Clarity on how despair works exactly?

Supersha7 · February 22

Reason I’m asking is I had a fight in war and I had over 50 debuffs on a defender.

Defender had 10 stacks of regen. And was still healing 1k per tick.

Is it the despair adds up , but also so does regen?

So if someone has 2 regens going that’s 200% regen you have to counter with despair? So would need 14 debuffs to counter it (14 x 15 = 210%)

So someone with 10 regen would have 1000% regen to deal with, so my 50 despair would only be 750% ?

Vegeta9001 · February 22

Who was the defender?

Crcrcrc · February 22

No, your initial understanding of it was correct. Who were you up against? Some champs are immune to regen rate modifications

Supersha7 · February 22

Was a thing fight on a regen node. The one where if you stand next to them they periodically get a regen

Supersha7 · February 22

The node did give double regen rate also. Says is 100% extra

Typhoon · February 22

Share all the nodes on the fight.

Supersha7 · February 22

Sec will get a pic up

Supersha7 · February 22

xLunatiXx · February 22

Extra regen. I believe despair can only block 100%.

captain_rogers · February 22

Well you see, previously despair used to reduce regeneration rate beyond 100% , Just like Void's petrify debuffs, so You can heal reverse with despair. But kabam then updated despair to reduce regen rate just upto 100%. That's what my alliance mate said.

xLunatiXx · February 22

I don't think you could reverse more than 100% with just despair. Now if you add petrify on top then you can

DNA3000 · February 22

xLunatiXx said:
Extra regen. I believe despair can only block 100%.

This. Despair has a maximum possible debuff strength of -100%. It states so in the mastery description ("Up to a max of 100%").

In the example above, the Enhanced Recovery-2 node increases the defender's healing and regeneration effects by 100%. That means Despair can, at most, eliminate that 100% boost and bring the defender back down to base level effects. Despair cannot reduce that defender's healing to zero.

A lot of people get confused by what's going on here. The way most modifier effects work in MCOC is that modifiers do not "change" the base effects, they act to amplify or mute their net output. For example, suppose a defender heals for 1000 health. If you apply a -100% heal debuff on that defender, that does not change the heal intrinically to a zero heal. It reduces the effect of the heal by 100% of the heal's intrinsic strength, so 1000 - 1000 = 0. Now, if the heal is boosted by 100%, the effect of the heal is magnified by 100% of the heal's intrinsic strength, so 1000 + 1000 = 2000. That intrinsic strength always remains the same: 1000 points of heal.

If both occur, you have a +100% bonus and a -100% bonus, they both act together in the exact same way. The -100% bonus becomes a -1000 heal strength reduction, and the +100% bonus becomes a +1000 heal strength magnification. The net result is 1000 - 1000 + 1000 = 1000.

Some people think the -100% reduces the heal to zero, and then the +100% should then increase that zero to still zero. Or going the other way around, they think a +100% increases the heal to double strength, and then the -100% effect reduces that double strength heal again to zero. But that's not how modifiers in MCOC work. "-100%' is minus one hundred percent of the . It is not minus one hundred percent of the current value.

The net result of this is that if the defender has enhanced heal or regen, Despair cannot stop it. Despair can only reduce something by -100%, and any heal or regen that is effectively higher than 100% cannot be reduced to zero.

ReignkingTW · February 22

Ug. Again, too complicated.

Wicket329 · February 22

The previous comments explain why this happened, so I’ll get into best counter options going forward:

Heal block. Doesn’t matter if it’s greater than 100%, heal block prevents any regeneration effect whatsoever. Also a niche idea for this is White Tiger. Wouldn’t work with Thing as a defender, but her sp2 bleed would shut down the defender’s healing and give it to you. Extremely fun, highly recommend sometime.

Champions who have heal reducing abilities in their own kits that can exceed 100%. There aren’t necessarily a ton of these Void is an obvious option for it, with his FotV passive plus petrifies plus despair. Sandman is another option, and actually a great Thing counter to begin with. Sp2 will get a bunch of debuffs for despair and stop his unstoppable from triggering, and Sp1 will start stacking petrifies which can go above and beyond the despair cap.

Milan1405 · February 22

ReignkingTW said:
Ug. Again, too complicated.

I agree, I don't see why there was a need to cap despair at -100% potency when many champs can heal reverse or heal block anyway.

Wicket329 · February 22

Milan1405 said:

ReignkingTW said:
Ug. Again, too complicated.
I agree, I don't see why there was a need to cap despair at -100% potency when many champs can heal reverse or heal block anyway.

Because if the mastery wasn’t capped, heal reversal would no longer be a special piece of utility. It would be something any champ with lots of debuffs could do, thereby lowering the value of the champs who can do it.

Also, can you imagine how cheesy it would be uncapped for certain champs? Any champ who could stack debuffs would be silly, and the ones who stack 20+ would be broken.

Pikolu · February 22

Milan1405 said:

ReignkingTW said:
Ug. Again, too complicated.
I agree, I don't see why there was a need to cap despair at -100% potency when many champs can heal reverse or heal block anyway.

Ikaris stacks 225 incinerates. That would be -3,375% heal reduction from that alone. Anyone that heals is just insta-dead. That would just ruin the entire regen economy. People like Cassie also stack absurd amounts of debuffs without even having any petrify. This means you'd be crazy to run someone like void for heal reversal when ikaris does the same, but better with just 2 sp1s.

ReignkingTW · February 22

Pikolu said:

Milan1405 said:

ReignkingTW said:
Ug. Again, too complicated.
I agree, I don't see why there was a need to cap despair at -100% potency when many champs can heal reverse or heal block anyway.
Ikaris stacks 225 incinerates. That would be -3,375% heal reduction from that alone. Anyone that heals is just insta-dead. That would just ruin the entire regen economy. People like Cassie also stack absurd amounts of debuffs without even having any petrify. This means you'd be crazy to run someone like void for heal reversal when ikaris does the same, but better with just 2 sp1s.

So to create something weird for Ikaris they nerf something else?

This is why we have bugs. Whack-an-unintended-consequence.

Wicket329 · February 22

ReignkingTW said:

Pikolu said:

Milan1405 said:

ReignkingTW said:
Ug. Again, too complicated.
I agree, I don't see why there was a need to cap despair at -100% potency when many champs can heal reverse or heal block anyway.
Ikaris stacks 225 incinerates. That would be -3,375% heal reduction from that alone. Anyone that heals is just insta-dead. That would just ruin the entire regen economy. People like Cassie also stack absurd amounts of debuffs without even having any petrify. This means you'd be crazy to run someone like void for heal reversal when ikaris does the same, but better with just 2 sp1s.
So to create something weird for Ikaris they nerf something else?

This is why we have bugs. Whack-an-unintended-consequence.

What? No, that’s not the takeaway here at all. Also, Despair has worked like this for a lot longer than Ikaris has be in the game. There aren’t even any bugs being discussed right now, so I have no idea where this comment came from.

If despair didn’t work the way it does, regeneration would be actively bad for any defender that didn’t have in their base kit that their healing couldn’t be reversed. It’s a bad idea.

Milan1405 · February 23

@Wicket329 @Pikolu apologies I worded my post poorly. What I MEANT (despite my poor english) was that I don't see anything wrong with despair blocking out healing (so going beyond -100%) but then stopping when the defender's healing was negated, if that makes sense. I.e if the defender had a healing rate enhanced by 25, 50, or 100%, then despair would mitigate that to 0% regardless (with enough debuffs) then require petrify or spectre etc to go negative. I think that would be fair; obviously if every champ with 7+ debuffs could reverse healing that would be stupid.

DNA3000 · February 23

Milan1405 said:

ReignkingTW said:
Ug. Again, too complicated.
I agree, I don't see why there was a need to cap despair at -100% potency when many champs can heal reverse or heal block anyway.

It isn't actually complicated. It does defy some people's intuitions, but most people's intuitions are themselves self-contradictory and cannot be implemented as consistent game rules.

The reason why despair was capped was probably because they did not want the mastery itself to be capable of reversing healing, as that was considered more powerful than they intended. However, the cap doesn't make this any more complicated. People already complain about situations where -150% of petrify doesn't reverse the healing of something with +100% healing strength. People insist -100% equals zero, without stating the assumption, that -100% means -100% of that the value is now. It isn't: it is 100% of the base value. The intrinsic value, if you like.

People simply need to understand that modifiers do not (usually) act upon modified values. -30% does not mean -30% of whatever it happens to be now. It means subtract 30% of the original base value from whatever it is now. True for despair, petrify, and the vast majority of modifiers.

The best mental model for what modifiers do is that modifiers turn the volume knob. If you're playing some music that has a certain volume, and you turn the knob three spots to the left and I turn it three spots to the right, it is back where it started. If the volume is currently at ten and you turn it "100%" to the left, the volume goes to zero. But if I turn it ten spots back to the right, it is back to full volume. Neither of us is touching the actual music: the song continues to play at its originally recorded loudness. Nothing either of us can do can make the sound level of the music zero in a way that someone else cannot just come along and just turn the knob back the other way again. And if I turn the knob far enough to the right, and you can't turn it back far enough to the left to compensate, you can't turn the volume to zero. Ten spots might be 100%, but if the knob allows me to turn it fifty places to the right to get to 500% loudness, you have to be able to turn fifty spots back the other way just to get back to normal, and another ten spots to get all the way to zero.

We're only allowed to touch the knob. We aren't allowed to edit the music.

Milan1405 · February 23

DNA3000 said:

Milan1405 said:

ReignkingTW said:
Ug. Again, too complicated.
I agree, I don't see why there was a need to cap despair at -100% potency when many champs can heal reverse or heal block anyway.
It isn't actually complicated. It does defy some people's intuitions, but most people's intuitions are themselves self-contradictory and cannot be implemented as consistent game rules.

The reason why despair was capped was probably because they did not want the mastery itself to be capable of reversing healing, as that was considered more powerful than they intended. However, the cap doesn't make this any more complicated. People already complain about situations where -150% of petrify doesn't reverse the healing of something with +100% healing strength. People insist -100% equals zero, without stating the assumption, that -100% means -100% of that the value is now. It isn't: it is 100% of the base value. The intrinsic value, if you like.

People simply need to understand that modifiers do not (usually) act upon modified values. -30% does not mean -30% of whatever it happens to be now. It means subtract 30% of the original base value from whatever it is now. True for despair, petrify, and the vast majority of modifiers.

The best mental model for what modifiers do is that modifiers turn the volume knob. If you're playing some music that has a certain volume, and you turn the knob three spots to the left and I turn it three spots to the right, it is back where it started. If the volume is currently at ten and you turn it "100%" to the left, the volume goes to zero. But if I turn it ten spots back to the right, it is back to full volume. Neither of us is touching the actual music: the song continues to play at its originally recorded loudness. Nothing either of us can do can make the sound level of the music zero in a way that someone else cannot just come along and just turn the knob back the other way again. And if I turn the knob far enough to the right, and you can't turn it back far enough to the left to compensate, you can't turn the volume to zero. Ten spots might be 100%, but if the knob allows me to turn it fifty places to the right to get to 500% loudness, you have to be able to turn fifty spots back the other way just to get back to normal, and another ten spots to get all the way to zero.

We're only allowed to touch the knob. We aren't allowed to edit the music.

Disregard that statement mate, I realised my poor english made me sound moronic and re-wrote what I actually meant, the comment above yours. I get that the percentages in this game have to be additive, and if they worked multiplicatively it would probably be a lot less interesting. I like the final metaphor though.

DNA3000 · February 23

Milan1405 said:
@Wicket329 @Pikolu apologies I worded my post poorly. What I MEANT (despite my poor english) was that I don't see anything wrong with despair blocking out healing (so going beyond -100%) but then stopping when the defender's healing was negated, if that makes sense. I.e if the defender had a healing rate enhanced by 25, 50, or 100%, then despair would mitigate that to 0% regardless (with enough debuffs) then require petrify or spectre etc to go negative. I think that would be fair; obviously if every champ with 7+ debuffs could reverse healing that would be stupid.

I don't think that's a bad or good thing: it is a question of opinion of what you think Despair ought to do. But I think it is problematic from an implementation perspective, as how much Despair should be allowed to do would be dynamic. In other words, if the defender has no regen buffs and you apply Despair, Despair should cap out to -100%. But then if the defender triggers a regeneration buff, what should happen next? Should Despair be allowed to rise to a new higher cap on the fly? If you already have a certain Despair effect and it is capped out, should it increases in real time if the defender's healing boosts change in real time? Or should it affect all future debuffs? The precise way this would happen might be both complicated to implement, and also confuse players who wouldn't see consistent behavior anymore.

This could also get messy when Despair stacks with other effects like Petrify, because Despair has a cap, but Petrify doesn't and that could get interesting in situations where regeneration and healing buffs interact with both Petrify and Despair.

DNA3000 · February 23

ReignkingTW said:

Pikolu said:

Milan1405 said:

ReignkingTW said:
Ug. Again, too complicated.
I agree, I don't see why there was a need to cap despair at -100% potency when many champs can heal reverse or heal block anyway.
Ikaris stacks 225 incinerates. That would be -3,375% heal reduction from that alone. Anyone that heals is just insta-dead. That would just ruin the entire regen economy. People like Cassie also stack absurd amounts of debuffs without even having any petrify. This means you'd be crazy to run someone like void for heal reversal when ikaris does the same, but better with just 2 sp1s.
So to create something weird for Ikaris they nerf something else?

This is why we have bugs. Whack-an-unintended-consequence.

Actually, this is the opposite. Whenever you have stacking effects, you always have the potential for problems. DR is itself a way to avoid stacking problems. Every game with stacking effects has to institute diminishing returns, guardrails, or both. Despair's 100% limit is a guardrail. It prevents one champion's specific design decisions from running amok with the mastery when it was designed in a game where stacking debuffs were much less prevalent.

The Despair limit prevents unintended consequences. By definition, it doesn't have any, because it truncates all behaviors outside its intended operating range, deliberately so. No champ is intended to reverse healing with its debuffs using Despair, and now none can.

Corkscrew · February 23

TLDR: Modifiers are additive in MCOC, not multiplicative, this allows modifiers to work independently of the order of operation.

Usually, players try to call out a bug (that's not a bug) by rationalizing an order of execution, to explain why a detrimental effect should not apply. (Not referring to the OP)
"But anything multiplied by zero is zero!!"

It's just simply not how this game uses modifiers.

Clarity on how despair works exactly?

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