Issue 27 Page 4 - The End of Procs

[macskull]

5 hours 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?

Infrigeridoo Infridgidigimon Infrigerator Infrigidate is a good power on its own merits even before introducing procs into the equation but "it's really good with procs" hasn't been used as justification for not buffing a power, as far as I can recall. I mean, Fire Blast almost got a buff to let it slot more procs a few updates back.

 

I mean, at the end of the day I'm not even sure why we're arguing about this. If a proc change is gonna happen it's gonna go through half a dozen variations while it's in beta before some even-more-convoluted-than-we-have-now solution makes it live. This is a troll thread with a clickbait title and we've all been pulled in hook, line, and sinker.

Edited February 22, 2022 by macskull

[Luminara]

Enough speculation.  Enough of the "procs are gonna be nerfed" doom-crying.  Enough of the "we all know" nonsense.

 

Prove that there's a problem before you say one more word.  Define the nature of that problem, set yourself test parameters, document results and lay down incontrovertible evidence that this problem exists, what the problem is and how the proof can be reproduced.

We've been rehashing this thread for years now (years.  multiple), and not one person has conclusively proven that procs are a problem, or the problem, or that a nerf actually is coming, or that a nerf is necessary, or that there even is a problem.  In fact, no-one has even given a solid example of what could be construed as a problem.  On the contrary, all existing evidence has indicated that there is no problem.  The HC team has never made an unwarranted change to proc behavior, despite those years of proc panicking and fear-mongering, and we're still on this same ridiculous merry-go-round?  What the fuck?

 

An unusually open and cooperative development staff has been the hallmark of this game, from its first days on the original servers to the HC team we're blessed with now, people who granted us insight to the game's systems and mechanics in a way unprecedented in MMORPG history... and this is what we do with that legacy, wring our hands and bemoan an imagined future of proc nerfs that we don't even know will happen, much less given any reason to expect, like we're a bunch of WoW players.

 

You want the proc system changed?  Prove that it needs to be changed.  You believe there's a problem which needs to be fixed?  Define what the problem is, prove that it exists and show exactly how it's detrimental to the game.  You want ridicule and scorn?  Keep doing what you're doing, I'm right here.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Yea, that tactic will work.

[Gobbledigook]

I suggest we start the name calling and get this thread closed asap before it does actually go that way 😛

[aethereal]

If Luminara uses bolded words, then you have to do what they say.

[ScarySai]

30 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Prove that there's a problem before you say one more word.  Define the nature of that problem, set yourself test parameters, document results and lay down incontrovertible evidence that this problem exists, what the problem is and how the proof can be reproduced.

The devs have gone on record saying they want to nerf procs on several occasions, both on the forums and in discord, nothing super recent, however. So I don't think it's a stretch for people to assume they might be planning something.

 

Though I'm in agreement with the general idea here, nobody, devs included, have really substantiated the claim that procs are as outrageous and need to be stopped as some people like to yammer on about. Hell, some of the most broken characters in the game right now don't have any proc dependence.

[Bopper]

24 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

The devs have gone on record saying they want to nerf procs on several occasions, both on the forums and in discord

Look no further than the Dev Corner. It was brought up almost a year and a half ago (time flies).

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/22534-game-balance-the-endgame/

 

[oedipus_tex]

Before I say anything about procs, I want to first say that there's a lot about the system that I think is charming. It's fun to explore ways to make powers useful or perform in unexpected ways. I'd much rather CoX wth its current system than what's available in other RPGs and MMOs, so anything I have to say about it stems from a place of respect for the design.

 

 

When it comes to valid criticism, I do think critiques have two valid points of concern:

 

• 1) Some attribute mods have lots of access to procs, and others have very few. Not everything has to be fair. But when people ask why things are they are, I think what they mean is why is Infrigidate a blast power when we would not put a real blast in a support set? And why is, say, Sonic Siphon not proccable in the same way? Is the fix to make it so that Sonic Siphon is proccable? I don't know to tell you the truth. Mind you, I have no beef with procced up Infrigidate specifically, but I see why questions are asked about it and future sets. 
  
   
• 2) The second item is the "spirit" of procs. Powers with very long recharges virtually guarantee procs to fire, turning what was originally intended to be a "chance for" something to happen" to a "near guarantee." Often, we think of procs as average chances. But there is no such thing in real life as an "average moment." Either the proc fires or it does not. 30% Chance to Hold over a period of six casts is not the same as a 90% chance to Hold in one cast. In the second scenario, I know with a great deal of certainty what will happen when a power is held on the hot bar for a period of time and only fired when needed. That level of certainty wasn't present in the pre-PPM proc design. I do think it's worth discussing the possibility that certain procs, especially of the Chance to Mezz variety, might be more fair using their old formulas versus the PPM model.

 

 

 

And at risk of being dragged into the town square and set afire: the stand out proc from item #2 I'd like to see reviewed is Gaussian's Chance for Build Up. 

 

 

All of the above said, I totally understand the concerns of people who don't want to see drastic changes happen either. A lot of folks rolled characters because of how procs work in them. I think its valid for players to play the game that is provided to them, and perhaps a bit unfair to snatch the rug out from under them after they've demonstrated how adroit they are at building cool stuff. 

Edited February 23, 2022 by oedipus_tex

[aethereal]

"Drastic changes" seem bad.

 

Like, look, if (if!) procs are overtuned, then maybe they need 10% cut off their damage, or their PPMs turned down a little, area factor adjusted, or their max-chance-to-proc set to 80% instead of 90%.  I'm sure someone will be on this thread shortly to say that if procs become 10% less effective, it's the worst thing in the world, Homecoming will be abandoned forever, their character will be literally unplayable, dogs and cats will be living together, mass hysteria.  But...  they'll be wrong.

 

I think that far more than procs being overtuned, they are just a kludgey, bad design, but as I outlined in the last page, you can pretty easily correct a lot of that without making a giant difference in the way existing proc builds perform.

 

@Bill Z Bubba's "drop all proc damage by 75%" is bad.  That shouldn't happen.  But there's plenty of room for substantive change to procs that doesn't upend the entire world.

[Snarky]

12 minutes ago, aethereal said:

"Drastic changes" seem bad.

 

Like, look, if (if!) procs are overtuned, then maybe they need 10% cut off their damage, or

I recall some similar points being brought up during the "fix super strength crash" time....welll, if you want to cut the crash out fine, but we still need to be able to double stack it....there....fixed

[Bill Z Bubba]

23 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Bill Z Bubba's "drop all proc damage by 75%" is bad.  That shouldn't happen.

 

Agreed. I formally withdraw the proposal but that's what you get when you prove yourself wrong.

[ScarySai]

I foresee a similar situation to the rage 'fix' if they ever do handle it.

 

The bug was left alone under Paragon's watch because it kept SS in a good spot. In fixing the bug, you now upped the priority of SS needing a look. It should have been left alone until they were ready to rework the set to compensate.

 

I bring this up because right away, in the wake of a proc nerf (depending on severity) and off the top of my head you up the need to buff sets like: rad blast, DP, Martial Combat, Martial Assault, both khelds ATs, potentially scrappers if their ATO gets hit hard enough (It's the only thing propping them up.), Super Strength again, control primary damage, controllers in general and titan weapons.

 

So whatever they have planned, it's in their best interest to try to only hurt major offenders like burn - which isn't really a proc problem so much as a weird interaction with how the power works. Otherwise they only serve to give themselves more work and generally piss everyone off.

Edited February 23, 2022 by ScarySai

[Luminara]

58 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Look no further than the Dev Corner. It was brought up almost a year and a half ago (time flies).

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/22534-game-balance-the-endgame/

 

 

Worth noting that the commentary there is specifically about PPM, its counter-intuitive functionality in intuitive slotting, and performance differences between AoE and single-target.  Not a whiff of "nerf procs", not a single alphanumeric character about cutting damage from procs, just an intent to clean up the PPM mechanic so it's neither encouraging players to slot in a manner which fails to appropriately improve powers, nor penalizing players for playing single-target/overly rewarding players for playing AoE-heavy sets.

[aethereal]

So, in an attempt to add a little bit of rigor to this whole conversation, I made a spreadsheet.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1exC_bOWKCrjQ4eCjN12Cs5ETFPOpJCaBjmBnUIyMXHU/edit?usp=sharing

 

This is not at all the final word on procs, but it shows how damage procs perform in a variety of powers in blast and melee sets, and specifically what they cash out to in terms of damage enhancement.

I chose, for each AT, a "normal" ST power (a T2 power), a cone, a spherical AoE, and a heavy-hitter ST power.  I used the same power for each AT except that I forgot that Stalkers don't get Dragon's Tail so I used Spine Burst for their spherical AoE instead.  I tried to avoid powers that I thought were weird special cases like, say, Energy Transfer or whatever.

 

I'm ignoring crits and scourge, so note that stalkers, scrappers, and corruptors will find procs to be less good than a naive reading of this spreadsheet would indicate.  I'm including AoE sizes before Tanker Gauntlet bonuses, so the proc numbers are right, but the actual AoE sizes for Tankers are smaller than they are in play.

 

Some takeaways:

 

1.  For Blasters, in ST powers, a proc isn't really much better than an ordinary damage enhancement except that it ignores ED.  For Scrappers, it's worse once you factor in crits.  For Stalkers, about on-par.  For other ATs, even in ST powers, the raw numbers of a proc are much better than you'd get from normal damage enhancement.

 

2.  As @Luminara alludes to above, but is I think frequently forgotten in these debates, procs are much better in AoE powers than ST.  A normal 3.5 PPM damage proc in even a Blaster AoE is like more than 45% damage enhancement!  In Defender Empty Clips, each proc is worth the entire damage of the power.  We often focus on things like pylon tests when talking about DPS, but procs are really good for AoE DPS.

 

3.  It is certainly the case that most ATs will get a lot out of replacing any singleton spot in their build with a damage proc.  Like, if you aren't missing the set bonus anyway, procs are way better than ordinary damage slotting except for ST powers in blasters, stalkers, and scrappers (maybe AoEs as well for scrappers).  Is it worth the loss of set bonuses to 3 or 4 or 6 slot procs?  I dunno, more complicated question.

 

4.  Obviously, as noted by many others, but worth mentioning, any nerfs to proc damage will make it harder for the non blaster/scrapper/stalker classes to be competitive to the blasts/scraps/stalks in terms of DPS.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

2) The second item is the "spirit" of procs. Powers with very long recharges virtually guarantee procs to fire, turning what was originally intended to be a "chance for" something to happen" to a "near guarantee."

 

That's a valid and constructive point.  The PPM mechanic encourages a different slotting schema, one which is not intuitive, and is contrary to the design intent behind the game, slotting in general and IO sets.  Deliberately avoiding Recharge Reduction, breaking sets and losing set bonuses, relying entirely on set bonuses and additional proc slotting to compensate for poor slotting, none of these behaviors were intended.  Do they work?  To a degree, because the Invention system is robust and flexible enough to absorb the slotting differential and compensate, and the overall design of the game, with buffs from third-party sources, bolsters the design.  But they aren't necessary optimal, and, again, that counter-design approach that the PPM system encourages is... messy.  And when they do work, they're not profoundly better than ignoring PPM entirely and using the traditional approach to slotting.

 

The PPM mechanic allows proc-heavy builds to work, and it urges some players to explore its limitations and try to find loopholes (perfectly normal behavior), but it doesn't allow them to work so well that we're fools if we don't use them.  And that's a key factor.  Proc-heavy builds aren't running rampant over traditional builds, which relegates them to "just a different way to do the same thing".  As long as that remains true, I see no justification for anxiety.

[Bill Z Bubba]

16 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Obviously, as noted by many others, but worth mentioning, any nerfs to proc damage will make it harder for the non blaster/scrapper/stalker classes to be competitive to the blasts/scraps/stalks in terms of DPS.

 

Why should they be? Flip side, why should scrappers be buffing entire teams with the likes of barrier?

 

My initial attack on procs absolutely stems from a belief that the game went completely off the rails at some point and procsmonster builds were just one more example of it. Thankfully, your data helps me understand why I was so off the mark on my expectations of what they mean to an ST focused character. I still find the tank buffs ludicrous as I did the blaster buffs before them, as I find incarnate usage, and hell even mitigation granting set bonuses now.

 

So, yea, there's my failing, I see the entirety of power creep in the game as one big-ass nail (not to be confused with one big ass-nail) and I want to hammer it back into place, consequences be damned.

[gamingglen]

To those who quit out of protest when procs are nerfed:

 

Can I have your stuff?

[Luminara]

20 minutes ago, aethereal said:

2.  As @Luminara alludes to above, but is I think frequently forgotten in these debates, procs are much better in AoE powers than ST.  A normal 3.5 PPM damage proc in even a Blaster AoE is like more than 45% damage enhancement!

 

But that was always the case.  Before PPM, when procs were fixed at specific rates, they were still better in AoEs than in single-target powers.  It's the simplest of maths in this case, more targets will always equate to more chances for procs to trigger, and greater likelihood of more proc triggers per power use.  The PPM mechanic didn't change anything in that regard, and even if the PPM mechanic were drastically altered to reduce AoE probability even further, AoEs would still benefit the most from procs, due to that greater number of trigger rolls.

 

The HC team could peg AoEs at a ridiculously low proc rate and they'd still be best-in-use, because they hit 10-16 foes.

 

47 minutes ago, aethereal said:

In Defender Empty Clips, each proc is worth the entire damage of the power.

 

Yes, a typical defender cone/AoE attack, optimally slotted for damage, deals ≤ the damage of a single typical proc.  Does that says more about the design of defenders, or about the design of procs or the PPM mechanic?  I have my opinion, and I've made it known (loudly and vehemently).

[cranebump]

Good God, this white room is loud.

 

(Any popcorn left?)

[Luminara]

40 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Why should they be?

 

I wish I could turn back time, sit you down and make you play a TA before Issue 7.  Not because I dislike you (i don't), but so you could understand how bad defender life can be.  But the time machine is on the fritz again, so I'll try to do it with words.

 

44 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

So, yea, there's my failing, I see the entirety of power creep in the game as one big-ass nail (not to be confused with one big ass-nail) and I want to hammer it back into place, consequences be damned.

 

Here's how I look at it.

 

Power is the money.  Desirable content is the goods.  Power creep is the inflation.  Right now, we have comparatively high inflation, generally speaking.  The amount of money circulating has compromised the price of goods in various ways (made some content too easy, made some content less "optimal", made some content uninteresting).  But that inflation isn't applied equally.  Most archetypes have reasonably good purchasing power, despite the inflationary nature of the economy, and leverage of that purchasing power (wider variety of content which can be easily completed, wider range of difficulty settings to make the game feel "challenging").  Support characters, on the other hand, have low purchasing power.  Their low damage output, (general) lack of status protection, imposed time penalties due to (general) reliance on clicks and debuff toggles instead of self-affecting toggles, and (general) problem with toggle dropping adds up to lower purchasing power and lower ability to leverage the purchasing power they do have.

 

Is the solution to this inflationary issue, then, to lock support's purchasing power at the lowest level and prevent them from accessing the same goods as other archetypes?  We've recently had newer, harder difficulty settings added, which increases the value of some goods, but it imposes a still higher purchase cost, which support archetypes may not be capable of paying.  Does it make economic sense to continue to impose purchasing restrictions on support archetypes, when more expensive goods are on the way?  I don't think it does.  If we were talking about a real economy, we'd see those with the lowest purchasing power emigrating to places where they weren't as heavily restricted, where they had higher purchasing power and better quality of life.  Or staging riots, revolts, regime over-throws, walk-outs, marches and other tactics to improve their situation, which, historically, have also been accompanied by a significant amount of bloodshed, but since this is a video game, we can assume no-one will be decapitated or shot.

 

That's why.  The end result of shackling support archetypes under a "no more power creep" clause will be the gradual loss of support as players stop playing them, opting instead to play archetypes which aren't restricted as heavily and, from the players' perspective, oppressively, or just leaving to play less restrictive games.  The inflation problem is being addressed for the majority, the archetypes which are already rolling in their surplus of money, through the addition of increased difficulty and new content.  Imposing further restrictions on support archetypes, locking or reducing their purchasing power, won't encourage players to support you with support archetypes, it will encourage them to say, "Fuck it, I'm done."

 

Or chop someone's head off.

 

If you want to fix power creep, bring the support archetypes to the same degree of creep as the rest of the archetypes, then address it by making content that everyone can enjoy, or improving existing content so it's more enjoyable despite the creep.  Or nerf the entire roster of non-support archetypes into the dirt to accomplish the same goal from the other direction (probably not a wise choice, given the reactions to such in the past).  Holding support archetypes down won't fix anything, unless the goal is to remove interest in playing them entirely.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

But that was always the case.  Before PPM, when procs were fixed at specific rates, they were still better in AoEs than in single-target powers.  It's the simplest of maths in this case, more targets will always equate to more chances for procs to trigger, and greater likelihood of more proc triggers per power use.  The PPM mechanic didn't change anything in that regard, and even if the PPM mechanic were drastically altered to reduce AoE probability even further, AoEs would still benefit the most from procs, due to that greater number of trigger rolls.

 

The HC team could peg AoEs at a ridiculously low proc rate and they'd still be best-in-use, because they hit 10-16 foes.

 

It is true that back in the days of fixed proc rates, procs were better in AoEs than in ST powers, but the rest of this is wrong.  We're looking at the damage increase per target, not the "chance of the proc firing somewhere on at least one target."  Because in this subthread we're talking about damage procs (the other metric would be a good one to look at for self-buff procs).

 

The reason that procs are better in AoE powers, in both the flat-chance and the PPM regimes, is that AoE powers are drastically lower-damage than ST powers, and procs with their flat damage will be more significant compared to the lower-damage AoEs unless this is compensated for by making procs trigger less often in AoE powers.  The PPM regime does do this, but the reduction in proc rate is mild compared to the difference in damage.  For example, Cosmic Burst and Empty Clips both have the same 10 second recharge time, but the proc rate of a 3.5 PPM proc in Empty Clips is 36.4% vs 70.41% in Cosmic Burst -- so half the rate.  But the damage of Cosmic Burst is about 3x the damage of Empty Clips.

 

If the HC team pegged AoEs at a "ridiculously low proc rate" such as 20%, the value of a damage proc in Empty Clips would be less than the value of a SO damage enhancement (albeit of course ignoring ED).

[Ukase]

7 hours ago, aethereal said:

I have some bad news.

 

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

I knew it was one of those two! 

[ScarySai]

@aethereal Empty clips isn't exactly great unless incendiary ammo is active, which your sheet doesn't seem to factor in.

[aethereal]

5 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

@aethereal Empty clips isn't exactly great unless incendiary ammo is active, which your sheet doesn't seem to factor in.

 

You're right that is not counting incendiary ammo.  I was deliberately trying not to choose powers that are "great." I wanted to give a sense of the performance of procs in "ordinary" powers.

[ScarySai]

Problem is three of the four blast sets you chose aren't just average, but underperform in general.