Underfyre

Zapping Bolt Cast time: 1 arcanatime: 1.19 Anim before hit: .73 Cast time: 1.033 Anim before hit: .75

Havoc Punch: Cast time: 1.5 arcanatime 1.72 Animation time: 1.5 Anim before hit: .83 Observed: Cast time: 1.483 Animation time: ??? Anim before hit: 1

No fun stuff like that for Sentinels, just the damage boost. I'm just trying to keep these 5 minute runs not be 7 minutes runs. It's a constant, and the Pylon has 20% resists across the board, so that isn't a factor either. But onto the new factor I'm blaming. At what point does one ability stop and the next one consider to have started. Cuz I'm looking at the animations, and when the damage is caused in chat, and when the next ability triggers on the bar. Everything is out of sync with each other.

Adaptation damage doesn't vary, and it's following the exact formula from the code. The only resistance debuff at play is from Opportunity, which I can prune out. But I don't think it will help. I think the cast time formula is antiquated.

Okay, so bear with me here. I'm looking at the recording from one of these last runs. I'm thinking to myself, "Maybe it's not my sheet that's the problem. Maybe it's the timing. Arcanatime is from back in the days of dial-up. Maybe that just doesn't really exist now." So abilities are largely just queued up one after another. I made a cut in the video at the exact moment the ability is activated, and another cut when the next ability is activated. Like zoomed in and finding the exact frame after stretching the video out to 25% playback speed. Then I shrunk it back down to 100% playback speed and lined it up with a second marker. This shot is lined up on 24 seconds. So my 1.19 second (arcanatime) ability went off, in under 1.19 seconds, and the next ability is firing. I'm going to compare more abilities, but you know where this is going.

Well shit, I forgot to take off the interface. Anyway, here's the 1 with it. Expected: 232.51 Observed: 266.76 Okay, with that out of the way... Expected: 200.18 Observed: 241.95 237.39 241.28 These 3 are high enough from the get go that I'm just going to say something's fucky.

So I have a plan to do runs with a build that has as few an amount of variables as possible. Obviously the highest baseline damage would be best, but Fire in itself has variables with its burn lengths. They're cancel on miss. So the next best option is Electric. Bio as a secondary is still viable because the bonus damage is 100% chance with no ticks or anything cancel on miss. So that will thankfully move things along. I'm on the fence about using offense or defense Opportunity. Opportunity itself isn't a variable as long as you aren't using the Opportunity Strikes proc. The offense proc doesn't have any cancel on miss shenanigans, it's just bonus damage, so it should be okay. The way it's coded it just looks to see how long it takes to clear 90 rage, which isn't likely to change aside from healing yourself. I have this build. It has no damaging procs in the abilities I plan to use. Nothing that will alter combat beyond raw damage. Hybrid is only taken for the 10% damage boost. No Interface. I'm going bare bones. If raw damage doesn't match up, there's something fundamentally flawed with the sheet. Anyway, if you want to also build this up and run some tests, it'll speed things along and give a wider sample pool. Planned rotation is (22)-(7)-1-4-20-6-1-4-1-6, but use whatever you want.

Checked this out. This was a call I made, may or may not be bad decision making. So my thought process was that if you have Opportunity active, the target has the full 25% debuff. So I cut out the chunk where it pulls from the main Opportunity -Res cell at the top and do a new calculation in cell, which pulls data for each -Res cell. So the (small) damage fluctuation when you manually change one of those 3 cells is the Opportunity cells reacting. It's not pulling for the sonic debuffs tho, that does need to be fixed.

I put a link to the sheet I'm currently working with on the main post.

The primary resistance data chunk is just: (-Res_All * (1-Target_Res)) - Target_Res, which is broken down into each ResType. This was mostly so I could give the option of different target resistance options and see how each sets damage type compared relatively. -Res_All is affected by Purple Patch. Not particularly relevant to Pylon testing, and I'm sure you've seen it, but I figured I'd mention it. In abilities it's Base_Damage * (1 + %Damage) * (1 + ResType) Annihilation and Fury work the same, they only fit on multi-target abilities, so I just pull the data if it exists. The data exists if the ability is in rotation. Achilles' is a headache of a cell to read because it may or may not come into play in multi-target rotations. Resistance Reductions cell is specifically for Sonic Blast. Works like Achilles' with the multi-target stuff. And D2. That's a hidden cell (white out data). There was no easy way to say what resist type Opportunity should be using. Water uses Cold. Steam Spray is a Fire attack, there's no Cold cell in the ability chunk to pull from. So I had to make a static cell that flagged what particular resistance Opportunity was using. So D2.

I dunno, I've combed over a ton of stuff and reconfirmed a bunch of formulas. I really wish I would have done runs that don't involve any/few variables, and I really wish those variables didn't increase damage so much. I guess I'm gunna have to put together a build that is based off of raw damage and move from there. Damage has fallen away from the observed across the board it seems.

I meant specifically on the damage procs like Molten Embrace, Offensive Adaptation and Assault Radial. Those are still using (1 + R x (11 x A + 540) / 30,000)

@Bopper So I see you replied to this post on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/cheum0/more_on_procs/ Should my area factor on damage procs (not PPM) be divided by 40000 instead of 30000? It shouldn't matter that much since I'm not using Assault Hybrid and only 1 cone ability in the rotation, but it's still something to fix.

New test with Fire/Dark, because predicted numbers have fallen dramatically below their observed times. No Build Up procs, no Aim. Predicted: 228.28 315 : 249.56 214 : 307.01 264 : 273.08 Still dramatically off.

Never mind, I gave my wife a reason to talk down to me and she broke it down for me. Apparently A*B/C/D breaks down to AB/CD. So in this case, "PPM * (MRT+ CastTime) / (60 * AreaMod)" and "PPM * (MRT+ CastTime) / 60 / AreaMod" are the same thing. For those curious: A*B/C/D = ((A * B) / C) * (1 / D) = (A * B * 1) / (C * D) = (A * B)/ (C * D) = AB/CD So multiplying 60 * AreaMod in the parenthesis was forcing the pairing where dividing them outside of the parenthesis was going to lead to their eventual pairing.

Variance has climbed to 10% in 2 of the sets. One uses 2 -res procs, one uses 0 -res procs. To clarify on the PPM calc, your guide says "PPM * (MRT+ CastTime) / (60 * AreaMod)" But your post on the blaster forum says Dividing obviously drives those proc chances even lower. Right now I have it as multiplying.

Fair, I'll dump the numbers into the new sheet for a few builds and see what we get. What I was really hoping for was finding out that fixing the numbers would result in being able to use shorter rotations, but I doubt it.

Well I listed the rotations used on each one, I usually brain dump things like that once I'm done with it so I can't remember much. I also don't remember stuff good in general. I'm fairly sure aoe abilities were used in most of the rotations simply because just adding in a -res proc is a big boost in damage and they're on a higher PPM than Decimation is. If you're concerned about the PPM calcs affecting aoes, you're right to be, but it also affected the single target abilities. So all the proc chances were off by upwards of 16% I think. Thankfully I can just update the DPS numbers from the sheet and not have to run a hundred tests again lol

I've been sprinkling stuff into the Sentinel sheet like fixing the PPM calcs, but I haven't added the big stuff from the Blaster sheet in yet. Usually I'm kinda lazy about updating with a separate sheet since it seemed like nobody was actually using the thing, so theoretically you could just use the link on the first post to grab new changes, but this time I'm actually using a separate sheet. This is what's coming for the next round of updates. Myshkin's weird build forced me to reconsider my assumptions on what abilities people will take. DarknessEternal's prodding about Build Up is making me consider forcing abilities in rotation to have their effects. As it is I'm forcing Coordinated Targeting which is inconsistent to say the least. - Minor fix to PPM calculations - Added Reactive Radial/Core -Res debuff to Voltaic Sentinel Pet. - Extended rotation bar to increase accuracy of the calculations. The longer your rotation accounts for, the more accurate your results will be. - Numbers have been tested in game and found to have a variance between +/-5%. (before PPM fixes) - Added a checkbox for Aim since apparently some mad men don't take it. - Also added a check box for which mode you're under in Adaptation, and a check box for Molten Embrace since people want to be silly. - Added pet calcs to Molten Embrace/Offensive Adaptation damage for Fiery Aura > Burn. - Added pet damage cap to Fiery Aura > Burn.

Just the basic hit chance with Aim running every time it's up. So yeah, they float around 6% hit chance, but they also have bubble defense at a minimum and heal all the time, so they take forever to kill. Then with Aim running frequently, they win through attrition.

Yeah, I updated all the PPM procs in the sheet. It weren't just the aoe procs. Everything in the sheet was using the same calc. Rain spells and toggles and the like just had an IF statement to add in a 10 instead of activation+recharge.

After eating pavement a few times I took a power analyzer to them mobs. They're running 130% accuracy and bonus to hit% on top of that.

Well. Fuck. I've been doing this for a year and a half, I needed you to straighten me out a year ago lol

So out of curiosity, are you putting the pre-ED or post-ED percentages into your powers? Because the sheet applies ED on its own, and if you're doing ED, then it's doing ED on top of that, you're going to be having lower numbers than intended.

I uhh... I took my "tough as nails" Water/SR into 801.7 (4/8) and promptly died without doing more than 15% damage to any particular mobs....