Stats Revamp 1.3: Gadgets

Bug Report
Fear Gas is producing an inconsistent number of damage ticks. Here is an example video:


First Cast: 9 damage ticks
Second Cast: 5 damage ticks
Third Cast: 5 damage ticks
Fourth Cast: 8 damage ticks (enemy was koed on the 8th)

Feedback
I am not liking this change to Suppressor Turret at all. In its new form, Suppressor Turret has the following characteristics:

• 500 base power cost
• 15 second duration
• Immortal
• Unreliable Damage (you never know what attack it is going to use)
• If the patch notes are to be believed, it should have a 30 second cooldown too.

Reasons I Hate This Change

• At 500 base power cost and a 15 second duration, it is too expensive to keep up full time. It is the most expensive power in the Gadgets powerset.
• Depending on your positioning, it could end up using the horrible Flamethrower attack for a majority of a summon period. That Flamethrower attack does terrible damage.
• As far as I can tell, you cannot despawn it once it is summoned. If you get in one of those situations where you need to despawn your pets, you can't.
• If you get interrupted while summoning it, well that's just bad luck for you. You'll have to wait on the full cooldown to try summoning it again.
• With a less than 50% uptime (going by the patch notes) and very high power cost, it makes a terrible aggro magnet now when used in conjunction with Distract.
• Suppressor Turret can't be used for clipping now due to the long cooldown.

Compared to the current Live version, these changes have done nothing to improve Suppressor Turret's usability. The only improvement is the "immortal" aspect, but that's a small consolation to being a 15 second pet now. Even in a lava-filled boss room, the first StatsRevamp version of Suppressor Turret would last at least 15 seconds before it was destroyed.

Suppressor Turret was mildly useful before the latest changes. I could use it as a clipping power or as an aggro magnet when paired with Distract. None of that is really feasible anymore. The Distract + 15 Second Version of Suppressor Turret is too expensive to use as an aggro magnet now. As mentioned above, the long cooldown prevents it from being used for clipping.

I'd rather have the non-immortal version of Suppressor Turret from the first Gadgets StatsRevamp build over what we have now.

It feels like each new StatsRevamp build takes something unique away from Gadgets. Stealth had its crit bonus removed caused of possible issues with supercharges being unbalanced. Nothing was done to make up for that adjustment though. Surprise Attack and Cuff'em still have the same crit bonuses as any other power. I believe primary reason Stealth had the crit bonus originally was because you lose the role bonus during the transformation. You don't get the Controller vitalization bonus or Damage role damage bonus when you are transformed. That is still the case under StatsRevamp. Another change is the Holographic Decoy duration reduction. You can't even maintain 50% uptime on it now like what you can on Live. A lot of the really cool stuff you could do with Gadgets isn't feasible anymore.

I jumped on for a brief look. I do like the smoothness of Stasis Field into Self Destruct. Stasis Field is single target in Damage role (multi in controller role) and when you use Self Destruct (which clips, has a very short cool down, cheap power cost and keeps you mobile) it becomes a multi target attack. I got a range of 4760 to 4942 damage per burst hit with 10,290 might on 1 target. Obviously that splits on 3 or more targets. In raids and in damage role, this trick won't be viable unless the NPC has really low will power. But in controller role it would be fun to use. I need to compare damage on my other abilties to see how good/practical it is. It's currently doing more than NN which got nerfed. I might use Self Destruct for clipping depending on a few things.

What I want to test out at some point is the damage on targets surrounding an encasement that belongs to another Gadget Controller/DPS. I only ran a couple test but I wasn't able to see surrounding damage on enemies when I did Stasis Field then SB or NG. It just registered as "_____ destroyed encasement" when there were other targets around. So Self Destruct would be the only multi burst combo to use. I'll check again tomorrow.

Also, when using Bunker Buster from within Stealth tray, the first 2 ticks are not full damage range of someone in Damage role. It's just reduced damage range. On tick 3 it returns to normal damage range of someone in Damage role. Stealth Form did not grant a damage modifier within it. I also see the green cross hair underneath my name tag when I'm in Stealth Form. That suggests there is some kind of buff or effect up. The current effects doesn't state anything. Can we info on what is trigger the green icon? The UI with name tags and current effects needs work. I'll add more this weekend.

The change to Decoy and the circumstances that altered it from what it is on Live are just silly. It's good for 2 taunts now and that's it. Controller shields are also weak. The only thing I actually like about that is that NN is a 5 second shield again. It's like they adjust a power twice, MAYBE 3 times, but mostly after 2 adjustments they leave it alone and move on. Then they revisit it months or years later. It's why it's annoying when things are changed due to dev decisions or bad player feedback.

Bug report:

• Sticky-bomb is still applying the dazing PI to enemies.

Feedback(Mostly negative)

• Remove the 3 second Cooldown from Cyro-Foam. I can use Sticky Bomb which does more damage, has a quicker cooldown(0.5 seconds), and only costs me 300 power compared to Cyro-foam's 200 power cost.
• Why does Supressor Turret still have a 500 Power cost? That's pretty demanding for a pet.
• What's the point of Self Destruct Signal here? It's useless and takes up two loadout slots just to use it properly.
• Ran against Artemis using Fear Gas(Medium) and Paralyzing Dart(Low) and I had the same trouble as I did with Electricity.

It's good for clipping while dealing multi target damage on surrounding targets of your encased enemy along with that enemy. Other than that, by itself it's useless. If you do content where you can encase targets, it will be more useful if the target doesn't breakout quickly. Sometimes depends on how fast you clip SF with SD. It would be more interesting for use as controller. I'm still looking at it.

Hi... I have to say that Fear Gass and Cryo Foam have been dots for so many years (Fear Gass has been a dot which you can jump cancel ) and then one day someone says let's scrath that... IT FEELS AND IT'S JUST WRONG.They have been and still are on live fun and usefull powers to use, please bring them back !

As far as I can tell, you don't get damage from blowing up the encasement with Sticky Bomb or Napalm Grenade.

Here is what it looks like with Self-Destruct Signal:


You can see the combat line logs for Self-Destruct Signal where it did 2 to 3k damage on each NPC.

If I repeat this with Napalm Grenade:


I'm not seeing those 2 to 3k damage ticks in combat log.

I think it's something with the PI. If you notice that there is an audio with the two 9 ones that sounds like a scream. The ones w/o it don't give that. It's like there is a lasting dot that continues after the animation. Possibly related to the shorter animation time? But I definitely am seeing this behavior.

Possible bug.
Gauss Grenade hits twice if you have both burning and frostbitten PI on an enemy.
I was noticing two hits happen and I wondered what it was. Looked at my combat log and sure enough. If you do Napalm > Cfoam > Gauss, it shows up twice.


Also cryofoam needs a shorter cooldown. It is the same as the grenades.

To be honest right now this feels like we're moving backwards again. I couldn't get on test yet (EU time) so this is from the patchnotes.

Holo Decoy - less than 50% uptime and not enough duration to use the last taunt effectively
Suppressor Turret - 30 second cooldown and 50% uptime with a horrible Power cost, this is just insanely bad
Stealth - without the crit buff all this is is an every 30 second loadout swap for 1-2 seconds max
Thermite Mine - expensive, melee range, cast time equivalent of what Napalm does instantly for medium cost at max range
Implosion Mine - cast time equivalent of EMP
Surprise Attack - coolio, it's a once every 30 seconds burst hit that can be interrupted by knocking you out of Stealth
Cuff'em - same thing as Surprise Attack, why would I want to setup a PI with an interruptable 30 second Stealth only ability?
Fear Gas - you're brute-forcing the unviability of JC again
EMP PULSE - still no fix for the name, but besides that it's an unpractical vulnerable to interrupt power with delayed damage
Sticky Bomb - super delayed damage makes this unpractical outside of double boss fights
Gauss Grenade - still as screwed as it has been for years with the ballistics
Self-Destruct Signal etc - looks like another band-aid fix, it's not too bad except that we have the annoying Frozen encasements too. I wouldn't even have a problem with those if they let my damage pass through, since they already have the appropriate shape for an encasement

So for what feels like the 10th time we got promised a return to the mechanics and playstyle that Gadgets used to be characteristic for (and still is to some extend), yet what I see here is that all of our characteristic abilities are unpractical or straight up unviable. The whole "fast-paced clipping" thing we had going on can be archived in history books now since Turret, Stealth and Fear Gas have been made significantly worse. At least we can clip with SDS now I guess?
If the aim of the revamp is really to make all abilities viable in some way, well here's a list of abilities I would avoid like the plague if this went live. This is like half of our powers so if I were a dev I'd take a hard look at some of these if Gadgets is supposed to keep any of its supposed versatility.

So what's viable now?
Well from a DPS perspective - Cryo-Foam and Field are good (I don't care about if Foam has a dot or not tbh), Napalm seems decent, Photon Blast is probably alright, Vortex Cannon and PDart are cool. For single target fights I'd seriously consider Taser and Stasis Field. Battle Display should be rad. That leaves us with two decent Daze utilizers but no decent Daze setup, two decent electrify utilizers but no decent multi target electrify setup.

I want to add and emphasize again that I do like the revamped PI web around Napalm, Gauss, Fear Gas and CFoam. With the other powers being more evenly distributed around the four PI types that (in theory) allows for a lot of different PI chaining rotations.

However, as it stands now two of the four core powers can be considered borderline broken (FG and Gauss) and most of the other powers are unpractical or just plain bad. Keep in mind I'm talking from a DPS standpoint here, I'd rather leave the trolling feedback to the expert trolls who play the role more frequently than I do.

The patch notes don't mention it, but the delay on Sticky Bomb's damage tick was significantly reduced. Also, the damage was reduced to be in-line with every other "heavy hitting" power.

I do agree with most of these assessments. Some can be fixed by just lowering their cooldowns to allow for more spam capabilities. I still believe that if you are going to use a power, you will have to eat the power cost. You shouldn't have to wait for it to come off. If you are specced heavy into power, you should be rewarded with more use of higher level powers.

The mines are just a joke. The interruptible cast bar and the short range on them makes them just rather extremely limited to use. What would be the point? Even in PvP, I don't see a benefit to them.

I'll never probably slot stealth again. I wasn't down with it before, I'm more not interested now.

Gauss Grenade being able to miss just surprises me to this day. Why doesn't it get switched with another method? Is it because it's UWC? Is that why it doesn't get changed?

After playing last night, I already know what powers I will probably end up using on a regular basis. It's sad, but I feel even more restricted on powers when I could slot any of them.

First off, thank you very much for the thorough testing and feedback, as always!

This is an issue across the Weapon Buffs and we're looking into it.

Daze is actually being applied mechanically, but the particle effects and sound effects are messaging Terror.

We will investigate these issues as well!

Same issue here as with Cuff 'Em. Daze is applied, but the particle effects and sound effects are messaging Terror.

These bugs should be fixed by the next build.

Thanks for the info. It's much better now.

You make a good argument but I'm not sure if I can agree with it. In principle you're absolutely right, lower cooldowns give us more freedom to customize our rotations and manage our Power accordingly. However, thinking back to pre-36, I'm worried that spammable expensive powers will just lead to people spamming them and then starting an outrage when they are constantly empty. Actually, I'm probably overthinking it. People will always find a way to maximize their Power consumption, and there will be lots of them not investing into Power and then complaining about it. We could already see that in every single testing thread. Short cooldowns on expensive powers probably won't break the system.

I think we can all agree that the whole Stealth module needs some serious work to make any of those powers viable.

Just some minor adjustments to some powers could open up a lot more options. At least the Acro movement skills seem to be pretty good now, except for Backflip. I tested with 9k Might and it did ~13-15k damage while Asphyxiation Gas (same SC cost) did around 6x3900 = 23400.

After some more testing with the new build I saw some things that were either not in the notes or I missed them previously:

• Stealth cooldown is 18s instead of 30 but my point still stands. For it to be useful the cooldown should be much shorter. It should be 12s maximum although 6s would be even better. In combat you'll get knocked out of it all the time, so being able to get back into it quickly would allow more freedom to use that second loadout.
• Thermite Mine is worse than Napalm Grenade in all aspects. It's more expensive, with a shorter range, and a cast bar that makes me vulnerable to interrupt and delays the effect. Utterly useless. Is making this useless for 99% of gameplay really worth the exceedingly small number of times someone will actually use these to setup before a boss fight? I say let it be useable with some kind of general rotation - if needed, make it PI just with the other Mine or with the Stealth attacks to distinguish it from the regular spammy powers. Make it cheaper as well. With the downsides this has compared to Napalm, this may as well be in the cheap category.
• Implosion Mine has its pull back which I guess is kinda neat, and it does a bit more damage than EMP. The tradeoff for that is that it's even slower and more vulnerable to interrupt than EMP. I'd prefer to have it cheaper than EMP, maybe even [100] base cost, and have the cast time decreased to match Thermite Mine. Of course I already made my suggestions on how to make the whole Stealth module viable earlier. Please don't make the mistake to balance these mines for the fringe case of 1 in 10000 players actually setting them up in preparation of some fight. You can still fix them later if they end up breaking PvP.
• Suppressor Turret actually has a cooldown of 15s now which makes it 100% uptime, so it seems perfectly viable. The Flamethrower burning dot only does ticks of 1-2 (alongside some decent ticks of 700+) so that may need to be looked at again. I'd like to see the cooldown lowered to 12s to allow for either smooth recasting or even having 2 of them out at the same time for a couple of seconds. I wouldn't mind either way. 15s cooldown is good already but that wastes some time on recasting so we can't actually have a 100% uptime.
• Cryo Field has a 6s cooldown which makes for 100% uptime as well. That's good. Perfectly viable even though its expensive cost will make it difficult to keep up. I'd prefer if it would last 12s but on the other hand that would make it much less viable for short fights so on second thought, it should probably stay as it is.
• Neural Neutralizer cooldown is 18s and the PI setup is delayed with the damage. This is utterly useless as a PI setter for both of those reasons. If I'm building around PI I want to have it up ASAP and 100% of the time. The delay wouldn't even bother me if EMP and Sticky weren't delayed already. What happened to the fast clippy Gadgets gameplay? Now every power we have is either delayed, a dot, a channel or a cast-time. Anyway, shorten the NN cooldown to 12s and this will be decent, maybe even a staple for melee loadouts. It would be a good replacement for Fear Gas for those who want to use the Daze PI but do not like to sit around and wait for the channel.

So there are some more options now that I missed or that were fixed. However the problem is still the same, a lot of powers are either designed for niches that don't exist (Stealth, Mines, Stealth attacks), slowed down needlessly (Fear Gas), vulnerable to interrupt (EMP, Mines), delayed (NN, EMP, Sticky), or have too long cooldowns (Stealth, NN).

All else aside, the change to FG being a channeling move is the biggest insult to all gadget players. There are plenty of moves that require channeling in gadgets already. The whole point of build diversity is DIVERSITY. Higher skill ceiling creates opportunity for players to try any way they can to surpass it. This creates competition; which in turn, creates more flavor and variety.

Best example is super smash brothers melee. Wave dashing was never intended to be part of the game. The developers could have easily removed it but they didnt. Now, a game over a decade old is still going strong and people are still coming up with new combos to exploit the mechanics. Exploiting your power to the highest potential should be encouraged, not discouraged

The web interaction is just one of Like 3 or 4 changes that I actually think are neat for both roles. Stealth is useful with the AM right now but aside from using it for BB placement, Gauss/foam/surprise attack hits, thermite mine placement while everyone is waiting for someone to return to start a boss battle, there's not much else. they could open it up for a practical double tray option. Things come to mind like adjustments for BD in Stealth with more in sync cool downs or even a hybrid gameplay (weapon use at one point and strict PFT once power bar is restored. I have feedback on this but I'm not posting it now) and not necessarily a hybrid build in the same loadout.

But what's completely annoying and a waste of time is when they say they read all feedback and they don't. I reported Gauss was doing double tick damage with the previous PI buff it had like 2 builds ago. The coding carried on despite the PI changes. The previous bug where FG was dealing inconsistent damage ticks returned. It's like seriously. if they want us to test, READ replies especially bugs so we don't have to deal with them 2 builds later. Fix them and keep them fixed for new test phases/builds. It's a waste of time for players (especially those with limited time) going out of our way to give detailed feedback on a fundamental game update no one asked for when we have to return to the next test build with bugs reported previously that hamper testing on new directions/options.

I also agree that some of these changes are just taking leaps backwards. Actually, it seems like they're going back to things that resemble what's on Live. They should've done a survey before their ideas reached the board on what fundamentals we wanted changed and reasons why.

In case anyone was wondering, Self-Destruct Signal works on Stasis Fields set by other Gadgets players.

Here is a demonstration:

Feedback
I was testing out several different loadouts for melee Gadgets Damage solo gameplay today and could not find anything that felt comfortable to me. I tried a few different melee weapons, but primarily stuck with One-Handed. Here are some comments.

Powers
Cryo-Field
Playing melee, I found it really hard to make this power work well unless I stood dead center in the AoE and remained there. If I moved to the edge of the AoE, mob groups would stop taking damage due to the short AoE radius. This power was particularly problematic on certain boss fights. Artemis loved setting up her fire pool just as I was casting Cryo-Field. I would have to roll out of the way to avoid taking damage from the Fire pool and she'd run out of the field without taking any real damage.

This power does not work very well if you have the Violent Breakout or Explosive Block mods equipped.

Too bad this is the only heavy hitter that takes advantage of Frostbite.

EMP Pulse
The three second cooldown on EMP Pulse just did not line up time wise with any of the weapon combos I tried. For shorter weapon combos, I would have to do a second weapon combo before EMP Pulse came off cooldown. EMP's cast time and vulnerability window were also problematic. The only thing I did like was it was a 360 degree midrange AoE.

Implosion Mine
The range is too short and it takes too long to deploy this mine when you're in melee range. It is very easy to get interrupted. The mine power feels more like a gimmick.

Neural Neutralizer
This should be best viewed as "Gadgets strongest shielding power" and nothing else. The damage is terrible and it is an unreliable PI applicator with its low range.

Stealth
Without the crit bonus, Surprise Attack and Cuff'Em aren't worth using once a fight starts. The only use I found for Stealth was to setup some mines ahead of attacking a mob group. That's only possible in solo gameplay since groups typically won't wait on you to lay mines.

Sticky Bomb
You would think this power would work well in melee mobbing situations, but that seemed to be an iffy proposition for me. There were several times where I'd have some enemies in front and behind me. The short AoE range on Sticky Bomb usually wouldn't hit the enemies behind me.

Suppressor Turret
I didn't use this power since the cooldown is currently bugged.

Vortex Cannon
The three second cooldown problems from EMP Pulse are valid here too. It was hard to find melee combos where I could use this power consecutively. Trying to keep the enemies grouped up so I would hit everything in a cone in front of me was also problematic. When meleeing, the mobs like to surround you and fight at various ranges.

Using Holographic Decoy to group NPCs helped some, but the cooldown on Decoy is long enough that I was only able to use it on every third group.


Pace of Combat
Compared to the fast pace of Gadgets melee AM, melee Hybrid just feels very sluggish. Gadgets melee AM has to be be played very aggressively if you want good results. Positioning and timing are paramount. You're constantly lunging from mob group to mob group casting your powers as quickly as possible in a race against the AM time duration window. Distract and Stealth help facilitate a fast clipping style of gameplay.

With Hybrid melee StatsRevamp, Gadgets is very slow and delibrate in comparison. In the Hybrid playstyle, you're basically doing a weapon combo in between every power and clipping your combo with the next power. If you're doing it correctly, is leads to a slow, steady burn. With the cooldowns, there isn't much you can do to "turn on the burn." About the best you can do is do a few rapid casts of Sticky Bomb and use Supply Drop/Soda to refill your power supply. Unfortunately, I found Gadgets heavy hitting powers to be rather lacking for several reasons as explained above when solo meleeing. Outside of Battle Display, there didn't seem to be any worthwhile Gadgets clipping powers that you'd use on a normal rotation.