Rad Armor Bugs - Radiation Therapy and Particle Shielding

[Maelwys]

I've noticed a few issues with the above powers on my /Rad Scrapper.

(i) Firstly, Radiation Therapy - this power does several things. Regardless of the number of foes around you, it always restores a moderate [non-stackable] amount of hitpoints and endurance; restores a minor [stackable] amount of hitpoints and endurance, and grants a [non-stackable] Regeneration Buff and some [non-stackable] Regeneration resistance. If there are any foes within 20ft and it passes a ToHit check (with 3x regular accuracy!) then it also deals a minor amount of energy and toxic damage to them and the [stackable] minor amount of hitpoints and endurance mentioned above increases; up to a maximum of 10 times.

The problem I'm seeing with this power is that the Regeneration Buff received is not remaining static.
If I have foes around me when the power activates, then the regeneration buff I receive is noticeably LOWER - by almost exactly 10%.

[With No foes in Range]
 

[With Foes in Range]


[Slotting]


This appears to happen regardless of whether the effect is replacing itself (overriding an existing instance of Radiation Therapy's Regeneration buff) or if it's a fresh casting with no previous instance of the buff active.

From looking at the power's stats I'm not certain what exactly is happening to produce that 10% discrepancy - the Regeneration buff is flagged to  ignore resistance so it shouldn't be getting affected by the "+Resistance (Regen)".  I can only assume it's some kind of unintentional interaction with the multiple foe mechanic?

[EDIT - as per replies later in this thread, this bug appears to be related to the level of the enemies you're fighting. The Regeneration Rate buff and Resistance (Regen) buff components of this power do not have the "Does not scale with enemy level"  flag set, which is causing their value to be affected by the Purple Patch whenever any higher-level enemies are nearby. So the fix here will presumably be to add this flag in order that these buffs remain constant regardless of enemy level. Most other healing/regeneration powers that can target foes such as Dark Regeneration , Siphon Life and Rise To The Challenge already have this flag set, but it's worth pointing out that this bug also appears to affect the recovery and regeneration buffs granted by Bio Armor's DNA Siphon]

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(ii) Secondly, Particle Shielding - this power is more straightforward. It grants a moderate [non-stacking] Regeneration buff, a moderate [non-stacking] Recovery buff and a [non-stacking] high amount of Absorb.

The problem I'm seeing here is very similar to one reported in the Beta Bug forum about Bio Armor's Ablative Carapace. Namely, if you activate the ability a second time before the first instance of the buff expires, then the new instance of the buff is supposed to replace the old one. However the amount of Absorb granted is incorrect - in this case it drops by about 30%.







At least in THIS case, I can guess the likely reason for the bug... 

As a Scrapper, my character's Base HP is 1339; so that's the maximum amount of Absorb that they can have.
A normal fresh instance of Particle Shielding grants an Absorb shield of 790.7 HP
1339 - 790.7 = 548.3... which is suspiciously close to the 547.92 figure that the second application of Particle Shielding is granting me.

So I very much suspect that repeated "replacing" applications of Absorb powers such as Particle Shielding and Ablative Carapace apply a fresh copy of their buff BEFORE the old copy of the buff gets removed (e.g. whenever the power is activated a second time and the Absorb buff attempts to be applied, the character's total Absorb runs afoul of the 100% cap and so the character only actually receives part of the buff... then the old copy of the buff gets removed and the character's total Absorb plummets, leaving the partial buff in place).

I assume the fix here would be to either make it so that any "replacing" applications of an Absorb buff fully remove the original buff before reapplying it or allow the maximum Absorb value to exceed 100% under the hood before it gets capped at 100% later on (similar to what currently happens with other stats such as maximum hit points and damage resistance etc - since this issue does not appear to occur during the reapplication of powers that exceed those caps, such as Dull Pain and Eclipse).
 

Edited April 25 by Maelwys

[Burk]

What level enemies did you test Radiation Therapy against? I notice that the regen effect does not have the "Does not scale with enemy level" flag. If you were fighting something one level higher than you, that would exactly reduce the effect by 10%. So, I'm guessing it applies the regen from hitting yourself and then if there are enemies around it immediately replaces the effect with the one from hitting them, level scaling the effect and all.

[Maelwys]

21 minutes ago, Burk said:

What level enemies did you test Radiation Therapy against? I notice that the regen effect does not have the "Does not scale with enemy level" flag. If you were fighting something one level higher than you, that would exactly reduce the effect by 10%. So, I'm guessing it applies the regen from hitting yourself and then if there are enemies around it immediately replaces the effect with the one from hitting them, level scaling the effect and all.

That's a very good point.
I was fighting +2/8 at the time so it's quite possible the enemies were +1 to me.

Retesting in Atlas Park (vs Lv1s) and Talos (vs Lv25s) I got the original 15.89 HP/Sec rate... so it looks like it's ignoring the enemy's level if it's lower than my own character.

However versus Level 54s (+3 to me) I'm getting this:


10.33 HP / Sec is 65% of 15.89 HP/Sec
So you're quite right, it's the Purple Patch kicking in.

Therefore the fix here will be to add the "Does not scale with enemy level" flag to both the Regeneration Rate buff and Resistance (Regen) buff components of the power.
 

Edited April 25 by Maelwys

[Trickshooter]

Was jumping in here to ask, what Regeneration buff in Radiation Therapy??? No Regen buff is listed in the short help or power description on my characters.

 

Looks like only the Scrapper version even has this Regen buff, which makes me think it's not supposed to be there at all.

 

Scrapper Radiation Therapy

 

Tanker Radiation Therapy

Brute Radiation Therapy

Stalker Radiation Therapy

[Maelwys]

Power descriptions are often inaccurate so I'd not put too much faith in them.

Interesting that it's not present in the other AT versions of the power though. It doesn't look to have been mistakenly copied from Particle Shielding etc. as the durations differ. TBH in practice a few HP per second of Regen here or there probably isn't going to make a huge amount of difference; but having that regeneration buff in RT at least gives Scrappers an excuse to not just automatically 6-slot it with damage procs... so I'd veer towards adding it to those other ATs rather than getting rid of it on Scrappers.
If they do decide to get rid of it then I'd definitely suggest they also extend the duration of the 30s Regeneration buff in Particle Shielding; to bring it into line with the 60s duration of the Recovery and Absorb buffs (whether as a compromise or a bugfix - the fact that Rad Armor was added post-shutdown means that its powers have always been a little wonky like that).

To be fair the target's level also affects the Regeneration Resistance component of Radiation Therapy; as well as Bio Armor's DNA Siphon (regardless of your AT) so they're going to need to add the "Does not scale with enemy level" flag in several places regardless of what the intent is for the Regeneration Buff.