Power Up interaction with Epic Defense (Frozen Armor, Scorpion Shield)

[Onlyasandwich]

I've been running my lovely Grav/Energy build and having a great time. 

 

It finally came time for me to slot up Frozen armor and - whoops, Power Up doesn't seem to be affecting it at all! Was there a memo I missed about it not affecting epic defense armors at all? It affects my pool defense powers just fine. I checked in Combat Attributes and its S/L contribution doesn't move a millimeter even for a second with Power Up on.

 

Mids is showing it boosted of course. Fairly disappointing if this is by design - perhaps an oversight?

[blaythesteuer]

Power Up doesn’t seem to affect Link Minds either 😞

[Carnifax]

It won't affect anything with +Res, which Frozen armour has (on the plus side you can slot the Res uniques in it). Scorp has unslottable Energy Res I think (so it won't PB or take the Res uniques)

 

Even if it did work it would only last for power boosts lifetime because toggle shields work by continuously casting a short duration buff.

[Carnifax]

1 minute ago, blaythesteuer said:

Power Up doesn’t seem to affect Link Minds either 😞

That'll be the incredible 1.7% psi resistance it gives you.

[blaythesteuer]

1 minute ago, Carnifax said:

That'll be the incredible 1.7% psi resistance it gives you.

and i would still like to have it 😛

[Carnifax]

Just now, blaythesteuer said:

and i would still like to have it 😛

What really hurts is that the description says "dramatically increases psi resistance".

[Onlyasandwich]

39 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

short duration buff.

 

Thank you for clarifying the reason it doesn't work.

 

I did get that it would only last for 10 seconds on a toggle. The plan was to use it as a sort of quick defense boost to softcap when needed in a tight spot, but we'll have to do without I suppose!

 

I wonder if they excluded these toggles for balance reasons, or some coding limitation that would otherwise force power boost type effects to enhance the damage resist alongside defense, even if power boost isn't flagged to enhance resist to begin with.

 

Oh well! Who needs softcap when you have perma-dom, right?

 

 

[macskull]

3 hours ago, Onlyasandwich said:

I wonder if they excluded these toggles for balance reasons, or some coding limitation that would otherwise force power boost type effects to enhance the damage resist alongside defense, even if power boost isn't flagged to enhance resist to begin with.

Coding limitation. If a power provides both enhanceable resistance and enhanceable defense, that power has to ignore outside strength buffs (e.g. Power Boost, Clarion). If it didn't, the resistance portion would also be affected by outside strength buffs. This sounds kind of like a "whatever, no big deal," until you learn that the eldritch gods which coded this game somehow inextricably linked damage and damage resistance together, so any damage bonus you have would also affect how much resistance you are getting. Fade from Dark Affinity was bugged in this way for quite a while - you could chomp a whole bunch of reds and get some silly resistance values out of it.

[Mezmera]

10 hours ago, Onlyasandwich said:

I've been running my lovely Grav/Energy build and having a great time. 

 

It finally came time for me to slot up Frozen armor and - whoops, Power Up doesn't seem to be affecting it at all! Was there a memo I missed about it not affecting epic defense armors at all? It affects my pool defense powers just fine. I checked in Combat Attributes and its S/L contribution doesn't move a millimeter even for a second with Power Up on.

 

Mids is showing it boosted of course. Fairly disappointing if this is by design - perhaps an oversight?

 

On my Energy dom the 4th power pool I take is Force of Will.  I'll Power Up that mighty Unleash Potential.  I have it slotted well with defense so it regularly nets me 20% defense to all and power boosted it nets me another 10%.  30% defense for a minute down for a minute and a half then right back ain't nothing to sneeze at, especially when I just can cycle in Barrier and alternate the two, then there's Demonic if I ever feel the need.  

 

But yeah you can't boost values of powers with resistance coded in like the others are saying.  The short bursts of added defense to things like Weave is nice while Power Up is active but long lasting clickable defense buffs without resistance coded in is the thing you want to make most use of with having access to Power Up.  

 

I feel like the old devs knew how well power boost interacted with long lasting clickable buffs so I think that's pretty much why you'll notice all of the power sets with a self affecting clickable defense buff have resistance coded into the power as well so that power boosting didn't make things too strong.  Except for Time which wasn't on Live and had most of its refinement done by the player devs.  Link Minds though should just give way better psi resistance than just a measly 1.7% .   

Edited May 24, 2021 by Mezmera

[Carnifax]

9 hours ago, Onlyasandwich said:

 

Thank you for clarifying the reason it doesn't work.

 

I did get that it would only last for 10 seconds on a toggle. The plan was to use it as a sort of quick defense boost to softcap when needed in a tight spot, but we'll have to do without I suppose!

 

I wonder if they excluded these toggles for balance reasons, or some coding limitation that would otherwise force power boost type effects to enhance the damage resist alongside defense, even if power boost isn't flagged to enhance resist to begin with.

 

Oh well! Who needs softcap when you have perma-dom, right?

 

 

Like Mezmera says FoW can be an excellent choice for a Domi with Power Boost in their secondary. It's basically a Tier 9 defense power along the lines of Stalker / Scrapper Ice Tier 9. 

 

Most of the Origin Pools are attractive for Domis. Sorcery RoP isn't hugely useful for them but Enflame does a lot of damage on a Domi and most Domis get a nice pet to cast it on. Experimentations Corrosive Vial is still terrible but Adrenal Booster is okay for them (+Dam, +Recharge and +Special). 

[oedipus_tex]

For some additional background, the technical reason Resistance and Damage are tied together this way is because the concept of "element type" precedes the concept of "damage" or "resistance" in the stat tables. 

 

What I mean is the game defines the elemental Attribs as kSmashing, kFire, kCold, kEnergy etc.  

 

The tables for each attrib then have the following rows: 

• CUR  - a percent of current value (used for Healing powers that heal a percent etc)
• STR - this is what modifies the Strength of an effect (Aim, Build Up, red insps, etc)
• ABS - the absolute amount of damage
• MAX - modifies the Maximum value (used for powers that raise max HP or max endurance etc) 
• RES - this is what modifies Resistance

 

Fire Resistance for example is really just a change to the kFire attrib, RES aspect. Fire Damage is just the kFire attrib, ABS attrib. +Fire Strength is kFire attrib, STR attrib. The game's texts explains that last one as "+Global Fire Damage." But really it's just a Power Boost type effect to everything connected to kFire, and if the developers didn't manually flag every enhanceable Fire Resistance power, hitting Build Up would indeed Power Boost your resistance shields.

 

TLDR like others said above, if a power has enhanceable Resistance, it is normally flagged to IgnoreStrength to make sure resistance doesn't mutiply.

 

There are a couple of powers that have some resistance but you can still Power Boost because the Resistance isn't enhanceable. Perhaps the most noteable example is Force Field's Deflection Shield, which provides Toxic Resistance, but you can still Power Boost because the Resistance is not enhanceable.

Edited May 24, 2021 by oedipus_tex

[siolfir]

4 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

if a power has enhanceable Resistance, it is normally flagged to IgnoreStrength to make sure resistance doesn't mutiply.

Yeah, first I learned of this was when Willpower was in beta. Brutes were getting ridiculous resistance numbers out of High Pain Tolerance, which provides 5.625% resistance to all.

It was missing the flag to ignore outside buffs, and Fury was pushing the resistance to silly levels.

[oedipus_tex]

1 hour ago, siolfir said:

Yeah, first I learned of this was when Willpower was in beta. Brutes were getting ridiculous resistance numbers out of High Pain Tolerance, which provides 5.625% resistance to all.

It was missing the flag to ignore outside buffs, and Fury was pushing the resistance to silly levels.

 

 

Yeah apparently there's also been some issues in the past with STR powers boosting other STR powers. 

 

One thing about the stats in this game, they are very literal minded. Damage is handled exactly the same as ToHit, Perception, etc. If a stat exists, it generally has some CUR ABS STR and RES implementation somewhere. So for example, there is theoretically such a thing as Power Boost for Translucency or Only Affect Self Resistance. Whether modifying those numbers would have an actual effect is a different question of course.