what interface abilities actually work?

[kendo339]

I have seen a few posts about top tier interface abilities not working as expected and certainly appears that reactive core is one of those.  supposed to do a 2.5% resist debuff, which doesn't show up in the combat log but I think is working.  it's also supposed to do a moderate fire damage over time.  I have yet to see more than 1 tic of damage and that is usually in the neighborhood of 13 pts of damage and it doesn't look to be firing off 25% of the time either, more like 10 - 15% tops.

 

compared to my hybrid assault which reliably double hits for around 110 energy damage, interface feels pretty lame.  moving to T4 certainly not worth it for any extra fire damage

 

thinking of switching over to interface degenerative core for the 75% chance for HP debuff.  if 13 pts of fire damage is considered moderate, don't think the cost of moving to T4 for a chance of minor toxic damage is worth it

 

can anyone shed any light on what T4 interface powers work as advertised and what ones you have found worth taking to T4?  many thanks for any feedback, could be I am just expecting too much out of some of the powers.

[Extor Prime]

Degen core, all day every day.

 

Diamagnetic too I think.

Edited December 20, 2019 by Extor Prime

[DarknessEternal]

The thing about T4 Degenerative and Reactive is the dot part only has a chance to activate if the debuff part already succeeds.

[Gulbasaur]

They all work, but the way it's programmed is just much stricter than comparable effects in the game. Each separate tick of damage has to roll, in sequence, and if one fails then the whole thing stops, and a separate roll is made for the debuff. 

 

Most start off with a 25% cancel-on-miss chance for the debuff, then another for each subsequent damage tick so you get hard diminishing returns until you hit T4 when suddenly it swings round to being useful.

 

It's more or less 25% of 25% for the first tick of damage to happen, as there is a 25% chance to activate and then a second 25% for the damage tick, with further 25% rolls all the way down, which means that you're at about 6.25% chance for one damage tick. For the ones with a lower chance for the debuff, it's even worse. 

 

At T4, you'll be ticking very regularly - one in four hits will start the chain, from which you'll get a 75% chance for each tick, and then 75% for each subsequent one with diminishing returns. Chances are that when it ticks, you'll get about 3 ticks of damage out. 

 

But yeah, it's annoying. The -HP debuff is probably one of the more useful ones out there and at T4 the damage tick goes off often enough to feel useful. 

 

tldr: Get to T4 as quickly as possible. Ones with bigger chances to hit work much better because of the cancel-on-miss mechanic. 

Edited December 21, 2019 by Gulbasaur

[kendo339]

12 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

They all work, but the way it's programmed is just much stricter than comparable effects in the game. Each separate tick of damage has to roll, in sequence, and if one fails then the whole thing stops, and a separate roll is made for the debuff. 

 

Most start off with a 25% cancel-on-miss chance for the debuff, then another for each subsequent damage tick so you get hard diminishing returns until you hit T4 when suddenly it swings round to being useful.

 

It's more or less 25% of 25% for the first tick of damage to happen, as there is a 25% chance to activate and then a second 25% for the damage tick, with further 25% rolls all the way down, which means that you're at about 6.25% chance for one damage tick. For the ones with a lower chance for the debuff, it's even worse. 

 

At T4, you'll be ticking very regularly - one in four hits will start the chain, from which you'll get a 75% chance for each tick, and then 75% for each subsequent one with diminishing returns. Chances are that when it ticks, you'll get about 3 ticks of damage out. 

 

But yeah, it's annoying. The -HP debuff is probably one of the more useful ones out there and at T4 the damage tick goes off often enough to feel useful. 

 

tldr: Get to T4 as quickly as possible. Ones with bigger chances to hit work much better because of the cancel-on-miss mechanic. 

I am at T4 and that is why it has been so disappointing.  I am running T4 Core Flawless, which is supposed to have 75% chance for a resist debuff and 25% chance for "moderate" fire DOT.  the DOT rarely goes off, have never seen more than 1 tick (when DOTs should hit for multiple ticks) and when I do see a tick of damage it is for 13 points of fire damage.

[MTeague]

I suppose any ticks > 0 are better than not having an interface power slotted at all, but that's interesting. 

It does make me wonder if the 25% chance to debuff, 75% chance to DoT options are better than the 75% chance to debuff, 25% chance to DoT options.

[Gulbasaur]

4 hours ago, kendo339 said:

I am at T4 and that is why it has been so disappointing.  I am running T4 Core Flawless, which is supposed to have 75% chance for a resist debuff and 25% chance for "moderate" fire DOT.  the DOT rarely goes off, have never seen more than 1 tick (when DOTs should hit for multiple ticks) and when I do see a tick of damage it is for 13 points of fire damage.

If I've understood it correctly (which I think I have, with some margin for error), the single DoT should be going off about once every five or six hits with two dots less than once in every twenty. I'm not sure if the debuff cancel-on-miss impacts the damage rolls, but I think they do... I could be wrong, though so please correct me if that's the case. 

 

For the ones that have more than two effects, I haven't tested them so I don't know at all. I also don't know if they're effected by the guaranteed hit or miss mechanics. 

 

Anyway, the numbers behind it are, if I am right (which I might not be): 

If the debuff cancel-on-miss impacts the chance for damage:

	Debuff	1 tick	2 ticks	3 ticks	4 ticks	5 ticks
Core	75.00%	18.75%	4.69%	1.17%	0.29%	0.07%
Radial	25.00%	18.75%	14.06%	10.55%	7.91%	5.93%

 

I did some testing and for Degenerative Radial, this seems to be the case:

Chance for each tick of damage:

		1 tick	2 ticks	3 ticks	4 ticks	5 ticks
Core	75.00%	25.00%	6.25%	1.56%	0.39%	0.10%
Radial	25.00%	75.00%	56.25%	42.19%	31.64%	23.73%

 

So it seems like Core is less efficient unless your debuff is one of the more efficient ones, such as the Degenerative -HP one on AVs and GMs and arguably a few others. The others do have more niche uses, but I think Degenerative still wins for all-round utility due to the -1000HP debuff being pretty darn snazzy. Powersets with lots of quick attacks (claws, masterminds through pets etc) will get more bang for their buck as they do more rolls to start the chain within the average combat situation. 

 

EDIT I did some testing. 40 Brawls on a ritki pylon resulted in 75 damage ticks (I copied the combat logs into Notepad++, I didn't sit and count them). An attack to tick ratio of 40:75 is a tick rate of 187%, or around two ticks on average. With more testing, I could get better numbers, but I got bored.

 

It looks like the debuff hitting or missing does not impact the chance for the first damage tick. I averaged just under two ticks per hit, which is about right for what I've worked out.

 

tldr for real this time: Take Radial unless you really, really, really need the debuff.

 

Edited December 21, 2019 by Gulbasaur
Did some testing

[kendo339]

great information Gulbasaur, thank you !

 

I took core for the debuff on an archery blaster to help overcome some of the resistance to lethal.  apparently the combat log doesn't record the debuff hitting, so cannot confirm it is applying and stacking as advertised.  will look at copying some logs from longer fights with an EB and should be able to see the same power doing more damage as the fight progresses 

 

with the relatively fast attacks in archery, I should be able to stack 3 - 4 debuffs, and figured having a 7.5 - 10% resist debuff going would be a decent perk.  the DOT would just be a little extra on top but wouldn't have tried to rush to T4 if I had your analysis of how infrequent those DoT ticks would be.  or how little damage it actually added, when it did hit

looks like degenerative is the way to go and pretty easy to get to T3 if I want the 75% chance for subtracting HPs.