Kruunch

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Not to beat an already-nerfed horse, but it was always strange to me from a game-theory perspective that the EM heavy-hitters were so fast-animating in the first place. I mean, here is the biggest pair of melee attacks in any set, including the single highest-damage melee attack in the game, AND they're a poorly-resisted damage type...AND they're both fast as hell? It just seemed like not giving much incentive for picking other sets (aside from the lack of AoE). Especially for PVP and certain sorts of power-gamers.

I'm not trying to call people names, I just thought it was an oddly lopsided design decision to give so many of the more attractive advantages to those attacks.

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The devs apparently agreed with you.

I see what you did there.

Yeah that sounds awfully familiar to me too.

Unfortunately no one had brought up Hamios in that discussion.

But then you could kind of say the samething about Stone and Super Strength too no?

I don't disagree that EM would be more attractive with more AOE btw.

If you're going to go Dark Armor, I'd go Dark/Mace over Dark/Ice as you can stack the stuns between Mace and OG in Dark.

Heraclea has a Dark/Ice (iirc) and she seems to be having a hard time marrying those two together.

I'd throw in another vote for Ice/Stone (given your criteria) although Ice/DM has more flexibility in the build I think (more skippable powers when combined).

Out of curiousity (and this is begging for a Hamio nerf) has anyone done any testing with using Centriole Exposures (dmg/rng) on Shadow Maul to see how much it improves the cone (if at all)?

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I think this issue is partly an issue in perspective. If you played your EM Tanker through the changes (especially to ET) then you are probably going to be more down about the set then if you just started playing one.

The set works as it is, but works isn't necessarily fun (especially when you remember how much smoother it was).

As far as survivability goes, the extra long animation times I've found to impact my EM Tanker (and by proxy, EM Stalker) on occasion but like my DM Tanker, I've learned to plan to work around it (or rather, plan for it). Having said that, EM is definitely one of the clunkier secondaries to play right now, due to the animation times in my opinion. Especially when paired with click heavy primaries such as Fire or Ice (mine is an Ice/EM Tanker and sometimes it makes me want to pull my hair out).

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Also, given J_Bs posting history it's pretty clear what he means.

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I'm very familiar with Johnny's campaigns and posting history, but I'm just not clear on what the inference is.

Whether or not any powers ever get alternate animations has nothing to do with luck. I've never personally been against the idea of having alternate power animations, quite the opposite. We've simply lacked the tech to do that and the time to create said animations.

The infamous knockout blow animation wasn't even something that I animated, so I have no attachment to it and don't feel any need to defend it's quality. I happen to like it, I know plenty of others do as well, and I know a great deal of people who don't.

What any of that has to do with 'knowing BABs' and the likelihood of this happening at any time is where I'm confused.

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It is actually very easy to explain.

You see, you and the Devs are all part of a massive conspiracy to undermine the comic book theme that Tankers should be following.

Now, I know you are going to deny it because I have a deep understanding of the nature of this conspiracy. It has roots in the old Everquest trinity of Damage/Heal/Tanker. Back then it was decided that a council of elders must make sure this "Holy Trinity" is maintained for not just EQ but all MMO's.

So, hidden as Developers, this council of elders has worked there way deep into every major MMO since that time. Some they pass there influence upon, such as WoW. Others they destroy as a threat to the trinity, such as Auto Assault. Always the holy trinity has been kept in check.

This is why you and the evil devs try so hard to force tankers into a non-super hero mold. If ever a hero were to figure out that the trinity is not necessary, like J_B, this person must be ignored and have the community turned against him. Such is the decree of the great elders of all MMO.

But what not even you know is that you are a Nemesis Automation. Yup, you were replaced several years ago..sometime between avatar #4 and 7 from my calculations.

So, to answer your confusion, you do not know yourself because you are part of a Nemesis plot to make tanks unplayable so that he can finally forcebolt the defenders.

Any questions?

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AC2, Tabula Rasa and Matrix Online didn't have the holy trinity ... the truth is out there.

*nods*

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Wow this thread has grown .... that's what I get for going away for the weekend.

I just wanted to extend an apology to Sarrate and Starsman (and the respondants of this thread by proxy) for haranguing them as much as I have. I don't know what got into me but you guys definitely didn't deserve it. Next time I'll keep my poor attitude and crappy math to myself

BTW good thread (kudos to the normal gang and Werner for his invaluable insights) and I look forward to seeing the new charts Stars comes up with.

You're right .. I don't know what I'm talking about and I apologize for being defensive and wasting your time.

You should not listen to anything I say in the future.

*nods*

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I have a soft-capped /SR scrapper that seems to get hurt much less frequently than this tank, but I don't know if that's because the Scrapper takes less aggro, if positional defense works "better" than typed, or if having Siphon Life in the Scrapper's 4-punch attack chain makes THAT much of a difference.

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D) All of the above.

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When Willpower first came out, people noticed this behavior in RttC and asked about it. Castle's answer basically amounted to: When an auto power or toggle counts a number of targets to provide a buff, it can either stack for a fraction of a second, or completely fall off for a fraction of a second.

I think they made the right choice.

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That's odd. Invince does this with no targets in range.

But yeah I agree about the decision.

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So I rerolled my BS/SD Scrapper into a SD/EM tank. I felt squishy as hell for the first 22 levels, and weak as hell until 35 (I'm now 36). But now that I'm past the nightmare, and my defense and damage are bearable, I'm starting to wonder...

I know Energy Melee gets a lot of negativity for its long animations and subpar utility, but I created mine like I was rolling a Scrapper (the "Can't go wrong" mentality). Plus, the animation for Energy Transfer is just too cool =] Anyway! What should and shouldn't be taken from EM? I considered grabbing Stun, since that plus Total Focus puts a boss under (as far as I know)... but I can't seem to fit it in.

But what I'm getting at is this: Is EM JUST a set with above average ST damage and crappy AoE? Or does it really have utility? I don't think the set is bad... but it seems every other set can do whatever it does but better.

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The utility factor are the stuns that can be generated by any of your powers. Some people get annoyed when the stunned targets wander around/away, but this shouldn't effect Shields overly much (might drop you a few percentage of damage bonus for AAO is all).

You are correct in that EM is good at single target damage and poor at AOE. No getting around that. Being paired with SD helps though.

Don't bother with Stun ... you don't need it (tends to be superfluous in my mind in a set that already stuns better then any other Tanker secondary).

Might want to look at Aid Self though

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Thank you for the dev interpretation. Handy as always.


In another thread Moonlighter said:
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Things that really should be banned (temporarily):
~ If your response makes assumptions on what the devs are thinking instead of the changes they implemented you need a break.
~ If your response is more about the devs and less about the change you need a break.
~ If your response is driven by self righteous indignation you need a break.
~ If your response word smiths or twists the devs words when my 8 year old nephew understands exactly what they mean you need a break.
~ If you waste time actually fabricating a fictional exchange in the Paragon office then you *really* need a break.

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But who would post on the boards then?

*smirk*

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And completing formulas often does not make you an expert. It makes you practiced.

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Sure, and they have a lot more practice than you do. Werner's also tested his theories with a high degree of accuracy, something you haven't done. In professional circles, being able to recognize expertise is a very good skill to have. I'm not trying to drive you further into uber-defensive mode - I'm genuinely glad the topic got brought up because I *have* been curious about single target tanker DPS for quite a while after all the scrapper work. That said, might want to give Werner and Sarrate a tad more credit - they've been doing this a lot longer than you have.

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I give credit where credit is due (no matter the source). Sarrate is often correct and has an impressive store of detailed information regarding CoH. However, he also has a tendency to lose the forest for the trees on occasion (as many number crunchers are prone to). In this particular case his conclusions abouts certain Tanker secondaries based on his calculations revolving around DPA is flat wrong. Not that his calculations are wrong ... he can use a calculator with the best of them. His criteria for his calculations are wrong. Wrong as in they don't stand up when you actually play the game.

Werner seems very intelligent and he and I are having a grand ole time of comparing apples to oranges (or Scrappers to Tankers). I think we're both finding out that the methodologies of the two aren't quite the same.

P.S. - I've been playing Tankers for longer then Sarrate and Werner .... combined. Quid pro quo buddy.

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DPS can only be approximated accurately. Various variables (which the Scrapper boards rarely acknowledge I might add) effect the actual end number after a particular "run" has been done.

These can include hit/miss ratio (especially on an AV where there is more of a base minimum chance to miss), insp gobbling (global activation means you're not doing damage (or as much damage in the case of auras)), alternate power activation (i.e. Build Up, Consume, T9 secondary power, etc ...), server lag (especially in AE missions now), missing a beat on your Q because you're going crosseyed slamming buttons for 10 mins straight and so on.

As some of these are totally random, you can only approximate DPS at best. That make sense in a real world context?

P.S. - Can you miss a pylon? If not, then you can more accurately approximate raw DPS, but that still has no real world place except maybe as a "perfect score" sort of scenario.

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You can miss a pylon. I strive for a 95% chance to hit +4s, and I include the 5% chance of missing in my DPS formulas. A long time ago, I compared everyone at 100% accuracy and just knew that my numbers were high, but this was making sets that require a number of attacks to hit in a row (like Dual Blades) appear better than they really were. That has long since been corrected. My DPS calculations will be wrong for those rare occasions that the enemy gets my chance to hit lower than 95%, but that is a rare occasion, even among AVs.

For inspirations, we typically don't use inspirations when we're doing “challenges” like AV soloing. Similarly, though a very different subject, when I calculate damage mitigation and survivability, I ignore inspiration use. So yes, inspirations will absolutely change things in the real world, and differently for different builds. But I ignore them in the calculations because I ignore them in game on any challenge of interest.

When I go full bore, I account for the Build Up cycle, the Consume cycle, the tier 9 powers, the Hasten cycle and so on. These accountings may not be 100% accurate, but they're a lot more accurate than ignoring them and just saying “too many variables to account for” and flying by the seat of your pants (not that that's what you do).

Anything but heavy server lag shouldn't be an issue if you queue your attacks up.

Missing a beat and screwing up your chain every now and again makes a difference, yes. But how much? 1%? Also, it's not the kind of thing that would invalidate a DPS comparison between two different chains. I suppose you could say that you're more likely to screw up complicated chain X than simple chain Y, and therefore reduce chain X's DPS by 1%, but I'd really rather leave the human factor out of it in this case.

As far as hitting other powers, let's take my Katana/Regen scrapper as an example. Regeneration is a very click-heavy secondary. And I don't, in fact, take those clicks into account when calculating DPS. So against really tough targets, like most AVs, I'll see slightly lower DPS than I calculate and see against easier targets that don't require the clicks, like pylons. But it's not enough to actually work into the numbers. It's just something to keep in the back of my mind. I just know that 200 DPS from Katana/Super Reflexes is marginally superior to 200 DPS from Katana/Regen when the character is pushed the the wall. On the other hand, maybe that Katana/Super Reflexes picks up Aid Self, and when pushed to the wall, has to spam it. That's a much longer activation, so might affect DPS more rather than less. If your point is that these factors exist, I agree. If your point is that they belong in a DPS calculation, and that if they aren't there then the DPS calculation isn't very good, then I would disagree.

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I don't include misses because I assume enough global and slotted accuracy to hit the target *most* times. For the kind of people and builds that would take on an AV seriously, misses would only serve to slow down the fight but not jeopardize the actual outcome for a Tanker (most times ... can't figure in for a string of really bad luck). With borderline sets such as Ice Melee and sets that depend on hit sequences (Dual Blades), this might be much more of a concern.

I only point out all the other factors that I'm skipping to ensure that the reader understands that what we're talking about is a gross approximation.

P.S. - I'd never ever leave out the human factor in a calculation based on human interaction. Again, calculating it accurately would be impossible, but it has to be thrown in as a "this will serve only to lower your overall DPS" kind of caveat.

P.P.S. - I've never heard of a Tanker that has solo'd an AV and not have had to pop at least one insp during the course of a fight (not that it hasn't happened ... just never heard of it). I know for myself, I'll pop lots of insps ... usually of the blue variety

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OK, I think I finally see what your formulas mean.

The formula for attack chain DPS assumes you're looking at the unslotted damage for the attack, and that you'll average 100% damage slotting. It doesn't adjust for Arcanatime explicity, but you could replace “Total Animation Time of Chain” with “Total Arcanatime of Chain” and it would do the trick. I'd definitely skip the * 2 part, though. It makes your formula completely inapplicable except as the first very rough approximation. Mind you, I make very similar very rough first approximations when I'm looking for a good DPS chain. In my case, I just add up the Mids' average unslotted damage and divide by the total Arcanatime. It's nothing even approximating what you'll see in game, but it's good enough to start looking for better chains for more detailed analysis. So if that's what you're doing here, then I'm on board.


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That's what I'm doing here (rough approximations). The *2 portion of the formula is what approximates the damage bonus of 100% and the 1.25 added is what approximates ArcanaTime.

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The formula for animation time of the chain is even rougher, anticipating that your chain will be limited by its longest recharging attack, have +100% recharge, and have a fudge factor of 1.25 seconds for Arcanatime. To me, that's just too rough to be of much use, even as a first approximation. You might find the best chains at exactly +100% recharge, but you won't find the best chains overall unless they happen to run at that low a point.

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This is the difference between Scrappers and Tankers. Scrappers have enough DPS out of the box that they can afford to (and often need to) use powers that will knowingly lower their DPS (e.g. Broadsword using Parry). Tankers don't have quite as much wiggle room as our DPS tends to be close to the threshold (and that's on the fairly enhanced level I've been approximating with) and our utility attacks tend to come with no damage at all (e.g. Fault, Stun, Handclap, etc ...). As a result, most times (if not all), a Tanker's attack chain is constrained to those powers that will yield the highest DPS the attack chain, and that pool of powers is often lower then can be made a full chain of. For instance, Shadow Punch on a DM Scrapper while not the highest DPS in your lineup still comes in at above an enhanced 94 DPS (especially when including possible criticals) whereas the Tanker's version never will. So our attack chains may have fillers, and except for the rare exception, will have less powers available to the Tanker then make up the chain itself.

What this boils down to is that a Tanker will often have less powers to fill an attack chain then the longest recharging power that the Tanker is using (iow my formula works for Tankers ... it wouldn't work for Scrappers, but it's not meant to be universal either).

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I hit it from another angle. If there's a buff attack (Blinding Feint, for instance), I'll amost certainly want it. Then I'm looking at the highest damage per Arcanatime attacks, and trying to fit them all together. Bonus points if the attack is a defense debuff, since those can take an Achilles' Heel proc, which is gold for AV soloing. I try out some chains, calculate the required recharge for each attack, and so on. As candidates start sticking out, the calculations get more and more detailed. For instance, with Dual Blades with perma Hasten and about +200% global recharge, can we do more DPS with Blinding Feint -> Ablating Strike -> Sweeping Strike -> Ablating Strike (doubling up on the Achilles' Heel) or with Blinding Feint -> Sweeping Strike -> Ablating Strike (tripling up the Blinding Feint buff on Sweeping Strike). Questions like that can take some pretty in-depth analysis.


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Again, Scrappers have many more options with their attack chains then Tankers do. The complexity in a Tanker chain almost always is figuring out how to shed that "filler" attack that's actually causing you to lose ground in a DPS fight with an AV.

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This is not to mention the futility of having 5 attacks in an attack chain that at most should be fitting 3 attacks given your criteria (but we'll assume different secondary effects or end costs or something to make up the logic).

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Completely correct. In the example, exceptional circumstances to the contrary, we should just have two attacks in our attack chain. I was just throwing out numbers to demonstrate the apparent problem with your formulas.

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And I hope you've seen that it's not quite as inaccurate as you first thought, while still understanding that it *is* an approximation and not a definitive calculation?

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Also, given J_Bs posting history it's pretty clear what he means.

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I'm very familiar with Johnny's campaigns and posting history, but I'm just not clear on what the inference is.

Whether or not any powers ever get alternate animations has nothing to do with luck. I've never personally been against the idea of having alternate power animations, quite the opposite. We've simply lacked the tech to do that and the time to create said animations.

The infamous knockout blow animation wasn't even something that I animated, so I have no attachment to it and don't feel any need to defend it's quality. I happen to like it, I know plenty of others do as well, and I know a great deal of people who don't.

What any of that has to do with 'knowing BABs' and the likelihood of this happening at any time is where I'm confused.

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J_B has consistently misinterpreted all red name posts stating that something might be either "hard" or "time consuming" as being, therefore, unlikely to occur as if you and Castle picked your own daily task list and decided to avoid the toughies instead of, say, doing what your presumptive bosses might have assigned to you that week.

I'm picturing something like:

Positron: BaB, I'd like to you work on power animation customization.

BaB: But that's hard. And it would take up like my whole day.

Positron: err, well, how about just making a new sit emote and taking the rest of the day off?

BaB: Ok. But just for males. I'll do the female version next tuesday after my morning nap.

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Wasn't that I10?

*ducks*

P.S. - J_B is the best troll ever ... even if he doesn't know it.

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I'm interested in seeing the result purely from an academic POV. I see no point in soloing AV's as I enjoy large teams and chaos, but the scrapper boards have had this down to a science for years. It would be interesting to see how tanker secondaries rank.

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See, I'm the opposite. I don't care much about the academics of it ....

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I got that from your posts above. Werner and Sarrate have been at chain-calculations for a long time. It's not something I'm interested in, but I respect them as experts.

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Completing a formula is not hard. Knowing what to put into it can be.

And completing formulas often does not make you an expert. It makes you practiced.

Re: Sarrate and Starsman.

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Those remarks simply meant that all the theory crafting and number crunching in the world ultimately cannot take the place of experience.

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I completely agree.

That said, calculating DPS can be done accurately. Over on the scrapper board, we often verify our calculated DPS by soloing a pylon. It's the "perfect" target for this, as if you have sufficient DPS to do it at all, you can easily calculate your actual in game DPS from the time it takes to solo one (DPS = 38343.75 / seconds + 127.8125). These calculations are in very high agreement with the theoretical DPS calculations we use.

AV soloing is also very close to an ideal DPS situation. You stand there and beat on an AV for ten minutes or whatever. There aren't that many variables. From a damage perspective, just about everything important can be accounted for.

So while I agree that accurate DPS calculations have little to do with in-game damage, and very little to do with in-game performance overall, particularly for tankers, they DO have a LOT to do with answering the question posed by the OP - what is the best tank for DPS and AV soloing.

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DPS can only be approximated accurately. Various variables (which the Scrapper boards rarely acknowledge I might add) effect the actual end number after a particular "run" has been done.

These can include hit/miss ratio (especially on an AV where there is more of a base minimum chance to miss), insp gobbling (global activation means you're not doing damage (or as much damage in the case of auras)), alternate power activation (i.e. Build Up, Consume, T9 secondary power, etc ...), server lag (especially in AE missions now), missing a beat on your Q because you're going crosseyed slamming buttons for 10 mins straight and so on.

As some of these are totally random, you can only approximate DPS at best. That make sense in a real world context?

P.S. - Can you miss a pylon? If not, then you can more accurately approximate raw DPS, but that still has no real world place except maybe as a "perfect score" sort of scenario.

Might want to take Shadow Maul earlier if you're planning on exemplaring down to grab the accolades (or to help your buddies). If not, don't worry about it.

Otherwise looks like a winner (mind you I'm not scoping out your slotting choices with a fine comb but I see you plug the Defense Debuff hole with recharge and Hamios ).

Also interesting slotting choice on Siphon Life. I may borrow that (its been driving me crazy ).

Glad I could help

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Werner: I typo'd the original formula I posted. Reread it and apply it again to your example.

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OK, reapplying your edited formulas:

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Formula for attack chain DPS: (Total Damage of Chain / Total Animation Time of Chain) * 2

*EDIT* (corrected typo) Formula for determining an attack chain: Total Animation Time of Chain + 1.25 = Longest Recharge in Chain / 2

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So again, my example is 5 attacks doing 200 damage each, activation time 2 seconds, recharging in 3 seconds.

Total Animation Time of Chain + 1.25 = Longest Recharge in Chain / 2
Total Animation Time of Chain + 1.25 = 3 / 2
Total Animation Time of Chain + 1.25 = 1.5
Total Animation Time of Chain = 1.5 – 1.25
Total Animation Time of Chain = 0.25

Attack Chain DPS = (Total Damage of Chain / Total Animation Time of Chain ) * 2
Attack Chain DPS = (5 * 200 / 0.25 ) * 2
Attack Chain DPS = (1000 / 0.25) * 2
Attack Chain DPS = 4000 * 2
Attack Chain DPS = 8000

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You're using the wrong formula ... the one you're using is to calculate the time of a proper attack chain, not DPS. Pardon me for not catching that earlier.

DPS Formula: Total Damage of Attack Chain / (Total Animation Time + 1.25 (or more precise ArcanaTime calculation if you prefer)).

Total Animation time of attack sequence: 11s (2.2 cast (with ArcanaTime (approx)) * 5 attacks)

Total Damage of attack sequence = 1000

1000 / 11 = 90.90 (which jibes with your first attempt where you forgot to add in the 100% enhancement damage bonus)

90.90 * 2 = 181.80 DPS

This is not to mention the futility of having 5 attacks in an attack chain that at most should be fitting 3 attacks given your criteria (but we'll assume different secondary effects or end costs or something to make up the logic).

Regarding Fire Melee: Are you saying that the total damage is wrong or that just the initial applied damage is wrong as its spread out over the length of the DoT?

If the latter, then I don't think it matters as the damage is still applied and your attack chain isn't waiting for the DoT to end (or do Fire Melee DoTs not stack?).

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Hey Ace!

I am not really that bitter just disappointed. Our group got all the way thru to the end and had 2 kins defs, 2 blasters, 1 scrapper and me. I thought the mix was fair was a bit worried about Reischman - but no idea he would smoke me like a cheap cigar.

I guess it just is makes me sad when I can't do my job. Lets face it on that team - my damage was a joke. The blasters and scrapepr with SB x 2 were just non-stop nukes and destruction. My simple job was alpha soaker and pushing up daisies almost instantly 2 in a row was really disheartening.

I do have the normal tank build:

Fire shield
Plasma Shield
Acro
Combat jump slotted for def
Tough

I also take the Ice pool and slot the snot out of them for the -regen with IO's.

I know you can do wonderful things with IO's - however I recall someone called Dev saying the mobs are not made tougher due to IO's and that normal SO are playable - except when they are not.

If I had a bubbler yes I could have equaled a Stoner - however it seems sad when an AV has been so buffed as to make a mockery of the tankers.

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While what the Dev said might be true, you'll find that using IOs will greatly increase the survivability of your Fire Tanker.

Drop Acro and get an IO with KB protection.

Replace Acro with Weave.

Look at Obliterations, Multi-Strikes and other IO sets to increase melee defense ... you can get up to around 40% when combiend with CJ/Hover and Weave on a good build. You'll notice a world of difference on your Fire Tanker.