Codewalker

It should work the same as Recharge debuffs, which are in fact Strength buffs (and Hasten is +70% Str(Recharge)). The power will never buff you for a negative amount, but it's effectiveness will approach zero as the Strength approaches -100%.

Come to think of it, I have no idea what would happen if a power attempted to increase or decrease your base Recharge attribute (not its strength). Probably either nothing at all, or Bad Things (TM).

The rooting is something that definitely came as a shock to me, having played some other games first that didn't do anything like that -- quite the opposite, you could always move, but it would just interrupt your cast time abilities.

For the most part, it's not an issue. There are very few "move or die" scenarios in this game, and most of them are in the incarnate trials (level 50+ content). Even then you usually have enough time to move, though once you get into the habit of queuing up attacks to form a seamless chain it can get a little difficult.

Long time CoH players tend to game the system a bit. They do things like jump at an angle right before using an attack with a long animation -- the momentum carries you even while you're "rooted". I think it's fair to say that most people enjoy the game in spite of rooting rather than because of it.

The developers seem to believe that it's an important balance consideration, though, so I wouldn't expect a major change in the way that it works.

Tangent: As a few people mentioned, "Haste" works the exact opposite here than it does in games like WoW. You can never reduce the cast time of your attacks: that's fixed and tied to the animation. You can, however, reduce the recharge (or cooldown) of them, and use your big hitters much more often. By the time you're in the mid to late 20s or 30s, you should be able to use your abilities continuously with no pauses.

If you need a filler until then, you can hold control and click on Brawl to make it fire automatically, simulating an auto-attack.

Based on my understanding of the combat engine, using Power Boost before Weaken SHOULD affect:

-ToHit debuff on the target.
Strength of To-hit buffs used by the target.
Strength of Sleep, Confuse, Terrorize, Hold, Stun, and Immbolize powers used by the target.
Strength of Defense powers used by the target.
Strength of running and flying speed affecting powers used by the target.
Strength of Healing powers used by the target.
Strength of Endurance drain done by powers.

I bolded Strength in the above, because Weaken does not directly debuff Defense and the other attributes. It works like an inverse Power Boost, debuffing you so that when you use those powers their effectiveness is reduced. It would, for example, reduce the amount of Defense that your toggles give you. Think of it as temporarily slotting a negative SO in all your powers.

Which could still be fairly nasty, even though the -Damage portion is unaffected.

No, PB does not increase recharge buffs, and Temporal Selection's recharge is not affected by them if it did. Since recharge buffs are by their nature strength buffs, they are all flagged not to be affected by them, or their strength would increase with your global recharge.

They're two completely different things. Green enhancements affect both Healing and Regen, much like red enhancements affect all damage types at once.

PB boosts Heal, but not Regen.

Controller power boost does not affect damage at all, neither does Mastermind or Blaster PB, nor the Corruptor PB from Soul Mastery.

Defender/Corruptor Power Build Up does, but Benumb's -DMG is not affected by buffs.

No, and no. Both of the +DMG buffs are set to Ignore Enhancements & Buffs. The +regen isn't, but Power Boost does not provide a regen strength buff.

How is a chance for double damage worse than an ordinary damage proc?

A damage proc doesn't scale with enhancements or +DMG buffs, a crit does. And 20% is fairly generous as far as damage proc rates go; though since it's attuned chances are it has a PPM limiter...

Sometimes I think people are expecting "Slot this for godmode" from the ATOs.

I don't think so (it does not placate, and IIRC there was some text in the long description that made that explicit). So really it's just a roundabout chance for extra crit, which isn't much different than the Scrapper special ATO.

The -Dmg in Weaken is set to ignore enhancements and buffs.

So if it used to work, it doesn't anymore. I also checked Issue 20 when it was single target, and that also would not be affected by PB.

The defense portion should be increased with PB active... maybe. Do strength buffs affect other strength (de)buffs? If nothing else, the tohit debuff should increase.

Looks like the Mastermind version of power boost doesn't affect damage buffs anyway. Corruptor Power Build Up does, however Weaken's -DMG won't be.

Yes, that's what it does. The Fury inherent checks to see if you have it slotted.

[min <= num <= max] acts as a clamp that limits a number to those values.

Normal Fury:
[0 <= (Attacks * 0.5) <= 10] * [0 <= ((100 - Fury) / 20)^2 <= 10]

Fury with Brute's Fury Special slotted:
[0 <= (Attacks * 0.55) <= 10] * [0 <= ((100 - Fury) / 20)^2 <= 10]

Fury with Superior Brute's Fury Special slotted:
[0 <= (Attacks * 0.575) <= 10] * [0 <= ((100 - Fury) / 20)^2 <= 10]

Source

It currently only boosts the >10% crit rate attacks like Eagle's Claw as if they were 10%. So +2% for the normal version and +4% for the upgraded version.

Try going to the zone they're in first. If they're a hero and you're a rogue, that usually happens if they're in a hero zone, say... Founders, and you're in a villain zone like St. Martial.

^^^ This.

CoH Faces was based off an ancient copy of a framework called CodeIgniter. Worse yet, it was a modified version of CI, so it can't be simply upgraded, as the site breaks when you wipe out the modifications. Even worse, it uses several deprecated features of PHP, which cause lots of warnings with the latest version, and means it will break entirely in the next major PHP release.

That and we strongly suspect that it was the weak link that the attackers got in through.

Tony's been trying to fix it as he gets time, but it's a massive amount of work that involves going through the entire code base. It's not quite as labor intensive as a full rewrite, but it's close. That and there are other issues that he has to deal with as well that are taking priority at the moment.

There's been some internal discussion that the site may simply be dropped as a result, but no official decision has been made on that yet. At this point I'd say it's a "maybe". If there is someone who wants CoH Faces up and running, is experienced with PHP, and with CodeIgniter in particular, and is willing to invest a serious amount of time in it, contact TonyV with your info.

By experienced I mean some non-trivial PHP knowledge in writing secure code, not just hacking together a script for a home page. We don't want a repeat of what happened with it last time.

No. If the necromancy pets were special-cased, then the engine was horribly, horribly broken, and I just don't think it's that bad. The engine represents an entity's state as a block of values, and power effects modify those values. The 'over time' code is generic so that it works for any value the engine knows about, whether it's damage, healing, Endurance, To-hit debuffs, Knockback, etc. Probably even attributes where it doesn't really make sense to do so, but the code is consistent and likely doesn't even know which attribute it's affecting.

The powers system is designed to be generic and to process effects within its design specifications without having to make any actual changes to the code. I'd wager that 95% of the powers changes in this game never touch the source code, and don't even require a recompile of the engine.

Edit: Yum, Korean BBQ. Nom nom nom.

But the whole "owning a power" thing is just a more specialized replacement for mode bits which have been used for years. Time Manipulation could have easily been implemented using those, unless there is an engine limitation on the total number of them that can exist.

In which case, the new tech isn't really new for that power, it's just a workaround for the engine reaching its design limits.

Edit: The oldest use of the "own power" check I can find is Issue 18, when Ouroboros portals were changed to no longer have distinct powers for the hero and villain versions. Mystic Fortune uses it also, but didn't used to (it used a mode). It was also used for the inherent fitness change to prevent you from getting double fitness. So, reasonably new, but probably not done specifically for Beam Rifle / Street Justice / Time Manipulation.