SW:TOR Mechanics - The Basics

[Alratan]

This topic will hopefully contain the basic, standard information for SW:TOR combat. If there's anything missing that has been confirmed, reply here. Otherwise, reply in the/create a appropriate thread so that we can discuss and test it.

Combat Basics

• To the best of our knowledge, there are no crushing blows. Bosses can crit tanks, however, and there's no known way to become crit immune (see below).
• Defense/Shield seems to occur at 360 degrees, so I don't think there's any benefit to being behind aside from positional damage and cleaves/AoE attacks.
• Attacks are done on a two roll system. First roll determines a hit or miss (miss being split into a dodge, parry/deflect and out-right miss, for graphical and fluff reasons). Second roll determines a shield, critical hit or normal hit. The second roll is % based, with shield and crit adding together, and anything left out of 100% being normal hits. Crits always take precedence over shield, and shields over hits, so a high enough crit chance can push shields off the table. [S]
• Defended/avoided attacks deal no damage, shielded attacks have their damage reduced by your Shield Absorption % (a lot like block value now functions in WoW).
• There are no auto-attacks.
• Resources regenerate at the same rate in and out of combat, and whether using abilities or doing nothing. The only exceptions are Sith Warriors/Jedi Knights, who lose resource when out of combat. IA/Smuggler and BH/Trooper also regenerate at different rates depending on their current resource level.
• Base character move speed is 6 meters per second.
• Aggro theft occurs at 110%/1.1x aggro holder in melee at 130%/1.3x aggro holder in ranged.
• 1 point of heal generates 0.5x threat of 1 point of damage. High threat abilities generate 1.5x threat of damage.
• Taunts set the taunter to the top of the threat list in addition to applying a 6s forced-attack debuff. Furthermore, they set the taunter's threat to 130% of the current aggro holder, even if the taunter currently holds threat. [S]
  [S]

Abilities

• Ability queueing is available and adjustable up to 5 secs. It is set on a .5 sec default.
• Channelling does not prevent avoidance, unlike in WoW - you can defend whilst channelling. [S] We're not sure if this applies to normal casts/activations, too, but that's easy enough to test.
• Resources are consumed and cooldowns start at cast completion for casted abilities, at activation for instant and channeled abilities.
• Healing deals 0.5 threat of damage.
• All threat modifiers add +50% threat.

Debuffs and DoTs

• DoTs do not tick immediately (or at the very least some do not).
• DoTs do not interrupt activation/channel, however, they will take a character out of stealth.
• DoTs 'clip' - a new DoT on the same mob by the same caster overrides the old one and starts at the beginning.
• Periodic abilities evaluate a person's buffs on each tick and not just on the initial cast.
  

Stats

• Armor mitigates Kinetic and Energy damage, but not Elemental or Internal damage, and caps at 75% mitigation.
• Surge is additive with talents. For example, with 30% surge and a +30% crit damage talent, total crit damage would be 210% of normal damage.
• Alacrity improves Activation time and Channeling speed. It can reduce activation time below GCD (1.5s), but only reduces the GCD on abilities for which the activation time is also reduced. It also will not add additional ticks to a channel, and simply decreases the tick interval and overall duration. [S]

[LagunaD]

(12-07-2011 05:35 AM)Alratan Wrote:  

• Attacks are done on a two roll system. First roll determines a hit or miss (miss being split into a dodge, parry/deflect and out-right miss, for graphical and fluff reasons). Second roll determines a shield, critical hit or normal hit. The second roll is % based, with shield and crit adding together, and anything left out of 100% being normal hits. If shield chance gets very high, it pushes crits of the table, but there's most likely a minimum crit chance.
  

Good summary, but I think this is incorrect. In fact the opposite is what happens - high critical chance pushes shield chance off the table. Posted by Georg Zoeller:

Quote:Combat Results:

We use a two-roll system for determining combat results.

First is a hit roll, accuracy versus defense, and if the attacker misses then no damage occurs. If the attacker rolled poorly enough to miss even discounting the target's defense then a "Miss" result occurs. If he misses because of the defense then the result varies based on the attack type, the cover state of the target, and the target's equipped weapons. All the possible results - Dodge, Parry, Deflect, Resist, Cover - are mathematically the same, but they can trigger different effects and are visualized in different ways.

If the attacker hits, then a second roll is made with the crit chance of the attacker versus the shield chance of the target. If a Crit or a Shield occurs then the damage is adjusted up or down (based on Surge/Absorb), and then it goes through to the armor and damage resistance. A critical can never be shielded, and an attacker with a high enough crit chance can push the target's shield chance off the table. It shouldn't be possible to get your passive crit chance high enough to start pushing off the target's shield chance, but there are short-duration buffs that push these chances high enough to come into conflict.

It is too rare to worry about, but anyway.

(12-07-2011 05:35 AM)Alratan Wrote:  

• Resources regenerate at the same rate in and out of combat, and whether using abilities or doing nothing.
  

Is this true for the shooter classes with variable regen?

(12-07-2011 05:35 AM)Alratan Wrote:  Abilities

• Ability queueing is available and adjustable up to 5 secs. It is set on a .5 sec default.
  

5 seconds? I admit I never tried it, but I can't see what the point of such a long queue would be.

[Alratan]

LagunaD, do you have the link for that Zoeller post, or was it a beta post?

Yes, I believe so. The only thing that matters is current resource.

Pass - will let others answer that.

[Ezmode]

I remember the queue being 1 second, unless they changed it after the Turkey Beta.

[LagunaD]

(12-07-2011 06:18 AM)Alratan Wrote:  LagunaD, do you have the link for that Zoeller post, or was it a beta post?

Beta. I saved the contents because I knew it would get wiped between builds (as it did).

[Sol]

I could be wrong on 5 seconds (I read them in patch notes while playing), however I'm certain there are 5 levels of queueing and they start at 0.5 seconds. I'll try to dig around and see where I found it. If I can't I'll check it on launch and update it here next friday.

Also, heat/evergy & ammo all regen at the same rat in and out of combat, however they are still bound by what tier they are currently in as to how much energy / second they regen.

[Jdee]

So is there no variable miss chance like other games where level is taken into account. Does 100% Accuracy mean that a level 1 player can "hit" a level 50 all the time and Defense becomes the only factor for avoidance. I can't remember the Accuracy tooltip saying if the figure was only for versus same level.

[bluekieran]

(12-07-2011 08:46 AM)Sol Wrote:  I could be wrong on 5 seconds (I read them in patch notes while playing), however I'm certain there are 5 levels of queueing and they start at 0.5 seconds. I'll try to dig around and see where I found it. If I can't I'll check it on launch and update it here next friday.

I recall finding the setting in the preferences last weekend, and I think it was 0.5 to 1.0 (entered as two-digit number with a decimal point in the middle, which would give 6 levels I suppose).

[SlimX]

Actually, I'm pretty sure the choices in the TG weekend test were 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0

Than again, we'll know in a week, either way.

[LagunaD]

(12-07-2011 09:52 AM)Jdee Wrote:  So is there no variable miss chance like other games where level is taken into account. Does 100% Accuracy mean that a level 1 player can "hit" a level 50 all the time and Defense becomes the only factor for avoidance. I can't remember the Accuracy tooltip saying if the figure was only for versus same level.

There is a threshold - I think 5 levels, but I may be wrong - at which NPCs become totally unhittable.

There is also an indication in the database that NPCs gain 3% Defense for each level above the PC, and lose 3% defense for each level more than 4 below the PC.

The parameter names pretty clearly indicate that this only applies to PC->NPC combat.

The various formulae which use Rating/Level and the Armor mitigation formula may use the target/attacker's level when different than the PC. No evidence for this, but it would make sense and would give some minor bonuses/penalties when fighting different levels.