Rain of Fire, Ice Storm (Accuracy?)

[Solarverse]

I have had a few folks in game tell me that RoF and Ice Storm does not need accuracy except for in PvP. I could have sworn this was changed at some point? Somebody mind ending this debate once and for all please?

[Spaghetti Betty]

I'm pretty sure both of those powers have a base accuracy of 2.00x. I don't think they're gonna miss much.

[macskull]

Neither is autohit. The power is autohit when you execute it but the power you execute just summons a pet that does the actual damage, and that portion is not autohit and has a base accuracy of 1.0x.

 

You can verify this both in CoD and ingame by looking at pet hit rolls in combat logs (or by trying to hit a group of waaaaay higher level critters and watching as only a handful of the ticks actually land before you get sent to next Tuesday).

[Solarverse]

11 minutes ago, macskull said:

Neither is autohit. The power is autohit when you execute it but the power you execute just summons a pet that does the actual damage, and that portion is not autohit and has a base accuracy of 1.0x.

 

You can verify this both in CoD and ingame by looking at pet hit rolls in combat logs (or by trying to hit a group of waaaaay higher level critters and watching as only a handful of the ticks actually land before you get sent to next Tuesday).

 

Okay, thanks for squashing that for me.

[Frostbiter]

Both of these powers summon psuedopets and the accuracy check is per tick of damage.  So yes, slot some accuracy. Also note that Aim and Buildup will pass their effects to the psuedopet but only if they are active when it  goes off. It will however last as long as the psuedopet does.

[carroto]

55 minutes ago, Frostbiter said:

It will however last as long as the psuedopet does.

 

Is there some way to confirm this?  I've always presumed that the powers don't benefit from Tactics at all and only get the first 10 seconds of Aim/BU and the 5 seconds of the BU proc.

 

Edit: and because of this require *more* accuracy slotting, not less.

Edited August 17, 2023 by carroto

[Frostbiter]

Yes, watch the powers and see if the damage numbers go down after 5 seconds. I could be entirely wrong about the effect not wearing off. It's been about 16 years since I experimented with it. 🤷‍♂️I do know that you hit them before you activate the rain powers.  I never mentioned Tactics. IT doesn't affect psuedopet powers as far as I know.

[Solarverse]

15 minutes ago, Frostbiter said:

  I never mentioned Tactics. IT doesn't affect psuedopet powers as far as I know.

 

That is a shame if this is true, since Tactics is AoE and is supposed to affect all entities aligned with the Toggle Owner.

[Frostbiter]

12 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

 

That is a shame if this is true, since Tactics is AoE and is supposed to affect all entities aligned with the Toggle Owner.

 

Psuedopets are weird. They aren't actual entities. They cannot be directly affected by powers but they do inherent your damage and to hit bonus when they are created. The Aim/BU effect will expire part way through. (I worked twelve hours today so my work lagged brain misfired earlier. It's only for the duration of Aim/BU that is left by the time you pop one off.)  All that really matters is that you hit Aim or BU before you use a rain power and it makes them go more kaboom. But don't use both because the few seconds left on them isn't worth it by the time you get a third or fourth power off.

[Uun]

Note the hover text in the screenshot below that boosts are copied to entity.

 

[carroto]

17 hours ago, Uun said:

boosts are copied to entity.

 

Right but they still expire in their normal duration, so short-duration constantly refreshing boosts like Tactics and Assault are pretty much worthless on pseudo-pets.

[Solarverse]

3 hours ago, carroto said:

 

Right but they still expire in their normal duration, so short-duration constantly refreshing boosts like Tactics and Assault are pretty much worthless on pseudo-pets.

 

I wonder if that can be changed, or if that is something that is hard coded?

[carroto]

4 hours ago, Solarverse said:

I wonder if that can be changed,

 

It would be nice.  As it is rain powers have mostly disadvantages relative to powers that apply their effects all at once.  With the latter you get the full benefit of any boosts including toggles, as well as often being good vehicles for procs.  On top of that the rain pseudo-pets often have lower damage caps than the ATs using them.

 

There are some nice things about rains but you're definitely giving up a lot with them.

[Chance Jackson]

On 8/17/2023 at 6:32 PM, Frostbiter said:

Both of these powers summon psuedopets and the accuracy check is per tick of damage.  So yes, slot some accuracy. Also note that Aim and Buildup will pass their effects to the psuedopet but only if they are active when it  goes off. It will however last as long as the psuedopet does.

Can you confirm if the same is true for caltrops & trip mine?

[Frostbiter]

18 minutes ago, Chance Jackson said:

Can you confirm if the same is true for caltrops & trip mine?

 

I have no idea. No personal experience with either. They seem like candidates for being psuedopets though. Easy test is to try them with and without popping a few red inspirations.

[Frostbiter]

Ok, something was bothering me about that test method. I think they only way to distinguish a psuedopet from a power would be to see the duration of a boost expire while the damage is ticking. Maybe somebody else has a better method.

[Uun]

I did some testing of Ice Storm (using an Ice/Kin corruptor) and Rain of Fire (using a Fire/Time corruptor) and I'm a bit perplexed by the results. I ran a lvl 50 mission out of Ouro and disabled enhancements and incarnate powers. I tried it at various levels, with foes (Council) ranging from lvl 51 to 54. I tracked pseudo pet hit rolls in the Pet Combat log.

• The Ice Storm and Rain of Fire pseudo pets should have 1.0 accuracy. They are classified as minion pets and should have base tohit of 0.75. While my attacks behaved as expected (65% chance tohit against +1s, 56% against +2s, etc.), the rains reported much higher accuracy than expected, and the results were different for each power. Ice Storm reported a 95% chance tohit against +1s and +2s, 88.78% against +3s and 72.14% against +4s. Rain of Fire reported a 95% chance tohit against +1s, 89.08% against +2s and 62.04% against +4s (I neglected to test RoF against +3s). Not sure why they're different, as the stats for both appear to be identical. I wasn't running anything that boosted accuracy or tohit and set bonuses were disabled. Also checked Ice Storm with my blaster and got the same numbers.
• Ice Storm did not benefit from Tactics at all.
• Ice Storm benefited from Aim while the buff was active (i.e., 10 seconds).
• Ice Storm benefited from an Insight inspiration for the full 15 second duration.
• Rain of Fire benefited from Farsight for the full 15 second duration.

[Frostbiter]

23 minutes ago, Uun said:

I did some testing of Ice Storm (using an Ice/Kin corruptor) and Rain of Fire (using a Fire/Time corruptor) and I'm a bit perplexed by the results. I ran a lvl 50 mission out of Ouro and disabled enhancements and incarnate powers. I tried it at various levels, with foes (Council) ranging from lvl 51 to 54. I tracked pseudo pet hit rolls in the Pet Combat log.

• The Ice Storm and Rain of Fire pseudo pets should have 1.0 accuracy. They are classified as minion pets and should have base tohit of 0.75. While my attacks behaved as expected (65% chance tohit against +1s, 56% against +2s, etc.), the rains reported much higher accuracy than expected, and the results were different for each power. Ice Storm reported a 95% chance tohit against +1s and +2s, 88.78% against +3s and 72.14% against +4s. Rain of Fire reported a 95% chance tohit against +1s, 89.08% against +2s and 62.04% against +4s (I neglected to test RoF against +3s). Not sure why they're different, as the stats for both appear to be identical. I wasn't running anything that boosted accuracy or tohit and set bonuses were disabled. Also checked Ice Storm with my blaster and got the same numbers.
• Ice Storm did not benefit from Tactics at all.
• Ice Storm benefited from Aim while the buff was active (i.e., 10 seconds).
• Ice Storm benefited from an Insight inspiration for the full 15 second duration.
• Rain of Fire benefited from Farsight for the full 15 second duration.

 

This might help a bit:

 

From https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#Calcuating_Accuracy_for_Pets_and_PvE_Enemies

Quote

Pet Accuracy

There are two completely unrelated issues with the accuracy of summoned pets and pseudopet-based powers. One is a misconception, the other may be a bug or a design oversight.

First, many powers that work through pets or pseudopets are listed as having an unusually high inherent Accuracy, like 2.0. This is misleading, since it implies that the pet is extremely accurate. In fact, this stat is meaningless, since the act of creating a pet doesn't care about Accuracy. What matter are the Accuracies of the pet's powers, which are stored separately.

Second, player-summoned pets seem to be treated as players rather than critters for parts of the attack formula. Their base chance to hit anything seems to be 75%, with no bonus Accuracy due to their rank. Previously, it was believed that a pet's base chance of hitting things was the same 50% that all critters have and that pets got a rank Accuracy multiplier of 1.5. Both these arrangements produce the same 75% final hit chance versus equal-level enemies with no Defense, but the way player pets apparently work makes them much better than they should be at hitting highly-Defensive or higher-level targets.

It is possible this second issue applies to all summoned pets, even those summoned by non-players, since it is known to apply to Malta Auto-Turrets.

 

[Uun]

2 minutes ago, Frostbiter said:

This might help a bit:

 

From https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#Calcuating_Accuracy_for_Pets_and_PvE_Enemies

I read that, but there needs to be another multiplier involved to get the test results I did (and that multiplier appears to be different for Ice Storm and Rain of Fire).

[Frostbiter]

Yeah, pets are weird. Wish I could be more helpful.

 

Edited August 19, 2023 by Frostbiter

[Solarverse]

3 hours ago, Uun said:

I read that, but there needs to be another multiplier involved to get the test results I did (and that multiplier appears to be different for Ice Storm and Rain of Fire).

 

I run an Ice/Storm Corruptor and my significant other runs a Fire/Storm. We have picked up on a few things ourselves.

I wonder if this accuracy difference was intentional since RoF does more damage than Ice Storm?

[Uun]

47 minutes ago, Solarverse said:

I wonder if this accuracy difference was intentional since RoF does more damage than Ice Storm?

Possible, but with normal slotting it's not going to be noticeable. Also, the difference in damage is pretty small (about 5 points over 15 seconds).