Pippy

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Personally, I could hear the difference in performance for LS on test vs. live, as I had both the +recharge from Hasten and from a slotted Decimation set. Many players might not ever notice a difference in their LS performance, but it was obvious to me.

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With Hasten and Decimation both, you're getting to over +150% recharge, right? I'm sure that much difference would be pretty noticeable. On the other hand, I'm not sure that a particularly high fraction of LS users have that much recharge. I'm not sure that a particularly high fraction of LS users have anything more than Hasten. Maybe +150% isn't an extreme edge case, but it's hardly the norm either.

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I also feel that anyone who normally buffs their standard pets (Singularity, Jack Frost, Stoney, Audrey) with Speed Boost or AM will also notice a difference in their damage output.

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You may well be right. You might not. Unless someone actually goes out and measures the difference in damage output in actual game situations, accounting for things like pet AI, travel time between enemies, all that jazz, we won't really know.

You points are well taken, but a few things to bear in mind:

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Your character is an extreme edge case.

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It's the "extreme edge cases" that are hardest hit by this change. To be honest, I would bet that the average non-forum-goer won't even notice the change. (I didn't notice for I don't know how long that LS was firing faster when I had Hasten up. Maybe I'm just not very observant.)

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It sounds like you did much of your testing in an environment where the bad guys come to you. That is, in the very case in which the change to LS hurts the least, since it doesn't get left behind with 2/3rds of the damage you paid the END for still unused.

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I would argue that the opposite is the case. The longer Ls is up and firing, the larger the disparity in damage done. If you have a cycle time of 3 seconds vs. 5 seconds, if you have enemies in range for 10 seconds, you'll get off 3 shots boostes, and only 2 shots at the normal recharge. If they're in range for 50 seconds, then you get off 16 shots instead of 10. In the first case, you get one extra shot; in the second, you get six.

Either way, LS is not an efficient use of endurance if you don't have it firing for most of its duration. That's an issue that should be looked at independent of this particular change.

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LS would not have been firing "a little less frequently".

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Again, the extent to which your pets firing rate is noticeable given everything else that you'd be doing is questionable. As I said, I didn't find a 70% bonus particularly noticeable. I couldn't tell until I got a stopwatch.

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In the case of my fire/storm most of my spawn to spawn killing power is fire at work...

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Yep, that was kind of my point. You can't look at a nerf to one power in isolation -- it has to be considered in light of the performance of the other 22 powers at your disposal.

Fire control is admittedly a high-damage control set; it might be a fairer test to look at, say ice/storm, any storm defender, earth/kin, etc.

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What I've found is that LS is NOT worth casting unless I'm going to be fighting in one location for longer than half a min.

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That was my observation of non-twinked LS as well. I'd bring it out for AV fights, sometimes for boss fights, or if I was just fooling around. It is pretty crucial to success in playing King of the Hill with the warriors on the hill by the tram in Talos.

In any case, I think a very good case could be made for either reducing the endurance cost or adding mobility. But I'm not sure that the current tone of the discussion is likely to render the devs particularly receptive to making those types of changes.

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to sum it up. Perma hasten stormy able to contribute less in tough fights (offense + survivability) than the other debuffing sets for about 7x as much endurance.

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I don't think there's any argument that this change makes LS less effective -- or rather, less enhanceable over its base performance.

The relevant question, though, is what effect it has on the performance of the powerset as a whole. Just as an example, if you were getting 50 dps from LS on live, but only 20 dps on Test, that's a much bigger deal if the rest of your powers only contribute 50 dps than if you can crank out 150. The claim has been made that these changes are detrimental to entire powersets.

It's time to back up that assertion with some evidence.

QR

Once again, I'm going to suggest that the most useful possible feedback -- from players' persepective as much as the devs -- would be to hop on the test server and actually test the changes, preferably in a quantitative fashion.

Here's what I would do, if I had any characters that I could use to test this (taken from an earlier post):

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I guess a good way to test might be to get some relatively straightforward mission -- maybe a radio "click the glowie," since that way you could basically do the whole mission, except actually clicking the glowie and completeing it -- and time it on both live and on test. As I say, if you didn't click the glowie at the end, you could run it a few times -- say 5 or 10 -- and then you'd start to get a decent sense of how much difference the change actually makes.

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Probably be good to try this for a couple different missions.

I'm pretty sure that Castle et al. aren't trying to harm the overall performance of stormies, electric blasters, or kineticists. Therefore, if you can show that the changes have a significant effect on your performance, it would go a long way towards making the case for compensatory buffs of affected powers.

Or everybody could keep on whining and crying and spewing hyperbole. I'm sure that's just as helpful to your case.

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On the other hand, Illusion/Kin may take a hit here as most of its damage DOES come from its pets.

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I haven't seen a lot of testing outside of pet AI issues -- have people tried, say, and ill/kin or a stormie to see what the overall effect on performance is in the context of the entire set? That would be good to read about.

My experience playing my fire/storm was that LS was gravy. I hardly noticed the difference in LS's firing rate between when Hasten was up and when it wasn't because there were 83 other things going on. I rather suspect that for most stormies, this change will primarily have a marginal effect on the performance of the powerset as a whole.

I have less (almost no) experience with kinetics. But I'd still be pretty surprised if ill/kin actually takes much of a noticeable performance hit, except in extreme situations.

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I have tested it out, and it SEEMED like it took longer to clear a mission than it does on live, but I'm quite prepared to admit that I would need do substantially more testing than I have done so already in order to get an accurate answer ...

But I have to admit I've been playing Fire/Kin a lot lately rather than Illusion/Kin so I can't say for sure that impression is accurate.

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I guess a good way to test might be to get some relatively straightforward mission -- maybe a radio "click the glowie," since that way you could basically do the whole mission, except actually clicking the glowie and completeing it -- and time it on both live and on test. As I say, if you didn't click the glowie at the end, you could run it a few times -- say 5 or 10 -- and then you'd start to get a decent sense of how much difference the change actually makes.

Of course, this doesn't sound like as much fun as actually playing the game, but it's really the only way to explicitly determine how much of an impact the changes will have. (I'd do it myself, but I don't have any characters who are currently affected by the changes -- I deleted my fire/storm a while ago to make room for new alts.) I think it's also the best way to get the devs to throw some compensatory buffs at affected powers if the changes do have a big impact on the overall performance in normal situations.

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On the other hand, Illusion/Kin may take a hit here as most of its damage DOES come from its pets.

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I haven't seen a lot of testing outside of pet AI issues -- have people tried, say, and ill/kin or a stormie to see what the overall effect on performance is in the context of the entire set? That would be good to read about.

My experience playing my fire/storm was that LS was gravy. I hardly noticed the difference in LS's firing rate between when Hasten was up and when it wasn't because there were 83 other things going on. I rather suspect that for most stormies, this change will primarily have a marginal effect on the performance of the powerset as a whole.

I have less (almost no) experience with kinetics. But I'd still be pretty surprised if ill/kin actually takes much of a noticeable performance hit, except in extreme situations.

I don't PvP a lot, or at all, even, but the DB animation times are in general not too long. The first three powers have 1 second animation times; only Typhoon's Edge, Vengeful Slice, and 1000000000000000000000 Cuts have animations longer than 2 seconds. It animates as fast as any scrapper set, really.

Of course, combos are next to useless, so there is that. And PvP doesn't really play to WPs strengths, from what I've seen.

I've generally gotten thrashed in PvP. But there's a pretty good chance that has a lot more to do with my skills (or lack thereof) rather than the powersets.

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I vote no. Again. And again and again and again. If you want a villain, make a villain. If you want a hero, make a hero. RP it however you want.

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Because nobody ever switches sides in the comic books, right? O.o

Seriously, the Heel Face Revolving Door is a pretty essential part of the comic book genre, and the fact that it's not yet implemented in the game is disappointing.

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Pohsyb had also been moved off of CoH/CoV but we managed to sneak him out and take him with us.

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Best damn grab you guys ever made. Poh is made of win and sunshine daisies.

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Indeed he is! I remember trying to get some accurate numbers on the way tohit scaled with level back around I3, since the stuff Geko had originally posted had fallen somewhat out of date.

Poshyb was the guy who finally tracked that down for me -- had nothing to do with UI design or anything, but he did it anyways.

Win and sunshine daises indeed!

Excellent guide, Bobitron! Just started a dark/dark, and the writeup of the DA powers was very helpful!

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Under the power attribute window accuracy is listed as 1.00 at base. Mine is currently at 1.57x. What the heck does this mean? Can anyone help me understand how to read this? Most of my attcks are slotted at around 45-50% so I would expect this number to be a % also...not sure what 1.57x even means.

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I believe that it means you have 57% in acc bonuses from sets. It functions just like an additional 57% acc enhancement in all of your powers, except not subject to ED. So 60% from slotting, plus your 57% set bonuses would give you 117% in all of your attacks.

With that much accuracy, slotting ToHit in BF definitely strikes me as overkill. Since CI gives you recharge, health, and even more accuracy, it seems like that'd be the way to go, if it were me.

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Both the streamlined costume creation and the detailed power info look like an outstanding addition to the UI. Kudos, to Pohsyb and whoever else may have been involved in getting this into I12! Can't wait to try it out!

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I like to fight +3-+5 enemies, so I can never have enough accuracy or tohit buffs.

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Without slotting, BF is +10% tohit. So, with that and +6% kismet, here's how your tohit progresses with level:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Even: 91%
+1: 81%
+2: 72%
+3: 64%
+4: 55%
+5: 46%
</pre><hr />

If you've got, say, 60% acc slotting (which is about what you get from level 40 CI sets), then that caps you up til +3s; you've got 88% vs. +4s and 74% vs +5s. If you're rolling with more like 80% acc enhancement, then you're capped up till +5s, which you hit 83% of the time. Of cousre, you might also have some set bonuses thrown in there -- you probably could get away with slotting for damage instead of tohit.

Now, the other side is that BFs base damage isn't that high, and any benefits you might get from damage slotting could well be overwhelmed by the damage boost from fury. So YMMV here. I think as long as (a) you took BF in the first place and (2) you've got a lot of recharge in there, I don't think it matters that much whether you go ToHit or Damage.

Personally, I love the bonuses from Crushing Impact, so I went with that, which kind of locks me into damage. You might be able to find something that you like in the ToHit sets.

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Interesting guide, but I'm going to have to take issue with your analysis of Blinding Feint:

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Blinding Feint

I'm not too fond of this power. Sure, it increases your damage, but for a very brief period of time, only 10 seconds. In order to take full advantage of it you would need to use it before every Attack Vitals combo. Well, the damage of this power itself is very low. It does more damage than Brawl, but not by much. Also, it is only used in one fairly pointless combo, which drops its value even more. If you want it, take it, but don't expect much from it. However if you do take it, slot it with atleast 2 ACC SOs, 3 DAM SOs, and a recharge. Yes, it takes 6 slots to make it bearable. If you can't fit that many slots, then forget it. Not worth the effort.


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I would disagree with just about everything you said in here, at least insofar as it applies to scrappers and tanks.

(1) BF does 0.8 DS damage; Brawl is 0.36. That's 2.222 times brawl damage.
(2) BF SHOULD be used before every AV combo. It occupies 1.33 seconds of cast time. The AV combo takes 4.82 seconds.

Assuming 100% damage enhancement (meh, close enough to the ED cap, although it might be a little optimistic), a scrapper using AV just by itself will get 708 damage every 4.82 seconds.

If you ignore double stacking, BF adds another 1.33 seconds to the chain (thereby requiring less recharge to make it chainable). It adds another 133 damage due to the damage buff, and then another 119 damage from its own (buffed) damage -- another 252. Therefore, increasing the length of the attack chain by 28% increases damage output by 36%. That's clearly a good tradeoff.

Now, when you account for the fact that both Ablating Strike and Vengeful Slice get double-stacked BF, you're adding another 69 damage to the pot. Therefore, the overall damage increase that you get from using BF goes up to 45%. In other words, BF+AV does significantly better sustained damage than AV alone. If you account for the fact that you'll probably need to add another attack to AV to get a chain, at least until you have a very expensive IO-ed build, the analysis favors the inclusion of BF even more. If you have less than 100% damage enhancement, then the analysis favors BF even more.

(3) You want to slot BF first for accuracy, then for recharge, and then for damage after you've hit the ED cap for recharge. With IOs -- I like 5 slots of CI, plus a regular recharge IO -- you can get up to 95%+ recharge and damage both, while having plenty of acc as well. That's really how you should be slotting BF.

The tl;dr version:

Take BF, slot it for recharge, and you'll do way more damage than you will without it.

I've said this before, in the epic missing thread in the General Powers forum:

The frustration caused by missing isn't a function of your hit rate, it's a function of how long you go without hitting your target. If you have an attack that fires every 0.2 seconds (think FR or burn), it's not a big deal if you only hit 20% of the time, because you're still landing something every second, on average.

If, however, all of your attacks are in the 2-3 second animation time range, then landing 4 hits a minute can be irritating, to say the least.

Not that there's much that can be done about it at this stage -- the animations are already done. About the only thing would be to have a separate to-hit check on each tick of a DoT, which would make a lot of sense for powers like flurry, shadow maul, the DB attacks, etc.

* &lt;----- The OP




&lt;-------- your head.

To the OP: I lolled!

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As for this thread, personally I agree with several points Pippy has made, but ultimately, as Arcana said, it comes down to what has any chance of being implemented

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Yep. This is pretty much what won me over in the end too.

Also, there is one thing to consider with multiplicative stacking that I am a little bit uncomfortable with: It works very well with keeping you away from the 45% "magic number" problem. It's a bit less successful when you apply it to the problem of debuffs.

Suppose that we did things my way and moved everything to (multiplicatively stacking) Elusivity. In such a scheme, you could make the first-order approximation that 1 point of defense is equivalent to 2 points of Elusivity. (You shouldn't do this while balancing; I'm just using this for my example since it works in this case and the math's easy.) In that case, the -7.5% def debuffs from, say BS or katana becomes -15% Elusivity.

In the absence of other defense or elusivity, a single debuff will result in a 15% proportional increase in your chance to be hit: if you're fighting even minions, instead of a 50% chance, it would be 1.15*50%=50%+7.5%=57.5%

Now suppose you've got four of them stacked on you. For defense debuffs, that's going to give your enemies a 60% increase in their chance to hit; if it's elusivity, the bonus is 1.15^4-1=75%. For even con minions, it's the difference between being hit 80% of the time and 87% of the time: not a huge difference in this case, but once you start looking at the potential interactions with defense, elusivity, and the respective debuffs you could potentially have in each, etc.

It's not a show-stopper by any means, but it's definitely something that would need to be considered quite carefully.

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Okay, I've spend a good deal more time thinking about this.

I think that in this thread, I've succumbed to the temptation to make the perfect the enemy of the good. The combination of ToHit and Resistance is, from a mathematical standpoint, irretrievably broken and this proposal won't change that. Changing everything to multiplicative stacking also won't change that. Nothing short of redesigning the combat mechanics from the ground up is going to fix the problems, and that simply isn't going to happen.

Arcanaville's system does, however, enable designers to reduce the impact of the flaws in the system, and, as she points out, might not be completely impossible to implement.

So I withdraw my objections and apologize for wasting everybody's time.

There! I'm sure Arcanaville will sleep better at night knowing I agree with her now!

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No, you're not understanding.

Even without the proposed Elusivity, if there is ever a case where a player/power has multiple *Accuracy* (not Anti-Accuracy) modifiers, then they would stack multiplicatively. That's the way it is *right now*.

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You know, you're right, I'd forgotten about this -- the best example being rank and level accuracy modifiers. I'll just polish off this tasty crow while I finish writing this post...

I don't think that this really alters my basic point with this which was that this would still represent a major programming change, regardless of whether or not it could potentially leave the existing balance intact. Still, though, I should've remembered this...

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I think you keep saying 'additive' when you mean 'multiplicative.' Because you are arguing against multiplicative stacking... right?

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Nope. My beef with Arcanaville's suggestion isn't that it includes multiplicative stacking, it's that it retains the additive stacking as well. In principle, you could get the same thing I want using Arcanaville's equation, but the problem is that it also still allows for the possibility of the current broken system. As a matter of practice, I don't believe that the necessary balance changes will occur if the old mechanics are left in place, so I'd prefer that they be removed.

It's not that I don't think that Arcanaville's suggestion isn't an improvement over the current system: it's that I don't think it goes far enough. My concern is that if they "fix" defense -- which is a pretty big if -- they sure aren't going to do it more than once, so I'd like to make sure that they do it right (and by "right," I mean "my way").

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Anyway, your point about the need for the formula to be simple and elegant just simply doesn't hold water. Simple mechanics doesn't necessarily lead to balanced or deep or fun mechanics. In fact, I'm sure you can think of mechanics that are extremely simplified and then imagine just how inadequate that would be to combat mechanics.

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You're sort of affirming the consequent here. I'm claiming that good mechanics should be as simple as possible. I never said that all simple mechanics are good: that would be self-evidently absurd.

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If you want to make that point that simpler is better, then, you've made the point. No need to keep hammering away at a tweak to a mechanic you think is already broken for being already too complex. Start your own thread in forum suggestions asking the Devs to simplify their already-too-complex Chance to Hit formula; or, start your own thread in Players Guide with your fix to defense: "My Simple Chance to Hit Formula Fix." Don't blame Arcanaville for the current complexity or for wanting to add in an obviously (once it's pointed out) missing part of that complex equation. If the complex equation is going to stay, her suggestion makes complete sense. If you don't like the complexity of the equation, take your beef to the Devs.

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I'm not "blaming" Arcanaville for anything -- I'm quite confident that the ToHit equation would've been much better if she'd designed it in the first place. (Seriously.) I just don't think this particular idea of hers is a good one. The reason I keep posting is just that I don't feel like I've yet done a good job of laying out my reasons for why I don't like it. Hopefully, I'll rectify that soon, and then I'll stop harping on stuff.

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If there is ever the case that there is more than one Accuracy modifier (not even sure if it would ever happen, but if there were to be more than one Accuracy modifier) then it would stack multiplicatively.

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Maybe so, and that's basically what Arcanaville is talking about adding, but the fact remains that as it now stands, every single attribute that can stack with itself does so additively.

As I've said, I think that additive stacking is mechanically poor, and is conducive to poor design, but that's where we are right now, and I wouldn't make any assumptions about the feasibility of changing it.

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The current Chance to Hit mechanic already relies on human developers to manually balance each power. After adding Elusiveness, then the Chance to Hit mechanic will still rely on human developers to manually balance each power, only now, they'll have on more tool to tweak, one that is not as heavy-handed as additive Defense bonuses.

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I'll discuss this more later, but my complaint isn't with the need for human input into balancing. It's that I don't think that giving them more tools to tweak is a good thing: ToHit is too complicated already. Rather, they should have different tools. Simpler tools. Tools that are less likely to cause things to break.

My point here was simply that a good set of game mechanics is one in which the game designers can do whatever they want (within reason, obviously) without causing pernicious behavior -- i.e., it should be robust. The current system -- and, I would argue, any system which includes additive stacking -- is just the opposite: there's a fairly narrow set of parameters which don't cause bad behavior.

Be nice, y'all! It's her first post!

Hiya, Salvage! Welcome to the forums!

I've been a bit slow responding to this, because I've been trying to figure out the best approach to take. I guess I'll first answer a couple points in this post that I particularly want to address; then I'll make a final post where I summarize my objections to the proposal in a more organized form than I have so far. I realize that I'm not likely to convince you of the correctness of my position, since I think some of the disagreement stems from irreconcilable differences in design philosophy. But I still think it's useful to have the opposing viewpoint expressed.

Anyways, here goes:

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I'm not advocating a wholesale change to the tohit algorithm. I'm advocating adding one additional type of effect to it, while leaving the rest completely intact and functioning exactly, precisely as before.

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In some sense, I'll concede that you're correct, in that you wouldn't have to change anything after you'd added your parts. That's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that the very fact of getting under the hood and adding terms to the tohit equation constitutes fundamental change -- it doesn't matter much if its and addition or replacement, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of the programming work involved, which, as I've said, strikes me as likely to be the greatest barrier to execution.

Let's be completely clear on this: you are proposing the addition of multiplicatively stacking defense terms to the tohit equation. Whether or not you leave the additively stacking terms in or not, this represents fundamental change. Nothing in the game that I am aware of stacks mltiplicatively. Nothing.

Not that I don't think that multiplicative stacking is a great idea, for reasons that I've already discussed, and for reasons that I'll clarify in my next post. But I have trouble accepting your optimistic appraisal of its ease of implementation. I can't imagine that the programming would be easier than, say, adding Toxic Defense.

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I'm recommending an addition to the existing toolbox of damage mechanics, and while I wear that hat, I have no right to dictate what the game designers do with it. Once its added, I'm free to take up the discussion of the best way to make use of it with the game designers...

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This is not a useful distinction in this context, I don't think, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The only "hat" I'm wearing here is that of an interested, well-informed (I'd like to think) player with some degree of mathematical agility (okay, I'm pretty sure about that one). If I were actually working for NCNC, I might feel more of a need to refrain from allowing design concerns to enter consideration of the mechanics. Since I'm not, I don't particularly see a reason to draw a distinction between the role of a game mechanic implementor and a game designer -- neither one of those is a role I can actually play unless I'm on the payroll.

Also, what I'm suggesting amounts to a mechanical change -- the current mechanics are mathematically pernicious, and adding new mechanics while simultaneously allowing the broken mechanics to survive is not advisable.

If you don't want game design considerations to enter your development of the mechanics, then neither should you rely upon the mathematical acumen of the designers to ensure that the mechanics remain stable: the distinction, if you want to make it, should cut both ways.

What exactly is this a guide to again?

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Its impossible for multiplicatively stacked defenses (Elusivity) to replicate that situation, period. You'll be able to exactly replicate just *one* of those situations, if any.

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I had sort of thought that one of the major purposes in changing the tohit equation is to correct the fact that stacked defense becomes too strong unless it's left at values so low as to be meaningless. So the fact that you aren't replicating the levels of protection that you get when you're stacking defense from three different sources isn't a problem to be worked around; rather, it's the motivation for making the change in the first place.

In any case, I'd thought I'd made the first-order balance point clear: the mitigation provided in toto by each set should remain unchanged. The individual components of each set would therefore need to give more protection, while multiply stacked sets would give less than they currently do.

Again, that's not an unintended consequence which I need to work around: it's the entire purpose of changing defense to multiplicative stacking.

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The math is easy. The "who decides which of those is 'working as intended'" is hard. Because you're going to end up screwing with somebody.

And that will kill the idea dead. Mine sidesteps that problem completely.

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I'm not sure that I agree with this argument. You seem to be advocating a wholesale change of the ToHit equation, while touting the fact that it's possible, under this change, to leave things exactly as they are.

If things are okay as they are, there's no need for a change in the first place. If they need to be changed, then rejecting a proposal on the grounds that it forces you to deal with wholesale balance changes is hardly a wise position.

Basically, I agree with you that any change in the ToHit equation at this stage has approximately zero probability, unless they do a wholesale rewrite of the game engine.

My point is simply that if they're going to take the time to rewrite the ToHit equation, they would be utterly foolish not to simultaneously deal with the imbalances that made the changes desirable in the first place.

Additionally, I'm not sure that it's necessarily better to make the changes piecemeal. Given that it will represent a significant change to both PvE and PvP (if it doesn't, why bother with it in the first place?), wouldn't it be better to get it done all in one fell swoop, rather than run into the I4-I6 situation where you have constant major adjustments over the course of most of a year?

In any case, all of my arguments are predicated on the notion that it's easier to balance powers -- you basically need a calculator, pencil and paper, and then a spreadsheet -- than it is to dig through the code (much of which currently seems to be something of a black box even to the developers) and reprogram stuff. If that's not the case, if it's actually fairly easy to mess around with the ToHit equation, then everything I've been saying goes out the window, and I'd have no further objections to your proposal.