Oedipus_Tex

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  1. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Golden Girl View Post
    That's hardly in the same league as the state-wide systemized brutality Tyrant's stormtroopers enforce

    I know you're set in your opinions, but I feel like you make it sound like every policeman or soldier who ever worked for a totalitarian government was corrupt him or herself. Do you think, as a real world example, every Italian soldier and policeman in WW2 was immoral, or is it possible that some of them were working within the means provided to them?

    [EDIT: Several edits to clarify the question.]
  2. Blue: Brickstown. Why? The Ziggurat. I think the new tech could make it really unforgettable. Especially if we got missions that made us go inside it (Villains: Break out! Heroes: Stop a riot!)

    Red: Rather than revamp I'd like an alternative to Grandville. Preferably something not having to do with Arachnos. Have we ever seen what the Carnie's homefront looks like?
  3. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Negate View Post
    Elec control is one of those control sets in which you actually have to know what you are doing as well so to some who try it out first it can seem weak but it's rather awesome! I just Wish ti worked well with storm...*SIGH*

    Well that does say one thing for Elec Control. It will make you hate Energy Blast and wreckless Storm Summoners all over again.
  4. Quote:
    Originally Posted by OmnipotentMerlin View Post
    Controllers have pain already. It is called Empathy. Pain Dom was created to give villains access to empathy.
    Hmm. Now that there are Controller villains I think (hope) this argument is a wash. Empathy and Pain Dom are not the same.

    It's true the sets have about 60% overlap. However Pain Dom is both different from Empathy in many ways, and similar to another set, Thermal Radiation, in many others.

    Here is the rundown of basic overlaps:

    Nullify Pain <> Warmth <> Healing Aura
    Soothe <> Cauterize <> Heal Other
    Conduit of Pain <> Rise of the Phoenix <> Resurrect
    Enforced Morale <> Thaw <> Clear Mind
    Share Pain <> [none] <> Absorb Pain
    Anguishing Cry <> Melt Armor <> [none]
    Painbringer <> [none] <> Adrenalin Boost

    In terms of play style, Empathy and Thermal both have a "rolling buff" on 60 second Recharge (Forge and Fortitude) that Pain Dom lacks. The nature of this buff has these sets constantly searching for a friendly target to buff during the middle of combat. This significantly affects the way these sets are played.

    Pain and Thermal both have "selfish rezzes" that differ from Empathy in that they double as either an attack or a buff.

    Pain Dom has a PBAoE toggle heal that is not duplicated by any other powerset in the game, to my knowledge. Empathy meanwhile has two PBAoE aura on long (agonizing!) recharge, 500 seconds, and not possible (or at least very, very difficult) to make perma. Pain Dom's unique power World of Pain is similar-ish, but has less than half the recharge, and the effects are almost like an AoE version of Thermal's powers Forge and Thermal Shield.

    Anyway, I see no reason to continue to prevent the proliferation of Pain Domination. Of the available sets that are remaining, it is probably the easiest and most straight forward available to make the transition.
  5. Was brainstorming ways to make Flash Arrow useful and thought of this: What if firing Flash Arrow allowed you to fire your other arrows for a time without alerting enemies? You could fire Flash Arrow into the crowd, follow it up with Glue, Poison Gas, Disruption, whatever you could fit into 10 seconds or so. Damaging the enemies would still alert them.

    In terms of how to accomplish this, one way might be to combine mechanics used right now by Jolting Chain and Dual Pistols. On a successful strike, Flash Arrow would summon an invisible pet that in turn casts a power at you that lasts 15 seconds. While it's active the power makes Entangling, Glue, Poison Gas, and Disruption become non-notify powers, similar to how the DP toggles change the effects of those powers. The non-notify arrows would basically function lexactly like Decieve or Mass Hypnosis currently do (non-notify but will still alert enemies if you put a damage proc in them).
  6. Dual Pistols has the ability to turn knockback on and off at will, and a pretty decent nuke that, despite not being in the league of Rain of Arrows (which is in a set with no debuffs of any kind), is still crashless. It may not be the best set on Blasters, but "crashless nuke" on a Defender or Corruptor means "nuke you will actually use." There are only three of them in the game, and 2 of them come on sets that are have no debuff to speak of.

    The set may still need tweaks. But looking at it on a table of damage values is not looking at the full story.
  7. Dual Pistols has the ability to turn knockback on and off at will, and a pretty decent nuke that, despite not being in the league of Rain of Arrows (which is in a set with no debuffs of any kind), is still crashless. It may not be the best set on Blasters, but "crashless nuke" on a Defender or Corruptor means "nuke you will actually use." There are only three of them in the game, and 2 of them come on sets that are have no debuff to speak of.
  8. Actually I think you've run into a Mid's database bug.... you can't actually slot Ice Blast as an AoE attack. It's single target only (but you can use the same slotting you used in Lightning Storm to similar effect).

    For this build I would say take O2 Burst. Snow Storm is murder on the endurance bar.

    Note that you can also swap the current slotting for three level 40 Miracles and get a small amount of extra recovery.

    I know you didn't request comments on the rest of the build, but I'd be tempted to replace at least some of the recharge IOs in Ice Slick with Range. Ice Slick around a corner is a nasty surprise, and because of the -RunSpeed enemies can't run off of it to come get you.
  9. Oedipus_Tex

    Tesla Cage?

    I actually get the Tesla Cage effect more often on my non-Electric Controllers than the Electric one I'm playing at the moment because of the 'Chance to Hold' procs. At least Tesla Cage can be recolored to make it less obtrusive if you want.
  10. I paired it with Force Field. It's an ok combo with some advantages and disadvantages. The damage is predictably awful. But I can run Conductive Aura without worrying too much about mezzes, and the other toggles without worrying too much about Endurance. Also, because the secondary is so hands off most of the time I have time to mash the knockdown chain.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Sorry, I forgot to mention something which came up in beta, and it slipped my mind. I slightly misspoke when I said arcs were like shooting power bolts. Actually the "arcs" are actually AoEs with a target maximum of one.

    That's not the same thing as being a single target attack, because when you shoot a single target attack, if it hits it hits, and if it misses it misses and its over either way. But when an AoE fires at a group of targets, and it has a target cap, the AoE will try each and every target within its radius until it hits its target cap. So if there are multiple targets within Jolting Chain's 15 foot jumping radius, it will get several tries to "find" a target. If it misses them all, that arc will indeed die, but if you are at 95% tohit, or even above 90%, then as long as there are at least two *valid* targets within range the streakbreaker will guarantee the arc will find a target and make the jump.

    I mention "valid" targets because as previously mentioned, an arc cannot jump to a target that has been hit by another arc within the last five seconds. But if you unleash Jolting in a dense spawn, the odds are pretty good that you'll eventually connect with all 15 targets, just because for an arc to "die" it has to miss *every* legitimate target in range. That either requires all targets to be currently "invisible to arcs" or your tohit has to be low enough for even the streakbreaker to be unable to save you.

    OK, this explains perfectly everything that I have seen with the power up to this point.

    It is not "auto hit" in the sense that it is flagged that way. But because it's launching AoEs, if you get targets close enough together, with decent accuracy it will almost never stop chaining early in the cycle. At a 95% chance to hit, assuming you have 10 enemies within range of the first target, the actual odds of one of the two child arcs failing is not 10% like it would be with a single attack, but 0.000000000009% BEFORE StreakBreaker, and zero after.

    This also explains why the power seemed to favor the unarmored guy in the test with the tanks and the squishy. The tanks were making their defense rolls, so the power would miss most of them, but it would hit him, almost making it seem like it was "attracted" to him.

    The reason my character got two back to back to-hit checks during the Confusion test was because after hitting the first target, the power had spread to at least two additional targets. When I became confused, I became the only valid target left. The first jolt missed me, so I didn't get flagged invalid. This allowed the second jolt to jump to and hit me. If I had had teammates or pets, the power would have gone after them next. However, it had no valid targets in range, so it ended with me.

    It all makes sense now, I think. Thanks Arcana. Can I ask how in the world you figured out the actual mechanics behind this?
  12. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Yes, but with a catch. Because the jolting "immunity" only lasts for five seconds, it is possible for the arcs to "loop back" to other targets deeper in the chain.

    In other words, I hit target A. Target A fires an arc at target B 2 seconds after getting hit, and an arc at target C 4 seconds after getting hit. Target B then shoots an arc 2 seconds after it was hit, which is 6 seconds after A was hit. That arc *can* loop back and hit A, because A is now free to be hit again.

    Because the arcs will tend to target the *closest* target that is still *valid* to be hit, you can get interesting looping chaining effects as jolting chain worms its way around a dense spawn of targets.

    I hear you. The chart is actually supposed to show the chain of jolt 'children,' not potential targets. I have witnessed the chain jumping back to previous targets (there's a screenshot showing that earlier in the thread) so agree that's how that part works. What I've yet to witness is a situation where only 7-8 jumps are fired because one of the first two jumps from the first target misses.

    [Nevermind, just saw your post above. I will reply in a moment. My team will kill me if I AFK on them again. Good thing I'm playing Force Fields. ]
  13. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jabbrwock View Post
    Arcanaville, I have a question. Does the chain effect work as Tex's diagram suggests, where a missed single jolt stops itself and all children, or does it keep going until it either hits its 15 target cap or until all jolts have missed or died due to lack of eligible targets? His testing suggests the latter case - that if one of the first two branches fails, the targets will in all likelyhood be jolted by branches spawned from the other one. That would make it extremely unlikely for the chain to die out without either hitting its target cap or rendering all targets in range ineligible for jolting.

    Tex, if my thesis is correct, the reason you never saw an entire half of the tree fail to jolt is because once you reach the bottom of the left side of the tree, assuming the right side failed, then you still have active jolts on all the targets at the bottom of the left side, and their only valid targets are the unjolted targets who would supposedly have been jolted by the right side. So unless you manage to kill *ALL* the jolts off to missing or traversing far enough away that there are no eligible unjolted targets, the chain won't stop until it reaches its target cap.

    I thought about that too. It's a possible explanation, and if its the case, definitely means the power would be effectively bypassing the normal 95% die roll in practice if not in actual fact.
  14. Quote:
    Originally Posted by StratoNexus View Post
    I don't understand this wait for them to rest theory.

    Vengeance-Fallout-Run to next spawn.

    I don't have social control over the other 6 people on my team who want to wait.

    I see resurrection powers a lot like Recall Friend. They're a way of inserting yourself into processes that you normally wouldn't get to have control over. I'm resurrecting you not just to be helpful (though that's part of it) but because I want to keep us moving. I have Recall Friend on many of my builds for this exact reason, to gently, eh, 'engineer' people who are constantly slowing the group down.
  15. I'd still take it before Fallout, but I'm in the minority. As great as Fallout is, IMO, it's not as as good as a living lvl 35+ team teammate with +100% Recharge and +200% Recovery for 90 seconds. Unless you're stuck with really awful teammates.
  16. Fixed. After writing that message I thought about it and realized my image editor likely had put a lock on the screenshots folder. Shutting that program down fixed the issue.
  17. I'm unable to install the latest patch as of Aug 24, 2010. Backstory is I've been playing Going Rogue for a few days with no issues. This same thing happened to me during beta test: in for a few days, then the patch system stopped working and I lost access to the game. Space is not an issue on this computer (279GB free). I don't know about the folder permissions, though I did note recently that Windows is asking to verify my permissions if I modify anything in the screenshots or client_demos folders, and didn't do that before. The computer is a ASUS laptop running Microsoft Vista.

    Any ideas?

  18. Oedipus_Tex

    Unable to Patch

    [Deleted. Posted in wrong folder.]
  19. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    I shoot target 1. I hit target 1. Target 1 now is affected by Jolting Chain. Target 1 will now shoot two jolts, A and B, two seconds apart. These are two completely separate attacks, like shooting power bolt twice. Each one has an independent chance to hit, because they are two separate attacks.

    But they cannot both hit the same target. When a target is hit by jolting chain, it is flagged for 5 seconds in a way that makes it impossible for another jolt to target and hit it. It basically becomes "invisible" to jolting chain. So if jolt A fires at a nearby target and hits it, jolt B has to find another target: as far as jolt B is concerned, that target just vanished. Jolt B can hit another target, if there is another target in range. If there isn't, the jolt dies. If it misses, the jolt dies.

    Incidentally, the jolting flag works for *all* jolting chains. Meaning: if a target was just hit by one of my arcs, it can't be hit by one of yours for five seconds. It can be, after that five seconds expires.

    Thanks. This is all very helpful. Am I understanding correctly that you're describing a binary tree, like the one below, where the blue marker would be the first target?



    If so, then I need to test this power some more. A binary tree which that has two chances to jump to a child node, with a 95% chance per jump, has the following odds (estimated):

    - 90% chance that both jumps are successful (.95^2 = .90)
    - 9.8% chance that only one jump is successful
    - Less than 1% chance that neither jump is successful (.05 ^ 2 = .0025)

    According to those rules, when the power does its first jump, there is a roughly 10% chance that only one jump hits. If I understand the model, that means that an additional 6 jumps become impossible, because they are dependent on the previous jump.

    The thing is, I've never actually seen that happen. There should be some situations where the power hits a small number of enemies, but I didn't see them. Maybe I didn't cast enough times? Or am I still not understanding what you mean about the power branching?

    Also, something else.

    If the chain model works by branching as shown on the model above, the 46% number I've been tossing around is actually correct. Your odds to hit 15 enemies in a chain are exactly identical to hitting 15 in a standard AoE, by definition. However, if you fail to hit the full 15, the odds of any particular branch of the power actually firing become increasingly remote. Here's a table breaking down the individual chances to reach each node:



    You have an 86% chance for any bolt in Jump 3 to succeed. With those odds you would expect to see one or two enemies missed per cast. I didn't see any.

    There IS a possible explanation for this part, and that's the next thing I want to rule out. It's possible that in some cases I was casting on groups with less than 15 enemies. That would indeed result in "all of the enemies" hitting the ground most of the time, because a missed jump would be possibly rerolled. A rerolled miss is basically the same thing as bending the rules on the 95% cap. It's mathematically identical to moving the cap from 95% to 99.9%.. but only really applies to jumps late in the chain.

    So we may have a partial solution. However, it still bothers me that of all the casts I did, I never saw only 7 or 8 enemies fall, despite the 10% odds of that happening. Have I misread the model entirely?

    Thanks again.
  20. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
    Jolting Chain spawns two "jolts" on its target that are staggered by two seconds from each other. When the target is hit, 2 seconds later Jolt A is launched at a target. 2 seconds later Jolt B is launched at a target. Both of these will show up in combat spam as "Chain Jolt Jump 1" because those are both hop #1 of the chain.

    Each of those will, if they hit a target, spawn two more. So if both Jump1's hit targets, you'll end up with up to 4 Jump2's, and then up to 8 Jump3's. However, there is a limitation on jumps: a jump cannot arc to a target that has been hit by a jump within the last five seconds. Also, jumps are not autohit. If a jump misses its target, it dies.

    Because of the 2 second stagger and the fact that many people do not know each arc spawns two "child" arcs, the sequence of events can appear a bit confusing.

    To reiterate: arcs have to hit, and they use normal tohit calculations to do so. But there's a lot of them staggered around, which can make it seem like arcs are taking multiple chances to hit a target when in fact its just that there are so many potential jumps to account for. And while jumps cannot arc back immediately to a previously jumped target, that prohibition only lasts 5 seconds, whereas the jumps will arc around for potentially longer than that. It is possible for a target to be hit twice by the jumping arcs, just not twice in five seconds.

    Thanks for sweeping in Arcanna. I'm trying to wrap my head around the math on that and totally failing.

    The odds of missing the initial cast (at maxed out chances) are easy. They'd be 5%.

    For the first jump are we saying that there are two die rolls, each coming from the initial target, and both have a 95% chance to hit? If so, and each has a 95% chance to continue to the next target, the odds that both hit the next target should be 0.95^2 = ~0.90, which means that 10% of the time one or the other chain would halt and half the targets shouldn't fall. If I understand what you're saying, that is.

    Basically even if the power does check ToHit (which I now believe it does), it has way better odds to hit than what a lot of us were throwing around in Beta, which was ~46%.

    [EDIT: Terminology.]
  21. Just after I posted the last experiment with the Confusion I decided to click a few more times for old times sake. The final time I tried it I got this result:

    First National Tank confuses you!
    You are confused!
    Chain Jolt Jump 2 MISSES! Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit, but rolled a 95.12.
    Conductive Aura is recharged.
    Chain Jolt Jump 3 HITS you! Charge power had a 80.00% chance to hit and rolled a 14.24.
    You are zapped with a charge of electricity for 16.24 points of energy damage.

    Basically the power missed me on the first try, then rolled again and hit. In other words, it missed, but did NOT end.

    I think there's a whole lot about this power we have yet to understand.
  22. Pay dirt! I changed the enemies so their only power was a Confuse. This caused the rather hilarious effect that after hitting the first enemy, the group Confused me and the power rebounded and hit me. That's how I was able to retrieve this:

    First try:
    You are confused!
    Chain Jolt Jump 3 HITS you! Charge power had a 80.00% chance to hit and rolled a 29.96.
    You are zapped with a charge of electricity for 16.24 points of energy damage.

    Second try:
    You are confused!
    Chain Jolt Jump 2 HITS you! Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit and rolled a 54.40.
    You are zapped with a charge of electricity for 16.24 points of energy damage.

    Third try:
    You are confused!
    Chain Jolt Jump 2 HITS you! Charge power had a 95.00% chance to hit and rolled a 20.61.
    You are zapped with a charge of electricity for 16.24 points of energy damage.

    So indeed, it is NOT auto-hit, at least when used against players. It just has a very good chance to hit. It also must ignore the normal 95% cap against enemies in at least some situations. Or the AE ignores that cap. Or using enemies with no attacks skews the results. I don't know. My head hurts. This should be easier.

    Meanwhile here's the pic of me getting zapped by my own chain to entertain you while I get some Tylenol:

  23. [EDIT: Added additional screenshots for clarity.]

    Did some more testing on it, and got some weird results. This was also some of the most boring testing I've ever done. :P But this may be helpful info.

    First test: Versus enemies with ridiculous Defense. To achieve this I created a group whose only powers were Deflection Shield (the enemy version of which is combined with the other shield) and Dispersion Bubble. This gave me an average 8% chance to hit the enemies.

    Results: Very strange. Hitting the first enemy (after many, many tries) would indeed bring down most of the group. However it almost seemed like sometimes the first guy I hit wasn't falling. Instead he would play an animation like he was casting Dispersion Bubble, then a bunch of random people would fall. I really don't know what to make of that.

    Here's a screenshot of the enemies falling over despite their massive defense (really hard to see what's happening though, and note that the first enemy I fired at was actually the guy on the right, not the character in the suit to the left, who fell despite a few other targets NOT falling. That character had no powers at all, but should have been equally buffed by the shields and dispersion bubbles. When I tried casting directly at him, I had the same chance to hit him as everyone else.):





    Second test: In this test all of the "Tanker" enemies were switched to Super Reflexes, and given all powers except the mezz protection toggle. This gave me about a 20% chance to hit them. I kept the character in the suit as the single armorless squishy character, who served as the initial target of the attack.

    Result: If the squishy was hit, the full number of targets was hit just like the experiments against armorless enemies. However the pattern was much harder to make out. Look at the screenshot below:



    Now what to make of this. It appears its at least possible there is a ToHit check of some kind in here. However it also appears from previous tests that the 95% ToHit cap is either not used or is ignored. It's also possible having all those Force Fields in proximity glitched something, or that I made some other mistake.

    Also, FYI, while I did not do as much testing on Synaptic Overload this round, I did note that unlike Mind and Illusion Control based Confuses, it IS affected by Force Fields. What I don't know right now is if this is because of a Postional component, or because it's tagged as Energy (Mind and Illusion are both tagged Psi, with no positional flag at all).

    Thanks again for the feedback. If I find anything new I'll be sure to post.
  24. P.S. I am running similar tests on Synaptic Overload right now with the exact same results so far. I had heard in Beta that this power branched two targets at a time but if that was true then it doesn't appear to be now. In the AE, at least, the power appears to be using the exact same mechanic as Jolting Chain. One target at a time, if first is hit all others are as long as they are in range. If you line the enemies up in a line you can actually see the power progress one at a time from enemy to enemy.

    Of course, the Recharge on Synaptic is long, so I've only cast it about 20 times now. I will post if I get something different. Meanwhile if anyone can convincingly show a chain ending earlier despite enemies being in range please let me know.
  25. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hyperstrike View Post
    No. Jolting Chain isn't auto-hit. It's using your Acc to jump to the next person to the limits of it's range. Including jumping back at people who it may have already hit.

    However, the first time it misses an Acc check, the chain is done.

    So, chuck LOTS of Acc at the power.

    If that is correct, the power is either bugged or does not use a standard attack mechanic to calculate a hit roll.

    Rolls are capped at 95% chance to hit. Against 15 enemies at 95% Accuracy it should make it all the way to the end of the chain .95^15 = 46% of the time. I tested this for twenty minutes against a group. If the power hit the first enemy, it never stopped short of hitting everything in the chain.

    It's possible there is an error in my testing, with the power, or some other situation. Can you show me definitively how you concluded the power rolls a hit check every pulse?