Hacker in Interlock?

Eclipses%60

I was fighting a hacker in interlock on the EP server today, and I noticed that it was much, much easier for the hacker to win rolls while in interlock. Aren't their rolls still being negatively modified when they try to use hacker attacks in interlock? And if not, why not?

In the interest of balance it has to be like this imho. If the hacker is able to do (even in CR 2.0 they do large amts of damage) tremendous amounts of damage outside of interlock, while interlock dependant loadouts work to get them in interlock, hackers, and those who use out of interlock attacks, should have negative modifiers attached to their abilities when they try to use them in interlock.

Am I wrong in thinking this?

Spectrasonics

No i don't think you are. I dueled a hacker yesterday and won once out of three goes with duelist loaded. While it is good they are limited to certain abilities in IL, they still seem to hit often and do large dmg, even with good viral resis.

Eclipses%60

Are there any plans to change this HCFrog? Yes? No? And if no, why?

Ingus

They wont recognize the imbalances until it goes live on vector... so just stay tuned hehe because your not gonna get much out of the non hostility of the test server.

**Rexxhavukk**

HaKeRz pwn............................. MA's cry

HCFrog

hmmmm I'm thinking this one over, about what the rolls would be to make it come out like that... hmmmm SMILEY

I'll have to get back to you on this one. It does kind of present an interesting situation when you think through it.

Cause basically in IL, a hacker casting a hack uses their Viral Accuracy vs. your Viral Defense, and if you're MA, your VD will be way better than in live, but not as good as a hacker's viral defense and accuracy. They have a better chance of hitting you, and every time they hit with a special and you're not using a special, your move won't go through because specials trump everything else (which is why Walrus always says "zero-sum combat isn't completely gone..." SMILEY

so hackers definitely are more powerful in IL than they were before.

I think they were meant to be better in IL with CR2; but they might be turning out too much better. Since their attacks got the IS costs reduced recently, they now might be able to use them more repeatedly than an MA or gunman... verrrrry interesting.

Cal

Well, from my experience with Harmful Code 1.0, I'm doing about the same damage that an MA does with his special (apart from the uber ones likes Wooden Dummy or FA Redux) for an IS cost that's near nothing (16 for me), while still being able to heal myself (and friendlies) with Restore Group 2.0 running on just about fumes.

Then again, I can only use it once every 8s (I think), but still, I'd imagine a Ballista would be dangerous in IL.

Now, I don't know what a couple of hackers from Vector were using earlier today, but they were throwing Cannons and Bomb/Nukes all over the place and I didn't notice them to stop, I'll have to test with a friend tomorrow about just how many attacks it takes me to burn my IS.

Still, looking at my buffs (I normally go about 40-short on my last one): Evade, Improved Hacking, Resist Combat, Movement 1.0, Gaussian Blur, Determination, Combat Training, and Viral Shielding. That's 410 IS so 370 IS, you toss on my Force Mulitplier's Cost Reduction, after stats comes to 13% comes to a burn of 322 IS.

Looking at that, without an IS Cost Reduction anywhere, you could hit about 24 cycles of Logic Barrage 4.0 and Blast 3.0 without running out of IS.

An interesting note is that they're rather efficient. The efficency (DPS/IS) of the main Ballista moves is 4.85 (Piercing) with Barrage 4.0 and 4.64 with Blast 3.0. With Cannon 2.0 (1.07), Nuke 3.0 (1), and Bomb 2.0 (1.15), your efficiencies approach 1.

(The effeciencies of Barrage 4.0/Blast 3.0 versus those of Nuke 3.0/Bomb 2.0 have about the same difference as those between the Trauma Surgeon heals and the Physician ones. Still, they are about twice as efficient.)

If you look at Karate for example, their effeciencies move between .48 for Wrist Throw (with a Stun chance though) to nearly one with Sidekick Combo (1.12), Maki-Otoshi (1), and EFK (1.15). Not to mention they all require interlock and have 10s re-use timers :o.

Now that's pretty interesting there... and with the short cast times of Barrage and Blast, interuption chance (if they have Concentration at least) has to be rather minimal so...

Also, just because, the effeciencies of the Harmful Codes are:

1.0: .67
2.0: 1.1
3.0: 2.26

With shorter re-use timers then MA moves SMILEY

.

**Symmetric**

I think one of the main problems with Hackers in interlock is that their high-DPS moves that take more than 4 seconds to cast are doing even higher DPS due to the fact that Interlock rounds are supposed to last 4 seconds.

Perhaps Hackers should suffer a DPS penalty proportional to the casting time of some of their attacks?

Cal · 03/19/2006 01:19:04

I didn't touch on this above, but it's rather important:

Let's look at sustained damage (because of a Ballista's high efficency). Now of course he'd be in combat with a shot regen, plus let's say he's getting people bouncing off his shield, with this many variables, let's assume he has no regen (and we'll go with with my pool of 247) that comes to 41s.

41s of damage at an average of 57 Viral DPS is 2337 Damage pre-mods (also, remember the Barrage 4.0s are armor piercing). In interlock you'd half this damage because of round length (I think) versus free-hacking.

The math = ouch, either way. When you look at long-launch moves their effeciency blows, but their burst DPS is evil (as it's always been) in IL... except this time, they can land them effectively without the target being de-buffed prior.

Message Edited by Cal on 03-19-200601:19 AM

RockyB

Just want to raise this point again: There are NO armour piercng abilities or items left in the game! I have this on good authority from 9mmFu himself (you better not be playin' wit me, foo' SMILEY

). All that's left are textual errors, which I spent half an hour compiling into a report to get fixed.

MrMagno

WaaaaaaaH! that's all I hear these days when someone loses a duel to someone else with a different loadout. Omg! the evade shield is too strong.....make it weaker so I can interlock hackers and gunmen and pwn them with MA, and go straight into machine gun fist and extreme falling kick to get an easy win!....Ok they nerf the evade shield.....Waaaaaaaah omg! the hackers and gunmen are too powerful in interlock my VD does'nt deflect and, and, his attacks hits more often then mine. Tell you whiners something you may not know, MA's are not the top of the food chain k! So stop trying to get them to be. I have yet to read a post about a hacker complaining about MA's redundantly cheap tactics in interlock, or gunmen for that matter. The most complainingness class is those red derim steen pant wearing, dire/greywolf coat bearing, trolls hide, widow's moore lenze and torturer's glove sporting MA's. MA's motto = nerf,nerf,nerf,nerf,nerf,nerf,nerf,nerf,nerf!:smileyvery-happy:

**Wendigo** · 03/19/2006 09:34:27

Cal's numbers are spot on - good work there. I think the bottom line here is that Hackers have somehow become more effective in interlock than interlock classes. There needs to be an element of balance, either an increase in IS costs and casting times or a decrease in DPS, because a well-built hacker or patcher is unstoppable right now.

You do have a point Magno, but I think we need to keep in mind the functions of the different trees. I'm not saying nerf, I'm just saying balance. What is the point of playing a Martial Artist if you can't beat a hacker in interlock? There should not be a "food chain" per se, but more of a situational cycle, whereby if a certain character build catches another build in a certain situation, they are heavily favored to win. Every build would have its advantageous situations, and every build would have disadvantageous situations - no one is at the top, no one at the bottom, just an ever turning wheel of whoop-*CENSORED*.

As it stands now, a well-built patcher can stand against any other build in a duel, because they can heal themselves indefinitely, and never run out of IS. A well-built hacker can chain-cast moves dealing out a constant stream of high-powered damage in or out of interlock, and never run out of IS. These things break the cycle. Lets keep the wheel turning.

Message Edited by The_Wendigo on 03-19-200609:34 AM

MrMagno

Well If what balance does it offer to the hackers when there are anti pills to stop purple effects that you can constantly pop one after the other with a very short reuse timer which makes the despoiler tree and every other downgrade ineffective, along with an automatic stun immunity after you get stunned or pacified "PLUS" an activity facilitator that sweeps for at least 10 mins? When doing boxes, more hackers are called hands down then MA's...why? Because hackers can bend more rules of the matrix. Neo=Hacker, Morpheus=Hacker, Trinity=Hacker, ect. ect. I mean why complain....you guys get bullet time!

Fade2blacK

MrMagno wrote:
Well If what balance does it offer to the hackers when there are anti pills to stop purple effects that you can constantly pop one after the other with a very short reuse timer which makes the despoiler tree and every other downgrade ineffective, along with an automatic stun immunity after you get stunned or pacified "PLUS" an activity facilitator that sweeps for at least 10 mins? When doing boxes, more hackers are called hands down then MA's...why? Because hackers can bend more rules of the matrix. Neo=Hacker, Morpheus=Hacker, Trinity=Hacker, ect. ect. I mean why complain....you guys get bullet time!

Translated this means:

"I play as an hacker so I don't care about balance, I just want h4x0rZ to pwn MAs both where hackers are supposed to be good and where they are not supposed to!"

MrMagno · 03/20/2006 06:38:50

Translated this means:

"I play as an hacker so I don't care about balance, I just want h4x0rZ to pwn MAs both where hackers are supposed to be good and where they are not supposed to!":smileyvery-happy:

I could care less about hackers not being good in interlock, I'd just like the anti's to have a decent reuse timer like the activity facilitators. And as far as your translation.....I play Hacker/MA so it I don't care about getting in interlock as a matter of fact I want it....but by the time my free attack does 2600dmg I can garuantee that once I bust "YOUR" evade shield, you'll be the one spamming your roll out icon!

Message Edited by MrMagno on 03-20-200606:38 AM