Hybrid Slot, Assault Radial vs. Core

[Cheli]

This question is brought up constantly in help chat, and because a lot of people really don't seem to know how it works, I'm going to break it down. This is all stuff I read/absorbed from various places about the hybrid slot; it's not my research, and I'm not an expert, but I know how it works and I figured I would help people who are always asking this (and people who don't seem to understand it).

 

Core

 

Core is a stacking buff that gives you 15% damage, up to a maximum of 75% damage at 5 stacks. This is considered +dmg% (which you can track on your combat stats), so it's subject to the +dmg% cap. What this means is that when you're at 5 stacks you're doing your base damage times 1.75.

 

Radial

 

Radial adds 'a chance for your power to hit twice'. What it actually does is, when it procs, it does the power that activated it's damage again. However, it only does the base damage the power deals, because it uses your AT's 'temporary power damage' stat (which afaik is 1.00 for every AT).

 

Every AT has invisible stats that control how much damage their attacks do. This is why a blaster does more damage with blast powers than a defender, or a scrapper does more than a tanker. If you took a generic attack that dealt 100 damage, for example, you would take that base damage (100) and multiply it by your AT's damage scale. As an example, a scrapper's melee attack scale is 1.125, and they have a 10% chance to crit; brute melee attack damage scale is .750, significantly lower (to allow for the Fury mechanic to do its thing).

 

That means that if those two ATs use that 100 damage attack, the Scapper version will do ~112 damage and the Brute version will do 75 damage.

 

The thing is that the radial doublehit effect does not scale with your AT's damage scale. That means that when the doublehit procs, the attack will do -

 

Scrapper - 112 damage + 100 damage (doublehit)

Brute - 75 damage + 100 damage (doublehit)

 

Doublehit also does not scale with critical strikes. If you crit with a scrapper and that crit triggered doublehit, it would deal 224 (double damage) + 100 (doublehit), NOT 224 + 224.

 

Comparison

 

Radial is better for ATs with lower base damage because the 'doublehit' actually does MORE damage, to scale, than the base power. Core is better for ATs that have higher base damage because the 'doublehit' does LESS damage, and DOESN'T scale with crits.

 

If you look at this mathematically, it's pretty glaring. Doublehit has, iirc, 6 procs per minute. Taking, again, a generic power that deals 100 base damage, we'll say you can use that power 10 times over the course of 1 minute. In that same 1 minute, you'll get 6 doublehit procs, and a scrapper will, over 10 hits, deal 1 critical strike for double damage.

 

Radial

Scrapper:

10 hits for 112 damage = 1120 damage

1 critical hit for = 224 damage

6 doublehit procs for = 600 damage

1120+224+600 = 1944 damage over a minute.

 

Brute:

10 hits for 75 damage = 750 damage

6 doublehit procs for = 600 damage

750+600 = 1350 damage over a minute.

 

Core

Scrapper:

10 hits for 112 damage = 1120 damage

1 critical hit for = 224 damage

multiply ALL damage by 1.75

= (1120+224)x1.75

=2352 damage over 1 minute

2352-1944= 408 extra damage you're dealing each minute with Core over Radial as a scrapper.

 

Brute:

10 hits for 75 damage = 750 damage

multiply ALL damage by 1.75

= 750x1.75

=~1313 damage

1313-1350 = 37 less damage you're doing each minute with Core over Radial as a brute.

 

So what does that mean?

 

It means if you're playing an AT like a scrapper that has a base damage scale HIGHER than 1.00, you're losing out on damage if you're using doublehit, and if you're playing an AT with a base damage scale LOWER than 1.00, you're better off with doublehit.

 

Which ATs have higher than 1.00 damage scales?

 

Scrappers, blasters with their ranged powers, and (I think?) dominators with their ranged powers. Stalker base damage is 1.00; however, they have both random and guaranteed critical hits, which again don't scale with doublehit, so are also better off with Core.

 

Everyone else has either 1.00 or lower base damage with most of their attacks, and will want to consider taking Radial instead. This is especially true for ATs that just do low damage in general like Defenders and Controllers. The exception to this is damage sets that use lots and lots of big AOEs; because of how procs interact with AOE range and power cooldowns, proc-based effects with big AOEs are generally less valuable, and so a brute or tank who uses lots of those will maybe be better with Core. (I'm not as clear on this.)

 

I don't know how incarnate powers interface with Mastermind pets, or Kheldian shapeshifts, so take this with a grain of salt if you play one of those.

 

The only other times Core is worse for a scrapper, blaster or stalker are:

• You have to constantly interrupt your attack chain enough that it interferes with your ability to maintain your stacks of Core. I generally never have this problem, personally, on these ATs, though, and even then, it would need to be often enough that you're losing most or all of your stacks, since even a +60% damage bonus is still better than the doublehit damage.
  
• You spend most of your time sitting at capped +dmg%, by using trays full of reds. Or you run with a kin who dumps Fulcrum Shift on you all the time. I don't think this is terribly practical, though, and if you're not +dmg% capped like more than half of your playtime, you're probably losing damage over if you used Core.
  

 

Basically, the lower your AT's base damage is from 1.00, the better doublehit is; the higher it is (and, if you crit more often like a stalker does), the better Core is.

 

There's a list of AT's base damage scales here.

[Obitus]

This is great information.  Quantitative data about newer powers/mechanics is generally very hard to find - so I'm grateful to find this thread.

 

That said, if your description of Hybrid Assault's mechanics is accurate, then I'm not sure the examples you provided afterwards are useful/relevant.  For example, if Hybrid Assault Radial only gives us a second hit of the base damage (not modified by AT scalars), then its proportion of the total will plummet if the player uses standard damage slotting (+95% damage), not to mention other damage buffs.  This principle holds for the Hybrid Assault Core too, of course. 

 

Likewise and perhaps most importantly, most players will attack more than 10 times per minute.  It's difficult to make a precise estimate across all builds and powersets, but I suspect the truth is closer to 30-40 attacks per minute on average.

 

So unless I'm misunderstanding something, which is entirely possible, your Scrapper examples should look more like this:

 

Radial

Scrapper:

30 hits for 112 damage = 3360 damage * 1.95 slotting = 6552 damage

3 critical hits for = 3 * 112 * 1.95 =  655.2 damage

6 doublehit procs for = 600 damage

6552+655.2+600 = 7807.2 damage over a minute.

 

Core

Scrapper:

30 hits for 112 * (1 + 0.95 slotting + 0.75 hybrid) = 9072 damage

3 critical hits for 112 * (1 + 0.95 slotting + 0.75 hybrid) = 907.2

= 9979.2 damage over 1 minute

9979.2-7807.2= 2172 extra damage you're dealing each minute with Core over Radial as a scrapper.

 

This comparison, again if I understand it correctly, will shift quite a bit as the player gains/sheds damage bonuses.  In the extreme case, for instance, if the player gets Fulcrum Shifted to the damage cap, then the Core boost will do literally nothing. 

 

Just based on the idea that Radial has a soft limit of 6 procs per minute, though, my suspicion is that the Core will generally be better, almost regardless of the player's AT damage scalar.  Then again, it's not clear to me how often/consistently the player can stack the +damage from the Core boost. 

 

Please do correct me if I'm wrong on all of the above.  I appreciate the discussion.

 

(Actually, it occurs to me that we were both double counting the crit damage, because 10 attacks with one of them being a crit should yield 11x single-attack damage, not 12x - or in my case, 33x single-attack damage, not 36x.  I've fixed that now.)

[Cheli]

It doesn't scale with your AT's base damage scale. This is different from the +damage% statistic, which every AT has access to. and it's got nothing to do with how you slot the power. Scrappers don't inherently have a damage% stat bonus.. their powers fundamentally do more damage because the base damage of the power is multiplied by a number higher than 1, before factoring in your current +damage% statistic. Your +dmg% and slotting isn't relevant; this is about comparing the two against one another on an AT-by-AT basis. Anybody can slot for extra damage to a power. Not every AT's melee damage powers inherently do 1.125 times the power's base damage, and not every AT deals critical hits.

 

The '10 attacks a minute' is for simplicity's sake, to explain the difference mathematically. '6 procs per minute' doesn't mean you'll literally always get 6 procs of doublehit per minute, it's a representation of a normalized number of a procs you get based on the power you use's recharge time and the size of the attack (for AOEs). That's why I just used 6 procs - for simplicity's sake. If you attack more, you'll get more. If you use mostly big AOEs, which proc less often, radial is even less useful.

 

 

[Obitus]

It doesn't scale with your AT's base damage scale. This is different from the +damage% statistic, which every AT has access to. and it's got nothing to do with how you slot the power. Scrappers don't inherently have a damage% stat bonus.. their powers fundamentally do more damage because the base damage of the power is multiplied by a number higher than 1, before factoring in your current +damage% statistic. Your +dmg% and slotting isn't relevant; this is about comparing the two against one another on an AT-by-AT basis. Anybody can slot for extra damage to a power. Not every AT's melee damage powers inherently do 1.125 times the power's base damage, and not every AT deals critical hits.

 

Ok, lemme see if I understand you correctly:

 

1. You're saying that the +damage buff from Hybrid Assault Core is net, i.e. separate from normal +damage buffs?  Because if it isn't, then like it or not, damage slotting (among other +damage buffs) is an important consideration for determining the net value of the buff.  On the other hand, if Assault Core is a net damage buff, as your numbers imply, then that's a huge honking deal, but your early description of the power's function suggests the opposite, when you say that Assault Core's +damage respects the damage cap.

 

2. I understand that the double hit doesn't scale with the AT damage scalar, which is why I kept your 600 damage figure.  This is one of those important bits of info for which I thanked you at the beginning of my post.  I haven't yet had a chance to earn Hybrid on any of my characters, so all of this is new to me.

 

3.  I admit that my memory of how procs work is foggy, but my understanding was that a proc with, e.g. a 6 procs-per-minute baseline would provide more-or-less 6 procs per minute regardless of how often you use the powers in question.  Now I seem to recall that the PPM mechanic does take into account recharge slotting, such that e.g. a power with 60s base recharge slotted for 100% recharge would have its proc chance basically cut in half.  But the PPM mechanic doesn't take into account global recharge from haste or IO set bonuses.  Is that right?  If so, then yeah, you could potentially end up with more than six procs, but still it's worth noting that a 6 PPM proc looks a lot better (like a higher proportion of the baseline damage) when you assume an unrealistically slow attack rate of 10 per minute.

 

4.  Or maybe the Hybrid Assault Radial's proc effect has a higher PPM?  It's hard to find numbers on this.

 

[Obitus]

If your point is simply to compare the damage you gain from each Hybrid Assault power, in absolute terms, then I think I understand where you're coming from.  If, for example, the base damage of your power (adjusted by AT scalar) is 100, then adding +75% in +damage will always give you 75 damage per attack.  (As long as the +75% damage buff doesn't get cut off by the cap, anyway.)

 

And if the double hit proc, likewise, is always just the base damage of the power (unadjusted by AT damage scalar), then you'll always get that number.  You can certainly compare in those terms, and if I jumped past that too quickly, then I apologize.

 

But I also think it's worth clarifying for other readers that when your example says "Assault Core multiplies all damage by 1.75," you don't actually mean that Assault Core is a separate, multiplicative damage boost.  The net benefit of that +75% damage will shift wildly based on the player's other +damage buffs.  Likewise, the net value of any proc effect, regardless of its PPM, will look much stronger if you attack very slowly (using powers with commensurately long recharge timers and low base damage, as in the example).

[Cheli]

Slotting a power doesn't give it a damage buff. It increases the base damage of the power, before applying the AT scalar, which is then multiplied by your +damage% statistic.

 

The point of the exercise is to demonstrate how much damage the variable, your hybrid assault incarnate slot, is contributing to your damage. It doesn't matter how much +dmg% from other sources you have because Core will always contribute the same amount, 75%, and doublehit will always contribute the same (simplified) amount, 6ppm worth of the power that triggers it's base damage. Both scale with any other source of +dmg%, so it's not important how much +dmg% you have unless you're at the cap, and most people who aren't Kins or fire-farm brutes accepting only red insps will achieve on a regular basis.

[Obitus]

Slotting a power doesn't give it a damage buff. It increases the base damage of the power, before applying the AT scalar, which is then multiplied by your +damage% statistic.

 

This seems incorrect to me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying.  Damage slotting is equivalent to damage buffs, in almost every case, certainly every case that I can think of.  Damage slotting is not some sort of separate category that separately raises "base damage" prior to other multipliers.

 

I'll use an example, to see if we're on the same page:

 

If you have let's say a Blaster with 95% damage slotting, a 10% damage buff from Assault, and a 40% buff from Defiance, then your total damage modifier (irrespective of AT scalar) follows:

 

1 + 0.95 slotting + 0.1 Assault + 0.4 Defiance = 2.45, or 245% of the base damage

 

In other words, the damage buffs and the damage from enhancements stack additively.  Are we agreed on that?

 

Now, this next bit of your post suggests that Hybrid Assault Core is, in fact, a damage multiplier separate from all others, i.e. a context-independent net 75% damage increase:

 

The point of the exercise is to demonstrate how much damage the variable, your hybrid assault incarnate slot, is contributing to your damage. It doesn't matter how much +dmg% from other sources you have because Core will always contribute the same amount, 75%, and doublehit will always contribute the same (simplified) amount, 6ppm worth of the power that triggers it's base damage. Both scale with any other source of +dmg%, so it's not important how much +dmg% you have unless you're at the cap, and most people who aren't Kins or fire-farm brutes accepting only red insps will achieve on a regular basis.

 

But you also say that Assault Core "is subject to the damage cap," which is just a cap on the damage multiplier heroes can achieve through conventional (i.e. additive) damage buffs.  (e.g. Blasters can't raise their damage above 500% of the base.) 

 

Both of these statements of yours are unlikely to be true, because the exceptions to the additive-damage-buff rule, by definition, exist outside of the damage cap's domain (e.g. damage procs).  This distinction, between conventional damage buffs that respect the cap (and whose net value varies by context), and proc effects that don't care about the damage cap, more or less encompasses the entire point of the comparison in your original post.  Or so I thought, hence my attempts to clarify.

 

If you have, in fact, demonstrated through testing that Hybrid Core's +damage is a separate multiplier from all other damage buffs, then that's great information!  Again, I don't know for sure, as I'm in the odd position of being a born again n00b after 8 years of playing the game, and then 7 years of forgetting most of what I knew.  I'd be pleased to be proven wrong, but what I do know about conventional +damage buffs suggests that we have a fundamental disconnect somewhere.  A 75% net damage buff to, say, a Brute already at +500% in damage buffs sounds way too good to be true, too.

 

EDIT: Here's a link to help explain what I'm talking about - https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits#Damage

[Cheli]

It's not incorrect. You seem confused by using the term 'buff' in an imprecise capacity.

 

When you use a power that deals damage, that damage is based on -

 

The base damage of the power. (this is what doublehit multiplies.)

Multiplied by your AT's scalar.

Multiplied by your damage bonus statistic, which is what you're referring to and thinking of when you're talking about 'the cap'. The damage buff statistic is universal, it affects all powers, it is tracked separately, and it has its own cap. It is unrelated to slotting an individual power for damage.

 

The damage bonus from assault is a damage bonus. The damage bonus from Build Up is a damage bonus. The damage bonus from the hybrid slot assault core ability is a damage bonus. The damage 'bonus' from playing an AT with a higher scalar is not a damage bonus. The damage 'bonus' from slotting your power for +damage is not a damage bonus.

 

Doublehit's damage scales with your slotting. So does Core, because it adds a 75% damage bonus that affects all the damage you do.

 

The sources for the actual damage bonus statistic, which is a multiplicative percentage that adds to all your damage, are few. Hybrid Assault Core, Build Up, Aim, Assault from leadership, Fulcrum Shift, Red insps, the Rad Armor power. There are probably a few more, but not many. Because it's a powerful stat.

 

That stat has nothing to do with how you slot the power. Slotting does not contribute to that stat. It alters how the base power functions, ie, it makes the base power deal more damage, or hit more accurately.

 

Slotting a power for damage does increase the damage that doublehit hits for. But that's a moot point because a character with Core who slots the same also gets increase damage in the form of +75% to the damage bonus statistic. That's the point of the post - analyzing whether doing 75% more damage is better than the contribution of the doublehit mechanic. Slotting isn't relevant.

[Obitus]

You seem confused by using the term 'buff' in an imprecise capacity.

 

Ha, ok.

 

The damage bonus from assault is a damage bonus. The damage bonus from Build Up is a damage bonus.  The damage 'bonus' from playing an AT with a higher scalar is not a damage bonus.

 

Correct.  Never in question.

 

The damage 'bonus' from slotting your power for +damage is not a damage bonus.

 

Nope.  Unless something dramatic changed in i-25 to reclassify enhancement slotting as something other than a damage buff/bonus.  (Whatever you want to call it; quite frankly your patronizing tone WRT your preferred terminology is unwarranted.)

 

Read the link I supplied.  I mean, I guess it's possible that the wiki had it wrong for all of those years.  Maybe I was a complete moron, too, for all of those years.  Nah, probably not.  I'm senile now, but not so much back then.

 

The damage bonus from the hybrid slot assault core ability is a damage bonus.

 

Ok, then, so its net benefit diminishes with damage slotting.  Progress.

 

The sources for the actual damage bonus statistic, which is a multiplicative percentage that adds to all your damage, are few. Hybrid Assault Core, Build Up, Aim, Assault from leadership, Fulcrum Shift, Red insps, the Rad Armor power. There are probably a few more, but not many. Because it's a powerful stat.

 

And damage slotting, and IO +damage bonuses, and Musculature, and any number of other things.  I grant you that reaching the damage cap isn't easy, but you've really underrated how prevalent these buffs are. 

 

That stat has nothing to do with how you slot the power. Slotting does not contribute to that stat. It alters how the base power functions, ie, it makes the base power deal more damage, or hit more accurately.

 

Again, no.  You have the base damage of the power.  Then you have the AT scalar.  Then you have everything else.

 

Base * AT Scalar * (1 + slotting + buffs).  That's how it's always worked. 

 

(In the case of Incarnate attacks, the AT Scalar generally doesn't come into play, or at least it didn't with Judgment, IIRC.  This is obviously because the devs wanted Incarnates to boost everyone equally, to the extent that equality is possible.)

 

Tell you what, though; don't take my word for it.  Here's a simple test:  Try using an attack that is 3-slotted for damage, with no other +damage bonuses.  Then hit Build Up, and attack again.  Compare the numbers.  You won't see a +100% net damage boost; instead you'll see something closer to +50% net.  This is because Build Up's +100% damage is additive with the 95% you already have from enhancements.  100 / 195 = 51.3%.

 

Or if you don't wanna try it in game, feel free to try it in Pine's Hero Designer.

 

Slotting a power for damage does increase the damage that doublehit hits for.

 

lol, ok, now we're onto a whole different interpretation.  I'm beginning to think you're confused about the whole topic.  When you say that doublehit deals the "base damage" of the power, you clearly have a definition for that term that no one else uses, so if nothing else it's important to clarify what you actually mean.

 

We seem to be getting somewhere on that front, at least. 

[nihilii]

It seems like great info, but the misunderstanding about damage slotting Obitus points out makes it hard to take your numbers at face value.

 

But if we do, the bottomline is: double hit on every character!

[Obitus]

It seems like great info, but the misunderstanding about damage slotting Obitus points out makes it hard to take your numbers at face value.

 

But if we do, the bottomline is: double hit on every character!

 

Oh ho, Nihilii.  There's a familiar name.  Good seeing ya, man.  How's it goin?

 

Yeah, this could be a very valuable thread.  I think Cheli's done some good work; if we could get past the the mis-categorized damage bonuses (and the inconsistent assertion that Core is simultaneously always +75% net, and +75% towards the damage cap), then I think we could pin this down.

 

Sadly, I'm a long way from earning Hybrid myself.  In fact, all I've managed so far is to roll a new alt every night for the past week.  Spend about an hour in the tailor and the Hero Designer, a few minutes marketeering, then it's time for bed.  It's almost like I'm too excited about the game to play it. :P

 

To make this post more substantive, if we look at the Hybrid pages on Paragonwiki, we do get a little information.  Whether it's accurate or up-to-date, I don't know.  But for the sake of discussion, the Core Assault page, for example, lists the chance of building a stack of (15%) +damage at 65% per attack.  Yet there's no duration listed for the buff.

 

If the duration is something like 20-30 seconds, then it shouldn't be a problem; it'll take awhile to build stacks, but you should be able to hit the max of 5 stacks consistently if you try.  On the other hand, if the duration is 10 seconds, then it looks like a character averaging 2 seconds per attack will only maintain an expected value of 3.25 stacks of the buff.  (1 attack per 2 seconds seems like a reasonable average, given that even extraordinarily fast attackers will tend to spend at least a little time repositioning or using utility/defensive powers.)

 

Then again, maybe you can trigger the damage buff multiple times (or more consistently) with AoE attacks.

 

This is important info to figure out, if we're ever to compare Hybrid options.  What's encouraging is that Cheli seems to take it for granted that players will get to 5 stacks of the Core buff, but I don't know how he tested it.

 

Likewise, we'd need to pin down the proc rate of Assault Radial to make a sensible comparison (along with figuring out how the proc damage is calculated).

 

I find myself in a bit of a weird spot here.  Not only have I forgotten more than I remember about the game's mechanics; we also have all of these new, exciting changes to the game that aren't well quantified.  The archived copy of City of Data helps, of course, as does ParagonWiki and of course this forum, and Mid's/Pine's too - but the dearth of info in certain (albeit small) areas really contrasts with the almost ridiculous amount of knowledge we used to take for granted in the CoH community.  We were spoiled.

 

Maybe we should get together and powerlevel Arcanaville. :P

[Nericus]

Quick question as my memory is skipping a neat, will Hybrid augment Mastermind pet attacks?

[nihilii]

Oh ho, Nihilii.  There's a familiar name.  Good seeing ya, man.  How's it goin?

 

Hi there! :)

 

For testing purposes, the Test server is super useful: you can instaboost yourself to lvl 50, and all incarnates are free.

 

The real struggle is in managing to escape having fun on Live long enough to go run controlled tests. :D

[Zolgar]

Quick question as my memory is skipping a neat, will Hybrid augment Mastermind pet attacks?

 

I could be mistaken, but I believe that your Hybrid does not boost your pets- aside from the Support Hybrid which is an AoE buff while it's toggled on, one path of which actually provides a greater buff to pets.

[Zolgar]

I just performed a small test with Hybrid Assault Radial to check this-

 

I created a level 50 scrapper on Justin. I ran to PI unslotted, found a 43 Fake Nemesis, attacked it with Hybrid Assault Radial on:

(Using the Broadsword T1, for the record)

199.75 damage from the hit

124.33 damage from the double hit.

I then ran over to Ghost Falcon and bought 3 damage SOs for the power.

372.26 from the hit.

124.33 from the double hit.

 

The double hit is based purely off the naked power and does not care for what is slotted in it.

 

If someone wanted to perform the same test with a tank, I would be interested in seeing the damage comparison.

 

I know for a fact that Core just provides a boost to your global damage increase stat, as I used to run Core all the time.

I also know for a fact that enhancers are factored in to calculations no different from global boosts. A scrapper, for example, cannot have more than +400% damage from any/all sources.

 

If you want to see this in action for certain, do the Incarnate intro mission where you're given the godmode powers, enter it unslotted and attack something, then put damage SOs in that power and attack it again, the damage will be the same.

[Maxzero]

 

I read someone saying that Hybrid Core Radial's double hit has a 50 damage minimum?

[Hopeling]

12 hours ago, Maxzero said:

 

I read someone saying that Hybrid Core Radial's double hit has a 50 damage minimum?

Nope.

This is on a +0 enemy with no damage resistance, and a t4 radial Assault.

[Maxzero]

53 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

Nope.

This is on a +0 enemy with no damage resistance, and a t4 radial Assault.

 

So how does the Doublehit actually work?

 

What does 'good chance to occur' mean? Is there a cooldown between procs?

 

From my time using Radial it procs but there seems to be no pattern to it. 

 

[Hopeling]

I am actually writing a guide about that right now. While the OP here is correct about qualitative things, the exact math given is fundamentally wrong; Doublehit does not deal the power's base damage. You can see this in Zolgar's test above: Hack does 199.75 damage base on a scrapper, which would be (199.75)*(1.000/1.125)=177.55 damage for a character with scale 1. The doublehit proc actually dealt 124.33 damage though.

 

The actual math is a bit weird, but basically, it's a PPM proc whose damage depends on the cycle time and area of the power being used. My guide should go up in this forum later this weekend, if not tonight.

[triduum]

Cool thread generating more light than heat (mostly). I look forward to your guide Hopeling.

[KelvinKole]

Glad I found this. Almost a year later and I still have questions about Hyrbid Assault. 

 

In addition to the special abilities provided by either core or radial, discussed above, both also provide a passive increase to damage all the time. In mids, this passive bonus is applied via increasing the enhanced damage value of each power, which means two things: 1) its is subject to ED limits and 2) because of that the effect can either be full value or highly diminished if already approaching the limit through enhancements. 

 

Can anyone confirm that this is how it applies in game? In a practical example, I have Midnight Grasp enhanced to +124% damage through enhancements and alpha musculature. Adding assault core only increases that value to +127%. The stacking damage buff doesn't get applied the same way; it's applied globally and not subject to ED.

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, KelvinKole said:

Glad I found this. Almost a year later and I still have questions about Hyrbid Assault. 

 

In addition to the special abilities provided by either core or radial, discussed above, both also provide a passive increase to damage all the time. In mids, this passive bonus is applied via increasing the enhanced damage value of each power, which means two things: 1) its is subject to ED limits and 2) because of that the effect can either be full value or highly diminished if already approaching the limit through enhancements. 

 

Can anyone confirm that this is how it applies in game? In a practical example, I have Midnight Grasp enhanced to +124% damage through enhancements and alpha musculature. Adding assault core only increases that value to +127%. The stacking damage buff doesn't get applied the same way; it's applied globally and not subject to ED.

Kelvin, you might be interested in this guide. 

 

[Bopper]

1 hour ago, KelvinKole said:

Glad I found this. Almost a year later and I still have questions about Hyrbid Assault. 

 

In addition to the special abilities provided by either core or radial, discussed above, both also provide a passive increase to damage all the time. In mids, this passive bonus is applied via increasing the enhanced damage value of each power, which means two things: 1) its is subject to ED limits and 2) because of that the effect can either be full value or highly diminished if already approaching the limit through enhancements. 

 

Can anyone confirm that this is how it applies in game? In a practical example, I have Midnight Grasp enhanced to +124% damage through enhancements and alpha musculature. Adding assault core only increases that value to +127%. The stacking damage buff doesn't get applied the same way; it's applied globally and not subject to ED.

The bonuses from Hybrid are not affected by ED limits. Only Alpha gets that distinction as it's treated as a global enhancement.

[lurker13]

(Apologies for necro post, hope someone sees it anyway)

Can DoT intensive builds skew any aspect of this?  I have a toon with mostly DoT attacks and would if double hit or getting to 5 damage stacks would happen quicker/more often.

 

[InvaderStych]

16 hours ago, lurker13 said:

Can DoT intensive builds skew any aspect of this?  I have a toon with mostly DoT attacks and would if double hit or getting to 5 damage stacks would happen quicker/more often.

 

What AT are you running?

 

At the most basic level, the conventional wisdom is that if your base damage mod is >1 (Scrapper, Blaster, etc) then +DMG Stacks are the way to go. Otherwise Double-Hit tends to net more damage.  This is not a hard rule, and there are likely dozens if not a hundred plus reasons to flip the convention.

 

Individual DoT ticks won't add +DMG stacks nor trigger individual "DoubleHits." It is activating an attack that adds a stack or checks for DH.

 

Double-Hit can also be good if one is running primarily smashing or lethal (or other highly resisted dmg like Psi) as it adds an additional damage type (Energy).

 

There are a couple of oddities and outlier cases as well. The thread that Bopper linked has the most thorough breakdown and does a good job of explaining the math to us "lay-folk." 😉

Edited December 17, 2022 by InvaderStych