Spiritual Alpha and the oddness of CoH to hit buffs question

[Snarky]

I seem to remember that to hit buffs and to hit debuffs are (in some cases) the same mechanic in CoH just a positive or negative value.  From my faulty memory...so....

 

Spiritual Alpha enhances to hit buffs.  Does that mean it also enhances to hit debuffs?

 

I realize in this case the powers are affecting self or other, yet the oddness of CoH coding makes me wonder,

[Underfyre]

I wan to say no, just like +dmg doesn't enhance +heal. But hop on the test server and get back to us, won't take but 5 minutes.

[Glacier Peak]

City of Data is your friend:

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=incarnate.alpha

 

Scroll down to the Spiritual Alpha tiers

[aethereal]

I think it would.  Spiritual Alpha is a "strength to ToHit" effect.  Both to-hit buffs and debuffs are ToHit effects, with, as you say, positive or negative values.  I can't quite see how they would prevent Strength to ToHit from affecting both (obviously, you can code an effect to ignore outside buffs/debuffs).

 

Haven't tested, don't claim to have expert knowledge here.  One thing that does speak against the idea that ToHit buffs and debuffs would be equally affected is that there are two different categories of enhancement -- ToHit Buff and ToHitDebuff.  Contrast with, say, Endurance Modification, which clearly is affected by the same thing regardless of sign and has only one enhancement type, not an Endurance Mod Buff and Endurance Mod Debuff.

 

EDIT:  That said, CoD at least seems to think that ToHit Buff and ToHitDebuff enhancements are the same thing:

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=boosts.crafted_deflated_ego_a.crafted_deflated_ego_a

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=boosts.attuned_encouraged_accuracy_a.attuned_encouraged_accuracy_a

 

EDIT2:  This raises an interesting question.  If there were a power that gave both +to-hit and -to-hit (to different targets), and both were enhanceable, and you could slot both To Hit Buff and To Hit Debuff sets in it, probably each effect would be enhanced by both enhancement types.  So my question is, how is Enhancement Diversification calculated?  Would you hit ED by slotting three total of To Hit Buff and To Hit Debuff SO-level enhancements in any combination?  Or could you cheat ED by having ED-limit to-hit buffing and ED-limit to-hit debuffing, and have each component reaching twice ED limit?  I think this is purely theoretical, since I don't think any power exists that fits these requirements.

Edited April 3, 2022 by aethereal

[Bopper]

43 minutes ago, Snarky said:

I seem to remember that to hit buffs and to hit debuffs are (in some cases) the same mechanic in CoH just a positive or negative value.  From my faulty memory...so....

 

Spiritual Alpha enhances to hit buffs.  Does that mean it also enhances to hit debuffs?

 

I realize in this case the powers are affecting self or other, yet the oddness of CoH coding makes me wonder,

If there is a power that accepts To-Hit Buff enhancements and has an effect that does enhanceable To-Hit Debuff, then yes.

 

Otherwise no.

 

Alphas are auto powers that grant various Global Enhancement powers. Those global enhancements are marked with a boost type to indicate what powers accept them. In the case of To-Hit buffs, it is marked as a To-Hit buff boost, and only powers that accept To-Hit buff boosts will accept that global enhancement.

[oedipus_tex]

Spiritual Alpha is in probably most cases one of the worst Alpha power selections. It's the mermaid Alpha slot luring the unwary sailor in a size DD bra made of useful seeming numbers that just want to drown you. I'm not going to say there's no build that exists that can't make use of it, but, probably 90% of the time, staying away is what you should do.

 

The reason actually isn't ToHit. But we'll get to that.

 

Alpha slots are just enhancements that happen to operate on your whole build. Imagine slotting a ToHit enhancement. What does that do? It enhances enhanceable +ToHit (if the power has it). Slot a Hami O that has ToHit enhance in a power that lacks +ToHit? Oh well, wasted. So it was with the Alpha slot. But that's not the reason Spiritual is such a sour power.

 

Like I mentioned, Alpha slots are just enhancements that happen to affect more than one power. What happens when you put Recharge in a power? Proc rates decrease. Same thing happens with Spiritual. 

 

On top of that, Alpha slots partially  break through the enhancement diversifcation system, which leads to my final statement:

 

I'm not going to say that it's always true, but probably 95% of the time, not taking an Alpha slot with a Damage enhancement is a mistake. Not talking to you right now, Kinetics. Everyone else. Damage. Damage damage damage Alpha slot. You can take one of the ones that happens to give Damage and other stuff like end mod or +/- ToHit or Hold duration. But anything else outside of a very very specialized situation should be taking a Damage alpha slot.

And especially not Spiritual.

[Snarky]

THanks everyone.  I am going to stick with Agility for my Dark / Invul Brute.  

 

Good advice above, special thanks to Tex.  

 

Dark/Invul is a niche case, in my opinion, where super high recharge takes a solid pairing and makes it superb.  This is due to a number of factors like long cool down utility powers and simple (small) attack chains because power selections leave little room for attack powers.  

[oedipus_tex]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

THanks everyone.  I am going to stick with Agility for my Dark / Invul Brute.  

 

Good advice above, special thanks to Tex.  

 

Dark/Invul is a niche case, in my opinion, where super high recharge takes a solid pairing and makes it superb.  This is due to a number of factors like long cool down utility powers and simple (small) attack chains because power selections leave little room for attack powers.  

 

 

Oh for sure there are cases where it can work out. Spiritual Core add 45% Recharge to every single power, 30% of which ignores enhancement diversification. That could result in unlocking an attack chain for some builds that otherwise wouldn't work out, and for those cases, all the blessings.

 

The damage alphas are so hard to pass up just because Damage is the one stat we normally want every power into the Reds on. Being able to go 30% or 22% above that, and have it apply to every attack, is really hard to pass up. There are occasions though where there's a house of cards moment that unlocks with an alternative slot.

 

[Uun]

Back on live there was an exploit where you could slot Enzyme HOs (-def/-tohit/endred) in Invincibility (+def/+tohit) and the defense would be enhanced on Schedule A instead of Schedule B. When they fixed that, I believe they made it so +tohit/+def powers wouldn't be affected by -tohit/-def enhancements, and vice versa. I'm not aware of any powers that are enhanceable for both.