Test Discussion Manacles of Force - Artifact

Question
Should Manacles work with Gadgets Stealth and Mental Invisibility when the player is using the Improved Stealth hands mod? The Improved Stealth hands mod turns both of those powers into Shields.

So two questions that i've come up with so far for the artifact that I didn't immediately jump to that conclusion when I made my in-depth breakdown video.

1) The unshakeable state does apply to a rage's enraged rage crash so while that sounds intended and working correctly in terms of the artifact I am concerned with how powerful that actually plays out in a raid. With how the artifact already works on halfing the upfront damage taken the players rage crash damage would be halved and then spread out over the next 6 seconds which can be covered at that point by the healers or the tanks own abilities where the massive spike damage from missing a rage crash is not easily covered by the healer or the tank himself. Also if that tank is running remoreless recovery or another reducer power he could rage crash have that damage reduced by the power and then further reduced by 50% with the the artifact buff. It just gives rage tanks quite an unfair advantage in this case.

2) My second point is a follow up to the artifacts unshakable state to half the damage taken initially then spread out. What I mean by that is in my footage testing this and walking through the doomsday aura without the artifact proc I took 32k damage per tick of the aura and with the artifact proc it was 17k on the 1st tick then the subsequent tick of 17k and then the damage started to spread out which was covered by my shield. Now the issue that presents itself there is that say I am a fire tank or even a rage tank with 100,000k+ base health which is completely easy to achieve. That means I could take a hit that is 180,000+ damage etc the first tick would be 90k which I would be able to survive easily then the second ticks are 90k spread out which can be covered by heals easily especially with their new artifact and with the shields of the tank.

I don't believe the first tick of damage should be halved. If a player gets hit for 50k then 50k it should be 50k damage taken then 25k on the next tick when the artifact has proc'd. If this is left how it is now this can lead to a situation where its impossible for a tank to die on skull attacks unless its a actual scripted one-shot and does 200k+ damage to the player which there isn't too much scripted one-shots in the game its just a health percentage. This can skew the difficulty in raiding and elite raiding with tanks just having their survivability increased infinitely on attacks that could normally kill them or attacks that they aren't prepared for because this artifact will literally bale them out of danger.

The unshakeable effect will be just as useful to players working how I suggested with the damage that subsequently happens after the artifact has proc'd being absorbed allowing the initial hit of damage to hit for full value. It just presents a issue that this artifact becomes more crucial to a tanks role than anything in the games history. DPS can get away without the artifacts their playstyle is the same, healers don't need demon fang or orb to do their roles effectively. Controllers don't really need the soul cloak or amulet of rao to debuff but the Manacles of Force would be absolutely without a doubt 100% necessary for a tanks role in that you can ignore one-shot mechanics with them being all halved on their initial damage.

This is really hard to test in practice so this is based in theory and how it will play out from my personal experience in the game but if there was a dev or yourself that could just hit me with attacks on test server for 50k 80k 100k 200k etc and I have 1 healer with me you'll see how much of a incredibly difference it is to survivability in a raid.

I don't believe it should be affecting these, but hard to tell from home I will look into this tomorrow when back in the office.

Thanks Batuba.

This was more of a conceptual question. The powers don't have the [Shield] tag, but become shields when a certain mod is slotted. This is an edge case that I was wondering about.

In summary, you feel this artifact might be too powerful depending on tank power set. I will look into rage crash triggering the artifact with our team internally and see how we feel about that. Also, apart from rage crash for rage tanks, it is difficult to plan when these manacles will proc as to avoid it being part of your rotation; this is by design as we gave it a CD and no active way to trigger it without getting creative. That being said, content team have ways to deal damage that bypasses the manacles defenses (aka 1 shot mechanics) that will still be detrimental to a tank.
We still also want the initial damage to be mitigated so this artifact is useful to more than just tanks. We like that healers, controllers and DPS are considering this as an option for survivability from being 1 shot by regular mechanics.
This is clearly a very strong Tank Artifact no question, however there isn't much to compare to atm for tank artifacts. Also, the buff lasts 5 seconds every 25s at max rank. A lot can happen in 20 seconds while it's not up If we continue to see feedback during testing that it's too powerful, perhaps CD number will change or the amount of damage absorption will be altered.
Thank you for feedback! Also, I enjoyed your video!

Thank you for your response Batuba, like I said I can't think of exact situations where this would be a determent to game difficulty but its something that i'll remain vigilant on testing for any future instances. My concern was from the fact that tanks already (same with others) an ability that ignores one-shot mechanics in amazon deflection have no known limits to the damage it can absorb and if you have that in combo with taking a massive 180k hit etc and just simply hitting Amazon Deflection right after you see your manacles proc you will have survived a hit that no other tank could have with the manacles and then block all the subsequent damage without a healer yourself with amazon deflection. Some tank powersets like Ice for example with a proper shield rotation and even with the cooldowns being slightly faster now its alot easier to control when the manacles would proc because most of the time its rare to have an attack hit you through a shield and still do 25% of your max health, what hurts ice is many small to medium hits or heavy damage over time like in Terra in Hive.

It's all like I said in theory but if everything plays out as It could it will negatively impact gameplay difficulty scaling. But we'll both see

FYI: The Base Shielding Modifier for Amazonian Deflection is ~779%. You're unlikely to ever reach that absorption cap in normal gameplay, but it does exist.

If you want to know how to measure it, send me a PM.

Feedback
I have been seeing several people (DPS and healers) use the Manacles artifact in the new Elite content. Apparently it has been working out very well for them. They are generally staying alive a lot longer than their Non-Manacle teammates. The Manacles work really well against occasional boss attacks where you receive small bursts of large damage ticks. In those situations, you take the big hit and can simply shield through the DoT damage very easily. The DoT damage you receive from Manacles also work with damage transferring pets. As long as you can survive the initial big damage tick and trigger Manacles, your survivability will increase quite a bit.

Generally the types of attacks I outlined above happen at 30+ second intervals. That means you don't have to worry about the cooldown on your high-level Manacles.

This is exciting to hear. I was planning on leveling this up for my tank build but it's nice to hear it might get some play on the DPS side as well.

If you know exactly what you're doing, it seems like an amazing artifact so far. Of course, it requires you to have good knowledge of shield mechanics, NPC attack intervals, and NPC Damage ranges. It just isn't something you can slot and expect to survive a OHKO attack.

Still, I can expect this will be a highly desirable artifact for Elite mode for non-tanks too.

Hello,

If it's not, it should take this 2 iconic shield. Because for example Hardlight shield it's core of every power tank and it's clearly writing [shield] in the power.

I believe the artifact should activate when you take 25% of your max health within 1 second rather than one hit. This would be far more useful to tanks. There are times when a boss might do three large hits in a row. Also times when a tank might get swarmed with adds and take heavy total damage from multiple adds.

Dude,
You are obviously here to promote your YouTube channel. If you want to promote yourself go ahead but don't intentionally sabotage the game for other players. Not every player is a spreadsheet number cruncher. Not every player will sit there and try to find exploits to the game. The average DC player logs in to do their dailies and grind their feats.

The description says when you take damage from the enemy you tryhard! Rage Crash damage is self inflicted. Ice tanks have always been easy to use based on the mechanics of the power from day one. Every tank has their strengths and weaknesses but they are not all perfect. This artifact is meant to give an average player the option to have an additional shield. It cost almost 700k exp to get there on top of it. You would have them Nerf the artifact that players will invest time and $$$ into so you can get YouTube subscriptions?!! Because you are obviously not here to help the community and you are not on Daybreak's payroll.

Amazonian Deflection is strong yes but is not an absolute. If you get block broken you are left vulnerable. I am a Fire tank and that tanking is far from perfect! You know the self heals in the powerset are not enough to successfully get you through end game content without kiting and a prayer. They changed the mechanics to be active but the survivability is low especially with multiple ads and boss! A lot of us players need this Artifact to get through elites. Dude if you are not here to help just STHU BRUH!

Needed a good laugh after work today thank you for that

I'll let you think about what you said there for a moment about rage crash damage has nothing to do with an enemy

For one if you were aware of half the things you talked about here you would see how any player could use the manacles let alone a tank. Right now a high sp, geared dps can easily have 70,000+ health that means if he runs the artifact that dps can take a hit for 120,000+ damage and survive because the artifact will halve the damage then the healer can simply use a supercharge or a shield to help mitigate the subsequent damage that dps takes. Just because that dps had 1 artifact it has completely negated an attack that would have 100% killed him before. That isn't balance and just leads to situations where content is only completed because of the power of an artifact. Skull attacks don't happen every 10-15 seconds they are once in awhile so even the cooldown being 25-30 seconds is completely manageable. Your comment about amazon deflection is completely pointless because the moment you would use amazon to cover the damage from the one-shot (like for example the nuke in the Ultimate Solider raid, or the Hive Master Beam) you will be hitting AD immediately following to cover the ticks of the manacles and likelihood that you are stunned out of AD especially in a boss fight where there may not even be any other sort of npcs is very slim.

Also its funny that you even mention you are a fire tank and don't actually realize what this artifact means to you, as a fire tank you will continually proc this artifact when you don't want to because of having low defense and self heal based recovery your health bar will continually spike past 25% of your health on attacks that an earth, ice or atomic wouldn't proc the manacles so they can actually save the artifact to avoid a one-shot that would have otherwise killed the group.

Please if you are going to attempt to talk about feedback have somewhat of an understanding of the subject matter, we don't need this discussion getting off topic.

Thank you and have a great day

1. He doesn't need to promote himself. Outside of Odyssey, Balkan, Smileb4death, and Orbit, he's been the biggest youtuber for DC.

2. Not every player sits there and tries to find exploits, but there is a community that actively does and they will spread it like hell when they find out it works in elite. TTBE probably wasn't intended to just use a group shield sc every tentacle phase but eventually every run hero side at least had 2-3 ppl just on sc duty and the tentacles were ignored completely.

3. It doesn't say damage from an enemy, it actually says "when an attack damages you". It doesn't specify where that attack has to come from. More dramatic example but if it was changed to "when you get stabbed, you take reduced damage for a few seconds", it doesn't matter if someone else stabs you or you stab yourself, the condition of being stabbed was fulfilled.

4. Me and him both know several leagues with people that have 4-6 160 artifacts through various means. I don't feel like seeing "WTB 160 MoF Artifact Tank for Throne Elite 5mil PST" in LFG. We already have people payng for other services I won't mention, we don't need exploited artifacts adding to that list.

5. That's why you don't use Amazonian Deflection early and or farm a blue before use.

6. You using this artifact to get through elite is exactly the problem. Elite was being tuned to replace SM as the hard content you're supposed to struggle through. Not pay $80 and you have free elite runs until server goes down. We didn't know the different ways that 1shots can be coded seeing as the majority of 1shots go away with CR a few tiers later so it seemed to just be a high damage value and not an auto 1shot regardless of your stats.

7. Enjoy your vacation BRUH!

Updated original post with updated changes coming soon to test for the Manacles of Force. I look forward to your feedback. Thanks!

Hi Batuba,
I was wondering if it's too late to add another function to this artifact. The issue is that when my fire tank gets swarmed with ads for examples in Hive Elite or Machine Elite, there is absolutely nothing in my tool kit that can keep me alive long enough for the DPS to dwindle their numbers due to the damage split. Even with 2 healers. Is it possible to give the artifact the ability to proc after taking more than 75%-85% damage within 3 seconds from multiple hits, you become immune to all incoming damage for 2 seconds as well?

Hey there Rival Ops! We are continuing to monitor the effectiveness of this artifact for the various power sets.

I use Engulf and Backdraft spaced out to juggle the adds up and down. If you keep them juggled, it's manageable, but as soon as they get cc resistance from say you spamming them too often or the controller, it's a panic mode to shield or jump away etc. If I was to change it for fire for add phases, I'd say taking 35% health in .75 seconds triggers it with an activation use of reducing incoming damage by 50% for 3-6 seconds. Give time for the self heals to kick in a little. But I'm not sure if they want it to apply to massive add damage and not just boss hard attacks.

Still no love for fire tank. I hope one day they will adjust them. And why not make tank role only for the actual effect ? and the other role get the 50 sec cooldown,35 % ?