Did Kinetics.Transference take a hit to efficacy?

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

I'm loving the new Speed Boost, but I swear Transference (Defender version) took a HUGE hit when Issue 4 went live. Am I imagining things?

Thanks,
FCM

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

I'm not imagining it. The recovery from trans is WAY less effective today on the mobs of the same con I was using it on yesterday. :\

I looked at the Recent Updates list and didn't see anything about Transference. Was this a ninja nerf?

-FCM

[Retrogression]

It's not listed, so it's probably a bug. /bug it and send a PM to positron or someone like that.

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

Done, and done. Here's hoping.

Hellooo, any red names out there? Power broken in Issue 4, please say something ...?

As an experiment, I took my level 32 Kin defender to Perez Park, used up my endurance bar, and then zapped a level 10 Skull with Transference. From that, I got back a little more than half my blue bar. This from a -22 grey mob. Now, scale that up to orange or red 34s and 35s ... and you can imagine how little return I'm getting from Trans on my team missions, heh. Transference is one of the really good powers in the kin def set, devs.

With it broken like this, I'm nothing but a speed-boost dispenser when on big teams. SB only lasts a couple of minutes, and boosting 6 or 7 people takes a big chunk of my own blue, so with Transference broken my routine gets reduced to SBing people and spamming Transfusion heals so that I won't be out of endurance when it comes time to refresh another 6 or 7 SBs for the next fight. I can't really use my attacks or other cool stuff nearly as much and afford to keep everyone buffed. SB is awesome, but even with four green recovery SOs there are characters whose endurance use can stay ahead of it. I need Transference to keep them going; endurance recovery is possibly my most vital and signature function as a kin. Pleeeease fix this quickly.

I4 has been bittersweet. The new Siphon Speed is sooo good. The improved endurance drain is sooo nice. Transference is sooo broken. :)

-M

[Fuzun]

Well they did reduce the effectiveness of End Drains in PvP (Since they are so uber in PvP). It may be the reducation made it's way into the PvE code.

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

I suspect you're right, and that somehow the reduction to Drain in PvP has unintentionally affected the Recovery in PvE.

Humorously, I didn't notice any major reduction to the drain aspect of Transference in PvE; only the massive hit on Recovery.

-M

[Rubber_Dog]

Using my Kinetics defender in Founders Falls last night I did not see any reduction in the amount of recovery...although I do have two endurance recovery slots in there. There was a huge jump in the amount of Drain from the bad guy though. I was draining even con Council down to zero endurance from a full bar.

As a side note/follow up question.....I do not have Siphon Speed...Are you seeing some signifcant improvement by using that power and do you have hasten as well.

[IceCream_Warrior]

i also noticed this, i have transference slotted 3 end drain 1 acc and 2 rchg, the end boost is now lacking for sure.

[Tiandy_1000]

[ QUOTE ]
i also noticed this, i have transference slotted 3 end drain 1 acc and 2 rchg, the end boost is now lacking for sure.

[/ QUOTE ]
Ya know what? I think Ice hit on it. I HAD an End Drain SO in mine with 2 acc, 1 recovery, and 2 recharges.. then switched to 2 recovery and I did notice a larger jump than I would have thought from just adding 1 more. Could it be that End Drain enhancers are reducing the amount recovered? Can anyone test this since I'm still stuck at work?

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
As a side note/follow up question.....I do not have Siphon Speed...Are you seeing some signifcant improvement by using that power and do you have hasten as well.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes. The new Siphon Speed is very good. As far as I can tell, it seems to add another 33%-or-so to the 66%-or-so that I get from Hasten, and so my recharge times are incredible now. It's like being able to Speed Boost yourself, in terms of recharge buff and movement buff. I love it. Add a teammate with AM and ... wow.

It's weird to me that you guys aren't (?) seeing the same dramatic difference in Transference that I'm seeing. Having gotten it fairly recently and having put my 27/29/31 slots in other things (more speed boost, more short circuit, more tactics, etc etc) I actually do not have Transference slotted at all yet ... so this is a baseline comparison for me. My one enhancement slot is filled with Accuracy. For me it's literally the difference between getting back 85-90% of my endurance one day and only 10-15% or so the next under identical circumstances. No new slots, no variation in enhancements. The only obvious difference is that I'm Siphon-Speeding myself a lot more now.

As I may have mentioned (have in some places, not in others) it's like Trans picked up a brutal dependency on con level that wasn't so pronounced before. I got back about 55-60% from a -22 grey in Perez Park, whereas the previous day I could recover at least 85% from +3 red minions on our team missions. Let me ask this ... about how much blue, without any enhancement, are you guys used to recovering from Transference on even-con minions? I wonder because for me, Trans has gone from a Very Good Power to barely mediocre. I had planned to slot it for additional drain on higher-con bosses, but now if I were to slot it fully for recovery I probably wouldn't even get it close to where it was before.

Among the things I like about the Kinetics primary is that many of the powers don't require heavy slotting to be useful. More is always more of course, but it's generally true of Siphon Power, Siphon Speed, Fulcrum Shift, ID, IR, and so on. So it was with Transference previously, but not now. My regular teammates can attest to the difference, too.

Perplexed,
M

[_Zoner_]

I had been pretty sure End Drain and End Recovery enhancers were doing the job of both at once, and they finally fixed that in Issue 4. I had decided this bug existed about 8 months ago, and kept quiet :)

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

Well, if that doesn't beat all.

Today, I can't repro it. I finally got a chance to log on and try out Transference again on a few targets from +0 up to +3, and it's working fine. Absolutely nothing unusual; exactly how it was a couple of days ago, and vastly better than last night.

I didn't imagine the problem, though.

Unfortunately, there's no way I can enumerate all of the player and villain buffs and effects my character was subjected to last night during play. At this point, it has to be some sort of interaction; ie., buff A wears off at precisely the moment I cast Transference or buff B or whatever. Which means that I'll probably see it again sometime, but the repro will be much more difficult. For now I'm just happy that it's working again, and for now I'll just have to live with the fact that you all think I'm crazy. ;)

-M

[Taallyn]

Some powers now provide a resistance to endurance drain. Could it be that the mobs you noticed the difference with been protected with any of those powers? That should have affected the amount of end you get back, but it is possible that it could.

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

Hmm ... that's a very interesting question. As you say, powers that resist drain shouldn't affect recovery, but it's still something I hadn't considered.

Looking through the list (Murky Cloud, Rooted, O2 Boost, AM, Insulation Field, are there more?) I don't see much for obvious possibilities. As I recall we fought mostly Nemesis, CoT, and some Freaks, but I didn't really notice the problem until we were fighting the CoT. I tried Trans on demons, earth thorns, fire thorns, bosses, minions, reds, purples, and everything seemed to return close to the same weak amount.

However, the mobs I tested on today were Council. I'll have to keep an eye on Trans versus different mob factions.

-FCM

[Father_Time]

Noticed a huge drop in end return on transference tonight and bugged it as well. We're talking a 15% return on endurance when I was getting 75% before (two end recovery SOs slotted).

[Tiandy_1000]

Just got through a few AV missions with my SG, and I noticed that when I was AM'd, I only got maybe 5-10 end back, non-AM'd I was getting the full effect.. maybe something is cancelling or the resistance to end drain is affecting it maybe? I don't know if it's just AM or even other defender buffs, but am going to try it w/some other types (like empathy) buffs and post back later tomorrow.

[Taallyn]

I soloed with my Kinetic defender a bit this evening. I respec him to get Siphon Speed back. In the process his Transference now has 2 accuracy and three endurance recovery enhancements in it. Fighting +0 to +3 freaks I never had a Transference that didn't fill me back to full.

[Tiandy_1000]

Ask in your zone if you can get an AM buff.. then try it on even cons.. end recovery is almost non-existant. Just finished trying it on -15s in Talos with an AM buff.. I went from 5 END to 29 or so.. and that's with 2 green End Recovery SOs :(

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

So here's the thing ... it's not consistent.

Earlier today it was working fine. I have a witness to my getting back nearly all of my blue bar from a red minion. I tried later on a few solos and it was working great on +0s, +1s, +2s, etc. This is un-enhanced.

So I get together this evening with my sg and we run a mission ... and it's broken again. I have several reliable witnesses who can attest that I got maybe 15-20% from any mob I zapped. Those were DE mobs, so we were thinking hmm, maybe that was related to it somehow. We went to Founder's and conduct some experiments with the same groups of Council on whom Transference was working for me earlier and no ... still broken. We tried mobs with full end, empty end, of various cons, with me on team, with me solo, no difference. So I know it's not just a faction thing or team size.

Then we go into an outdoor mission with CoT, and suddenly Trans is working great again! Everything's cool.

The only thing that even remotely resembles a pattern that I'm seeing right now is that every time it stops working, I have in the not-too-distant past been under the influence of recovery buffs other than my own ... RA and AB from an empath teammate, AM from a rad teammate, and so on. I zoned into the CoT mish after having relogged; maybe that cleared the slate somehow, I don't know, but I'm still working on it. Right now we're doing an indoor Council mish and all is well.

-FCM

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
Ask in your zone if you can get an AM buff.. then try it on even cons.. end recovery is almost non-existant. Just finished trying it on -15s in Talos with an AM buff.. I went from 5 END to 29 or so.. and that's with 2 green End Recovery SOs :(

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes! I was thinking the same thing in my post just now. Earlier this evening my rad teammate was along using AM on us, and my Trans stopped working correctly until I returned to the game later. Last night it was our empath teammate with RA and AB. It seems to be related to having recovery buffs from other teammates, and it lingers.

-M

[Shadow_Fire]

I haven't noticed a drop in utility for Transference so far.
Its been leaving me with about 98 out of 105 on everything from -1s to +4s, basically the same as before I3.
I have it slotted with 1 accuracy, 3 end recovery and 2 recharge. All +2 SOs (40s, and I'm 38). I was with a Rad most of the time too.

Though so far all I've fought are Freakshow, Rikti, and Hydra.

I wonder if they've caught the drain/recovery 'bug' and Drain SOs aren't helping recovery or if certain villian types now have drain resistance.

What types of villians have you all been fighting? I'll go do some testing with Transference and Short Circut and see if I can repeat your problems.

[Tiandy_1000]

[ QUOTE ]

Yes! I was thinking the same thing in my post just now. Earlier this evening my rad teammate was along using AM on us, and my Trans stopped working correctly until I returned to the game later. Last night it was our empath teammate with RA and AB. It seems to be related to having recovery buffs from other teammates, and it lingers.

-M

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes.. I noticed even when I wasn't getting AM'd, if I had Rec Aura on me, it would still mess up the recovery. Bugged it twice last night, here's hoping we get an answer on this.. anyone have a direct line to Cuppa? :D

[Vampyric]

I agree I am definately seeing a reduction in effectiveness to transferance. On my lvl 49 kin/dark, it seems to work ok, but then again i have it 5 slotted with reducers. Where I really noticed the difference was when i exemplared to 33 today. It healed maybe 1/10 of my bar when draining a +3 and only drained maybe 1/2 their bar. In the past, i had it slotted with 2 reducers and i could easily drain a +2 boss to 0. With no slots for end healing, i could still do over a half a bar. I am 100% sure this is broken.

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
Where I really noticed the difference was when i exemplared to 33 today. It healed maybe 1/10 of my bar when draining a +3 and only drained maybe 1/2 their bar. I am 100% sure this is broken.

[/ QUOTE ]
Had you at any point since logging on been affected by a recovery buff (AM, RA, AB) from another character? That seems to be the pattern. Being recovery-buffed by another person breaks your Transference for some reason.

-FCM

[Vampyric]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Where I really noticed the difference was when i exemplared to 33 today. It healed maybe 1/10 of my bar when draining a +3 and only drained maybe 1/2 their bar. I am 100% sure this is broken.

[/ QUOTE ]
Had you at any point since logging on been affected by a recovery buff (AM, RA, AB) from another character? That seems to be the pattern. Being recovery-buffed by another person breaks your Transference for some reason.

-FCM

[/ QUOTE ]

I had not noticed. I will try this if I remember.

[Lord_of_Time]

Yup it's not working properly. 6 slotted Transference with 2 50++ Endur Recov, 2 Recharge 50++, and 2 Acc 50++ use to give me a 75% or more return on just hitting 1 person in a mob (even reds too and purples). Now I can BARELY get 10% return on even con mobs. Then it shifts from mob to mob and I see the old Transference where I get all my endur back. Then it breaks again and I get s***t return. Hmmm.. I bugged it and sent a PM to the DEVS.

[DiskMind]

I'm not a Kinetics player, but was teamed with a buddy who is and he noticed that he wasn't getting end from transference when I bubbled him. Once I stopped bubbling him, his end recovery rates jumped. Could buffing also play a role in this?

[Rolle]

One of the bubbles resist endurance drain.
Perhaps the +end from kinetics is the same ffect as endurance drain only positive
so end-drain resists resist end-recovery from transference too?

[Shade420NJ]

The bug is seeming to be any buff applied to YOU which protects from end drain. Tested out using a ice/storm controller friend of mine. With O2 boost on my end recovery = ~45% with no O2 boost end recovery = ~92%. Seems its protecting you from recieving too much end and overloading lol. Probably a small bug in the game which the devs have not noticed yet. Trust me its not the mobs its the buffs. I tested it across many different mob types in Bricks and missions and found it to be decreased only while buffed with End Drain protective powers. So lets not all forget to /bug it so it may get fixed(hopefully they dont mess it worse before fixing it). GL to all my fellow Kin.

[Pickle]

I actually had to tell a teammate yesterday to NOT AM a tanker so that transference would work. He died twice from toggle drops from endurance loss even though I sapped the boss 2 times for him at point blank range.

[Seniara]

[ QUOTE ]
I actually had to tell a teammate yesterday to NOT AM a tanker so that transference would work. He died twice from toggle drops from endurance loss even though I sapped the boss 2 times for him at point blank range.

[/ QUOTE ]

I've got you beat. We had to choose between Transference and Insulation Shield when fighting Nightstar. It was . . . painful . . .

Through testing and a consensus from just about everyone, I'd say it's safe to mark end drain resist as the culprit.

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
One of the bubbles resist endurance drain.

[/ QUOTE ]
Hey, doesn't AM give endurance drain resistance now, too? It hadn't occurred to me, but maybe it's an interaction problem with other powers that give endurance-drain resistance, instead of recovery buffs.

I've noticed that receiving SB from another Kin doesn't impair Transference, and I don't think RA causes a problem either. It would make more sense if it were some sort of interaction with drain-resistance powers, though ... since drain resistance is a new thing while recovery buffs have been around since the beginning.

What do I have to do to get a red name to pop up in this discussion??

-M

[Positron]

There was a very difficult to track down bug in Transference and its interaction with Endurance Drain Resisting powers.

Thanks to FlyingCodeMonkey and the others in this thread it has been found and fixed. I have no idea when this will make it to the Live servers.

Thanks again guys.

[Pickle]

Two words:

THANK YOU!

[_Ilr_]

Great work CodeMonkey. My ill/KIN thanks you! :)

[Tiandy_1000]

Wow, finally. Though now I hope this change comes shortly.. teaming w/bubblers, rads, and stormies has become interesting to say the least :p

[SuperUser]

Sweet! Thank you!

[Sara_Phim]

Whew! I was curious.

On a side note, has anyone noticed a change in Fulcrum Shift? It seems like either the cone range is smaller or the icons just aren't displaying as many. I'm really not sure, just thought I'd check.

[Warmaster]

[ QUOTE ]
Whew! I was curious.

On a side note, has anyone noticed a change in Fulcrum Shift? It seems like either the cone range is smaller or the icons just aren't displaying as many. I'm really not sure, just thought I'd check.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no cone for Fulcrum - just lots and lots of circular AOE's.


I haven't noticed any difference with my Kinetics Defender.

-- Warmaster

[_Brev__NA]

[ QUOTE ]
There was a very difficult to track down bug in Transference and its interaction with Endurance Drain Resisting powers.

[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks for tracking this one down - it was proving a right pain! Would I be right in assuming that your fix for this also fixes the new stygian circle's end recovery which was also suffering from the same symptoms?

[FlyingCodeMonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
There was a very difficult to track down bug in Transference and its interaction with Endurance Drain Resisting powers.

[/ QUOTE ]
Woohoo! Thanks Positron.

-FCM

[Cheetatron]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There was a very difficult to track down bug in Transference and its interaction with Endurance Drain Resisting powers.

[/ QUOTE ]
Woohoo! Thanks Positron.

-FCM

[/ QUOTE ]Take a bow FCM