UberGuy

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I was right. serious nerfs to CoH (ED, I5, I6) to prepare for serious buffs to CoH to balance it with ED, I5, and I6. They done the nerfs first to get the nastiness out of the way.

Disclaimer: not meant as a troll/told ya/brag/negative things post.

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Honestly, I can't see this being related to I5 or ED. Defense has always been inferior to other mitigation methods. If I5 and ED had never happened this would still have needed to be done to balance it.

I'm not going to disagree that some buffs are now reasonable perhaps only in light of the global nerfs (the changes to Dull Pain come to mind), but I am certain this is not one of them.

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Far from making mitigation a sliding scale, the change *freezes* the mitigation ratio for all ranks and all levels (that the change operates on).

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You are, as usual, correct, as are other respondants. I was wrongly thinking of the raw toHit chance in terms of absolute rather than considering it as a percentage of the 50% base.

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With the change to bounding, you can achieve 90% mitigation against any enemy up to +5.

Changing it the way you suggest means you can reduce a +5's or an AV's damage to less than 10%.

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Hmm. That's wierd.

The maximum mitigation becomes a sliding scale, depending on foe rank or level.

Because, with this system, you can, in fact, mitigate a +0 minion to 5%. But your best mitigation vs. a +5 is 10%. Everyone in between has some proportional value.

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It's so there's always a chance to hit and always a chance to miss. Think of it like a natural 1 or 20 on a D20.

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I know. But that's being overdone. Like I point out in my example, they way it's being done now, it's like anyone with increased accuracy (not toHit) gets to roll a bigger die and miss on a smaller range of numbers (5 out of 60 instead of 1 in 20 for 2 ACC SOs).

I'm asking if the inner bound shouldn't be made 0..1 so that the outer bound can do what you're saying.

Edit: it dawns on me to provide an example.

I'm in PvP and I have an attack with 2 accuracy SOs. Let's say I'm going after two Defenders who slapped Darkest Night and Rad Infection on me (just to be sure I'm floored).

If I have a base 50% toHit (PvP), and those two powers are fully slotted, I have an effective toHit of (50% - DN - RI). Even if those numbers are 30% each, I'm at -10%. Now the inner floor kicks in and raises that to 5%. But I'm 2 slotted for accuracy. That's 5% * 1.666 = 8.3%. That's greater than 5%, so the second bounding operation leaves it alone.

If the inner bounding was 0..1, my -10% toHit would be raised to 0%. This would be multiplied by 1.666 for 0%. The second bounding would raise this to 5%.

Honestly, as a player, I'm more worried about the +2 AV my team is trying to floor than I am about my own being floored. A 3.333% increase in my own (abysmal) to hit rate isn't going to matter in the course of one fight. If I am that badly debuffed I'm running no matter whether the result is 5% or 8.3%. But that small difference on a big, powerful foe can be more meaningful in my eyes.

I'm definitely splitting hairs, but most if this thread relates to that, so there it is.

Castle, Geko... a question for you guys popped into my head.

I understand why the inner quantity is bounded. But why is it bounded by 0.05 and 0.95? Wouldn't it make vastly more sense for the inner quantity to be bounded by 0 and 1, leaving the outer one bounded as it is now?

This would avoid the oddity of raising the floor by bounding the low end twice.

I do understand that doing this would represent a slight nerf to PC characters, who benefit today from being able to multiply thier slotted accuracy times a potentially floored inner quantity. However, in practice, I thing we would benefit more from having a lower floor on powerful foes being debuffed than we would from going from 3 hits in 60 (5% floor) to 5 hits in 60 (5% floor with 2 ACC SOs). At least, when we're talking about foes who can mez or even kill us in one shot.

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Using your numbers for DN, and rounding things off nicely, that 30% debuff is going to be slotted to 60% (we're dropping ED for now).

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But that number is wrong, since castle said 3-slotted DN is -30%, not 60.

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I don't think I can reconcile a 15% base (30% 3-slotted) with practical experience in game. There is no doubt in my mind that +0 minions are floored by 3-slotted DN, even on a Corrupter, and that shouldn't be possible with that base.

Nothing's changed here except the DEF part of your build. The toHit debuffs will work as they always have, and they're the dominant part of your "defense" there.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the PP was introduced to the game. It wasn't part of the original design strategy as far as we know. That is why I don't see why Debuffs would be any less effective than +DEF if we ignore the context of the game.

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Definitely not correct. Since release, mobs of higher level always had this feature. The "purple patch" in its original and second forms, changed the "scaling" of this effect from what appeared to be a gentle, linear slope to something more resembling a cubic function (at least in the positive direction). At release +10 mobs were very hard to solo, but could be readily defeated by 8-man teams in their 20s and up.

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Castle, back when debuffs were explained originally (by Geko or Positron) they were stated to be a function of multiplication/division (not a straight subtraction/addition like defense was.)

Has this been changed? Or is this now how it is figured? Because facing off against +mobs would immediately (and drastically) impact the accuracy debuff.

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I have been using the subtractive form, since this follows the latest conventional wisdom from the forums testing (since about I4, when I started following it) and seems borne out by Castle's comment regarding toHit debuffs functioning as defense for your team.

My understanding was that they weren't doing anything to toHit debuffs. (Or toHit buffs, for that matter, though that's a related but separate debate, mostly focusing on PvP issues.)

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You said the lack of scaling is a defect, then we can not use the scaling defficiencies as a design intent.


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As I said, there is a facet of debuffs that has always made them weaker than even today's defense powers. It has nothing to do with scaling as discussed in the OP of this thread. That facet is that they are reduced by the purple barrier (as are all powers that affect foes) and, additionally, most are affected by debuff resistances of various sorts. As a result, toHit debuffs have always been "double dinged", in addition to having the same scaling issues as defense.

This is what leads to the idea, at least for me, that they are not to be as effective. As was pointed out, even if they are somehow changed to scale (such as by making them scaling accuracy debuffs instead of subtracting from base toHit), then they would still be attenuated by high-level mobs and by resistances. Thus, they would have a weakness that defense does not. And while I can't speak for Arcana, I read the comment we're discussing as referring to this aspect.

Edit: Their magnitude compared to defense powers definitely muddies the waters, but I can see where the behavior above might lead to the idea that debuffs are, perhaps if not to be less powerful, maybe to be less dependable than outright defense.

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Its unclear to me if there are any specific instances where tohit debuffs are explicitly meant to be as strong as pure defense.


[/ QUOTE ] This is a curious statement. RI and DN seem to be better than pure defense as they have a higher base value than say /SR's toggles and they require less slots for completely comprehensive acc reduction..i.e. three slots emulating six powers in /SR in the non-resistance days.

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As powers imposed on a foe, debuffs have always suffered directly from the purple barrier, where defense has only suffered as an indirect function of the increased base toHit of foes (and this is clearly now considered a defect).

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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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Don't get me wrong, I deeply resent ED and dislike what it meant for the PvE game. However, that drop in DN is representative of what happened to most powers in the game, defensive and offensive, and as such, by itself, it doesn't mean that much.

The power still works pretty well. While I intended to 6-slot mine, I never got it over three, and I still solo my DDD on Invincible. (My Corruptor, too.) Yeah, it gets cut through like hot butter by bosses too often for my tastes; usually an issue when it's a mezzing attack (like they all seem to be). But in the scope of the game as it exists now, it's still pretty dang effective. If it didn't seem to do much, I'd be rallying with you on the front patio at Cryptic. But since it is still a powerful, uh, power, I'm just not sure it needs a champion.

That said, I'm not going to try to stop you.

I agree too, Arcanaville. But it can't hurt (well, I hope not!) to cause the devs to consider it.

In this specific case, like I said, I think toHit debuffing works pretty well, and if they somehow changed it in the way they indirectly are fixing defense, they might find it too effective and have to mess with it even more.

That's my gut feel, at least. I could be way outta wack on it.

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Let's say it is decided that a tank with fully SO'ed out Unyielding should get a 4.8% defense debuff. Then for a scrapper it would be 3.6%.

When a tank first gets the power and only slots it with endRdx, the debuff would be 3%. For the scrapper it would be 2.25%.

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I gotcha. Discussions of scaling with foe level aside, this seems like what they should have done to begin with.

Although I bet there's no code for linking enhanced value to a debuff (or buff) like that. At least, I know of no examples of it today.

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Are accuracy debuffs being doubly penalized because base_hit/accuracy is increased by the purple patch *and* debuffs are always directly reduced by the purple patch too?

If so, something probably needs to be looked at to fix it somehow.

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That's a good question. I so much hadn't considered it that it took me a minute to understand what you were saying. I'm pretty sure this must be happening, and has always been that way.

To be fair, though, I'm not sure it's much of a bother to us. It's definitely good to bring it up so someone might consider it, but the toHit debuffs I'm used to using seem fairly effective for the range of foes I find it wise to fight (usually +3 or less, rarely +4 except on a large team, and +5 or higher only when I'm dragged along by circumstances).

Left alone, though, it would be a way "fixed" DEF would now work vs. mobs better than toHit debuffs.

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On a serious note, maybe Unyielding's defense debuff should be derived directly from the enhanced resistance value.

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Why? What problem are you trying to solve? What imbalance?

To see why I question this, first, you need to compare what Invuln gets from Unyielding to what other sets do. Compare the mez and "armor" benefit to, for example, Integration.

Now (and I admit this is much more complex), compare what Invuln as a set can achieve as damage mitigation compared to SR, DA or Regen. This is so much more complex because:

*) it is actually quite difficult to compare Regen to anything else, though you can do well if you consider damage mitigation over time instead of instantaneous damage avoided.
*) if has been difficult to compare +DEF to DR (or regen) because +DEF scales non-linearly with foe base toHit.

The easiest set, in some ways, to compare Invuln to is DA. This too is difficult, however, because Invincibility is incredibly complex. It is a conditional defense buff that operates on pulses and varies with the number of foes in melee range. Moreover, it provides significantly less DEF to non-melee attacks.

However, some things we do know.

The defense debuff on Unyielding was added when Unyielding Stance (which rooted you) was made into Unyielding. At the time this happened, Unyielding was 15% (Scrapper) across-the-board DR to everything but Psionic damage. Invincibility provided easily twice the defense per foe as it does now, provided equal benefit to range and melee attacks, and it pulsed more often, affecting its self-stacking. Unstoppable was still able to be "perma", as was Dull Pain (not that much of anyone did it back then).

In other words, Invulnerability, as a set, looked nothing like it does now. Exacerbating the changes, when the I5 reductions went in Invincibility did not undergo a simple proportional decrease. Its maximum DR against non Lethal/Smashing damage is about 65% of what you would have expected if it had just been halved. Now, compared to other sets, which have no particular Achilles heal in terms of damage type (Regen and SR don't care, and DA has pretty full-spectrum coverage), Invuln now has not just Psi, but all ene/ele damage as a sort of weak Achilles. Compounding this, some sets weren't reduced at all. Fire and DA, for example, did not have their fundamental DR powers reduced in I5.

And last but not least, Invuln has always payed, using Mieux's terms, the second highest opportunity cost to take all its core armor powers. It used to get excellent (uniform) coverage at the cost of six powers. In comparison, Regen gets its core full-spectrum protection in 4 powers (IH no longer qualifies), and DA gets everything but Immobilization and Knockdown in 3 armors, leaving plenty of open opportunity to cover the missing aspects (and gain additional L/S protection) with pool powers. Only SR payed a higher cost, weighing in at 7 powers (3 toggles, 3 passive and one mez click), but for that cost, SR has no damage-type Achilles heal.

But in addiction to all these other downgrades, Invuln still has the same magnitude of defense debuff that was given to Unyielding way, way back when. This thread's long debate about scaling aside, I think this legacy of change indicates that the original debuff is, today, too large at a minimum. Honestly, I would love to know what math tells the devs it needs to be there. And Mieux's protestations aside, I do believe that it is almost totally pure math that the devs use to determining AT balance, because we know that Geko maintains a literal spreadsheet of balancing factors between the powersets. The defense, DR, mez shields, endurance costs and presumably other factors are all assigned numerical values, and those values are used to check for functional balance across powersets as a whole.

I'm open to be being proven wrong. If a redname came and actually laid out the math, or even a non-math logical explanation, showing that this penalty makes sense, I'm not so obtuse that I couldn't accept it. But in the absence of that kind of explanation, my personal inspection of the issue (more detailed than what I've outlined here) suggests to me the penalty needs to be looked at for reduction or removal. Not increase with DR, as you suggest.

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Does this mean you'll be changing your signature then?

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No, because mob accuracy has actually been buffed. It's mob base toHit that was nerfed.

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Okay, not that I want to be flamed or anything (I also agree that SR sets deserve some lovin'), but doesn't this necessarily mean that a person is exposed to the same amount of risk (up to +5 levels) for increasing reward (up to +5 levels)?

Doesn't this contradict the idea of reward scaling with risk?

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You don't seem to understand.

Risk DOES scale with reward. Higher level foes still hit more often, and do more damage.

The problem is, without this change, for Defense-based builds, risk rises FASTER than reward. This is not true for any other kind of "armor". Defense is, in most of our opinions (and clearly the Devs agree) broken. It is actually penalized twice under the current way things work; once because the enemy hits more often, and again because it works less well because the enemy hits more often. Everyone else only suffers the first of those two.

What this does is make the risk/reward scale the same for defense as it is for DR and healing as armors. (Edit: approximately the same, and it looks close enough for most purposes.)

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Tell you what, why don't we just remove the debuff and give you capped resistances... Anything else we need to fix? I know...the idea that some power might have a penalty associated with it is completely un-American. And God knows we can't trust the devs to use penalties to achieve any artistic conception.

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I'll tell you what. Why don't you go compare what Invul does and gets to the other sets. When you have soemthing other than pompous posturing to back up your opinion (as I do for my opinion) and you are willing to discuss something without a superior attitute, I'll give you some consideration.

For now, I find myself filing you under the category of troll. For your information, it has nothing to do with you disagreeing with me - lots of people disagree with me and I don't call them names or think less of them. It has to do with how you choose to do it. Whether you choose to accept that or not, I don't really care. Enjoy.

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Is this honestly your opinion?... or are you just playing devils advocate?

[/ QUOTE ] I find it funny that people always assume they aren't getting enough of a benefit but never concede they might not be getting enough of a penalty.

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I'm sorry, but you really are being a pompous [censored] on this topic. We're (or at least I am) explaining to you that analysis has been done on the matter, and that, in our opinions, it does not bear out the penalty.

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The point is that with a multiplicative scaling effect in place, the defense debuff is also scaled such that it is more powerful than current levels.

I am just saying it should be looked into, the type of solution that may or may not be instituted is less important to me than the fact that it is at least "solved".

[/ QUOTE ]The other perspective is that it wasn't giving the debuff that it should have against higher level foes???

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See my comments above.

You seem to have it in for the set. Any particular reason?

Edit: Nevermind, by the time I posted this your above post appeared. Nonetheless, I think you are missing the point that there is a broader context involved in the problem many of us have with the debuff on Unyielding. That is, compared to what other sets get in terms of numerical resists (or other mitigation) combined with a fully mobile mez resist armor (q.v. Focused Fighting, Integration) the magntiude of the resists in Unyielding (and the set as a whole) do not appear to require a penalty. And at the very least, the power is something like 40% of its original power (bear in mind also that perma-Unstoppable was available when the penalty was added) but the penalty is beleived unchanged.

The discussion of the changes to def buffs/debuffs only makes this discussion more relevant.

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I originally suggested that it be scaled down to 3.75%...

[/ QUOTE ] Isn't the whole point to provide them with a penalty? Is the penalty supposed to be offset by the resistance in the power?

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The penalty is to offset a version of the power we no longer have. The power was halved in effect on all resistances except Lethal/Smash, which was quartered, yet conventional knowledge says the debuff was left alone.

In light of other changes to the game, I continue to question whether the penalty is appropriate at all. There are other penalties present in the set. For example, I do not believe that any consideration is given to the fact that, to get the most Ene/Ele resist that Invincibility as a set can provide (which is substantially less than that provided by Dark Armor in one power) requires the acquisition of three powers. That represents a cost.

Ooh, good call, Hunter. (I didn't check your numbers, so I hope you did. )

Maybe this would be a good time for the devs to consider just plain dropping that debuff thing.

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hey I just realized something...with buffing defence they nerfed accuracy!

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Only villain accuracy.

And actually, they buffed villain accuracy. They just stopped buffing their base toHit.




Yes, I am splitting hairs at a level that would make IBM's atom-moving lasers envious.