Friday Grab Bag - 10/23/2020
Reminder! For the day before, of, and after Halloween itself, costume potions will work in the frontiers! I hope everyone has their RvR costumes planned
Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.
Continue reading for the questions!
Does the Dread Lord AF debuff stack with the Warlocks AF Debuff? plus the dread commander is doing more damage then the dread lord with 2h axe and the dread lords af debuff is not working.
The Bonedancer’s Dread Lord pet does not have an Armor Factor debuff ability but fossil guardian sub-pets do. Their AF does not stack with the Warlock AF debuff; the highest AF debuff delve will remain or overwrite the lower version if both are applied.
As for damage comparisons between different pets and different weapons, each pet has its pros and cons. A dread lord automatically fully-buffs itself, can control more sub-pets, and takes less damage than a dread commander due to its higher level while the dread commander deals more in melee damage if fully buffed.
What is crossbow damaged based off of?
The Armsman’s dexterity stat, the crossbow’s damage and weapon speed values, and the crossbow bolt’s damage type.
How do minstrel timered songs (celerity, magic resists, range) and insta "buffs" (siege damage reduction, ablative) interact with pet charm, flute mezz, and other songs?
In terms of the number of pulsing chants or songs up at once, the timered songs and instant chants same cap of 8 concurrent pulsing abilities with the normal songs like movement speed, health regen, etc. Only 8 of them can be active at once, with the oldest-cast song or chant dropping when an 8th song or chant is newly cast.
In terms of interacting with each other, instant chants like the pet charm, siege damage reduction, and ablative do not require an instrument to cast and therefore do not interfere with any of the pulsing songs. A minstrel can start or stop a chant and swap weapons without the chant dropping. Casting a chant will also not cause any songs to cease (unless the chant puts them over the limit of 8 concurrent pulses).
However, songs (timered songs or normal ones) like the magic resistances, mezz, or movement speed buff all act the same way in that they require an instrument to cast.
Swapping away from an instrument to a weapon will cause all *normal* songs to stop (not chants or timered songs) and need to be re-initiated unless the minstrel swaps back to their instrument before the song refreshes (very hard to do most of the time). The reason timered songs do not stop when swapping to a weapon is simply because timered songs do not automatically refresh and only require the instrument to be equipped on initial cast.
Years ago it was rumored that mastery of pain RA increases the floor percentages for crits while in zerk mode (thereby critting for more damage), is this true?
Mastery of pain simply increases the chance to critical hit; it does not influence the damage dealt by a critical hit in any way.
Berserk mode does two things:
It guarantees critical hits on every swing.
It raises the ceiling of critical hits’ damage up to a potential 100% of the damage dealt by the melee swing, instead of the normal 50% cap.
The floor for all critical melee hits’ damage is 10% of the original damage, which you will still see in Berserk.
Is parry affected by multiple attackers and by how much? What about evade? How does the number of attackers blocked for large/medium/small shield come into play? For example, for a large shield, is it 3 attackers able to be blocked per attack round? every single second? How do additional attackers reduce block?
Combat checks are done from the attacker’s perspective not the defender’s. The order checks are done is as follows: the target’s Evade, Parry, then Block (and Guard if they are guarded) chance, then the attacker’s fumble then miss chances, and finally the target’s bladeturn. The chance to block is capped at 60% and the chances to evade and parry are capped at 50%.
In RvR combat…
Multiple attackers do not penalize a target’s chance to parry OR evade so long as the attackers are in the frontal arc for parry and standard evades. The caveat to this with evade is that dual-wield attackers will halve their chance to be evaded (not the chance for other attackers).
The frontal arc is defined as 120 degrees for parries and standard evades and 180 degrees for blocks; with advanced evade working in a 360 degree arc.
For block, the number of attackers in the frontal arc does not directly reduce the block rate either, with the caveat that the target’s shield size limits how many of the attackers will face a block check at all.
Small shields can block up to 1, medium shields 2, and large shields up to 3 attackers.
For example, if 5 attackers are swinging in the frontal arc of a target wielding a large shield, each attacker will calculate through those combat checks separately at the time of their melee swing. 3 of the 5 attackers will have a chance to be blocked while 2 of the 5 will never be blocked. Which 3 attackers are blocked and which 2 are not is not always the same, but if a target wielding a large shield blocks 3 attackers in the same combat round (defined by the defender’s swing speed), subsequent attackers will not be blocked in that same combat round.
Enjoy the weekend, all