Are bosses in AE broken

[greenstalker]

I was trying to do lunchbox s/s farm today with +4 x8 with bosses and for some reason, all bosses in the map had one or two attacks that ignored my defense and resist. I was popping oranges to get %75 resist hardcap (scrapper) and I already have more than %50 defense on my aoe, melee and ranged despite that when i checked the combat log most of bosses had entries like these

 

Puddin' Moms HITS you! Savage Leap AoE power had a 95.00% chance to hit and rolled a 91.97.

Puddin' Moms causes you to bleed for 18.64 points of lethal damage.

Puddin' Moms slashes at your with their Savage Leap AoE for 763.76 points of Lethal damage.

 

These were happening alot too like 5 or 6 of them happening consecutively while I had hard cap resist and softcap defense.

[ceaars]

I don't really know the details of those bosses, but a few observations:

 

A boss would normally only have a 65% base chance to hit.  If the power has a 95% chance to hit, your actual defense (purples plus powers) must have been debuffed into the toilet!  OR the mob has a massive to hit boost.  (In other words, it sounds like it isn't so much that "bosses are broken" as "this boss has been giving some serious buff or debuff powers that it is using on you").

 

Hitting for more than 700+ damage sort of suggests a similar scenario.  Not only is your damage resistance debuffed enough to cancel the effect of the oranges, it's probably in the negative values (even taking into account that damage resistance debuffing would start at 25% strength at your damage cap, if enough has been applied to you, it WILL cancel all your resistance out and start putting it into negative numbers).

 

What you need is to actually open your combat monitor and then watch your defense and damage resistance numbers as you try to fight these bosses.  It should (in real time) give you a list of what is buffing and debuffing your stats.

 

If you see a huge list of debuffs starting to stack onto you, that's what's going on.  If not, then it means *they* probably have some pretty serious buffs they are applying to each other...

 

For what it's worth, both of my published arcs are using both normal and custom mobs of every rank up to and including bosses.  I always run with key values being tracked on my character's combat monitor - and I can report nothing out of the ordinary when I'm fighting bosses in MA.  At least in my arcs.

 

So I don't think "bosses are broken in MA."  I think *these* bosses have set to do something to you.  Something very, very bad.

 

 

 

 

[greenstalker]

I don't really know the details of those bosses, but a few observations:

 

A boss would normally only have a 65% base chance to hit.  If the power has a 95% chance to hit, your actual defense (purples plus powers) must have been debuffed into the toilet!  OR the mob has a massive to hit boost.  (In other words, it sounds like it isn't so much that "bosses are broken" as "this boss has been giving some serious buff or debuff powers that it is using on you").

 

Hitting for more than 700+ damage sort of suggests a similar scenario.  Not only is your damage resistance debuffed enough to cancel the effect of the oranges, it's probably in the negative values (even taking into account that damage resistance debuffing would start at 25% strength at your damage cap, if enough has been applied to you, it WILL cancel all your resistance out and start putting it into negative numbers).

 

What you need is to actually open your combat monitor and then watch your defense and damage resistance numbers as you try to fight these bosses.  It should (in real time) give you a list of what is buffing and debuffing your stats.

 

If you see a huge list of debuffs starting to stack onto you, that's what's going on.  If not, then it means *they* probably have some pretty serious buffs they are applying to each other...

 

For what it's worth, both of my published arcs are using both normal and custom mobs of every rank up to and including bosses.  I always run with key values being tracked on my character's combat monitor - and I can report nothing out of the ordinary when I'm fighting bosses in MA.  At least in my arcs.

 

So I don't think "bosses are broken in MA."  I think *these* bosses have set to do something to you.  Something very, very bad.

I forgot to mention but I am super reflexes there is no way a defense debuff stack up on my character to bring it down for a %95 hit and my combat monitor was open whole time I never saw my resist drop from blue to green yet alone to 0.

 

However this only happened two different sl farm(lunchbox and comiccon). When I tried a fire farm with same toon the numbers were normal. However I was doing both farm before I just switched to an alt to bring it to 50 for  4 or 5 days whatever happened during that time made this situation.

[ceaars]

That suggests the bosses then must have some sort of amazing self buffing abilities.  I'm inclined to think if the combat monitor showed you basically softcapped defense and hardcapped resistance, then the only way to get 95% to hit and 700+ damage is if the bosses were running some spectacular +ToHit and +Damage buffs (well, above what the purple patch gives them, which is already pretty substantial).

 

If you were running x8/+4, then if whatever was buffing them was AoE, you could easily have had a whole lot of them stacking.

 

*Why* whoever wrote the arc would set them up that way is beyond me.  Unless they intended it as a challenge or something.

 

But both my experience and yours seems to suggest that it was just that set of bosses (which, again, implies it's those bosses and likely a design decision by the author and not a bug), not all bosses in all MA being bugged.

[greenstalker]

That suggests the bosses then must have some sort of amazing self buffing abilities.  I'm inclined to think if the combat monitor showed you basically softcapped defense and hardcapped resistance, then the only way to get 95% to hit and 700+ damage is if the bosses were running some spectacular +ToHit and +Damage buffs (well, above what the purple patch gives them, which is already pretty substantial).

 

If you were running x8/+4, then if whatever was buffing them was AoE, you could easily have had a whole lot of them stacking.

 

*Why* whoever wrote the arc would set them up that way is beyond me.  Unless they intended it as a challenge or something.

 

But both my experience and yours seems to suggest that it was just that set of bosses (which, again, implies it's those bosses and likely a design decision by the author and not a bug), not all bosses in all MA being bugged.

 

When I posted this I tried two farms I talked about and both of them had this problem so I assumed it was something wrong with in general I tried fire farm after I posted things here. However considering I am SR it means whatever buff they are getting is enough to hit pretty much anyone in the game kinda beats the purpose of a farm map.

[ceaars]

I decided to take a look.

 

First, since you're doing this at +4, you're dealing with the purple patch.  Even with totally softcapped defense, that means that every single attack from a boss (and at x8 there'll be a lot of those) has about a 10% chance to hit you regardless.  To make matters worse, the designer gave those bosses their version of "build up" - which will grant a to hit bonus and full stacks of blood fury.  To make matters even worse, one of the powers debuffs defense, one of them debuffs damage resistance.  If they hit blood frenzy, even with 50% defense, that chance to them to hit you suddenly jumps up to close to 20%.  Gets worse: that "summon a hawk" power a bunch of them have *might* also be buffing them (it's possible when they ported it from beast mastery over to savage melee in MA they left 'pack mentality' into account, which *might* very well be buffing the attack AND all of their allies every time they hit with it).  And since even the minions have the attack, that's a lot of hawks coming your way at once each with 10-20% hit chances.  Some are bound to get through, buff everyone around them, let them land more attacks, etc.  And as good as your defense debuff resistance actually is, it won't take long for the collective defense and resistance debuffs in the savage melee set to tear down your defense (especially when boosted by 40% thanks to the purple patch) completely and take you down.

 

In fact, based on what I'm seeing, once the "cascade" hits, you'd probably go from full strength to completely defeated faster than the combat monitor actually updates.  And once you are defeated, all buffs and debuffs disappear, so you'd never know they were there...

 

Of course, I might very well be wrong.  But that's the impression I get (and I looked at what the numbers would be applied to a boss in AE, NOT a character): unless you go in with 90% smashing/lethal resist (and possibly even a defensive Destiny buff), I wouldn't expect a character to last long.  And it looks like a defense based character relying on inspirations as their only source of resistance (and that cap out at 75% versus 90%) is going to get murdered.

 

I have no doubt your SR character is quite good.  But that just doesn't look to be what this particular farm was built around...

 

But again, I don't really know for sure.  I've got a character with soft-capped S/L resist (versus the positional defense SR is based on).

 

Tell you what.  I'll take him in at both normal and +4 and see.  But I suspect he'll get killed REAL fast...

[ceaars]

It's definitely NOT a case of "bosses are broken in MA."  It's actually only one power (and, to your credit, you did mention that power) in (as near as I can tell) one set.

 

It's Savage Leap.  Although it says it is typed lethal and AoE, it totally ignores one or both types of defense.  I have no idea if that is just the version ported into MA, or if the actual player version of the power has that little bug as well.

 

Literally every other attack power the mobs had possessed exactly the to hit chance I would have expected based on enemy rank and level relative to me.  I didn't even see one that was unexpected (in fact, it was pretty clear only the bosses had Blood Frenzy).  Savage leap was the only power that ignored defense.  All of the other powers were affected normally by defense.

 

So there's your answer.  The Savage Leap power is missing its lethal and AoE tag.

 

What I don't know:

 

1.  Whether or not that is WAI.  Savage leap may be intended to behave that way because it is a teleport attack.  I doubt it, but I don't presume to know (didn't design the set, after all).

2.  If it is just the MA version, or if the player version has the same behavior (generally players don't notice when 'things go right' - just when 'they go wrong').  So it may have literally never occurred to a single player that Savage leap was not supposed to be hitting 95% of the time.  They might very well just be leaping in, seeing the damage numbers fly, and think "cool" and NOT "wait, should that have actually hit ALL of the +4 Rikti drones I was aiming at?"  So it may not even have been reported.

[greenstalker]

It's definitely NOT a case of "bosses are broken in MA."  It's actually only one power (and, to your credit, you did mention that power) in (as near as I can tell) one set.

 

It's Savage Leap.  Although it says it is typed lethal and AoE, it totally ignores one or both types of defense.  I have no idea if that is just the version ported into MA, or if the actual player version of the power has that little bug as well.

 

Literally every other attack power the mobs had possessed exactly the to hit chance I would have expected based on enemy rank and level relative to me.  I didn't even see one that was unexpected (in fact, it was pretty clear only the bosses had Blood Frenzy).  Savage leap was the only power that ignored defense.  All of the other powers were affected normally by defense.

 

So there's your answer.  The Savage Leap power is missing its lethal and AoE tag.

 

What I don't know:

 

1.  Whether or not that is WAI.  Savage leap may be intended to behave that way because it is a teleport attack.  I doubt it, but I don't presume to know (didn't design the set, after all).

2.  If it is just the MA version, or if the player version has the same behavior (generally players don't notice when 'things go right' - just when 'they go wrong').  So it may have literally never occurred to a single player that Savage leap was not supposed to be hitting 95% of the time.  They might very well just be leaping in, seeing the damage numbers fly, and think "cool" and NOT "wait, should that have actually hit ALL of the +4 Rikti drones I was aiming at?"  So it may not even have been reported.

 

I was doing both maps before and this was not the case before so whatever happened it should be in last couple of days but it seems the power itself got bugged since comiccon has different power sets i guess there might be mobs in that one that has savage leap as well. Anyway I might report this if it continues to happen but i need to check update notes to see if it was an intended change first.

[Shinobu]

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,4554.0.html

 

I posted about this in relation to the Rainbow Comicon S/L farm, and got absolutely no response from anyone.  I decided that maybe I shouldn't be trying to run a defense-primary scrapper (mine was shield, but a really well built one) at +4/8 with bosses in an AE farm, because even when I switched to a farm without Savage Melee bosses in it, I could only survive for a few minutes before finally succumbing (but at least that wasn't the insta-death that these other farms serve up).

 

It definitely is Savage Leap that is the main culprit.

 

I've been working on an MA/Invul brute in part just because I was curious how well a really good resist-based brute would do in these kind of farms with these nasty Savage Melee bosses, but I'm only about level 42 for now.  I suspect without a fast-recharging heal, even my brute is going to have problems.