Test Discussion Episode 42: Ally - Batman Who Laughs

Howdy Y'all, we've got a new ally release, so head on over to either Cyborg or the PC test vendor to check out this new ally

Functionality:
Deadman's Hand
[Combat Ability]
Roots and damages enemies around him before retreating and throwing a fan of cards.
At Scaling:

• (1) Ability Unlocked
• (2) 40% damage
• (3) 90% damage
• (4) 135% damage
• (5) 180% damage
• (6) 225% damage
• (7) 270% damage
• (8) 315% damage
• (9) 360% damage
• (10) 400% damage

Luck of the Draw
[Passive Ability]
While in combat, receive a random buff card from The Batman Who Laughs Deck. The effects are as follows:

• Gaea Card: HP Heal
• Enigma Card: Power Heal
• Frigor Card: Increased crit chance duration 10s
• Batman Card: Increased might duration 10s

A card is drawn every 30 seconds.
At scaling:

• (4) Unlocked G: 5% heal, E: 2% power restore, F: +5% crit chance, B: +1% might
• (5) G: 6% heal, E: 4% power restore, F: +6% crit chance, B: +1.5% might
• (6) G: 7% heal, E: 6% power restore, F: +7% crit chance, B: +2% might
• (7) G: 8% heal, E: 8% power restore, F: +8% crit chance, B: +2.5% might
• (8) G: 9% heal, E: 10% power restore, F: +9% crit chance, B: +3% might
• (9) G: 10% heal, E: 12% power restore, F: +10% crit chance, B: +3.5% might
• (10) G: 12% heal, E: 15% power restore, F: +12% crit chance, B: +5% might

Toxic Encore
[Passive Ability]
When using a finisher on an enemy below 25% health, prepare a bomb that will activate on the next finisher. The activated bomb will release a field of defense-reducing toxin for 10s.
At Max Affinity Level:

• (6) Unlocked 3% defense debuff
• (7) 4% defense debuff
• (8) 5% defense debuff
• (9) 6% defense debuff
• (10) 7% defense debuff

Please let me know your feedback on these new ally abilities as well as your general thoughts on the ally itself.

Sounds like a good choice for Dps players.

Is the chance on the 1st Passive 25% each, or does it favor the less interesting buffs over the more useful damage buffs?

The second passive sounds great at first, but what that will do is lower the little advantage that might players have over precision, wich is the damage increase during below 35% health on targets (because it lowers the amount of time your finisher deals extra damage).
If this debuff is for anyone, its too strong in my opinion since its effectively like a 2nd controller defence debuff with rao artifact on top.
If this debuff is only for the player that caused the effect its fine, but then its just a 7% buff instead of a debuff i guess.

Something that could change the second passive to the better for anyone is applying the debuff during the first 25% health. Anyone benefits and no drawback for any type of Dps.

Test results with Rank 10:

Combat ability: Damage seems in line with other Allies on AoE. Single target is also very strong and almost keeps up with Batman or HoL bot.

Passive 1: All buffs applied except the power regen. Couldve been bad rng though. Crit chance increases weapon crit chance from 46% to 103%. Ability Crit chance is not affected for some reason. Might buff got applied and was 5% like intended.

Passive 2: Tested as dps and troll. Works as intended. It stacks with regular controller debuffs, increasing damage massively. Havent tested if its affected by Rao artifact.


One thing many allies' passives share is the indication of activation. It doesnt need a special vfx to make it fancy but at least make a symbol appear on the enemy name card for example or when its a buff it should show up in current effects please.

Questions
This is about Toxic Encore. Here is a demonstration video that can be referenced:


I use Fear Gas three times at the start of the video to establish that 1307 is my baseline for a non-crit tick. I then alternate casting Photon Blast and Fear Gas to see what happens.

1. Should Toxic Encore stack with itself? You can see where my damage ticks goes from 1307->1405 at 17 seconds and 1405->1519 at 21 seconds.

2. Is there supposed to be internal cooldown timer on the effect? My damage goes back to 1307 at 33 seconds and remains that way until 54 seconds.

Feedback
When you are first looking over Luck of the Draw, it looks fairly decent. Once you start play-testing it though, you realize there are a number of issues with it.

Lack of Visual Indicator
Outside of looking at combat log or keeping your stat screen open, there is no way of knowing what buff you are receiving.

Frigor Card
Going by the description, this buff is just bugged at the moment. It can either provide a Critical Weapon Attack Chance or Critical Ability Attack Chance buff. It will not buff both of them at the same time. Also, it was boosting my Crit Chance from 45% to 101.2%. What happened to the "12%" buff?

Sheer Randomness
The effect activates even when you are out of combat. So it continues to cycle buffs even when you are idle or out of combat. With 10 second duration and 20 second downtime, you only have a stat boost 33% of the time. On top of that, you have no way of controlling which of the 5 buffs you are supposed to receive. The Crit and Might bonuses are always going to be useful. The Healing and Power Healing chance are only useful if you need them at that specific moment. So when you factor in downtime in combat and the ever cycling randomness of the passive, the odds of getting the buff you want at a critical moment seem very low.

I love that greeting lol.

Question about Frigor card, does this include healing & power healing crits?

Sort of related, can ally's position of combat or support & what Passive we choose be locked to our armories?

I like to use various allies for different reasons depending on the build, but it can be a hassle to do that manually in the middle of a mission.

You think it would be more helpful for the buff to be role specific? Like hp heal strictly for tanks, power heal for trolls & healers, the might buff strictly for dps, while the Frigor card can be universal so each role can have a 50/50 chance to get at least one buff they will likely need?

Ok wait a second here... how come precision gets no love this ally is gonna be another over powered ally for might base smh the passive they will pick is the 7% defense debuff and they will most likely one shot everything now. Because defense debuff is way better at end game cr then dmg out of any kind. This is the episode all precision dps go might base for sure

I haven't had a chance to test this either, but the Randomness makes it not really worth the investment. If you want it for DPS or a role, you are looking at very unpredictable results. Plus, since it's a legendary ally, the investment on it is steep. (Someone want to explain why legendary allies start with a legendary alliance at the first breakthrough?!)

I'll be testing this during the holiday weekend, but at first glance, the jack of all random trades makes it seem like a hard pass. The finisher power isn't a bad idea, if you a finisher.

I doubt might players can (one shot) & lower content is clamped. Prec already has the highest single target damage in the game & im not seeing shuriken storm mastery being out paced in by much if at all from my experiences with it. My guess is it was probably done this way to help might be more in line with prec so the devs can adjust content more uniformly for both playstyles.

I dislike the general concept of this passive. Rather than having "random buff at uncontrolled time", I'd rather use a passive that I can count on.

If you want to try to salvage the concept of "random buff," give us smaller buffs that last the full 30 seconds so there is no downtime. Another player I was talking to had the idea of replacing the heal with a Health stat buff and power heal with a Power stat buff. That would be more useful than getting a healing tick at a completely random time and hoping you need it.

How about split passive ability Luck of the Draw on 2 passive abilities?
Luck of the Draw (1\DPS)
[Passive Ability]
While in combat, receive a random buff card from The Batman Who Laughs Deck. The effects are as follows:

• Frigor Card: Increased crit chance duration 10s
• Batman Card: Increased might duration 10s

Luck of the Draw (2\Support)
[Passive Ability]
While in combat, receive a random buff card from The Batman Who Laughs Deck. The effects are as follows:

• Gaea Card: HP Heal
• Enigma Card: Power Heal

Hold up, so since legendary Allie’s are gonna be purchased with source marks now does that mean we get refunded all the marketplace cash we spent on them?

Nope. Your purchased on mp ally can be claimed for every character(one that you will create in the future too) on account. Cyborg sell allies per character so all fair.

I see where you're coming from & I agree it would be nice if it wasn't a "box of chocolates" lol.

I'll have to wait until after this weekend before I can test how random it can get lol but my thought process was (if support role crits were increased heal and power heal) then nearly every role will always be able to use it & the other ones could still benefit it.

I like that the passives seem to be designed to work with the “card” artifacts. I do so enjoy it when lore informs gameplay synergy. As an avid user of the transformation and strategist cards, that first passive does tickle my fancy.

The rng factor does seem to need some work. While the aforementioned cards are also rng based, they average out at a net positive, and I don’t see this passive doing the same in its current form.

I think the above suggestion of the buffs being weaker but cycling through them with zero downtime, and perhaps changing more often would be great. After all, that’s how the artifacts work and I imagine their permanence and constant proc potential contributes significantly to their potency.

After all, the more cards you can draw, the less a bad draw will punish you.

Yeah this is a more organized version of how I was thinking but if it works like the transformation card it wold be nice if healers (added bonus & trolls) heals crits & power heals crits get a buff too.

When you activate the batman who laughs Passive luck of the draw, does a card fly above your head like that one accessory?

Yeah, they added the fx for the Frigor and Batman cards with the latest update, as far as I've seen the Gaea and Enigma cards aren't in yet. The card effects look really good and they are good indicators, it'll just take a bit to get used to which card is which.

Bugs:
-The effect is still being activated while outside of combat.
-Entering and exiting Invisibility, and I imagine other states, forcibly makes the passive draw cards. Allowing up to 3 cards to be drawn at the same time, if timed properly.
Suggestions:
-The crit chance for the Frigor card is only applying to either weapon or ability attack chance, causing this to be a 5 way split in rng instead of 4. The crit chance should be streamlined to both ability and weapon attack, or remove the chance for a weapon attack crit.
-For the 1/4th chance (currently 1/5th assuming all the cards are equally likely to be drawn) you have to draw either the Frigor or the Batman card and have it be useful to you, 10 seconds feels completely underwhelming. Increase the duration of the Frigor and Batman cards, proportional to ally level, to a possible 20-30 second duration.
Far-stretch Suggestions:
-The Gaea card, and to some extent the Enigma card, are somewhat useless for dps roles, however can prove very useful for troll, healer, and even tank. Due to the random nature of this passive it'd be nice to have it work for all roles. Have the Frigor card increase crit chance for all aspects, including healing and power chance.
-Take the previous suggestion one step further by making the Batman card also increase precision, restoration, dominance, and vitalization. Lock the effect based on role, if possible.

The concept for this ally is really fun and "luck" is always part of a players arsenal whether they consciously realize this or not. With a little polishing I think this could be a great jack-of-all-trades ally for anyone that plays multiple roles and wants to test their luck.