Arcanaville

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Oil Slick is decent?

I thought it caused fear and did utterly craptastic damage...

is it actually good?

(no seriously, I absolutely LOVED TA when I tried it...I'm just interested in how it does now)

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I can defeat 16 even-con minions at once with it. Oil Slick Arrow, Blazing Arrow to light it, and sit back to watch the show. The AoE is very large, the damage, when slotted with 3 enhancements, is JUST enough to take out even-con minions, and it's both a knockdown and a slow, so it's tough for runners to get out before the burn finishes them.

That's why it's going to get nerfed. It's basically a pre-ED defender nova. When combined with something like Disruption Arrow, it's even more powerful. Throw in Glue Arrow to keep everything moving as slowly as possible, and most of the time, you can turn an entire spawn (within the 16 enemy limitation) into a pile of ashes without anything but lieutenants or bosses getting out.


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Hard to say. Debuffs can boost your damage by 30%+, but fulcrum shift can take you right to the (defender) cap, basically doubling your damage. Oil slick comes early, but it comes early on a set that doesn't have the same overall damage boosting capability of sets like radiation or kinetics and has no endurance boosting capability.


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The caveat is that it's finicky about lighting. Some days, it'll light EVERY time you use it, other days... well, it can get extremely frustrating.


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Interestingly, (if I hit it) I seem to light it practically 100% of the time inside of missions, and hardly ever outdoors. Amusingly, police drones are capable of igniting it.


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They'll nerf it, though, despite its quirky behavior being one of the inherant limitations on the power. Probably by removing the ability to slot for damage. Especially with the ability to buff things like rains that's coming, which will probably also allow you to buff the damage on OSA.

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Unlikely that you'll be able to buff oil slick. A couple of reasons: first, many pet-like things are not going to be buffed: I believe it was said things like turrets won't be. Second, even if oil slick *was* somehow buffed by Aim, oil slick itself does no damage: the act of killing it creates the burn patch, and there's no real reason to believe that having Aim on at the time you shoot the oil slick will somehow cause the new burn patch to have higher damage: the burn patch isn't "coming from you" at the time.

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My TA slots acc in just one power: acid arrow. If that hits, I'm targeting things under it's effects. Even without it I can fight +3 and +4 without accuracy issues being too bad due to archery's inherant acc boosts. Ice arrow I might eventualy add a slot of acc into, but had to devote too many slots for recharge to put accuracy in most anything.

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Try soloing the vampyre capsules mission in Striga without every single shot landing on its target 100% of the time.


At +4, your accuracy is not as important on attacks because they aren't really contributing much damage to a team anyway. The inherent accuracy of archery is about one DOs worth: if you are happy with the accuracy of archery's inherent accuracy without additional slotting, you'd be happy with one DO's worth of accuracy in a set with no bonus: most people these days aren't. Sets like rad or katana are very different: they have defense debuffs, which are much stronger, and stackable, than the inherent accuracy bonus of things like archery and MA.

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I had mentioned in passing that my dark/rad and TA/A both forgo accuracy enhancements, at which point he (she?) began calling me a lier.


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I wouldn't call someone a liar unless I was on incredibly sturdy ground, but I will say that while slotting accuracy for dark/rad (or especially rad/rad) is somewhat of a matter of taste, I personally think its a little bit crazy not to slot TA for accuracy, especially on powers like flash arrow that I'd rather not have to reapply multiple times, and acid arrow that, if it misses, is a huge opportunity cost penalty (doubly so if you are trying to stack it with disruption arrow).

And there's no way I'm not slotting blazing for accuracy, since missing the oil slick is a Bad Thing: miss twice, and you've probably lost your chance to ignite it.


(BTW, I've played rad/rad without acc, and kin/rad without accuracy in the rad attacks - but definitely acc in the kinetics powers. In rad/rad, I used to replace acc with end, because at low to moderate levels even with AM rad/rad defenders tend to run out of end faster than they run out of health.)

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Hide-like in this case = can't see them, and they can do Assassin strikes out of it.


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Nope, as I mentioned, and Castle reiterates, the hidden state that Placate the power confers has no stealth component associated with it. If you placate a target and you don't actually have the Hide power or any other stealth power running, you can clearly see that the hidden state has no stealth of its own; the placated target cannot target you, but anyone and everyone else can still see you fine (players and critters).

The definitive PvE test: find two critters close to each other but clearly in different spawns (so alarms from one won't aggro the other). Run up to the first one, and placate him, then quickly run up to the other one. The second one will definitely see you and attack, even if you still have the "hidden" green state in your console: that green "hidden" word has nothing to do with stealth or -perception.

[/ QUOTE ]Wrong. You are Hidden-Like(TM) (I know it's not grammatically correct, sue me :P) to everyone, as the Hidden-Like(TM) effect is applied to the player, not the mob. You're getting confused because you're reading one sentence without the follow up qualifier:

"Second, it applies a 'Hide Like' state, which is neither Hide, nor Stealth. It does allow for Stalker powers critical's, however.

It does not give any Defense bonus at all."

The reason it is not Hide or Stealth is because both of these states have an inherent defensive component, which the Hide-Like(TM) effect doesn't have. That is the distinction he is making, as evidenced by the second sentence.

Your example regarding PvE is flawed, because you're not taking into account the effective level of invisibility granted by the Hide-Like(TM) effect (which is currently an unknown). Therefor, just as running up to a mob with insufficient stealth/invisibility/what have you will result in the mob seeing you once you pass a certain distance, so will running up to a mob with Hide-Like on. Once you get on a mobs aggro list, it will attack you through invisibility/stealth/etc, unless you Placate it.

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The hide-like state, as you call it, has no -perception at all. I've tested this quite carefully, in beta, and on live. I'm not confused by any aspect of the hidden state: I've tested it carefully in both PvP, and PvE. What Castle calls the "hide-like state" is exactly the same thing I call the "hidden/critical state" as opposed to being actually hidden in the sense of the Hide power. The "hidden state" as indicated by the green hidden word on the screen is unrelated to stealth, and unrelated to the hide power, and unrelated to -perception.

Test before posting corrections please.

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Read more carefully as to the definition of base "to hit" and "base accuracy;" they are not the same thing, so there is the first problem. For that matter recheck your arithmetic on what you did do. Assuming that you chose appropriate identity elements (1 or 0) for all unknowns, you are off by an order of magnitude.

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I'm sure my math is wrong - that's what I meant. I guess what I'm looking for is a sample formula replacing the textual definitions with real values. Cause it isn't making sense to me.

I know - I'm dumb - One would think that a masters and 15 years experience in software development would prepare me for this, but I'm at a loss.

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Sometime between version 1.4 and 2.0 I'm improving the description of the tohit formula so its more easy to understand, although there are absolute limitations in how easy I can make it and still be accurate, and accurate comes first.


I'm likely to use an example:


Attacker: Player
Attacking: +0 (even) minion

Player base tohit: 75%
Player slotted accuracy: 1 acc SOs: +33% acc
Player attack: Energy Blast: Power blast, no inherent accuracy adjustment, standard accuracy = 1.0
Player tohit buff: Aim +100% (assuming Aim is 100%, it might not be)

Target Defense: 15%


Net tohit: Bounded [ (1.0) * (1.33) * Bounded [ 0.75 - 0.15 + 1.00 ] ] = Bounded [ (1.0) * (1.33) * Bounded [ 1.60 ] ] = Bounded [ (1.0) * (1.33) * 0.95 ] = Bounded[ 1.26 ] = 95%


Attacker: Player
Attacking: +2 minion

Player base tohit: 56% (normally 75% against even con)
Player slotted accuracy: 2 acc SOs: +67% acc
Player attack: Martial Arts thunder kick: +10% inherent Martial Arts accuracy, acc bonus = 1.1
Player tohit buff: tactics +8% (number picked arbitrarily just for example purposes)

Target Defense: 15%


Net tohit: Bounded [ (1.1) * (1.67) * Bounded [ 0.56 - 0.15 + 0.08 ] ] = Bounded [ (1.1) * (1.67) * Bounded [ 0.49 ] ] = Bounded [ 0.90 ] = 90%

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Hide-like in this case = can't see them, and they can do Assassin strikes out of it.


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Nope, as I mentioned, and Castle reiterates, the hidden state that Placate the power confers has no stealth component associated with it. If you placate a target and you don't actually have the Hide power or any other stealth power running, you can clearly see that the hidden state has no stealth of its own; the placated target cannot target you, but anyone and everyone else can still see you fine (players and critters).

The definitive PvE test: find two critters close to each other but clearly in different spawns (so alarms from one won't aggro the other). Run up to the first one, and placate him, then quickly run up to the other one. The second one will definitely see you and attack, even if you still have the "hidden" green state in your console: that green "hidden" word has nothing to do with stealth or -perception.


If I were the devs, I would change the "hidden state" name and indicator to the "critical state" in name and in display indicator, because the "hidden" state doesn't actually mean you are hidden in any colloquial sense of the word, on top of renaming the power Placate to differentiate itself from the status effect Placate.

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Other powers which can Placate (Smoke Flash) only apply the First part. The Hide like stat is not granted at all -- in other words, it is 100% defensive, not a Set Up power.

Perhaps it would help alleviate confusion if Placate (the power) had its name changed to something like Distract.

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Castle: make note that whenever Venture echos a suggestion I also made, it implies its either so obvious its impossible to disagree with, or at least one of us is back on the meds.

(I PMed this to Castle when this issue of nomenclature previously came up)

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The two most common tohit buffs are build up and Aim, and both are high order tohit buff (Build Up is a 60% tohit buff, and Aim is a 100% tohit buff).


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This is the ONE thing I was really curious about how you got numbers for, and the ONE thing that you didn't mention. . .


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I used the generally accepted numbers for blasters (technically, it should have been 66% for blasters). I'm aware this is being reopened for investigation in light of iakona's power data formulas. My long ago testing appeared to confirm Aim's +100% accuracy buff, but I have no recent testing to point to. Version 1.4 of the guide is very likely to link to the power data thread(s) for additional information about defense, tohit, etc, numbers.

The real numbers aren't that important for the particular point being made in that particular section, though, because even at iakona's lower calculated values for tohit for those two powers, they would still qualify as "high order tohit" in my opinion, which I define loosely as "higher than the total defense of SR scrappers, on the order of 30% buff or higher." As opposed to my loose definition for "extreme" tohit buffs, which is "stronger numerically that Ice tank or FF bubble defenses, on the order of 40% or higher."

You'll note how close "high" and "extreme" are in those two examples. That's a consequence of how defense works, and shouldn't be surprising: the scrapper resistance cap is "high" at 75%, and the tanker one is "really high" at 90%, even though those two are only separated by fifteen percentage points numerically.


Stacking, stacking, stacking.

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I just noticed this. Nice guide. Very thorough...updated, no doubt, as a Valentine's Day gift for the community.

One minor observation (hopefully more valid or relevant than the last one that I made on something that you posted...):

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NetToHit = (BaseAcc) * (AccuBuffs) * (AccDebuffs) * [ BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs - (Defense - DefenseDebuffs) ]

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and

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I am currently unaware of anything that is an accuracy debuff (and not a tohit debuff) but I'm told that they theoretically exist in CoH. In practice, the term AccDebuffs is almost always zero.

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are irreconcilable in obtaining anything but trival solutions in most known cases; however, the intent is obvious:

...(BaseAcc) * (1+AccuBuffs) * (1-AccDebuffs)...

or

...In practice, the term AccDebuffs is almost always one.


Anyway, brilliant work, as usual...and thanks for the Valentine.

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An error due to version changes in formula. Originally, I called the accuracy terms (1 + AccBuff) * (1 + AccDebuff) as you suggest (version 1.1 I think does that). I changed it to the simpler terms without the "1+" stuff because it was making the formulas longer without really helping the reader understand anything. Fixed for version 1.4. I've also changed the wording of that section to clarify it: there are "accuracy buffs" less than 1.0, for example the Base accuracy of AoE mez, and those are sometimes called accuracy debuffs or inherent accuracy debuffs. What I mean to say is I'm unaware of a power that either debuffs foe accuracy, or debuffs self accuracy; powers that buff or debuff targets with a buff/debuff effect all appear to be tohit buffs/debuffs regardless of their text descriptions. However, I've been told the theoretically exist in the sense that the game engine would support such a thing, but I'm unaware of any specific power that does it. This is as opposed to toxic defense, for which not only does no power offer it, it doesn't exist even theoretically in the current game engine.

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quick question, is Manuevers essentially unncessary for Force Field MMs (or any FFer I guess) with the prescence of Dispersion Bubble, since DB's +def will overrule Manuervers' +def except in regards to psi and toxic?


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Dispersion bubble stacks properly with maneuvers (or is supposed to), because all power pool defenses now offer defense to all types. This means maneuvers is supposed to be defense to melee/ranged/aoe/smash/lethal/fire/cold/energy/negative/psi (this is noted in the guide). Thus, maneuvers ought to stack with any defense, however typed, in the best way possible, which was the intent of typing power pool defenses that way.


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As for this, I tested it out and filed bugs and conferred with other disappointed illusionists, and made a thread HERE, but anyway it seems like GI does not stack in PvP for sure, which did sound like it should and would based on Castle's quote. Have you tried it out yourself yet?


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Nope, haven't tried it out myself yet. Let me know if you discover more; I suspect there are still kinks in how -perception powers work still out there.


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If you're in a testing mood, you might also want to look at THIS and see if it has any effect on the wonderful world of +def because it seems to in some ways make +def more appealing but makes all the toggle debuffs to -def, -acc etc. questionable.


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For the benefit of readers of this thread that don't want to jump to your post (although they should if they are interested in defense at all), a quick exerpt:

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I've come to find that general movement can actually disable toggle debuffs in PvP. What I am reffering to is Player A casting a debuf on Player B. Player B is debuffed and hops madly away with the debuff on his buff/debuff icon listing, mid-hop the debuff disappears from the listing though Player A sees it as still on and the animation is still present.


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If others can confirm this is a reproducible bug, I'd bet real money its related to the tanker AoE bug: basically, the player is moving away from the location of the toggle debuff faster than the system can move the toggle debuff to their new location, in terms of AoE tracking. In other words, the player momentarily jumps out of the toggle debuff's AoE, even though the toggle debuff ought to be "locked" onto the player. This one is very intriguing, and worth following up on.

Based on some research I did for a different thread, I dug up the post by Castle for the defense of stalker hide:


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What are the Defense Values of Hide?

Hide, when Suppressed, gives a base 1.88% Defense to all damage types except Toxic or Psionic as well as Melee, Ranged and Area Effect. When Unsuppressed, it gives a base 3.75% Defense to all of those except Area Effect attacks, which if gives a 37.5% base defense to.

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The guide will be updated with these numbers in the next version.

Since it does seem to be the generally accepted numbers, and because I've now had more time to look over how it was tested, I'll update the next version of the guide with this description for invincibility, unless contradictory information arises:

Invincibility provides defense to all but psionic/toxic damage for every foe in melee range to a maximum of 10. The defense buff is 7.5% for the first foe, and each additional foe adds 1.5% additional defense. The defense buff for one target in melee range is therefore 7.5%, and the maximum benefit with 10 targets is 21% defense. These numbers are unslotted tanker numbers, and the scrapper numbers are likely to be 75% of these. The power does not currently offer a specific melee/ranged component to defense, although it may have done so in the past.

I make an exception for invincibility in terms of quoting specific numbers mainly because the mechanics of the power are sufficiently unusual, and because its changed many times, and because there is a lot of confusion surrounding the power. My policy is still to point people to other excellent guides for numbers: Buffy appears to be revamping hers for Scrappers and Tankers, and when she does I'll update the guide's links to those new scrapper and tanker guides, which do cover all the basic numbers.

I should probably update my stalker Q&A at some point. Here's how placate works:


First, there is a placate effect and a placate power.

What placate the effect does is remove the user of the placate from the aggro list of the target of the placate, in PvE, and suppress the ability for that critter to reaggro the attacker until the placate wears off or is broken. Attacking, or in any way damaging the target breaks the placate immediately.


Placate the power has a couple of properties:

1. Its autohit

2. It placates (in the sense of the effect) the target

3. It places the stalker into the hidden state

4. Placate counts as an attack. This means even though it takes you off the target's aggro list, it will cause any critters near the targetted critter to aggro on you, just as if you attacked the target with a normal attack.


The hidden state has nothing to do with stealth. It is, in fact, somewhat of a misnomer: it ought to be called the "critical state" because thats what it does: while in the hidden state, stalker attacks will perform critical hits when they land.


The confusion arises because the hidden state is related to another power: hide. Hide will also place the stalker into the hidden state under a certain set of circumstances, but hide itself has a number of properties:


1. Hide is a stealth power: it offers significant -perception.

2. Hide also offers defense like most stealth powers.

3. Hide's -perception and +defense are suppressed, like most stealth powers are, when the stalker is either hit by damage or attacks in turn. Note that attacks break hide's stealth, but not all actions do. Tossing caltrops does not break stealth directly.

4. When hide's stealth activates, hide simultaneously:

* begins to offer -perception
* begins to offer (increased) +def
* places the stalker into the hidden state.

5. If hide's stealth is broken, it takes 10 seconds of inactivity (during which the stalker cannot attack or be hit by damage) before the hide suppression wears off and hide reengages, with all of the effects listed above.


The confusion is that the hidden state can be achieved in two separate ways: placate will immediately place the stalker into the hidden state, and the stealth power hide can also place the stalker into the hidden state. But the hidden state is only one of *many* things both hide and placate do, and most people incorrectly link those powers' other effects with the hidden state.

The hidden state has nothing to do with stealth. Hide offers stealth, and also can get you into the hidden state at the same time. But when placate puts you into the hidden state, placate has no stealth benefit to add on top.

Similarly, placate (the power) has no special critical hit capability. Placate (the power) puts you into the hidden state, and its the hidden state that gets you critical hit capability. Smoke flash, which is an AoE placate (the effect, not the power), is another power that can placate targets, but because it has no ability to place you into the hidden state, you can't crit after using it (necessarily).


There seems to be some confusion as to whether or not placate will place you into the hidden state because the "hidden" word doesn't show up in your console. I'm not sure why: I tested this when I wrote my stalker FAQ, and I retested to be sure: if you turn off hide, walk up to something, and placate them, you immediately get the green "hidden" indicator word on your screen below your buffs, every time. That indicator was added in beta specifically to tell stalkers that the were in the state necessary to critical hit: if you find a circumstance whereby you believe you are in the "hidden" state, because your attacks critical, but the green indicator word doesn't show up on your screen, /bug it.

(By the way, while in the hidden state stalker attacks have a 100% chance to crit: outside of the hidden state stalkers can still land critical hits if the attack they use has an inherent critical hit percentage chance separate from the hidden state. For example, attacks like eagle's claw have inherent critical hit percentages: they can crit at that inherent percentage even if the stalker is not hidden).


Perception is something special. I've discussed perception with Castle recently. The problem with the -perception of hide is that critters are not affected by -perception in the same way that players are. Critters use their perception range for one thing and one thing only: determining if they detect a target to aggro on. Once aggroed, critters do not consult with perception values to track you: in effect, critters that are aggroed on you have almost limitless perception (but it is bounded: you can actually hit targets from outside their maximum perception range, and when you do, they just stand around confused and unable to do anything - try it with a highly slotted snipe), and that perception cannot be significantly altered.

The problem is with critter AI: if a stalker could really make herself "invisible" to a critter, there's no AI available to tell the critters what to do next. So if you aggro a bunch, and then run away, and then rehide, you're invisible, but the critters don't care you're invisible: they'll know where you are regardless, and will target you as if you were perfectly visible.


Notice: mastermind pets will hunt down critters that you as the mastermind can't even see anymore. Anything controlled by the game AI "cheats" perception, because the limitations of the game AI force them to.

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You seem to be willing to disregard testing because you don't like the numbers.


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I didnt' disregard it at all. I have not seen it. I'm asking Blue if he thinks, from a design perspective, that RI would basically be twice as good as DN. Don't accuse me of an attitude I do no have.


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I'm only accusing you of saying this:



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TopDoc's testing showed Radiation Infection to be 31.2% tohit debuff without enhancements


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At that base value, 3-slotted, RI should probably allow you to floor +3's or close to it. It should be noted, that the debuff will appear lower from testing than it actually is due to the streakbreaker. So if he's done 13K tests, the coded value may be as high as 35%. That's puts the debuff around 70% three slotted. You're going to tell me that three slotted RI is a 70% debuff? [emphasis mine]


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This certainly sounds to me like you're saying you doubt the tested value because it doesn't match your own expectations of what it "ought to be."

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At that base value, 3-slotted, RI should probably allow you to floor +3's or close to it. It should be noted, that the debuff will appear lower from testing than it actually is due to the streakbreaker. So if he's done 13K tests, the coded value may be as high as 35%. That's puts the debuff around 70% three slotted. You're going to tell me that three slotted RI is a 70% debuff?

You really think the devs are going to let it be 30-35% at level 1? [emphasis mine again] Since Castle already stated that DN was 37%...that makes RI twice as good as DN in terms of -Acc.


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This certainly sounds to me like you think *if* its really that high, it has to be a mistake, or a bug, and not intentional. But discussions about the strength of RI have been going on for ages; this would not be news to the devs. Aren't you the one that is always so fond of suggesting to me that we have to assume the devs "have the numbers?"


Are they going to "let it" be 35%? Who knows what they are going to do in the future: I think tohit buffs/debuffs and defense buffs/debuffs are likely to be at least reexamined after I7, if not as part of I7. But they "let it" be basically that high for two years already.


And by the way, even if they cut RI by 25%, it would still be more than twice as good as DN in terms of its tohit debuff in I7, because of how tohit debuffs work.

One more thing, before I decided to log out, I noticed that one of the things I herded into the debuff cloud was an LT, not a minion. I watched him miss 11 times in a row. The streakbreaker says I had to have him below 20% to hit for that to happen: that places an absolute lower level bound on RI of 57.5% - 20% = 37.5% 2-slotted, or 22.5% base, again for controllers. The lower bound for RI is already within striking distance of the numbers TopDoc implies it ought to be (which is in the range of 25%-27%).

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TopDoc's testing showed Radiation Infection to be 31.2% tohit debuff without enhancements

[/ QUOTE ] At that base value, 3-slotted, RI should probably allow you to floor +3's or close to it. It should be noted, that the debuff will appear lower from testing than it actually is due to the streakbreaker. So if he's done 13K tests, the coded value may be as high as 35%. That's puts the debuff around 70% three slotted. You're going to tell me that three slotted RI is a 70% debuff?

You really think the devs are going to let it be 30-35% at level 1? Since Castle already stated that DN was 37%...that makes RI twice as good as DN in terms of -Acc.


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You seem to be willing to disregard testing because you don't like the numbers. For someone who claims to play a rad, you don't seem to have noticed how strong the RI debuff is. The Controller version has to be higher than 20% base, 40% enhanced, because that's trivial to determine. The net tohit of minions in its aura is much less than 1 in 10. That places a lower bound on the defender version at 22.5% and 45% slotted. The absolute lower bound.

But here's how much faith I have in TopDoc's testing methodology. I'm logged into test now, running RI 2-slotted against 3 level 50 nemesis minions. This would be a controller, again. TopDoc's numbers say I should have these guys down to on the order of 9%.

That's pretty much what its looking like.

Its actually rather odd that you seem to be simultaneously trying to argue that RI's debuff is not really all that good, relative to flash arrow, because of its mechanical constraints, and simultaneously too powerful, because of its numerical strength.

In any case, the purple patch degrades that number rapidly, so its not possible to floor +3s with it in any case. I wouldn't be surprised if extreme tohit debuffs like RI were reduced in I7, primarily because its overkill when nothing has more than base 50% tohit anyway, and the extra tohit debuff strength is really just bypassing the purple patch at that point, which is probably not something the devs want to allow to too much of an extent. Tohit debuffs *had* to be high because it had to work on things with higher tohit that had nothing to do with level. I7 will simplify the ability to balance that more carefully; one of the many benefits of executing the I7 scaler changes besides just making me look like a messiah.

TopDoc's testing methodology, btw, factors out the streakbreaker; at least his current methodology does. And if RI is as powerful as we all know it is, the streakbreaker has essentially zero effect on RI.

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And we dont believe your assertion of how high Flash Arrow is. From what I can tell your evidence is based off of one passing quote from Castle where he says "it's identical to Smoke grenade". Then you mathematically applied an AT modifier and enhancement modifiers to reach your 20% assertion.

When the set first came out someone did actual testing with Flash Arrow and concluded that the base debuff was about 7 or 8%. Unfortunately I can't seem to find that thread anymore, may have scrolled off the boards. Anyway since this fits much closer to my own experience than your 20%, I'm not believing your assertion unless a red name states it...twice. Or at least until someone has some numbers that they themselves have tested to show that the debuff is higher than 8%.


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My guess based on experience is that its about 10% unslotted, which would make it 20% slotted. But it might be very hard to tell the difference between 20% and 16% (which is base 8% 3-slotted) without a very long set of trials. In fact, in general most accuracy tests have a margin of error on the order of one to two percentage points, which makes a measured 8% well within the margin of error of a true 10% number unless the tester tested many thousands of swings.

In other words, 8% doesn't contradict 10% unless the margin of error on those tests were very tight (probably at least 5000 swings).

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RI can FLOOR even level minion accuracy post-ED.


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RI would have to have 40+% -acc with three slots to floor even level mobs. Sorry...no way I believe RI is this high. RI seems very effective, but I'm not believing your assertion unless a red name states it...twice.


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Didn't we go through this already? I can easily demonstrate that RI with 3-slots of -ACC allows me to stand in the middle of five even level CoT, and get hit at or very near the 5% floor.

That test was with a controller.

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stacking res helps, but I do not believe it makes up for the actual lack of damage relative to a damage dealer in this case


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Right...but you implied that "any" other combo. My point wasn't that your specific statement was false, but that its implication was over-stated.


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Actually, what I said was:

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for one thing I'm thinking practically everything else I've ever played would have made the fight go faster - even my main, an en/en blaster


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Of course there are things that would not speed the fight up: empathy/archery would obviously be slower than TA/A. I just haven't played them. Of what I have played, I think my kin/rad defender might have ultimately been less help and been overall slower in that duo. But practically everything else I've played would have likely been faster or safer at the same speed.


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But Acid Arrow's -def slotted up should be a real bonus if the PP's in question are bosses.


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Not really: bosses are not intrinsicly harder to hit than minions (and we are talking about bosses: if you celebrate after defeating to +3 PP minions you're just looking for an excuse to party) and the only ones that -DEF would help on would be those pesky MoG PPs (energy). I'm pretty sure I mentioned the ones I fought were of the claws variety (unstoppable). Actually, several pairs. Level 37-38 PP bosses seemed to be consistently claws PPs in Bricks, although that might have been a coincidence.

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Though Oil knockdown did seem just as effective...in any event, if you felt it was "quite useful" you're entitled to that opinion.


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Knockdown patches, like ice slick, oil slick, earthquake, are peculiar beasties. They are often more effective against higher level critters than you might otherwise expect, possibly because they constantly "pulse" a KB: even seriously degraded, the pulses happen fast enough to still knock down a high level critter "often enough" - i.e. they are normally strong enough that against an even level critter they aren't functioning to their full capacity (because you can only knock something over so fast; you can't knock them down when they are already down).

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Two squishies taking on two paragon protectors should not try to keep them together, by the way, unless they are lucked out or have tremendous accuracy debuffing, and even then its tricky. The PPs can often two-shot you, so keeping them together increases the risk of a rapid 2-shot kill too fast for you to pop respites. Your best bet is to split them up, but still concentrate all your damage and resistance debuffing on one, to get the first quick kill. If you let them go two on one on you, the results are less favorable. Fortunately, claws PPs do let you get away with this if you are careful.

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Buwahaha, my Stormy has tanked 3 at once before, and two of the bastards were the Energy/Regen ones

Silly people not having played Storm Summoning!

It's hard as hell soloing the Elite Bosses that used to be Arch Villains though, their mez immunity renders my KB ineffectual. Bile has sent me packing FOUR times, three of which weren't even close .

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Eventually, I intend to play everything with major knockback to 50, just to say I did. Energy, illusion, MA; knockback was the first thing that I really liked about playing CoH. I'd have a high level storm by now if a little thing called City of Villains didn't come out and distract me.

Which also means at some point, I will need to get that explosive arrow also


(yes, I did have whirlwind at one point: what else do you take at level 49 before the epic pools came out?)

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I've ever played would have made the fight go faster - even my main, an en/en blaster


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I'll have to disagree with that. Acid Arrow slotted with debuffs on top of DA, is pretty good stacking -res. No to mention reducing the defense on both PP's if they stay together. I also use Entangle to bring the boss out of the air and make them put a foot in the Glue or the Oil. I don't think Dark or Storm would make the fight go faster...safer...yes...faster...no.


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Don't have oil slick, so that isn't quite an option for me yet. The stacking res helps, but I do not believe it makes up for the actual lack of damage relative to a damage dealer in this case: my blasters and scrappers are likely to have dumped more damage over time without the res debuffs than one blaster and an archery defender with them. In a team larger than a duo, the res debuffs would have been a greater factor than simply adding more damage: trio and higher is about the break even point.

Its hard to say with dark; I believe it would have gone faster, but I'll concede that one might more properly be called a draw. You're probably right on storm, except storm is one of the very few sets I have yet to play to any significant level, so it wasn't one of the options I was considering in that statement.

Two squishies taking on two paragon protectors should not try to keep them together, by the way, unless they are lucked out or have tremendous accuracy debuffing, and even then its tricky. The PPs can often two-shot you, so keeping them together increases the risk of a rapid 2-shot kill too fast for you to pop respites. Your best bet is to split them up, but still concentrate all your damage and resistance debuffing on one, to get the first quick kill. If you let them go two on one on you, the results are less favorable. Fortunately, claws PPs do let you get away with this if you are careful.

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The tank asked me to join his SG after we got done. Said he'd kick someone to make room.


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I wouldn't let it go to your head: these days all it takes for me to get this sort of attention is shoot at the right thing at the right time and not wipe the team. There was a time when that was the expected skill level; now the expected average skill level is "I'll pull (with fireball)."

Can a level 36 energy blaster and a SKed TA/A take out two 38 PPs simultaneously? Until today, I would have said probably not. Now, I know its possible with a good blaster: but I still think on average the answer is still "probably not." I wouldn't hold it up as proof of how fantastic the set is, at any rate (why not? lots of reasons: for one thing I'm thinking practically everything else I've ever played would have made the fight go faster - even my main, an en/en blaster).

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Against +5's and +6's...I wasn't hitting very many. One small Insight and I hit like 90% on one spawn...but that's anecdotal.


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Against +5s and especially +6s, accuracy is not terribly important because debuffs by then are either marginal (+5 = 30% effective) or nearly absent (+6 = 15% effective). I'm not sure flash arrow is even worth the activation time at +6 (for that matter, even RI and EF with their combined debuffs are borderline at +6).

Debuffers are basically along for the ride at +6: they're essentially being PLed because of the sudden drop in effectiveness due to the purple patch between +5 and +6. Buffers, of course, are still effective because of how buffs work (for the most part).

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Argh, true, I always think of the higher initial foe bonus as base def, but you're right, of course.

I'm fairly certain that there was a thread on the tanker forum after the patch I quoted went live where test results were reported, but at 5.30 am my search-fu is too weak to find it, and I don't recall what the results were (although I think that the stacking bug was reported as fixed).

So, in conclusion my previous post was probably totally unnecessary, but at least it upped my post count

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Not at all: it reminds me to try to find enough information to update that section, because in fact it is somewhat dated at this point. I appreciate all constructive feedback: I try to keep folding it back into the guide.

And of course there's the post count thing.