wai Cold Shields not affected by Power Boost

[Zirilion]

Cold shields are flagged to ignore all Power Boost type effects when other shields (i.e. Force Field) do not.  Looking at City of Data, it shows that all parts of the Cold shields (Def/Res) ignore Power Boost type powers whereas powers such as force field shields correctly buff the defense part but ignore the resistance component.

 

As far as I know, this bug with Cold shields have been around a long time and it would be great to see this finally fixed.

[Apparition]

56 minutes ago, Zirilion said:

Cold shields are flagged to ignore all Power Boost type effects when other shields (i.e. Force Field) do not.  Looking at City of Data, it shows that all parts of the Cold shields (Def/Res) ignore Power Boost type powers whereas powers such as force field shields correctly buff the defense part but ignore the resistance component.

 

As far as I know, this bug with Cold shields have been around a long time and it would be great to see this finally fixed.

 

It's not a bug.  It's intended behavior.  Power Boost does not work on any power that does +res (other than Toxic damage), and is not supposed to work.

[Bill Z Bubba]

17 minutes ago, Apparition said:

It's not a bug.  It's intended behavior.  Power Boost does not work on any power that does +res (other than Toxic damage), and is not supposed to work.

Intended at one time, perhaps. But now we can separate a power's boosts and get them to work properly.

 

Take Personal Force Field for example. It buffs Self +Def, Res(All except Toxic) but only the +Res portion of the power is set to ignore enhancements and other boosts.

 

If it can be done for some powers, it should be done for them all.

https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=defender_buff.force_field.personal_force_field&at=defender

[Zirilion]

15 hours ago, Apparition said:

 

It's not a bug.  It's intended behavior.  Power Boost does not work on any power that does +res (other than Toxic damage), and is not supposed to work.

So if that's the intended behavior, doesn't that seem unfair specifically to cold?  Every other defense/resist power that I'm aware of has only the defense element affected by power boost while ignoring the resist part of the power.  To single out cold as the only defensive shield in the game that is not affected by Power Boost seems inherently wrong.

 

Plus Bill Z pointed out other powers (Like Personal Force Field) don't have this drawback so why should cold?

[BillyMailman]

Yeah, there may once have been a general rule, but there definitely isn't one now. Providing some data points to help clarify things:

 

Cold Domination's shields have the whole power un-boostable, despite being mostly defense, and only a little bit of resistance.

Force Field's shields, on the other hand, have the components separated.

Moving away from Defender, an Ice/ Tanker's Wet Ice power has the parts tagged separately, even though it's almost entirely a resist power, as do an SR/ Tanker's auto powers.

But a Shield Tanker's Deflection power, despite being mostly a defense set, is completely un-boostable, meaning Power Boost will bump up their Ranged/AoE defense, but not their Melee. A Stone/ Tanker even has Crystal Armour ignore boosts, despite it not having any damage resistance at all.

Then there's things like Bio Armour's Evolving Armour power, where the whole power's tagged as ignoring boosts, but so are the individual resist and defense components, which is especially silly.

 

It's also noteworthy that this weirdness doesn't see to extend to debuffs. Melt Armour, e.g., allows boosting the -def component only. As do Sleet, Fallout, Slowed Response, etc.

[UberGuy]

Crystal Armor is probably a doubly out-of-date oversight, as I believe it long ago provided psi damage resistance.

 

More things that suffer from this are any Reconstruction-like power, which combines self-healing with +resist (usually to Toxic damage). They all ignore external boosts, which makes them immune to +heal set bonuses and, probably more whack (though nice if you're the user), -heal effects from things like Poison/Weaken.

 

The inconsistency is almost certainly one borne of lack of revisiting powers once per-attribmod blocking of external became a feature of the game. So it's not a bug in a strict sense - this is how the powers were built on purpose. But they could, in theory, be revisited. Edit: Note that +def powers may not be left entirely alone if this is removed, as sometimes this seems to be used as a balance consideration. Comparing Cold to FF "boost-ability" in a vacuum is not valid - Cold does things that FF does not, and generally Cold is considered better for it.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2021 by UberGuy

[macskull]

On 3/2/2021 at 4:52 PM, BillyMailman said:

Yeah, there may once have been a general rule, but there definitely isn't one now. Providing some data points to help clarify things:

 

Cold Domination's shields have the whole power un-boostable, despite being mostly defense, and only a little bit of resistance.

Force Field's shields, on the other hand, have the components separated.

Moving away from Defender, an Ice/ Tanker's Wet Ice power has the parts tagged separately, even though it's almost entirely a resist power, as do an SR/ Tanker's auto powers.

But a Shield Tanker's Deflection power, despite being mostly a defense set, is completely un-boostable, meaning Power Boost will bump up their Ranged/AoE defense, but not their Melee. A Stone/ Tanker even has Crystal Armour ignore boosts, despite it not having any damage resistance at all.

Then there's things like Bio Armour's Evolving Armour power, where the whole power's tagged as ignoring boosts, but so are the individual resist and defense components, which is especially silly.

 

It's also noteworthy that this weirdness doesn't see to extend to debuffs. Melt Armour, e.g., allows boosting the -def component only. As do Sleet, Fallout, Slowed Response, etc.

There's a reason these are separated, and in the case of Cold shields it's because they can be enhanced for +res whereas FF shields cannot. As an example of what could happen, look at Fade from Dark Affinity - it was bugged for a long time for the power to not ignore strength boosts. This meant Power Boost-like powers boosted its defense but it also meant any damage bonuses the caster had would boost its resistance, which is obviously not something you want to happen. This is because damage and damage resistance are treated almost identically by the game to the point it's nearly impossible to separate them from each other. The reason you can boost the -def on debuffs like Melt Armor, Sleet, etc, is because you cannot boost -res.

[UberGuy]

Yeah, a bit of a necro, but the for powers where you can boost +def on powers that also grant +res, the +res cannot be enhanced.

• If the attribute itself is flagged, that flag blocks both external boosts and enhancement.
• If the entire power is flagged to refuse external boosts, the +res can allow enhancement without interaction from +dam effects like Build Up or red inspirations.

Right now, those are the only two options.

[Windchime]

Bringing this back from the dead, and ugh--that's butts!