Wow. Thanks for crunching those numbers, very useful stuff to know in there.
I guess I'll have to stop calling defiance 'completely useless'. I don't get under 60% health in most fights with either of my blasters, but at least now I know it's always doing something, even if that something is minimal.
Nice stuff Arcana.
Wish I could confirm the bar lag/defiance lag thing... the number of times my defiance bar has skyrocketed with the damage increase coming several shots later (if I'm not dead) has been a marked one. This seems to be a prevalent complaint. Is it all just player perception?
[ QUOTE ]
Nice stuff Arcana.
Wish I could confirm the bar lag/defiance lag thing... the number of times my defiance bar has skyrocketed with the damage increase coming several shots later (if I'm not dead) has been a marked one. This seems to be a prevalent complaint. Is it all just player perception?
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I don't know. What's odd to me is that in all of my testing, not only have I not seen the issue you describe, if anything, I've seen the *opposite* happen, because the bar itself is slightly laggy: the damage buff happens *first* and then the defiance bar jumps a fraction of a second later. I've never seen it happen the other way around. That doesn't mean its not happening, but especially where such things are likely to occur if at all (during much faster paced combat than my test conditions), its also very difficult to actually *see* what the defiance boost is moment by moment.
I'm of the opinion that defiance damage should be a separate floating number, like criticals. That way, blasters can actually see the defiance boost in a way more psychologically satisfying (and perhaps a bit more obviously). This was done recently for defense: the various "dodged" and "deflected" messages which show that defense is actually "working" were added purely to give a psychological boost to the visibility of defense. Defiance damage should probably get similar treatment.
*Especially* since defiance is one part numerical buff, and three parts psychological buff, its important to make sure its highly visible to get the psychological boost its intended to provide.
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Thanks. This is very good to know. Not even looking at that bar again.
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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I'm of the opinion that defiance damage should be a separate floating number, like criticals. That way, blasters can actually see the defiance boost in a way more psychologically satisfying (and perhaps a bit more obviously). This was done recently for defense: the various "dodged" and "deflected" messages which show that defense is actually "working" were added purely to give a psychological boost to the visibility of defense. Defiance damage should probably get similar treatment.
[/ QUOTE ]
That would be nice.
Also, I want to thank you for going to the trouble of doing the tests and the math to nail defiance down. It doesn't make me stop believeing that defiance either needs to have the bottom end of the curve smoothed out or to be replaced by something a bit better suited for the end game, but it definately gives us a solid platform from which to discuss the subject of defiance.
Kudos to you.
Arcanaville, you keep posting threads that I keep adding to my favorites. I'd like to say, thank you, mucho. You are a boon to us all.
That defiance equation is nice to know, as are the handy datapoints.
I may have to pay attention to see if the dreaded "Defiance delay" ever happens. As a player of blasters with Holds, Stuns, and Aid-self, I don't get into the heavy buff range often though.
Again, thanks.
Mission Arc: Metatronic Mayhem (Id 1750): A tale of robots gone wrong, rogue robots gone right, and madmen gone every which way but loose.
Good job Arcaneville.
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1. Blasters are defiance buffed constantly
Even at full health, you are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1% damage boost due to defiance. You're not likely to notice it much until you reach about 50% health, though.
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This is true, but is that small damage buff for 60% health and above is almost meaningless. It only adds a few more points of damage that will still need another follow up attack to finish, most likely will already result in excess damage without the Defiance boost.
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Because the relationship between critter damage and blaster health changes with level, defiance means different things at different levels. I'm still looking at defiance for blasters at levels other than 50 (defiance itself doesn't change, but I'm still looking at the damage numbers verses health issue at different levels).
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Have you also considered resistance buffs on the blaster? Higher resists will slow down the damage the blaster recieves, but if the blaster is taking less damage, then he's living longer where normal damage will be enough.
[ QUOTE ]
Even at full health, you are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1% damage boost due to defiance. You're not likely to notice it much until you reach about 50% health, though.
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Enough proof for me. You lost some where in the area of 600 points of damage from 1500 to get 900 and gained 1.xx of damage. Thats 5% if you want to average it out to a round number, no thanks. It still sucks, i am going to fight my hitpoint bar every time.
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Also, I want to thank you for going to the trouble of doing the tests and the math to nail defiance down. It doesn't make me stop believeing that defiance either needs to have the bottom end of the curve smoothed out or to be replaced by something a bit better suited for the end game, but it definately gives us a solid platform from which to discuss the subject of defiance.
[/ QUOTE ]
It sucks. Next topic of conversation. 
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Good job Arcaneville.
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1. Blasters are defiance buffed constantly
Even at full health, you are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1% damage boost due to defiance. You're not likely to notice it much until you reach about 50% health, though.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is true, but is that small damage buff for 60% health and above is almost meaningless. It only adds a few more points of damage that will still need another follow up attack to finish, most likely will already result in excess damage without the Defiance boost.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, its hard to hover at 10% health for a blaster, but its not hard to hover at about half health before popping respites, and the defiance buff there is comparable to assault. Its not bad (but smaller than the average bonus due to criticals). I think the message I'm getting from the defiance numbers is that its about 2-3 times too weak on the low end, not totally worthless, if we assume that blasters should get a similar benefit from defiance as scrappers get from criticals. But its hard to say: blappers especially tend to get *much* higher defiance numbers: those quarter-health blappers you see destroying everything are doing so because they have a damage buff comparable to perma-rage.
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Because the relationship between critter damage and blaster health changes with level, defiance means different things at different levels. I'm still looking at defiance for blasters at levels other than 50 (defiance itself doesn't change, but I'm still looking at the damage numbers verses health issue at different levels).
[/ QUOTE ]
Have you also considered resistance buffs on the blaster? Higher resists will slow down the damage the blaster recieves, but if the blaster is taking less damage, then he's living longer where normal damage will be enough.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, indeed. Sturdies can be amazingly bad news for blasters to have in PvP, unless they are heavily debuffed. It also adds some context to the whole "would you trade your tier 9 attack for MoG" question. MoG would start by making the blaster perma-build up, and somewhere around "one third health" would make the blaster perma-capped. That's a serious damage buff coming out of MoG.
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I knew the howling monkeys would join this discussion at some point.
Arcanaville, thanks for posting this, and thanks for putting the lie to the so-called "health / defiance lag". More actual data and knowledge is always useful.
Now the argument isn't whether Defiance isn't working. It clearly is. Now the question is whether or not the exponential equation it's based on is appropriate or whether it should be adjusted, or whether it should be an exponential curve to begin with.
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I knew the howling monkeys would join this discussion at some point.
[/ QUOTE ]
Chimp, not monkey.
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Arcanaville, thanks for posting this, and thanks for putting the lie to the so-called "health / defiance lag". More actual data and knowledge is always useful.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, thank you again Arcane.
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Now the argument isn't whether Defiance isn't working. It clearly is. Now the question is whether or not the exponential equation it's based on is appropriate or whether it should be adjusted, or whether it should be an exponential curve to begin with.
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Yes, Defiance has always worked. It is also not the question of the curve, but how well a Blaster can utilize it. It is also of how much benefit a blaster can gain from it and how often. If it's only function less then 1% of most situations for a blaster, then it's garbage.
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Even at full health, you are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1% damage boost due to defiance. You're not likely to notice it much until you reach about 50% health, though.
[/ QUOTE ]
Enough proof for me. You lost some where in the area of 600 points of damage from 1500 to get 900 and gained 1.xx of damage. Thats 5% if you want to average it out to a round number, no thanks. It still sucks, i am going to fight my hitpoint bar every time.
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At 911.9 health (for me), that was 66% health, and about 6% damage boost. That is approximately the benefit of scrapper criticals on minion targets. Its not trivial.
I wouldn't head to "criticals are still better because its better for an occasional big number than a lot of slightly bigger numbers" quite yet. One of the things I'm looking at is whether criticals end a fight quicker than a comparable defiance boost. It is not as simple as you might expect, because one odd coincidence I'm starting to see, and I cannot explain, is the "sliver of health" oddity. Alarmingly frequently, the damage numbers of the attacks blasters get combine to leave a target with a sliver of health, at unbuffed damage levels. Its happening at a higher frequency than can be explained by probability. And that serves as critical context for whether defiance can just get "lost" as a tiny buff that doesn't actually help in practice. It can, at surprisingly small levels, sometimes reduce the number of attacks necessary to kill by one (sometimes at levels of only 8%).
I suspect it has something to do with the fact that damage numbers were designed around a particular "metric" of number of attacks necessary to defeat a minion, and were scaled from there. That might have left a statistical "footprint" in how damage interacts with targets' health bars: how much "wastage" damage is done to a target (the amount of damage over and above necessary to defeat the target, and subsequently the likelyhood that one less attack might leave the target with a small sliver of health) might not be remotely random at all.
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[ QUOTE ]
Now the question is whether or not the exponential equation it's based on is appropriate or whether it should be adjusted, or whether it should be an exponential curve to begin with.
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The exponential part is not really a problem: asking for it to be linear doesn't necessarily make the low parts higher, it might just make the high parts lower.
What might make more sense, though, is to give it a "floor." If it had a 5% floor, say, then the buff would start off as about as good as scrapper criticals on minions, unslotted. Then, "shallowing" the curve could allow the boost to reach 20% by 50% health, which would be close to the average buff of scrapper criticals, slotted (because scrapper criticals are post-slotted boosts, while defiance is a base damage boost). Everything above that would be gravy.
Its not really that much different from the current curve, its still exponential, but it offers a slightly better curve at lower levels.
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[ QUOTE ]
I'm of the opinion that defiance damage should be a separate floating number, like criticals. That way, blasters can actually see the defiance boost in a way more psychologically satisfying (and perhaps a bit more obviously). This was done recently for defense: the various "dodged" and "deflected" messages which show that defense is actually "working" were added purely to give a psychological boost to the visibility of defense. Defiance damage should probably get similar treatment.
*Especially* since defiance is one part numerical buff, and three parts psychological buff, its important to make sure its highly visible to get the psychological boost its intended to provide.
[/ QUOTE ]
Agreed.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
Well, that's sort of what I meant about adjusting it.
However, the part we're not privy to, and can't be privy to, is how often Blasters are operating above the amount Scrappers get on average. Those amounts for the lows are staggeringly high and will skew any average considerably. It'd be very hard to find this out, but the question, in terms of balance, is whether or not we're averaging above, below, or about the same as Scrappers.
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Yes, but I don't want to be fighting my inherent. I don't want my "earned" defiance disseappering when some defender/controller saved my life by doing their job. I don't want to pill pop to get any effectiveness out of it, only to run out when I hit the end of a mission and all I got are 3 awakens with 7 wind dropping. So that 6% is really nothing.
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Alarmingly frequently, the damage numbers of the attacks blasters get combine to leave a target with a sliver of health, at unbuffed damage levels.
[/ QUOTE ]
Noticed that myself and Fusilier never believed me. Now I know I am not the only conspiracy theorist around.
Arcana,
Your 'interesting data points' chart for the damage buff, could you whip up a similar one for the to hit buff? I'm pretty sure it will look dismal but I'd still like to see it, if you have the time.
The game ends at 50.
SmilegasmDo not ever give Mind Control a pet.
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That was very impressive ... Nice work.
My only comment about DIEfiance is ... It needs to be fixed.
Fixed to be useful that is ... Cause as it is, it might as well not exist.
By far it's the worst inherent in the game, which with a few minor tweaks to the equation, it could be the BEST inherent in the game.
Personally ... I'd like to see a bit of middle ground found with it ... Something that helps, but doesn't require you to risk debt to get the help. Maybe a bar that builds up to a click power that gives a large burst of extra damage for a very short period of time ... Not unlike the Dominator's inherent, but more damage for a shorter period of time.
I play around with DIEfiance with my newbies, so there's no debt involved in case I do happen to bite it, which surprisingly isn't as often as you might think ... But my Blasters over level 9, don't have an inherent, because I'm simply not willing to risk debt period ... Ever.
I've very rarely reached the point where Defiance has saved my life. More often than not, I die before I can get more than one or two blasts off after 50%. That usually means that I'm too far gone into a fight to save myself with Defiance. I agree with the floor idea, and this was a very informative thread. If it was a little more effective and less tricky to "get something out of it" (as was suggested earlier), then I'd be a lot happier with having it as an inherent. As it is, I think that it's severly underwhelming.
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Arcana,
Your 'interesting data points' chart for the damage buff, could you whip up a similar one for the to hit buff? I'm pretty sure it will look dismal but I'd still like to see it, if you have the time.
[/ QUOTE ]
Not exactly, no. The reason is, as hinted in the original post, there is no trivial way to confirm the tohit buff of defiance with high degrees of accuracy. Basically, what I had to do is this: hit a blaster with -regen and -dmg, and then knock his health down to levels I wanted to test, and then let him swing away and watch for streakbreaker changes which told me the blaster's net accuracy had crossed a streakbreaker window threshold. Needless to say, this does not produce nice numbers like the damage buff ones, and it took the better part of a day just to confirm two data points on the tohit buff curve to any degree of precision at all.
So, I'm very certain the damage buff equation is correct. I'm only reasonably sure the tohit buff one isn't radically wrong, although as I said, I have confirmation on both expressions from a red name.
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Talk about this subject has been tossed around for some time, but it's nice to get some concrete numbers. I think what I find most interesting is the relationship between the numbers 45%, for the HP Percentage, and 25%, for the boost. I would expect that THAT is where Defiance is expected to hover, by the devs. That it doesn't, in actual practice, is potentially the flaw.
I also find it interesting that the 50% mark seems to be about 12.5%, which would match the bonus that Scrappers get to their base damage. (actually, it's 17.67%, which is a little higher than I expected) It's important to remember that Scrapper Criticals really only are about 5-15% more damage, and so is their 12.5% boost to base damage, but they get both boosts. (Which would total to about 25%...)
At least knowing that having your HP hovering around 70-60% is giving you a 5-10% bonus is better than thinking you're getting no bonus at all. I have often felt that my damage was a little higher than in the old days, but not so much that I would call it significant.
This issue about the "sliver of health", however, may actually be based on the fact that Blaster damage, at 100%, is considered to be the standard. Since foes are balanced to that standard, it would hold to reason that Blasters are balanced to JUST BARELY kill them. Adding an additional 5-10% on top of that may turn the tide on leaving those "slivers of health". Again, Scrappers' 12.5% bonus may also help them avoid that problem.
(12.5% is actually at 55% HP. And as I said, from about 65-70% the damage is around 5%. So I don't think a 5% floor would be asking too much. 75% HP actually gives a pretty interesting result, the recognizable 3.125%, which shows up a lot in Defense numbers)
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This issue about the "sliver of health", however, may actually be based on the fact that Blaster damage, at 100%, is considered to be the standard. Since foes are balanced to that standard, it would hold to reason that Blasters are balanced to JUST BARELY kill them. Adding an additional 5-10% on top of that may turn the tide on leaving those "slivers of health". Again, Scrappers' 12.5% bonus may also help them avoid that problem.
[/ QUOTE ]
That's possible, but there is another possibility: the possibility is that there is a subtle selection bias going on that creates that possibility, especially for blasters. Actually, two of them.
To explain the first one, lets imagine that you could keep track of all the fights you experienced in a particular mission. For every target you defeated, there is a certain amount of damage you delivered, X, and that is bound to be at least a little larger than the amount of damage necessary to defeat that target (its health). For each target, there is a certain amount of "overkill" that is Health - X.
Make a list of all the overkill numbers. Now, imagine reducing your damage by 10%, say. Some of those kills would have still been kills anyway, because your overkill is more than 10%. But some of them would no longer be kills: the reduction is larger than the overkill, and what used to be a kill, now ends up short.
It will be short on average by a small amount, much less than 10% of the target's health (its complicated to say precisely how much, though). Lets say 5%. That means a damage reduction actually creates the potential for a lot of targets with just a "sliver" of health left. The question is whether this sort of thing actually happens. And it does.
Many players instinctively or deliberately fight the most difficult fights they can get away with, within their comfort level. They do that primarily using the difficulty slider. And the slider in effect reduces player damage in steps dictated by the purple patch, but in the early stages by roughly 10% increments. In effect, using the difficulty slider to "find" the fights you are most comfortable with can actually induce "small sliver" situations, because those will be the borderline cases where, because you are fighting the strongest things you are capable of, sometimes you'll fall just a tiny bit short.
The second selection bias possibility has to do with how blasters choose their attacks. Its often the case that blasters will instinctively or deliberately pick the heaviest attacks first, in order to take out an initial target first. This reduces the damage they experience during the fight significantly lower. But in using those high damage attacks first, because they are slow to recharge the rest of the fight tends to be dominated by the lower damage attacks. And that means that its much more likely for a target to have just a sliver of health left, as its pelted by lower damage attacks. In fact, critter resistances can increase the perceived instance of small slivers of health remaining, because the average amount of health left on a target before the last attack finishes that critter off is comparable to one half of the damage of the average attack that is inflicted on the target, and that number drops with increasing critter resistances.
Basically, if you are only taking small amounts away from a pile, its much more likely that the last bit of the pile left will be small before you take the last bit away. If you're taking the pile away in much larger chunks, its much more likely that there will be a lot left in the pile before you take that last chunk away.
There are other possibilities as well, some that can be influenced directly or indirectly by the players, to actually unconsciously cause this to happen, separate from the way the attack powers themselves were designed. Its hard to say for sure if the game is designed to coincidentally create this problem for blasters, or if its built into the overall playstyle for blasters.
In either case, analysis of the SR passive resistances suggests that the actual effect of a power like this, and its casual glance effect, can be radically different. In analyzing the SR passive resistances, I was able to determine three numbers: the average experienced resistance, the average effective resistance, and the average surivivability effect.
The average experienced resistance was the average level of the resistances given a set of combat parameters. That number was about 15%. The average experienced resistance was the average amount of damage deflected by the resistances: that number was about 3.5%. Then there was the effect on survivability: the amount of fixed resistance necessary to improve SR survivability by the same amount as the passive resistances: that number was about 24%. All three ways of "measuring" the resistance seem logically sound, and yet they all disagree with each other dramatically.
Similarly, the damage boost might, or might not improve things more than it first appears. But I have reasons to suspect they *don't* improve things by much more than it appears on paper. I just don't have a way to prove it quite yet.
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[ QUOTE ]
One of the things I'm looking at is whether criticals end a fight quicker than a comparable defiance boost. It is not as simple as you might expect, because one odd coincidence I'm starting to see, and I cannot explain, is the "sliver of health" oddity. Alarmingly frequently, the damage numbers of the attacks blasters get combine to leave a target with a sliver of health, at unbuffed damage levels. Its happening at a higher frequency than can be explained by probability.
[/ QUOTE ]
So I'm not the only one to see this. I found this phenomena on my Warshade and Defender as well as Blaster. I think it gets worse after SOs, or at least don't remember seeing it often until Banished Pantheon and Freakshow. Every freaking fight with those guys had me desperately blasting off the last ~3-5% off before they'd summon more Husks or Dull Pain.
I also remember someone showing that enemy health bars were often multiples of damage scalar values. Could the combination of base regeneration and the ~5% difference from those damage scalars from ED create this difference?
Well, here's how defiance actually works, based on some testing I was able to do in between clicking presents like a maniac, and some discussion with the devs.
First of all, here are defiance's two operating equations:
DamageBoost: 25% * 2 ^ [(45 - HealthPercentage)/10]
ToHitBoost: 1.25% * 2 ^ [(45 - HealthPercentage)/10]
HealthPercentage, as far as I can see, always rounds *up*. So 58.22% health is 59%, as far as the equation is concerned.
Lets see defiance in action:
[ QUOTE ]
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 20.12 points of smashing damage!
Brawl is recharged.
You activated the Brawl power.
Harlequin Fencer Parries you for 101.19 points of lethal damage.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 20.18 points of smashing damage!
Brawl is recharged.
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 20.2 points of smashing damage!
Harlequin Fencer Parries you for 101.19 points of lethal damage.
Brawl is recharged.
You activated the Brawl power.
Harlequin Fencer Stabs you with her Rapier for 120.47 points of lethal damage and reduces your defense!
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 20.22 points of smashing damage!
Brawl is recharged.
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 20.37 points of smashing damage!
Harlequin Fencer Parries you for 101.19 points of lethal damage.
Brawl is still recharging.
Brawl is recharged.
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 20.55 points of smashing damage!
Brawl is recharged.
Harlequin Fencer Parries you for 101.19 points of lethal damage.
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 20.64 points of smashing damage!
Brawl is recharged.
Harlequin Fencer Parries you for 101.19 points of lethal damage.
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 20.68 points of smashing damage!
Harlequin Fencer Stabs you with her Rapier for 120.47 points of lethal damage and reduces your defense!
Brawl is recharged.
You activated the Brawl power.
Brawl missed!
Brawl is recharged.
Harlequin Fencer Parries you for 101.19 points of lethal damage.
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 20.89 points of smashing damage!
Harlequin Fencer Stabs you with her Rapier for 120.47 points of lethal damage and reduces your defense!
Brawl is recharged.
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 21.1 points of smashing damage!
Brawl is recharged.
Harlequin Fencer Parries you for 101.19 points of lethal damage.
You activated the Brawl power.
Brawl missed!
Brawl is recharged.
Harlequin Fencer Stabs you with her Rapier for 120.47 points of lethal damage and reduces your defense!
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 22.04 points of smashing damage!
Brawl is recharged.
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 21.45 points of smashing damage!
Brawl is recharged.
Harlequin Fencer Parries you for 101.19 points of lethal damage.
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 21.66 points of smashing damage!
Brawl is recharged.
Harlequin Fencer Stabs you with her Rapier for 120.47 points of lethal damage and reduces your defense!
You activated the Brawl power.
You Brawl with Harlequin Fencer and deal 21.91 points of smashing damage!
[/ QUOTE ]
Here, I'm brawling a level 50 fencer, with my level 50 blaster. My level 50 blaster has, with accolades, temp powers, and whatnot, 1566.2 health at the moment. I did not keep track of my health throughout this particular run, but what I can tell you is that it starts at full health, and ends at 911.9 health. Lets see if this matches the defiance equations.
911.9 health is 911.9/1566.2 = 58.22% health, which I said earlier is rounded up to 59%.
(45 - 59)/10 = -1.4
2 ^ (-1.4) = 0.3789
0.25 * 0.3789 = 0.094732
Now, blaster brawl at level 50 is 20.01, if I remember correctly pre-defiance (not precisely 20, but pretty close). It might be 20.005 or something like that, that the game is rounding, but we'll use 20.01 for now (if you use 20, you'll get pretty close to the same results for reasonably large values of defiance). So, if defiance is giving a 0.094732 boost, your brawl should hit for:
20.01 * (1 + 0.094732) = 21.9056, or about 21.91 rounded to two decimal places (which the damage chat always does).
(Note: the defiance calculations appear to be actually carried out to a significant number of places: if you do them to only two or three decimal places, you tend to see rounding errors, but at five places, they tend to match much more accurately what the combat chat says)
So at 911.9 health, the actual damage of brawl matches the predicted damage of brawl, based on the defiance equations. Lets push our luck: lets work backwards and see if the previous brawl (21.66) actually also matches. We have to work backward: the fencer hit for 120.47 damage on the previous strike, so if we were at 911.9 health at the end, we must have been at 911.9 + 120.47 = 1032.37 health prior to that, and therefore the defiance boost at that point would have been based on 1032.37/1566.2 = 65.91% ~ 66%
Defiance then becomes: 0.25 * 2 ^ ((45 - 66)/10) = 0.058315
The total damage then becomes: 20.01 * (1.058315) = 21.18
Whoops, something went wrong: the actual damage of that brawl was 21.66. And the thing that went wrong in this case is that a health tick occured at that point in time. Can we correct for that?
Yes we can. Health ticks are always 5% of health (powers like Health only speed up the ticks). So a health tick is 1566.2 * 0.05 = 78.31 health. Our health was actually 78.31 lower than the calculated 1032.37, or 1032.37 - 78.31 = 954.06.
(Why lower? Because we had to be lower, so that when the health tick actually happens, we end up at the correct final value of 911.9. If we actually *were* at 1032.37, the when the health tick occurs, we would be even *higher* than that, and then after the fencer damage we would be even higher than 911.9.)
954.06 health is 954.06/1566.2 = 60.92% ~ 61% (always round up).
Then defiance becomes 0.25 * 2 ^ ((45 - 61)/10) = 0.082469
The calculated brawl damage is then: 20.01 * (1.082469) = 21.66
Which matches the brawl damage shown in the combat chat precisely.
I have about a hundred different data points for defiance, and they all seem to match this equation so far, so I believe the damage equation itself is on pretty solid ground. I have less testing of the tohit buff equation. I have three streakbreaker-related tests of the tohit one, by very carefully engineering accuracy tests under conditions where health doesn't move (by being regeneration-debuffed). They *seem* to confirm the second equation, although I wouldn't say those tests are 100% definitive.
In any case, both equations have been verified by red name, so they are the best ones we have.
Just for fun, here are some interesting defiance points:
Code:[/color]
The interesting stuff, as you might expect, happens at or below half health. But you don't need to be at a sliver of health to get a significant benefit. Also, in spite of conjecture to the contrary, my own testing indicates that the defiance bar lags, but defiance itself doesn't: if you have X% health when you fire a shot, you'll get that much defiance boost, period. If you are there when you hit the activation button, you'll get the boost (at least as far as my testing so far indicates).
I stuck in some data points on where you become in danger, on average, from being one-shotted by the average LT and Boss, in very rough numbers (these are my own ballpark estimates). Meaning, if you are fighting one of those, any defiance number lower than that is a buff you don't really want to ever have to see: its genuinely a desparation buff, inless you have resistance buffs operating. Also, +health accolades help (those numbers presume base blaster health at level 50, verses typical level 50 critters).
The important things to note about defiance:
1. Blasters are defiance buffed constantly
Even at full health, you are getting somewhere in the neighborhood of a 1% damage boost due to defiance. You're not likely to notice it much until you reach about 50% health, though.
2. Defiance is not "laggy"
All my testing to date seems to indicate that if you have health X at the moment you activate an attack, then that's the defiance boost you'll get. Much like all damage-boosting abilities. The defiance bar is very laggy, though, and also has a maximum movement "speed."
3. Don't rely on the accuracy (tohit) buff for defiance
Its there, but you aren't likely to notice it until you are very nearly dead. This is probably intentional.
Because the relationship between critter damage and blaster health changes with level, defiance means different things at different levels. I'm still looking at defiance for blasters at levels other than 50 (defiance itself doesn't change, but I'm still looking at the damage numbers verses health issue at different levels).
[i]Edited to fix the order of some numbers in the defiance chart[i]
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