Featured Questions #7

Sorry for the delay - here's the next installment of Featured Questions!

Featured Questions #7:

If elemental resistance is 50, and other normal types reduce 20, where does this land supreme resistance and is it both elemental and non-elemental resistance?

Supreme resistance is not considered an elemental resistance. It will trigger on any damage type, and will always provide 20% damage reduction when triggered.

Will practicing impairments above 100% increase the chances for target to fail "impairment break" checks? and does the ninja's hakanai shouten perfect stun denies any "impairment break" check?

Currently, the chance to land an impairment is an attacker-victim comparison, but once an impairment lands, only the victim's stats matter. Thus, stun mastery and hakanai shouten affect stun's chance to land successfully. However, once a victim is stunned, the only thing that alters the victim's chance to "break" it is the victim's constitution.

Does the Silver Elf racial healing boost stack with Dajain Healer's 'Augmented Divine Healing'?

Augmented divine healing provides the same effect as the silver elf's racial healing. As long as either one triggers, your healing is doubled. (It cannot be applied more than once per heal - you cannot get a quadruple heal with multiple augmented healing effects.)

Here's a technical question. I was randomly looking at different skills and noticed warp reality and how it can be used 'through' such things as temple touch. If the person is suffering lag while crippled, etc., then how abilities like warp reality go 'through it' ?

Impairment does not actually add lag to a person (currently, only a few abilities can inflict lag on others - inharmonix helix, rite of sundering, and trial of aggression). Every attack or action that an impaired victim attempts must succeed against a specific "break chance"; otherwise, it fails. Some impairments are much harder to break than others (and each checks against a specific victim stat when rolling this break chance). Temple touch provides no break chance.

Certain abilities (such as warp reality) and attacks (such as shape-of-the-mind fist and most mental attacks) cannot be stopped by an impairment. These abilities and attacks automatically succeed on their break chance 100% of the time. (They can even break through impairments which normally do not provide a break chance, such as temple touch.)

Whim, you've mentioned before of an event called Vl'lakian Ramparts. Could you give a teaser on what it is about? How it would help the gameplay of nodeka, how it will promote less botting, and uniqueness to the game.

The Ramparts are just a logical extension of the internal AI improvements I've been implementing with each update, as well as the events that have been implemented so far (Invasion, Sigil Cits, Orator missions). It's a group-based event, with a more rigid structure than the current Invasions (i.e., a linear progression and strict group limits). The newbie improvements, some pvp improvements, and another smaller-scale event will probably be released before the Ramparts surface. (A number of outside responsibilities surfaced in the past week and a half which ate into my development time, but progress should be back on track shortly. =))

Going on for strike from the shadows, approximately how many % more damage are we looking at (while flanking) for training over 100%?

Strike from the shadows provides a flat damage increase, not a percentage-based increase. It's a pretty good number. =)

Where's the [new spell] you said was coming?

It's working, but I'm still tweaking it. I didn't quite like the original implementation; it's an important spell in terms of what I want it to do and a bit tricky to design correctly. (I want it to be a fairly effective sorcerer spell, which is potentially useful in both pvp and as a somewhat non-traditional running tool, which requires the use of the magus war-shell.)

Can you talk about the Phase of the Suns and Solar Poliir?

Sure - sunbind and solar-flame can only be used during the daytime (or a nighttime hour which is very close to daytime). The Phase of the Suns displayed via the 'time' command shows you the current Nodeka hour. There are 30 hours in a Nodeka day; nighttime hits sometime around the 20th hour. =)

How do you calculate the value of damage gained when [element of surprise] lands?

Element of surprise simply turns your attacks into flanking attacks. The amount of bonus you gain from flanking depends on your victim (players who focus on +dam over other stats tend to get flanked harder) - flanking attacks tend to be quite accurate with a fair damage bonus. If your attack gains any special bonus while flanking (such as the precision pierce from archer's competence, which deals double damage while flanking), element of surprise will trigger that as well.