Strike_Hawk

Originally Posted by Broomhilda

Well I am running a GTX 570 and while I dont have it maxed out right now because of some testing im doing for the game. I have had it maxed out along with every other game I have. So far no problems.

Originally Posted by Psychic Guardian

Somewhere along my CoH Boards help travels I was given this Hierarchy of video cards at Toms Hardware, it puts the GTX 260 in the same comparison-tier as the GTX 460, which in my thread they suggested I setup 2 of with SLI and would be able to max Ultramode at your exact resolution of 1920x1080.

So according to that hierarchy chart and the members here if you are comfortable installing the simple driver to allow CoH to use SLI you should be able to get Max Ultra Mode settings at 1920x1080 like you want with this card you found.

If I missed something or a speed or quality of something is different making me wrong I'm sure someone who participated in that conversation in my thread will swoop in and correct me lol.

Originally Posted by je_saist

Now, as to whether or not Multi-GPU is worth it largely depends on the game.

Is it worth it with the 2xx series of Nvidia GPU's? Oh hell no. Unless you are buying one of the heavily discounted BFG graphics cards a GTX 260 will generally start around the $200 mark.

The problem here is that the $200 price point will be getting you RadeonHD 5830's or Geforce GTX 460's... and either one of these cards in single-rendering modes have no problems blowing SLI'd GTX 260's, or single card 285's, out of the water.

So basically, to get an identical card to a GTX 260 you already bought, unless you bought a BFG, you'd be paying as much money as it would take for less performance than a brand new card.

So no, it's not worth it under any conditions.

Originally Posted by Stelios

IIRC, CoX is not able take advantage of multiple GPU setups.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

I hate to ... no, actually I love doing this. In my opinion, if you're going to be absolutely certain, its important to also be correct.

So lets get to it. Blizzard deals 75 ticks of 0.06 scale damage lethal and 0.06 scale damage cold over its 15 second lifetime. This is 75 pulses of attacks, not a 75 tick DoT (more on that later). Total damage is scale 9 damage. Its a pseudo-pet so it deals damage on the pet damage scale. That means at level fifty it deals 55.6102 * 9 = 500.49 points of damage.

Inferno deals Scale 1.0 smashing, plus Scale 2.0 fire, plus 75% chance for Scale 1.5 fire, plus another 50% chance for another Scale 1.5 fire. If all waves hit, Scale 6 damage (basically the same as Nova). *And* it also deals nine ticks of Scale 0.3 fire damage over eight seconds with 99% chance for each tick (and its coded cancel on miss). If *everything* hits, that's a total of Scale 8.7 damage (6 + 9*0.3).

But for Blasters that's on the blaster ranged scale which is higher than the pet scale. At level 50, that would be 62.5615 * 8.7 = 544.29 damage. Oops, looks like Inferno beats Blizzard and it deals that damage almost twice as fast to boot.

Of course, that's maximum damage. Neither power will hit all of its ticks all the time. The *average* damage depends on your accuracy. Important to note that the Blizzard pseudo pet damage power has standard accuracy (1.0) while Inferno has tier9-style accuracy (1.4 - just like Nova). But lets assume both powers are stuck at the tohit ceiling of 95% vs its targets. In that case the average damage of Blizzard is fairly easy to calculate: its just 95% of the total, or 0.95 * 500.49 = 475.47.

Inferno is a bit more complex because its waves have less than 100% chance to trigger, separate from the power actually hitting the target. The average of the base damage is 1.0 + 2.0 + 0.75 * 1.5 + 0.5 * 1.5 = 4.875 scale damage, or 304.99 damage at level 50. The DoT is slightly more complex because its a cancel on miss: if any tick fails all the other ticks fail also. That means the average number of ticks is 8.56, and the average damage from DoT is 8.56 * 0.3 * 62.5615 = 160.66. Total average damage: 465.65. With the 95% tohit ceiling that gets reduced to 442.37. So actually Blizzard does more on average.

But not so fast. Blizzard is a pseudopet, and thus has a 400% damage strength cap. Inferno is a direct attack, and thus has a 500% damage strength cap (by virtue of the Blaster having one). At the damage cap, Blizzard does 1901.88 damage on average, while Inferno does 2211.85 on average. Inferno deals more.

So, actually, you're wrong. Blaster Inferno's maximum base damage is higher than Blizzard's. And Blaster Inferno at the damage cap deals more damage than Blizzard at the damage cap for either the maximal case or the average case. Only if you compare Blizzard's average unbuffed base damage to Blaster Inferno's average unbuffed base damage does Blizzard outdamage Inferno. By 33.1 points of damage at level 50. Interesting final question: at what level of damage buff does Inferno overtake Blizzard on average damage? At 430% damage buff. What's the damage buff of a blaster slotted to the ED soft cap and with BU and Aim stacked onto Inferno? 357.5%. So at the point where the team has about 72.5% ally damage buffs floating around, Blaster Inferno will be able to exceed the damage Blizzard puts out assuming the targets remain under its area of effect for the full 15 seconds. Less if we assume Defiance is running some level of buff on the Blaster at that moment.


Not so simple, is it?

Originally Posted by DMystic

With the cases given here Blizzard has to pull off all it's ticks to beat Inferno that pulls off all it's ticks and dots.

Keeping that in mind Stalker Assassination is the most consistent high damage attack you can get that's available to players.

Originally Posted by Amy_Amp

If you think that's awesome, you should try it on a corr.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

I believe Blaster Inferno will beat non-scourging versions of Blizzard. I think the numbers were discussed up-thread.