User:Kgiesing

Overview

Inspirations are temporary buffs that a player can apply at any time. There are seven types of inspirations, which come in three grades of increasing effectiveness. Each type has a characteristic color.

Types of Inspirations

Color	Buff	Small	Medium	Large
Red	Damage	25%	33%	50%
Green	Health	25%	33%	50%
Blue	Endurance	25%	33%	50%
Yellow	ToHit	25%	33%	50%
Purple	Defense	25%	33%	50%
Orange	Restance	10%	15%	20%
Lavender	Escape Effects	30sec	45sec	1min

Notes on the different inspiration types are as follows:

Red: These buff your base damage by the listed percentage.

Green: These return a percentage of your hit points when used. [Note: is this current max hit points, after all buffs, or base max hit points?]

Blue: These return a percentage of your endurance when used. [Note: is this current max endurance, after all accolades, or base max hit points?]

Yellow: These increase your chance to hit. Note that there is a difference between "to hit buff", which affects your base percentage to hit, and accuracy, which is what enhancements on a power affect; see below. They also buff your perception, which is invaluable against opponents with stealth or perception debuffs, such as Longbow Spec Ops and Arachnos Night Widows.

Purple: These are the inverse of yellow inspirations: they increase your defense, which effectively decreases the base chance to hit for your opponents. Purple inspirations are the most cost effective way of temporarily protecting yourself against damage, but after a certain point taking more of them will have no effect; see below.

Orange: These protect you against a certain percentage of incoming damage, of any type. They do not add up as quickly as purple inspirations, but they do protect against burst damage and unlucky streaks in a way that purples do not.

Lavender: These allow you to escape certain non-damage effects: sleep, hold, immobilize, disorient, fear, and confusion. In addition, they leave you resistant to such effect for the duration of time listed. You may use these inspirations even while under such effects (i.e. when you can not take any other actions). Note that they do not protect you against intangibility effects, which are admittedly rare outside of PvP and the Recluse Strike Force. Note also that it is possible to stack such effects to the point where more than one of these inspirations is required to become freed, though again this is rare aside from Arch-Villain or Hero class opponents or PvP.

Notes on yellow and purple inspirations

The numbers on these are somewhat misleading. The basic formula for an opponent to hit you in PvE is as follows:

Chance to hit: ( 1 + accuracy ) * ( 50% + (to hit buffs) - (defense + defense buffs) )

There is one complication to this formula, in that the base and final chance to hit is pinned to the range (5%, 95%). That is, prior to accuracy modifiers, the chance to hit can never be less than 5%, and after accuracy modifiers, the chance to hit can never be greater than 95%.

Note that this no longer (as of issue 7) depends on the type or level of opponent you're facing. Higher level opponents get accuracy modifiers, rather than to hit modifiers; lieutenants, bosses, elite bosses, and Arch-Villain or Hero class opponents get additional accuracy bonuses.

What this means is that, against an opponent with no to hit buffs of their own, you can floor their chance to hit you with a 45% defense buff. But note that this is *not* the sum of two small lucks. Small lucks have been measured to have about 1/4 the value of this maximal defense buff - that is, a small luck will give you about 25% protection against opponents. This is what the percentages in the descriptions refer to.

The same holds true of yellow inspirations, to some extent: their buffs are the same magnitude as the corresponding purples. However, because the base to hit for players (in PvE) depends on the level of opponent being fought,

Rule of Thumb for Purple Inspirations: Most characters should take four small, three medium, or two large to maximize damage mitigation. Those that have native defense-based powers such as Tanker Ice primary or Scrapper Super Reflexes secondary may need only three or even two small lucks to reach maximum damage mitigation.