Confused by double hit. How does it work?

BL Angel's table on (what for me is) page one of this thread lists activation chance and also damage per activation versus cycle time for various integer cycle times.

One correction of my own previous post, where I said "recharge time" several times, I should have said "cycle time", which of course is the sum or recharge time and activation or cast time. I blame the hour at which I posted it.

Edit: Hm, having said that, BL's table refers to recharge time. I guess I'll whip something up just in case.

The proc chance uses cycle time, but the proc damage uses just recharge time. This is consistent with what we know about PPM procs, and also what we know about doublehit (it's based on the "normal" formula for attack damage, which is a function of recharge time and doesn't care about animation). This is also why the doublehit formula on City of Data looks so clunky: the 2*(.8*recharge+1.8)/10/aoefactor part is just the regular formula to determine an attack's damage scale, which means the whole formula is really just "damage scale times purple proc damage times .4".

What I meant before was, for the testing I did, Double Hit outperformed the flat stacking +Damage. If you read the entire thread and saw I said I had been testing Titan Weapons specifically, you would know I corrected myself.

I restate the following: Radial Assault vastly outperformed Core Assault on a Titan Weapons Scrapper, in my testing.

Why I have to state the obvious because of a wicked troll attempt, I don't know. Clarity?

Clarity.

PS: I liked Clarity. She was nice.

Here is the bottom line:

Core can only take you to your damage cap.

Radial lets you go beyond it.


Playing the long game, no matter what, Radial is superior.


The only question you need to be asking yourself for the now is: "For a given situation, do I have 70% or more head room until hitting the damage cap to take full advantage of Core?"

Solo, for most ATs and sets besides Super Strength Tankers, that's a "yes".

But anyone teamed with a Kin, or several SoA/Leadership users, or playing on a league, that would likely be a "no", you're probably bumping the cap with Build Up and the like.


So, rule of thumb = Core solo, Radial teamed.

Exceptions being SS and/or Shield Tankers, and Kins themselves. They'll probably lean towards Radial when solo as well.


.

I'm not sure about Core solo, Radial teamed. I was thinking the same thing until I used the spreed sheets in this thread. I was looking to see which would be better for my night widow. I read that if your damage mod is 1.0 or higher that Core should be better but my Night Widow has a 1.0 mod in M/R and Radial looks better.

I used the attack chain mentioned in this thread to calculate the bonus damage from both as well as the I24 formula.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=240568

Core - 827.6675
Radial I23 - 929.713291
Radial I24 - 969.24111

The funny thing was I thought I24 would nerf Radial when in fact it buffs it, well at least for a Night Widow.

I23:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...Ea0tBMFE#gid=0

I24:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...MSUxUWmc#gid=0

I think everyone should use those spread sheets to see which is best since it's not so cut and dry.

I even did one to see the effects on a Fort in I23 as well as the pets.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...SMlJxUWc#gid=0

The Guardian results were:
Core - 259.335
Radial - 433.414

I can't see your spreadsheets. Are they visible to the general public?

I'm curious about them, because that result seems non-intuitive to me.

Is your attack chain heavily composed of the longer-recharge attacks?

Edit: Using my local spreadsheet, I added the attacks for my melee Widow and the only melee attack for which Radial added more damage was Follow Up, which makes sense, as its damage is low for its recharge. That's for I23 settings.

So, I'm doing some testing on the beta server, and getting some weird results.

I am using a TW scrapper (only character with Hybrid unlocked, as of yet) and the Assault Radial Embodiment. Crushing Blow, Follow Through, and Rend Armor appear to have 100% proc chances as expected, and their doublehit procs deal the expected amount of damage. Titan Sweep also behaves as expected (I don't have a large sample size, so I can't be confident of the proc chance, but it appears to be a high-but-not-100% chance as expected, and the proc damage matches precisely). Brawl and Boxing deal the expected damage, and have low proc chances as expected (although again, I'm not yet precisely confident of the percent chance).

However, Arc of Destruction appears to not be applying its areafactor to its doublehit damage - its doublehit deals 152.49, rather than the predicted 94.13, which is exactly the amount it would deal if it were acting like a single-target attack.

Whirling Smash also appears to have roughly the right proc chance, but doublehits for 37.11 instead of 34.27.

I've ruled out enemy resistances (I'm testing against Nemesis with 0% energy resist), debuffs (I have avoided using Rend Armor before other attacks, and unequipped my Reactive Interface, and have no other sources of -res), and level differences (I have an alpha shift and I'm testing against 51s in a tip mission).

So, one cone works as expected, another cone thinks it's a single-target attack, and a radial AoE deals very slightly too much damage, but single-target attacks seem to work as expected. I can't test with other powersets myself, because I only have the one character with Hybrid so far; more data and/or more eyes on the problem would be helpful to figure this out.

Perhaps, but then I have no idea why it's affecting AoD but not TS. They're both 10-foot, 120-degree cones. And it doesn't help explain Whirling Smash at all.

I think the original bug was inconsistent like that. But I also don't think it would explain Whirling Smash. Well, unless there were subtleties that either weren't mentioned or that I just didn't grok.

Just did a double check of my math for I23 and it looks as if I Missed an attack while adding. It does make it closer but Radial still gave better numbers using this attack chain - FU > Lunge > Slash > Strike > FU > Lunge > Strike > Slash > FU > Lunge > Strike > Swipe.

Core 900.04862
Radial 929.713291

OK, you have lots of epic pool powers. I'm not sure what your chain for them looks like, but since Epics have higher recharge than their damage would indicate, Radial ends up huge for them compared to the base damage, even in AoEs.

One thing: your Spin is listed with 0 radius, which has its Radial damage much higher than it should be.

Edit: Hm, I get really different numbers. For that chain I got 1402.6 for I23 Core and 1050.1 for I23 Radial.

Edit2: I think I see why. I'm using Mids and it's including the Toxic DoT in the base damage display, and it's much too large.

Edit3: OK, I don't know what Mids is showing me. I took the numbers from RedTomax, and they're much lower, even on Follow Up, which has no DoT. (Oddly, Spin is correct in Mids, but not the ST stuff.) Anyway I now have the same per-attack damage you do to within 0.01 points. I still got really different numbers for the chain you listed, though. With the corrected damage numbers, I get 899.24 for Core and 1050.11 for Radial. Radial's lead is all in Follow Up - the Radial version is ahead by sixty points using I23 calculations, and nearly 50 using I23s. That wildly dominates the deltas between Core and Radial in the rest of the attacks in the chain.

Now, my own build heavily leverages Spin, and Core seriously dominates on that power. So if I chose Radial to maximize single-target DPS, I would cut fairly deeply into the AoE damage cycle I could have with Core.

If anything, this analysis shows that it's not cut and dried which is better. Powers which do significantly less damage than their recharge would suggest, such as some mezzes, many Epic Pool powers, and powers like Follow Up, can have really dramatic impact on how Radial compares to Core for a given build and play style.

I think your numbers for the individual attack damage are fine. You and I used different sources and came up with excellent agreement there. I'm not sure why our totals for the chain you listed are different, but our conclusions are the same.

I prefer Spin to Scream because it animates faster, deals more damage per target, and is a PBAoE. (To optimally leverage a cone, you have to back out of melee range.) But I realize that's very much a playstyle preference thing, and not clearly objectively better. Since I like Spin, I'll probably stick with Core. For your build and preferences, it sounds like Radial is the right bet.

Thanks all for the charts and further explanations.

This thread is a Godsend. Thanks guys.