Some "Tooltips" are horribly ambiguous - for example

I've been here everyday for about 7 years now and am really, really tired of guessing what many "Tooltips" actually mean. We rely on this "Tooltip" information to make "informative" decisions about any specific skill BEFORE we spend millions upon millions of hard earned XP's - only to find out it's practically worthless AFTER the XP investment.

For example - The Earth Tree has an innate called Sympathy of Stone which is a prime example.



The "Tooltip" says: " Increases damage avoidance... "
At my current level it also says: " +3.2 Damage Avoidance " .

+3.2 what ?
It's not +3.2%, so what does 3.2 this mean exactly ?

What we need is the math to do our own calculations on how much it will effect us in actual combat - or, better yet, a "Tooltip" that will actually lets me know WHAT TO EXPECT in terms of avoiding damage with any particular build.

I can't be the only one who is quite frustrated with many of our so-called "Tooltips" ........

 

Ok, yes there are a lot of tooltips that are messed up, that however isn't one of them. DA is a hard number, not a %; ever. it gives you 3.2 damage avoidance.

 

Ok, that's exactly what I'm talking about, @Vesper .
So again.... what does +3.2 mean ?
Without any qualifiers, it's a meaningless number !

 

There are none, its damage avoidance, it does this:

 

Yeah, I'm a bit lost here. That's kinda like saying, "+14 health? What does that even mean?"

 

As mentioned above Damage Avoidance is the unit itself. For some more info on how that number works in combat check out this post on the subject. As far as I know it's still accurate, other than no longer using the character/mob level in any situations, but would love an update on it if one exists.

 

Your main question got answered already, but I just want to add a point to this comment you made :

Once you're in the range of "millions upon millions" of exp, you are in the realm of "practically worthless."

For Active skills, lv.80 is the breaking point, where you got the best bang for your buck in terms of exp investment. At lv.80, you get "100% effectiveness" off of the majority of the skills, as well as all 5 glyphs. After that, the exp curve climbs so quickly it doesn't even make sense to spend that exp (although we are now at a point where we can make that exp easily, so who cares). Just to give you an idea, for 25% extra power (or 20 more skill levels), you have to spend 5.73x the experience you already did, so you only get 25% of what you had, for almost 6x the original cost, and it doesn't get any better... Also, there are no extra glyphs after lv.80, so you don't get any "Extra benefits" either, it's just an experience drain at that point.

Meanwhile, Innates don't get any extra glyphs, and the majority are x4 skills, so it's an even bigger exp investment for even more cost. When you are in the "millions upon millions" of exp invested in something, you've already gone too far, and you will only see micro benefits, that's why a hard cap is not necessary, because at some point, what's "the point"?

 

It's exactly the same with dodge, parry and block.

 

When you raise that skill it raises this.

This help @FrostII

 

No @Violet Ronso , with all due respect, my question has absolutely not been answered - but I'll comment on that in my next post.

What I'd like to address now is your comment(s):

Again, most respectfully @Violet Ronso , I disagree absolutely and completely with you there.

Below is a pic that shows EXACTLY what happens when you increase a skill by "millions", and it's far from "practically worthless".
(I went to "Offline" mode so I could make my skills whatever I chose.)

The character that produced these numbers was:
Naked except for his Bridge Defender Bow.
Had no buffs, blessings, food, potions - nothing that would change anything in my results.
I set all skills in the Range tree to 80 and began there, then set Ranged Combat and Draw Strength to 100, 120 and finally 140 respectively (leaving all other skills unchanged, as they don't matter for this test.)

I auto-attacked a Training Target in Soltown for EXACTLY 5mins for each session, auto-attack being the perfect way to display the very significant difference skill levels make.

Look at (Total) Dmg, Max Hit, Avg Dmg & DPS at 20 level increases - from 80 to 140.

The #Uses shows that my bow hit for the same number of uses in each test, and as such that the results are both accurate and repeatable.



The numbers speak for themselves....
So that when you said:

"What's the point?"
Millions of points in skills ABSOLUTELY do matter -and - "That's the point."

 

First let me say that I appreciate your input here, and that you are a great "Ambassador" for SotA !
I watch you helping and answering questions in Universal Chat all the time... great job

Now, as per your response here...

The pic below shows your "Damage Avoidance" at 3 (crop from your pic), and an Alt of mine's .



Yours says your Damage Avoidance is "3" and that it "Increases the character's chance of receiving a glancing blow that inflicts only 1/3 damage."
My alt's says her Damage Avoidance is "0" and that it "Increases the character's chance of receiving a glancing blow that inflicts only 1/3 damage."

We're left to "assume" that "3" is certainly better than "0", but how much better ?

What we're left with - with this typical "Tooltip" - is "practically" worthless in terms of what we can "practically" expect to avoid/dodge in REAL terms - to be able to visualize how much this will help us in real combat.

How much more often can you "dodge" if you have a "3" than a "0" ?

That information would "mean something" to me, whereas a 3 vs a 0 tells me NOTHING in actual terms.

 

Okay, so here is why I say that there is no point, or that it doesn't make a difference, I understand your POV, but you're looking at it from only a levels perspective, not a return on investment perspective.

So if we take your numbers, and add in the experience cost :

Lv.80, 14.74 average damage per hit, 180138 exp cost, or, 12221 exp per average damage per hit
Lv.100, 17.64 average damage per hit, 1212424 exp cost, or, 68731 exp per average damage per hit
Lv.120, 19.55 average damage per hit, 32628496 exp cost, or, 1668976 exp per average damage per hit
Lv.140, 23.65 average damage per hit, 54877598 exp cost, or, 2320405 exp per average damage per hit

This means that your average damage per hit per experience point is 0.005x less at lv.140 compared to lv.80. Your experience cost is nearly 305x more for a 67% upgrade. If you deem that it ABSOLUTELY matters, and that you see the difference, sure, if gaining those decimals for way more investment, sure, but there are many things that would augment your output for a much lower cost.

 

Have you read the reply Coswald linked? It most certainly answers your question : 3 is bigger than 0, but the result is relative to many other factors including your dex, the opponents dex, the opponents equipment, the opponents skills. Saying 3 dodge will dodge 10% more often than 0 dodge could be true for 1 specific mob, but false for all the other mobs. Once again, this is affected by diminishing returns, so the bigger the better, but the difference between 0-10 is bigger than the difference between 10-20.

Don't expect an absolute answer, we didn't get one 3 years ago, and we won't get one now, because the math is made so that there is never an absolute number, and so that the majority of the numbers are hidden from us to reduce the amount of min-maxing.

 

Ah. I see. To be fair, though, this doesn't feel like a tooltip issue. I wouldn't expect the tooltip for a skill, or item that adds Damage Avoidance, to give a full explanation of the Damage Avoidance mechanic and math. To be honest, I wouldn't really expect that in the tooltip for DA on your character sheet, either. You do have a point in that the info isn't available anywhere, but I don't think the tooltip is the correct place for it.

 

Having it more readily available in game could be nice, I agree with that, but it is available. I linked it above, and will do so again here.

 

Oh contraire @Violet Ronso - it is EXACTLY from a "return on investment perspective" that I am asking for better clarification here !

As in - before I invest "millions and millions" of XP's, I need to be able to make my decision based on "something" - and our current "Tooltips" are what SotA has given us to make these decisions !

I submit that many (some are just fine) of our current tooltips are woefully inadequate for this purpose, but it's all that we have.
I suggest that there is no reason not to have them explain more in terms of what to expect 20 levels beyond our current level.

There's plenty of UI space for more expanded tooltips (where needed).

I've done three screenshots showing what I mean (and put them in "Spoilers" to reduce the wot here:
We typically don't access this rather large UI window while "in combat", so the current size is just fine.

Just fine as is...

Spoiler: Size of Skills window alone

Just fine as is !

Just fine as is...

Spoiler: Size of Skills window w/Tooltip

Just fine as is !

Enlarged Tooltip - when necessary !

Spoiler: Size of Skills window w/size of Tooltip when necessary

Enlarged Tooltip - when necessary !

Tooltips already "auto-size" up to a point, and I can see no reason why they couldn't contain more info if deemed necessary for clarity - especially regarding "what to expect" at 20 levels more !

Respectfully,
Robert Frost

 

Thank you @Coswald_Dirthmire for the link to some of the math involved in my Avoidance question, but that one Tooltip is only one of many that are similarly uninformative.

I have read your link (and yes, it is a bit "aged" - but may still be valid... Only Chris knows).

As typical "users" or "players", I'm sure the vast majority of us don't need to see the "actual math" to gain more insight as to what exactly we can expect in the way of tangible results when the tooltip shows us what's ahead. Some tooltips do this just fine now.

An example of a good tooltip, with numbers we can expect to see down the road.



Below is another example of a "somewhat worthless" "Tooltip"
This one is for Blink.

It gives us spot-on Range, great !
It then goes on to say it will be 187.1% "Effective" - as opposed to the 173.2% "Effective that I'm at now.

Say whaaa...... "Effective" in terms of WHAT ?
And an "Effective" that is already beyond 100% - what the heck is that number referring to ??

The access to the actual "math" involved in every Tooltip would be great if/when what the "math" says does not equate to what we are seeing ingame - and want to see what the problem with the math might be.

In the post you reference, the author @mystarr took the extra step of giving an example at the very end (after the actual math) of what to expect, when she added the following:

At least that gives us something that's "tangible" to watch for moving forward - information that could easily be included in Tooltips.

The math itself would be great to access - when expectations are not met.
But more INFORMATIVE "Tooltips" are what we need to see prior to investing "millions" of XP's only to find out we based our XP expenditure on misleading or meaningless (in a practical sense) "Tooltips".

Thanks again for the link @Coswald_Dirthmire , and I hope you can see my main point here...

 

The efficacy rate of blink is the chances of moving to the target location after it's successfully cast. It always seemed self explanatory to me (if you blink with <100% efficacy sometimes you stay in the same place, even if you don't fizzle), though it might be cleaner/more intuitive if the tool-tip capped at 100%. Then again, if we get modifiers for it (say an effect of chaos bolt that gives -50% to -150% blink efficacy) being at >100% might become relevant.

I do agree that nicer tool tips would be nicer, as nicer things tend to be, but the stats themselves have mostly seemed alright to me. I think there's more room for improvement in the descriptive blurbs up top.

 

'Ya think !
Now that would at least make sense..........

 

I'm not sure what would counter Blink, but the efficacy of some skills is countered by other factors. For instance, you may have a >100% chance to stun with a certain skill but each time you do, your opponent gets some crowd control resist that stacks.