Ember Demon Resists: Bug or Intended?

Note the slotting on Summon Demons.

If the image doesn't load: I slotted three generic IO damage enhancements, level 20, in the power Summon Demons, and the numbers displayed say I now have not only 58.5 percent more damage, I also have 58.5 more damage resistance.

This appears to apply only to the Ember Shield power, rather than the inherent "Resistance" power. I don't know if it's really the case, or if the displayed numbers are just wrong, and the power works like it should.

I know that damage resistance and damage are basically the same thing codewise, just expressed in different ways, but I also thought that this was fixed due to issues with Hamidon Origins.

Is this a known bug? Is it working as intended? Or is it working as Too Much Trouble To Fix?

Known issue in beta. So roll with it until they fix it.

I believe the shields are actually not being affected, only the info display on the enhancement window is bugged

This is a problem, because not only is the supposed resist enhancement not doing anything, your damage enhancement is capping as if it were damage resistance. So with 3 +3 damage SOs, I only have 64% damage enhancement. Instead of the 95% or so I should have.

I think this is due to the way the system ties damage and resistance together - for example, if you slot a Centriole (dam/range Hami) into, say, the Thermal shields (which you can do because range is an enhanceable aspect of those powers), you'll increase their damage resistance as well as their range, and you'll ED cap on resistance with only two slots.

As far as I'm aware, Summon Demons is the first power which can be enhanced for both resistance and damage, and it's due to how the power system works that this is caused. To be entirely honest I'm not sure they'll be able to fix this problem unless they flag the Ember Demon's resistance buff as "unaffected by enhancements and buffs" and remove the ability to slot resistance buff IOs, because this is the same sort of bug that allows you do to things like the Therm shield issue I described above, or using Membranes to enhance the defense debuff, tohit debuff, and recharge time of powers like Earthquake even though Membranes are +def/+tohit and not -def/-tohit.

It looks like it's only an error in the display on the enhancement screen - the correct powers are being enhanced by the correct amount, as far as I can tell.


I have mine enhanced with 3 +2 SOs, displaying as +63.5% damage and +63.5% resists. The detailed info is showing 23.49 (14.37) damage on Fire Blast (i.e. damage is displaying as 63.5% above base) with Ember Shield showing 8.17% (5.00%) and the inherent resistance as 22.2% resist to smash/lethal (though Gargoyle is showing 45.37% (22.2%)).


However, if I then exit the enhancements screen, my Combat Attributes monitor is only showing the base 5% from Ember Shield.

The detailed info on the power icon is showing the 63.5% version for Fire Blast (23.49 damage), but when I actually tested it in battle vs a handful of even con Council enemies, Fire Blast was doing 31.82 fire damage.

14.37 * (1 base + roughly .95 for 3 SOs + .25 supremacy) = 14.37*2.2 = 31.61. So more or less what it should be.

Also a -2 Enraged Miner hit me for 70.23 damage without Ember Shield, then hit me for 66.72% with Ember Shield - which works out to be 5% damage resist, not the displayed 8.13% (same attack from the same Miner both times, of course).


So yeah, assuming I haven't made a mess of all that, it looks like it's purely a display bug in the enhancements screen - you're not enjoying any bonus resists, and your damage isn't actually being penalised. No idea what happens if you slot actual damage resist enhancements, but tbh for 3% damage resists I won't be bothering to find out.

Pet powers are only affected by enhancements that match that power's type. The display is messed up because the pet summon power accepts all those types, but the actual pet abilities do not. The attacks are flagged to accept Damage but not Resist enhancers and are set to schedule A, so they are properly enhanced by Damage slotting and unaffected by Resist slotting. The shields are flagged to accept Resist but not Damage enhancements and are set to schedule B, so they are not increased by Damage slotting and cap at 60% as normal with Resist slotting.

Even though Damage and Damage Resist are considered the same thing internally by the game engine, the enhancements that provide it are flagged with a type (Resist or Damage) and pet abilities ignore all enhancements in the summon power that don't match one of that ability's type settings... that's why (for instance) slotting a Lich with an Acc/Hold IO only boosts accuracy on his Hold powers and slotting Pet Damage set Acc/Dam does not boost accuracy of non-damaging controls. Things like putting Centrioles in Thermal shields works because if a power accepts any of an enhancement's type flags you can slot it and it will have full effect, but that only applies to Hami-Os since they (and the lower level versions like Titan-Os) are the only enhancements with such a wide range of flags. IOs are flagged for a particular type of power (a Hold set Acc/End IO is still a Hold enhancement) but Hami-Os are flagged for every effect they generate.

In the case of the Ember Demon's shields, I suspect the devs have (or will) set the shields to not be enhanceable for Range. That would keep Centrioles from affecting them. As far as the power effects UI goes... well, don't expect that to be accurate any time soon since they'd have to recode things to get it to display properly for certain oddball (mostly pet) powers.

Summary:

Enhancement window has wrong numbers on Resist Damage when slotting for Damage.

Combat Attributes window shows the correct numbers on Resist Damage when slotted for Damage.