Is Opportunity Unresistable?

[Hopeling]

In several conversations here, I've seen people say that Opportunity's -20% res is not resistable. I assumed this was correct, because people said it, and there was no reason not to believe them. But I noticed this with a power analyzer today:

I mostly was just curious how much energy resistance Dominatrix has, because I remembered it being pretty high, but wasn't sure if it was to all types. But look at that: 50% base resist, a -20% debuff plus some others, and more than 30% left. Even without doing the arithmetic, that can't be right.

 

And sure enough, that's -34.6% resist total. If they're all resistable, those debuffs get cut in half to -17.3%, leaving her with 32.7% total, which is exactly what Combat Attributes says.

 

So: Opportunity's -res debuff is resistable, both the -5% from all attacks and the -20% from filling the bar. And sure enough, the detailed power info lists -20% resists, but does not say it's unresistable. Unless Single Shot specifically is bugged, but the power info for other Sentinel t1 attacks says the same thing.

[oldskool]

I didn't think that resistance debuffs were subtractive like that.  Like 50% - 20% - 5% -9.6% = 15.4%.  

 

But 17.3% is 34.6% of 50.  So that seems right based on the original calculations on resistance.  Or am I totally misunderstanding this? 

[Hopeling]

All buffs are additive. The game doesn't actually know what a 'debuff' is as opposed to a 'buff'; it just thinks that some buffs have positive numbers and other buffs have negative numbers. Similarly, some buffs are resistable, and some are not.

 

Resist buffs in particular are a bit weird to calculate, because "energy resistance debuff resistance" is just energy resistance. But the process goes like this:

1. Take base value (0%).
2. Add up all the unresistable effects and apply them. In this case, Dominatrix has +50% resistance from her passive. Resistance bonuses are almost always flagged as unresistable; you can see this on eg Tough or any armor toggle.
3. Now add up all the resistable effects and apply those, subject to debuff resistance (ie, the total resistance from the previous step). Resistance penalties are almost always flagged as resistable.

In this case, that works out like so:

1. 0%
2. +50% = 50% total
3. We're applying (-5%+-9.6%+-20%)=-34.6% energy resistance, but Dominatrix resists half of that because she had 50% resistance at the previous step, so really it's only -17.3%, giving 50-17.3=32.7% total.

It's definitely NOT "remove 34.6% of the resistance the target already has". If that were the case, -res would do nothing on targets without resistance, and it's easy to verify that this is not the case. In fact, it's in the same screenshot: you can (barely) see at the bottom of the window that Dominatrix has -34.6% psi resist, because she started at 0% and then suffered the full effect of the debuff.

[Hopeling]

For completeness, if the Opportunity -20% were unresistable, the calculation would go:

1. 0%
2. +50%-20%=30% total
3. Apply -5%-9.6%=-14.6%, of which she resists 30%, leaving -14.6%*.7=-10.22%, for a total of 30%-10.22%=19.78% resistance.

[oldskool]

I get that.  I think what I am getting at is that the mechanics work as a play on semantics.  

 

*edit, Per Paragon Wiki, "It's also important to remember that stacked resistance debuffs always use the unbuffed resistance value when calculating resistance."  So the -5% and 9.6% would be applied to the original value of 50 not the modified value of 30.  In the case of resistable buffs the calculation was NewResistance = OriginalResistance + DebuffAmount - [(DebuffAmount x OriginalResistance) / 100%]

 

From the perspective on semantics It is true that 17.3 is half of 34.6 (resisted argument).  It is also true that 17.3 is just over 1/3rd of 50 (unresisted argument).   

 

So in the first statement saying that the target resists the effects is true.  In the second statement saying that the result is "unresisted" is also true.  

 

I get that the code doesn't apply "remove % of target value" but since you cannot multiple by zero the effects are added as they are.    

 

The calculations on resistance gives me a headache because the use of terms "unresistable" is misleading as to how it works holistically (seeing as how you can go into negatives for full value).  Anyway, that's how I always calculate it when I know that resistance is present and I know that the debuff says "unresistable".  I handle it from the perspective of a ridiculous semantic argument that something like 17.3 is technically 34.6% of 50.  

^ Me being stupid. 😉

Edited August 20, 2019 by oldskool

[Hopeling]

It's not semantics. If the debuff were unresistable, Opportunity by itself would bring Dominatrix from 50% to 30%. It doesn't.

 

My first example allows for some confusion on this point, since the target has 50% resistance, and so "amount resisted" and "amount left" are the same. Here are some other examples:

 

This is a Fire Tarantula, which has 20% resist to everything. I've applied -16.21% total debuffs to it. Its resistance was actually reduced by 16.21*0.8=12.968%, which after some rounding, becomes 20-12.968=7.04%. It does not remove 16.21% of 20%; that would have left the target at 20(1-.1621)=16.76% resist.

 

For comparison, Rest gives an unresistable -1000% res debuff. My sentinel is /Elec, so he has 75% energy resistance. If this worked like the above, I would resist 75% of that debuff, so only -250% would get through, leaving me at 75-250=-175% resist. That's not what happens; Rest's debuff is unresistable, so it applies in full and floors my resist at -300%:

Now, resistable debuffs are still quite good. Almost all resistance debuffs in the game are resistable. But I've seen people say in multiple places that Opportunity is unresistable, and I was surprised to find out this was wrong.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Hopeling

[oldskool]

I should have pulled up the game before running my virtual mouth.  Pulling up a T1 and scroll to the bottom there is nothing about the resistance debuff that says it is unresistable at all.  

 

So you're right, and we shouldn't assume it is applying its full value.  My apologies. 

[nihilii]

Unresistable Opportunity would be brokenly good against targets (ab)using stuff like Unstoppable + other sources of resistance to reach 90% or even 100% resistance.

Which could be a good thing.

Imagine seeing "Khan TF forming, need Sentinels" on the LFG chat. One can dream. 😉