Scourge is broken (of course)

[Greymistbc1]

Scourge, as an inherent, is pretty iffy unless you are on a team hunting GMs.  This is especially true considering how many DOT/Rain type powers seem like they should scourge, but don't, and the powers are pretty opaque about that.

(suggestion: put "Scourge Power" in the description of those that can scourge over time) (i.e. Pseudo-pet?)

However... the power itself is broken.

From the wiki: Scourge offers no chance of critical damage until the target has less than 50% health. The chance then smoothly increases to 100% once the target has only 10% or less of its health remaining. These percentages are based on the target's base health -- targets with large health boosts from powers can effectively delay the point at which Scourge damage starts being possible.

I was testing in Striga against solo council.  My targets had 201 HP.  My cloudburst was doing 10 ticks of 9.8 (so just under 5% of target health each tick.

I would take them down with other powers to just under 50% HP, then cloudburst.   Sometimes it would 'scourge' 2-3 times before death.

But... sometimes it would take them to zero, 5% at a time, and never scourge.  This should not be possible.  The last two ticks would be under 10% HP remaining and should scourge 100% of the time.

[Luminara]

Scourge is checked when the attack is activated, not per tick.

[Greymistbc1]

17 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Scourge is checked when the attack is activated, not per tick.

This appears to show the 2nd, 4th, and 6th tick scourging, but not the 1st, 3rd, and 5th.

 

[brass_eagle]

26 minutes ago, Greymistbc1 said:

This appears to show the 2nd, 4th, and 6th tick scourging, but not the 1st, 3rd, and 5th.

 

 

Cloudburst is 10 ticks of damage. What you are showing is damage ticks 1, 2 & 3 with scourge on ticks 1, 2 & 3. It only checks on the cast (for normal attacks). If scourge procs, all ten ticks will scourge. You can see 10 ticks of damage and 10 procs of scourge from one cast below:

 

 

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by brass_eagle
Added parentheses for clarification.

[Greymistbc1]

Ah, ok, that makes sense.
I mean, Scourge is still terrible, but at least now I am looking at it properly. 

I have made 11 attempts to make a corruptor that doesn't suck.  Including a lvl 50, a lvl 31, and a bunch in the 20's.

All parked for the foreseeable future.

Corruptors need a base attack that does like, 3 damage, with recharge and animation time of 0.1 seconds, lol.
 

[Luminara]

5 minutes ago, Greymistbc1 said:

This appears to show the 2nd, 4th, and 6th tick scourging, but not the 1st, 3rd, and 5th.

 

 

And that's all it is, appearance.  Verisimilitude.  It's occurring every other tick because 

 

100% chance

• • 
    9.4885 points of Cold damage (all affected targets) every 0.3s for 2.9s (100% chance)

if minmax(5 * target>kHitPoints% / 2 - 25, 0, 100) < 100 * rand()

 

That's the Scourge check for Cloudburst.

 

Scourge is... essentially an exact copy of whatever attack you just used, activated if a specific condition (target HP at or below 50%) is met and a hit roll succeeds (the 100 * rand() part).  In the case of DoTs, the condition check and hit roll are made at the time of activation, not on a per-tick basis.

[Greymistbc1]

Gotcha.  Thanks Luminara.  I appreciate the  explanation and the math.  🙂