Brawl: bug, inside joke, or sekrit elite powerz?

[Curveball]

I've tried to sort through this and I'm giving up. If this is a huge inside joke that I'm clueless about, I'll take my lumps, but the BIGGEST MYSTERY OF THE GAME since coming back has been the detailed information for Brawl:

 

 

My first thought was "whoa, Homecoming buffed the hell out of brawl!" My second thought was that no, they obviously didn't, and actual brawl performance matches the damage listed at the bottom of the panel rather than the averages listed in the middle. I asked on /help and the response was "yeah, brawl is OP" followed by laughter, so there's obviously some kind of history here I'm not getting.

 

But while brawl is obviously not performing as documented in the detailed info, I just want to understand the reason it's shown the way it is. For my own sanity, which is somewhat threadbare these days...

 

I have a few guesses:

 

1. The base value the average/per activation/per cast values are working from was mistyped, and it's basically a display bug that nobody has bothered to fix yet, because, you know, it's brawl

 

2. Same as above, only it has become a much-beloved joke in the community so it won't be fixed

 

3. It was entered incorrectly deliberately, as a joke, and won't be fixed

 

4. "It really is that powerful, man. Git gud."

 

5.  It's actually correct, as long as you understand the context of the information provided, and the real problem is I just don't know how to read the detailed information panel right.

 

 

Can... can someone tell me what's going on here?

[Sunsette]

Brawl is actually one of the most complex powers in the game, with a number of various effects that conditionally occur based on your AT and whether or not you've taken powers from the fighting pool, on top of a few other things I don't understand from glancing at its city of data entry. 

 

My guess is that the over large number is the result of the game incorrectly adding together all of these possible conditions which cannot actually occur at the same time. 

[ZemX]

What @Sunsette said... The in-game power details can't handle certain conditional effects so it sometimes just adds them to total damage.   For example, they'll always say Corruptor attacks deal 2x damage when in fact the extra Scourge damage is only a chance that starts at 0% when the enemy is 50% health and increases to 100% chance when they have zero health.  It's because the in-game detail window just ignores some conditionals in the effects list.  It seems to get "if your AT is this" right but not random chance to occur effects like Scourge.

 

And that's what's happening here.  Though it's considerably more weird than Corruptor Scourge.

 

Here is the full detail on Brawl from the powers database as displayed by City of Data:

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=inherent.inherent.brawl

(Unfortunately we can't select Tanker for the AT here for some reason so we have to look at the raw numbers * modifiers and cross-reference the modifier tables).

 

Brawl does base 0.37 * melee_damage modifier.  For a Level 18 Tanker (like you are showing here) that modifier is 24.914.  Which works out to the 8.97 damage you see listed at the bottom of the power detail in game.

 

But then it also has a weird effect down the page that is in a section tagged "Hidden in in-game info". Actually lots of weird effects but the key one is the one that can execute Plasmatic Taser's effects 11.1% of the time.  So Brawl does a bit of extra damage rarely?  So what does Plasmatic Taser do?

Well, 0.66 * Ranged_Tempdamage Energy and 0.3 * Ranged_Tempdamage Smashing.  Ranged_Tempdamage for a Level 18 Tanker is 39.8077.   So all this ranged temp damage works out to an extra (0.66 + 0.3) * 39.8077 = 38.215 damage.  It can also proc some Fireworks?  Maybe? Kind of looks like the April Fool's joke maybe.  Not sure.

 

Anyway, add that to the base 8.97 we had before and you get.... 47.18.  So the in-game window is telling you what would happen if all the conditional effects fired along with the base damage.  You'd do 47.18 damage with that punch.  Over the 0.83s animation time that's 56.85 and averaged over 2.83s (cast + recharge time) it's 16.67 damage.

 

tl;dr: You're going to hit for 8.97 damage.   Also, never read the in-game power description.  Refer to City of Data instead.  It's much more likely to be correct... if you can figure out what it is saying. 🤪

[Curveball]

Thank you both! This was something I tried to simply ignore for as long a I could (because it's BRAWL for crying out loud) but the discrepancy kept gnawing at me until I couldn't take it any more. I wasn't even aware of City of Data - I have a new bookmark!

[ZorkNemesis]

5 hours ago, ZemX said:

But then it also has a weird effect down the page that is in a section tagged "Hidden in in-game info". Actually lots of weird effects but the key one is the one that can execute Plasmatic Taser's effects 11.1% of the time.  So Brawl does a bit of extra damage rarely?  So what does Plasmatic Taser do?

Well, 0.66 * Ranged_Tempdamage Energy and 0.3 * Ranged_Tempdamage Smashing.  Ranged_Tempdamage for a Level 18 Tanker is 39.8077.   So all this ranged temp damage works out to an extra (0.66 + 0.3) * 39.8077 = 38.215 damage.  It can also proc some Fireworks?  Maybe? Kind of looks like the April Fool's joke maybe.  Not sure.

 

This is an April Fool's joke, yes.  Brawl gets overbuffed for the day and does some silly things.

[Shenanigunner]

Hey, if you're not six-slotting Brawl... that's all I'm sayin'.

[Jacke]

9 hours ago, Curveball said:

I've tried to sort through this and I'm giving up. If this is a huge inside joke that I'm clueless about, I'll take my lumps, but the BIGGEST MYSTERY OF THE GAME since coming back has been the detailed information for Brawl:

 

 

 

 

I think those /linkinfo panels have some display bugs in certain contexts.  One I know of is the "Show Detailed Info Here" in the Enhancement Management screen: it shows "<Recharge Value> (<Recharge Value without enhancement>)" but both values show are the same; really need to report that.

 

I recreated your visual, which appears to be another "Show Detailed Info Here" in the Enhancement Management screen.  That definitely has a display bug.  Here's two ways to get a better view of that power with the 2 other ways to bring up a /linkinfo window.

• Enter this command: "/linkinfo Brawl"
  • That shows the info on Brawl without enhancement (but it will have any buffs from having certain Fighting Pool powers).
  • And sometimes gets the wrong variant power....  "5th Column Brawl" ?!?  Seems to be the right values....
• In the 3-column Powers display, scroll the right-hand column down to the Inherent section, right-click on Brawl, and select Info.
  • Well damn, that one has display bugs too, maybe even worse.

Just goes to show, "Them thar's bugs in them thar hills!"  Gotta get to reporting these....

 

 

[Greycat]

5 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

Hey, if you're not six-slotting Brawl... that's all I'm sayin'.

 

... I do recall at least one person going 1-50 on Brawl. I believe IO silliness was involved, but Brawl apparently got fairly scary.

[Enchantica]

I want to 6 slot brawl . but I am too much of a coward!

[Scarlet Shocker]

If you think the stats are good there, try six slotting it with Mako's Bite

 

Win! 😇