Mids’ Hero/Villain Designer 1.954

[Diellan]

Happy holidays from the Titan Network!

Mids' Hero/Villain Designer 1.954 - March 2012

New features:

• Archetype Enhancements!
  
• Dark Control, Dark Assault, Darkness Affinity!
  
• Stalker changes!
  
• Gravity Control buffed?!
  

Fixes & changes:

• More random bug fixes!
  

Known issues:

• Windows Vista and Windows 7 have issues with the updater due to UAC interfering with writing to the Program Files folder. Many of these problems can be resolved by (a) installing as Administrator, (b) running Mids as Administrator, or (c) installing Mids to a location other than the Program Files folder.
  
• Diminishing Returns for PvP mode have not yet been added; all buffs currently show their full, unmodified values.
  
• The Power Graphs for the current build do not display effects for pseudo-pet powers like Ice Storm. This does not affect the Powerset Comparison, which is now fully aware of pseudo-pets.
  
• Power Boost affects some powers that should ignore its buffs, such as Ice Shields.
  
• Temporary and Accolade powers are not being affected by buffs such as recharge rate.
  
• Some powers are still enhanced by HOs that shouldn't be (like Active Defense's Res(Def))
  
• Archetype Enhancement procs do not give the correct chance in some powers – this is due to the Devs not providing the formula for their calculation. We have 99% confidence in single target powers, 99% confidence in 16 target targeted aoe powers, but cone powers are inaccurate. Hopefully Synapse or Black Scorpion or somebody can slip us the formula.
  

[AlienOne]

YAY!!! Thanks so much for your work on this!

*downloads, installs, and starts working on more builds*

"Alien"

[WanderingAries]

For the non-number-cruncher, this is still good pie!

[ohms]

Yay new mids! Thanks guys :)

[Storm Reaver]

You all are absolutely AMAZING!!! The work you do is nothing short of mind blowing! I really don't know that I would even be able to play the game and enjoy it that much if it weren't for the Hero / Villain Designer that you have created and kept up to date here. To be completely honest; at least with you guys, the Devs should be sharing any and all information that you need to keep this working as smoothly as possible. You've kept many people able to create and build charaters that they can love and enjoy playing through so many game changes and alterations to powers sets, additions to those sets, etc. They should be paying you for keeping so many of us around for so long...

[WanderingAries]

So...

When's beast mastery and staff coming out.  ;) :P 8)   j/k...sorta

[Codewalker]

So...

When's beast mastery and staff coming out.  ;) :P 8)   j/k...sorta

Step 1. Open Mids, select Mastermind, pick Beast Mastery
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit!

[Diellan]

Step 1. Open Mids, select Mastermind, pick Beast Mastery
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit!

I'm actually really surprised that nobody commented on that yet. Or on the fact that I haven't implemented Beast Mastery's Pack Mentality.

[WanderingAries]

eh, the notes just mentioned the Darkness stuff so I figured the other two weren't out quite yet.

[TA]

I'm actually really surprised that nobody commented on that yet. Or on the fact that I haven't implemented Beast Mastery's Pack Mentality.

It looks like Staff Fighting won't hit for another two weeks, sadly, but it's been in a pretty final form on Beta for a while now.  Is that not getting added to Mids until it actually hits Live, or is it being worked on for a beta release?

[Codewalker]

It looks like Staff Fighting won't hit for another two weeks, sadly, but it's been in a pretty final form on Beta for a while now.  Is that not getting added to Mids until it actually hits Live, or is it being worked on for a beta release?

More like 4, I think.

[TA]

Synapse says I can.

The basic formula for the PPM procs is:

PPM * Cycle / AoE

where Cycle is:

(Cast Time + Base Recharge)/60 for click powers (in other words, the cycle time expressed in minutes)

and

(Activation Period / 60) for toggles and passives (in other words, the activation period time expressed in minutes).

The idea is that a 5PPM proc *should*, on average, fire five times per minute when slotted in a click power assuming you use that power as often as possible, at base recharge.  But it can fire more often than that if the power activates faster, which it will if its slotted for recharge or you have recharge buffs.  That's apparently intended.  For toggles and passives, a similar principle applies except you cannot speed up the activation time of passives and toggles, so the firing rate will obviously be fixed in those cases.

AoE powers can hit multiple targets and procs normally have a chance to fire per target hit.  So to ensure that AoE powers don't arbitrarily fire far more often, the formula reduces the firing rate by the AoE factor of the power, the same AoE factor used to reduce the damage of AoEs relative to the damage/endurance/recharge formulas.

As far as I've been told, there are no exceptions to the formula, and no enforced caps on the firing rate.  If you are the world's most lucky person, the procs can fire every single time just because you rolled lucky: the game won't stop that from happening.

Also, as a consequence of the intent of the PPM mechanics, any single target power that has a base recharge of 20 seconds or higher will trigger any PPM proc with a rating of 3 or higher 100% of the time.  As far as I know, there is no limit on the percentage chance of the proc up to the obvious limit of 100%.

Also as a practical matter, the same thing is true with long duration AoEs.  If you have a power that has base 120 seconds of recharge and you slot something like a 3/min rating PPM proc in it, the formula specifies that the proc percentage chance will be something like 6/AoEfactor.  No AoE I'm aware of has an AoE factor of 6, so the chance to proc will essentially be 100%.

A note about the behavior in passives and toggles.  Traditional procs only checked once every ten seconds.  PPMs seem to check on every tick, so the percentage chance is adjusted relative to the tick interval.  This has a side effect of PPM procs not having a pseudo-enforced ten second minimum between ticks.  It also means the PPM equivalent of an existing proc relative to passives and toggles is 0.6PPM per 10% firing chance.  It is, however, twice that rating when compared to the standard 1s cast 4s recharge attack (and other ratios for other attacks).  Which means there is no conversion rate that will make standard procs equal to PPM procs across usage.  It is likely that the devs will aim for making PPM procs balanced for a target that makes PPM procs better than conventional procs in passives and toggles in order to make them roughly comparable to conventional procs in click powers.

I seem to recall the patch notes for Mids saying that some PPM rates weren't figured out yet.  Well, here's this!

[Codewalker]

I seem to recall the patch notes for Mids saying that some PPM rates weren't figured out yet.  Well, here's this!

The two basic "activation cycle" formulas were already well known and discussed in various threads on the forums for weeks. :P

The problem is figuring out the "AoE factor". The old damage one seems to work for spheres, but is off for cones.