Captain Fabulous

1.35. You add them together the same as you would enhancement buffs.

Short answer: tohit is additive, accuracy is multiplicative.

Tohit is your base chance to hit. Any tohit buffs are added to that base. Unlike tohit, accuracy is multiplicative, and is applied after all the tohit buffs (and tohit debuffs, defense buffs, and defense debuffs) are added together.

For example. Base chance to hit an even level is 75%. If you have a 20% tohit buff your chance to hit is 95%. If instead you have 20% accuracy your chance to hit would be 90% (75 x 1.20). At that level the difference is often minimal. But because tohit debuffs and critter defenses both work like anti-tohit, or when fighting higher level critters where your base to hit is much lower than 75%, when you're dealing with these accuracy becomes increasingly less effective.

Example #2. You're fighting an even level. Base chance to hit is 75%. That critter hits you with a 35% tohit debuff. Your chance to hit is now 40%. With a 20% tohit buff that figure is increased to 60%. But a 20% accuracy buff would only be 48%. Huge difference. The less net tohit you have the less effective accuracy is and the more you need tohit buffs to compensate. Another way to look at it is that tohit buffs make accuracy buffs work better.

Yup still here. At least until this month's sub runs out. Then one more month for GR and I'll be gone till the next free weekend.

Just make sure you don't cross the streams, misalign the flux capacitor, or forget to charge the Heisenberg compensators. You wouldn't want to accidentally create a singularity in your computer room.

Yeah! You tell 'em! Damn whiny fool! Oh... wait...

I don't care anymore. LIke I said, you're never going to change my mind and I'm never going to change yours. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.

It's much easier to mitigate those things if you're a ranged toon. You can completely avoid the PbAoEs and patches. It's a lot harder for a melee character that has very few options but to get up close and personal.

Sure they can all be overcome, but is it FUN? Running in and out of melee, popping inspirations like they're candy, taking powers you don't want, taking 2-3 times longer to complete a mission... all NOT fun for me. If you revel in it, well great for you. But when I play a GAME, it's for fun. If I'm getting annoyed and aggravated there is something wrong.

One last aside, cause I think I've stated my position many many times and I don't see the point in repeating myself any more. I was playing a Defender a bit last night on a full team (I don't solo anymore, it's just not worth it), and we were fighting Artemis. Whoever thought that "design" was a good idea should spend the rest of his life in an iron maiden. The only words I have to adequate describe the experience would never make it thru the profanity filter.

Are they doable? With enough time and patience, sure. Is it fun? Absolutely not. So why on Earth would I want to do it?

Settle down dude, you're gonna give yourself an aneurysm.

Look, if you don't agree with anything I'm saying (which you clearly don't) that's fine. I'm never going to convince you I'm right, and you're never going to convince me I'm wrong. Obviously you think the game is just peachy-keen the way it is, and I think it needs to evolve into something more. To each their own.

FRAPS.

I'm not entirely sure that's true, tho it may be. I suspect if it is, the actual stinting of the data would be extremely small tho, as in a fraction of 1%.

So once you've used KO Blow, Foot Stomp, Hurl, and let's say Laser Beam Eyes, and that Death Mage is still at 75% health, then what? Kite around waiting for those top tier powers to recharge while plinking away at him with the tier-1 equivalent LBE? Golly, now that sounds like fun.

And yes, I thought I made it very very clear the 1 in 20 is over time. If you look at small sample sets you're bound to see more irregularities, but in large ones over time the statistics will always fall to 1 in 20.

Don't make me summon Arcanaville. This is basic statistics. If you have a 5% chance to miss that means, on average, you're going to miss 1 in 20 attempts. Com'n people, I'm not pulling this out of my ***, this is basic math. Now the random nature of things might allow you to go 25 or even 30 attacks before you get a miss, but it will balance out the next time you miss twice in 5 attacks. It's an *average* over time.

Part of the problem here too is the un-randomness of the random number generator which can sometimes make you feel like you're missing a lot, or not missing at all. But at the end of the day you're are indeed going to miss 1 out of 20 times. This ain't speculation, it's fact.

Just as my perception sees every miss and curses under my breath, your perceptions are ignoring them. But they are there.

A 95% chance to hit = 5% chance to miss. This is the best case scenario. 100/5 = 20, therefore you have a 1 in 20 chance to miss, meaning, on average, you will miss 1 out of every 20 attempts to attack. You don't need a combat log to prove this.

As I said before it's not about making the game easier, it's about making it less annoying. I don't think anyone is going to stop playing if they suddenly stopped missing.

You sir, clearly win on this one. How silly of me to use math to show things like percentages. Yep, you got me. I can't argue with that kind of logic.

Why do I need combat logs to prove math to you? You're gonna miss on average 1 out of every 20 attacks. The average attack chain is 5 attacks, that take an average of 10 seconds to cycle. Add in an extra second for movement and targeting and you're gonna come out with 20 attacks every 45 seconds, where at least ONE is going to miss. Then consider the average spawn of 3 minions and one LT, where each minion takes 4 hits to kill and the LT takes 10, that's about 44 seconds, meaning you're just about guaranteed to whiff at least once each spawn.

You miss, at best, 1 out of 20 times. It will NEVER be less than that. Ever. It works out to be around 1 miss every 45 seconds. I wouldn't say that's "once in a while". I'd say that's at least once or twice in every spawn. And that's provided you're at 95%, which isn't always easy to stay at.

I get it. You don't care. But there are many that do. Why don't you list all the things you dislike about the game so I can go thru it and point out all the things that don't matter to me and claim it's just your perception and that you're overreacting to something that's not a big deal?

Changing the tohit cap from 95% to 98% or even 100% requires nothing more than changing a single value in a formula. There is no reworking, reformulating or tearing down required. Of course it would require some balancing here and there, but that's expected after any change like this. And who exactly would be pissed off about missing less? Is there really such a huge "I love to miss" faction of this game that I don't know about?

Now if you're talking about my laundry list of issues, then maybe yeah, that would require a bit more tinkering, but still nothing requiring a major overhaul, and certainly nothing requiring new code.

If it were just one or two things then yes, it's easy to overlook. But it's not. Let's take a typical level 15 mission. Well even set it to -1. Let's try Council. Run into the first mob. Even with a 95% chance to hit I whiff on my first shot. Well it's only 1 out of 20, no big deal. Clearly I won't miss again for a long time. Second shot... whiff!!! damn they're even levels in my -1 mission and I only have a 92.5% chance to hit. So much for the streakbreaker. I then take few hits from a rifle... oops, now my defense is in negatives, so they're hitting me a lot more often, putting me further into negatives and try as I might I can't kill them fast enough cause they're now hitting me with nearly every shot. Then the LT comes and fires off a concussion grenade and I go flying backward. I get back up and try to attack but dammit, I'm now out of endurance, which is fine cause I don't live much longer anyway. This mission sucks. I'll drop it and take something else.

Lessee, my choices are CoT, CoT, or CoT, so OK, let's try CoT. I run in and an LT immediate debuffs my tohit down to 45%. So I back out of the PbAoE. Now the LT level boss mezzes me. So I get to sit there while the entire spawn pounds on me. I finally wake up, and bam! mezzed again. Lather rinse repeat till dead, which thankfully isn't very long. On my way back from the hospital I fill my tray with break frees. Unfortunately it's not enough to make it completely thru the mission (I need one for every spawn) so I wind up getting to know the floor nurse and inspiration vendor on a first name basis.

Clearly CoT aren't the way to go. Let's try Tsoo. I get one single shot off (which of course misses) and then I'm chain slept. Or siphon-speeded to 1/10 run speed and recharge. Or siphon-powered down to 1/4 normal damage. Or continually knocked on my *** and my tohit debuffed by the Sorc's Hurricane. This clearly won't do. I would go try Lost, but I know from past experience they too will perma-mez me to death. Gee, who the hell is left?

Now of course these are a tad bit exaggerated (but absolutely NOT fabricated), but I think you get the idea. It's not just a single issue, it's a lot of little single issues that keep adding up to become a big issue.

Why do you think people powerlevel to level 22? Cause running out of endurance isn't fun. Why do you think so many people set the difficulty to -1? Cause constantly whiffing isn't fun. Why does everyone clamor for mez and KB protection (go check out the prices of KB IOs if you're ever in doubt)? Because being perma-mezzed or continually knocked on your *** isn't fun. Add it all up and there's a whole lot of "not fun" going on.

Making matters worse is the binary nature of almost all of it. Get mez protection and you never ever have to worry about being mezzed. Oh, your set doesn't have it? Well too bad for you! Ditto with KB protection. Sick and tired of being end drained by Mu or slowed to a crawl by Artemis? Well I guess you should have picked a set with -end or -slow resistance. Why do some people get to completely ignore the BS while others are forced to suffer thru it? Doesn't seem right, does it?

So then the next question one should ask is "is all this 'un-fun' stuff absolutely necessary?" Clearly it's not, because it simply does not exist to this magnitude in other MMOs. Do we need a triple-redundant limiter on our abilities when other games have demonstrated that a single limiter works just as well?

And the final question to ask is "with all the current and upcoming MMO competition is it really wise to not revisit these and other issues that ultimately force players away from the game?" CoX is no longer the only superhero MMO in town. And there are 3 more coming. What seemed like a solid design decision 5-8 years ago very well not be all that sound anymore.

Only when one refuses to acknowledge that it's even slightly possible there are issues with the game. So far I've outlined a number of recurring problems and for each I'm repeatedly told it's just me.

So yeah, that smells a lot like dev-worship if you can't even accept that perhaps the game has design flaws.

Yes. Why should I be forced to skip missions (preventing me from finishing a story arc, earning badges or accolades, unlocking future contacts, etc.), take powers I don't want at the expense of one I do, spend time making temp powers that are practically useless due to their base stats, and otherwise be inconvenienced by poor design choices?

Let's be clear here. Instead of spending time creating real "challenge" in the post level 40 game the devs instead went around giving critters all sorts of abilities to which very few characters have any kind of mitigation for. It's a half-***** way to design a game, and doesn't wind up being challenging or fun, just aggravating. Seriously, this is nothing new, it's an argument has been going on for over 5 years.

Keep sipping the Kool-Aid sparky. If you really think this game "bends over backwards to accommodate a wide range of playstyles" you really need to get out more.

It's not a matter of easy or hard, it's a matter of frustrating or fun. Things I don't find fun:

Missing 1 out of 20 times despite a heavy investment in accuracy.
Getting repeatedly mezzed over and over again by common minions
Running out of endurance in the middle of a battle
Getting debuffed to half (or less) of my base stats, with no viable mitigation
Doing a story arc where I am sent to 6 different zones
Getting knocked around like a ping pong ball by common minions
A convoluted and obtuse crafting system

These are things I find to be frustrating, not fun. They are also things that are unique only to this game.

If this stuff doesn't bother you, hey, that's great. But that doesn't mean my opinion is any less valid. I have over six years invested in this game and my greatest wish has always been to see it become a really great game. But that's unlikely to ever happen, at least with the current devs. And that's kinda a bummer. So much potential, and it's all being squandered by their refusal to evolve.

So I gotta ask, this farm mission you do, is it full of critters that toss out tons of debuffs, have high defense or resistances, or are otherwise "tricky"? Or do you pick the critters that are the easiest (read: fastest) for you to kill and least likely to frak you up with effects you can't readily mitigate?

Well this is pretty much what it's been reduced to for me. I never solo anymore. Hell, I don't even play much anymore. When a new issue drops I come back to check it out, play for a few days, maybe a week or so before I I'm over all the same BS, and then I'm gone. I then go solo in a different superhero MMO, space MMO, or fantasy MMO, none of which bend over backwards to aggravate and frustrate me.

And really, if you and the others think the game is so great why are you here in a thread started by a guy who's sick and tired of missing so much? Go have another glass of Castle-flavored Paragon Kool-Aid and find a "gee isn't this game swell" thread.

Oh, and when Going Rogue kills CoV, remember I told ya so.

Knockout Blow on its own won't hold a boss-level Death Mage and does nothing to a Dark Servant whose PbAoE tohit debuff aura is always on. Now if I turned off bosses for soloing then this would be a somewhat workable approach (at least for CoT, but won't help with Carnies). But again, why should I have to go out of my way and make multiple trips to the Field Analyst because of what's essentially a poor design decision?

Again, easier to just avoid.

And it's not like this is a unique situation. I know people that won't do Malta missions cause they don't want to deal with Sappers. Or DE cause of of the stupid beacons and their high resistances to various damage types. Or council because they don't have KB protection and can't stand being knocked around like a ping-pong ball by their spammed AoE grenades. Or Tsoo cause they don't have mez protection and find being perma-mezzed to death "unfun". The list goes on and on. Not just one poor design choice, but dozens. It's one of the reasons this game will never be anything but mediocre.

BINGO! If I wanted strategy I'd be playing Starcraft II. My day is full of having to think and strategize and manipulate the world. When I play my games I want a few completely mindless hours of feeling super. I don't want aggravation and frustration. The rest of my life gives me plenty of that. I want to jump in, kick ***, and never look back. Once I'm not able to do that, then it becomes a chore. And once that happens I'm done. I'll move onto something else where I don't have to think so hard or work so much (that is, at all...)

As for the difficulty being -1, well yeah, when I solo I do often have it at -1/x5. Fighting 2-3 critters at a time is dull and not very super.

And if you don't have a second hold, cause perhaps you want Laser Beam Eyes instead?

No, it's not impossible. But the options are not palatable to me. And it's totally unnecessary. And that's why it frustrates me and keeps pushing me away from this game after even short play periods.

Let's face it, this game ain't deep. The goal is to earn XP as quickly as possible to advance in level to get more slots and new powers. If I have to do a mission where I have to kite around, jumping in and out of melee like a jackrabbit, time every single movement and attack around their toggle cycles, burn thru tray after tray of inspirations, and have to travel back and forth across a zone to visit my friendly neighborhood Field Analyst twice, then it's just not worth it. All this in an attempt to counter a debuff that's 3-5x stronger than it should be. Sorry but to me that says there's a problem.

There's a reason why most of my characters never make it out of their 30s. Cause the fun to aggravation ratio take a steep nose dive once you start fighting levels 40-up.

It's just not worth the time and effort. And I'm not taking a hold power just so I can take out Death Mages. Easier to just skip em.

I do the same thing on the villain side with post level 40 Longbow and resistance Brutes. They love to toss out those multiple 35% -resistance grenades, which are impossible to mitigate. The only option is to keep moving out of the fields. And again, why bother? it's an inefficient waste of time, when I could do 2-3 other missions in the same time without the aggravation.

It's much easier to ignore the crap than it is to fight a losing battle with a single pig-headed dev.