UberGuy

From what I've read, that bug isn't restricted to TFs. BillZ was reporting that in Arachnos scanner missions during beta.

Given that it seems to potentially affect all content (or at least all content with the right mob factions in it), I wouldn't expect them to fix this particular bug by turning off the settings in TFs.

(By the way, if it's an EB, it's the controllable RV spawn. The ones you get from the temp power are a lot smaller and they aren't EBs. I wonder if that means you can get Cataphract spawns when fighting Longbow.)

Are you suggesting that TFs and SFs would behave differently from one another?

If not, the answer is in the patch notes.

Good news. The settings work again in Ouro.

We know that's not true. Just because the uninitialized variable has been here all along doesn't mean that it was being populated with the same (erroneous) data all along. There is significant circumstantial evidence suggesting it changed meaningfully for the first time in I16.

All you have to do is go back to TopDoc's purple farming thread, which pre-dated I16. In efforts to gather comparison data from live with test when I16 was still in Beta, TopDoc's numbers were found in adherence with predicted values.

I know that personally the whole reason I started investigating is that I noticed my own drop rates on test did not seem very good. It was in trying to gather data to confirm that feeling that I ended up part of a collective effort that, ultimately helped the devs find the actual problem. Yet there was no collective sense of issue before I16. While some people may have joined in after seeing the forum discussions, the beta effort to get to the bottom of things was spontaneous and simultaneous from several people. It's notable that such an effort never formed before. One obvious explanation is that this was the first time anything changed significantly.

The mention of comparing times for the Scrapper and "other" teams comes to mind.

Are you familiar with the all-Defender and all-Controller STFs that have been run?

Absolutely. Probably most characters who can obtain such effects still won't be as impressive at them as an AT that specializes in it, but the -RES procs are one of the best examples of it just because of how nearly universally -RES benefits everyone beating on an affected target.

Quote:

And do you guys consider Kheldians who, with each attack, refresh their minor debuffs of -Speed;-Recharge (WS) and -Def (PB) to be force-multiplier despite the debuffs not being constant toggle powers?

As I've mentioned earlier, the only effects there I would consider force multipliers is the -Def of a PB's attacks, which (perhaps sadly) is the most conditionally useful force multiplier we have access to even when wielded by things like Defenders.

That's hardly to say the -speed/-recharge of a WS, the taunts of their tank forms, etc., are not useful. They just degrade the foe's ability to threaten the team, the benefit of which is conditional on how threatening the foes were to begin with. Outright force multipliers tend not to depend much that condition unless the foes are so threatening no one can keep the effects in play.

I have a problem with those people too. I'm not one of them.

I only jumped in here because I saw what I perceived as people mangling the understanding of a reasonably well-defined term, at least in the context of these forums. I also think it helps people to understand just how useful things like offensive buffs and debuffs can be.

The problem (as I see it) comes in when the types of players you're talking about apply that understanding in extremis. They let efficiency drive their playstyle and team building to an extent that is needlessly exclusive.

I think this game is too "casual friendly" to have much need for that. It's not as if there's much content that calls for it. Even if one makes the argument that things like the RSF or STF do call for it (not something I'd automatically agree with), it's not as if the whole game presents anything like their level of difficulty.

You had an edge case going already with the -Def that let you slot the proc to begin with. But there's no question that the -Res effect from the proc has a lot fewer conditions attached on being useful to a team. Letting the target be a single sack-o-HP like M. ReichsBison definitely makes it more likely to actually be leveraged by the whole team.

I have several slotted on my Broadsword scrapper, just to up the odds of activation for continuous benefit in situations like that.

I'm confused. As far as I could tell, the store was off-line, at least every time I logged in, from the scheduled downtime on Wednesday through sometime Saturday. (I wasn't on-line between Saturday noon-ish central time until late on Sunday, so I can only assume it was restored somewhere in there.)

That's a lot more than 24 hours...

I sure hope not, given how often I play them. And Brutes who aren't built to hold aggro. And Stalkers (who are about as uncomplimentary as you can get with a damage dealer - they sic aggro on their teammates).

The bug has nothing to do with being in missions or not. It may depend on whether you're in TF/Flashback mode or not.

I'm pretty sure Gad meant that one of the three "D"s from DDD were missing. Specifically, the sacrifices in the build make it more of a "Dark Miasma Defender". Lacking "Dark Blast" knocks out the middle "D" in "DDD", leaving "DD", and thus D2.

Yes, it does. I tested it. Settings have no impact on Ouroboros missions.

This is a bug, and was not intended.

The behavior in TFs is intended. I am hopeful we can change their minds enough to get us at least to the TF features we had before I16.

As an aside, getting fillers for Ouroboros sounds extremely onerous on the fillers compared to normal mission fillers, who can stay wherever they were without going to Ouro or a SG base to start an arc.

I understand, but while numbers (and many mathematical operations) can be reorganized to achieve the same results many ways, not all of those ways necessarily make good models for given game scenarios.

Let's take a simplistic team, composed solely of 3 Scrappers. We'll say they're all pretty similar in damage contribution. Maybe all three are sword scrappers with similar builds.

Now, let's say we can add one more character before the team runs off to maul foes. We can add one more Scrapper, or one Kineticist. (I keep using Kinetics just because the examples are easier to calculate, and so easier to explain.)

Adding a 4th similar Scrapper would increase the peak damage potential represented by the original three by about 33%. (4/3 ≈ 133.3%)

Now, if we grab a Kinetics character, we'll say it's a Controller, so the per-foe buff from Fulcrum Shift is 20%. We'll say that most of the time the /Kin manages to get 5 foes with FS, meaning they offer +100% damage bonus to all three Scrappers' peak damage potential. Assuming they already have about 100% damage enhancement, that's an increase in damage for those three equal to 50%. (100% base + 100% enhancement + 100% FS bonus) / (100% base + 100% enhancement) = 150%.

So even if the Kinetics Controller has some sort of bizarre "pure support" build and never contributes a lick of damage on their own (an unusual Controller build, for sure), they contribute more damage potential to the team than adding a fourth Scrapper.

Now, if we do as you suggest and consider adding the 4th Scrapper multiplicative, adding him or her is a "multiplier" of 4/3 while the Kinetics is a multiplier of 3/2. But if our original team is instead 7 Scrappers, adding an 8th Scrapper makes his force multiple 8/7, while adding a Kinetics Controller who regularly hits 5 targets remains a force multiplier of 3/2.

That means that treating an additive force bonus as a multiplier isn't a terribly intuitive model for explaining what those additive effects do for a team's peak damage potential, because their "multiplier" has to account for the team's existing damage output.

In contrast, the multiplier provided by -DR especially and +Damage to a point (it's generally easier to hit the cap on +Dam than the floor on -DR) tends to be more invariant of what the team already has. It's extremely likely that if your team has no primary force modifiers already, adding one will allow you to apply its full multiplier, no matter what else is already on the team. The same is not generally true of adding something like a primary damage character.