18.7.0.24 - Updates and Concern Adressing!

LE Procs

• Rebate: Increased damage/healing

• Payment Plan: Lowered drain to 10s, buff to 30s

• Escrow: Improve tick rate

• Unexpected Bonus: Increased damage and heal amount

• Unforgiven Debts: Lowered drain to 10s, buff to 30s, changed to type 1

• Deplete Assets: Increased AC drain to -1449, AC buff to 1394, changed to Type 2

• Exchange Product: Increase heal/damage, changed to type 1

• Rigid Liquidation: Increase tick rate

• Unopened Letter Letter: Increase AC drain to -2098, AC buff to 2067, changed to type 2

• Debt Collection: Increased damage/heal

• Accumulated Interest: Lowered drain to 10s, buff to 30s

Personal Thoughts:

The loss of the Unforgiven Debts by swapping it to Type 1 is a little bit of a concern, a net loss of 136 -Weaponskills and -68 AAO on the target will hurt us a bit in PvM. In PvP it won't make much difference since we rarely last long enough for the procs to even go off On the other hand, the increase in heals and AC buffs could make up for the loss of -AAO/Wepskills by offsetting any damage we might take instead. Will need to see better healing numbers and get a chance to play on test to give a solid answer.

Overall Profession changes

• Added nano Shutdown Skills, without the critical modifiers

• Added nano Take the Bait, temporarily reduces special attacks of the target, as well as their SkillLockModifier

• Divest/Deprive skills will land more reliably

• Shortened some casting/recharge timers on lines of debuffs which were missed previously

• Nanobot Defense will have adjusted reflects/damage to nano, based on their level

• Industrial Sabotage and Corporate Protection are no longer bound to the normal drain lines; their durations have been reduced

• Normal Drains will last for 35 seconds in PvP

Personal Thoughts:

SS IS BACK! Also 'Take the Bait' looks like the perfect answer to our alpha perk woes, this seems like a very good step in the right direction in terms our opening fight survivability. Our drains landing more reliably is also a huge bonus. Reduced cast/recharge on other debuffs is also a huge bonus. NBD getting its reflects and DtN sorted, also a massive bonus. IS/CP NO LONGER SHARE THE D/P LINE. And a 5s buff to Drain duration in PvP.

Overall:

BLOODY GOOD JOB MICHI, THANK YOU FOR LISTENING

Closer to Live status-quo, but I'm still not sure how am I supposed to survive the loss of defence, especially with drain procs being nerfed. IS/CP have self duration of 30 seconds, so meh. DTB is back to how it was on live with the multiplier lowered to 200 from 250.

At least it's not as bad anymore that entire profession would cease to exist, so there's that.

Nerfing the drain procs is nonsensical I gotta say. 10 second duration, seriously?

Ok, so, more numbers.

I'm wearing what can be described as an endgame defensive setup with Beta symbs instead of Alphas. I'm sitting pretty on about 3k static defence. (2.1k Evades~/900AAD)

With the new changes we can drain a target for -275(Deprive)/-275(Plunder)/-300AAO(Industrial Sabotage)/-300AAD(Corporate Protection)

800 AR reduction.
1100 if you factor CP +AAD.

This brings us to around 4.1k Defence on paper with drains up.

Testlive Observations:

Nanobot Defence is still completely unusable, 4 hits and my nanopool was obliterated.
Take The Bait doesn't operate as I thought it did, it does not affect perks as I hoped it would. It's a form of reverse blockers which puts the enemies Fling/Burst/FA/AS etc onto a very long CD if they use it during the 4s duration.
Predraining is ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY if you plan on actually surviving past SS, even with the new 90% Deprive check it took me a considerable amount of time to land Deprive without predrain.
Procs are sort of 50/50. We can now choose to either have Accumulated Interest or Debt collection as our best Type 1 LE Proc. Debt collection is now a 1.1k Heal on a 5% chance.
Our Type 2 seems to be either a nano drain on a 5% or a 2k AC drain.
RK AC Drains are now Insta/1s at 220.
The new 30s IS/CP buff durations are a bit wonky as are the hostile durations.

So overall, a few steps in the right direction, but we're still falling awfully flat on our faces. I honestly am not sure what else can be done.

I played my 150 trader in a CSS setup with proper symbs/ gear etc maxed for that level.

My observations are overall positive, but I felt that (playing in S10 for a combat test) resulted in frantic casting to keep defences up/debuffs up.

For a levelling trader I felt playing trader would actually be insanely difficult.

After playing it for a few minutes I got the hang of the rotations I needed to use in order to survive, but it was not easy, and nano management was very tough.

Here's what I think:

1. IS line needs either: AOE effects/ shorter local CD and lower nanocost and longer duration.

2. CP line needs longer buff on self (like 1m 30s or so would kinda be bare minimum)

3. The drains (divest/plunder) have gone back to the 3m durations - this isn't bad, but it's not really great either.

Overall: decent. but Very hard for levelling trader.... might scare people.

Like I've already said at the start, these changes are simply conceptually wrong, wrong at the very core. The intensity and difficulty of gameplay was increased x50, the risks you are exposed also went up, even with SS back. But for all that effort you actually gain significantly less than you would on Live. All this in a game where difficulty of playing alpha-faceroller consists of running up to a person and pressing a keybind. That's ass-backwards game design If I ever saw one.

And the special-debuffer thingy is an absolutely bizarre idea. Just add specials to drains for god's sake, they're only 30 second duration anyway.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raggy

Predraining is ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY if you plan on actually surviving past SS

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Then this patch is entirely useless.

I'm sorry, but this has been an excrutiatingly bad experience for me as a Trader main and if we still need to "cheat" to have a chance then there's not much to do, except start stealing other professions' toolsets with nabbing CIB/Acro/Unstunnable/whatever other random-ass perklines other professions have. And as Lufa says, we're just back to the old ways of now only having SS to deal with Keybind Online, without the tremendous(ly overpowered) drains to compensate beyond this.

The system in place absolutely requires our toolset to go balls to the wall with the punishment inflicted or we're dead, due to the sorry state that PVP has become.

I mean... don't get me wrong. These are all things we asked for and I'm very happy our voices are, for the most part, being heard. But then it comes to show just how broken the game has become when this now apparently isn't enough. The overall issues are so glaring and so obvious and yet fundamentally cannot be fixed unless the entire game is changed to reflect it. And in that sense... maybe we shouldn't have suggested anything at all.

Nerfed drain procs (short duration, same line) seem to be a hard hit to pvm MA setups. It may be not worth playing those anymore.

Well, we're at the point now where asking for a complete rework to the system that is already in place is going to be totally out of the question so it's going to have to come down to number tweaking and other bits and bobs.

I'm personally ok with the 'speed drain' playstyle in PvM, but that's just me. In PvP though we are still severely lacking. I did duels against MP, Keep and Enfo last night.

I won about 3 of 8 duels with the MP.
And none against the Keeper or Enfo.

I'd be fine with the "death metal drummer" playstyle if it actually came with more staying power or more offensive threat. Not less of both. Basically the balancing between risk/reward/difficulty for Traders is just completely messed up right now. I could play two Soldiers simultaneously, one with each hand ,and it would still require less keystrokes per minute than just staying alive on Trader.

Well, not all is doom and gloom. I ran my skinny backside out to Scary Spider in Inf and was able to solo him without too much trouble. There were a few spikes here and there where I got close to dying, but that was mostly my error in neglecting CP/IS.

Has anyone been able to solo Scary on live? I know I havn't. So for me this is a nice outlook on our PvM capability, shame about PvP though haha.

Did a DPM test with PDKPs against high AC target.

1. Pricecuts ( 815.240 / 209.880 / 172 / 84 / 48% / 5.277 )

Couldn't use YEEIYF for obvious reasons.

Try to solo the foreman down at 4 holes, good pvm test, has evades and decent nr and ar

Its indeed not a "doom" situation anymore, so there's that.

However, I'm having a bit of a problem being excited about "we buffed your profession just enough that it won't instantly cease to exist" kind of scenario.

Mcnuckle's post about threat levels from weeks back still accurately describes what has occured with this patch so far. Out of all the professions, what's the Trader offensive threat level? 14. What's the Trader squishiness level? 1. What's the gameplay difficulty and learning curve level? 1. How many reasons you can come up with to play a Trader after this patch? 0. Or 1, if you literally don't have anything else that's 220.

The whole thing would actually be totally fine if:

1. plunder line/Divest line durations were increased to 1 minute each,

2. CP/IS were not stackable on target, but the bonuses WERE stackable on self

3. CP/IS buff durations were ~3+ minutes, and debuff durations were in the 2-3 minute range.

If CP/IS debuffs don't stack on target, the durations don't have to be so short, and because IS is, quite frankly, the best PVM debuff in a trader's arsenal, it makes the most sense for a levelling trader to be spamming that in a 1 vs 1, 1vs 2, 1vs N encounter to keep up effective evades ratings vs multiple targets.

In my experience, you need to be able to survive 1 vs 5ish mobs. If a trader in decent gear at ANY level range cannot survive 1 vs 5... then things need to be tweaked.

FYI, I was able to survive 1vs 5 mobs on my 150 trader in S10, but it was not easy. None of the changes I've proposed are "omg gamebreaking" but they will allow the trader to be a bit more "PVM friendly" and more importantly it gives traders a slightly higher threat level in PVP (and with CP/IS not stacking on target, still give the single opponent a "chance").

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raggy

Take The Bait doesn't operate as I thought it did, it does not affect perks as I hoped it would. It's a form of reverse blockers which puts the enemies Fling/Burst/FA/AS etc onto a very long CD if they use it during the 4s duration.

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It will work on perks that use those skills as an attack, but you're limited to Enf, Sold, and MA.
It will also set AS/SA effectively to single attacks, while making brawl/burst/fling/fa/bs likely to miss.
It roughly does to specials what SS does to perks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by srompu

It will work on perks that use those skills as an attack, but you're limited to Enf, Sold, and MA.

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Wasn't aware of that, thank you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by srompu

It will also set AS/SA effectively to single attacks, while making brawl/burst/fling/fa/bs likely to miss.

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While it does lower the targets skill in special attacks (AS/FA/Burst/FS/FA etc) to 0 for the 4s duration, it's not going to make them more likely to miss because that is down to the AR of the player, not the special skill amount (Unless you're saying that we'll have SS running alongside it, which, we probably would). The only thing that this would be semi-true for is Full Auto where the amount of FA skill dictates the number of bullets fired.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by srompu

It roughly does to specials what SS does to perks.

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And is negated as easily by anyone with a minor understanding of Trader PvP. Simply, don't try to alpha in the first 5s of the fight :D.




Just thought I'd mention too, as much as I enjoy the faster pace of play, it is currently VERY exhausting. If you want to play optimally for a long duration, you will get tired, very quickly. I'll talk to Michi about increasing durations again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raggy

While it does lower the targets skill in special attacks (AS/FA/Burst/FS/FA etc) to 0 for the 4s duration, it's not going to make them more likely to miss because that is down to the AR of the player, not the special skill amount (Unless you're saying that we'll have SS running alongside it, which, we probably would). The only thing that this would be semi-true for is Full Auto where the amount of FA skill dictates the number of bullets fired.

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Special attack AR is calculated as ([Weapon Attack Skill + Special Attack Skill] / 2) + AAO.
So yes, it will have an effect on whether the special attack lands or misses.
If your skill is diminished to 0, that means that Sneak Attack & Aimed Shot will have the lowest possible multiplier available only, so even though they will land the chance of any real damage is negligible, your Burst/Fling/Fast Attack will have a low chance of landing, Full Auto will not only have a low chance of landing, but also cap at 5 bullets (as that's the starting value on the number of rounds fired with FA), and Brawl will not have the potential for the increased stun chance % as well as the increased stun duration.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wakizaka

Special attack AR is calculated as ([Weapon Attack Skill + Special Attack Skill] / 2) + AAO.
So yes, it will have an effect on whether the special attack lands or misses.
If your skill is diminished to 0, that means that Sneak Attack & Aimed Shot will have the lowest possible multiplier available only, so even though they will land the chance of any real damage is negligible, your Burst/Fling/Fast Attack will have a low chance of landing, Full Auto will not only have a low chance of landing, but also cap at 5 bullets (as that's the starting value on the number of rounds fired with FA), and Brawl will not have the potential for the increased stun chance % as well as the increased stun duration.

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Ah fair enough, I was trying to find the Special Attack formula to double check, but I couldn't. I was basing what I said off the fact I can't remember the last time I missed a special attack, thanks for the clarification Waki.

man why nerf our LE procs?! PVM solobility just went downhill.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by levronae

man why nerf our LE procs?! PVM solobility just went downhill.

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Actually, it didn't.

With 18.7 we are able to use CP/IS in PvM, meaning we're actually gaining 232 AAD, as Unforgiven Debts reduced target AAO by 68. Since -weaponskills debuffs do not actually reduce a monsters ability to land a hit on you, the -AAO portion is the only thing that mattered.