Enhanced Target Priority does not function with Relentless and is detrimental to the player and the team

[AC3NATOR]

Issue Type (Required):

Talents

Issue Description (Required):

The ability: Enhanced Target Priority outlines enemies for allies for 5 s when using executioner’s stance, this leads to the team being assisted in killing the targets of the executioner’s stance user, but Relentless does not activate when allies kill outlined enemies, even when Relentless says: “Killing an Enemy outlined by Executioner’s Stance refreshes the duration of its bonuses to 5s.”
This means that allies who use the benefit of Enhanced Target priority cause their bonus to run out with increased probability. An easy fix is to have allied outlined enemy kills actually trigger Relentless as intended, this fixing the bug and the emergent gameplay problem.

As for personal feedback: it would also be better for Enhanced Target Priority to outline all the same enemies that the veteran themselves outlines, this avoiding the problem of, for example, allies killing the shooters which would have given them refreshed duration of Enhanced Target Priority had they been outlined for them or had the veteran themselves killed the shooter.

Steps to Reproduce (Required):

Go to a game with a friend in comms

Activate Executioner’s Stance with Relentless and Enhanced Target Priority

Have friend in coherency kill an outlined target

No refresh.

friend loses the buff you give them.

[PC] Do You Use Mods? (Optional):

No, I don’t use mods

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Constant (100%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

[SilverJack]

I don’t believe it’s appropriate to call this a bug. Relentless is a benefit applied to the Veteran as part of the activation of Executioner’s Stance, which then grants Ranged Stance and related Talent Tree node bonuses. It follows then that Relentless can only be granted to a Veteran who activated Executioner’s Stance and has the node active on their Talent Tree. I assume ETP is a separate buff granted by Ranged Stance to allies so that the team cannot infinitely refresh the benefit for themselves via Relentless whenever the Veteran activates his ability and to of course avoid the team infinitely refreshing the Veteran’s Ranged Stance buffs. The hierarchy of buffs as I’ve described explains why the Veteran can refresh ETP for his team and Ranged Stance for himself but not for another Veteran in the middle of their own Ranged Stance and also why his allies cannot refresh the buff for themselves.

However, the Veteran is capable of refreshing Enhanced Target Priority for the team already with considerable frequency using Counter-Fire or The Bigger They Are because these specific targets are not outlined for allies at all.

[AC3NATOR]

Yet the trouble of ETP having internal antisynergy remains, which I think ought to be addressed to have ETP be a reasonable choice.

Even if, as you say, this is “intended” then picking ETP is -1 point that can go to a talent such as Field Improvisation and then furthermore ETP increases the likelyhood of Exec Stance Ending, as it assists teammates in killing the targets the Executioner needs to kill to maintain the buff, this means that in a hypothetical scenario where the veteran uses The Executioner’s Stance with ETP, then a teammate kills a target BECAUSE of the assisted outlining, then the veteran’s ability runs out, resulting in the teammate sabotaging themselves with the use of the veteran’s own ability, because now the team of the teammate has 1 person who just lost their heightened damage ability that allows them to clear out threats of the team. The teammate using the team-focused perk which costs 1 point for the veteran is punished for using the team-work mechanic.

This is poor game design to me and seems that it does not consider the emergent properties of the ability and the behaviours it incentivizes and punishes.

As such, the reasonable thing is is to buff ETP, by making it work correctly, or if what you assert is true, that it is not a bug, then changing how it is “intended” to work to actually give you value.

Currently ETP gives you -1 points for a team-wide slight positive that is an emergent negative. As such I do not think it is well designed as a feature that costs the same amount as Relentless or Out for Blood.

Honestly, I think that the teamplay aspect of ETP is not even worth it after this bug is fixed, or the “intention” is changed, whichever the case may be, even with the proposed changes implemented. I would have the allies gain a shared damage increase, but perhaps then the overall damage of the ultimate is also lowered for the ability user, making it a more team-play oriented variant in this team-game. This could also be made more balanced with an additional text that says “ability recharge is blocked during the active duration” if then the uptime would be too much.

Although that last part is more just a thought, and is not the topic of this discussion. As such I do not care so much for it as for the resolution of this bug/ludological issue that was the original reason for the report.