Defense and Scaling
By
Aaron123,
Posted on: 2006-01-11 16:47 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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I mean really, a %7.5 chance to hit for an AV?????? Thats a joke.
Am I completely missing something here? 
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You're missing that debuffs are serious business in CoH. That's the reason people keep saying "you don't need much healing if you have enough debuffs." The AV doesn't have a 7.5 % chance to hit you, but it can be reduced to that with enough debuffs. Course, if it lands a hold on one of the debuffers, that springs right back up again.
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Another thing he's missing is that it used to take only two DDDs to floor an even-con AV before this change (assuming they could squeeze an extra -5% ACC out of the rest of their powers to put on top of Darkest Night), and that floor was 5%.
And 3 or 4 could floor a +5 AV, before the change.
Post the change, it will still take 2 to floor the AV, but now the floor is higher. So pragmatically speaking (since you can't get 1/2 of a DDD on your team), it's no easier to floor the AV now, and the floor is higher.
The main difference is that the team with only 1 DDD will get a lot more out of him than before.
Castle, Geko... a question for you guys popped into my head.
I understand why the inner quantity is bounded. But why is it bounded by 0.05 and 0.95? Wouldn't it make vastly more sense for the inner quantity to be bounded by 0 and 1, leaving the outer one bounded as it is now?
This would avoid the oddity of raising the floor by bounding the low end twice.
I do understand that doing this would represent a slight nerf to PC characters, who benefit today from being able to multiply thier slotted accuracy times a potentially floored inner quantity. However, in practice, I thing we would benefit more from having a lower floor on powerful foes being debuffed than we would from going from 3 hits in 60 (5% floor) to 5 hits in 60 (5% floor with 2 ACC SOs). At least, when we're talking about foes who can mez or even kill us in one shot.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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I understand why the inner quantity is bounded. But why is it bounded by 0.05 and 0.95? Wouldn't it make vastly more sense for the inner quantity to be bounded by 0 and 1, leaving the outer one bounded as it is now?
This would avoid the oddity of raising the floor by bounding the low end twice.
I do understand that doing this would represent a slight nerf to PC characters, who benefit today from being able to multiply thier slotted accuracy times a potentially floored inner quantity. However, in practice, I thing we would benefit more from having a lower floor on powerful foes being debuffed than we would from going from 3 hits in 60 (5% floor) to 5 hits in 60 (5% floor with 2 ACC SOs). At least, when we're talking about foes who can mez or even kill us in one shot.
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It's so there's always a chance to hit and always a chance to miss. Think of it like a natural 1 or 20 on a D20.
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It's so there's always a chance to hit and always a chance to miss. Think of it like a natural 1 or 20 on a D20.
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I know. But that's being overdone. Like I point out in my example, they way it's being done now, it's like anyone with increased accuracy (not toHit) gets to roll a bigger die and miss on a smaller range of numbers (5 out of 60 instead of 1 in 20 for 2 ACC SOs).
I'm asking if the inner bound shouldn't be made 0..1 so that the outer bound can do what you're saying.
Edit: it dawns on me to provide an example.
I'm in PvP and I have an attack with 2 accuracy SOs. Let's say I'm going after two Defenders who slapped Darkest Night and Rad Infection on me (just to be sure I'm floored).
If I have a base 50% toHit (PvP), and those two powers are fully slotted, I have an effective toHit of (50% - DN - RI). Even if those numbers are 30% each, I'm at -10%. Now the inner floor kicks in and raises that to 5%. But I'm 2 slotted for accuracy. That's 5% * 1.666 = 8.3%. That's greater than 5%, so the second bounding operation leaves it alone.
If the inner bounding was 0..1, my -10% toHit would be raised to 0%. This would be multiplied by 1.666 for 0%. The second bounding would raise this to 5%.
Honestly, as a player, I'm more worried about the +2 AV my team is trying to floor than I am about my own being floored. A 3.333% increase in my own (abysmal) to hit rate isn't going to matter in the course of one fight. If I am that badly debuffed I'm running no matter whether the result is 5% or 8.3%. But that small difference on a big, powerful foe can be more meaningful in my eyes.
I'm definitely splitting hairs, but most if this thread relates to that, so there it is. 
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
With the change to bounding, you can achieve 90% mitigation against any enemy up to +5.
Changing it the way you suggest means you can reduce a +5's or an AV's damage to less than 10%.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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With the change to bounding, you can achieve 90% mitigation against any enemy up to +5.
Changing it the way you suggest means you can reduce a +5's or an AV's damage to less than 10%.
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Hmm. That's wierd.
The maximum mitigation becomes a sliding scale, depending on foe rank or level.
Because, with this system, you can, in fact, mitigate a +0 minion to 5%. But your best mitigation vs. a +5 is 10%. Everyone in between has some proportional value.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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With the change to bounding, you can achieve 90% mitigation against any enemy up to +5.
Changing it the way you suggest means you can reduce a +5's or an AV's damage to less than 10%.
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Hmm. That's wierd.
The maximum mitigation becomes a sliding scale, depending on foe rank or level.
Because, with this system, you can, in fact, mitigate a +0 minion to 5%. But your best mitigation vs. a +5 is 10%. Everyone in between has some proportional value.
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That's the trade off. Higher floors for better performance when you can't floor them.
It's a good trade off, and a fair one.
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With the change to bounding, you can achieve 90% mitigation against any enemy up to +5.
Changing it the way you suggest means you can reduce a +5's or an AV's damage to less than 10%.
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Hmm. That's wierd.
The maximum mitigation becomes a sliding scale, depending on foe rank or level.
Because, with this system, you can, in fact, mitigate a +0 minion to 5%. But your best mitigation vs. a +5 is 10%. Everyone in between has some proportional value.
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5% to hit for an even minion is 90% mitigation or 10% damage.
The result is that they hit 1/10 as often as they do with base accuracy.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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I understand why the inner quantity is bounded. But why is it bounded by 0.05 and 0.95? Wouldn't it make vastly more sense for the inner quantity to be bounded by 0 and 1, leaving the outer one bounded as it is now?
This would avoid the oddity of raising the floor by bounding the low end twice.
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I don't consider it an oddity, I consider that change to be the *proper* behavior.
Consider: the 90% resistance cap is unaffected by level or rank. You cannot get better than 90% resistance against a minion, or an AV. The *proper* thing to compare that to in the defense world is *also* the mitigation ratio, not the tohit floor. The maximum mitigation ratio possible for defense is the floor over the base tohit of the foe; Floor/Base. As base goes up, so must the floor.
Now, the base tohit of an AV is going to be adjusted down to 50%, but all this doesn't take accuracy into account. The standard chance to hit (because I can't use the terms accuracy or tohit without being confusing) of an AV against something with no defense is (1.5) * (0.5) = 75% - same as now. The absolute best a defense set ought to be able to do against that is 7.5%, or 90% total mitigation; the same maximum mitigation they have against minions.
That defense now has the same maximum mitigation against AVs as they have against minions is exactly what we mean when we say "defense will now work just as well against minions and AVs."
Another way to put it: if the math didn't work that way, I would make it work that way with some form of adjustment. When I first suggested altering defense and tohit in this way, I wasn't even aware that accuracy and tohit worked differently or that the floors and ceilings were checked twice: in my suggestion, I *made* accuracy work this way, and I *made* the equation check floors and ceilings twice, because that was the only way to make it fair, without realizing that in fact it always worked that way. cf: The Accuracy vs Defense thread.
(Note: Castle has pointed out to me that it *didn't* always work that way, in terms of checking floors and ceilings twice, and that it was partially the arena that caused them to specifically add that check in. I imagine that is because it was first in the arena that the issue of extremely high accuracy buffs first became prevalent. Outside of PvP combat, ultrahigh accuracy was uncommon, and therefore the issues surrounding the doublecheck on bounds was also uncommon)
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The maximum mitigation becomes a sliding scale, depending on foe rank or level.
Because, with this system, you can, in fact, mitigate a +0 minion to 5%. But your best mitigation vs. a +5 is 10%. Everyone in between has some proportional value.
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The 5% floor is not a proper measure of mitigation, at least comparing it to resistance. Lets go through it step by step:
We define the mitigation benefit of a particular amount of defense or resistance to be the amount of damage that you avoid, relative to not having that defense or resistance active. The comparison is on verses off. And its expressed as a ratio of mitigated damage to standard damage (without mitigation).
Its a nice way to measure mitigation, because resistance is trivially easy: the mitigation ratio for a resistance power is exactly equal, numerically, to the resistance percentage. That's not a coincidence: its true because resistance itself is defined in exactly the same way. A 75% resistance power deflects 75% of all incoming damage - that's the same way we define "mitigation."
Not so easy for defense. The mitigation ratio or value of a defense power is defined in the same way: amount of damage avoided (on average) when the power is on, verses when the power is off. So lets look at minions and AVs.
Suppose you have 30% defense. That is 60% mitigation verses minions. Why? Because on average, *without* the power, you'd be hit 50 times out of 100, and with the power you'd be hit 20 times out of 100. The power allows you to avoid 30 out of every 50 hits on average: 30/50 = 60%.
Suppose you floor the minion. That would be net 5% tohit, relative to 50%. Net overall mitigation would be 90%, because you'd be avoiding 45 out of every 50 hits, relative to having no defense. 45/50 = 90%
Now AVs: flooring an AV in this new scheme will only floor the AV to (1.5) * (5%) = 7.5%. In other words, out of 100 swings, the AV will hit you only 7.5 times. BUT, how many times would he have hit you if you had no defense? That's right, 75 times (1.5 * 50% = 75%, or 75 times out of 100). So for AVs, the act of flooring the AV - the best you can do with defense - will allow you to avoid 67.5 out of every 75 hits (75 - 7.5). Thats a mitigation ratio of 67.5/75 = 90%. The same 90%.
Far from making mitigation a sliding scale, the change *freezes* the mitigation ratio for all ranks and all levels (that the change operates on).
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Far from making mitigation a sliding scale, the change *freezes* the mitigation ratio for all ranks and all levels (that the change operates on).
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You are, as usual, correct, as are other respondants. I was wrongly thinking of the raw toHit chance in terms of absolute rather than considering it as a percentage of the 50% base.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Some more good news...
Ice Tankers and SR Scrappers have long lamented that Defense doesn't scale with level. Because mobs higher level than a player possess an inherent to hit bonus, Defense isn't as effective over levels as Resistance.
A while ago, peoople have requested something be done. Well, we've done a bunch of work and done this. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless of their rank or level. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. This change has no effect on a player who does not have any Defense.
This change is coming in I7
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I was right. serious nerfs to CoH (ED, I5, I6) to prepare for serious buffs to CoH to balance it with ED, I5, and I6. They done the nerfs first to get the nastiness out of the way.
Disclaimer: not meant as a troll/told ya/brag/negative things post.
50Soulsunder: DM/Regen Scrapper
50Limitshift: EM/WP Brute
Victoria Nox: Dark/Dark Dominator
And about 5 others that change constantly...
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I was right. serious nerfs to CoH (ED, I5, I6) to prepare for serious buffs to CoH to balance it with ED, I5, and I6. They done the nerfs first to get the nastiness out of the way.
Disclaimer: not meant as a troll/told ya/brag/negative things post.
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Honestly, I can't see this being related to I5 or ED. Defense has always been inferior to other mitigation methods. If I5 and ED had never happened this would still have needed to be done to balance it.
I'm not going to disagree that some buffs are now reasonable perhaps only in light of the global nerfs (the changes to Dull Pain come to mind), but I am certain this is not one of them.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Honestly, I can't see this being related to I5 or ED. Defense has always been inferior to other mitigation methods. If I5 and ED had never happened this would still have needed to be done to balance it.
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But with the old defensive numbers for powers I'd say this particular change would have made defense the obviously superior form of damage mitigation. Nerfs would have definitely followed or accompanied this change had it been done prior to I5.
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Honestly, I can't see this being related to I5 or ED. Defense has always been inferior to other mitigation methods. If I5 and ED had never happened this would still have needed to be done to balance it.
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But with the old defensive numbers for powers I'd say this particular change would have made defense the obviously superior form of damage mitigation. Nerfs would have definitely followed or accompanied this change had it been done prior to I5.
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Remember, everything was basically halved. I'm not saying defense numbers wouldn't have had to come down to prevent them flooring everything, but I5 as such and especially ED are not logical follow-ons of this change.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Honestly, I can't see this being related to I5 or ED. Defense has always been inferior to other mitigation methods. If I5 and ED had never happened this would still have needed to be done to balance it.
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But with the old defensive numbers for powers I'd say this particular change would have made defense the obviously superior form of damage mitigation. Nerfs would have definitely followed or accompanied this change had it been done prior to I5.
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Remember, everything was basically halved. I'm not saying defense numbers wouldn't have had to come down to prevent them flooring everything, but I5 as such and especially ED are not logical follow-ons of this change.
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I consider them linked in this sense: the devs stated that I5 "calibrated" defense numbers to have the desired effectiveness against base 50% tohit (even level minions). That is logically tantamount to saying that defense is *not* working at the desired effectiveness against anything that has higher base tohit, unless that thing is deliberately designed to affect defense more than other mitigation mechanisms.
Therefore, it makes no sense to balance defense around even level minions, and then have all other ranks and all other (higher) level foes be imbalanced against defense. Contrawise, it makes no sense to adjust all (most) villains to base 50% tohit if defense *isn't* balanced around that number.
Thus, if you care about the game being balanced, the I5 defense adjustments (regardless of whether or not you think they were *quantitatively* correct), and the defense scaler, are intertwined. If you were designing the game from scratch, you'd want to balance defense around a "normal" tohit number, and then you'd want to give most things that base tohit. That's what the I5 reductions and the defense scaling change combine to do.
They only look like buffs and nerfs in isolation: if they had been launched simultaneously, I would have considered the two changes to be a single design change, and neither a buff nor a nerf explicitly (specifically referring to Defense).
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I agree with the spirit of what you're saying Arcanaville, but I do not agree that I5 and this change are linked. At the very least, I do not agree that the must have been linked in order for defense to be "fixed" in the way this change does help it. The point about the idea of the values of the change are the crux of it. The real values could have been anything. A normilzed base or standard for critter accuracy could have been chosen using the pre I5 critter progression.
The shift of higher level and rank foes from toHit scaling to accuracy scaling was feasible at the game's release. Nothing whatsoever required I5 for that to be possible or desirable.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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I agree with the spirit of what you're saying Arcanaville, but I do not agree that I5 and this change are linked. At the very least, I do not agree that the must have been linked in order for defense to be "fixed" in the way this change does help it.
The shift of higher level and rank foes from toHit scaling to accuracy scaling was feasible at the game's release. Nothing whatsoever required I5 for that to be possible or desirable.
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At release, SR scrappers had similar defense to what they do now. They could have put this change in at release, because defense was even lower than now. Its Issue 1 through Issue 4 that's the problem: the boosted I1-I4 SR numbers would have allowed SR to floor everything in the early teens with this change, and its unlikely they would have ever given us that level of performance.
(As a separate issue, a lot of things had equal or better defense than SR, and power pool defenses were much too high relative to SR defenses; that would have had to be dealt with eventually.)
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Time for my long nit pick...and as such is not a big deal...but
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Consider: the 90% resistance cap is unaffected by level or rank. You cannot get better than 90% resistance against a minion, or an AV ***That defense now has the same maximum mitigation against AVs as they have against minions is exactly what we mean when we say "defense will now work just as well against minions and AVs."***I would make it work that way with some form of adjustment.
[/ QUOTE ] I understand the argument here, but I think it's revisionist and I submit that it ignores the most likely reason why there was 5% floor to begin with. I also think we are comparing disimilar mechanics.
First off, non-tankers cannot achieve the 90% resistance. So to allow all individuals through buffs and to-hit debuffs to achieve 90% through +DEF is not commensurate. You are assigning a connection where there is an asymetric occurance. With RI, DN, Bubbles, Flash Arrow, Manuevrs, etc it is very possible for just about everyone to cap PvE accuracy. The same is not true for resistance. Just as you examined the debuff in Uny and decided it was not a balancing debuff, to link the 90% resistance cap to the 90% +DEF cap is tenous and largely circumstancial. But I don't think you are doing that...so moving on...
Second, the devs have never espoused any such philosophy about the scaling caps for bosses versus minions versus AV's, etc. They easily could have implemented such a notion by just adding the scaler on a conditional.
Maybe they've changed their mind and now subscribe to exactly what you're suggesting, but that would suggest that something they implemented to always have some risk was, in fact, intended as a golden ratio. I don't believe this. It was possible to cap an AV and as such the devs implemented a 5% floor so there wouldn't ever be zero risk in fighting it. To go back and say they always wanted us to experience 10% incoming damage seems unlikely.
The argument that the math should work this way is not compelling. It's based on a the premise that the 5% floor was something other than a need to maintain some element of risk. You stated in another post that this result was some how mandated by the need to preserve some average damage mitigation value. It seems more likely that this was the by-prodcut of needing defense to scale and it is convenient to interpret that as some sort of truth.
What I am really arguing is that the floor is artificial. While it is true that the new method preserves the mitigation against minions at 10%, the fact is that the 5% floor is an arbitrary construct from this being a game. If we remove the floor conditional, then higher level/rank mobs will do more damage proportionally. If the inside value is negative, it's zero. As soon as mob gets 1%, the +level and rank values will kick in appropriately. The only problem is that once you get to high level toons, many of the mobs won't do any damage at all. It's far to easy to exceed the 50% base accuracy once you throw in multiple debuffs.
So I submit, this 5% accuracy floor is not some truth about the universe in its relationship towards minions. Nor does it bear any relationship to the 90% resistance max because that only applies to tankers, not to all toons. There is no 90% resistance max that a defender can achieve, but now you've forced that defense max on all +DEF.
This could be countered by my whole Uny argument. The difference there is that Uny was a power built within a set which has to achieve both a artistic effect and a quantitative/qualitative balance. The acc floor is not meant to achieve a balance, but the existence of some risk, regardless fo the circumstances, for the same reason we can't achieve 100% accuracy. There is no real world reason why we shouldn't be able to achieve 100% acc. Aren't some of the super heroes supposed to be machines? Nor should there be a "streak breaker." These things are artifacts for a game, as is the 5% floor. To argue that this 10% is consistent with the statement that now our defense will work "equally well" ignores that this is not a result of how are defense works. The 5% floor has nothing to do with how our defense works, but rather places where our defense is not allowed to work. It is in fact a discontinuity in +DEF environment. The engine is inserting a 5% chance when none should exist.
Of course...this could all be wrong if there is already code in the game that gives AV's and +level mobs a higher capped accuracy. But your posts don't contend this.
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Castle has pointed out to me...
[/ QUOTE ] can you clarify this? In PvP, are your acc enhance applied to the 5%? What exactly did they change, when did they change it, and where did they change it?
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I understand the argument here, but I think it's revisionist
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I don't understand how it could possibly be revisionist, because:
a) I've always felt that way, and I was expressing my opinions, not what I thought the devs thought.
b) The post you quote was a direct response to someone suggesting that the tohit floor - whatever it is - ought not to move because the tohit floor was the true measure of maximum mitigation, which isn't strictly true. The math is significant because its on point to the question, and is not offered to make any specific assertion of how the math originally worked. The math originally worked differently, but thats irrelevant to the point.
c) None of this is either relevant nor significant, because the devs have made sufficient statements about how they *want* defense to work in I7 as to make any statements about how it was *originally supposed to work* largely meaningless, especially since they are acknowledging, by way of making a change, that at least *at this time* they believe the way it used to work wasn't correct.
As to the tohit floors being "artifical" they are no more so than the resistance caps, but the math involved in explaining precisely how the resistance caps relate to the tohit floors and ceilings within the context of the current tohit formula is involved, and I suspect insufficiently convincing. It is reasonably transparent to anyone that has studied defense in CoH, though, and probably completely transparent to anyone judging the merits of the design from a designers point of view.
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a) I've always felt that way, and I was expressing my opinions, not what I thought the devs thought.
[/ QUOTE ] Ah...my bad on two counts then. I don't recall your ever stating that the to-hit floor should be higher for AV's or +5's. I thought you were suggesting that this is what the devs intended.
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ought not to move because the tohit floor was the true measure of maximum mitigation, which isn't strictly true.
[/ QUOTE ] I agree with you. The to-hit floor is just a construct for the game...not a measure of something on a theoretical design level.
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because the devs have made sufficient statements about how they *want* defense to work in I7
[/ QUOTE ] How defense should work and how to-hit floors should work are not logically connected. They are simply mathmatically connected based on the method of implementation. What I see is the realization by the devs that resistance scales and defense doesn't. This was defended/ignored for several issues. For whatever reason, Statesman suddenly subscribed to this being a problem. Their chosen solution, forces the to-hit floor to rise for everyone who has greater than a 50% to hit. But there is no logical rationale for this when the to-hit floor is simply a "game" construct. I see this as an unavoidable consequence of this method not a mandated necesssity.
Now, they can turn around and argue that they spefically chose this method because of what happens at the to-hit floor, but such an argument would be a change in any previous espoused philosophy. I've never seen them comment on the to-hit floor not working properly, nor has there been any espoused philosophy which would lead us to believe such a result is desired. Perhaps they have to you? Perhaps it is not something they would comment on despite their goals.
Before, you could simply have more defense/debuff than the opponent had accuracy and as such the game imposed some risk. Now, simply because they are a boss or +level minion, they will always have better accuracy than a +0, even if you had infinite defense. It's a nit-pick, but nonetheless, the logic behind the rationale is not compelling and is arguably not logic but compromise
I think any arguments about the to-hit floor having any relational significance based on the +0 minion value are seriously challenged when you consider a lvl 1 Hellion has the same value as a lvl 50 Minion against an Eluded+Toggle /SR.
I'll be surprised if this specific implementation doesn't see some revisions. I see some major problems based on the context of the game.
I repeat my request for you to share what Castle said about how things worked previously with the flooring logic and why they changed it and when.
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I repeat my request for you to share what Castle said about how things worked previously with the flooring logic and why they changed it and when.
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What I said was what I was told, and all I was told: that the tohit formula had been changed (at least) once before, that it was arena combat that had prompted the change. Beyond that, I can infer that the change was related to the tohit floors and ceilings, because that is the specific issue I was asking about (to wit: did the second floor/ceiling check always exist, because I had conducted tests that suggested that at least at one time it might not have, and if it did not, at what time was it put in).
[The rest is strictly coming from me only, not Castle]
The second (interior) check is meaningless when there are no accuracy buffs/debuffs (because the outer accuracy term is 1.0) and while players have high accuracy (due to slotting) villains typically do not; thus, the absence of the second check has limited effect on the game - prior to arena combat, when players face players, and high accuracy faces high defense. Thus, it made perfect sense to me that the absence of the second check might survive in the game *until* arena combat forced the issue. Clearly, if the devs responded to arena combat (aka high accuracy/high defense combat) by instituting the second check, that strongly signals how they expect defense to "scale" (honestly, I'm not fond of the term except colloquially).
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How defense should work and how to-hit floors should work are not logically connected.
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They are if your reference point for defense performance in the game is resistance performance. If you don't feel that defense performance and resistance performance need to be parallel, then the tohit floors need not float - but then again, defense need not scale, either.
(And defense-oriented sets like SR and Ice really ought not exist)
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The second (interior) check is meaningless when there are no accuracy buffs/debuffs***Thus, it made perfect sense to me that the absence of the second check might survive in the game *until* arena combat forced the issue.
[/ QUOTE ] I'm confused by this. If PvP brought the internal check, then we should see a 6 acc/dmg HO'd Blaster hit Super-Duper-Eluded-up-the-Wazoo Scrapper with 20% accuracy. Did we see that? It should have been impossible to floor anyone with 6 HO's...regarless of what debuffs or defense you were running. In fact, we could test this now by going on the Test server with 3 acc and see if we get 10%.
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They are if your reference point for defense performance in the game is resistance performance.
[/ QUOTE ] But we can argue that it shouldn't be. Especially at the max. Busting someone down to 10% of their accuracy is far better than busting someone down to 10% of their damage...when you factor in secondary effects. Statesman argued this very notion himself. It's the same reason why Elude doesn't have higher mez protection and Unstoppable does. My DM and my Kinetics would much rather face 90% resistance versus 90% defense (if my acc is 100%). You yourself said defense != resistance. Just go ask Sappers. There are even situations where resistance is better than +DEF...like when the damage is massive enough to one-shot you without resistance and you have a healer.
I think the whole scaling defense thing is an interesting argument. On one level it seems like defense should scale just like resistance. On another level, it's not a given that such a system creates a balance...given the context of the game. Not getting hit has many cascade benefits over getting hit when getting hit has penalties not associated with just taking damage. I've seen you make these arguments yourself, as well as The Confessor.
If you really feel that the resistance cap of 90% is reflected in the to-hit floor of 90%...all non-Tanks should have a much higher to-hit floor than Tanks. It should be 12.5%..not 5%. But the fact that it's not and never was means that the two are not related and never were. If they raise it...then it shows they've adopted this approach. But if you think the 10% should be preserved as we level up, then you'll have to explain why it isn't 25% for scrappers.
Mieux:
You're forgetting some minor but important things. First off, the ACC Floor is 5%, not 10% so the 90% number for Def sets should actually be 95%. This minor error actually makes your arguement stronger *but* there is a new change coming up in that that floor will be going up slightly. New floor = 7.5% for AVs and I'm assuming Monsters. Who knows what things like Hammie is now.
At low values for both DEF and RES, 1% DEF == 2% RES. 10% DEF means a minion hits 40% of the time or 20% damage reduction. As the DEF number approaches 45% it starts getting silly (with the I7 numbers) and for all practical purposes 45% Def is now the absolute effective cap.
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I mean really, a %7.5 chance to hit for an AV?????? Thats a joke.
Am I completely missing something here?
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You're missing that debuffs are serious business in CoH. That's the reason people keep saying "you don't need much healing if you have enough debuffs." The AV doesn't have a 7.5 % chance to hit you, but it can be reduced to that with enough debuffs. Course, if it lands a hold on one of the debuffers, that springs right back up again.