Escalating Exposure damage affected by Resistance and Resistance Reduction TWICE

[MisterSnook]

Hello Deadlock devs!

So there is currently a pretty major bug with Escalating Exposure. Which heavily buffs the item in some stages of the game and heavily nerfs it in others.

I will post the math below but the gist of it is that it seems like both the damage amplification and the final damage gets affected by enemy resistances. This results in it giving much MORE damage vs people with negative resistance but also much LESS vs people with a lot of resistance.

MATH

You already know this but im simply writing it out for clarity.
Damage is calculated with the following formula when it comes to resistances in this game.

Resistance Modifer = [1 - (1 - Resist.1) * (1 - Resist.2) * (1 - Resist.n)] - [1 - (1 - ResistReduct.1) * (1 - ResistReduct.2) * (1 - ResistReduct.n
Final Damage = (Base Damage - Resistance Modifier * Base Damage) * Damage Amplification(Soul Shredder)

We can verify this by testing with the following builds



Here we get
- 242 Base Damage on Splatter
- 24% from Crippliing Headshot
- 12% from Spirit Strike
- 12% from Mystic Vulnrebility
and in the second case we also get 10% damage amplification from Soul Shredder.
If we type this in to our formula

we get
(242 + (1 - (1-0.24)*(1-0.12)*(1-0.12)) * 242) = 341.57 in the first case
and
(242 + (1-(1-0.24)*(1-0.12)*(1-0.12)) * 242)*1.1 = 375.73 in the second case.
Below is a video verifying this in game.


View attachment Deadlock 2024-09-10 15-16-28.mp4

These calculation do not work for Escalating Exposure though.

With 20 stacks the expected outcome would be (with splatter base damage being

(167+ (1-(1-0.24)*(1-0.12)*(1-0.12)) * 167)*(0.06*20+1) = 518.57

When verified in game this isnt correct though...its not actually correct.
View attachment Deadlock 2024-09-09 23-58-57.mp4

Instead what seems to be happening is that the Spirit resistance is affecting both the Damage Amp from Escalating Exosure as well as the final damage.

This is the formula that i've found to match the best with results in game.

(0.06*20*(2-(1-0.15)*(1-0.24)*(1-0.12))+1)*(2-(1-0.15)*(1-0.24)*(1-0.12))*167 = 649.73

((Amp From EE) * (Res Modifier) + 1 so it multiplies)) * (Res Modifier) * (Base Damage)

The big issue here is that if your oponent has positive resistance this works to you detriment. To me this feels like an anti tank item which makes this interaction a bit counter productive.

That is all!

//MisterSnook

 

[StrangerPuncher]

Does this include the minus spirit resist from Escalating Exposure itself?

 

[thalion]

Good find.

 

[lewin]

Excellent post

 

[Dezvul]

I went and tested this one and verified it myself, though because of some insight into why this is happening I kind of figured it was extremely likely true and I could probably just assume it to be true.

It seems escalating exposure counts as its own separate instant of damage, you'll notice "escalating exposure" as one of the listed damage sources when you die to someone using it. This effectively means that it doesn't amp up the spirit damage dealt, but instead applies a new instance of damage based on the damage of the initial source. Because of this, the logic used by the code is to look at the spirit damage the enemy took, then "amplify it" but as a new damage instance, because it's a new damage instance coded as spirit damage it is once again resisted spirit resist.

There are a several other consequences of escalating exposure's spirit amp being coded as its own separate instance of damage, here are the ones I know of:

• Because other sources of spirit amp (soul shredder bullets) increase the damage of the initial hit, they stack multiplicatively with the spirit amp from E.E. (escalating exposure); though we can't say for sure that they aren't meant to stack multiplicatively to begin with.
• "Mystic burst" and "improved burst" have passives that apply an additional burst of damage so long as you deal a threshold damage in a single tick of damage, because the damage amp from E.E. counts as its own separate damage, it doesn't increase the damage of the ability and therefore cannot push the damage of an ability over the threshold even though spirit amp from other sources can.
• There are several DoT abilities which cannot be lethal. E.E. makes so these abilities lose their "can't be lethal" property because E.E. deals the lethal damage, not the ability it is supposedly boosting.

 

[CookieMeister]

I went and tested this one and verified it myself, though because of some insight into why this is happening I kind of figured it was extremely likely true and I could probably just assume it to be true.

It seems escalating exposure counts as its own separate instant of damage, you'll notice "escalating exposure" as one of the listed damage sources when you die to someone using it. This effectively means that it doesn't amp up the spirit damage dealt, but instead applies a new instance of damage based on the damage of the initial source. Because of this, the logic used by the code is to look at the spirit damage the enemy took, then "amplify it" but as a new damage instance, because it's a new damage instance coded as spirit damage it is once again resisted spirit resist.

There are a several other consequences of escalating exposure's spirit amp being coded as its own separate instance of damage, here are the ones I know of:

• Because other sources of spirit amp (soul shredder bullets) increase the damage of the initial hit, they stack multiplicatively with the spirit amp from E.E. (escalating exposure); though we can't say for sure that they aren't meant to stack multiplicatively to begin with.
• "Mystic burst" and "improved burst" have passives that apply an additional burst of damage so long as you deal a threshold damage in a single tick of damage, because the damage amp from E.E. counts as its own separate damage, it doesn't increase the damage of the ability and therefore cannot push the damage of an ability over the threshold even though spirit amp from other sources can.
• There are several DoT abilities which cannot be lethal. E.E. makes so these abilities lose their "can't be lethal" property because E.E. deals the lethal damage, not the ability it is supposedly boosting.

Pocket being able to kill you with his ult is a really scary thought

 

[MisterSnook]

I went and tested this one and verified it myself, though because of some insight into why this is happening I kind of figured it was extremely likely true and I could probably just assume it to be true.

It seems escalating exposure counts as its own separate instant of damage, you'll notice "escalating exposure" as one of the listed damage sources when you die to someone using it. This effectively means that it doesn't amp up the spirit damage dealt, but instead applies a new instance of damage based on the damage of the initial source. Because of this, the logic used by the code is to look at the spirit damage the enemy took, then "amplify it" but as a new damage instance, because it's a new damage instance coded as spirit damage it is once again resisted spirit resist.

There are a several other consequences of escalating exposure's spirit amp being coded as its own separate instance of damage, here are the ones I know of:

• Because other sources of spirit amp (soul shredder bullets) increase the damage of the initial hit, they stack multiplicatively with the spirit amp from E.E. (escalating exposure); though we can't say for sure that they aren't meant to stack multiplicatively to begin with.
• "Mystic burst" and "improved burst" have passives that apply an additional burst of damage so long as you deal a threshold damage in a single tick of damage, because the damage amp from E.E. counts as its own separate damage, it doesn't increase the damage of the ability and therefore cannot push the damage of an ability over the threshold even though spirit amp from other sources can.
• There are several DoT abilities which cannot be lethal. E.E. makes so these abilities lose their "can't be lethal" property because E.E. deals the lethal damage, not the ability it is supposedly boosting.

So first off, EE does not allow non lethal dot abilities to kill you. As far as i know there exists only one non lethal ability in the game and that is pocket ult. His ult also states that it doesnt apply item procs and while it doesnt stack the EE buff it does benefit from the amp. It still isnt lethal.
Every other "non lethal" ability simply deal current hp dmg which is very different.

Yes, the EE is applied seperatly . A more representative equation for it would look like this:
((0.06*20)*167*(2-(1-0.15)*(1-0.24)*(1-0.12))+167)*(2-(1-0.15)*(1-0.24)*(1-0.12)

Soul Shredder bullets also seems to be the only damage amplification that actually is able to trigger Mystic Burst as you can see in the clip bellow. Why? Dont know.

View attachment Deadlock 2024-09-16 17-09-37.mp4
While testing this i uncovered another bug though. When using pockets 1 only the first hit actually visually benefits from EE the rest give you the right dmg but display the wrong number.