5.10 PTS Patch Notes Updated 11/5 with reversion 3

Star Wars: The Old Republic
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First, sorry for the delay in getting a PTS refresh out to you all. The server gremlins came out in full force, conspiring to keep us apart… While their eventual defeat was inevitable –for love indeed conquers all –it doesn’t lessen our longing in the meanwhile.

Second, thanks a ton to everyone who’s been hopping on the PTS. We’ve had a loooot of activity. Thanks especially to those of you who have hopped on to take a moment to run through Story / Veteran modes, as it’s arguably even more important that we get those adjustments correct!

Alright. Onto the refresh notes:

General:
•The Ossus Daily Area is now ready for PTS testing, and for the first time players will be able to access the area! pokerfaceJust open the galaxy map, and you’ll find Ossus (it’s just southwest of Voss).
•Fixed an issue where players could not purchase items from some of the PTS vendors
•The 252 Gear Vendor, ED-5E, is now present in the Odessen Landing area!
•Fixed the issue where Nightmare Crystals could only be used in GotM, instead of the intended behavior of being usable everywhere except GotM. (Checkboxes are hard!!)
•The Tyth skip button has been enabled in Master Mode, allowing thusly inclined players to bypass the encounter to test Aivela & Esne.

Tyth:

Overall, Tyth seems to be playing really, really well, but it’s become clear the encounter is a tad overtuned in what it’s demanding of the DPS, given the chaos of everything else that’s going on. We’re going to attack this with a series of smaller adjustments in multiple areas (as opposed to a single large adjustment to one facet of the encounter) to get us to where we want to be without ruining the current feel.

Therefore, we’re (1) Pulling back ever so slightly on the HP of Tyth and the drones, to give just a little bit more moment-to-moment breathing room. Additionally, we’re (2) Kicking out the enrage timer by an additional 30s, and (3) Decreasing the drones per wave in Phase 2 from 5 back to 4, since that seems to be just about the survivable break point to begin with.

We’ll see how this winds up playing, and then adjust again from there.

In terms of Veteran mode, the changes to Tyth have certainly made the encounter a lot more viable, but I think we might have gotten to the correct answer in the wrong way, in that everything winds up being so thin that the structure of the encounter is coming a bit loose.

While there are no changes to Veteran mode in this refresh, as a heads up: For the next refresh we’re thinking of reducing Vet mode’s Phase 2 wave size from 5 to 4 (to match Master Mode), while walking back the cooldown increase on Phase 2 wave summoning (reducing it from 36s to 32s). We might also put some HP back on the drones, since it’s easier to DPS fewer targets. We’ll see.

Master:
•Tyth HP reduced ~6%
•Drone HP reduced ~5%
•Standard Drone wave size in Phase 2 reduced to 4 drones (down from 5)
•Enrage timer increased by 30s (6:45 -> 7:15)
•Cast time of Inversion increased to 5.0s (up from 4.0s)
•Fixed an issue where the encounter would occasionally spawn a “blank” wave of drones (i.e. the spawn warning text appeared but no drones did).
•Fixed an issue where Energy Wave’s radius of effect was larger than the ground indicator (by about .75m), occasionally causing rather unfortunate outcomes.
•Reduced the maximum width of Tyth’s high rage Energy Wave by .5m (8.0m -> 7.5m) (in addition to the above correction).

Aivela & Esne:

We actually did get a bit of exposure to the A&E encounter, in one case due to a fatfingered dev command, and in others through judicious application of Nightmare Crystals. This wound up being a happy accident, because it exposed a couple of things that had gone wrong in the encounter, saving us all a PTS cycle! #HappyAccidents \o/

All Modes:
•Players standing on any of the four pillars in the Master Repository Core will now take damage while the encounter is engaged. There are no VFX for this yet, but there will be soon.

Master:
•Fixed an issue where the Nexus wasn’t going invulnerable when it should have been.
•Fixed an issue where Codex obelisks weren’t going invulnerable when they should have been.
•Increased the damage of the Codex obelisks’ secondary attack by a bunch. (You’ll know it when you see it, if you haven’t yet)
•The Nexus’s “Disco Lightshow Mode” will now fire properly (Again, you’ll know it when you see it, if you haven’t yet).
•Super Energy Burst now does what it’s supposed to, as opposed to… whatever you would call the nonsense it was doing before.
•The base damage of System Shock has increased, as it was insufficiently spicy.
•The purification sequence will now run during Phase 3.

Veteran:
•Probably fixed an issue that could cause the first Purification sequence to be polarized incorrectly (3-and-1, instead of 2-and-2).

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Okay!

Build system gremlins do indeed seem to be firmly under control, therefore we’ll be able to get back to a much regular update cadence. Still, due to the lost time we’re going to be accelerating the pacing of stuff a bit (at least on the operations side of things) just to make extra sure we can get eyes on stuff with enough time to iterate/implement feedback.

Tyth:

Apologies for the inversion nonsense, that should be fixed now. Ditto for the questionably functional skip button, which should also be fixed now.

Inversion’s pull is getting a threat multiplier to offset the DPS loss to make tanking a little more stable. You may still experience some token panic for the first GCD after a pull (when multiple people are pulled), but it should iron out fairly quickly, especially if the other pull-ees don’t do anything that Tyth finds irritating.

We’ve been toying around with a variety of other threat adjustments to try and ease this encounter’s complexity for tanks (it’s kinda nuts). There have been some ideas, and a couple of suggestions from all of you, but nothing that seems to be free of annoying side effects (as in, one change may make strategy X easier/more viable, but prevents players from employing strategy Y). We may yet wind up with an adjustment in this department before all is said and done, but for now we’re cruising with the status quo.

Master mode players will find one new mechanic related to Justice drones, wherein they’ll provide an AoE damage buff to nearby players the first (and only the first) time their shield is sheared off by a Lance. This is intended to counterbalance the fact that dealing with a Justice drone requires more effort, which makes encounter pulls that roll more Justice drones relatively harder.

Thanks to the player who suggested this mechanic (you know who you are). Let us see how it plays.

Oh, and lastly, the savvy among you may immediately reason that having Justice drones put out a damage buff will naturally increase the raid’s total DPS output over the course of the encounter. You’re right! To offset that, the Enrage is walking back by 10s to 7:05. No free lunches here! Just less… uh… less lumpy lunches? I guess?

In all honesty, I’m not entirely convinced that the enrage walk back needs to happen (the encounter is already a pretty substantial thing)… So we may just wind up going back to 7:15… In which case I guess the lunch would wind up being free… so… hmm…

All Modes:

  • Fixed an issue with Tyth’s ability logic that was making his use of Inversion rather erratic.
  • Tyth’s skip button will now kill Tyth immediately (similar to the other bosses’ buttons), as opposed to trying to be cute by setting his HP to 1%.
  • Inversion’s Long Wave Resonance (the pull debuff) now increases threat generation by 100% for its duration.

Master:

  • The first time a Justice Drone is hit by a Lance shot, it will release an Energizing Overload, which will increase the damage dealt by all players within 10m of the event by 20% for 10 seconds. Overlapping applications of this effect stack independently. After being hit, a Justice drone will perodically emit a subtle yellow crackle of electricity as a visual indicator that its buff has already been triggered.
  • Enrage timer decreased by 10 seconds [7:15 -> 7:05]

Aivela & Esne:

The Sisters got their first major block of PTS testing over the weekend, and the encounter has shown itself to be appropriately spicy.

You all uncovered a couple of logic issues with the encounter (if there’s one thing you can count on with players, it’s that they’ll find ways to horribly break everything that is breakable ). Unfortunately, there wasn’t time before the refresh to work quite all of them out, so be careful about hard burning the Nexus in the initial phase (unless you just really, really like the Nexus’s Disco Lightshow Mode).

Super Energy Burst seems to be succeeding at causing the mayhem we all hoped for, but it’s clear that there’s room for some quality of life improvements surrounding the sequence. First, we’ve made Aivela and Esne leap immune during the sequence (so that players can’t accidentally gap close themselves out of existence), and secondly we’ve changed the SEB sequence to put Remote Access and Spike on a hard cooldown of 18s, so that players shouldn’t need to taunt A&E on the platforms to avoid a spike when they return.

In terms of pacing, it’s pretty clear that the enrage is far too tight right now. We’re going to be pushing the enrage back by a full minute [8:00 -> 9:00]. It’s unclear that this is the correct solution, as 9:00 is a bit long. We may instead wind up shortening bits of the encounter here and there to bring it back to 8:00, but that’s a much more involved process. For now, we’ll see how things go with the 9:00 limit.

Master:

  • Aivela and Esne should no longer become permanently shielded if phase transitioned during the Super Energy Burst sequence.
  • Aivela and Esne are now leap immune for the duration of their Super Energy Burst sequence, which will hopefully prevent some accidental (if hilarious) deaths.
  • The Super Energy Burst sequence will now place both Remote Access and Spike on cooldown. The net result of this is that players should have ~3s of grace period at the end of the sequence before those mechanics resume.
  • Enrage timer extended by 60s [8:00->9:00]. We may wind up approaching this differently (i.e. shortening the length of the encounter, rather than knocking back the enrage) in a future update.
  • KNOWN ISSUE: Damaging the Nexus to 50% before destroying all the Codex obelisks will result in the Nexus being permanently stuck in Tri-beam mode.

Nahut:

Nothing to see here… Move along…

Master Mode:

  • Power Cell use time decreased to 1.0s (from 2.0s), because that’s an awful long time to have to stand still…
5.10 PTS Refresh #3 Operations Notes (2nd of November, 2018) 11.02.2018, 07:15 PM
Onward we go, brave testers! There’s a skip button for Nahut down now, as well as delicious 258 gear! The components are a little trickier, but I have confidence that you all can handle the execution complexity.

As a warning: This is likely the last refresh where Tyth will be playable. We need to start pushing forward and picking at the later encounters, so earlier encounters are going to start becoming unpullable as we go forward.

General:

  • Tier 5 Legendary Gear (258) is now available from purchase from ED-5E L at the Odessen landing area. There is also a vendor selling 258 components.
  • To try and ease the total run time of the GftM operation in non-master modes, the health of non-boss encounters have been reduced by ~15% in Story Mode, and ~13% in Veteran Mode.

Tyth:

Just a couple of odds and ends here, cleaning up things that went wonky with the build.

I’m leaving Tyth open this refresh to get a little more information about the power level of the Justice buff (especially when it’s actually working as intended). If it’s making things too easy, we’ll dial it back a bit.

All Modes:

  • Lances are no longer taunt immune.

Master:

  • The Justice Drones’ Energized Overload proc now actually applies its damage buff to players.
  • The Justice Drones’ Energized Overload proc will no longer apply its damage buff to Tyth and other Drones.

Veteran:

  • Removed Inversion’s hinder component, as it was odd to do this in Veteran mode but not in Master mode.

Aivela & Esne:

No more permanent disco mode, and a little bit of time pulled out of Phase 3 (approx 1 million HP), to pull the encounter forward just a tad faster. We’ll see how this goes.

Master:

  • Pushing the Nexus from Phase 0 to Phase 1 before destroying all of the Codex Obelisks will now unleash a Codex Feedback shockwave that wipes the raid.
  • Half of the Nexus’s Phase 3 health has been removed. The net result of this is that the Nexus has 25% less HP than it used to, and the transition point out of Phase 0 is 33% instead of 50%.

Nahut:

A little quality of life for Nahut, but not much more, as testers were unable to make much of any headway into the encounter without 258 gear. It turns out Master Mode Nahut is kind of a hard encounter. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

So, funny story: Way back when, in the long long ago… Candle passes originally hit the first thing in their path (player or Nahut). As it turns out, this was a horrendously mean thing to do. I removed it by simply flagging the player interception behavior as Master Mode only (since we weren’t making Master Mode, it was the quickest and cleanest change to remove it). Fast forward to the reality of today, and you Master Mode testers were delighted(?) to discover these new candle interception mechanics.

Spoiler: Candle interception is still not an okay thing to do, so that business has been rightly and properly removed.

Master Mode:

  • Power Cells will now become usable 6s earlier than before (3s after Candle Pickup, down from 9s) so that players have ample time to pick up a cell and get back to the center.
  • Other players can no longer accidentally intercept candle passes in Master mode. (Nahut can still intercept passes, just like Veteran mode)
  • The debuff associated with the Radiation Field outside the Singularity Chamber should no longer be right-click dispellable.

Veteran:

  • Rail Turrets should actually have 20% less HP in Vet8 now.|