Magnitude question

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...fpart=1#815523

^^^ I've just been reading that (old) guide to magnitude and control effects, but it's left me with a few questions.

1. Has that changed substantially recently.
2. Does the magnetude effect of sleep wear off if any enemy is being hit
3. Does sleep interfere with hold magnitude

The latter one might need some clarification...

My mind-controller has mesmirise and dominate. If I hit someone with sleep, they become slept instead of held. If I hit someone with hold, they become held instead of slept.

Does this also occur with the magnitude? Does the sleep effect (paralysis) being replaced with the hold effect mean that the "sleep" magnitude is replaced with the hold magnitude?

Does that mean alternating these two attacks will mean the cumulative magnetude of the effects experienced by an enemy stays at the base 3-4, as the 3 (four with a critical) hold is replaced by the 3 of the sleep and vice versa?

And, RE: 2 - If the sleep effect is cancelled by the enemy taking damage (or being healed) - does the magnitude applied also expire, or does that stay "on" even though the effect has been cancelled?

Oh, and how does duration vs recharge rate vs accuracy enhancements figure into these? Does the enhanced duration apply to the magnitude too? Or just the length of time the effect is applied for? Obviously the accuracy is contingent on the accuracy of the powers and the probability of applying the magnitude difference.

Any ideas?

PS: I think the whole magnetude engine sucks. It sounds like a really clumsy way of handling Control Effects, and explains why they have so many problems balancing them.

Basic rule I've noticed is that the last effect applied is the one that shows the animation.

However, in your particular test case the sleep is totally ignored because Dominate causes damage and damage breaks Sleeping.

I think you misread my point. I know if the sleep / hold effect is on, as I can see it. However, the cumulative "mangitude" of it, which is needed to over-ride the target's inbuilt mes protection is invisible. It is not the "effect" that is the issue, but the invisible "magnitude" value, which is described in the link at the top of my post.

To mez something you have to overcome the mag of resistance he has to that effect.

So for a boss, who has a mag 4 resistance to any kind of mez, you need to stack 2 holds with Dominate or 2 Confuse to have the effect take place.
Only the same effect will stack, so Stun doesn't stack with Confuse, wich doesn't stack with Sleep, wich doesn't stack with Hold and so on and so forth.

Unless you make a 'Critical' that boosts the mag of your effect of 1 IIRC.

That guide is a bit out of date from what I can see, now the AVs can be Mezd with FAR less than 100 MAG as you can manage to hold one with ease even alone if you have either TK or Volcanic Gasses.

Sleeps and Holds magnitudes don't stack.

Only similiar mezz's stack. So 2 holds, 2 confuses, 2 disorients etc. Theyr stacked in both duration and mag. Thats why 2 ST holds will hold a boss, but one wont. And he'll break the hold when the first hold's duration runs out.

No slotting can incease the Mag, just the duration the mag is applied, as you predicted.

LoL, you're slow my young padawan, Sarnath'd

Sleeps and Holds (mags) don't stack, which is what I gathered from the link I posted. But do their magnitudes counter-act each other, much as sleep effects counter-act (override) a hold effect.

IE:

If a target has mag resistance of 10 and I hit it with critical mesmerise, it would have 6 resistence left to *sleep*. I hit it with another two sleep, and he goes under and is sleeping.

If I hit him with Mass Domination - what happens? It does no damage, so THAT wouldn't cancel the sleep, but I assume that it trying to apply the Hold effect would over-ride the sleep and, as it is well under the 10 mag resistance to holds, would have no tangible effect.

SO, what happens to the mags? Sleep *effect* gets cancelled, does that kill the stacked sleep magnetudes, resetting them to 0? Or do they continue timing out behind the scenes, active even though the effect is inactive?

What I am getting at is:
If I alternate my two main single-target mind-control attacks (Mesmerise and Domination) - will I be able to build up the magnetude of both independantly, or will the hold over-ride the sleep, maybe vice-versa, constantly resetting the other back to 0?

IF a target is held, and you cast a sleep, it'll stay held. So

a) a sleep doesnt break a hold

and in your example, if the hold does no damage, the sleep would remain, and the hold mag would build in the background as mentioned. If it DOES do damage, the sleep will be set to 0.

I'm pretty sure that if anything breaks a sleep effect at all, any sleep magnitudes - whatever the stacking - are immediately and fully lost.

I'm less sure whether a damage-less hold will break a sleep in the first place.

Can I suggest an experiment for the guy with the toon that wants to know ? Find a boss, who will, of course, need 2 sleeps or holds to have an effect. In rapid succession hit him with a Sleep, the Hold, then a second Sleep.

If the Hold cleared the first Sleep, the second Sleep won't have any effect. If the Sleep mags are still present after the Hold, the second Sleep will work.

Question answered!

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IF a target is held, and you cast a sleep, it'll stay held. So

a) a sleep doesnt break a hold

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Urm, no. My mind-controller's sleep will over-ride the hold. So, if I dominate an enemy, they are held, and I can get out several levitates (pure damage) without losing the hold. If I I hold them, then sleep them, then levitate them, they go to sleep, then the levitate does damage and wakes them and they are not still suffering frm hold effects. Or at least it did when I created the character months and months ago, it may well have changed in the most recent issue, as I have barely played it.

Will test out the the sleep / mass hold thing presently. I guess I'll also have to test to see if sleep nullifies the hold mag too. Cheers anyway.

You will always send a Boss to sleep with Mesmerise as this power has a higher magnitude than other Controller's Hold, stuns etc... it can sleep a boss with one hit.

My favourite tactic is to keep the boss sleeping, kill the rest of the mob, then finish off the boss.

TIP: For a no-aggro kill against a lone boss, Mesmerise him, while he's sleeping stack confuses on him. Wake him up with a hold, then while he's confused, use another hold to keep him in place.

Do you know what mag Mesmerise is numerically? Sounds like it is 4 with maybe a 5 critical... Are the epic holds higher mag?

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You will always send a Boss to sleep with Mesmerise as this power has a higher magnitude than other Controller's Hold, stuns etc... it can sleep a boss with one hit.

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OK, that makes testing 33% quicker.

Hit the boss with Mesmerise, he goes to sleep.

This use a regular hold on him and see what happens; that won't have enough magnitude to actually hold him, but will break the sleep if it's going to...

How does the Radiation Emission "Choking Cloud" power fit into this, incidently? Likewise for the sleep effect of TA's Trick Arrow. Does it "tick" every X seconds and do an AoE mes check? Or is it like Mag 1 and always active as long as they are in the AoE? Or does it do a variety (randomly does different mags)? Or does it always do a hard 2 or 3, but is very innaccurate, and "misses" a lot? And if so, can it's accuracy be improved by to-hit buffs like tactics or Aim from a blaster powerset?

*AND* does a power like the epic "power up" boost mag as well as extending duration?!?

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How does the Radiation Emission "Choking Cloud" power fit into this, incidently? Likewise for the sleep effect of TA's Trick Arrow. Does it "tick" every X seconds and do an AoE mes check? Or is it like Mag 1 and always active as long as they are in the AoE? Or does it do a variety (randomly does different mags)? Or does it always do a hard 2 or 3, but is very innaccurate, and "misses" a lot? And if so, can it's accuracy be improved by to-hit buffs like tactics or Aim from a blaster powerset?

*AND* does a power like the epic "power up" boost mag as well as extending duration?!?

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It ticks every X seconds, with a 50% chance of hitting with a (IIRC) Mag 1 hold on all targets in the AoE.

It can't be directly slotted with Acc enhancers, but will benefit from anything that boosts the user's base accuracy like Tactics.

The low accuracy makes it a bit "meh" out of the box, as it attracts lots of aggro but even when it hits the hold isn't long enough to keep mobs off your back well enough.

Slot a few hold durations in though, and holds start overlapping between ticks and it gets much more useful. End permitting.

AFAIK nothing apart from Domination will boost hold mags.

Edit: That's all for Choking Cloud - no idea at all about the TA stuff!

I think you are imagining it, your hold had probably worn off by the time you had slept and woken the mob.

Now you probably have hold better slotted, so it has a longer duration, so it hasn't worn off.

Hence the perceved change.

Aha, very helpful information. Properly slotted and combined with some more holds and maybe a to-hit power such as Aim, or tactics, etc I could see how it could quickly give your holds a vital edge. Shame that my Defender's hold powers (EMP and Atomic Blast) are too slow cycling to be able to super-smash someone's protection, but it's good to know, could be handy for support with someone who is more mes-centric.

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Urm, no. My mind-controller's sleep will over-ride the hold.

[/ QUOTE ]It won't. I can recall several cases where I have had a mob both held and slept, or have myself been both.

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AFAIK nothing apart from Domination will boost hold mags.


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Quote from Castle on how holds work (the "Guide" being the Prima guide):

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1) Hold vs Critters. It is Duration Scale 8, which is affected by Enhancements, AT mods and Level Scale. It has a fixed magnitude of 3. The Mag increasing in the Guide is erroneous.
2) Hold vs Players. It is Duration Scale 6, which is affected by Enhancements, AT mods and Level Scale. It has a fixed magnitude of 4. It is subject to Suppression. The Mag increasing in the Guide is erroneous.
3) A second Hold vs Critters, which stacks with the first one. It is Duration Scale 12, which is affected by Enhancements, AT mods and Level Scale. It has a fixed magnitude of 3. The Mag increasing in the Guide is erroneous. This entry only activates when Domination is active.
4) A second Hold vs Players, which stacks with the first one. It is Duration Scale 8, which is affected by Enhancements, AT mods and Level Scale. It has a fixed magnitude of 4. The Mag increasing in the Guide is erroneous. This entry only activates when Domination is active.

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So Domination is in fact a second hold of equal mag (3 in PvE, 4 in PvP) but longer duration stacking onto the first one.

Yep, quite right, I just tested this myself. However, I am sure when I first created this character, prolly last November, I'd have an enemy held, and would hold,sleep,wake an enemy in the meantime. It might just be my imagination playing tricks on me, it could've been a patch, it could be the way the powers were slotted combined with their durations relative to level, or it could just be I was subconsciously holding weaker minions first and then holding, sleeping, levitating more powerful enemies that the holds were wearing off of quicker.

So, hold-sleep leaves to hold intact after you damage them and thus deactive sleep. I was unable to verify if the deactivation of sleep through damage means: the default mesmirism (does damage) can't be used to stack against the magnitude, as its damage would be "breaking" the previous sleep effect, and thus undoing the magnitude; or if sleep-hold leaves the magnetude of sleep in place, or over-rides it with hold.

I tried to attack a death mage (35, my char is 32) with Mesmerise / domination combo, I didn't seem him get held, but his nearby lieutenant killed me before I could say for sure, and I couldn't find any more bosses nearby to test it on safely. That does seem to suggest that the domination and/or the damage from it and/or the damage from subsequent mesmerises resets the magnitude of the sleep, even if the holds are still active.

As an aside - how does Telekinesis's Magnetude apply? Is it, like choking cloud, a tick every X seconds with a constant "knockback" creating the movement, but more accurate and higher magnetude?

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As an aside - how does Telekinesis's Magnetude apply? Is it, like choking cloud, a tick every X seconds with a constant "knockback" creating the movement, but more accurate and higher magnetude?

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TK is auto-hit but has a lower limit (for both the hold and the repel) than the other controller group holds (5 foes iirc?).

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I tried to attack a death mage (35, my char is 32) with Mesmerise / domination combo, I didn't seem him get held, but his nearby lieutenant killed me before I could say for sure, and I couldn't find any more bosses nearby to test it on safely. That does seem to suggest that the domination and/or the damage from it and/or the damage from subsequent mesmerises resets the magnitude of the sleep, even if the holds are still active.


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Aren't Death mages bosses? And Mesmerise is a sleep and Domination is a hold, both Mag 3? They need mag 4 for anything to affect them. You'd need to stack two sleeps or two holds on them normally to do that. One of each won't work.

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Aren't Death mages bosses? And Mesmerise is a sleep and Domination is a hold, both Mag 3? They need mag 4 for anything to affect them. You'd need to stack two sleeps or two holds on them normally to do that. One of each won't work.

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Urm, if you re-read the thread, you'll see that is the point. Death mages ARE bosses, which is precisely what I needed in order to see if hold magnitudes on their own (without damage) would reset sleep magnitudes, etc.

The experiment being to test a number of things, the most obvious being to see if alternating between Mesmerise and Domination resulted in both of them beating the mag protection of the boss, (result: sleep and holds alterating with each hit after an inneffective application of both) or if sleep doesn't work in conjunction with holds (result: no matter how many times you alternate between the attacks, it requires at least two consecutive sleeps for it to work, due to holds resetting the sleep) or if Mesmirise doesn't stack, due to its damage portion "waking" the foe before re-sleeping him, thereby resetting the mag to sleep effects (result: can't sleep bosses with damage dealing sleeps [mesmirise] except with critical hits - hard to prove without testing on several identical bosses)

A confounding factor is "critical" (+1) bonus controllers get to mags (allegedly) and the +1 bonus mesmerise has according to an earlier poster (my test seemed to disprove this, but not conclusively), and the obvious fact that Mesmirise might be specifically coded such that damage from subsequent Mesmirises doesn't interfere with sleep effect and/or magnetude, but it DOES with any other power, as per the afore mentioned theory that when the effect drops, so does the magnitude.

<deep breath> hope that makes sense, as it made my head spin.

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IF a target is held, and you cast a sleep, it'll stay held. So

a) a sleep doesnt break a hold

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Urm, no. My mind-controller's sleep will over-ride the hold.

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Not any effect override each other.
It's just the animation that changes but the effects are still in place.

If you hold someone then Stun him, you'll see him BOTH stunned and held, even if the animation is the held one.
Same goes for sleep + stunned, held + sleep etc

The Mesmerize power is a bad example, because it does damage so you can't stack it (any damage frees from sleep), but if you cast Mass Hypnosis 2-3 times you can stack enough sleep on someone to sleep it by stacking sleep, because it doesn't do any damage.