Genuinely confused about the deep science testing of enemies buffed ITF with different builds .. help

[R jobbus]

 

As the topic suggests, the testing I've been doing on enemies buffed ITF in the beta server is really inconclusive and I have no idea why. This build: 

 

 Seems to tank to the stage 4 ITF at +4/x8 AV fight with nictus and rommy all together perfectly fine solo. It rarely ever dropped to what, maybe 60% health after the auto nictus died but other than that it stays very steady at 85%-100% health, most of the time, and it can complete the fight within 40ish minutes or so. This testing is without using -regen lores, but I probably would on rommy just to save time. But the summary is, this build is fine for this. Reminder, it's Shield Defense/War Mace solo, +4/x8 ITF, stage 4, Rommy+all nictus all together without any aggro limit abusing and the "enemies buffed" thing checked on the task force challenge menu.

 

However, *this* build: 

^This build, almost immediately drops to 50%-70% on the exact same fight. Then, as I am fighting in the same way under the exact same conditions as described above, Rommy will hit this build more consistently and do more damage to it, it cannot complete the fight comfortably. As the fight continues, the above build sinks below 50% and into the 25% -30% range where really it's just luck if you get one shotted at that point or not. 

 

So what gives??? These builds are barely any different, the only difference is that you're losing some energy resistance from less slotted adjusted targeting.. 3%? Literally the only major hit was this build has *less* global recharge and far more melee defense. So how??? what the hell is happening?  Like how is it *that* bad of a difference. This builds are so similar, I have no idea why.

 

My ONE singular hypothesis is that clobber on war mace has a hefty recharge timer on it, meaning that maybe the archtype resist damage procs that stack with each other are just popping off like crazy ? compared to other builds? That's my one hypothesis.  However:

This build, seemed to fight the same exact conditioned AVs pretty ok... Which, again, you're gaining maybe 3% energy resistance, and you have more global recharge............. but shouldn't *less* recharge make the resistance procs happen more often? Does *more* global recharge make the scaling damage resist procs happen more often or is it just the actual recharge of the ability needing to be fairly longer rather than shorter? I thought adding like, what maybe 1 second to an ability would increase the chances of any procs happening?

 

But again, the difference between these builds is so tiny.. but seriously, I'm not kidding. I've been on the beta server testing this and it is remarkably consistent how much damage you take and how often rommy hits you. 

 

I simply do not understand. Do AVs just spawn within a certain margin of randomized stats or something? Or do AVs have some hidden mechanism of punishing you if you have more defense? Does enemies buffed make something funky happen? 

 

And another thing I want to say too is, testing out shield/savage on tanker, literally everytime I use blood frenzy and become 'exhausted' rommy hits me and i take more damage, same fight, same conditions, similar builds. And again, I know some people will say 'oh it's just luck' but it is stupidly consistent. Like it happens literally everytime, then when you stop using it, it stops.

 

There is nothing that I could find in city of data about this, whatsoever. Im genuinely curious if there's just hidden stuff happening that I don't know about. None of it makes sense to me and I'm just reaching out to see if anyone has any ideas.

 

Frankly at this point, clobber has such a massive recharge on it despite ageless core and massive global recharge, I'm assuming what's going on is that the resist proc is just popping off all the time, because besides that I genuinely do not have a clue why.

 

Genuinely asking for any insight here, thank you.

 

 

[Maelwys]

If you can't provide Mids Build files, could you at least post a screenshot of each build's Combat Attribute values for MaxHP, Defense and Resistance?
Wouldn't be the first time there was the wrong IO slotted somewhere (like a Rech/End instead of a +Def Global) or one build was lacking its +HP Accolades.

[R jobbus]

15 hours ago, Maelwys said:

If you can't provide Mids Build files, could you at least post a screenshot of each build's Combat Attribute values for MaxHP, Defense and Resistance?
Wouldn't be the first time there was the wrong IO slotted somewhere (like a Rech/End instead of a +Def Global) or one build was lacking its +HP Accolades.

 

SD/War Mace (Build that works for this):

 

SD/Fire Melee (Build that did not work for this, had considerable trouble with the 4 AV fight and got hit quite a bit more. Way more):

 

It is worth noting that SD/War Mace has a little less HP at the moment, the build is flexible enough to unslot some HP from true grit in order to move glad armor to it instead, opening up deflection for more melee defense for the other parts of the ITF, then just reslotting HP back in true grit for the AV fight, so that's probably why it looks that way, as I was testing it earlier and it works well. 

 

I know covering bases is always important when asking about these details but I do not think any enhancements would be accidentally the wrong piece, I've respec'd these builds so many times and I have always deleted all excess enhancements and check the pieces everytime before I do anything.

 

 

Honestly, the only thing I can think of that is making the AV fight behave this way is the stacking resist proc from the archtype set. I do remember some times when I would just let my tanks sit there just to see what happened without doing their chain for absorb and stacking resist and they definitely would crumble if given enough time, noticeably more. but that doesn't have anything to do with the rate at which they are getting hit... and the differences in these aren't *that* drastic so I'm still skeptical.

 

Is there something going on where global recharge increases proc rate? I thought the whole point of procs was that the higher the cooldown in general of a move, the higher the proc rate. The entire point of my slotting obliteration like in the 2nd build (SD/FM that struggled) was that I could drastically increase defense while still being able to take a recharge hit if it's chain can handle that (which it can) and also slightly increase any proc chances since great fire sword gains like 1 second of recharge when ageless is at 20~ seconds of cooldown left.

 

But now i'm starting to think global recharge drastically affects proc rate, cause if not i dont know what's going on, literally. it's bizarre.

 

That or clobber's proc rate is just insane for some reason. Like I said, after 5x lotg, armageddon, some other recharge and ageless core it's timer is still 6~ seconds when ageless is at like 11~ish seconds left. 

 

other than that, i dont know.

 

Edit: I don't have the stats of the third build, the sd/fm build that ended up doing "ok" for the AV fight because I respec'd into the later build, but it was based off of the earlier sd/wm build and was probably literally identical to it stat wise

 

 

 

Edited Sunday at 01:39 PM by R jobbus

[R jobbus]

Also just to add onto this discussion, I built a similar sd/martial arts build following the same build (the sd/fm build that didnt work), and even landing storm kick repeatedly (which supposedly gives quite a bit of defense, like 10% to a whole bunch of things) and it had the exact same result as sd/fm. It just got hit more often and took considerable damage. Which makes no sense. The sd/ma build should've had just absolutely insane defense at that point, so maybe stacking resist proc was in something too fast? but that shouldnt' affect the rate of being hit so I dont know. 

[Sovera]

Nothing seems undully out of place, and global recharge has no effect on proc chance. Has this been repeatable? Say, three or four fights with the same results?

 

Honestly the build seems pretty damn solid. Nothing much i could see to improve other than sacrificing some recharge for more resistances. If anything I'd try replacing Incinerate for Scorch as when I tested on a pylon it was the same as doing GFS, Scorch, Fire Sword, Scorch, than doing GFS, Incinerate, Fire Sword. Then put the ATO from GFS there. Less of a chance of the proc going off but better leveling/exemplaring, and twice the usage to make up for the lost proc chance. GFS is the heavy hitter and it's a pity it is not at least given the purple damage proc, and probably the -res proc. This chain doesn't ask for huge amounts of recharge either.

 

None of this would really change what you're experiencing though.

 

Trading Ageless for Barrier would probably help as well. Another 5% against defense debuffers and 5% res at minimum but mostly used if/ when things get dire. As a Shielder you're probably hurting for that endurance but maybe Recovery Serums once in a while? No idea, I never seriously played a Shielder.

 

 

Edited Sunday at 01:51 PM by Sovera

[Maelwys]

Global Recharge has no impact on Proc rate (that's the whole point of stacking Global Recharge over slotting the attack power itself for recharge).

 

The at-rest numbers look fine, so it has to be something like an unlucky run of SMoT Proc activations occuring. If it was me I'd pin a few relevant resistance figures (S/L for most AVs, but Rommy deals considerable Negative) and see what it sits at during the fight. 

 

To be fair, Clobber has a base recharge time of 16s to GFS's 12s so the expected Proc rate in it will be considerably higher (I'm on mobile at the moment so can't work out the exact PPM differences unfortunately)

[R jobbus]

19 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Nothing seems undully out of place, and global recharge has no effect on proc chance. Has this been repeatable? Say, three or four fights with the same results?

 

Honestly the build seems pretty damn solid. Nothing much i could see to improve other than sacrificing some recharge for more resistances. If anything I'd try replacing Incinerate for Scorch as when I tested on a pylon it was the same to do GFS , Scorch, Fire Sword, Scorch, than doing GFS, Incinerate, Fire Sword. Then put the ATO from GFS there. Less of a chance of the proc going off but better leveling/exemplaring, and twice the usage to make up for the lost proc chance. GFS is the heavy hitter and it's a pity it is not at least given the purple damage proc, and probably the -res proc. This chain doesn't ask for huge amounts of recharge either.

 

None of this would really change what you're experiencing though.

 

Trading Ageless for Barrier would probably help as well. Another 5% against defense debuffers and 5% res at minimum but mostly used if/ when things get dire. As a Shielder you're probably hurting for that endurance but maybe Recovery Serums once in a while? No idea, I never seriously played a Shielder.

 

 

 

Thanks for the response. Yea I might try out scorch. And yes, it's been extremely consistent - probably 4 fights per build, and the builds that I've tested for this are SD/War mace, SD/Fire melee, SD/ Martial arts, SD/battle axe, and sd/savage.

 

Ageless is a must for this build, as nice as barrier would be. But again, that's the give and take of this. Shield probably demands ageless, cause while endurance isn't tight necessarily it does need it. But that's the exchange for being able to do challenges like this, since it's my belief that shield is probably the only tanker primary that is going to be able to solo enemies buffed ITFs at +4/x8, without abusing the aggro limit. SR is just simply not going to cut it against this kind of stuff, solo-wise, imo and in my experience.

 

16 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Global Recharge has no impact on Proc rate (that's the whole point of stacking Global Recharge over slotting the attack power itself for recharge).

 

The at-rest numbers look fine, so it has to be something like an unlucky run of SMoT Proc activations occuring. If it was me I'd pin a few relevant resistance figures (S/L for most AVs, but Rommy deals considerable Negative) and see what it sits at during the fight. 

 

To be fair, Clobber has a base recharge time of 16s to GFS's 12s so the expected Proc rate in it will be considerably higher (I'm on mobile at the moment so can't work out the exact PPM differences unfortunately)

 

Next time I test things I'll do that just to get at look at it.

 

Yea it's looking like the proc rate is the culprit.. but there was an sd/fm build, the third one that managed pretty well, so I just don't have any idea. The only difference between the third build and the 2nd ones is 3% energy/negative resist. so maybe in a very high level solo multiple AV fight, that much matters. 

 

Thank yall for the responses. What I'm going to do in my next run of testing is just respec and put the stacking resist proc from the AT origin set in the highest base recharge move possible on every secondary powerset, while trying to keep any resist numbers similar to the sd/wm build that worked.

 

Edit: i may try throwing the stacking resist proc into firesword circle or something, since the recharge is alot higher. Just to see

Edited Sunday at 02:08 PM by R jobbus

[Sovera]

3 minutes ago, R jobbus said:

 

Thanks for the response. Yea I might try out scorch. And yes, it's been extremely consistent - probably 4 fights per build, and the builds that I've tested for this are SD/War mace, SD/Fire melee, SD/ Martial arts, SD/battle axe, and sd/savage.

 

Ageless is a must for this build, as nice as barrier would be. But again, that's the give and take of this. Shield probably demands ageless, cause while endurance isn't tight necessarily it does need it. But that's the exchange for being able to do challenges like this, since it's my belief that shield is probably the only tanker primary that is going to be able to solo enemies buffed ITFs at +4/x8, without abusing the aggro limit. SR is just simply not going to cut it against this kind of stuff, solo-wise, imo and in my experience.

 

What are you using for your alpha? Cardiac Core increases endurance reduction and damage resistance which both seem to be things you'd like to have in your bag of tricks. That could(?) free the Destiny slot.

[R jobbus]

1 minute ago, Sovera said:

 

What are you using for your alpha? Cardiac Core increases endurance reduction and damage resistance which both seem to be things you'd like to have in your bag of tricks. That could(?) free the Destiny slot.

 

musculature core, I could take a look at others but basically what's going on is, the damage is already so tight on the solo AV fight under these conditions, I don't think I can sacrifice any damage at all. Already, when I don't have assault up the auto hit nictus takes very very slow damage. And when more than one AV is still alive, if a longbow lore is out they will randomly just insta-kill it. (The auto hit nictus especially) And longbow radial isn't anywhere near enough healing to actually keep it alive. I think it's like, 3 autohit nictus hits if not 2 that just deletes it under these conditions

 

[Sovera]

Just now, R jobbus said:

 

musculature core, I could take a look at others but basically what's going on is, the damage is already so tight on the solo AV fight under these conditions, I don't think I can sacrifice any damage at all. Already, when I don't have assault up the auto hit nictus takes very very slow damage. And when more than one AV is still alive, if a longbow lore is out they will randomly just insta-kill it. (The auto hit nictus especially) And longbow radial isn't anywhere near enough healing to actually keep it alive. I think it's like, 3 autohit nictus hits if not 2 that just deletes it under these conditions

 

 

The damage boost from Musculature is not a lot. We're talking around 15%. Not to say it wouldn't be what tips the balance. Assault is another one that only adds about-ish 5% despite the tooltip (hit something without Assault on, toggle it, hit it again, compare). Again, not to say those 20% aren't what's tipping the scale into doability, but a paradigm shift could be what would make a difference.

 

For the Lore pets there is not a lot to do for that fight since the auto hit nictus has a huge radius but you can use the pet commands to make them leave melee to at least avoid the boss' PbAoE.

[R jobbus]

3 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

The damage boost from Musculature is not a lot. We're talking around 15%. Not to say it wouldn't be what tips the balance. Assault is another one that only adds about-ish 5% despite the tooltip (hit something without Assault on, toggle it, hit it again, compare). Again, not to say those 20% aren't what's tipping the scale into doability, but a paradigm shift could be what would make a difference.

 

For the Lore pets there is not a lot to do for that fight since the auto hit nictus has a huge radius but you can use the pet commands to make them leave melee to at least avoid the boss' PbAoE.

 

Yeah. I mean it's not alot to add on, for sure.

 

But again, I kind of *am* testing it since even with assault being equipped but not toggled (when on cooldown) the autohit nictus (and third nictus left alive after auto hit and the other dies) take hardly any damage at all, give or take.

 

But it's good information. i'm not opposed to trying it, or really anything at this point. I'm just hesitant to make the AV fight start pushing 50 minutes or so, it already is around 40ish minutes solo under these conditions. Maybe less if I summon longbow radial for rommy when he's the last alive.

[Sovera]

2 minutes ago, R jobbus said:

 

Yeah. I mean it's not alot to add on, for sure.

 

But again, I kind of *am* testing it since even with assault being equipped but not toggled (when on cooldown) the autohit nictus (and third nictus left alive after auto hit and the other dies) take hardly any damage at all, give or take.

 

But it's good information. i'm not opposed to trying it, or really anything at this point. I'm just hesitant to make the AV fight start pushing 50 minutes or so, it already is around 40ish minutes solo under these conditions. Maybe less if I summon longbow radial for rommy when he's the last alive.

 

Do let us know how it's going. I remember doing the +4x8 enemies buffed, no inspirations, no deaths on my Fire/Claws but when I got to the last boss I didn't know/remember that killing the nictus would trigger the stun and once those were down he one shot me instantly 😄

[R jobbus]

23 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

Do let us know how it's going. I remember doing the +4x8 enemies buffed, no inspirations, no deaths on my Fire/Claws but when I got to the last boss I didn't know/remember that killing the nictus would trigger the stun and once those were down he one shot me instantly 😄

 

Lol nice. yea that stun is nasty.. I've completed it on sd/war mace a few times but it's the inconsistency between builds that is strange to me. And doing it without abusing the aggro limit is also kind of the goal since the aggro limit seems super inconsistent, and subject to change. Like it feels like it has changed from before.

 

Also I've experienced stuff like, I'll jetpack over to rommy, not hit literally anything, then pull rommy and his nictus will not follow him.. From behind the little chapel looking building on the right side. Just on that corner. 

 

So that's obviously super abusable but i'm hesitant to make it a standard in any build I play since i fear all that stuff is gonna be changed if it is exploited. Like I've tried the "old" method of using the aggro limit, where you run into a massive group in the middle and get everything, then attack a nictus without aoe damage and supposedly rommy and the other nictus will not harm you during this, letting you kill it while being at the aggro limit... but that does not/has never happened for me, this year. All that happens is that it instant aggros all of the AVs, and ive tested this multiple times on multiple builds... 

 

But again, what's the deal with being able to just fly over to rommy without killing anything in the stage, pulling him from behind the little building in the center, and he separates from the nictus? Everytime I fight the AV fight for testing I have to kill a minotaur on the left and whoever follows me so that his nictus will end up following him when I pull him from behind the chapel. I use darkest night to pull him too. 

 

I just don't get it. It's this kind of stuff where I am really hesitant to use the aggro limit cause it seems to be all over the place sometimes

Edited Sunday at 02:59 PM by R jobbus

[Uncle Shags]

I'm taking a leap here because I've never played WM, but my impression is that it has a lot of mitigation via knockdown?  Fire has zero mitigation. For large groups of normal enemies that can make a huge difference. Although, if you're talking AVs that might not matter because I don't think knockdown works on them? 

[R jobbus]

40 minutes ago, Uncle Shags said:

I'm taking a leap here because I've never played WM, but my impression is that it has a lot of mitigation via knockdown?  Fire has zero mitigation. For large groups of normal enemies that can make a huge difference. Although, if you're talking AVs that might not matter because I don't think knockdown works on them? 

 

The AVs and cimerorans, most things in the ITF have knockdown protection, it rarely ever procs off of anything except vs minotaurs and cyclops that rage crash, or on isolated, non-grouped cimerorans, or on the council enemies. I mean it does work on regular cimeroran enemies but they almost always use their war cry/phalanx fighting thing, whatever it is that grants them protection, once they use that it hardly works much.

 

In the AV fight it's a non factor essentially

Edited Sunday at 05:14 PM by R jobbus

[Warboss]

I haven't messed with my shield Tankers much lately, but could it be your DDR? Active Defense cycles giving a basic "base" buff (all the time) and then stacking on that when the power is active and in affect. If your cycle time is slower on the second build you'd be open to more debuffing and damage during that time. Check your Debuff Resistance under Combat Attributes and see a difference in the cycle times between the builds. Recharge differences could account for what you're see and how you describe it.

[lemming]

On sharing builds:

/buildsavefile string.txt

works great   (stored in Games/Homecoming/accounts/ACCOUNT/builds)  and can be read by Mids.

[Maelwys]

7 hours ago, R jobbus said:

Yea it's looking like the proc rate is the culprit.. but there was an sd/fm build, the third one that managed pretty well, so I just don't have any idea. The only difference between the third build and the 2nd ones is 3% energy/negative resist. so maybe in a very high level solo multiple AV fight, that much matters. 

FWIW I'm home now.
Clobber with that slotting should be getting 76.9567% chance for SMoT proc activation; and be up every 7.552s.
Greater Fire Sword will be getting 61.4467% chance for SMoT proc activation; and be up every 6.244s.

The SMoT Proc only persists for ~20s and best case (if you're utterly spamming each power) you'll get 3 chances to stack it over that window.
And plugging three trials with those values into the ol' handy Binomial Distribution Calculator gives...
Clobber = a 1.224% likelihood of 0 procs, 12.259% likelihood of 1 proc; 40.941% likelihood of 2 procs and 45.576% of 3 procs.
GFS = a 5.73% likelihood of 0 procs, 27.4% likelihood of 1 proc; 43.67% likelihood of 2 procs and 23.2% of 3 procs.

[R jobbus]

25 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

FWIW I'm home now.
Clobber with that slotting should be getting 76.9567% chance for SMoT proc activation; and be up every 7.552s.
Greater Fire Sword will be getting 61.4467% chance for SMoT proc activation; and be up every 6.244s.

The SMoT Proc only persists for ~20s and best case (if you're utterly spamming each power) you'll get 3 chances to stack it over that window.
And plugging three trials with those values into the ol' handy Binomial Distribution Calculator gives...
Clobber = a 1.224% likelihood of 0 procs, 12.259% likelihood of 1 proc; 40.941% likelihood of 2 procs and 45.576% of 3 procs.
GFS = a 5.73% likelihood of 0 procs, 27.4% likelihood of 1 proc; 43.67% likelihood of 2 procs and 23.2% of 3 procs.

 

 fascinating stuff, thanks.

 

but I'm not sure what to take from this. It's not all *that* different right. Especially since the third build I listed was fm and slotted closer to the original wm build, and it did better than the 2nd build of fm, which didn't perform well at all. But the proc rate of the 2nd and third builds, both of which are fm, their proc chances are the same, no? 

 

That's what confuses me. The only difference is 3% negative resistance (and a ton of defense on the 2nd one, which clearly didn't help it). So I don't know.

 

4 hours ago, Warboss said:

I haven't messed with my shield Tankers much lately, but could it be your DDR? Active Defense cycles giving a basic "base" buff (all the time) and then stacking on that when the power is active and in affect. If your cycle time is slower on the second build you'd be open to more debuffing and damage during that time. Check your Debuff Resistance under Combat Attributes and see a difference in the cycle times between the builds. Recharge differences could account for what you're see and how you describe it.

 

I had not thought of this and that might definitely be a thing, I'll pay attention to it and see on the next round of testing. Surely the 2nd build's active defenses timer would be taking quite a bit longer. So maybe it's getting debuffed and eating damage. Thanks for pointing this out! 

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, R jobbus said:

but I'm not sure what to take from this. It's not all *that* different right. Especially since the third build I listed was fm and slotted closer to the original wm build, and it did better than the 2nd build of fm, which didn't perform well at all. But the proc rate of the 2nd and third builds, both of which are fm, their proc chances are the same, no? 

 

That's what confuses me. The only difference is 3% negative resistance (and a ton of defense on the 2nd one, which clearly didn't help it). So I don't know.

The takeaway is that it's far more likely that the Clobber build will have 2-3 stacks; and the GFS build will oscillate far more randomly between 1 and 3.
So I imagine that having (6.7*2)+3=16.4% less Negative damage resistance at a few inopportune moments is the main issue here.

The third build has 5% more global recharge I think? (Purple set in Shield Charge) and so technically GFS will be a smidge faster to cycle (and therefore it's a smidge more likely that you'll have more SMoT procs up at any one time); but honestly if it has performed noticeably better than the second build then I suspect that's more due to the random number generator happening to prefer it on the runs in question.

[R jobbus]

15 hours ago, Maelwys said:

The takeaway is that it's far more likely that the Clobber build will have 2-3 stacks; and the GFS build will oscillate far more randomly between 1 and 3.
So I imagine that having (6.7*2)+3=16.4% less Negative damage resistance at a few inopportune moments is the main issue here.

The third build has 5% more global recharge I think? (Purple set in Shield Charge) and so technically GFS will be a smidge faster to cycle (and therefore it's a smidge more likely that you'll have more SMoT procs up at any one time); but honestly if it has performed noticeably better than the second build then I suspect that's more due to the random number generator happening to prefer it on the runs in question.

 

Yea I just am not convinced it's just rng favoring the builds. The 2nd is noticably worse than the third build and it doesn't take very long to replicate it either, over and over. and as the fight goes on it just keeps happening. I'm starting to wonder if it's the active defense thing.. or something. 

 

One thing that I have noticed though is that it likely is directly related to negative resist..  Because once the autonictus dies (I always kill it first), then stuff is alot more doable for any of these builds. Maybe the 3% and GSF being slightly slower is enough negative resist to matter, i don't know. 

 

But if it was related to active defense, the only thing that is defense debuffing is rommy in the AV fight, correct? In regular groups of enemies, the 2nd build absolutely destroys them, noticably easier than the other builds at times.... so maybe it isn't defense debuffs. If it was defense debuffs, the build would be cascading really badly in groups of normal enemies. Part of the goal of having mega high defense builds like this was to be able to throw myself into 3-4 enemies buffed +4/x8 cimeroran spawns and just tank all 30~ people or whatever. The 2nd build does this. The 1st and 3rd ones do also, but I was just trying to get a bit more defense.

 

But if it was defense debuffs.. all of that would be a problem, especially for the 2nd one, if that was the culprit for the AV fight.

 

I really dont know. i'm just gonna test more. thank you for putting in the effort and giving me the numbers and all that, very cool stuff.

 

but I'm not gonna know for sure until I do another round of testing. At least this will help me slot SD/MA and SD/Savage with a bit more insight, putting the SMoT proc into the longest base recharge move, probably axe kick for MA and i dont know what for savage. Whatever is next aside from the leap since it's recharge is too long.

 

 

[Maelwys]

14 minutes ago, R jobbus said:

I'm not gonna know for sure until I do another round of testing.

I think this is the answer TBH.
Using one of the combat log analysis tools (like Carni's or Cyclops') might help narrow down the culprit!
 

[tidge]

Here is something that is on my mind, that isn't directly related to the (static) builds: are the attack chains used in the fights for both builds exactly the same (specifically the timing/use between single-target and AoE)?

 

There is a very subtle sort of RNG effect I'm convinced I see but is very hard to completely believe (in hypothesis testing this would be "high confidence, but with low power") between performance of different chains (AoE, ST)... see below. This could manifest itself in the %+Res in a marginal way for the extreme content here.

 

My attempt to explain my thinking, because 'streakbreaker':

 

Spoiler

We know that the pseudo-RNG yields a flat distribution to evenly populate 'rolls' between 0.0 and 1.0

 

We know that 'streakbreaker' for final ToHit chances about 95% does the following:

• It watches two different 'streaks', one for AoE attacks, one for Single-Target
• at 95% final ToHit, one miss of a type of streak (AoE or ST) guarantees the next attack of that type (AoE or ST) will be turned into a hit.

We know that the 'ToHit' check happens for more than just attacks...e.g. auras with a ToHit check. I think the only such power used in this case is Against All Odds. <- I mention this because it is possible for PBAoE auras with a ToHit check to hurt the AoE streakbreaker, but for the rest of this I'll pretend that final ToHit is always at the 95% ceiling for everything in the build.

 

My guess about streakbreaker is that RNG makes the rolls, but then throws the results of the rolls away.

 

I have no clue if the RNG calls for %proc is subject to streakbreaker, but I'm going to assume "NO".... in the build above I didn't see any procs in powers where I think this would be the case anyway, I mention it only because procs are another invocation of RNG.

 

Because of the 'flat' RNG distribution, for ceiling 95% ToHit we'd expect that 1-in-20 attack rolls to be a miss, and the RNG has demonstrated this to be the case.

 

However: the chance of getting an immediate second miss (without streak-breaker) is NOT 5%, it is much less... and by my informed-by-flat-priors guess makes me think that it is in fact a greater chance than 19-in-20 that any roll after 0.95+ would be below 0.95 (because pseudo-RNG is flatly populating between 0.0 and 1.0) so in effect, streakbreaker is tossing out more hits than misses, and slightly inflating the chance of another miss. Even ignoring RNG priors (and flatness) if I got the math right the chance of two consecutive 0.05% results is only 0.025%, not the 0.05% for any one roll.

 

 

Normally this sort of thing kinda washes itself out, and is highly annoying to check (for high power, see my hypothesis test comment above) because so much has to be controlled for but for this more extreme sort of content that has been run repeatedly with similar results... I think it may be possible that the reliance on a %proc in an attack for more resistance... could be falling in the margins for this (unfortunate) build.

 

To first order, if a log-parser is used, you could take a look at the total number of streakbreaker calls for each case. This won't be super-informative, but if the number is consistently different between the builds while being consistent among both builds, this could be a clue.

 

Like I wrote: this is a PITA to test for many reasons. (1) we don't see the roll that was tossed (if it was!), (2) we don't get told in the logs which streakbreaker (AT, AoE) was used (but we can tell by power choices, so not impossible), (3) we have to take all other sources of player RNG calls out of the mix (including %procs).

 

 

[R jobbus]

49 minutes ago, tidge said:

Here is something that is on my mind, that isn't directly related to the (static) builds: are the attack chains used in the fights for both builds exactly the same (specifically the timing/use between single-target and AoE)?

 

There is a very subtle sort of RNG effect I'm convinced I see but is very hard to completely believe (in hypothesis testing this would be "high confidence, but with low power") between performance of different chains (AoE, ST)... see below. This could manifest itself in the %+Res in a marginal way for the extreme content here.

 

My attempt to explain my thinking, because 'streakbreaker':

 

  Hide contents

We know that the pseudo-RNG yields a flat distribution to evenly populate 'rolls' between 0.0 and 1.0

 

We know that 'streakbreaker' for final ToHit chances about 95% does the following:

• It watches two different 'streaks', one for AoE attacks, one for Single-Target
• at 95% final ToHit, one miss of a type of streak (AoE or ST) guarantees the next attack of that type (AoE or ST) will be turned into a hit.

We know that the 'ToHit' check happens for more than just attacks...e.g. auras with a ToHit check. I think the only such power used in this case is Against All Odds. <- I mention this because it is possible for PBAoE auras with a ToHit check to hurt the AoE streakbreaker, but for the rest of this I'll pretend that final ToHit is always at the 95% ceiling for everything in the build.

 

My guess about streakbreaker is that RNG makes the rolls, but then throws the results of the rolls away.

 

I have no clue if the RNG calls for %proc is subject to streakbreaker, but I'm going to assume "NO".... in the build above I didn't see any procs in powers where I think this would be the case anyway, I mention it only because procs are another invocation of RNG.

 

Because of the 'flat' RNG distribution, for ceiling 95% ToHit we'd expect that 1-in-20 attack rolls to be a miss, and the RNG has demonstrated this to be the case.

 

However: the chance of getting an immediate second miss (without streak-breaker) is NOT 5%, it is much less... and by my informed-by-flat-priors guess makes me think that it is in fact a greater chance than 19-in-20 that any roll after 0.95+ would be below 0.95 (because pseudo-RNG is flatly populating between 0.0 and 1.0) so in effect, streakbreaker is tossing out more hits than misses, and slightly inflating the chance of another miss. Even ignoring RNG priors (and flatness) if I got the math right the chance of two consecutive 0.05% results is only 0.025%, not the 0.05% for any one roll.

 

 

Normally this sort of thing kinda washes itself out, and is highly annoying to check (for high power, see my hypothesis test comment above) because so much has to be controlled for but for this more extreme sort of content that has been run repeatedly with similar results... I think it may be possible that the reliance on a %proc in an attack for more resistance... could be falling in the margins for this (unfortunate) build.

 

To first order, if a log-parser is used, you could take a look at the total number of streakbreaker calls for each case. This won't be super-informative, but if the number is consistently different between the builds while being consistent among both builds, this could be a clue.

 

Like I wrote: this is a PITA to test for many reasons. (1) we don't see the roll that was tossed (if it was!), (2) we don't get told in the logs which streakbreaker (AT, AoE) was used (but we can tell by power choices, so not impossible), (3) we have to take all other sources of player RNG calls out of the mix (including %procs).

 

 

 

 

You know, this is fascinating stuff and I'll tell you why.... So against AVs in the fight, I do not use any AOE powers at all for these builds, as they tend to be lower single target damage and higher animation times. However, for War mace, the single target chain is pulverize (I think, the starter ability), clobber, then shatter.... Shatter is an aoe cone. So is that triggering this streak breaker thing potentially over and over again? Maybe increasing the chance of stuff hitting vs all single target moves being used in a chain?

 

The Fire melee chain is GSF, incinerate, fire sword. I don't use FSC in AV fights, since it's a long animation with similar single target damage to gsf, I only do it maybe if ageless is 10 seconds away and the cooldowns are at their lowest.

 

Honestly in a high-end extreme fight like this where a build is being pushed to it's limit, I could see something weird like this happening.

 

The problem though is of course that the 2nd and third builds, both of which are fire melee, have the same single target chain and frankly the difference in their performance is noticable rather quickly.. But I do need to respec and check the third (more successful) FM build and just be ultra sure that it's not just FM's fault in general for this. but I highly doubt it, since I remember doing this before, and I also remember doing it with builds that have a similar/shorter recharge chains than GSF.. meaning their SMoT proc would have the same or less results.

 

This is wild though, I never knew about this, though something tells me I could kinda 'sense' something weird going on..

[Warboss]

I see you're using Incinerate. Is it possible that the DoT is causing the issue? The "continuous hit" messing with the proc timer. Maybe replace with Fire Sword on a fast recharge and see what that does?

Edited Monday at 07:39 PM by Warboss