With the major class reworks from the neuroforge behind us, we have been watching the meta and all of the accompanying build craft closely. There are some things we have observed that we believe need to change in order to encourage more variety. These changes are all on the Live Test server, available for you to test before they hit the live server. Feel free to check them out there!

Shield Monkey

With the previous patch, we made some changes to Shield Monkey. These directly reduced the Shield Monkey’s ability to both deal damage with shield stealing and heal up from shield stealing. It also gave them the ability to do increased damage with their weapons with the  Shield Monkey Enveloper. There was a vision that the Shield Monkey would mainly use stealing to refill it’s shields, and then deal damage with non-transference weapons with the help of the Enveloper. In actuality, the way the new shield stealing resists were calculated ended up mitigating the healing gained by the Shield Monkey. This made that playstyle unviable.

Stealing is not only critical for a Shield Monkey offensive ability, it’s also needed to help the Shield Monkey survive. Most importantly, its what allows them to heal others for more shields than they are capable of generating with their own shield bank. When we moved to a system where healing is 1:1 between the healer and the healed, we added Shield Stealing as a way for the class to keep up with incoming damage a squad might find themselves facing. Because a Shield Monkey needs this mechanic to function, having the amount of shields a Shield Monkey could restore vary so wildly from target to target doesn’t make sense. So here’s what we decided to do:

• When a Shield Monkey deals transference damage to a target, the shields they gain via stealing are not mitigated by the resistances of that target.

  • The damage dealt is mitigated by both the target’s shield stealing resistance and beam resistance.

  • Both damage dealt and shields gained are still mitigated by class based mitigation mechanics, Like  Speed Demon’s glance and Berserker’s frontal shield.

• In the last patch we adjusted the rate at which shield stealing does damage and restores shields. These values were reverted to what they were before they were changed. You can see these values on the Shield Monkey Class 3 skill.

We also noticed that stealing resistances were not always working as intended. Some combinations of AI resistances and diffusers were returning unexpected results.

• Shield stealing resistance mechanic has been refactored. Resistances should now be consistent in both effect and how they are displayed to players.

Finally, the way the Shield Monkey Enveloper works created some pretty ludicrous results under certain circumstances, resulting in very high Damage Per Hit values when optimized just right. We are aiming to force Shield Monkey’s to aug and gear for larger amounts of Shield Bank in order to fully unlock the damage potential of the Shield Monkey Enveloper, making it more tricky to replicate those high Damage Per Hit numbers.

• The Shield Monkey Enveloper can only give up to 10% of the Shield Monkey’s current shield bank as bonus damage per shot. This is reduced from 50%.

We are still trying to find ways to divorce Shield Monkeys from relying on its shield bank in order to power its mechanics. As long as it does, it needs to be able to generate enough shields to feel potent when using its tools.

Ranger

Ranger has been very successful at reimagining the Sniper gameplay it was meant to replace. We need to make one change to the way the class functions with Critical Hit Chance, so that it falls in line with the other classes in terms of how the stat interacts with it. This is going to heavily pull back on the ability of end game Ranger to scale with Critical Hit Chance, but it is necessary to do before we start piling on the Critical Hit Chance sources as we move into another tech level.

• Ranger’s empowered shot will only benefit from 100% critical hit chance worth of bonus damage. This bonus damage is now calculated after checking the targets Critical Hit Resistance against the Ranger’s Critical Hit Chance.

• Ranger’s “True Grit” skill now gives +10% more damage per level.

  • This damage was previously on this skill, however it was originally removed in favor of Ranger getting a 7th mark. Now they both get the bonus damage and retain the 7th mark.

Berserker

Players may have noticed that we have been very careful to make changes to Berserker. Our previous changes were focused on reducing the amount of multiplicative sustain they could generate via Lifestealing, and in doing so we made it so that they only gained 10% of their normal value from Damage Over Time weapon effects (Parasites and Fires) and On Hit weapon effects (Area of Effect, Splash, Bounce, etc.). This was the same multiplier for both effects. We do not like how this has affected the class and are making further adjustments.

• 33% of On-Hit effect damage is used for Lifesteal from the Berserker Shield Redistribution Device.

• 0% of Damage Over Time effect damage is used for Lifesteal from the Berserker Shield Redistribution Device.

Neuroforge Item Logic

We have not made many changes to the Neuroforge since it was released. We think it is in a good place, for the most part, and are mostly interested in making some slight adjustments. As a player invests more and more item copies into a Neuroforged item, the option to swap an Enhanced mod for a different Enhanced mod just isn’t as desirable. Obviously, if a player has a high enhancement level it means that they want to keep that Enhanced mod! Because of this, we’re going to make the following adjustment.

• The rate at which you are offered the option to swap your Enhanced mod goes down as the Enhancement level of the mod goes up.

  • Options to swap secondary mods, remove secondary mods, or add a new secondary mod, will be offered more as you are at higher levels of enhancement.