Arbiter Hawk

There's been at least one significant Lore DPS balance pass since this compilation - i22 included a bug fix that was preventing 8 or so Lore trees from proc'ing Interface or benefiting from any Alpha slots. I also made a balance pass on them around the time of i20.5's release in an attempt to bring all of the sets within a reasonable margin of performance.

It's probably worth re-evaluating Lore pet DPS rankings if what you're interested in is maximum DPS performance.

(Caveat: Please do not actually use this in game, beat the Dark Astoria storyarcs with it, demorecord or FRAPS your progress, upload it to YouTube, and then PM me a link. I would have to cry if that occurred.)

The selected location can be in midair, much like Teleport.

I mistyped - it is a location-targeted AoE. It creates a 20 foot radius sphere at your targeted location which phases and immobilizes everything that steps inside of it. You can target a spot in the air, as well, so as to limit the volume of the sphere that intersects with a spawn, if you feel so inclined. All of this works together to let you control with great finesse how much of a group you phase, as well as giving Gravity Control characters a tool for "Area of Effect Denial" - perfect for stopping everything coming through a door, or for dropping where that blaster is standing so that the enemies around him can't melee him.

We wanted to make Dimension Shift a toggle so that it could be turned off when the group was ready to attack the phased creatures. Toggle powers check whether or not their targets are eligible every tick of their effect, so you can't make a creature-targeted toggle phase power - the target would be eligible for the first tick, but on the second tick it would be in a different phase from the caster and would be ineligible. I got around this by having the power target a location instead of a creature - since the location is always in the caster's phase, the power works.

As for the request to switch Wormhole and Dimension Shift's order in the powerset, as a general rule we don't re-order powers within sets anymore - it causes problems for players when respec'ing. I've tested the revamped set internally a fair amount, and I think with these changes to the powers it's a very playable, very competitive control set - when it hits beta, I definitely recommend you all try it out at various level ranges to see how it feels, and provide further feedback. Thanks to all of you who have participated in this sort of unofficial feedback thread.

I believe these are fixed in the future as well.

Right now we're not planning on changing the knockback to knockdown in Wormhole. The KB actually synergizes really well with the new Dimension Shift, since you can grab a bunch of enemies and throw them into your Shift's sphere. I also just think the power feels/looks a lot cooler as "throwing enemies around with gravity" rather than "dropping enemies somewhere else with teleport", which keeps it much more in Gravity's kit. The scatter effect of the KB is easy to contain with environment if the player desires to contain it, and if they don't, the stun duration is long enough such that it's still a very effective control power.

Here are the current numbers for the Cognitive slot, which unfortunately doesn't show all of its guts in Real Numbers/Detailed Info. The Confuse proc is mag 2 and lasts 4 seconds in PvE, 2 seconds in PvP. It stacks collectively (between multiple users) and can stack up to four times (so up to mag 8). Here are the proc chances at all tiers:

Tier 1

8% chance for Confuse

Tier 2 Core

12% chance for Confuse

Tier 2 Radial

8% chance for Confuse
25% chance for Damage

Tier 3 Total Core

16% chance for Confuse

Tier 3 Partial Core

12% chance for Confuse
25% chance for Damage

Tier 3 Partial Radial

8% chance for Confuse
50% chance for Damage

Tier 3 Total Radial

4% chance for Confuse
75% chance for Damage

Tier 4 Core

20% chance for Confuse
25% chance for Damage

Tier 4 Radial

12% chance for Confuse
75% chance for Damage

As with all Interface powers, it only procs in powers that allow damage enhancements to be slotted. The conditional VFX for the power look similar to the classic purple dots "confused" look, but they are a bit brighter/stand out a bit more. The duration of this effect is affected by level mods - so using it against level 54 enemies will only work for very brief periods of time, while using it on enemies lower than your level will bring the duration over 4 seconds. Hope that clears up any confusion on how the power works.

Hi again, all. I'm stopping in to clarify my post from before. Please note that these are the current plans for Dark Astoria rewards, but they are subject to change once we start receiving data from Beta testing.

Defeating critters in Dark Astoria, whether street sweeping or the critters inside DA missions, will give you both Physical and Psychic Incarnate XP, and chances to get threads on each defeat. Completing the one-off Repeatable Missions available in the zone will allow you to gain Threads. Completing the Incarnate Story arcs will allow you to obtain Incarnate Components, Incarnate Merits, or Threads, with some amount of time-gating per reward per arc. Incarnate Story arcs can also be flashbacked via Ouroboros, allowing you to repeat them at your own pace (and allowing you to re-earn rewards after your cooldown on that choice has elapsed).

I hope that this helps shed some light on the great extent to which solo and small team progress through the Incarnate system will be possible in Death Incarnate.

Dark Astoria critters and mission content will provide threads, components, and both Astral and Empyrean merits.

Dark Astoria has Incarnate story arc, repeatable mission content, and level 50 to 54 npc enemies from several villain groups if you feel like street sweeping.

Staff Fighting will be available for Stalkers, Brutes, Tankers, and Scrappers.

We're testing three improvements to stalkers in i22:
-Assassin's Strike: using Assassin's Strike outside of hide will be an uninterruptible attack with no windup time, dealing Superior damage. This will allow Stalkers to do very competitive dps.
-All Stalker attacks that are not Assassin's Strike will build stacks of a buff called Assassin's Focus. Assassin's Focus increases your chance to critically strike with the out-of-hide Assassin's Strike.
-Stalker Buffed Max HP will be increased by about 400. This should allow them to fully benefit from powers like dull pain, hoarfrost, etc.
-These changes to Stalkers should make them very competitive top-end damage dealers, and help them with their early attack chain since they can use Assassin's Strike mid-combat.

This is the case. Interface debuffs will proc off of any power that can be enhanced for damage.

Hi NT,

If you edit one of your chat tabs and include the "Cutscene Captions" chat channel, the caption text from those dialogue lines should appear there for you to read after-the-fact. I know I had to manually add it on my launch-day character's chat settings, though it is included in Global by default for new characters.

There had previously been a bug where the channel for these dialogue lines did not have a visible name, but we fixed that in i20, so it should now be easy to add so all of your characters can enjoy the story of TFs and Trials at their leisure.