On OG Scarlet Witch

OG Scarlet Witch’s signature ability is perhaps a bit misleading, and the way it’s coded makes the quicksilver synergy not work as stated. The signature ability says there is a (at sig 200) 89.97% chance on critical hit to trigger veil of fortune, triggering 0-8 buffs or debuffs. The 0 in here raises the question on why that would count as a trigger, but more on this later.

It would be nice to know what the odds are to trigger at least 1 buff or debuff, and this is certainly not 90%. I don’t want to come into the forums and be that guy that’s “everything feels like it’s not this,” so I won’t be, instead I got some hard data. Using a 6* rank 5 sig 200 ascended OGSW as the only member on the team, I went ahead and beat up RoL WS 4 times while screen recording to collect some data. Out of 233 critical hits (not counting critical hits that would end the fight since it’s not possible to tell if those triggered or not), 114 triggered at least 1 buff or debuff. These data suggest to me (though this is just mere speculation) that the actual probability of triggering at least 1 buff or debuff is probably around 50%. And it says nearly sure that it’s not 90% to trigger at least 1 buff, since the variance for this distribution would be 20.97 = 233 cdot 0.1 cdot 0.9, the square root of this, giving the standard deviation, is a measly 4.58 roughly, and this puts us over 20 standard deviations off from the expected result. The data set is large enough that this *should* be meaningful, but this was not much of a question on Kabam’s side since they do say that veil of fortune may trigger 0 buffs or debuffs.

So why would they make it so veil of fortune triggers 0 buffs or debuffs? One explanation is the quicksilver synergy, which triggers prowess when veil of fortune activates, or at least it is supposed to. The only problem is, I think it only triggers when a buff or debuff actually triggers. I went into RoL again with just QS and the same SW on my team. Assuming that the odds of triggering a buff or debuff are around 50%, then about 40% of the crits should trigger veil of fortune with no other effects. So, of those crits which don’t trigger any buffs or debuffs, we expect about 80% to trigger veil of fortune, so about 40% overall to trigger a prowess. Our of two fights against RoL WS, I delivered 57 crits which did not trigger a buff or debuff, and none of them triggered a prowess. This seems to be an oversight in the description of the synergy I would guess (well, if I had to guess, I’d probably say that a crit which doesn’t trigger a buff or debuff doesn’t act like it triggered veil of fortune, even though SWs description says it should. In the early days of the game when this was coded, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, so perhaps it’s just a relic of the old days?).

Remark: power steal effects count as debuffs in the above, even though strictly speaking they are not.

Comments

Deepworld

I didn’t understand that maths at all but… insightful!

SummonerNR

(calling @DNA3000 )

Although you’re right in that why wouldn’t it just say a 100% chance of between 0 and 8, no matter what Sig you are, if that “0” chance is indeed part of that %

Yes, you would think the Ability wording should say between 1 and 8.
And if indeed 0 buffs/debuffs had certain percentage as part of the overall Ability Sig %, then just state the “lower” (but accurate) % in the Ability description that would correspond to between “1 and 8” instead.

Visually, it just wouldn’t look as great saying at Max Sig there was only 50% chance to trigger between 1 and 8. As it looks saying basically 90% chance (for 0 to 8). But it would be more meaningful.

**unless there is some other definite benefit from “Veil of Fortune” even when such Veil didn’t result in any buff/debuff (0).

DNA3000

My recollection of the way Scarlet Witch’s Veil of Fortune effects works is, if SW either lands a critical hit or is struck by a critical hit, there’s a chance to trigger the Veil effects that depends on signature level. That chance is rolled for first.

If that chance succeeds, then each of the eight possible buffs or debuffs are independently rolled for. Originally, there was a 12.5% chance to trigger each buff or debuff. The obvious intent was for there to be one buff triggered on average (eight buffs, one in eight chance) but for random chance to make that variable. However, after 12.0 the chance for heal and the chance for stun was cut in half, to reduce the ability to stunlock or regen like crazy.

The reason why there’s a chance for zero buffs is because each buff/debuff has an independent chance to trigger, so if all eight fail you’ll get no buffs, even if Veil itself activated. The odds for that happening if Veil is triggered in the first place is about 39.4%, so the odds of getting at least one buff should be about 60.6%.

At 200 sig there’s about a 90% chance to trigger Veil, so I would expect out of 233 critical hits for about 210 to trigger Veil, and then about 127 of those triggers should trigger at least one buff or debuff on average. I would expect the margin for error around this to be about 11, and so most tests like this should drop between 116 and 138. 114 is just outside that range, but not terribly outside the expected range.

My original recollection was one in eight chance per buff/debuff, but if we use Auntm.ai’s approximate figure of 12% instead of 12.5%, the expected number of buffs/debuffs drops to 124 +- 11, which includes the observed value of 114 and is a slightly better fit. But I don’t know if DS is rounding, or just has a more precise value for the odds per buff/debuff.

SummonerNR

(To the tune of that famous song, *pick whichever version you prefer…)

"It's All Coming Back to Me Now"

And for Kabam to go into that much detail in a champs Ability page in the game would read like .. (well, like a @DNA3000 response, lol)

Great work DNA 😀

(wonder if they ever thought to expand on her possible buffs/debuffs to include any of the newer ones that have come out after SW was initially designed ? probably not)

The basically-infinite Stun Lock she could do, with any of a few different Synergy Teams, was fun while it lasted. Way, way, back then.