The Secret World Combat Table

Question

In comparison to other games the combat table in the Secret World seems to differ in many ways. So far it appears to be built up of the following possible outcomes to each attack:

• Evade (miss)
• Block
• Glancing
• Hit
• Critical Hit
• Penetrative Hit

However, I've also seen instances of multiple of these effects that I would not expect to see together occur, for example a "Glancing Penetration" or a "Critical Block" which do not seem to make sense.

Has anybody else put any thought into the way the combat table in the Secret World works and if so do we have any ideas on this yet?

Answer 1

There is a very good FAQ about The Secret World that has a nice section about combat mechanics. I think the part that would be of interest to you is this section from the 'Hit roll order' part of it all (And is where the link above will take you directly to).

There are five rolls in the following order for every hit. Even for each individual "tick" of a multi-hit attack (Burst, Frenzy, Focus, and Chain)

• Evaded? (If yes, stop here)
• Glancing? (If yes, skip the Crit roll)
• Critical?
• Blocked? (If yes, skip the Penetration roll)
• Penetrated?

This will give you all of the possible effects that can be combined and hold up to the combinations you mention in your post. The article goes on a bit explaining the information above but then also gives a nice break down of how these combinations can scale the damage as follows:

• Critical (positive-scaled damage) AND Penetrated (reduced by negative-scaled Protection)
• roughly equal damage:
  • Critical (positive-scaled damage and reduced by non-scaled Protection)
  • Penetrated (non-scaled damage and reduced by negative-scaled Protection)
• Critical (positive-scaled damage) AND Blocked (reduced by positive-scaled Protection)
• Normal (non-scaled damage and reduced by non-scaled Protection)
• Blocked (non-scaled damage and reduced by positive-scaled Protection)
• Glancing (negative-scaled damage) AND Penetrated (reduced by negative-scaled > - Protection)
• Glancing (negative-scaled damage and reduced by non-scaled Protection)
• Glancing (negative-scaled damage) AND Blocked (reduced by positive-scaled Protection)
• Evaded (0 damage)

Now the article does go on to say that this is not the predominant conversation in this area on the forums and such but in my own playing this information has appeared to be fairly accurate to me. I will admit I am unaware of the information on the forums and such.