NDB
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If I recall correctly, Pyro Fly used to take into account all tied skills when considering the top three highest level skills. For example, if the opponent had a level 10 skill, two level 4 skills, and two level 3 skills, all five of these skills would be eligible to be disabled by Pyro Fly at 20% each. I believe this is how it worked for years.
Recently, CactusChan and Ginger did some testing and found that it only ever disabled 3 skills over a hundred trials. The build they used had a maxed skill, three level 2 skills, and the rest level 1 skills. The fact that the robot is disabling exactly three skills no matter the number of ties isn't really wrong, I suppose (maybe this was just a change to the way the bot works, not a bug). However, the problem arises when in the cases of ties, the specific skill that is elegible to be taken out of the tied skills appears to be pre-determined depending on the build and not random at all, and this can give the impression that the skill is rigged.
Out of curiosity, I decided to test what would happen for each case of having a skill at max level and the rest of the active skills tied at level 3. By doing this, I hoped to reveal the exact priority list that the bot follows when it chooses from a list of tied skills. The results were intriguing.
For Blood Mage, when having:
Fireball, Plasma Cannon, Brutal Strike, Blood Instinct, Fire Rain, or Energy Parasite maxed and all other skills tied, Field Medic and Terrify were eligible
Blood Shield, Terrify, or Maelstrom maxed and all other skills tied, Field Medic and Blood Instinct were eligible
Field Medic maxed and all other skills tied, Blood Instinct and Blood Shield were eligible.
For Cyber Hunter, when having:
Nanotech Shield, Malfunction, Plasma Grenade, Static Charge, Adaptive Offense, or Memory Leak maxed and all other skills tied, Field Medic and Neurotoxin were eligible
Precision Strike, Neurotoxin, or Massacre maxed and all other skills tied, Field Medic and Memory Leak were eligible
Field Medic maxed and all other skills tied, Memory Leak and Massacre were eligible.
The patterns observed for the two classes are eerily similar yet hard to explain. For BM, the default combination appears to be Field Medic and Terrify whereas for CH it is Field Medic and Neurotoxin. However, there are exceptions. For BM, the skills that switch from Terrify to Blood Instinct are Field Medic, Blood Shield, Maelstrom, and Terrify itself. For CH, the skills that switch from Neurotoxin to Memory Leak are Field Medic, Precision Strike, Massacre, and Neurotoxin itself. For both classes, Field Medic is an extra special case, which is probably not a coincidence because it is the one skill that is eligible to be taken in every single build setup.
In fact, when I tested builds that had one skill maxed, another skill at level 5, and the rest of the skills tied, in all cases the maxed skill, the level 5 skill, plus Field Medic were eligible. Field Medic is the undisputed number one priority for Pyro Fly when it chooses from tied skills.
From this information, I decided to test what would happen if I had one skill maxed, several skills tied at level 4 that did not include Field Medic, and the rest of the skills at level 1.
When I had Fireball maxed and:
Plasma Cannon, Brutal Strike, Fire Rain, and Maelstrom all tied at level 4, Plasma Cannon and Maelstrom were eligible
Brutal Strike, Fire Rain, and Maelstrom all tied at level 4, Maelstrom and Fire Rain were eligible
Plasma Cannon, Brutal Strike, and Fire Rain all tied at level 4, Plasma Cannon and Brutal Strike were eligible.
Again, some sort of strict pre-determined priority ranking system seemed to be at play when choosing among the tied skills. That's the bottom line, and it's strange. By having Pyro Fly only ever take three skills, it's a huge indirect buff, and the fact that it always prioritizes Field Medic when it is among the tied skills is, generally speaking, also a buff considering how vital Field Medic is to most builds. Intended or not I don't know at this point, but now we are aware of it.
As for the ratios with which the three skills are taken, I wasn't able to find anything conclusive to say that they weren't exactly even (33.33% each) because my sample size was far too small for each build, but I'm also not ruling it out completely either. I got the sense that Field Medic tended to be overrepresented whereas the other tied skill (Terrify, Blood Instinct, or Blood Shield in the case of BM) were underrepresented.
Now here's something I know isn't working properly: Plasma Fly is only targeting exactly three skills as well even though it is supposed to be able to target any active skill. This is according to the skill description which states that it places "a random skill" on cooldown. The three skills that Plasma Fly targets are the exact three that Pyro Fly would have targeted. Majorly rigged!
< Message edited by NDB -- 6/21/2020 21:54:16 >
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