Arcanaville

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Thanks everyone, its a great honor and privilege to be featured in a comic

Now if I can get the dev team to make a statue of me I will have everything a hero could ask for

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Good news: the devs are willing to make a statue of you in Atlas Park.

Bad news: the devs will add 0.00047% of the statue height for each Hellion boss you defeat in Atlas Park.

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how hard would it be to do a 'mezzability/debuffability' comparision? Many people often contend (as you well know) that SR makes up for lagging behind in damage mitigation by being more resistant (er, that is to say better Defended) to mezzes and debuffs.

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Not easy, because mez protection has thresholds. Below a certain level of mez, no scrapper is affected by mez at all. Above a certain level, they are affected quite a lot.

Debuffs in general are a separate thing, but its hard to separate debuffs into defense debuffs, and all other debuffs, because of the high frequency of defense debuffs. I know what it "feels" like playing all the sets: it feels like exempting defense debuffs, SR is the hardiest, and Invuln is the least hardy, over all, to the full spectrum of debuffing and other status besides hard mez. Mostly because of the effects of endurance drain, which are probably the single most problematic non-damage effect for a scrapper. SR tends to avoid them, regen tends to recover from them, and DA tends to stun/fear everything in sight before they are applied.


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Based on your many and frequent conversations with the Devs, what proportion of powers design decisions were made with an eye toward 'comic-bookyness' as opposed to math balance? The game seems to be an interesting amalgam of the two to me. That's not necessarily a bad thing, IMHO...

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I've pieced together bits and pieces of this, and based on what I know, the way things are/were designed is that there is a concept design phase that is all fun/appearance/experience, and then there is a numerical design phase that is all numbers.

Basically, we have a fire blast set because the devs wanted us to be able to play with fire. Fireball looks the way it looks because the animators thought it looked cool. It does the damage it does because geko said so.

I *don't* think it does high damage because they wanted fire to be high damage as a concept. I think the concept of powers, and the numbers of powers, did not really get simultaeously considered like that in the general case. One noteworthy exception: animators have some say in how long it takes to animate, and therefore activate and root a power, which is one of the few ways in which "concept" collides with function in powers design. You see this most obviously in how both TA and Claws were handled as they were changed.


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Finally: I'd like to catch more of your thoughts about the 'good enoughyness' of the various sets compared to what you fight at level 50. It might not matter (as much) that they are 'unbalanced' if they are all demonstrably in the right spot compared to what you fight in a Heroic mission (from a design perspective). Should everyone be below, but very close to, the '3 +3 minions' line in order for the game to be properly challenging in your opinion, or should everyone be there or above?

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I think there is a subtle misconception here. I think that when people quote the three-minions rule, or the 3/+3 rule, they are slightly misinterpreting what the devs are saying. The game engine has some spawning rules for how many, and which, critters to spawn at a particular spawn point either outdoors or in an instanced mission. The most simple way of expressing that spawn rule is "one player = three minions" but that isn't necessarily a direct balance rule. Its a somewhat more vague one, because those spawn points don't necessarily always spawn three even minions, obviously. Really, its a bit more abstract than that: a player is worth three points, say, and an even minion is worth 1. A player is about equal to three minions. An LT might be worth 1.5 points, say (making up numbers here), so a player might also be approximately equal to one minion and one LT (2.5 vs 3). The rule is partially an expression of intent on the part of the devs, and partially an expression of hope.

The game is *designed* to throw three even minion-equivalents at each player. In that sense, the game is "balanced" around 1 player = 3 minions. But is it "balanced" in the sense that its right? That's the *hope*: that players, on average, are about as powerful as necessary to make defeating three even minions, or anything else the game decides to spawn of comparable strength, something that is not impossible, not trivial, but something of a challenge.

They *know* that is false in many cases, specifically at least for most damage dealers in the late game. There, they have acknowledged that a single player is more of a match for three +3 minions, in the same sense they were shooting for balance at 3 even minions, which is to say that a single high level player (fully enhanced with SOs) probably has the same difficulty defeating three +3 minions as they wanted them to have defeating 3 even minions, subjectively.

This means the game is "balanced" around 1 player = 3 even minions in the sense that that is what the game throws at us, nothing more or less. The game is "balanced" around 1 player = 3 +3 minions in the sense that the devs believe that the average difficulty level that the average high level player has in dispatching 3 +3 minions is, in their opinion, what the average player should see, on average, all the time throughout the game.

Now: are they right? That depends. One problem with all balance metrics like this is that CoH supports a wide range of offensive ability, even for reasonable builds and reasonable build decisions. That wide range means any balance point you pick will have reasonable players existing very far away from that point. So the challenge the devs have is to make sure that the game is challenging enough for people who want it to be, while not making it so difficult that some archetypes are unable to solo heroic missions, which is one of their stated design goals of the game.

Given that, I think the only real compromize given how the game currently works is to make the purple patch work for them: design the archetypes so that the low end can solo heroic missions spawning 3xEven minions, and allow characters at the higher end of the offensive curve to face at least +3s in invincible missions.

There will *still* be characters that fall outside that range in both directions, but at least the vast majority of characters will live above the 3 even minion line and not extraordinarily above the 3 +3 minion line (remember: being balanced around 3 +3s doesn't mean they have a 50/50 chance of killing you, just that they are sufficiently difficult to make you work for that defeat, and possibly chisel you down a bit before the next fight against three +3 minions).


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And yet more finally: what should SR be better at than everyone else if it lags in damage mitigation? Should it an Invulnerability be 'brought even' with DM in some category? Or all they already there, all things considered (end burn, mez avoidance, etc). I'm thinking that the '3 minute/30 second/ chunks is what concerns us here.

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That's probably the $64,000 question. The obvious answer is "status effect avoidance" but its already intrinsicly better at that, and yet I'm not convinced its *sufficiently* strong at that to be the balancing thing, because the devs have places *many* such balancers on top of defense: autohit debuffs, autohit damage effects, defense debuffing, tohit buffing, etc.

The other three scrapper sets have a very obvious design direction, and they very obviously implement that design direction to a high degree. Regen is all about downtime: health regeneration downtime and endurance downtime. Invuln is basically a smash/lethal "physical damage" king, in multiple ways, DA is basically all about "dark" PBAoE effects (stun, damage, fear, heal).

SR avoids status, but that really isn't the same strong statement it used to be in the past. In the days of perma-elude level defenses, SR was basically untouchable, except for the lucky hit, and if the lucky hit was hard enough, you could be dead in seconds (facing +5s and up ensured those hits were hard). Now, things are much less dramatic: SR is still hit, and often enough that it isn't, for example, sapper-immune like it used to be. Its just less sapper-prone.

It should have something, and its even worth *losing* some of what it has, to go after something really good. I have some ideas on what that should be: I'll post them in a follow up post.

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Have you ever considered similar comparisons between Stone, Electric, Energy, Fire and Ice defense sets, as well as Ninjitsu, using the same base HP and res cap as Scrappers?

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Yes. I have some thoughts on how I might do that a little differently than this behemoth, but I currently lack the time to do it properly.

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What many will fail to realize is the tools that you've given us in this writing. Through it, you(ie the reader) can actually use the formulas and derive the effect of unique slotting and power pools.

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An explicitly stated purpose to the way the analysis was written was to show how the calculations actually work, and the theory behind them, so that number-crunchers could take the calculations and use them for their own purposes. Showing the final numbers only would have been much shorter, but much less useful.

Its also supposed to provide some cover for people wanting to use similar methodologies, since this covers in large detail the degree to which you can (and sometimes cannot) trust the numbers to reflect reality. That's actually the entire purpose to the second half of the analysis, and its not something many people will have any inclination to replicate.

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I'd suggest you reread what I wrote although it really does not matter to me even a trifle whether or not you understand.

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You might want to consider at least making your suggestions understandable by humans, on the assumption you want at least one person, especially a dev, say, to read it.

It took me quite a while to figure out with reasonable certainty that what you are attempting to suggest is adding skills that represent different types of abilities, each of which is capable of influencing what we consider the raw attributes of the game, like base damage, and base tohit, and accuracy. And on top of that, you want there to be more independent possibilities of combinations of attributes, and you think that's achievable if the attributes ranged over a larger set of values: instead of zero to one hundred percent, say, zero to one hundred thousand milli-percents.

The problem is that the first part buys us nothing, since the actual powers in the game do that for the most part, to the extent that is generally desirable. And the second part doesn't make sense, because its based on a false assumption: that the fact that the game restricts numbers to between one and one hundred, there are only one hundred possibilities. In fact, probability is mathematically restricted to being between zero and one, and the zero to one hundred percent scale is just a way of expressing that with more convenient numbers. Increasing the size of the numbers doesn't actually change the range of possibilities, which is all possible values from zero to one, within the limits of the game engine's precision (which is at least hundredths of a percent, or one part in ten thousand).


I can tell you that if it takes me more than about sixty seconds to figure out what you're trying to say, its unlikely anyone else is going to spend the time to figure it out, including the devs.

Recursive irony story:

I ran into a woman I hadn't seen in a very long time, and we got to chatting about this and that, when I mention I play this game. She then mentions that she is a *very* fanatical WoW player. I know I shouldn't think this, but I'm still struggling with the concept of a middle aged mother leading WoW raids at four in the morning, when she mentions to me that she was one of the midnight shoppers to buy the WoW expansion that went on sale, and she just *couldn't* get over the ~90 year old man waiting in line ahead of her, just dying to get his level 70 smack-down.

I think it says something both good and yet scary about the videogame marketplace that there is no segment of the population that isn't playing something, and yet its happened so fast that everyone is still surprised to hear who *else* is gaming, especially online.

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Reasons why devs might be silent on an issue:
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3) The answer is already being given by a lot of players already
4) The answer is obvious (and thus will eventually be given out by a lot of players, see #3).

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Hold up there. It might seem obvious to you, but you realize you're leaving yourself wide open for a, "If the developers don't address it, it must be true" clause here, y'know. Might want to exert a little more effort here to perform a bit of rumor control.

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We're posting on the internet - since when has rumor control ever been a factor?

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It should be pointed out that players say a LOT of things, and say them a lot. It's a little hard to pick what answer is "being given by the players" when they are giving conflicting answers. So trying to infer developer standing from a bunch of people posting their opinion is just bad practice.

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It helps eliminate confusion if you just believe everything I say.

Even when I'm wrong, you still won't be confused.

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Reasons why devs might be silent on an issue:

1) We didn't see the issue. There are a lot of threads out there.
2) We are in the middle of looking at an issue, and saying anything at the time might be invalidated. Even something like "we are looking into it" can be read as "we are going to change it" if we look at it and find it to be fine, we would get blasted for not changing it when we said we would.
3) The answer is already being given by a lot of players already
4) The answer is obvious (and thus will eventually be given out by a lot of players, see #3).
5) It involves talking about stuff we can't/shouldn't be talking about.
6) The question is a "when" question. We rarely answer these, because even when we put disclaimers on it, our answer becomes taken as gospel, and if we fail to deliver, we look bad.

There's a secret 7th reason that I am not going to give you because of reason #7.

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7) Busy buying up the supply of Masterwork Weapons and taking bets on the highest bid on them for the day.

8) Currently trying to convince Castle that radiation blast needs a Mag 100 hold just like Ghost Widow's.

9) Designing nineteen more missions to add to my task force.

10) Calculating how much my atomic blast needs to be boosted to be able to one-shot Statesman.

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Also I would like to see one successful raid on each side on each server before I hear people saying it's fine and beatable. Test is far from Live in quality of testing, player demographics on one server might be heavily Corruptor or some other AT compared to another so unlike test any one server might not have the magical mix that test did with it's access to all servers and all players...

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The test server did not beat him with "magic" combinations of characters. Players, maybe, but not characters.

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... the devs said that while adding toxic damage and toxic resistance was easy, adding a toxic_defense type ... would have been much more difficult.

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While I have no knowledge of the code whatsoever, this seems like a plausible excuse, and not just a way they decided to present it.

As attacking is probably the most common calculation that has to be done, I'd bet that they tried to optimize the bejeezus out of this code. It seems like no coincidence that if you group together the two damage types that have no associated defense, untyped and toxic (which originally was designed as untyped), you end up with 8 types:

smash, lethal, fire, cold, energy, negative, psi, untyped/toxic

If you can fit all these flags into a single byte, then you can use a bunch of bit-wise operators to do some math and comparisons. Not only are those operators computationally "cheap" to perform, but it becomes very easy to do more things in parallel.

One could add another bit for toxic, but then you'd need to use a 16-bit value instead and waste a lot of bits, probably also reducing the number of computations that can run in parallel.

The alternative would be to have a form of defense that applied to both the original untyped and the "new" toxic, but that may be unrealistic either because it could imply a significant Hamidon nerf, or because that bit was used to detect certain special cases (by taking intermediate computed values and byte-wise checking if they are equal or not equal to zero).


Then again, maybe they aren't pulling any tricks like this at all. My background is in chip design, and instinctively I feel that growing from 6->7, and 7->8 are cheap, while growing from 8->9 is very expensive; likewise with 16->17 and 32->33. I'm out of my element with software, so my instincts could be completely off base.

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Somehow, I get the impression that they aren't coding the engine in assembly, and in any case not many CPUs have packed 8-bit byte ops, so an eight bit status register would probably waste 24 bits in a normal 32 bit word most of the time.

Its probably a simpler thing like not wanting to tamper with the more complex parts of the code. The guy who originally wrote it might not even be there now: software development is like that.

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#2: I would love to know how you know all of this.

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You bother the devs for years, you pick up a thing or two.

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Everyone go back to whining...

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Hilarious.

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And since when does the whole game just adjust solely for SR Scrappers in PvP? Cause it's not like I can just run out and craft up 4 or 5 full sets of IO inventions right now to give every toon I have a 30% tohit buff. You all make it sound like it's something every single toon can easily and cheaply obtain. Well it ain't. And before someone utters "Focused Accuracy" one more time, I'll remind you it can't be obtained till LEVEL 41. That gives all you SR scrappers 40 levels of unfettered PvP playtime.

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My "unfettered PvP playtime" ends at level 8, when tactics technically becomes available.

You were not meant to have the tohit buffs: this is the correction of an error. And its not SR scrappers alone that were significantly and negatively affected by this error, it was SR scrappers and stalkers, Energy Aura stalkers and brutes, force field defenders, controllers, and masterminds, Ice tankers, stone tankers and brutes, pretty much anything that relies on defense for protection. They all have to be screwed so you can hit more often? I think not: drop your difficulty scaler and go hunt weaker prey, if having fair game impairs your abilities that much.


Listen up: the game *does* in fact get designed around SR scrappers. SR scrappers virtually *always* get *screwed* because of this. The devs placed positional defenses very high up on the set bonus ladder. Do you think that was so players wouldn't be able to stack them on combat jump? Do you think that was an accident? No: that was a specific decision to make it extremely difficult for SR to stack positional defenses.

Why are power pool powers weak? Because the devs are worried that defense sets, especially SR (and Ice) can stack them too high. They are very cogniscent of that, and make sure that SR scrappers have limits to the amount of defense they can buy, and how they can stack.

Do you think the devs don't know that high-order tohit buffs skewer defense sets, like SR, in PvP? They know: I know they know. But they let everyone keep them anyway. They could fix the problem tomorrow, but they've made the calculated decision to allow players to keep those powers, so that they continue to have the effect they have in PvE, and so that they continue to have the effect they have in PvP against all other non-defense oriented power sets. They *know* they are slanting the table against defense sets, like SR, but their calculus is that if SR scrappers have to die so the majority of players can feel good about themselves, so be it.

So if you're going to cry about losing a bunch of excessive tohit buffs you were never even supposed to have in the first place, because as far as you're concerned it doesn't matter how many defense set bodies you have to stack to get a good view of the game, well, all I can say is its a shame you're not going to get what you need; not while I'm around.

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When your base chance to hit is floored, accuracy does squat. You know this, I don't need to tell you this.

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Actually, if you're floored, accuracy *always* has an effect, tohit buffs don't unless they are high enough.

Take something with very high defense, like an Eluded scrapper in PvP, or maybe a MoGed PP in PvE. Stacking a small amount of tohit, something that might have a very dramatic effect on something very close to flooring you, on something that is deep-flooring you actually has zero effect. Accuracy always increases your chance to hit, right up to the tohit ceiling, by a proportional amount.

The proportional amount might not be as much as you want, but that's not the same thing as saying its worthless.

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Bypassing everyone's resistances and defenses is nothing more than a cheap trick -- not completely unexpected as the devs have been relying on cheap tricks since I2 and the creation of the post level 40 game.

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Let me see if I get this straight, because occasionally I get confused. You believe this, and you *also* believe this:

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Actually I was much more concerned with them changing set tohit buffs to accuracy buffs, essentially making those buffs useless.

All the +accuracy in the world isn't gonna help you against foes with defense and/or tohit debuffs. This was the sole opportunity for toons without access to a persistent tohit buff to actually be able to reasonably fight these foes. Tanks and Scrappers can get Focused Accuracy at level 41, Defenders, Controllers, and Corruptors can get Tactics if they can squeeze it into their builds, and the rest get NOTHING.

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... at the same time? How do they fit in the same head?

Tohit buffs are, in essence, a cheap trick to bypass defenses. There are lots of mechanically complex reasons for desiring the *existence* of a cheap trick to bypass defense, which I've written more words on than you've written actual words (and I'm not talking about here, specifically, either). But seriously, separate from the blatant contradiction, its worth noting that this is one in a long list of examples of people's perceptions having exactly no correlation to reality whatsoever. For example:

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Anything less than 15% of a tohit buff is by and large meaningless. Only Corruptors, Defenders, and Controllers can get to that level or higher.

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Sure, if you are one of those people that have the basic opinion that there is hitting all the time, and everything else, then you might think this. However, its worth noting that the current version of the invention system allows for much higher tohit buffs than that, and combined with just plain old tactics anyone could still get about as much tohit buffs as an SR scrapper has defenses, which is ridiculous.

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And if they were actually supposed to be accuracy buffs, not tohit buffs, why were the values of the tohit buffs cut in half while on test?

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Ooh, ooh, me, me!

They were originally tohit buffs because it wasn't thought that there was a way to make them accuracy buffs. They wanted to give players a way to hit more often and that was the only way to do it at the time. However, the side effect of allowing players to hit more often in this case was that they would hit defensive sets way, way, way too often.

When it became clear just how much tohit buffs there were, and how they could be stacked, in sample calculations (like, say, [u]mine[u]) they decided to knock them down so that they wouldn't hit defensive sets as hard.

The problem was that there really isn't a value for tohit buffs that is strong enough under all conditions in PvE, without being disasterous for defense sets in PvP. There is no sweet spot, but that doesn't stop the devs from trying to find one anyway. But they *knew* there was a problem, they just were not sure how to address it. They definitely wanted increased accuracy in PvE, but didn't want to further unbalance PvP. That just wasn't possible, because there isn't a Player Accuracy attribute to modify: the notion of a "player accuracy buff" doesn't exist in the current game.

The realization was, though, that while there is no way to buff a player's accuracy, there *was* a way to buff all the accuracy attributes of every single power possessed by a player. *That* revelation allowed the devs to implement the +Acc in the invention system as originally desired: something that was a nice boost in PvE, without being a problem in PvP.

The change is happening now, after go-live, because they didn't want this particular patch, which has a whole lot of powers changes, to hold up the I9 release.


They are +accuracy because they were always intended to be +accuracy. They were only +tohit because they thought they had no choice. In fact, its actually a valid point of debate to ask whether *any* "persistent" tohit buffs were actually meant to be tohit buffs when cast in this light. "Focused Accuracy" is not called "Focused ToHit:" it claims to boost accuracy, when it actually boosts player base tohit. Tactics is also specifically said to buff ally Accuracy. Something worth thinking about.

Oh, and:

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Tohit buff = useful. Accuracy buffs = useless.

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Deslot all your accuracy and come back and say this again.

Pool B: Regenerative Tissue: +Regen

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If you won't pull out the stops to make Hamidon's AI very tricky, or his powers design more intricate, you're even less likely to ever think its worth it to make Hellion-AI more tricky or make nemesis bosses more intricate. And thats not a good thing.

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I honestly don't think they can, at least not easily. I'd imagine that somewhere high up on the class inheritance tree there is a class that is the parent of all the mobs in the game and changing Hami is going mean a lot of work and/or risk of bugs. That's not say that its not worth while, but that its hard.

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The intrinsic assumption here is that the game is designed as an object-oriented hierarchy. Based on the information we have about how a lot of things function in the game, this appears to be virtually impossible to be true. There have been many instances of the devs admitting that particular critters' AI was malfunctioning to not use particular powers, or use them much less frequently than intended, and that generally centered around specific critters, not all critters in general, which implies changes to the behavior of a specific type of critter is usually isolated from all others of different types (although there are probably generic "behavior libraries" that all the critters can tap into).

Its also very likely that many "special" critters like Hamidon are entities unto themselves, with special coding that determines their basic behavior (separate from certain general things that are likely true by default for all critters, like their tendancy to shoot at you when they detect you).

The point, though, is that whatever entanglements that *do* exist when changing things, they almost certainly don't involve Hamidon, because its clear Hamidon follows his own rules. So if they were going to change anything, the perfect candidate is Hamidon, because its very unlikely to cause side-effects elsewhere in the game.

Hamidon is a form of canary in the cage. If the devs don't think something is worth it for Hamidon, its very likely they won't think its worth it for very much else.

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You may thing Hamidon's design is stupid. I don't, for reasons stated. If things that poke through phase shift and hibernate start showing up in door missions then I'll be on the bandwagon with you.

Simply because they did it in this particular case doesn't mean they're dense enough to do it everywhere.

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The one thing that concerns me about this design decision is that if there is *anywhere* you would expect the devs to pull out the cleverness-stops, it would be with Hamidon. After all, there's only one of him: however much work you decide to put into him, you only have to do it once, and its for a show-piece element of content.

The fact that they immediately went essentially to hacks to make Hamidon more difficult (and some initially massive blow-the-doors-off ultra-high numbers) implies that there's a good chance they would think its even *less* worth it to employ creative means to make more "mundane" encounters more tricky.

If you won't pull out the stops to make Hamidon's AI very tricky, or his powers design more intricate, you're even less likely to ever think its worth it to make Hellion-AI more tricky or make nemesis bosses more intricate. And thats not a good thing.

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I've not yet seen anyone on the forums posit a design for an entity that can take on 50 players with consistent challenge that never breaks any rule the players have. I'll be very impressed if I do see it. I'll be even more impressed if it's something that the devs could implement without something like engine changes or other time-consuming modifications, meaning they'd have to prioritize their development time around it.

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That sounds like an interesting weekend challenge...

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CAVEAT: I take my numbers from Sherksilver's Builder. They are not guaranteed to be 100% completely accurate. But they should still be close enough for our purposes today.

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The problem, as I see it, is that ToHit buffs are ADDITIVE, while accuracy is MULTIPLICATIVE. And the ADD happens before the MULTIPLY, which only serves to compound both of them. Plus, the same character can get both sides of that coin, at the same time, even when playing solo.


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This boils down to OFFENSE having a decided advantage over DEFENSE, in the majority of encounters. The cause of this is, ultimately, the very ToHit formulae used by the game. The only real fix would be to rip it out by the roots, and rebuild from the foundations up. That might strike some folks as a bit SWG-esque, though. So I won't hold my breath over it, sorry to say.

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I don't see this as a problem at all. As long as Defense can floor any amount pf +toHit, the accuracy multiplier can then get the actual chances back into reasonable numbers (which is about 10%).

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Defense cannot floor someone strongly ToHit buffed that way.

Let's see - the current "oh my god" maximum Accuracy-and-ToHit buff would be a Scrapper running both Tactics and Focussed Accuracy, firing off a triple-SO-slotted attack, yes? We'll be extra-cruel, and make it a [Martial Arts / Invulnerability] scrapper - and throw both Focus Chi and Invincibility into the mix. Triple-slotted for ToHit, wherever possible.
[*] PvP Base: 50%[*] Tactics: +11.01%[*] Focussed Accuracy: +29.11%[*] Focussed Chi: +31.47%[*] Invincibility: 5.90% per foe in melee range

This totals to a base ToHit of 127.49% ...! And the o.05/o.95 boundaries only kick in AFTER defense, at this point in the formula ...!!

The top-end defense such a scrapper might face in a PvP zone? Probably something like my own Robo/FF mastermind. We'll assume, for whatever reason, he's going against my Assault Bot - which I can currently cap out at 54.5% defense, pretty much against everything. We'll add in an insanely triple-slotted Maneuvers to that, for anotehr ~2.7% ... totallin 57.2% defense.

127.49%, minus 57.2%, is ... 70.29% base to-hit; within bounds. That, compounted by the 102% net accuracy MA attacks triple-slotted for ACC get? 141.9858% - close enough to just say "142%, especially since it is now Bounded to 0.05/0.95

Net result? He has a 95% chance to hit my Assault bot - and everything else in the game. Purely because ToHit and Accuracy are multiplicative, and Accuracy comes after Defense.

Even if it were my MM, and I had (and used) PFF?
[*] Maneuvers, ~2.7%[*] Dispersion Bubble, ~11.8%[*] single Protector bubble, ~11.8%[*] PFF, ~106.2%

That totals to an amazing 132.5% defense. The Scrapper, however?

142, minus 132.5, is 19.5 ... 19.5, times 2.02, is 39.39 ... almost a fourty percent chance to hit ... and, barring now-ineffectual Pet attacks, the MM can't strike back through that PFF. His supposedly "supreme defense at the expense of being able to act" ... really isn't very supreme at all, anymore.

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A couple corrections:

Tohit is additive, accuracy is multiplicative. To make up some numbers to illustrate simply, this is how you calculate the net overall chance for someone with one accuracy SO (1.333 acc) using a martial arts attack (1.05 intrinsic accuracy), to hit another player (base tohit: 50%) with super reflexes defenses (assume 30% defense) while running focused accuracy (assume +20% tohit):

1.333 * 1.05 * (50% + 20% - 30%) = 1.333 * 1.05 * (40%) = 55.99%.

Notice the two accuracy factors don't add, they multiply, even with each other. Tohit buffs/debuffs and defense buffs/debuffs are all additive.

The powers listed above: Focus Chi (Build Up), Invincibility, Focused Accuracy, and Tactics, all grant tohit buffs. The only things at the moment that grant accuracy buffs are intrinsic accuracy bonuses (the attack is designated with higher accuracy, like MA attacks, things with a weapon draw bonus, archery, or snipes: that sort of thing), and the bonus that comes from accuracy slotting.

Also, the most common form of high-end defense you're likely to face in high-level PvP combat is probably a well-slotted Eluded scrapper. With slotted Elude and running all the toggles and passives, you're looking at about 101% defense, plus or minus.

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(the real question is: why is there no toxic_attack type, which is a much more complex question).

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Okay, let me ask that then. Why isn't there a toxic_attack type, and what prevents the devs from adding it?

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Originally, there wasn't a toxic type at all: no toxic damage or anything related to toxic. Toxic is an invention post-live. Originally, there were the damage types we know today: smash/lethal/fire/cold/energy/negative/psionic. And there was a special damage "type" which was really untyped damage. This was the bogeyman of damage: being untyped, it was unresistable, because no resistance was designed to protect against it. Most of the attacks that now do toxic damage did untyped damage at release. The Vahz, for example, were pretty hard on resistance sets because of this.

I'm sure it sounded like a good idea at the time, but eventually the devs decided that untyped damage was not a good idea. So they decided to type the damage, and invented the "toxic" damage type, and the associated toxic resistance type. If you look at toxic resistance in CoH power sets, you can see artifacts of this change: toxic resistance is spread around rather haphazardly, as if it was sprinkled onto the sets after they were designed - because it was.

The logical thing to do would be to also make a toxic_attack type, and an associated toxic_defense type to protect against it. But at the time, the devs said that while adding toxic damage and toxic resistance was easy, adding a toxic_defense type (in essence, adding a toxic_attack type, although that was not well-articulated back then) would have been much more difficult.

I now suspect that it was not as difficult as they presented it to be, it was just more difficult than adding damage/resistance types. Damage/Resistance calculations happen after the game determines hits and misses, and is relatively easy to "tack on" at the end of the damage calculation mechanics. But adding attack types and defense types is not as simple as just adding those things to the powers: those types need to be added to the tohit mechanics, including defense stacking and typing decisions (what defense gets to be used on what attack), and other elements of the tohit algorithm. Touching that part of the game seems to traditionally be a no-no: its only done when the devs perceive it to be absolutely necessary. To the devs, it wasn't necessary to add a toxic_attack type, because they could fudge it with toxic resistances. And honestly, in general they seem to like to slap patches onto things, rather than re-engineer them to work as they always should have.


So the bottom line is: they added toxic resistance and toxic damage because they had to, to fix the problem of too much untyped damage. But they didn't need to fix the problem of too much untyped attacks, because most of those attacks were not untyped: they had typing, and could theoretically be defended against. If a set was missing defenses necessary to protect against those attacks (i.e. positional defenses), they could always stick in some toxic resistances and fudge it. It would have been cleaner to add toxic_attacks, and I think it would have been possible if they had the will to do so, but they didn't have the will to do so, and they figured toxic resistance itself would be good enough.

FYI, now that I9 has officially gone live, I've started updating the guide for I9. I'm thinking of *significantly* streamlining it, at least as much as I can, and I'm thinking of eventually making it a generic Tohit/Defense guide, instead of specifically a guide to defense, although it will probably take a few iterations to get there.

I've already taken two passes at it, and I'm planning on adding some inventions information. Just like with this I7 version, there's some information I'm planning on adding, that I can't actually add yet, which will probably delay the guide for a little bit; hopefully not too long.

It helps greatly that this time around, there's more places to point to, rather than having to repeat information that exists in other places: paragonwiki and city of data, in particular.

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I think I read somewhere that technically speaking the damage an attack does is not strictly tied to the way an attack is "typed" In other words, an attack could be "typed" as Melee/Smashing, tested against Smashing Defense, and then apply Fire damage to the character. Is this true, or am I imagining things? I couldn't find it explicitly listed as a "feature" of defense, but it seems to be alluded to in your guide.

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I'm completely rewriting the guide for I9, and that's one of the things I plan to highlight a lot more. All attacks are Typed as one or more of the following:

Melee_attack, Ranged_attack, AoE_attack, Smashing_attack, Lethal_attack, Fire_attack, Cold_attack, Energy_attack, Negative_Energy_attack, Psionic_attack.

Ten types. Which defense powers work against which attacks depends solely on which of these types the attack is tagged with. This has nothing to do with the damage the attack does. Ice Arrow is typed Ranged_attack/Cold_attack, so ranged defenses work on it, and cold defenses work on it. It does no actual damage, though. Fireball is typed Fire_attack/AoE_attack: fire defenses work on it, and AoE defenses work on it. But the damage it does is fire/smashing. Smashing defenses don't work on it, because its not a smashing_attack. The fact that it does smashing damage is irrelevant.

Technically, the correct answer to the question "why is there no toxic defense" is: "there is no toxic attacks." There are attacks that do toxic damage, but no toxic_attack type. Because there is no toxic_attack type, there is no way a toxic_defense defense could work on anything (the real question is: why is there no toxic_attack type, which is a much more complex question).

The current I8 Hamidon ignores any defenses you have (with a special exception not important right now) because his attacks are Untyped - they have no attack type. No attack type means no defense will work on them. His damage is unresistable because the damage they do is also untyped (or typed Special which still means it doesn't match any type that a player might have resistance to). Untyped attacks doing untyped damage. Those two are two separate properties of his attacks.

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Like every time when I'm in the arena, cant use my nemesis staff. Whats wrong with using the nemesis staff? I dont know. Its just 1 power I cant seem to use.. maybe its because I'm unlucky?

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No temp powers from outside the arena function there, the vet reward powers are "permenant" temp powers and are not allowed.

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That sucks on many levels. The main level is the fun level. I think the nem staff has to be the best, all purpose weapon in the game. I've only had it for 2 months now, but it is instrumental in most of my PvE encounters.

I use it the way Dr Who uses his sonic screw driver: from picking locks in bank doors and reading news papers in mayham missions, saving team mates when I'm tanking (taunt aint what it used to be), to pulling single minions out of mobs to thin out their numbers. And every time it knocks someone down, a hero is allowed to be revived in the hospital. Its that good!

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And that's part of the reason why you aren't able to use them in the arena.

Its not a question of the devs allowing you to use them or not: that's not the decision they face. The question is: do you allow temp powers and veteran rewards in PvP and balance them for that use or do you disallow them and balance them just so they don't completely break PvE.

Basically, if the devs decided to allow veteran rewards in PvP, you wouldn't have the Nemesis staff as a veteran reward now.

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Clearing up some incorrect info about GW's absurdly overpowered hold:

Soul Storm
Accuracy: 1.0
AttackTypes: AOE_Attack, Negative_Energy_Attack
Area Affected: Targeted AoE
Range: 80 feet
Radius: 10 feet
Recharge: 45 seconds
Hold Magnitude: 100
Hold Duration: 22 seconds (vs. level 50 hero) (ignores resistance)
Damage: 10 ticks of 410 (vs. level 50 hero) Negative Energy per tick over 10 seconds

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Just think how much stronger it will be when she gets around to slotting it with inventions.