Test Discussion Solar Amplifier Bug

"This bug was not fixed sooner as we were not aware this was happening with the artifact (as tends to be the case with any bug until it is fixed - we don't purposely release bugs)."

No one is really going to believe this. Maybe the team needs a dedicated feedback reviewer. Its been posted months ago on bug threads. To choose to gloss over that and fix ridiculous other things in the game that have no relevance like renaming NPC's or whatever else; to allow it to remain a bug for so long without acknowledging anything relevant to it. And in the meanwhile, here it is, having been a main staple artifact for numerous builds and loadouts. Its almost like there's selective listening and favoritism through means outside of the forums, especially when you see repeat "defensive" argumentative comments from certain people that show a bit more concern than your average post just because there's a difference of opinion. Wonder why.

And if the argument is going to be "Well you should have known it was a bug..." Sure, some did, but many many more didn't. And when you guys don't respond/acknowledge/fix things for the longest time, what do you really expect? How long did you leave Nature broken while also saying "its working as intended." For the record, good job on nerfing Nature. Unfortunately, not every bug is as clear to the usual playerbase as that one was.
How many different times have we had artifact adjustments needed? How many times through the years has there been a pattern showing lack of acknowledgment or "working as intended" and then finally "patch notes- fixed" Okay? Why was it okay back then and not okay now? What is it? A bug or not? How do you change your mind all of a sudden on a whim. This isn't directed at one person in particular.

The amount of times I've heard something being said to be "working as intended" up until the moment it gets fixed is getting hilarious. Its become a habit it seems like.
-Ice Elemental AM Era Damage Buff after leaving form (Working as intended, gets fixed around Revamp)
-Speed Drain Pet Boost (Working as intended, also fixed later)
-Mental (Grandeur/Mass Terror/WM Glitch...no acknowledgement up until it was changed))
I could go on but I'm I'll stop myself here.

Compensation? Personally, I don't really care whether or not I get compensated for it at this point. However I can easily understand the frustration and desire for it when the artifact was left untouched while people(whether they knew or not) leveled it spending their money during these times. You let the Venom Wrist Dispenser stick around while the whole community had a better understanding of its over-performance than this. There was compensation.

Please show some professionalism in addressing feedback and bug reports quicker. The inaction to do so is what gets the community angered(because guess what, players spend money on this artifact nonsense) and its what makes you guys look bad.

(Yes this is all constructive feedback. It concerns feedback/bug report approaches, whether or not something is clearly stated as a bug in a timely manner, possible compensation.) Thank you for reading.

Who, how, and why someone leveled it is not relevant a year later.
Again like others, your underlying point is that it was soooooo Known an in the open YET no one that mattered was aware? Who’s fault is that? Its not the consumers fault. Why someone bought something is NOT relevant. The relevant point is they sold it, we bought it, they a ted like it was perfect for a year ish an now suddenly wanna say somethings wrong?
****

How is this getting one thing and then get another? where is it listed anywhere with the solar amplifier that the explosion proc just at rank 200 doesn't split damage? Because I am pretty sure the only item it lists at 200 is "Install Tactical Mod" maybe its just my reading comprehension, perhaps you can show me differently. When you purchased the Solar Amplifier and got it to Rank 120 when the aoe explosion first appears does it properly split damage? yes does it do that at rank 140? yes does it do that at rank 160? yes so where you can remotely draw the assumption that at Rank 200 its anything more than a bug that it doesn't because all the previous tiers it didn't? When you purchased the Solar Amplifier did it install the empowered channeling tactical mod? did it? because if it did then dcuo met exactly what they were selling. If you bought a car with the salesman's briefcase still in it and he showed up at your house to get it and you SCREAMED AT HIM AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS like you are doing now that the salesman is shady and its a bait n switch because you bought a car with a briefcase in it and HOW DARE THAT DEALERSHIP mean for the briefcase not to be in the car right? because that situation makes perfect sense right?

There was never even any logical reason to consider it a bug other than sheer conjecture. Progression, balance, and the fact it's impossible to believe devs weren't aware of the well known, frequently discussed, heavily documented mechanic all indicated the non-split was intended, which is why I defended it as such in the bug thread on the subject (for which it was never flagged as a bug). It's simply not possible to believe them here.

No power's description indicates whether or not it splits and this went from no aoe... to split aoe... to non-split aoe... which is extremely logical commonsense progression given the cost. There was never an actual performance imbalance because ranged aoe was still outperformed by melee aoe.... so there's really no valid explanation as to why this is happening, and why it's happening now... almost an exact year after the fact. This leaves the game less healthy than before the "fix."

It should also be pointed out that the DoT on this was a very weak one. This is on test now and not only does the burst split but so does the dot. The dot ticks now tend to sit in double digits. It's absolutely atrocious. As such, this didn't just screw the arti over for AoE, it screws its ST performance anytime there are other targets present now as well. Despite Batuba's assertion, this simply does not have the same ST value at all anymore. This looks and feels exactly like they simply wanted to nerf the artifact. The new state of Solar Amp is simply an unpolished dog's breakfast of hot garbage design in every way and there's zero logic to it.

Preliminary checks indicate this change results in a ~40-50% overall ranged aoe rotation performance loss, even after optimizing artifacts and loadout to compensate. This is in addition to a hefty ST DPS loss with HV anytime multiple targets are present. As anticipated, this basically means that ranged aoe clear is now dead for most powers. Ranged AoE used to be balanced: weaker than melee but more consistent. Now it's just worse in general... An otherwise balanced trash-clear playstyle eradicated by an arbitrary decision.

After seeing this change in action, I've lost a good deal of trust and respect in this process. This wasn't a bug fix, it was a nerf... plain and simple. A pointless, senseless, stupid nerf. Possibly the dumbest and most pointless nerf I've ever. All this change does is hurt balance and devalue an artifact. Funny how that keeps happening with the game's big ticket items that cost a fortune... The excuses/justifications for which I no longer buy, as will now become my policy for most expenditures in this game to an ever increasing degree if these kinds of decisions continue.

To reiterate: The fact this can even AoE at all now is a liability, not an advantage. It actually makes heat vision worse than if the AoE didn't even exist. It is completely idiotic design. I'm more mad at how atrocious this design is than I am at the loss of ranged aoe play.. it's just plain amateur in general. Whoever had the devs' ears on this did not have the game's best interests at heart.

I do not use Heat Vision or Solar Amp, just making that clear up front.

I returned to the game after being away for years in April. Immediately after re-joining my old friends and new ones told me about the AoE damage not splitting with Solar Amp. It was all over YouTube and these forums. How I, someone who hadn't touched the game in years, figured out about this bug within weeks of re-joining before you did is embarrassing for you (not you specifically, the general dev "you") and speaks volumes about how inept your communication with the player base is. People have been talking about Solar Amp since at least April (definitely longer) and you only just now noticed? I'm glad that it's being fixed, it's about time. You let it go on for so long that I'm sure many casual players could have assumed it was the norm. Same with DW/FS, same with Doomspin and same with Nature. You guys are just too slow. It's shameful. I wash my hands of this game, again.

No power indicates whether or not it splits, merely whether or not the power hits multiple targets. The artifact description remained just as true at 200 as it did at 160 and the progression was logical and balanced both in terms of performance:cost ratio and overall build balance. By your reasoning, every non-split power in the game would be bugged. The new design actually makes the fact it can AoE at all a DPS liability, not an advantage. The time to change a product like this is not a full year after the fact.

There are plenty of bugs that are posted daily that go overlooked and missed in favor of others, you want to know how long the link dead glitch was floating around in game? In that post was there anything offered besides conjecture about the damage splitting? Did anyone actually show it in video form, break down on test the side by side comparison of rank 160 to 200? nothing of the sort was done to actually prove that Solar Amplifier was out performing at the time, whether it be players like yourself wanted to turn a blinds eye to it because like you said its necessary for it to be broken for might dps, that it's necessary for Heat Vision a power that is singular target in nature for the past 10 years in the game to have an artifact rank come out that makes it the strongest AOE power in the game, only at a specific rank breakthrough .

Your comment about other powers already existing in game that don't follow normal damage splitting rules, you mean abilities like Arc Lightning, Tesla Ball, and Berserk? because abilities like that were common knowledge of their broken splitting and attempts over time were already completed to bring them closer in line. https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/test-server-hotfix-december-20-2017.293415/ so while the precedent exists that powers exist outside of normal damage splitting the precedent also exists to have them corrected because of the very fact they didn't split damage properly.

Looking at the actual numbers where those aren't ever discussed, just peoples feelings about being cheated out of a broken artifact




does it make rational sense that by allowing the damage not to split on Solar Amplifier Rank 200 that Amplified Heat Vision should have 74% more damage in the same time frame as when it splits damage properly? Does it make any logical sense to you that a singular target ability in Heat Vision should be the strongest aoe power? There was a reason countless dps builds of yours had Heat Vision not only on Single Target but Ranged and Melee. So 1 artifact and only Rank 200 should have that much influence over an ability to increase its damage by 74%?


It's seems much more likely that once the developers realized the actual magnitude of this bug that it was fixed promptly and its on the community for not properly making it known, myself included with such a delay while we all resorted to becoming comfortable with having Heat Vision and a 200 Rank Solar Amplifier required for each and every might rotation, regardless of the powerset.

Your point with Venom Wrist Dispenser is also completely irrelevant because there was no bug with Venom Wrist Dispenser, it was working as intended, but while it was working as intended there was a precision imbalance which lead the developers to take it down the path that they did and because they were changing an artifact not due to any actual bug/glitch they offered to players with increased nth metal and skipped leveling. That situation is entirely different than with Solar Amplifier and any precedents set with Venom Wrist Dispenser does not apply to Solar Amplifier.

Do players still get an increase single target beam that turns blue at rank 80-200? CHECK
Do players still get an aoe damage explosion at rank 120-200? CHECK
Do players still get an aoe burning dot applied to nearby targets at rank 160-200? CHECK
Do players still get the tactical mod empowered channeling installed at rank 200? CHECK

So I fail to see where the consumer confidence is shaken and dcuo is acting in bad faith. Players bought a car that was advertised with a V8 and got one with a V8 Supercharger that wasn't listed on the bill of sale and then want to complain when the dealership took away the Supercharger when you went to the dealership for service. Be thankful that you had one with a supercharger for the time you had.

I'll test again tomorrow, but that was not the case for me. The DoTs for a 160 solar amplifier were the same on a single target or on all 8.

“Laughs in prec”. this is what happens when you beg for one thing to be nerfed and it actually happens, everything else gets nerfed In the process lol lol. Good job devs

The non-split was well known for as long as it existed and it passed testing like that. It has been the major selling point of investing in the artifact beyond 160 since release. There's no dismissing this as an honest mistake, especially when it pertains to an item requiring this kind of investment... doubly so when this keeps happening in ways that stand to increase cross-spending. I would have agreed with you on this in the past but the cycle of "working as intended > no that was a bug" repeats itself a bit too much and it's not outlandish to point out a professional development team shouldn't keep making these kind of mistakes in areas directly tied to monetary investment.

- Solar Amp is adding a bonus AoE burst at the end of the power. The % gains to which you are referring only occured when multiple targets were hit, as with all AoE-focus powers. The intent was for it to become an AoE and it became an AoE (in part). Even with that taken into consideration, however, that's not a substantial % gain for an AoE effect. AoE powers that do split will deal ~200-400+% extra damage when they're hitting multiple targets. Solar Amp now does 0% extra damage in AoE (ie. it is a complete and total split; ST dmg = AoE DMG), so its ST performance actually goes down now if there is more than one target present (and players can't jump cancel to prevent this because we don't get the DoT/PI without the burst, unlike vanilla HV).

- The degree to which an individual power's output is increased is not as important as its effect in actual builds. The only builds this removes Solar Amp from are ranged trash clear AoE, and in those builds use of The Strategist Card results in an even greater overall DPS boost while that artifact still remains a potent ST option as well. With this change, Solar Amp being able to AoE now costs it ST DPS performance and it is no longer a viable AoE option at all. It went from being a versatile tool, like many other artifacts, to a one trick pony that's now pretty derpy about its one trick.

There is a substantial difference between maintaining non-split behaviour while reducing damage and adding a 100% split without boosting damage or following standard non-split AoE rules. Arc Lightning and Tesla Ball remain potent AoE powers, giving Electricity one of the best AoEs in the game. By changing the HV AoE burst from a non-split to a total-split, Solar Amp now loses ST performance with multiple targets present while gaining nothing in AoE situations.

The rank breakthroughs in question were specifically designed to make it an AoE power as well. As originally released and upgraded, the design and progression was sound. Solar Amp provided AoE output without hurting ST performance. This change hurts ST performance in all but 100% clean ST situations, objectively making HV a less capable ST power than if the AoE didn't exist, while now also fails to provide AoE of any value. In its current state, even calling it an AoE is a travesty in all but the most literal sense in that it is exactly as effective as using a ST power in an AoE situation. The AoE aspect is worse than useless like this. Note that this is also combined with Solar Amp removing HV's ability to apply PI at all w/o running full duration, so it's barely better for the powers that benefit in that regard.

It would be one thing if the AoE burst followed the logical split rules of other AoE effects. It's quite a different animal altogether when one the "bonus" effects of this expensive artifact is actually a detriment to the capabilities of the power it's meant to boost. Now, instead of an artifact as versatile as trans, strat, and even grim, we have an artifact that is only useful in ST situations and actually suffers in that role if those situations aren't completely clean. This is where consumer confidence becomes an issue: the design was good, logical, versatile, balanced... and now it's illogical and counterintuitive, making elements of HV objectively worse. This change turns Solar Amp into one of the least versatile artifacts in the game.

Agreed... but as a non-prec player whose league was/is almost entirely non-prec, I actually begged for them to not nerf prec.

On test server? It's not on live yet. On test server, it is a 100% damage split, where however much damage you would deal to a single target is the amount you will deal to multiple targets, which is antipodal to the purpose of Heat Vision.

On test Server.

Yeah probably another bug. the 160 rank dot doesn't split properly, but the rank 200 dot does. That is to say, if you level your solar amp to 199, your dot will not split at all-- dealing 800% damage against 8 targets in the league hall. At 200, things definitely split. I haven't done the math to verify that they split after 2 as expected.

Keep in mind that it's a weaker DoT to begin with though. The original non-split dot hitting 8 targets was still weaker than, or at best on par with, the dots of comparable AoE powers. Now we get practically LPVE numbers from the DoT.

As chill pointed out, the AoE damage increase was only 72% before, which is significantly less than that of AoE powers which can double or quadruple their output or more in the same situations. The actual AoE rotation performance gains with Amp were only increased by the same margin as with other AoE artifacts, so it wasn't unbalanced there either compared to other artifacts or compared to non-ranged AoE options.

This isn't how AoE split rules generally work, ie AoEs are supposed to deal more overall damage when they hit multiple targets, not the same amount of damage split evenly. They're also only supposed to split after a fixed number. I don't remember it ever being this bad at 160 or lower at all.

Also, there was supposedly nothing wrong at all with 160.

Good point, so I just checked and at 200 it is a complete, 100% split beyond 1 target. Damage per target is equivalent to ST damage divided by the number of targets right now. At 160, which has been indicated to have worked as intended, before arti level was increased the burst would follow standard AoE split rules (ie. would deal more overall damage in aoe situations) and the DoT would not split at all, which makes sense given the low tick damage.

That said, I took your lead and leveled a second Amp to 160 on test for comparison and the current 160 AoE burst is also violating normal AoE behaviour in that beyond 2 targets it is now essentially a 100% split, which also isn't right. If something hits a single target for 10k for example, it should hit 3-8 targets for a combined total of ~25-40k if it's following standard split-after-two behaviour. This is likely an additional bug at 160 hindering that breakthrough's performance right now (unless the intent was always to have full split at 160 and non-split at 200, which would be logical but they've now indicated it isn't the case). As it is right now, the artifact-powered HV AoE burst is actually considerably worse than a single tick of Freezing Breath (or really any other aoe-capable power, proportionally speaking).

Anecdotally, this is a lot of nonsense to sift through for a change to something that was only performing on par with or worse than other comparable artifacts in AoE situations in the first place =/ hope this was all worth it.

If you are going in and fixing the bug, could you fix the animation as well. Before rank 200 the blue beam is huge then after you reach lvl 200, it gets considerably thinner.

Batuba this is one of those times that you should REALLY consider what it is your doing here. Change the description of the Solar Amp and move on. To come back this late in the game and come up with the reasoning you just said STINKS to high heaven that you are up to something else and people aren't buying it. It seems like a little to much work for something that is minor and people have generally adapted to it already.

People paid real money to get their Solar Amplifier up to rank 200.

Now it gets 'adjusted' after months of no-acknowledgement by the devs on the no-split bug.

It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I guessing this will alienate a large portion of your players in the process.

Artifacts are a main source of income for Daybreak.

I'm thinking you guys are smart enough not to kill your golden goose now, would you?

Perhaps the devs might want to consider offering compensation by way of a free artifact switch to another rank 200 artifact?

Why would they offer a swap for a different artifact? You level the solar amp for the might increase and the primary alteration to heat visions damage. If you leveled it because there was a bug that made it deal more damage than intended and you wished to abuse that then it’s your fault for doing so. I leveled it to 160 for the damage increase for my single target build, I leveled it to 200 for the might increase. No where in the artifact does it say it doesn’t split so logically it should follow the same AoE rules as almost every other ability. It’s not just an “adjustment” it’s a fix for a bugged ability.

Here is a quick raw demo of the game's standard split as seen with several powers compared to the current split performance of 160 and 200 Solar Amp on test. What we're looking at here is the base damage of any given hit or dot tick. In the interest of (relative) brevity, I'm not going to get into the minutia but you can check my assertions against the raw hits/ticks you see here (using base damage, headmath the crits a/r if you need to), or simply check for yourself ig:



Standard Split Rules
Most powers follow "splits after two" rules. This means most powers deal 2x DMG if they hit 2x targets, then split thereafter while doing some additional bonus damage. The bonus damage doesn't generally scale beyond three targets. As can be seen with Meteor Strike, Wildfire, Freezing Breath, Mass Detonation, Detonate, and Inferno, these powers all adhere to that rule and the total 8x target damage of any given hit/tick exceeds the sum of their 1x target damage by a factor of well over 200% in each case, in keeping with the 2x dmg + bonus damage split standard.

160 Solar Amp Split Behaviour
Then we look at Solar Amp 160, which the devs state is behaving correctly. We can immediately see that the burst's damage split is not following established "splits after two" logic. The amount of burst damage is simply being split 8 ways such that ST:AOE DMG is 1:1, which is broken and obviously bad. It's not shown here but I also went to Patchwork and tested on 2x targets and it did not split at 2x targets.... so 160 burst split is especially messed up in that it behaves appropriately if and only if there are two or fewer targets, then the split stops working properly and it does only about 40% of the overall damage it's supposed to in further AoE situations. The DoT, however, does not split. It is applied to each target individually without splitting and this is always how this has been with Solar Amp. It's an important nuance because if it didn't behave that way, a considerable portion of Heat Vision's otherwise clean ST damage would become wasted on AoE targets in a manner that doesn't benefit the power's otherwise ST nature (and which is the exact opposite of how vanilla HV works, which we'll discuss more below). It's also important because a player seeing double-digit DoT ticks after spending a fortune on an artifact would obviously not be impressed.

200 Solar Amp Split Behaviour
With Solar Amp at 200, all the rules go out the window. None of the appropriate split rules are adhered to. The power splits after 1 and there is no bonus damage, meaning it is a complete and total split of both the burst and the DoT (the DoT ticks become comically weak) and a customer has essentially spent 1.7mil nth + catalysts + seals for the privilege of being retroactively handed the single worst AoE attack in the entire game. This is also the worst case scenario hinted at in the 160 discussion, because it makes the forced AoE a detriment to our ST performance when multiple targets are present, which is a non-negligible amount of the time. This results in the burst and HV burning DoT dealing only 12.5-50% of their damage to any given target in a multi-target scenario, turning an otherwise completely clean ST power into the dirtiest the AoE effect could possibly be with no way to prevent it due the real bugs discussed below.

So now that this whole can of worms has been opened for... reasons?... here are the actual bugs caused by Solar Amp.

Real Solar Amp Bugs
Loss of Appropriate DoT/PI Application Rules: Without Solar Amp, Heat Vision applies its DoT the instant the channel ends no matter how it ends. We can immediately jump cancel it, be knocked out of the channel, or we can simply change targets and we still get the full DoT and the PI on our initial target. If we're feeling nasty we could apply the DoT to our primary target then move the beam to a secondary target to ensure no damage was wasted. This is important behaviour from a channeled PI applicator, as we can't be having a DoT/PI that risks not landing. With Solar Amp on, however, we only get the DoT or the PI if the channel is allowed to run its full course, meaning we lose them completely a lot, even with Empowered Channeling due to the prevalence of hard interrupts and physics-based attacks in boss fights. We also can obviously no longer jump cancel to trigger the DoT or quickly apply PI.

Complete loss of Burst, DoT, and PI application: If our primary target becomes untargetable for any reason around the 3rd or 4th tick and the channel is forced to switch to a new target, the burst, DoT, and PI application are lost completely. As with the previous bug, this is in stark contrast to the consistent, reliable PI and DoT application of vanilla HV.

Inconsistent Power Consumption Frequency: Amplified Heat Vision consumes an inconsistent number of ticks worth of power for the purposes of Lernaea's Amulet, sometimes using power three times and sometimes only using power twice.

Very much looking forward to all of the actual bugs with this artifact being fixed after all this time. Surely this same vigor will be applied to the backlog of actual publicly confirmed bugs that have been in the queue for months/years as well.

No description indicates whether or not a power splits. This holds true for attacks in both PVE and LPVE. In terms of split, there is/was nothing inaccurate with the description relative to any other description that's ever existed in the game and the only things that didn't perform in keeping with established game logic and balance are the bugs mentioned above.

If the salesman in your example tried to shiw at my house a year later then yea, that is my briefcase. The more correct analogy is i would have tried to return it to the dealership just as ppl tried commenting here. The devs knowingly chose to ignore this for about a year. Their lack of communication and acknowledgement is in fact telling us that it works as intended. There is literally no reason to think otherwise an now that they have collected enough $ they want to bait n switch us in the hopes we dump it and buy something else and that IS bait n switch and that IS as crooked as it gets.
Again, a bug fix is not somethin the company sits by an watches an collects $ for a year then tries to suddenly say its a bug. Thats BS and you know it. Its openly neglegent at best and intentionally deceitful at worst.
The devs have an opportunity to take the bullet on this and do rite an accept responsibility And couod compensate those with solar amp who basically purchased a product that performed 1 way and now will perform a different way. Will they tho? We shall see, need a green name to address this