And the mask comes off.

[Codewalker]

Both. The maximum hit chance is 95%, and the minimum is 5%.

The reason for this is rooted in the D20 rules that the original designers (mostly Jack) were fond of, having played games like Champions tabletop. Rolling a 20 is a critical success, rolling a 1 is a critical failure, and both usually apply unconditionally regardless of any other skills or variables. If instead of dice you are using a computer to generate random numbers, a 1 out of 20 chance is 5%.

[brothermutant]

Yeah, that makes more sense. I liked the chance I could miss, frankly. Otherwise everyone would slot acc and dmg and that's it. I mean lets face it, who cares how much it cost to cast the attack or how long it took to recharge (assuming you had a semi-decent attack chain) so long as you ALWAYS hit and did MAX dmg. Wouldn't be as fun IMHO.

[Arcana]

I can say from long experience if I popped a small Yellow inspiration on my blaster - my next attack almost always missed - it was so obvious that I would use a lesser damage attack that activated quick and then the major attack.

I played the game for 8+ years and it was a standing joke - I would face palm if I nuked right after the small Yellow and whiffed. I would go arrrgggghhh - forgot! I know Arcana you are going to tell me it was not true but it happened with Clockwork regularity.

I had a standing invitation on the forums for anyone who thought they could either demonstrate this to me in-game, or log it.

Apparently, turning on logging made the effect go away.  It seems chatlogs were an accuracy buff.

Keep in mind, I spent hundreds of hours investigating *all* credible or common reports like this.  On the basis of those investigations I discovered that luck and insight inspirations were mislabeled, a reward randon number generator was bugged, two separate defense buffs accidentally got dropped from the code but not the patch notes, and a bunch of other strange or extremely hard to find (prior to real numbers at least) bugs.  I was definitely not ignoring those reports.  But this sort of thing would have been trivial for me to detect if it actually existed, and I tested for this effect on different powersets, on different archetypes, at different times, on different servers, in different combat conditions.  I had people tell me that the reason why I couldn't find it was because you had to pop an odd number of yellows and use an attack on a whole number animation frame for it to work - and I specifically engineered a test to check for that.

Understand: everyone who believed this believed it was all but obvious.  Exactly zero of them could either make it happen in my presence or have it happen while they were chatlogging.  It *only* happened when the only thing looking were players, and nothing was actually recording the event.  Also, something most players didn't know: the servers logged these events.  On two separate occasions I asked the devs to check *server logs* based on a player's report of the event, and the servers disagreed with the player's recollection of the events.  It took too much effort to ask the devs to check logs unless I was absolutely certain, and after going to bat for the players twice to check on this kind of event I imposed a "you have to convince me first" rule before I would take it to the devs.  For this specific issue, no player ever achieved that mark.

[BraveStar]

I never found accuracy a problem as much as endurance. I don't remember when they changed the way endurance was handled, but in later years I remember having lowbie characters run out of endurance half way through fighting a group with 2 minions and a Lieutenant and I always hated having to take a long break to rest seemingly between every encounter (again, on lowbies - I admit it, I'm an alt-o-holic).

[ivanhedgehog]

Nope. Streakbreaker only worked on forcing misses into hits. It never forced a hit into a miss. Ever. (For players *and* NPCs.)

And it forced hits based on the tohit of the hits involved. Read up on it. It wasn't "nice...I guess". It was pretty awesome. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Streakbreaker#The_Streak_Breaker

And I thoght the streaker breaker stopped us from superspeeding around atlas park nekkid.....

[dwturducken]

[opprime2828]

I never found accuracy a problem as much as endurance. I don't remember when they changed the way endurance was handled, but in later years I remember having lowbie characters run out of endurance half way through fighting a group with 2 minions and a Lieutenant and I always hated having to take a long break to rest seemingly between every encounter (again, on lowbies - I admit it, I'm an alt-o-holic).

Endurance was both a blessing and a curse.  We need some sort of gating mechanism to keep us from spamming constantly, and recharge alone can't be it, because the only thing WORSE than having no endurance would be having plenty but having no attacks recharged.  Ever fight an NPC who did massive -recharge and you know what I'm talking about.  Still, the way lowbies would run out of endurance so quickly was just painful.   
 
I still prefer it to "builders" like Champions Online uses. The idea is cool "lets give them an attack that they can use even when out of endurance, to refill" but since so many builders just felt like weak attacks, I felt like I was being FORCED to use my weaker attacks all the time just to keep my endurance up.  It made my toon feel weaker, overall. I hated it.
 
The Secret World relies on counters and gating some powers behind having "resources" built by certain attacks.  This was slightly better than Champions' version, since some of the resource builders were decent attacks, but it involved more micromanaging than I really wanted, and forced you in to very specific attack chains.  Build, build, build, build, build, use big three resource consumer, build two more times, use big five resource consumer, start over.   Sometimes you don't want to start out with smaller attacks.  You want to run in, Nova, and then clean up if you can.  If you have to build "resources" to Nova, that becomes impossible. You ALWAYS have to start off with the same attacks.
 
I'd love it if an MMO came up with a system where energy for attacks was based on endurance that naturally regenerated like CoH, but most attacks could still be activated when out of endurance, just with reduced effectiveness. So you start a fight with your blaster and it lasts longer than you expected, but you have no blues? You can keep fighting but as you get more and more tired you start doing less and less damage until you take a break or pop a blue.
 
Something that lets you keep fighting and avoid a faceplant when you're out of end, but still gates you a little and makes you slow down between fights, etc. 

[brothermutant]

I never found accuracy a problem as much as endurance. I don't remember when they changed the way endurance was handled, but in later years I remember having lowbie characters run out of endurance half way through fighting a group with 2 minions and a Lieutenant and I always hated having to take a long break to rest seemingly between every encounter (again, on lowbies - I admit it, I'm an alt-o-holic).

Dude, invest in those +recov and +recov/+regen IOs in the healing set. One of each and one BIG numina lvl 50 Heal IO in every one of my toons. Plus, you can add the chance of +end (performance shifter IO proc) into stamina (it ill randomly proc a decent chunk of End every so often IIRC).

From there, make sure to get ALL your +Max End Accolades. That extra 10 (?) end is a huge difference.

Lastly, while I never waste a LOT of end redux in my attack powers (unless they are 15 or more End to cast), I do make sure the togs get some lubbin.

[Ankhammon]

I never found accuracy a problem as much as endurance. I don't remember when they changed the way endurance was handled, but in later years I remember having lowbie characters run out of endurance half way through fighting a group with 2 minions and a Lieutenant and I always hated having to take a long break to rest seemingly between every encounter (again, on lowbies - I admit it, I'm an alt-o-holic).

That's why early game slotting was important to me. I would only put in end redux, acc, rech before DOs in every power (never damage or anything else). For DOs, those three would be there and probably another acc then damage if I had any slot open. And damage powers got slots before anything else.

When I got to SOland, I would respec.

[opprime2828]

Dude, invest in those +recov and +recov/+regen IOs in the healing set. One of each and one BIG numina lvl 50 Heal IO in every one of my toons. Plus, you can add the chance of +end (performance shifter IO proc) into stamina (it ill randomly proc a decent chunk of End every so often IIRC).

From there, make sure to get ALL your +Max End Accolades. That extra 10 (?) end is a huge difference.

Lastly, while I never waste a LOT of end redux in my attack powers (unless they are 15 or more End to cast), I do make sure the togs get some lubbin.

 
Unfortunately, none of that applies to lowbies, who can't slot Numina's Conv. until 25, and can't get those accoldes until late game.  I THINK Performance Shifter +end proc was available at level ten, but you couldn't take Stamina that early, if I recall, anyway.  If you took Swift at level 6, Health at level 8, then I guess you could get it at level 10, now that I think about it, but that means you haven't taken any actual powers since level four. 
 
By the time those things really came in to play, end was becoming less of an issue.  Those things just made end move from a rare issue to a non-issue.

[Power Gamer]

 
Unfortunately, none of that applies to lowbies, who can't slot Numina's Conv. until 25, and can't get those accoldes until late game.  I THINK Performance Shifter +end proc was available at level ten, but you couldn't take Stamina that early, if I recall, anyway.  If you took Swift at level 6, Health at level 8, then I guess you could get it at level 10, now that I think about it, but that means you haven't taken any actual powers since level four. 
 
By the time those things really came in to play, end was becoming less of an issue.  Those things just made end move from a rare issue to a non-issue.

Ah, the choices we have to make!

[MWRuger]

 
Unfortunately, none of that applies to lowbies, who can't slot Numina's Conv. until 25, and can't get those accoldes until late game.  I THINK Performance Shifter +end proc was available at level ten, but you couldn't take Stamina that early, if I recall, anyway.  If you took Swift at level 6, Health at level 8, then I guess you could get it at level 10, now that I think about it, but that means you haven't taken any actual powers since level four. 
 
By the time those things really came in to play, end was becoming less of an issue.  Those things just made end move from a rare issue to a non-issue.

Inherent fitness made this possible much earlier and in fact pretty much ended END problems for me. I would slot what ever dropped until I hit 12 and either frankenslot level 15's doubles or triples or just slot level 15 IO's. They were more effective and I didn't have to worry about them until 25.

[brothermutant]

 
Unfortunately, none of that applies to lowbies, who can't slot Numina's Conv. until 25, and can't get those accoldes until late game.  I THINK Performance Shifter +end proc was available at level ten, but you couldn't take Stamina that early, if I recall, anyway.  If you took Swift at level 6, Health at level 8, then I guess you could get it at level 10, now that I think about it, but that means you haven't taken any actual powers since level four. 
 
By the time those things really came in to play, end was becoming less of an issue.  Those things just made end move from a rare issue to a non-issue.

Ah but then they gave us all 4 from the Fitness pool at lvl 2. THat was so sweet.

[opprime2828]

Inherent fitness made this possible much earlier and in fact pretty much ended END problems for me. I would slot what ever dropped until I hit 12 and either frankenslot level 15's doubles or triples or just slot level 15 IO's. They were more effective and I didn't have to worry about them until 25.

Yeah, inherent fitness really did change the game for the better in just about every way.

[adarict]

Yeah, inherent fitness really did change the game for the better in just about every way.

I would disagree with that. It made things easier, not necessarily better. Of course that also depended on what you considered fun. Inherent fitness meant not having to plan as much, and reduced strategy. You seldom had to consider your active powers or chain, because end wasn't an issue anymore.

I didn't care about the rest of the fitness pool. They were nice to have but didn't really make a difference in my play, but stamina made a huge difference. To be fair, there were definitely times where inherent fitness made me happy. Especially when I just wanted to hop on and smack things around. I didn't always want to have to figure out how to last through the fight. I mostly played defenders solo, so it was not uncommon for a fight to last long enough that I had to be careful with my endurance.

Inherent fitness to me was mostly beneficial to people who already knew what they were doing. For new people, it encouraged sloppy playing. That isn't to say it was wrong. Just that, for me personally, I preferred knowing how to manage resources and how all my powers impacted that. If you never have to worry about it 90 percent of the time, when that 10 percent situation comes up, it can be a rude awakening. Possibly REQUIRING an awaken.

[silvers1]

On the yellow inspiration issue, I have to side with those who believe it.  I always felt that I had to pop several yellows to get any benefit - just 1 small yellow seemed to make things worse. And even with several yellows, I always seemed to miss on the first hit attempt after. 

Never knew that anyone else noticed this until these posts.   And you can point out your tests all you want,  I know what happened in my own experience.

[LaughingAlex]

As the unofficial tohit system moderator, I can say no such effect ever turned up.  Moreover, once real numbers was added I kept *all* my logs with all options turned on to investigate.  Because of my many long-ranged tests of the game combined with my gameplay, I have a huge number of tohit rolls I can analyze.  Because of the many suggestions that the tohit rolls were biased in some way, I did an analysis of tohit rolls in which I analyzed first ten million, then over 100 million tohit rolls for randomness, using most of the randomness tests I am aware of.  There was only one non-random signal detected in the tohit roll values, and that was due to the way the game rounded off tohit rolls for display which affected the hundredth (of a percent) digit and skewed it in an odd way.  In other words, when your tohit roll was 72.35%, the "5" could have actually been slightly non-random.

This was actually on-going testing; if the game was still runnning my next stop was going to be to retest with five hundred million rolls and then one billion.

I'd regularly find my to hit rolls in attack chains for alot of attacks consistently hover in 3-5% at times, rarely straying, actually.  I'd look at to hit roles all the time.  I had other moments where some mob rolled 33.5%, 34.7, then 32% in all three attacks he had on me(hitting EVERY time).

Not saying the to hit roles are biased but really if one attacks fast enough strangely I noticed very strange numbers rolling.  I wouldn't say at all in fact that the random number generator was evenly distributed.  Each 1% should have a 1% chance of rolling, but just from play experience overall I found that not to be the case.  This is from play experience and looking at the numbers in actual combat at the time the game was running.

Edit: I would say, more the hit roles were strange, at best.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

Both. The maximum hit chance is 95%, and the minimum is 5%.

The reason for this is rooted in the D20 rules that the original designers (mostly Jack) were fond of, having played games like Champions tabletop. Rolling a 20 is a critical success, rolling a 1 is a critical failure, and both usually apply unconditionally regardless of any other skills or variables. If instead of dice you are using a computer to generate random numbers, a 1 out of 20 chance is 5%.

Champions uses 3d6, not a d20, when attacking or making skill rolls, so it wasn't as simple as a straight 5% of the time attacks always hit and 5% of the time always miss.  Attack rolls follow a bell curve rather than the flat distribution of d20 based games, so that Champions and the Hero System have automatic succeed or fail results .46% of the time instead of 5% when rolling, which does make the automatic hits or misses more noteworthy since they each happen a bit less than a half a percent of the time.

[AnElfCalledMack]

Endurance was both a blessing and a curse.  We need some sort of gating mechanism to keep us from spamming constantly, and recharge alone can't be it, because the only thing WORSE than having no endurance would be having plenty but having no attacks recharged.  Ever fight an NPC who did massive -recharge and you know what I'm talking about.  Still, the way lowbies would run out of endurance so quickly was just painful.   
 
I still prefer it to "builders" like Champions Online uses. The idea is cool "lets give them an attack that they can use even when out of endurance, to refill" but since so many builders just felt like weak attacks, I felt like I was being FORCED to use my weaker attacks all the time just to keep my endurance up.  It made my toon feel weaker, overall. I hated it.
 
The Secret World relies on counters and gating some powers behind having "resources" built by certain attacks.  This was slightly better than Champions' version, since some of the resource builders were decent attacks, but it involved more micromanaging than I really wanted, and forced you in to very specific attack chains.  Build, build, build, build, build, use big three resource consumer, build two more times, use big five resource consumer, start over.   Sometimes you don't want to start out with smaller attacks.  You want to run in, Nova, and then clean up if you can.  If you have to build "resources" to Nova, that becomes impossible. You ALWAYS have to start off with the same attacks.
 
I'd love it if an MMO came up with a system where energy for attacks was based on endurance that naturally regenerated like CoH, but most attacks could still be activated when out of endurance, just with reduced effectiveness. So you start a fight with your blaster and it lasts longer than you expected, but you have no blues? You can keep fighting but as you get more and more tired you start doing less and less damage until you take a break or pop a blue.
 
Something that lets you keep fighting and avoid a faceplant when you're out of end, but still gates you a little and makes you slow down between fights, etc.

But if you wanted to run in and nova in TSW, you just take melee weapons, because they recharge to full resources out of combat. Or Blood Magic, and cast that first nuke from health - you even get a buff to your Blood spells from doing that.
Yes, the rotations are fairly fixed, but that's largely because you have two weapons and only seven power slots. So the optimal setup is usually one builder, two consumers, and four utility/burst damage cooldowns, so you're not wasting the slots. Maybe a spare AoE ability if you're doing mixed content and don't want to swap abilities between fights.

The thing that makes fixed rotations so powerful in TSW is actually the passives, most notably Elemental Force (every 8th attack is a guaranteed critical), which can give huge benefits if you ensure that your biggest, most powerful attacks land on the forced crit. Especially if you're stacking Crit Power and Penetration to make that attack hurt even more. Want to mix it up from build-to-five-then-consume? Try Fists with Adrenalise. Go build-build-consume with your fist weapon, mixing in your off-hand consumer to avoid capping out. Try Bloodline/Bloodshot/Finish the Movement for one-to-one consumers to builders, plus occasional "free" bloodshots from HP. Also works with Exquisite Corpse as a healing build! Look at a Balanced Blade impair build, where you can spam your consumer until the stun wears off. Or open with an Anima Charged Thor's Hammer for a huge free single-target nuke. Use your builders to apply Afflicted and/or Weakened, then have your consumers benefit from it. Or slant your build towards procs and multi-hit abilities, so your "weak" attacks can be a major source of damage, not just your consumers.

[Power Gamer]

Champions uses 3d6, not a d20, when attacking or making skill rolls, so it wasn't as simple as a straight 5% of the time attacks always hit and 5% of the time always miss.  Attack rolls follow a bell curve rather than the flat distribution of d20 based games, so that Champions and the Hero System have automatic succeed or fail results .46% of the time instead of 5% when rolling, which does make the automatic hits or misses more noteworthy since they each happen a bit less than a half a percent of the time.

Very correct.

Loved Champs tabletop, hated the mmo.