Rodion

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I agree with moving it to Galaxy. There is very little traffic in Galaxy. Face it, most of the time your first contact sends you to Atlas right away anyway!

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There's already an AE in Galaxy. That wouldn't solve the problem, though, it would just move it to Galaxy. Characters who go to Galaxy still have to deal with tremendous lag. While Galaxy is less popular, people still don't have a choice about if they want to get a respec from Jack Wolfe.

People are complaining about lag, but no one is saying what exactly is causing it. They're just complaining of rubberbanding, slow response times, being unable to move, etc. We really need to identify the type of lag that is causing the trouble to identify the right fix.

These lag effects are caused by something: typically it's too many graphics effects (low FPS) from too many characters, too much data being transmitted from too many characters, long ping times (which can mean the server CPU is overloaded because of the sheer number of characters), lost data packets, etc.

Different kinds of lag will require different kinds of solutions.

One thing that's different about AE is that it the interior is above ground -- you can see outside. This is a neat feature, which I like a lot. From my experiments it doesn't seem like you can see inside from the outside: the windows are gray or reflective. This means that the interior is essentially the same as a store interior that is far below the surface. That means that the optimizer should be able to ignore any character data from inside AE when sending display information to characters who are outside the building.

From my experiments, it doesn't look like that's happening. I started a character at City Hall on Freedom server and walked it over to AE. As I went, the FPS went from 60 down to 40, then down to less than 20. The data rate went from 3 or 4K and spiked to 16K, then went down when when I stopped, then increased again when I went forward again (probably as I got into the radius where more character data got sent to me). The data rate then went down again to 5K. When I went into the building and went up the elevator to the imaging chamber, FPS dropped to 7 and then went up again to 20 after a while, where it hovered.

I then went outside on the balcony overlooking City Hall and got a data rate of 3-5K and an FPS of 40. If I turn and look at the windows of AE, I get a data rate of 3-4K and FPS of 40-50. When I go back inside the main room my FPS goes down to 25, but interestingly my data rate hovers around 3-4K (because most people are just standing there doing nothing).

What this boils down to is that the lag problem with AE should be fixable, simply by not sending data to characters who don't enter the building. If I never go into AE, the system should not send me any data about the existence of characters inside.

The system already does a lot of this kind of optimization (which you can see by going in and out of AE onto the balcony). The problem seems to be that as you approach AE you're getting data about all the characters who are inside the building, even though you can't see them.

If the lag that people are experiencing is really an overloaded server CPU, then the threshold for the number of instances of Atlas Park needs to be changed. This is a drastic solution which I don't particularly like, but on Freedom it was very common to see two or three instances of PI during the evenings, when all the PLing went on there.

As for the broadcast chatter: the devs are already adding an AE broadcast channel, but the problem could be solved in another way: anything broadcast inside AE could be limited to the building. This sort of thing is already done with local chat, which has a shorter radius in Pocket D.

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Appendix C: Salvage to Watch Out For.

This is what's very expensive at time-of-writing:

Pangaean Soil
Prophecies
Hamidon Goo
Empowered Sigils
Deific Weapons
Magical Conspiracies
Soul Trapped Gem
Enchanted Impervium
Mu Vestments
Essence of the Furies

Hopefully it's cheaper when you read this.

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You might amend this to mention that rare salvage can be bought for tickets at Aeon Entertainment. You can easily earn enough tickets in an hour or two to get something that sells for millions on the markets.

Also, common salvage can be rolled for randomly at a paltry eight tickets a shot (one in six chance for getting a Luck Charm!). These are two of the best deals in the game.

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if I am allowed to write an arc aimed at a specific subset of the CoH playerbase, in terms of hero or villain, team or solo, story-heavy or challeneg-based, why can i not write one aimed at players who view clues as something to be read when they drop? I'm not going to put that in my description or suggest we need another TAG for it lol


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Now that I've done the missions, I have a better appreciation for your intent.

First off, writers love to write. That often means they write too much. The most important thing a writer can do is distill and compress the story to fit the medium and the space available.

I think the essential story elements in your final mission could be pared down into six or eight clues instead of 18. You mainly need to exercise editorial control. From a combat standpoint the bosses are more or less the same, so 18 is too many.

But that still leaves the sequencing problem. To alleviate that, you might consider moving the earlier clues to missions 2-4. That would ensure they are read in the proper order because they're doled out in the missions. Assuming that the front/middle/back stuff works on your final map, the final few clues would similarly be dropped in the right order as you work through the map front to back. Chaining spawns wouldn't be necessary.

I also think it isn't a bad thing if the players get an insight as to what's going on in the antagonist's mind early on, in mission two or so. So having those clues presented in another context, say as archival footage from a TV reporter who was at the scene of the quake, would set the stage sooner for the revelation at the end.

The most important thing you did was properly describe your arc in the summary. If your arc delivers what you promise no one can complain.

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I think a better solution would be to make some change that will make it undesirable or impossible for level 50 characters to use the AE facilities in the lower level zones.

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Horrifically bad idea and defeats the entire auto ex/sk systems purpose which allows friends of all levels to mish without need to worry about enough mentors.


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Actually, I realize now that I misstated what intended to say. Rather than prevent level 50s from using the AE facilities completely, the goal could be accomplished by disallowing characters from taking AE missions in lower level zones, in exactly the same way higher level characters can't get radio missions in Atlas and KR.

This solution wouldn't stop SKs or EXes. A level 5 character could still EX a 50 in Atlas and take an AE mission. The only wrinkle is deciding what to do if the 50 becomes the team leader.

Overcrowded zones aren't particularly fun places for anyone to be. If players refuse to sort themselves out among the various zones in some logical fashion, the devs will need to do something about it. It's particular egregious for level 50 characters to dominate resources intended for the use of lower level characters, when perfectly acceptable facilities are available for their use in "their" zones.

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Maybe it's just me, but I tend not to read the clues I get in a mission until it is already over. I don't have time really to stop and read every time I get one, especially when playing a Brute or a Dominator.

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Each to their own, of course. . I sort of work on the premise that if an authors put a clue in the first room for example, then the intended time to read it is in that room. ...

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I understand where both of you are coming from. As a writer you need to understand your audience, and write the mission that will accommodate that audience.

In this game there are several audiences: lovers of stories, power levelers, roleplayers, people who just want to have fun, etc. The most successful missions cater to the largest number of audiences.

On top of that, the mechanics and social dynamics of the gaming environment have to be considered. There's only so much space in the chat window for NPC text. Brutes can't afford to stop fighting. On a team there often isn't time for everyone to stop and read the clues after they drop, because the goal is always go! go! go! inside a mission.

To that end, a mission with broad appeal will have to make some compromises and take some short cuts. Because the clue interface is kind of klunky, requiring players to read the clues in a mission will limit your audience. Optimally, the one-liner displayed in the chat window when you fulfill an objective should be all the players needs to get the gist of what the clue holds.

Clues are your long-term memory of what's going on in the arc. I don't expect players to look at clues until they have some kind of down time, such as the pause between missions.

I have another arc that uses clues very heavily as actual clues in a murder mystery. Unlike most CoH content, the contact in this arc doesn't spoon-feed you any conclusions. The clues drop and it's up to you to decide what they mean. You have to decide who the bad guy is and take him out. If you make the wrong choice you may fail the mission.

Making missions like this is extremely difficult because the system is aimed at making replayable content. But with the thousands of people making AE missions I'm hoping that the devs will add features that will allow true branching within missions that let players make real decisions.

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Remove the AE buildings from Atlas Park, Steel Canyon and Talos.

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I think a better solution would be to make some change that will make it undesirable or impossible for level 50 characters to use the AE facilities in the lower level zones.

For example, the AE building in Atlas could only allow characters up to level 10 into missions. KR would allow up to level 15, Steel Canyon and Skyway to 20, Talos to 30, etc.

This would return us to the status quo (on Freedom) where the farm spam was concentrated in PI, and caused two or three instances of PI to persist pretty much 24/7.

The devs should not concentrate on eliminating farming, but eliminating behavior that annoys or impedes other players. Constantly spamming "3 more spots on AE farm" every few seconds is just as obnoxious as two nitwits yammering about who is more l33t on the broadcast channel.

I don't really care what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own missions, but the rest of us should not be subjected to advertisements on how much they charge per run for PLing lowbies.

The EULA should be clarified to identify charging other people for teaming as prohibited conduct. It already forbids spamming and advertising, and broadcasting your fee for PLing lowbies is obviously spamming and advertising. Players should be banned for soliciting influence for PLing.

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The text delivered to the Player in the last mission is very long, split up into those 18 clue drops. The clues HAVE to drop in a certain order, or it doesn't work.

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In general, I absolutely despise multiple chained spawns, but you obviously understand how truly awful they are and have done everything humanly possible to alleviate their sheer wretchedness. Backtracking is a truly horrid waste of a player's time. However, I'm not really sure why the clues have to drop in a certain order.

In my experience, once you have collected all the clues, they are displayed in the order that you defined them, not in the order that you collected them. (See my Jabberwocky arc, which has the poem's stanzas as clues. The poem clues have always displayed in the right order at the end of the mission for me.) Are you not seeing the clues appear in the order you define them?

Do you really need to have clue 1 to defeat boss 2? I can see why you could need your clues to display in the right order, but it should do that automatically.

It sounds like you've already got the boss placement down, so if you spawn them all at the beginning of the mission the players would pretty much get the clues in the order you want them to. If you number them it'll be especially obvious what's going on.

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Both of these points are especially true because of the hideous number of arcs out there that shouldn't have been published at all. For every serious entry I've found, there are six farm missions, four lame arcs with a custom villain group but insufficient or zero text/story, and three that the author marked "unfinished" but published anyway (what's with that?).

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During open beta I lobbied for getting tickets in test mode for exactly this reason. People are publishing their arcs so they get rewards, plain and simple. There is nothing to stop them from doing this except shame.

You also have to publish your arc if you want someone else to be able to test it without you, or if you want someone else to be the team leader so they interact with the contact (because there's no easy way to make someone else be the leader of a TF).

This calls for another flag on an arc: "ready for prime time."

Unless there is some compelling story reason for a Defeat All (like a bank robbery or some kind of invasion, or intentional genocide), there's no good reason for a Defeat All. It is an authoritarian dictate from the mission author.

It means that the author does not value my time because it forces me to hunt down every single solitary mob on the map, something that the system does not even guarantee is possible.

Furthermore, if I'm actually interested in the story, and not just farming for XP and tickets, a Defeat All adds nothing to the mission. Most of the other goals provide some additional information -- an NPC's appearance, description, dialog, a clue -- but a Defeat All contributes nothing to the story.

Many of the maps are prone to spawning mobs inside walls, ceilings, etc. Additionally, knockback attacks on many maps (especially caves) will often drive mobs into the wall where they can still attack you, but you cannot attack them. These are defects in the map and/or programming, but you can't just shrug and blame it all on the devs.

By specifying enough real goals in a mission and placing them throughout the map, the author can satisfy players who are just interested in story, and also those who are interested in defeating all the mobs.

The key is that you're giving your players the choice between wiping out everything and just getting the interesting story elements.

Defeat Alls aren't the only bad mission goal. A series of two or more chained spawns will also waste the player's time.

I did a mission on the Training Room that spawned five AVs sequentially on the defeat of the previous one, and then spawned three destructible objects. This was a horrible waste of time. I had pretty much gone over the huge outdoor map for the first AV, clearing the "fog". That meant I couldn't tell where I'd already searched for the second and subsequent AVs.

I wound up going over the whole map 10 or 15 times looking for the AVs and objects hidden among dozens of acres of buildings. The last destructible had spawned inside another object, so it wasn't immediately obvious unless you were right next to it. Since it didn't make the glowie noise, it was nearly impossible to detect.

The developers made defeat all missions to stretch their content -- they only have so many writers and have to produce so many hours of content to keep us entertained all the way to level 50. There's no reason for us to do so, since there are so many of us making thousands of missions. We can also repeat these missions immediately and indefinitely, unlike missions from regular contacts (before Ouroboros).

I would advocate removing them as an option from MA missions completely. When I look for MA missions to play, Defeat Alls are pretty much a deal-breaker. If there's just one and the story sounds good I'll try it, but if there are two: forget about it.

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Yeah the only way I've found around this issue, unfortunately, is to make the unique boss an EB so that they aren't spawned whenever the MA says "Need to put a boss here".

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I made this work by putting the unique bosses in a custom group called Bosses. Then I put all my other custom mobs in another group, let's call it Enemies. Do not put your unique bosses into the Enemies group.

When you define the Boss encounter, specify the Bosses group, select the unique boss and then make the surrounding group Enemies.

Your unique Boss will always spawn singly this way. If you define Enemies with other bosses they will spawn multiply as normal. Just be sure to omit your custom boss from Enemies.

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Is this intended? Because very few minions in the rest of the game have natural protection, and it seems like somehow the blaster mez protection, ...

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If you pick any blast powerset the mobs get Defiance. Technically, it should give them Defiance if you picked a Blast set under Blaster, but not if you picked it under Corruptor or Defender.

The devs are likely aware of this, but opted to take some shortcuts to get the MA out in this decade.

I'm mostly interested in the story aspects of arcs. After running through several MA arcs, I have compiled a list of pet peeves. They are, in order:

1) Defeat all missions: These are the pits. Especially the ones with invisible mobs on huge maps. There's absolutely no reason to write defeat alls: your mission should have well-defined goals beyond "kill everything." You are wasting your players' time when they have to hunt down that last hidden mob. If they want to defeat all enemies, let them decide to do it.

The devs agree with me; check out the tutorial for writing good stories from the contact in the AE building.

The only time you can justify a defeat all is when the map is tiny (like some banks or Roman caves) and you can't avoid defeating everything anyway. Since the ticket reward is proportional to the mobs defeated, players aren't getting anything extra by skipping some mobs.

2) Unmentioned Arch-villains: If you're going to put an AV or EB in your missions, make sure that you mention this in your description so that people who are actually interested in your content can be sure to turn down the challenge level. But before you put an AV in your mission ask yourself if you really, really need one to tell your story. Most of the time you don't. A boss is usually sufficient.

Also realize that Bosses, AVs and EBs don't spawn the same way in MA arcs as they do in regular arcs. I don't know the rules, but I've been a three-person team where mobs defined as Bosses spawned as Lieutenants at Challenge Level 1, and I've been solo in a Challenge Level 3 mission where the AV appeared as a full-fledged AV. Whether these are bugs or intentional, I don't know. But that's what I'm seeing.

3) Just try and whoop my character missions: these are just plain boring. Go into a bar and try to beat the author's character. These are usually combined with:

4) Stacked ambushes: Yes, you can send a four or five waves of hard ambushes at a character trying to defeat an Elite Boss or AV. Remember that lots of people are going to be running your mission solo because they're interested in the STORY and not getting pounded into the ground. If multiple ambushes are integral to the story (which they rarely are), make sure you mention something like "not easily soloed" in your arc description.

One or maybe two ambushes is okay. But if you send four hard ambushes that could mean more than a dozen mobs attacking a solo character. The IOed-out tanker you use for testing your mission may not have a problem with this, but lots of scrappers will, not to mention defenders, blasters, scrappers, stalkers, corruptors, etc.

If you do use ambushes be sure to give them some dialog so the players know they're coming.

Finally, if your arc contains overpowered or excessively tricky or truly obnoxious mobs (AVs, EBs, Electric Brutes that drain ALL your Endurance, Cold Corruptors that slow your movement and recharge rate down to zero), be sure to mention or at least hint at this in your description. PvE players are used to slamming through missions quickly and easily, in large part due to their familiarity with the existing villain groups. They know what tactics are required to dispose of the standard mobs. With your custom mobs they may not have any idea what they're facing. This is both good and bad. As long as they're expecting the unexpected, they can't complain too much. (Yes, truly observant players know what to expect from most mobs just by looking at them, but not everyone has that sort of experience and in-depth game knowledge.)

Remember, the more up-front you are about what your arc contains, the more likely you are to get good ratings. If you say your mission contains multiple AVs and ambushes, people who are just interested in story won't bother with it; if you say your mission is easily soloed, people who want a real challenge will likewise avoid it. The automatically generated tags can give the reader some hints, but they don't really give a true idea of the magnitude of the difficulty. If your players get what they expect, they'll be much happier.

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The next ingredient is hops...from Praetorian Earth. The nav bar says "Find the Alpha Wolf and assert your dominance"....um....riiiiiight.... Taking him out triggers the spawn of EB "Loup-Garou", a Super Strength/Regen. Thanks to the current AI silliness the first thing he did was pop Instant Healing, meaning the first 60 seconds or so of beating on him just didn't count. After a effort roughly akin to felling the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring, he bought it.

Next up was a trip to Eden for yeast. You are warned to bring END insps and to stay out of melee range...nice thing to say to a Scrapper. I also noticed going in that this mission is level-locked to 50, which actually EXed me to 49. The objective target is, I kid you not, a gorram Blue Mitochondria. I did try to fight it but, as a Scrapper, that was just not happening. At this point I bailed out of the arc and one-starred it. If zero was an actual option I'd have used it.

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I'm not sure why you're complaining about things being too tough if you're playing on Challenge Level three or higher (which I assume is the case since you were exed to 49). I ran this mission solo at Heroic with an electrical blaster, as I recall, and while it was not trivial to best the Loup Garou and the Mito, it wasn't all that hard (i.e., no visits to the hospital).

Because custom characters are essentially player characters (admittedly, played by a bad player), we can't insist on running at the same level of difficulty that we've been running at all these years. PvE against custom characters is almost like old-style PvP.

That said, I agree that there is a tendency among many authors to make their missions really tricky and excessively hard. But I wouldn't put that all on the authors.

In some ways, it's hard to make to missions easy. For example, because the only choices you have are standard/hard/extreme for power sets, if you pick anything but standard for most melee defense sets, even minions wind up with status protection, which makes missions extremely difficult for lower-level controllers and defenders. (One problem with giving us free rein over power selections, though, is that it allows you to create non-challenging opponents that are easily farmed. The devs have to consider a ton of stuff when designing things.)

Another example: I think a lot of authors would love to be able to use the standard PvE powersets for their mobs, if they could control their appearance. But to get the look you want, you have to use player powersets, which are generally more powerfu. It would be great if we could skin standard mobs with custom costumes.

I'd also like to put standard PvE skins on custom characters. This would be really nice because of the space it would save in arc definitions, as the costumes are what take up all the space. The Halloween temporary costume powers show that the system can handle putting a huge variety of standard PvE skins on most any character.

Before we do this, I'd like to put the symbols that can appear on your chest on your cape (potentially inset in various shapes, as can now be done with chest symbols).

That seems more applicable generally.

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It would be nice if the MA language filter didn't kick in until you decided to Publish the mission. That way you could run custom missions with groups of friends and be as foulmouthed as you want (but not get any drops or other rewards). If you're foolish enough to run one of those with a random PuGgy with delicate sensibilities and they get offended, they can report your mission for stabbing their virgin eyes with sharp pointy words.

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I created a new arc and typed the word Crap, all by its lonesome, into the very first edit field. BOOM! The whole game comes crashing down.

The censor is apparently running in the background all the time. A lot of people are complaining about poor performance just editing their story, and this may be the reason.

The censor shouldn't be run until each edit field is "done" -- that is, that field loses the focus. That would accomplish the goal of giving you immediate feedback on publishing errors, without doing a letter by letter check. It would probably be more efficient, and less bug-prone (background processing and multithreading is always tricky).

They want to avoid giving a hundred errors when you publish the mission, so deferring the checks till publishing is probably not an option.

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I'm only worried about having the resources to do the stories I want to do. I won't know until I can get in to the Beta. Can't paint without a canvas you know.

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Yeah, I wonder about this too. If your goal is to create scenarios to run your friends through (sort of like a GM running a tabletop game), three published arc slots may not be enough. Is there some way to run other people through unpublished arcs?

If it's not onerous to publish and unpublish things, then swapping out these types of arcs would be easy and the three arcs wouldn't be a serious limitation.

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I honestly don't see why tradable merits are such a big deal; they are redeemable for goods that are.

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The difference is somewhat abstruse, but it is very real.

As a reward, Merits are more "fungible" than recipes. That is, all merits are inherently equal, and exchangeable for anything. They can be given away in smaller increments, accumulated with other merits, etc. Influence is a completely fungible currency.

A "rare recipe" is not fungible because not all rare recipes are equal.

Once merits have been turned into something physical, that something is no longer equal to another (different) something that costs the same number of merits. For example, if my character has no power in which to slot a Luck of the Gambler: +Recharge, that recipe is useless to me (except that I can sell it to someone and get some fungible influence).

Similarly, when I accumulate 10 Trap of the Hunter recipes, they will never be convertible into a Luck of the Gambler: +Recharge, no matter how many I get (unless I convert a few million of them to a fungible currency such as influence).

Finally, even if I do convert my merits into something in high demand, there's no guarantee that I'll get the price I want if I sell it on the market -- just because that LotG: +Recharge is selling for 80 million today doesn't mean it will tomorrow. If you actually list it at that price you're taking a risk. Listing on the market costs influence, and if you list too high and your item doesn't sell you take a loss.

Fungible items are inherently more flexible, and hence more useful, especially in the presence of a market that facilitates free exchange.

Merits cannot be traded now, so they aren't truly fungible. If they were made tradeable they would be another currency like influence. They could be bought and sold by spammers, high-level characters could give them to low-level characters, etc.

The devs have pretty much said that characters should stand on their own, and this is why you can't trade merits or share them across an account. The absence of an in-game item-mailing system seems to reinforce this interpretation. (I have a suspicion that the original ridiculously low limit on trading influence was also a sign of this mind-set.)

True, there are ways around this limitation, but they all require a second account in some way. You either have to give items or influence directly to another character, or you can add items to storage in a base (which requires another account to invite you to the supergroup). The devs apparently want to make alt-boosting harder, but they're willing to live with a certain amount of it to give us convenience features.

All of which is of course irrelevant in the crusade against spammers, who have multiple accounts and are not hampered by these restrictions in any way.

This implies the following philosophy on the part of the devs (yeah, I'm putting words in their mouths): if you don't play a character enough to earn the merits to buy all the rare recipes you want to put on it, you don't care enough about that character to put the effort into it.

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Can you make Fed Ex missions as part of your story arc? Example:
Mission 4: Go talk to Statesman in Independence Port.

??

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I hope not. They're not so bad when you're running solo, but nothing destroys team cohesion more than these time-wasting run-around missions (except maybe serial team wipes).

Just tested this and found Synapse's number to be correct.

Arc name: A Path into Darkness
Contact: Colleen Nelson
Merits awarded: 16

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I explained why pretty well like two posts up. It's less a matter of 'hey here's a nice thing for players' and more a matter of 'the longer it continues the more the resources to make them are wasted on an ever-shrinking segment of the population, which will eventually reach a point where it'd make more sense to make things everyone can enjoy because the people who can benefit from them is disproportionate to the effort to add them'.

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The resources required for the vast majority of vet rewards are negligible. Most of it is reworking things that are already in the game so that a vet badge unlocks them. Think Sands of Mu, Nemesis Staff, travel power at 60, more respecs, free costume changes, etc.

The costume bits (wings, trench coats) are similarly quick to develop and turn on with a badge.

Once the infrastructure for vet rewards was in place, the incremental costs of adding new ones has most likely been minimal.

Customer loyalty is extremely important. While vet rewards don't make their holders better people (or even better players), they represent a reward for loyal customers who have invested a large amount of time and money in a product. It's a nice gesture.

Management of CoH is already well aware of how limited their resources are, and the nature of vet rewards already indicates this knowledge. They are not extravagant by any stretch.

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From what I read it only gives you access to tier 1, 2 or 3 powers at level 6, so therefore I don't see how you can skip right to Acrobatics which is the tier 4 power. I would guess that the tier 4's still require two previous powers to unlock them.

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This seems to be a common misconception. There are only three tiers of pool powers: the first two are are tier 1 (Hover and Air Superiority, for example), the third is tier 2 (Fly), and the fourth is tier 3 (Group Flight).

Positron should have said "any of the first three powers can be taken at level 6" instead of talking about tiers. He has already clarified this to say that you can skip the tier 1 power. The Original Post should be modified to reflect this.

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I mean hero side there is no use for pet damage drops below level 32 yet there they are.

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Actually, the new Recharge Intensive Pet recipe is usable at level 18 by Illusion controllers. The previously existing IO sets weren't particularly useful for Phantom Army, but Call to Arms is.

However, the real problem with using IO sets at level 18 is that characters are that level for a very brief time -- typically only a few hours of playing time.

It's only at level 25 or 30 where the bonuses granted by IO sets are good enough to warrant the time needed to acquire them. There are some lower-level sets worth getting and keeping long-term because of the set bonuses, if they can be augmented by common IOs or frankenslotting.

I've tested this a number of times and it seems to go like this:

* Jump into a mob of level 20 Freakshow in Talos (I'm level 27).
* Activate Snowstorm.
* Activate Sleet.
* The sleet begins hitting the targets.
* The proc tests each target to see if it is debuffed.
* The sleet continues to pelt the targets.
* After ten seconds each target is checked again to see if the proc fires.
* The sleet pelts targets for five more seconds.

From this I can't really tell what the firing of the proc is linked to. It doesn't happen first (because regular to-hit rolls come before it), and when it does happen all the proc firings are lumped together, and not interspersed among the to-hit rolls. It would seem that Sleet's automatic debuff would be applied first, so the proc firing doesn't seem to be linked to that.

That would imply that the proc firing is independent of both the to-hit and the debuff, but that's pure speculation because the log seems to be incomplete: only a small portion of the Sleet to-hit rolls are logged.

If I had designed this I would only log the misses because there would be so many successes that the log would be totally flooded. Yet there are some successes listed when Sleet is first used. The code must do some optimization in output to cut down on the sheer volume of data but still let you know the power is doing something.

In any case, the proc seems to be giving me the effect I would expect. Whether the actual debuff numbers are right is another question. If you want some assistance in the Arena trying to determine what those numbers are let me know. My Cold Defender is on Champion.

Here are two typical logs:

You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Chief Smasher with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Mad Freak Slammer with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Freak Gunner with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Stunner Chief with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Slasher with your Snow Storm.
Slasher MISSES! Bow power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 9.26.
Chief Smasher MISSES! Sawblade power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 94.17.
Stunner Chief MISSES! Charged Bolts power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 85.49.
Freak Gunner MISSES! Submachine Gun power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 53.19.
Mad Freak Slammer MISSES! Heavy Revolver power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 43.83.
Chief Smasher MISSES! Cybernetic Hammer power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 63.38.
Slasher MISSES! Hack power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 73.68.
Stunner Chief HITS you! Shock Punch power had a 5.75%% chance to hit and rolled a 4.57.
Stunner Chief hits you for 9.67 points of smashing damage!
Stunner Chief hits you for 9.67 points of energy damage!
Slasher MISSES! Whirling Sword power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 73.32.
Stunner Chief MISSES! Tesla Cage power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 22.52.
You activated the Sleet power.
HIT Cold Comfort! Your Sleet power is autohit.
Cold Comfort HITS you! Sleet power was autohit.
You call forth Sleet!
Sleet: MISSED Chief Smasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.87.
Sleet: HIT Mad Freak Slammer! Your Sleet power was forced to hit by streakbreaker.
Sleet: HIT Freak Gunner! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 59.87.
Sleet: HIT Stunner Chief! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 81.22.
Sleet: HIT Slasher! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 64.95.
Sleet: You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily
Slasher MISSES! Slash power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 93.50.
Sleet: MISSED Stunner Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.92.
Sleet: MISSED Mad Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.59.
Sleet: MISSED Stunner Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.46.
Sleet: MISSED Stunner Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.49.
Sleet: MISSED Mad Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.22.
Sleet: MISSED Slasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.60.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Gunner!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.95.
Sleet: MISSED Slasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.71.
Sleet: MISSED Chief Smasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.24.
Slasher MISSES! Parry power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 67.01.
Sleet: MISSED Chief Smasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 98.28.
Sleet: MISSED Slasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.23.
Sleet: MISSED Slasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.74.
Sleet: MISSED Chief Smasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.83.
Sleet: MISSED Mad Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.40.
Sleet: MISSED Stunner Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.54.
Freak Gunner MISSES! Submachine Gun power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 70.54.
Sleet: MISSED Stunner Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.79.
Sleet: You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily
Sleet: You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily
Sleet: You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily
Sleet: MISSED Stunner Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.78.
Sleet: MISSED Stunner Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.50.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Gunner!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.29.
Mad Freak Slammer MISSES! Heavy Revolver power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 73.35.
Slasher MISSES! Hack power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 90.88.
Chief Smasher MISSES! Cybernetic Hammer power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 20.52.
Sleet: MISSED Slasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.15.
Stunner Chief MISSES! Charged Bolts power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 70.71.
Sleet: MISSED Slasher!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.11.
Sleet: MISSED Stunner Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.59.
Mad Freak Slammer MISSES! Sledgehammer power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 87.71.
Shutting off Snow Storm.


You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Warrior Bruiser with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Freak Chopper with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Freak Slammer with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Freak Gunner with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Freak Slammer with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Freak Buckshot with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Hewer with your Snow Storm.
You slow the attack and movement speed of all foes near Juicer Chief with your Snow Storm.
Juicer Chief MISSES! Shock Punch power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 66.00.
Hewer MISSES! Pendulum power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 23.49.
Freak Buckshot MISSES! Shotgun power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 99.28.
Freak Slammer MISSES! Heavy Revolver power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 70.26.
Freak Chopper MISSES! Fireman Axe power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 82.92.
Warrior Bruiser MISSES! Brawl power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 56.18.
Freak Slammer MISSES! Sledgehammer power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 88.57.
Freak Gunner MISSES! Submachine Gun power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 20.32.
You activated the Sleet power.
HIT Cold Comfort! Your Sleet power is autohit.
Cold Comfort HITS you! Sleet power was autohit.
Warrior Bruiser MISSES! Boxing power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 93.79.
You call forth Sleet!
Sleet: MISSED Warrior Bruiser!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.66.
Sleet: HIT Freak Chopper! Your Sleet power was forced to hit by streakbreaker.
Sleet: HIT Freak Slammer! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 12.28.
Sleet: HIT Freak Slammer! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 86.57.
Sleet: HIT Freak Buckshot! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 46.34.
Sleet: HIT Hewer! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 44.06.
Sleet: HIT Juicer Chief! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 94.96.
Sleet: You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily
Sleet: You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily
Sleet: MISSED Freak Chopper!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.44.
Sleet: MISSED Juicer Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.76.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Buckshot!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.10.
Hewer MISSES! Gash power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 33.93.
Sleet: MISSED Warrior Bruiser!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.68.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Buckshot!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.46.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Buckshot!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.39.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Chopper!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.28.
Sleet: MISSED Hewer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.73.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 98.16.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.19.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Chopper!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.34.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 98.08.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 98.78.
Sleet: MISSED Juicer Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.49.
Hewer MISSES! Chop power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 39.76.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.89.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Buckshot!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.54.
Sleet: MISSED Warrior Bruiser!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.60.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 98.58.
Sleet: MISSED Juicer Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.44.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.94.
Juicer Chief MISSES! Shock Punch power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 92.01.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 99.70.
Sleet: You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily
Sleet: You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily
Sleet: MISSED Juicer Chief!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 98.47.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.98.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Chopper!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.14.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 98.68.
Sleet: MISSED Warrior Bruiser!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.51.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Slammer!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.58.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Buckshot!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 95.97.
Sleet: MISSED Warrior Bruiser!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.10.
Sleet: MISSED Freak Buckshot!! Your Sleet power had a 95.00%% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.04.
Freak Gunner MISSES! Submachine Gun power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 9.78.
Hewer MISSES! Beheader power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 13.16.
Freak Chopper MISSES! Heavy Revolver power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 21.64.
Freak Slammer MISSES! Heavy Revolver power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 85.51.
Juicer Chief MISSES! Ball Lightning power had a 5.75%% chance to hit, but rolled a 75.99.
Freak Buckshot MISSES! Shotgun power had a 5.00%% chance to hit, but rolled a 78.00.
Shutting off Snow Storm.

[ QUOTE ]
Sleet would be a psuedo-pet. The combat log is a bit picky about which pseudo-pet effects get recorded there and which don't. (I don't have it, but I'd bet Sleet doesn't normally report what targets it debuffs.)
Usually I'd suggest looking for the -Res orange triangles, but Sleet is putting those up anyways. hmm... how about testing it in PVP? Have a friend watch their Real Numbers, and see if they ever get a 2nd debuff after a few applications of Sleet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks, that was what I was missing. I turned on the Pet To Hit Rolls and the Pet Healing Delivered (weirdly, this is what reports the debuff) in the combat log and the proc triggered twice on a group of 5 Tsoo.

It's not really quite clear whether accuracy enhancements need to be slotted in Sleet to increase the effectiveness of the procs. Some people have said Sleet is autohit, but obviously to-hit rolls are being made. But it's also obvious that it hits a lot of the time because of the cloud of -1s rising over the targets.

From what I've read the proc only fires once every 10 seconds for rains. Does that mean the proc will (almost) always fire on two targets per application (it lasts 15 seconds)? Since it's hitting so many times anyway, is it the case that additional accuracy is superfluous?

I slotted Achilles' Heel: Chance for Resistance Debuff in both Infrigidate and Sleet on my Cold/Cold Defender.

I see the notice "You reduce your targets damage resistance temporarily" in the Combat log when I use Infrigidate as I expect, but I never see it fire in Sleet.

Is this a known issue?