I don't have any direct experience with this power really, but I do have an Electric Control character or two, and Conductive Aura also ticks every two seconds. And based on my experience with that power, I'm thinking something more like B, because it sounds like what I've seen. Enemies get their recovery tick (bar visibly moves), then it goes back down from them either getting drained again or them getting off an attack.
Although I think it might be based on something to do with the AI rather than tick timing - enemies won't always decide to use a power before their endurance gets drained again. Hard to really tell, but timing doesn't seem like it'd be a good explanation for inconsistent performance when it's a toggle involved.
Have you considered copying to test and experimenting there?
-Morgan.
It potentially could, but you're looking at far too much work just to drain one boss. The immobilize from electric fence will be a much more effective method of defense against those.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=285219
From the above thread a post by Arcanaville:
Quote:
Hopefully this sheds some light on your question.|
Critters work exactly identically to players when it comes to endurance drain. If you do not have enough endurance to activate the attack, you can't use it. Players build for having enough attacks and enough recharge to attack continuously or nearly so. Critters do not. So you notice endurance drain more on a player. If you are constantly trying to attack, temporarily having little or no endurance is immediately noticable. Its not on a critter if the critter is waiting for recharge anyway. It becomes noticable on a critter when attacks start to recharge and become available, and many of them require more endurance than they have. In that case, they must wait for an attack to recharge that doesn't cost more endurance than they have. That's why you observe critters using lower end attacks more: that's all they can afford. One other thing is that recovery is not continuous: it happens in ticks of 6.67% endurance per tick: faster recovery speeds up the ticks. But that means everyone including players and critters goes from zero to 6.67% endurance in a single jump of recovery. For players with base endurance and minions, that is 6.67 end. For LTs with 150 max endurance, that is 10 end. For Bosses with 200 base end that is 13.34 end. For AVs with 800 base end that is 53.36 end. So if a critter has an attack ready to go and it requires 12 endurance, you can keep a minion or Lt from ever using it by just continuing to stack drain. They'll never have more than 10 end at a time. But a boss will go from 0 to 13 end in one jump and will have a moment when they have more than 12, and they will be able to use that attack as will AVs. The only way to prevent a boss from being able to use an attack that requires 12 end is to either debuff recovery so they cannot get any recovery ticks, or stack drain so fast that the split second they have a recovery tick is not long enough for the critter to decide to fire the attack (they usually take a quarter of a second to "decide" to attack, so that drain has to be basically right on top of the recovery tick). As a practical matter, drain (without recovery debuff) can *prevent* the use of an attack that needs more endurance than a single recovery tick. It can only *delay* the use of an attack that needs less than one recovery tick. Critters actually take more endurance than players do to activate a comparable attack. What costs us 5.2 endurance costs them 7.0. The only advantage critters have over players when it comes to endurance drain is that some critters have more max endurance, and they ironically don't have full attack chains and so are waiting around for things to recharge more than players, so drain is a problem less frequently. |
Doomguide
Morgan - nah, not copying to test and testing because, well, I'm lazy. Also, the red post Doomguide excerpted pretty much answered my question. Thanks, Doomguide!
Important bit I was missing is that foes have *way* more Endurance than players' 100 base, and Electric Fence is one of the few attacks that drains *points* of Endurance, rather than *percent* of total Endurance. Which means it's gonna be fairly insignificant on Bosses and AVs, even enhanced. *sigh* Off to load up on -recovery. Thanks for the help, everyone.
Technically, this could go in Blaster or Corruptor forums, but my character is a Defender, so I'm asking here.
Electric Fence drains a small amount of endurance each time it ticks (2.5, per Red Tomax's site), and it ticks every two seconds. Can these ticks keep computer opponents from using the endurance from their regular regen tick, or can the opponents instantly use that endurance as soon as it ticks?
To clarify - a critter has been reduced to 0 endurance, and is hit by Electric Fence. Then it's regular recovery tick happens, restoring 6.667 endurance; within the next two seconds, Electric Fence ticks and drains 2.5 endurance. Given this setup: is the critter A) always able to use any power the 6.667 endurance can pay for, regardless of the delay between the recovery tick and the EF stamina drain tick B) sometimes reduced to using only powers the 4.167 remaining endurance can pay for after the EF tick, depending on how closely the EF tick follows the recovery tick, or C) always reduced to 4.167 available endurance by the EF tick.
I suspect the answer is "A", but I'd just like somebody to pat me on the head and tell me I'm correct before I go nuts loading enhancements for maximum -recovery.