The Serendipitous assault relics do not stack with the direct damage relics. In their current states, a proc from a PvE Serendipitous Assault relic triggers a 4.5s cooldown on any other equipped damage relic, and the direct damage relics put the Serendipitous Assault relic on a 4.5s cooldown as well. Effectively, this makes it so that only one relic can proc every 4.5 seconds, and therefore makes it as worthless to equip the Power Buff and Direct Damage relics as it is to equip any two damage proc relics.

I do not believe this is intended because the relics are documented as non-stacking only with similar effect relics. The effects on these relics are different enough in terms of cooldown, damage mechanism, and effect trigger (As indicated below by color) that I don't think they qualify as "similar".

Underworld Relic of Serendipitous Assault - On Hit: Healing an ally or performing a damaging attack on an enemy both have a 30% chance to grant 550 Power for 6 seconds. This effect can only occur once every 20 seconds, and shares this limit with similar healing or damaging effects. It will not trigger inside of PvP areas.

Underworld Relic of Dark Radiance - On Hit: Damaging attacks have a 30% chance to deal 264 additional internal Force damage to the target. This effect can only occur once every 4.5 seconds, and shares this limit with similar damage-dealing effects. It will not trigger inside of PvP areas.

I tested for a good while (Long enough to eliminate any reasonable doubt) on an ops dummy with a Serendipitous Assault and Dark Radiance relic equipped at the same time, then browsed my combat log to see how far apart the procs were, and the frequency of the procs from either of the two relics combined was the same as the proc rate for only one 4.5 second CD relic. No two effects from the relics activated within 4.5 seconds of each other under any circumstance. This often causes the Power buff relic to delay its activation for several 4.5s cooldowns, significantly reducing its value.

If they stacked properly, each relic would be able to activate independently of the other when its own cooldown ends. As it is now, the Serendipitous Assault relic is the better one to have, and all of the direct damage proc relics are superfluous. Stacking both relics as is can cause a loss of 14-66 DPS compared to what the expected DPS would be without the extra 4.5 second cooldown. Being generous, that is potentially a 1-3% DPS decrease.

I have submitted in-game bug reports, but one was closed without response while the other got a response suggesting I post my ideas on the Suggestion Box forum, so I am not convinced anyone is aware of this bug. I also posted numerous threads in the General, Suggestion Box, and Customer Service forums, all of which have been completely overlooked and buried without response from anyone, devs or players alike. The new Bug Report forum now seems the best place to post this.

I would like to know if anyone else even cares about this issue, as the new PvE Direct Damage proc relics are mathematically better than the equivalent Boundless Ages clicky relics. If this is working as intended, which I strongly doubt, it would be good to know as well.

(If this thread gets buried, I'll repost with better formatting.)

Can you post a link to the combat log so we can see it for ourselves?

Here you go. I tested with PvP relics as well, and they stack just fine. The PvE ones do not. Here are the combat logs for both.

Carnage, PvP, SA, DD

http://www.torparse.com/l/242155

Power Surge is the SA buff, Wind Buffet is the DD attack. In this short PvP gear parse, you can see the Wind Buffet proc'ing within 4.5 seconds of the Power Surge effect twice (Second Power Surge), once before and once after. It procs 3.2s before and 1.4s after the Power Surge.

Annihilation, PvE, SA, DD

http://www.torparse.com/l/242323

Power Surge is the SA buff, Dark Spike is the DD attack. To browse this log, it is best to ctrl+F and search for Power Surge, then look within 4.5 seconds of each one front and back. The fight lasted almost 5 minutes, but not once does Dark Spike proc within the 4.5 second frame before or after a Power Surge.

I tested this out as well and I belive I can corraborate this.

Here is a parse from April 6 with bot a SA and a Ceruelan Nova relic equipped (both are arkanian). Length: 10min 11 seconds

http://www.torparse.com/a/211929/3/0/Overview

The two relics never proc within 4.5 seconds of eachother, and the proc rate of the CN relic is just about once every 9 seconds.

Here is a parse I just did with the same character, only unequipping the SA relic, length: 10min 16seconds

http://www.torparse.com/a/243083/2/0/Overview

The proc rate of the CN relic is once every 6.9 seconds, a fairly dramatic increase. It's true that rng could play a part in this, but a 20% higher proc rate over 10 minutes is a fairly large change.

Checked 4 different parses I could find. All done with Arkanian Power Proc relic, and Dread Guard elemental (force) damage proc relic. The effective cooldowns were 7.1, 6.9, 7.1 and 7.6 seconds. Don't have any Underworld relics to test with to compare, but 8.9 second avg cooldown seems very high, too high to only be bad RNG (MVaglin's parse).

My parses:

http://www.torparse.com/a/229039

http://www.torparse.com/a/219666

http://www.torparse.com/a/209577

http://www.torparse.com/a/207955

I'm fairly certain that this is working as intended.

It would be nice if BW would actually state if this is intended, and update their tooltips to be clearer. It isn't at all obvious to me (and I suspect a lot of other people) that granting additional power is a "similar effect" to dealing damage, especially when they have such different cooldowns and mechanics. A somewhat rhetorical question: should my clicky power relic also put a proc relic on cooldown?

But I am fairly certain this is NOT the intention, because if it was, a proc from SA would put the other relic on a 20s cooldown.

Hm, should I stick with a click relic and proc relic for the time being then?

For now, yes. I would say to get an Underworld Serendipitous Assault relic and Arkanian Boundless Ages relic, but save your second Underworld relic token until this gets sorted out or clarified.

@BW - is there any news on this? Can you at least state what the intent of the various relic CDs are even if they are not functioning properly now?

This is one of a few lingering relic issues out there.

Yes Please! An answer from the BIOWARE team would be great about now.

I'm using an EWH (Static Power) and UW SA relic. Don't want to chance getting that 2nd Relic with one that is completely useless. I mean why have two relics if they both don't stack at some point in time.

I've heard tanks are seeing the same issue with with two different relics even. (Sheild/Absorb and Defense)

Yes Please! An answer from the BIOWARE team would be great about now.

 

I'm using an EWH (Static Power) and UW SA relic. Don't want to chance getting that 2nd Relic with one that is completely useless. I mean why have two relics if they both don't stack at some point in time.

 

I've heard tanks are seeing the same issue with with two different relics even. (Sheild/Absorb and Defense)

I wouldn't say its completely useless. From what I've tested, it seems that the power proc relic essentially takes over a lockout of the damage proc, so the procs would end up looking somewhat like p d d d p d d d p when without the bug it would be pd d d d pd d d d pd, where p is a power proc and d is damage proc.

I wouldn't say its completely useless. From what I've tested, it seems that the power proc relic essentially takes over a lockout of the damage proc, so the procs would end up looking somewhat like p d d d p d d d p when without the bug it would be pd d d d pd d d d pd, where p is a power proc and d is damage proc.

From my own testing when both are equiped the average proc time for the power proc relic was about 25seconds as a madness Sorcerer, and the average proc time for the damage proc was 7.3seconds.

When testing with only 1 equiped at a time I had an average proc time of 21.2seconds for the power proc and an average proc time of 5.1seconds for the damage proc relic.

Over the course of a 5min fight I lost 2-3 procs from the power proc and 18-19 procs from the damage proc. These numbers may not seem like much, but the dps difference over a 5min fight is about 30-40 dps or 9k - 12k damage.

Hm, should I stick with a click relic and proc relic for the time being then?

TBH, I always thought that to be the consensus everybody agreed on a long while ago. I always assumed "similar effect" was referring to the proc itself, not what the proc actually does.

This issue really deserves a response. The player base needs to know...

1) How these relics are supposed to behave? What proc effects should share a cool down? Are all 4.5sec cool down proc chances on one timer, and 20sec procs on another? Is every proc effect on the same timer? People should not have to guess. Obtaining a top tier relic, adding a top tier augment kit, and installing a top tier augment takes more than a trivial amount of time.

2) Are things working as intended after the most recent update?

This issue really deserves a response. The player base needs to know...

 

1) How these relics are supposed to behave?

The average proc time is given by:

Locktime + 1/[0.3*HitFreq]

Whereby locktime is 4.5sec in case of dmg proc. Hitfrequency can be calculated from parse. That is overall hits number minus hits from dmg proc, then divided by fight duration (in second). Only on demand I´ll show you its derivation. Check my thread here

I tested this out as well and I belive I can corraborate this.

 

Here is a parse from April 6 with bot a SA and a Ceruelan Nova relic equipped (both are arkanian). Length: 10min 11 seconds

http://www.torparse.com/a/211929/3/0/Overview

 

The two relics never proc within 4.5 seconds of eachother, and the proc rate of the CN relic is just about once every 9 seconds.

 

Here is a parse I just did with the same character, only unequipping the SA relic, length: 10min 16seconds

http://www.torparse.com/a/243083/2/0/Overview

 

The proc rate of the CN relic is once every 6.9 seconds, a fairly dramatic increase. It's true that rng could play a part in this, but a 20% higher proc rate over 10 minutes is a fairly large change.

Nice work, in first case the locktime of relic would be 7.2sec instead of 4.5 sec as tooltip stated. A good proc number from a test should have a 95.4% chance to fluctuate round 97±4 in that case. A proc number of 68 is statistically absolutely not allowed. Otherwise this test would only have a chance of 68% to fluctuate at least around 29, means something is wrong with RNG.

Checked 4 different parses I could find. All done with Arkanian Power Proc relic, and Dread Guard elemental (force) damage proc relic. The effective cooldowns were 7.1, 6.9, 7.1 and 7.6 seconds. Don't have any Underworld relics to test with to compare, but 8.9 second avg cooldown seems very high, too high to only be bad RNG (MVaglin's parse).

 

My parses:

http://www.torparse.com/a/229039

http://www.torparse.com/a/219666

http://www.torparse.com/a/209577

http://www.torparse.com/a/207955

I recently checked proc number of PvP relics used several combis(including power click dread guard). I only used marauder´s assault. Each fight was about 5.5 minutes. "Sadly" no obviously anomaly in my case.

• 
   
   
  
• auto-proc & power-proc: procced 62 & 13, formula 58 & 16
  
• auto-proc with power-click: procced 58, formula 57
  
• power-proc with power-click: procced 15, formula 15
  
• only power-proc: procced 15, formula 15
   
  

Here's the response

http://www.swtor.com/de/community/showthread.php?t=645585