[Article] Mechanics of Defile stacking

TheYKcid

Defiles appear to behave inconsistently when stacked. This behaviour varies among different sources of defile, and also depends on which combinations of them you are stacking. Here are some findings @Pelican and I obtained through extensive testing.

Thread isn't very organised at the moment—I just wanted to record our results and make them available to others. May tidy-up the thread in future to improve readability.

Defiles tested:

• Minor Defile ... 15% base, affected by Befoul CP
• Major Defile ... 30% base, affected by Befoul CP
• Meatbag Catapult ... 50%, not affected by Befoul
• Flaming Oil ... 50% - not affected by Befoul (note: not a true defile as it doesn't reduce health recovery, but interacts with healing the same way)

The section below documents the various rules that govern defile stacking. Open the spoilers (where available) to view the mathematical expression of its respective rule.

Rules:

1. You cannot stack more than 2 sources of defile—only the 2 largest values will be taken into consideration.
2. All defiles interact with your Healing Received modifier.
   Spoiler

   For example, Major Vitality and 5pc heavy armor would give you the following Healing Received modifier:

   1 + 0.3 + 0.08 = 1.38
   

   This is 1 of 3 healing modifier categories, which are all multiplicative with each other. The other two are:

   1. Healing Taken
   2. Healing Done

   and are irrelevant to defiles.
3. Single, player-based defile (eg. minor OR major):
   Interacts multiplicatively with healing received.
   Spoiler

   eg. for Major Defile (with no Befoul CP):

   Net heal value * 0.7
   

   where,
   "Net heal value" is the actual healing tick you would normally experience
4. Double, player-based defiles (i.e. minor AND major):
   Minor behaves multiplicatively (and is applied first), while major is subtractive (applied second).
   This is irrespective of the order in which you apply either debuff.
   Spoiler

   ... [(Healing Received * 0.85) - 0.3] ...
   

   "..." before and after the sub-expression are a reminder than you still need to include base heal value (derived from raw stats), Healing Done, and Healing Taken in the full equation
5. Single siege defile (eg. Meatbag OR Oil):
   Interacts subtractively.
   Spoiler

   ... (Healing Received - 0.5) ...
   

6. Double siege defiles (i.e. Meatbag AND Oil):
   The first one is applied subtractively, the second is applied multiplicatively.
   Spoiler

   ... [(Healing Received - 0.5) * 0.5] ...
   

7. Meatbag Catapult + Major Defile:
   Does not stack
8. Flaming Oil + Major defile:
   Oil is subtractively applied first, Major Defile is multiplicatively applied second.
   Spoiler

   ... [(Healing Received - 0.5) * 0.7] ...
   

9. Siege (Meatbag OR Oil) + Minor Defile:
   Siege is subtractively applied first, Minor Defile is multiplicatively applied second.
   Spoiler

   ... [(Healing Received - 0.5) * 0.85] ...
   

10. 2 siege + Major and/or Minor Defile:
    Identical result as only stacking 2 siege (see rule #1).

TheYKcid

@Reorx_Holybeard thought this might be useful to you. The build editor currently doesn't factor defiles correctly.

usmcjdking

Archer guards Lethal Arrow is a 90% healing reduction modifier IIRC.

Solariken

Wait - Healing Taken and Healing Received aren't the same thing? I always assumed they were the same just worded differently on tooltips.

All very interesting though

TheYKcid

usmcjdking wrote: »

Archer guards Lethal Arrow is a 90% healing reduction modifier IIRC.

Interesting, so many cyro guard abilities are analogous to (and sometimes old versions of) skills available to us players.

I've also heard the Chaosball's healing reduction on its carrier is a form of defile. It would be far too problematic to isolate and test that in an actual BG though.

Solariken wrote: »

Wait - Healing Taken and Healing Received aren't the same thing? I always assumed they were the same just worded differently on tooltips.

All very interesting though

Yep, Healing Taken is distinct from Received and a category of its own. I've tested it personally this patch.

Reorx_Holybeard

TheYKcid wrote: »

@Reorx_Holybeard thought this might be useful to you. The build editor currently doesn't factor defiles correctly.

Thanks for the tag. Will fix the editor when I get back from vacation in a few weeks!

Reorx_Holybeard

Do finally got around to testing this on PTS. Conclusions are up top followed by a little detail on the tests done. I didn't test all the combinations in the OP as I was testing by myself on two accounts which made it a little tricky to get 2 or more effects on at the same time.

1. Meatbag Catapult doesn't stack with Major Defile (doesn't seem to use the same debuff name at least from the interface).
2. Most Healing Received modifiers stack additively with each other (usually, see below).
3. Buff/debuff order appears to affect the exact result.

For 2&3 every Healing Received modifier except the PVP Battle Spirit buff stacks additively with each other "most of the time" however depending on the order of debuffs you can get the occasional weird results that can only be explained by effects being changed from additive to multiplicative. I found this same effect with Mitigations and Vulnerabilities earlier this year which makes it very challenging to find the underlying equations used.

As an example of this consider 2 tests that are identical except for the order in which the Meatbag Catapult and Minor Defile effects are applied. These are using actual values seen on PTS:

• Minor Defile + Meatbag = 704 heal (all additive as expected)
• Meatbag + Minor Defile = 764 heal (Defile is not multiplicative and doesn't give exact results as expected)

So, for the moment I'm going to leave the build editor using additive stacking for all healing received effects as that covers most of the cases, at least for the moment.

Test and Calculation Details

Basic test was to apply some healing received modifiers (both buffs and debuffs), get damaged, and then cast a healing spell to see the actual healing done. The healing tooltip showed 2333 health for all tests done. In the following list shows the amount of healing done followed by modifiers used (in order, HT = Healing Taken, mV/MV = Minor/Major Vitality, mD/MD = Minor/Major Defile, MB=Meatbag Catapult, OI=Oil, BS=Battle Spirit) and then the calculation to show/confirm how it is found.

• 2333 = No modifiers
• 2983 = 15%CP + 8%mV + 4%HT = 2333 * 1.04 * (1 + 0.15 + 0.08)
• 2619 = 8%mV + 4%HT = 2333 * 1.04 * 1.08
• 3347 = 8%mV + 30%MV + 4%HT = 2333 * 1.04 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.30)
• 2619 = 8%mV + 15%CP - 15%mD + 4%HT = 2333 *1.04 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.15)
• 1491 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15)
• 1309 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS - 15%mD = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.15)
• 1128 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS - 30%MD = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.30)
• 946 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS - 15%mD - 30%MD = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.15 - 0.30)
• 946 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS - 30%MD - 15%mD = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.15 - 0.30)
• 886 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS - 50%MB = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.50)
• 764 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS - 50%MB - 15%mD = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.50) * (1 - 0.15) = 753 (?)
• 886 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS - 50%MB - 30%MD = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.50) (MD has no effect)
• 886 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS - 50%OI = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.50)
• 704 = 8%mV + 4%HT - 50%BS - 50%MB = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 - 0.50)
• 569 = 8%mV + 4%HT - 50%BS - 15%mD - 50%MB = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 - 0.50) * (1 - 0.15) = 598 (?)
• 704 = 8%mV + 15%CP + 4%HT - 50%BS - 15%mD - 50%MB = 2333 * 1.04 * 0.5 * (1 + 0.08 + 0.15 - 0.15 - 0.50)

The general Healing Received calculation used is:

(Item + Skill + Set + Buff + CP) * (BattleSpirit)

and overall healing is:

HealingReceived * HealingTaken * HealingDone

The 764 case is the one where the order of debuffs changes the additive stacking of Minor Defile to a multiplicative one although the result is not exactly what we see. I believe this is due to multiple steps of rounding within the game and it is something I saw in my extensive testing of mitigation and vulnerability. Similarly, the 569 case doesn't exactly work out additively (522) or multiplicatively (598).

No_Division

I quickly read this but does this mean minor/major defile is a more potent counter to healing or less potent counter?

Reorx_Holybeard

No_Division wrote: »

I quickly read this but does this mean minor/major defile is a more potent counter to healing or less potent counter?

It seems to depend on the order of debuffs. For example, if you're fighting someone you'll get slightly more reduction in healing if you cast Minor Defile before your Meatbag Catapult or Oil. Have only seen this effect using the siege weapons and unsure if it exists using normal debuffs. In theory, if it does you would want to cast Minor Defile before your Major Defile.

Edit: Tested this today and the additive/multiplicative issue only seems to occur with siege weapons. Changing the order of Minor/Major Defile has no effect (effects are always additive).

Berenhir

These threads are the gems in the useless rubble of this forum. Keep up the good work.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

. This is 1 of 3 healing modifier categories, which are all multiplicative with each other. The other two are:
Healing Taken
Healing Done
and are irrelevant to defiles.

What does this mean?

Pelican

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

show previous quotes

. This is 1 of 3 healing modifier categories, which are all multiplicative with each other. The other two are:
Healing Taken
Healing Done
and are irrelevant to defiles.

What does this mean?

"Healing Taken" is like healing received but its categorised differently. It is not affected by defiles. Defiles affect to your healing taken multiplier, not your healing done multiplier.