U60 Lamannia Preview 1 - Rune Arm Shot Changes

[SteelStar]

With Update 60 introducing the Machrotechnic Epic Destiny, we decided to take this opportunity to do some much-needed Rune Arm shot rebalancing. We currently have ~20 Rune Arm shot types, which vary wildly in damage, number of hits, speed, spread, homing, and hitbox size. In this pass, we've standardized many things to make more Rune Arm types viable, bring in odd outliers, and make the user experience better.

General Notes

• The information below is sorted by Shot Type - Every Rune Arm with that Shot Type is affected by the listed changes.
• It's mentioned in the general notes for this Preview, but the Rune Arm Charge UI is now moveable like other UI elements. If you can see it, you can click and drag it to a new spot where it will remain.
• All Rune Arm shots now have a consistent projectile size. This should especially help ones like Light Spirals, which were so large they'd often impact the ground before actually shooting.
• One of the biggest power disparities we tackled here is in AOE vs. Single(ish) Target Rune Arms.
  • An example of AOE is Fire Blast, which is a cone that hits many enemies inside it
  • An example of Single(ish) Target is Salt Shot, which shoots 5 homing projectiles at a single target. That doesn't mean all of those will hit that target, or ONLY that target as things can get in their way, but they're single target mostof the time.
    • We've made the target damage for Single(ish)-Target ones equivalent to what Salt, Knife, Ghost, Book, and Bee Shot are currently dealing (below called "New Single Target Curve"). Their damage has remained the same; other shots have come up to meet them.
  • Currently, these have similar damage curves. However, many of the AOEs only hit their target once, while the Single(ish)-Target ones can hit up to five times. Meaning the AOEs are doing 20% of the damage of Single(ish)-Target ones, sometimes less.
    • We also don't necessarily want big AOE cones doing 100% of the damage that single-target ones do.
  • So: The damage on AOEs that do 1 hit to affected targets has gone up by A LOT across the board. This puts their damage at roughly half of what the Single Target(ish) ones do with the number of projectiles they fire at the same tier (i.e. what 2 projectiles do at Tier 2, what 5 projectiles do at Tier 5). (Below called "New AOE Curve").
• All Rune Arms that deal multiple damage types still do, we've just split the numbers to fit the new damage paradigm.
• Please hop into game for exact damage numbers, which are in the tooltips on each Rune Arm for each tier of each shot type
• Fine details of the changes are definitely up for adjustments if needed; outside of changes requiring gigantic bodies of work and the general relation between Single Target and AOE, we can be flexible.

Breakdown By Shot Type

• Acid Bolt
  • Updated damage to New Single Target Curve
  • Changed shot spread to narrow
  • Increased projectile speed
• Bee Shot
  • No changes (slow projectile speed remains as this one also delivers a DOT)
• Book Shot
  • Increased projectile speed
• Cold Bolts
  • Updated damage to New Single Target Curve
  • Increased projectile speed
• Cannon Shot
  • Updated damage to something close to New AOE Curve, split across two damage types
  • Increased projectile speed
• Electrical Blast
  • Updated damage to New AOE Curve
• Electrical Lash
  • Updated damage to New AOE Curve
  • Increased projectile speed slightly
  • Added homing - This projectile does not explode on impact, but this change will fire it in the direction of your target instead of straight ahead.
• Ghost Shot
  • Increased projectile speed.
• Fire Blast / Corrupted Fire Blast
  • Updated damage to New AOE Curve
• Exploding Fire Shot / Corrupted Exploding Fire Shot
  • Updated damage to New AOE Curve
  • Added homing
  • Increased projectile speed
  • Made hitbox significantly larger - This now matches other shot types, but we wanted to call it out because the hitbox on this one was SO SMALL before, especially without homing, that it... often just wouldn't hit anything.
• Force Shot
  • Updated damage to New Single Target Curve
  • Changed shot spread to narrow
  • Increased projectile speed
• Gold Shot
  • Updated damage to New Single Target Curve
  • Increased projectile speed
• Knife Shot
  • Increased projectile speed
• Light Spirals
  • This shot type actually works now, no longer immediately destroys itself while standing on the ground
  • Updated damage to New Single Target Curve
  • Increased projectile speed
• Salt Shot
  • No changes
• Trash Shot
  • This is our outlier. Trash Shot is currently doing around double the damage of the next-best Rune Arm in the game. Yes, there are trade-offs, but its current role is not good for the overall Rune Arm meta. We've adjusted the damage down and given it homing and better projectile speed.
  • Its damage has been reduced by around half, putting it slightly higher than the New Single Target Curve to most targets.
    • It has four damage types, but very few will almost take all four - Poison and Rust are generally mutually exclusive against targets.
    • Each damage type here is slightly higher than 1/3 of the New Single Target Curve. If you manage to find a target that will take all four types of damage... Well, this Rune Arm will be good for that.
  • Added homing
  • Increased projectile speed
  • This may not be in this build, but the tooltip is in need of some rewriting; the current one on Live describes the tiers at which you get additional projectiles, but it's entirely wrong.

 

[JaynChar2019]

I'm so glad to see that homing has been added to these!!

 

[Xgya]

So long as part of the nerf to Trash Shot includes a MUCH NEEDED projectile speed fix, I'll readily accept it.
I don't think anything in any game should shoot a projectile its user can outrun.
The description said charge tiers increased speed. (they didn't)

The fix to Light Spirals is awesome. I've never used one before, because I didn't even know why the projectile kept vanishing.


I know Runearms aren't exactly meant to replace or ever be as powerful as actual spells are, but they should still gain something from levels.
I'd love to know what the curve actually is now.

As they currently are, runearms have the same scaling issue older spells had. When spell damage got updated, they got left in the dust.
The base damage for a Wizard's best spells at level 14 are almost 4 times as powerful as a level 6 Wizard's.
Meanwhile, an Artificer that goes from a Tier 3 charging AoE runearm to a Tier 5 one for those same levels gets 150% more powerful.
Same number of levels, a little over half the improvement.

 

[Misadventure]

Now if only rune arms can be centered.

 

[Grumpy]

• Ghost Shot
  • Increased projectile speed.
• Have you looked into increasing its range? Last time i used this rune-arm from the Halloween event I stopped using it, because it has about 1/2 the range of standard blast/projectile rune-arms

 

[Mesmerin]

• Ghost Shot
  • Increased projectile speed.
• Have you looked into increasing its range? Last time i used this rune-arm from the Halloween event I stopped using it, because it has about 1/2 the range of standard blast/projectile rune-arms

Haven't got on lam to check it out, but wouldn't increasing the projectiles speed also increase the distance travelled?
It's been a long time since I left school but I'm pretty sure distance = time * speed.

 

[CaptainSpacePony]

This all looks pretty good.
For future rune arm work, I'd like to see more sound effects. To this day I still get sad whenever I launch a book shot and don't hear, "Book 'em!" or "Dan-no!"

 

[PaleFox]

It has been ages since I last used a rune arm (because no need to run arti.)

Weren't there some secondary effects on runearm shots? And saves for half damage?
And it effects scale with spell power and crits from spell crit perc?
Has that been taken into account?

It looks like cannon shot charging to tier 1 and firing is the way to go forward now.

 

[Ying]

What is the expected behavior of a runearm with both Foe and Directional? Legendary Lucid Dreams: If I have a DPS Boss Kobold soft or hard targeted, the shots will hit other mobs on the way to the foe because they arc outwards. If I don't have a foe soft or hard targeted, then the projectiles travel in a straight line. Why are there two different shot patterns? If I have a mob targeted, I want that mob to be hit.

Legendary Toven's Hammer: I have DPS Boss Kobold targeted on the other side of the room, yet the rune arm discharges on the floor very close to my feet.

 

[droid327]

This all looks great. This is the kind of numerical balance that a lot of the game needs to be relevant in modern content.

 

[SteelStar]

What is the expected behavior of a runearm with both Foe and Directional? Legendary Lucid Dreams: If I have a DPS Boss Kobold soft or hard targeted, the shots will hit other mobs on the way to the foe because they arc outwards. If I don't have a foe soft or hard targeted, then the projectiles travel in a straight line. Why are there two different shot patterns? If I have a mob targeted, I want that mob to be hit.

Legendary Toven's Hammer: I have DPS Boss Kobold targeted on the other side of the room, yet the rune arm discharges on the floor very close to my feet.

On shots and spells that arc in that fashion, the exact distance of arc is determined by the game engine via how far away the target is and what it needs to do to home in properly. With no target, it doesn't have anything to home in on, no data for the arc, so it defaults to a straight line. We could fire a similar shot pattern, but with nothing to home in on they'd all fly out in a fan and converge on nothing, which seems worse.

RE: LToven's: I'm taking a look at that Rune Arm right now, it's doing odd things with collision at the moment.

 

[Synthetic]

Electric lash is no longer consistent.

Previously it would pass through all monsters in a line and "lash" anything with damage as it passed. It was extremely fun to use.

Now I can't get consistent behavior out of it. It sometimes hits the first kobold in the bowling alley and other times it hits several - it's more likely to hit multiple if there's a target - but often it just hits the first kobold and stops. It hit all the kobolds one time and then only ones on the right the next shot, but I didn't change position or target.

 

[MisterVan]

I think the Electrical Storm shot (Toven's Hammer, both heroic and legendary) got missed in the pass that made the projectile sizes more consistent. It still has issues colliding with terrain and hitting enemies that are nowhere near the target. If I had to guess, the projectile collision size seems to be 5+ feet in diameter, they're huge.

 

[PaleFox]

Could someone check if the candle-runes In Inferno of the damned can still be lit/blown out with runearms?

 

[JaynChar2019]

I've said for a long time the bee shot is the best, with knife and salt being almost as good. Makes sense they wouldn't change these.

 

[Docjekyll]

I played around with rune arms a bit. Feedback:

• Electric storm shot (toven's hammer) seems to have bad projectile size, hits wrong targets
• Homing shots feel way worse than they did before due to not connecting. I personally didn't mind the spread with how they used to work, but I understand wanting to reduce the spread and increase speed; however, with those changes several projectiles reliably do not connect with enemies any more. We should not ship these changes as currently seen on Lamannia.
• Bee shot continues to feel the best, IMO.
• Rune arm cooldowns are still a big problem. The increased cooldown time after firing higher charges effectively punishes the player for what is supposed to be a rewarding damage increase. IMO, the "stable charge tier" mechanic and charge up time together present the player with sufficient tradeoff decision-making. Charging to a higher tier would be more enticing if the cooldown/reset time were the same for all rune arm blasts, regardless of charge tier. Right now the player has to consider not only the time to charge up the rune arm, but also the time to charge down after firing. This makes the trade-off a lot less obvious and generally makes rune arms feel worse than if it were removed.
• (Macrotechnic) The interaction of the new "Spark Drive"/"Echo Drive" destiny enhancement with rune arm mechanics needs work. The flat damage incentivizes only using tier 1 rune arm charge; the damage should scale based on charge tier. The damage also only applies to one target in an AoE blast; the damage should instead apply to all enemies in AoE effect (whether explosive projectile or cone blast), but at 50% reduced rate compared to single target damage.
• UI Bug: The rune arm charge UI element can be repositioned when hotbars are locked. This makes it very easy to accidentally reposition the rune arm charge UI when attempting to perform other actions, like fire an equipped crossbow. Ideally all HUD elements should also remain locked in position when the hotbars are locked, including focus orb, minimap, chat panels, player health bar, dice visualization, and ally health bars.
• Rune arm charge Bug: (also reproducible on live servers) Sometimes moving while the rune arm is charged to a tier about the maximum "stable" charge tier, the charge will be immediately dropped down to the "stable" charge tier rather than gradually decreasing towards the "stable" value. I seem to encounter this most often when moving the character just as the charge hits exactly one tier above the "stable" value. This means that small side-to-side position adjustments in combat can have a more punishing effect on rune arm charge than intended.
• (Macrotechnic) Bug: The new Macrotechnic enhancements do not seem to contribute to rune arm stable charge tier, regardless of stable charge contributions from Battle Engineer enhancements.

 

[Edrein]

While not runearm shot feedback, I was curious if we might be able to see the imbue on runearms reverted to their old state of scaling with spellpower or at least adding spellpower to their current scaling mechanic?

 

[PyrotechRick]

Not sure if this has been suggested but perhaps next preview the new loot NPC in the Test dojo could hand out all the rune arms in the game for easy testing?

 

[MisterVan]

I played around with rune arms a bit. Feedback:

• Rune arm cooldowns are still a big problem. The increased cooldown time after firing higher charges effectively punishes the player for what is supposed to be a rewarding damage increase. IMO, the "stable charge tier" mechanic and charge up time together present the player with sufficient tradeoff decision-making. Charging to a higher tier would be more enticing if the cooldown/reset time were the same for all rune arm blasts, regardless of charge tier. Right now the player has to consider not only the time to charge up the rune arm, but also the time to charge down after firing. This makes the trade-off a lot less obvious and generally makes rune arms feel worse than if it were removed.

This is another interesting aspect to rune arm use. Opportunities for optimizing rune arm usage are very rare, even after getting a destiny dedicated to it.

Rune arm charge rate and stable charge tiers are available from so few sources, and they feel really bad to use if you don't have them all. Personally I like to stick to Toven's Hammer purely because it's built-in extra charge rate makes it feel so much better to use.

It would be nice to have a heroic feat(hopefully also available as an Arti class feat) that offers stable charge tiers and/or charge rate. An epic feat might be nice too(like warlocks/bards get some that boost their abilities) but I don't know how on earth I would fit it in. I don't even know how I will fit in Epic Mage Armor for some of the Machrotechnic goodies.

 

[HoopleHead]

please make more of them craftable