Set bonus question

[Libertyguard]

if under my set bonus it says...*improves damage by 3%* is that across the board or just that power?

[EmperorSteele]

Usually it's across the board 😃

[Bionic_Flea]

All powers that can do damage.  It might be further limited to those that can be slotted for damage, but I'm not sure.

[Mezmera]

Usually bonuses are across the board.  Remember you can only have 5x of the same bonus so in the case of damage you can get 5 bonuses of the 3% damage but you can also get 5x any other damage bonus so 5% damage would work for you.

 

Also, I'm pretty certain boosting your damage doesn't affect damage procs to do more damage but if the target has their resistance debuffed those damage procs will give you higher numbers.  

Edited March 15, 2022 by Mezmera

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, Libertyguard said:

if under my set bonus it says...*improves damage by 3%* is that across the board or just that power?

 

+Damage from IO set bonuses is a global effect.  Every damage-dealing power which is not flagged to ignore +Damage, like Sands of Mu, will benefit.

 

For further information: Damage is additive and cumulative, it takes all sources of Damage and pools them collectively.  If you take Air Superiority, slot it up to 95% Damage, then add a 3% global +Damage, Air Superiority's final damage output will not increase by 3%.  What actually happens is, that 3% +Damage is added to the 95% you slotted in the attack, bringing its final value up to 98%.  That's how +Damage works.  If you rack up 24% +Damage from set bonuses, every damage-dealing power you use will have 24% added to the slotted value.  If you're playing a defender in a solo environment, you would also receive 30% +Damage from Vigilance, so your character would have 54% +Damage added to the slotted value of all damage-dealing attacks.  If you then popped Aim, your damage-dealing attacks would receive a total of 104% +Damage on top of their slotted Damage.  

 

Note that even if you have 0% slotted Damage in a damage-dealing power, the game still reads it as 100% +Damage.  This is because Damage Debuffs exist.  The game has to consider an unenhanced power to be at 100% in order to subtract damage, so the debuff can function when dealing with unslotted attacks (what critters use, to highlight the most important example).  Consequently, in slotting your attacks to 95% Damage (using SOs, IOs, set IOs, makes no difference, it's all the same to the engine), you're actually at 195% for those attacks.  So that means, when you hit that magic 104% +Damage on your soloing defender who popped Aim, you're not actually doubling the damage of your attack(s), you're only adding about 1/3rd more damage (a bit less, in fact, because Vigilance is always active) because your attack, slotted for 95% +Damage, was read by the game as being at 195% Damage.  195 + 104 = 299.

 

Additionally, +Damage does not bypass the damage cap.  The damage cap is the damage cap is the damage cap.  Damage enhancements, buffs like Assault/Aim/Build Up, Vigilance's +Damage, Fury's +Damage, set bonuses adding +Damage, it's all pooled together and it all counts toward your character's damage cap.  Most of the time, this isn't an issue, as the damage cap is intentionally higher than most characters can achieve without significant assistance from other characters, but there are a few builds which can run head first into the damage cap.  It can occasionally cause some confusion when players use powers which buff Damage in amounts which would make it appear that they exceeded the cap.  Fulcrum Shift and Soul Drain, when used by defenders/masterminds/controllers/corruptors, and when their attacks are well slotted with Damage, can easily take them up to their respective caps and cause consternation when they realize they've "wasted" extra Damage.

 

-Res, being multiplicative, allows players to sidestep the damage cap, by multiplying the final damage output of attacks by 1.amount (meaning, if you apply 20% -Res to a critter, your damage output will be multiplied by 1.2 (Resistance Debuff caps at -90% (you can apply more, but you can never reduce anything's Resistance to less than -90% (and Resistance resists Resistance Debuffs, so if your target has Resistance, that Resistance resists the debuff by the percentage of that Resistance, but only for the damage type it resists (totally not complicated, right?))).  Containment effectively doubles the damage output of controllers, even if they're at the damage cap, thus also sidestepping the cap (which is why most controller damage-dealing powers are comparatively weak.  they can double their damage through Containment, then they can multiply that by 1.9 with Resistance Debuffs.  the final result can be very impressive when all variables are properly set up).

[Shred Monkey]

2 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

+Damage from IO set bonuses is a global effect.  Every damage-dealing power which is not flagged to ignore +Damage, like Sands of Mu, will benefit.

 

For further information: Damage is additive and cumulative, it takes all sources of Damage and pools them collectively.  If you take Air Superiority, slot it up to 95% Damage, then add a 3% global +Damage, Air Superiority's final damage output will not increase by 3%.  What actually happens is, that 3% +Damage is added to the 95% you slotted in the attack, bringing its final value up to 98%.  That's how +Damage works.  If you rack up 24% +Damage from set bonuses, every damage-dealing power you use will have 24% added to the slotted value.  If you're playing a defender in a solo environment, you would also receive 30% +Damage from Vigilance, so your character would have 54% +Damage added to the slotted value of all damage-dealing attacks.  If you then popped Aim, your damage-dealing attacks would receive a total of 104% +Damage on top of their slotted Damage.  

 

Note that even if you have 0% slotted Damage in a damage-dealing power, the game still reads it as 100% +Damage.  This is because Damage Debuffs exist.  The game has to consider an unenhanced power to be at 100% in order to subtract damage, so the debuff can function when dealing with unslotted attacks (what critters use, to highlight the most important example).  Consequently, in slotting your attacks to 95% Damage (using SOs, IOs, set IOs, makes no difference, it's all the same to the engine), you're actually at 195% for those attacks.  So that means, when you hit that magic 104% +Damage on your soloing defender who popped Aim, you're not actually doubling the damage of your attack(s), you're only adding about 1/3rd more damage (a bit less, in fact, because Vigilance is always active) because your attack, slotted for 95% +Damage, was read by the game as being at 195% Damage.  195 + 104 = 299.

 

Additionally, +Damage does not bypass the damage cap.  The damage cap is the damage cap is the damage cap.  Damage enhancements, buffs like Assault/Aim/Build Up, Vigilance's +Damage, Fury's +Damage, set bonuses adding +Damage, it's all pooled together and it all counts toward your character's damage cap.  Most of the time, this isn't an issue, as the damage cap is intentionally higher than most characters can achieve without significant assistance from other characters, but there are a few builds which can run head first into the damage cap.  It can occasionally cause some confusion when players use powers which buff Damage in amounts which would make it appear that they exceeded the cap.  Fulcrum Shift and Soul Drain, when used by defenders/masterminds/controllers/corruptors, and when their attacks are well slotted with Damage, can easily take them up to their respective caps and cause consternation when they realize they've "wasted" extra Damage.

 

-Res, being multiplicative, allows players to sidestep the damage cap, by multiplying the final damage output of attacks by 1.amount (meaning, if you apply 20% -Res to a critter, your damage output will be multiplied by 1.2 (Resistance Debuff caps at -90% (you can apply more, but you can never reduce anything's Resistance to less than -90% (and Resistance resists Resistance Debuffs, so if your target has Resistance, that Resistance resists the debuff by the percentage of that Resistance, but only for the damage type it resists (totally not complicated, right?))).  Containment effectively doubles the damage output of controllers, even if they're at the damage cap, thus also sidestepping the cap (which is why most controller damage-dealing powers are comparatively weak.  they can double their damage through Containment, then they can multiply that by 1.9 with Resistance Debuffs.  the final result can be very impressive when all variables are properly set up).

 

In case you dont' speak Liminaraian... the answer to your question is, yes, it affects every power.

[Luminara]

26 minutes ago, Shred Monkey said:

 

In case you dont' speak Liminaraian... the answer to your question is, yes, it affects every power.

 

[MTeague]

3 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

In case you dont' speak Liminaraian... the answer to your question is, yes, it affects every power.

 

I get it though. Can't tell you how many times at work they told me "I don't need a giant writeup, just the executive summary". 

Then when I actually give them the short version, they carve it into a stone tablet and hold it agianst me saying "But you never TOLD us about this part!"

 

After that I wanted to start all my JIRA's with "In the beginning..."

[oedipus_tex]

Hopefully this won't make things more confusing, but likely anything you can think of that affects stats is technically a "power."

 

The short version:

• Most Set Bonuses, including +Damage, are global
• Most (not quite all) enhanceable powers benefit from these globals
  • ...and almost nothing else does

 

 

 

-----------------------------------------

 

 

The longer version:

 

 

If you're familiar with simplistic object-oriented programming,* Power is the base class that most other things derive from. I'm lying about the specifics to make the analogy work, but you can imagine Power is the parent class of all the various things you think of in game: 

• Power Base Class >>>
  • >>> Archetype Inherent - varies wildly in implementation
  • >>> Boost/Enhancement - are usually marked to only affect the power they are slotted in (but don't have to be--a global enhancement is theoretically possible)
  • >>> Set Bonus - are usually marked as global (but again don't have to be)
  • >>> Inspiration - are just powers that cause the button to disappear after you use it instead of recharge
  • etc 

 

 

[*The object oriented programming example shouldn't be taken literally. There are no actual subclasses of Power as far as I know. Instead literally everything is a Power, and differences between Enhancements, Set Bonuses, Inspirations, Temporary powers etc all comes down to design patterns used on those objects. When you go into the code and look at the game's files there isn't even a separate folder for Powers, Set Bonuses, Inspirations, or Archetype Inherents. They're all in one giant folder called Powers, which houses everything.

 

Because of this, you could theoretically turn an Enhancement into a normal Power with a couple of small line changes. In fact, with just a couple of edits you could turn something an enhancement into a power that accepts its own enhancements, altho it may cause the UI to freak out.]  

 

 

 

To blow things completely out of proportion relative to OP's question, it's even probably possible to create Enhancements for Inspirations. With manipulation to the Inspiration code to allow them to accept specific external boosts, you could theoretically have a Set Bonus that "makes Inspirations 10% more effective" or whatever. Probably a lot of work to implement, but at least theoretically possible, because of how intertwined all of these systems are when you dive into them. 

Edited March 16, 2022 by oedipus_tex

[srmalloy]

On 3/15/2022 at 12:46 PM, Mezmera said:

Remember you can only have 5x of the same bonus so in the case of damage you can get 5 bonuses of the 3%

This needs to die. Open up your combat attributes window and look at the damage modifiers, then look at the name of the bonus on the left side. That is what you can have five of. You could have four "Large Damage Bonus" entries, with two of them being 1.5% damage and two being 0.75% damage, which means you could only have one more before hitting the Rule of Five. This is how you can get 75% Recharge bonus using ten 7.5% bonuses - five "Luck of the Gambler: Increased Recharge" and five (IIRC) "Huge Recharge Bonus" (could be 'Ultimate'; I'm working from memory here).

[Mezmera]

46 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

This needs to die. Open up your combat attributes window and look at the damage modifiers, then look at the name of the bonus on the left side. That is what you can have five of. You could have four "Large Damage Bonus" entries, with two of them being 1.5% damage and two being 0.75% damage, which means you could only have one more before hitting the Rule of Five. This is how you can get 75% Recharge bonus using ten 7.5% bonuses - five "Luck of the Gambler: Increased Recharge" and five (IIRC) "Huge Recharge Bonus" (could be 'Ultimate'; I'm working from memory here).

 

Okay but seeing how every iteration of a scaled bonus gets listed with the particular percentage its at as either small, medium, large, huge, ultimate, etc., you will only be allowed to get 5 of that particular bonus for instance the "Ultimate Damage Bonus" at the 5% would be one. 

 

So you're trying to find something wrong with the statement that you can only have 5x of a particular percentage bonus to justify that the LotG's work different because they are listed in the combat details of your bonuses as a different name of recharge bonus.  Which yes you can get 10x those 7.5 recharge bonuses, 5 set bonuses and 5 lotg's.  

 

SO aside from how the LotG's and other unique's operate you can only have 5x of a particular regular set bonus.  And also you're allowed 5x LotG's and Karma kb protection and the like if you really want to get into semantics.  

Edited March 17, 2022 by Mezmera

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Mezmera said:

 

Okay but seeing how every iteration of a scaled bonus gets listed with the particular percentage its at as either small, medium, large, huge, ultimate, etc., you will only be allowed to get 5 of that particular bonus for instance the "Ultimate Damage Bonus" at the 5% would be one.

The reason to draw the distinction is that there are some odd quirks in the bonuses for Defense sets. For example, among the bonuses for the Blood Mandate set is a "Small Increased Fire/Cold/AoE Defense Bonus" and a "Huge Increased AoE/Fire/Cold Defense Bonus". Each of these gives 1.88% to Fire and Cold Defense, but because they have different names, you can theoretically slot five sets of Blood Mandate and get ten 1.88% Fire/Cold defense bonuses.

[Mezmera]

10 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

The reason to draw the distinction is that there are some odd quirks in the bonuses for Defense sets. For example, among the bonuses for the Blood Mandate set is a "Small Increased Fire/Cold/AoE Defense Bonus" and a "Huge Increased AoE/Fire/Cold Defense Bonus". Each of these gives 1.88% to Fire and Cold Defense, but because they have different names, you can theoretically slot five sets of Blood Mandate and get ten 1.88% Fire/Cold defense bonuses.

 

So its a rare overlooked inconsistency while coding the name for that particular bonus.  No need to gum up the topic with a super rare instance of a misnamed set bonus.  The intent of the IO bonuses is the 5x rule, once the OP becomes savvy with the system then yes this'll explain why some bonuses show up more than they should in case they ever want to slot more than one set of Blood Mandate's let alone one set of it.  

[srmalloy]

34 minutes ago, Mezmera said:

So its a rare overlooked inconsistency

A 'rare overlooked inconsistency' specifically cited by Castle talking about how the Rule of Fives worked by name, not by value. All of the Defense set bonuses have one positional and two typed, with the positional defense either first or last. The first (either the positional or both typed) have a value of 1.25% modified by the adjective (defining the tier of the bonus) , with the remaining being 0.63% modified by the adjective.

[Mezmera]

14 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

A 'rare overlooked inconsistency' specifically cited by Castle talking about how the Rule of Fives worked by name, not by value. All of the Defense set bonuses have one positional and two typed, with the positional defense either first or last. The first (either the positional or both typed) have a value of 1.25% modified by the adjective (defining the tier of the bonus) , with the remaining being 0.63% modified by the adjective.

 

If you're shooting to slot all of the best stuff to be as good as you can be you'll be running into the Rule of Five.  If you're looking to somehow break the bounds of a build by using gimp sets that go outside of what the named set bonus should adhere to you're not building the character with the best stuff anywho. 

 

It's best practice to operate under the Rule of Five when building your character since all of the best stuff adheres to those rules anyways.  You will never see a 10% recharge, 6% resist or 5% defense bonus break out of that rule and those are all of the values you should be striving for as many of as you can. 

 

I'd rather the OP stick to aiming for the best potential they can build for than considering the sagely wisdom of a long lost developer that had the gumption to nerf Energy Transfer the way they did for some reason to their own lament.   

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Mezmera said:

I'd rather the OP stick to aiming for the best potential they can build for than considering the sagely wisdom of a long lost developer that had the gumption to nerf Energy Transfer the way they did for some reason to their own lament.   

Knowing how the Rule of Fives works is important to understanding how the set bonuses group under the rule. And Castle's explanation of how it works -- a description of fact relating to the code -- is unrelated to your or anyone else's opinion of him based on his decisions regarding the development of the game.

[oedipus_tex]

Rule of Five gets a bit easier when you remember the "everything is a power" rule.

 

Each set bonus is a power. You can have up to five copies of a set bonus power. This works the same way max counts work with temp powers like Tidal Power, Momentum, Bloom, etc. You can stack the power up to the limit, anything beyond gets ignored.

 

 

 

On the more technical side, in the code it looks like this:

 

 

 

 

In this case the "power" is Increased_Melee_Def_6." That is the thing you can have five copies of.

 

 

Luck of the Gambler's Recharge bonus is different from the generic Recharge bonus powers. LoTG has its own specific power all to itself. It looks like this:

 

 

 

There's also a generic Recharge power other powers use. You can stack each power up to 5 times. They do happen to give the same amount of Recharge, in some cases. But it's the power the game is looking at.