Call to gear heads: Lambda Sector mystery

[Mister Bison]

So, I remember strange things from the Lambda Sector. Especially Marauder's resistance. It was the same case with Reichsman's Unstoppable too, though harder to gather the debuffs to notice it.

Was I the only one that sometimes felt like good old goatee BaB was all squishy, due to too many debuffs ? Even with his Unstoppable and serum ? I mean no hit between before and after both went up in the last quarter of his short life.

Normally, if the buffs made all debuffs recalculated, and since Unstoppable made him hit 100% resistance (except to Psi, which wasn't all the damage we had), he should not have been debuffed at all, right ? So, what happened ? Or does the debuffs not get updated throughout their lifetime even though a new buffs has been applied ? (to recalculate everything every loop must be too intensive to do so I'm leaving it out).

I still want to know how the game ticked... call that obstined obstination.

[Servantes]

From my view point is pure speculation, based on visual information I'd see.

 I remember the lambda groups when marauder went invulnerable you couldn't kill him with no debuffs, yet some groups he fell over from 100% to 0% in under 30 seconds with debuffs with his unstoppable active, other times while he was doing the animation the group finished him.

 Id see his resistance didn't always seem to fire off due to servers just not catching it or his invulnerability had a delay, but from what Ive noticed it is similar calculation when looking at real numbers, about every 4 seconds or so then would fidget or fluctuate.

so the resistance to resistance debuffs was calculated every few seconds.

[Absolute]

I vaguely remember his resistance being nerfed from so it wouldn't reach 100%. This would mean resistance debuffs would affect him.

Resistance debuffs would change depending on the resistance as if they were not applied. Your resistance was calculated through an equation. Here's a simplified version.

Where 0.5 is the resistance debuff (Represents -50% resistance), and X is the resistance you currently have:

Res = (0.5)*(1-X)
Res = (0.5)*(1-0) = 50% resistance taken off. 0 --> -50%
If you activated unstoppable
Res = (0.5)*(1-0.9) = 5% resistance taken off. 90% --> 85%

That would ensure that -resistance doesn't become more and more effective as your resistance lowers. Resistance had a built in feature that dodged a similar effect to defense's cascading defense failure.

If Marauder had 95% resistance, it would take -1900% resistance to bring him to 0. That being said, you wouldn't need to bring him to 0 to see him drop fast. It would only take -100% resistance to make him drop twice as fast.

4 Cold defenders and 2 rad defenders could stack -320% resistance and get him to 79%. Then he's dropping 4x faster than usual.

With a team of 16, stacking interface, -res procs, and the huge amount of -res present in powers, it's not too surprising Marauder could drop really fast.



Anyone know for sure what stopped Marauder from jumping in a fight? We used to do it for speed runs. We thought it was using Burn on him. None of us knew for sure; it was hit and miss.

[SerialBeggar]

I have nothing to add to the maths, just an anecdote.  There was one time I saw Marauder get SHOT DOWN during one of his jumps!    I was playing support, so I helping the couple of guys working on the quota kills.  When they had the rabble thinned down, I turned to join the main group.  Just in time to see Marauder jump.  There were several blast attacks arcing overhead tracking him.  This isn't unusual, of course, but then suddenly, mission complete!  Like, really:   Unfortunately, I wasn't paying attention to the count of his jumps, but I got the impression that it was only his 3rd jump.  However, logically, it should have been the 4th jump.  Not much time had passed since the attack started.  This feat occurred at least half a year before shut down and I never encountered a repeat of it. 

[Codewalker]

Anyone know for sure what stopped Marauder from jumping in a fight? We used to do it for speed runs. We thought it was using Burn on him. None of us knew for sure; it was hit and miss.

I don't know for sure, but it was probably a Mastermind's Noxious Gas. For some unfathomable reason, it has a very small (0.2%) chance for a Mag 1000 unresistible hold.

Marauder normally has mag 1000 hold protection, along with max hold resist. However, if the unresistible hold from the gas fired off at the right moment, combined with a few hold effects that a league of players would normally have on him at any given moment, it would push it over and hold Marauder. Depending on the duration of the other effects subject to the resistance, it might only last for one server tick, or might even occur a few times in sequence. If the timing was just right it could prevent him from using a power that the script depended on which might cause him to not jump, or even fail to activate Unstoppable.

I heard rumors of leagues stacking Poison MMs for Really Hard Way attempts in order to try to exploit this. It would sometimes prevent Tyrant from using Flow Lightning, and not having to scatter for one of those can make the difference between beating the timer or not.

[Mister Bison]

I vaguely remember his resistance being nerfed from so it wouldn't reach 100%. This would mean resistance debuffs would affect him.

That was a vague dream indeed. Berserker Rage alone gave 95% res to Marauder (Melee_Res_dmg is 0.1 for Class_Boss_PraetorianArchvillain). And Class_Boss_PraetorianArchvillain can go to 100% resistance. I doubt Marauder's Unstoppable was nerfed to less than 5%. Unless Marauder's resistance buffs were multiplicative (and that would be a first, considering it's against the engine inner workings). No no, definitely, up to the last Lambda I made (true it was some months before closure), I'd swear I saw the Marauder still get 100% resistance because of Rage + Unstoppable. And the other time we didn't always have a poison MM to proc right when he did activate Unstoppable (which was going to be done anyway, because that's an AI-activated power that unlocks at 25% life, right ?). But still, other times, it was dumb easy to dump him from his last quarter of life.

Anyone know for sure what stopped Marauder from jumping in a fight? We used to do it for speed runs. We thought it was using Burn on him. None of us knew for sure; it was hit and miss.

That's when he puked. Or was in the middle of animating his nova punch. So he couldn't jump. I always found funny how puking the serum had such a dramatic effect For once, poison MM were godlike.