Enemies Autohit

[TimesSeven]

I'm noticing more and more enemies that have the capability to autohit you regardless of your defense. Arachnos Night Widows can use an automatic blind that doesn't even show up in the hit rolls OR the combat logs. The Tarantula Queen's ability, "Scramble Thoughts" is an autohit. So you're saying that even if your defense was 2000%, these powers are going to automatically work on you no matter what? Just take an inspiration and deal with it?

 

How many other enemy abilities are autohit? 

[biostem]

I dislike autohit powers as well.  If they're going to exist "by necessity", then they should be used extremely limitedly...

[Rudra]

Agreed. An over-prevalence of autohit powers makes sets like Super Reflexes and Ninjitsu worthless.

[Riverdusk]

The one that I notice the most are the super stunners when they rez.  They were murder on my beast/cold MM especially.  All the doggies being melee so tough to get them away from it, high defense based that was worthless against it, and no heal to help recover from it.  Pretty brutal.

[Akisan]

Arachnos seems to have quite a few of these, though my least favorite is still probably Mental Scramble (Tarantula Mistress, -tohit, -perception, and -25% defense)

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Akisan
Eventually, I will learn to check spelling *before* posting

[TheZag]

Enemies start with a base 50% accuracy.  I suppose we could give them a players base accuracy and allow for accuracy enhancements so they can get 80-95% accuracy and then take away their auto hit stuff.....

  

[Rudra]

6 hours ago, TheZag said:

Enemies start with a base 50% accuracy.  I suppose we could give them a players base accuracy and allow for accuracy enhancements so they can get 80-95% accuracy and then take away their auto hit stuff.....

  

Let's look at that.

 

Enemies start with a base accuracy of 50%. Let's ignore the different ways their accuracy can be boosted by themselves or other mobs. So we'll stick to 50%.

 

Players cap out at 45% defense even if they get their defense to 3,141,593% defense. (As opposed to mobs that don't have that cap. Case in point: Hamidon's 300% defense making it impossible for the mitos to be hit by the wrong attacks.) That's before any defense debuffs are applied and including any defense buffs. So we'll stick to 45%.

 

Chance to hit is the accuracy - the defense at its most basic calculation, so at base values for mobs and best values for players, mobs have a 5% chance to hit. For decimals, that is 0.05. Then Streakbreaker kicks in. At less than 0.2, or 20% chance to hit after defense is subtracted from their accuracy, mobs have a forced hit after 100 misses. Max defense characters still have a 5% chance of being hit with every attack, with a forced hit on the 101st attack if the previous 100 miss. Good for SR and Ninjitsu.

 

Now we give them player base accuracy at 75%. Now with mobs at their minimum accuracy and players at their best defense, mobs have a 30% chance to hit the defense maxed player. Every 7th attack by the mob is a forced hit on the best defense a player can have character. Assuming that the mobs always miss with a 30% chance to hit somehow.

 

Boost the mobs to 95% accuracy? They have a 50% chance to hit. With streakbreaker, they get a forced hit every 5th attack if the previous 4 missed. Though at 50% chance to hit, I'm betting the mobs are hitting much more often. Good way to make SR characters near unplayable in my book.

 

And the part that most confuses me about your post? Is that mobs already can get up to 95% accuracy. Play at +4 Difficulty? There's an automatic +20% accuracy given to the mobs. Got a mob with Leadership like the Cage Consortium, Arachnos forces in Hard Mode content, or other factions? They boost the accuracy and/or damage of the rest of the spawn. Depending on the power sets the mobs have? Their attacks can have a higher base accuracy than the normal listed base accuracy. Run a TF or SF with the players debuffed and/or the mobs buffed? Accuracy just went up for the mobs.

 

Autohit is a good mechanic for making sure max defense characters can't just faceroll everything, so they'll have to go "Crap! Is that one of the gonna hit me no matter what ones?! Better drop him first!". I understand the need for autohit for mobs. When autohit starts showing up more and more often, especially on the newer content? Well, I still remember back on Live when I joined my first Cathedral of Pain and the league leader opened by telling the SR Scrappers to just stay out of the fight because the Aspect of Rularuu was going to just insta-kill them because their defense was garbage on the trial.

 

(Edit again: So my understanding of your proposal to address the concern that autohit attacks may be becoming too prevalent is "okay, so let's just take autohit away from the mobs that have them and make it so that every mob in the game can rather easily murder max defense characters". That makes no sense to me.

 

(Edit x3: I would like to see more mobs using Leadership. And I would vastly prefer that to more mobs getting autohit attacks.)

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Rudra
Edited to fix a LOT.

[Uun]

The Night Widow's Smoke Grenade isn't autohit, however, it's an untyped area attack so you need AoE defense to protect against it. Not sure why it doesn't show up in the combat log.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=v_arachnos.night_widow.smoke_grenade&at=lt_grunt

 

I'm not clear why the Tarantula Queen's version of Scramble Thoughts is autohit. The version Fortunata Mistresses get isn't, nor is the version CoT Madness Mages get. Might be worth filing a bug report. [Tarantula Mistresses have an autohit attack called Mental Scramble, which is a nondamaging defense/tohit/perception debuff.]

 

[TheZag]

My post was the sarcasm.  Mobs need the occasional not fair auto hit because their brain is the size of a few lines of code.  There are quite a few mechanics in the game that go almost totally ignored because most mobs couldnt hit the ground with a rock without the help of a gravity controller.

 

[Saiyajinzoningen]

I cant dive deep into the numbers but how about rularuu and cimemorans? (I hope those are spelled correctly)

they seem to hit a whole lot more often than not VS defense based characters

 

[Doomguide2005]

57 minutes ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

I cant dive deep into the numbers but how about rularuu and cimemorans? (I hope those are spelled correctly)

they seem to hit a whole lot more often than not VS defense based characters

 

Those mobs (certain Rularuu) specifically have a large bonus to their To Hit ... large as in would make 4* Hard Mode small.  It's +100% as memory serves me, they also ignore Stealth.  Likewise DE eminators give off various buffs to DE in range and again one of those is a brutally large +100% to hit.  If I recall right that one is a 'Quartz' and dropped by Guardian DE.  Kill them asap or move drawing the DE out of the buff.  Or invite a couple Force Field Defenders with Power Boost or Power Build Up to buff the daylights out of you.  Cimerorans probably are stacking some not insignificant defdebuffs which with no or small DDR can rapidly induce cascade defense failure in a character.

 

PS:  Players are not limited to +45% defense hence the term soft cap or Incarnate cap.  The actual hard cap is ~175% or better and based on AT (Tankers sit around 225%).   Some auto hit powers are in the game to promote not just standing in place and pounding such as Super Stunners.  Move away let ranged attackers finish them or use a ranged attack yourself (epics, temp powers, vet powers etc.).

 

Many, many hours on SR tell me there's really not that many troublesome mobs and most can be dealt with via thought, situational awareness and preparation.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Doomguide2005

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

I cant dive deep into the numbers but how about rularuu and cimemorans? (I hope those are spelled correctly)

they seem to hit a whole lot more often than not VS defense based characters

 

 

Sometimes buffs are ridiculously high.  Like quartz eminators give +100 to hit to all allies, so they blow past your "soft-capped" defense.

 

[Akisan]

54 minutes ago, Saiyajinzoningen said:

I cant dive deep into the numbers but how about rularuu and cimemorans? (I hope those are spelled correctly)

they seem to hit a whole lot more often than not VS defense based characters

 

Rularuu eyeballs are... special.  Like, +100% tohit kind of special (I don't think I've *ever* had less than a 95% chance to be hit by them).  Plus, each of their attacks carries a huge amount of -def (30-50%).  Pretty sure they were designed as a hard counter to defense based builds, especially since Shard content was the capstone "hardmode" content when it came out. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the only reason all their attacks aren't autohit is because that capability may not have been there when the Shard came out.

 

Not sure about Cimerorans having +acc/tohit, but since they use swords, any hit that does land inflicts a good amount of -def, so they cascade very easily.

 

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

Players cap out at 45% defense even if they get their defense to 3,141,593% defense. (As opposed to mobs that don't have that cap. Case in point: Hamidon's 300% defense making it impossible for the mitos to be hit by the wrong attacks.) That's before any defense debuffs are applied and including any defense buffs. So we'll stick to 45%.

 

(Ninja'd by @Doomguide2005).  Defense negates to-hit at a 1 to 1 rate, so the soft cap is 59% in incarnate content, and would be 70% if enemies had the same base to-hit as players.  Also, since accuracy is a multiplier, it affects your minimum to-hit chance.  (I have between x2 and x4 total accuracy on my ranged attacks, so I end up with somewhere between a 10% and 20% chance to hit the melee mitos).  @TheZag's enhancement example, and your level shift example add accuracy to the mobs, not to-hit (so they'd still end up with about a 7-10% chance to hit a capped character).  Well, until you go to +5s or higher - those get +tohit in addition to +accuracy. Wiki link here.

 

11 hours ago, Rudra said:

Their attacks can have a higher base accuracy than the normal listed base accuracy.

 

Kinda makes me wonder why some of these auto-hit attacks don't just have a large accuracy multiplier on them - x10 would make them effectively auto-hit for everyone but a capped toon, and still let capped toons have a 50% chance to avoid it.

[arcane]

Not seeing a problem. Game’s pretty easy despite these “threats”. Was there a suggestion here?

[Rudra]

53 minutes ago, Akisan said:

12 hours ago, Rudra said:

Players cap out at 45% defense even if they get their defense to 3,141,593% defense. (As opposed to mobs that don't have that cap. Case in point: Hamidon's 300% defense making it impossible for the mitos to be hit by the wrong attacks.) That's before any defense debuffs are applied and including any defense buffs. So we'll stick to 45%.

 

(Ninja'd by @Doomguide2005).  Defense negates to-hit at a 1 to 1 rate, so the soft cap is 59% in incarnate content, and would be 70% if enemies had the same base to-hit as players.  Also, since accuracy is a multiplier, it affects your minimum to-hit chance.  (I have between x2 and x4 total accuracy on my ranged attacks, so I end up with somewhere between a 10% and 20% chance to hit the melee mitos).  @TheZag's enhancement example, and your level shift example add accuracy to the mobs, not to-hit (so they'd still end up with about a 7-10% chance to hit a capped character).  Well, until you go to +5s or higher - those get +tohit in addition to +accuracy. Wiki link here.

If you want to get technical about it, then it is the BaseHitChance modified by Accuracy (for percentage increase) modified by ToHit (for flat increase) modified by Defense (for flat decrease) for FinalHitChance, which is then modified to remain in a 5%-95% range if necessary. I wasn't using the correct terms, I admit. My point wasn't the terms though. (Edit: It was to give an over-simplified presentation to counter what was apparently a sarcastic comment.) (And while players have a BaseHitChance of 75%, just like with mobs, that drops to 50% when attacking other players. I don't PvP, but I also don't remember SR being a preferred PvP build.)

 

53 minutes ago, Akisan said:

12 hours ago, Rudra said:

Their attacks can have a higher base accuracy than the normal listed base accuracy.

 

Kinda makes me wonder why some of these auto-hit attacks don't just have a large accuracy multiplier on them - x10 would make them effectively auto-hit for everyone but a capped toon, and still let capped toons have a 50% chance to avoid it.

I could get behind that.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Rudra

[Doomguide2005]

Two major things (at least) are at play here I think.  First there are a lot more players with characters at or near the soft caps.  Second there are and always have been a lot of defdebuffs among various foe groups.  The overall increase in characters with higher if not capped defenses has led to a greater expectation of "I will hardly be hit".  Before players more less expected to get hit and rarely noticed cascade failure if when it occurred.  Blasters were 'glass' cannons.  Now those glass cannons are soloing up lvl large mobs with the not unreasonable expectation of not being hit.  But that has also led to cascade failure being much more noticeable and remembered when it occurs owing to the prevalence of defdebuff attacks that really been there all along.  This not to say Devs haven't spiced things up a bit or auto hit attacks aren't a thing but it does make me wondered how many of the auto hits are masquerading as cascade failure induced by previous attacks.  Certainly would explain at least some of why my SR main rarely notices "auto hit" attacks in any significant frequency.

[Clave Dark 5]

With Incarnates walking around a dime a dozen, fully purpled-out builds, you name it, isn't this game already easy enough? 

 

The only time I might agree with this is MMs, who's pets seem to very often get one-shotted, which of course gimps you terribly.

[Sakura Tenshi]

Meanwhile, there's only a handful of powers that completely ignore your resistances. One being the crystal titan and I think Tyrant in the Mage trial's Hammer of Justice is another. (or is his called 'Fist of Tyranny' like Reichsman?)

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

Meanwhile, there's only a handful of powers that completely ignore your resistances. One being the crystal titan and I think Tyrant in the Mage trial's Hammer of Justice is another. (or is his called 'Fist of Tyranny' like Reichsman?)

It's called Hammer of Justice, like Statesman's. The difference is Tyrant's can be used while flying and Statesman's couldn't.

[Herotu]

I believe that powers should be reflective of comic book culture. If it's necessary to provide a dramatic battle, then it should... bend the rules. Of course, heroes/villains should have a weakness as in comic books, but I think this game skipped over that, vital aspect of the genre. I know people don't like to hear that, but it's true.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, Herotu said:

I believe that powers should be reflective of comic book culture. If it's necessary to provide a dramatic battle, then it should... bend the rules. Of course, heroes/villains should have a weakness as in comic books, but I think this game skipped over that, vital aspect of the genre. I know people don't like to hear that, but it's true.

We do have weaknesses in this game. Every armor set has at least one hole in its defense. ATs that don't get access to armor sets lack those holes because they aren't as robust (HP) and lack the integral invulnerability (damage resist/defense). With IO sets, players can bolster their defense against attacks, but there are still weaknesses that can't really be overcome in the armor sets except with tactics, overwhelming firepower (to quickly get rid of the threat), or a team.

[Greycat]

On 11/11/2023 at 5:23 PM, Riverdusk said:

The one that I notice the most are the super stunners when they rez.  They were murder on my beast/cold MM especially.  All the doggies being melee so tough to get them away from it, high defense based that was worthless against it, and no heal to help recover from it.  Pretty brutal.

 

Super Stunners' rez being autohit makes sense. They're dead. At that point they have zero accuracy.

 

Besides. Everyone has access to a ranged KB power through the P2W vendor. While MMs are a pain with the pets with this... call them back, knock the stunner away (or hold/immob and back off,) kill from range - no rez. It's not an unlimited range autohit.

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Besides. Everyone has access to a ranged KB power through the P2W vendor. While MMs are a pain with the pets with this... call them back, knock the stunner away (or hold/immob and back off,) kill from range - no rez. It's not an unlimited range autohit.

Or, you know, order your ranged pets like the bots to maintain distance and lock down the Super Stunner. Or if you slotted the pet IO procs, let your melee pets stay in close, use the heal most MM secondaries have to heal your pets when the Super Stunner rezzes, and laugh as the Super Stunner most often dies again before he has a chance to do anything other than get back up. (This is particularly fun with the that one unique Tank that has both the Super Stunner drain rez and the Tank chance for rez. Keep the pets gathered around him on aggressive, and enjoy the show.)

[Riverdusk]

Thanks for the advice, but ironically the best way I did find to deal with them on my beast/cold was to actually get closer to them.  Close enough that my arctic fog power was giving them at least some extra energy resistance to help them deal with it.  They'd still take a bit of a beating, (depending on difficulty level), but still the most efficient in the end. Faster than trying the slow and unreliable knockback of a nem staff.  It too often misses or too easy to mistime when to call the pets back being either too late or leaving too much hp on the thing.  It'd then end up taking multiple hits with the staff or other things to finish it off which slowed me down immensely.  Was just as fast to resummon at that point.  Also, that only works solo, teams are much too chaotic to try and time something like that with melee pets.  

 

So, on that character I'd found myself running closer to them. 😁 But trying at the same time to not get too close (their rez is 25 ft. fog is 40 ft).  

[SwitchFade]

Hmm.

 

No. Here's why...

 

We can play on 0/0, even if they can auto hit, they are still auto hitting kittens.

 

Even if they can auto hit, the game is ridiculously easy to begin with.

 

We don't have to even play arachnos. Or freakshow. Or crey. Or anything, we can council it to 50.

 

We can team, this compensates for possible holes in AT. We are playing an MMo, after all 😄

 

One person's spoilt milk is another's cottage cheese. Maybe there are people that appreciate the nuance?