Are pilot trees still a thing or has the idea been scrapped?
So Pilot Skills as previously implemented won’t be in for launch. We largely redesigned the components system to fit that need for power increases and build defining support stats. We may revisit this system in the future.
Doing the Lord's work, friend. I didn't have the cohones to do it myself.
We talked about this today. The work that Respawn did with this system is incredible and very intuitive. Certainly good inspiration.
I can’t speak to any immediate plans, but improving in-game communication to teammates (in whatever form that is) is something we want to do.
/u/BiowareBen any chance you able to spread some love on this topic?
Hey yes this is something we are aware of and have addressed. At the moment I can’t remember if this made it in for launch or for shortly after, but it is a known issue.
Read moreSo to double check, even team mates can’t combo off of Inty aura? So as Inty, I go and drop a venom bomb on a scar scout, get the acid aura by combo’ing that myself, then zip over to that legendary enforcer with the aura, and apply the acid to him, that elemental effect can not then be detonated by anyone to include my team mates?
I understand not being able to combo it myself because then I would have a permanent acid aura, however it would be very good, tactically, if my team mates could combo off of it, particularly since inty aura should theoretically have the best chance of applying status/primer to boss level mobs. One could open a fight/damage phase on a boss with int comboing to get the aura to keep acid on the boss for as long as possible and then the ranger could detonate for the damage, otherwise it effectively plays out that on boss fights Inty is lacking.
Though if it’s by design that elemental spread doesn’t allow another combo I understand ...
That last part is exactly why we limited it. A single Storm player could freeze 5-6 legendary enemies down permanently with very little effort.
However, the limitation on teammates may be something we reconsider. But again then you could lockdown with two Storms. It just gets a little too exploitable.
Why wouldn't you make it so if you reapplied the same effect, but after being comboed, that would allow it to be comboed again? Having to wait for an effect to fall off wastes time, especially when you get into grand master difficulties.
In practice this doesn’t seem to be a problem. At least from what we’ve played/tested so far. Most of your primer gear pieces are close enough to that status effect duration that it’s maybe a couple seconds between. Time you can fill with melee, guns, alternate gear, etc. The only time this really plays a factor is when multiple teammates are running the same primer type. If this becomes a problem we could take a look.
I am kind of saddened to hear this - the ability to constantly chain combos and shut down adds at the cost of being in the thick of it because you're reliant on your melee was my favorite part of storm - it encouraged very aggressive play, versus its sounding like this change will encourage floating up in the rafters.
But that risk-reward wasn’t restricted to melee. You could permanently lockdown 5-6 targets at nearly any range by rotating the combo over and over. It was pretty broken.
I encountered some confusing behavior with interceptor auras in the demo and I'm hoping you can clarify.
- With an aura up, it didn't seem that I could trigger combos, even on status effects that had not been comboed (e.g. fresh effects using different elements and applied by teammates). Is this intentional? If it's not, would the aura from the new combo overwrite my existing aura or stack with it?
- Interceptor ice and acid auras behaved differently from one another. I could apply ice, combo and trigger the aura, apply ice to a second target via the aura, and then combo that second target once my aura wore off but the target was still frozen. Substituting acid for ice, I could not combo off the second target in the same situation. Which is intended?
The first one is something we need to look into. This doesn’t sound like it’s working as intended to me. My guess would be we want to always allow combo and you’d inherit the aura of the last primer you combo’ed. I’ll double-check.
This second one is not working as intended. When Storm and Interceptor apply additional status effects via their combo, those targets are not able to be combo’ed. This is because it was extremely easy to lockdown ~5-6 creatures with 1 Storm by just rotation the combo chain over and over, forever.
Are there any concerns about how this might discourage use of gear that extends the duration on these effects since letting it fall off to reapply (in the case of a very high health target like those that would be found in higher difficulties) would be preferable with how devasting and necessary combos are?
Like if you increase the duration of the flamethrower’s burn, wouldn’t that lower damage to the target since they’ll be primed for combo less frequently?
Potentially, but we haven’t quite hit that point yet but it’s a good call out. In nearly all cases it’s still pretty beneficial to have the status effect on the target. It may not be optimal like you said but currently it doesn’t appear to be reaching that tipping point. If it does we’d likely review this again.
Thank you for the quick response. Can't wait to see how strong my interceptor will become in the end(game), I know that the demo version is the low point and everything will be better and many things are going to be fixed. Looking forward for new abilities as well to keep the builds/javelins fresh, but I guess that's 6 months to 1 year away?!
Hey Nestroit! Yeah lots of things planned and in the works for javelins. Not sure about timelines yet but we’ll keep y’all updated.
So if I understand this
Have a different un-combo’ed status effect applied.
right it means its by design the Interceptor can't detonate the status effects it spreads by doing combos (and I guess neither can the Storm)? Cause I never got a combo once off the Intercepter aura in the demo, even when applying it to fresh enemies.
That’s correct currently.
Just to chime in on your chime ;)
Have you thought about something like Diminishing return on higher difficulty levels, or status effect lasting shorter? Of course not until it won't have any effect at all, since comboing is the major source for high dmg output.
Yup this is already the case. Creatures have different resistances to not only damage types but also primers and status effects. For example if you try to freeze a frost wolven it’s harder to do and doesn’t last as long.
So does this mean if I flamethrower and combo off it with my colossus, only I am locked out of doing a combo again and my storm friend can lightning strike him? Or does my friend have to apply his frost primer first to be able to combo?
Only one person on the team can combo any given primer. New primer is needed to combo again.
Interesting, thanks for clarifying!
I actually thought the primer status number stacked on enemies and a combo would take away from that number and require an fixed amount.
I also thought that maybe harder enemies had a resistance against primers making it harder to stack enough to combo.
So that’s close yeah. But once you reach the threshold the creature will receive the status effect. Detonators don’t subtract but just trigger off whether the creature is or is not able to be combo’ed. The status effect itself plays out regardless of combo status once that threshold is reached. Different creatures do require different amounts to apply primers.
Hmm, but when playing Storm I'm 100% positive that I could detonate multiple times, because I would often detonate with an ability and then detonate again immediately with my melee. I can't remember if this also worked with Colossus, so maybe the Storm's detonation ends the current effect and re-applies it, making it technically a "new" effect?
Yeah I can’t remember exactly what rules and states were in place in the demo, I’m mostly speaking about intended current functionality on launch. Sorry for the confusion there.
Didn't you just say above that air to air melee had been changed especially with ultimate? I'm confused. See below
- Air-to-air melee attacks. This allows the Interceptor to more effectively and repeatedly hit enemies in air, especially in ultimate mode.
Right the air-to-air melee is done by jumping and melee’ing or falling and melee’ing. We have not added flight to the Interceptor Ult.
There is a lot of conflicting information and questions in this thread about how much damage combos do as well that would be great to get some clarification on.
The two big questions I have are:
Does detonating a combo with a skill do more damage based on how much damage the detonator did? And is the combo damage the same damage type as the detonator?
Do storm and interceptor combos do any damage at all to the target besides the detonator damage? Or do just colossus and ranger get a damage bonus? Do you have any numbers of the relative strength of the rangers single target damage combo compared to the colossus' AOE (and the storm and interceptor if they do any damage at all).
Detonating combos do a flat scaling damage value, it’s not based on how much damage the detonator or primer did.
On launch only the Storm’s detonator will not do additional damage (on top of the detonation itself). Interceptor will do ticking damage for each tick of the aura. I don’t unfortunately remember the scale between Colossus and Ranger.
Read more<Edit: I just want to say thank you to everyone who jumped in to talk about this topic, as well as a special thanks to BioCamden and the generous soul who gave gold for this thread. I can't wait to investigate more in the full game!>
This post intends to investigate the following:
- Internal Cooldown on Combos
- Some basic builds from the demo weekends
- In an optimal group what class should be the highest priority for detonators?
Combo Internal Cooldown
I spent a fair chunk of the weekend playing a Flamethrower/Lightning Coil Colossus and (while cackling maniacally) I began to notice a pattern. High health targets appear to have some kind of internal cooldown on how often then can take combo damage.
Before we delve too deeply into this, let’s cover a few basics about Combos. Combo’s occur when a detonator ability is applied to a mob to which a primer abi...
Just to chime in and help out. There isn’t a hard restriction or cooldown on when a target can be combo’ed again, however the target either has to
Or
Basically the rule is you can’t combo the same status effect twice. If you combo off flamethrower and then keep applying flame, it is still the same (already combo’ed) status effect. So in theory you could have multiple combos go off very quickly in succession on the same target assuming they are all different status effects.
Do our combos generate less Ultimate Meter than other classes because we only get 1 combo per 10 seconds at best while other classes can combo many times on groups of enemies to refresh their ultimate faster?
I’m not sure, but theoretically that may be the case at least versus Storm and Colossus. I’ll bring it up with the team.
Read moreI'm a little scared that you guys seem to be addressing the balance of the game due to feedback from a limited demo like this. I hope that you guys are only making changes that you recognize from your internal build, because the demo is extremely limiting for the following reasons:
It's mid level content so the power levels at end game are probably completely different
a lot of people don't even have access to all of their skills let alone have enough time to have tried them out and properly build around them
4 days total playtime is not nearly enough to understand what roles are best for each javalin and how to build for those roles
gear is completely broken with almost no random inscription stats being meaningful (where as in the final game they're clearly very powerful).
no powerful gear rarity levels are even unlocked let alone obtained in such a short play time
most people are play...
The changes I mentioned were mostly kicked off from internal balance testing, user experience testing, game changer feedback, and internal Alpha testing. Just so happened that a lot of it lined up with feedback folks had from the demo.
Not only that but feedback about how something functions is usually still valid too. But yes you’re right that balance feedback shouldn’t be at a glimpse or a snapshot of content.
Is there a reason why we can't fly during the ultimate attack? I mean the timer is the same, it would solve the problem of not being able to hit targets in the air. It's an odd design choice that ironically you are the least mobile when you are ulting.
We’ve gone back and forth on that. Probably something we will talk about again.
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