Seatin made a rookie mistake (but it isn't his fault) - Mr. Sinister synergy with Cyclops

So if you haven't watched @Seatin vid of his 6* Blue Cyclops, then do it now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxy_Dva7Crs

Anyway, Seatin used a synergy team composed of Blue Cyclops, Cable, Mr. Sinister, Havok and Magneto. I would say, not the best synergy team for one good reason: Mr. Sinister.

With any Cyclops, Mr. Sinister synergy gives Cyclops Special Attacks +20% critical hit rating and True Strike, ignoring armor, resistance, evade and auto-block.

This is a synergy that actually NERFS Cyclops rather than boost it. Cyclops has only one good thing: his armor break. On the SP1, a rank 1 6* reduces armor rating by 1310.66, SP2 by 1610.71 and SP3 by 2133.67. Red Cyclops has much better armor break but this ain't too bad. Three stacks of armor break goes well below zero, against a champion with a challenger rating of 110 and base zero armor rating, the SP1 AB's increases your damage by 65.73% and 70.21% for the SP2 AB's.

But alas, as True Strike ignores all armor rating, including negative armor rating, which means you lose all that extra damage for every special attack. As beam attacks are the only ones benefiting from increased critical damage rating from the sig, you lose twice. That's a very rookie mistake Seatin made here and distorts the performance of Cyclops significantly (but no, still no god tier!).

But hey, you gain +20% critical hit rating. Assuming it is only +20% base critical hit rating (including masteries), a R5 4* gains 212.6 critical hit rating. Not that much, certainly as you've 70% chance of propping precision, which increases critical hit rating anyway by 1103.85. Thanks to diminished return function, that's pretty much none increased critical hit chance. If you're interested: without the synergy the crit chance against 110 CR and no crit resistance is 51.38%, with the synergy is 53.72%.

But it isn't Seatin's fault. Not many people know about this annoying interaction of True Strike and armor break, or the diminishing return function of critical hit rating. If anyone should know, it is Kabam. Synergies are supposed to improve the champion, not detriment them. Yeah, I assume there are match-ups that outweigh the damage loss (like evade champions or really stacked up resistance champions), but not many.

To sum up, Kabam really missed the mark with this synergy. A shame, because Cyclops can really use some good synergies.

No, if you want a good Cyclops synergy team, it is this:
- Blue Cyclops (Mutant Agenda with Wolverine, Nemesis with Magneto)
- Havok (+100% AB duration with Cyclops)
- Magneto (Enemies with Wolverine, Nemesis with Cyclops)
- Wolverine (Enemies with Magneto, Rivals with Cyclops)
- CAIW (Mutant Evolution with Wolverine (+20% passive prowess))
- Namor (Friends with Magneto (+5% attack rating), Enemies with Magneto (+155 crit rating))

I hope Seatin is going to redo the video with this synergy team, I wonder how Cyclops will perform then. I think Cyclops will hit harder during his special attacks, maybe bumping him up to pretty useful tier.

Comments

Aleor

Why won't you do it yourself, showcasing what a great champ he is?
Also does it mean pierce mastery and crits in general benefit less from armor break? Still find negative armor ridiculous, thought they got rid of it after 12.0

Lormif

there are a couple of problems with your analasis.

the synergy team you mention would be better than him in cases where the defender is immune to armor break. in addition truestrike is not just about ignoring armor, but evasion, resistances and autoblock. There are probably more cases where true strike would be beneficial over armor break in story modes because of that, maybe even in war.

If you want to compare raw damage sure you may have a point, but raw damage alone would rarely make someone god tier, and there are several god tier champs who hit like wet noodles, but have great utility.

Chewybucca

Is that you Mike?

Colonaut123

Why won't you do it yourself, showcasing what a great champ he is?
Also does it mean pierce mastery and crits in general benefit less from armor break? Still find negative armor ridiculous, thought they got rid of it after 12.0

I didn't state he is great, I did state that the video of Seatin is misleading due to the unintended interaction of the Mr. Sinister synergy. As a Content Creator, I hold Seatin to a high standard. His videos are well viewed and his opinion carries weight. He made the wrong choice, leading to a worse performance of Cyclops then he could be. I know Cyclops is a laughing stock, but I do value honesty. We don't need to picture him worse then necessary.

I'm a forum writer, not a youtuber, so I do not feel the need to 'showcase' anything but by written word. That's my preferred way of content creation, I do hope you respect that.

That is a good question. Crits only ignore 50% of the armor and pierce only adds up to 15% extra on top. I suppose crits are still affected by armor breaks, as demonstrated by the increase in damage for Medusa and others. So far, it is only True Damage/True Strike that ignores armor rating completely (check Corvus: regardless of the amount of armor breaks, he will hit the same, which is a clever balance: utility without extra benefit).

It is a common misconception that ever since 12.0, armor rating can't go below zero. It still can, it is limited. The current formula is:
armor modifier = |armor rating| / (|armor rating| + 1500 + 5 x challenger rating)

At a R5 4* with challenger rating of 100, 2000 positive armor rating will result in 50% reduction in damage, while negative armor rating results in 50% increased damage. 4000 armor rating however will only result in 66.67% reduction. It would require infinite armor rating to get 100% damage reduction (or increase).

If you would have the fortunate luck to pull a 5* Thor twice (or awaken him) and get him to sig 200 and rank 5, his armor break reduces armor rating by 4360.89 and would increase his damage by 68.6%. Two armor breaks would increase it to 81.3%. Three armor breaks 86.7%. As you can see, any armor break beyond two is pretty much moot, which forms the core of the 12.0 nerf of Thor. Still, 81.3% increased damage just by parrying twice is enormous. Watch out though, the SP1 deals True Damage, nullifying that damage boost.

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Colonaut123

there are a couple of problems with your analasis.

the synergy team you mention would be better than him in cases where the defender is immune to armor break. in addition truestrike is not just about ignoring armor, but evasion, resistances and autoblock. There are probably more cases where true strike would be beneficial over armor break in story modes because of that, maybe even in war.

If you want to compare raw damage sure you may have a point, but raw damage alone would rarely make someone god tier, and there are several god tier champs who hit like wet noodles, but have great utility.

As I stated, there are match-ups where the benefit of the True Strike outweighs the loss in damage, evading champions being one of them as I mentioned.

I also never stated Cyclops would become god tier due to this synergy. That's absurd. I did suggest to bump him up to the pretty useful tier. Low demigod, perhaps, because armor breaks have higher utility these days. But certainly not higher than that. I do confess that is a stretch, so pretty useful tier is most accurate estimation.

I do hope you read my analysis in full, before pointing out problems I already (or did not) address ;-).

Colonaut123

Is that you Mike?

I do feel sorry for Mike, sometimes. Rarely. In a schadenfreude way.

Colonaut123

True strike ignores armor rating?
Guess when my corvus parries HTD and gets 8 armor breaks the extra damage comes from thanos himself

You shouldn't get extra damage, as far as I'm aware. But then again, this is MCOC and bugs are everywhere.

Inventor6b

I've seen Corvus get extra damage from armor broken champs. I use him every day. I can't point to a specific example (besides HTD), but I know I've seen it. Not all the time. Just enough that it might be a bug. But I ain't gonna complain, because extra damage is nice.

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DNA3000

Crits only ignore 50% of the armor and pierce only adds up to 15% extra on top. I suppose crits are still affected by armor breaks, as demonstrated by the increase in damage for Medusa and others. So far, it is only True Damage/True Strike that ignores armor rating completely (check Corvus: regardless of the amount of armor breaks, he will hit the same, which is a clever balance: utility without extra benefit).

Last I checked, critical damage ignores 20 percentage points of armor percentage mitigation. Critical *hits* are still affected by armor breaks because critical hits deal normal damage plus critical bonus damage. As far as I'm aware, only the critical bonus damage ignores armor. The standard damage from the attack is affected by armor, positive or negative.

You have to be very, very careful about pushing the math too far in this game. The precise interactions of armor, armor break, and true strike and true damage, are not known absolutely, and have changed over time. It literally changed twice on me when I was trying to write up a description of it *post* 12.0, and I gave up (although I've been trying to get back to it).

For a less mathy illustration of the issue, watch Seatin's video at 8:35 and again at 10:16. Those are two SP1 attacks, the first one starts with no armor break and the second one starts with two. The first one ticks 559, 1465, 1953. The last two are crits. The second ticks for 1465, 1465, 746. The first two are crits. Note the middle tick: it is identical in both SP1 attacks. That means SP1 is dealing the same damage regardless of the amount of armor or armor break (we can infer that in both cases crits land for about 2.62x the non-crit damage: that means ticks one and two land for 559 if they don't crit and 559 * 2.62 = 1465 if they do crit, and tick three lands for 746 if it doesn't crit and 746 * 2.62 = 1954 ~ 1953 if it does crit: the tiny difference is probably a round off happening).

That doesn't automatically prove the synergy is broken: as others have pointed out there is a more complex trade off that is happening here. But it does illustrate the non-intuitive interaction between things that ignore armor (like crits and true strike) and negative armor effects like armor breaks.

Aleor

Why won't you do it yourself, showcasing what a great champ he is?
Also does it mean pierce mastery and crits in general benefit less from armor break? Still find negative armor ridiculous, thought they got rid of it after 12.0
I didn't state he is great, I did state that the video of Seatin is misleading due to the unintended interaction of the Mr. Sinister synergy. As a Content Creator, I hold Seatin to a high standard. His videos are well viewed and his opinion carries weight. He made the wrong choice, leading to a worse performance of Cyclops then he could be. I know Cyclops is a laughing stock, but I do value honesty. We don't need to picture him worse then necessary.

I'm a forum writer, not a youtuber, so I do not feel the need to 'showcase' anything but by written word. That's my preferred way of content creation, I do hope you respect that.

That is a good question. Crits only ignore 50% of the armor and pierce only adds up to 15% extra on top. I suppose crits are still affected by armor breaks, as demonstrated by the increase in damage for Medusa and others. So far, it is only True Damage/True Strike that ignores armor rating completely (check Corvus: regardless of the amount of armor breaks, he will hit the same, which is a clever balance: utility without extra benefit).

It is a common misconception that ever since 12.0, armor rating can't go below zero. It still can, it is limited. The current formula is:
armor modifier = |armor rating| / (|armor rating| + 1500 + 5 x challenger rating)

At a R5 4* with challenger rating of 100, 2000 positive armor rating will result in 50% reduction in damage, while negative armor rating results in 50% increased damage. 4000 armor rating however will only result in 66.67% reduction. It would require infinite armor rating to get 100% damage reduction (or increase).

If you would have the fortunate luck to pull a 5* Thor twice (or awaken him) and get him to sig 200 and rank 5, his armor break reduces armor rating by 4360.89 and would increase his damage by 68.6%. Two armor breaks would increase it to 81.3%. Three armor breaks 86.7%. As you can see, any armor break beyond two is pretty much moot, which forms the core of the 12.0 nerf of Thor. Still, 81.3% increased damage just by parrying twice is enormous. Watch out though, the SP1 deals True Damage, nullifying that damage boost.

Do you do some reverse engineering to get that info? Haven't seen it anywhere in game

Colonaut123

Crits only ignore 50% of the armor and pierce only adds up to 15% extra on top. I suppose crits are still affected by armor breaks, as demonstrated by the increase in damage for Medusa and others. So far, it is only True Damage/True Strike that ignores armor rating completely (check Corvus: regardless of the amount of armor breaks, he will hit the same, which is a clever balance: utility without extra benefit).
Last I checked, critical damage ignores 20 percentage points of armor percentage mitigation. Critical *hits* are still affected by armor breaks because critical hits deal normal damage plus critical bonus damage. As far as I'm aware, only the critical bonus damage ignores armor. The standard damage from the attack is affected by armor, positive or negative.

Thanks for the clarification, I think I confused the extra damage modifier with the armor penetration.

You have to be very, very careful about pushing the math too far in this game. The precise interactions of armor, armor break, and true strike and true damage, are not known absolutely, and have changed over time. It literally changed twice on me when I was trying to write up a description of it *post* 12.0, and I gave up (although I've been trying to get back to it).

For a less mathy illustration of the issue, watch Seatin's video at 8:35 and again at 10:16. Those are two SP1 attacks, the first one starts with no armor break and the second one starts with two. The first one ticks 559, 1465, 1953. The last two are crits. The second ticks for 1465, 1465, 746. The first two are crits. Note the middle tick: it is identical in both SP1 attacks. That means SP1 is dealing the same damage regardless of the amount of armor or armor break (we can infer that in both cases crits land for about 2.62x the non-crit damage: that means ticks one and two land for 559 if they don't crit and 559 * 2.62 = 1465 if they do crit, and tick three lands for 746 if it doesn't crit and 746 * 2.62 = 1954 ~ 1953 if it does crit: the tiny difference is probably a round off happening).

Thanks again for providing the proof.

That doesn't automatically prove the synergy is broken: as others have pointed out there is a more complex trade off that is happening here. But it does illustrate the non-intuitive interaction between things that ignore armor (like crits and true strike) and negative armor effects like armor breaks.

It does prove it is misleading. Like Seatin, you would think it would provide extra damage. There should be a warning message.

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Kerneas

Interesting interaction, but whose fault is it then ?

Bendy

The interaction of armor break losing damage is champs with physical resistance mainly

Jaded

Seatin isn’t in the content creators program...he was removed for account sharing a long time ago.

jdrum663

Don't care for Seatin, just my opinion.

Colonaut123

True strike doesn’t make armour break do nothing it’s just armour break won’t increase damage with true strike until they are in negative armour

That is factually wrong.

Colonaut123

Interesting interaction, but whose fault is it then ?

The developers who don't know the mechanics of their own game. Or they did it intentionally, then they just conned the community.

Colonaut123

Seatin isn’t in the content creators program...he was removed for account sharing a long time ago.

He's still a content creator, just not a Content Creator.

Jaded

Seatin isn’t in the content creators program...he was removed for account sharing a long time ago.
He's still a content creator, just not a Content Creator.

The point is you are holding people above standard. They are just normal people playing the game trying to make money to play the game. In this case he is just a youtuber. Nothing special.

Also why not just bring this up with him?
@Seatin

Patchie93

I mean he legitimately says he's not sure if its the best synergy for cyclops near the beginning of the video or did you just skip that part?

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Colonaut123

Seatin isn’t in the content creators program...he was removed for account sharing a long time ago.
He's still a content creator, just not a Content Creator.
The point is you are holding people above standard. They are just normal people playing the game trying to make money to play the game. In this case he is just a youtuber. Nothing special.

Also why not just bring this up with him?
@Seatin

He's one of the most watched YT'ers. His opinion carries weight. I said he made a mistake, but I don't put the blame on him. I believe I treated him fairly.

I actually already tagged him. I do hope he responds.

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Tehsigzorz

Seatin isn’t in the content creators program...he was removed for account sharing a long time ago.
He's still a content creator, just not a Content Creator.
The point is you are holding people above standard. They are just normal people playing the game trying to make money to play the game. In this case he is just a youtuber. Nothing special.

Also why not just bring this up with him?
@Seatin

By definition he is a content creator because he literally creates content for people to watch, to enter the content creator program you need to be a content creator but just because you are a content creator doesnt mean you are in the program. Understand the difference?

Colonaut123

True strike doesn’t make armour break do nothing it’s just armour break won’t increase damage with true strike until they are in negative armour
That is factually wrong.
How does corvus increase his damage with armor breaks then

He doesn't.

Bishop no armor break: medium hits 5601

Bishop two armor breaks: medium still hits 5601

Vid link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iThMk4v0Jiw

Before you ask: 6* rank 2 Bishop has 260 base armor rating, rank 4 5* Corvus reduces armor rating by 361.76. Two should certainly reduce armor rating into the negative.

He doesn't hit higher due to the armor breaks.

Jaded

Seatin isn’t in the content creators program...he was removed for account sharing a long time ago.
He's still a content creator, just not a Content Creator.
The point is you are holding people above standard. They are just normal people playing the game trying to make money to play the game. In this case he is just a youtuber. Nothing special.

Also why not just bring this up with him?
@Seatin
By definition he is a content creator because he literally creates content for people to watch, to enter the content creator program you need to be a content creator but just because you are a content creator doesnt mean you are in the program. Understand the difference?

The phase content creator only came around when kabam introduced the program. Seatin is a youtuber. He makes and edits videos, he does not create anything. Understand the difference?