Castle

1) James -- Low Low Low
2) Garbage -- Milk
3) Concrete Blonde -- Joey
4) Jethro Tull -- Slipstream
5) Queen -- Fat Bottom Girls
6) Garbage -- Bad Boyfriend
7) Sublime -- Hong Kong Phooey
8) Belly -- Gepetto
9) Jethro Tull -- Locomotive Breath
10) Black Sabbath -- Sweet Leaf

FYI: Darkest Night

Its base Scale is 1.5. It has been since at least I3 (that's as far back as I checked.) Defenders multiple is .125 and enhancements are 1.98 (my calcs before were thinking ToHit Debuffs were Schedule B.)

1.5 * 0.125 * 1.98 = .37125 or a tad over 37%.

Any guide that says it is Base 30 Probably meant 30% mitigation, since that lines up with the 1.5 base.

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Don't forget that accuracy debuffs were heavily affected under ED. My Darkest Night (which was about a 90% -ACC before) is now only 65% -ACC, a fairly hefty change.

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Debuffs are applied to To Hit, not Accuracy. So, a 30% To Hit Debuff on an AV would result in the AV having (50% - 30%) * 1.5 [Their Accuracy Modifier] or 30% chance to hit someone with no Defense. If you have 5% Defense on top of the Debuff, that would be cut down to 22.5% chance to hit. If you have 20% Defense on top of the Debuff, then the AV's chance to hit would be 7.5%. A Defender with Darkest Night with 3 even level To Hit Debuff Enhancements has a 30% To Hit Debuff.

Lastly, To Hit Debuffs essentially fulfill the function of Defense for everyone the Debuffed target attacks.

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they get -50 points for making yet *another* fundamental alternation to their game engine without warning.

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Technically, this thread is the warning, since none of this is coming until I7.

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This means that every enemy always had a base of 50% plus a % buff instead of a fixed buff? Or was it changed to be this way with the new system?

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That's not exactly true, but for all practical purposes, it is close enough. They had a higher Base To Hit value, which is the same as having a To Hit buff that increased their To Hit to that point.

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Some more good news...

Ice Tankers and SR Scrappers have long lamented that Defense doesn't scale with level. Because mobs higher level than a player possess an inherent to hit bonus, Defense isn't as effective over levels as Resistance.

A while ago, peoople have requested something be done. Well, we've done a bunch of work and done this. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless of their rank or level. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. This change has no effect on a player who does not have any Defense.

This change is coming in I7

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Responses:
Is that strictly for +defense powers, or will -accuracy powers be included in this also?
Yes, To Hit Debuffs will be more effect in PvE as well.

Based on the question below...will all defense work this way? All defense to include primary or secondary powers, self and team buffs, and inspirations. Or is this change targetted to specific forms of defense?
The To Hit calculation was changed, so all Defensive powers of any type are affected by this change.

Is this change for all ATs with defense or only certain powersets?
Do defense buffs get this change?
Do Inspirations get this?
Do Power Pools?
All AT's benefit from this change.
Yes, buffs are affected.
Yes, Inspirations are affected.
Yes, power pools are affected.

This only effect PvE or PvP as well?
PvE mostly. In most ways, PvP already had effects that essentially did the same thing.

Is it safe to assume this also applies to CoV defensive sets?
Yes.

I look forward to a detailed explanation of how this will work.
Glad you asked. Basically, Level advantage in PvE, Lts, Bosses, AV's, and Monsters had To Hit bonuses. This made Defense not scale properly. We changed them so that instead of To Hit bonuses, they have Accuracy bonuses. What that means is, Defense is applied before their bonus, rather than after. Since Accuracy is a multiplier, it is multiplying a small base value than before.

For instance, an AV had a base To Hit of 75%. If a player had 25% Defense, the AV would have had a 50% chance to hit. Under the new system, the AV's has a base 50% chance to hit. The Defense is applied, reducing his To Hit to 25%. The Accuracy is then applied, giving a final To Hit of 37.5% -- a 12.5% improvement over the old system.

does this mean Mobs(bosses) that use defense will be more difficult?
Nope! The above change only applied to Mobs.

So when will you be announcing that all +DEF powers have been cut in half?
We've only reduced one power, since it was a kluge fix to the problem that is no longer necessary. Essentially, Super Reflexes power sets Defense will be the same in effectiveness at Melee, Ranged and AoE ranges. Currently, SR has a bonus vs AoE attacks that was added to help them against tougher opponents with higher Base To Hit values.

Have you guys really play tested this?
It's been running internally for all tests since October.

There's a way to do that and still be perfectly fair to defense and resistance sets. Just give higher level villains accuracy increases instead of tohit buffs. Higher level foes would now hit more often, but in a proportional manner. Problem solved.
Someone give Arcanaville a cigar!

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Look! It's an ULTRA RARE!

_Castle_

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I like the "[censored]?" added in there.

EDIT: Defeated by the filter! LOL!

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Long long ago, in a post far away, one of the devs mentioned the way -Resistance worked. Now, What I've heard that post mentioned was that -Res wasnt actual -Res but a damage multiplier. Is this correct, or is this one of the fallacies just randomly flying around?

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Resist Debuffs are resisted by Damage Resistance.

If your 100 damage attack hits someone with no resists, it does 100 damage.
If that person had a 25% Resist Debuff, damage taken would be 125.

A 100 damage attack vs someone with 50% resists would take 50 damage.
If that person had a 25% Resist Debuff on them, damage taken would be 62.5.

EDIT: The above assumes the Resist Debuff is resistable. Defenders debuffs are not resistable in PvP.

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1) Longbow have an XP Bonus
2) Flamethrower: The Multiple Burn Patches is a bug. I've put it on my list of things to fix.
3) Spec Ops are limited to 1 per spawn point for generic spawns. There may be specific encounter groups designed with more than one, however.
4) The Sonic Concussion power blows through anyones Hold protection, but it only lasts 1/4 of a second. It is working as designed, however, I'll pass this to geko to see if it is too strong of an effect.
5) Arachnos is fairly tough, too -- especially if there are Fortunata's around.

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After talking to geko:
The Flamethrower is by design, however there is a bug (well, it's really a feature with an unintended consequence) which prevents Henchmen from reacting properly to the power. I'll be fixing that portion of the power.
The mag 100 Stun is being replaced with a more standard stun (duration based, normal magnitude.)

1) Longbow have an XP Bonus
2) Flamethrower: The Multiple Burn Patches is a bug. I've put it on my list of things to fix.
3) Spec Ops are limited to 1 per spawn point for generic spawns. There may be specific encounter groups designed with more than one, however.
4) The Sonic Concussion power blows through anyones Hold protection, but it only lasts 1/4 of a second. It is working as designed, however, I'll pass this to geko to see if it is too strong of an effect.
5) Arachnos is fairly tough, too -- especially if there are Fortunata's around.

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Can some explain exactly under what circumstances a stalker will not lose health when using Energy Transfer? I've been seeing some health losses when I shouldn't be losing health.

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If you have "Hide" status, you can get a critical hit with your powers. Energy Transfer's critical eliminates the Self Damage property of the attack. So, if you use Energy Transfer while you have the "Hide" status, ET will do no damage to you.

FYI:
Hide gives "Hide" Status.
Placate gives "Hide" Status.
Smoke Flash does NOT give "Hide" Status.

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Allow me to point you to this thread I started a couple of days ago:
You click here.

There seems to be some debate as to whether they're working or broken in PvP. I don't think there's any debate about their PvE usefulness, but I am yet to experience anything other than frustration with using them in PvP. Teleporting someone into them only to have them instantly run out of them seems a little...odd.

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As KOS noted, they seem to not be working very well. I'm used to Caltrops on my /Dev blaster, and I'm certainly getting different results. Castle told me the sets all point to the same Caltrops power, but it really appears as if this is either untrue in some way or that the code to fix Caltrops in PvP (which came I think in I4) is somehow separate from the Caltrops power itself and so we've received the old broken version, anyhow.

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Yep. Exactly the same as Traps or Devices Caltrops powers. There ARE limitations to Caltrops -- anyone above them (jumping, flying, doing cartwheels) won't be slowed by them. It is also possible in certain cicumstances for a super speed character to run into and out of the area of effect before the Caltrops power can effect them. That limitation is the same on Tar Patch, Ice Patch and other similar persistent area powers.

To sum up, Caltrops can be a very powerful tool in PvE and PvP, but in PvP players have quite a few 'counters' to the effect. It is not meant to be an "I Win" button.

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Yes he has 100% resistance

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You are referring to the EoB event, yeah, pretty much. The final version won't.

Couple things:

One, everyone needs to calm down and stop the personal attacks. We're all here trying to make this a better game, so resulting to name calling or bullying is actually contrary to our goal.

Two, I like to think we are special here at Cryptic.

Three, everyone needs to remember the absolute cap on Stealth is lower than the absolute cap on Perception if the players are even level. This means that a TEAM using non-Temp powers but with a good overlap of other powers will be able to see a Stalker before that Stalker gets into Melee Range. Additionally, while Tactics is a Toggle power which can be left on indefinitely for a +Perception boost, Grant Invisibility is a click buff which has a finite duration. So, a group of Stalkers + Support needs to stop and rebuff every few minutes to remain at the Stealth Cap, while a group using overlapped Tactics can remain on the move constantly.

I'm also aware that TP Foe is a big issue in PvP. In our internal testing, my Stone/Stone Brute used it to great affect on opposing targets.

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Trick Question. The answer doesn't matter. It has the same psychological effect that a one-shot does.

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Bingo. This was exactly my point.

PvP is a very fine balance and there are a lot of ways to creatively combine powers for extreme effect. Assassin Attacks, while powerful, are only the most visable (irony?) example. There are others which are worse and whatever solution we come up with for 'The one shot problem' has to address as many variations as we can identify.

Quick question:

Is Caltrops + (Trip Mine * 3) a "One Shot" or is it 4 attacks?

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In CoH Beta, players were able to push NPCs rather than the other way around. Quite reliably, players would then herd the NPCs all into a small area, causing AI issues and horrible server lag.

I hate being pushed around, too, but I don't believe it will change any time soon. (NOTE: I could be wrong!)

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I've been informed that whoever told me the above misinformed me (well, the language wasn't quite that polite. ) In any case, the true reason appears to be physics collision checking (Players check collision, NPCs do not.)

I apologize for any confusion!

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Castle = coolest dev EVER!

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Dev, maybe. Red name? Cuppa still wins

She has an insanely tough job: herding belligerent nerds in an online forum.

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CuppaJo and her team do a fantastic job.

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Castle,

I appreciate the response, but the impression your giving is that User documented bugs in a friendly and well thought out format only get attention from developers willing to put in an extra amount of overtime out of the goodness of their hearts rather than having dedicated resources to address these very serious concerns.

At the very least you give the impression that the community doing these things is pretty much a wasted time and are/have been likely ignored for a very long time as player concerns are basicly being/have been ignored.

Like I said, I very much appreciate you looking at these issues Castle, but to me this just re-enforces the notion that the dedicated users are being ignored. It certainly explains why the fact that Controller Storm powers have been operating at Defender Strength or better for over a year.

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Not it at all. Many of the issues in the list already make it into our bug database. Most of the things I am looking at are considered fairly low priority in the grand scheme of things. Yes, I know that there are some fairly egregious issues on the various user compiled bug lists, and they should probably be higher priority than they are -- and that is why I take time during my lunch hour and when generating data from spreadsheets to look at issues that are important to you guys, rather than just looking at our bug database.

As for other community reps, that's on the "Things to do" list. After CoV beta ended, we decided we wanted to continue the idea, but being short on personnel, especially those who have an in depth knowledge of the powers system, we've not yet decided how to go about it. It will probably happen at some point in the not so distant future, but it is also possible we never get a properly trained core group to divvy up the responsibilities effectively.

In the meantime, I do what I can.

I grabbed a copy of the "Defender Issues" post a couple weeks ago and am working through it in my spare time. Considering the length of it, I will probably have gotten through it sometime in Janurary.

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I am tired of doing bank missions with full teams only to have my AS interupted because the damn headless chicken npcs that run thru the bank push me out the way. Is there a way to change it to where only mobs can push us around. I remember at one point a red name said that they were working on this but nothing has come to the light yet. It is bad enough during those missions that we get doors blocked by them but now they can interupt the AS too? Its almost like they be trying to grief us on purpose. I have had a few team wipeouts from this where I could not take out the boss due to the interuptions from the npcs and we had a few situations where we could retreat because the npcs blocked the doors.

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In CoH Beta, players were able to push NPCs rather than the other way around. Quite reliably, players would then herd the NPCs all into a small area, causing AI issues and horrible server lag.

I hate being pushed around, too, but I don't believe it will change any time soon. (NOTE: I could be wrong!)

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what is the point in having unyielding, which supposedly prevents toggle drops, and then having a stalker come up and each time he hits dropping all of my toggles....that means that unyielding is useless. i wouldnt mind if they dropped my health and killed me that way but dropping my toggles is somthing that should not happen. unyielding doesnt work at all vs stalkers

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Unyielding does not protect from Toggle Drops.

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Not anymore, that's for sure. I was just on, I can't even kill Blues and Whites with AS anymore. Looks like we've been hit with the nerf hammer.

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No, you haven't. The AA powers have not been altered.

FYI, I just tested and, yes, they do stack.

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so i got on my stalker this morning, he just got 17 and has his AS full of 3 damage DOs, level 20. so i hear that AS was nerfed. i go up to a LT clockwork, i was able to get these guys down to about 15 hp before they died before. i use my AS and i bring him down to a little less than 1/2. had the devs listened to all the whiners and not just the people who planned those assassin strikes, who waited for the perfect moment to strike?

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The Assassin Attack powers have not changed.