Today's update notes (5/11/04)

[Xilren's Twin]

For those who dont peruse the offical boards...

Update Notes: 05/11/04


** Many client crashes that we've had sent in from users over the past two
weeks have been addressed. Keep sending in the error reports!**


City Zones:

* Unresponsive villains in the Sewer Network and Abandoned Sewer Network
should be ready to go!

* Removed lost and wandering NPCs from "The Hive."


Anti-griefing:

* A hero will now get defeat task credit for any villain defeat where his
team did at least 25% of the damage to the villain and they are within 200
ft of the villain when the villain is defeated. This is to minimize the
potential impact that "kill stealing" may have on the completion of defeat
tasks.


Powers:

* Fixed an issue that kept many powers (including Kinetics -> Transfusion and Kinetics -> Siphon Power) from working properly.

* Fixed mistake with Hasten where the recharge time was far too great.

* Empathy/Resurrect can no longer take Heal Enhancements - It doesn't need
them since it heals for 100% anyway, so these were wasted).

* Fixed the Endurance cost of Hack and Slash (for both Katana and

Broadsword). END costs were reversed.

* Increased the recharge time of Hasten and Accelerate Metabolism.

* Updated Fly description Text (power has not changed).

* Set all Scrapper and Tanker Dull Pain powers (and Earths Embrace) to cost
15 Endurance.

* Slightly increased Combustion Damage.

* Volume adjustment made to address complaint about Combat Jump SFX.

* Volume adjustment made to address complaints about targeting drone.

* Arctic Air can now be used with stealth powers.

* Increased Endurance cost of Telekinesis.

* Fixed Seismic Smash. Previously the power did not scale with the player's level.

* Telekinesis will no longer work on bosses, arch villains or giant monsters.

* Increased Endurance cost of Force bubble.

* Super Speed no longer buffs defense and debuffs ACC.

* Added Confusion to Controller/Ice Control/Arctic Air: "While
this power is active, you are surrounded in a fog of Arctic Air that
dramatically slows the attack and movement speed of nearby foes. The
chill of Arctic Air is so bitter that most foes are forced to flee,
albeit very slowly, from the immediate area. Those that do not flee from
the cold may attack their own allies, as the fog from the Arctic Air is
thick and can cause much confusion."

* Controller/Fire Control/Fire Imps: Reduced number if Fire Imps that are
summoned by 1 (it is now 2-5).

* Changed Gravity Control/Fold Space to Singularity (and moved
it to the end as the last power in the set): "You can create a very
powerful Gravitational Singularity. The Singularity will engage your
foes, assaulting them with various gravity powers. Any foes that attempt
to approach the Singularity will be violently hurls away. The
Singularity cannot be healed, but is highly resistant to all forms of
damage and nearly impervious to Controlling type powers."

* Increased Duration on Mesmerize, Mass Hypnotize and Salt Crystals.

* Increased Accuracy (more affected targets in the AoE) for Mass
Hypnotize and Salt Crystals.

* Dark Miasma/Darkest Night now also debuffs the target's Accuracy.

* Increased movement speed of Storm Summoning/Tornado.

* Decreased Recharge Time and Duration of Earth Control/Animate
Stone (to compensate for its slow movement).

* Update text on Earth Control to reflect its Debuff to Defense abilities.

* Fix Short Help (Tool Tips) for Blaster/Devices.

* Ice Armor/Wet Ice now takes Res Damage Enhancements.

* Increased Accuracy of Auto Turret.

Xilren

[ClydeJr]

* Fixed mistake with Hasten where the recharge time was far too great.

* Increased the recharge time of Hasten and Accelerate Metabolism.

Am I just reading this wrong or are they both increasing and decreasing the recharge time on Hasten at the same time?

[schild]

Sounds pretty good to me.

[cevik]

* Fixed mistake with Hasten where the recharge time was far too great.

* Increased the recharge time of Hasten and Accelerate Metabolism.

Am I just reading this wrong or are they both increasing and decreasing the recharge time on Hasten at the same time?

Well when the first put in this patch (yesterday?) it increased the Hasten recharge time to an insane ammount.  That increased the recharge time is the patch note from the patch that was rolled back.  Now they added to the patch to decrease the time from the insane increase (but probably still increased compared to what it was last week) and that's the new patch note.

So they increased hasten recharge time by an insane amount, then decreased it from that level to a more appropriate level, but it's still increased from last week.. Make sense?

[Morfiend]

* Fixed mistake with Hasten where the recharge time was far too great.

* Increased the recharge time of Hasten and Accelerate Metabolism.

Am I just reading this wrong or are they both increasing and decreasing the recharge time on Hasten at the same time?

Well when the first put in this patch (yesterday?) it increased the Hasten recharge time to an insane ammount.  That increased the recharge time is the patch note from the patch that was rolled back.  Now they added to the patch to decrease the time from the insane increase (but probably still increased compared to what it was last week) and that's the new patch note.

So they increased hasten recharge time by an insane amount, then decreased it from that level to a more appropriate level, but it's still increased from last week.. Make sense?

The recharge of Hasten is now 9 minutes. 6 socketed with SO reduction enhancments you can get it down to 2:45 seconds.
Thats pretty good, but thats a lot of sockets.

[Alluvian]

But the duration of hasten is longer than 2.45 minutes I believe.

It has been changed so much it makes my head spin.  All I know is that at the end of beta at level 16 I had 2 level 15 dual origin recharge timer reductions on it and it came back almost at the exact same time the effect expired.  It was nice.  If it now has a long period of time where it is NOT on, it will KILL certain classes.  The regeneration scrapper for one.  They need hasten to be viable at mid-high level.  They have no defense and have to keep healing with their active powers to stay alive.  Hasten was the only way they could heal fast enough to survive encounters.  Any gap in its effect will be complete read a book downtime for them.

[WayAbvPar]

Volume adjustment made to address complaint about Combat Jump SFX.

Thank GOD! I haven't played my scrapper recently in large part because I couldn't freakin' STAND that goddamned hum...my whole desk and most of my internal organs would vibrate whenever I had it toggled on.

[Alluvian]

They should have lowered ALL the aura sounds though.  I have been grouping a lot with a force field controller and my god, each one of their fucking shields makes a sound and they get a ton of them.  I am humming and chirping and vibrating all the time.

Superspeed sound also is freaking annoying.  More of a throb than a hum but just as maddening.

[Daydreamer]

* Slightly increased Combustion Damage.

Just tested this out on Bloodfire - nearly an extra 50% damage.  This makes me very very happy.

[HaemishM]

Volume adjustment made to address complaint about Combat Jump SFX.

Thank GOD! I haven't played my scrapper recently in large part because I couldn't freakin' STAND that goddamned hum...my whole desk and most of my internal organs would vibrate whenever I had it toggled on.

Is that why you caught your wife playing your scrapper when you weren't home? :)

[Sky]

I agree that more 'hums' need to be removed and sound overall given a 'balance' pass. I run my receiver at -50, but with CoH I have to turn it down to -66 and lower my subwoofer (100W 10") to almost nil, and the hums are /still/ too loud and reverbrating.

[WayAbvPar]

Volume adjustment made to address complaint about Combat Jump SFX.

Thank GOD! I haven't played my scrapper recently in large part because I couldn't freakin' STAND that goddamned hum...my whole desk and most of my internal organs would vibrate whenever I had it toggled on.

Is that why you caught your wife playing your scrapper when you weren't home? :)

Ha! I should've had her try it out...beats the hell out of the spin cycle on the washing machine I bet.

[Morfiend]

But the duration of hasten is longer than 2.45 minutes I believe.

It has been changed so much it makes my head spin.  All I know is that at the end of beta at level 16 I had 2 level 15 dual origin recharge timer reductions on it and it came back almost at the exact same time the effect expired.  It was nice.  If it now has a long period of time where it is NOT on, it will KILL certain classes.  The regeneration scrapper for one.  They need hasten to be viable at mid-high level.  They have no defense and have to keep healing with their active powers to stay alive.  Hasten was the only way they could heal fast enough to survive encounters.  Any gap in its effect will be complete read a book downtime for them.

The duration of Hasten is 2 Minutes. Like you said, with two DOs you could basicaly perma hasten, and the devs said they did not want this. right now the VERY best you can get is 2 minutes on 45 seconds off. But like I said, thats with 6 SO's.

Bummer for me. One of my two mains is a Hasten/Regeneration Scrapper.

[Valmorian]

Any gap in its effect will be complete read a book downtime for them.

Sounds like they may need to be addressed.  However, making a power pool power mandatory to make the character playable at mid-high level is not the way to go.  

This is, of course, assuming you are right and not blowing things out of proportion. ;)

[Murgos]

...If it now has a long period of time where it is NOT on, it will KILL certain classes.  The regeneration scrapper for one.  They need hasten to be viable at mid-high level.  They have no defense and have to keep healing with their active powers to stay alive.  Hasten was the only way they could heal fast enough to survive encounters.  Any gap in its effect will be complete read a book downtime for them.

That sounds like the solution to the problem isn't Hasten but a look back at what a regen scrapper needs to be effective.  I'm guessing much lower activation times on thier self-heals.

Hasten being able to be up 100% of the time with only a couple of DO's is OBVIOUSLY overpowered.

Edited:  The rest of the list of changes seems reasonable, some nerfs some needed improvements.  Looks good to me, of course my main wasn't affected by the patch at all.

[geldonyetich]

Well shoot, I've been messing around with the Guild Wars E3 beta all day yesterday and CoH pulls a patch on me.

I'll have to play around with The Nanites and see if Hasten's recycle is really any less than it used to be.   Having "far too great" of a recharge time and then "increased" it seems like a net decrease in recharge time verbally.    If it's now 9 minutes unenhanced, I'm not positive if that's more or less than what it was before due to the way time flies when you're playing CoH.

Ah well, at least they didn't further decrease the effectiveness of Hasten's recharge time reduction, and that's the important bit.

Conjecture, my Controller, is getting a major nerf however:

* Increased Endurance cost of Telekinesis.
* Telekinesis will no longer work on bosses, arch villains or giant monsters

This is the same power I used to hold Dr. Vahzilok neigh helpless pinned, wiggling, up against a wall as Volt blew the snot out of him.   Yes, it was overdue for nerfing, but the only reason I would even need Telekinesis is for really slippery bosses.     Now I not only can't use it against normal (not arch-villian or giant) bosses, but they increased it's already formidable endurance cost further.  

Great, so now I'm being massively tapped out for holding a Leuitenant or Minion?  Worthless, worthless power.   Methinks I'll probably find and bump a whine post about this.

[geldonyetich]

Hasten was nerfed heavily.  

The thing with hasten, it quickly became the power everyone needed. It was just that good, and no power should be like that. With just a few enhancements, players were able to be permanently hastened. So we have increases its recharge time, but not as much as you saw in this mornings patch (since then reverted). It was not suppose to have over a 15 minite recharge.

The new hasten will work as follow:
Normal Rechage is 9 minutes. It have a 2 minute duration (this has not changed), so this gives you 7 minutes of down time.
3 Dual Origin Recharge Enhancements will give you a 5:40 recharge time (so only 3:40 downtime)
6 Single Origin Recharge Enhancements will give you a 2:40 recharge time, so only 45 seconds of downtime.

Still, just as Telekinesis shouldn't be able to make Super-Villians mere punching bags, it's justified enough that Hasten shouldn't be the power everybody wants.  

As a testiment to Hasten's potency, Geko writes:

hasten decreases the recharge time of a power by 70%, not 35%.

That is, a 10 second recharge power becomes a 5.88 second recharge.

I would take 3 SO RT Enhanc, or 5 DO RT Enh in every power to give you the effectiveness of hasten. Its just that good.

Hasten still functions as a two minute massive buff, at least.  Also a decent panic button.

[Sable Blaze]

I can't say I"m thrilled by the longer recycle of hasten, but then I never really planned on enhancing it to any great degree. However, it's power is undiminished. Push the yellow button and it's ultraviolence in the streets of Paragon City.

My friends keep saying it should be a panic button. I prefer to think of it as my "this boss is dead" button. It's still pretty sick on a high-damage tank character. Hasten, buildup, and things splash away from the axe.

The real use for me was to keep Healing Flames and Consume recycling quickly. The extra smackdown quotient was just a very nice fringe benefit.

I'll probably just slap two or three SOs in it to get it back to 5 minutes or a touch less. I was pretty happy with it at that recycle time.