Arcanaville
-
Posts
10683 -
Joined
-
Quote:I have some corrections to the original numbers I posted. I made a mistake when I just hacked in the numbers quick and dirty: I entered actual defense numbers when I should have capped them to 45% (to honor the soft-cap). That shifts things slightly. I also added in your Willpower numbers from the second build. Here's the relative standings, in composite numbers: Willpower, then Electric, then Invuln:Originally Posted by StratoNexus
If you do get the time, I'd be curious how that WP build I posted fares with and without SoW in your comparison thingy.
Sustainable: 35.43 26.36 18.80
180 seconds: 24.24 17.71 14.31
60 seconds: 17.39 12.42 11.55
30 seconds: 14.12 9.89 10.24
The Willpower numbers beat *everyone*, before I even add in SoW. Why? Two reasons. One: your build nearly perma-caps health. That's a huge advantage that partically makes up for your lesser resistances. Two: the composite scores presume you're going to see a constant barrage of all the damage types, 66% smash/lethal, and all the rest evenly distributed (with half the psionic damage being non-positional). This means ultra-high protection in one area won't compensate for massive weakness in another: think of it as leaks in a dam. A lot of small leaks is better than one big one. If you have one big one, it doesn't matter if you seal the other leaks completely. Willpower's performance is a bit more even, which means it doesn't have the one big leak in damage.
Consider, these are the damage numbers for the 30 second window for Willpower:
Smash/Lethal: 8056.46
Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative: 2490.52
Toxic: 741.24
Psi/Non-positional Psi: 1955.16
Compare to the Electric build:
Smash/Lethal: 8996.90
Fire/Cold: 1161.16
Energy: 16464.33
Negative: 3292.87
Toxic: 505.16
Psi: 830.53
Non-positional Psi: 328.18
And Invuln:
Smash/Lethal: 17635.53
Fire/Cold: 3019.78
Energy/Negative: 2676.10
Toxic: 546.14
Psi: 328.18
Non-positional Psi: 328.18
In a completely smash/lethal environment, Invuln crushes them both. But in an environment where only 5.7% of the total damage is psionics, Invuln has problems compared to Willpower that blows them both away.
One issue with my composite score is that its a bit naive relative to true damage type distribution. It assumes that s/l is 66% of all damage (which is probably close to the truth) and the rest is evenly distributed (probably not so close to the truth). But since we're talking about slicing up 34% of the damage in different ways, that's usually not a bit deal. And actually psionic damage is probably under-represented, which is actually depressing Willpower's scores relative to the other two sets.
So why do so many people think Willpower isn't in the same class as Invuln or Electric? Probably because few people have seen a health capped defensive soft-capped Willpower Tanker with 665% regen. And that's with one thing in RTTC. With RTTC maxed out, its a ridiculous 1096% regen. Its also true that these numbers don't factor in endurance drain as mitigation, although that's probably not strong enough to shift the numbers radically without Power Sink. -
Quote:You said it yourself:Originally Posted by Breog
Why put Elec so far down?
It seems Auroxis was thinking about out of the box non-IOed strength, because of this phrase right next to Ice Armor:Quote:its almost important to understand out of the box Ice preforms VERY very well. I just dont think pure Def sets get the biggest bang for buck out of the IO system
As to defense sets in general, its a question of cost. From millions of inf to tens of millions of inf, defense sets tend to get more out of the invention system than most other sets, because they are within close striking distance of soft-capping. But when you cross into the hundreds of millions or billions of inf builds, you start entering realms of getting so much defense that even non-defensive sets can soft-cap to some or all types, and at that point even *having* defense becomes almost irrelevant. The difference between my SR scrapper and other really tough scrapper secondaries is not that I have defense and they don't, its that I have defense and I get to keep it almost all the time. Theirs will fluctuate when stressed by defense debuffs.Quote:(falls down a survivability tier after IO's are considered)
My guess is that no 50 million inf Electric build is going to out-tank a 50 million inf Invuln build. Its when we're talking about 500 million inf builds or 5 billion inf builds that the scales equalize. -
Quote:No one is asking for any.Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
I have no pity.
Almost no one is asking for any.Quote:The Tanker you worked hard making nigh-unkillable, to never have to run from anything, is now slaughtered by cat girls and runs from blue bubble patches. Soon, they'll also be slaughtered by guard towers and run from mass-produced household cleaning appliances. -
Quote:There are many questions about the AE I can answer without speculation. However, any question about future development can likely only be answered by the devs, and they might not be able to comment on future development directly regardless.Originally Posted by talestar
ok didnt know that policy, i just wanted to ask some questions that only they can give a correct answer to without speculation as we do.And if thier liky not to answer a pm anytime soon. ill wait till 20 is done. thanks
-
Quote:That sort of happened by happenstance, not the result of a direct suggestion. The damage numbers for Cobra and CAK both were fiddled with up and down during beta when that set was being adjusted. I actually suggested to Castle that the three powers end up with 9,10, and 11 second recharge so they would all be different, but in the shuffle Cobra ended up at 10 seconds because 9 generated funny numbers I guess. It was then that I realized that was potentially better because it would now mean Cobra and Crane would essentially be interchangable based on which secondary effect players wanted. Normally I don't like powers that similar, but in this case the secondary effect option included knockback, which I know many people do not like. Castle seemed to agree that was a good idea, and that damage number stuck. CAK did get increased from 8 to 11 though, with commensurate damage increase.Originally Posted by BrandX
Turning Cobra Strike into a clone of Crane Kick, with a chance for stun instead of CK's chance for KB!
On the subject of the thread, let's just say I've made a few suggestions that got into the game, but I'm not sure its a good idea to list them all in one place. One big set of player-driven suggestions not mentioned so far not from me were the set overhauls of both Claws and Ice Armor. Claws was overhauled when a player (Stupid_Fanboy) realized and then pressed the issue that Claws did not function as the devs (Geko, specifically) described it to. It literally didn't include the features Geko thought were put into it. Ice Armor was modified in several ways to improve it: its -DMG for example. That was a forum-driven process, but its most associated with Circeus.
I no longer remember who suggested what when anymore, but a lot of the features of the invention system are also very player feedback-driven or directly suggested. The ability to purchase common recipes is I think a player suggestion from beta. I suggested that invention salvage get its own set of drop messages ("Invention Salvage" rather than just "Salvage" to distinguish between the two kinds, and I specifically suggested color coding the messages). Personal vault storage is I believe a player suggestion.
Many things that are suggested eventually come to pass, but there's no clear cause and effect between the two. But even when you discount all "coincidental" suggestions, this game has an awful lot of features that are directly traceable to a player suggestion. Probably more than any other commercially supported MMO. Many of them few people know are player suggestions. For example: /ghide. Or: "Last Chance To Hit" in the combat monitor. Lots of little things like that. -
Quote:Possibly. Also possibly they didn't synergize well when only fighting one target. As people trying to solo this might have been noticing, when the critters aren't aggroed, they just kind of stand around. Many of them are buffers or debuffers that would come into play if you had team mates to wake them up.Originally Posted by BunnyAnomaly
Finally... when Doctor Murnau says: [NPC] Doctor Murnau: My strongest disciples have arrived! the last wave was a bit slow to reach me and it was barely a challenge. I'm not sure why that spawns was meant to be so tough but they were a piece of cake. Perhaps they have something that SS/Fire is strong against.
That would be my guess as well, although I'm working on a response to that possibility.Quote:Edit: I'd hazard a guess and say that a Mind Dominator with perma-dom and sleep could probable handle it quite easily too, so long as they were careful pulling and seperating the mobs apart.
True: it was just a colloquialism carried over from another mission. I'll adjust that tonight when I perform some balance tweaking based on the feedback so far. Its clear I need to shift some of the strength from synergistic stacking to single targeting, or its possibly a little too easy for a single powerful character to pick them apart.Quote:2nd edit: The success message should not say "Who's the man!" as some of us are not male
Also, I'll speed up the computer a bit for people that want to have an emergency escape hatch. Although if you can't clear the area around the computer of "minion" your ticket count is bound to be a bit low.
And yes: the mission is published under my main account, which means it should be searchable under @Arcanaville. Although the ID number is also posted in this thread: 491922. -
Quote:On the tangential subject of debuffs, Oppressive Gloom has to hit its target, as does Whirling Hands (which I'm assuming you're stacking with OG). Power Sink autohits. That can be important if you're tanking dark debuffers, or things with defense buffs themselves (or are just higher level and intrinsicly hard to hit). So while OG has its advantages, Power Sink has them also.Originally Posted by Psiphon
That's true but -End takes a while to work, stuns are instant and can be stacked with stuns from the Secondary, if going against mobs with debuffs this can be very important.
-
Quote:Its a judgment call, because while there are situations where Aid Self can't be reliably used, to ignore it would be potentially significant because its so strong. I should also point out that sets without terrorize protection can find themselves unable to use even non-interruptable heals like Energize.Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Why don't we cast "Summon Greater Arcanaville" and find out?
I normally count Aid Self when talking about comparing builds and what they can do in-game, particularly when there is strong evidence that Aid Self would actually work in the circumstances being discussed, like if Aid Self is part of an actual in-play build. I usually ignore it when talking about powerset to powerset abstract comparison, like balance ones.
As to the notion that Aid Self is a very uncommon build addition to tankers, particularly high performance ones, all I can say to that is that does not match my experience.
Since it uses a tier 9 power its technically disqualified from this thread, but over the weekend I decided to try my hand at making the strongest Granite build I could come up with, and guess what: it has Aid Self in it. Not even very well slotted, but its there. The only two tankers I think might go out of their way to avoid Aid Self might be Willpower and Dark Armor, both because Aid Self's benefits would be highly diluted in those sets given their huge intrinsic regen or healing. -
Quote:I find on high defense builds that its not normal DoT attacks that interrupt Aid Self the most, its either autohitting DoT (like caltrops) and more commonly autohitting debuff auras. Sonic disruption fields in particular are ironically highly annoying to my soft-capped SR scrapper because even though they debuff resistance which you'd think means nothing to an SR scrapper, they autohit, make me highly vulnerable to one big lucky hit, and prevent me from using Aid Self.Originally Posted by StratoNexus
Not correct. They render it less likely to work. I have gotten Aid Self off on top of triple stacked Caltrops. Many (most?) ticks of DoT will come slow enough that you can get Aid Self off, if you slot for interrupt. That being said, DoT does often hinder the power. Certain toggles will always interuupt it (like the Radioligists).
-
Quote:The jury is still out for me. High end Dark builds are crazy strong in general, but I haven't really studied what the absolute best you can squeeze out of Dark is, relative to other sets. I do know that in a team with any sort of defense buffing, Dark's PBAoE auras and especially Dark Regen start to become extremely significant. And Dark has the best bounce-back rez in the game for a tanker if you do get killed every once in a while: as long as you're not dying constantly, death isn't a big deal for Dark. In fact, its probably better for the team for you to die and Soul Transfer back than it is for an Ice tanker to duck into Hibernate and live.Originally Posted by slainsteel
What are your thoughts on dark? Considering dark regeneration, I would suppose it would rate higher than everything else on the table? High resistance, easier to soft-cap (not as much as invuln or WP, but more than ice/fire) and a crazy heal power.
-
Been thinking about doing a Stone/Stone/Earth for a while, and finally decided to roll her up and started thinking about her final build. I'm planning on dual building for in and out of granite, and tried to see what my max survivability build would be inside of Granite. This is my current best effort:
Code:It gets to at least 46% to s/l/f/c/e/n (soft-cap with some margin for debuffs) and 20.6% defense to psi. It caps everything except psionic and gets 15.6% resistance to psi.| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1466;706;1412;HEX;| |78DA7D946B4F1341148667DBADB5A5DCCAAD145A6E85DE6FA809024A944B04ADC18| |078494C5D60A495B225DB35D16FFE0635FE39E3FD931FBCFC837AF63D43A969E224| |CD33FBCE9973DED93DD3D2CBB58010AF57841658AD198D4679D7308FA5E5BD6BD82| |F2CA326BC4288306BE535F94C9A0D99DBB1EBA62CDFB04EEA56482D95644D9E2D60| |DEBF6956A4254D3B7736E9DEAED76BB9923CAC1E544DC94F1BD5A38A5D358FFC78D| |A3995F23088E92EE538AD5BB66157EB6670FDB47A905B372CBB522E190D5B5AAF42| |646B9E7E1F7C428DA65B6CB885280AD726E33610DE0266FCAD385DA45D8EA427800| |B49460AE88903310AD738DCA3DD248484BE0A5C5C63DC2244847F13E8D9023E9219| |B7C666DC3B9A93C85F020251B808ECE26996B27B5476CF53E1487D06631F081E009| |387C08C043E51762F67F7781760337815185C0442D780F125606A19F84CBB7CBCCB| |E5BB8FF283F780E1051275B79823375DCA4D57059B866B9CF00498AC72C2E740FC1| |8F84279BB7997E8BE4209E32242BDD2ABA4DE183C7FA5A87E96B4FE3E941D1F0226| |287880575C03EC2BCFAFAC3886AD1A050CA96C43CB6CD54DDA081F461B712611119| |BC79BFD46854655A151AE101E0074DA33A65EC018AF4407196C28E977F2F0F92319| |1C2E5A045259460EC8E41905E03B159C505F632289F34F65607C2E81A7B918230A3| |1CE4851AD69D586D38BDC994B8CEB406C1948AE00690A9F55D666B951E2DC28296E| |940C374A961B25CF8D324D274EA81327D29092FFE01D254F2B17E9C7384E760FC83| |F028A0F190F801FF40791535F22C719E254A2A0A442185EC7F5D60D13427DAFA4A3| |B19366AA7DBD4943143A94628772A943B9DCA1DC6957B2F0B7ADB7EEAFD0D8B2AF8| |F2E274BCD9FCEF5D6D432EFF87D2E69DA1EB7D616BEE0AFF6E00482FF9C4B2EED0D| |5F92F7FC1EDF02CDD6D8F63B19B9EC93B6B9D136DF6F9BFF7FACD09529AAC8BF184| |0FB43| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
It gets there without needing to run Maneuvers, which allowed me to squeeze in both Aid Self and Hasten, which means I can cut the downtime on Earth's Embrace significantly: my calculations say its average downtime while Hasten goes up and down will be about 20 seconds.
It also has a psionic failsafe in being able to drop out of granite and toggle on minerals, although that would only make sense in an ultra-heavy psionic situation: I would be soft-capped to psionics, but I would only have 40.5% defense to smash/lethal: one small purple would soft-cap me to s/l/e/n, but then again two would take care of psionics within granite also (usually: with minerals up the build has 55.9% defense to psionics, which has *huge* margin for error on debuffs). Still, its an interesting if not exceptionally useful option. I also think it doesn't give up much in the way of offense like GodofGod's build, although technically speaking his build would be much more resistant to defense debuffs than Syntax42 or mine due to the much higher defenses on s/l/f/c (but not energy/negative).
It lacks Siphon Life, but I think it might theoretically give Syntax42's build a run for the money given the faster cycling EE and Aid Self. Also, if I swap Cardiac Core with Spiritual Core I still remain res capped to everything except Energy/Negative which drop to 83%, and EE then only falls short of perma by about one second on average. Another interesting option to keep around, after acquiring enough incarnate components.
If anyone can squeeze more performance out of this build, I'd sure like to hear about it before I reach 50 (which will be a while, since I just rolled the tanker that will eventually level into this build). I'm also contemplating the non-granite exemplar build and leveling builds, but this is intended to be basically granite only. If I actually build this build, and I have every intention of doing so eventually, it will be by far and away the most indestructible character I've ever played, ever. -
Quote:Well, that would be a side issue to the survivability question. I wouldn't go so far as to say its unplayable: if you have a low-offense tanking style, it could work for you. In the days before inventions people had to make hard choices about whether to run in Granite also.Originally Posted by StratoNexus
I think it is important to note that the Electric build in this comparison does not have energy drain as mitigation, it lacks Power Sink. That is important also from on offensive standpoint, because that Electric build has bad endurance use while Energize is active, and absurdly unplayable end use for the brief Energize downtimes.
That Electic build is, IMO, nearly unplayable.
Although I will say that I would never play the posted Electric build. In my opinion it sacrifices too much endurance management and offense. If I wanted Electric's resistances and was willing to spend a couple billion to soft cap myself, and I wanted my endurance to suck, I'd play Dark Armor.
I also would never play Electric without Power Sink, but it does still have some endurance drain as mitigation because it does have lightning field. Its not as good as having Power Sink *and* Lightning field, but it will act to reduce the endurance pool available to critters, which does have some mitigative effect. Probably not too dissimilar from the small mitigative effect of RTTC's debuff. Invuln lacks this type of extra foe debuff mitigation that sets like Dark, Electric, Willpower, and Ice have, which is why I mentioned it in passing. -
At a glance, my mental calculations suggest both Willpower builds are weaker than the posted Invuln and Electric builds, although that is against a single target. They both close that gap and enters the same territory the other two builds are in when RTTC is saturated, the latter especially. Invuln can't gain as much from scaling up invincibility, because that build is already soft capped to everything Invincibility would help with.
There's a chance of the second build exceeding Invuln's and Electric's performance under RTTC saturated levels, but I've now exceeded my calculation limits for a Friday night and will have to look at it more closely when I once again care more about Willpower survivability than I do about my blood alcohol level. -
Quote:You say that like they don't know this. They know this. The problem is that no game will cater to everyone with every piece of itself. Games - MMOs specifically - try to create a diversity of experiences such that *enough* of them will be attractive to enough players to make the game as a whole enjoyable enough to want to spend time playing.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I believe this single sentence needs to be printed on t-shirts and handed out to game developers the world over to wear, because it points out a fundamental step that far too many game developers tend to forget about: People come to your game to have fun. You can't tell them that the fun only starts 25 hours in.
Whenever a dev says something like "well, if you don't like X, pretty soon it will be Y" players seem to think the devs don't understand that if X isn't fun they should change X. The problem is that often its the players that don't understand that there exists a flip side of players that like X, and dislike Y. The parts of the game you don't like might not be there for you, but they might be there for someone else.
When I roll a new alt, I still play that alt from the tutorial and up through every level. I roll new alts specifically to level them. No part of the game is intrinsicly unfun, just not enjoyable for everyone. Sometimes you can avoid it, sometimes you just have to tolerate it. If it becomes intolerable, that's the point when you either decide to stop playing, or admit its not actually intolerable and keep playing.
As to the original topic, in my opinion games are meant to be played. I don't consider my time in City of Heroes to be either a journey or a destination, because I'm not headed anywhere and I'm not leaving anywhere. I'm just here. The last time I was on vacation in Las Vegas, I don't recall thinking that I was taking a journey through the city. I was just there unwinding. On a micro-level, my characters journey through the game. But I just play it. I know ten thousand times more about the game now than when I first started. I have thousands of hours more experience. Over a hundred more alts to choose to play, besides rolling a new one. But I still play it exactly the same way I did in May of 2004. I log in, I pick a character, I run missions, I make lame jokes. I enjoy playing the game, so on a fundamental level I don't need it to be more than that.
Yes: I pursue things in the game. Levels, influence (if I need it to buy things), badges. But only because the act of pursuit itself is something I will enjoy doing. I have never pursued anything in the game where I was thinking the entire time I hated doing it (River Rat and Zookeeper notwithstanding). I would continue to play the game even if those things didn't exist - although I appreciate the fact that they do. I know this because when I roll a new alt, and she's standing in Outbreak trying to fossilize things to death, none of those things really exist at that moment. And not once in seven years have I ever rolled an alt and thought to myself for even one second "man, I can't wait for this alt to be good." Moreso than practically any other player, I *know* what that alt will eventually become. But right at that moment I'm fossilizing something to death: its already good. -
Quote:The damage buff in Hide suppresses if the critters are attacked or damaged just likie for players. However, also just like players Hide gives a huge defense buff to AoE attacks when the critter is hidden. So unless you are using tohit buffs, you won't likely knock a Ninjitsu hidden custom critter out of hide with blanketing AoEs. You have to see them and target them, or hit them with something autohitting like caltrops, or get lucky with an AoE.Originally Posted by Elfis_Presley
By the way, how well does ninjitsu actually work? I assumed that enemies would be attacked or otherwise get in combat and wouldn't get a hide damage bonus, but do they get to use the damage bonus even if you try to spoil it?
-
Using the builds as posted, plugging numbers into my survivability spreadsheet generates the following results (assuming I typed everything in correctly):
Code:Sorry for the ugly formatting: this is a lot more difficult in our messed up vBulletin than it was with the old forums, or a hammer, chisel, and rock tablet for that matter. The first column is Electric, and the second Invuln. The important numbers are the relative composite numbers:Sustainable Smash 5043.56 11260.89 (points/s) Lethal 5043.56 11260.89 Fire 559.80 1566.69 Cold 559.80 1566.69 Energy 8099.54 2221.42 Negative 1619.91 2221.42 Toxic 243.54 181.34 Psi 400.40 123.20 Nonpositional Psi 229.58 108.97 composite (66% s/l) 1246.66 1015.79 weighted average 3974.61 7878.36 Relative (Invuln = 1) 27.09 22.07 180 second surv Smash 5946.55 15036.49 Lethal 5946.55 15036.49 Fire 660.03 2091.98 Cold 660.03 2091.98 Energy 9549.67 2966.23 Negative 1909.93 2966.23 Toxic 287.15 242.14 Psi 472.09 164.51 Nonpositional Psi 270.69 145.50 composite (66% s/l) 1469.86 1356.37 weighted average 4686.22 10519.85 Relative (Invuln = 1) 18.20 16.80 60 second surv Smash 7752.54 22587.69 Lethal 7752.54 22587.69 Fire 860.48 3142.55 Cold 860.48 3142.55 Energy 12449.94 4455.84 Negative 2489.99 4455.84 Toxic 374.35 363.74 Psi 615.46 247.12 Nonpositional Psi 352.89 218.57 composite (66% s/l) 1916.27 2037.53 weighted average 6109.44 15802.83 Relative (Invuln = 1) 12.76 13.57 30 Smash 10461.52 33914.48 Lethal 10461.52 33914.48 Fire 1161.16 4718.41 Cold 1161.16 4718.41 Energy 16800.34 6690.26 Negative 3360.07 6690.26 Toxic 505.16 546.14 Psi 830.53 371.04 Nonpositional Psi 476.21 328.18 composite (66% s/l) 2585.87 3059.27 weighted average 8244.27 23727.30 Relative (Invuln = 1) 10.17 12.03
Continuous: Relative (Invuln = 1) 27.09 22.07
180 seconds: Relative (Invuln = 1) 18.20 16.80
60 seconds: Relative (Invuln = 1) 12.76 13.57
30 seconds: Relative (Invuln = 1) 10.17 12.03
What this says is that Electric, with a fast recharging Energize, can sustain a higher level of damage than Invuln can: about 23% more. However, on time scales somewhere around 120 seconds or lower, Invuln can sustain higher levels of burst damage on average: 18% more in 30 second bursts.
Its hard to call a winner here, because it depends on what you're most concerned about: sustainable tanking, or alpha strike bursts. With its massively higher health and almost impenetrable smash/lethal performance, Invuln tends to win on burst. With higher healing and regen, Electric will generally win in the long run on long term performance.
Its clear, though, going back to your original assessment:
Invuln is a lot better than I think you were originally giving it credit for. Its the only one you suggested had to give up a lot in the build to soft cap, when its much easier to do so for Invuln than say Dark or Electric, but I don't think you own posted Invuln build gives up a lot for soft-capping, and it can be done even easier than that (your Invuln build even has more recharge than your Electric build - I'd say its Electric that is compromising more to get softcapped defenses, and doesn't even get there with Fire/Cold). And overall, your own Invuln build's survivability is comparable to your Electric's survivability, and while Electric has better long-term survivability and energy drain as a secondary damage mitigation effect, Invuln has better alpha strike resilience - something you yourself originally focused on with mitigation - and better defense debuff resistance to maintain those high defenses.Quote:Stone (king of the hill in survivability, by miles and miles)
Elec (expensive though to soft-cap)
Dark (KB can be an issue, plus expensive to soft-cap)
WP (again expensive to soft-cap)
Invuln (almost impossible to totally soft-cap unless giving up a lot)
SD (best for damage)
-- below this, really don't bother
Ice
Fire (don't roll a fire tank, really)
I'd say when it comes to the absolute best Invuln builds verses the absolute best Electric builds possible (which I'm not conceding either of these are), Invuln and Electric are probably comparable. Everywhere else my guess is that Invuln holds on to that strength better than Electric does. Invuln can keep defenses higher longer, and has invincibility for situations with more than one target to further buttress defense, and the better DDR. And as you take resources away, my guess is that Invuln reconfigures to cheaper but still relatively strong builds more gracefully than Electric.
I think an absolute statement about which one is stronger would be difficult to prove. -
So lets address the issue of how expensive it is to build a strong Invuln relative to other sets. I took your Invuln build and just shuffled things around a little bit, knocking out both PvP recipes (+3% defense, +3% resist) which cuts the cost of the build practically in half. It still is soft-capped to s/l/e/n, and s/l/f/c/e/n is still in all cases higher than your Electric build. Psionic, which started off slightly higher in your Invuln build than your Electric build is now a hair under. Resists are now a bit lower with the removal of the 3% resist IO but with the shuffling S/L is still capped.
Technically Hasten is no longer perma in my variant, but its only got a gap of about a second or so.
I'm sure someone else could do better, especially with a clean rebuild, but this was just a quick proof of concept that at least with regard to how much effort it takes to get Invuln to the same high performance as your Electric build gets to, the costs are not higher, they are lower.
As to the relative strengths of the build, I'll be looking at that next.
Code:| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1432;707;1414;HEX;| |78DA65936B4F1341148667DBE5D2522CB5DCA12D2DB7B6C0D2463E281A8C1130203| |545D06F069732D2956569B68B916FFE418D7255FF81F1FA0FEAE97B86D2A44DB6CF| |D933EF9CF7CCEC4CE1FD7248880F0F85167A6C9BD5EACEB6E91C48B7B370EC999E7| |5E4880E21449C933BCBF28D74AAD25873DE1DDB8E74CD5DCBB6BC93981A2E485B4A| |63C59625CFB54AA6CD89C89A5396AE743CE33AE82E1E1DD9C6AAB55FF62C673F88B| |7AD8A947B21841BD2AC503E7CFDB227DD6AD9AA44572A56C978E4963CABB45330AB| |9E744F06A9B92C3DA701FAD3E811359F58A0202F7C39461EF81816EA57D3C56B424| |A8C9AA23E32B6CB2801C93DE08CEA695CCFAFC52998167A8A9100C693C0272AEB57| |65FD45949DD8643C07A6B6807C0C65CFA96C9B2ADBB685C6DA9FA050F205DEF2DBC| |005E93A94AE837D3BB98B4EB68FB3FD25E9024A1760419047823C6B96E557A4EB52| |BA2ED685581062C128CFFA4CCBE9E6E5B475977DF5566E598CB740FF01306803F14| |3E00BCD0AAB59E11F948A899E9F8C5F40AF8DD5F73A40FF21F0957A8A608F6BBE48| |1F967DBB97D1039C52CD289715D14582EE171A9DC63EB5DF7DEB701F7F0A4C6C00D| |30520F30C48917C80D7AD0DCCC07690F18DDC87D4811962F761761F66773F4D1D51| |534796EAEE94ADD78A89B370FD9F9B884DC1682C0B64A71969602EC37B469512AA5| |282AD926C15A191941A49F14886472EC86252594CDE4599A97B8C455EE77DC603E0| |3BAD26CD725F3A8D263313F8A2739340910EE98C12CC9CE3A3CC5E32AE009D5A31D| |40931B895796E659EF7633E0A0C902EA73E4A2E8DAD1CD51B574B88611CF78DE694| |1F2D1675754129A58D6062466F5CDA5AA0A771916ABF838DCB27B43948FF34A7D8F| |6EF4D4AD7D6F956F0251A7F0964D7780796B01FFF6EE49A36860AED8C5C73B335FA| |896C4B26DF925968C9DC69C96CD2F1CDAB05EE06EBCE1C9B4DF1ABA6B8D814FF075| |FF0D8D2| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
-
Quote:Yes and no. Dull Pain has a heal, but discounting that the +health in Dull Pain can be viewed as a resistive-like damage mitigation. It doesn't stack with resistance per se, but it acts like resistance in most other respects. Mathematically speaking, +health is usually viewed as an independent damage mitigation ratio, not a boost to regen. In absolute numbers it boosts regen, but not in a percentage sense which is how most calculations are done.Originally Posted by slainsteel
So when I dismissed healing, I was essentially dismissing healing/regen and max health. If you bring one into the picture, you have to bring all three.
To put it another way, if we ignore the effect of heals, then something with 60% more health takes 60% more damage to kill, all other things being equal. That's how we usually view +health: as essentially reducing the impact of damage, similar to how resistance works (but independently).
Not so much a formula, but I do have a spreadsheet. The question would be whether, given those numbers above, you also have soft-capped defense, and given that seems to be a potentially very expensive custom build, there would need to be a comparable Invuln build to compare to.Quote:The elec tank build I've made is, - 81% s/l resist
- 90% elec resist/51% negative resist
- 58% Fire/Cold resist
- Energize comes up every 37 seconds and heals for 54% hp
- 479% regen with energize
- 130% from tanker base
Looking at these numbers, if you factor in DP, assuming it's perma, and well slotted, the invuln tank probably has a 80% heal every 1m10s or so, and 60% more hp; but he has no real +regen power other than health.
If you factor that in, the hp gap between Invuln and Elec lowers; and with resistances where they are for my build, would put elec back on top.
I believe you had come up with a formula in which you could plug-in resitance/defense/hp/regen in and get a total number for survivability that could be used in comparison? If so, we could just use that.
A Mids block would be useful, to extract the type-by-type numbers, for each build.
Another reason for the Mids block would be to validate certain numbers. For example, a 37 second recharge on Energize is 324% total recharge. That implies global recharge on the order of 124%. But perma-hasten requires global recharge closer to 175%, which suggests your build doesn't have perma-hasten. Its probably closer to 24 seconds of downtime on Hasten, which means the average recharge on Energize is closer to 39 seconds, with the worst case scenario being about 42 seconds. Stuff like that can be significant.
At a glance, though, Energize would make that build tend to beat a strong Invuln build in long term survivability if that build is soft-capped. If its not, Invuln will tend to have the advantage in defense given it has both tough hide and invincibility, and its then anyone's game. -
Quote:That slipped my mind: in fact that means the tanker cap is about +88.6%, and an Invuln can fully benefit from DP and accolades. That would increase the Invuln +health edge from about 42.5% to about 50%. It wouldn't change the basic point, but it would shift the numbers slightly more in invuln's favor.Originally Posted by Sarrate
I was about to raise this exact point on Invuln's +MaxHP, but you beat me to it. Of course, it would factor slightly more in Invuln's favor because the Tanker HP cap was raised from ~3212 to ~3534.
-
Quote:The engineers are lower rank to give controllers something to do: they are vulnerable to holds knocking them out and taking down the resistance umbrella, making everything else vulnerable. On the other hand, if you don't have an easy way to control them, brute force will be much less effective.Originally Posted by Elfis_Presley
Very impressively hard mission, but I prefer damaging and damagable over resistance capped and healing. I liked the mean patrols and I had to dodge them a few times. One wandered to the mission door and permanently camped there.
I am interested to see what happens when tier 4 Interface and Judgment slots arrive.Quote:I'll probably give it another go after the new incarnate powers add a dot to my attacks and give me a buffing pet and mini-nuke.
That's too much detention field. I'll look into it.Quote:Edit: Went back in and punched one of the static spawns. Took out 2 engineers and called it good. Think I got detention fielded 5 times for each engineer I took out but didn't require any inspirations or danger. -
Quote:One thing this mission does is throw a lot of ways to hurt you, not just in big ways but also in little ways that add up. There are lots of pets with higher tohit, some autohitting stuff, and some buffed attacks. You're going to get nicked and scraped even if you aren't whacked hard, and it'll probably be hard to survive for long without a heal. By my calculations, a defense floored resistance capped tanker would not be able to tank the entire thing without some form of healing at least some of the time.Originally Posted by Oedipus_Tex
Tried it with two characters, both set on the easiest settings I could manage: -1x0 no bosses, no AVs. One character was the Ice/Fire/Fire Dominator who did the Scrapper challenge previously. When he died due to lacking a self heal, I switched to an Ice/Radiation/Psi Controller, who did much better, but didn't have the damage output to kill things very quickly.
I tried to be judicious with the use of Ninjitsu, but there are some of those guys in there waiting to pounce on teams without +perception. But no Hide-boosted energy transfer attacks. Yet.Quote:On the second character I was able to get as far as the Netherfrosts without dying. By kiting enemies around I was able to outpace their damage pretty easily despite a couple of scares where both AM and IW went down. I died when I got more or less one-shot by a something/Ninjitsu elite boss that I didn't know I was fighting. At that point there were about 6 elite bosses running around that I might have been able to kill, but would have taken me a really long time. If any of the enemies had had heals, it would have been almost impossible for me.
In a team, you'd potentially be stacking it up. The mission has to be prepared for players to superstack any effect: superstacked confuse, superstacked defense debuff, superstacked knockdown, superstacked damage debuff, superstacked slows, superstacked holds, superstacked immobilizes. I tried to figure out how much of what things to try to compensate for that, but I tended to err on the side of being too powerful because I'm sure teams will be far stronger than just eight times more than a really good player.Quote:It did occur to me that some game mechanics are extremely arbitary in their level of power. Arctic Air was very useful simply because all-boss spawns weren't turned on. If they had been, AA would have been next to worthless.
It depends on the team. There are teams out there that make the STF and Apex look like schoolgirls with spitballs. This was designed to be targeted at them, but I don't know if its strong enough yet to be a legitimate challenge for them.Quote:Mission well done. I do want to try it on a team eventually, although from what I've seen so far, am sure it will be painful.
By the way, anyone actually reading the descriptions of anything, or is stuff just happening too fast for that sort of intelligence-gathering? I did try to make it a point to generally give clues as to what the critters did in their descriptions. -
Quote:Those guys have soul transfer specifically for two purposes: to give players an incentive to move around and not stand in place while corpses pile up around them, and to act as a partial hedge against a team of players trying to overwhelm the mission with a giant mass of mastermind and controller pets. They become fuel for Soul Transfer.Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
I shouldn't have been surprised by Necrocaster's Soul Transfer, but I managed to live through that one, even with the Netherstalkers and Netherfrosts. I found time to heal during fights by turning on Ninja Run and just leaping around and regenerating.
I actually had someone tell me that the interesting thing about the mission was that it forced him to move almost as if he were in a PvP match, probably because while the critters are not nearly as smart as a player, you don't want to stand still too long and let them gang up on you. Movement is a significant weakness for the critters if you can use it to your advantage, because they can't. -
Quote:In my opinion, its in not factoring in +Health into your thinking. Assuming everyone has all the accolades, an Electric tanker will have +20% health, while an Invuln tanker will hit the cap with Dull Pain at about +71% health. Normalizing that difference, if you're going to compare Invuln resistances to Electric resistances, then the apples to apples comparison for Invuln's resistances should be something closer to about: 93% smash/lethal (yes: that is higher than the tanker res cap - that's due to being capped s/l + having higher health), and about 52-53% f/c/e/n/t. My guess is that Electric resistances end up for most builds with tough somewhere around 79% s/l, 56% f/c/psi. 90% energy, 48% negative. Electric wins on energy and psi, loses on smash, lethal and toxic, and basically draws on fire, cold, and negative. That is not an obvious net win for Electric. Its actually a net loss.Originally Posted by slainsteel
I didn't say the guide was wrong, I just said it doesn't tell me anything new.
Tell you what, I'll just drop 'best tank' argument completely, too many variables to count. Going on just survivability, let me put it down this way,
To have great survivability, you need great resistance, defense and regen.
Past capped defense, ideally in just s/l/e/n, resistance is the second most important factor, again, in s/l/e/n. If we all agree till here, let's go further.
You can cap almost every tank to s/l/e/n; after which what counts is resistance.
Invuln, though with great s/l resistance, has low e/n; which makes it's survivability on a capped tank, lesser than that of an elec/dark (if you take and slot tough on all the builds). Other than that, dark/elec also have self heals, which I am guessing helps survivability too?
Which is why I place them both above invuln on survivability.
If I am wrong, I would really like to know where.
Where Electric might edge out Invuln is on Energize's heal or Power Sink's effects, but you dismissed healing and didn't mention endurance drain. You specifically focused on the damage mitigation effects of defense and resistance, and +health is effectively a damage resistive effect. Even factoring in the max health cap, the Dull Pain advantage equates to a significant strength over Electric Armor in the direct damage mitigation area outside of heals and regeneration. -
Preliminary difficulty report. I've had a couple of reports that the mission can be soloed by perma-doms when set to 0x1 and no bosses or AVs. That makes sense because when scaled down to minimal levels and spawn sizes enough stacked control can neutralize enough of the threats to make it doable. Although its still apparently very difficult even under those circumstances, which is a good sign.
No one has yet told me of a successful conventional melee archetype character run through at any difficulty, or a successful run-through by anything with bosses and AVs turned on at any slider setting. I'm wondering if it could be done by a very strong melee character set to -1x1 with bosses and AVs on, and slotted with level shift making everything in the mission -2.
Also, no reports of a superteam making a run at it yet. -
Quote:Ever since I read Meanwhile** I've wished for the possibility of doing something along those lines.Originally Posted by Aliana Blue
Heck, if I had unlimited slots I'd have a "choose your own adventure" style arc I've actually planned. It'd need a mere 17 slots.
** Off topic: Fleep by the same author is one of the best short-run webcomics I've ever read.