Bio Armor Ablative Carapace Removes Its Own Absorb

[Monos King]

If you have enough recharge to use Ablative Carapace again, before the first ones buff is removed, the entire remaining absorb buff is lost, and the second use of Ablative is rendered useless.

 

This happens whether or not you use tester recharge to auto recharge, or simply have enough recharge to stack the two. Furthermore, taking damage and losing some of the initial absorb does not change the fact the second Ablative will remove all of the initial.

 

This has been observed on tankers, scrappers, and brutes. It does not appear to happen with stalkers or sentinels.

Edited April 8 by Monos King
Happens for all but stalkers and sentinels

[arcane]

I don’t have video but pretty sure this is what happens on Nature Affinity - Wild Bastion too…

[SeraphimKensai]

This is a good catch. Is this bug limited to beta or also on the production servers?

[Monos King]

4 hours ago, arcane said:

I don’t have video but pretty sure this is what happens on Nature Affinity - Wild Bastion too…

Just confirmed this is happening with Nature Affinity as well; on Live.

 

9 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

This is a good catch. Is this bug limited to beta or also on the production servers?

I tested bio on beta, but this behavior is happening with Nature Affinity on live as well as beta. It's probably happening on live as well, though I can't confirm that yet.

[SeraphimKensai]

2 minutes ago, Monos King said:

Just confirmed this is happening with Nature Affinity as well; on Live.

 

I tested bio on beta, but this behavior is happening with Nature Affinity on live as well as beta. It's probably happening on live as well, though I can't confirm that yet.

I can check tonight but I won't be able to boot up for about 6 hours as I'm at work and then have to do the feed/play/bathe/storytime/tooth brush/bedtime routine with my daughter before I can fire up my PC.

[brass_eagle]

Just a request here-- 

 

Your video shows visually what is happening with the silver absorption overlay, but can you provide numbers (hover over) and monitor your absorption points on screen (combat attributes)?

 

My quick testing on a live server Nature Defender (enhanced 121.1%) show Wild Bastion providing 668 absorption, then cutting it to a value of 350 when recasting before the first expires. Both through Burnout and letting the power cycle naturally (lots of recharge buffs). 

 

Might need to move this to the live forums.

 

Edit to add--

 

The second application seems to properly apply 668 absorption in the combat logs, and even in the white text above the character. After about a second it just cuts to 350 for some unknown reason.

Edited April 9 by brass_eagle

[SeraphimKensai]

This bug exists on live for Ablative Carpace as well.

With my build using Offensive Adaptation I pop Ablative and get 1675.2 absorption points., when refreshing while its active, I end up with 198.86 absorption points.

While using Defensive and Ablative, the numbers are: it hits 1874.07 (capped based on my hp of 2999.16, and the refresh while its active brought it to 0 points of absorption.

[seebs]

huh, that's suspicious, because 198.86 is very close to 1874.07 -  1675.2. like, within ~.01.

 

So that feels like you're ending up with, somehow, the gap between defensive and offensive, instead of the raw value? or it's just a coincidence.

[csr]

I wonder if the amount would be more if you'd lost some of the absorb to damage.  It looks like (Cap - Active) equals the result in both cases.

[Major_Decoy]

This isn't exactly a bug. What's happening is that the absorption is stacking, hitting the cap and being limited, and then the original absorb is expiring. This happens on Radiation armour too. The closer the power is to providing the absorption cap, the less absorb remains once the initial expires.

 

This is less of an issue if you're actually taking damage because you're farther away from the cap.

[brass_eagle]

10 hours ago, Major_Decoy said:

This isn't exactly a bug. What's happening is that the absorption is stacking, hitting the cap and being limited, and then the original absorb is expiring. This happens on Radiation armour too. The closer the power is to providing the absorption cap, the less absorb remains once the initial expires.

 

This is less of an issue if you're actually taking damage because you're farther away from the cap.

 

I thought that too, but when using--

 

Wild Bastion --> Burnout --> Wild Bastion in the course of 10 seconds, you still see this effect. Wild Bastion has a duration of 1 minute. 

[csr]

4 hours ago, brass_eagle said:

 

I thought that too, but when using--

 

Wild Bastion --> Burnout --> Wild Bastion in the course of 10 seconds, you still see this effect. Wild Bastion has a duration of 1 minute. 

 

I think that's because it has a "replace existing" tag causing the old buff to expire when the new one is applied.

 

I don't really see why "replace existing" tag is needed given that there is a cap.  It would make the powers only a little stronger if removed, since it is hard to stack them for long without Burnout and that tag makes their behavior fiddly like the VEAT pets used to be; where you had to watch and wait for expiration before recasting.  Rad Armor's Particle Shield is a bit more of an issue, as you can get an overlap of 20 seconds or more.  However, I think the way it works is that if you take damage during the period of overlap it effectively comes out of the newest buff since the buff amount removed on expiration of the earlier buff will remain the same.

[Major_Decoy]

4 hours ago, brass_eagle said:

 

I thought that too, but when using--

 

Wild Bastion --> Burnout --> Wild Bastion in the course of 10 seconds, you still see this effect. Wild Bastion has a duration of 1 minute. 

Oh, I see. It's flagged on City of Data as "Replaces Existing Effect" not "Stacks With Existing Effect" (so are Ablative Carapace and Particle Shielding) so the question is why the values are stacking at all? I know the first time I noticed it on my Radiation tank, it was kind of a loop. 1110 Absorb, recast get +1110 Absorb, hit Absorb cap (for tanks) of 1874, get just +764 Absorb, initial absorb expires get left with +764 Absorb. recast get +1110 Absorb, +764 expires, run around with 1110 Absorb.

 

These values are definitely stacking and they shouldn't be.

[csr]

I don't see a stacking effect.  I just logged my Rad Tanker and on repeated casts she got 1057.4 (the amount from the power) the first time and 816.7 (the cap minus the buff that was removed) each time thereafter.  A Rad Armor Scrapper I tested had the same pattern.  I tested 6 Bio toons before and also saw the same thing.  These were all on Live though.  I'll try to test on Experimental later if no one else does.

Edited April 11 by csr

[Major_Decoy]

Well, there isn't exactly a stacking effect, but it's clearly using your existing absorb to calculate how much new absorb you get.

 

I suppose that, if there was another source of absorb, like one person using wild bastion and another person using particle shielding, you could check to see what the numbers look like as the different buffs expire.

[csr]

What I think it's doing is adding the new Aborb buff, stacking that with the existing buff to hit the cap, then the "replace" immediately removes the previous buff, which has a fixed value, which leaves you at that (Cap minus that fixed value) remaining.  At no point does the mouse-over actually show the Aborb go up to the cap though.

 

If "replace" removed the existing effect first you'd simply get a new buff of the normal value.  Which I suspect might be what was intended.

 

In any case, I don't like how it works now, but I'm not sure its behavior counts as a bug.

Edited April 11 by csr

[Major_Decoy]

Yeah, and while it's annoying while you're kind of idling, as long as you're taking about 40 damage every six seconds you won't have to worry about the cap. I could see where this would be a problem for a defense set like Super Reflexes, but Radiation and Bio Armour have varied enough sources of damage mitigation that it shouldn't be an issue even if they do have high defense builds.

[arcane]

I don’t see how this could possibly be working as intended. It’s literally comparable to if heals did damage to full health allies.

[csr]

There are probably some really weird edge cases that happen rarely that we don't notice.  For example having a Speed Boost take you to the recharge cap and then the old boost being removed giving you a lower value than would be expected.  It's the cap that causes the problem.  If the Absorb cap were twice what it is then we wouldn't see this.  For example, my Rad Tanker would get 1057 then another 1057 taking her to 2114 (which would now be below the cap) then the old buff would be immediately removed dropping her back to 1057.  So she'd just refresh the 1057 she had.  If either the old buff was removed first or the cap applied last there wouldn't be a problem, it's that the new buff is applied and the cap enforced before the old buff is removed that seems to be the issue.

 

[Edit:]  This isn't quite right, since Absorb can be lost.  The fix seems to be to remove the old buff first, then apply the new one and apply the cap.

Edited April 13 by csr

[Maelwys]

Same thing's happening on Live with Rad Armor Particle Shielding and it definitely seems to be the "100% Absorb" cap kicking in prior to the buff renewal.

Realistically whenever a melee toon is in the thick of things, enemies will likely whittle through most/all of your absorb shield by the time you can refresh it; but the fact that these "replace existing effect" powers don't necessarily refresh their full Absorb value is still annoying for anyone who isn't getting actively pummeled.

Have submitted a bug report here.