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Er, clarification please? I thought a 14% damage debuff would turn 100 into 86?
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Edited post - you're right. Typing in haste made me use the original 7% value.
[/ QUOTE ]
Time to nerf Hasten, I say. (Seriously. Kill the dang thing!)
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Recharge enhancements, and recharge buff/debuffs, are the only true "diminishing returns" effects in the game, because they don't actually affect the entire activation/recharge cycle.
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Really?
Okay, let's say I'm trying to break down a door with 1000 HP! So how many attacks will it take, with that 100 damage attack, and various levels of enhancers?
Just to review, that's doing:
100, 133, 166, 200, 233, 266, 300
damage per attack.
So it takes...
10, 7.5, 6, 5, 4.286, 3.75, 3.333
attacks to break down the door.
What's going on? I thought damage enhancements didn't have diminishing returns!
--GF
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In addition there is the factor that -recharge only affedcts an attack after it's first discharge. So there is no mitigation to an alpha strike, and if a mob has more than one attack then that 2nd attack can go off right away as well. It also suffers the same weakness as resistance, status effects such as endurance drain are not evaded. So defense by -recharge is not as effective as other methods in several ways.
Nogala
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Recharge enhancements, and recharge buff/debuffs, are the only true "diminishing returns" effects in the game, because they don't actually affect the entire activation/recharge cycle.
[/ QUOTE ]
Really?
Okay, let's say I'm trying to break down a door with 1000 HP! So how many attacks will it take, with that 100 damage attack, and various levels of enhancers?
Just to review, that's doing:
100, 133, 166, 200, 233, 266, 300
damage per attack.
So it takes...
10, 7.5, 6, 5, 4.286, 3.75, 3.333
attacks to break down the door.
What's going on? I thought damage enhancements didn't have diminishing returns!
--GF
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This sort of thing happens because the phrase "diminishing returns" has an ill-defined term: "returns." The question is, what do you define your "return" to be. Anyone can make up a definition for return that demonstrates diminishing, static, accelerating, or looping returns, with sufficiently complex math.
The question comes down to deciding what "return" is actually being sought. For example, we talk about defense and resistance as providing "accelerating" or "exponential" returns because while in one sense the returns are linear (5 more percentage points of defense, another 5 more, another 5 more), in the sense most people think about: increasing lifespan, which is inversely proportional to damage mitigation - more properly its converse: damage intake - we see an accelerating change in performance with increased defense and resistance.
So the question is, what is the return "supposed to be" when slotting damage? Obviously, to get more damage. In that sense, each slotted enhancement offers the same linear benefit.
Now - this is critical - once you decide to measure the effectiveness of damage enhancements that way, you're locked into doing the same thing for recharge enhancements if you want to compare them: you cannot compare them with different measuring sticks.
Thus, if you think about damage enhancements as "adding damage" then you have to "normalize" your comparison, and figure out how much more net damage over time recharge enhancements provide. When you do, you see the diminishing returns relative to damage enhancements.
Now, its perfectly valid to look at enhancements from the perspective you mention above. But if you do, two things happen:
1. *Everything* now has diminishing returns, so stating that something has diminishing returns is now a meaningless statement.
2. Recharge will still have *more* diminishing returns than damage.
In effect, looking at it that way masks the difference betwenn recharge and damage enhancement (or buffs or debuffs), but doesn't actually make the difference go away. The *quantitative difference* between the two is always going to be the same no matter what math trickery we employ, but some viewpoints make it easier to describe the difference in english.
* "Recharge enhancements provide diminishing returns relative to the linear returns of damage enhancements"
is simpler to understand than
* "Recharge enhancements provide a diminishing return level declining on a faster decay scale than damage enhancements provide"
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First off, sorry for my crankiness earlier...it was late and I'd been studying for hours. My thoughts and feelings were genuine, that was just about all the fluff I could come up with at that time though.
Secondly, some questions for those of us not of the uber-mathematical bent:
1) the new value, 14%, still gets hit from the enemies resistances, even against even con baddies, yes?
2) It still doesn't apply to auto-hit attacks, correct?
3) What would be the best slotting for EA now? Still just endurance reduction or 2 for pve, with some slows in for pvp in the late game?
Hmmm...well, my opinion is that this definately will help...however, I'd like States to keep in mind our entire set is the ONLY set that has a great deal of our survivability cut by various percentages when facing higher level spawns. Resistance is a great help versus +1-3s (which you will run in to, TFs, large teams, etc), whereas I am facing a decrease in the effectiveness of my defense, debuffs, accuracy, and damage all at one time. It's not the end of the world, but it would be nice to change it.
Also...well...it should be taken into notice that not all of my enemies are engaging me at melee range, which means I'm losing survivability versus other builds too.
Often I have 4-5 guys around me and then 2-3 guys sniping me from afar. They are out of range of my CE, so no debuff there, but also out of range of my EA, depriving me of the defense bonus and more endurance. They are taunted, as should be the case, because often they're LTs and Bosses and have damaging attacks.
This hasn't been a HUGE deal, but when doing one of the monster missions in the mid-40s, versus (brainfart) whatever the zombie and totem things are called, I was running in to gather aggro, and would borderline faceplant the whole time while I was being sniped by the dart things, ranged dark blasts, and other things that refused to come into melee range and were too spread out to concentrate on.
As you point out, Ice still has some issues compared to other sets. As Circeus points out, Ice lacks sufficient smash/lethal mitigation when compared to other tanker primaries. 
This is a step for the better, but there's still a way to go.
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As you point out, Ice still has some issues compared to other sets. As Circeus points out, Ice lacks sufficient smash/lethal mitigation when compared to other tanker primaries.
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STILL? Crap...do I need to take fighting then? Check out my ice ice baby thread for my burgeoning (lvl 31) ice/em tank.
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1) the new value, 14%, still gets hit from the enemies resistances, even against even con baddies, yes?
[/ QUOTE ]
Enemies and players alike with damage resistance automatically resist resistance debuffs. I'm not aware of anything inherently resisting damage debuffs, beyond the purple patch "resistance" which is really a drop in your effective power.
If you are specifically asking about higher level villains resisting the debuff, then higher level villains ought to resist both the slow and the damage debuff in equal measure. Even con villains shouldn't resist either the 0.32 slow nor the 0.14 damage debuff normally, unless there's some *other* effect going on I'm unaware of (or if there are actual villains with slow resistance - I'm unaware of anything with damage debuff resistance).
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Also, my ice tank just hit 32...may I again voice my concerns over Hybernate?
Stone and Invuln both get "ok, let's get really serious now" powers at 32. Ice gets to take a nap.
Fire, even worse off, gets a self res...but I'm not here for fire.
Hybernate would be a totally fine and usefull for me IF YOU COULD HOLD AGGRO. I'd one-slot it for recharge, pop it off as an "oh [censored]" power and regen my way to good health while holding the aggro I had already aquired. Make the recharge timer as long as you want...I'm gonna need it all of once every few missions anyway.
Please, consider allowing CE or Taunt to work through hybernate...it seems kind of cruel to our teamates, who are probably counting on us, to make us check out on them when they need us most.
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1) the new value, 14%, still gets hit from the enemies resistances, even against even con baddies, yes?
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Enemies and players alike with damage resistance automatically resist resistance debuffs. I'm not aware of anything inherently resisting damage debuffs, beyond the purple patch "resistance" which is really a drop in your effective power.
If you are specifically asking about higher level villains resisting the debuff, then higher level villains ought to resist both the slow and the damage debuff in equal measure. Even con villains shouldn't resist either the 0.32 slow nor the 0.14 damage debuff normally, unless there's some *other* effect going on I'm unaware of (or if there are actual villains with slow resistance - I'm unaware of anything with damage debuff resistance).
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This is something that has plagued defenders for awhile. Apply a damage debuff to a mob that has resistance to the same kind of damage type that it attacks with. The mob will resist the damage debuff. Ladios_Sop has a spread sheet with the numbers in his Kinetics guide if you want to check it out. I believe he is on version 5 of the guide.
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Now, its perfectly valid to look at enhancements from the perspective you mention above. But if you do, two things happen:
1. *Everything* now has diminishing returns, so stating that something has diminishing returns is now a meaningless statement.
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Exactly my point.
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2. Recharge will still have *more* diminishing returns than damage.
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Hmm, really?
Okay, let's take that attack which does 100 damage and say it recharges in 20 seconds, meaning it'll take 200 seconds to break down the door.
So as you add more recharge enhancements it takes:
20, 15, 12, 10, 8.571, 7.5, 6.667
seconds for the attack to recharge.
Meaning it takes
200, 150, 120, 100, 85.71, 75, 66.67
seconds to break down the door.
...and dividing this by 20 to put the first number in the series at the same point, we get
10, 7.5, 6, 5, 4.286, 3.75, 3.333
But I thought recharge had 'more diminishing returns', whatever that means!
--GF
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
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STILL? Crap...do I need to take fighting then? Check out my ice ice baby thread for my burgeoning (lvl 31) ice/em tank.
[/ QUOTE ]
Tough does not make up the difference.
[ QUOTE ]
So as you add more recharge enhancements it takes:
20, 15, 12, 10, 8.571, 7.5, 6.667
seconds for the attack to recharge.
Meaning it takes
200, 150, 120, 100, 85.71, 75, 66.67
seconds to break down the door.
...and dividing this by 20 to put the first number in the series at the same point, we get
10, 7.5, 6, 5, 4.286, 3.75, 3.333
But I thought recharge had 'more diminishing returns', whatever that means!
[/ QUOTE ]
Way to miss the point Glazius... You forgot to include the activation time in your timings, the entire CAUSE of effective "diminishing returns".
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Enemies and players alike with damage resistance automatically resist resistance debuffs. I'm not aware of anything inherently resisting damage debuffs, beyond the purple patch "resistance" which is really a drop in your effective power.
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Damage Resistance (RES) affects Damage Debuffs as well. Its very odd in how it works too. But basically if the mob has RES vs the same Damage type they are using to attack, then the mob is able to resist, in part, the Damage Debuff vs that Damage type.
I've quoted this from the Defender's current issues posting:
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Bug: Fulcrum Shift and Siphon Power. If a mob has a resistance, or vulnerability, to a certain type of energy AND that mob has an attack that is based on that type of energy, the amount the damage will be debuffed is altered by the mobs resistance. For example -- a villain has a 25% vulnerability to energy attacks. His energy damage is debuffed an extra 25% beyond the base 25%, making the final debuff 31.25% (25% of 25 is 6.25). This works in reverse as well. A mob, such as Hamidon, with 90% resistance to all attack types would only be debuffed 2.5%. (Ladioss_Sopp)
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NOTE: Defenders are a little short sighted in that they don't seem to realize this affects all Damage Debuffs and not just these two.
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oh, he only SAID it would happen.
I'll believe it when I see it. And then when it hasn't been changed back in the 12 months following it. And then I'll start to not believe it again, just in preparedness.
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Every time Statesman has said a change will happen, it's happened or he's explained why it couldn't (like that "rage" ability for tankers).
[/ QUOTE ]
Not PvP that PvP he PvP can PvP honestly or PvP clearly PvP state PvP the PvP true PvP reasons PvP for PvP the PvP "changes" PvP were PvP made.
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Have a closed mind often? Or just when posting?
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Enemies and players alike with damage resistance automatically resist resistance debuffs. I'm not aware of anything inherently resisting damage debuffs, beyond the purple patch "resistance" which is really a drop in your effective power.
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Damage Resistance (RES) affects Damage Debuffs as well. Its very odd in how it works too. But basically if the mob has RES vs the same Damage type they are using to attack, then the mob is able to resist, in part, the Damage Debuff vs that Damage type.
I've quoted this from the Defender's current issues posting:
[ QUOTE ]
Bug: Fulcrum Shift and Siphon Power. If a mob has a resistance, or vulnerability, to a certain type of energy AND that mob has an attack that is based on that type of energy, the amount the damage will be debuffed is altered by the mobs resistance. For example -- a villain has a 25% vulnerability to energy attacks. His energy damage is debuffed an extra 25% beyond the base 25%, making the final debuff 31.25% (25% of 25 is 6.25). This works in reverse as well. A mob, such as Hamidon, with 90% resistance to all attack types would only be debuffed 2.5%. (Ladioss_Sopp)
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NOTE: Defenders are a little short sighted in that they don't seem to realize this affects all Damage Debuffs and not just these two.
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Two things: first, do we know if this behavior is the proper behavior, or a bug?
Second, Debuff the damage of Hamidon? Must be something new: never seen that effect ever. Not to mention: Hamidon starts off with about 99% damage resistances prior to being hold-stacked, and I'm not sure if he can be debuffed that low: never seen it get much lower than about 95% off the top of my head.
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[ QUOTE ]
Two things: first, do we know if this behavior is the proper behavior, or a bug?
[/ QUOTE ]
Doesn't make it not the way it works now. Which is all anyone was saying really. Right now -Damage debuffs are resisted. There's no mistaking that. And we don't know, but people have been complaining about it for over 6 months and the devs have not spoken up about it or done anything to alleviate it, so I think its a "works as we want it to right now" sort of thing.
RE: Hamidon. He wasn't saying Hami would get debuffed to 2.5%, he was saying the debuff would be reduced from 25% to 2.5%. I personally am not conviced the amount RES resists a -Damage debuff is 1 for 1.
Any ETA from a Redname PM on this hitting Test?
TTR
First: if you calculate a situation with two different points of view conceptually, but the initial numbers are all the same, and you get different results, at least one of them has to be false. Thats a truism of math in general: it points to a conceptual error, or a mathematical error somewhere.
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Hmm, really?
Okay, let's take that attack which does 100 damage and say it recharges in 20 seconds, meaning it'll take 200 seconds to break down the door.
So as you add more recharge enhancements it takes:
20, 15, 12, 10, 8.571, 7.5, 6.667
seconds for the attack to recharge.
Meaning it takes
200, 150, 120, 100, 85.71, 75, 66.67
seconds to break down the door.
...and dividing this by 20 to put the first number in the series at the same point, we get
10, 7.5, 6, 5, 4.286, 3.75, 3.333
But I thought recharge had 'more diminishing returns', whatever that means!
[/ QUOTE ]
In this case, its a mathematical error. You calculated the recharge times without taking activation time into account, which is where the diminishing returns initially come from.
The actual times require knowing activation times: lets presume the 20 second cycle time you state is composed of 2 seconds activation and 18 seconds of recharge. The recharge times in that case become:
20.0, 15.5, 12.8, 11.0, 9.7, 8.7, 8.0
not
20, 15, 12, 10, 8.571, 7.5, 6.667
Time to break down door is now:
200, 155, 128, 110, 97, 87, 80
Divide by 20, and you get:
10, 7.75, 6.4, 5.5, 4.85, 4.35, 4.0
Which means recharge is providing less benefit than damage which is declining that time at this scale:
10, 7.5, 6, 5, 4.286, 3.75, 3.333
By the time you get to 6-slotting, the recharge-based time is 20% higher than the damage time.
Note: the damage time decay curve converges to zero as the number of enhancements increases, although there is a limit of 6 damage enhancements in reality (technically, it converges on zero but the minimum is two: the first activation time can't be eliminated). The recharge based time decay curve converges on 20 seconds, because even if by some miracle you had infinite recharge, each attack would still take 2 seconds to activate, and ten swings can never take less than 2 seconds.
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Now, its perfectly valid to look at enhancements from the perspective you mention above. But if you do, two things happen:
1. *Everything* now has diminishing returns, so stating that something has diminishing returns is now a meaningless statement.
[/ QUOTE ]
Exactly my point.
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I don't think this was exactly your point: my point was that while you can pick different perspectives to analyze things, some of them create situations where you can say no meaningful things. Looking at the enhancements from the perspective you articulated doesn't change the fact that recharge is still inferior, but it does take away a relatively simple way of articulating that fact. If you are attempting to contrast two things, you can pick a perspective that enhances those differences for explanatory purposes, or you can pick one that masks those differences forcing a more complex explanation (like I did above). Normally, deliberately choosing a perspective that mandates a more complex explanation is considered the poorer choice.
I should point out that damage and accuracy enhancements don't just provide better overall benefit in terms of dps, but as a completely different issue they also benefit dpe.
So there are two things going on when comparing damage or accuracy buffs, relative to recharge or end reduce buffs (mainly end enhancements). The first is that when you look at dps, damage and accuracy enhancements/buffs provide proportional benefit so long as they provide any benefit at all. Accuracy only provides benefit up to the tohit ceiling. Recharge provides a lower benefit than damage or accuracy. End provides no benefit at all.
In the dpe world, damage and accuracy both provide the same benefit they did in the dps world. End enhance provides the same benefit as they do. Recharge provides no benefit. Thus, this table:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
enh/buff dps dpe
Damage linear linear
Accuracy linear/capped linear/capped
Recharge non-linear none
Endurance none linear
</pre><hr />
When I say "capped" I mean that accuracy enhancements typically allow you to reach the tohit ceiling much faster than damage enhancements allow you to reach the damage cap - and no one can reach their damage cap on enhancements alone, so accuracy is in general capped sooner.
Recharge lags damage in net dps benefit, and lacks the dps benefit altogether. There's a reason why most people slot 5 damage and 1 acc in most attacks: that table is why.
The fact that damage enhancements provide both dps and dpe benefit, and recharge provides only dps benefit, and not even the same amount of it, greatly marginalizes recharge except for powers for which damage is non-existent or not a priority, or where activation time is small relative to recharge time (pre-I5 pets were slotted for recharge because slotting for both damage and recharge has a multiplicative benefit that overrode the minor reduced benefit of the recharge enhancement alone - because activation time was immaterial at normal pet recharge times).
And there is even another thing hurting recharge enhancements. Because unlike damage enhancements, recharge enhancements follow a diminishing returns curve, anyone with hasten has just pushed themselves more than 2 recharge enhancements deeper into the diminshing curve. Remember: damage doesn't diminish: you can stack damage on top of damage, and each incremental increase is the same as the last. But not recharge: recharge enhancements are devalued by hasten in a way that damage enhancements are not devalued by, say, assault.
Why does this matter for Ice tanks? Because slows stack in the same way: if a defender hits the villains with a slow, the net effect of the Ice tank slow and the defender slow will not stack additively, because of the diminishing returns. The *actual slows* will stack additively, but their net effect will be lower than you would otherwise expect. So in the same way that hasten devalues recharge enhancements, so will team slows partially devalue Ice tank slows on a relative basis (the net effect will still be more beneficial than each alone, just not as strongly as -dmg would stack with -dmg, say). One bright spot in splitting up slow into slow and -dmg, although I don't think its a big enough one to compensate for the combined effects of the purple patch acting on both effects for anything higher than +1.
Edit: corrected typoed "hasten" as "stamina" in one place, thanks da5id for the catch
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Defenders aren't short sighted about it in actual fact. During the EF issue I explained to Cuppa about how -damage debuffs were being screwed over in the Arena and how this would be a problem for both CoH and CoV since they both share the kinetics set (hence alot of focus on kinetics). No word back on what the devs thought about the issue though.
I also at the time explained that -dam debuffs were being resisted (along with alot of other stuff so if it got lost in the shuffle sue me not her). The devs have not seen fit to make it an issue they want to comment on. Now that it effects 3 out of 5 ATs I am hoping they will explain it. I especially want to hear how they balance PvP and damage debuffs. For PvP I would much rather have a larger recharge debuff than a damage debuff since damage debuffs don't debuff the enhanced damage.
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Any ETA from a Redname PM on this hitting Test?
TTR
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Well based roughly on past performance, I'd guess 9 days from when Statesman posted they they check in the change.
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Defenders aren't short sighted about it in actual fact.
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Whoever wrote up that issues list is 
It'd carry more weight to mention up front that the problem affects every Damage Debuff in game, and not just the ones in the Kinetics set, which is what the list implies. It just carry more weight to drive that point home every time the issue comes up.
It's not just damage debuffs, it's every debuff that affects a buffable/slottable power. But . . . the devs don't seem to address these issues on an "overall" basis, but on a "power by power" basis. For instance, Slow debuffs used to be ridiculously weak, having no effect on most PvP battles. The devs changed the debuff in PvP so that it now at least effects Superspeed. Kind of.
So, instead of addressing the overall problem, which is that buffed/enhanced powers make most debuffs irrelevant, the devs addressed a particularly egregious example. Storm Defenders, for instance, pointed out that Snow Storm debuffed their speed more than the target's speed b/c of suppression. We whined enough about a particularly bad effect that it got changed. I think that's what it takes.
Sorry, I spilled all my wine during the vigilance war. It will take me awhile to get restocked.
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Er, clarification please? I thought a 14% damage debuff would turn 100 into 86?
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Edited post - you're right. Typing in haste made me use the original 7% value.
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What? Haste has a -typing debuf? Stealth Nerf!