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Addo

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  1. Addo

    Best team AT

    POST-ACTION

    I have played several support characters (no VEAT yet though) and none of the ones I have tried does more to increase the speed of a team than my kinetics/sonic defender. It is not really a good first support character though, since there will always be more things you could do than you have time to do them in (don't neglect your attacks, stacking some -resist helps a lot when combined with fulcrum shifted teammates). One of the most recent teams actually caused a scrapper or brute on the team to shout in joy "I am doing SO MUCH damage"...

    My Plant/rad controller also does a lot for the team speed, but more "playing alongside the team" than "integrated with the team", if I were to try to explain the difference.
  2. Addo
    Thanks!

    This was exactly the type of information I was looking for. It was my assumption about the server clock granularity that was incorrect.

    If the granularity is that fine, regen will work as you would expect for all levels of buffing. It means enhancement slotting will always matter and there will not be any points where a buff is without value.
  3. Addo
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DSorrow View Post
    I'm quite sure regeneration ticks can only happen on server ticks, but I'm not sure if the server can actually calculate that the right amount of regen ticks is given over a certain amount of time. I'm thinking of a cycle like this: you get 10 ticks every 0.264 seconds and then one after 0.132 to get you the correct regeneration on average.
    Thanks for the reply, I think I see what you are getting at. A number of health increase ticks could occur at one interval, then a shorter or longer interval occasionally to even out the average amount of health over time. Very interesting, and I sure hope some algorithm like that exists in the game. Tricky to program it correctly though, and you would need to keep track of one extra counter per player.

    The mathematics is not difficult, the tricky part is to test it in a reliable way. It would require the cooperation of at least two characters, who together can buff the regen of one of them to 2000%-3000% (to see the effects easier) and keep it consistent for long enough to run trials either against a known damage source or for the time to regen from 0 to full health (after a long drop or something). I can't test that by myself, and I wanted to hear if someone else had done such tests before I start looking for a way to run trials (it would be a lot easier for someone with two accounts).

    Thanks Ad Astra for the tip about PM:ing Arcanaville, you are probably correct that if someone had done such tests she would at least know about it.

    As for why doing things like these instead of "just playing the game"... Like I said, it helps with build plans. For example, one Empath I am designing could self buff to 1207% regen with Regeneration Aura slotted a certain way, but if everything from 1137% to 1298% gives the same end result anyway, I can do the slotting a lot cheaper (use lower level enhancements, ignore set bonuses etc). It also has implications for who I would cast Adrenalin Boost on, and whether I should bother slotting for maxed heal enhancements in Adrenalin Boost.
  4. Addo
    A lot of actions are synchronized so that they can only occur at intervals decided by the minimum time unit between each server tick. This applies to activating powers, where we call it "Arcanatime", but what other things are tied to the ticks?

    The time interval between regeneration health increase ticks is said to vary based on a formula such as this:

    Time in seconds = 3/(Regen percentage * 0.25)

    which can be shortened as

    Time in seconds = 12/Regen percentage

    For 100% regen (no buffs) that should mean 12 seconds between each health increase tick. At that level any potential difference based on server ticks would be negligible, and impossible to measure. What caused my question was that when I work on builds for Regeneration scrappers and Willpower tanks/scrappers, and some buffing characters like Empaths, it is possible to buff regeneration to rather extreme levels. Stacking Regeneration Aura and Adrenalin Boost on the same target, for example. According to Paragonwiki (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Limits#Health_Regeneration), there are hard caps for each archetype. Scrappers and stalkers get 3000%, brutes and tankers get 2500%, everyone else gets 2000%. An extremely good level to reach on your own buffs alone might be around 1200%, which would translate to one second between health increase ticks. At that point any difference from server ticks is still small, but might be noticeable.

    However, if I play an Empath and buff a Willpower scrapper he can actually reach his hard cap at 3000%. The problem is that this does not match up with an even number of the most commonly seen figure for the duration of a server tick, 0.132 seconds.

    2 ticks = 0.264 seconds ==> 4545.5% regen
    3 ticks = 0.396 seconds ==> 3030.3% regen
    4 ticks = 0.528 seconds ==> 2272.7% regen
    5 ticks = 0.660 seconds ==> 1818.2% regen
    6 ticks = 0.792 seconds ==> 1515.2% regen
    7 ticks = 0.924 seconds ==> 1298.7% regen
    8 ticks = 1.056 seconds ==> 1136.4% regen
    9 ticks = 1.188 seconds ==> 1010.1% regen

    So, back to my question. Two assumptions:
    1. That the length of a server tick is 0.132 seconds (Arcanaville said it was a "best guess" when it was introduced but it seems rather commonly adhered to)
    2. That regeneration health increase ticks can only happen on server ticks (it would be very difficult to program it some other way, but possible)
    Combining those assumptions, we get a situation where the difference in hard regen caps between tankers and scrappers does not influence actual time difference between health increase ticks when you buff each of them to their cap (same for stalkers vs brutes). We also see that at the high end, only certain levels of buffage actually matter, and giving small increases in between those is irrelevant. If this is true it might influence both build choices and target selection by buffers. I have so far never seen it discussed though.

    My question is whether my second assumption has been tested by anyone? I did not see any threads on it when I searched, but it was hard to think of the right keywords.
  5. Addo
    If you want a spreadsheet that automatically calculates exemplared enhancement values, you might want to look at the one I have been using for myself.

    Here is a version uploaded to Google Documents. I had to set it to allow public editing to let you select different real levels and exemplared levels. Please do not change anything other than those two cells. I have my own local copy but you could mess up the formulas for someone else following the link after you.

    HTML preview of spreadsheet:
    https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?...60&output=html

    Real spreadsheet:
    https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?...CPy5wLEO#gid=0