So, procs...

[Galaxy Brain]

5 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

Subjective.  No different from saying that one kind of pet (cat, dog, sugar glider, hedgehog, etc.) is better than another, based on your personal preference.

 

Is a smashing damage proc with 4.5 ppm better than a smashing damage proc with 3.5 ppm?

[Luminara]

2 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

Since this is a conversation about procs, I think it's fair to mention that what you are describing is also a proc build. One version is a 6 proccer in the style of Dominate, the other a 2 purple proc with more traditional slotting. Both are benefitting from the PPM systems interaction with long recharge powers. In the case of the Hecatomb build, the two procs are contributing ~200 points of damage per cast.

 

Then I'll also mention that the actual slotting on Grav/TA build is just the five Hecatomb (sans Damage enhancement).  No sixth slot, no second proc.  I have no vested interest in either side of the debate, I'm just here for the math, and to ensure that the facts are accurate so any decision made is based on reality, not FUD, or defensive posturing, both of which have been excessively used in this thread.

 

11 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

DPS depends on your willingness to hammer the power the instant it recharges. DPA is an always-in investment, which is why the huge DPA of this power sticks out to me. Same reason Arcane Bolt is so attractive on Controllers these days. 

 

Or you can have a high DPA attack available more frequently and part of a continuous attack chain, contributing higher DPS overall and making better use of that DPA.  The end result is what matters to me, not how it's achieved, so with procs, without procs, whatever.

[Luminara]

5 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

 

Is a smashing damage proc with 4.5 ppm better than a smashing damage proc with 3.5 ppm?

 

Objectively, no, because PPM rate is only one facet.  There are other considerations, such as the expense, the powers in question and how they interact with different procs, what the build needs versus what extras it can support, which bonuses accompany each proc's set, et cetera.  It's never apples to apples, unless you're just slotting every power you have with procs exclusively.

 

That might make an interesting challenge...

[Galaxy Brain]

Just now, Luminara said:

 

Objectively, no, because PPM rate is only one facet.  There are other considerations, such as the expense, the powers in question and how they interact with different procs, what the build needs versus what extras it can support, which bonuses accompany each proc's set, et cetera.  It's never apples to apples, unless you're just slotting every power you have with procs exclusively.

 

That might make an interesting challenge...

 

If you have to choose between the two and they can go into the same power, is one better than the other?

[America's Angel]

30 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

 

If you have to choose between the two and they can go into the same power, is one better than the other?

 

This would depend on the build.

 

If Power A has a 90% proc rate for both 4.5 and 3.5 procs, and Power B  has a 90% proc rate for 4.5 procs, but a 70% proc rate for 3.5 procs, putting the 4.5 in the Power A would be a waste. (So in that situation, the 3.5 would be better in Power A than the 4.5.)

**EDIT**

I actually do this on my ss/inv. The Hecatomb damage proc works out better for my DPS in Haymaker than KO Blow.

Edited July 8, 2021 by America's Angel

[Galaxy Brain]

There is only 1 power that can take this proc in your build, with 1 slot open. Is one better than the other?

[Bionic_Flea]

36 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Subjective.  No different from saying that one kind of pet (cat, dog, sugar glider, hedgehog, etc.) is better than another, based on your personal preference.

Everyone knows that sugar gliders are rude, selfish, and just out right mean.

[oedipus_tex]

19 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

Then I'll also mention that the actual slotting on Grav/TA build is just the five Hecatomb (sans Damage enhancement).  No sixth slot, no second proc.  

 

 

 

I hate to pry, but why would you skip the second damage proc? If you're casting this power the instant it recharges to take advantage of the DPS you've established, that looks like damage loss to me. You're spending 1.5 of every ~8 seconds locked into this power. If you're not actually casting the power as it recharges, the high instant DPA version becomes more attractive. I can't picture where you would have put that slot that would be more effective if you are really hammering the power every 8 seconds. I'm not saying you couldn't do it, but where did the other slot go?

[Luminara]

1 minute ago, Galaxy Brain said:

There is only 1 power that can take this proc in your build, with 1 slot open. Is one better than the other?

 

What are the set bonuses associated with each proc?  What's my slotting in other powers?  Would I benefit more from another Movement Speed bonus, or a little more Recovery, or changing my slotting so I can use that slot more efficiently, instead of another damage proc?  Would that proc do more good for my build if I changed the slotting in a different power and put it there?

 

Objectively, there's no way to know where that jigsaw puzzle piece goes simply by looking at the edges.  I need to see the picture and the other pieces.

[Luminara]

Just now, oedipus_tex said:

I hate to pry, but why would you skip the second damage proc?

 

It's at an acceptable balance of damage output and availability for this character.

 

3 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

I'm not saying you couldn't do it, but where did the other slot go?

 

Into Fissure, so I could slot a Positron's Blast proc.  107.1 damage in a single target power, versus 71.75 damage in a 16 target power.  If I hit two, I'm dealing more extra damage overall than I would with the Unbreakable Constraint proc in Seismic Smash.  I'm also getting an opportunity to ignite OSA without having to use another power, like Apprentice Charm.

 

I never allocate a slot, or slot an enhancement, without consideration of the whole picture.

[Galaxy Brain]

35 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

What are the set bonuses associated with each proc?  What's my slotting in other powers?  Would I benefit more from another Movement Speed bonus, or a little more Recovery, or changing my slotting so I can use that slot more efficiently, instead of another damage proc?  Would that proc do more good for my build if I changed the slotting in a different power and put it there?

 

Objectively, there's no way to know where that jigsaw puzzle piece goes simply by looking at the edges.  I need to see the picture and the other pieces.

 

You are set on a damage proc, and these are your options for this power. Would you go for one over the other?

[KelvinKole]

9 hours ago, Super Atom said:

Honestly, after seeing a lot of people express their opinions and how they build and enjoy the game, nerfing procs on a whole would be a detriment to the game. However, there are a small number of procs that could be nerfed a little and some that could be beefed a little still.

 

like that dang guassians

This is beginning to hone in on a problem statement and I like it. There’s a small number of procs, like Gaussians and force feedback, that overperform due to the PPM system. Similarly, there’s a small number of powers that also overperform with proc slotting. The discussion should really be around those outliers and not the PPM mechanic as a whole. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 7/6/2021 at 3:02 PM, Myrmidon said:

 

Someone definitely wake me when this “discussion” starts up.

It’s exhibit A in my +4/x9 postmortem.

[Monos King]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

There are no bad procs, because a proc is just "something extra".

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Deflated_Ego:_Chance_for_Recovery_Debuff 

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Commanding_Presence:_Taunt/Placate_Resist 

 

Just saying. Carry on,

[Yomo Kimyata]

There are 8 new pages since I last looked, and I’m not going to read them all.

 

Procs are overpowered.  SOs are overpowered.  Inspirations are very overpowered.

 

if you all are fighting over how easy you want this game ofTic-Tac-Toe to be, so be it.  Balance and challenge left long before Live finished, so let’s just be grateful we can play and solo ITFs on SOs and inspirations.

[...]

I was the second poster on this thread with my 1 proc per power suggestion, and I've read nearly every post since then. 

 

I'd like to revise my suggestion, but first a few comments. 

 

Lotta useful discussion. Lots of chest-pounding (including my-metric-is-better-than-yours), and even some people who claim mathematical superiority but lack a deep understanding of the word optimal (Google "partially ordered set" and then ask yourself if there are mathematical structures with multiple maxima (hint: I just used the plural of maximum)). I would argue that character design in CoX requires multiple considerations, and there isn't a single optimal solution for all possible conditions. 

 

I digress. If I were a developer, I'd take as many distinct viewpoints into consideration as possible, and certainly wouldn't use a single metric, but would consider a range of performance characteristics under varying conditions. I get the feeling the current developers are doing a decent job of that. 

 

Anyway, my new suggestion is: PROC DIVERSIFICATION. 

 

At most 1 type of proc per power. All dmg procs form a single type. Debuff procs could likely form multiple types (ie both -tohit and -res could be slotted). Buff procs... well there aren't a lot of them, so I dunno.  

 

 

[Sancerre]

2 hours ago, KelvinKole said:

This is beginning to hone in on a problem statement and I like it. There’s a small number of procs, like Gaussians and force feedback, that overperform due to the PPM system. Similarly, there’s a small number of powers that also overperform with proc slotting. The discussion should really be around those outliers and not the PPM mechanic as a whole. 

 

Getting closer to the fundamental issue -- global recharge not effecting procs per minute... and more directly the abundance and flexibility to put global recharge in any build to the extreme.  one of the most obvious offenders perpetuating all of this... that has been a notorious as long as the game has existed... perma-hasten.  Force feedback proc is additionally, and specifically, is all kinds of broken because it cascades the global recharge abuse on itself.

 

the real question to ask is -- are any of these procs fundamentally a problem to the game design if global recharge did not warp their use?

on a personal level, i feel like 95% of the proc IOs are not particularly a problem with that question centered around that.

and further, the overwhelming majority of any "problem" IO procs are self-buff proc-on-hit slotted into AoE powers... where you get to leverage the relatively low proc rate on the position that it only needs to flip heads on 1 of the 16 critters hit, despite the coin being very heavily weighted towards tails.

 

Gaussian specifically... other than pairing it with judgements (which is its own issue), i dont see much issue with the concept.  i think stalkers are the only ones that really get to abuse this... and i would just say that is a perk that stalkers get to leverage.  the exact buff numbers could stand to be reviewed i suppose.

 

All that said, i currently enjoy the system (procs and hasten both) as is and would not like to see much change.  Force Feedback recharge is probably the only one specifically that i think needs a VERY hard look at (or just outright removed).

[Olerus]

7 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

I think the person who brought up Gaussian's really hit the nail on the head on the problem with a PPM system. The value of proc chance isn't linear. There is added value as a proc approaches greater certainty. Just the fact that you know the proc is very likely to trigger increases the value of the effect.

 

This is true with non-damaging procs: Gaussian's, Force Feedback, Theft of Essence, Decimation, Lockdown.

 

This isn't really mathematically true in most scenarios for damaging procs. It can be pretty clearly shown that the difference between a 4s and an 8s recharging attack is minimal in most areas where single target is desired, with most of the difference being due to animation times.  Which is to say, PPM does do what it says.  At 0% global recharge, a 4s attack will trigger a normal damage proc 3.5 times per minute and an 8s attack will trigger it close to 3.5 times per minute as well.

 

Basically, if you capped proc chances at half the current max (45%) but doubled their effectiveness, damage procs would largely be unchanged.  Some powers that reliably 1-shot minions will now have a slightly higher chance of not doing so, but the time to clear bosses and AVs will not change and might actually decrease with more local recharge being slottable in big powers.  This is not true for Gaussian's allowing you to reliably 2-shot bosses or nuke away non-bosses, or Lockdown reliably taking out a boss with a single hold.  Make those unreliable, and the entire playstyle and viability changes.  

 

The real thing boosting proc rates is global recharge.  Instead of each 3.5 PPM proc adding 4 DPS, it adds 12 DPS at 200% global recharge.  Likewise, instead of 11 DPS, 4.5 PPM procs are adding 33.  This was true even with flat proc rates though, as high global recharge made it possible to do things like keep Force Feedback nigh-permanent with Foot Stomp and also made it easier to chain low-animation time powers together even if the recharges were long, making sets with low animations fundamentally even better at dealing damage.  So realistically speaking, this wasn't new to I24 (even discounting the P2W PPM procs).  Global recharge has been making procs more powerful since 2007 and the invention of Inventions.  

 

And as mentioned, the difference these are adding is not as large as what Incarnates add.  Judgments add 200-300 damage per second when hitting max targets, something no amount of single target attacks procced to the gills will match.  Lore pets add 200-300 damage per second while out to a single target, and Banished Pantheon can functionally add much more than that by lowering resistances for an entire league.  Hybrid Assault acts as a massive, crazy strong proc.  

 

 

[Myrmidon]

5 hours ago, Monos King said:

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Deflated_Ego:_Chance_for_Recovery_Debuff 

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Commanding_Presence:_Taunt/Placate_Resist 

 

Just saying. Carry on,

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Triumphant_Insult:_Chance_to_Disorient
 

You missed one.

[oedipus_tex]

5 hours ago, Olerus said:

And as mentioned, the difference these are adding is not as large as what Incarnates add.  Judgments add 200-300 damage per second when hitting max targets, something no amount of single target attacks procced to the gills will match.  Lore pets add 200-300 damage per second while out to a single target, and Banished Pantheon can functionally add much more than that by lowering resistances for an entire league.  Hybrid Assault acts as a massive, crazy strong proc.  

 

 

Yeah I agree about incarnates. I'm just keeping quiet about them because I'm managing my message board aggro. 😄

 

Might as well mention that a single Level Shift that shifts you from +4 down to +3 is worth around +30% damage IIRC and -30% damage taken. That's 'true' damage, meaning a multiplier on a multiplier. So, in most cases every end game character is hitting enemies 30% harder with attrib damage, Judgment, procs, and Hybrid than they would be if they actually had to fight +4 enemies.  

[aethereal]

6 hours ago, Olerus said:

 

This is true with non-damaging procs: Gaussian's, Force Feedback, Theft of Essence, Decimation, Lockdown.

 

This isn't really mathematically true in most scenarios for damaging procs. It can be pretty clearly shown that the difference between a 4s and an 8s recharging attack is minimal in most areas where single target is desired, with most of the difference being due to animation times.  Which is to say, PPM does do what it says.  At 0% global recharge, a 4s attack will trigger a normal damage proc 3.5 times per minute and an 8s attack will trigger it close to 3.5 times per minute as well.

 

I think the slight complication of this is that because most medium-end and higher builds build a lot of global recharge, the value of fast-recharging powers quickly gets capped in a way that slow-recharging powers do not.  If you're running permahasten (180% global recharge), then a power that has an 8s base recharge recharges in 2.86 seconds.  A power with a 4s base recharge recharges in 1.43 seconds.  A power with a 3s base recharge recharges in 1.07 seconds.

 

Since recharge doesn't start until animation of a power finishes, you can't have a one-power attack chain in CoH (and other factors work against that too -- like you want a power that can hold -res, but that's not your highest DPA power, etc).  If you have a 3 power attack chain, the smallest that people realistically ever have, that devalues recharge that's < the summed animation times of the other two powers.  But you still pay for that recharge time both in base damage and proc rate.

 

This is part of what pushes people towards 15 second recharge time powers.  (The other is reliability in your damage output when not at the infinite limit).

[Bill Z Bubba]

53 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

Yeah I agree about incarnates. I'm just keeping quiet about them because I'm managing my message board aggro.

 

Maybe it's due to how much more tanking I've done since the unsnappening compared to before the snap but I say bring ALL the aggro! Example to follow.

 

We can all accept that procs are only part of the power creep problem. But they are a part of it and just nerfing procs won't be enough. Let's fix ALL the problems at once!

 

For procs, let's ED the issue. Got 1 proc in a power at 3.5 PPM? Great, it's still 3.5 PPM. Stick 2 3.5 PPM procs in a power and they BOTH become 2.5 PPM. 3 procs drops all 3 to 1.5 PPM.

 

For inspirations, purge insp storage across the board outside of your insp tray. Remove them from the markets, no base storage, block them from email completely. No insp stores in bases either. The *only* place you can buy them is the medic in a hospital and they will never sell anything but T1 insps.

 

On the incarnate front, purge level shifting. Completely. Nothing level shifts ever. 54s are 54s and 50s are 50s. And then double the recharge stats on all the incarnate powers.

[Bionic_Flea]

*Breaks out all the auto-hit powers to use on BillZ*

 

That's just crazy talk!  Let's not get carried away.

[Parabola]

39 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Maybe it's due to how much more tanking I've done since the unsnappening compared to before the snap but I say bring ALL the aggro! Example to follow.

 

We can all accept that procs are only part of the power creep problem. But they are a part of it and just nerfing procs won't be enough. Let's fix ALL the problems at once!

 

For procs, let's ED the issue. Got 1 proc in a power at 3.5 PPM? Great, it's still 3.5 PPM. Stick 2 3.5 PPM procs in a power and they BOTH become 2.5 PPM. 3 procs drops all 3 to 1.5 PPM.

 

For inspirations, purge insp storage across the board outside of your insp tray. Remove them from the markets, no base storage, block them from email completely. No insp stores in bases either. The *only* place you can buy them is the medic in a hospital and they will never sell anything but T1 insps.

 

On the incarnate front, purge level shifting. Completely. Nothing level shifts ever. 54s are 54s and 50s are 50s. And then double the recharge stats on all the incarnate powers.

Well I've already demonstrated my 'happy to watch the world burn' credentials in this thread so why not!

 

In all seriousness though I would totally get behind the limits on inspirations and particularly removing level shifts. In my anything but humble opinion level shifts were one of the worst thought out design decisions made by the original devs (alongside several other bad design decisions in the incarnate system). In a game with a fixed ceiling of enemy difficulty artificially lowering that ceiling while simultaneously adding powerful new abilities to characters was not a good idea. Apart from anything it just doesn't make me feel more super, just that all my enemies have suddenly had a hand tied behind their backs.

 

I'm not sure ED on procs is the answer for proc balance though. For a start it wouldn't deal with those single procs like gaussian's that some regard as problematic and it also wouldn't address the disparities between what different powers and AT's get from procs. I think for this issue a more targetted case by case approach is probably needed.

[Apparition]

55 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

For inspirations, purge insp storage across the board outside of your insp tray. Remove them from the markets, no base storage, block them from email completely. No insp stores in bases either. The *only* place you can buy them is the medic in a hospital and they will never sell anything but T1 insps.

 

 

That would certainly make some Hamidon raids impossible to carry out, considering that Hamidon sometimes spawns in less than one minute of monster hunting.