Enhancement Proc Changes

Hmm. Hadn't thought of that. That's sort of another example of the general category "devs do not take the implications of activation time into effect when balancing", because a "full attack chain" is a concept which relies on activation time in relation to recharge, not just recharge. Balancing around recharge alone without considering other powers and their activation times does seem a bit buggy.

Why? All it shows is that they changed their minds. We may not always enjoy it, but they're allowed to do that.

It's a fairly substantial boost to Stalker performance that has builds including it routinely over 200 dps, with many over 300 dps, in pylon testing. It wasn't just the new Assassin's Strike that provided such a substantial jump; it was also the guaranteed critical immediately afterwards on your heaviest hitter.


Edit: as for capping the proc chance, why not the 95% we've all come to know and curse every time we miss with an attack?

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

Okay, let me use another example to point out something that I see as a major problem with this. Let's look at a positron's blast IO used in a corruptor's fireball power. Fireball has a base recharge of 16 seconds, a cast time of 1 second, a max of 16 targets, and a radius of 15 feet. I don't know if you use arcanatime for the time to activate, but I'm not going to in these calculations for simplicity's sake. For the PPM versions of the proc, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the area factor, whether it's the radius of an AoE (and if it's radius, how it works for cones), the area of an AoE in square feet, or the max number of targets it can hit. For simplicity's sake here, I'm just going to use the radius of the AoE since the point I'm trying to make will apply regardless.

The current fixed chance Positron's Blast proc has a flat 20% chance to trigger per target. This is by far the most common version of the proc out there I'm sure.

The current PPM version of Positron's blast is set to 3 PPM, which gives fireball a 5.66% chance to hit per target. This is already a major nerf to the normal proc.

With the new proc, we'll have to take recharge into account. Assuming the PPM goes up to 4.5 (a 50% increase as you suggested), we have:

At the base recharge, the chance to trigger is 8.5% per target.
At 100% recharge, the chance to trigger is 4.5% per target.
At 200% recharge, the chance to trigger is 3.2% per target.
At 300% recharge, the chance to trigger is 2.5% per target.
At 400% recharge, the chance to trigger is 2.1% per target.

It just keeps getting worse. By the time you've hit the recharge cap (which isn't all that hard to do on leagues during incarnate trials right now), the chance to trigger is down to 10% of what the fixed chance proc gives. That's a pretty massive nerf.

Were AoE damage procs really so broken that they need to be nerfed that hard?

I do understand why the AoE factor works the way it does for procs that can be slotted in both AoE and ST attacks. But is it really necessary to work that way for damage procs that can only be slotted into AoE powers anyway? At the very least, if you're going to keep the area of effect scaling for AoE damage set procs, the PPM should be increased significantly to make up for it. Otherwise these are going to become almost useless.

I simply see it as an implied developer admission that AoEs as they are currently implemented in the game are too powerful and don't need any more help.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

This example makes me fairly unhappy, because of how it would translate to most of my level 50 characters.

I have the kinds of recharge slotting going on you're talking about here, but not for purposes of my attack chain. Things like Dark Miasma and Regen characters can benefit from much more global recharge than they need to build a full attack chain, and that +recharge isn't really going into things that I slot with procs. A Regen, for example, benefits from having lots or recharge for powers like Moment of Glory and Instant Healing, while a Dark Miasma benefits from it for things like Fearsome Stare and Howling Twilight. In "final" builds on these character types, I usually jack up my total recharge into the 200-300% range (150-200% global + 50-100% slotted) to benefit those kinds of powers, not my attack chain. But by doing that, using this example, procs that do go in my attacks end up with worse proc rates than they would be today with non-SBE procs.

A non-SBE purple proc today has a 33% chance to activate, and SBE versions have a 4.5 PPM. If the ToE proc had a purple equivalent, in this example it would only go off around 24.6% of the time.

No, that's an inferred meaning. We all know what happens when we assume, right?

If we're talking about changes and adjustments made to powers, procs, exc based on DPS performance on high end pylon testing, then there are many more things in this game that should be altered as well. Last time I checked, people have been taking pylons down with ease for some time now.

To say something needs nerfing/adjustment based on pylon challenges is just hogwash. How many people actually run around fighting pylons all the time, compared to those who make builds for normal content? I've been leveling up 3 different stalkers since these new ATOs came out and don't think they are game breaking anymore than builds that capitalize on defense bonuses that soft cap defense on a combo that normally doesn't even come close.

This is the biggest issue I think. Penalizing builds that are recharge heavy, even if this recharge focus has little to do with increasing DPS.

Well, for most single-target attacks it'll be better than the fixed percentages; for pretty much every AoE in existence it will be worse because the PPM on them is far too low relative to the flat percentages - if a floor is added they'll always be at the floor (see post on Fireball, above).

But "PVE diminishing returns" was one of the first things that went through my head when I read about the SBEs being balanced around "procs per minute" in the first place, which is why I was amazed that they used base recharge instead of final recharge in the calculation - then the measurement of how many times it will proc "per minute" is completely skewed.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

It seems to me like this would be a pretty rare problem. There can't be that many attacks that do so little damage (and have such short recharge) that filling them with procs would do significantly more damage than just enhancing them for damage in the first place. Neutrino bolt probably. Maybe flares and some of the other T1 ranged damage powers. And for the most part, you aren't going to be using those powers a ton, since you can do a lot better damage making an attack chain of better powers.

As far as putting a bunch of procs into a low-recharge power is concerned, this really comes off as a solution in search of a problem.

I would suggest implementing a lower bound an each and every proc that is equal to either the current flat proc rate, or the current proc rate -20%. Upper bound should be 90% as you have suggested, the lower bound should equal 20%/16% or 33%/26.4% based upon the current flat proc value. Everything in between and up to the cap can be dictated by your proposed formula.

Edit-- just to add, the lower bound should ideally remain at the current proc rate, as most players do not want to be penalized for haveing extra global recharge. In the example given here for Theft of Essence, just because Dark Regeneration CAN be cast every 7.5 seconds when at the recharge cap, it doesn't mean that a player will WANT to cycle it as such. Players want to keep a skill like this in reserve, and use it when most needed. Having the proc rate dictated by current recharge rather than base recharge really penalizes players.

Let's call it posterity I wouldn't want that info to "disappear"

they also told me one thing to sell me on a system that no longer applies that makes it bait and switch

Hm. My builds all lay within this range.

Elec/EA/Mu Stalker
Plant/Earth Dom
Fire/Earth Dom
SS/Shield/Soul Brute
Traps/Arch/Dark Defender.

Seems I will be heavily impacted by ths change in regard to my global recharge, power enhancement, AND AOE factors...

There is nothing I can do about the single target procs, but the AoE procs look like junk now.

C'est la vie.

Can you think of any other logical explanation beyond assuming incompetence? They have to realize that setting the base PPM value off of a percentage that fires per target actually hit and then reducing that number based on the area size without a proportional increase in the base PPM to compensate would result in less proc damage overall.

The change was made deliberately and talked about repeatedly. It's just that until the change goes through, you could always use the flat percentage procs and still get the better performance with the only theoretical limitation being the level you get to keep your set bonuses at.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

This is one of my biggest concerns as well. Especially considering that there is no good way to stop from getting these boosts. Especially on a large team or league when they're flying around so freely.

Take my fire/sr scrapper for example. He has enough recharge to run a gapless chain of GFS/incinerate/cremate. Since the cap on recharge is 500%, no amount of added recharge can let him run a better chain, so any recharge buff is going to actually lower his damage.

Though it seems like positron is seriously considering the idea of a minimum chance to trigger, which should hopefully fix this problem for the most part.

I asked Synapse because what makes sense or not to me may not be relevant. I think what you're assuming is the justification is silly unless they plan to make other changes. And if they are interested in making those other changes, I'd like to know.

"They have to realize that setting the percent chance off of base recharge while setting PPM rates to intersect non-SBE rates at 3-4s cycle times would be a massive increase in proc performance."

See how that goes?

Inferring intent from what is actually being implemented has consistently proven unwise. It might give the right answer, but it often does not.

That seems reasonable to me. As a non-SBE user, and as someone who doesn't use every power just as soon as it comes up (especially when heavily speed-boosted), it's nicer NOT to have to worry about my timing to get full use out of something.

So a min-chance to proc that varies with rarity (or PPM, presumably the same thing?) works for me as a compromise. I don't want anything to be abused, but I also don't want to bother trying to fire off every power as often as possible to get full use out of it. I'm lazy that way.

thanks!

The problem is as Uberguy mentioned.

My Elec/EA/Mu stalker has just enough recharge (110% global) to run its chain and boost its survival powers (Energy Drain/Energize). On teams Any recharge buff I get hurts my build.

Then I have my SS/Shield who needs to go for as much recharge as is sanely possible to get the most benefit out of Shield charge. Procs will practically be useless in his AoEs and massively diminished in his Single target attacks.

Its frustrating and these aren't extreme examples. Look at Uberguys DB/Regen vs DB/SR example. That is going to be night and day.

(Heck and all stalkers have a interest in high recharge as AS is the best attack they have, and they all want it used as much as possible).

Interesting that you mention this. Arbiter Hawk and I just spoke about this possibility. However, without using some really complex math that would ultimately make this feature even more difficult to explain and just replacing AF with targets hit you're going to get a decrease in proc chance without completely overhauling how PPMs work.

This leads me to my next point...

I think the way the formula handles Area Factor isn't ideal and it over penalizes AoE proc chance in a way that is more harsh than was originally intended. So, I would like to address that somehow. Back to the drawing board on that part.

Synapse

I inferred the intent based on the fact that none of the procs that existed prior had any area checks, so it had to have been deliberately added just to address AoEs. And it was added as a factor in the denominator when the numerator didn't change. We're not talking rocket surgery to figure out that makes the total go down for any value over 1 (or under 0), and I have to think that someone questioned "why are we adding this extra bit here?"

Edit: Since Synapse posted while I was writing this, it looks like they're at least revisiting that part of the formula.
Edit2: And other portions.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.