Futurias

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Blueeyed is correct on both accounts.

When stacking -res powers, they all get summed up and then applied. One resistance debuff doesn't affect the others.

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That can't be right for the Tar Patch stacking on itself. I know the increase was not a flat 30%. I was *more than doubling* my damage with three -30% Damage Resistance debuffs when this first hit test.

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It was a flat increase of 60%. Get two Dark Defenders together and try it yourself.

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Already tested, thanks. On test when I could three stack it myself.

Why don't *you* go test it to match what you saw?

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Blueeyed is correct on both accounts.

When stacking -res powers, they all get summed up and then applied. One resistance debuff doesn't affect the others.

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That can't be right for the Tar Patch stacking on itself. I know the increase was not a flat 30%. I was *more than doubling* my damage with three -30% Damage Resistance debuffs when this first hit test.

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Except that you have less resistance to resist the second debuff, hence it is more effective. About 1/3rd more, I believe.

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This does not seem to be the way the effect is calculated, at least for Archery's two resistance debuffs. While damage resistance does resist damage debuffs, at least for Disruption and Acid Arrow, the calculation is done before any debuffs are applied.

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I know it did with Dark Miasma when they added the Tar Patch -DAM RES. It's a -30% Damage resistance, then *another* -40%. It got really ugly on the third application, as the mobs DR was only at about 30% and end up being debuffed another 60-70%.

The damage ended up being +30% for the first Tar, +70% with the second and I think +120% for the third (which you could do on test.)

That's right. It was an added cumalitive effect. The second tarpatch was 30% for effective, so the second one debuffed 39% (30+30*.3) so was debuffed a total of 69% from just two applications. If you had a third tar patch to throw on top, it was 69% for effective (30+30*.69) so you debuffed 50.7 for the third one, on top of the 119.7% Damage Resistance Debuff.

This math would show why with just three applications you could "more than double" your damage.

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All debuffs are considered "damage" or an attack and are resisted. Dark Miasma's are "Dark Energy" so things with high Dark Resistance are less debuffed, they "resist" it better. If you lower their resistance (like by debuffing their damage resistance with Tar Patch) you can debuff things better.

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This is assuredly not the case. Tar Patch works well against Banished Pantheon for my Dark/En. By comparision, a TA/Dark's Disruption Arrow would get reamed by them.

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It does work... but not as well as it is 50% resisted. I think I remember testing that and it's where I noticed that debuffing DR could be resisted.

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How is that possible if damage debuffs work that way? (q.v Tar Patch and Darkest Night). I believe it is impossible for it to work that way. If so, the base debuff is set so that the "buffed" debuff works out to 22%.

In any case, it all means that I have, in fact, double counted it. I'll correct my earlier post to that effect.

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Debuffs are *damage* and hence if you debuff Damage Resistance, you are now more affectable.

Let's take Tar Patch with it's base of -30% Damage Resistance Debuff. You drop it and the mobs are now taking +30% more damage.

Drop a second and they are taking +71% extra damage, until you hit the minimum (which I believe is the hard coded 10% limit.)

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Where are you getting 71% from? -30% + -30% = -60%.
The cap for resistance is -300%.

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Except that you have less resistance to resist the second debuff, hence it is more effective. About 1/3rd more, I believe.

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This also impacts how the mob *resists* Darkest Night Accuracy/To-Hit debuff and Damage Debuff.

There was a big reason I advocated reigning in the Tar Patch Damage Resist debuff. It was freaking powerful solo and I was almost able to solo AVs and Giant Monsters as long as they didn't have any mezzing.

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Let me make this very clear: Damage Resistance has NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER on To-Hit. They are two completely unrelated attributes. Damage and Damage Resistance buffs/debuffs are only related because they both use the same set of attributes.

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All debuffs are considered "damage" or an attack and are resisted. Dark Miasma's are "Dark Energy" so things with high Dark Resistance are less debuffed, they "resist" it better. If you lower their resistance (like by debuffing their damage resistance with Tar Patch) you can debuff things better.

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How is that possible if damage debuffs work that way? (q.v Tar Patch and Darkest Night). I believe it is impossible for it to work that way. If so, the base debuff is set so that the "buffed" debuff works out to 22%.

In any case, it all means that I have, in fact, double counted it. I'll correct my earlier post to that effect.

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Debuffs are *damage* and hence if you debuff Damage Resistance, you are now more affectable.

Let's take Tar Patch with it's base of -30% Damage Resistance Debuff. You drop it and the mobs are now taking +30% more damage.

Drop a second and they are taking +71% extra damage, until you hit the minimum (which I believe is the hard coded 10% limit.)

This also impacts how the mob *resists* Darkest Night Accuracy/To-Hit debuff and Damage Debuff.

There was a big reason I advocated reigning in the Tar Patch Damage Resist debuff. It was freaking powerful solo and I was almost able to solo AVs and Giant Monsters as long as they didn't have any mezzing.

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I am unaware of Tar Patch debuffing damage output of foes. I believe it only applies -speed (not -Recharge) and -DR (which has the effect of multiplying damage.

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Not directly, but if you get people to chase you around in the goo, there damage is debuffed because they won't attack until they get somewhere or tarpatch wears off (this was the only way I could solo bosses that mezzed at one point. I'd drop TarPatch in between me and it, snipe and hopefully wake up before they get their mitts on me.)

Oh, yes. The improvement to Defense is going to be very, very appreciated. I'm just seeing debuff changes that I don't think were fully thought out.

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Actually, my Kinetic defender appeared to be the best debuffer of all my debuff sets when faced with a single target. The only exception was the female AV mentioned a while back (NightSong, Nightwing?). With all the other AV fights I was able to survive the nuke attacks against an AV or Giant Monster by debuffing like a maniac while my team dished out the damage. In fact I would steal many kills by timing a well placed snipe near the end. This was back in the perma hasten days though so I had very little downtime in my debuff attacks.

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I've done nearly the same thing with my Dark Miasma Defender. Stacking Twighlights Grasp on top of Darkest Night is very effective against AVs.

I've gotten AVs down to the old 10% damage cap before.

Regen Scrappers and Invulnerble Tanks are like "What the? Why isn't this killing us?"

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A) Debuffs are being made to scale and be roughly as effective as Defense in i7, the "defense scaling fix". I am worried that even though Debuffing is an attack, draws aggro and suffers toggle-anchor death, it is not enough "better" than defense to be used in place of Defense sets that are much harder to *de*toggle.

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Well actually, ToHit Debuffs won't be anywhere near as effective as Defense in I7.

That's Rad Infection VS 40% defense (approximately what an FF defender can give to their teammates) against LTs.

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That's basically showing that debuffs are going to be incredibly inneffective in the future.

Well, except for grabbing large ammounts of aggro and then you dying.

Crud. My posts about debuffing and how it is being "resisted" instead of capped got nuked because of the flamewar.

Let me restate my concerns here, hopefully in an intelligible manner.

A) Debuffs are being made to scale and be roughly as effective as Defense in i7, the "defense scaling fix". I am worried that even though Debuffing is an attack, draws aggro and suffers toggle-anchor death, it is not enough "better" than defense to be used in place of Defense sets that are much harder to *de*toggle.

B) Bosses and Archvillains are being set up to resist debuffing much more than Defense would scale. This makes me think that the developers feel that debuffs are far more powerful than defense and want to limit it in some way, but the method actually hurts the individual player and does not actually stop heavily stacking. I'd recommend a stacking cap instead of resistance, so that Boss and AV fights are always more challenging.

I might have some more points, but I'm a bit braindead now.

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Here's a question. I know that Futurias and Ilr have touched on this, but it really hasn't come up specifically.

In the past I have seen suggestions that mobs resist debuffs as a function of their damage resistance. This would relate to the specific example of Nightstar being largely unaffected by Darkest Night, possibly as a function of having a high DR to negative energy.

Do we have any verification or quantification of this effect? It would be fairly easy to test in the arena using a Dark Amor Scrapper, and maybe a /Regen Scrapper as a non-resistant damage soak. (In fact, /DA would be decent for testing with Rad Infection, too).

In particular I ask because this would be a good reason to shrink the rank-dependant auto-resistance to toHit debuffs - AVs that already have damage-type-based resistance will have really severe overall resistance if this is the case.

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You'd need to use a controller, Mastermind or Corruptor. Defenders debuffs are "unresistable" in PvP IIRC.

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I believe the PDF version becomes available a couple of weeks after the print copy is released.

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Some of us do want to see our subscription arrive first!

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If you cant deliver on a promised service posted in your public forums, a promis to your custoimer, you will get berated, you have absolty no justification for FAILING to do what you said to do.

FACT: Jack said they deplorable patch notes would end
FACT: he had months
FACT: he FAILED
OPINION: HE SHOULD BE FIRED FOR INCOMPETENCE

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I think the "fact" that the *live* notes are deplorable is highly subjective. Most of the missed notes on patches have been to test, which I find as acceptable as that's part of the test process.

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you find it Acceptable that the Tester have to test the game to find out whats changed.
You find it acceptable that the staff is so imcomplent they cant even tell the peopel who volenter to test things what their testing "Bob i want you to test this microwave" "for what" "uh boss ive got cancer" "oh ya that one of the ting we wanted you to test, see our new mictrowaves cause cancer, is the cancer reacting as we expected" "how is it expected to react" "....."

3 days later "its supose to grow at a exponetial rate of 3 inches a day"

if Jack was working at my Job he be FIRED

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Because I'm sure that none of your co-workers have any failures following your orders, every single time?

The Test Server is *just* that, to all the players to test the upcoming build up. I'd say that we are doing a bang up job, as we caught a few big bugs before they could go liver (KO Blow AOE? I *WISH* that had gone live for just a week!)

There were some missing patch notes (or omitted, which is not the same thing) on the test server. Their ratio for missing these sort of things on the live server is much, much lower.

So please, get off your high horse and out of your glass house.

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If you cant deliver on a promised service posted in your public forums, a promis to your custoimer, you will get berated, you have absolty no justification for FAILING to do what you said to do.

FACT: Jack said they deplorable patch notes would end
FACT: he had months
FACT: he FAILED
OPINION: HE SHOULD BE FIRED FOR INCOMPETENCE

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I think the "fact" that the *live* notes are deplorable is highly subjective. Most of the missed notes on patches have been to test, which I find as acceptable as that's part of the test process.

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I confirmed both values via PM from _Castle_ a few days ago (actually DN is 18.75%). There's a post with the details here

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That was as clear as mud....

The terms really aren't well standardized, which is probably a bit of what is holding up "revealing" the real numbers.

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So say you put Fluffy on the AV, keep one application of FS on him at all times (the debuff duration is unenhanceable), put Darkest Night on him, and between you and fluffy have two TGs on him at all times. Now let's say it's all 3-slotted for debuffs.

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There's only one problem with this, you don't "put dark fluffy" on anything.

We have no control over it directly.

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(As an aside, TG may have a -ACC debuff, but I know you can't slot for it. Usually I've gotten the target's *damage* debuffed by that time and they are still hitting. So it will take some verifying on that.)

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Purely continuing the aside, it can indeed be slotted for that.

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Hmm. The last time I checked, you couldn't. I'm usually too worried about accuracy, healing and recharge though.

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If Debuffs are being dropped/limited to within the sight of Defense (which they are) the difference of buff versus debuffing has to be looked at very hard.

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I agree, because the debuffing "rolls off" while defense no longer does.

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Well, and the mezz inequality issues in general. I absolutely hate mezzing and its protections right now. It's a terrible system of haves and have nots.

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They are dramatically different in application, but now they are being treated more equaly *numerically* and debuffing is being made weakened so that you can't hit the minimum 5% as easily.

This is both good, and bad. Good, because it's not going to be overpowering in the cases where you do have that "primary" mitigation. It's no longer good in that you can't for sure flatten someone's chance to hit you (and their mezz) like you used to be able to do so.

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I do understand this, and agree. I do want to point out that I don't think we've been able to floor much of interest in a very long time. Not with Dark Miasma.

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I don't play my Dark Defender much anymore. And the last time I did anything other than Hamidon I faced off against Nightstar where I faceplanted opening with my debuff. She managed to one-shot me through my Shadow Fall and Darkest Night almost instantly.

As he would have done it to anyone else on the team, as there was no tank that could take her alpha well, IIRC.

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Now consider that DN is also a damage debuff. I believe it's around -35%?

So let's pick a +2 AV. One DDD would drop him to .9/.6016*(1-.35) = 43% of his damage. One character would do that for the entire team. TWO DDDs running DN would drop a +2 AV to 14.25% of his original damage output.

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Uberguy, the reason I'm stating it like this is that Debuffing is being put in the same ballpark *and* being treated the same Defense based buffing, even though there are very serious issues and differences.

(As an aside, TG may have a -ACC debuff, but I know you can't slot for it. Usually I've gotten the target's *damage* debuffed by that time and they are still hitting. So it will take some verifying on that.)

If Debuffs are being dropped/limited to within the sight of Defense (which they are) the difference of buff versus debuffing has to be looked at very hard.

Buffing on a Force Field is two castable buffs and an AOE buff w/ Mezz protection. It garners no aggro by itself.

Debuffing from a toggle-anchor debuff is a bit stronger, but not strong enough to avoid retalitory fire by itself if there is any mezzing. You can suddenly lose the entire debuff if your anchor dies and it is AOE on enemies, which might aggro extra mobs if you don't detoggle quick enough.

They are dramatically different in application, but now they are being treated more equaly *numerically* and debuffing is being made weakened so that you can't hit the minimum 5% as easily.

This is both good, and bad. Good, because it's not going to be overpowering in the cases where you do have that "primary" mitigation. It's no longer good in that you can't for sure flatten someone's chance to hit you (and their mezz) like you used to be able to do so.

I'm not saying that it's a totally bad change, but it's a change made in isolation without looking at the overall picture.

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Not to mention Dark Miasma's previous nerfs to Petrifying Gaze (a hold that did no damage, thus already weaker to any controller's hold), Fearsome Stare, and Dark Servant. All because these primary powers somehow were too much like controller powers and therefore had to be weaker.

Yes, load up a primary of one AT with the types of powers from another AT and then weaken them precisely for that reason. It all makes sense!

Then, on top of that, make Dark Miasma a secondary set for other ATs and then weaken those powers even further!

Do us all a favor, reclassify Dark Miasma as a Controller set and then stop nerfing it because it's not a controller set. That would be a lot better than realizing how badly you screwed up with AT design and trying to 'fix it' by crippling it to death.

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What happens to the Masterminds and Corruptors then? Dark Miasma is a Secondary for them. :P

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Their "hold" powers are unchanged at all. Only the actually debuff/buffing powers actually have a 25% difference.

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This also does not include things as balance such as mezzing. If Dark Night/Shadow Fall are "equal" with the three forcefield bubbles, where is Dark Miasma's *real* mezz protection?

Debuffs garner aggro. Usually a lot, but the person grabbing that aggro is incapable of wistanding *one* minion mezz which can knock of toggle, then leaving themselves (and their team) unprotected with all the angry mobs.

Yay! We are now imbalanced to ForceFields because of a shortsighted "numbers" fix.

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*cough*BS*cough*

First, a FF defender might have mag-based mez protection (with a sleep hole), but she only has 16% def from DB. The bubbler will be mezzed more often because Fluffy, DN, and TG debuff accuracy to a far greater extent than DB buffs defense with no stanking sleep hole. Not getting hit in the first place is superior to having low mag mez resistance.

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You actually don't know Dark Miasma very well, do you? You have *no* control over what Dark Servant's do. It could debuff that boss you so deperately need debuffed, or that minion right in front of it.

Twighlight Grasp debuffs Damage and Regeneration, not Accuracy or ToHit.

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Second, Fluffy grabs aggro and heals. When a 32+ dark defender is mezzed, Fluffy is likely to pull some of the aggro of him, and can break sleeps with a heal. Hell, Fluffy's heal alone can help a dark defender ride out a lot of mezzes.

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Dark Servant is A) Stupid B) pitiful on damage C) draws less aggro and runs off on its own.

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Next up, dark has a perfectly good heal that is, in fact, so good that many dark defenders don't even bother six-slotting it. Dark miasma's heal provides a truckload of damage mitigation, and it's a very, very potent single target debuff. And did I mention that Fluffy has the same heal?

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Which it spams in its "chain of things" it does, turning off its debuff.

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Oh ... and dark also has a hefty damage debuff in darkest night. Which Fluffy also casts. Ummm ... and dark also has high-level resistance to neg, energy, and PSI ... in a PBAoE stealth.

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Dark Servant is nice, but too erratic to depend on unless solo... where you don't really need it most of the time.

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And dark's AoE disorient doesn't toss mobs to the winds, has a longer duration, and has a better chance to disorient.

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The only disorient in Dark Miasma is in Howling Twighlight, not something you can use regularly for *just* the disorient.

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You can, under I7, legitimately argue that FF provides better "can't hit me protection" than dark to teammates, but dark has far more powers that are of direct and substantial benefit to the defender herself. Every single power in dark is a potentially good power for soloing. Except the AoE phase, that is. That power sucks [censored].

Cripes. Some of you guys are as flakey crying dark's gimpitude as Erratic was crying rad's gimpitude.

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Note I'm not saying that the Dark Debuff itself is "bad" but in its team role of "defending" the team, it falls short because of that mezz protection.

Dark Miasma only provides "fear" protection, which doesn't drop toggles. Inequality on mezz protection in this case is *very* important.

With this change, debuffers will only ever be able to *assist* a primary mitigation power set (tanks, scrappers or Sonic/FF) on large teams. They can not even attempt to fill those same roles, even if you had a couple of debuffers.

One person would activate their debuff, get hammered before the second debuff lands if your timing is not perfect and die.

Happened a lot pre-i5/ED. With lessened numbers, it will just happen more!

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FF boils down to its Big Three defense buffs. Force bolt is nice, and is clearly the best keepaway power in the set. Detention field has its advocates. PFF is a lifesaver (at your teammates expense). And the rest of the set is laughably bad. Errr, "situational." As _Castle_ called those powers.

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Used aggressively, they can be useful. My Robotics/FF hasn't got that far, but I'm planning on trying all of the FF powers.

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But please, go back to bashing the devs.

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When they screw up? Yes, I will.

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FWIW, my bubbler (L37) dates from I1. She was in her low 20s, I believe, when badges were released. She consistently got her mez badges at lower levels than my 43 DDD -- even though the counters started ticking for her at a much later level. And I've spent much more time soloing my DDD.

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You need to go back and check on your powers. You are miss-interpeting several powers.

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PS -- you can regain the a big chunk of the to hit debuff numbers by slotting fearsome stare with accuracy debuffs. I'm not, however, defending the devs over the Schedule A / B nerf. They're clearly goofy.

I'm just sayin'.

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Actually, the changes on debuffing themselves aren't that big a deal, its just a decision putting debuffs and equating themselves as "equal" to defense, when it's not.

They are an attack power, grabbing aggro that offers no real protection against mezzing.

Against *any* primary/secondary defense set it will fail if it is in near equality for the "Protection" it provides compared to FF if that is ignored.

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When looking at the graph, though, an interesting question comes up: How do you balance the two against each other when they behave so differently?

You would have to find a suitable point of intersection. It can't be too high because defense-heavy sets like FF don't have much to make up for their losses before that point. You can't make it too low, either because, although debuffing sets like Dark Miasma have much to make up for it, the curve becomes very steep very quickly after that point. It won't be long before the disparity between the two far outpaces what else the set can do.

So, then, what do you do?

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This also does not include things for balance such as mezzing. If Dark Night/Shadow Fall are "equal" with the three forcefield bubbles, where is Dark Miasma's *real* mezz protection?

Debuffs garner aggro. Usually a lot, but the person grabbing that aggro is incapable of wistanding *one* minion mezz which can knock of toggles, then leaving themselves (and their team) unprotected with all the angry mobs.

Yay! We are now imbalanced to ForceFields because of a shortsighted "numbers" fix.

Yes, this is really starting to look bad, especially with the new information that bosses and AVs by default, have an innate resistance to debuffing.

Is that on top of the energy/dark energy resistance against debuffs too?

I kind of thought I died spectacularly to Nightstar a month or so again. I thought it was just the i5/ED, but if they've snuck in an extra resistance in there that would explain me appying Darkest Night and then *immediately* faceplanting.

I bet this resistance also applies to the damage debuffing too.

Yay for defender gankage and being "happy" with Defenders. We really are the red-headed step-children of archtypes.

Happy B-Day, Liquid-X.

And a roaring welcome back to War Witch!

Wahoooooo!

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Ok, quick run down:

The AV / Player bonus only applies if your Fury is 80% or more. That's the point where diminishing returns sets in, and this allows you to get to max rage easier. That's not exactly what we wanted, nor is it exactly what you folks were told. I'm sorry for that. I'm uncertain at this time what can be done to improve how this works, but I'll be exploring possibilities.

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I think something like this is the root of why "Defiance" isn't working right. You can get a damage bonus, but it's at the last 1/6th of the bar... after about two-three seconds.

It's like this insane power-curve. It's useless about 99% of the time, which is not good when you are taking damage.

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This is a little odd, I agree. Consider that a Dark mastermind already has an AOE immobil and an ST hold. All the pool adds is the armor and ANOTHER attack, when we already have three attacks, the last one usually AOE, we could take and slot. The armor's nice, though.

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They get a slow that debuffs damage resistance in Dark Miasma. It's Dark Servant or Dark Blast: Tenebrous Tentacles that is the immob in Dark sets.

And the pet one is pretty useless a lot of the times.