March 9th 2017 Update Discussion

[Nine]

Accidantily used the wrong thread (deleting the post doesn't seem to work there?), sorry for that:

Could you have a look at Navigat Eddie's Scourge ability? The actual percentage seems way below the stated 35% and it certainly does not profit from raising accuracy. Dead Reckoning doesn't seem to be affected by Accuracy either.
By the way: the tool tip for Increased Accuracy seems to wrong. It says 25% while the older Sentinel Bomber Boy's Fortune discription says 35%.

It would also be highly appreciated if you could adjust the AI of the Navigator. Most notably is that he uses Charted Course a lot right now. And a lot means twice in a row most of the time, even when at full health. That is basically wasting a turn. Crashing Rock and Scourge are never used and Roaring Wave is used at the worst opportunities. If Scourge and Crashing Rock can't be worked in it might be more convenient if he stuck to Landfall, uses Dead Reckoning when there is available power and heals himself when necessary.

[Sparton_LOTB]

Could you have a look at Navigat Eddie's Scourge ability? The actual percentage seems way below the stated 35% and it certainly does not profit from raising accuracy.

The targeting logic on some of Navigator Eddie's skills are a bit deceptive:

• For Scourge, each of the 3 listed things can happen at the same time, not a 35% chance of one thing happening. If they do happen, the enemy is randomly chosen (so 3 things with a 35% chance; could all be on the same guy, could be 1 on one guy 1 on another and the last doesn't happen, etc)
• For Dead Reckoning, there's 6 hits total, and for each hit, one randomly chosen enemy has a 20% chance of it's beneficial effects being removed (so 6 attempts at 20% chance)

Due to the fact that these skills have randomly picked enemies for the secondary effects, but those effects have a chance of occurring multiple times, the effects are not as reliable when facing many targets but are substantially more likely to trigger per character when there's less characters being fought. For example, if facing 1 enemy, Dead Reckoning would have a 73.79% chance of removing that character's beneficial effects (or 97.23% chance if Navigator Eddie has Accuracy Up).

By the way: the tool tip for Increased Accuracy seems to wrong. It says 25% while the older Sentinel Bomber Boy's Fortune discription says 35%.

Actually, it looks like the Fortune skill description reminder text is wrong; that skill (like all other instances of applying Accuracy Up) only applies a 25% increase to skill chances, not 35%. We'll correct the skill description in an upcoming update.

It would also be highly appreciated if you could adjust the AI of the Navigator. Most notably is that he uses Charted Course a lot right now. And a lot means twice in a row most of the time, even when at full health. That is basically wasting a turn. Crashing Rock and Scourge are never used and Roaring Wave is used at the worst opportunities. If Scourge and Crashing Rock can't be worked in it might be more convenient if he stuck to Landfall, uses Dead Reckoning when there is available power and heals himself when necessary.

EDIT: I'll have to spend more time to investigate what's going on with his ability to use other skills (including Charted Course... despite what his data is flagged to do, he's doing something funky to say the least).

[Nine]

Hey Sparton, thanks for the detailed reply. I really like the insight into calculations and wish we would have some insight the game.

Dead reckoning works excactly the way I thought. I arrivied at the same numbers, (1-(0,2+0,25)^6)=2.8% of a burn not being applied, yet it happens far more often.

As for Scourge: I thought the chance of nothing happening at all was 17% for four enemies and wondered. Now you are saying it should be 0.6%? That is definitely not the case.
It should basically impossible that nothing happens with Accuracy, yet I had that case...

[Sparton_LOTB]

Dead reckoning works excactly the way I thought. I arrivied at the same numbers, (1-(0,2+0,25)^6)=2.8% of a burn not being applied, yet it happens far more often.

As for Scourge: I thought the chance of nothing happening at all was 17% for four enemies and wondered. Now you are saying it should be 0.6%? That is definitely not the case.
It should basically impossible that nothing happens with Accuracy, yet I had that case...

For Scourge, you're looking at 3 trials with a 35% chance of happening each time you use the skill. The chance of all 3 trials (ie all 3 effects) not occurring is a 24.76% chance of happening. I think your math for Dead Reckoning is similarly off; the burn chance is 6 trials with a 20% chance of happening (before accuracy... but also before accounting for the fact that the same enemy could be chosen twice and get two Grevious Burns, which will both appear).

Depending on how many times you've tried the skill, you'll likely see a bit of variation. I think when I checked Scourge at the end of the day yesterday it was closer to 20% of the time, but I only used the skill 8 times.

[Nine]

I did some testing today, after all it is easier to refuse a hypothesis than making up your own and try to prove it.

Granted, it is only a small amount of runs, but it confirms what I abserved previously. In about 20 runs Game of Death Madness I used Dead Reckoning once every wave, all played manually. So I have 60 observations. I had a Warrior Bomber Boy with Accuracy Passive in my team. Usually I got one or two burns from using the skill with four enemies alive (only used it at the beginning of the round, so there were always four), usually means about 80%. Not once were all four enemies affected by a burn at the same time, although that should happen 90% of the time. Three burns were rare but happened. If you need more prove I start taking notes tomorrow but I'd rather not

Out of curiousity I did 3 runs using Scourge every wave. I managed it two times in those 15 waves to not get a single effect on four targets, which is as close as impossible as it gets. Something is defintely off there.


In regards to accuracy: I guess you can not be convinced that 35% is the actual correct value? After all it was the only statement about that buff accessible to players for a long time (and you could argue that besides from the passives the buff is pretty limited in use).


Edit: I somehow missed your post before, sorry. Here's my math:

Regarding Scourge: Before your statement I thought it was a 35% chance of something happening for each enemy. That left 0,65^4=0.17 of nothing happening when four enemies are present. As it turns out I was wrong with that assumption and I really appreciate you sharing the mechanics. So with that inside the chances of nothing happening are actually far far lower, my stated 0.6%. For one enemy: 65% of first debuff, 65% of second debuff, 65% of third debuff not being applied. I agree that is 27.46% (I assume there's a mixup in your number). For four present enemies, however, this is 27,46^4, correct? This is 0.00569, roughly equal to 0.6% (which I stated).

Please correct me if I am off somewhere.

I have to add: I never ever, not even once saw multiple grievous burns being applied on the same enemy and I figured it was intended to be possible.

[slauki]

hey sparton,

i feel that the talisman colour of the immunity talis is not optimal. maybe they should be colourless or maybe even green. because right now they are pretty useless vs. siege, because there are
very few chracters that can stack them. and most of them are not very usefull with two sets of immunity. i think this is a huge problem. siege was always extremly powerfull (i think it's also OP) and the talismans
didn't help us there. so the problem of a missing counter to siege (beside the prisoner) is still not solved, so the tauntfest can go on.

would be happy if you could consider something about this. maybe extend the immunity of the talis to 2 rounds and make them a 3set or something like that?

my argument is always, that every strategy needs a reasonable counterstrategy. right now only real counter to siege is the prisoner...

anyway, i feel that the game drifts in the right dorection atm, and i'm happy that things are moving :-)

EDIT: another problem is the talisman changing for the characters. in theory every opponent needs different setups an your team. it would be great if we could configure some attacking teams and save them, so that we can simply load them when needed...team 1 with setup x or team 2 with setup y and so on. would save us a hell lot of time.

[Sparton_LOTB]

i feel that the talisman colour of the immunity talis is not optimal. maybe they should be colourless or maybe even green. because right now they are pretty useless vs. siege, because there are
very few chracters that can stack them. and most of them are not very usefull with two sets of immunity. i think this is a huge problem. siege was always extremly powerfull (i think it's also OP) and the talismans
didn't help us there. so the problem of a missing counter to siege (beside the prisoner) is still not solved, so the tauntfest can go on.

would be happy if you could consider something about this. maybe extend the immunity of the talis to 2 rounds and make them a 3set or something like that?

We're wanting to wait a bit longer to see how things are when more people are using these talismans on attack and on defense, especially once people start having the chance to have multiple sets of them. It's definitely a tricky subject, but we want to give people more time to come up with creative or surprising setups.

my argument is always, that every strategy needs a reasonable counterstrategy. right now only real counter to siege is the prisoner...

Siege strips a lot of defensive options from you, but neither Angel of Pain nor Death Dog are particularly durable, and Angel of Pain won't do a lot of damage to you unless it burns most of that team's power on it's power skill. They're still very potent characters in the arena, and we are keeping that in mind when considering changes and additions for subsequent updates (including potentially improving Immunity and Shell talismans if necessary).

EDIT: another problem is the talisman changing for the characters. in theory every opponent needs different setups an your team. it would be great if we could configure some attacking teams and save them, so that we can simply load them when needed...team 1 with setup x or team 2 with setup y and so on. would save us a hell lot of time.

In general we don't want to encourage swapping around talismans too much... it's definitely an option to help you experiment, but not something we want you to do a lot of. Nonetheless, this is a subject that comes up periodically within the team. The main problem right now is how a lot of the information is saved doesn't really allow for this right now, but as we add more game modes we'll consider it for sure.

[Sparton_LOTB]

I did some testing today, after all it is easier to refuse a hypothesis than making up your own and try to prove it.

[Stuff about calcs being off]

Yeah, for checks like this, I'd want to do at least a hundred uses, and I'd want to be very sure about recording the exact amounts per wave (to confirm if numbers are correct, or to see if there's patterns that imply what, if any, bug is present); this is the kind of check I'd have the team do for verifying things like the talisman fixes in specific scenarios. Our team doesn't have time to check it more thoroughly right now, but I'll see if they can after the next major bit of testing is done.

In regards to accuracy: I guess you can not be convinced that 35% is the actual correct value? After all it was the only statement about that buff accessible to players for a long time (and you could argue that besides from the passives the buff is pretty limited in use).

I looked right into the data where the value is defined for that skill and other skills; internally it's set to 25% everywhere that applies an Accuracy Up. It's also communicated as 25% in places like the Character Battle Info popup and the Help section in-game, but I guess somewhere along the lines we missed updating that one skill and no one noticed until now.

It used to be 35% when the game went worldwide last year, but I think the value was changed a month or two later as part of one of the first tuning updates that went out (did you know you used to be able to get the Corrupt General to 100% stun rate against all enemies?).

For four present enemies, however, this is 27,46^4, correct? This is 0.00569, roughly equal to 0.6% (which I stated).

It's not a 35% chance for each effect for each enemy. It's a 35% chance for each effect once, and if it will happen, then it happens to a random enemy. Think of it like doing AoE damage, but single target debuffs, just for those single target debuffs, they're not on the enemy you're targeting but a random enemy for each debuff.

The wording of the skill is not super clear, though. I can see if we can update that for a subsequent update.

I have to add: I never ever, not even once saw multiple grievous burns being applied on the same enemy and I figured it was intended to be possible.

It should be possible, but if you're using it when fighting 3 or 4 enemies, it'll be very, very rare. I believe the odds of 2 or more burns happening is only 25% of the time, so the odds that 2 or more happens and that at least 2 happen on the same enemy would be far less than 10% of the time. I can also see if the team can look into this when they have more time.

[gmac]

Hi Sparton,

Just to reinforce Slauki's post.

First, quick selection for teams/toons would be very much appreciated.

Second, and this is big, the issue with the Prisoner really is that it allows teams to attack with immunity first round no matter what. Top players with Prisoners used to be able to go with Hell Hound or Artillery Dog against non prisoner teams, so they would pretty much only lose to other prisoner teams. (I'm guessing ones with "taunt fest" or a full GRE + AoF)

Now prisoner teams don't even need a Hell Hound or Artillery Dog, and they can go with immunity against other prisoner teams too. I mean, top players with prisoners will have a hard time losing.

I recently pulled an artillery dog and after using it I can say I was not fully aware how big of an advantage going with immunity first round really represents, it's HUGE. (I'm using mine without any skill shards and with lv3 talismans just for fun, that's how big that is).

I'm convinced that this is the unbalance that creates the gap (showed in our weekly results thread) between guys with prisoners and guys without him, and the immunity talismans made it worse.

So, I think it's either taunt fest for everybody, or no taut fest for everybody, and I actually think taunt fest is necessary with the current AI.

There is no real counter to the prisoner's passive, perhaps the best thing would be to change it's passive to siege. Lot's of lv 5 toons but, really, nothing matches him, not even close.

This is sad for me to say, but I was wrong, some hard nerfing is indeed needed.

(sorry guys with prisoners!)

[mjmxiii]

Hey Sparton, just wondering, in PvP will we ever be able to setup DEF scheme/strategy? Seen this kinda asked before, but didn't see if it got answered... and just to be clear, some kinda "all out attack" or "defensive shell" style options at DEF setup screen just to give it a bit more importance and help the AI to play it a lot more like we would if we could.