Diminishing Returns

Can someone knowledgeable explain Diminishing Returns to me? Does it effect Masteries? If I max out things like Deep Wounds, Assassin or Mystic Dispersion am I actually hurting myself as opposed to only putting 3 points into them? I have read all that I can find about it but still don't actually understand how it works. Sorry if this is an ignorant question but I never claimed to be a genius and am confused on what all it will and won't effect.

Comments

Shrimkins

Diminishing returns only effect armor, block proficiency, crit damage, and crit chance.

If your masteries add to one of those stats then diminishing returns could definitely be negating some of it's effect.

If your masteries modify anything other than those 4 stats, then there is nothing to worry about.

spumington

@DNA3000 has a really good understanding of Diminishing Returns. Hopefully he sees this thread.

DaMunk

I'm curious how it affects Cruelty and Precision. No doubt it does but to what extent. My question is, is it still worth having 5 points in them? My guess is yes but if someone has already done the math an answer would be greatly appreciated.

Shrimkins

DaMunk wrote: »

I'm curious how it affects Cruelty and Precision. No doubt it does but to what extent. My question is, is it still worth having 5 points in them? My guess is yes but if someone has already done the math an answer would be greatly appreciated.

greater precision still adds about 10% crit chance +/- 2%ish depending on the champs starting crit rating. For example, crossbones actually gets about a 12.5% crit chance increase from 5/5 greater precision while my r4 5* hawkeye only gains about 9% since.

DaMunk

Thank you. Makes sense. I figured someone had done the math. I appreciate the information and reply.

DaMunk

To be a little more clear. I'm curious about the difference between having 4 points versus 5 in them. I imagine it's still worth it but if anyone has done testing I'd be interested in the results.

DNA3000

BCdiscman wrote: »

Can someone knowledgeable explain Diminishing Returns to me? Does it effect Masteries? If I max out things like Deep Wounds, Assassin or Mystic Dispersion am I actually hurting myself as opposed to only putting 3 points into them? I have read all that I can find about it but still don't actually understand how it works. Sorry if this is an ignorant question but I never claimed to be a genius and am confused on what all it will and won't effect.

Diminishing returns explicitly affects flat stats. All of the flat stats that used to be expressed as percentages are now given rating numbers. DR is the formula that converts the rating to a percentage. I posted a spreadsheet on the old forums that calculated DR that I need to get around to recreating the thread for, but it is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t10zVx4zvPsGVj1y1WQYy7HXQvYNpAwM9jZ2GkQeAJM

DR doesn't directly affect masteries, but when a mastery directly affects a flat stat then DR ultimately does affect the mastery, just indirectly. In other words, suppose you have a critical rating of 686, and you're fighting a champion that is 5/50 (I'll explain in a minute why that's important). That equates to a critical percentage of 25.54%. Now lets say you also have rank 5 precision, which gives you +425 critical rating. DR does not directly touch that. But what happens is your critical rating goes up from 686 to 686+425=1111. DR affects *that*, converting 1111 to 35.71%.

Deep Wounds increases the duration of bleeds by X seconds. That doesn't directly affect any flat stat, so that effect is unaffected by DR. Mystic Dispersion generates a certain amount of power when enemy buffs expire. That also doesn't affect a flat stat, so DR doesn't touch that either. Assassins also doesn't touch a flat stat, so DR doesn't affect it. Masteries that directly buff flat stats, which you can recognize because they say that add +XXX some number to another stat are indrectly affected by DR, because they buff a flat stat that itself is affected by DR.

If you look at my spreadsheet, you'll see that a flat stat doesn't directly convert to a percentage. The conversion is dependent on the enemy rank. That's the effect of challenger rating. The higher your enemy challenger rating, the lower the net percentage you will squeeze out of a particular flat stat. But you can also see, because I made a giant table of values, how that number changes with challenger rating. It is a relatively small effect. That's why you need to know what rank you are fighting against to properly calculate DR: Challenger Rating is a factor in the DR formula. And now you know what Challenger rating does.

The one gotcha on flat stats and converting to percentages: critical damage rating has a special modification. After you convert Stat to Percent, you multiply by 5 and add 50%. So a critical damage rating of 1000 would be 33.33% under DR. But your actual critical damage is 33.33 * 5 + 50% = 216.65%. Otherwise critical damage would be too low: the DR formula levels off at 1.0 or 100%. No flat stat can reach or exceed 100% under DR: DR applies an effective soft cap of 100% on all flat stat real values.

Although my spreadsheet is a good way to see a big overview of how the numbers change relative to challenger rating and relative to changing values in a big grid and you can download it and edit it yourself, if you just want something to directly calculate values for you then the Redditor DickSlug (from whom I got a lot of valuable information about how the mechanics worked in the first place) created an online calculator which you can use here: http://champions.azurewebsites.net/stats

Hope this helps.

Sighsohard

The biggest issue with diminishing returns is that champs that depend on crits are effected far more than champs that don't.

Example: x23 has low damage because she's a bleed champ. Most bleed champs have a low base damage since they apply so much damage via bleeds. But they have to be critting to bleed. No not only will they bleed less, they will also crit less and will be hitting softer since they already have a low base attack.

Immortal

Indirectly, DR does in fact affect assassin. Since the damage to assassin is tied to both crit rate and chance.

Unless your hits below 18% are crits, I often times find myself wondering if assassin is working or not. Many fights I find my champ ending it with a hit under 1k. BW ending with a 400 hit... etc ..

Assassin increases your base attack. The damage increase might not even be worth the points, depending on the opponent's conditions....

Personally, I avoid champs that is proc dependent. Especially when the proc is tied to crit or regen. That is out of us players hands... and like the 5 * featured crystals...expect the worse.

prior to 12.0

ok wolverine has a 14% chance to proc regen, I should be able to outheal the damage from this caltrop...

after 12. 0

wolverine is definitely NOT going to be able to outheal the caltrop node. The opponent seems to be tougher than before... ok he's not going to work, lets bring a bleed immune champ instead. Ok, need to allocate an afternoon to grinding arena for some units to be safe...

DaMunk

Great thread.

DNA3000

Sighsohard wrote: »

The biggest issue with diminishing returns is that champs that depend on crits are effected far more than champs that don't.

This is a potential balancing issue. Critical damage and critical chance are affected by, and thus indirectly capped by DR. Attack isn't. This is not the only situation in which DR is applied in a way I personally find to be inconsistent with balance requirements.

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

Sighsohard wrote: »

The biggest issue with diminishing returns is that champs that depend on crits are effected far more than champs that don't.

This is a potential balancing issue. Critical damage and critical chance are affected by, and thus indirectly capped by DR. Attack isn't. This is not the only situation in which DR is applied in a way I personally find to be inconsistent with balance requirements.

Right. The reasoning was that the Attack and Health are the distinguishing characteristics of the Champ. Although it's indirectly affected through the ways you mentioned.

DNA3000

Immortal wrote: »

Indirectly, DR does in fact affect assassin. Since the damage to assassin is tied to both crit rate and chance.

Just to be clear: DR directly affects stats. It therefore indirectly affects anything that directly affects stats. What you are talking about is not an effect that either impacts what assassins does or how to determine how assassins scales.

Because assassins increases attack, it directly increases your critical damage in direct proportion. That direct proportional increase is *not* affected by DR. To put it another way, if assassins doubled your attack, it would double your crit damage, and DR would not alter that. Doubling critical rating doesn't double crit damage because crit rating is affected by DR. That's what I mean when I say DR does not affect assassins. DR does not change the relationship between assassins' buff and your actual net damage increase. You get full value for every point you put in assassins.

BCdiscman

DNA3000 wrote: »

Diminishing returns explicitly affects flat stats. All of the flat stats that used to be expressed as percentages are now given rating numbers. DR is the formula that converts the rating to a percentage. I posted a spreadsheet on the old forums that calculated DR that I need to get around to recreating the thread for, but it is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t10zVx4zvPsGVj1y1WQYy7HXQvYNpAwM9jZ2GkQeAJM

DR doesn't directly affect masteries, but when a mastery directly affects a flat stat then DR ultimately does affect the mastery, just indirectly. In other words, suppose you have a critical rating of 686, and you're fighting a champion that is 5/50 (I'll explain in a minute why that's important). That equates to a critical percentage of 25.54%. Now lets say you also have rank 5 precision, which gives you +425 critical rating. DR does not directly touch that. But what happens is your critical rating goes up from 686 to 686+425=1111. DR affects *that*, converting 1111 to 35.71%.

Deep Wounds increases the duration of bleeds by X seconds. That doesn't directly affect any flat stat, so that effect is unaffected by DR. Mystic Dispersion generates a certain amount of power when enemy buffs expire. That also doesn't affect a flat stat, so DR doesn't touch that either. Assassins also doesn't touch a flat stat, so DR doesn't affect it. Masteries that directly buff flat stats, which you can recognize because they say that add +XXX some number to another stat are indrectly affected by DR, because they buff a flat stat that itself is affected by DR.

If you look at my spreadsheet, you'll see that a flat stat doesn't directly convert to a percentage. The conversion is dependent on the enemy rank. That's the effect of challenger rating. The higher your enemy challenger rating, the lower the net percentage you will squeeze out of a particular flat stat. But you can also see, because I made a giant table of values, how that number changes with challenger rating. It is a relatively small effect. That's why you need to know what rank you are fighting against to properly calculate DR: Challenger Rating is a factor in the DR formula. And now you know what Challenger rating does.

The one gotcha on flat stats and converting to percentages: critical damage rating has a special modification. After you convert Stat to Percent, you multiply by 5 and add 50%. So a critical damage rating of 1000 would be 33.33% under DR. But your actual critical damage is 33.33 * 5 + 50% = 216.65%. Otherwise critical damage would be too low: the DR formula levels off at 1.0 or 100%. No flat stat can reach or exceed 100% under DR: DR applies an effective soft cap of 100% on all flat stat real values.

Although my spreadsheet is a good way to see a big overview of how the numbers change relative to challenger rating and relative to changing values in a big grid and you can download it and edit it yourself, if you just want something to directly calculate values for you then the Redditor DickSlug (from whom I got a lot of valuable information about how the mechanics worked in the first place) created an online calculator which you can use here: http://champions.azurewebsites.net/stats

Hope this helps.

1st: Thank you. It seems overly complicated but the explanation really does help.

2nd: Why has KABAM themselves not bothered to explain it as well or precise with a nice spreadsheet like you provided? This is one of the more frustrating things about the game to me. Players must look to other players to get the answers about how the game does or does not work way to often.

3rd: Again thanks for the hard work you and others did to figure this out and your willingness to disseminate the information.

DNA3000

BCdiscman wrote: »

2nd: Why has KABAM themselves not bothered to explain it as well or precise with a nice spreadsheet like you provided? This is one of the more frustrating things about the game to me. Players must look to other players to get the answers about how the game does or does not work way to often.

There are probably lots of reasons, a full listing of which would be beyond the scope of the thread. But I wish it was different, and I hope the game development industry as a whole one day makes this problem a curious thing of the past. Not holding my breath.

FalseOracle

They need to just make an "Official Guide to MCOC". I've been asking for that since before the game even came out. Just kidding. But I have been asking/looking for something like that for years.

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Sighsohard wrote: »

The biggest issue with diminishing returns is that champs that depend on crits are effected far more than champs that don't.

This is a potential balancing issue. Critical damage and critical chance are affected by, and thus indirectly capped by DR. Attack isn't. This is not the only situation in which DR is applied in a way I personally find to be inconsistent with balance requirements.

Right. The reasoning was that the Attack and Health are the distinguishing characteristics of the Champ. Although it's indirectly affected through the ways you mentioned.

They never gave that reason that I recall, and there are easy ways to make criticals and attack buffs internally consistent. The most logical one would be to create an attack buff stat, however much the players probably wouldn't be crazy about that (which didn't stop them from making critical chance and critical damage effectively soft capped by DR).

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Sighsohard wrote: »

The biggest issue with diminishing returns is that champs that depend on crits are effected far more than champs that don't.

This is a potential balancing issue. Critical damage and critical chance are affected by, and thus indirectly capped by DR. Attack isn't. This is not the only situation in which DR is applied in a way I personally find to be inconsistent with balance requirements.

Right. The reasoning was that the Attack and Health are the distinguishing characteristics of the Champ. Although it's indirectly affected through the ways you mentioned.

They never gave that reason that I recall, and there are easy ways to make criticals and attack buffs internally consistent. The most logical one would be to create an attack buff stat, however much the players probably wouldn't be crazy about that (which didn't stop them from making critical chance and critical damage effectively soft capped by DR).

Tried to find the Post on the old Forum, but I was redirected. If I find it, I'll attach it. The reference, (and I'm paraphrasing), was that the Attack and Health were unique to each Champ, so they were not changed. Basically, what differentiated them.
(I believe it may have been in the Elder's War Post, but it's not the same Announcement in the Changelog)

DNA3000

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Tried to find the Post on the old Forum, but I was redirected. If I find it, I'll attach it. The reference, (and I'm paraphrasing), was that the Attack and Health were unique to each Champ, so they were not changed. Basically, what differentiated them.
(I believe it may have been in the Elder's War Post, but it's not the same Announcement in the Changelog)

I'm dubious, mostly because it is mathematically incongruent for attack and health to be affected by diminishing returns. In other words, given the system they implemented they couldn't do it even if they wanted to.

Note that I didn't say they could apply DR to attack and health: I said there was a theoretical way to apply DR to attack *buffs*. Not the same thing. Attack and Health might be "unique" to each champ, but attack buffs are not.

To someone familiar with the mathematics, Kabam trying to justify why they didn't apply DR to attack and health is no more weird than Kabam trying to justify why they didn't change the color of attack and health. Attack and health don't have color.

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Tried to find the Post on the old Forum, but I was redirected. If I find it, I'll attach it. The reference, (and I'm paraphrasing), was that the Attack and Health were unique to each Champ, so they were not changed. Basically, what differentiated them.
(I believe it may have been in the Elder's War Post, but it's not the same Announcement in the Changelog)

I'm dubious, mostly because it is mathematically incongruent for attack and health to be affected by diminishing returns. In other words, given the system they implemented they couldn't do it even if they wanted to.

Note that I didn't say they could apply DR to attack and health: I said there was a theoretical way to apply DR to attack *buffs*. Not the same thing. Attack and Health might be "unique" to each champ, but attack buffs are not.

To someone familiar with the mathematics, Kabam trying to justify why they didn't apply DR to attack and health is no more weird than Kabam trying to justify why they didn't change the color of attack and health. Attack and health don't have color.

Fair enough.

Immortal

DNA always love your post, very insightful. Please help!

Are the champs we face the same as the one we control? I noticed in different area of the game (I...e monthly etc, act v etc) the same champ, lets use Starlord in ACT V for example, he is same * tier, same rank, same level, but at maxxed sig (sig200), yet sig 200 stats are lower than what is stated in mine at sig 100. I don't understand how the stats would be so different.

When fighting AI, I noticed sometimes if I hit while the opponent is blocking, some of the damage would be 0. Which confuses me. They don't have perfect block, not sure how that would be possible. Unless the AI also has a set of so called "masteries"?

If these champs are pulled from the same data as ours, how come many champs when they use their heavy or s2, they could defy and go beyond what ours is capable of? I.e. Luke Cage map 6 , when he uses his s2, he dances across the screen... etc

thanks in advance!

DNA3000

Immortal wrote: »

Are the champs we face the same as the one we control? I noticed in different area of the game (I...e monthly etc, act v etc) the same champ, lets use Starlord in ACT V for example, he is same * tier, same rank, same level, but at maxxed sig (sig200), yet sig 200 stats are lower than what is stated in mine at sig 100. I don't understand how the stats would be so different.

When fighting AI, I noticed sometimes if I hit while the opponent is blocking, some of the damage would be 0. Which confuses me. They don't have perfect block, not sure how that would be possible. Unless the AI also has a set of so called "masteries"?

If these champs are pulled from the same data as ours, how come many champs when they use their heavy or s2, they could defy and go beyond what ours is capable of? I.e. Luke Cage map 6 , when he uses his s2, he dances across the screen... etc

The short answer is that the computer usually has the same champions we do, but don't have to.

Slightly longer answer: there are a lot of different versions of every champion floating around. It is possible, for example, that when we rank up a champion that isn't changing a stat on some singular prototype champion, our 4/40 Star Lord gets replaced with a 5/1 Starlord which we then rank up (in fact I think this is likely). The Rhino in RoL doesn't have unstoppable because he's a copy of Rhino from before that feature was added to the champion in general (at least this was true last time I fought him) It is entirely possible that the champions we face are sometimes copies of the same champions in our roster, and sometimes altered for balance purposes in different content.

On top of that, there are other reasons why we might see behavior we can't replicate. The computer can probably command the champions to do things we can't due to the limitations of us having to actually use controls. The computer can instruct a champion, at high difficulty, to release heavy attacks faster than I think we can: even faster than I think we could with superhuman reflexes because when we do it we have to hold the heavy for at least some finite amount of time before the game will recognize that as a hold and release rather than a tap. The computer doesn't seem to have that limitation. I suspect the computer can also execute movement commands that human fingers would find difficult to do, like long swipes to move across the screen during attacks.

Bottom line: the champs we fight are not necessarily identical to the champs we possess. That isn't always a bad thing. On top of that sometimes the champs we fight can have abilities comparable to our masteries or to node buffes that we might not see when we look at them. And the computer can simply tell champions to do things that we can't because we are limited by physical limits and the rules the game controls impose.

Immortal

This formula that you listed above and azure's champion site, the critical damage % shown, does it already include

" 33.33 * 5 + 50% = 216.65% " in the calculation? To find the potential crit damage, are there other variables that's missing? I'm confused about the crit damage %. How is it calculated into the damage we see on screen?

Thanks in advance!

DNA3000

Immortal wrote: »

This formula that you listed above and azure's champion site, the critical damage % shown, does it already include

" 33.33 * 5 + 50% = 216.65% " in the calculation? To find the potential crit damage, are there other variables that's missing? I'm confused about the crit damage %. How is it calculated into the damage we see on screen?

Thanks in advance!

The basic formula converts flat stats to percentages. Critical damage has an explicit extra step: multiply by 5 and then add 50%. Those two numbers - the five and the fifty percent - are themselves special constants in the game and can be tuned by the devs in theory. The reason for this extra step is that the DR formula only generates numbers between zero and one, or if you prefer between zero and one hundred percent. That makes sense for many of the flat stats like critical chance. But it doesn't for critical damage, which is supposed to scale across bigger numbers. So the devs tweaked the computation for critical damage basically to make the number bigger.

Immortal

Thanks for explaining.

So if I am comparing

5★ rogue against lets say winter soldier.

L attack 512 damage, 1609 when crit.

Her base crit damage is 759 (187.5%), with lesser precision and precision maxxed 625 on azure's champ site would be 66.9%, when measured against a CR 100 rating champ, the critical damage % is 254.5%. Do I take the 512 light attack and multiply it by the crit damage %? The numbers don't come out right.

Thanks for helping!

GroundedWisdom

DNA3000 wrote: »

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Tried to find the Post on the old Forum, but I was redirected. If I find it, I'll attach it. The reference, (and I'm paraphrasing), was that the Attack and Health were unique to each Champ, so they were not changed. Basically, what differentiated them.
(I believe it may have been in the Elder's War Post, but it's not the same Announcement in the Changelog)

I'm dubious, mostly because it is mathematically incongruent for attack and health to be affected by diminishing returns. In other words, given the system they implemented they couldn't do it even if they wanted to.

Note that I didn't say they could apply DR to attack and health: I said there was a theoretical way to apply DR to attack *buffs*. Not the same thing. Attack and Health might be "unique" to each champ, but attack buffs are not.

To someone familiar with the mathematics, Kabam trying to justify why they didn't apply DR to attack and health is no more weird than Kabam trying to justify why they didn't change the color of attack and health. Attack and health don't have color.

So I found the Post. It was that they easily scale together and act as Base Numbers. They are not affected by DR. I conjectured the bit about being the Champ's distinguishing qualities. Although that can be said, since no two seem to be the same. You were correct. My memory is not always clear. Lol.