Kabam, please bring some clarity

If I play a game, I try to understand its basic mechanics. Any game has some mathematics and types of effects behind them. I like to know the exact numbers: how much can I hit, how much can I get hit, etc. MCOC just left me flabbergasted. A non-exhaustive list:

Some Cosmic champions can deal Direct Damage i.e. damage ignoring armor and resistances, according to the ability icon. Such Cosmic champions are Captain Marvel, Thor, Ronan the Accuser and Thanos. However, in the actual description the same ability is called "True Damage". So what is it: Direct Damage or True Damage? Are they the same? Presumably, but why having two names for the same thing?
Talking about armor, Direct/True Damage is not the only way to bypass it. Besides the traditional Armor Break, some champions can Armor Pierce. Armor Pierce is even a stat you can look. But all champions have that stat on zero (redundant) but worse, Armor Pierce does not work consistently. Winter Soldier and Old Man Logan can both Armor Pierce with (one of) their specials. Their specials are percentage-based, they ignore 100% armor. But the Armor Pierce of Thor, however, is a fixed number. I presume you need to subtract this number from the Armor Score, but Kabam doesn't explain how it works and why some champions have a number while others a percentage.
If talking about armor, I cannot evade the mechanics of critical hits. Critical hits are supposed to exploit weaknesses in armors. Some of your hits can be critical, and have a higher damage output. However, what relation do the numbers of Critical Hit Score and Critical Damage Score have with Armor Score? No idea. Kabam gives some numbers and we should accept it that it makes sense. I would pass it if it wasn't for the mastery Pierce, which states that "Critical Hits from your Champions ignore an additional 5/10/15% Armor". Yeah, no idea how this works out.
The stat table didn't brought the clarity it should. Besides the redundant Armor Pierce, Critical Hit Resistance and Block Pierce, it misses two of the important stats in the game: Physical and Energy Resistance. Again, a lot of numbers which presumably reduces damage but what would adding like 40 Energy Resistance (Mastery lvl 1) or 80 Energy Resistance (Mastery lvl 2) to damage reduction? I don't know, do you? And what is the relation with Armor Score?
Don't get me started on Armor Score. We know it supposes to reduce all damage and it is according to a certain percentage. But these percentages are based on facing a 4* rank 5. Does this means the same Armor Score would be more effective against a 1* than a 6*? It certainly hints to it. But it is very cryptic. Worse, if I get an Armor Up of like 2000 Armor Score, how much damage would I reduce? I can only guess. If you wonder why defensive champions aren't so well-liked, well this is one. The reverse, Armor Break, presumes Armor Score can become negative but again, how much extra damage would you get? Is it comparable with a Fury?
Finally, the very mechanics of hitting is cryptic. We have Light, Medium, Heavy and Special Attacks, but what damage modifiers Kabam uses is a big mystery. Does charging a Heavy Attack yield more damage? I simply don't know. It is nowhere explained.

You might know some of the answers, please help as Kabam won't.

Also, wouldn't the mechanics of some of the things mentioned be changed? Like scrap armor in "critical hits find weaknesses in armor" or give an exact number of base damage subtracted by armor instead fumbling around with these scores. Armor Break would reduce that (or boost your damage, if you look at it differently). Same thing with Resistance.

Comments

Gwendoline

The reason that some stats are on 0 is because after the v12 issues and the whole boycot, they didn't remove these new stats but instead zero'd them out. Meaning they can start using them again real easily, but for the time being the stat is on 0 for all champs.

Colonaut123

Gwendoline wrote: »

The reason that some stats are on 0 is because after the v12 issues and the whole boycot, they didn't remove these new stats but instead zero'd them out. Meaning they can start using them again real easily, but for the time being the stat is on 0 for all champs.

Well the stats are used, Iron Man (Infinity War) has critical hit resistance and Thor has Armor Pierce. But for 99.9% of the champions it is redundant.

Gwendoline

Colonaut123 wrote: »

Gwendoline wrote: »

The reason that some stats are on 0 is because after the v12 issues and the whole boycot, they didn't remove these new stats but instead zero'd them out. Meaning they can start using them again real easily, but for the time being the stat is on 0 for all champs.

Well the stats are used, Iron Man (Infinity War) has critical hit resistance and Thor has Armor Pierce. But for 99.9% of the champions it is redundant.

But it’s not. If they had removed it, they couldn’t slowely start using it without people throwing a fit. Now they can. And they did.

Riegel

Good luck.

DNA3000

Colonaut123 wrote: »

If I play a game, I try to understand its basic mechanics. Any game has some mathematics and types of effects behind them. I like to know the exact numbers: how much can I hit, how much can I get hit, etc. MCOC just left me flabbergasted. A non-exhaustive list:
Some Cosmic champions can deal Direct Damage i.e. damage ignoring armor and resistances, according to the ability icon. Such Cosmic champions are Captain Marvel, Thor, Ronan the Accuser and Thanos. However, in the actual description the same ability is called "True Damage". So what is it: Direct Damage or True Damage? Are they the same? Presumably, but why having two names for the same thing?

Because the descriptions mix technical jargon and colloquial language, sometimes terminology changes, and sometimes it is just wrong.

Colonaut123 wrote: »

[*] Talking about armor, Direct/True Damage is not the only way to bypass it. Besides the traditional Armor Break, some champions can Armor Pierce. Armor Pierce is even a stat you can look. But all champions have that stat on zero (redundant) but worse, Armor Pierce does not work consistently. Winter Soldier and Old Man Logan can both Armor Pierce with (one of) their specials. Their specials are percentage-based, they ignore 100% armor. But the Armor Pierce of Thor, however, is a fixed number. I presume you need to subtract this number from the Armor Score, but Kabam doesn't explain how it works and why some champions have a number while others a percentage.

Winter Soldier, Old Man Logan, and Thor all have special attacks that ignore armor rating. I'm not sure what you mean by "fixed number" in the case of Thor.

Beyond attacks that ignore armor rating intrinsically, critical hits ignore armor rating. Besides ignoring armor rating, attacks can inflict armor break which reduces armor rating and a champion could get armor penetration as a stat which reduces the effective armor of the target.

Incidentally, armor is a flat stat, and thus all armor rating buffs and debuffs are subject to the diminishing returns function.

Colonaut123 wrote: »

[*] If talking about armor, I cannot evade the mechanics of critical hits. Critical hits are supposed to exploit weaknesses in armors. Some of your hits can be critical, and have a higher damage output. However, what relation do the numbers of Critical Hit Score and Critical Damage Score have with Armor Score? No idea. Kabam gives some numbers and we should accept it that it makes sense. I would pass it if it wasn't for the mastery Pierce, which states that "Critical Hits from your Champions ignore an additional 5/10/15% Armor". Yeah, no idea how this works out.

Critical rating is the flat stat that replaces critical chance and essentially means the same thing, but in flat stat form. Flat stats replace older percentage-based stats using a diminishing returns formula. The conversion is:

Percentage = FlatStat / (FlatStat + 1500 + 5* CR)

where CR is the challenge rating of the opponent or target.

Critical damage rating is the stat that replaces the old critical damage stat, which basically is a damage multiplier. Critical damage uses the same DR formula as critical rating, except the net damage multiplier is five times higher (i.e. if critical rating would have generated the number 30%, the actual critical damage rating is 150%).

Neither of these ratings directly interact with armor rating. Armor rating reduces incoming damage for attacks subject to armor.

Colonaut123 wrote: »

[*] The stat table didn't brought the clarity it should. Besides the redundant Armor Pierce, Critical Hit Resistance and Block Pierce, it misses two of the important stats in the game: Physical and Energy Resistance. Again, a lot of numbers which presumably reduces damage but what would adding like 40 Energy Resistance (Mastery lvl 1) or 80 Energy Resistance (Mastery lvl 2) to damage reduction? I don't know, do you? And what is the relation with Armor Score?

Armor pierce, critical hit resistance, and block pierce are not redundant, and I'm not sure why you think they would be redundant. They are currently not used by many champions, but the stat has to be there for the case where champions might eventually gain base non-zero values for those.

On the other hand, I believe physical and energy resistance aren't listed there because no champion I'm aware of has base physical or energy resistance - all champions with either gain them from an ability, so the resistance is listed in the ability descriptions (I could be wrong there, but I can't think of any off the top of my head).

In any event, both physical resistance and energy resistance are flat stats, and thus follow the diminishing returns formulas to convert flat stats to percentages.

Colonaut123 wrote: »

[*] Don't get me started on Armor Score. We know it supposes to reduce all damage and it is according to a certain percentage. But these percentages are based on facing a 4* rank 5. Does this means the same Armor Score would be more effective against a 1* than a 6*? It certainly hints to it. But it is very cryptic. Worse, if I get an Armor Up of like 2000 Armor Score, how much damage would I reduce? I can only guess. If you wonder why defensive champions aren't so well-liked, well this is one. The reverse, Armor Break, presumes Armor Score can become negative but again, how much extra damage would you get? Is it comparable with a Fury?

Armor rating is also a flat stat, and follows the same DR mechanics. Negative armor score has changed how it works at least a half dozen times, but last I was aware it functioned like positive armor rating for the purposes of the DR formula, then like negative armor rating for the purposes of damage calculations. Meaning, if you have a negative number for your armor rating, you take the absolute value of that number and pass it through the DR formula, then you make the resulting value negative and use that in the damage mitigation equation (which is basically NetDamage = InitialDamage / (1 + ArmorPercentage) ).

Armor like all flat stats are more effective against lower ranked opponents. See DR formula above.

Colonaut123 wrote: »

[*] Finally, the very mechanics of hitting is cryptic. We have Light, Medium, Heavy and Special Attacks, but what damage modifiers Kabam uses is a big mystery. Does charging a Heavy Attack yield more damage? I simply don't know. It is nowhere explained.

I believe Light attacks do 25% of attack rating, Medium attacks do 40%, and Heavy attacks do 85% of attack rating.

Charging a heavy does not intrinsically make it hit harder unless the champion has some sort of mechanical ability in that regard.

Colonaut123 wrote: »

Also, wouldn't the mechanics of some of the things mentioned be changed? Like scrap armor in "critical hits find weaknesses in armor" or give an exact number of base damage subtracted by armor instead fumbling around with these scores. Armor Break would reduce that (or boost your damage, if you look at it differently). Same thing with Resistance.

I don't think you really want to go down that rabbit hole. You think you do. You do not.

CoatHang3r

@DNA3000 Unless 12.0 changed things and it was not listed there are characters with base resistances (those were previously listed in the place where penetration etc are listed). Characters like Beast who has base phys resist and negative energy resist and loki with the inverse of Beast.

DNA3000

CoatHang3r wrote: »

@DNA3000 Unless 12.0 changed things and it was not listed there are characters with base resistances (those were previously listed in the place where penetration etc are listed). Characters like Beast who has base phys resist and negative energy resist and loki with the inverse of Beast.

I *think* those were zeroed out, but I cannot specifically recall testing in that regard.

DankestChef

i agree with everything u said. unfortunately kabams gonna close this thread as usual.

CoatHang3r

DNA3000 wrote: »

CoatHang3r wrote: »

@DNA3000 Unless 12.0 changed things and it was not listed there are characters with base resistances (those were previously listed in the place where penetration etc are listed). Characters like Beast who has base phys resist and negative energy resist and loki with the inverse of Beast.

I *think* those were zeroed out, but I cannot specifically recall testing in that regard.

Beast with negative energy resist.

Loki with positive energy resist.

Hulk without any modifcation. (Legacy character).

taojay1

Thanks for ur knowledge as usual, @DNA3000. I have a couple questions:
If crits ignore armor rating, then what is the pierce mastery for? I was under the assumption that crits ignore physical resistance, but were still hindered slightly by armor?
I assume the DR formula was stated in the 12.0 notes. Where did the damage mitigation equation come from?
What exactly does the attack rating number represent? And how do fury and dot effects correlate (I'm specifically thinking of drax, he has fury that increases his attack, and also does x amount of bleed damage over time. is x the actual sum of all the bleed ticks that will proc over the duration of the bleed debuff, and how does fury increase bleed damage?)

DNA3000

CoatHang3r wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

CoatHang3r wrote: »

@DNA3000 Unless 12.0 changed things and it was not listed there are characters with base resistances (those were previously listed in the place where penetration etc are listed). Characters like Beast who has base phys resist and negative energy resist and loki with the inverse of Beast.

I *think* those were zeroed out, but I cannot specifically recall testing in that regard.

Beast with negative energy resist.

Hmm. That seems pretty conclusive. If those stats haven't been zeroed, then I think they should add them back, or list them as base attributes in the character info screen somewhere.

DNA3000

taojay1 wrote: »

Thanks for ur knowledge as usual, @DNA3000. I have a couple questions:
If crits ignore armor rating, then what is the pierce mastery for? I was under the assumption that crits ignore physical resistance, but were still hindered slightly by armor?

I should have said critical hits ignore the first twenty percentage points of armor, not that they ignore all armor. I typed that one out too fast, and then your pierce question gave me Pure Skill flashbacks.

I assume the DR formula was stated in the 12.0 notes. Where did the damage mitigation equation come from?

Actually, the formula originally came from work done by DickSlug on the reddit, and I picked up on that and did in-game testing to confirm the formula and then wrote up a guide and a spreadsheet calculator. Quite a lot of the formulaic knowedge I have comes from DickSlug and other enterprising people on the reddit, plus a little bit of my own digging.

What exactly does the attack rating number represent? And how do fury and dot effects correlate (I'm specifically thinking of drax, he has fury that increases his attack, and also does x amount of bleed damage over time. is x the actual sum of all the bleed ticks that will proc over the duration of the bleed debuff, and how does fury increase bleed damage?)

Attack rating is just a value that represents how much damage the champion does in general with normal (non-special) attacks. Different kinds of attacks do different fractions of that value, and attacks scale with increases in that value in general. Attack boosts like fury temporarily increase this value, which increases the damage of all attacks whose damage is based on this value.

Think of it as a kind of simplified shortcut for damage. Your champions have a lot of different attacks doing lots of different damage. If you want something in the game to boost your damage upward, you could make that thing individually increase the damage of every single attack and effect separately and individually, but that's complicated and a lot of work. Making all attacks (or most of them) do some multiple of a single number, and then making damage boosts increase that one number, makes damage easier to work with and understand.

Some attacks do not scale with attack rating. For example, some special attacks and some damage effects do fixed amounts of damage. These do not scale upward with effects that increase attack rating.

DNA3000

taojay1 wrote: »

What exactly does the attack rating number represent? And how do fury and dot effects correlate (I'm specifically thinking of drax, he has fury that increases his attack, and also does x amount of bleed damage over time. is x the actual sum of all the bleed ticks that will proc over the duration of the bleed debuff, and how does fury increase bleed damage?)

I forgot to add, most damage over time effects are essentially multipliers of attack rating even though they don't say that explicitly, so they scale up with higher attack. Fury increases attack, so fury should increase the damage of Drax's bleeds.

I believe, although I've never explicitly confirmed this, that all damage over time effects (and all heal over time effects) "tick" twice per second. When an ability states that it does "1000 damage over five seconds" that generally means the total damage of the bleed effect will be 1000 damage, and it will deliver that damage with ten ticks of damage of 100 damage each over five seconds.

Colonaut123

DNA3000 wrote: »

Because the descriptions mix technical jargon and colloquial language, sometimes terminology changes, and sometimes it is just wrong.

Winter Soldier, Old Man Logan, and Thor all have special attacks that ignore armor rating. I'm not sure what you mean by "fixed number" in the case of Thor.

Beyond attacks that ignore armor rating intrinsically, critical hits ignore armor rating. Besides ignoring armor rating, attacks can inflict armor break which reduces armor rating and a champion could get armor penetration as a stat which reduces the effective armor of the target.

Incidentally, armor is a flat stat, and thus all armor rating buffs and debuffs are subject to the diminishing returns function.

Critical rating is the flat stat that replaces critical chance and essentially means the same thing, but in flat stat form. Flat stats replace older percentage-based stats using a diminishing returns formula. The conversion is:

Percentage = FlatStat / (FlatStat + 1500 + 5* CR)

where CR is the challenge rating of the opponent or target.

Critical damage rating is the stat that replaces the old critical damage stat, which basically is a damage multiplier. Critical damage uses the same DR formula as critical rating, except the net damage multiplier is five times higher (i.e. if critical rating would have generated the number 30%, the actual critical damage rating is 150%).

Neither of these ratings directly interact with armor rating. Armor rating reduces incoming damage for attacks subject to armor.

Armor pierce, critical hit resistance, and block pierce are not redundant, and I'm not sure why you think they would be redundant. They are currently not used by many champions, but the stat has to be there for the case where champions might eventually gain base non-zero values for those.

On the other hand, I believe physical and energy resistance aren't listed there because no champion I'm aware of has base physical or energy resistance - all champions with either gain them from an ability, so the resistance is listed in the ability descriptions (I could be wrong there, but I can't think of any off the top of my head).

In any event, both physical resistance and energy resistance are flat stats, and thus follow the diminishing returns formulas to convert flat stats to percentages.

Armor rating is also a flat stat, and follows the same DR mechanics. Negative armor score has changed how it works at least a half dozen times, but last I was aware it functioned like positive armor rating for the purposes of the DR formula, then like negative armor rating for the purposes of damage calculations. Meaning, if you have a negative number for your armor rating, you take the absolute value of that number and pass it through the DR formula, then you make the resulting value negative and use that in the damage mitigation equation (which is basically NetDamage = InitialDamage / (1 + ArmorPercentage) ).

Armor like all flat stats are more effective against lower ranked opponents. See DR formula above.

I believe Light attacks do 25% of attack rating, Medium attacks do 40%, and Heavy attacks do 85% of attack rating.

Charging a heavy does not intrinsically make it hit harder unless the champion has some sort of mechanical ability in that regard.

I don't think you really want to go down that rabbit hole. You think you do. You do not.

Thanks for the information, it is very helpful!

Some questions/remarks though:

For Thor, every Fury buff give 94.74 extra Armor Pierce (it stacks, so this number is from my 4* rank 1 level 10 Thor). This Armour Pierce number gets converted to a percentage armor ignored. Old Man Logan on the other hand has 100% Armour Pierce as his Sp1. Confusing much?

Wow, your formula works! How does the formula for critical damage score work again? I tried multiplying the result by 5 but it yields different results than the description.

Are you sure that NetDamage = InitialDamage / (1 + ArmorPercentage) and not simply NetDamage = InitialDamage * (1 - ArmorPercentage)? Let's take my Thor again, who has an Armor Score of 200 and a Damage Reduction of 9.1%. If what you say is correct, a hit of 1000 would have a hit of 916.67, which would be a reduction of 8.3% not 9.1% (as the description says). It seriously dampens the effectiveness of armor score/break.

Colonaut123

DankestChef wrote: »

i agree with everything u said. unfortunately kabams gonna close this thread as usual.

It is still here!

Colonaut123

DNA3000 wrote: »

taojay1 wrote: »

Thanks for ur knowledge as usual, @DNA3000. I have a couple questions:
If crits ignore armor rating, then what is the pierce mastery for? I was under the assumption that crits ignore physical resistance, but were still hindered slightly by armor?

I should have said critical hits ignore the first twenty percentage points of armor, not that they ignore all armor. I typed that one out too fast, and then your pierce question gave me Pure Skill flashbacks.

I assume the DR formula was stated in the 12.0 notes. Where did the damage mitigation equation come from?

Actually, the formula originally came from work done by DickSlug on the reddit, and I picked up on that and did in-game testing to confirm the formula and then wrote up a guide and a spreadsheet calculator. Quite a lot of the formulaic knowedge I have comes from DickSlug and other enterprising people on the reddit, plus a little bit of my own digging.

So if I get this straight: the critical damage score is the same formula as the critical hit score but multiplied by 5, plus some extra percent damage? According to my calculations, with Pierce level 1 (5% extra armor ignored), I should only have +25% damage but the description gives +50% damage. So...?

Do you have a link to your guide?

DNA3000

Colonaut123 wrote: »

Are you sure that NetDamage = InitialDamage / (1 + ArmorPercentage) and not simply NetDamage = InitialDamage * (1 - ArmorPercentage)? Let's take my Thor again, who has an Armor Score of 200 and a Damage Reduction of 9.1%. If what you say is correct, a hit of 1000 would have a hit of 916.67, which would be a reduction of 8.3% not 9.1% (as the description says). It seriously dampens the effectiveness of armor score/break.

Typo: it should be Damage * (1 - Armor). I was thinking about something else when I typed that.

Kabam Miike

Hey Guys,

I want to thank you that took the time to answer these questions for each other. I am also working with the game team to get some more information as well. This might take some time (the team is swamped) but we're working on it.

0chris999999999

Where is alpha arena? I just have one champ to rank up so I can retire my account

DNA3000

Colonaut123 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

taojay1 wrote: »

Thanks for ur knowledge as usual, @DNA3000. I have a couple questions:
If crits ignore armor rating, then what is the pierce mastery for? I was under the assumption that crits ignore physical resistance, but were still hindered slightly by armor?

I should have said critical hits ignore the first twenty percentage points of armor, not that they ignore all armor. I typed that one out too fast, and then your pierce question gave me Pure Skill flashbacks.

I assume the DR formula was stated in the 12.0 notes. Where did the damage mitigation equation come from?

Actually, the formula originally came from work done by DickSlug on the reddit, and I picked up on that and did in-game testing to confirm the formula and then wrote up a guide and a spreadsheet calculator. Quite a lot of the formulaic knowedge I have comes from DickSlug and other enterprising people on the reddit, plus a little bit of my own digging.

So if I get this straight: the critical damage score is the same formula as the critical hit score but multiplied by 5, plus some extra percent damage? According to my calculations, with Pierce level 1 (5% extra armor ignored), I should only have +25% damage but the description gives +50% damage. So...?

Do you have a link to your guide?

Critical damage has two tuning parameters, a multipler and a "flat" bonus. My recollection is that the multiplier is 5.0 and the flat parameter was 0.5, so the critical damage percentage formula is CriticalDamagePercent = DR(CriticalRating) * 5 + 0.5.

So just popping into the game for a moment, my Blade has critical damage rating of 721. Passing that through the DR formula with CR=100 gives 0.265. Sending that through the critical damage percent formula gives 0.265 * 5 + 0.5 = 1.825, or 182.5%. The game agrees with me that Blade's critical damage rating as a percentage value is 182.5%, so I'm pretty sure my memory is correct there.

The guide was vaporized along with the old forums.

Note: this is a repost: my original reply included a link to another article on Reddit but the URL itself is unpostable due to content. The article mentions that testing a year ago showed that at the time the testing was done there was evidence that there was a cap on damage mitigation due to armor. There are various undocumented caps in the game: stacking caps, value caps, effects caps. I am unaware of anywhere these are all collected and documented by anyone. Googling "Reddit MCOC armor cap" might locate the article in question.

Colonaut123

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Hey Guys,

I want to thank you that took the time to answer these questions for each other. I am also working with the game team to get some more information as well. This might take some time (the team is swamped) but we're working on it.

Thanks for the respons. I do hope there will be some more clarification in-game or on the website.

taojay1

Colonaut123 wrote: »

Kabam Miike wrote: »

Hey Guys,

I want to thank you that took the time to answer these questions for each other. I am also working with the game team to get some more information as well. This might take some time (the team is swamped) but we're working on it.

Thanks for the respons. I do hope there will be some more clarification in-game or on the website.

Definitely agree. Very generous of @DNA3000 to provide the info that should be coming from Kabam

Colonaut123

DNA3000 wrote: »

Colonaut123 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

taojay1 wrote: »

Thanks for ur knowledge as usual, @DNA3000. I have a couple questions:
If crits ignore armor rating, then what is the pierce mastery for? I was under the assumption that crits ignore physical resistance, but were still hindered slightly by armor?

I should have said critical hits ignore the first twenty percentage points of armor, not that they ignore all armor. I typed that one out too fast, and then your pierce question gave me Pure Skill flashbacks.

I assume the DR formula was stated in the 12.0 notes. Where did the damage mitigation equation come from?

Actually, the formula originally came from work done by DickSlug on the reddit, and I picked up on that and did in-game testing to confirm the formula and then wrote up a guide and a spreadsheet calculator. Quite a lot of the formulaic knowedge I have comes from DickSlug and other enterprising people on the reddit, plus a little bit of my own digging.

So if I get this straight: the critical damage score is the same formula as the critical hit score but multiplied by 5, plus some extra percent damage? According to my calculations, with Pierce level 1 (5% extra armor ignored), I should only have +25% damage but the description gives +50% damage. So...?

Do you have a link to your guide?

Critical damage has two tuning parameters, a multipler and a "flat" bonus. My recollection is that the multiplier is 5.0 and the flat parameter was 0.5, so the critical damage percentage formula is CriticalDamagePercent = DR(CriticalRating) * 5 + 0.5.

So just popping into the game for a moment, my Blade has critical damage rating of 721. Passing that through the DR formula with CR=100 gives 0.265. Sending that through the critical damage percent formula gives 0.265 * 5 + 0.5 = 1.825, or 182.5%. The game agrees with me that Blade's critical damage rating as a percentage value is 182.5%, so I'm pretty sure my memory is correct there.

The guide was vaporized along with the old forums.

Note: this is a repost: my original reply included a link to another article on Reddit but the URL itself is unpostable due to content. The article mentions that testing a year ago showed that at the time the testing was done there was evidence that there was a cap on damage mitigation due to armor. There are various undocumented caps in the game: stacking caps, value caps, effects caps. I am unaware of anywhere these are all collected and documented by anyone. Googling "Reddit MCOC armor cap" might locate the article in question.

Thanks for the confirmation. But then it is still not known what the Pierce mastery does... If I would invest two points to get it from 5% to 10%, what would change in the formula?

Good to know there is an armor cap. I wondered if maxing out Hulkbuster would give the giant passive armor boost and reduce damage like to 1%. (Another thing that is unclear, like if my health is 70% how much armor do I have from my sig? Idem with Hulk's sig and Rhino's sig.) Maybe @Kabam Miike can ask this to the game team to.

Colonaut123

DNA3000 wrote: »

CoatHang3r wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

CoatHang3r wrote: »

@DNA3000 Unless 12.0 changed things and it was not listed there are characters with base resistances (those were previously listed in the place where penetration etc are listed). Characters like Beast who has base phys resist and negative energy resist and loki with the inverse of Beast.

I *think* those were zeroed out, but I cannot specifically recall testing in that regard.

Beast with negative energy resist.

Hmm. That seems pretty conclusive. If those stats haven't been zeroed, then I think they should add them back, or list them as base attributes in the character info screen somewhere.

Bishop also seems has a high Energy Resistance according to the description, and based on his synergies, Storm, Cyclops, Electro and Doctor Strange should also have an invisible non-zero Energy Resistance.

Colonaut123

Colonaut123 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Winter Soldier, Old Man Logan, and Thor all have special attacks that ignore armor rating. I'm not sure what you mean by "fixed number" in the case of Thor.

Beyond attacks that ignore armor rating intrinsically, critical hits ignore armor rating. Besides ignoring armor rating, attacks can inflict armor break which reduces armor rating and a champion could get armor penetration as a stat which reduces the effective armor of the target.

For Thor, every Fury buff give 94.74 extra Armor Pierce (it stacks, so this number is from my 4* rank 1 level 10 Thor). This Armour Pierce number gets converted to a percentage armor ignored. Old Man Logan on the other hand has 100% Armour Pierce as his Sp1. Confusing much?

I've upranked my Thor to rank 2 and the Armor Pierce increased from 94.74 to 97.37. However, regular levelling up do not increase this stat. Like Armor Score, Armor Pierce seems to increase only with each rank. According to the description, Armor Pierce should convert to a % armor ignored.

That leaves one question: why does Thor (as far as I know) only have this stat while Old Man Logan and Winter Soldier have a fixed percentage?

A second question: my 2* rank 2 Thor has an Armor Pierce of 84.21. That isn't much lower than my 4*...

Shrimkins

Colonaut123 wrote: »

Colonaut123 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Winter Soldier, Old Man Logan, and Thor all have special attacks that ignore armor rating. I'm not sure what you mean by "fixed number" in the case of Thor.

Beyond attacks that ignore armor rating intrinsically, critical hits ignore armor rating. Besides ignoring armor rating, attacks can inflict armor break which reduces armor rating and a champion could get armor penetration as a stat which reduces the effective armor of the target.

For Thor, every Fury buff give 94.74 extra Armor Pierce (it stacks, so this number is from my 4* rank 1 level 10 Thor). This Armour Pierce number gets converted to a percentage armor ignored. Old Man Logan on the other hand has 100% Armour Pierce as his Sp1. Confusing much?

I've upranked my Thor to rank 2 and the Armor Pierce increased from 94.74 to 97.37. However, regular levelling up do not increase this stat. Like Armor Score, Armor Pierce seems to increase only with each rank. According to the description, Armor Pierce should convert to a % armor ignored.

That leaves one question: why does Thor (as far as I know) only have this stat while Old Man Logan and Winter Soldier have a fixed percentage?

A second question: my 2* rank 2 Thor has an Armor Pierce of 84.21. That isn't much lower than my 4*...

Leveling up a champ only increases base health and attack. Nothing else. All other stats like crit rating, armor, ability potency, ect are only increased by ranking up a champ.

To answer your first question, that's just the way it is. Thor only reduces the armor a little while OML and WS bypass all of it. Different abilities for different champs.

Second question: The only thing that changes by leveling champs are base health and attack. Even between rarities this is the only thing that changes. The only exception to this is signature abilities which are maxed out at 99 for 2*, 3*, and 4* champs and 200 for 5* and 6* champs so they have different potency at corresponding sig levels.

caligarelinquo

Colonaut123 wrote: »

If I play a game, I try to understand its basic mechanics. Any game has some mathematics and types of effects behind them. I like to know the exact numbers: how much can I hit, how much can I get hit, etc. MCOC just left me flabbergasted. A non-exhaustive list:
Some Cosmic champions can deal Direct Damage i.e. damage ignoring armor and resistances, according to the ability icon. Such Cosmic champions are Captain Marvel, Thor, Ronan the Accuser and Thanos. However, in the actual description the same ability is called "True Damage". So what is it: Direct Damage or True Damage? Are they the same? Presumably, but why having two names for the same thing?

Talking about armor, Direct/True Damage is not the only way to bypass it. Besides the traditional Armor Break, some champions can Armor Pierce. Armor Pierce is even a stat you can look. But all champions have that stat on zero (redundant) but worse, Armor Pierce does not work consistently. Winter Soldier and Old Man Logan can both Armor Pierce with (one of) their specials. Their specials are percentage-based, they ignore 100% armor. But the Armor Pierce of Thor, however, is a fixed number. I presume you need to subtract this number from the Armor Score, but Kabam doesn't explain how it works and why some champions have a number while others a percentage.

If talking about armor, I cannot evade the mechanics of critical hits. Critical hits are supposed to exploit weaknesses in armors. Some of your hits can be critical, and have a higher damage output. However, what relation do the numbers of Critical Hit Score and Critical Damage Score have with Armor Score? No idea. Kabam gives some numbers and we should accept it that it makes sense. I would pass it if it wasn't for the mastery Pierce, which states that "Critical Hits from your Champions ignore an additional 5/10/15% Armor". Yeah, no idea how this works out.

The stat table didn't brought the clarity it should. Besides the redundant Armor Pierce, Critical Hit Resistance and Block Pierce, it misses two of the important stats in the game: Physical and Energy Resistance. Again, a lot of numbers which presumably reduces damage but what would adding like 40 Energy Resistance (Mastery lvl 1) or 80 Energy Resistance (Mastery lvl 2) to damage reduction? I don't know, do you? And what is the relation with Armor Score?

Don't get me started on Armor Score. We know it supposes to reduce all damage and it is according to a certain percentage. But these percentages are based on facing a 4* rank 5. Does this means the same Armor Score would be more effective against a 1* than a 6*? It certainly hints to it. But it is very cryptic. Worse, if I get an Armor Up of like 2000 Armor Score, how much damage would I reduce? I can only guess. If you wonder why defensive champions aren't so well-liked, well this is one. The reverse, Armor Break, presumes Armor Score can become negative but again, how much extra damage would you get? Is it comparable with a Fury?

Finally, the very mechanics of hitting is cryptic. We have Light, Medium, Heavy and Special Attacks, but what damage modifiers Kabam uses is a big mystery. Does charging a Heavy Attack yield more damage? I simply don't know. It is nowhere explained.

You might know some of the answers, please help as Kabam won't.

Also, wouldn't the mechanics of some of the things mentioned be changed? Like scrap armor in "critical hits find weaknesses in armor" or give an exact number of base damage subtracted by armor instead fumbling around with these scores. Armor Break would reduce that (or boost your damage, if you look at it differently). Same thing with Resistance.

This is the best post I have read in a very long time. I hope Kabam addresses this directly. I'm sure they all are wrapping their heads around these valid points. This is what I call constructive. I'm sure Lyra and Miike will agree.

DNA3000

Colonaut123 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Colonaut123 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

taojay1 wrote: »

Thanks for ur knowledge as usual, @DNA3000. I have a couple questions:
If crits ignore armor rating, then what is the pierce mastery for? I was under the assumption that crits ignore physical resistance, but were still hindered slightly by armor?

I should have said critical hits ignore the first twenty percentage points of armor, not that they ignore all armor. I typed that one out too fast, and then your pierce question gave me Pure Skill flashbacks.

I assume the DR formula was stated in the 12.0 notes. Where did the damage mitigation equation come from?

Actually, the formula originally came from work done by DickSlug on the reddit, and I picked up on that and did in-game testing to confirm the formula and then wrote up a guide and a spreadsheet calculator. Quite a lot of the formulaic knowedge I have comes from DickSlug and other enterprising people on the reddit, plus a little bit of my own digging.

So if I get this straight: the critical damage score is the same formula as the critical hit score but multiplied by 5, plus some extra percent damage? According to my calculations, with Pierce level 1 (5% extra armor ignored), I should only have +25% damage but the description gives +50% damage. So...?

Do you have a link to your guide?

Critical damage has two tuning parameters, a multipler and a "flat" bonus. My recollection is that the multiplier is 5.0 and the flat parameter was 0.5, so the critical damage percentage formula is CriticalDamagePercent = DR(CriticalRating) * 5 + 0.5.

So just popping into the game for a moment, my Blade has critical damage rating of 721. Passing that through the DR formula with CR=100 gives 0.265. Sending that through the critical damage percent formula gives 0.265 * 5 + 0.5 = 1.825, or 182.5%. The game agrees with me that Blade's critical damage rating as a percentage value is 182.5%, so I'm pretty sure my memory is correct there.

The guide was vaporized along with the old forums.

Note: this is a repost: my original reply included a link to another article on Reddit but the URL itself is unpostable due to content. The article mentions that testing a year ago showed that at the time the testing was done there was evidence that there was a cap on damage mitigation due to armor. There are various undocumented caps in the game: stacking caps, value caps, effects caps. I am unaware of anywhere these are all collected and documented by anyone. Googling "Reddit MCOC armor cap" might locate the article in question.

Thanks for the confirmation. But then it is still not known what the Pierce mastery does... If I would invest two points to get it from 5% to 10%, what would change in the formula?

Pierce causes critical hits to ignore more armor than they normally do. They normally ignore twenty percentage points of armor. Pierce would increase that to 25%, or 30%, or 35% depending on rank.

"Ignore armor" is different from "reduce armor." If you reduce 30% armor by 20% you end up with 10% armor. But if you reduce 5% armor by 20% you end up with -15% armor. When you ignore 20% armor, 30% armor looks like 10%, 20% armor looks like 0%, and 5% armor also looks like 0%. Basically, the difference between ignore and reduce is you cannot ignore more armor than is there.

Incidentally, massive pet peeve of mine that goes for almost every game I've played: when developers don't know the difference between percent and percentage point. If my attack is 1000 and I say I reduce that by 20%, it is obvious that the value should reduce to 800. And if I say my attack is 1000 and I say I reduce that by 20, it is equally obvious that the value should reduce to 980. But when my block percentage is 50% and I say I reduce that by 20%, that *should* reduce that value to 40%, not 30%. Twenty percent of the value "fifty percent" is ten percent: 0.2 times 50. The remainder is forty percent. If you mean fifty minus twenty, the correct statement is that block percentage is 50%, and you are reducing that value by twenty percentage points - which means you should treat the number "twenty" as a value, not a *fraction* of something.

Using "percent" to mean both actual percentages and values measured in percentage points interchangeably everywhere in the game means no one has any idea whether the game is reducing something by a fraction or by a flat value. And sometimes the devs misstate that, and players perpetuate that mistake for a long time.

Here's the description for Parry: "Timing a Block right when attacked reduces damage by 25%."

No it doesn't. What Parry does is: when executing a well-timed block, Parry increases the effectiveness of blocking by an additional twenty five percentage points.

In other words, when you successfully block an attack, you reduce the damage you take from that attack by a percentage equal to your block percentage (which is calculated from your block proficiency stat). If you have Parry, a successful well-timed block will increase that block percentage by an additional twenty five points. Block percentage 60% goes up to 85%.

Parry doesn't change damage by twenty five percent. It changes block proficiency by twenty five points of value. This has caused real confusion in the past, when players have asked whether Parry acted before or after Block. The correct answer is neither: it doesn't act before or after Block, it acts *upon* Block. The game description implies something that isn't true. My version correctly specifies what Parry actually does, and correctly specifies that here the percentage value is simply a number, not a fraction of something.

Colonaut123

Shrimkins wrote: »

Colonaut123 wrote: »

Colonaut123 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Winter Soldier, Old Man Logan, and Thor all have special attacks that ignore armor rating. I'm not sure what you mean by "fixed number" in the case of Thor.

Beyond attacks that ignore armor rating intrinsically, critical hits ignore armor rating. Besides ignoring armor rating, attacks can inflict armor break which reduces armor rating and a champion could get armor penetration as a stat which reduces the effective armor of the target.

For Thor, every Fury buff give 94.74 extra Armor Pierce (it stacks, so this number is from my 4* rank 1 level 10 Thor). This Armour Pierce number gets converted to a percentage armor ignored. Old Man Logan on the other hand has 100% Armour Pierce as his Sp1. Confusing much?

I've upranked my Thor to rank 2 and the Armor Pierce increased from 94.74 to 97.37. However, regular levelling up do not increase this stat. Like Armor Score, Armor Pierce seems to increase only with each rank. According to the description, Armor Pierce should convert to a % armor ignored.

That leaves one question: why does Thor (as far as I know) only have this stat while Old Man Logan and Winter Soldier have a fixed percentage?

A second question: my 2* rank 2 Thor has an Armor Pierce of 84.21. That isn't much lower than my 4*...

To answer your first question, that's just the way it is. Thor only reduces the armor a little while OML and WS bypass all of it. Different abilities for different champs.

It is just strange to have two different mechanics to do the same thing. It is like you would have the current armor mechanic and another mechanic that reduces base damage flat. Kabam has to make a choice.

Colonaut123

DNA3000 wrote: »

Pierce causes critical hits to ignore more armor than they normally do. They normally ignore twenty percentage points of armor. Pierce would increase that to 25%, or 30%, or 35% depending on rank.

So, no relationship with the actual description of the damage? Or is that included in the +50%?

DNA3000 wrote: »

"Ignore armor" is different from "reduce armor." If you reduce 30% armor by 20% you end up with 10% armor. But if you reduce 5% armor by 20% you end up with -15% armor. When you ignore 20% armor, 30% armor looks like 10%, 20% armor looks like 0%, and 5% armor also looks like 0%. Basically, the difference between ignore and reduce is you cannot ignore more armor than is there.

Incidentally, massive pet peeve of mine that goes for almost every game I've played: when developers don't know the difference between percent and percentage point. If my attack is 1000 and I say I reduce that by 20%, it is obvious that the value should reduce to 800. And if I say my attack is 1000 and I say I reduce that by 20, it is equally obvious that the value should reduce to 980. But when my block percentage is 50% and I say I reduce that by 20%, that *should* reduce that value to 40%, not 30%. Twenty percent of the value "fifty percent" is ten percent: 0.2 times 50. The remainder is forty percent. If you mean fifty minus twenty, the correct statement is that block percentage is 50%, and you are reducing that value by twenty percentage points - which means you should treat the number "twenty" as a value, not a *fraction* of something.

Using "percent" to mean both actual percentages and values measured in percentage points interchangeably everywhere in the game means no one has any idea whether the game is reducing something by a fraction or by a flat value. And sometimes the devs misstate that, and players perpetuate that mistake for a long time.

Here's the description for Parry: "Timing a Block right when attacked reduces damage by 25%."

No it doesn't. What Parry does is: when executing a well-timed block, Parry increases the effectiveness of blocking by an additional twenty five percentage points.

In other words, when you successfully block an attack, you reduce the damage you take from that attack by a percentage equal to your block percentage (which is calculated from your block proficiency stat). If you have Parry, a successful well-timed block will increase that block percentage by an additional twenty five points. Block percentage 60% goes up to 85%.

Parry doesn't change damage by twenty five percent. It changes block proficiency by twenty five points of value. This has caused real confusion in the past, when players have asked whether Parry acted before or after Block. The correct answer is neither: it doesn't act before or after Block, it acts *upon* Block. The game description implies something that isn't true. My version correctly specifies what Parry actually does, and correctly specifies that here the percentage value is simply a number, not a fraction of something.

I actually never thought about it. But it does explain why I'm sometimes confused when certain nodes state "Increase armor by +45%" and you get like a huge boost in hero rating and sustainability, even though it are champions with no particular high armor (like Magik). I always thought: the armor score gains +45% (that would be max +100-150 armor score) but now I think that might be overall damage reduction!

@Kabam Miike can add this to the list of required clarifications of the game team.