focused accuracy ?
By
Call Me Awesome,
Posted on: 2010-05-18 18:25 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
In short? No. At least, not when you can get better results with IOs anyway, and without the obscene endurance cost.
I'd only call it "worth it" if you're someone like a /Kin with infinite endurance, and are either on a very tight budget, market-phobic, or a very high-end challenge-seeker who really does need all that accuracy for PvP or hunting +4 Nemesis or something
Rule number six of an empathy defender is NEVER underestimate a blaster's ability to die. I don't care if he has CM, Fort, both RAs, bubbles (both FF and Sonic), and is fighting next to a Storm defender with hurricane on. If there is a way to die in that situation, the blaster will find it.
While I'm not going to argue that who-ever ran the numbers for Focused Accuracy in Player Versus Enviroment mode seemed lack a grasp of what the power was for, I still prefer the power for two main reasons:
- The To-Hit Debuff Resistance. One of the benefits IO bonus's and Tactics don't give you is To-Hit Debuff Resistance. You can have all the accuracy and To-Hit in the world, and reliably hit that 95% defense against even the likes of Stacked Nemesis and Cimerorans. What happens when something comes along that can wipe that To-Hit / Accuracy buff out? Okay, there's a fair argument that outside of the Rularuu, Carnival, Praetorian Shadows, and Arachnos that nothing else in the 40+ range really does a meaningful to-hit debuff. We still don't know what all Going Rogue and following issues will bring.
- Physical Perfection. When playing a tank or scrapper that just needs bit more survivability, Physical Perfection is a nice high-level edging power. If I've got endurance to burn at that level, I might as well take Focused Accuracy over Conserve Power.
Now, those reasons being said, I do want to go back and address the original problem. The new Focused Accuracy is not anywhere near as effective as the Old Focused Accuracy against targets that Focused Accuracy was supposed to be designed for. The ludicrously high endurnace drain was supposed to offset the buffs that high level NPC characters could generate. Really, in the pre-IO and early-IO days, very few scrapper and tank builds could afford the endurance to keep the power running on all the time. Most play-styles dictated that you'd only enabled FA when facing a mob that had super-buffed their defense.
When the rework hit, my opinion is that whoever rebalanced the power simply ran a previous FA enabled avatar against a random selection of enemies, ranging across Rikti, Devouring Earth, Carnival, and most of the Praetorian mobs. I think that whoever made the change forgot to check the Nemesis... mostly because they don't really spawn at level 50 on a wide-scale... and didn't check Cimerora at all... and didn't run any task forces... and didn't actually check the power against the High-Defense targets it was supposed to counter.
My gut-reaction is that Castle, Synapse, and Sunstorm should treat the current power implementation as a bug, and come up with an... alternative function to re-enable FA as a stacked-defense counter mechanism. Personally that involves jacking up the to-hit buff.
I think a mechanism that utilizes flagged opponents for Defense Buffs might also be a unique way to address the issue. The concept is that if you are surrounded by say, Bobcat minions, you get a flat To-hit / accuracy buff. If you are surrounded by Nemesis and one of them triggers vengeance, you get a +to-hit bonus for every vengeanced Nemesis soldier in range. I think this could work by setting a silent PbAOE trigger to the powers. So when Nemesis Vengeance is fired, your avatar registers the firing, then registers a PbAOE effect from all in-range Nemesis, and then boosts the To-Hit to compensate. Yes, this is probably over-elaborate, but it might be an acceptable long-term solution to keeping FA from being too overpowered, but still useful in situations where it was NEEDED to begin with.
Alternatively, lowering the endurance consumption to match Tactics would also be an acceptable post-fix for the set.
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I didn't realize 6% ToHit (using a power and an expensive, unique enhancement) was better than 6% ToHit (using a costly toggle and a +0 SO enhancement)
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Originally Posted by Doctor_Kumquat
In short? No. At least, not when you can get better results with IOs anyway
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http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
I like Physical Perfection, I don't like Conserve Power, and I can six-slot FA for a decent Defense bonus. So, yes, I'd take it sometimes.
However, that doesn't change the fact that I think it's endurance cost is a bit much for what it offers.
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I'd wager he was referring to any number of non-unique set bonuses to accuracy.
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Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
I didn't realize 6% ToHit (using a power and an expensive, unique enhancement) was better than 6% ToHit (using a costly toggle and a +0 SO enhancement)
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Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
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Depends if 5% +tohit, 20% +acc and 69% res -tohit and 60% +perception(you could stick the +perception unique in as well for 80%) is better than a unique acc and IO bonuses to you. However, isn't it just as easy to build for recovery as it is for acc? |
Originally Posted by kendo
is any one taking this power any more, after the severe reduction in its benefits?
it used to be a great power but the extremely high endurance cost balanced it out pretty well. then when physical perfection came along, I thought that you would finally be able to afford to run FA and was looking forward to adding it to more of my scrappers and brutes. until I saw how much they neutered it. I still have it on a couple of characters though I think it may be swapped out when I get around to respecing them. even if I can afford to run it, I usually switch it on only if facing mobs with heavy accuracy debuffs. that's the one good use I still see for it. am I missing something here? with a kismet +6% and IOs giving + accuracy, I can get numbers equal to or exceeding FA without the endurance drain and power selection. and while FA would, of course, add on top of those same to hit and accuracy numbers, it's pretty much overkill as I am usually at the 95% cap against just about anything I ever go up against. |
Also, I was under the impression that +tohit was better than acc, am I mistaken in this?
edited for smoking something. Unlike RO i can admit when im wrong
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Actually, if I recall correctly, it's just the opposite. I believe the formula for final tohit chance is:|
Originally Posted by Captain_Freak
+tohit is a multiplier where +acc is an addition.
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constrain(acc*constrain(base+tohit-def))
where acc is accuracy, base is your base chance to hit (generally 0.75 for evencon NPCs), tohit is your total tohit bonus (or penalty), def is the enemy's total defense bonus (or penalty), and constrain is a function that keeps values between .05 and .95. There are other factors for level difference and so on but I'm trying to keep it simple. So your chance to hit is calculated by adding tohit to your base chance, then multiplying by accuracy. In the absence of strong defense or tohit modifiers, accuracy is generally the dominant factor, but it has the effect of magnifying the effect of changes to the tohit factor.
On topic, Focused Acc is highly situational now, but not useless.
@SPTrashcan
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not following your comments. as I expressed in my original post, it isn't that the bonuses from FA aren't decent but I can get the same bonuses for to hit and accuracy from IOs. and unless you are hunting +4s or do a lot of pvp, I don't see the need for both. I try to find a home for a kismet on most builds and generally get at least 40 - 50% +accuracy from IO sets without even really focusing on accuracy bonuses.|
Originally Posted by SinisterDirge
Depends if 5% +tohit, 20% +acc and 69% res -tohit and 60% +perception(you could stick the +perception unique in as well for 80%) is better than a unique acc and IO bonuses to you. However, isn't it just as easy to build for recovery as it is for acc?
Also, I was under the impression that +tohit was better than acc, am I mistaken in this? |
so far, most of the comments mirror my thoughts. the only real reason to pick FA is as a pre-req, instead of conserve power, to get to physical perfection, which I still want to take on many characters. it can be used as a mule for some decent IO bonuses.
about the only bonus I see from FA that you can't easily get another way is the to-hit debuff resistance, which I did point out in my original post.
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whew! at first I thought you were directing this at me |
Originally Posted by je_saist
While I'm not going to argue that who-ever ran the numbers for Focused Accuracy in Player Versus Enviroment mode seemed lack a grasp of what the power was for,
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and while I don't claim to be any kind of expert, I thought I had some grasp of what the power was for Quote:
I still prefer the power for two main reasons:
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This is... almost entirely wrong. The only thing correct is "acc is easier to get".|
Originally Posted by Captain_Freak
+tohit is a multiplier where +acc is an addition. If you have terrible ACC then the multiplier is going to do you very little good (but better than nothing). I believe but not sure that acc is easier to get but gets killed in certain other situations where +tohit becomes godly. For the most part building a little of both or an extreme of both will get you farther than just one or the other.
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- Accuracy is the multiplier, not ToHit.
- Accuracy cannot be killed, since there are no -Acc debuffs; every power which claims to debuff Accuracy is actually debuffing ToHit.
- If ToHit is debuffed, Accuracy doesn't help. And since there isn't anything that debuffs Acc, and ToHit is already the more effective of the two...
- [Base ToHit] + [ToHit Buffs] - [ToHit Debuffs] - [Target Defense]: if this sum is at 0.95 (95%), more ToHit is no longer effective. Base ToHit is 0.75 against +0 critters, 0.39 against +4 critters. Unless you're being hit by -ToHit or the target has +Defense, you're never going to need more than +0.56 ToHit.
- [Power Accuracy] * [1.0 + Accuracy Enhancements + Accuracy Bonuses] * [Net ToHit] is the final chance to hit for the attack, and it cannot exceed 0.95 (95%). Many powers have 1.0 Accuracy (thus without any +Acc, the chance to hit will equal the ToHit), and few powers outside of AoE controls have less than 1.0. And, if the final value exceeds 0.9 (90%), the worst you can do is hit with every other attack, due to the streakbreaker.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
On my Claws/Regen I took it and use it if I find myself whiffing a lot. The end cost is laughable for me (lowest end cost primary paired with the best end recovering secondary), and I don't have anywhere else to slot Gaussian's that isn't completely stupid.
For some combinations, like mine, it's not a bad power. I will agree that it isn't nearly as good as it used to be, and that the endurance cost should probably be dropped some.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
I usually take Tactics over Focused Accuracy for a variety of reasons. I'm often building for some amount of defense on all of my characters to help increase their survivability. Often I am not soft capping, but under the philosophy that more is better than nothing when it doesn't require sacrifices to something "more important." As such, I often want to take Maneuvers and slot up Tactics for the Gaussin's Set bonus.
Tactics is also easier to leave on all of the time as it costs less endurance, meaning that the Chance to Build Up has the maximum amount of potential to go off.
IO's already offer more accuracy than I usually need, and Tactics can easily fill the rest; Focused Accuracy is often overkill.
In a situation where I am needing more accuracy, there's a good chance that my team mates are going to require it as well. Going off the theory of force multiplication, it felt more advantageous to have everyone with boosted accuracy than just myself taking care of the entire spawn while my team is off being useless somewhere.
I like to think that taking the leadership pool is contagious, and it will prompt other people to do the same. I dream of the day when I'm in an entire party with Leadership toggles that doesn't consist entirely of Arachnos.
I take it a lot. It's not just 5% to hit, but +20% acc and +300ft perception. That, and it stacks with Kismet.
The plastic tips at the end of shoelaces are called aglets. Their true purpose is sinister.
--The Question, JLU
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Yes to accuracy. However, you can't get +tohit from any IO bonus as far as I know. I may be wrong, but I just went cross eyed trying to speed read set bonuses on wiki.|
Originally Posted by kendo
I can get the same bonuses for to hit and accuracy from IOs.
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Originally Posted by kendo
unless you are hunting +4s or do a lot of pvp, I don't see the need for both.
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Originally Posted by kendo
I try to find a home for a kismet on most builds and generally get at least 40 - 50% +accuracy from IO sets without even really focusing on accuracy bonuses.
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Originally Posted by kendo
so far, most of the comments mirror my thoughts. the only real reason to pick FA is as a pre-req, instead of conserve power, to get to physical perfection, which I still want to take on many characters
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In the end, it is a situational power pick for me. My DM/Regen scrapper loves it. My Spines/Fire... not so much.
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It's situational.|
Originally Posted by SinisterDirge
Also, I was under the impression that +tohit was better than acc, am I mistaken in this?
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If you're fighting normal even-con opponents (no defense powers or to-hit debuffs), to-hit and accuracy are about equally valuable: 20% to-hit or 26% accuracy will put you at 95% hit chance. Since accuracy increases are easier to get, most people stick a single accuracy IO in each power and call it done.
If you're fighting normal high-level opponents, to-hit becomes increasingly valuable over accuracy: at +7, you have a base 8% chance of hitting an opponent. A 100% increase to accuracy (the most you can reasonably slot into a power) will double your hit chances, but you can get the same effect with only an 8% to-hit bonus.
If you're fighting opponents with defense buffs or to-hit debuffs, the relative value of to-hit increases just like when fighting high-level opponents, until your base hit chance is debuffed below 5%, or the opponent's defense is buffed above 45%. At that point, accuracy becomes more valuable: 100% accuracy will double your hit chance no matter what, while against stacked to-hit debuffs, much of your to-hit bonus might be wasted just getting your hit chance back up to 5%.
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Kismet +6% tohit unique... it's mislabeled as +6% accuracy but it's really tohit. Offers roughly the same tohit bonus as FA at zero end cost.|
Originally Posted by SinisterDirge
Yes to accuracy. However, you can't get +tohit from any IO bonus as far as I know. I may be wrong, but I just went cross eyed trying to speed read set bonuses on wiki.
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There's also Tactics, which offers a scrapper 7% base tohit buff at a base end cost of .39 eps vs FA's 5% base tohit @ .78 eps.
Frankly I can't see much reason to pick up FA anymore since it was gutted a few issues ago... it costs WAY too much endurance for way too little benefit. After the nerf to FA I've dumped it on all my builds that had it. The only benefit I can see is it's tohit debuff resistance; and that's just way too much cost for a small benefit.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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That changes my position considerably. I didn't know that. I stand corrected.
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Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
Kismet +6% tohit unique... it's mislabeled as +6% accuracy but it's really tohit. Offers roughly the same tohit bonus as FA at zero end cost.
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To get a little off topic, but not much, I've always considered Tactics and FA to be similar. And if I'm getting Vengeance, which I've never done but plan to, I have to either take Maneuvers or Tactics [ I have no problem taking Assault, wish everyone did.]
Does Tactics suck also?
I tend to slot the Rectified Recticule +20% perception and the Kismet +6% acc [tohit...] but haven't taken any perception/acc/tohit powers besides targeting drone on a /dev.
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Sinister - I was in no way saying you had no reason or "fake" reasons for taking the power. my reply to your previous post simply indicated that I wasn't following your comments. I couldn't tell if you were saying, for the way you played, that you stacked FA with things like the Kismet unique because you liked PvP or fighting +6 mobs in PvE. or whether you preferred using FA instead of boosting to hit and accuracy through IOs, and why.|
Originally Posted by SinisterDirge
Yes to accuracy. However, you can't get +tohit from any IO bonus as far as I know. I may be wrong, but I just went cross eyed trying to speed read set bonuses on wiki.
Great. You don't see the need for the power. I get it. I thought your question was if other people were still taking the power besides you. All I was saying was that the individual needs to figure out what is more important to them. I thought that was clear, my bad. Other people do like to hunt +4's and pvp. You can also get lots of recovery through bonuses that will help offset the heavy endurance cost of this power and still have even more accuracy, tohit debuff resistance and perception. Of course, That means a power pick, and some builds are tight. Guess I only have fake reasons for taking it. Crap. Its a good thing we are all different. Otherwise the world would be a boring place. In the end, it is a situational power pick for me. My DM/Regen scrapper loves it. My Spines/Fire... not so much. |
as someone already clarified, the Kismet IO that I mentioned in my posts provides basically the same +to hit as FA.
and yes, I am interested in whether people still take FA, actually use it other than a mule for an IO set, and why. my comment was that, so far, most comments I saw mirrored my own experiences that it wasn't that much of a boost for fighting things under +4 or pvp. in no way was I trying to say that those things weren't important to other people, I think it's great that there are so many different ways to play this game.
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My position was based on the faulty assumption that the kismet unique was +acc, like it says in the description. Not the correct +tohit that it does. I didn't think you could get +tohit from IOs. I was wrong.
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Originally Posted by kendo
Sinister - I was in no way saying you had no reason or "fake" reasons for taking the power. my reply to your previous post simply indicated that I wasn't following your comments. I couldn't tell if you were saying, for the way you played, that you stacked FA with things like the Kismet unique because you liked PvP or fighting +6 mobs in PvE. or whether you preferred using FA instead of boosting to hit and accuracy through IOs, and why.
as someone already clarified, the Kismet IO that I mentioned in my posts provides basically the same +to hit as FA. and yes, I am interested in whether people still take FA, actually use it other than a mule for an IO set, and why. my comment was that, so far, most comments I saw mirrored my own experiences that it wasn't that much of a boost for fighting things under +4 or pvp. in no way was I trying to say that those things weren't important to other people, I think it's great that there are so many different ways to play this game. |
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I had the same misunderstanding on Kismet for quite a while, until I asked some questions about a sample build someone had posted. I still get surprised by the descriptions on some powers or IOs, especially with understanding how some of the special procs or globals work.|
Originally Posted by SinisterDirge
My position was based on the faulty assumption that the kismet unique was +acc, like it says in the description. Not the correct +tohit that it does. I didn't think you could get +tohit from IOs. I was wrong.
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if nothing else then, happy this thread may give you, and others that might read through it, some new ideas to use in their builds
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Actually, if you want to be technical about it, they're BOTH additions. The difference is in exactly what it is they are adding. | +tohit is a multiplier where +acc is an addition |
+ToHit is a flat addition to your base accuracy. So, if you are at 75% with an attack an have a Kismet +Acc equipped your to-hit will be 81%.
+Accuracy is the addition of a percentage to your base accuracy. So, if your to hit is at 75% and you have a 10% accuracy bonus your to-hit with that attack is 82.5% (because 10% of 75% is 7.5%, and 75% + 7.5% = 82.5%)
What makes +To-hit more valuable than +Acc is the fact that it adds directly to your base chance to hit.
Using the previous examples: 75% + 6% to-hit = 81% to-hit. Now, if you have a 10% accuracy bonus on top of that your total chance to hit becomes 89.1%. This is because your accuracy bonus is applied as a percentage of the new value of 81% instead of the base 75%.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
edited for smoking someting. unlike Ro i can admit when im wrong.
Basic point build for both +acc and +tohit. One extreme or another isnt as good.
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Consider that you need either Maneuvers or Assault in order to get Tactics, both of which are also 0.39 eps. If you run both toggles, you're still at 0.78, and if you only run tactics, then you've wasted a power (unless you're just trying to use Maneuvers as a set mule).|
Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
There's also Tactics, which offers a scrapper 7% base tohit buff at a base end cost of .39 eps vs FA's 5% base tohit @ .78 eps.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Freak
So what your saying is the ACC enhancments are not ACC but +tohit bonuses, but the +tohit is actually adding to accuracy even though its outside the equation being multiplied and is normally slotted as a +tohit Enh....gotcha
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Clamp( x ) := if( x < 0.05 ) then ( 0.05 ) else if ( x > 0.95 ) then ( 0.95 ) else ( x )
AccMods = PowerAcc × ( 1.0 + AccEnhances + AccSetBonuses )
BaseHitChance = {[-4:.95], [-3:.9], [-2:.85], [-1:.8], [0:.75], [1:.65], [2:.56], [3:.48], [4:.39], [5:.3], [6:.2], [7:.08]}
HitChance = Clamp( AccMods × Clamp( BaseHitChance + ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs TargetDefBuffs + TargetDefDebuffs ) )
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
is any one taking this power any more, after the severe reduction in its benefits?
it used to be a great power but the extremely high endurance cost balanced it out pretty well. then when physical perfection came along, I thought that you would finally be able to afford to run FA and was looking forward to adding it to more of my scrappers and brutes. until I saw how much they neutered it.
I still have it on a couple of characters though I think it may be swapped out when I get around to respecing them. even if I can afford to run it, I usually switch it on only if facing mobs with heavy accuracy debuffs. that's the one good use I still see for it.
am I missing something here? with a kismet +6% and IOs giving + accuracy, I can get numbers equal to or exceeding FA without the endurance drain and power selection. and while FA would, of course, add on top of those same to hit and accuracy numbers, it's pretty much overkill as I am usually at the 95% cap against just about anything I ever go up against.