Procs in Powers that Chain

[UltraAlt]

I've been playing a ?/Martial Arts Dominator recently.

[Trick Shot] is a chain power which takes Universal Damage and Ranged Enhancements.

It looks like the ranged enhancement procs may only trigger on one of the targets (not necessarily the original target) is that correct or am I just not catching that it is triggering on multiple opponents sometimes?

[Clave Dark 5]

I believe someone did some in-depth investigation of this and found that yeah, it only possibly procs off the first target.  I think this was in one of the proc monster threads under the Doms tab or maybe Defender???

[oedipus_tex]

@Carnifax did an examination of procs in Jolting Chain recently and came up with results he posted in this thread:

 

 

 

 

The end result was that procs do fire in chains, but not with the frequency you'd expect from a single target power. 

 

I'm not sure about Trick Shot.

[UltraAlt]

5 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I think this was in one of the proc monster threads under the Doms tab or maybe Defender???

 

Someone said there was one, and I dug around for a while and couldn't find it.

 

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

did an examination of procs in Jolting Chain recently and came up with results he posted in this thread:

Thanks

[Carnifax]

2 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

I'm not sure about Trick Shot.

As it happens I have a Dark/Martial domi with Trick Shot slotted up with a Javi & apoc procs. So lets take them on a trip through a -1x6 Crey mission (because Martials damage is terribad)

 

It also happens I've the same question about the new Tesla Cage chains & procs (which I haven't confirmed or denied yet)

 

First thing I'll note is that the chaining is more like Tesla Cage, rather than older things like Jolting Chain (which creates pseudopets which then cause the chain effects).

 

Jolting : https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=dominator_control.electric_control.jolting_chain&at=dominator showing the pseudopet spawns clearly

Trick Shot not : https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=dominator_assault.martial_assault.trick_shot&at=dominator

You'd need Bopper or a dev to explain the difference as to why there are two different chaining mechanisms. 

 

So the results may not be as we think based off Jolting, cos they work differently. It also makes it harder for me to say "these were the Chained targets rather than the first hit". 

 

That means in my Logger the procs will have their own lines, alongside the Trick Shot ones

 

So Trick Shot activated 71 times, hit 258 entities and the attached Apoc went off 61 times. Which isn't the most fabulous proc rate in the world. Glads went off 54 times : Edit but note this is the total number of Glad procs, and I have that slotted both in Trick and Masterful. The log file won't tell me which belongs to which. 

 

So Apoc is adding about 33% extra damage and Glads about 20% of the final damage figure for Trick. Which actually seems reasonable to good to me.

 

But like I said this Dark/Martial is headed for the Glue factory because martials overall damage at the mo is pretty poor. Envenomed Blades is currently beyond worthless. 

 

Note that 2140 is the ENTIRE contribution for Envenomed (other than pets as my haunts did a tiny bit from it too, listed under them). I activated Envenomed 10 times, so each Envenomed cast only added an average of 214 damage, which is laughable. 

 

Whomever gutted envenomed to this should be ashamed of themselves really. Waste of a power. 

 

And in case anyone wants to explore the parse : https://www.carnifax.org/?uuid=76934fd2-0c8c-4e7a-84e1-2e2923fe11e3

Edited March 30, 2022 by Carnifax

[macskull]

8 hours ago, Carnifax said:

Jolting : https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=dominator_control.electric_control.jolting_chain&at=dominator showing the pseudopet spawns clearly

Trick Shot not : https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=dominator_assault.martial_assault.trick_shot&at=dominator

You'd need Bopper or a dev to explain the difference as to why there are two different chaining mechanisms. 

I'm neither Bopper nor a dev but the reason there are two different chaining mechanisms is because until Electrical Affinity was released chain powers didn't really exist, they were just powers which created pseudopets which "jumped" like with your Jolting Chain example. Electrical Affinity is the first set to use the actual chain mechanic, which is more desirable since it's way easier to define priorities and conditions for the chaining effects. This particular example provides a really interesting look into how Trick Shot has changed since it first showed up in the Issue 24 beta before shutdown - if you look at the CoD entry from 2012 it uses pseudopets and even shares some code with Chain Induction. At some point I don't recall, it was updated to be an actual chain power.

 

More on topic for the OP: the distinction between "single-target power which triggers pseudopets" and "chain power" is really really important from a proc standpoint. Chain powers have their own calculation for proc chance purposes:

=PPM*((Base_recharge/(1+Recharge_slotting))+Activation_time)/(60*(0.25+0.75*(1+0.75*Max_targets)))

where "Max_targets" can be dynamically defined but is currently always set to 5 regardless of actual max targets. To put that into actual readable format, it means chain powers are pretty bad for proc slotting. A 10-second recharge time power with a 2.03-second activation time and no slotted recharge has about 18% chance to fire on each target for a 3.5ppm proc, which is even worse than a comparable AoE's 22%.

 

As far as pseudopet powers go, I'm fairly certain for any "jumps" procs will use the calculation of the parent power for determining proc chances, but someone feel free to correct me here.

Edited March 31, 2022 by macskull

[oedipus_tex]

9 hours ago, Carnifax said:

 

 

But like I said this Dark/Martial is headed for the Glue factory because martials overall damage at the mo is pretty poor. Envenomed Blades is currently beyond worthless. 

 

Note that 2140 is the ENTIRE contribution for Envenomed (other than pets as my haunts did a tiny bit from it too, listed under them). I activated Envenomed 10 times, so each Envenomed cast only added an average of 214 damage, which is laughable. 

 

 

 

I mothballed a Dark/Martial too and suspected this, but didn't know it was that dire. How confident are you that these are consistent results? I always thought Envenomed Blades worked similar to incarnate powers that add proc damage.

[macskull]

28 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

I mothballed a Dark/Martial too and suspected this, but didn't know it was that dire. How confident are you that these are consistent results? I always thought Envenomed Blades worked similar to incarnate powers that add proc damage.

From the I26P2 patch notes:

Envenomed Blades: Fixed a bug where this power would sometimes proc more than once. Procs now ignores damage buffs and enhancements.

That last part is what really did it in. Martial was a top-tier secondary before this but the EB change combined with a few other tweaks to the set make it low-to-midrange now. (This also answers my question about when Trick Shot got turned into a proper chain attack, actually.)

[UltraAlt]

11 hours ago, Carnifax said:

So Trick Shot activated 71 times, hit 258 entities and the attached Apoc went off 61 times. Which isn't the most fabulous proc rate in the world. Glads went off 54 times : Edit but note this is the total number of Glad procs, and I have that slotted both in Trick and Masterful. The log file won't tell me which belongs to which. 

 

I was actually trying Winter's Bite : Recharge/Chance of -Speed & -Recharge along with a Devastation : Chance for Hold.

I'm not sure if there is any additional impact of having both procs in the same power.

[Carnifax]

7 hours ago, macskull said:

where "Max_targets" can be dynamically defined but is currently always set to 5 regardless of actual max targets. To put that into actual readable format, it means chain powers are pretty bad for proc slotting.

This is all great info. Ta MacSkull. 

 

6 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

I mothballed a Dark/Martial too and suspected this, but didn't know it was that dire. How confident are you that these are consistent results? I always thought Envenomed Blades worked similar to incarnate powers that add proc damage.

Well it does, from a logging point of view. It logs exactly as if every power and pseudopet power had a proc called Envenomed Blades attached to it. Inky and Binky here are my haunts. Note that my parser doesn't currently treat it like a proc proper (which is why the main entries "Attacks" are only 10. I need to add a new Pattern / modify the existing "Is this a proc attack" pattern so Envenomed is handled exactly like a proc. That would correct the number of attacks and the Recharge (Avg recharge in procs should mean "On average how often does it go off", in powers it should be "What was the average time between activation and recharge"), although you could argue on which figure is more meaningful for a power which acts both like a Power and a Proc (do you want to know how quick it takes to recharge or on average how often it goes off)

 

But the damage is so low considering its a power choice. I mean it's adding ~10 damage per attack to the haunts. 

 

And the main entry covers all powers (including Trick Shot) and it's being outperformed by most other slotted procs. To give you some idea in terms of my build I only have Cloud Senses in Heart of Darkness. HoD hit 108 time, triggering 102 procs (which did 9,326 damage). Envenomed did about 25% of that 

 

 

I mean looking at the actual logs I've no idea how it decides to calculate the actual damage numbers. On Trick Shot its terrible, on single target attacks its a little better than Reactive, despite the two not being all that different in terms of damage they do 

 

 

[macskull]

I’m on mobile so I’ll try and update this with the math and stuff later when I get back to an actual computer, but Envenomed Blades and the DoT interfaces calculate damage very differently. Interface adds a fixed value of damage per tick regardless of the power which triggers it, while EB uses a calculation based on the base recharge time and areafactor (if applicable).

 

EDIT: Oh, and the lookup table is different beyween the two as well. Interface procs use melee_tempdamage while EB uses melee_damage. I’ll explain why that’s particularly shitty when I update this post.

Edited March 31, 2022 by macskull

[Bopper]

I'm curious if anyone has ever tested procs in rehabilitating circuit. With max targets set to 255, it should floor your chances even if you don't slot recharge 

[macskull]

As promised, here's the update to my previous post:

 

Envenomed Blades uses the following formula for determining damage:

(0.15*Melee_Damage)*(0.16*minmax(power.base>rechargetime, 0, 20) + 0.36)/power.base>areafactor

• The damage scale is melee_damage, which means it can change depending on the AT in question but since Dominators are the only AT with access to this power that number will always be 58.3907 at level 50. Thankfully, Dominators have the second-highest melee damage scale in the game behind Scrappers (1.05 vs 1.125).
• Power.base>rechargetime is pretty self-explanatory: EB damage scales based on unmodified recharge time, capping at 20 seconds (powers with recharge times longer than 20 seconds gain no extra benefit).
• Power.base>areafactor is a little weirder, but basically it uses the same calculation as PPM for reducing damage in AoEs. If you're curious how areafactor is determined, it's using the following formula:

  • areafactor = 1+(0.15*Radius)-(0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30)

    where radius = 0 for single-target powers, which makes areafactor = 1.

• Since @Carnifax mentioned earlier they were disappointed with the results of EB on Haunt, I'm going to assume EB works like Assault Hybrid, where a pet summoned while the caster has EB active will have EB's proc damage ability carried over to it. Like I mentioned in my last post, EB using melee_damage is especially shitty in this case because melee_damage for "minion pets" is 55.61, so your pets will be dealing less damage to begin with and they tend to have shorter-recharge attacks, resulting in even less extra damage per attack.

• EB uses a slightly different formula for location/toggle/auto powers that uses activation period instead of recharge time, but I'm not going to list that here.

Interface DoTs don't use a dynamic formula like EB, instead theirs is like this:

(0.125 * Melee_TempDamage)

• The above example is for interfaces which state they deal "moderate" DoT, but every DoT interface is similar. The interfaces which state they deal "minor" DoT use scale 0.1 instead of scale 0.125, so about 20% less.
• Using melee_tempdamage here means every AT/pet/critter in the game will use the exact same scale - each entity technically has its own value, but they're all set to the same number: 107.0897 at level 50 (this ensures procs deal the same damage across ATs, among other things). Already you can see this is almost twice as much as EB before we start factoring in recharge time and areafactor.
• Interface DoTs don't care about recharge time or areafactor. They're always the same number. It doesn't matter if you have a 1-second-recharge AoE with a 1000-foot radius, the DoT ticks will never change.

TL;DR: Envenomed Blades sucks - a lot. That's at least partly by design, and I would not be at all surprised if similar changes made their way to other powers, like Interface procs.

---

 

6 hours ago, Bopper said:

I'm curious if anyone has ever tested procs in rehabilitating circuit. With max targets set to 255, it should floor your chances even if you don't slot recharge 

At least for the Electrical Affinity powers, maxtargets for PPM calculation purposes is always set to 5 regardless of what the actual maxtargets is. I don't know if this is the case for all chain powers, or only the EA ones. I'll have to test it sometime. I can't find the source at the moment, and this may have changed in the last 3 years, but minimum chance for a proc is always 5% plus an additional 1% for each PPM, so in this case a 3.5 PPM proc would be 8.5%.

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

least for the Electrical Affinity powers, maxtargets for PPM calculation purposes is always set to 5 regardless of what the actual maxtargets is. I don't know if this is the case for all chain powers, or only the EA ones. I'll have to test it sometime. I can't find the source at the moment, and this may have changed in the last 3 years, but minimum chance for a proc is always 5% plus an additional 1% for each PPM, so in this case a 3.5 PPM proc would be 8.5%

I recall that 5 targets for Elec Affinity, but can't remember where I saw it. I also am not sure if that was a global chain change, or just for chain powers with variable max targets.

 

As for the minimum, it would be 1.5% per ppm. In this case it'll be 10.25%

[Carnifax]

10 hours ago, macskull said:

• •  

• Since @Carnifax mentioned earlier they were disappointed with the results of EB on Haunt, I'm going to assume EB works like Assault Hybrid, where a pet summoned while the caster has EB active will have EB's proc damage ability carried over to it. Like I mentioned in my last post, EB using melee_damage is especially shitty in this case because melee_damage for "minion pets" is 55.61, so your pets will be dealing less damage to begin with and they tend to have shorter-recharge attacks, resulting in even less extra damage per attack.

Thanks for all this. Yes, I noticed this on the parsing. Inky & Blinky, the two Haunts, had some EB parses but Clyde, the doggo didn't have any. So the Haunts were probably inheriting the EB buff I had running at times. 

 

At the moment EB really is a "Cool idea with a new mechanic which actually ends up being meh when you look at the numbers", a bit like Shocked! and the Tesla chains.