Taking Interrupting Blows breaks interruption

[Guest]

Description:

 

Normal interruption mechanics (so far as I've been able to tell):

 

1) 25 Base Interrupt + Perception modifier

2) Add the value from step 1 to a random 1-100 roll

3) If that number is greater than 75 + the target's Resolve modifier, then an interrupt occurs

 

There seems to be some confusion about how Interrupting Blows works (is it an additive 15 to the roll, so that 25 becomes 40? Is it applied to the base roll, so that [25+9]*1.15? Is it applied to total roll so that [25+9+51]*1.15?)

 

So to test, I gave both Sagani and my PC Interrupting Blows and tested the outcome by having them attack another party member until an interrupt occurred.

 

Before taking the talent, interruption worked as I outlined in steps 1-3 above. After taking the talent, the "25 Base Interrupt" went away. The roll only used the Perception modifier + the random. 15% was not added to anything. 

 

Conclusion: Interrupting Blows not only doesn't work, it actually breaks Interruption.

 

I have screen shots and save games if you need them, however unless I'm missing something, you should be able to reproduce this yourselves.

 

Steps to Reproduce the Issue:

 

 

1) Advance any party member until they are at an odd number level

2) Assign them Interrupting Blows talent.

3) Have the party member attack something (preferably another party member so that you don't have to engage in combat and can just watch the combat log)

4) Once a non-graze, non-crit interrupt occurs, mouse over the entry to see that the base value matches the party member's Perception modifier only.

5) Have a sad

[Cronstintein]

Wow you totally saved me with this post, thank you.  I was just considering taking this talent, glad I didn't!

Edited April 3, 2015 by Cronstintein

[Cronstintein]

Huh so had some bizarre results and went back to do more testing. It seems that 25+interrupt+1d100 is only for crits.  On regular attacks you just get d100+interrupt.

[Emptiness]

I don't have my party at an odd level-up, so I'm not in a position to test this myself, but I wanted to look at the normal interrupt calculations.  This is what I'm seeing:

 

 

I was surprised by the -7 and the 84.  Looking at Pallegina's character sheet, it lists her interrupt as 18; Eder's concentration is listed as 9.  The best explanations I can come up with are 18 - 25 = -7 and 75 + 9 = 84.

 

That would make the default calculation [ (Attacker's Interrupt based on Perception) - 25 + d100 ] compared to [ (Defender's Concentration based on Resolve) + 75 ].  That's a little bit different than your formula (the 25 isn't added to interrupt chance, but subtracted).  Also, it seems unnecessarily obtuse.  Why not [interrupt + d100] compared to [Concentration + 100]?  Even if the formula isn't adjusted, it would be helpful to have the popup show the characters' interrupt and concentration values from the character sheet and how they factor into the calculation, to avoid confusion.

 

Also, that formula doesn't seem to leave a lot of room for interrupts to occur, and if your concentration is higher than your attacker's interrupt then they will never interrupt you.  Is that intended?  Or did I miss some subtlety of the formula that means that there is still a small chance to interrupt a high-concentration foe?

 

Anyway, I will test this more extensively when I get a chance to do before-and-after with Interrupting Blows.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Emptiness

[Emptiness]

It seems that 25+interrupt+1d100 is only for crits.  On regular attacks you just get d100+interrupt.

 

Yeah, this is matching what I'm seeing.  The -25 in my example above was because it was a graze.  So it seems to be d100 + interrupt, with a +25 bonus for crits and a -25 penalty for grazes.

 

That makes me feel a little bit better, because on a normal hit you still have a chance to interrupt your target unless their concentration is 25 points higher than your interrupt.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Emptiness

[Guest]

Huh so had some bizarre results and went back to do more testing. It seems that 25+interrupt+1d100 is only for crits.  On regular attacks you just get d100+interrupt.

Nice catch! I guess my PC crits a lot because all I saw were the 25's

 

Unfortunately, Interrupting Blows still appears to be broken, but at least we cleared up that other stuff.

 

Now we just have to hope that one of the devs sees this and that a fix makes it's way into 1.04.

[Emptiness]

I finally got around to testing this some more.  I gave two of my characters the feat and had them attack each other - there was no sign of any change anywhere in the interrupt calculation for either of them.

 

The only other possible place I could think that there might be an influence would be on the die roll itself.  In other words, maybe the die roll was being skewed upwards by 15% behind the scenes, and that increase was not reflected in the combat log in any way.  Far fetched and unlikely, but not impossible.

 

To test that, I had my protagonist kill Eder twice: once with Interrupting Blows, and once with Bull's Will (+10 Will, which should have no effect on the ability to cause interrupts).  Eder had the same level, health, stats, gear, etc, for both tests.  I counted the number of interrupts that occurred:

 

Bull's Will: 62

Interrupting Blows: 54

 

Obviously this is a very small sample, so it is impossible to draw any statistically significant conclusions from this test, but informally the hypothesis that Interrupting Blows is increasing the chance to interrupt does not look favorable.

[durbal]

It does nothing and is broken at the moment.

[Cronstintein]

The only way it could be doing anything is if it was changing the d100 roll behind the scenes (making it roll from 15-100).  That would be a dumb way to do it, but possible.

[cRichards]

Thanks for all of the information, everyone. This issue has been reported to the team. It looks like the talent does not properly add interrupt chance, possibly because interrupt went through different iterations for balance and the talent may be using one of those older versions.

[Cronstintein]

Thanks for the reply, Richards.

[XomRhoK]

I think it maybe just wrong ingame description. According to http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Interrupting_Blows

Effect Interrupt base value x 1.15

 

 

Interrupt

If your Interrupt is high you will stop the enemies actions if you hit them more often. Each weapon/attack have time how long they interrupt the enemy and attacks that have high rates of fire (like wands and spell missiles) or area of effect abilities have low base Interrupt values. But there are exceptions, Firearms have relatively low base Interrupt (and high damage) and Thrust of Tattered Veils has a high base Interrupt (but does very little damage).^[5][6][7] Interrupt is influenced by Talents and Equipment.

 

 

The attacker must at least score a Graze. Each weapon or attack has a base Interrupt time in one of the following categories Scale:

• [None]
• Weakest: 0.05 seconds
• Weaker: ???
• Weak: 0.35
• Average: 0.5 sec
• Strong: 0.75 sec
• Stronger: 1 sec
• Strongest: ???

These values can further be modified by magicial weapons, items or the talent Interrupting Blows. <---THIS!

 

Magical weapons can have a special property (called Superior Interruption) that bumps their set/listed Base Interrupt rating up by one category. E.g., a Stiletto would be set to Weak but be bumped to Average. Magical items (of any sort, but usually armor) and spells/abilities can have a special property, called Interrupting, that increases the base value by a percentage.

The attack roll can further modify this value. The final result increases by 50% if the attack was a Crit and is cut to 50% if the attack was a Graze. Additionally, a Disengagement Attack automatically increases the final result by 50%. A Disengagement Attack that Crits would increase the result by 50%, then that result by 50%.

To call a hit reaction, the percentile roll needs to be 51 or higher. The roll is 1-100 + Interrupt - Concentration.

So it not a chance increase, but duration increase. I think it will be noticible in Morning star test, but now i am lazy to test it =)

Edited April 15, 2015 by XomRhoK

[Matt516]

 

It seems that 25+interrupt+1d100 is only for crits.  On regular attacks you just get d100+interrupt.

 

Yeah, this is matching what I'm seeing.  The -25 in my example above was because it was a graze.  So it seems to be d100 + interrupt, with a +25 bonus for crits and a -25 penalty for grazes.

 

That makes me feel a little bit better, because on a normal hit you still have a chance to interrupt your target unless their concentration is 25 points higher than your interrupt.

 

 

Yes. I was going to say this after reading the OP - there's no base 25 Interrupt, it's just your perception modifier +d100 vs their resolve modifier +75. 

 

@Xom, don't trust the wiki. It's a liar and a cheat.

[Guest]

I ran several rounds of combat against another party member and looked for interrupts. The ones I saw only made sense based on the assumption that there was a base of 25. I just happened to miss the fact that they were also crits.

[XomRhoK]

Just tested duration of interrupts of Morning star without and with Interrupting Blows. No difference.

And overall, interrupts applied to all enemies colldowns, for example after hit recovery, extend the cooldown time. 

And very unexpected for me was to discover that animation time don't extend really when character interrupted. I checked it at long animations like reloading. It seems that animation stops after interrupt hit, but overall animation time don't change. Character just speed up animation. For example character need 3 sec to reload, he start reloading for 1 sec and get interrupted,  he start reloading again for 1 sec, and get interrupted again, seems it can last forever, but no, he already virtually reload for 2 sec and character just speed up animation and reload for 1 sec(1+1+1=3 sec total like it has to be). But it need confirmation, i checked it just by my eyes, and there is guys who count frames somehow.

[Guest]

Yeah, dev confirmed like 5 posts up that they know it's broken.

[rwendi]

Has this been fixed?

[MaxQuest]

And very unexpected for me was to discover that animation time don't extend really when character interrupted. I checked it at long animations like reloading. It seems that animation stops after interrupt hit, but overall animation time don't change. Character just speed up animation. For example character need 3 sec to reload, he start reloading for 1 sec and get interrupted,  he start reloading again for 1 sec, and get interrupted again, seems it can last forever, but no, he already virtually reload for 2 sec and character just speed up animation and reload for 1 sec(1+1+1=3 sec total like it has to be). But it need confirmation, i checked it just by my eyes, and there is guys who count frames somehow.

It might be a little late reply, but anyway:

 

Interrupt does not increase or influence reloading duration in any way. The game has a reloadingTimer; it tracks how long the reloading duration should be, and how much has already elapsed. So when resumed, reloading will continue from the last value.

 

Interrupt does increase recovery duration. When you interrupt someone, the interruption value (0.05 weakest up to 1.0 strongest) is appended to the end of recovery, prolonging it.