SemanticAntics

This wont happen unless they can rework the entire AI of pets. It was the exact reason why they removed +recharge on pets, their AI went totaly bonkers. As for travel, group flight still works on your pets, they follow you just fine :P As I recall, the AI issue was that pets spammed their fast-recharging weak attacks and didn't use their slower-recharging powerful attacks. Why they didn't just prioritize available (as in, not currently recharging) longer-recharge attacks (with perhaps some exception to control or AoE attacks, so those might be used more tactically) is something I don't know. Maybe that didn't fix the issue, or perhaps I misunderstood the issue. Has Group Fly's area been increased? I seem to remember pets falling out of it all the time unless you used Goto to keep them moving with you.

That may make some of the difference. In my (admittedly brief) testing, I saw two or three peel off from the pack when I used Rain of Fire, but 4-7 fled when I used Burn. This was with comparable group sizes. I suspect there's an issue of magnitude as well, as bosses were less likely to flee.

The initial hit does the majority of the damage. Approximately 60%, all at once. The other 40% happen over ten seconds in the flame patch. Yes, the Arsonist, Assault Bot, and Assault Rifle's Ignite all appear to be affected by this bug. In the case of the Assault Bot, it directly summons Burn's pseudopet. In the case of the Arsonist, it appears to summon a copy. I'm not sure, but Ignite seems to be a copy of the old Burn. Enflame is not affected. Huh. In looking at Enflame, its effects vary slightly by archetype. I see a reference to an archetype I had never heard of before. The Primalist.

I agree that its endurance cost seems a bit low for the damage that it does. I do not believe that inherent inaccuracy is intended as a balance for the low endurance use, however. If that were the intent, it would be reflected by a lower accuracy multiplier, not by ignoring enhancement values. This is clearly a case of a flag not being set. Comparing it with other, similar powers, I would guess that Burn's damage, low target cap, 25-second recharge, small radius, and more-damage-as-a-secondary-effect nature of Fire should probably put its endurance cost somewhere closer to 8-13. If its target cap and radius were raised to 10, 16-20 would be a reasonable endurance cost. I did. And while the powers you mention do indeed have an internal "Avoid" mechanic, even though Burn doesn't appear to, Burn also causes foes to flee the effect. I tested that just now, along with Rain of Fire and Freezing Rain. All three caused mobs to scatter, unless they were being affected by Taunt effects (being attacked by a tanker or brute, for instance, or using a taunt aura like Blazing Aura). Oddly enough, Burn caused more scatter than Rain of Fire or Freezing Rain, despite the lower target cap and lack of an explicit "Avoid" mechanic. The main difference is that Rain of Fire and similar powers are flagged to be affected by accuracy enhancements, while Burn's DoT patch is not. Funny thing about the i18 change you mention. Neither there, nor in any of the other patch notes I searched through, is there a mention of Burn being changed to allow accuracy enhancement. You said that it originally didn't accept accuracy enhancements. That may be correct, but I can't find any evidence supporting or refuting it. Other powers have been changed to accept enhancements, or to no longer accept enhancements, and those changes are typically in the patch notes. One would think that, if Burn were changed to accept accuracy enhancements, it would be in a patch note. It's one of the things I was looking for in order to determine whether this appeared to be intentional or not. Knowing when such a change was made would give insight into why it was changed. It is a strong power. I'm not disputing that. I also never said I was going to skip it. I'm not sure where you got that idea. Its front-loaded damage is almost as good as most other PBAoE attacks. Its total damage (assuming all the DoT ticks land on the same enemy) is actually better than most PBAoE attacks. It suffers over time by comparison with other PBAoE attacks because most of them do similar or better damage (compared with Burn's front-loaded damage), but with a faster recharge, a higher target cap, and/or a larger radius. Claws' Spin, for instance, does a full third more damage than Burn's initial pulse and about 80% as much as Burn's ideal total, but against twice as many enemies and nearly twice as often. Now, this comes at the cost of a lot more endurance, as well as the arguably-inferior Lethal damage type. But I didn't post about it because it isn't working the way I'd like it to. I posted about it because it sticks out among every other mechanically-similar power I tested in one respect: Burn's pseudopet does not use the accuracy enhancements given to it. I have asked several times for a GM to weigh in on this topic. If one of them said that Burn was working as it was intended, then I'd be happy enough with Burn as an AoE attack that sometimes happens to do DoT. Even better if someone could produce an archived forum post from the original dev team to that effect. I was unable to find such a post. Until then, I believe this is a bug that, while probably not very high-priority, should get fixed at some point. I even went and found where the bug is in the server files so that fixing it should be trivially easy. As a bonus, I even addressed Rain of Fire in that post. Working as coded is not necessarily the same as working as intended.

Literally no other similarly-functioning power behaves as you describe. Why should Burn?

Personally, I'd prefer it to stay on until I'm done needing it, regardless of my anchor's status. That way, I choose when it comes down, not Johnny happy-trigger.

I believe that's because it's technically an offensive toggle. I've noticed that as well on another toggle. I think it was Rise to the Challenge.

I now have proof! Under Brute_Defense.Fiery_Aura.Burn in the Powers.bin file, the "BoostsAllowed" attribute identifies "Boosts" (the internal term for enhancements) with ID numbers 23, 18, 9, and 5. Through testing and cross referencing, I've determined that those are Endurance, Recharge, Damage, and Accuracy, respectively. Burn triggers, as one of its effects, the entity Pets.Burn.Burn which does the DoT ticks. That entity's "BoostsAllowed" attribute only lists boost ID 9. That's damage. It makes sense for endurance and recharge slotting to not be allowed, they make no logical sense for the pseudopet. But boost ID 5, Accuracy, is missing. This is consistent with my testing, which showed that the pseudopet uses Damage enhancements, but not Accuracy enhancements. I believe this line is why. Truncated copy/paste (the ellipses in brackets are mine, to represent trimmed lines): ================ FullName = Brute_Defense.Fiery_Aura.Burn [...] BoostsAllowed = [ 23, 18, 9, 5 ] [...] ================ FullName = Pets.Burn.Burn [...] BoostsAllowed = [ 9 ] [...] Edited to add: For comparison's sake, Rain of Fire's pseudopet (Corruptor version), Pets.Corruptor_RainofFire.RainofFire, allows both Damage and Accuracy. ================ FullName = Pets.Corruptor_RainofFire.RainofFire [...] BoostsAllowed = [ 9, 5 ] [...]

It does. My early testing (example 3 in this post) demonstrated that.

It seems we understand one another, then. I try not to interpret an ambiguous statement as being malicious unless the context makes it clear that it's meant to be. I don't always succeed, but I try! I am concerned if this is indeed a long-standing bug. It may be difficult to fix. It may simply have gone unnoticed, but I find that hard to believe. There were some die-hard math nerds in the old days, for whom I am immensely grateful, and I'm sure one of them would have noticed. Burn has been tweaked several times through the history of the game, but accuracy was never addressed.

That's weird. What, exactly, are your graphics settings? Are your graphics drivers up to date? I had a similar issue once long ago that was resolved by updating my drivers.

I wasn't sure that was your intention. I was hoping it wasn't, and I'm glad to hear you confirm that. I hope you can see how your words could have been interpreted that way. To reiterate, the data I have presented here took minutes to acquire, but it was hours of play time before I noticed the bug in the first place. Once again, I am the OP. All of the data I've shown so far does not discredit the accuracy mechanic. It shows that Burn is exclusively not properly using it. I suspect there's a misplaced flag somewhere that is telling its pseudopet not to inherit slotted accuracy. I took a peek at a couple versions of the source code that I found but I was not able to find where power data is stored. I hope to have more time to look into that in the near future, as I'm sure it will confirm my findings. It would greatly speed up my search if someone knowledgeable about the source code could point me in the right direction.

Allow me to separate your response so that I can reply point by point. Let me just say that Pine's Hero Designer is a very helpful tool and I use it frequently. But, like Mids' before it, it is far from authoritative and, at times, wildly inaccurate. You've hit upon an excellent example. I don't know where that 150% base accuracy figure (I assume you're talking about Rain of Fire or a similar power, as Bonfire has no accuracy listed) came from but, if anything, it applies to the part of the power that summons the pseudopet. The pseudopet itself has base player accuracy (75% to-hit vs. a same-level foe). All player pets and pseudopets do, despite all other NPCs having a 50% base to-hit. The foes in my data are usually +2 or +3 (with the exception of the Diseased Abomination which I merely happened across as I sought to test Rain of Fire. It was even-level.) minions and lieutenants and without any relevant defenses so as to demonstrate the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of accuracy slotting. Not egregiously high level, nor any special foe. Further, Rain of Fire, Freezing Rain, and Ice Storm all had approximately 17.5% accuracy slotting (a single +1 DO's worth) at the time of testing. Just enough accuracy to show a variance from the base to-hit. By the way, you not-so-subtly implied that I'm cherry-picking my data. I don't know you well enough to guess as to whether that was an intentional slight or not. Just pointing it out. To address the point, I'd direct you to my previous post where I posted abbreviated combat log data along with the details of what I was fighting and how I had the power slotted. This would be easy for anyone to replicate in-game. The data I present is from the combat logs, not from manual observation. The combat logs track every attack, every hit-roll, every miss, from and to every target. You are correct that the damage tics overlap and suppress each other so that catching a given, single tick of damage would be near-impossible to do by eye. Further, that isn't how accuracy works. No hit-check can simply become auto-hit if the power's accuracy is high enough. Please refer to this archived post from Arcanaville for a full explanation of how accuracy works, but the short version of it is this: Any given power that rolls an accuracy check starts with the user's base chance to hit (75% for players vs. an NPC, 50% for NPCs and players vs. a player), adds any available toHit buffs (Build Up, Rage, Tactics, Insight, etc.), subtracts any applicable defenses from the target, and multiplies the resulting number against the sum of the power's slotted accuracy and any available accuracy buffs (Focused Accuracy, IO set bonuses, etc.) as well as the power's own inherent accuracy (for most powers, this multiplier is a 1) to arrive at the final hit chance. In simple form, this is NetToHit = (InherentAttackAccuracy) * (1 + AccuracyEnhancement) * [ BaseToHit + ( ToHitBuffs - ToHitDebuffs ) - (Defense - DefenseDebuffs) ] (cited from the above article). Further, the final chance to hit is always limited to between 5% and 95%, so that there is always a chance to hit (on a very inaccurate attack) or miss (on a very accurate one). Burn's accuracy is the same as all the other powers (except Bonfire) mentioned in this discussion, as I've demonstrated. The only difference is that all those other powers benefit from being slotted with accuracy enhancement, despite using pseudopets to actually accomplish their damage, while Burn's pseudopet does not. You will never see Burn's DoT miss. You will never see Rain of Fire or Ice Storm miss. That doesn't mean they don't miss. You are not the entity making the to-hit rolls, the pseudopet is. To demonstrate this, I invite you to perform the experiment yourself. I assume you have a character with Rain of Fire, Ice Storm, Freezing Rain, Sleet, or Burn. Pick one of them. Log in. Right click in your chat window and add a new tab with the following channels: Pet Hit Rolls, Pet Damage Inflicted, and Pet Combat. Feel free to add the other Pet channels if you wish. Go use one of the above powers in a regular fight and, afterward, scroll through the chat tab and review the hits and misses. Assuming you aren't a Mastermind or a Controller, you should only see data from whichever power you used. Note the percent chance the pseudopet had to hit things, particularly if Burn is the power you're testing. Especially note that the power will miss on occasion, even with optimal slotting. Finally, check again: I am the OP.

That's not quite accurate. Below are some examples of the powers you mention (I assume by "Fire Patch" you mean Burn? That's thoroughly covered above). Bonfire is the only one that is autohit among them. Freezing Rain reduces defense, boosting its accuracy on subsequent hits (that's why it is listed twice). I haven't tested Sleet but, since it's a copy of Freezing Rain, I expect it to perform identically. As a side note, each of the below powers creates a pseudopet to perform the effect and each one correctly inherits the power's accuracy enhancement values, with the exception of Bonfire, which cannot be slotted directly for accuracy. I'm sure that Bonfire requires an accuracy check in PvP, as does Taunt (to my knowledge), but if the power is autohit, you cannot slot accuracy enhancements into the power, outside of multifaceted enhancements (set IOs and Hami-Os). Bonfire: HIT Repair Bot! Your Bonfire power is autohit. Rain of Fire: MISSED Diseased Abomination!! Your RainofFire power had a 92.82% chance to hit, you rolled a 94.87. Freezing Rain: HIT Fire Imp Boss! Your FreezingRain power had a 56.40% chance to hit, you rolled a 16.98. Freezing Rain: MISSED Fire Imp Boss!! Your FreezingRain power had a 79.31% chance to hit, you rolled a 92.90. Ice Storm: MISSED Gabriel!! Your IceStorm power had a 65.80% chance to hit, you rolled a 96.98. I think by now I've thoroughly demonstrated that Burn is bugged in not passing the accuracy enhancement value to the Flames pseudopet. Every other example of a similar power I've examined passes accuracy enhancement values to power's pseudopet except Burn.

I just noticed that the Mastermind Assault Bot is affected by the same bug. Its Incendiary Missile power summons a copy of Burn's pseudopet under its targets, but that Burn patch also fails to inherit slotted accuracy. I'll try to do some testing to get some specific numbers, but I'm already seeing that it doesn't have the same to-hit chance that the Assault Bot's other powers do. Edited to add these lines from the Pet combat chat window. My Assault Bot (named "Mk. VI") currently has 73.1% accuracy enhancement, and this is against a same-level Longbow Nullifier. All of its powers should have a 95% (capped from ~130%) chance to hit, yet the Burn/Flames pseudopet has only the base (75%) chance to hit. Mk. VI: HIT Longbow Nullifier! Your Incendiary Swarm Missiles power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 72.63. Flames: HIT Longbow Nullifier! Your Burn power had a 75.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 11.54.

Very excited to see updates and fixes like this. I'm a little disappointed the accuracy bug in Burn wasn't addressed yet, but I'm glad that bugs are being fixed. It's very encouraging. Keep up the good work!

Snippets from the combat logs I have. For the sake of clarity, I've reduced repeated lines to focus on Burn's accuracy. The logs demonstrate that Burn's pseudopet, Flames, is affected by both inherited buffs and enhancements, with the exception of Accuracy enhancements. I don't have a good example for it, but Focused Accuracy's buffs are inherited by Flames, albeit extremely briefly. Focused Accuracy provides +5% toHit and +20% Accuracy, which correctly boosted Flames' chance to hit to 73.2% against +2 foes. This only seemed to last for the first tick of Flames' damage, so Focused Accuracy's buff is very short-lived, but this shows that the power is not flagged to ignore Accuracy buffs. For the following examples, I am facing a single +3 Lieutenant from one of the AE fire farms. I am reasonably certain it has no defense or resistance to affect the results. For this first example, I had 73.1% enhancement to both Accuracy and Damage in Burn. You can see that Damage enhancement affects the Flames pseudopet (compared with example 2). Note that Fury affects Flames (and Burn directly, but that isn't demonstrated here), as you can see it falling off when the damage goes from 6.38 points to 3.93 points of fire damage. But the main thing I wanted to point out here is that with +73% accuracy, against a +3 foe, Flames should have a chance to hit of 83.07% (the same as Burn in this example). 2019-05-23 14:26:15 You activated the Burn power. 2019-05-23 14:26:16 HIT Fire Imp Lt.! Your Burn power had a 83.07% chance to hit, you rolled a 69.07. 2019-05-23 14:26:16 You burn Fire Imp Lt. with your Burn for 113.95 points of fire damage! 2019-05-23 14:26:16 Flames: HIT Fire Imp Lt.! Your Burn power had a 48.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 41.12. 2019-05-23 14:26:16 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 6.38 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:26:17 Flames: MISSED Fire Imp Lt.!! Your Burn power had a 48.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 51.15. 2019-05-23 14:26:18 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 6.38 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:26:21 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 3.93 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:26:23 Flames: MISSED Fire Imp Lt.!! Your Burn power had a 48.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 51.06. 2019-05-23 14:26:25 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 3.93 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:26:26 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 3.93 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:26:27 Flames: MISSED Fire Imp Lt.!! Your Burn power had a 48.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 69.80. 2019-05-23 14:26:29 Burn is recharged. For this second example, I removed the enhancements to bring it back to 0% for both Accuracy and Damage. The point of this was to both compare the accuracy of the Flames pseudopet with and without enhancement, as well as to demonstrate that some enhancing (in this case, Damage) is being passed to Flames. You can see that, without Damage enhancements, the damage of both Burn and Flames is significantly reduced, even with Fury. Again, Fury affects Flames, but drops off of the Flames pseudopet shortly after the power starts. 2019-05-23 14:28:59 You activated the Burn power. 2019-05-23 14:29:00 HIT Fire Imp Lt.! Your Burn power had a 48.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 13.68. 2019-05-23 14:29:00 You burn Fire Imp Lt. with your Burn for 56.81 points of fire damage! 2019-05-23 14:29:00 Flames: HIT Fire Imp Lt.! Your Burn power had a 48.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 13.09. 2019-05-23 14:29:00 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 3.12 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:29:00 Flames: MISSED Fire Imp Lt.!! Your Burn power had a 48.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 97.08. 2019-05-23 14:29:01 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 3.12 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:29:01 Flames: MISSED Fire Imp Lt.!! Your Burn power had a 48.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 93.92. 2019-05-23 14:29:02 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 3.12 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:29:03 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 1.98 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:29:05 Flames: MISSED Fire Imp Lt.!! Your Burn power had a 48.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 73.31. 2019-05-23 14:29:05 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 1.98 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:29:05 Flames: Your flames burn Fire Imp Lt. for 1.98 points of fire damage. 2019-05-23 14:29:16 Burn is recharged. For this third example, I used an Insight to boost my toHit chance. The buff from affects Burn (as expected) and passes through to the Flames pseudopet (again, expected). Normally, powers that intentionally ignore enhancements also ignore buffs. 2019-05-23 14:01:57 You have Insight into your enemy's weaknesses and slightly increase your chance To Hit and your Perception. 2019-05-23 14:01:58 You activated the Burn power. 2019-05-23 14:01:59 HIT Fire Imp Lt.! Your Burn power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 34.03. 2019-05-23 14:01:59 You burn Fire Imp Lt. with your Burn for 130.29 points of fire damage! 2019-05-23 14:02:01 Flames: MISSED Fire Imp Lt.!! Your Burn power had a 55.50% chance to hit, you rolled a 62.28. 2019-05-23 14:02:04 Flames: MISSED Fire Imp Lt.!! Your Burn power had a 55.50% chance to hit, you rolled a 82.10. 2019-05-23 14:02:05 Flames: MISSED Fire Imp Lt.!! Your Burn power had a 55.50% chance to hit, you rolled a 66.50. 2019-05-23 14:02:15 Burn is recharged.

You've been misinformed. Pseudopets (like Lightning Rod, Burn, etc.) absolutely benefit from Fury. It's just that Fury is a short-duration buff that is constantly refreshed. When inherited by a pet, it doesn't get refreshed, so it wears off after a few seconds. This is why you're seeing Burn's ticks drop in damage after a few seconds. That up-front damage is actually caused by the Brute, not the pet, but the ticks are all pet damage. Just to confirm, I jumped in game now to check, and Lightning Rod does a bunch more damage toward the end of a fight (or any time with high Fury) than at the beginning (or any time with low Fury). You've probably heard that Lightning Rod/Shield Charge/Spring Attack are better for a Scrapper because the people who say that use those powers to open fights, when the Brute would have low Fury. The Scrapper would definitely win in that situation. The best way for a Brute to use them is to take the alpha to generate some Fury, then fire them. Or, to use them on the second mob, when they're already at high Fury, carrying the momentum forward.

Upon further testing, I am convinced this is a bug. It could be an exception, but in either case, I believe it should be fixed. I tested the Electrical Melee powers Lightning Rod and Chain Induction as well as the Leaping power Spring Attack. All three create pseudopets to perform their effect, and all three pseudopets were affected by accuracy enhancements. Further, I test Burn's pseudopet's accuracy under the effects of the Energy Mastery ability Focused Accuracy, and it's chance to hit was modified by both the +toHit buff and the +Accuracy buff from Focused Accuracy. Burn's pseudopet's accuracy was unaffected by its own accuracy slotting, but buffs went through. Normally, a power flagged to ignore enhancement is also flagged to ignore buffs. Given the precedent and example of Electrical Melee's pseudopet behavior (as well as Leaping's Spring Attack), as well as the ability to be buffed by outside sources, but not it's own Accuracy slotting, I believe this is a clear case of a bug and not a design choice. Any chance a GM will comment on this?

I had originally thought so, when I noticed it used the base to Hit, but the damage is enhanceable. If the damage is, it stands to reason the accuracy should be.

Burn, according to the archived City of Data page, does a tick of AoE damage and summons a pseudopet called "Flames" which does the actual burn patch. I discovered what I believe to be a bug in the Flames pseudopet. It is not affected by accuracy slotted into the Burn power. It appears to be affected by damage slotting, and any buffs pass through normally (Fury, inspirations, etc.), but not accuracy. I can produce combat logs if desired. I tested it with and without accuracy IOs in Burn. The tick of AoE damage Burn does directly is enhanced as usual, and Flames is enhanced by Damage enhancements, but Flames is not enhanced by Accuracy enhancements. Edit: I have found proof. See this post for details. Can I get a GM to comment on this? Edit 2: Updated link comment.