Arcanaville

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I'm no math whiz but I imagine the time it takes to get a character to 50, once added up, would be astounding to those of us that try not to think about it


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Find a civilian whose first name starts with the letter 'M'. Click on him or her while you are relatively close by, see what he or she says.

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Dev's, dealing with what they do, have an almost purely technical understanding of AT's.

Statesman has an almost purely theoretical understanding. Having read a ton of his justifications for recent AT adjustments and subsequent responses, I think there is reasoning at work that "looks good on paper," but for whatever reason does not pan out in practice. I can't imagine that either the dev's or Statesman play enough to have as good a feel for these things as players who put thoughtful and informed posts out here.


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I don't think that's true: the devs are much, much more likely to be dismissive of "paper analysis" than anything else.

The problem is two-fold: first: almost anything can be made to work by at least someone, and what people enjoy doing is highly variable. Ironically, even though the devs keep calling us (the forum posters) 5% of the playerbase, I doubt any single dev has played enough to team with more than 5% of the player base either, which means the sum total of opinions that the devs themselves have, plus every single player they have ever encountered, is probably of a similar minority. They can have just as much of a skewed perspective on what people like and dislike, what works and doesn't work, as they claim we do. When all you see is a small subset of the population, its easy to think that they roughly represent the average population of your users, and they might not.

This is very common: dismissing other people's experiences as anecdotes, while valuing your own anecdotes as experience. An easy trap to fall into: as everyone will attest to, if someone says something is possible that you think is impossible, they're probably wrong, and if someone says something is impossible you know to be possible, they are definitely wrong. There aren't a lot of rules of thumb that generally suggest someone else is probably right.

Two: the devs reluctance to share numbers and formulae mean that often - I believe - they are highly dismissive of "paper analysis" because they feel its irrelevant due to being incomplete: their own MegaExcel calculator says it should work, so anyone else who demonstrates differently obviously either didn't take enough things into account, or isn't analyzing correctly.

I'm not saying this happens universally; they have on occasion listened carefully to the player base, but I would bet heavily that both of these effects are in play when the devs "listen" to us.

Attempting to convince the devs of anything is like attempting to win a game of CalvinBall: the devs can take the discussion anywhere they want (the devs make up the rules), the devs will not tell you if you are arguing a point they feel is irrelevant (the devs will not tell you what the rules are), and the devs can elect to not respond if they don't feel the discussion is on point (the devs can declare victory if you don't follow the rules). And the devs are under no obligation to play if they don't want to.

First: if you calculate a situation with two different points of view conceptually, but the initial numbers are all the same, and you get different results, at least one of them has to be false. Thats a truism of math in general: it points to a conceptual error, or a mathematical error somewhere.

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Hmm, really?

Okay, let's take that attack which does 100 damage and say it recharges in 20 seconds, meaning it'll take 200 seconds to break down the door.

So as you add more recharge enhancements it takes:

20, 15, 12, 10, 8.571, 7.5, 6.667

seconds for the attack to recharge.

Meaning it takes

200, 150, 120, 100, 85.71, 75, 66.67

seconds to break down the door.

...and dividing this by 20 to put the first number in the series at the same point, we get

10, 7.5, 6, 5, 4.286, 3.75, 3.333

But I thought recharge had 'more diminishing returns', whatever that means!

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In this case, its a mathematical error. You calculated the recharge times without taking activation time into account, which is where the diminishing returns initially come from.

The actual times require knowing activation times: lets presume the 20 second cycle time you state is composed of 2 seconds activation and 18 seconds of recharge. The recharge times in that case become:

20.0, 15.5, 12.8, 11.0, 9.7, 8.7, 8.0

not

20, 15, 12, 10, 8.571, 7.5, 6.667

Time to break down door is now:

200, 155, 128, 110, 97, 87, 80

Divide by 20, and you get:

10, 7.75, 6.4, 5.5, 4.85, 4.35, 4.0

Which means recharge is providing less benefit than damage which is declining that time at this scale:

10, 7.5, 6, 5, 4.286, 3.75, 3.333

By the time you get to 6-slotting, the recharge-based time is 20% higher than the damage time.

Note: the damage time decay curve converges to zero as the number of enhancements increases, although there is a limit of 6 damage enhancements in reality (technically, it converges on zero but the minimum is two: the first activation time can't be eliminated). The recharge based time decay curve converges on 20 seconds, because even if by some miracle you had infinite recharge, each attack would still take 2 seconds to activate, and ten swings can never take less than 2 seconds.


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Now, its perfectly valid to look at enhancements from the perspective you mention above. But if you do, two things happen:

1. *Everything* now has diminishing returns, so stating that something has diminishing returns is now a meaningless statement.


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Exactly my point.


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I don't think this was exactly your point: my point was that while you can pick different perspectives to analyze things, some of them create situations where you can say no meaningful things. Looking at the enhancements from the perspective you articulated doesn't change the fact that recharge is still inferior, but it does take away a relatively simple way of articulating that fact. If you are attempting to contrast two things, you can pick a perspective that enhances those differences for explanatory purposes, or you can pick one that masks those differences forcing a more complex explanation (like I did above). Normally, deliberately choosing a perspective that mandates a more complex explanation is considered the poorer choice.


I should point out that damage and accuracy enhancements don't just provide better overall benefit in terms of dps, but as a completely different issue they also benefit dpe.

So there are two things going on when comparing damage or accuracy buffs, relative to recharge or end reduce buffs (mainly end enhancements). The first is that when you look at dps, damage and accuracy enhancements/buffs provide proportional benefit so long as they provide any benefit at all. Accuracy only provides benefit up to the tohit ceiling. Recharge provides a lower benefit than damage or accuracy. End provides no benefit at all.

In the dpe world, damage and accuracy both provide the same benefit they did in the dps world. End enhance provides the same benefit as they do. Recharge provides no benefit. Thus, this table:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
enh/buff dps dpe

Damage linear linear
Accuracy linear/capped linear/capped
Recharge non-linear none
Endurance none linear
</pre><hr />

When I say "capped" I mean that accuracy enhancements typically allow you to reach the tohit ceiling much faster than damage enhancements allow you to reach the damage cap - and no one can reach their damage cap on enhancements alone, so accuracy is in general capped sooner.

Recharge lags damage in net dps benefit, and lacks the dps benefit altogether. There's a reason why most people slot 5 damage and 1 acc in most attacks: that table is why.

The fact that damage enhancements provide both dps and dpe benefit, and recharge provides only dps benefit, and not even the same amount of it, greatly marginalizes recharge except for powers for which damage is non-existent or not a priority, or where activation time is small relative to recharge time (pre-I5 pets were slotted for recharge because slotting for both damage and recharge has a multiplicative benefit that overrode the minor reduced benefit of the recharge enhancement alone - because activation time was immaterial at normal pet recharge times).

And there is even another thing hurting recharge enhancements. Because unlike damage enhancements, recharge enhancements follow a diminishing returns curve, anyone with hasten has just pushed themselves more than 2 recharge enhancements deeper into the diminshing curve. Remember: damage doesn't diminish: you can stack damage on top of damage, and each incremental increase is the same as the last. But not recharge: recharge enhancements are devalued by hasten in a way that damage enhancements are not devalued by, say, assault.

Why does this matter for Ice tanks? Because slows stack in the same way: if a defender hits the villains with a slow, the net effect of the Ice tank slow and the defender slow will not stack additively, because of the diminishing returns. The *actual slows* will stack additively, but their net effect will be lower than you would otherwise expect. So in the same way that hasten devalues recharge enhancements, so will team slows partially devalue Ice tank slows on a relative basis (the net effect will still be more beneficial than each alone, just not as strongly as -dmg would stack with -dmg, say). One bright spot in splitting up slow into slow and -dmg, although I don't think its a big enough one to compensate for the combined effects of the purple patch acting on both effects for anything higher than +1.

Edit: corrected typoed "hasten" as "stamina" in one place, thanks da5id for the catch

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Enemies and players alike with damage resistance automatically resist resistance debuffs. I'm not aware of anything inherently resisting damage debuffs, beyond the purple patch "resistance" which is really a drop in your effective power.

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Damage Resistance (RES) affects Damage Debuffs as well. Its very odd in how it works too. But basically if the mob has RES vs the same Damage type they are using to attack, then the mob is able to resist, in part, the Damage Debuff vs that Damage type.

I've quoted this from the Defender's current issues posting:

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Bug: Fulcrum Shift and Siphon Power. If a mob has a resistance, or vulnerability, to a certain type of energy AND that mob has an attack that is based on that type of energy, the amount the damage will be debuffed is altered by the mobs resistance. For example -- a villain has a 25% vulnerability to energy attacks. His energy damage is debuffed an extra 25% beyond the base 25%, making the final debuff 31.25% (25% of 25 is 6.25). This works in reverse as well. A mob, such as Hamidon, with 90% resistance to all attack types would only be debuffed 2.5%. (Ladioss_Sopp)

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NOTE: Defenders are a little short sighted in that they don't seem to realize this affects all Damage Debuffs and not just these two.

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Two things: first, do we know if this behavior is the proper behavior, or a bug?

Second, Debuff the damage of Hamidon? Must be something new: never seen that effect ever. Not to mention: Hamidon starts off with about 99% damage resistances prior to being hold-stacked, and I'm not sure if he can be debuffed that low: never seen it get much lower than about 95% off the top of my head.

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1) the new value, 14%, still gets hit from the enemies resistances, even against even con baddies, yes?


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Enemies and players alike with damage resistance automatically resist resistance debuffs. I'm not aware of anything inherently resisting damage debuffs, beyond the purple patch "resistance" which is really a drop in your effective power.

If you are specifically asking about higher level villains resisting the debuff, then higher level villains ought to resist both the slow and the damage debuff in equal measure. Even con villains shouldn't resist either the 0.32 slow nor the 0.14 damage debuff normally, unless there's some *other* effect going on I'm unaware of (or if there are actual villains with slow resistance - I'm unaware of anything with damage debuff resistance).

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Granite armor is only 50% resistance. Sure, you can slot it up,


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Huh....Well no Inv power comes with 90 resist to S/L either.....guess you could slot them up or just pick more of them...

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I think the point was that you can slot up Granite Armor for resistance, or defense, but not both, so if you slot up Granite Armor for 90% resists, it won't have a lot of defense, making it not really a "defense-based" set. If you slot up GA heavy for defense, then you can't get 90% resists.

So while Stone as a set can be heavy resistances and heavy defense, no individual stone tanker can really be both at the same time, so his original statement "No set that allows 90% resistance to smashing and lethal, and a Dull Pain power, can legitimately be called 'defense-based'" suggests that there does not exist a set that allows a specific hero to both have 90% resists and nevertheless claim to get the majority of its mitigation from defense ("defense-based").

Of course, this brings up the invincibility argument, but that, most agree, is a special case.

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Recharge enhancements, and recharge buff/debuffs, are the only true "diminishing returns" effects in the game, because they don't actually affect the entire activation/recharge cycle.

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Really?

Okay, let's say I'm trying to break down a door with 1000 HP! So how many attacks will it take, with that 100 damage attack, and various levels of enhancers?

Just to review, that's doing:

100, 133, 166, 200, 233, 266, 300

damage per attack.

So it takes...

10, 7.5, 6, 5, 4.286, 3.75, 3.333

attacks to break down the door.

What's going on? I thought damage enhancements didn't have diminishing returns!

--GF

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This sort of thing happens because the phrase "diminishing returns" has an ill-defined term: "returns." The question is, what do you define your "return" to be. Anyone can make up a definition for return that demonstrates diminishing, static, accelerating, or looping returns, with sufficiently complex math.

The question comes down to deciding what "return" is actually being sought. For example, we talk about defense and resistance as providing "accelerating" or "exponential" returns because while in one sense the returns are linear (5 more percentage points of defense, another 5 more, another 5 more), in the sense most people think about: increasing lifespan, which is inversely proportional to damage mitigation - more properly its converse: damage intake - we see an accelerating change in performance with increased defense and resistance.

So the question is, what is the return "supposed to be" when slotting damage? Obviously, to get more damage. In that sense, each slotted enhancement offers the same linear benefit.

Now - this is critical - once you decide to measure the effectiveness of damage enhancements that way, you're locked into doing the same thing for recharge enhancements if you want to compare them: you cannot compare them with different measuring sticks.

Thus, if you think about damage enhancements as "adding damage" then you have to "normalize" your comparison, and figure out how much more net damage over time recharge enhancements provide. When you do, you see the diminishing returns relative to damage enhancements.

Now, its perfectly valid to look at enhancements from the perspective you mention above. But if you do, two things happen:

1. *Everything* now has diminishing returns, so stating that something has diminishing returns is now a meaningless statement.

2. Recharge will still have *more* diminishing returns than damage.

In effect, looking at it that way masks the difference betwenn recharge and damage enhancement (or buffs or debuffs), but doesn't actually make the difference go away. The *quantitative difference* between the two is always going to be the same no matter what math trickery we employ, but some viewpoints make it easier to describe the difference in english.

* "Recharge enhancements provide diminishing returns relative to the linear returns of damage enhancements"

is simpler to understand than

* "Recharge enhancements provide a diminishing return level declining on a faster decay scale than damage enhancements provide"

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However, this is only the case when the activation time of a power is small compared to the recharge time. Recharge debuffs only affect the recharge part, so whenever we have a greater than zero activation time, recharge debuffs fail to live up to their "maximum potential".


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That's a good point (one I keep harping myself when it comes to recharge enhancements) so it begs the question: when people test recharge debuffs against villains, do they factor that in when they time recharge differences, or do most testers presume that villain powers have zero activation time? Do villains (really, the game engine code that deals with NPC villain attack speed) even take such considerations into account when they run their attack "cycles?"

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Recharge for a power does not occur during its activation time. I'm sure it works on villains as well.

This shouldn't be an issue.

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Its an issue precisely because recharge doesn't occur during activation times, or the way most people phrase this: recharge buffs do not speed up activation. This means recharge buffs/debuffs, unlike damage buff/debuffs, are not directly proportional.

If you speed up recharge by 50%, you do *not* increase the number of attacks per minute by 50%. If activation time was zero, you would. But activation messes up the ratio - to the detriment of recharge.

Watch the impact of slotting damage into a power that does 100 damage, starting from zero enhancements:

100, 133, 167, 200, 233, 267, 300

Each enhancement boosts damage by the same amount: 33.33% of base.

Lets assume that the power recharges in 60 seconds, and has *zero* activation time. Here's the effect of slotting recharge, in attacks per second, also starting from zero enhancements:

1, 1.33, 1.67, 2.00, 2.33, 2.67, 3.00

Ah, but what if the power has 6 seconds of activation time, and 54 seconds of recharge (which means that without any enhancements, it too fires once per minute):

Note: I'm just making the numbers easy to see: 6 sec activation on a 60 second cycle is much like 2 sec activation on a 20 second cycle, but the numbers are easier on the eyes

1, 1.29, 1.57, 1.82, 2.06, 2.29, 2.5

Notice two things: the overall numbers are smaller, and the actual net benefit of each successive enhancement is smaller: the net increase in attacks per minute for each enhancement is about: 0.29, 0.28, 0.25, 0.24, 0.23, 0.21 (its a little jumpy because of round off).

Clearly activation times make a difference, because they add a linear term to the recharge time being buffed/debuffed.

Recharge enhancements, and recharge buff/debuffs, are the only true "diminishing returns" effects in the game, because they don't actually affect the entire activation/recharge cycle.

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I think you're mistaken.

If we assume that the 0.32 recharge and the 0.14 damage can translate into resistance (they can), then:

(scale * 0.32) + (scale * 0.14) = total damage

If we combine like terms:

scale * (0.32 + 0.14) = total damage

This won't hold true if the scales are different, of course, but I don't think they are. Also, the 0.32 -recharge d


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There's no reason you're allowed to add the -recharge and the -dmg together.

Statesman's numbers are, as is often the case when I'm guessing he's writing quickly off the top of his head, messed up, but he's articulating the equation as:

net damage over time in dpm (damage per minute) = [ 60s / (BaseRecharge * (1 - RechDebuff) + activation) ] * [ BaseDamage * (1 - DamageDebuff) ]

To break it down:

Damage per minute = Attacks per minute * Damage
Attacks per minute = 60s / (recharge + activation)
Debuffed Recharge = BaseRecharge * (1 - RechDebuff)
Debuffed Damage = BaseDamage * (1 - DamageDebuff)

Just start substituting and you're there. This means my numbers (and everyone else's calculated numbers) are a bit off, because as Stargazer pointed out, RechargeDebuff is weaker than you expect, because of activation times. But the principle is still the same: we could calculate an Average Effective Recharge Debuff that -0.32 corresponds to, by averaging over all villain attacks with differing activations and recharges. The principle that two effects are hit harder by the purple patch than one would still apply. The core principle: attacks per minute is being debuffed, and damage is being debuffed, and those multiply together. Anything that simultaneously weakens both terms is going to have a stronger net effect than if only one term was being affected.

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However, this is only the case when the activation time of a power is small compared to the recharge time. Recharge debuffs only affect the recharge part, so whenever we have a greater than zero activation time, recharge debuffs fail to live up to their "maximum potential".


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That's a good point (one I keep harping myself when it comes to recharge enhancements) so it begs the question: when people test recharge debuffs against villains, do they factor that in when they time recharge differences, or do most testers presume that villain powers have zero activation time? Do villains (really, the game engine code that deals with NPC villain attack speed) even take such considerations into account when they run their attack "cycles?"

Edit: so of course Statesman answers this question immediately following the post I'm reading.

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Of course, I forgot to mention that just as its never a good idea to trade a defense for a debuff (all things being equal), its never a good idea to trade one debuff for two, unless you only tank even level villains.

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I agree. I think that's why in the end Statesman is taking the approach of making the sum of the two debuffs higher than the original, rather than equivalent. 0.14 + 0.32 = 0.46 as opposed to 0.40. Makes it a little bit stronger vs level and RES. Not much, but a little bit. (note: not saying that's "great math", but I suspect that's his approach)

Still since in teams you almost never fight even level foes, he's probably shooting to help there too.

Now if I could just get Statesman to realize how far behind Ice is on Smash/Lethal, with little to show in return for being that far behind, I'd be much happier.

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Its actually weaker against level, having two effects instead of one.

When you have one debuff, and you fight higher levels, there's only one thing to debuff with the purple patch. When you have two, there are two things that can be debuffed fighting higher levels. And since slow and -dmg are roughly multiplicative, the two debuffs are going to combine.

A 40% slow in effect is 60% attack speed, assuming slow works like this: rech time = base time * (1 - slow). -DMG is, I think, figured this way: net dmg = base dmg * (1 - dmgdebuff).

Against +1s, a 0.4 slow (or whatever you want to call it) becomes a 0.36 slow, and attack speed rises to 63% of base.

But a 0.32 slow and a 0.14 dmg debuff (which is 58.48% dmg at even) become a 0.288 slow and a 0.126 -dmg, and attack speed/dmg increases to 62.23% - a bigger jump, and just about tied with the original 0.4 slow.

At +2, you're down to 0.256 slow and 0.112 -dmg, and attack speed/dmg goes to 66.07%, compared to the original 0.4 slow which would now be 0.32 slow, and 68% of base attack speed.

It seems the net effect is to make the buff better at even, tied at +1, and worse at +2 and higher. That might have even been the original intent of the change, although there might be other reasons.

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[If I'm understanding the numbers correctly, the original debuff effectively reduced incoming damage to 60% of the original value. The change Statesman *thought* was made (-.32/-.1) would have reduced incoming damage to 61.2% of original - a tiny nerf. The *actual* change reduced damage to 63.24% of original - a significant nerf. The proposed checked change reduces net damage to 58.48% of original, a slight buff. If I understand correctly: recharge is not my field of expertise]

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Essentially, yes.

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Of course, I forgot to mention that just as its never a good idea to trade a defense for a debuff (all things being equal), its never a good idea to trade one debuff for two, unless you only tank even level villains.

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Archery has the highest Accuracy in the game. All powers have an accuracy of 1.16. Ranged shot, the sniper attack, has an accuracy of 1.39.

So that like getting 1 free ACC DO in all Archery powers. Against a target with no defense, thats a 87% chance ToHit.

In comparison, most powers in the game have an accuracy of 1. Most sniper attacks have an accuracy of 1.2. Assault Rifle has an ACC of 1.05 (1.25 for thier sniper attack).

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It is good to see that you are starting to look at the threads dealing with archery and TA. Now that you know what our opinions are after playing the sets, it would be nice to know if we are going to see changes or if we are just talking up a storm. There are other things to talk about if there are no changes comeing to archery or Trick Archery.

Is the accuracy bonus supposed to compensate for the slow activation times? You are aware that is what kills most blasters right? Sitting there activating a power while the mobs come into melee range, do you guys play blasters solo? That's great, we get accuracy, I just hope that this isn't what you consider a balancing factor of any kind. This may be great for a defender but for a blaster the bonus accuracy is chump change when it comes to a secondary effect. Actually, as a defender I find that I still have to slot accuracy anyway on teams since I never know if the team I am on is fighting +3 mobs or if they are fighting even level mobs.

So, your great accuracy boost in the Archery set is nothing to laud in my opinion and it for damned sure does not even begin to address some of the problems mentioned with archery.

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I can calculate SR's mitigation numbers a million ways to Sunday, but those are "just numbers" - I am overlooking "the big picture" and "how the set actually plays" which is what is really important.


So the archers come out and say the set doesn't play right. Geko's response: precise accuracy numbers for the set.


I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry...

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We checked a change in so that Chillling Embrace will NOW be:

-.32 to Recharge
-.14 to Damage

I'll post tomorrow explaining these numbers...



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So States always does what he says?.....um where is the explanation?....lol

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Its still today. It isn't tomorrow yet.

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oh, he only SAID it would happen.

I'll believe it when I see it. And then when it hasn't been changed back in the 12 months following it. And then I'll start to not believe it again, just in preparedness.

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When Statesman or anyone else says we're going to be buffed, nerfed, or painted polkadots, you should be skeptical: all those things are apparently subject to interpretation.

However, its generally been the case that when Statesman or the devs in general state a very specific change like this, it generally happens. I'm more inclined to believe that if a specific announced change doesn't occur in precisely the way described, that's a backend error on their part, or sometimes an additional overlapping change they just forgot to tell us about, and not something especially nefarious. Its still not a Good Thing for the devs to ever announce something specific and not have that specific thing happen precisely as announced without followup, because that's misleading, but I don't think its deliberately so on their part.

Its also the case that sometimes, I honestly don't think they know the full ramifications of their numbers, no matter how many excel sheets they compile. Sometimes very small changes in numbers interact in non-intuitive ways, and its clear sometimes they make intuition-based errors. Statesman seemed genuinely surprised that the net effect of the changes was a nerf: a numbers-person wouldn't make that error, and someone who knew they weren't a numbers person but ****** checked numbers wouldn't make that error. Someone who sets things by "feel" would.

Its not really an understandable error (there are no understandable errors that are avoidable), but its at least an honest one.

[If I'm understanding the numbers correctly, the original debuff effectively reduced incoming damage to 60% of the original value. The change Statesman *thought* was made (-.32/-.1) would have reduced incoming damage to 61.2% of original - a tiny nerf. The *actual* change reduced damage to 63.24% of original - a significant nerf. The proposed checked change reduces net damage to 58.48% of original, a slight buff. If I understand correctly: recharge is not my field of expertise]

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Polite posts, common sense, and thousands of emails have got us no where. The "only if Statesman says you're having fun or not having fun" way seems to prevail. Which is like having someone tell me I REALLY like eating spicy food no matter how much I'm crying, spitting it out, and simply saying "I do not like Spicey food!" Of course none of this could possibly mean I REALLY DO NOT LIKE spicey food.

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Nobody likes boring food. If your eyes are watering, its burning your tongue, and you're ejecting it from your mouth at high speed, that just means you're having a more active eating experience. You get the same amount of calories, but at a significantly higher entertainment level.

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Eating while possessed, Linda Blair style, also satisfies these requirements. I'm sure we can all agree that this is an excellent dining experience. Think ambiance...

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Lets not forget the other rules at Cafe Statesman:

1. All our meals are served family-style, but if you come alone, we'll still seat you.

2. If you are alone, may I recommend the appetizer menu.

3. If you want to try the main courses, I suggest you sit over there with those folks and share.

4. No? Well, good luck then, but we don't do doggie bags; if you can't finish it, you can't take it home either.

5. Nope, sorry, you can't order that: serves four or more.

6. Yes, in fact that soup is supposed to be eaten with a fork. It should take about an hour, which gives us enough time to serve the salad.

7. Its supposed to be that spicy, stop asking.

8. No, that dish doesn't have chicken. The last time you were here that dish had chicken? Well, it has eggplant today. The dish doesn't actually say "guaranteed to contain chicken" does it?

9. I'm sorry, you're still eating that soup too quickly. Gonna have to take that fork away. Here's some chopsticks.

10. Put the bowl down.

11. Here's your mussels. Eggplant? Heck, a few minutes ago you were complaining it didn't have chicken.

12. Eat it, its good for you. Well, I like them anyway.

13. Would you like dessert? Shame we don't have any. Would you like to try the soup again?


I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Kinda.

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It's not that easy though, as everything would have to be rebalanced to take into account the new changes.


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This presumes that it was the intent of the devs for the powers pools and other defenses to *not stack* in the ways they currently are not. If, in fact, it was the intent of the devs that they ought to stack, as it appear to be the case (given the ad hoc changes they are making), then in fact no real rebalancing of defense numbers would be necessary.

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As for changing the way defense works...eek. That's not really an option. There's simply too many things that would break...It's just not do-able.

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It was changed before.

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And look what happened...

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Right, my point is that history shows its not hard to change, so I don't buy what Statesman is trying to sell in that statement.

Its simple. A hose on your car's engine spring a leak, do you patch it with a band-aid and forget it ever happend? Or do you replace the hose?

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But your assuming that this one change will be the only fix ever done for it. Personally, I'd patch the hose with a band-aid long enough for me to actually get a chance to replace the hose. And while it may not certainly be hard to change, it IS hard to change and do it *RIGHT*.

Plus, people are already upset because they "had" to make changes for I4 and I5. If the Dev team went and completly reworked defense, do you honestly think people are going to be happy about having to change their characters again?

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I don't think Cireus is referring to the I5 Global Defense changes when he talks about history: none of those changes actually changed the mechanics of defense. In fact, he's probably referring to the damage-typed stacking issues from a good while ago. Those changes *did* change the actual mechanics of defense.

I think Circeus is suggesting - and I'll state it directly - that when the devs see a major problem that gives too much power to the players they will spare no expense in changing things: no one balanced the books on expense in adding travel speed suppresion, stealth defense suppression, damage-type stack exclusions, AoE target restrictions, or unenhanceable regeneration.

Look at that list carefully, and see what that says about the following assertions:

"Its too difficult to change the way core powers function, how defense operates, how defense stacks, how attack powers function, or how enhancements work. Its simply too much work."

The current stacking problems are problems that generally go the other way: now, the issue is that players won't benefit as much as they ought to. In my personal opinion, such problems appear to be considered of much lower priority, because they can be hand-waved away as "well, better more difficult than we wanted, than less."

The question is not a question of how much effort it will take, but rather what the priorities are in allocating resources. It was obviously a very high priority to make sure there wasn't an odd corner case on damage-typed defenses stacking, even though it didn't affect all that many players overall. Look at how many players are going to be affected by all the new corner cases being created by the new ad hoc changes: the number is approaching all defense wielders and buffers.

And the more I think about it, the more corner cases I find. Is it going to be worth it to patch them all with bandaids, relative to changing base mechanics? Or more likely, will some be hand-waved away as insufficently important to fix?

I'll start the ball rolling right now: I already mentioned this in another thread, so I might as well do so here: power pool defenses have 2.5% base defense and protect against melee/ranged. SR passives give 5% defense to melee or ranged, which means most power pool defenses provide identical protection, in a slot-efficiency sense, to both melee and ranged passives. Hover+combat jumping is equal to dodge+agile. Now, that was balanced against the fact that dodge+agile were passives with no end drain, while the power pools were toggles. But now, hover+CJ now provides superior protection to dodge+agile: because hover+CJ now provide AoE defense to smash/lethal, which is most of the AoE damage in the game prior to the levels at which you can take lucky/evasion. Hmm, a blaster with hover has better AoE protection than an SR scrapper prior to level 28 if the SR scrapper doesn't go to power pools. Someone with weave has better AoE protection than an SR scrapper even if the SR takes a power pool defense, unless its also weave. Hmm...weave. Weave offers not bad defense against melee/ranged, and smash/lethal. That means the only attacks weave is *not* good against are elemental, energy, psi, and toxic AoE - actually, to be specific, AoE attacks that have only energy/elemental/toxic/psi damage. If the attack has a component of smash/lethal, weave still works (weave works against fireball, for example). I don't explicitly mind weave being that good (its a consequence of how the devs are approaching the problem), but I might mind the fact that its better protection than any of the SR passives, in slot efficiency and attack coverage.

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Once again, proof that empirical data collected through in game testing and concise, polite posts are the best way to bring these things to a devs attention.

Good job.

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Polite posts, common sense, and thousands of emails have got us no where. The "only if Statesman says you're having fun or not having fun" way seems to prevail. Which is like having someone tell me I REALLY like eating spicy food no matter how much I'm crying, spitting it out, and simply saying "I do not like Spicey food!" Of course none of this could possibly mean I REALLY DO NOT LIKE spicey food.

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Nobody likes boring food. If your eyes are watering, its burning your tongue, and you're ejecting it from your mouth at high speed, that just means you're having a more active eating experience. You get the same amount of calories, but at a significantly higher entertainment level.

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Also, be clear that you're talking about Invuln scrappers here. Regen never could tank on the level of a tanker - it could handle infinite damage below a certain threshold, but invuln and stone tankers could handle much more than that due to capped resists, more hit points, and even moderate health regen (higher for stone than invuln).


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Yeah, specifically I was thinking about spines/invuln (which had a nice damage aura to stack on top of the invincibility taunt aura) as a great herder, and DM/invuln (which has a nice set of tools including some -acc and a self heal to compensate for the lower health of scrappers to tanks) as a good stand-there-and-take-it scrapper (not that it couldn't herd as well). Potentially, the net damage-taking capability of DM/invuln (when scrappers had 90% resists) was as good as any invuln/* tank, given siphon life. When invincibility was high, both DM/invuln and invuln/* could potentially floor villains (which means the power was equal regardless of numbers), both capped out the same on resists (equal), and invuln/* had 40% more health against DM's periodic self-heal (tough call).

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The falloff for the effect of Chilling Embrace's Recharge and Damage Debuff works like this: the effect (after Enhancements) is multiplied according to this table

0 1.0
+1 .9
+2 .8
+3 .65
+4 .48


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I take it this is still the case, right?


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I hope it is: its the purple patch in action:

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Foes your level have not changed. You have a 75% chance to hit and your powers are 100% effective.
Foes 1 level above you - No Change. You have a 68% chance to hit and your powers are 90% effective.
Foes 2 levels above you - No Change. You have a 61% chance to hit and your powers are 80% effective.
Foes 3 levels above you - You have a 55% chance to hit and your powers are 65% effective.
Foes 4 levels above you - You have a 48% chance to hit and your powers are 48% effective.
Foes 5 levels above you - You have a 41% chance to hit and your powers are 30% effective.
Foes 6 levels above you - You have a 34% chance to hit and your powers are 15% effective.
Foes 7 levels above you - You have a 25% chance to hit and your powers are 8% effective.
Foes 8 levels above you - You have an 11% chance to hit and your powers are 5% effective.
Foes 9 levels above you - You have a 6% chance to hit and your powers are 4% effective.
Foes 10 levels above you - You have a 5% chance to hit and your powers are 3% effective.
Foes 11 levels above you - You have a 5% chance to hit and your powers are 2% effective.
Foes 12+ levels above you - You have a 5% chance to hit and your powers are 1% effective.


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If it wasn't, I'd be confused.

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And, scrappers could not tank as well as tankers. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. That was never true, is not true, and never will be true. A completely reasonable argument could be made that they could tank well enough, and that I'll grant you.


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I think, back in the good ol' days, scrappers could tank sufficiently efficiently, that the only thing that could bring some of them down was the purple patch, and the purple patch is exponential in effect. The problem was that sometimes, the difference in efficiency between a really well-built scrapper and a really well-built tank went so high up the scale, that in effect the difference between the two was lower than the difference in difficulty between notches in the purple patch. In effect (and with made up numbers) it was entirely possible to have a scrapper and a tanker such that both could tank +8s, but neither could tank +9s - something like that.

Thus - just for some extreme cases - a scrapper might not be able to tank as well as a true tanker, but there were very few actual situations that existed where the difference between that scrapper and that tank was discernable. A distinction without a difference, as it were.

Mind you, I'm all for precision in language, especially when discussing more sensitive topics. Technically, scrappers as a group could never tank with the same efficiency as tankers as a group. However, there were many cases where scrappers could survive the tanking role to the same degree as tankers for all game situations ever encountered or were likely to be encountered. Those are subtly different statements, which probably helps perpetuates this argument.

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No, I believe Statesman is saying that all power pool defenses, in parallel with providing melee/ranged defense, will also be providing smash/lethal defense.

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Yep. That's what it meant.

As for changing the way defense works...eek. That's not really an option. There's simply too many things that would break...It's just not do-able.

As for why only S/L? Because in these powers, that simply made sense - and because of the prevalence of S/L damage throughout the game.

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I don't think this suggestion really makes drastic changes to the way defense works internally, and its comparable to the changes made to fix damage-typed defense stacking in the first place, although there's no way I could ever really prove it one way or another. But its very simple conceptually, and I think most people would understand what is going on a little easier: every defense you own that *applies* to a given attack *actually works* with the one exception being two defenses from the same power set and owned by the same player. The "same player" exception already exists: you can't stack the same power buff on the same target. An extension is that you cannot use both DS and IS from the same defender on the same attack - they were meant to be "side-by-side" and not "stacked" defenses.

Look at it from the point of view of buffs. If someone flips on hover, should they get the benefit of the "buff?" The answer should always be "yes." If an FF defender hits you with DS, should you get the benefit? Yes. If an FF defender hits you with two DSs, should you get the benefit twice? No. If an FF defender hits you with DS and IS, should you get the benefit twice against a single attack? Still No. But if one FF defender hits you with DS, and another one hits you with IS, should they stack against a single energy/smash attack? Yes, because the second defender's buff shouldn't be "penalized" by the presence of the first one.

Of a more critical nature is the fact that you may end up making a lot of little ad hoc fixes to address lots of potential corner-cases that are bound to come up, and that has the "cost" of making things very complex for people to attempt to understand. Its really that cost that should be factored in when thinking about how hard it will be to fix, or work around, specific problems.

*I* understand it just fine. I even "get" why you limited power pools to smash/lethal (the thought was: power pools work against the more common attacks: melee/range and smash/lethal, and not the more exotic ones: AoE, and elemental/energy/psi). But I am not a good example of the limits of how far defense complexity should be stretched.

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Ok. First, why only S/L?

Second, if someone punches my ice tank with a dual-typed attack, say, energy-smashing damage, is hover going to help to its full defense bonus? Half? Greater defense still applies?


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Assuming nothing has changed in the defense logic, the way it works now when a defense with smash/lethal is attacked by an attack with smash/energy damage, the full value of the smash/lethal defense is used, not only a portion.

The logic is a bit torturous, but the basic conceptual reasoning for why this occurs is this: many times, defense is "separated at birth." Deflection Shield and Insulation shield (prior to the melee/ranged recent changes) offered smash/lethal (DS) and fire/cold/energy/negative defense (IS). The intent of the devs was that they expected an FF bubbler to one day have both bubbles: the two bubbles were supposed to "combine" into a shield offering full defense to smash/lethal/fire/cold/energy/negative. They then split a piece (s/l) into one shield (DS) and the remaining piece (f/c/e/n) into the other shield (IS). Those two shields were meant to be, for lack of a better way of putting it, "side by side defenses" not "overlapping defenses."

Now, attacks that aren't broken up along the same lines create confusion: energy blast attacks have smash/energy typing. Its a little ambiguous conceptually what is supposed to happen, but the devs have declared their notion of the "correct" behavior when they fixed up damage-typed defenses a while ago (it was bugged before). An attack with smash/energy "interacts" with (damage) typed defenses as if stopping either damage component stops the entire attack. So if you have smashing defense, and energy defense, the *greater of the two* is used to determine if you are hit or not, and if you aren't hit, the entire attack misses.

To answer your question: hover is going to stack with Frozen Armor for all of its value.

In more detail, if you have frozen armor (smash/lethal defense) and glacial armor (energy/negative defense), and hover (melee/ranged/smash/lethal) and you are hit with an energy blast (smash/energy damage, ranged attack), then:

You will have FA + Hover smashing defense
You will have GA energy defense
You will have Hover ranged defense

Obviously, FA+Hover is always greater than Hover alone, so it comes down to the greater of FA+Hover and GA.


Now, if you are attacked with an electric blast (energy damage, ranged attack), then:

You'll have Hover ranged defense
You'll have GA energy defense

You get to have the greater of those two.

Au Revior, Gil.

Sigh, I never got the chance to discuss that idea I had for an investigative report on "why the villains of Paragon City appear to all be deadeyes" but good luck in your new adventures.