Congratulations, you ran into a stupid player.
@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
That'll teach you to be helpful and informative next time
I was expecting him to say he pvps and gets knocked back a lot. Or even that they liked the name of the power and it fit the theme of the character. That?... That came from left field. I true definition of a "noob". Sounds the official poster child.
"All problems can be solved by throwing enough scrappers at it."
@Riez on Virtue, Protector, Champion, and Exalted server.
This is pretty common; most people who think they know something about game mechanics actually know nothing about game mechanics. Recently I read a post in another forum where the poster was trying to calculate attack chain DPS without factoring in Arcanatime - or knowing what it was.
I wonder how many Tankers know there's an aggro cap, and how many Defenders can accurately state how much resistance a target with 0% resist to all has after 3x Enervating Field is put on it. (Actually, I'm not 100% sure about that one, either. 
)
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how much resistance a target with 0% resist to all has after 3x Enervating Field is put on it. (Actually, I'm not 100% sure about that one, either. )
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Assuming they're all defender EFs, -90% resist.
This thread is why I love this forum. Please continue. I must learn more.
Hmmm, reminds me of when a 54 month Vet was trying to tell me Stamina worked in shapeshifted Kheld forms...
Wait, it doesn't?
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Wait, it doesn't?
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Nope. Neither does Health, Swift, or Hurdle.
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So, I was checking the consignment market this morning and I had a really wierd conversation with the Scrapper next to me. I liked his costume so I took a peek at his build and noticed that he was a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes with the Leaping Pool with Acrobatics... And Practiced Brawler in the build as well. Below is the conversation from my chat log (color coded for clarity and with names removed).
Me: Acro and Practiced Brawler?
Me: Isn't that a little... redundant?
MA/SR Scrapper: no
Me: How so?
MA/SR Scrapper: because all defence powers are expressed in percentages, when one fails another may not.
Me: Never had any KB or Mez isssues with practiced Brawler on any of my /SR Scrappers... Ummm. And that logic is not accurate.
Me: Acrobatics does not provide any Defense or Defense Debuff Protection
Me: Also, attacks check against your total Positional Defense value, not each power sequentially
Me: Acro does provide some resistance to status effects, but as long as Practiced Brawler is overlapping, the PB protection dwarfs the contribution that Acro provides.
MA/SR Scrapper:all defence powers (melee - sorry i didnt meean to include practiced brawler there) dont activate accumaltively - they are all separate activations
Me: Activations, yes. But attacks check against the TOTAL Positional Defense you have
Me: Cumulatively
MA/SR Scrapper: Practiced Brawler u must have against sleeps and disorients and stuns. QED.
MA/SR Scrapper: no they dont
Me: Read Arcanaville's guide to Defense on the forums
MA/SR Scrapper: otherwise u would have over a 1000
MA/SR Scrapper: its wrong
Me: Suit yourself.
MA/SR Scrapper: no let me get back to this please
Me: A-OK.
Me: Good luck, have fun.
Am I missing something here, or perhaps am I misinformed? I was flummoxed by his response, as he had a substantial number of Vet bages on his character...
According to Red Tomax, Acrobatics for a Scrapper gives:
-7 Knockback, Knockup (unenhanceable)
-2 Knockback, Knockup (enhanceable)
-2 Held
RES(Held) +60.55%
What gives? 
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Theoretically speaking, you could decide to stack Acro with Practiced Brawler for the small increase in hold protection and the hold resistance (which would reduce the duration of holds assuming you don't actually get held and acro shuts off).
But as to the rest, the player is misinformed. However, my guess is that more than half the players who play this game are misinformed or believe blatantly false information about how the game works. The documentation is unclear, and when you gather a large amount of people and ask them to guess about something complex, a lot of people will guess wrong and some fraction of them will guess wrong with certainty.
So long as the player isn't misinforming others and is having fun, I really don't care if they don't know and don't want to know or refuse to learn: its their dime. The only times I've forcefully corrected another player in-game is when they were attempting to spread dangerously false information to other players. Otherwise, I correct them once and if they think I'm uninformed or incompetent, I leave them be.
I'd actually bet even money that one of the things confusing the player in question is the slotting screen. Neophytes - even "neophytes" that happen to be long-term subscribers - have been known to get confused when it comes to the difference between slotting percentage and base strength percentage. When the real numbers screens first came out, I did have actual players in-game ask me how it could be that they had 300% defense or something like that, because they thought their defense powers were as strong as the slotting strength listed rather than the modified base strength.
Incidentally, the basic mechanics of defense and tohit are so well known at this point that even if you were to subtract everything I've ever said, done, tested, or confirmed about defense and tohit mechanics, what's left is still enough to confirm the basics a dozen times over. In terms of the basics, they are known with absolute certainty.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
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Ebay account purchase FTW!!
Also, First after someone who should be a redname!!! 
Willpower has more passive regen than Regen does. Who thought that was a good idea?
Can we get a fix for Energy Melee instead of more new sets?
[QR]
Least he had some status protection. Ran a Sara Moore TF last night, SR scrap had no PB because it "didn't add any defense." This on a 36 month veteran player, mind you.
fake edit: ebay indeed.
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So, I was checking the consignment market this morning and I had a really wierd conversation with the Scrapper next to me. I liked his costume so I took a peek at his build and noticed that he was a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes with the Leaping Pool with Acrobatics... And Practiced Brawler in the build as well. Below is the conversation from my chat log (color coded for clarity and with names removed).
Me: Acro and Practiced Brawler?
Me: Isn't that a little... redundant?
MA/SR Scrapper: no
Me: How so?
MA/SR Scrapper: because all defence powers are expressed in percentages, when one fails another may not.
Me: Never had any KB or Mez isssues with practiced Brawler on any of my /SR Scrappers... Ummm. And that logic is not accurate.
Me: Acrobatics does not provide any Defense or Defense Debuff Protection
Me: Also, attacks check against your total Positional Defense value, not each power sequentially
Me: Acro does provide some resistance to status effects, but as long as Practiced Brawler is overlapping, the PB protection dwarfs the contribution that Acro provides.
MA/SR Scrapper:all defence powers (melee - sorry i didnt meean to include practiced brawler there) dont activate accumaltively - they are all separate activations
Me: Activations, yes. But attacks check against the TOTAL Positional Defense you have
Me: Cumulatively
MA/SR Scrapper: Practiced Brawler u must have against sleeps and disorients and stuns. QED.
MA/SR Scrapper: no they dont
Me: Read Arcanaville's guide to Defense on the forums
MA/SR Scrapper: otherwise u would have over a 1000
MA/SR Scrapper: its wrong
Me: Suit yourself.
MA/SR Scrapper: no let me get back to this please
Me: A-OK.
Me: Good luck, have fun.
Am I missing something here, or perhaps am I misinformed? I was flummoxed by his response, as he had a substantial number of Vet bages on his character...
According to Red Tomax, Acrobatics for a Scrapper gives:
-7 Knockback, Knockup (unenhanceable)
-2 Knockback, Knockup (enhanceable)
-2 Held
RES(Held) +60.55%
What gives?
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See this all the time from vet players they do not understand game mechanics and they will not listen to you until they get on a team with a scrapper and he blows by them making them look like chumps that they start to listen sometimes. I was in a mission once with a db/reg he said he respeced out of integration because it burned too much endurance off course all he did was die the entire mission as we where fighting council and they used him like a ping pong ball all over the map.
About 3 of us explained to him why he should have kept it and this was no power leveled up AE person this was back in the early release of DB
I seen a lot of goofy stuff but I have ran a lot of pugs
I seen katana scrappers with Gamblers cut then the rest of the attacks where Air super Jump kick and Flurry
Get use to it is all I can say
Pinnacle
Langar Thurs-Katana/SR 50; Hejtmane-DM/DA 50
Rogue Spear-Spines/DA 50; Hypnosis-Ill/Rad 50
Sir Thomas Theroux-DM/SR 50; Melted Copper-Fire/Shield 50
Byzantine Warrior-DB/ELA 50;Blade Tempo-50 DB/EA
It's hard to know what the guy meant, and what he thought YOU meant.
For instance, when you talked about total positional defense, his answer of no they don't... otherwise u would have over a 1000 to me says that he thought YOU were telling him that the game just added up all of your defenses (45% melee + 45% range + 45% AoE + 23% smashing + ... = 1000% defense!). If that's what he thought you were saying, then of course he thought you were an idiot and didn't want to listen to you.
He knew the 1000% defense couldn't be true, so I guess he figured that instead they had to occur sequentially in some way 55% of attacks go through his melee defense, 55% of those got through his ranged defense, etc. Or maybe something else, like every melee defense power individually, 93% getting through Weave, 97% getting through the Steadfast Protection IO, and so on. I can't tell what he was thinking. I can just tell that it was almost certainly wrong.
Anyway, no, you're not missing anything. He doesn't know what he's talking about and apparently didn't know what you were talking about. You don't want Acrobatics on a Super Reflexes.
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
Sounds like me before the ED and GDN went live after CoV dropped. I was told by folks in my SG and Coalition I need to take Dull Pain. Naw I said. I do not need it. Of course I'm eating green pez like nobody's business at the time too. After spending week after CoV went live dying all the time, I respec into Dull Pain. Life as a /INV scrapper got so much easier.
So yeah, I can see where the guy is coming from and like me, he will learn the hard way.
For the record, I was genuinely curious while talking to him. I try not to be so jaded to think there is nothing new I can learn in City of Heroes...
Arcanaville is right from my perspective, in that a character does not need to be Uber-Max'ed to be a ton of fun and a great time to play. Hell, most of my early characters were far from "good" from that perspective.
I was just really puzzled by the conversation. No intent to bash the poor soul, who is likely underinformed but having fun. Good for him.
But yeah, confused the hell outta me.
And good point, Wener. I was trying to be as concise and informative as possible, but I may not have done the best job trying to explain it to him... Communication can be a funny thing.
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He knew the 1000% defense couldn't be true, so I guess he figured that instead they had to occur sequentially in some way – 55% of attacks go through his melee defense, 55% of those got through his ranged defense, etc. Or maybe something else, like every melee defense power individually, 93% getting through Weave, 97% getting through the Steadfast Protection IO, and so on. I can't tell what he was thinking. I can just tell that it was almost certainly wrong.
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He is almost certainly thinking (among other things) that the % numbers are expressing percentages of something when in fact in the strictest sense they are actually only expressing percentage points instead. The distinction is critical, because when you think "percent" you think "some fraction of one hundred" whereas percentage points are just points: 45% means forty-five points of defense. Not forty-five out of something, just forty-five. One hundred thirty three points of defense is not unreasonable: 135 percent defense is mathematically unreasonable. When you think this, your intuition will lead you to incorrect places about how defense probably stacks, because "obviously" 50% defense and 50% defense "cannot possibly" stack to 100% defense.
However, I can't cut a lot of slack on this one, especially with real numbers, because even factoring in observer bias, observer skew, and just plain human-limited observation, the defensive powers don't work remotely close to the percentage numbers they imply. I can cut a lot of slack for someone that doesn't understand, but not someone that adamantly understands incorrectly.
In any event, anyone with an incorrect operating theory for how tohit works can only hurt themselves (unless they are handing out a lot of build advice).
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
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However, I can't cut a lot of slack on this one
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Nothing to do with the guy explicitly saying that your guide is wrong, right?
Uh, what is Arcanatime?
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Uh, what is Arcanatime?
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It's like Hammertime but without the baggy pants.
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That'll teach you to be helpful and informative next time
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Ah those character bring back such fond memories of my early days of play when I had no idea of what the hell I was doing. I remember my first character was an ice/ice blaster with no aim or build up, only ice blaster and bitter ice blast, all the melee powers from ice manipulation, and three travel powers.
It was that way for a few months until I joined an SG and learned the ways slowly but surely lol.
Virtue: @Santorican
Dark/Shield Build Thread
Ahh yes. Reminds me of how I didn't take fire shield on my first tank because it didn't do dmg. So I picked up flurry and air sup. I did have enough sense to get healing flames when it opened up. Waited till 18 or 20. Between that and not taking a travel till 22 on my first alt, I didn't know crap. (Yup. I was an altoholic from the start. 3 alts of screwing up) However, unlike when it was pointed out to me that I should have had a travel power by then, no one told me I should have taken fire shield early on and it wasn't a good idea to play it like my /regen scrapper just because I had healing flames. In any case, I would have listened. At least this guy had the powers, though. I've heard stories of people with /SR just taking the autos with the reason being "why take the power the power that uses end when this one does the same thing?" I guess not knowing what you are talking about is still not knowing what you are talking no matter what extent you look at it in.
"All problems can be solved by throwing enough scrappers at it."
@Riez on Virtue, Protector, Champion, and Exalted server.
I think the guy has a very important factor missing from his calculations which then leads him to believe Arcana's is wrong. To me, it sounds like he's multiplying defense percentages by magnitude levels. Or hell, it could be that he thinks accuracy and to-hit are the same thing.
So, I was checking the consignment market this morning and I had a really wierd conversation with the Scrapper next to me. I liked his costume so I took a peek at his build and noticed that he was a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes with the Leaping Pool with Acrobatics... And Practiced Brawler in the build as well. Below is the conversation from my chat log (color coded for clarity and with names removed).
Me: Acro and Practiced Brawler?
Me: Isn't that a little... redundant?
MA/SR Scrapper: no
Me: How so?
MA/SR Scrapper: because all defence powers are expressed in percentages, when one fails another may not.
Me: Never had any KB or Mez isssues with practiced Brawler on any of my /SR Scrappers... Ummm. And that logic is not accurate.
Me: Acrobatics does not provide any Defense or Defense Debuff Protection
Me: Also, attacks check against your total Positional Defense value, not each power sequentially
Me: Acro does provide some resistance to status effects, but as long as Practiced Brawler is overlapping, the PB protection dwarfs the contribution that Acro provides.
MA/SR Scrapper:all defence powers (melee - sorry i didnt meean to include practiced brawler there) dont activate accumaltively - they are all separate activations
Me: Activations, yes. But attacks check against the TOTAL Positional Defense you have
Me: Cumulatively
MA/SR Scrapper: Practiced Brawler u must have against sleeps and disorients and stuns. QED.
MA/SR Scrapper: no they dont
Me: Read Arcanaville's guide to Defense on the forums
MA/SR Scrapper: otherwise u would have over a 1000
MA/SR Scrapper: its wrong
Me: Suit yourself.
MA/SR Scrapper: no let me get back to this please
Me: A-OK.
Me: Good luck, have fun.
Am I missing something here, or perhaps am I misinformed? I was flummoxed by his response, as he had a substantial number of Vet bages on his character...
According to Red Tomax, Acrobatics for a Scrapper gives:
-7 Knockback, Knockup (unenhanceable)
-2 Knockback, Knockup (enhanceable)
-2 Held
RES(Held) +60.55%
What gives?