Kruunch

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If you want to spew platitudes, let's just go to its natural close: Nothing is "needed" for any of the game content.

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McBoo is right. Ice Patch is amazing for mitigation.

However "majority" content is a little misleading, if the majority of your content happen to be L50 TFs.

Quid pro quo (and no I'm not trolling Mod8 )

That would work fine for packs of minions. Packs of LTs and Bosses (and mixed packs) will cream you without Tough/Weave in my experience.

With today's game, I suggest Tough/Weave for every Tanker looking to engage in extreme tanking (with the possible exception of Stone but haven't run that lately to say for sure).

Invuln's can get away without it in normal group situations or with support.

For all others, it's a face plant waiting to happen.

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I love what KO blow does, I hate how it looks doing it.

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Hey, if we're really lucky, i16 will allow alternate animations for our powers.

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Knowing BaBs, we would have to be astronomically lucky.


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I think I know me, and I have no idea what you're inferring.

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I think he's saying the odds of getting lucky with you by I16 are astronomical.

I think he's right .... for once.

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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 (past if its possible) but I *love* building a toon that can defeat an AV solo. Pure bragging rights.

But as Starsman points out, there is no tangible gain in a reward type of scenario past the fact of actually doing it.

Which *is* the reward itself

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

As for the rest, read above.

Sarrate (and Werner by extension) I understand that numbers and formula are source of comfort for some (and I don't mean this disparagingly). They provide (seemingly) a solid explanation to the things you are trying to understand. I deal in numbers and formula all day long as part of my career and with people who live and die (figuratively speaking) by them. Any one of them (and by proxy anyone who has a fundamental understanding of math) *knows* that random elements in an equation make the equation worthless, except as a reference point. In this particular instance (forgetting for the moment we're just talking about a video game) the amount of variables and random occurances that are trivially being dismissed here makes both your and my DPS charts worthless *except* where you show something as being incapable of soloing a base AV (re: Ice Melee) and I show that it can be possible (albeit slowly). In this instance you are the one giving false information (as is Starsman by his wildly inaccurate statistics (both past and present)).

Now my figures aren't meant to be taken as gospel and if this is the source of contention, I plainly state that now. Were this a more important venue, I'd be perfectly accurate (as much as chance will allow) instead of building attack sequence chain formulae in my head. The numbers I posted are a rough guide. They can be off by +/- a few DPS here and there (and I would think a reasonable person could see that given my explanations). However they do accurately provide a rough guide into the areas of what they describe. Now some people will read them, and may race off to make */Fire Tankers without understanding that things like mitigation (or lack thereof) and other secondary effects can be as or even more important then straight damage in this given situation (re: SD/DM). I can't help that and am not looking to. I am neither writing a guide nor a gospel. I'm posting something that conflicts with conjecture you've (and others) have engaged in that contradicts some of my experiences in game (and by proxy I've surprised myself with some of the things I've posted (i.e. Fire Melee)). Which leads me to the next point ...

In the past I've made comments such as "... because I play the game, not a calculator ... " which you've (and others) have taken to be condescending remarks. They weren't meant that way. Those remarks simply meant that all the theory crafting and number crunching in the world ultimately cannot take the place of experience. This is why I've made 16 Tankers to date (many of them 50 or past their T9s) amongst the other toons I've played (which incidentally many times were to measure tanking from an outside perspective) since the beta of this game. Ultimately I want to know for myself. So when I see things like Inv/SS can't solo most AVs because they only have two powers with DPA above the AV's regen rates it irritates me ... especially when I've solo'd the majority of AVs in this game post ED and pre-IO up through I8 (which according to you is impossible) on my Inv/SS Tanker. Sort of like me saying you can't do something you already did would kind of irritate you, no?

It's the diffence between spouting formula and understanding what that formula means in practical application.

I play Poker with a bunch of friends once a week. One of my friends many times calls out that he has a worse hand than he actually does (a poker player's wet dream normally). Being friends, we always point out where he should win and have a good laugh while giving him our money. Now you and I aren't friends, but as neither of us are exchanging money and this *is* a game, maybe you could extend me the same courtesy.

Or to put it another way, you don't disprove a supposition by disproving the logic, unless you have an agenda. You disprove a supposition (as much as a supposition can be disproved) by failing to come up with logic (either on your own or someone else's) that proves it in your mind. You're more then intelligent enough to see what I've written, fiddle around with it and come up with something fairly close to what I have. I bet you can.

P.S. - In the Stone Melee example, you don't count the first attack's animation time as that's the start of the chain at the start of the fight. If you want to include it (as part of a midfight chain) then you simply lop off the end attack and/or scramble the attack sequence around to fit and you'll come up with similar numbers each time. The main goal is to cram as many high DPS attacks as you can between the recharge time of your longest recharging power (usually your heaviest hitter). Most players do this intuitively by hitting the power that pops up first in their attack chain (assuming they've chosen the correct powers to use). Practical application versus theory crafting.

P.P.S. - Don't forget to apply the 100% recharge bonus when building an attack sequence to each power's recharge time. That's fairly crucial in the process.

The biggest DPS asset in a long fight that a Scrapper has (besides the 15% or so increased damage) is the inherent to critically hit which a Tanker can never do.

And some Tanker surivability is tied in directly to HP pool (WP for instance) which Scrappers could never reach.

So while they share some of the same sets (in reverse), the differences are larger then mere value swaps.

Ah... Fire Blast or Ice Blast would be a better alternative from a DPS standpoint.

Werner: my last post was directed at Sarrate (in case there was some confusion).

Re your post: This discussion has turned into how each Tanker secondary ranks with respect to single target damage within the context of attack chain and how it applies to soloing an AV.

Scrappers and Tankers have a slightly different set of concerns with soloing an AV. Every Scrapper primary has the DPS to overcome the base regen of an AV out of the box ... the Scrapper's major concern is survival (and how it would effect that DPS). This applies to Tankers but in a slightly different context ... we're more survivable, but we must work on DPS more diligently (you might say flip side of the same coin).

There are also some rampant misconceptions on what certain Tanker secondaries can and can't achieve (my own included) which is why I broke down and did a mathematical comparison. It's still *very* subject to many variables (which I tried to point out where I could) but is intended to give a baseline of what each set is capable of and how they compare from a raw DPS/end perspective per attack chain sequence.

EDIT: I ran a DM/SD Scrapper. The problem I found with them is that Siphon Life doesn't have enough base health to work off of to be reliable in keeping it upright in heavy situations. This may or may not apply to a single target with heavy attacks as much (i.e. an AV) as only the random number generator can allow. In other words, your ability to solo an AV would depend primarily on luck in staying upright (although the percentages are in your favor). The SD/DM Tanker version seems to get by just fine (still at the mercy of the random number but not by quite as much as the Scrapper version). The DPS between the two is almost identical as both can push the damage cap with no outside help.

Sigh ... do you really need to prove me wrong that badly? Is it a driving force for you or something?

Your confusion is that I listed the powers I'm using in the chain but not the chain sequence itself.

Example:

Stone Melee: SS + SM + HM + SF + HB + HM + SM + 1.25 (for ArcanaTime) = 11.06s

Total Damage: 624.7

DPS = (624.7 / 11.06) * 2 (for 100% enhanced damage) = 112.97 (rounded up to the nearest hundredth)

I was 1.5 DPS off (shorted) in my original post but I was doing it in my head so give me a break

I'll let you go back over them all, create the proper chain and redo the math (again). I think you'll find I erred on the low side in each case.

What your *real* points should have been:

1) ArcanaTime can be off by a lot in itself as it doesn't take into account server lag which can at times be measured in multiple seconds (Arc may have addressed this in his/her original post as a caveat, I can't remember).

2) The above is in reference to having each attack queued and never interrupting. As I pointed out, various things can interrupt the attack chain (insp popping, activating BU or other similar power, lag, player missing a Q after beating on the same mob for 5+ minutes, etc ...). This is one of the reasons I tried to err on the low side while giving a realistic environment (in this case, the enhancements needed) to solo an AV.

3) Synergy with the Tanker primary being used (also as I pointed out) can increase/decrease these values. For example DM looks to be low on the list however when paired with Shield Defense it would rate as one of the (if not the) best when combined with Shield Charge and to a lesser degree AAO. Shield Defense doesn't offer this for any of the other secondaries as it would require too many insps to keep upright (both greens and blues).

Conclusion: DPA is a rough measure of a power's strength based on animation and recharge time, but it's out of context and as such can only be used as a rough guideline (very rough).

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Sarrate: This is my problem with DPA ... it doesn't seem to correctly reflect an attack chain. If you look at my post above you'll see I took the same attack chain but came out with a slightly higher number. If given more recharge, Build Up, IO damage bonus, IO procs and throw in an APP power (Fire Blast) it exceeds the threshold for a baseline AV's regen.

Having said that, it would still take an Ice Melee with no other sources of damage, quite a long time to solo said AV (as it can't exceed it by *that* much).

So it's possible to solo an AV on an Ice Melee Tanker (say Invuln/Ice for instance) .... just a really bored Ice Melee Tanker

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ArcanaTime. :P

-edit-

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(that's the 1.25 seconds within each attack chain buffer I put in).

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Huh? I did the exact math for your Stone Melee chance and there was no buffer put in at all.

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ArcanaTime is in there.

Heh I got my own formula wrong. Attack chain formula should look like this:

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

(the 1.25 is the ArcanaTime)

In English:

Let's take Super Strength ... the longest recharge time in an SS chain is KO Blow (25 seconds). Half of that (for 100% recharge) is 12.5 seconds. So from KO Blow to KO Blow you have 12.5 seconds to fill up with the rest of the chain. That make sense so far?

In the second example I put together the chain lasts 10.9 seconds (animation times strung together of all powers). The difference is my nod to ArcanaTime (the 1.25 in the equation). It's a little longer for SS since the chain lasts longer and yes it's not precisely exact, it was just a guestimate of ArcanaTime.

The 100% dmg, recharge and endurance are all achievable via enhancements (IO frankenslotting) which is why I used those figures as a baseline. They're a little off as most people ED-slotting are going to hit 90-97% usually but it doesn't impact the overall DPS greatly. This doesn't include things like taking Hasten or global recharge from IO set bonuses purposefully. In other words my numbers are the lower baseline numbers. Build junkies can certainly improve upon them (re: my point about Ice Melee).

So I don't think my formula is wrong as a rough baseline measure unless you can point out something I really missed

P.S. - I'll look into Fire Melee ... it seemed a bit high to me also.

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Interesting work Krunch, but why do your #'s and Sarrate's #'s disagree on Ice Melee if I read the earlier portion of the thread correctly?

Also, could you try a hand at optimizing the ones with *'s with APPs- interesting to see where they would end up. SS is quite a bit of a surprise, I must admit, but I haven't played the set since launch and it was pretty mediocre then.

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Sarrate is using DPA listed while I'm calculating animation time of power (unalterable) within the framework of the attack chain (in other words, what a real chain might look like with the damage it would output divided by the time it would take) and a gross guesstimate nod to Arcanatime (that's the 1.25 seconds within each attack chain buffer I put in).

Check out the notes for (**) for Super Strength ... I added the APP Fire Blast into the mix and it adds 20 DPS to the attack chain. Include enough global recharge and you can eliminate Hurl within the chain and that would increase it another 10-15 DPS (making the set rise to 118-123 DPS for the attack chain). While all of the attack chains benefit from more recharge, SS benefits the most (the same for adding the APP).

Still that list is midleading (as I pointed out) .... a lot depends on the primary its being paired with and if you notice the end usage to sustain the chain, almost all of them have to skip a beat hear and there while you gobble a blue (don't forget an AV capable Tanker is averaging something like 1.09/s end usage to begin with).

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Starsman, thanks for replying, as I read your answer in another thread it looks like you're using automated means to generate dynamic attack chains.

I don't believe this is the right approach for something as complicated as attack chains, with so many parameters there's too much room for user error if a program does most of the work, and to me it explains the discrepancy between your numbers and the other analysis I've seen or ingame experience I've had.

YMMV and all that, I'm not attacking you personally but I think your numbers aren't applicable at all to AV soloing.

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This is exactly right (and no I'm not attacking you either Stars). See the case of Super Strength above.

Sarrate: This is my problem with DPA ... it doesn't seem to correctly reflect an attack chain. If you look at my post above you'll see I took the same attack chain but came out with a slightly higher number. If given more recharge, Build Up, IO damage bonus, IO procs and throw in an APP power (Fire Blast) it exceeds the threshold for a baseline AV's regen.

Having said that, it would still take an Ice Melee with no other sources of damage, quite a long time to solo said AV (as it can't exceed it by *that* much).

So it's possible to solo an AV on an Ice Melee Tanker (say Invuln/Ice for instance) .... just a really bored Ice Melee Tanker

Here is what I have worked out based on attack chains as a *baseline* for secondary-based DPS. This does not include buffs such as Build Up (or Soul Drain or Rage), inspiration use or IO set bonuses. The only attacks I've used are in the secondary listed (although I note where it can be bettered that I could see off the top of my head) and the numbers I've used include enhancements to damage (100%), recharge (100%) and endurance (100%). Numbers gotten from Mids.

Here are the sets in order by DPS with attack chain and endurance/second listed:

Fire Melee - 123.19 DPS (2.48/s end) - FS + Insin + GFS
War Mace - 113.64 DPS (3.33/s end) - Pulv + JB + Clob + Shatter
Energy Melee - 112.05 DPS (2.5/s end) - Barrage + BS + ET + FS
Stone Melee* - 111.6 DPS (3.96/s end) - SF + SM + HM + SS + HB
Battle Axe - 109.9 DPS (3.22/s end) - Chop + Gash + Swoop + Cleave
Dark Melee* - 105.55 DPS (3.03/s end) - SP + Smite + SL + MG
Super Strength** - 86.47 DPS (3.60/s end) - HM + KOB + Hurl + Punch
Ice Melee - 84.47 DPS (2.76/s end) - IS + Frost + FT + GIS

* This attack chain can be vastly improved by replacing/adding an APP power such as Fire Blast or Ice Blast.

** Super Strength really *has* to have an APP power and its attack chain is made more complex due to the long recharge of KO Blow (25 secs). So when putting an SS attack chain together you should come out with something like this: KOB + HM + FB (Fire Blast) + Punch + Hurl + HM + FB + Punch (this is to recycle back to KOB which has now completed your attack chain). With this chain the DPS is raised from 86.47 to 108.82. Global recharge and Hasten adds to the DPS immensely as it cuts out one or more of the below threshold attacks in the chain. Rage is another factor for SS DPS, however the Rage crashes somewhat offset the bonuses. Since you will have to endure multiple Rage crashes during a fight with an AV, it's hard to compute the actual rise in DPS Rage will give you. I would guestimate with double stacked Rage, the increase in the attack chain's DPS to be about 10%.

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



Now some things to consider here:

These baseline stats are a little misleading as they consider only DPS. However in a set like Dark Melee which comes in 3rd to last on this list in baseline DPS, it also comes with end recovery in Dark Consumption (which also gives damage), a built in heal with Siphon Life (no stopping to pop insps) and ToHitDebuff as its secondary effect (another reason insp popping isn't as heavy). This, when combined with an APP power such as Fire Blast, makes Dark Melee about 2nd or 3rd on the list.

Also to consider is the end cost to maintain the attack chain. Surprisingly Energy Melee comes in second in this category while coming in third for DPS, making EM one of the better, not worse, choices for soloing AVs (this came as a surprise to me as did Fire Melee coming in first in both categories).

Now this also doesn't take into account the Tanker primary involved nor the synergy between the two (i.e. SD/DM extremely effective soloing AVs ... Fire/Fire not so effective due to squishiness).

In any event these baselines can be improved with IO set bonuses, global recharge, global damage bonuses and procs. Given that, *any* of these secondaries can be improved to be used to solo a baseline AV (the magic number care of Sarrate is 94 DPS).

Your charts are still way wrong.

I'll see if I can come up with some better figures.

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Using SM (or LBE) in an AV soloing chain hurts more than it helps. Their low DPA decreases your overall DPS, despite the procs.

(Unless you plan to use temps such as Shivans... In which case the -res might be worth it, as you're not only boosting your own damage.)

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LBE?

You're right about Shadow Maul although it sits just on the fence when buffed via AAO from Shields and/or Soul Drain. Those powers that are close but come in just under are good fillers if there is a gap in your attack chain (which DM doesn't have but just wanted to make the point).

I say good "fillers" in that they're not helping you kill the AV outright, but they are in effect stopping the regen to a certain point. Sets like SS and EM that have gaps in their attack chain due to long recharge times on some staple powers benefit from having these "close filler" attacks and keeps the entire chain above the DPS threshold needed to down the AV.

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OK, so I will be eliminating DA/ I think.

Another question: What are the benefits if any of Invuln/ over Willpower/ and Shield Def/?

Thanks.

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Invuln is the second strongest primary at taking alphas and the second strongest in prolonged fights (both second to Stone).

Will Power is very prone to large and/or concentrated alphas while Shield is a Defense based set that is has to deal with the random number generator (sometimes it just has it out for you) and doesn't come with a heal (in other words eventually you will die without healing (insps or another source)).

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Have you considered just taking his spreadsheet and replacing the Scrapper's numbers with the Tanker's numbers? He posted it in his post and I can't see there being many changes to the actual attack chains.

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T1 powers.

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I have not tested it myself as I don't find AV soloing a rewarding experience (their HP+Regen/Reward ratio sucks) but I have heard of even Ice Melee users soloing AVs with the right build.

Now, as to what set can potentially dish the most ST damage? With high levels of recharge (150% that can be a mix of slotting and global) my calculator ranks them:

2.14 Stone Melee
1.98 War Mace
1.97 Energy Melee
1.94 Super Strength
1.90 Battle Axe
1.87 Dark Melee
1.84 Fiery Melee
1.75 Dual Blades

Note that this is raw damage, and some sets may achieve this via bonuses like DoT or mitigate their endurance in other ways, like Energy Transfer making the endurance efficiency better and end efficiency will be important for AV soloing.

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I can tell you from experience that SS and EM don't hold a candle to DM for soloing an AV.

I would be very surprised if SS or EM could out perform BA or WM in AV soloing (the only thing I could think of making them equivelantly as clunky as SS or EM is the draw times when they occur).

The key is the attack chain ... SS and EM have poor attack chains because of selection of powers (SS only having 2 decent hitters) or animation times (2/3s of EM's attack chain combine in animation time to be more then DM's whole attack chain) or recharge (EM and SS both have attacks of 20 seconds or over in recharge in their chains).

For normal fighting these recharges don't seem like a lot given the recharge reductions and global recharge we can achieve however when fighting an AV, the attack chains have to be seamless (which EM and SS does not have, even with monstrous recharge reduction) to maintain the DPS needed to overcome the AVs regen and endurance efficient (enough so that your total recovery can come close to overcoming your endurance expenditure).

BTW looking at FM, it's attack chain seems a bit clunky and the damage (for single target purposes) while sufficient is not outstanding.

The last part to this is that every attack chain isn't seemless (even if on paper it is) no matter how well built the toon. Popping insps, using heal and recovery powers and so forth all detract from the attack chain.

One of the misleading points that I see brought up is that "soandso set only has XXX amount of powers over the DPA threshold needed to bring down an AV". While this is technically correct, powers that come in at just under that threshold still apply to the attack chain *if* the total of that attack chain is still over the regen threshold of the AV in question (and all other points still apply).

So looking at Starsman's list, EM and SS should be towards the bottom (not top), while DM should be near the top and Fm somewhere in the middle.

I was trying to keep it simple

But basically what I was saying was that your DPS (over however long you want to measure) has to be above the AV's regen rate (over however long you want to measure).

Other things to consider are resists (as you've pointed out in the Soloing Recluse thread) which can be factored into determining if your DPS is high enough.

Heals and T9s as you've pointed out are based on mob AI so a little less predictable to account for (but if they do it at least once in the fight then you must account for it).

Ah I see what you mean about all ATs getting this via their debuffs, etc ....

But the ATs aren't supposed to be balanced for team play and soloing.

That's according to the devs and documentation on and in the game. The only time they've adjusted this was when the mission slider was put in place (and that was more of a nod to the casual gamers versus the balance of ATs). They (attempted) to tackle early level damage with the Origin Powers but I think everyone will agree they were kind of a joke in that regard.

I doubt they (the devs) would change direction at this late date on one of the fundamental points of the game however (AT role).

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SS is a tad poor (FM I *think* isn't that great on single target either but I haven't looked at the numbers recently).

Animation times being the operative factor above.

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Starsman had some charts up a while back with varying recharges ... iirc Stone, Fire and SS were the top 3 for single target with good recharge. If those charts are around, easy to check.

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IIRC Starsman's chart was based over a period of time. For the purposes of killing an AV that time period can only be based across the regen rate of the AV (i.e. a single tick ... which in this case is something like 1.25s?). So basically the DPS of the attack chain has to be greater then the regen rate of the AV. Additionally on some AVs you have to account for +healing, resists, T9 powers that can include resists and/or more regen, etc ....

SS has enough fire power in it to beat the lower end AVs (lower end of the regen/resist spectrum) with about 120-150 DPS or so on average (varied for build). You need a minimum of 90(?) DPS to overcome one of these low end AVs.

The only secondaries under this formula that are lower (that I know of) are Ice Melee and EM.

Again I haven't gone number diving on this, so this is just off the top of my head.

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Stone Armor is toughest but recharge and damage penalties I think take it out of the running for an AV killer unless supremely built (Stoners correct me if I'm wrong).

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No way. One of my guilty pleasures is trying to build the toughest baddie(s) in the MA I can and see if they can solo me on my stoner (I've done the entire LRSF, but unfortunately you can't get them all on a small enough map that they will all attack you, but have gotten 3-4 of them at a time), but trying to actually kill it would be a lesson in futility... and my build is pretty high up there. Outside of granite, possibly but still unlikely... and I don't know if you'd have enough survivability to manage it.

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We're talking about solo killing an AV, not making a sandwich while one attacks you

Phalanx Fighting doesn't do this iirc (at least I don't remember the numbers jumping around the last time I looked at it).