Shadow nerf or accident

liambradshaw · October 2017

I'm a 15k pally that's very close to bis everything. Only not 16k because I'm not in a gh20.
Since the chult release I've noticed a massive drop in my temp hp, used to be able to comfortably hit 2mil temp hp in good groups in fbi/msva/msp and solo 500k. My question is, is this intentional?
I've looked around and can't see any changes to the way the pally runs, the only change I can think of is the one to the battle system itself. That being the arm pen change. Also noticed that moves like RA now loose agro to gwfs slam and some GFs depending in the gfs spec (not including knights challenge that always beats pally agro) before this mod that move seemed to hold 100% agro for a long while after use. Has there been an unintentional reduction in pally usefulness or has the pally been the subject of a ninja nerf?
If it's the latter is love to know what's been changed so that I can change the way I play accordingly.

rjc9000 · October 2017

Paladin TempHP mechanics are based around how much Power you have, how many teammates you hit with Templar's Wrath (note: does not deal damage, but it helps you generate more TempHP), in addition to exterior buffs like the Feytouched buff or Radiant Strike's damage buff (as per @michela123's testings).

I think you're fine, the reason why you're probably not getting as much TempHP in solo is because you don't have the benefit of high powershare from DCs and soloing means you don't get the benefit of extra teammates to get TempHP off of.

armadeonx · October 2017

Has the amount you gain for solo changed? If not then it's not your powers.

liambradshaw · October 2017

I started by saying that I'm almost bis. I underatand how my pally works and how all the powers work together. I definatly have millions LESS hp in well made groups. The group hasn't changed and it's not my solo play I'm worried about. It's in a group that the hp isn't there anymore. My power literally has not changed. I'm not hitting as hard as I was even with the buff cap changes.
And what about the agro change? Nothing had been said about why my agro is less than it should be. Is the 500% extra class feature not working anymore or has agro been changed? @rjc9000 You didn't answer what i asked. Ty for trying.

armadeonx · October 2017

Yeah the point of my comment wasn't to dismiss what you've said or seen, it was to say "if you can still hit the same temp HP solo then Pally powers & Bonding effects are still the same so the issue must be some other factor".

Are you only seeing the change in Chult or does it also happen in FBI & MSP?

If it's only in Chult then there's possibly a resistance mechanic at work there. If it's all content then it's possible that changes to the DC have impacted it, although the only changes I'm aware of for that class are the reintroduction of effects from Break The Spirit, Forgemaster's & (I believe) FotG.

The loss of Threat would also back up your statement about a loss of power, obviously the two would be linked, but if you can answer the question about 'where' you are seeing this effect would be useful.

Edit - just to clarify. Only one stat impacts temp HP: Power. A drop in power. The reason why OPs get into the millions for temp HP when in groups is due to power buffing from DC's impacting both the player and the player's companion. This increases temp HP which ignores RI but also of course increases your damage and so your threat.

One theoretical change could be that temp HP no longer ignores enemy DR & that with enemies now going as high as 85% DR, could possibly mean a significant reduction in HP, DPS & Threat.

What is your RI in combat? A way to test this would be to switch SH boons from power to armor pen, if the situation improves then it would be down to an issue in this area.

araneax · October 2017

I heard a few people complain about something being off, when running Tong and Chult in general , lately.

Pallies and damage dealers kept asking what is wrong with their stats, armor pen for DPS and HP for Pallies, also keeping the aggro at the last boss in Tong seems to be the problem now as well , a few times we got asked if we noticed a change.

I thought it is paranoia, but since you are mentioning it here, there is a possibility something really was changed ?

armadeonx · October 2017

That's why I want to narrow it down to a question of 'is it just Chult'

just1rndmdad · October 2017

While i have only ever hot more than 2million temp hp in msva...agro is def not a prob for me. I have never run aura of radiance so i dont know there. But keeping aggro on last tong boss is also no problem.. ibwill note that i am 14k wotg 30k base power and hit about 1.2 million temp hp at orcus in tong with approx 160k power..

liambradshaw · October 2017

It's not just chult. What you said about RI though seems to have worked somewhat. When I have 80% RI it seems to be back to normal. I used to drop the arm pen boon for the power boon to give more power out. It drops my dps but that's fine. Now it seems that without high RI everywhere I don't hold agro or get high temp hp.
Seems like Argo and temp hp are now involved with RI

armadeonx · October 2017

Ah that sucks then. It's probably a recent 'fix' but it's not helpful to pallies. I guess we'll have to adapt though

hirogarde · October 2017

I don't think Armor Penetration has much (if anything) to do with Temp HP. If you test TW on the dummies on the docks in Chult, you should get the same Temp HP as you get in your SH - at least I did. I also did a quick test to see if ally deflect was somehow changed to impact the Temp HP received - fortunately, it does not appear to have been affected.

I haven't done "extensive" testing on the Temp HPs, but as a quick check it should equal
300% (damage) + [300% (ally "damage")]
Where (damage) is the damage seen in parens in the combat log, and [ally damage] is the "theoretical" (damage) you would have done to them - you can only hit five targets and enemy damage counts first.

If you're really seeing improved Temp HP with higher RI... I wonder if the "new" damage equation misplaced a parenthesis somewhere and is now using RI to amplify damage - so when you over-penetrate, it uses a number >100% to calculate Temp HP from.

EDIT:
I read through Michela123's Post again after playing around some more. The 1800% thing holds pretty well for unarmored mobs, but something weird happens with armored mobs that adds more than the 1800% to Temp HP - and it appears to be related to RI.

Higher RI apparently adds more Temp HP (when used against armored mobs). Again, this may be a misplaced parenthesis in the code, but I'll run a few more tests over the weekend to see if I can narrow it down more.

liambradshaw · October 2017

Thank you

hirogarde · October 2017

Ran a few more tests on this today, and proved I can be absent minded sometimes. Last night, I just ran some quick numbers on the Chult docks. What I forgot was that the dummies are L73, so the “average damage” I was seeing wasn’t the damage being used to calculate Temp HP.

For today’s run, I went to RD docks and kept to the same few sets of mobs to minimize differences. I only counted encounters with five or more mobs so I could verify I actually hit the max. I switched in and out of the Guild Armor Penetration boon, going between 14.6% and 40.4% RI (with no other stat changes). At 14.6 there was still armor on everything, at 40.4 only the Mercs and Shield guys still had “unpenetrated” armor.

To test, I started combat with TW and checked Temp HP, then divided that by 18 to see if that fell in the range of TW’s tooltip (I also cross-checked my visual by adding up the absorbed damage). There was a lot of variance between encounters, but it always stayed within reasonable tolerance of the tooltip damage considering I usually took a hit or two before getting TW off (raising power and changing TW damage numbers).

There was no difference between 14.6% RI and 40.4% RI. In fact several times I saw higher Temp HP with 14.6% RI than I did with 40.4%.

I tested this again in Chult (spiders and compies at the front), and on the spiders in the SH ( to check at L70 mobs). It was always the same no matter the mob armor, or my equipment, or my RI. I even fought a couple nekkid with a L5 mace to narrow the damage range - and still, it always fell within the limits of the tooltip.

In conclusion… there’s something else going on with your situation. As @armadeonx mentioned above, power is the most likely culprit. I know I’ve had a few Sunday mornings where I looked at my character and asked myself wtf I was doing the night before; Is it possible you changed some other gear, mount, or companion that you forgot about?

quick thought... Do you have something that procs a "power boost" off of damage done? A lower RI would reduce "actual" damage done and power (and Temp HP) would follow.

armadeonx · October 2017

You know, it's possible it could have something to do with companion stat fluctuations. The devs are currently trying to fix this so it's still a problem.

Edit - the devs said yesterday that they have a fix that'll be rolled out with 12b

Shadow nerf or accident

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