Futurias

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  1. [ QUOTE ]
    How about just installing an arena terminal in your base?

    On the hero side, I'd LOVE to see something like a Hero Base Spur Line you could install. It would be a little mini-subway room that would allow you to go anywhere the Green or Yellow lines go. It would make a nice complement to the teleporters which only go to zones not serviced by the trams anyway.

    Oh, and the stupid teleport beacon for Founders Falls.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Oh, heck. I'd even put two spur rooms for both Green and Yellow Line!

    Who had the brilliant idea for teleport beacons to only be for hazard zones?
  2. [ QUOTE ]
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    A Defender with Darkest Night with 3 even level To Hit Debuff Enhancements has a 30% To Hit Debuff.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Yikes. So did Darkest Night get a nerf somewhere along the line? Because 30% is the BASE tohit debuff percentage I've seen listed for it in many places. From what Castle wrote, the base is actually, what, 15%? Or have previous estimates of the power just been way wrong, and that bad info has made it into guides and character builders uncorrected? I'm guessing we just never knew the real numbers. (So count that as one more reason we need quantitative values in the power descriptions!)

    And what about Radiation Infection? Is that the same type of debuff (ToHit, not Accuracy)? They both take ToHit Debuff enhancements. In the power and enhancement descriptions, the phrases are used interchangeably, but there's actually a pretty significant difference. Not that the difference is easy to explain, so I don't blame them for being vague on the details in the user interface.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I did miss that. Darkest Night was a base -30% ACC DEBUFF and -35% DAM DEBUFF. But you could only slot it for -ACC.

    As those are "A" type enhancers, they are 33% each.

    Using these numbers, Darkest Night will actually be giving a base negative to hit number that is then multiplied by the mobs rank.

    Something does *not* sound right there. I somehow don't think that AVs are actually going to have a -15% ACC under this system.

    And if Darkest Night got stealth-nerfed to Smoke and Smoke Grenade 15%, something was *really* wrong there.
  3. [ QUOTE ]
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    That facet is that they are reduced by the purple barrier (as are all powers that affect foes)

    [/ QUOTE ] Ahhh, I see where you are coming from. I am not under the impression that RI debuffs less against a +5 than a +0.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Debuffs are listed as "attack" powers (and cause aggro) so are resisted directly by the purple patch on mobs.

    Damage debuffs were tested and proven to work this way, and it was clarified that accuracy did too, I believe.
  4. [ QUOTE ]
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    Don't forget that accuracy debuffs were heavily affected under ED. My Darkest Night (which was about a 90% -ACC before) is now only 65% -ACC, a fairly hefty change.

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    Debuffs are applied to To Hit, not Accuracy. So, a 30% To Hit Debuff on an AV would result in the AV having (50% - 30%) * 1.5 [Their Accuracy Modifier] or 30% chance to hit someone with no Defense. If you have 5% Defense on top of the Debuff, that would be cut down to 22.5% chance to hit. If you have 20% Defense on top of the Debuff, then the AV's chance to hit would be 7.5%. A Defender with Darkest Night with 3 even level To Hit Debuff Enhancements has a 30% To Hit Debuff.

    Lastly, To Hit Debuffs essentially fulfill the function of Defense for everyone the Debuffed target attacks.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Castle, back when debuffs were explained originally (by Geko or Positron) they were stated to be a function of multiplication/division (not a straight subtraction/addition like defense was.)

    Has this been changed? Or is this now how it is figured? Because facing off against +mobs would immediately (and drastically) impact the accuracy debuff.

    The way I understood it used to work that Total_Hit = (Base_Accuracy * Purple_Patch_Modifier) * (Debuff * Purple_Patch_Modifier)

    This covers both the increasing accuracy *and* the fact that powers that affect mobs are hit by the diminishing returns of mobs resisting the power via the purple patch.

    Just like attacks have to deal with their decreasing accuracy and decreasing damage, but you can't slot debuffs {to hit better with accuracy SOs}.

    AFAIK, there was never a time that I could throw out a -90% subtraction on accuracy, as it was always "division". They would always have 10% of their accuracy (which for old style bosses even level was still about 7.5% accuracy.)
  5. [ QUOTE ]
    Oh god if thats the case please limit that to pvp. I do not want to have to slot freezing rain for accuracy :/....., if that is the case though and its gonna take away the autohit feature make it pvp only the way smoke needs a to hit check in pvp but not pve.

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    You can TP out of the AOE, stopping the damage. You can't do that to fireball.
  6. [ QUOTE ]
    I agree too, Arcanaville. But it can't hurt (well, I hope not!) to cause the devs to consider it.

    In this specific case, like I said, I think toHit debuffing works pretty well, and if they somehow changed it in the way they indirectly are fixing defense, they might find it too effective and have to mess with it even more.

    That's my gut feel, at least. I could be way outta wack on it.

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    Don't forget that accuracy debuffs were heavily affected under ED. My Darkest Night (which was about a 90% -ACC before) is now only 65% -ACC, a fairly hefty change.
  7. [ QUOTE ]
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    Although I've pushed for this change at least as hard as anyone, I'm *not* an advocate of making everything work exactly, precisely the same way. That's why even though I've harped on tohit buffs for a long time, I *dont* want a solution that completely nullifies their strong effect on defense. I *want* the devs to have a tool in their toolbox that allows them to make enemies that are hard on defense to create challenges above the norm: I just wanted that effect not be used *pervasively* (i.e. all higher ranks, all higher levels). I don't want defense to be immune to tohit buffs, I want the devs to use tohit buffs to make things special, ala villains with psi damage or regeneration debuffs.

    I'm also not in favor of making tohit debuffs work precisely the same way as defense either. Defense, tohit buffs, tohit debuffs, and resistance should work differently for variety sake: what we need to make sure about is that each AT gets the appropriate one (or ones) necessarily to function as they should.

    You can get too crazy trying to make *everything* "equal." For example, blasters are said to use offense as their primary defense: they are presumably supposed to kill faster than something like a tank, which has higher mitigation and lower damage. But tank mitigation is stable relative to higher level foes, while the purple patch reduces blaster damage substantially. It reduces tanker damage similarly, but the tank isn't relying on high offense for its survivability: in effect the tank gets high mitigation and low damage, while the blaster gets high damage and low mitigation, and one of those two is hit harder by the purple patch. Does this mean blasters need a damage boost against higher foes? I don't personally think thats a good idea myself, at least not directly.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Just wanted to echo this sentiment.

    I think this DEF scaling fix is very good, and - if I understand it correctly - it boils down to moving the ACC bonus that +rank and +level opponents get to the same place in the equation where our ACC enhancers lie instead of putting that ACC for +rank and +level where ToHit and DEF live in the equation.

    If that is correct, then ToHit buffing should still be able to penetrate DEF just as it used to do, and debuffing ToHit should act a lot like having +DEF (with the advantage that it helps your teammates, too). I think that's all very good as far as it goes.

    But I hope they will retain the idea of ToHit buffs "penetrating" DEF and apply it where appropriate. Such as places where the extra accuracy of the entity isn't due to his rank or level, but due to his nature.

    For example. Those damnable turrets with their higher BTH than other things. Don't move that ACC to the enhancement portion of the equation. Those suckers should have nice, DEF penetrating ToHit buffs so us squishies with no access to DMG RES continue to hate them.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Actually, as debuff are divisors, it does not matter where in the accuracy calculation they are put (relative to Defense which is a flat subtractive/additive number).

    Basically, this change does not fix nor hurt accuracy debuffs, which are still getting double dinged.
  8. Are accuracy debuffs being doubly penalized because base_hit/accuracy is increased by the purple patch *and* debuffs are always directly reduced by the purple patch too?

    If so, something probably needs to be looked at to fix it somehow.

    Even applying the debuffs to the base_hit, it will still have the same problem.

    I wonder what would be easier to code? Removing the scaling affect of resisting the debuff (which still allows the improving accuracy to affect it) or changing the code some other way?
  9. [ QUOTE ]
    I would like to raise a couple issues in the light of this new changes made to mob toHit values.

    1. Mob toHit bonus values with respect to rank were toned down in the wake of I5. Even level bosses used to have a BTH of 75%, now it is 65%. IIRC this change was made to help out defense sets. Given current I6 BTH values of 50%, 57.5%, 65% and 75% BTH for even level minions, LTs, bosses and AVs, the new accuracy bonuses will be 0%, 15%, 30% and 50%. Are there any plans to bump these bonuses back to 0%, 25%, 50% and 80%, corresponding to I4 BTH values of 50%, 62.5%, 75% and 90%? After all, the buff to SR/Evasion is going to be reversed.

    2. Statesman mentioned that this new change is going make defense scale up to +5 levels. Why is this limitation in place, i.e. why only 5 levels? What are the values for +6 and beyond? OTOH, what happens to mobs 1 or 2 levels below?

    3. The current Chance-to-Hit (CtH) equation is: <font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>cap{ cap[BTH + sum(toHit) - sum(def)] * (acc) }</pre><hr />...and it will remain as is for I7. Only the BTH and acc values are being changed for mobs. As has been pointed out by others, this proposed change is only going bring defense in parity with resistance in the absense of toHit buffs. While that is the majority of the cases in PvE (notable exceptions: Rularuu eyeballs), the same cannot be said for PvP. Have the devs ever considered making defense multiplicative, such as in the follow CtH equation?<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>cap{ [BTH + sum(toHit)] * cap[1 - (2 * sum(def)] * (acc) }</pre><hr />If the answers is yes but it has been decided that the current CtH equation is preferred, what would be the reasoning behind said decision?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    They did *lower* the defenses across the board, while decreasing accuracy. Now that they are fixing Defense so that it scales better/correctly, I dodn't see that any defense/accuracy numbers (across the board) need to be revisited.

    +5 should be at the top level of effectiveness. The calculation they are doing does not actually preclude about +5 per se, but there isn't a reason to really go beyond it either.

    This is a fairly elegant fix, IMO.
  10. [ QUOTE ]
    I hope this has not been stated before, but I see 1 potential problem with this change that should be addressed.

    I love what this alteration is doing for SR scrappers and Ice tankers.... however, when it comes to Invulnerability there is an issue.

    Under the current system unyielding gives a -5% defense effect across the board.

    This essentially enhanced the to-hit value of minions from 50 to 55%... lieutenants from 62.5% to 67.5%... and bosses from 75% to 80%.

    If this change goes into effect without altering the unyielding defense debuff we will get the following result.

    Minions will go from 50% to 55% (no change here)

    Liuetenants will go from 62.5% to 68.75 (an increase over current values)

    Bosses will see the largest change as they go from 75% to 82.5% (another increase over current values)

    This can be rectified by adjusting the unyielding debuff to compensate and I recommend that such an adjustment take place to prevent a nerf from comming out of what is supposed to be a buff to defense based sets.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    The Unyeilding debuff needs to be taken into context. It isn't supposed to be totally by itself. Added together with tough hide and invincibility, it's not bad... except against Psi.

    I do feel it needs to be slightly toned down and that the PSI component needs to be removed.
  11. [ QUOTE ]
    I'm not too pleased about the idea of them buffing the bosses accuracy in a way that will decrease for the defense set, but the other majority of sets will only be getting hit by bossess more often now.
    Just what we need, more hits without the defense to withstand it.
    Bummer

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Um, if you have no defense, it makes no apparent difference to how it is now.

    It is strictly a buff to defense.
  12. [ QUOTE ]
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    A while ago, peoople have requested something be done. Well, we've done a bunch of work and done this. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless of their rank or level. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. This change has no effect on a player who does not have any Defense.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    The devs get 20 points for listening to the playerbase, 10 points for giving a boost to SR Scrappers, and 10 points for the same to Ice Tanks.

    ...however, they get -50 points for making yet *another* fundamental alternation to their game engine without warning.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Um, WTH? This *is* the warning. From best estimates, i7 (which this will be part of) is over a month away.

    Sheesh, some people. You'd think the world was ending because some didn't give you ten dollars for nothing.
  13. [ QUOTE ]
    Glad you asked. Basically, Level advantage in PvE, Lts, Bosses, AV's, and Monsters had To Hit bonuses. This made Defense not scale properly. We changed them so that instead of To Hit bonuses, they have Accuracy bonuses. What that means is, Defense is applied before their bonus, rather than after. Since Accuracy is a multiplier, it is multiplying a small base value than before.

    For instance, an AV had a base To Hit of 75%. If a player had 25% Defense, the AV would have had a 50% chance to hit. Under the new system, the AV's has a base 50% chance to hit. The Defense is applied, reducing his To Hit to 25%. The Accuracy is then applied, giving a final To Hit of 37.5% -- a 12.5% improvement over the old system.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    So, basically, you subtract defense first to the "base" accuracy and then modify it by rank and difficulty. Not exactly as good as I was hoping, but possibly workable.

    So let's see how minions work out +3 or +4. We'll assume that 25% DEF is nearly equivilant to 50% damage reduction.

    (50% - 25%)* 1.40 = 35% Accuracy (mitigating 65% of damage incoming which is at 140%.) 49% damage.

    (50% - 0%)* 1.40% = 70% Accuracy (mitigating 30% damage incoming which is at 140%, but resisted by 50% damage resistance. So a total of 65% damage is fully defended and resisted against.) 49% damage (roughly.)

    I have to say, hot-diggity-dog! That's much better than my gut feeling said it would be. As long as the purple patch bumps accuracy and damage equally, minions are "fair" to DEF and RES.

    Now for AVs! (trepidation!)

    ((50% -25%) *1.5) *1.4 = 52.5% (or mitigating 47.5% damage of an AV's 140% damage. Painful, but still a radical improvement onl 20% mitigation from before!) 73.5% (roughly)

    ((50% -0%) *1.5) *1.4 = 105% (capped at 95%) (So you are taking 95% of 140% AV damage, 133%, but resisting 50% of that. So you are only taking 66.5%.) So 66.5% (roughly).

    Amazingly enough, in the same ballpark. I am *very* impressed! The 5% miss chance helps Resistance just a little bit.
  14. [ QUOTE ]
    *foams at the mouth*

    1 more quickie question if possible: What if you drop say..Blizzard and then Fulcrum Shift (I know about the no end, I meant popping a blue and then using FS). Will it buff the damage of blizzard temporarily or will you have to do all the +dmg and +acc before you throw something like Blizzard?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    From what it sounds like, it *inheirets* all buffs (that are applicable) from you when it spawns. So you don't buff them after you cast it, but before you cast it (like any other attacks.)

    I wouldn't mind this if the short lived pets were given this "bonus" over perma pets.
  15. [ QUOTE ]
    We're tweaking with toggle dropping...mostly decreasing its overall effect.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    On deeper thought, I *really* hope toggle dropping is going away, as being Hulk and then suddenly turned into that wimp Bruce Banner is just not fun.
  16. [ QUOTE ]
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    Net_2Hit = Base_2Hit * Purple_Patch_Multiplier - DEF * Purple_Patch_Multiplier


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    The problem with this one would be that you are doing nothing to help with even enemies (or any level enemy) that has accuracy that is higer than 50%, so AVs, Bosses, turrets, etc, would still be gimping Defense.

    NOW, if you did Net_2Hit = Base_2Hit * Net_2Hit = Base_2Hit * Purple_Patch_Multiplier - DEF * Purple_Patch_Multiplier * Rank_bonus

    Then you do indeed get an actual scaling, but as far as i know, the rank bonus is not a calculated bonus itself, but simply the base of this enemy. Another issue is we are still leaving buffs and debuffs out. An advantage is that you wont always get negative numbers if you go above 50% def.

    If it IS on a table, and enemy has an accuracy on a factor of... lets say 1 = 50 then 1.5 would mean the AV accuracy... Lets call it MinionDefIndex just as we do with brawls. In this case you can use this instead:


    EnemyAcc - (Def * MinionDefIndex * (1+LevelBonus))

    Still leaving out the buffs though.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I believe you are close, but {I believe} it works out like this...

    Net_2Hit = Base_2Hit * Purple_Patch_Multiplier * Mob_Rank_Modifier - DEF * Purple_Patch_Multiplier * Mob_Rank_Modifier.

    This would neatly fit in with scaling mobs by rank (Boss &lt;--&gt; Lieutenants and the new ArchVillian &lt;--&gt; Elite Boss).

    As both the purple patch modifer and rank modifier get passed to defense, if you *have* defense it increases in effectiveness based on what you are facing.

    This has the benefit of making defense "better" against Lts, bosses and AVs *and* against increasing con.

    With a hypothetical 30% defense, you would end up with a 20% chance to be hit against minions and against an AV you would get 50*1.5-30*1.5= 30% . That used to be a 45% chance that he would hit you.

    So bosses and AVs would still hit more, but your defense isn't totally useless.

    The only problem with this sort of equation is negative defense or a penalty to you defense, like Unyeilding, as this would effectively *increase* your penalty.
  17. [ QUOTE ]
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    We just received tech that will allow players to pass buffs onto certain powers (such as Blizzard).

    [/ QUOTE ] Um...what does this mean exactly?

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    Attacks that are actually pets will now be affected by buildup type powers? HOLY COW!

    Can that pretty-please be added to Dark Servant?
  18. [ QUOTE ]
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    And why scrappers? Not to be rude, but their "role" is not defensive... perhaps because they ARE changing the way DEF works globally?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I bet thats just it.

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    Actually, I'm guessing they are revoking the +/- scaling of mobs accuracy up to +5/-5. So no more double dinging accuracy *and* damage.

    I've held the theory for quite a while that accuracy is directly affected by the purple patch. So while you take a 10% hit on your base accuracy at +1 level, mobs got a 10% bonus at +1.

    +2 was +25%, +3 was +40% and +4 about +55%. (Barebrained numbers, BTW. Don't quote them.) +55% on minion accuracy (50%*1.55=77.5% or AV accuracy.)

    Now take AV/Rulari accuracy and do the same. 75%*1.55=116.25%.

    Subtract defense straight from both numbers and you realize why defense *really* doesn't scale well. You go from about 10-20% minion accuracy to about 30-40% at 140% damage. Basically doubling to tripling how often you get hit for half again as much damage.
  19. [ QUOTE ]
    Some more good news...

    Ice Tankers and SR Scrappers have long lamented that Defense doesn't scale with level. Because mobs higher level than a player possess an inherent to hit bonus, Defense isn't as effective over levels as Resistance.

    A while ago, peoople have requested something be done. Well, we've done a bunch of work and done this. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless of their rank or level. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. This change has no effect on a player who does not have any Defense.

    This change is coming in I7

    [/ QUOTE ]

    While I applaud this whole-heartedly, this doesn't fix AVs three shotting my EA brute. Same level, but just high enough base accuracy kicks my heiney left and right.

    Now *if* that gets fixed, I'd want to see Defense/Accuracy inspirations revisited.
  20. [ QUOTE ]
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    OK, that's an exploit I hadn't thought of. The solution may be, if a person quits a team (as opposed to disconnects) the mission fails.

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    Alternatively, boot the team-quitter off the map unless it's their mission, in which case you boot everyone else off the map.

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    And hope mission owners never lag out?
  21. [ QUOTE ]
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    Any time you use "most" in a situation with exploit, someone will turn it to "always abused".

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    But part of what makes an exploit an exploit is repeatability. If we're talking mission complete XP here, how is that exploitable? Once you've finished the mission, you can't go back and do it again.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Yes, it is repeatible. You set up the mission, *quit* from the team and select a different mission. The team is doing your mission, but you are no longer connected to it for completion purposes.
  22. [ QUOTE ]
    Given that (a) they have given up any XP for the opponents defeated, (b) the number of missions where you can complete the mission by only clicking glowies is limited, and (c) most of those who like to do this are running characters where defeat all missions take longer and represent higher risk than those who go through missions leaving a wake of defeated foes as they move towards the glowies, I'd say No. At most, it balances things out.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Any time you use "most" in a situation with exploit, someone will turn it to "always abused". That's why exploit have to be blocked, so you don't get super-powerleveled-from-glowies-in-one-day problems.

    It's not like Stalkers aren't supposed to use their stealth *for* combat purposes!
  23. [ QUOTE ]
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    one of the most common respodendes was "Watch the devs post how their going to lesten it to suppression and give us the old bait and switch 'see we do listen toyou its just going to be suppression now"

    [/ QUOTE ]

    The Devs haven't said that. States LIKES the suppression idea, which was suggested here.

    What the players need to do, IMO, is address the problem rather than the solution. If a stalker (for example) can whiz through a mission, click all the glowies and thus finish it without once facing a risk, is this a problem?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    This would be a "yes" as there is no risk for the reward, and can be exploited with massive XP bonuses for end mission rewards.
  24. [ QUOTE ]
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    This means no suppression either, right? That would incur most of the same problems the original nerf brought, so I hope we're sticking with stealth as-is.

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    If you read Statesman's comment on it, yes supression of stealth will be coming in a future patch. They will be pulling the current method so they can code supression in.

    Its only being pulled because otherwise idiots would use group and castable invisibility abilities to grief and harass players.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Oh okay, so it's just the usual bait-and-switch that comes like clockwork. Suppression still brings in a huge host of QOL problems and is as bafflingly asinine as the previous idea. They may as well just change the power name to "kinda sneaky...sometimes".

    Well, so much for boosting my expectations.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    It still hasn't changed the fact that there *are* exploits that they have to block off. Their first iteration didn't take into account stealth powers you couldn't turn off.

    There is nothing wrong with being able to steal past *most* of the combat, but CoX is still mostly a combat sim. As the exploit was massive XP for just clicking on glowies with *no* danger, suppression is a fine compromise.

    So no more level 2 guys running through a mission and gaining two levels. Which doesn't hurt my feelings.
  25. Banner/Shield/LOGO (small/medium/large)
    Originally suggested by: Futurias (but it's probably not that original)
    Category: Decorative
    Customizable? No, but automatically uses your Super Group logo and colors.
    Type: Purchased
    Description: Just allows you to customize your base so it is immediately visible as your own.
    Limitations: Unlimited decorative fitting.

    Immaterial SFX (lights, water, sparkles)
    Originally suggested by: Futurias
    Category: Decorative
    Customizable? (Y/N) Multiple colors placable
    Type: Purchased
    Description: Just beams of vertical light and water drips/walls
    Limitations: Decorative limited, to make your base more unique.

    Blank edging
    Originally suggested by: someone in Beta
    Category: wall decorative
    Customizable? (Y/N) No.
    Type: Wall Preference Setting.
    Description: A "blank" setting for upper and lower walls edging.
    Limitations: Style application, can be applied to the entire base per normal.