Issue 27 Page 4 - The End of Procs

[Troo]

15 hours ago, Luminara said:

You move like a possum, though.  I have one good lung and I can catch a possum.  That Run Speed, that's like, what, six years to run from one spawn to the next, taking reverse time dilation into account?

 

FYI never ever have I chased movement bonuses.

 

If I wanted to both jump far and run fast, I'd just take two travel powers. But I have a button to toggle travel on and off maybe that's somehow not the case for everyone..

 

 

Edited February 22, 2022 by Troo

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

Some powers can be slotted as "proc bombs", and the proposed solution by those same people is to grind damage procs into dust, rather than address the powers themselves to make them perform less like outliers, because kicking entire archetypes in the balls is a better solution than bringing individual builds into line, and even that is predicated on the presumption that these people can reasonably prove that there is a problem... which, to date, no-one has done.  The attempts to do so have been shown to be deliberate efforts to misrepresent the entirety of the situation, with facts swept under the rug, cherry-picked datum held up and loudly proclaimed as the end-all and be-all of evidence... the epitome of scientific misconduct, which would have those people permanently barred from publication if they tried to submit the same "research" in a respected scientific journal.

 

You think the outlier powers will get fixed if things are left as is? Why bother fixing infridgidate when I can just load it up with procs? Power ain't intended to be a damage attack? Who cares? Proc that sucker up so it IS a damage attack. No need to fix it now, we have a fix! Who cares if the fix also makes the most damaging attacks in the game grossly more powerful?

[KaizenSoze]

8 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

You think the outlier powers will get fixed if things are left as is? Why bother fixing infridgidate when I can just load it up with procs? Power ain't intended to be a damage attack? Who cares? Proc that sucker up so it IS a damage attack. No need to fix it now, we have a fix! Who cares if the fix also makes the most damaging attacks in the game grossly more powerful?

And here we go again. How does procs negatively effect you? Are you being denied teams? Can't solo your favorite TFs w/o procs?

 

I mean there are so many LFG calls only asking for proc'ed out builds. /sarcasm

[Bill Z Bubba]

14 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

How does procs negatively effect you?

 

Me, directly? They don't. I use 'em all over the place. I especially proc out Infridgidate. Couple it with seeds of confusion and arcane bolt on a controller and you got some sick shit happening.

 

Nothing in this game directly affects my life one way or the other but that also means precisely nothing in regards to game balance.

 

In the end, either the devs see them as overpowered or they don't. I suspect they see them as problematic in regards to game balance and won't be remotely surprised when/if changes happen.

[Luminara]

25 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Power ain't intended to be a damage attack? Who cares? Proc that sucker up so it IS a damage attack. No need to fix it now, we have a fix!

Individual problems should be addressed individually, not with mass quality of life reductions.  If there are problems with some powers being slotting in certain ways, we address those powers and slotting possibilities, because a global attack on the problem doesn't actually change the situation.  Those individual powers will still be outliers when the dust settles.  Nothing's fixed, and no-one's satisfied when it goes down that way.

 

33 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Who cares if the fix also makes the most damaging attacks in the game grossly more powerful?

 

I addressed that scenario thoroughly in the last two proc nerf-herd threads, showing mathematically that the final result was not, in fact, grossly more powerful.  Will that high damage attack hit harder when it's used?  Most likely, yes.  But it's also usable less frequently and has a higher cost associated per use, and in the end, we're looking at a miniscule improvement, a few damage per second.

 

The end result is negligible in terms of DPS, expensive in terms of endurance, requires jumping through multiple slotting hoops, imposes a longer recharge time on the power, and in the end it's still only "winning" the imaginary dick measuring contest by a millimeter or two (and then only if the player doesn't hesitate to use that ultramegaboomy attack every time it's up, rather than hold it in reserve for the bosses).  In essence, it's just playing the game a slightly different way.

 

As many times as I've seen you step in to have your say when others are demanding that we all play their way, or that the game be redesigned or rebalanced to force us to play a certain way, I know that's not your preference or position.  And given your adamant opposition to ED and GDN back in the day, it's hypocritical of you to advocate global nerfs to address outlier situations now.  You're better than that.  I know you're passionate about balance, but this isn't the way to achieve it.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Luminara said:

And given your adamant opposition to ED and GDN back in the day, it's hypocritical of you to advocate global nerfs to address outlier situations now.  You're better than that.  I know you're passionate about balance, but this isn't the way to achieve it.

 

And Satan knows I hate hypocrisy.

 

Took my shield/nrg tank to beta, reslotted as shown in the build above.

Attack chain went from ET-Long, TF, ET-Short, Gloom, BS to ETl, TF, BS, ETs, G, BS.

Didn't even have to swap on destiny as she was already on ageless core. No other changes were made to the build.

 

Average pylon kill time after changes: 3mins

Average pylon kill time on live: 2:45

 

Proc build loses 15 seconds.

 

When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Fix irradiated ground and burn. Have a good day.

[KaizenSoze]

39 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Me, directly? They don't. I use 'em all over the place. I especially proc out Infridgidate. Couple it with seeds of confusion and arcane bolt on a controller and you got some sick shit happening.

 

Nothing in this game directly affects my life one way or the other but that also means precisely nothing in regards to game balance.

You say the above, but before you say "And I'll stick with my "reduce all proc damage by 75%" line."

 

So, it does bothers you somehow or you wouldn't suggest such a draconian nerf.

 

We keep rehashing this topic and nothing comes of it.

 

I personally think the devs have made their minds up. The new challenge settings are their answer to the power balance issues.

 

Some powers will get adjusted, but overall I think the current procs system is here to stay.

 

Also, I suspect new AOE powers will have curtails on procs. See how they handled procs in the new AOE placate.

[Naraka]

13 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Individual problems should be addressed individually, not with mass quality of life reductions.  If there are problems with some powers being slotting in certain ways, we address those powers and slotting possibilities, because a global attack on the problem doesn't actually change the situation.  Those individual powers will still be outliers when the dust settles.  Nothing's fixed, and no-one's satisfied when it goes down that way.

 

 

I'm curious how this can be accomplished.

 

Hypothetical: let's just use Infridgidate. Let's say, with the sets and procs it can slot, it is believed to be too strong. What solutions do we apply? Decrease it's overall stats to require slotting to make effective (low acc, high END)? Decrease the applied effects and make it a super fast recharging debuff or make the power a wide range AoE so it screws up the PPM formula? Or do we remove the ability to slot certain sets? Or just make certain procs not work anymore?

[Troo]

Is there a list of individual Proc outliers?

[ShardWarrior]

20 hours ago, SaintD said:

Limited to a single proc per power.

 

^ The simple and elegant thing to do.  Only 1 per power.

 

[Myrmidon]

18 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

You know, talking about this reminds me that Ageless is probably a little overpowered.  

Ageless is fine.

You may go about your business.

Move along.

[aethereal]

57 minutes ago, Naraka said:

 

I'm curious how this can be accomplished.

 

Hypothetical: let's just use Infridgidate. Let's say, with the sets and procs it can slot, it is believed to be too strong. What solutions do we apply? Decrease it's overall stats to require slotting to make effective (low acc, high END)? Decrease the applied effects and make it a super fast recharging debuff or make the power a wide range AoE so it screws up the PPM formula? Or do we remove the ability to slot certain sets? Or just make certain procs not work anymore?

 

So here is one view that I kind of generally hear people hinting at.  I don't endorse this view, just saying that I think some people have it:

 

"Procs in normal damaging powers are fine.  My problem is that certain powers that do a trivial amount of, or no, damage or which have recharge times that are very different from the recharge time they 'ought' to for that power (such as epic attacks) can be loaded with damage procs and do a lot of damage."

 

Proc rate is based (mostly) on recharge time.  When the PPM system kind of mostly works, it basically scales a proc's effective damage to the power's effective damage, since (most) powers base their damage on their recharge time.

 

So one way to satisfy someone with the above view would be to cut out the middleman.  Instead of proc rate being based on recharge time, it could be based on actual damage.

 

Some (depending on what you think of the problem) advantages here:

 

1.  It cleanly provides a solution to both epic attacks and things like using DNA Siphon as a proc bomb.  Epic attacks would have a normal proc rate for a power with similar damage, not a really high proc rate.  DNA Siphon, which does trivial damage, would have a very small proc rate.  Powers that do no damage at base would either have a 0% proc rate or some floor (5% or whatever).

 

2.  It removes some of the current ambiguity about recharge time from the game, where like, if you have a shorter recharge time than you "should," is that an advantage?  Well, kinda, but for procs it's a disadvantage.  We could meaningfully say like, "Hey, an advantage this power has will be that it breaks the design formula by having a shorter recharge time," or "a disadvantage that this power has will be that it breaks the design formula by having a longer recharge time."

 

3.  It would probably remove at least some of the current problems with pseudopets, which don't interact well with recharge-time-basis for PPM.

 

4.  It at least starts to unwind some of the insane recharge time shenanigans that we get with PPM.

 

But there are some significant flaws in this idea:

 

1.  Recharge time is a (mostly) unitary value.  Powers have A Recharge Time.  A very limited number of powers have some complexity to their recharge time (like, it's unenhanceable, or the power can be insta-recharged in various ways), but that's nothing to the many, many, many ways that powers can deal damage.  There really isn't a damage rating that a power has, there are just a number of effects, many of which are conditional in various ways.  Writing code that decides what the damage rating of a power actually is for the purposes of proc rate would be challenging and would probably have a bunch of weird corner cases where the code's interpretation of "what damage does this power do" does not correspond to a reasonable person's intuition of "what damage does this power do."

 

2.  We at some point have to grapple with the fact that there are 3 normal damage procs and 1 purple damage procs in Hold sets.  The overwhelming majority of Hold powers do low or no damage.  It is clearly by design for these hold procs to do damage, and it would be weird and bad if we made them into traps by making them have extremely low proc rates in most hold powers.  Similarly for damage procs in immobilize and slow powers.

 

3.  Also, what about non-damage procs?  Surely nobody objects to people using Lockdown's hold in a Hold power, we don't want that to have a floored proc rate because the Hold in question does 5 points of damage.  We could perhaps continue to have non-damage-procs be based on recharge time but damage procs be based on damage, but that creates yet more complexity in the proc system.

 

 

 

Ultimately, I can't endorse this kind of solution (and I'm not sure I agree with the framing of the problem).  But I think there is an important insight that the use of recharge time as a limiter on proc rate creates some real issues.

[ScarySai]

All I know is that blasters need more buffs, they definitely need it. 

 

Controllers and soldiers have it so easy, when do the poor little blasters get a buff?

[aethereal]

So, here's a suggestion that I do mostly endorse.

 

The problem with procs as I see them is:

 

First, they may need some fairly mild nerfs.  Definitely not a 75% reduction in damage.

 

Second, the interactions with recharge time are bad.  They're terrible.  They lead to all this proc bomb stuff, they lead to things that are supposed to be disadvantages for powers being advantages instead, they lead to the absolutely insane local/global recharge time break and focus the meta even more on global recharge.

 

So, solution:

 

1.  Procs go back to having a percentage chance instead of a PPM.

 

2.  Powers have a multiplier to that percentage chance, that is noted in the in-game info for that power.

 

3.  That multiplier is based mostly on recharge time and area factor, but it's like damage -- there's a formula for it, but it's an instantiated value in the power definition, not an instantaneously calculated formula.  It doesn't vary depending on actual recharge time, and it can be set to a different number than the formula indicates, if the power designer feels like that's important to do.

 

4.  We create the percentage chances and the formula to hit whatever overall damage numbers we feel is important.

 

So for example, a normal damage proc might have a base chance to proc of 20%, and Neutrino Blast might have a "x1/2 proc rate," so that damage proc procs at 10%, while Cosmic Burst might have a "x3 proc rate," so the damage proc would proc at 60% in Cosmic Burst.

 

Advantages of this solution:

 

1.  It is vastly more legible to the players of the game who do not read the fora obsessively.  They can see in-game one number, multiply it by another number, and know the proc rate.  They do not have to know about whether a power has local or global recharge, whether it has a pseudopet or not, and then use a fairly complicated formula.  One multiplication, no external sources of knowledge, done.

 

2.  It can neatly sidestep the pseudopet problem.

 

3.  It neatly solves the epic attack problem.

 

4.  It allows individual powers that are "too good" or "too bad" with procs to be tuned individually.  If we don't like DNA Siphon being able to be a proc bomb, we can just reduce its proc multiplier.

 

5.  It returns fast-recharging to, ceteris paribus, being an advantage, not a mixed advantage/disadvantage, and vice versa for slow recharging.

 

Disadvantages of this solution:

 

1.  It means juggling one more number for every power, there are opportunities to get it wrong, and it's work to set up the right number in the first place.  I think it's a manageable amount of work, if we use the current proc rate formulas as a design formula, but we are still going in and having to individually set the proc rates on hundreds of powers.

 

2.  The current system to some extent "auto-balances" based on local recharge.  With the new system, you'd have to just kinda set some values and then someone improving local recharge would make their procs better in that power.  That doesn't bother me (it's how normal damage enhancement works, and the idea that this is a really meaningful balance in a meta of 180% global recharge is kinda laughable), but might bother other people.

 

3.  Damage proc rate and non-damage proc rate are still conjoined.  If you want a hold to be able to proc Lockdown +2 Mag at a decent proc rate, it'll also necessarily be able to proc the four Hold damage procs at a decent proc rate.

[Snarky]

In my opinion, PROCs should be subject to EXTREME ED type rules.  1st PROC 100%, 2nd PROC 50%, 3rd PROC 25%, then 10%, then 5%, then, if you really need a sixth 1%

 

THis needs to be only for damage dealing procs or old school builds with globals etc could get caught up in the code.  

 

This will never happen.  I already hear the toddlers pulling on their diapers andf getting a bucket of pacifiers to angrily hurl across the room creep into the discussion.  If the DEVS put something that touches their precious on BETA you will hear a baby chorus like the tabernacle choir

[Ukase]

21 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

I didn't know this was a problem.  Is it really a problem? 

 

I mean, proc builds are the most extreme bestest of the best DPS builds, but they give up a ton of other good things to really get there.  I thought that was working as intended.

Well, some proc builds are quite good. And they do give up a LOT. Seems balanced to me. Typically, I'll only use more than one damage proc in one power. Pursuing them beyond that gives up way too much to suit me. 

I think what would be better is to have more transparent details as to how often they'll fire in a given power. It gets to be tedious to see a build that looks nice in the forums, and then when I do the math on the procs in a given power, I see that the creator of the build clearly did not do the math, or they think an 18% chance of firing is okay. (That ain't me - I want at least 90-95% chance) 
There's a lot of confusion, I believe, about procs and how they work, despite a lot of effort from Bopper and MacSkull and some others. 

But I guess if they opt to change 'em up, that might explain why they're kind of vague and nebulous to how they work in the detailed info tab. 

[aethereal]

1 minute ago, Ukase said:

(That ain't me - I want at least 90-95% chance) 

I have some bad news.

 

(The chance for a proc to fire is capped at 90%.)

[carroto]

31 minutes ago, Ukase said:

then when I do the math on the procs in a given power, I see that the creator of the build clearly did not do the math

I made a tool for doing this visually (in my sig).  The powers info is not complete up-to-date, since the creator of the tool to obtain those data abandoned the project, but most is still accurate and you can check it all and change it if needed.

[MTeague]

If I were to make any change to procs at all, it would be to treat ALL forms of Recharge the same, 

 

So that if the power normally takes 2 minutes to recharge but you're loaded to the gills with slotted with loads of Global Recharge and running Hasten, and Speed Boosted, such that the power actually comes back every 30 seconds, then the proc-ability would be based on that 30 seconds, not the original 2 minutes.  So that the Proc-Per-Minute is based around the ACTUAL number of uses you might squeeze out for that power over intervals of gameplay.

 

I would also fully expect to be tarred and feathered if this were to ever happen. 

[aethereal]

18 minutes ago, MTeague said:

If I were to make any change to procs at all, it would be to treat ALL forms of Recharge the same, 

 

So that if the power normally takes 2 minutes to recharge but you're loaded to the gills with slotted with loads of Global Recharge and running Hasten, and Speed Boosted, such that the power actually comes back every 30 seconds, then the proc-ability would be based on that 30 seconds, not the original 2 minutes.  So that the Proc-Per-Minute is based around the ACTUAL number of uses you might squeeze out for that power over intervals of gameplay.

 

I would also fully expect to be tarred and feathered if this were to ever happen. 

 

I'd go the other direction -- make no recharge affect it, including local.  The reason that global doesn't affect it was because of a (reasonable, IMO) objection that people had that "hey, I don't want to be telling people don't speed boost me because my procs will suddenly stop firing."  There are lots of sources of external global recharge, and it's kinda conceptually sucky to not be able to plan anything because who knows, someone might hit Ageless.

 

So I think the solution is just "everything is based on the base recharge of the power, doesn't matter what recharge you build off that."  That could very reasonably include a nerf to proc rates -- lower base rates, but local recharge no longer affects them.

[Luminara]

13 minutes ago, MTeague said:

If I were to make any change to procs at all, it would be to treat ALL forms of Recharge the same, 

 

So that if the power normally takes 2 minutes to recharge but you're loaded to the gills with slotted with loads of Global Recharge and running Hasten, and Speed Boosted, such that the power actually comes back every 30 seconds, then the proc-ability would be based on that 30 seconds, not the original 2 minutes.  So that the Proc-Per-Minute is based around the ACTUAL number of uses you might squeeze out for that power over intervals of gameplay.

 

I would also fully expect to be tarred and feathered if this were to ever happen. 

 

That was the original implementation of the PPM mechanic.  It was changed because we aren't always in control of our global +Recharge.

 

Example: You and I team up, you have a specifically crafted proc build which works exactly the way you want it to... and I buff you with Accelerate Metabolism, throwing your build and proc chances into disarray.  You are, understandably, displeased with that result, and write a strongly worded missive to the development team (Paragon, at that time) saying so.  Perhaps even posting about what I total dick I was, buffing you with AM when you didn't want to be buffed.

 

That's why the PPM mechanic was redesigned to ignore global +Recharge.  Penalizing players for being buffed is bad design, not just for making players happy, but for promoting teaming.

[ScarySai]

I'd rather go back to flat rates than pretty much every suggestion given in this thread thus-far.

 

My proposal: Leave them alone, they allow otherwise underperforming sets to thrive, and HC realistically doesn't have the resources to 'fix' the terribad sets that are only propped up by procs in a timely manner.

[Naraka]

Why have procs become a hot button issue again?

 

Didn't seem that concerning about a week ago...

 

13 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

I'd go the other direction -- make no recharge affect it, including local.  The reason that global doesn't affect it was because of a (reasonable, IMO) objection that people had that "hey, I don't want to be telling people don't speed boost me because my procs will suddenly stop firing."  There are lots of sources of external global recharge, and it's kinda conceptually sucky to not be able to plan anything because who knows, someone might hit Ageless.

 

So I think the solution is just "everything is based on the base recharge of the power, doesn't matter what recharge you build off that."  That could very reasonably include a nerf to proc rates -- lower base rates, but local recharge no longer affects them.

 

I still think formula diversification would be a decent option. You could then change some of the current damage procs to other triggering mechanisms like PPM (locked) vs PPM (open) that merely runs off the current PPM mechanics but locked only triggers on one target per power activation while the other can trigger multiple times making one ideal for AoE and the other for ST. You can have 100% procs that always go off but with less damage  so ideal for fast recharging powers but less so on longer recharging powers. 

 

The problem is, damage procs are all in a basket so you just need to create the ideal circumstance to capitalize on all of them you include in a build. If there are multiple baskets, you can still capitalize on individual baskets but you're ending up with less of a bang. Further still, since you have more baskets, you have new opportunities to proc a power that might not have been very attractive under the current system.

[MTeague]

27 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

That was the original implementation of the PPM mechanic.  It was changed because we aren't always in control of our global +Recharge.

 

Example: You and I team up, you have a specifically crafted proc build which works exactly the way you want it to... and I buff you with Accelerate Metabolism, throwing your build and proc chances into disarray.  You are, understandably, displeased with that result, and write a strongly worded missive to the development team (Paragon, at that time) saying so.  Perhaps even posting about what I total dick I was, buffing you with AM when you didn't want to be buffed.

 

This is why I don't work in customer service.  Because I would likely reply to such a missive, "commiserating" with them about how awful it is in that in a multiplayer game you don't have complete control over the actions of other players, and how sometimes other humans act in ways that dont' always provide unconditionally beneficial results, and how sympathic I am to their plight. 

 

I would then be fired for being deliberately antagonistic to a customer.

Edited February 22, 2022 by MTeague

[aethereal]

4 minutes ago, Naraka said:

Why have procs become a hot button issue again?

 

Didn't seem that concerning about a week ago...

Meh, people just brought it up, nothing particular about this except that it's been a while since we've had the arguments and there aren't big other topics to discuss right now.