thelee

Where is it documented this "recovery" part of guns? PoE1 had recovery and reload, but AFAICT Deadfire removed all "recovery" for guns to just be "reload." People in other threads have commented that this is likely a bug due to animation cycles (which has no connection to actual game mechanics).

Example 1: have crippling strike. Assign it to a hotkey. Upgrade to debilitating strike. The hotkey is still for crippling strike, even though it is no longer in the character's HUD. You can still use it, though. Example 2: have athletics trained up, so you have second wind. Assign it to a hotkey. Respec and don't train up athletics. You still have a hotkeyed second wind, which you can actually use to heal a tiny amount of health. Here's a dropbox link containing a save game and a output_log for example 2: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w8jqdsw5flgdg1a/AAA604qFbJVH86GbfxCiCs1fa?dl=0 (look at Aloth, he still has a usable second wind even though I removed his athletics ability from a respec)

Had two characters with drug crashes (deadeye and something else). Was about to encounter Tahae, so I rested beforehand. Entered Tahae encounter, noticed I still had drug crash effects (??). I re-loaded, noted that my characters had drug crashes, rested on the map, and checked on character screen for each of them that they still have drug crashes. Meanwhile, if I enter the Tahae encounter and rest there, the drug crashes appropriately get cleared. So something about resting on the world map doesn't clear drug crashes. Here's a dropbox link with a quicksave (and output_log) for the drug crashes right beroe Tahae encounter, not clearing: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y5mhnlb1yheije2/AADoEs5pwQMMsv91AtFI5tR9a?dl=0

I noticed in a recent test that not only is the Warding Seal damage bugged, but it does not appear to get any damage benefit from being empowered. It gains bonus penetration and accuracy from being empowered, but the damage itself is unchanged. something is buggy here. Searing Seal may also be affected by these issues.

I updated my OP with new findings re: explosives and martial abilities. So I did some test and power levels do work with martial abilities, both weapon-based and non-weapon based (thanks Alhoon for the tip-off!). So +x to fire power levels will make flames of devotion stronger (assuming it is appropriately tagged). Lash damage will be boosted insofar as the base damage of the weapon gets adjusted upwards from power-level scaling (or via Empower). However, most lashes I see are pretty low (15-20%) so don't expect too much extra lash damage from even an Empowered ability.

My assumption is that your recovery rate is computed continuously. This was the case in backer beta where I could have a character hit by Blind (-100% recovery penalty then) and they would take FOREVER to get their next action, instead of their current recovery finishing normally and *then* their next recovery being really slow.

And if you have both positive and negative speed modifiers, you will see the negative one higher than in the ability tooltip (I had -33 of the Arquebus modal instead of -25).I don't think this is true. This is why I am pushing the point to MaxQuest that in his OP his statement about double-inversion making maluses overpower bonuses is incorrect. In reality it is because some maluses are phrased in terms of "time" and some bonuses in terms of "speed." In the tooltip, the game is showing you the coefficient normalized for "time." So if arbalest has a -25% speed in the modal description, that actually translates into +33% recovery time penalty in the tooltip (note the distinction between "negative speed" and "positive time" here). It's the same thing mathematically. It has nothing to do with there being a mix of bonuses and maluses. This ongoing confusion between speed and time (including my own until a few posts up) makes me think that this is a really huge systems blunder on Obsidian's part.

I've gotten a decent amount from de-trapping of course, but I've been blowing through them pretty quickly. Wondering if there's a vendor to get more traps from. I've seen the two in Delver's Row, but they don't restock their traps (and I've already cleaned them out). A little disappointed that you can craft basically every other consumable other than traps.

Yes that is correct, all of it. The bonuses are additive with all other sources, if any. I have to change my answer; you actually will likely get more than half a projectile per PL when you empower. I got the "every other" rule from an old backer beta dev post, but testing in game, the two projectile spells I tested actually get more than .5 projectile per PL, and by a variable amount, so we should consider .5 projectile per PL a minimum. PL4 superstar Minoletta's Concussive Missile gets an insane 1 projectile per PL, which is largely why an empowered version is so insanely good.

Actually, power level of attack abilities also increases the base attack damage that is mostly derived from your weapon. I discovered this while testing how Empower affects Flames of Devotion. The increase is very noticeable if you compare base damage (before any bonuses) from combat log between Empowered and non-Empowered attack skills. I also tested whether this is because of Empower or just power level, and modded an equipment to give +10 fire skill power level (Flames of Devotion is tagged as fire skill), and it definitely is power level that boosts base attack damage. Odd, because testing with Knock Down and Crippling Strike I didn't see any boost in damage other than from Overpenetration. great, more things to research. Tbh overwhelming wave in pillars1 was OP. Combined with intellect bonus, that 4s in deadfire can still be not shabby. Empower it and get lasting empower and it's even longer. It wasn't. It had crappy template that was fully friendly-fire, it didn't benefit from radius increaase from INT and it was a stun - an affliction druid had in abundance. It was also slow. I'd rather have something mind-affecting. Stun was also rolled againts Fort, a defense with highest average value. Not sure what was OP in OW but surely not stun. Besides, the point is increase in durations from PL is tiny. Especially on thing with very short base duration like OW. When i saw durations in Tyranny i was surprised they are even shorter than in PoE. Then i realized it is that way because Tyranny is a cooldown rotation game. But no, they did same in PoE2. I'm afraid PoE3 will be MOBA, party size is already at 5 Friendly-fire isn't a downside because it's easy to work around. And the stun had a whopping base of 8s, and stun is very rarely an immunity or resistance for enemies in pillars; even though it targeted fort the duration was so long that even a graze could be absolutely devastating if you had some reflex-targeting stuff to follow up with. The other sources for druid stun were all really short and two of them hooked onto really slow spells (one of which targeted randomly). On POTD, a very slightly buffed druid (for accuracy) can trivialize the llengrath fight because one well-aimed overwhelming wave will stun the dragons and llengrath for a really long time. Each PL point in duration is at least as good as a point in intellect. Possibly the bigger problem is that PL scaling on other things (e.g. projectile count, which I updated) is a little insane OP.

Was an issue in Backer Beta, is still an issue now. Basically, the priest gets three elemental boosting passives: scion of flame, heart of the storm, and spirit of decay. Unfortunately, two of three are essentially nothingburgers inside the priest's own skill tree. Heart of the storms affects "electricity" spells, but actually has zero effect with Warding Seal (Warding Seal also does less than its stated damage). Wael's version of Spiritual Weapon has a shocking lash, but does not benefit from it. I have not tested Spark the Souls of the Righteous yet, but even if it did get affected, you are taking an ability at Power Level 5 that won't see any benefit until Power Level 8 (which is impossible for multiclass). That seems broken. And don't get me started on Spirit of Decay. It affects "acid" or "decay", but by default a priest has zero acid/decay spells in their skill tree. Only a Berathian priest gets acid/decay spells, which means for all other multiclasses it has no innate value. And if we're really adding a passive that only one multiclass benefits from, then where's Secrets of Rime? Wael gets several frost-damage abilities and the priest has Iconic Projection which if all were tagged with "frost" would be actually more valuable than Spirit of Decay. This seems like gross oversight. At the very least, please ensure that Heart of the Storm benefits Warding Seal and Spark the Souls of the Righteous. I don't know what you'd need to do with Spirit of Decay to make it anything other than a "trap" ability for non-berathian priests. And please consider adding Secrets of Rime and tagging all frost-damage abilities as "frost". And, optionally, please consider making the various Spiritual Weapons tagged appropriately so that there's at least slightly more early game benefit for taking these elemental passives. I don't know if a save is actually necessary here, but here's a dropbox link to a save right before leveling up Xoti. You can take Heart of the Storm and experiment with Warding Seal and note that penetration is unaffected and the damage is bugged. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tvt7p13kxf57kqc/AAByWXDRUsGWOLJtiYhoqe31a?dl=0

This is also consistent for Potions and Drugs. The tooltips describe a "level" modifier, which is sometimes just Power Level (for pure Healing potions), sometimes just Alchemy skill (for magnitude of non-healing effects, such as the Armor bonus from a Potion of Spirit Shield), and sometimes both added together (durations: 5% longer per PL+ALC). I think all alchemical stuff counts as PL1 as the baseline (i.e., you get a bonus for each PL above 1), but I haven't tested this much with higher-level potions, etc. The Nalpazca bonus functions just like an Empower: all drug durations and drug healing effects (Whiteleaf) are boosted by 10 PLs (generally meaning a +50% duration), but buff magnitudes are the same as that for a non-Nalpazca with equivalent Alchemy skill. Alchemy skill for potion/drug purposes is personal-- no bonus from party assist. Your friends can't help you get high. Thanks, Enoch. I added a small note to the OP about PL and drugs/potions.

By "normalize" I mean that everything should be changed, at least to the player, to use the same unit. Right now a lot of the confusion is that some things refer to "speed" and other things refer to "time" which require a lot of care and math for players to understand how they impact and influence your recovery. If obsidian changed it all to be, e.g. "speed" then we could just add things up in our head and be done with it. I think what i'm tripping up here is the technicality that it's not the double-inversion here that matters. It's that you're combining two numbers with the magnitude (25) but they're doing different things, hence why we get a non-obvious result where two 25s combine and give us a -8%. What I was trying to make clear in my earlier post is that double-inversion makes perfect sense if you're talking about adjusting how quickly or slowly a character is advancing through their action frames, which is what dex and gunner did back in pillars1. It is surprising that they have this double-inversion, but then have this alternate way of computing coefficients as well, which leads to very confusing outcomes. Anyway I think we agree that the current system makes less sense than alternatives. This is a good point. Another thing I thought of was that, as a game designer, you may just want an ability that does "X" and not have to figure out the math it takes to accomplish "X" in your system. I.E. if you want to design a buff that halves your recovery time, you probably just want to fill in an input box in some tool that says "-50% time" instead of having to think a bit and put in "+100% speed" instead. I just wish that regardless of what is done behind the scenes or in the .json file, obsidian just gave us a standard, unified, normalized unit (your "speed coefficient" that you talk about in your tool). Stacking rules were complicated even in pillars, which had plenty of exceptions and bugs. Even with the rule in deadfire of "actives don't, passives do" (or is it the other way around? ARGH) I'm sure there's going to be lots of nonobvious, exceptional, and/or buggy cases. But I'm pretty sure effects won't stack with themselves.

This is a great way to put it. At first I was bummed that so many martial abilities saw no PL scaling, but as you put it they already scale because weapons get better and better. Really, spells were just getting a raw deal in pillars1.

Tbh overwhelming wave in pillars1 was OP. Combined with intellect bonus, that 4s in deadfire can still be not shabby. Empower it and get lasting empower and it's even longer.

Yes. Basically as you gain more power levels, all your spells gain more penetration, either because you have access to new higher level spells with greater inherent power level (from ability level bonus) or because the other spells gain a PL bonus. The PL bonus not being as large as the ability level bonus means that your most penetrating spells will generally be the highest PL spells you have though the others won't be too far behind. Though in-game, penetration values are shown correctly in the right-click pop up on spells (if you hover over it you should get a breakdown by ability level and PL), so you don't have to do the math yourself. Yes that is correct, all of it. The bonuses are additive with all other sources, if any.

As far as I can tell, no PL does not affect proficiency modals, and no empower does not alter cast time.

I updated the post with all the latest information I could find. This may be the most definitive explanation of power levels. There are probably some exceptions to the rule.

Easy enough to recreate. 1. Have a character with the "arms bearer" passive. 2. Equip a weapon there. 3. Level them up later on. 4. After you level them up, the weapon will have been unequipped and placed back in inventory. Here's a dropbox link to a save right before a level up and an output_log from right after: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3e93mbr5jseb13p/AADm2uH4dtds--zUuP3dzJFha?dl=0

Frankly, Obsidian should just re-normalize all the numbers they use to be same "unit", so we don't have to keep track of what affects "time" or "speed" or whatnot. Then we can just add up all the numbers (like pillars 1). This is unnecessarily confusing.

Swift Strikes grants +20% action [speed].But when you mouseover the recovery time of weapon, the game tries to display how much did Swift Strike affect the [time]. It converts speed coefficient to time coefficient: 1/1.2 = 0.8333. So a +20% increase in speed, corresponds to a -16.(6)% decrease in time. That makes sense for swift strikes, but I'm not crazy in thinking that that's not how dexterity is calculated, right? It should just be (1 + .03 * dex) as the coefficient? Which means the tool-tip is inconsistent in showing the effects on recovery rate and recovery time. (Wouldn't be the first time a pillars tooltip has been misleading) EDIT: the dexterity in that tooltip is at level where a coefficient of (1+x) = 1.06 versus 1/(1-x)=1.06 round to the same thing, so there's nothing inconsistent about the tooltip, potentially.

Thanks, MaxQuest. And holy large json file, Batman! TIL that vim will struggle to open a 14mb file with no line wrapping. Frankly the information you provide is disappointing, mostly because it talks about a murkiness in the game when I thought Obsidian was trying to clear all that up from pillars. So my thinking is that the way the modifiers are being combined, and with the inversion, what Obsidian is approximating is that all of these adjustments are to a rate of how quickly or slowly you move through attack frames. For all below cases I assume a 5s recovery: The example is simple with most positive cases: 5/(1 + sum(x)). +100% action speed really means we are increasing how many attack frames we process in the same time frame by +100%, so 5/(1 + 1) is how we represent that (we now have 2.5s recovery, or double speed advancing through attack frames). This is the same as dex and gunner from POE1. For net maluses, we can't just do 5/(1-x), because when we say you have +100% increased recovery, we are not saying that you take infinitely long to recover from an attack. Instead what we are saying is that +100% increased recovery means we have +100% delay between attack frames. The way you do this is 5/(1/(1-x)). We take the negative bonus (-1) and we reverse the sign so we get 1/2. Then we invert that, so that instead of increasing how quickly we are going through attack frames, we are decreasing our speed through attack frames (hence, a double-inversion of a malus). So 5/(1(1-(-1))) = 10s, or half as many action in the same time frame. So I was predisposed to thinking of maluses in terms of this thinking, where a malus means degradation in your action/recovery time (instead of action/recovery speed). MaxQuest, you've shown that for a -25% modifier, Obsidian is storing .75 as the coefficient. So OK, in your example with the car, it makes sense because .75 would literally mean -25% actions for any given unit of time. However, it is clear that in other places Obsidian do care about things being modified as an effect on time (e.g. instead of slowing down by 25%, you extend the time it takes by 25%); thanks to your spreadsheet and the .bundle file, we see that arbalest ia a .75 coefficient, but warbow overdraw is a 1/1.5 coefficient. The former directly reduces how many actions you should take by 25% (which translates to a +33% degradation in your recovery time), whereas the latter is formulated directly as a degradation of your recovery time (a coefficient of .66 or -33% action speed). That above distinction between how certain coefficients are computed just leads to a murkiness that is frustrating and requires a lot of care to pay attention to exactly what tool-tips are saying (and hoping that Obsidian was precise with their wording on each tooltip). So, one of my original points still stands though. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "double-inversion", double-inversion is not what makes things bad, because when the double-inversion is applied to something that lengthens your recovery time (warbow overdraw), it is basically a negative additive modifier to most positive modifiers which affect speed. What makes things bad are maluses that are targeting your action speed directly (like arbalest overbearing) because by their very nature they overpower identical magnitude improvements also to your action speed. Interestingly, there's a flip side here: Sure-Handed Ila stores a 1/.8 coefficient, instead of a 1.2, because I guess it is targeting giving you 20% less recovery time (effectively a 25% improvement in your action speed), instead of improving your action speed by 20% (like potions of deftness do by 15% for coeff of 1.15), so Sure Handed, too, will overweight against maluses that merely degrade your recovery speed (like warbow overdraw or armor). Something similar happens with dual-wield (given that its coefficient is stored as 1/.7 and not 1.3). (So, dual-wielding an implement with Sure-Handed will outweigh the penalty for wearing heavy armor, even though the tool-tip penalty for heavy armor exceeds a naive* sum of the tooltip bonuses for dual-wielding and sure-handed). * I use naive not to be insulting, but more in the math-y way of saying "possibly the obvious, but apparently incorrect" approach. Personally, I think we should try to spit out a list of coefficients and normalize them, or at least be explicitly clear into how they are put into the equation, because there are clearly some maluses are no different from bonuses (warbow, rapier needle, armor) and some that are significantly overweighted (arbalest overbearing but there are also bonuses that are overweighted: sure handed, dual-wielding). EDIT: i am also pretty busy the next couple of weeks, but I might take a stab at doing this when I have more time. Coefficients are just way too murky for my game-analytical needs as it stands. EDIT2: i tried to clear up terminology. It's a little confusing because it's a bit asymmetric. TL;DR: bonuses to your action speed are equally weighted to maluses to your recovery time. bonuses to your recovery time are equally weighted to maluses to your action speed. On the other hand, bonuses to your action speed are outweighed by maluses to your action speed, and maluses to your recovery time are outweighed by bonuses to your recovery time. UGH

I find power level to be extremely confusing. (Frankly, before doing in-game research and learning more about how it worked I thought it was a systems blunder by Obsidian due to how obtuse and confusing it is.) I'm posting this share my research but also gather comments on power level, because I can't find an updated recent thread that isn't locked to talk about it. I only have incomplete information from staring at combat logs and a limited set of spells/abilities, so others feel free to chime in. Power level scaling: affects all active abilities (including consumables). Weapon-based martial abilities get minimal and special power-level scaling (including special treatment by Empower, see end of post). Because weapon-based martial abilities are so special, this post will mostly focus on scaling done to other abilities. Note: this wasn't clear to me before, but adding this here -> all damage/duration bonuses you get from power level scaling are multiplicative with any other modifiers: they are applied first, and then all other modifiers are applied. What it does: for every power level you have that is greater than the native[1] power level of the spell, you get scaling bonuses. There are general rules about how spells should scale that I've found, though there appear to be exceptions. But what you see here should suffice for the vast majority of cases. [1] some classes get spells from other classes' skill trees. For example, if you have Xoti train as a priest or priest/monk, at PL3 she gets a bonus spell: "Vile Thorns." Vile Thorns is natively from the druid skill tree, and so it is treated as PL1 in terms of power level scaling. So that means at PL3 you get access to Vile Thorns and it already has some bonus damage, even though you don't have a power level higher than the power level Vile Thorns is on, because natively it is a PL1 spell, not a PL3 spell. General guidelines: First of all, tool-tip accuracy is inaccurate and inconsistent. The one you see when you right-click on an ability ignores ability and power level scaling. The one you see when you hover over the ability in your HUD ignores power level scaling, but counts ability level scaling. Anyway, regardless of power level, there is a scaling ability level accuracy bonus, which is equal to 2 * (power_level - 1) of the spell. So a PL3 spell will inherently have a +4 ability level accuracy bonus, whereas a PL1 spell will have none. There is also a scaling ability level penetration bonus, which is equal to +.5 per ability level. Second of all, the general way scaling appears to happen is, first, take the difference between your current power level and the spell's native power level. For simplicity's sake, let's just call this the "PL". (So casting a PL1 spell at PL4 you would have a PL of 3 for scaling purposes.) A. if a spell bounces or has projectiles, it gets an additional bounce or projectile every other PL. Spells used to have variable projectile scaling but it looks like that got nerfed at some point and they appear to get .5 projectile per PL. B. if a spell does damage/healing, it gets +5% per PL. Non-bounce, non-projectile damage/heals used to get up to 10%, but looks like that was nerfed at some point. C. if the spell has duration effects, it gets a longer duration of +5% per PL. D. if the spell has penetration, it gets an additional +.25 penetration per PL (rounds up to the nearest tenth). E1. if the spell has an accuracy roll, it gets +1 accuracy per PL. E2. if the spell primarily only has that accuracy roll (no damage/healing, no duration effect), it instead gets a +2 accuracy per PL. I'm not actually sure how many of these types of spells exist, but I noticed this while playing with Repulsing Seal (which only does a prone). Slicken is another example of a prone-only thing (though it also has a hazard duration, a hazard duration must not prevent a spell from getting +2 accuracy per PL). Empowering a spell gets you +5 PL to that spell when you cast it. Because some spells have multiple components to it that may touch on A, B, C, D, E some spells disproportionately benefit from power level scaling than others. Anecdotally, empowering a Minoletta's Concussive Missiles can be extremely powerful, because it is almost getting a boost in everything: damage, projectiles, accuracy, penetration. On the other hand, empowering a different PL4 spell like Form of the Delemgan will certainly give me a longer-lasting buff, but is not going to single-handedly swing a fight like empowering concussive missiles. Martial abilities: Non-weapon based seem to roughly follow the spell rules, but weapon-based (primary attack or full attack) abilities follow a special set of scaling, being only affected by B and secretly get an adjustment to their damage in A, but applied as a direct adjustment to the base damage roll, making it effectively a secret multiplicative damage boost. Because it is secretly applied, it's kind of hard to suss out what the bonus is, but my best guess from lots of force-attacking Eder is +5% to your roll per PL. Interestingly, doing an Empower-ed weapon ability manually adds a special damage, accuracy, and penetration bonus: +25% damage (additively combined with any inherent PL scaling), +10 accuracy and +2.5 penetration. I call this a special bonus because in the combat log, this accuracy/penetration bonus isn't attributed to power level scaling at all, it's attributed to the ability itself. And like normal power-level scaling, the Empowered damage bonus isn't actually listed on the tooltips at all, it is secretly added into the "roll" used for damage numbers. But it's there and works on weapon-based martial abilities that don't look like they have much power scaling whatsoever (i.e. Knock Down or Force of Anguish). Note that the way the base damage works means that the damage bonus is effectively a multiplicative bonus, making it more impactful than any other damage bonus in the game. Scrolls: function exactly like spells with one critical difference: instead of using your power level, it substitutes half your Arcana skill for it. Regardless of the spell on the scroll, the spell is treated as PL0. If you have a bonus to your power level (from items, potions, or whatnot), those also boost scroll power 1:1. Might, intellect, and perception have no effect on scrolls. (Note: I suspect it uses half your Arcana skill because scroll strength is already tied to arcana based on the minimum required to use one, so Obsidian didn't want you to get further insane scaling from a scroll of maelstrom, for example.) Potions/drugs: are influenced by your Alchemy skill. Like scrolls, if you have any bonus to your power level (from items, potions, or whatnot), those also boost potion/drug power level. Nalpazca monks effectively have +10 PL for drugs, which generally means +50% duration with drugs. Pre-1.2, all potions/drugs got their effect boosted by your alchemy skill, but this scaling has been removed with 1.2. (So no more broken uses of Potion of Impediment.) Might, intellect, and perception have no effect on potions. Explosives: are influenced by your Explosives skill. Bombs used to have a hidden native power level, but as of 1.2 they all have PL0 and have been rebalanced so that they scale appropriately from there. Like with other consumables, if you have any bonus to your power level (from items, potions, etc.) they also boost your explosives skill 1:1. Might, intellect, and perception have no effect on explosives. Reverse pickpocketing: from stealth, you can reverse pickpocket an explosive (can't be in your quick item slot). It gets a special version of "empower" when it detonates, which grants it +100 accuracy (all but guaranteeing a crit), and +100% to the base damage (multiplicative with other damage bonuses).' Traps: are weird~! They do their own thing when it comes to PL scaling. First, each point of Mechanics gives a +3 accuracy bonus to traps when they trigger. However, for each of your character levels, it gets a bonus PL, except this PL scaling does not affect damage, they only affect penetration, accuracy, and duration (this may be related to an issue where spells that create "hazard" effects do not do correct damage that scales with stats/abilities). Interestingly, trap duration is not affected by intellect, but trap accuracy is affected by perception. So a level 12 character with 10 mechanics would get a +30 accuracy bonus from mechanics, then another +12 accuracy from PL scaling (listed as an "ability level" bonus in the combat log). Then, if it's a trap with a duration, it gets +60% to duration, and if it's a trap with a penetration value, it gets +3.25 (rounds to 3.3 in display). Anyhoo, this effectively means that for people who keep using traps late game, they will primarily be useful for their debuffs (sorry, caltrops trap). Monastic Unarmed Training: is also weird! I did my research in a separate thread dedicated to fists. Additions welcome! I'll edit this post and add in corrections or extra details.

Wait. Does not the first attack cease stealth/invisibility? That's not what diminishing returns are though. The "true metric" is DPS, or actions/second more generally. When you go from 100/2 to 100/3 in your example the same number of modifiers is giving you the same increase in DPS or actions/second, from 1x => 2x and then 2x => 3x. That's precisely linear returns. Avoiding zero or negative recovery is simply avoiding increasing returns. You can avoid zero or negative recovery and have linear returns. It's the same reason why deflection in pillars has INCREASING returns. Even though each point gave you one point of deflection on your tooltip, the "true metric" was your effective health, which would eventually become infinite with a sufficiently high deflection. Paying attention to what your "true metric" is very important. Could you please advise if the figures in my char sheet are lower because the calculations are made according to that formula with other buffs taken into account. Only Dual Wield bonus is the same as it should be (30). I used to think it is a bug. Boy that's confusing. IIRC, Swift Strikes is a increase of +20% action speed, right? But in that recovery speed tooltip it's listed as a -17% bonus. I mean, what the heck. But naively just using the listed bonuses, 3.0s is correct. 5.0s/(1 + .06 /*dex*/ + .458 /*dual wield*/ + .17 /*swift strikes, apparently*/) = 2.96s rounds to 3.0s.

Are you sure about the "not the native level" thing? I was looking at Xoti the other day and her PL3 bonus spell is natively a PL1 druid spell, and is definitely getting PL bonuses as if it was a PL1 spell, not the subclass's PL3.