NPC Streakbreaker

[Ultimo]

Ok, I wasn't actually aware this was a thing, but apparently NPCs get the benefit of streakbreaker now?  I'm not sure when this started, but it can't be allowed, it renders characters depending on not getting hit completely defenseless.

 

I was running a mission this afternoon, a low level Super Reflexes Scrapper.  He doesn't have his status protection yet, but his defense is as good as can be at low level.  An enemy hit him with a hold, which was FORCED to hit by streakbreaker... and that was it.  The character couldn't break free, couldn't fight back, he just stood there and got attacked again and again and again, with no way to do anything.  He would have been FINE, but the hold was FORCED to hit him.  His defense, not getting hit, was rendered completely irrelevant by the streakbreaker.  Of course, that was a hold.  However, if it was just a normal damaging attack, it would have been much the same...  NPC damage (Bosses and higher, anyway) is SO much higher than ours, one hit can essentially end the fight, if you don't have other defenses.

 

Now, it's fine for US, because we're the players.  We need to be able to fight back.  The enemy doesn't need to have that freedom, they're MEANT to be defeated.  We should get the benefit of streakbreaker, but NPCs should not.

[Rudra]

NPCs have had Streak Breaker ever since we as players got it. And it is resolved per NPC, not as a group. So if your defense is high enough, then Streak Breaker still isn't going to benefit them much.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#The_Streak_Breaker

 

(Edit: Also, if for some unknowable reason the decision is made to take Streak Breaker away from NPCs? Then you just hamstrung PC pets. NPCs get access to the same powers and effects we do. That is how things should work specifically so players don't have a ready made God Mode available to us in the form of specific power sets in specific ATs. You're playing a low level SR? You'll be doing much better when you get the rest of your enhancement slots and powers. And as for your defense being the only thing protecting your character? SR gets scaling damage resist, so that isn't true. Don't have status protection yet? Either take down the mezzers before they mez you or carry Breakfrees.)

 

Edited February 7 by Rudra
Edited to add spaces in Streak Breaker.

[Luminara]

51 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

Ok, I wasn't actually aware this was a thing, but apparently NPCs get the benefit of streakbreaker now?  I'm not sure when this started

 

Officially, April 28, 2004.

 

But the streak breaker was created during the beta, so it's been around even longer than the ~15 cumulative years of the game's operational lifetime.

 

Tell us you don't know how the streak breaker works without telling us you don't know how the streak breaker works.

 

52 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

it can't be allowed, it renders characters depending on not getting hit completely defenseless.

 

Yup, that'll do.

[Ultimo]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

Officially, April 28, 2004.

 

But the streak breaker was created during the beta, so it's been around even longer than the ~15 cumulative years of the game's operational lifetime.

 

Tell us you don't know how the streak breaker works without telling us you don't know how the streak breaker works.

 

 

Yup, that'll do.

Fair enough.  I suppose I've just never suffered from it before.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Ultimo said:

Fair enough.  I suppose I've just never suffered from it before.

 

No-one in the history of the game has "suffered" due to NPCs sharing the same streak breaker rules with player characters.  If anything, we've benefitted from it far beyond the intended design.  The streak breaker is what makes soft-capped Defense so strong, because the same "You have to miss 100 times before I'll give you a free hit" rule that applies when our hit rolls are floored is applied to NPCs, and it's exceedingly rare for anything to survive long enough to make 100 hit rolls.

 

There are ways in which the streak breaker doesn't work well.  Mixing AoEs/PBAoEs/cones with single-target attacks causes arbitrary misses via the streak breaker forcing hits on targets other than the target which the player is attacking (very few things send me on a tear like missing a target repeatedly because my PBAoE toggle keeps applying an auto-hit on something else in the aura).  The new Sleep auto-hit screws up hit checks (when the previous attack missed, that auto-hit Sleep cancels the streak breaker's check).  The streak breaker isn't flawless.  But NPCs using the streak breaker?  Not even remotely problematic.

[Ultimo]

I'm afraid I'm going to disagree with you.  If I take steps to defend myself by making it impossible to hit me, then a mechanic that makes it guaranteed that I'm going to get hit is rendering my defense irrelevant.  If I lose a fight because of that (as I did tonight), then I've suffered from it.  You can play with the semantics as much as you like.

 

In any case, if it's been there from the beginning and I've never noticed it until now, it's not actually a problem.

[Rudra]

Saying you "suffered" because a game mechanic prevents you from ignoring enemies is ridiculous. A resistance based character isn't "suffering" because they still take damage despite having maxed damage resist. A high damage character isn't "suffering" because that character's opponents are resistant to the character's attacks. And a high defense character isn't "suffering" because enemies can hit the character. Defense is soft capped at 45%. Even if you somehow get your defense to 300%, the game will only count 45% against enemies. (Edit: There is an absolute floor of 5% chance for enemies to hit you regardless of how much defense you have and how lousy their accuracy/ToHit is.) So your SR character will eventually be hit even without streak breaker. And if your defense is high enough, the likelihood of that hit happening won't change even with streak breaker.

 

Edited February 8 by Rudra

[Ultimo]

Good lord, some of you people will argue and fight over ANYTHING.  The character suffered a defeat.  I'm not comparing it to actual physical suffering or anything like that.  If you don't like that word, substitute the word "endured."

[Stormwalker]

1 hour ago, Ultimo said:

I'm afraid I'm going to disagree with you.  If I take steps to defend myself by making it impossible to hit me, then a mechanic that makes it guaranteed that I'm going to get hit is rendering my defense irrelevant.  If I lose a fight because of that (as I did tonight), then I've suffered from it.  You can play with the semantics as much as you like.

 

In any case, if it's been there from the beginning and I've never noticed it until now, it's not actually a problem.

 

Ok, let's talk a little math here.

 

Defense never makes it impossible to hit you.  The accuracy floor is 5%.  That's a 1 in 20 chance.  That's if you are at or above the soft-cap (45% defense), which, if you are too low-level to have Practiced Brawler (which is available at level 10), you are nowhere close to.  If you've focused on defense at the expense of weakening your offense, you might have 25% melee/ranged defense at that level.   That's still going to get you hit 20% of the time - that's 1 in 5.  And if you even have 5% AoE defense, you've devoted way too many slots to defense at your level.  So you're going to get hit 40+% of the time - more than 1 in 3 - by AoE attacks.

 

You could be hard-capped on defense and they would still have a 5% chance to hit you.  That's 1 in 20.  As an example: my fully soft-capped Claws/SR scrapper can pop Barrier Core (putting her at 137.3%/137.3%/140.3% defense - over triple the soft-cap) and stand in the middle of a pack of +0x8 mobs, and she will take hits.  Not a lot of hits, of course - not enough hits to overcome her resistance and regeneration, typically - but she will consistently take hits.  And not because of the streak-breaker, but because the accuracy floor is 5%.   To say nothing of what happens when she runs into Nemesis with stacked Vengeance, or a DE Quartz emanator, or Rulaaru eyeballs, who add enemy To-Hit Buff to the mix and can make many enemy attacks almost auto-hit even against soft-capped defenses.

 

Never assume you cannot be hit, because you can be and you will be.  Expect to be hit, and have an answer for it. 

 

The accuracy floor and the RNG are more dangerous to you than the streak-breaker is.

Edited February 8 by Stormwalker
Typo correction.

[Ultimo]

1 hour ago, Stormwalker said:

 

Ok, let's talk a little math here.

 

Defense never makes it impossible to hit you.  The accuracy floor is 5%.  That's a 1 in 20 chance.  That's if you are at or above the soft-cap (45% defense), which, if you are too low-level to have Practiced Brawler (which is available at level 10), you are nowhere close to.  If you've focused on defense at the expense of weakening your offense, you might have 25% melee/ranged defense at that level.   That's still going to get you hit 20% of the time - that's 1 in 5.  And if you even have 5% AoE defense, you've devoted way too many slots to defense at your level.  So you're going to get hit 40+% of the time - more than 1 in 3 - by AoE attacks.

 

You could be hard-capped on defense and they would still have a 5% chance to hit you.  That's 1 in 20.  As an example: my fully soft-capped Claws/SR scrapper can pop Barrier Core (putting her at 137.3%/137.3%/140.3% defense - over triple the soft-cap) and stand in the middle of a pack of +0x8 mobs, and she will take hits.  Not a lot of hits, of course - not enough hits to overcome her resistance and regeneration, typically - but she will consistently take hits.  And not because of the streak-breaker, but because the accuracy floor is 5%.   To say nothing of what happens when she runs into Nemesis with stacked Vengeance, or a DE Quartz emanator, or Rulaaru eyeballs, who add enemy To-Hit Buff to the mix and can make many enemy attacks almost auto-hit even against soft-capped defenses.

 

Never assume you cannot be hit, because you can be and you will be.  Expect to be hit, and have an answer for it. 

 

The accuracy floor and the RNG are more dangerous to you than the streak-breaker is.

Yes, I'm aware of this.  Every attack has a CHANCE to hit you.  What bothers me is that when streak breaker engages, it's GUARANTEED to hit you.  It was my understanding that means every sixth attack is guaranteed to hit you.

 

Again though, I thought this discussion had reached its logical conclusion.  The streakbreaker has been in place all along, and I never even noticed it... so there's not really an issue.  I still think it probably shouldn't be there, but if I've never noticed it before, how much of a problem can it really be?

Edited February 8 by Ultimo

[Rudra]

40 minutes ago, Ultimo said:

It was my understanding that means every sixth attack is guaranteed to hit you.

If you had used the link I provided you, then you would have seen that is only true if the mobs have a 40%-60% chance to hit you. And as your defense improves, making it harder for them to hit you, that guaranteed hit rate falls off. It can get down to the mob can only hit guaranteed after 100 misses. It all depends on the mob's chance to hit you.

 

@Luminara told you the same thing in his/her/their second post. (6 posts up from this one.)

 

Edited February 8 by Rudra
Edited to remove apostrophe. And again to remove "before the 5% clamp". And yet again to correct "hits" to "misses".

[Ghost]

How dare the enemies have a fighting chance against MEEE!

 

 

[Luminara]

10 hours ago, Ultimo said:

If I take steps to defend myself by making it impossible to hit me,

 

[Shin Magmus]

     Ultimo, your threads are always a real treat but this game is clearly just too difficult for you.  If your character didn't have mez protection yet, and you were soloing content against an enemy group with mezzes, then you needed to carry some break frees.  This applies to any character in that situation.  By being a bad enough player to not carry break frees, you invited defeat.  So take Practiced Brawler at its first available level like a good player, and/or carry break frees until you get to that power.

[ScarySai]

[Seed22]

11 hours ago, Ultimo said:

I'm afraid I'm going to disagree with you.  If I take steps to defend myself by making it impossible to hit me, then a mechanic that makes it guaranteed that I'm going to get hit is rendering my defense irrelevant.  If I lose a fight because of that (as I did tonight), then I've suffered from it.  You can play with the semantics as much as you like.

 

In any case, if it's been there from the beginning and I've never noticed it until now, it's not actually a problem.

Have you given this much thought?

 

Because what you're suggesting would make it so an IOed SR tank would singlehandedly be the best toon in the game in all content. 

 

This does not bode well for, as much as I hate sound like a lot of armchair developers here and on the discord, the health of the game.

[ScarySai]

1 minute ago, Seed22 said:

Because what you're suggesting would make it so an IOed SR tank would singlehandedly be the best toon in the game in all content. 

 

It kinda already is.

[Shin Magmus]

     SR Tankers and Shield Tankers (with doublestacked Active Defenses) both end up having hard-capped Defense Debuff Resistance, but they are also unhittable GodKing Tankers who end up with decent Resists underneath those Defenses because of both their AT scalars and their special ATO procs, with some free Absorb as well.  Their extreme bulk being something that enemy groups cannot defeat with debuffs is part of why they are so incredibly strong.  However, these powersets don't let you automatically win with a bad build and no effort.

[Uun]

17 hours ago, Ultimo said:

The character couldn't break free, couldn't fight back, he just stood there and got attacked again and again and again, with no way to do anything. 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Inspirations#Resist_Effects_Inspirations

[Videra]

Oh boy, a new Ultimo thread! I'm sure everyone is being respectful and . . .

[macskull]

There is no case in which the streakbreaker mechanic will force hits at a higher rate than what the attacking character should already be hitting. To use OP’s example:

1. A Super Reflexes Scrapper with its auto and toggle powers active has 16.65% defense, assuming no other sources of defense - and no slotted enhancements in any of those powers.
2. If that Scrapper is being attacked by an even-con minion, that minion will have a (50-16.65=33.35%) chance to hit, or roughly 1 in 3.
3. A 33.35% chance to hit puts that critter in the streakbreaker bracket that requires six misses before forcing a hit. The chance of an enemy missing six times in a row with that hit chance is less than 9%.
4. In other words, in this specific scenario it’s more than three times as likely for your character to simply get hit because of a successful hit roll than it is for your character to get hit because of streakbreaker.

[arcane]

2 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

     Ultimo, your threads are always a real treat but this game is clearly just too difficult for you.  

I don’t want to be antagonistic towards Ultimo and his struggles right now because I’m on thin ice, but I agree with Shin here.

*gets hit in the face by a flying pig*

[Riverdusk]

 

 

19 hours ago, Ultimo said:

I was running a mission this afternoon, a low level Super Reflexes Scrapper.  He doesn't have his status protection yet, but his defense is as good as can be at low level. 

I think you've had enough of being dogpiled, so will offer another alternative.

 

Stock up on that START vendor defense/mez protection buff that is cheap at low levels.  Grab 8 hours of it at level 1 for 8,000 influence and that'll easily carry you through until you get your mez protect power as a scrapper, even if you level up as slowly as I do.  It also gives you another +5 defense as well.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

To use OP’s example:

1. A Super Reflexes Scrapper with its auto and toggle powers active has 16.65% defense, assuming no other sources of defense - and no slotted enhancements in any of those powers.
2. If that Scrapper is being attacked by an even-con minion, that minion will have a (50-16.65=33.35%) chance to hit, or roughly 1 in 3.
3. A 33.35% chance to hit puts that critter in the streakbreaker bracket that requires six misses before forcing a hit.

 

Hm...

 

12 hours ago, Ultimo said:

every sixth attack is guaranteed to hit you.

 

HM...

[macskull]

13 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Hm...

So, I'll give Ultimo the benefit of the doubt on this one. He said he didn't have Practiced Brawler yet, so odds are pretty good he's below level 10 and I really wouldn't expect a character at that level to have any enhancements slotted unless they got them as drops. Granted, any character at that level is going to be awful to play.

Edited February 8 by macskull