Mechanical Questions Thread
Hi
I'm Mark_GGG, and I know how PoE works. If you'd also like to, this thread is for you. We're trying out something new as a way for people with mechanical questions to get answers. People can post mechanical questions in this thread, and every few days I'll come by and answer as many as I can. This is specifically for questions about game mechanics - I can't tell you why a balance change was made, whether something will get nerfed, or what option is "best" for a given build. So if you have questions like "Does X support Y?", "What order do A, B, and C happen in when I get hit?", or "Why do the calculations come out this way when I take this passive?", I can help. Questions like "What will the next league be?", "How do people level so fast?", or "What were you thinking when you nerfed X?" are off topic for this thread, and I'm not going to be answering them. I'm not perfect, and some things I'll have to look up. It might take me longer to get an answer to your question than someone else's - please be patient in this case. I will be doing my best to answer every mechanical question asked in the thread, although this is on top of my other work, so again, please be patient in waiting for me to get to things. If you ask about announced, but unreleased content (such as unique items shown in previews before the patch that adds them to the game), please understand such things are not always final when shown, and not all the answers might exist yet. This doesn't mean I won't still be replying in other parts of the forum, so don't feel you have to ask things here to get answers. That's pretty much all I have to say, so let's get the questions rolling! --- Here's a link to just the GGG posts in this thread, for people who just want to see answers. Last edited by Jess_GGG on Apr 26, 2021, 8:53:09 PM Last bumped on Apr 26, 2021, 8:55:20 PM
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Thanks for the questions!
"It's worded that way because that's what it does, and having the wording say something else would be problematic. If you mean why it works that way, then I'm afraid that's an example of the kind of question that's outside the scope of this thread. I can tell you how it does work (you need to crit something, so your totems critting something won't cut it, but once active, since totems use your skills, they benefit from it), but not why that decision was made. "Probably not, although I don't have a full logical proof of this. Practically, definitely not - the amount of extra processing added to common stat calculations by that would be unreasonable, if it were possible. "There is not one limit that applies to all skills, but there is generally a requirement that skill have a limit for technical reasons (as well as potential balance and or performance reasons) to the number of simultaneous hits that can occur. "Well outside the scope of the thread sorry. I have no idea about this. "There is a technical limit to the visible DPS on a skill popup, due to that being stored in an integer variable. There is a technical limit on the amount of damage a given hit can deal (same dealio), but to my knowledge not a technical limit on the number of times you could hit a target in a second, so I do not believe there's a technical limit on actual DPS dealt to a specific enemy. There is definitely a mechanical limit to DPS, because there are limits on how high the values of stats you can obtain from passives/gear/etc. There is some theoretical "best DPS" build* that could exist with perfect gear, that would have more DPS than any other actually possible build. This limit is significantly below where any technical limitation would occur on actual damage. "Not really the kind of question for this thread, but no. Those are impossible as a consequence of other important decisions, not a decision to make them impossible. "Global "In general, if a modifier can modify the base behaviour of an item (what a white item of that type would do) then it will be local. There are very few exceptions to this, but they do exist, so the answer to the question is no. Note that this is not a case where it "could be either" - the modifier depends on the number of frenzy charges your character has, which is necessarily external to the item. A local modifier like this would make no sense, as the weapon itself can't have frenzy charges. local modifiers only affect the item, and are self-contained - if the effect cares about the player, it's inherently non-local. *It's technically possible that there are multiple such builds with exactly equal DPS that are all "best", but very unlikely. | |
"Yes. "No. Buffs can be identified by having a visible icon with a green border. Anything without that icon or with a different border is not a buff. "This is true of all damage over time, and always has been. Flat added damage only makes sense for hits, and damage conversion cannot apply to damage over time (although that one might be able to change in the distant future). "No. | |
"Skill Tooltips intentionally only show the stats that are specific to that skill. They don't show global things that affect all skills. If you want to see everything a skill does, including all your global stats, the character panel, not the skill popup, is the place to do that. "A bug. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. "Yes. "It's just as interruptable as any other skill. "You get stunned. Currently, there's a bug where the movement continues, meaning you slide while playing the stun animation, but you're no longer damaging things. The bug will be fixed in a future patch. "Yes. Experience for a kill is assigned to players within range, regardless of whether any of those players are the ones which killed it. "If you're actually getting "several screens away" before they die, they probably aren't dying at all, since time stops passing for things outside the player's wake range. "No. "Also no. Magic strongboxes inherently have increased quantity/rarity of items for being magic, but this is unrelated to any prefices they have. Similarly for rares and uniques. "Mechanically, yes. "This is incorrect. The passive says "20% more chance to Evade Attacks while not on full Energy Shield". This may seem pedantic, but given that wording is very specific in some cases, it's not a good idea to use quote marks around something that isn't actually the text used in the game. "I have no idea what you mean by this. The wiki page for the passive shows the correct stat, and the history of that wiki page does not appeat to show it ever having being wrong. Regardless, the wiki is sometimes inaccurate, and should never be trusted over actual mechanical text in the game. "This is incorrect. That's fundamentally not how evasion works. I'm assuming you're looking at the Estiamted chance to evade shown in the character panel. This is an estimate, based on the accuracy rating of an average monster of your level. Your character does not ever have a specific chance to evade. Chance to evade is different for different hits, determined by comparing your evasion to the attacker's accuracy, not a fixed global value on the character. "Technically no, in that it's tied to your actual chance to evade each hit you take, which isn't (and can' be) shown to the player, but is not a stat (because it must be calculated for each hit). "The Estimated chance to evade shown in the character panel is inaccurate for any pupose. It can give a rough idea of how evady you're likely to be against monsters of the same level as you, but no more than that. That said, this modifier to chance to evade should in theory apply both to your actual chance to evade, and to the estimate stat (which are entirely separate things). This is a (display only) bug, which I will investigate. "It does. "Of course. The projectile loses pierce chance, so anything calculated based on that pierce chance also changes. "While taunted, a monster's AI cannot consider any object as a potential target except the taunter. "Previously, some unique monsters (act bosses and map bosses) that were taunted gained immunity to further taunts for 9 seconds. This was removed as part of the 2.3.0 Taunt rework. There is now no such mechanic used. "No. The only effect of this type was the taunt immunity when taunted, which was removed in 2.3.0. "No. However, if the taunter is outside the monster's aggro radius, they're an invalid target, meaning the monster has no targets to choose from (since objects that aren't the taunter can't be targeted). "The totem is a seperate object from the player. If the totem taunts an enemy, the totem is the taunt target. "Yes. "The primary difference is that the reflected damage is reflected damage, which carries a whole bunch of rules baggage. Reflected damage cannot trigger on-hit effects, for example. The other two are just hits of regular secondary damage you deal to yourself. They are more different than they are similar. "You've made two errors I can see in your post - you list a mulitplier of 150% for WED support, when the actual value is 140%, and you treat Reduced Mana support as having a 75% mana multiplier, which it does not - it has no mana multiplier, but aplies the stat "reduced mana cost" to supported skills. Being a reduction, this is additive with the "increased mana cost" from your jewels. The mana multipliers total to a 942% total multiplier, to the base cost of 15. This then has a 375% increased applied (400% increased from jewels - 75% reduced from RM support), giving the total of 699. (Note that each step of this process uses integer maths, so any fractional parts are discarded). "It does not have any. Tags are a feature of gems, not skills. This skill does not have a gem. "Yes. "No. The skill is a spell, not an attack, and is already triggered. Supporting it with a cast on trigger support gem would mean it would be cast on that trigger. Because it already has a trigger, the spell would then be disabled for having two triggers. "Yes. I have fixed the description locally. "First Contagion is added to the monsters, then Essence Drain. If they were not already under the effect of debuffs, contagion will be the "first" debuff on them, until that contagion runs out. "Yes, from the taunted enemies. "Bladefall cannot be supported by Rapid Decay. "Yes "Yes, but the skill needs to be one that can be supported by those gems for them to have any effect. "Checking whether a hit is a critical strike or not is always done when that specific hit is calculated, and cannot be done at any other time, because your critical strike chance can be different for different hits. The critical strike roll is only made once, when the skill is cast, just like most skills. All hits from the same action have the same roll, but are potentially checking against different chances to crit, so may or may not crit on different enemies. "Yes. "Teams cannot be correctly set on the client for objects that aren't actors. This is a known bug which is difficult to solve because migrating team serialisation code to generic object code breaks existing and required functionality in other cases. "You only play a block animation if a hit would have stunned you if not blocked. Since you avoided the stun, the hit would not stun you, and there is no block animtion. "No. Conditional modifiers cannot apply to DoT, because the condition could change during the DoT. "Since I know there are some people who'll jump in and accusme me of lying if I'm not specific, they're psuedorandom. For all practical purposes, they're random, but computers don't do "true" randomness. "Those are generated normally. If you do enough maps, you'll see things like that. They aren't caused by any hidden mods. "No. The item directly applies the damage to enemies, your stats are not involved. "I have a few minor plans to include commonly requested information, but ultimately the volume of questsions means things like linking them all in the first post will be completely impractical. The thread can be searched, viewed with the dev-posts-only filter, and importantly, specific responses can be linked to by Support or anyone else answering questions in future. "You answered your own question here - because it's now a duration skill, and Rapid Decay only supports duration skills. "Rapid Decay only supports duration skills. "No. Lightning Arrow does not deal area damage. "Yes. "Yes. This node does nothing to change how leech applies to you, it just leeches life. "Scold's Bridle self-damage cannot crit. "The diamond flask does not affect chance to crit. Chance to crit is worked out, inclduing all modifiers such as Assassin's Mark, then compared to the Crit Roll of the skill. The Diamond flask does nothing at this point, it affects when the crit roll is made, by rolling twice and taking the better of the two rolls. "This is the main thing I was referring to under having plans to include commonly requested information in the first post of this thread. "No. "Yes. "No. Trap damage modifiers do not apply to minions summoned by traps. Cluster Trap and Multitrap give "less damage", not "less trap damage" - the reason it applies is because it is not a modifier to "trap damage"[/quote] "Depends on the monster's AI. "Trying to get a comprehensive list of all on kill effects in the game is beyond the scope of this thread. Are there specific ones you're unsure of? In pretty much all cases, you need to kill something to trigger an on-kill effect (Headhunter is a notable exception, which we're looking to find good wording for). "Yes, but it's not going to come in the form of some big list of things that work with other things. It comes from understanding the mechanics, which determine all the results. In general, any of your modifier stats apply to anything you do (that is the thing they apply to). "Yes, Yes, Yes. The explosions are caused by you and use your stats. The skills are just like any other skills, and you can check them in the character panel to see things apply. "Damage over time is damage. The Sulfur flask providfes increased damage. This applies. "The answer is no to all of these cases - Temporal Chains does not increase the duration of anything. It slows down how fast timed effects think time is passing. This affects anything which has an icon with a timer. | |
" Assuming starting from zero charges, and only a single enemy, within discharge range, which never dies (and taking the Resolute Technique option as it's easier to describe) 1) You hit with Mjölner, with a non-critical hit. 2) You gain a power charge. 3) First discharge triggers. - 3a) Discharge calculates damage, based on your one power charge. - 3b) Discharge consumes all charges. - 3c) You lost a power charge, so gain an endurance charge, which is replaced by you gaining your maximum number of endurance charges. - 3d) Discharge deals damage, hitting the enemy, with a non-critical hit. - 3e) You gain a power charge. 4) Second discharge triggers. - 4a) Discharge calculates damage, based on your one power charge and maximum number of endurance charges. - 4b) Discharge consumes all charges. - 4c) You lost a power charge, so gain an endurance charge, which is replaced by you gaining your maximum number of endurance charges. - 4d) Discharge deals damage, hitting the enemy, with a non-critical hit. - 4e) You gain a power charge. 5) Third discharge triggers. - 5a-e) Same as the second Discharge. 6) You currently have one power charge, and your maximum number of endurance charges, and have finished your attack. "Minions do not "have the spell tag". Minion spell gems have the spell tag, because they are spells. They deal no damage. There is a fundamental difference between your Raise Zombie spell (which is a spell cast by you that creates a minion and no damage (but would be affected by spell damage modifiers if it did), and the Zombie's Melee attack (which is a attack, not a spell, not used by you, that deals attack damage because it's an attack). The damage of the Zombie's melee attack is not the damage of the Raise Zombie spell, and is pretty much entirely unrelated to it. "Lacerate when dual wielding always does a main-hand hit followed by an off-hand hit. "That a) only applied to combining main-hand and off-hand hits into a single hit, which is not the case here, and b) was fixed in 2.2.0. "Yes, they include all those things. "That is a bug, probably due to mines not previously being able to be dropped in multiples. "Yes. All damage done with an attack using a bow is bow damage. "Bleeding an Poison are entirely different mechanics with different rules. Bleeding has always been attack-only. "The order of active skills in sockets determines the order they will trigger in if triggered by the same event. It has no effect on dps calculation, and the position of supports never matters. "Assuming you take a hit that deals enough damage to trigger each of those skill's thresholds at the same time, yes. "Because they are using (old) shield charge, which has built-in stunning based on distance. "That isn't possible. There is no amount of increased duration and/or projectile speed that ensures the sparks will definitely reach a point more than 150 units from the character. It's entirely possible for infiinite-duration sparks to bounce/circle around within that radius, and never leave it. In general, sparks will be more likely to stay within the radius in an enclosed space with walls to bounce off, and more likely to leave it in open areas, but it's still not guarunteed. Last edited by Mark_GGG on Jun 10, 2016, 1:48:55 AM
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"Because of a mistake made when merging multiple changes to that file, which reverted my fix. It will be correct on live soon, if it isn't already. "Any given hit either does or does not apply poison. It cannot apply multiple instances of poison. "Yes. "No. In addition, you are mistaken about what increased Projectile Speed works. It does not increased the distance projectiles travel in general. There are a very few specific cases of projectiles that "fade out" over time, in which case increasing their speed has a knock-on effect on how far they get before this process completes, but that's all. The effect of increasing projectile speed is just to increase the speed, not the range. "No, because at 100 units, Powerful Precision grants 18% pierce chance. You're also incorrect about the chance granted at 20 units, which would be 90%. The third line would be correct if you replaced the distance with 120 units, which is the distance at (and beyond) which Powerful Precision grants no pierce chance. The pierce chance is 100% up to 10 units away, and scales linearly with distance down to 0 at 120 units away. "You are incorrect. The adding sockets stat is processed first, adding sockets to the items. The fully linked stat is processed after that, and links all the sockets the item has, even the additional ones. However, before everyone starts wasting currency trying to roll this, these two mods can't roll together on the same chest. It would have to be a unique chest with both those mods in order to have both of them. "This was covered in my first response. "You aren't supposed to know. This isn't a game mechanic, it's a behind-the-scenes detail of how things work at a low level. "Blast Rain was bugged and was checking spell dodge rather than evasion/regular dodge. | |
"Yes, it increases any numerical quality of the curse. "As above - yes, except for Onslaught, which is not a numerical property, but a boolean state. A character either does or does not have Onslaught, and 20% increased "having Onslaught" is still having it. EDIT: As has been pointed out, this is incorrect. The question said their Diamond Flask was giving increased critical strike chance (which would be affected by this modifier), but Diamond Flasks do not increase critical strike chance, they make it Lucky, which like Onslaught, is boolean, and cannot be increased. "You only used the skill once, and it repeated. It rolls once per skill use. "Because it's a projectile support, and those are projectile skills. Making this specific interaction more detailed by implementing a specific new skill type for things that inherently pierce is both more trouble than it's worth and less futureproof. "This depends on the traps. The traps don't stop existing until they've finished using their skill. If the skill is one that calcualtes damage at that point, such as Ice Nova, then the traps will be there at the time damage is calcualted, and apply. If they fire projectiles which don't hit anything until after the trap has already gone, then they won't be there when that projectile hits something and calculates it's damage. "Poison is modified by skill duration modifiers, so yes. "It does give charges. However, if you move on and leave the aftershock to kill things, those might not still be in the aura when they're killed. It also doesn't get around the only one-charge-per-skill restriction, so if you kill something with the initial hit and get the charge, you won't get a second charge from the aftershock. "All local modifiers on a weapon contribute to that weapon's damage, which can be seen on the item. This total is what you get as base damage for equipping the weapon, to which your modifiers apply. "Movement speed modifiers and Attack Speed modifiers. Where they come from is irrelevant. "They are Auras, and would be affected by increased Aura radius, and increased Effect of Auras. However, you do not have those modifiers. They are not Aura Skills, nor are they Auras you Cast. Thus they can't be affected by increased radius of Aura Skills, or increased effect of non-Curse Auras you Cast. "Yes. The penalty is "less Damage", and the skeletons are dealing damage, so are affected. "No. The bonus is "increased Totem Damage", and the skeletons are not dealing Totem Damage. "Yes. The damage is not limited to attacks and/or spells, so will apply to all hits of damage. Last edited by Mark_GGG on Jun 28, 2016, 8:31:32 PM
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"I'm not sure what you're referring to, sorry. "This part is roughly correct, yes. "This part is not. What you're referring to are modifiers to damage taken, and are entirely separate to modifiers to damage dealt. They are inherently not part of the same calculation. The result of the first calculation is your damage, this is then mitigated by resistances/armour/etc, to obtain the base damage dealt. These modifiers apply to that value. They follow the same rules as all modifiers - increased/reduced modifiers of this type are additive, more/less modifiers are multiplicative. "Correct on both counts. "Reflected damage cannot crit. But you are correct that you're hitting yourself, so it's your own accuracy, etc. Reflected damage cannot be modified by damage modifiers, and cannot cause on-hit effects, including penetration. "No. It does not do this and is not intended to. I don't understand why you think it would be? "Reflect can't trigger anything. It does not trigger any on-hit effects, of which on-block effects are a subset. "This is currently bugged, thank you for bringing it to my attention. It will be fixed in the future. "You aren't doing any damage. This is the basic reason - that skill cannot possibly deal damage. It summons a minion, which, once it's been summoned and thus has it's own entirely separate set of stats that aren't part of that skill or directly calculatable from that skill, that minion uses an attack that does damage. This is inherently not DPS of the Summon Raging Spirit skill, and cannot be displayed as such. The calculation of damage accounts for well over 6000 lines of code. Duplicating all of that with different inputs in order to attempt to predict the damage output of a monster that doesn't exist yet and thus has no stats is infeasible and would lead to massive problems with having to maintain the two sets of calculations in parallel. There are improvements planned for the character screen in the long term, but for now the fundamental fact that the minion's damage is not the skill's damage, and has nothing to do with the skill's damage, makes this effectively impossible. | |
"No. "You are incorrect - those kills are credited to your character. They are, however, inherently not main-hand, nor off-hand kills, which means that passive cannot apply to them. "Yes. " "Yes. "No. Poison is not a Warcry. "Not at all "Essence Drain will have "increased Skill Effect Duration", which is a stat that applies to poison (among other things). "I have no idea what you're talking about, sorry. There is no "Thorns" damage in PoE. "Yes. "Technically, they are Notables, although since you can't socket an Inspired Learning jewel near them, this doesn't matter mechanically. I'm not aware of any other specific name for them. "These are, as you've correctly noted, conversions. Converted damage (or converted anything) is the thing it's converted to, and is affected by modifiers to it, but it is also affected by modifiers to the thing it used to be. So the fire damage that was converted to physical is affected by increased fire damage, increased physical damage, and increased attack damage, and all of these stack additively, since they're increases. "This is incorrect, but grounded in truth. "This is extremely incorrect. Gem tags do not indicate which modifiers apply to something. That's not their purpose, nor could they be adequate for that purpose. Gem tags exist to classify gems into groups, primarily so we can give "+1 to level of socketed TAG gems" and have that mean something. They also help clarify the types of skill, such as which skills are curses. Bow skills do not get the "Projectile" tag, because they already have the "Bow" tag, which implies they are projectile skills, and makes having the tag redundant. "Correct. It does not fire any projectiles. "By classifying it's damage as "projectile damage", just as was done for Rain of Arrows, because this made intuitive sense. | |
"Global "Distinguishing between whether a mod is local or global is done by whether that mod could affect the base properties of the item, not other mods it has. Weapons don't have a base value of lightning damage to increase, they do have a value of physical damage to increase. "Yes. "No. The aftershock is a specific part of the skill that hits things. Degens are inherently not the aftershock. "Correct. "Minion Damage" modifiers work by giving the minion the eqiuvalent "Damage" modifier as a base property. "It is the same as case 2, but your description of case 2 was wrong. It only applies to the hit. "This is hit-only, like all conditional damage modifiers. Degen can't check those. "Only the hit has a charge distance. This only applies to the hit. "Correct. "Leech first, then reflect. "If it happened in that order, that would not be possible - you'd die. That's why it doesn't happen in that order. "No, because you're moving at the time it deals damage. "No. Flameblast will go off when you start casting Rallying Cry, not when Rallying Cry takes effect, which is later. "No. "Base damage is worked out by taking the base damage of the skill, plus any relevant additional damage. Conversion (extra X damage as Y is a form of conversion) all happens before modifiers. Converted damage will continue to be converted to new types if you have more conversion stats - if you have some physical as cold and some cold as fire, you'll have some of your physical damage as fire (via cold). Damage can be affected by any modifiers which could apply to any of the types it was converted through. So that fire damage that was cold damage that was physical damage, is affected by any modifiers which would apply to physical damage, or to cold damage, or to fire damage. No modifier can apply to the same damage twice. "Technically this would fall under your "something unique about this mod" category, in that this mod is bugged. It's applying multiplicatively, rather than correctly as an additive modifier. This has been fixed locally and will be in a future patch. "Because Vaal Rain of Arrows removes your movement speed. Cyclone moves you at your movement speed, Whirling Blades ignores movement speed and moves you based on your attack time. "Taking 10 damage and healing 10 damage each frame is inherently different from taking no damage. Each needs to be processed and can trigger different things (ES recharge inhibition, for example). The functions that apply degen can't apply regen, and vice versa. "The Most Delicious Passive Skill applies elemental proliferation to your hits. This is inherently affected by area modifiers. |