There’s some changes in the “rooting” effects of some of the rezzes listed in the patch notes below (that’s for the Test instance, mind you), and immobilize effects have been put in. Castle explains …
When we use the term rooting, it refers to a flag set in the actual animation sequence that prevents any player action. This includes moving and using any powers or inspirations, even breakfrees. Rooting is always something that’s set in an animation, not the power itself and since a lot of powers share animations, this has led to a bit of flip flopping between powers rooting or not rooting.
While we were looking at click powers for normalizing which ones should root or not we came across self-rez powers, most of which are sharing two animations. The first is the spiraling up and then floating back down to the ground that Rise of the Phoenix, Restore Essence, and a few other powers use. The other is the basic ‘get up from belly’ animation that Revive and most inspirations use. The first was not rooted, so you could start acting as soon as the power fired off. Unfortunately, this animation is on a
higher priority than every other possible animation. This allows you to move and/or attack and avoid being rooted while the self-rez animation continues to play. The second animation was rooted for the entire 4 second animation. This meant if you used an awaken in combat there was 4 seconds when you were pretty much a sitting duck. You couldn’t even use a breakfree to recover from the disorient of an awaken until the animation was completely finished.Neither one of these was really where we wanted self rez powers to be. So instead of rooting all self-rez power animations, Castle added an immbolize effect to the powers themselves and the root was removed from both animations. This solved the issues with both animations. There will still be a period of time after rezing yourself where you won’t be able to move, but you will be able to use inspirations, turn on toggles, etc. The first animation was also shortened a bit to make the immobilization period consistent
between both animations.
Makes sense. Not that I rez all that often …
On a related, broader note about actions and rooting …
We’re looking into these inconsistencies in powers rooting and not rooting. This whole process has been a jumble because so many power share animations and “rooting” is something that’s set in the animation itself, not the power definition. So I’m often undoing things I’ve fixed before by fixing things further down the road, not realizing they’re both using the same animation … and then later unfixing the original fix by re-fixing the unfixed fix.
This is why some click powers that should have been rooted were briefly un-rooted as they were sharing animations with toggle powers that were un-rooted. This is also why some toggle powers that should be un-rooted are once again rooting. Your incredible diligence in testing these changes and reporting them here on the forums has been an immeasurable help in getting everything working the way it should be. We can’t thank you enough for that. Please continue to report powers that don’t follow the rules for rooting.
Toggle Powers:
- Any toggle that damages or debuffs an enemy in any way is considered an attack and will root the player while activating.
- Any toggle that affects yourself and/or allies will not root you while activating.
- Any toggle that only affects yourself will not cause you to be rooted while activating.
Click Powers:[list]
- Any click power that damages or debuffs an enemy in any way is considered an attack and will root the player while activating.
- Any click power that is a PBAOE ally buff, single target ally buff, or single target ally heal will root the player while activating.
- Any click power that is an PBAOE ally heal will not root.
- Any click power that is a self only buff or self only heal will not root.
- Any click power that is a ‘tier 9’ power (Unstoppable, Moment of Glory, Elude, etc) will root the player while activating.
There can be exceptions to any of the above rules as deemed necessary.
Attacks have priority over any of the other rules. So if a power is a PBAOE ally heal and debuffs an enemy’s to-hit for example, it’s going to root.
We tried to come up with a set that made sense to us and generally followed how things already worked in game, so only a few things needed to be changed. There were actually a lot fewer click power animations that changed because of these rules than toggle animations. Also, toggle animations that root will do so for 1.5 seconds after which point the animation is interruptible by other animations or player actions. Click power rooting durations are not consistent and probably never will be, however we are willing
to more closely examine any powers that you feel root for too long of a duration.
And a note on Inertial Reduction for all you kineticists out there:
We’re also hearing your concerns about some AOE click buffs, like Inertial Reduction, being left as rooted animations. In that particular case we contend that Inertial Reduction is not a travel power. It’s literally an Ally buff and thus should follow the same rules as all PBAOE Ally buffs. However we understand that this is often used as a replacement for travel power and we’re looking into ways to make it less cumbersome to use in that method. No promises that it will change, just that we’re looking at it.