Enhancement Proc Changes

If I recall correctly, it wasn't a balance-driven change. It was about BaB normalizing/correcting the animation and activation times.

As an aside, and if I recall even more minutia about that particular change, I don't think it affected people as much as we all thought it did, because I think that all happened before the general populace knew about Arcanatime.

A pointer to something saying what the AoE mod actually *is* would be a good idea too. It seems like a lot of people think this number is much higher than it actually is.

-Morgan.

It depends on the attack. Min/max avoids low DPA attacks. Some powersets have good or even excellent DPA in their T1 attack. Ice Blast and Stone Melee come to mind. Many T1 attacks certainly do have absolutely crummy DPA, but this also makes them a poor place to put a proc.

There's nothing inherently wrong with T1 attacks in the sense that many of them have reasonable damage per activation. What's wrong with most of them is that their animation time is too long for that damage, which (unfortunately) isn't something that was taken into serious consideration when most of the powersets were created.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

I haven't bought any SBE's and I'm on the fence about the proposed PPM changes because I'm sure they are still up for revision and I don't understand the PPM arithmetics involved just quite yet. I wouldn't buy anything in the game that I couldn't earn while playing.

I think the main reason it didn't affect people as much, though, is that they had better attack chains than Caulderone and I do. When SP's animation time was changed, there suddenly was a very noticeable pause before another power could be activated.

I could be wrong, and the calculations determining the impact may have involved attack chains like ours, but I don't think they did.

(And yeah, I remember BAB's reasoning now, too--lots of people thought it was to reel in "buzzsaw" builds).

Possibly. Back before that change and before we knew about the impacts of Arcanatime, people used Shadow Punch in "buzz saw" builds that added lots of procs to SP. Then the activation time changed, and everyone that did that was sad about how it affected the performance on paper. Then we found out about Arcanatime, and found out that the buzz saw builds weren't as good in practice as they looked on paper.

Even if you weren't doing a buzz saw build, the change wasn't as bad as it looked on paper, but it did worsen an already poor power.

I don't really have a strong opinion on this; I'll abuse whatever they put into the game. However, how is this a balance issue? That's what my last three questions have been on this thread.

If it's that the balance between regular IOs and Attuned IOs are different, you could make players able to attune regular IOs, make them a new tier of item, and make Catalysts useful. All in one fell swoop.

If it's because of abused mechanics, unless theres some way to use the ToLG proc to kill hami I didn't notice, this doesn't really change anything.

After PPMs take slotted recharge into consideration, it just feels like time invested in change for the sake of change and power creep.

Personally, I think that's a horrid solution. Catalysts are too infrequent for that, and it restricts PPM mechanics to people playing incarnate content. To take this approach at all reasonably, I think they would have to introduce a whole new kind of Catalyst beyond the one we have that drops more often from non-incarnate content.

I prefer that they have one system.

I'm sorry, but I think this is silly. Practically any quality of life or power mechanics change they have ever made falls into this category. Anything they do other than add new powersets and critters is "for the sake of change".

I wanted to continue this conversation, but we're off topic, so I just sent you a PM.

This has been discussed many times in the past. There *is* a diminishing return for recharge, but its not because of this. This is actually an incorrect perspective on recharge.

The notion here is that the "return" on recharge is the actual literal reduction in recharge time, which is false. No one builds recharge to move that number any more than they build resistance to move that number. The "return" on resistance is survivability which is why we consider the jump from 20% to 30% to be less of a jump than from 80% to 90%. The first increases the amount of damage you can take by about 15% while the second doubles the amount of damage you can take. If you just count points, the return is the same: ten percentage points. Suvivability is the real return, so the latter is a bigger return.

The return on recharge is "able to use power more often" not the numerical representation of the recharge. Suppose we have a power that recharges in eight seconds, and we boost the recharge +100%. Its recharge drops to four seconds. Now we boost the recharge by an additional +100%. Now its recharge drops from four seconds to 2.7 seconds. It might *seem* like the return on that second boost was lower, just like the difference between 20 and 30 seems identical to the difference between 80 and 90. But actually, the difference is the same. A power with recharge 8 can be used once every 8 seconds (not exactly, but hold that thought). A power with 4s recharge can be used twice in 8 seconds. A power with 2.7s recharge can be used three times in 8 seconds. The first recharge boost increased the number of times you can use the power per eight seconds by one, and the second recharge boost did the same thing. If this was an attack the damage per time curve would be linear with recharge: recharge 1.0, damage X; recharge 2.0, damage 2X; recharge 3.0, damage 3X. That is the definition of equal return on investment.

What makes the return on investment for recharge actually have a diminishing return is cast time immutability. Recharge doesn't directly reduce cycle time, it reduces only recharge time, not cast time. So doubling recharge doesn't halve cycle time. Cast time cuts into that. The bigger cast time is compared to recharge, the higher the diminishing return effect. If you're talking about Elude with a 2s cast time and 1000s recharge, the effect is almost zero. You get almost full return on recharge. If you're talking about Fire Blast, with 1.67s cast time and 4s recharge, the effect is very pronounced. For Elude, going from 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0 recharge the number of times you can use the power per base cycle time (1002s) goes from 1.0 to 1.996 to 2.988. That's basically 1/2/3. But for Fire Blast, its 1.0 to 1.545 to 1.888. That's obviously a much harsher diminishing return on investment in recharge.

There are some corner cases where you could argue the actual intended "return" is something other than "increase the rate of use of the power" but as this is the general definition of the purpose of recharge, in the general case there is no diminishing return on recharge due to scaling. There's only due to the ratio of cast time to recharge time. Higher is worse, lower is better.

It was about BaB smoothing out the animations called PUNCH_L and PUNCH_R, and that affected Energy Punch, Shadow Punch, and a bunch of other powers that used that animation and typically had 0.67 cast times. My understanding was that he thought that twenty frames was not enough animation frames to make a smooth animation with the proper transitions and wanted to standardize the minimum animation frame limit for moves a little higher (to 25 frames I believe).

Agreed. This won't prevent the screwing up of perfect min/maxed chains, but it will prevent the procs from becoming virtually nonfunctional in a League with tons of AoE recharge buffs.

A little perspective is in order here. This change leaves 99.999% of the game unaffected. It only affects procs. It only heavily affects super IO'd builds that also have perfectly calculated attack chains (a tiny minority), and those attack chains are mostly a solo or single target thing. On a more chaotic team or aoe basis (which is most of the game) those chains are less used/useful.

I'd bet that most players won't even notice the change.

You're right in that I should have said "the more recharge you have, the less each percentage point is worth as an absolute value in seconds."

However, people do frequently build for recharge for the absolute value in seconds reduced from a cooldown. This is especially common when considering buff uptime.

The most prevalent example is probably Hasten, which has a 450s cooldown at 0% Recharge (note that I'm disregarding the complication made by the fact that Hasten has a partial-uptime Recharge buff itself, since, while it makes the math more complicated than I feel like doing, it doesn't affect the point) which has a 120/450 ~= 26.67% uptime.

Hasten with 50% Recharge has a 450/1.5 = 300 second Recharge, a reduction from base of ~33.33%. 120/300 = 40% uptime, an increase of ~33%.

Hasten with 100% Recharge has a 450/2 = 225 second Recharge, a reduction from 50% recharge of 25%. 120/225 ~= 53.33% uptime, an increase from 50% recharge of ~25%.

When speaking in the relative, each 50% Recharge increase is about a 13.33% uptime increase from the previous, but in the absolute sense, the second 50% recharge increases the buff uptime by ~25% less than the first. Every percentage point of Recharge gains you less uptime than the previous, until you hit the magic number where the buff becomes permanent, at which point, unless it can stack, any further increase has no value at all.

This isn't the only perspective of recharge, certainly, but I don't see how it's an incorrect one, either.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

The calculations are based off enhanced power recharge not global recharge. Which means ANY build using procs will be affected by this change, not just those that are min/maxed.

Since recharge buffs don't affect the proc rates at all in the currently proposed model, that's not really on the table anyway.

Although I do hope the floor ends up a bit higher than last proposed, or it could end up pretty hard to play my Elec/Rad controller...

-Morgan.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

You hit the nail on the head.

Please? >.>

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.

Right! So with that established I'd like to make my argument for not implementing a cap to the percentage chance to fire.

Right now we have two different and clashing design intents for procs.

The first is the general design intent for procs, which is a chance for something to happen. Having a 100% chance to fire violates this intent, as it's not a chance so much as simply an added thing to happen.

The second is the PPM design intent, which is to adjust the percentage chance to fire and added effect, depending on a power's cycle time, so that any power choice with give a comprable number of 'effects' per minute. A 100% proc chance is neccessary for this, because even with a 100% chance to fire some powers cycle too slow to get the full number of intended procs per minute. The only advantage they get is knowing they will always fire, when other powers may still get more procs in a minute.

Of the two clashing design intents, the PPM design intent is the most fair to long cycle time powers. Much like the competeing designs of PPM vs. the flat percentage chance to proc, the PPM design is more fair to a greater number of slotting options, so it was in.

The same situation is found here. Two competeing design intents, with the PPM design being more fair to more powers. The original design intent should be dropped in favor for the PPM, and 100% chances to fire should still be allowed.