Targeting Drone .... not so good any more.

I was doing a bit of playing with my newly respecced build for Cryostrike, my blaster and I noticed he kept on missing.

He uses a Targeting Drone, from the Device Pool, currently slotted 3 to hits and one end reducer. None of his attacks have accuracy enhancements in them.

I'm pretty sure ( and did testing on Tactics that support it ) that in I5 To Hit Buffs were a schedule A enhancement, providing a 33% increase per enhancement, however the release notes for I6 say they are schedule B.

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Schedule B Enhancements (20%, 10%, 5%) are:

Range, Defense Buff, Resist Damage, To Hit Buff

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The limits the maximum to hit buff to about 55% of what it was before.

Most people who take Targeting Drone do so to free up a slot in all their attacks ( something that now could be considered less useful now that 6 slotting is no longer efficient ). I'm not sure that it can be used for this anymore unless you are 2 slotting accuracy.

Does anyone know the value of the To Hit Buff that Targetting Drone provides?

My guess is 10%. This would mean that 6 slotted it would give an to hit buff of 16.5% which is about 5% worse than an Accuracy SO in all attacks. In order to be as good as Accuracy enhancements it would have to have an enhanced To Hit Buff in the low 20s.

IIRC, the buff provided by a three-slotted Targeting Drone (with +3 SOs) equates to about a 40% Accuracy buff. Remember, To Hit Buffs don't work in exactly the same way as Accuracy enhancements - Accuracy enhancements are a multiplier to the base To-hit, To-hit buffs are added to the base accuracy, not multiplied after. This is probably explained better by Arcanaville:

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Tohit buffs work like this to increase the base tohit number:

base tohit * (1 + tohit buffs)

So if your base tohit is 75%, and you use or receive a 60% tohit buff, your modified tohit becomes:

0.75 * (1 + 0.60) = 1.2 = 120%

Note that this is higher than 100%: see tohit floors and tohit ceilings below. Tohit buffs and tohit debuffs are subtractive from each other, as the advanced formula shows.

Accuracy enhancements work differently than tohit buffs. As shown in the formula, accuracy enhancements take effect after defense, while tohit buffs take effect before defense. The difference is that tohit buffs are much more effective than accuracy enhancements when defense is high. If your tohit on a target is 30%, a 33% accuracy enhancement SO will boost that percentage to 40% (30% * 1.33) regardless of what the defense of the target was (as long as the net effect of base tohit and defense was 30%).

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I did some testing with Syn - as a few choice people in Warburg were aware - and he hit far more often than he missed with only 3 slots in TD. He seemed to do worse in PvE, that said - so yes, we're a little less uber, just like everyone else.

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IIRC, the buff provided by a three-slotted Targeting Drone (with +3 SOs) equates to about a 40% Accuracy buff. Remember, To Hit Buffs don't work in exactly the same way as Accuracy enhancements - Accuracy enhancements are a multiplier to the base To-hit, To-hit buffs are added to the base accuracy, not multiplied after. This is probably explained better by Arcanaville:

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If it is 40% of worth of accuracy enhancements for a 3 (even)SOs then it would be a (40.0*0.75) = 30% to hit buff indicating it has about a 15% base to hit buff in I5.

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Tohit buffs work like this to increase the base tohit number:

base tohit * (1 + tohit buffs)

So if your base tohit is 75%, and you use or receive a 60% tohit buff, your modified tohit becomes:

0.75 * (1 + 0.60) = 1.2 = 120%

Note that this is higher than 100%: see tohit floors and tohit ceilings below. Tohit buffs and tohit debuffs are subtractive from each other, as the advanced formula shows.

Accuracy enhancements work differently than tohit buffs. As shown in the formula, accuracy enhancements take effect after defense, while tohit buffs take effect before defense. The difference is that tohit buffs are much more effective than accuracy enhancements when defense is high. If your tohit on a target is 30%, a 33% accuracy enhancement SO will boost that percentage to 40% (30% * 1.33) regardless of what the defense of the target was (as long as the net effect of base tohit and defense was 30%).

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The formula that both myself and DrRock ended up agreeing on after testing was. This was Positron's formula, but he didn't define what Base Accuracy was.

cap(cap(Base Accuracy + to hit buff/debuff - defence buff/debuff)*(100+Accuracy enhancements)/100)

Where Base Accuracy for most powers was 75% and was modified by enemy level.

So my to hit buff now with new I6 style Schedule B SOs is 15% * 1.56 = 23.4%. I guess that is just about as good against evens as a accuracy SO ( and better against others and high defence).

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I did some testing with Syn - as a few choice people in Warburg were aware - and he hit far more often than he missed with only 3 slots in TD. He seemed to do worse in PvE, that said - so yes, we're a little less uber, just like everyone else.

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I think I noticed the difference because I was used to having 34.5% from 4 Schedule A SOs before. That pretty much capped my accuracy against anything up to reds. Damn.

I guess Freaks must have defence, does that sound right?

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So my to hit buff now with new I6 style Schedule B SOs is 15% * 1.56 = 23.4%. I guess that is just about as good against evens as a accuracy SO ( and better against others and high defence).

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I may have missed the bus on this one - who confirmed that To-Hits had changed Schedule?

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I think I noticed the difference because I was used to having 34.5% from 4 Schedule A SOs before. That pretty much capped my accuracy against anything up to reds. Damn.
I guess Freaks must have defence, does that sound right?

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And never forget your "5%" chance to miss.

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So my to hit buff now with new I6 style Schedule B SOs is 15% * 1.56 = 23.4%. I guess that is just about as good against evens as a accuracy SO ( and better against others and high defence).

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I may have missed the bus on this one - who confirmed that To-Hits had changed Schedule?

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Well it's been in all the red name ED related posts that it is Schedule B and is in the I6 release notes. I have no official confirmation that it was Schedule A before. However when ED release notes were released I went back to my Tactics test in the ( now lost ) To Hit Buff thread and checked if there was any way that the results I got would fit for a schedule B enhancement if Tactics had a 12.5% base To Hit Buff for a defender. There wasn't, it had to be schedule A.

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I think I noticed the difference because I was used to having 34.5% from 4 Schedule A SOs before. That pretty much capped my accuracy against anything up to reds. Damn.
I guess Freaks must have defence, does that sound right?

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And never forget your "5%" chance to miss.

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Yes but I was comparing the feeling of missing lots compared to the previous day. We still had a 5% chance to miss the day before.
Someone also mentioned in another thread here that people have noticed that there are more missing streaks. Given that I wasn't counting, it could be that I had a lots of misses in a row that made me feel I was missing a lot. I guess I'll have to download the new (unstable) version of Herostats and get some more accurate data.

It's possible it's just perceptual; you're expecting to miss more, and so you notice more readily when you do. It's also possible that there's been an (unlisted) change in the 'streak' code, by the same token.

Looks like it's a job for Herostats, indeed.

Herostats to the rescue!!!

i av hade a targeting drone before they were really good but for some reason i find them not as good anymore and they kind of annoy me by floatin above my head

I still love it.

Though it disappears a few seconds after you activate it now. I liked the little thing too

Herostats to the rescue!!!

So, after testing in Herostats against even level Buttonmen with and without an unslotted Targetting Drone, the accuracy of brawl is:-

Without 73.55% ( 121 attempts )
With 89.66% ( 203 attampts )

I think that the results are lower than expected for the first one ( 75% and 90% ) because I didn't realise until half way through the testing that Buttonmen Muscle must have some form of defence ( Weave ? ). In the run with the targtetting drone I used my blasts against the Musclemen so they didn't affect the statistics.

However this does now show that the base for targetting drone is 15% as Syn suggested. For a 3 slotted targettting drone we can now expect 23.4% extra to hit.

I also discovered that held opponents get a defence debuff, as in my first non-targetting drone dry run I got an accuracy in the low 80s, which was higher than expected and deduced that it was because I was sometimes hitting the Frozen enemies. When I didn't in the second test I got values approaching 75%.

Also the fact that I was able to safely stand in groups of 3 even minions wihtout having to worry about them shows how good Devices is as a defensive set. I had stacked Smoke grenades ( 20% acc debuff each I think ), cloaking device ( 4.5% defence unsupressed with 1 slot ) and combating jumping ( 3.0% defence 1 slotted ). Come to think of it I think they must have had floored accuracy if Smoke Grenade stacks.

The effect of this change is:-

To hits against enemies White, Yellow, Orange, Red, Purple, Purple+1
75 68 61 55 48 41 - base
88 79 71 64 56 48 - 1 slotted attack for Acc ( DO )
87 80 73 67 60 53 - 3 slot I6 blaster tactics ( SO )
90 83 76 70 63 56 - unslotted drone ( SO )
95 90 82 73 64 54 - 1 slotted attack for Acc ( SO )
95 91 84 78 71 64 - 3 slot I6 drone ( SO )
95 93 86 80 73 65 - 6 slot I6 drone ( SO )
95 95 91 85 78 71 - 3 slot I5 drone ( SO )
95 95 95 89 79 70 - 1 slotted attack 3 slot I6 blaster tactics ( SO )
95 95 95 90 83 76 - 4 slot I5 drone ( SO )*
95 95 95 91 80 68 - 2 slotted attack for Acc ( SO )
95 95 95 95 95 86 - 1 slotted attack 3 slotted I6 drone ( SO )

* a 3 slotted blaster tactics and a 3 slotted targetting drone in I6 provides the same to hit chance as a 4 slotted I5 targetting drone.

So generally a slotted drone in I6 is equivalent, but slightly better than an acc SO against most opponents. However excessive accuracy can be obtained by combining a single accuracy SO with a targetting drone.

Ssssshhhh

They may be over hear you!!

Looks for bat……

Deletes post quick……..


This is not the accuracy you’re looking for “wave’s hand”


Move along now move along

hi im new to CoH and just getting to grips with my fire / Dev blaster.. just got my targetting drone but not sure that best way to slot it? anyone advise please? thnx

Add 3 tohitbuffs, maybe an end reducer if you have spare slots. I currently slot 1 accuracy SO and have the TD so I hardly ever miss.

G-Force