Issue 27 Page 4 - The End of Procs

[aethereal]

21 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

I have lost toggles on a tank without being mezzed. It may just be feature of the AVs in the SSB.

This doesn't sound true to me.  Maybe you were just very briefly mezzed?

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

Except that doesn't really work. I have had my taunt aura turned off too many times without ever being CC'd on my tanks.

 

1 hour ago, Naraka said:

You take mez protection so you don't get mezzed. I guess that part isn't even important anymore lol

 

Toggles only get dropped if you get mezzed (edit: if they are enemy affecting toggles) or if you run out of endurance.

 

Therefore, yes, I take mez protection so that my toggles don't get dropped.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Gobbledigook]

11 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

 I think I take mez protection to keep my toggles from dropping. Soooo, no.

 

Also, see new sig. This is why I think this game has become fucked up all to hell and back. At 40 I have no incarnates. No purples. Cruising Bricks radios. Soloing at max diff without a care in the world at a completely comfortable clip. Enjoying it. Sure it's fun to be an unkillable god even before the god mode powers and enhancements come into play.

 

There's no fix for any of this.

 

And to answer the earlier question, numerical purity would mean the more mitigation you have, the less damage you can do and vice versa. It ain't rocket surgery.

 

Edit: To add for the record, 1st mish in PI at lvl 41 was against Arachnos. Had to eat some blues when CP was down, had to eat a green against the +5 spawn with the +5 toxic tarantula. Oh, the horror.

What you don't  /LFG "Sitter LF a farm"?  😛

 

 

[Luminara]

18 hours ago, Brutal Justice said:

The game isn’t balanced around your desire for all archetypes and powersets to play the same.

Mechanical parity between otherwise functionally identical powers doesn't equate to "play the same".  You don't seem to understand that, which is why your proposal to hard-cap Defense at 40% hasn't gained any traction, as it's not parity of any kind, it's a hypothesis conceived of in a vacuum and so narrow in scope that it ignores the basic functionalities of Defense and Resistance, and every variable that affects them.  You were counseled on ways to refine your idea, you told everyone to piss off.  You were given opportunities to revise your suggestion, you continued to post it without revision.  And when people, including myself, finally turned to sarcasm to show you how little traction you were gaining, you became angry and went on a tirade of revenge down-votes and vitriol.

 

You don't care whether your idea would work, you don't care if you've approached it from the correct perspective, you don't want to consider the possibility that there were oversights and mistakes, you just need to be "right".  To "win".  Even if it means damaging your own reputation and standing within the community.  But that's fine, too.  If that's what makes you happy, go for it.  I don't even have to see it with you in my /ignore list.  Down-vote everything I've ever posted and cut loose with the most vile shit you can compose if it makes you feel good.  And I mean that.  Having spent so many years of my life feeling miserable, it's not something I wish on anyone, certainly not people with whom I've had mild disagreements over ultimately meaningless crap in an Internet forum.

[Brutal Justice]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

And when people, including myself, finally turned to sarcasm to show you how little traction you were gaining, you became angry and went on a tirade of revenge down-votes and vitriol.

Ha.  I only down vote under two conditions.  I don’t like the post for a multitude of reasons, nothing to do with the poster name, or I’m serving a forum ban and it’s the only way I can respond.

 

Quote me on some vitriol and I’ll review the context and apologize if I was the aggressor and out of line.  My ego isn’t so big I can’t admit I make mistakes all the time.

 

I presented the idea.  People challenged me to present math, so I put in the effort to provide the math.  I welcomed math corrections.  They never came.  I don’t want to “win” but I do want to be correct and if I’m incorrect I welcome the correction because truth and correctness are what matter.  I don’t want to spread misinformation.  

 

Hearsay/opinions and claims of doom and gloom and mass quitters isn’t substantial evidence to warrant correction.  

[Marshal_General]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

 

Toggles only get dropped if you get mezzed (edit: if they are enemy affecting toggles) or if you run out of endurance.

 

Therefore, yes, I take mez protection so that my toggles don't get dropped.

Except I am seeing this on my tank that does have mez protection and mostly in a SBB.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 minute ago, Marshal_General said:

Except I am seeing this on my tank that does have mez protection and mostly in a SBB.

 

Doesn't SBB cap you at a pretty low level? Quick search shows lvl 29. CoD is showing that Mag lvl of mez protection does scale with level. And if your mez has any hole at all that's being hit, it'll drop your enemy affecting toggles or if no hole, then stacking mag from the enemies will do the same.

[SeraphimKensai]

18 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Doesn't SBB cap you at a pretty low level? Quick search shows lvl 29. CoD is showing that Mag lvl of mez protection does scale with level. And if your mez has any hole at all that's being hit, it'll drop your enemy affecting toggles or if no hole, then stacking mag from the enemies will do the same.

Lvl 29 is correct.

[ForeverLaxx]

Outside of my issues with global recharge being a huge culprit for why procs are so valued (and really, an issue with much of the game as a whole), my biggest wish for procs is for the control-focused ones to be more useful. There are so many different damage procs that can let certain ATs or individual powers begin to "encroach" upon a traditional damage AT's level of offensive power, but the same can't be said for the control procs. Not only are there not enough to really stack, the powers you'd want these procs in are almost all universally sub par for the usage of procs. One top of that, the magnitude of these procs is so low that only the weakest enemies will be affected by them, assuming they aren't being defeated outright before the proc even has a chance to do its job. The final nail in the coffin is that many of these control procs are put in sets that belong to control powers and become functionally useless (who needs a slow proc against an immobilized/held target?)

 

What sets the damage procs in damage powers bit apart is that those procs do damage irrespective and in addition to the power's own damage slotting. It's bonus damage on top of what already exists; but a slow proc firing against targets that already can't move, that doesn't even last as long as the control power's own effect, is useless. Even in the realm of "stacking mez," the control procs come up extremely short. Hell, I run the immobilize proc to try and mitigate the "stumbling problem" of being a Dark Armor/Stone Melee tank and it does practically nothing.

 

I just want a reason to want to go for these procs where they shine. Currently, even in their best-case scenario, they aren't doing anything.

[Unclemarty]

25 minutes ago, ForeverLaxx said:

my biggest wish for procs is for the control-focused ones to be more useful.

Making control in general more useful (especially on high end teams) Would also help make control procs more useful.

 

Returning to the discussion about toggles in this thread.... what if more enemies had toggle powers such that stunning / holding them would drop the toggles and soften them up for follow up damage? I don’t remember seeing many enemies in game with toggles while many of the players have lots of toggle powers.
 

I also agree that bumping the magnitude, duration or proc chance of control procs would lead to more interesting and meaningful proc build choices and build diversity.

Edited February 24, 2022 by Unclemarty

[Naraka]

4 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

 

Toggles only get dropped if you get mezzed (edit: if they are enemy affecting toggles) or if you run out of endurance.

 

Therefore, yes, I take mez protection so that my toggles don't get dropped.

So would you be fine if we made enemy affecting toggles suppress instead of drop while mezzed but blanket nerf armor mez protection down to about 5 (Tanker and Brute) to 4 points (other sources)?

 

Mez might be dangerous but your toggles won't drop!

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 minutes ago, Naraka said:

So would you be fine if we made enemy affecting toggles suppress instead of drop while mezzed but blanket nerf armor mez protection down to about 5 (Tanker and Brute) to 4 points (other sources)?

 

Mez might be dangerous but your toggles won't drop!

 

No. I want to go the other way and let buffers use all their powers on themselves, including mez protection.

[Naraka]

2 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

No. I want to go the other way and let buffers use all their powers on themselves, including mez protection.

 

So you have chosen death.

 

Well, you probably won't die because you're in the meta-crowd using every cheating ounce of power creep.

 

But everyone *ELSE*? Dead lol

[Luminara]

18 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

IMO player toggles that do not do damage should not detoggle. I think the standard is for them to also suppress, but I'm not even sure that there's a major balance reason they should do that. The toggles are mostly not any stronger than click buffs and debuffs, and those don't disappear when caster is mezzed.

 

That said, I do think there's an additional difference between debuff and mezz toggles and self affecting buff toggles.

 

I'd specifically preclude damage toggles and toggles which don't directly contribute to damage mitigation.  Sonic's Disruption Field, would not suppress because it doesn't directly contribute to damage mitigation (more rapid defeat of foes is arguably a valid interpretation of damage mitigation, but it is not direct damage mitigation in the way -Recharge, -ToHit or -Damage is).  The goal isn't to improve "kill speed", but to instill an objective balance between functionally comparable powers used for damage mitigation (+Def and -ToHit, +Res and -Damage, etc), so a more thorough and stable game balance can be achieved.

 

I'm on the fence with mez toggles.  They should offer significant damage mitigation in and of themselves... but they're easily detoggled by anything outside of their AoEs, or anything not mezzed in the AoE, which compromises their utility and value.  I think suppressible mez toggles would inch over to the power creep side, but if we added an additional factor, such as increasing the suppressed duration beyond the mez duration, it might be possible to avoid the creep.

 

17 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Self affecting buffs (mostly) only benefit the caster, while debuff toggles help all teammates and pets.

 

Superficially, yes.  Functionally, eeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh.

 

Example:  Weave nominally has a value of 1 for the number of targets it affects - the user.  Functionally, though, it affects everything the user interacts with, and that number of targets is theoretically infinite.  It doesn't matter if there is a single enemy, or 17 enemies, or 100 spawns all attacking, they're all affected by the damage mitigation provided by that toggle.  Until that toggle is suppressed or turned off, it affects everything attacking the user.

 

That's the basic nature of self-affecting buffs in the game.  They have two target vectors, self, and everything else.  The stated number of targets is 1.  The number of other targets affected is ∞.  These powers are, essentially, just graphical representations of equations performed on the fly, and there are no bounded exceptions or special variables in those equations which alter the math for actions beyond target caps.  There's no sub-equation or engine component which does that, either, of which I'm aware.  Nothing in the game tells Weave, "Your user somehow managed to get 19 enemies to make simultaneous attack rolls (did he/she forget to bathe this month?), and that's three over the AoE cap, so your Defense buff won't be counted for the following list of enemies: Hellion Bob, Skulls Clara and Snorflemog the Unclothed".  Instead, the game says, "Hit rolls?  Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, whatever, just apply the Defense to everything and stop bothering me.  I'm trying to finish my script for Blade 19.  The Daywalker (Daaaaaywaaaaaaaaalker.  Daaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyywaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalkeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!) is beamed up by the Millennium Falcon and has to help Walter Bishop fight vampires on Arrakis.  It's an art film, you wouldn't understand it.".

 

Click buffs of this type are functionally identical, from that perspective.  This X affected | ∞ affected functionality isn't a phenomenon exclusive to toggle buffs.  When someone pops Grant Invisibility on your character, that character's Defense is increased for an infinite number of foes, like Weave or Combat Jumping does.  If a */Sonic corruptor drops Sonic Barrier on you, you have that extra Resistance against an infinite number of attacking enemies, exactly the same way a Fire scrapper's Fire Shield provides for him/her.  Your damage buffs aren't limited to increasing the damage of your attacks only for foes at or below the target cap, they increase the damage of your attacks regardless, and the game relies on other mechanics to limit you, such as animation times, target caps for attacks and range.

 

Even toggles and clicks which seem to be entirely self-contained and appear to have no interaction with enemies, such as heals and regeneration buffs, have that second vector.  You don't regenerate only the damage taken from the foes near you, or foes up to the target cap, you regenerate all incoming damage, independent of source or type.  When you click a heal, the engine doesn't look at the list of foes who attacked you and prevent you from healing damage from any attacks which came from a number greater than X, it just restores a specific amount of HP.

 

And some self-affecting toggles/clicks have effects which restrict them to target caps below infinity, but that's actually a third vector.  Those are the powers which use a scaling variable based on the number of foes nearby or hit.  The effect which most of them provide, such as +Res and +Def, or increased regeneration, is still completely applicable in the second vector, in that even if the toggle/click is saturated, additional foes are still affected by the attribute which was increased by the scaling variable.  That +Res or +Def isn't dismissed on foes beyond the target cap.  That extra regeneration doesn't halt if you're attacked by one more foe than the aggro cap (or ten more, or ten thousand more).  Those effects continue to apply, regardless of the number of enemies attacking.

 

We all remember dumpster diving.  That only worked because these buffs affected all of those enemies, in this unlimited way.  Not the first 10 enemies, or a maximum of 16 enemies, but all of them.  Hundreds of enemies, all piled into a dumpster, swinging and missing at the character with capped Defense, or plinking with single-digit damage on the character with capped Resistance, et cetera.  Everything ever herded into a dumpster was affected by those self-affecting buffs which, superficially, only affected the character on which they were cast or toggled.

So even though these powers "only" affect the user or recipient, they also affect an infinite number of foes.  And that can be leveraged.  In fact, we have an archetype based specifically on that leverage, the tanker.  The tanker provides damage mitigation for teammates by engaging enemies and utilizing that unlimited mitigation through exactly this dual-vectored approach.  Target and threat caps provide constraints (now) by denying that tanker the ability to engage and hold the attention of an infinite number of foes, but they don't constrain that dual-vector functionality of the toggles themselves.  There's no code written for the game to do that (again, of which i'm aware).  So those self-affecting toggles actually provide a measure, and measurable amount, of damage mitigation to entire teams, in a lateral way.  That's the foundation for the tanker archetype.  In the absence of the aggro cap, the tanker proved that self-affecting buffs were functionally unlimited in how they aided survivability.  Regardless of how many enemies were attacking, the buffs worked at full strength against every enemy.  And because it was easier to simply limit the number of aggroed targets than it was to rewrite how buffs worked in relation to attacking enemies, we now have an aggro cap.

So yes, buffs only protect the user or the recipient, but when viewed in light of their overarching functionality, they also protect the entire team by permitting the buffed character damage mitigation beyond the caps imposed on debuffs, via that unlimited protection provided by buffs not having a cap on the secondary vector.  As long as the buffed character can hold aggro, and stay upright, the team benefits from that character's buffs, and they do so even when faced with a theoretically infinite number of foes.

 

We can also look at this from the other side.  If we summarize this as, "buffs offer a limited number of teammates mitigation from an unlimited number of damage sources", we can make the corollary statement that "debuffs offer an unlimited number of teammates mitigation from a limited number of damage sources".

 

If the game didn't have limits, or had significantly different limits, then each would have broader usage, as well as more specific usage (debuffers for Hami raids, buffers for small teams defending against overwhelming odds, et cetera).  Cryptic made a distinct effort, when they implemented target and aggro caps, to ensure that debuffs were as close to parity with buffs as possible in that context, but in practice, the limits tend to favor buffs over debuffs... or, more aptly, tend to allow buffs to reach a greater degree of their unlimited potential while confining debuffs to a small fraction of theirs.  The content to leverage the full extent of debuffs' mitigation potential doesn't exist, and, in truth, can't (we all know how the engine chokes when large numbers of player characters are in a small area together), so this particular oddity of the engine is something that will always be present.  We do, though, have much greater numbers of enemies (two for every one player character, in a full standard team), so the existing content, and likely all future content, allows buffs to leverage their flexibility more fully.

 

Note that I'm not suggesting that click and toggle debuffs should have their target caps removed.  Nor is any of this to be construed as negative commentary on caps, a call for new or different caps, or a complaint that buffs should be redesigned with caps on their secondary vectors.  I'm simply pointing out that a self-affecting buff (click or toggle) is inherently more effective than is immediately apparent by looking at the stated target number.  The existing target and aggro caps are generally effective at limiting the secondary vector of buffs and providing a reasonable degree of parity with debuff target limitations (bending the aggro cap rules is possible, but extremely work-intensive and prone to failure with the least mistake or fraction of a second mistiming.  not many people bother to juggle enough enemies to surpass the aggro cap, because it's slower than just kicking ass and moving on, and in the current game, many players are experienced enough and have sufficiently powerful builds to manage stray aggro when others are at their respective cap).  There are functional target number differences between buffs and debuffs which go beyond the expressed number of targets, but they're relatively well hidden by things like spawn sizes, team sizes and caps.

 

And I like to talk about this kind of thing, so everyone has to suffer through my long-winded, pretentious yammering.  Sucks to be you guys!  😄

[Bill Z Bubba]

22 minutes ago, Naraka said:

So you have chosen death.

 

Well, you probably won't die because you're in the meta-crowd using every cheating ounce of power creep.

 

But everyone *ELSE*? Dead lol

 

Something tells me we're not talking about the same thing. If my emp/nrg def could cast clear mind on herself, that'd STOP me from dying... as much.

[PeregrineFalcon]

20 minutes ago, Luminara said:

And I like to talk about this kind of thing, so everyone has to suffer through my long-winded, pretentious yammering.  Sucks to be you guys!  😄

I actually like your posts. They're interesting and informative and actually starting to change my mind on this subject.

 

I just feel that maybe they belong in a different thread.

[Brutal Justice]

27 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Superficially, yes.  Functionally, eeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh.

 

Example:  Weave nominally has a value of 1 for the number of targets it affects - the user.  Functionally, though, it affects everything the user interacts with, and that number of targets is theoretically infinite.  It doesn't matter if there is a single enemy, or 17 enemies, or 100 spawns all attacking, they're all affected by the damage mitigation provided by that toggle.  Until that toggle is suppressed or turned off, it affects everything attacking the user.

Ehhhh.  This “issue” is an issue that assumes you can’t just recast the debuffs on the next group.  If you can continue to recast the debuffs you essentially have infinite targets in the same way.  Just think of a toggle as a power that is continually recast.  

 

This was handled by the addition of the aggro and target cap.  Also helped by the persisting toggles which was a great change!  Had they introduced a target cap and not an aggro cap then this issue would be true.  With the existence of both it’s really just fancy words that don’t actually play out in practice.  

 

It’s like regen vs willpower.  Balance aside.  One is passive.  One is active.  The regen toon can infinitely click their heals.  They don’t run out of uses.  

 

If there is a huge concern with over aggro cap effectiveness all that would need to be done is increase the duration of the toggle debuffs to twice as long as the refresh rate.  The debuff would then cycle through up to 32 enemies applying the debuff after, say, half a second.  

 

Radiation infection for example.  The refresh of the debuff happens every .5 seconds.  The debuff duration is .75 seconds.  Ensuring you maintain 100% uptime.  If the debuff duration was increased to 1.1 second then the toggle would have the “ability” to debuff 32 mobs after .5 seconds.  

 

With the aggro cap in place 15 of those 32 won’t bother to attack you so you’re technically debuffing nothing.  I suppose currently, if you threw out rad infection on that group of 32 you might not debuff the 16 that are attacking you and the slight increase in debuff duration would cover that.  

 

Until we have “weapon durability” on our click powers, this is essentially a giant waste of energy.  Both technically have infinite targets.  One is just active while one is passive. Maybe increase the debuff durations of the toggles and that’s it.  

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

The regen toon can infinitely click their heals.

 

But they can be slowed to the point where the heal can NOT be clicked in time leading to a faceplant. The passive regen just keeps on truckin.

[oedipus_tex]

RE: Mezz toggles, might be helpful to share some background on the under the hood mechanics. I'm using publicly available powers code, which could potentially differ from the more updated Homecoming stuff, but as far as I know this part of the code hasn't changed.

 

There's actually no code-level distinction between a toggle that's offensive versus defensive. Instead, the default is for all toggles to detoggle on mezz. If the power designer decides the power should not detoggle, the designer can manually add flags to the specific mezzes that should not detoggle it. Here for example is the first power in Scrapper Super Reflexes:

 

 

 

With these flags set, the toggle will completely ignore the specified mezzes.

 

 

To achieve suppression, the power designer then must visit each individual attribute mod that the power provides. Here is Super Reflexes again. Code like this appears in every benefit the armor provides that should suppress. In this case, the attribute would suppress if the player is on a PVP map, or if they are Held, Stunned, or Slept.

 

 

 

 

There are powers that exist in the game that perform a bit differently than expected. Blaster Fire Manipulation for example manually handcodes the conditions for suppressing the damage in its Cauterizing Aura, and at least on Issue 24 code, appears to get it slightly wrong:

 

 

That code basically says "target must be a critter, must not be the same entity who caster the power (so we don't damage ourselves), and caster must not be Held, Slept, Stunned, or Terrorized." Terrorize does not normally suppress a toggle, but in this isolated case, it will.

 

Also, for some reason this specific toggle can be activated when you are mezzed) because of this bit, which most toggles do not have:

 

 

That's the same code that lets you press e.g. Rune of Protection even if you are mezzed.

 

 

 TLDR: powers are not code-bound to perform in a certain way. A toggle can be designated a "suppress versus detoggle" power no matter what the power technically does, if that's the direction the designer/team thinks is appropriate.

[Brutal Justice]

17 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

But they can be slowed to the point where the heal can NOT be clicked in time leading to a faceplant. The passive regen just keeps on truckin.

True, and I wish regen had resistance to slow.  

 

I see that more as a set intricacy than a target issue.  The same as a target click debuff like flash arrow can’t be debuffed but a target click  buff like fortitude can.  I don’t see that as on the topic of targets.

[Saikochoro]

I have rewritten my thoughts several times as it kept getting too long winded. 
 

I think procs are fine. I’m generally not a fan of witch-hunting in the name of combating power creep or achieving balance. 
 

Procs are just one flavor of over the top power that permeates this game. There are plenty of other flavors to choose from as well. 

Edited February 25, 2022 by Saikochoro

[Troo]

3 hours ago, Luminara said:

pretentious yammering

 

+1

 

😉

[macskull]

2 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

To achieve suppression, the power designer then must visit each individual attribute mod that the power provides. Here is Super Reflexes again. Code like this appears in every benefit the armor provides that should suppress. In this case, the attribute would suppress if the player is on a PVP map, or if they are Held, Stunned, or Slept.

 

Your post is pretty much spot-on but a minor nitpick here, that exclamation mark next to "isPVPMap?" acts like a "not" as far as game logic goes. Nothing suppresses in PvP environments - it's either on all the time regardless of mez status, or it turns off when mezzed.

[oedipus_tex]

8 minutes ago, macskull said:

Your post is pretty much spot-on but a minor nitpick here, that exclamation mark next to "isPVPMap?" acts like a "not" as far as game logic goes. Nothing suppresses in PvP environments - it's either on all the time regardless of mez status, or it turns off when mezzed.

 

 

Hey there, prompted by your comment, I took a deeper look at exactly how this functions. It turns out we are both correct. Each power in Super Reflexes and perhaps other armors has two separate attributes, one for PVP maps and one for non-PVP maps. In the in-game readouts, its not obvious that its actually being controlled by two different attribute mods, one of which gets suppressed depending on what type of map you're on, but that's how it works under the hood.

 

This one suppresses on PVP maps or if you are Stunned, Held, or Slept:

 

 

 

This one suppresses on non-PVP maps and like you mentioned doesn't suppress on mezz.

 

 

 

Interestingly, each references different particle effects. I don't know enough about how powers work in PVP to explain why, perhaps its because players aren't allowed to "hide" their armors with custom PFX in PVP? Interesting none the less.

[aethereal]

Yeah, you have to have visible armors in PvP, presumably so that players will realize if you become vulnerable.