Arcanaville

Responding generally:

1. I doubt Positron ever said proliferation was done. If he did, I suspect he was drunk at the time.

2. I doubt proliferation sells the game or made a significant impact to the sales of any expansion. Its a nice to have, and its one component among many that obviously influences sales by some amount, but I doubt its specific benefit would be measurable.

3. I don't think its ever the case that a powerset is "too powerful for proliferation." Presume that *every* powerset is reviewed to ensure it is appropriate for the archetype it is being ported to. So no powerset is too powerful, because every set can be tweaked to not be too powerful. By the same token, however, no powerset is automatically immune from being reviewed and possibly tweaked. Some sets are ported without significant tweaking, or any tweaking. But no set is ported on the assumption that its fine as is and doesn't need tweaking. In fact, at the beginning of time most of the Blaster Manipulation power group was created by proliferation: proliferating the melee powersets into manipulation powersets, sometimes with radical alterations.

4. Some sets would require so much change, or alternatively the devs want to make sufficient changes to support proliferation, that instead they look to make analogs rather than proliferation. Empathy and Pain, for example. When that happens, few things are absolutely certain but don't hold your breath waiting for the analog set to be proliferated.

I was asked by The_Masque to write a basic tutorial on Diminishing Returns for PvP designed to be useful to the Boot Camp. Unfortunately, there's no really easy way to explain or calculate DR in PvP, so while I tried to simplify as much as possible, even to understand the basics requires a crash course in game mechanics. Some of you might know this stuff, and some of you probably don't, so the article begins with some basic information on how the game actually calculates what powers do. If you know the difference between Cur and Abs, between Str and Res, and know how they work, you can probably skip that stuff, but the rules for PvP are embedded in that discussion (highlighted) so I would recommend skimming it regardless.

For those that want it, I include the formula for DR. For those that want to know what the DR values for a particular scenario will be but don't want to calculate them, I include a link to a google spreadsheet with all the DR values for all attributes that you can just plug numbers into. For those that don't even want to do that and just want some rules of thumb, I have tables at the end for some of the more common attributes PvPers are likely to be concerned about with ranges of values.

I'll try to monitor the thread for questions, but if anyone has a question and I fail to respond to the thread, you can always PM me and I'll try to respond when I can. And of course feedback on how to improve the guide in a way that would make it more useful to a general audience would be useful as well: if people think this would be useful outside of the Boot Camp, I'll consider tweaking it and posting it as a general guide.



First, some background. All entities in City of Heroes have properties called Attributes. These are things like melee defense, smashing (damage), endurance. Each attribute has a set of Aspects. These are things like its value, strength, and resistance associated with it. Its value is obvious. Strength refers to how strong the entity is when using powers that affect that attribute. So if your Smashing Strength is 1.5 (150%), any attack you use that deals smashing damage will hit 1.5x as hard as its base value. Resistance refers to how strong the entity resists anyone trying to change that attribute. So if you have 50% Smashing Resistance, anyone trying to deal smashing damage to you will have that damage reduced by 50%.

All powers have what the game calls Attribmods and players call "effects." Each power effect affects one attribute. When Build Up buffs "damage" it actually buffs the strength of all damage types: Smashing, Lethal, Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative, Toxic, and Psionic. It has eight separate individual effects each of which buffs the strength of one of those attributes (and one that buffs tohit).

When a power tries to change an actual value of an attribute, it has two basic ways to do that. It can do what is called a "Cur" change, and it can do an "Abs" change. "Cur" changes are relative percentage changes. When a power tries to change Endurance with a Cur -0.5, it is reducing the Endurance of that target by 50%. Abs changes are Absolute in points. When a power tries to change Endurance with an Abs -0.5, it is reducing the Endurance of that target by 0.5 *points*. Note the difference. Most damage is done in Abs: attacks deal a specific number of points of damage. Many debuffs of actual values are Cur: they deal a relative change.

There are other kinds of changes. Max changes buff the maximum a value can be. Dull Pain buffs the Max of health for example.

Rule Number One: PvP Diminishing Returns affects all Cur, Str, and Res effects. It does not affect Abs, or any other kinds of effects.


When a player uses a power, the game does this *for each attribmod the power has* (i.e. for each individual effect separately).

1. The game calculates all strength buffs and debuffs for the attribute in question.
2. If the attribmod allows strength mods, the game applies them to increase or reduce the effect.
3. If the attribmod is resistable, the game applies the appropriate resistance of the target to reduce (or increase) the effect.

Rule Number Two: PvP DR works on Cur, Str, and Res individually, but it only works on totals for each.


Example One:

You have +95% damage enhancement in an attack that does base 100 points of damage, and you have +80% damage buff from build up, the game totals them all up to get +175% damage. That is +1.75. It then applies DR to that value. For damage, that would be reduced to +1.28, or +128% damage. The attack is then magnified from its base damage to 2.28x normal, or 228 damage. That's an Abs, which is unaffected by DR, so that's the end: the attack does 228 damage.

Example Two:

A Scrapper has a defensive power that buffs melee defense by 10%. It is slotted with +56% enhancement, and you also have an invention bonus of +3% melee defense. The game needs to calculate the effect of the first power by calculating the effect of DR on its strength buffs. +56% or 0.56 is reduced to 0.51, and the power then does 10% * 1.51 = 15.1%. That is a Cur buff. The invention bonus adds +3% Cur buff for a total of 18.1% or 0.181. The *total* Cur buff on the Melee_Attack attribute is then the DR value of 0.181, or about 16%.

Example Three:

A Blaster has Health slotted with +95% enhancement, but is also under a -50% regeneration debuff. The strength buff is reduced from +95% to +80%. Health is a player self buff, and its a Cur. That makes the effect of Health +40% * 1.8, or +72% Cur. But the Blaster is also under a -50% debuff which is also (probably) a Cur. So the net is +22%. That is reduced to about +22% (negligable loss). Note: the buff and the debuff are summed and then DR is applied. As far as the game is concerned, those are both just attribmods: both buffs, just one negative. The game does not apply DR to buffs and debuffs individually. It only affects totals.


Rule Number Three: PvP DR is set individually per archetype, although most attributes work the same for most archetypes.

Nearly all Strength buffs obey the same DR curves for all archetypes. Most Resistance buffs obey the same DR curves with the exception of actual damage resistance. There are five different Resistance curves. Masterminds have the harshest, then the other squishies (Blasters, Controllers, Defenders, Corruptors, and Dominators), then HEATs and VEATs, then tankers, then the non-tanker melee (Scrappers, Brutes, Stalkers). For reference a 75% damage reistance buff would be DR reduced to 30% for MMs, 40% for the other squishes, 47% for EATs, 49% for Tankers, and 55% for the other melee archetypes. Most Cur DR curves are also similar, with the big exception being Cur defense buffs. There are three classes of Cur defense curves: the melee+VEAT curves, the HEAT curves, and the everyone else curves. For reference, a +40% defense buff is 18% for most classes, 26% for HEATs, and 30% for melee and VEATs.


To really apply DR, you need to know what powers actually do, so you know whether something is a Str, Cur, or Res buff - or none of the above. Here are the basics:

1. Essentially all standard enhancements are Strength buffs.
2. Any power that buffs you in such a way that another power gets stronger is a strength buff. Note the trick here: Build up buffs damage powers: the damage part is a Strength buff. But the tohit part just increases to hit, it doesn't, say, boost the effect of tactics. Its actually a Cur buff.
3. Self buffs that do not buff other powers, but buff the player directly are almost always Cur buffs (except for things like Max buffs).
4. Damage is basicaly always Abs (unaffected by DR directly - although damage Strength buffs are).
5. Heals are Abs.


Special case: Status protection and mez, including Knockback

Almost all power effects have two properties: a magnitude and a duration. Damage has a magnitude, but it typically does not have a duration - it has duration zero. Damage with a duration is not a DoT: damage with a duration is a continuously firing damage at the maximum speed the server can calculate damage - about eight times a second. Damage with a duration is generally a bug. Mez, on the other hand, tends to have meaningful magnitude and duration. Its important to note here that only *one* of those two properties can be changed for each effect per power. When you slot a hold for hold enhancement, the hold's duration gets longer. Its magnitude does not get higher. That's because all holds are designed so that the hold effect is *tagged* to be "Duration type." That means strength buffs affect duration, not magnitude. This is a binary switch: it can be set to "Magnitude" or "Duration" but not both. All effects in all powers must obey this rule: one property is frozen static, and one can theoretically be changed by buffs and debuffs, enhancements and other powers.

KB (and KU) are different from most mezzes. They are not designed to have duration, and buffs don't boost duration, they boost Magnitude. So while most holds are Duration-type effects, KB is a Magnitude-type effect. Buffing KB buffs its Magnitude. And KB is a Cur effect like most Mez and like most Mez protection.

Interesting note: you do not need to factor DR into mez magnitude to determine if something is mezzed. You only need to factor in mez strength in the attacker's mez power itself. The reason: Rule Two. DR only affects totals. If you have a mez protection power that is reducing Hold by mag 10, and and you have an incoming set of holds that are mag 9, the total is -10 + 9 = -1. DR might reduce that, but it will still be negative, which means you are still not mezzed. If the incoming hold total is +12, then the total is -10 + 12 = 2, and you're mezzed. DR might reduce the 2 to a lower value, but it will still be greater than zero. The only thing you have to factor in is if the attacker has mez strength capable of increasing the magnitude of the mez. The answer for most mezzes is usually "no." Enhancement and other buffs make holds last longer, not get higher mag. But the exception is KB: buffing a KB will buff its magnitude, so you do have to factor in KB strength into the attacker to determin the attacker's net KB, before adding to the target's KB magnitude protection.




For the mathematically inclined, here's the formula:

Final Value = Original Value * (1 - ABS(ATAN(A * Original Value) * 2/pi * B))
A and B are the tuning parameters set per attribute, per aspect, per archetype. To find the values for A and B, see the DR calculation sheet at this link: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?...thkey=CPO10LgM

Use the two pulldowns to pick archetype and attribute, then enter values in the Normal value column for Strength, Cur, or Res. The calculated values show to the right. For reference, at the far right the sheet displays the A and B values for that attribute, that aspect, for the selected archetype.


For the mathematically disinclined, here's some tables with precalculated values. You can interpolate between values to get an estimate for other values:

Most Strength buffs including damage: