WIP: 0.9.0 Overall Combat Adjustments

This may come as a surprise, despite us mentioning throwing balance out the window down the drain, there are still changes that were needed for M.A.S.S. Builder's combat to bring everything to a certain level that's nearly the same. As mentioned time and time again before, our goal is to make everything feels overpowered so that nothing is overpowered and all playstyles feel good to use. So today, we'd like to reveal these changes, our goals to improve the combat in M.A.S.S. Builder in 0.9.0.

Problem: While close combat feels much better and regarded by most as a great playstyle, its performance was still lower than we wanted. Boss enemies does not provide enough time for players to freely attack them for a full combo or two. Melee players felt they need to use certain methods to be effective in playing, such as dash attacks spamming. Quantum Break still feels slightly off. Defensive nodes still overlooked.

Solution: Adjust their attack patterns and vulnerable windows. Raise melee damage and speed in total, even higher in later combos to compensate for their downtime (as mentioned before in gameplay speed adjustments). Write more codes to allow the modification of shield recharge and quantum break activation time through nodes (FINALLY). At the same time, create changes that would provide something more to ranged playstyles as well.

Bosses Changes

• Bosses will have a longer wind-up time before some attacks, such as the first boss' ground stomp, the multi-headed runner boss jump attack.
  
• Bosses will now "fall" for a longer period of time to create a window for combo attacks to chain until the end. These windows of attack should also benefit slow firing weapons such as detonator and single shot weapons more.
  
• Bosses will recover their stamina from melee attacks less.
  
• There's something else planned as a big update coming to boss fights that both close combat and ranged players can utilize, which these changes will compliment. We cannot reveal them yet until its ready.

Dash Attacks

• Reduced dash attacks' damage multiplier by around 20%.
  
• Dash attacks now has a cooldown of 0.4 seconds. Normal players won't feel any difference, but dash attack spammers and macro users will not be able to utilize it to the same power as before.
  
• While changing this might not seem enough to deter players from using it, please know that we don't want that kind of playstyle to die out completely as we wanted everyone to play however they wanted and still have it as a possible playstyle.
  

Others

• As mentioned before, increase melee attacks' animation speed in their combo attacks. The deeper the combo is, the faster the attack is.
  
• Certain defense nodes now have a passive increment to armor in addition to triggered defense increase.
  
• There are now nodes that allow faster shield recharges and quantum break activation. We just had some time to code them in so now there's more choice of nodes to help with your playstyle. Glass cannons ranged players can now regen their shields much faster with a single shield regen investment node while others can have a much lower downtime.
  
• Quantum Break can now utilize "trigger at end combo attacks" tech nodes on every of their 'nth' hit. We're still unsure what 'nth' will be.