Jack Frost's Greater Ice Sword accuracy is broken!
By
airy_,
Posted on: 2004-09-25 19:06 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I can't say that an average of 282 hits/misses with a character against two varying mob levels is an accurate representation of the true "average accuracy"
I find i run in streaks with my Level 32 Ice/Rad Controller with just 2 Jacks out, with only a single-slot in it, and 1 Damage in it.
Some fights, he just tears the mobs up. never misses a beat. others, if I could shove a sword in my stomach, it'd save so much time than "Waiting" to die..
If you're going to do some sort of statement about his accuracy truly being broken (really, i'm not arguing that it's broken. there's a lot of issues still remaining with Jack Frost. heh.) I'd rather see more concrete hard numbers over a much longer span of time, versus the entire range of mobs.
Specifically, I say that because of the formula used to calculate Accuracy, penalties are applied based on it's level versus yours. Therefore, there should be a much larger variance, if it's truly broken, between White Minions and Yellow Minions.
In the end, i think his accuracy is still "remotely acceptable". His timing, however, is of a highly dubious nature.
As far as I can tell, looking at Video Caps of him in Action:
Non-ACC Met:
Ice Bolt (IB) 7 Second Timer
Freezing Touch (FT) 10 Second Timer
Ice Sword (IS) 5.5 Second Timer
Greater Ice Sword (GIS) 16.5 Second Timer
ACC-Met:
Ice Bolt (IB) 5 Second Timer
Freezing Tough (FT) 8 Second Timer
Ice Sword (IS) 4.5 Second Timer
Greater Ice Sword (GIS) 12.5 Second Timer
Frankly, in both cases, comparing it with the *reasonable* transcribed powers:
IS: 6
GIS: 10, not 16.5
FT: 16, Not 10.
IB: 4, Not 6.
The *main* concern here appears to be a possible error in the programming between FT and GIS.
By switching these two timers, to make FT longer in recast (since really, Jack casting FT is pointless anyway, your job as the Controller is to lock the mobs down. not his.) you would have Jack with an option to GIS every other attack instead of every 3rd attack. This would allow him to essentially follow up (with some programming finesse):
Open: IB > FT > IS>GIS>IS>IB>IS>GIS>IS>FT etc.
A slight lessening of the recharge times (4/8/14/8?) would help him attack faster as well.
Lastly, I think the final kicker to make Jack *most* reasonable would be to alter his Hitpoint or Damage Formulas. Either Give him the appropriate level "Tanker" (Heck, give him Scrapper if you want) Hitpoints... or, increase his damage output to a level comparable to a Tanker or Scrapper.
At Current Prospect though:
At Level 32, he has 785 Hitpoints.
At Level 26, a Tanker has around 1060.
At Level 29, a scrapper has 876.
This seems to be a *gross* deficiency in his hitpoints, to me, personally.
and his DPS is severely lacking.
If you were to raise *both* then you would eliminate the need of other characters, which would be unbalancing. However, raising one or the other would make him much more useful, not only in Solo-Ventures, but also in Groups, as he wouldn't just be a pointless Aggro-Machine running around.
Why don't you just convince the Devs to make you Level 55, that way, you'll never have a reason to actually PLAY the game? -To The "Oh No I've Been Nerfed" Folks.
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I can't say that an average of 282 hits/misses with a character against two varying mob levels is an accurate representation of the true "average accuracy"
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While you do need many more samples if you want to reach a particular error level, you don't in order to know that something is amiss if your numbers are nowhere near your expecations. This is the case here. I believe, if my statistics powers are still strong, he has about a 5% statistical measurement error here.
Also of note:
- With an SO Acc in Jack, you should be near the acc cap and thus hit almost 95% of the time. I believe it was stated that base acc vs an even for a pet is 75%. He's getting nowhere near what is expected.
- His numbers for even and +1 minions support each other. The acc vs even minions was 49%, acc vs +1 was 42%. While I'm sure this could be a coincidence, I think the fact that the numbers he got for +1 were lower than those for even bolster the validity of the numbers.
woe, didnt believe you, but you are correct. it is grossly inaccurate. will fix.
Good Job, Zoner.
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woe, didnt believe you, but you are correct. it is grossly inaccurate. will fix.
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Cool, I had a few ice contoller friends drop due to thier pets, nice to see that they are getting some love.
Zoner, you are a god for putting up your extensive test numbers and getting this noticed by the devs. I might actually be happy to see Jack run in for melee once GIS gets some acc love. 
Geko, many thanks for giving GIS a second look. :thumbsup:
*hijack* can we get the stone bloke to not use his ranged *quite* so much too?
Nice job Zoner. I love it when people take the time to do this. It's how things that could be easily overlooked get fixed. Heck, I should do more stuff like this. 
But I'm a lazy A$$. 
Woot I gotcha too two stars with my 5 star vote Zoner =) Good catch, all of us ice controllers thanks ya a bunch.
Zoner > Powerbomb 
Heh. Powerbomb was totally wrong on this issue, as well as totally wrong on the Combat Jumping issue. 0-2! Not looking good, PB
"I see your words..." ~The most menacing thing a forumite could say
Great job on the info gathering Zoner and thanks Geko for finally checking it out and admitting we were right. I love you guys! 
Thx geko for the confirmation.
Thx Zoner for the research work. I was actually going to do this test sometime tomorrow since when this issue was raised with a 100 GIS sample on the training boards before I2 went live, geko posted that he thought Jack's accuracy was fine.
Its not as easy to test pet powers as it is your own. especially the ones the pets prefer not to use and have a long recast timer, so kudos to you.
Thanks Zoner for the tests and Geko for the fix.
Wow.
50% accuracy WITH a 33.3% boost.
Meaning Jack Frost was using Greater Ice Sword at ~20% accuracy?
Whoa.
So... any word?
Because the fad is Outrage posts now, necro-rising might be cool again!
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Because the fad is Outrage posts now, necro-rising might be cool again!
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Rage was responsible for some necro-rising in a movie I once saw...
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Because the fad is Outrage posts now, necro-rising might be cool again!
[/ QUOTE ]
Rage was responsible for some necro-rising in a movie I once saw...
[/ QUOTE ]
Those zombies were weak! They died eventually!!
I'm a level 44 Ice/Kin controller with about 425 hours on this character. In the past 2 days I've been logging Jack Frost's use of the 'new and improved' Greater Ice Sword attack that came with Issue 2. I've gained nearly 10 bars of XP in the time it took to gather these stats. This information was taken on the current LIVE servers. Seeing as there are no patch notes for this on Test, I can only assume TEST is also broken.
Against White Con Minions:
86 hits/89 misses = 49% accuracy
Against Yellow Con Minions:
45 hits/62 misses = 42% accuracy
Notes on these statistics:
Only attacks on minions were counted.
All attacks come from completing all the 40-45 door missions, so includes an agregate of every villain type at that level range.
My Jack Frost is slotted with Level 45 SOs: 1 Accuracy, 4 Damage, 1 Recharge.
Disqualified attacks were not counted i.e.:
<ul type="square">[*]Any time jack was hit by an accuracy penalty attack (5th vampire punches etc)[*]Any time vengeance was in use[*]Any time a force field was in use (ritki guardians, fake nemesis boss,etc)[*]Attacks where it was ambiguous what was the killing blow (offscreen hits when 2 pets are out, damage numbers from the greater ice sword not visible etc)[/list]
P.S. Even if this was fixed jack goes from 1.2 fire imps to 1.5 fire imps. They are still 3x stronger as a pet (as opposed to 6-7x stronger as they were before).
P.P.S. Jack uses ranged too much (I can only assume this will be 'fixed' when someday in the distant future we have some semblance of control over the pets.) I picked Kinetics and its become rather difficult to use Tranfusion and Fulcrum Shift with the 'improved jack'.
P.P.P.S. The Ice Sword and Greater Ice Sword attacks don't show up in the combat message window like Ice Blast and Freezing Touch.
And if anyone cares he is 30% resistant to Cold and 10% resistant to fire.