Beta Decay detoggles and I am not sure why

[Icono04]

I use Beta Decay on two different characters*, a dark/atomic blaster and a rad/dark tanker. On both of them I have noticed that from time to time, Beta Decay toggles off without me noticing. I thought it might be caused by an enemy attack which randomly turns off one of my toggle powers. However, in that case it ought to be equally likely to turn off one of the other 5-6 toggle powers I am running at the same time, but in practice it only happens to BD, not to the other toggles.

So, even though I know the above is not a whole lot of information to go on, the question is: Is there some commonly-known-to-everyone-but-me reason why Beta Decay can get detoggled without any other toggles being affected?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

(*) ...which is why I am posting this question in General rather than in either of those ATs' subforum.

[Sovera]

Toggles stop working if you are stunned, held, etc. But they will not detoggle. Offensive toggles (damage or debuffs) will detoggle though. On a blaster without CC protection I imagine anything will do a micro stun or disorient and off it goes.

[rookery.]

I have noticed that as well. Be fighting along and realize Beta Decay is off but all  the other powers are still chugging along. No idea why.

[BZRKR]

On my Rad/SS tanker, if I'm herding mez heavy spawns like Carnies with their swarms of Illusionists or on MSR I might get mezzed, but due to mez resistance, it drops so fast that if I don't notice the red text, it feels no different than a spot of latency. Since Beta Decay is my only offensive toggle, it's easy to not notice that it dropped.

 

However, it's possible that you are seeing something different since it's happening on your Blaster too.

[The_Warpact]

Use your edit tab shut everything off except for damage taken, and relevant chat related to combat.

Run mishes watch for de toggle, look at chat log and it should say what happened. 

[ForeverLaxx]

It's very simple. Beta Decay is a toggle that affects enemies. All toggles that affect enemies, be that with damage, debuffs, or anything else, will shut off when you're overcome by a mez effect. Toggles that are only buffs for you/allies will not shut down, such as Tactics, Maneuvers, Tough, or Weave.

 

The reason Beta Decay is the only one that shuts off when you're mezzed is because it's your only "offensive" toggle active.

[SuperPlyx]

I have multiple /rad  toons and it is so annoying. I asked once somewhere if it couldn't be changed. The answers were not promising 

[Rishidian]

I have several toons where some toggles are deactivated unexpectedly.  I've learned to deal with it.

 

Would be nice if there was an enhancement that provided De-Toggle Protection.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Detoggling has been explained over and over around here lately. It's even partially explained by @ForeverLaxx in this thread. In a sense, there is really no such thing as "unexpected detoggling." Meaning, there is always a reason why one or more of your toggles dropped. 

 

Offensive Toggles (e.g., Beta Decay): If you get mezzed, even if it's only for a split second (i.e., you got hit by a sleep, but it didn't last long enough for you to notice because you were then healed or damaged right away, thus, breaking the sleep), then your offensive toggles will drop.

 

Defensive Toggles: I'm fairly certain the only ways these can drop is if you click them off, you die, or you run out of end.

 

This game has very little challenge and tactics and such left in it as is, let's not advocate making it even easier by suggesting the enemies should never, ever be able to detoggle us. As it is, you can build for and/or plan for keeping your toggles from dropping by knowing what causes them to drop, what type of toggle they fall under, and adjusting your playstyle accordingly.

[siolfir]

6 hours ago, ForeverLaxx said:

Beta Decay is a toggle that affects enemies. All toggles that affect enemies, be that with damage, debuffs, or anything else, will shut off when you're overcome by a mez effect.

There's an exception for Entropic Aura, but that's because it is your mez protection toggle and the enemy effect was added later. It suppresses, instead. Prior to moving the enemy effect and taunt to Entropic Aura, Energy Cloak was the taunt toggle for Brutes (once it was added) and had the same situation, where it suppressed instead of detoggled - before that, Energy Aura didn't have any enemy effecting toggles.

 

As an example for the OP, you can look at Alpha Barrier in CoD and compare it to Beta Decay. Under Activation Details for Alpha Barrier you'll see a green icon with hovertext that indicates reads Toggle Ignores Hold, Sleep, Stun - meaning it doesn't get shut off - but in the PvE Standard Effects section you'll see that there is an icon indicating that the resistance is flagged to Cancel When Held, Sleep, Stun. That's how the toggle is set to stay active (ignore the mez status) and but be suppressed (cancel the effect of the toggle) while you are mezzed. Checking Beta Decay, you'll see both of those icons are missing: since it doesn't ignore the mez status, it shuts off when mezzed and there's no need to have the tag on the specific effects that it does. This lines up with other offensive toggles like Death Shroud.

Edited March 12, 2021 by siolfir
adding in more junk about why Energy Aura is weird

[oedipus_tex]

What determines if a toggle detoggles on mezz or not is how that power is flagged by the designer and not because the combat system recognizes offensive vs defensive toggles per se. It's generally true that powers that effect enemies will detoggle on mezz and powers that don't will not, but there are some exceptions, mainly with powers that buff caster while debuffing enemies (e.g. the various Blaster sustains that are also enemy debuffs).

 

 

The usual recipe for a power that buffs the caster is two parts, the first of which is in the power's main code that prevents the detoggling. Without this piece of code, any Hold Sleep or Stun will detoggle the power (even defensive ones):

 

There's then an individual tag on each specific effect within the power that should suppress when mezzed. Without this, the effect will still work even through the mezz. This piece of code is what causes, for example, Force Field's bubble to stop providing Defense while the FF'er is asleep.

 

 

I didn't look at all versions of Radiation Armor, but the Scrapper version I looked at didn't have Beta Decay tagged to ignore those mezzes. 

 

 

 

 

Making a power like Cauterizing Aura not damage enemies while the caster is mezzed requires some custom footwork on behalf of the power designer:

 

 

Weirdly I think the code above means Cauterizing Aura damage aura suppresses when the caster is Held, Stunned, Slept or Terrified, which is not how toggles usually work. Cauterizing Aura's heal will also continue to buff you even while you're mezzed--even Tanker armor toggles I know of don't do this.


FWIW I've been pushing for a long time for powers like Arctic Air, Choking Cloud, etc to get the ToggleIgnores tags and suppress on mezz instead. Those powers are punished very harshly for appearing on archetypes without native mezz protection.

Edited March 12, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[TygerDarkstorm]

Thank you for the more detailed explanation @oedipus_tex