Arcanaville

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

* Bug: When an attack misses its target, aggro is generated when the attack begins. This is problematic when using a power with a long activation time (such as Ice Arrow); aggro is generated and you are subject to "return" fire before the attack is actually launched. The character is rooted in place until the animation finishes. (If the attack actually hits, no aggro is generated until the attack lands; this is when a miss should generate aggro as well). This bug is not limited to the Trick Arrow set, but impacts the set more than others due to its many powers with long animation times. (Concern, Goofy_Parrot)


[/ QUOTE ]

This is the way the combat engine works. Fixing this would require rewriting the whole thing. This is not likely to change.


[/ QUOTE ]

There is a way to create long-animation time attacks that don't immediately draw aggro: snipes. Snipes are two-phased attacks that begin with a prelude animation, and then a triggering animation - aggro isn't generated until the snipe actually "fires." Is it possible to consider taking the longest animation times attacks, and convert them essentially into uninterruptible snipes, to defer aggro until deeper into the animation sequence?


[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

* PvP: Darkest Night debuffs base damage rather than enhanced damage, crippling it in PvP. A power that does a 100 base damage would do 195 with 3 damage SOs. With Darkest Night, the damage would be debuffed to 145, which is a reduction of only 25.6% instead of 37.5% or 50.0%. (LastHumanSoldier, wording by Quason, corrected by WhatRoughBeast, i6 information found by Blueeyed and KaliMagdalene)


[/ QUOTE ]

All Buffs and Debuffs throughout the game are applied to the Base effect, not the Enhanced Effect.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure that is 100% true: it seems things like damage debuffs are the exception, not the rule. Or rather, it seems most debuffs don't really modify *either*. For example, a defense debuff doesn't debuff the *base* defense of your defense powers - or really the *enhanced* values either - its a straight percentage point reduction (i.e. -10% defense debuff subtracts ten percentage points from defense regardless of what your current defense is, or how they are enhanced). You could argue that a defense debuff is "subtracting from base defense" or something like that, but that appears to be a distinction without a difference.

In any case, an interesting question is whether this is intended or not, separate from whether or not its easily correctable. There is an interesting inconsistency with regard to damage debuffs and enhancements: attack powers can be enhanced to essentially nullify damage debuffs, but damage debuffs can't be enhanced. I understand that damage debuffs are potentially the most dangerous debuffs to allow to be enhanced - because it can lead to someone being debuffed to zero damage - but if damage debuffs are only going to affect base damage, and that can't be fixed, perhaps the time has come to reexamine enhancing damage debuffs, possibly with a low maximum damage debuff cap (75%?).

[ QUOTE ]
Obviously, I'm going to need therapy after this.

[/ QUOTE ]

Or a power drill to let the music out of my head.

I would consider putting agile at 32, and then pushing downward aid self, focused accuracy, and conserve power to put stimulant at 41. The reasoning is that with aid self at 41, its unavailable for PvP combat in Warburg anyway, so agile is better for Warburg than stimulant (all three passives then fit under 38). This only delays AS to 44, which is not a big deal if this is a leveling-up build really, and is completely a non-issue if its a respec build.

Here was my stalker strategy for soloing this:

Grab four lucks and head into the zone.

Use assassin's strike on the outer turrets from hide: make sure you knock them out quickly.

Pop all four lucks.

Wipe out the four rooftop turrets.

Use computer.

I'm sure this is generalizable to any heavy-damage AT, but I don't think it will be easy for dominators to solo, and masterminds might have a problem with accidental aggro with all the shivans wandering around.

Its possible that you might get unlucky and happen to get a turret respawn, but I will say that when I was doing this a few months ago, they did *not* respawn all at once. I'd take out two, take out another two, and discover that one or two had respawned. I never had the rooftop ones respawn at the same time as outer ones. Its quite possible that the turrets do not respawn as aggressively if someone is actually at the location; I've only had a turret respawn right next to me once.

[ QUOTE ]

What if you could "throttle" your flight speed?


[/ QUOTE ]

Putting a "speed slider" in for flight was the very first idea I ever suggested on the forums; minutes later it became the very first suggestion that I was told was old news. I still think its a good idea.

[ QUOTE ]

At least we still have pulling.


[/ QUOTE ]

That's only because 99.99% of all players don't know how to do it right.

From level 2 to level 50, the words that still cause me to grit my teeth are "I'll pull" which means "I'll shoot at something and then wait for it to shoot back or possibly bring all of his friends over here" and everyone else in the team interprets this as "good, we'll stand right next to you and watch."

[ QUOTE ]
FWIW, I PM-ed Statesman about this back in I4 and he specifically said that suppression was not to prevent jousting. It was "to prevent PvE issues." What issues those were other than jousting, he didn't say, but apparently, jousting wasn't one of them.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are things related to "jousting" that I combine together, because they are conceptually related, even though not everyone considers them all to be true jousting. Most people only consider it jousting if it involves a high speed approach that triggers a melee attack. But performing the same maneuver with a short range blast like power burst is basically in the same category.

Non-jousting things that travel suppression impair are things like the superjump/snipe issue, where you could begin moving after the snipe interrupt period, but *before* it fired, and so be far out of range of the target when the snipe actually went off, in effect getting a free shot.

[ QUOTE ]

Can someone explain to me how jousting could be used to give any significant advantage in PvE?


[/ QUOTE ]

Advantage? I'm not sure you'd call it an advantage, but if you're something without mez protection, say a blaster, and you're dueling a mezzing boss, there is a significant advantage to melee-jousting; landing your own heavy-duty hits and making sure that if you're mezzed, you're a half a mile away when the mez kicks in.

Its an advantage, although frankly I always considered it a proper advantage: using tactics to manage your weaknesses in a tough situation. And suppression doesn't really negate the usefulness of jousting in this fashion either, although it does slow it down.

*Without* suppression, though, one thing you could always do if you were really good was to ensure your foe always used ranged attacks while you were using melee attacks (again, especially if you were a blaster) by timing your melee runs to happen essentially right as they were firing a ranged shot, guaranteeing that they couldn't switch to melee on you. Its questionable if this was game-breaking, though, since it was only "risk-free" if you were really good at it, and if you judge on that basis, there's a lot of things that are risk-free (and being shot at by ranged shots is not "risk-free" for blasters or anyone else really).

[ QUOTE ]
Hover: We might buff it some, at some point. However, it should never be an effective travel power.

Flight: I'll talk to geko about it. No promises. (I got spoiled by the Holiday Jet Pack, too!)

[/ QUOTE ]

My view on hover/fly, speaking as someone who has leveled to 50 with each of the main travel powers essentially exclusively at least once, but now is a die-hard flier, is this:


Fly as a travel power should have end cost no higher than natural end recovery. I wouldn't mind if you were required to turn every toggle off to break even on flight, but flight should not draw more than that, or else its end cost penalty is simply too high as a travel power - it *should* be usable to cross zones without having to stop to rest or accidentally fall out of the sky.


Hover should never replace fly, but you ought to be able to keep it on during combat and follow your team. That would imply that its unslotted speed should be comparable to normal running speed without sprint, and its 3-slotted speed should be comparable to 1-slot sprint or thereabouts.


Once upon a time, the devs decreed that flight had massive advantages over other travel power because of the vertical freedom of motion. One by one those advantages have been nullified as the devs have decreed that those very advantages were *too* advantageous. So hover/fly can't pull you off of patches because that's "unfair" and so most patches have -fly (but of course, no patch has -teleport). Hover/fly can keep you away from villains who don't have ranged attacks, so now virtually all do (but super jump can escape from them faster than flight). Basically, most of the advantages of flight have been decreed to be too advantageous, and reduced or eliminated. But flight's costs haven't been similarly reevaluated.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Certain player attacks have certain inherent accuracy bonuses or deficits. All attacks within an offensive set that require a weapon draw (i.e. katana, assault rifle) are supposed to have an inherent tohit bonus, said to be about 5%. In addition, all snipe attacks also have a tohit bonus, in a similar range. AoE control based attacks have an accuracy penalty, but a recent post by geko stated that normal AoE attacks do not have an inherent accuracy penalty by default. The devs have stated that the archery attacks have an inherent tohit bonus higher than the standard weapon-draw bonus, but the precise bonus has not (to my knowledge) been determined.

[/ QUOTE ]

The parts I have bolded, shouldn't they be "accuracy?"


[/ QUOTE ]

Yep, I didn't catch all of those when I added the part about weapon draw being accuracy. Fixed for 1.3.


[ QUOTE ]

Concerning radiation attacks, perhaps they simply have a chance to bypass (as the description says) defense altogther, meaning defense simply isn't factored into the NetToHit? And perhaps Hamidon and his Mitos have this ability with a 100% chance in their attacks, otherwise their untyped attacks should still be subject to positional defense and not hit 100% of the time if you scarf down a tray full of purples.


[/ QUOTE ]

I asked about radiation attacks specifically, and it seems they have an inherent accuracy buff, and a defense debuff, and no other weird effects - at least that is the direct information currently given to me.


[ QUOTE ]

Also, is it true that player base tohit is lower against higher ranked mobs, and not just higher level mobs?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, just higher level. Player base tohit is 75% against all villains of even level to the player, before target defense, and target and player buffs and debuffs are taken into account. Except in PvP: its 50% there. It sometimes seems like player base tohit is lower against bosses mainly because bosses are more likely, on average, to have defensive buffs of some kind. Also, they tend to stay alive long enough for you to notice actually missing: short of things like bubbled drones, you don't usually get a chance to miss often against an even level minion.

[ QUOTE ]
One point that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread (yes I read the entire thread and Jesus Mary Joseph you guys can babble, prattle, and otherwise say in 10 paragraphs what can simply be said in one)


[/ QUOTE ]

I'll try to be brief.

[ QUOTE ]
are the effects of foe defense debuffs, typically found in great quantity via lethal attacks?


[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, covered a couple times.

[ QUOTE ]

The -5% def in unyielding was touched upon and noted that the -def will now scale. But then so would the -def from lethal attacks, no?

If your overall defense stays 0 or greater after calculating the -defs, then there's no problem. But if you're a toon with no defense, or your adjusted defense becomes negative, then scaling will occur under the new system and you'll actually get hit MORE.

My guess is that solo or on small teams it won't amount to much, but on large teams that are +2s and higher the difference could be quite significant, especially if you rely upon defense (if you don't foes quickly hit the 95% cap). Some melee sets get a def debuff resistance which helps lessen the blow (no idea what the % is on that), but what about defense powers that don't have that resistance, like force fields and invulnerability? The difference in foe accuracy current vs. new could often be greater than the protection given from powers like dispersion bubble or invincibility.

Are there plans to address this issue or does this mean that non-defense based toons will now suffer in these situations at the expense of defensive sets?

[/ QUOTE ]

No.

[ QUOTE ]
Actually as far as i can remember arctic air never gave defense. Doesnt say it anywhere, even in planners, and you could never slot it for defense, are you confusing it with steamy mist for storm secondary?

[/ QUOTE ]

From the manual:

Arctic Air (TOGGLE)

HIdes your team. It does not make you and your allies Invisible, but it makes them much harder to see as long as you don't get too close or don't attack. Even if discovered, Arctic Air grants a bonus to Defense. Arctic Air reduces your movement speed (but not your teammates')


Clearly, its been changed a couple times since then.

[ QUOTE ]
That's... this is.... by my complete lack of a god or gods, that's the silliest, frelling thing I've ever seen.

Not that you've figured all this out... that's absolutely amazing... but it is farking insane that they would do it this way.

And you still have to layer the purple patch on that? And does it continue to work that way beyond +5s, or does something else occur against +6s and higher?

EDIT: On the flip side, maybe this explains the lag.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, it isn't especially crazy to me: this is actually the first formula I've been moderately comfortable with. Even the previous iteration with additive accuracy buffs has bugged me for a while now, although I accepted it because it came straight from geko's mouth, *and then* was apparently confirmed by pohsyb. But pohsyb explicitly told me that if he previously stated that accuracy buffs were additive, that was a small error on his part.

I'm not saying its the best of all possible formulas, but - and it takes some experience dealing with this sort of thing - its the first one that seems to have the "ring of truth" to it, that I can imagine the tohit formula evolved into, starting from scratch, till now. It hasn't always been this way: the formula/algorithm seems to have evolved (slightly) from release to now. At least two definite revisions: Step Seven Intermediate Checks after the arenas were released (according to Castle) and the I7 changes (tohit increases for accuracy buffs, adding terms to the left side of the equation).

Its been suggested to me, and I tend to agree, that its easy to get caught up in the details of this. In fact, I *could have* made the above algorithm simpler, but I wanted to show it "naked" as it might be really implemented, which is detailed. And the game is sufficiently detailed that the tohit calculator almost certainly has to deal with a lot of special cases, and a lot of detail checking (just the fact that there are many different types of relevant buffs creates a lot of the detail: acc enhs, tohit buffs, defense debuffs, etc).

Its detail for people who want detail. I'm not sure this should be thrust into the face of players who shouldn't care. I'm arrogantly hoping that people who should care might check in this thread periodically. But at least when someone asks, I'll know definitively how the I7 change will affect, or not affect, accuracy. As will my loyal readers

As to +6 and higher: I try not to bug the devs more than I have to (I try, but I usually fail), and now that I know the formula in a more authoritative fashion, the subject of what happens at +6 and higher should probably really be a general forum discussion question that hopefully Statesman or another red name can answer for everyone.


The search for the tohit formula feels like the search for the Grail in the Da Vinci code, with me playing the role of Sophie Neveu, and various people playing the role of Robert Langdon. You know, several times in the book Langdon turns to Neveu and essentially says "I don't want to tell you now, even though your life is in danger and we might be killed at any time, it'll spoil the surprise." By the middle of the book I would have shoved his head into the aircraft toilet. Not that anyone has specifically done that to me in this case, but there are analogies.

I believe, based on the sum total information out there, and after discussing the subject with pohsyb very carefully, that I know what the I7 "tohit formula" is. Its this:

Bounded[(BaseAcc) * (1 + AccuracyEnhancements) * (AccBuff) * (AccDebuff) * (LevelBuff) * (RankBuff) * Bounded[(BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs - Defense + DefenseDebuffs)] ]

Where Bounded[x] is 5% if x is less than 5%, 95% if x is greater than 95%, and x if x is between 5% and 95%. The part highlighted in yellow is the main difference between I6 and I7, with the added caveat that in I6, the term "BaseToHit" means a different thing than in I7: its basically 50% in I7, but a looked up value based on rank (i.e. 50%, 57.5%, 65%, 75% for minions to AVs) and then adjusted for level differences.

At least, that is how we *might* express it if it was an equation. It seems clearer to me now that part of the reason for all the various "versions" and discrepancies in how its been described (besides normal human error and typos) is that it *doesn't* exist as an equation *anywhere*. It exists solely as an algorithm implemented in the code for the game engine. There isn't a "tohit formula" there is only a "tohit procedure." We can express it, to varying degrees of fidelity, but the main reason why the devs do not just give us the formula, is that there isn't one.


*IF* the devs were to drop the tohit algorithm onto us, it *might* be something like this:

(disclaimer: this is all me. I'm only quoting it for formatting purposes: absolutely no one gave this to me and you shouldn't infer that anyone gave me anything remotely similar)

[ QUOTE ]

Step One: Look up BaseToHit

If attacker is player, and target is player, then BaseToHit = 0.5
If attacker is player and target is not player, then BaseToHit = 0.75
If attacker is not player, then look up BaseToHit based on type

In I7, BaseToHit = 0.5 by default


Step Two: Calculate NetToHitBuffs

NetToHitBuffs = SumOf(ToHitBuffsOnAttacker)


Step Three: Calculate NetToHitDebuffs

NetToHitDebuffs = SumOf(ToHitDebuffsOnAttacker)


Step Four: Calculate NetDefenseBuffs

NetDefenseBuffs = SumOf(DefensePowersOnTarget) + SumOf(DefenseBuffsOnTarget)


Step Five: Calculate NetDefenseDebuffs

NetDefenseDebuffs = SumOf(DefenseDebuffsOnTarget)


Step Six: Calculate intermediateToHit

intermediateToHit = BaseToHit + NetToHitBuffs - NetToHitDebuffs - NetDefenseBuffs + NetDefenseDebuffs


Step Seven: Check for tohit floor and ceiling boundary

if intermediateToHit < 0.05 then intermediateToHit = 0.05
elseif intermediateToHit > 0.95 then intermediateToHit = 0.95


Step Eight: Look Up BaseAccuracy

BaseAccuracy = BaseAccuracyOf(AttackPower)


Step Nine: Lookup RankScalingBuff

if attacker is minion, RankScalingBuff = 1.0
if attacker is LT, RankScalingBuff = 1.15
if attacker is Boss, RankScalingBuff = 1.3
if attacker is AV, RankScalingBuff = 1.5


Step Ten: Look Up LevelScalingBuffs

if attacker is +1, LevelScalingBuff = 1.0940
if attacker is +2, LevelScalingBuff = 1.1867
if attacker is +3, LevelScalingBuff = 1.2667
if attacker is +4, LevelScalingBuff = 1.3600


Step Eleven: Check for AccuracyBuffs

NetAccuracyBuffs = ProductOf(AccuracyBuffsOnAttacker)


Step Twelve: Check for AccuracyDebuffs

NetAccuracyDebuffs = ProductOf(AccuracyDebuffsOnTarget)


Step Thirteen: Calculate Enhancements, if any

TotalAccuracyEnhancements = SumOf(AccuracyEnhancementsInPower)

AdjustedAccuracyEnhancements = EnhancementDiversificationScaler(TotalAccuracyEnha ncements)

NetEnhancementAccuracy = (1 + AdjustedAccuracyEnhancements)


Step Fourteen: Calculate NetAccuracy

NetAccuracy = BaseAccuracy * RankScalingBuff * LevelScalingBuff * NetAccuracyBuffs * NetAccuracyDebuffs * NetEnhancementAccuracy


Step Fifteen: Calculate final tohit

NetToHit = NetAccuracy * (intermediateToHit)


Step Sixteen: Check for tohit floor and ceiling boundaries

if NetToHit < 0.05 then NetToHit = 0.05
elseif NetToHit > 0.95 then NetToHit = 0.95


Step Seventeen: roll the dice, see what happens


[/ QUOTE ]

Holy Kukamunga.

Now seriously, if they dumped that out there, they would be answering questions about tohit from now until Kingdom Come. As it stands, this is *my* expression of how tohit works, and thus less likely to have ten thousand armchair mathematicians flooding the forums attempting to deconstruct it. But it represents the best expression of how tohit works, based on *all* the information I have available.

(not really: I could have made you all go blind while I added a dozen more steps factoring things like the purple patch, but you get the idea)


Thanks to Castle for answering my initial questions, and special thanks to pohsyb for taking the time to clear up, hopefully once and for all, how this works. I7 was the Rosetta Stone to clarify something once and for all: all accuracy buffs/debuffs are multiplicative, not additive. That means in particular the Rank and Level buffs in I7 will be multiplicative, and will scale properly relative to the current I6 rank and level scaling. Its really the *only* way for them to scale correctly in the presence of other accuracy buffing/debuffing.


What Does This All Mean?

It means the Defense Scaler will work exactly the way Statesman described, and essentially the way that Castle and Geko amplified. The *details* are a bit confused in the forums as to the math, but it *will* work. In particular, it will work the way I've been assuming it will work and have suggested in the forum threads regarding it (with minor math tweaks), so if those make sense to you, the rest of this is really just a lot of math you don't need to know. People like Circeus or Stargazer might need to know for proper quantitative analysis or accuracy testing, but for the rest of us, assuming we trust this version of how tohit works, what we know is this:


1. Defense subtracts from tohit.

2. Tohit buffs and defense debuffs work in basically the same way: by subtracting from defense.

3. Whatever your net chance to hit is, if you have a +60% accuracy buff, you'll hit 60% more often. A similar statement can be made for accuracy debuffs.


These additional rules are mine: they aren't 100% dev confirmed, but they seem to be operative:

4. No matter how its described, if it affects the entire player/attacker, its a tohit buff/debuff

5. No matter how its described, if it affects a single attack power, its an accuracy buff/debuff


If all you know are these five rules, the math is unimportant, unless you want to calculate something exactly. 99.9% of all players are unlikely to ever need to calculate anything related to tohit precisely.

[ QUOTE ]
My apologies. I misinterpreted your formula. It is actually mathematically equivalent to the one I posted, but with a different naming scheme and a different reordering of the factors. Your explanation cleared up where I was confused.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, don't apologize. I've been pursuing something that has been bugging me, even about my own formula. In fact, yours and the one I originally put in the guide *aren't* identical: their different in a subtle, but significant way. And in fact, I now have strong evidence we're *both* wrong.

Stay tuned.

[ QUOTE ]
Wow thats positively got to be the longest post ive ever seen in my life lol. PS. ice control's arctic air does not give defense.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't remember when arctic air lost defense, but you're right, the help text no longer says it offers defense.


And scarily, I'm not sure this is my longest post ever.

[ QUOTE ]

OK i just did a test with Damage Resist and debuff.

I took on an enemy that did 20.71 damage normaly.
I used chilling embrase and i got 17.81. Thats 14% less damage.
Then i poped up a 5% resist inspiration. He did 16.92 damage. Thats a total of 18.3% less damage, and that is definitively not 14 + 5. It does however fit with the debuff taking effect first and the resist taking effect later, so they do not stack.


[/ QUOTE ]

To the best of my knowledge, (foe) damage debuff and (self) damage resist never stacked. The debuff always reduced the outgoing damage at the target, and then the (self) resistance always reduced the damage that was *seen* by the resistance; the resistance never somehow "knew" that the damage had been originally debuffed.

Resistance stacks with resistance, defense stacks with defense, etc. Dissimilar things do not stack. What confuses people is when someone says "tohit debuffs stack with defense." They don't: not really. But the way the tohit formula works, *numerically* they have the same effect: they subtract from base tohit. So they combine in the formula *as if they stacked*. This makes some people think that perhaps related effects stack: -DMG and +RES being related. But in fact tohit buff/debuff and defense buff/debuff are the exception to the rule, not indicative of how things work in general.

As to force fields, I lost track a bit of some of the changes made during the stacking revisions, thus my original omission of the illusion controller changes and some of the FF changes (FF was changed three times). I'll be sure to have that all added for the next version, which will probably be out before I7 is.

As to the tohit formula, lets break it down.

This part: (BaseToHit + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs - Defense + DefenseDebuffs) has been confirmed a gazillion times, and both geko and castle say that it is checked against the 5% floor and 95% ceiling. That's pretty solid.

This term: (BaseAcc + AccBuffs - AccDebuffs) comes straight from geko. The BaseAcc is the base accuracy of the power you are using, which by default is 1.0. That comes straight from geko. The accbuffs are almost always enhancements. Technically speaking geko didnt mention accuracy debuffs, but if they existed, they would subtract from the accuracy buffs, and castle specifically stated that such debuffs exist, albeit uncommonly. One possible source for them is the accuracy penalty associated with AoE mez attacks.

The relevant quote from Geko (see the Ask Geko thread) regarding accuracy is this one:

[ QUOTE ]

We then do the following:

(Total_To_Hit - Total_Defense)

That value is clamped between 5% and 95%. That is, you can never have more than a 5% chance to hit or miss a target. So if a target's Defense is greater than the attacker's ToHit, the attacker will still have at least a 5% chance to hit.

We then multiply that number by the power's total Accuracy (total Accuracy = Accuracy + the power's Accuracy Enhancements).

We again clamp the values between 5% and 95%.


[/ QUOTE ]

In other threads, he does elaborate on what the term "Accuracy" is in that formula - its the base accuracy of the attack, normally 1.0 (which is the source for a lot of people's confusion between "base to hit" which is normally 75% for players, and "base accuracy" which is normally 1.0 for player attacks.


Then there is this PM from pohsyb which is quoted by another player (in this thread):

[ QUOTE ]

Chance to Hit = MINMAX(.05, .95, (MINMAX(.05,.95, BaseTohit + BuffTohit - Debufftohit - TargetDef)) * (BaseACC + EnhanceACC) )


[/ QUOTE ]


The only question is how the Rank and Level adjustments factor in. Two possibilities:

(BaseAcc + AccBuffs - AccDebuffs + RankBuff + LevelBuff)

(BaseAcc + AccBuffs - AccDebuffs) * (RankBuff) * (LevelBuff)

In the two cases, RankBuff and LevelBuff are calculated in slightly different ways: in the first one, its calculated as a percentage addition (i.e. +50% or 0.5) and in the second as a true scaling factor (i.e. 150% or 1.5).

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What other powers provide defense?

The following additional powers provide defense:
Illusion Control/Superior Invisibility (melee/ranged)
Illusion Control/Group Invisbility (melee/ranged)


[/ QUOTE ]

Regarding illusion controls +def powers, it now says its +def (ALL). Does this mean that they now made it damage typed instead of postional vector melee/ranged?

[/ QUOTE ]

More likely, as part of all the stacking changes made, those powers were changed to base defense like the power pools: i.e. literally defense to all.

Defense to all damage types isn't really defense to all: because of how the game engine currently works, defense to all damage types is actually missing toxic defense.

I don't recall when that change was made, though, so I will have to do some checking.

[ QUOTE ]

The sad thing is, I didn't come in to start an argument, but simply to point out why the devs might have chosen to not start with different floors. I don't know how it'll play out on test, and am not trying to predict the future. However, I do remember the past:


[ QUOTE ]

2. Tankers damage is way out of whack compared to Scrappers' Resistance. Previously, I stated that Scrappers couldn't reach the Resistance cap. And they can't - UNLESS they resort to the Power Pool. That was my error. A correctly built Scrapper (with a lot of Enhancement slots) CAN reach the 90% cap. But a Tanker can NEVER do the same amount of damage as a Scrapper. This needs to be rectified. A Tanker should be as good at Resistance as a Scrapper is at Damage.


[/ QUOTE ]


[/ QUOTE ]

Your memory of the past is not in error. The resist caps were originally 90% for everyone because they were not originally meant to be easily reachable - by anyone. That was strongly hinted at back then. In effect the 90% resist cap was equivalent to the 5% tohit floor in the sense that it wasn't meant to be a specific limit on any one AT, but a general limit on the game as a whole. In essence, a "physics" limit.

That changed when the devs decided to reduce the non-tanker resistance limit to 75%; that was specifically done because at the time they did not want to monkey around with powers too much, but did want to in essence *ensure* that scrappers could not reach the same resistance number - and therefore damage mitigation - as tankers: no matter what they did or how they might have been buffed. I almost get the feeling that Statesman, having been wrong about scrappers being able to hit the caps once, decided to trump high resistance scrapper builds once and for all by capping scrapper resists off.

The 5% floor has lasted as long as it has simply because a similar issue between scrappers and tanks hasn't come up for defense as it did for resistance. Weirdly, the tanker set with the best defense was invuln with invincibility (invincibility with normal - for that time - numbers in its field was effectively perma-elude). Its not fair to compare the 75% resistance scrapper cap differing from the 90% resistance tanker cap relative to everyone having the same tohit floor, because the 75% resistance cap was added later. Originally, everyone had the same resistance cap, and everyone had the same tohit floor.

The scrapper resist cap was lowered *specifically* to deal with scrappers approaching tanker mitigation value: SR does not encroach on Ice in quite the same way, because while SR and Ice now have the same defensive mitigation numbers (something that goes a long way towards erasing one of the few differences of opinion Circeus and I have: factoring in elude) but Ice has much more mitigation extras than SR (in particular, hoarfrost - really the only *other* difference of opinion I have with Circeus), SR does not encroach on Ice in nearly the same way that invuln scrappers used to encroach on invuln tankers. The specific triggering reason for adjusting resistance caps doesn't exist for defense so the situation isn't really analogous.

What we are left with is SR gaining too much of an advantage against invuln by having the lower mitigation maximum. But curiously, the only way for SR to really take advantage of that maximum is to use elude and this change *lowers* the effectiveness of elude.


Conceptually, I can see fiddling with the tohit floors - but other compensating adjustments might need to take place. But the specific *reason* for doing it to resistances doesn't exist for defense. The 75% resistance cap was a sledgehammer solution to the problem of scrapper (resistance) encroachment on tankers. No such defensive analogy currently exists to force such a change.

In fact, the *best* example of such a potential problem was really the two invincibilities: both scrapper and tankers could floor villains, making them basically equal in strength if not equal numerically. But the devs elected that time to make a surgical change, and not a sledgehammer one: they altered invincibility. That suggests that any other defense encroachments that *might* exist will more likely be addressed with defensive value changes, and not a change to the tohit floor (had the I5 reductions happened in '04, there might not have even needed to be a change to the resist caps, which further suggests the situation creating the need to alter the tohit floors also might no longer exist).

*IF* they were going to make the tohit floor variable, the time to do so would be now, when they are already making changes to the tohit formula. So I doubt any such change is currently being planned.

[ QUOTE ]

I haven't moved the goal posts one milimeter. You just can't seem to hit them so you're shifting the blame.


[/ QUOTE ]

You're not really supposed to hit the goalposts.

[ QUOTE ]

No, but my personal guess is that when a mito hits 50% HP it has a 50% chance to split unless it is held or disoriented.


[/ QUOTE ]

I've seen mitos split prior to taking 50% damage. Clearly, damage is what causes splits, and there is a certain, probably random nature to the splits in terms of when it occurs, but I do not believe there is a specific level of health that does it. It *might be* related to the total amount of damage they absorb, though. I've seen high-speed raids where mitos essentially never split, and slow ones where they essentially always split, and at relatively high health levels. Slower raids allow mitos to regenerate, forcing a lot more damage to be dumped into them before they get killed.

[ QUOTE ]

Actually, this topic got started when Arcana suggested the 90% mitigation floor was linked to the resistance cap of 90%. A comparision that breaks down on a number of levels....one of which is that there is little of or no historical evidence of a consistent treament of +DEF and +RES in that manner. Jack himself argued that +DEF is not the same as +RES. Arcana repeated that very same idea herself. Now you are trying to tell me the two should be linked because on a spreadsheet, they come out to offer the same mitigation


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I say that the two should be linked because:

1. I want defense and resistance to scale in exactly the same way when normalized to average damage mitigation.

2. I want defense and resistance to scale across the same dynamic range, to the best extent possible.


When I attempted to achieve both goals a long time ago, I came up with (among other more complex possibilites):

1. Institute an intermediate floor (assuming one did not already exist).

2. Swap tohit increases with exterior multiple bonuses (today, we call these accuracy bonuses but I didn't know at first).

3. Roughly scale defense numbers to be about half the numerical magnitude of resistance numbers in comparable sets that have them, then tweak the numbers to balance total set performance.

Its questionable if the devs are thinking the exact same thing as me, but clearly they are thinking something at least in the same ballpark as me, because it they are not, the current changes are unfathomable. I'm going to go with the devs think the two goals listed above are both laudable and achievable, until someone comes up with a better idea.

If you want to suggest that the devs have a completely different motive for making the changes they are making, including the changes related to the intermediate floor, because they are a direct consequence of attempting to achieve the two goals I list above, there exists a very high burden of proof to suggest anything different.


Although I talked about this in late '04 a bit, and in random posts in early '05, I first posted this as an actual Suggestion thread in April '05 - I found a copy of the thread I saved in my recovered files. I wish I could repost an entire thread easily: it shows both my remarkable prescience and my amazing ignorance at the time simultaneously. And I don't mean to embarrass Obitus specifically, but I thought within the context of I5/I6 that this comment by Obitus was just too funny - not because his comment is funny, but because it points to just how far we've come in three issues:


Obitus:

[ QUOTE ]

Your reaction is perfectly understandable. From a pure numbers' perspective, Arcana's suggestion does seem more consistent, if nothing else. And again, I don't intend to denigrate the work and thought that he put into his post.

Unfortunately, because of the way the math works, I don't think any amount of tweaking the DEF powers themselves would help much. Basically, anyone with a total DEF of under 100% will be nerfed against reasonable opponents, and anyone with 100% or more DEF will be uber against everything. There's really not much middle ground. They could, I suppose, adjust mobs' BTH values across the board, but that sounds like a rather massive task.


[/ QUOTE ]

(Emphasis mine)

LOL at "anyone with 100% or more DEF."

Its interesting when I think about it, that we basically hit on just about every possible reasonable suggestion in those acc vs defense threads, even the notion of tweaking base tohit of villains, because it ultimately spawned this idea in response:

Me:

[ QUOTE ]

Ah, actually, this idea has a lot of conceptual tangles that have to be addressed, and this is one of them. For each +1 level a foe is higher than you, they get an accuracy buff of +7.5% or so, at least that is the number I've read and work with. You assume under my scheme that this number would affect the base to-hit. It shouldn't, because it is, in effect, an accuracy buff. Old style thinking says the 7.5% should be *additively* combined, Arcana-style thinking says that should be *multiplicatively* combined.


[/ QUOTE ]

"Multiplicative combined." Hey, younger and more ignorant version of me, thats an accuracy buff, sheesh.

If Stargazer had found that thread and corrected my goofed up tohit equation, I might have been shouting something a little less gibberishy much earlier.

[ QUOTE ]

Castle, I'm incredibly confused by how these debuffs are calculated now. I can see that the numbers add up to 37.5%, but what do those numbers mean? What is base Scale? Defender modifier?


[/ QUOTE ]

I'll help out Castle by saying that the game wasn't designed around numbers like 0.37125. Those are not numbers that are easy to scribble around with. They were balanced around "simple" numbers like "this attack does 100 damage, so that one does 50% more; 150" and so forth. The actual "numbers" that the devs use are normalized numbers.

Just like we use the brawl index to compare two damage powers together, instead of their "true" damage, the devs design the game with "Base" numbers, and then the game multiplies them by scaling factors to get the "true" numbers.

In other words, back in the beginning of time, the devs picked a debuff power, whatever it was, and called it "1.0" (or 100, or whatever). And then all other debuff powers were scaled around that, which is easy to do with a pencil and the back of an envelope. Then they figured out how strong they sort of had to be to get the effects they wanted, and used scaling factors to bring *all* the numbers down into the range they want.

And then, of course, because defenders and controller have different strength debuffs (defenders stronger than controllers), defenders have a scale factor that is different than controllers: thus, the "defender multiple" (as opposed to the "controller multiple" which is probably 0.1).

Castle is free, of course, to thwack me if that's completely off the mark in this case.


Mathematically, by the way, if Defense was originally designed that way, that points to how we could have gotten where we are now (because using that methodology partially obscures the true effect of defense, which doesn't "honor" such scaling factors in an intuitive way).

Updated version of the guide posted: its here.