Repulsing Torrent (and Frost) have too-low crits

[aethereal]

This isn't based on gameplay, just was examining CoD, so it's possible the problem is in CoD, not the actual game.

 

Or it's possible it's WAI, but I don't understand why it would be.

 

Repulsing Torrent

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=scrapper_melee.kinetic_attack.repulsing_torrent&at=scrapper

 

Repulsing Torrent's PvE damage is:

 

17.2044 points of Energy damage

51.6132 points of Smashing damage

 

That's a total of 68.8176 damage

 

Its critical damage is only 50.0492 points of Energy damage.

 

I think that it should be the normal 68.8176 (that is, a crit should double the damage of the power).

 

Commentary:  There are a few powers that have lower-than-usual crits because they are extremely strong powers.  For example, Energy Transfer has a small crit.  Repulsing Torrent is no Energy Transfer.  It has one of the lowest DPAs of any scrapper cones (only Titan Weapon's Defensive Sweep comes in lower).  Its secondary effect is an 80% chance of mag 6-ish KB, which is arguably a disadvantage of a power in a melee set, not an advantage -- certainly not so strong that it needs a nerfed crit.  It's certainly a very big cone (with a 40' radius and a 45 degree arc), but compare to Throw Spines, which has a 30' radius, a 90 degree arc, a 20% better DPA, and a full-strength crit.

 

Honestly, I'm not sure if this was a straight up mistake in coding the power or an ill-conceived balance decision, but it seems egregious enough to me that I'm at least floating the idea that it's a bug.

 

Frost

 

Scrapper: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=scrapper_melee.ice_melee.frost&at=scrapper

Stalker:  https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=stalker_melee.ice_melee.frost&at=stalker

 

For Scrappers, Frost's PvE damage is:

 

16.8916 points of Cold damage (all affected targets) every 0.2s for 1.1s

 

That's a total of 101.3496 damage

 

Its critical damage is only 87.8363.

 

Stalker situation is basically the same, to its own scalars.

 

I think it should be the normal 101.3496 (that is, a crit should double the damage of the power).

 

Commentary:  Frost is a better power overall than Repulsing Torrent.  Its DPA is middle-of-the-road for a cone, it has a somewhat better-than-usual radius (that is also enhanceable), and it's frankly in a better overall set than Repulsing Torrent.  But it isn't an outlier crazy good power that needs special treatment like Energy Transfer, and it seems unlikely that anyone will really notice a 15% bonus to crit damage on Frost as a special thing.  This seems like another situation where it should just be regularized.

[aethereal]

These crits were not (seemingly) changed in the latest page, so thought I'd just bump this for attention.

[Bopper]

On 1/17/2022 at 6:00 PM, aethereal said:

These crits were not (seemingly) changed in the latest page, so thought I'd just bump this for attention.

 

Looking into these two powers, there appears to be some context behind why there is a discrepancy. In short, both powers are doing damage that is greater than what the design formula would allow. So the smaller crit seems to put the total damage closer to what the design formula would suggest.

 

Repulsing Torrent: 12s recharge, 40' radius, 45' arc.

Design Formula says this power should do 0.958 scale damage. However the power is doing 1.10 scale damage. The crit damage of 0.8 makes a total crit damage of 1.90. The design formula's scale would suggest this should be a 1.916 total crit damage. Pretty close.

 

Frost: 11s recharge, 10' radius, 90' arc.

For melee cones (radius less than 20'), a 2' discount is used for calculating the design formula's damage scale. So 11s with 8' radius and 90' arc would suggest the damage scale should be 1.506. Frost does 6 ticks of 0.27 scale damage which equates to 1.62 scale. The 1.404 crit scale is actually the correct scale if we used 10' radius instead of 8' radius. But nonetheless, 1.62 + 1.404 = 3.024. If we used the 1.506 and doubled it, it would be 3.012 scale. Pretty close.

 

I figure I share that since I noticed your bug report never got responses and it had me curious so I chose to dig into it. I hope my findings help. I don't know if this is the purpose for why you're seeing smaller crits, as I'm sure it's not consistent for all cone attacks (at least I assume so, I haven't looked). It just seemed in these two examples this could be a reason for it.

[jojogladco]

On 2/13/2022 at 2:21 PM, Bopper said:

 

Looking into these two powers, there appears to be some context behind why there is a discrepancy. In short, both powers are doing damage that is greater than what the design formula would allow. So the smaller crit seems to put the total damage closer to what the design formula would suggest.

 

Repulsing Torrent: 12s recharge, 40' radius, 45' arc.

Design Formula says this power should do 0.958 scale damage. However the power is doing 1.10 scale damage. The crit damage of 0.8 makes a total crit damage of 1.90. The design formula's scale would suggest this should be a 1.916 total crit damage. Pretty close.

 

Frost: 11s recharge, 10' radius, 90' arc.

For melee cones (radius less than 20'), a 2' discount is used for calculating the design formula's damage scale. So 11s with 8' radius and 90' arc would suggest the damage scale should be 1.506. Frost does 6 ticks of 0.27 scale damage which equates to 1.62 scale. The 1.404 crit scale is actually the correct scale if we used 10' radius instead of 8' radius. But nonetheless, 1.62 + 1.404 = 3.024. If we used the 1.506 and doubled it, it would be 3.012 scale. Pretty close.

 

I figure I share that since I noticed your bug report never got responses and it had me curious so I chose to dig into it. I hope my findings help. I don't know if this is the purpose for why you're seeing smaller crits, as I'm sure it's not consistent for all cone attacks (at least I assume so, I haven't looked). It just seemed in these two examples this could be a reason for it.

Question @Bopper, Took me forever to find it, but Powerhouse said on discord back on 2/8/21 that pure DOT attacks get a 7.3% buff in the damage formula. So Frost should come out to 1.616 scale right?

 

Which is really close to the 1.62 we see in game. It seems like the regular damage is being correctly calculated using the 2' discount and the 7.3% buff, but the critical is obeying the base damage formula. 

[Bopper]

3 minutes ago, jojogladco said:

Question @Bopper, Took me forever to find it, but Powerhouse said on discord back on 2/8/21 that pure DOT attacks get a 7.3% buff in the damage formula. So Frost should come out to 1.616 scale right?

 

Which is really close to the 1.62 we see in game. It seems like the regular damage is being correctly calculated using the 2' discount and the 7.3% buff, but the critical is obeying the base damage formula. 

I'm not sure how to interpret CPH's comment. He might have been speaking to all DoTs being 7.3% more, or he was just speaking to Gloom. I'm not sure honestly, but if it's the former it seems to fit what you are noticing. Since the crit isn't a DoT, it shouldn't get a buff.

[aethereal]

On 2/25/2022 at 3:46 PM, Bopper said:

Since the crit isn't a DoT, it shouldn't get a buff.

 

I disagree with the last sentence.  It is clearly the case that crits typically sum up the damage of the whole DoT, we don't typically have a case where crits are lower because they're not DoT.

 

For example:

 

Frozen Touch does 11 ticks of 16.5788 damage (Scrapper values), for a total of 182.3688.  Its crit damage is 182.6796

Incinerate does 10 ticks of 15.6404 damage, for a total of 156.404.  Its crit damage is 156.4038

Shadow Maul does 8 ticks of 12.6562 damage, for a total of 101.2496.  Its crit damage is 101.2433

[Bopper]

On 10/25/2022 at 11:11 AM, aethereal said:

 

I disagree with the last sentence.  It is clearly the case that crits typically sum up the damage of the whole DoT, we don't typically have a case where crits are lower because they're not DoT.

 

For example:

 

Frozen Touch does 11 ticks of 16.5788 damage (Scrapper values), for a total of 182.3688.  Its crit damage is 182.6796

Incinerate does 10 ticks of 15.6404 damage, for a total of 156.404.  Its crit damage is 156.4038

Shadow Maul does 8 ticks of 12.6562 damage, for a total of 101.2496.  Its crit damage is 101.2433

Frozen Touch and Shadow Maul, despite being DoTs, follow the design formula (no bonus). So their crit damage is appropriate for the cooldown and AoE those powers provide.

 

Incinerate...that looks like a power that needs to be looked at. 2.5 scale damage is far too high for a 10s cooldown (27.6% higher than the 1.96 scale it should be doing), and the 6.864 endurance cost is waaay too low. I'll pass this along as a bug report.

 

It is possible (small chance) this has multiple things going on. As a DoT that has no secondary affect, it might be getting a 20% discount on the design formula. If so, then the power would be treated as a 12.5s cooldown (for formula purposes only) and the power should do 2.36 scale damage. If the 7.3% buff for DoTs is supposed to be applied to the cooldown for design formula purposes, then the 12.5sx1.073 = 13.4125s and the damage scale would be 2.506 (very close to what it is now). But take that with a grain of salt, I am doing a lot of math gymnastics to get the numbers of Incinerate to make sense.

[aethereal]

I mean, design formulas are a guideline.  If the theory is that Frozen Touch should get an all-up-front crit but Frost shouldn't, this is obviously a case where the design formulas are not capturing good balance.  If the theory is that Frozen Touch is fine, but Repulsing Torrent of all things needs a nerfed crit, then dudes.  Frozen Touch is one of the premier ST attacks in the game, Repulsing Torrent is a not-very-good power in a not-very-good set.  Or, again, for a more apples-to-apples comparison, compare Repulsing Torrent to either Throw Spines or Shockwave.  Both of those are long-distance cones in melee sets, and both are obviously better than Repulsing Torrent, and both get full crits.