Need a bit of help to understand a City of Data entry

[Icono04]

I am trying to get a sense of the AoE damage potential of Electric Melee -->  Thunder Strike. From what I understand, it is an ST attack with a percentage chance of adding some damage to surrounding targets as well - but what is the probability of hitting additional targets and for how much damage? I figure the answer is on CoD, but since I have never bothered to learn the terminology/format of CoD, I am not sure what to look for in the data sheet: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=tanker_melee.electrical_melee.thunder_strike&at=tanker

 

tl;dr: Can a kind soul please explain to me how Thunder Strike works? Oh, and to be clear, I do understand that TS has other effects besides the damage, such as the KD, but those I mostly understand, it is only the damage part I am ignorant of.

[tidge]

Hmmm.... how to explain.... Here is how I opted to slot Thunderstrike on my Tanker:

 

Level 16:              Thunder Strike 

 (A) Multi-Strike - Accuracy/Endurance: Level 50+5

 (*) Superior Gauntleted Fist - RechargeTime/+Absorb

 (*) Scirocco's Dervish - Chance for Damage (Lethal)

 (*) Eradication - Chance for Damage (Energy)

 (*) Perfect Zinger - Chance for Damage (Psi)

 (*) Explosive Strike - Chance for Damage (Smashing)

 

I opened the post with my slotting, so you can see I am NOT trying to use it for it's inherent extra damage. My first introduction to Thunderstrike was on a Dominator, and for a couple of reasons I found it to be an inferior attack. What I saw on my Dominator, where I had the power slotted without %damage, going for set bonuses with slotting:

• Dominator controls make it hard to have enemies bunched up (less of a problem for Tankers)
• I was rarely seeing any secondary effects... such that I actually dropped the power at the level 50 respec.

 

TL;DR: For Tankers, I found Thunderstrike to be an excellent source of %damage... so much that I stopped thinking about the other part of the power (that never seemed to work for me).

[ZemX]

16 hours ago, Icono04 said:

From what I understand, it is an ST attack with a percentage chance of adding some damage to surrounding targets as well

 

No, the "splash" damage is not conditional.  It's 100%.  It's just less than the main target damage.  In CoD, you need to look down the entire lower right side "Effects Group" panel to see all the effects that are applied to targets (or self, if the power does that).

 

The one you're looking for is this one:

 

So from the top left, this is a PvE (globe icon) effect.  The yellow tag allows powers to have descriptive tags added to them.  This one just says "splash".  I am not sure if it actually DOES anything.   The next three circular icons, if you hover over them are "inner radius", "outer radius", and "excludes main target".   All of these combine to limit this particular effect to the enemies AROUND the main target (i.e. those between the inner and outer radii but just to be safe also explicitly excluding the main target).   But backing up a little, you can see this effect also has a 100% chance.  Sometimes there's a gray bar at the bottom of the effect box that can list other conditions that affect whether or not this effect applies to the target.    But this one only has the 100% chance condition.   

 

So 100% chance but less damage.  This is why @tidge likes %dmg procs here.  They can proc on any of the affected targets and when they proc, they always do the same damage unaffected by any +dmg (or -dmg) effects on you and having no relation to the amount of base damage the power does.  They'll do the same damage to the surrounding targets of Thunderstrike as they will to the main target UNLIKE the base power effect above.

 

And on a Tanker, this power now extends out to 15ft radius from the main target (10ft + 50% for Gauntlet) and hits up to 16 targets.  In other words, it's the same size as Foot Stomp and it procs better (because procs calculate chance based on original 10ft radius).  It just doesn't do as good base damage to all targets.

[Icono04]

Thanks a bunch, @tidge and @ZemX, nicely detailed information and just what I needed. Much appreciated.

 

Now I need to dig into CoD a bit more and learn about the powers I already use on other chars without actually understanding how they work 🙂

[Major_Decoy]

[Maelwys]

26 minutes ago, Major_Decoy said:

@Devs:
Posts like this one are precisely why we need more icon options for forum likes.
I'm thinking "Gold Star with Lollipop" - for all the times whenever a 5 year old wanders in with a Red Crayon and proceeds to patiently explain everything to all the silly grups.

_{(Bonus points because of the military connotations of the username and the fact that the crayon is BLOOD red...)}
 

Edited February 27 by Maelwys