Silence / Ancient Grappling Attacks

[Tiltskillet]

The last few infested arbitrations I've played--all Deimos Survival and Defense--I'm very occasionally getting grabbed and knocked down by Ancients.  It's rare, like maybe once every 10 or 15 minutes at the most, but it's happening.

• Silence is up, and not close to ending more often than not. 
• Seemingly it's always within Silence's effect range. 
• A few of these times I didn't see any sign of an arbi drone, although I very well have just missed it

What's so odd about it to me is I can't recall this ever happening until the last week or two.  And I've played Arbitrations since they came out.  Casually, but regularly, and on Banshee at least half that time..

Maybe Silence suppressing this ability on units under the influence of an arbi drone was a bug and now it's been fixed.  Makes sense.   But if that's the case, it's weird that it's not happening -more- often.

One thing I haven't tested is whether Scorpion grapples are behaving the same way now.  (I've been almost exclusively running Deimos arbitrations to get my 5000 mutagen samples.  Finally, done! As of 15 minutes ago. 😎 )

In any case, anybody else seen Silence behaving differently now?  Has thisbeen happening all along and I'm just really lucky and/or cray cray?

[Sevek7]

Interesting. I haven't been playing much recently, but I also use silence a lot and enjoy it for this exact reason. I haven't tested it myself, but we should try to find the cause. As you said, perhaps it's a long range hook outside of Silence's range, or perhaps it's an arbitration drone. 

We should be able to test this pretty easily. We should start with a high-range silence build on a non-arbitration mission and see if it still happens. If it does, then we know it is a more general problem. If it doesn't then it appears to be limited only to arbitrations. 

It may be that an update has changed how arbitration drones work, and that ability resistance remains even after an enemy has left the drone range. It's worth testing it out, I'll have a go this weekend and let you know if I find anything worthwhile!

[Tiltskillet]

49 minutes ago, Sevek7 said:

It's worth testing it out, I'll have a go this weekend and let you know if I find anything worthwhile!

I'll test in the sim when I get a minute.  It hasn't yet happened outside arbitrations, so frankly, the sim hadn't even  crossed my mind.  But if it's not actually arb-specific, spawning 16 ancients at a time in controlled circumstances might shake that loose very quickly.

[Tiltskillet]

Ok, I did some simulacrum testing with various Ancient types, super ranged Silence.    The behavior seems largely the same:  they stop using their hook attack as expected, but they still use the big wind-up overhead punch, and this causes a knockdown if it connects.

It's possible that with enough of these around in an actual fight, I was mistaking this attack for the grappling hook. 

So leaving aside the Arbitration drone issues for the moment...

I still don't recall getting knocked down by these guys until recently--or any infested, for that matter--not with Silence on.   Is this new, or do I just have a really bad memory?

 

[Sevek7]

29 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

I still don't recall getting knocked down by these guys until recently--or any infested, for that matter--not with Silence on.   Is this new, or do I just have a really bad memory?

Hmm yes, I have a similar recollection. Probably it's a case of both of us having bad memory, because:

I just logged in and looked at my Banshee build. It has Primed Sure Footed on it. So apparently at some point in the past I was getting knocked down with silence up. I also had a look at the Wiki:

"Ancients may lock-on to a target and charge at them with their knockdown attack when they are within sight range."

I think this refers to that running-punch attack, so apparently it always had knockdown. I guess if Silence prevented hook attacks and this attack, then ancients wouldn't really be able to do anything at all! 

Tested in Simulacrum, got the same results as you. 

[Duality52]

Banshee's Silence nullifies enemy ability usage. This is something many people overlook in regards to Banshee. It's not just Ancient/Scorpion whips that it nullifies:

• Acolytes (Funny as Violence can also use Silence)
• Eximus Active abilities (i.e Artic/Frozen Eximus's Snow Globe)
• Grenades
• Hostile Necramech abilities

Not all of them, but Silence neuters the Infested even in the Steel Path considerably.