New Fixer Nano Changes

[Ebondevil]

If not what they've basically done is create a line of nano's that people will most likely never use. I thought that privilege was left to MP's and their creation weapons.

Wouldn't it be much better to actually tailor the % based heals to be used alongside the current HOT's?

I don't really understand that, the Team HoT's will be used on and benefit teams, while the % based HoT's are more powerful so will be used on self, so how have the dev's created a line that people most likely won't use?

They pretty much have tailored them to be used alongside the Team HoT's while insuring the HoT the fixer can get is stronger...

[Josephina]

I don't really understand that, the Team HoT's will be used on and benefit teams, while the % based HoT's are more powerful so will be used on self, so how have the dev's created a line that people most likely won't use?

They pretty much have tailored them to be used alongside the Team HoT's while insuring the HoT the fixer can get is stronger...

If the "rebalance" %-hots are compared to the life hots, than Tanana is right and the %-hot line would be useless except for the last ones. But in a similar fashion to how the then developers forced SL snares upon fixers, the current devs have ensured that the low level fixers have to use the %-hots by nerfing the existing long hots to hell by giving them 20s intervals. Unless every fixer will really be running around with 500hp at tl1 of course. Also, the only reason that at high levels the %-hot is better than the classic hots, is because those hots are part of the SL fixer nerf and have always scaled very poorly: a comparison against some others support healing toolsets.

Not that it will really matter after "rebalance" that the "balanced" long hots still scale extremely poorly or have a too long tick interval, since they become a 4 hour buff and the fixer wouldn't be invited to the PUG even if these did perform well.

[Colrain]

Yes, to get GSF your char level has to be level 109+ and for example level 55-72 toons will get Grid Surfer buff when GSF is cast on them.

I didn't see comment so far about lvl lock changes to casting fixer run buffs ...
so here are my questions ...

It looks like with re-balancing, to cast GSF the fixer must have the appropriate skills and be at least level 150, is this correct? Level 125, for next smaller buff, etc.

Also, the GSF level-check for GSF team lets a 109+ toon be buffed with GSF, but the fixer has to be level 150 to cast? That makes no sense ...

If you must add a level lock on the fixer to cast fixer run speed then it should be no higher than the levels in the "GSF level-check" formula ... i.e. GSF with a Casting level-lock equal the the Target level-lock.

Or, if you think there is miss-balancing because of fixer run buffs on targets, then make GSF no level lock for self-only but add this new balancing level lock for target-only. Then a fixer that already casts GSF can still cast on themself, just new restrictions on casting on targets/teams.

I thought re-balancing was removing level locks to casting nano's on yourself, not adding new lock-outs.

What happens to current fixers that are already casting GSF at level 95 because they have ai-perks to nano combat and CI running? Will they still be able to cast GSF after re-balancing or must I level my "buffing-only" fixer to 150 now?

Colrain

[Tanana]

I don't really understand that, the Team HoT's will be used on and benefit teams, while the % based HoT's are more powerful so will be used on self, so how have the dev's created a line that people most likely won't use?

They pretty much have tailored them to be used alongside the Team HoT's while insuring the HoT the fixer can get is stronger...

Yeah, I'm sorry, don't really get the concept there...might be better to wait for them to come ingame I guess.

Team HOT effects the team, how is that different from just casting the current single hots on each member? Time saving?

I've just got it in my head that when these come in game your choose the best one, which will make the other line pointless...right?

Why not, instead of giving us a choice between using one or the other, adjust the healing of the % based heal so that it can be used alongside the Long and short hots so we arn't wasting part of the tool set?

[haxi]

[QUOTE=Colrain;5966168
What happens to current fixers that are already casting GSF at level 95 because they have ai-perks to nano combat and CI running? Will they still be able to cast GSF after re-balancing or must I level my "buffing-only" fixer to 150 now?

Colrain[/QUOTE]

I know what would happen to my theoretical level 95 fixer and it would not be a leveling spree.

[Ebondevil]

If the "rebalance" %-hots are compared to the life hots, than Tanana is right and the %-hot line would be useless except for the last ones.

Not that it will really matter after "rebalance" that the "balanced" long hots still scale extremely poorly or have a too long tick interval, since they become a 4 hour buff and the fixer wouldn't be invited to the PUG even if these did perform well.

The first 4 % based hot's are about as good as the current long Hots assuming you go for high HP rather than low, while the rest are all considerably better and because they're % based will scale better with level improving as you level.

Yeah, I'm sorry, don't really get the concept there...might be better to wait for them to come ingame I guess.

Team HOT effects the team, how is that different from just casting the current single hots on each member? Time saving?

Because % based HoT's are self only, not target, only the fixer can benefit from them and they can't be cast on anyone else, they are also stronger than the team ones, net result Fixers should always be choosing the % based HoT's assuming they go for more HP instead of trying to abuse low HP setups, leaving the Target/Team Based weaker ones for everyone else.

When comparing the Old Long HoT's to the New Team Long HoT's: The new ones are fractionally more powerful, healing as much healing over time as the old ones would have if every heal tick of the old ones was maxed, though in some cases the new ones are even better than that.

To sum up, the Team ones have improved Heal Per Second, even factoring in the slower tick rate, and the % based ones are even stronger than the team based ones, so I fail to see the problem really...

[Tanana]

Because % based HoT's are self only, not target, only the fixer can benefit from them and they can't be cast on anyone else

Ahh, ok...I think I've got it.

Fixer comes along casts the team HOT, for the team, and then over writes his portion of that buff with the % based HoT. Can the fix recast the team HoT with the % based HoT running or do they need to cancel this to refresh the HoT for new members?

So this is better for a few reasons..unlike now when most of the time I just throw a HoT on a few key players, such as the tank and healer, everyone will benefit. Good if your in a poor team when the tank can't tank I guess. Also it's just one cast so less time buffing people.

Though...and again, maybe wrong...how many times do you team a fix and expect them to buff everyone in the raid, or team even, with a HoT. NCU and RS sure but keeping HoT's running on everyone? So while it will be an improvement to a team situation it's not really ground breaking and it's not really going to get people pro fixer.

[Ebondevil]

Can the fix recast the team HoT with the % based HoT running or do they need to cancel this to refresh the HoT for new members?

As I understand it no, it's effects the targets team, not the fixers team, so Fixer can cast the nano on anyone he wants, and that Target and their team benefits, so cast it on the tank and everyone in the Tank's team benefits from the best version they can get.

Though...and again, maybe wrong...how many times do you team a fix and expect them to buff everyone in the raid, or team even, with a HoT. NCU and RS sure but keeping HoT's running on everyone? So while it will be an improvement to a team situation it's not really ground breaking and it's not really going to get people pro fixer.

6 casts and you have an entire raid force buffed without any need to go swapping around teams.

The Short Term hot is Target's Team as well, meaning a fixer can get HoT's running on all members of a team in a very short amount of time.

Maintaining both the Team Short and Team Long term HoT's on a full Raid force would give a total healing rate of around 5724 Hit Points per second. Not factoring in the fixers own % based HoT. (Compared to a Doctor's 4925.1 Raid based HPS, or an Adventurer's 3547.8 Raid Based HPS, not factoring in single heals)

Individually they may not seem all that powerful, but when you add up the effects both HoT's can have on a team or a raid, then they actually seem to be very powerful damage mitigation which a Fixer should be able to maintain across a raid force with a little effort.

[Tanana]

The point I'm trying to make is that these things arn't really needed. A raid force doesn't need every member to have a HoT running. If the tank/healers are doing their jobs most members of the raid won't see their HP move.

So while it's nice it's not reqiuired. Anything that does cause that much concern for an entire raid force is gonna need much more than a simple HoT to counter. The way I see it it's just a convinience buff, much like the changes to most of our other buffs.

It would work much better if I could run both short and long term HoT's and also get the benefit from an additional % based HoT for myself.

[Josephina]

The first 4 % based hot's are about as good as the current long Hots assuming you go for high HP rather than low, while the rest are all considerably better and because they're % based will scale better with level improving as you level.

The %hots will always be better on fixers since 20seconds is a way too large tick interval, but speaking about the hps:
FC was able to make the top %hots way better than the long hots, because those long hots suck.
In the document the low %hots are better than the long hots, because FC pulled some numbers out of their ass. Those hitpoint numbers are not realistic for a selfbuffed fixer, and most definitely not for a casual new player trying to level a fixer.

The idea of scaling %buffs itself is faulty, since it implies that the toolset will be relatively less effective at low levels, while non percentage based stuff can be cept as effective at all levels. Relative to the total hitpoints (which in the document are underestimated for the highlevels and overestiminated for the low levels), the top %hot heals two and half times that of the lowest %hot, the only way FC manages to pass this off past the gullible, is because the SL hots suck and FC is chosing not to do anything about this with "rebalancing" + FC backwards calculated the hp numbers needed at low levels and then chose to ignore that these are unrealistic.

[Ebondevil]

The idea of scaling %buffs itself is faulty, since it implies that the toolset will be relatively less effective at low levels, while non percentage based stuff can be cept as effective at all levels.

Or it factors in that higher level content is more challenging, which it is.

And because they are %-based they scale relatively effectively along the various levels of HP, if you have less they won't perform as well, if you have more they will perform better, encouragin higher HP builds instead of Low HP builds, whether the numbers that are in the document are reasonable or not I couldn't really say, but based on those numbers the nanos look to be scaled relatively well.

Without a breakdown of the health levels available at the levels where those HoT's are expected to be used though it's difficult to say how effective or not they will be, other than to use the information presented in the document.

It also sounds like you are basing your analysis of the % based HoT's on current Health levels, which is what you have, however, that does not mean that the numbers presented in the document won't be more accurate after the rebalancing, or what sort of character those numbers have been estimated for. For all we know that might be the average expected HP for a non twinked Fixer to have at the levels where those nanos are intended to see use, while a good fixer could get better than what is listed in the document.

It sounds like your argument is: 'The %-based HoT's are rubbish because if we got them as things stand, without any other rebalancing, they'd be rubbish'.

[Josephina]

Ah yes, the undocumented unannounced fundamental game changes that will miraculously make the utterly unbalanced "rebalancing" documentations balanced. That excuse has turned into a classic by now. I don't know why FC is even bothering to ask players for feedback since all feedback is by default irrelevant.

You're also talking as if someone at FC actually bothered to use a skill emulator or even build actual equips to get those hp numbers. They really didn't have to do that effort, their methodology to fabricate those numbers is very simple and can easily be derived from the document.

The first step in creating the %hots was scrapping existing long hots (several of the scrapped ones are on live essential for a smooth progression across the levels, but maybe this will turn out to not be the case anymore when "rebalancing" goes live because of yet undocumented unannounced fundamental game changes - or maybe they've based this decision on the habits of the users of the most prevalent leveling method), then they created the same amount of %hots as there where classical (nerfed) long hots left.

Next they gave those %hots gradually increasing relative hps compared to the hp. At the high levels the devs ofcourse had an easy time to make them give more hps than the live long hots since they chose to retain the piss poor scaling numbers of the Shadowlands hots (they consider these so "balanced", that they have no problem with the top one being casted on low tl5 players), combined with the high level %hots being several times better than at low levels.

Only now the dev making the document fabricated the needed hitpoint numbers. To create them he took the hps of a long hot (the scaling of the hps is roughly unchanged in the "rebalancing" documentation), took the corresponding %hot and from that calculated the needed hitpoints to make that %hot give more hps than the corresponding live long hot. Then those hitpoints were rounded upwards to a logical number to make the %hots appear better.

For example:

• Relieving Salve: 1.5hps
• The corresponding %hot:
  
  • 3% every 9s
  • Needed hitpooints to make it as good as long hot: 1.5*9/0.03 = 450
  • Rounded up wards to make it appear better on paper: 500
  
  
  
• Hacked Diagnosis: 5hps
• The corresponding %hot:
  
  • 3% every 8s
  • Needed hitpooints to make it as good as long hot: 5*8/0.03 = 1333.33
  • Rounded up wards to make it appear better on paper: 1500
  
  
  
• Kichten Sink Surgery: 10hps
• The corresponding %hot:
  
  • 4% every 10s
  • Needed hitpooints to make it as good as long hot: 10*10/0.04 = 2500
  • Rounded up wards to make it appear better on paper: 3000
  
  
  
• Blackmarket Prescription: 20hps
• The corresponding %hot:
  
  • 4% every 9s
  • Needed hitpooints to make it as good as long hot: 20*9/0.04 = 4500
  • Rounded up wards to make it appear better on paper: 5000

To force (or "encourage") players to actually use the %hots at low levels, the existing long hots were nerfed into oblivion for low hp characters (such as the fixer profession, since even a high hp fixer has low hp compared to any high hp profession) by giving them 20s tick intervals (but only as a hot, they still retain some use as active healing with a long cooldown). The devs also changed the duration of the long hots to 4h to further encourage players to have multiple accounts and changed the nanoskill requirements to something that completely ignored the ip template of fixers (no doubt this will be solved by yet undocumented unann...).

What most amazes me is not FC's lip service to balance, but that so many players still find in themselves to keep on believing.

[ylnotixe]

Having read both the profession and the breed perk redo with the background of having made 4 fixers over 200 (yeah didn't learn after one it seems). It seems overall to be reasonable changes. A couple of thoughts though. It seems clear that the % hots are targeted to adversely impact the low hit point setups. Ok, I can live with that I suppose although it doesn't exactly delight me. What is not clear is whether the changes will actually fix the root snare problems. Durations and the like are nice, assuming you can ever get the bloody thing to land in the first place. I would like to know if that problem has been addressed.

This last item troubles me a lot. Colrain brought up that to cast nano such as gsf on self required the fixer to be 150, but it can be cast on the same fixer by outside buffer at 109. There are a few other nanos with the same condition. Having target and self buff locked at different levels has always been and remains absurd. If you are going to put in a level lock, make it a target lock that is the same for self and others. The most silly part of this is that as written up, a fixer less than 150 (with the nano historically uploaded) could potentially cast the nanos on others but not themselves. Again worse than silly. This really needs addressing and setting target and self to the same amount should have no impact on rebalancing.

[HereifixeditFrzn]

Has anyone noticed the increased NCU costs in the fixer nano document?

Current nanos:
Superior Insurance Hack - 43
Greater Preservation Matrix - 30
Experienced Survivor - 20
Karma Harvest - 47
Blood Makes Noise - 36
Embrace of Shadows - 9
Improved Frenzy of Shells - 56
Slip of Mind - 52
Firewalled Sync Compressor - 2 (1 + 1)
Improved Semi-Sentient Augmentation Cloud - 40
Blessed By Shadow - 55 (53 + 2)
Total NCU cost: 390

Proposed nanos:
Experienced Survivor - 20
Preserve Movement - 40
Systolic Equalizer (Team) - 43
Recoded Preservation Matrix - 35
Blood Makes Noise - 36
Embrace of Shadows - 9
Improved Frenzy of Shells - 56
Spray 'n Pray - 60
Stacking the Deck - 50
Improved Semi-Sentient Augmentation Cloud - 43
Firewalled Sync Compressor - 1
Escape Peril - 53
Blessed By Shadow - 40
Total NCU cost: 486

[HereifixeditFrzn]

Currently fixers have 2 stacking nanos (SL run speed buffs and top 2 smg buffs) that buff all three evades and 1 percentage based dodge ranged buff line.

In the fixer nano document, these evade modifiers are removed from these buffs and merged under a new evade buff line. However, the nanos in this new line doesn't have a static dodge ranged modifier, which makes fixers lose 170 dodge ranged from the top nanos we currently have.

Can anyone confirm if dodge range is left out by mistake or it is a nerf to fixers?

[ylnotixe]

I had also noticed that all levels most professions experience additional NUC requirements. With the buffs, I had not worried too much about it on fixers, but had not really counted the full impact either.

Funcom, this is direct impact of splitting all the nano lines. Strongly recommend you consider adding roughly 25% to all types/levels of NCU to offset this impact. While it was brought up here, this impacts every profession at every level and after looking back at the documentation , it does not seem to have been addressed.

[HereifixeditFrzn]

I know it's difficult to happen, but the increase in buff NCU requirements for all profs might make fixers more desirable in PvM teams. Yay for "lfm fixer and ready to go" ^^

[HereifixeditFrzn]

A quick look at soldier nano document reveals that NCU requirement of soldier buffs decreased by 3.32%, whereas NCU increase in fixer nanos is 24.61%.

Current nanos:
One-More-Hit Healing - 24
Total Combat Survival - 56
Augmented Mirror Shield MK V - 61
Pre-Nullity Sphere - 55
Heavy Assault Absorption Shield - 49
Offensive Steamroller - 48
Full Automatic Targeting - 53
Improved Total Focus - 56
Art of War - 51
The Power of Three - 22
Improved Soldier Clip Junkie - 56
Gazump fight (Team) - 7
Phalanx - 4
Total NCU cost: 542

Proposed nanos:
Last Resort - 0
Total Combat Survival - 50
Augmented Mirror Shield MK V - 40
Pre-Nullity Sphere - 68
Heavy Assault Absorption Shield - 10
Offensive Steamroller - 50
Full Automatic Targeting - 37
Improved Total Focus - 56
Assault Rifle Control - 50
Power Trigger - 47
Improved Soldier Clip Junkie - 53
Gazump fight (Team) - 63
Total NCU cost: 524

[Josephina]

Currently fixers have 2 stacking nanos (SL run speed buffs and top 2 smg buffs) that buff all three evades and 1 percentage based dodge ranged buff line.

In the fixer nano document, these evade modifiers are removed from these buffs and merged under a new evade buff line. However, the nanos in this new line doesn't have a static dodge ranged modifier, which makes fixers lose 170 dodge ranged from the top nanos we currently have.

Can anyone confirm if dodge range is left out by mistake or it is a nerf to fixers?

It's a nerf.

There's also a problem because of mixing the % with the fixed numbers:

FC screwed up when collapsing the evade and %dodge buffs into 1 nanoline:
Not enough intermediate nanos at low levels and the percentage scaling of dodge doesn't mix well with the fixed numbers for evade and duck. At 125 with current numbers it will buff 160 evade+duck and 120 dodge. At 220 it will buff 210 evade+duck and 275 dodge. Furthermore they haven't changed the very high PM and SI requirements of the top nano of this line. To put it in an example the devs will understand: casting a nano with 1715 PM requirement by a fixer is equivalent to casting a nano with 1600 MC requirement for a soldier. Fixer also lost 150 (more) dodge ranged at 220.

It's a direct nerf, as well as another example of how the devs have just made up numbers and thrown them together without even making the most basic calculations of their actual effectiveness.

[Shareida]

A quick look at soldier nano document reveals that NCU requirement of soldier buffs decreased by 3.32%, whereas NCU increase in fixer nanos is 24.61%.

As a Trader, I don't mind. With all drains and self buffs running i can barely fill 300 NCU. Having around 600 with 4 NCU chips in, I welcome some more usage of my NCU. For raids i can always swap Range Increaser and DB NCU for pande chips.

Since when did Fixers have NCU problems anyway?