Werner

I don't seem to have anything saved, but I've seen Katana/Fire builds that would be perfectly AV-capable with a few tweaks in that direction. If I remember the approach, you combine soft-capped (or near) defenses with very good resists and a rapid fire self heal. The extra damage doesn't hurt either. Anyway, good job, Iggy. Nice to see Fire Armor kicking some [censored].

[ QUOTE ]
Alright, so how do you calculate for the extra damage provided by Procs?

[/ QUOTE ]
You plug them into the formula in the place where it says "proc chance * proc damage". The example given there shows a regular proc with a 20% chance to fire and 71.8 damage if it does.

More complicated procs like chance for build up or -resist are, well, more complicated. But there are examples of those in my in-progress Scrapper DPS Comparison.

[ QUOTE ]
How much of Katana/BS's -Def gets resisted at those levels?

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm honestly not sure. I'm in a possibly bad habit of ignoring any debuffs that I have since AVs resist them so much. It kind of looks like a +7 would resist 92% of my defense debuffs, but I'm not sure if I'm looking at the right table.

Oh, I'm aware. I refreshed my memory on a lot of those numbers before I posted that. I was using the 8% to-hit when I said the attacks were around 50%, and I know I'll want at least 55% melee defense to deal with their +10% to hit.

But this sounds like a fun new project. Something new and interesting and difficult.

And at the same time, very old and interesting and difficult. Long long ago, I routinely hunted up to +7s (well, single lieutenants anyway) with my Katana/Regen while I was in my lower 40s. That was with old Focused Accuracy, and I definitely wasn't at 95% to hit them. I also would burn through a lot of inspirations. I remember it would take about 10 minutes if I succeeded at all. Kind of like an AV fight.

[ QUOTE ]
I managed to take down Stringus Theorius... but there was a heavy price.

[/ QUOTE ]
Good lord, man! As an AV??? I have enough trouble with him as an EB on Heroic.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I wonder how much accuracy and over the soft cap melee defense I can pick up without heavily compromising everyday survivability. Hmmm.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you really want to, you could just switch out the LotG +rech in Weave for the Karma +tohit and get 95% chance to hit v. +4s with only a .1% drop in defense and rather minor drop in recharge.

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually, we're already well over 95% for +4s if we can leave Focused Accuracy on. But I think my new target with the new I16 difficulty is 95% against +7s. I want to play a game of "just how high uplevel can I hunt?"

Which is going to be VERY difficult. Even with the switch, the attacks would barely be over 50%. I doubt my own build is any better. Looks like several percent worse, actually. Ugh. I guess I'd need both Tactics and Focused Accuracy, and also a whole lot more +accuracy. Eesh. Might not be possible. Maybe I should be looking at my Broad Sword/Invuln for this. At least Invincibility is another to-hit buff. I could probably frankenslot decent defense and to-hit out of it. Might be enough if stacked with Tactics and Kismet. Ugh.

Things just got a whole lot tougher.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How do you figure up DPS? I want to try and do math on some builds for tanks and see what I can come up with.

[/ QUOTE ]
Examples of DPS calculations in this spreadsheet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I don't understand the spreadsheet, could you explain how to get a DPS total, b/c on some of the spreadsheet there isn't even a number for DPS for some of the attacks. I was just tyring to figure out what my DPS would be using SD/SS w/Double Rage and AAO +5.

[/ QUOTE ]
From the most simplistic point of view, you want to add up the damage done by your attacks, then divide by the time it takes to get them out.

So the spreadsheet has a damage column. Under the Super Strength build, you can see the damage of the Super Strength attacks I was using. There is a calculation for each, and a the top of the spreadsheet, you can see an example of how the damage is calculated. For the Super Strength tanker, Rage takes the place of Build Up.

The spreadsheet also has a couple of time columns, Activation Time and Arcanatime. The activation time you can get from the real numbers in the game. Arcanatime is a formula that adds in the irreducible delay between attacks caused by the way the server ticks of time work. So the Arcanatime is the time that each attack will take when used in the attack chain.

For some builds, that might be enough. Super Strength is more complicated because of Rage. In the example, I know that Rage will stack for five cycles of my attack chain, then crash, and then I'll have one more chain before I get to click on Rage again. That is, of course, based entirely on recharge. You need to look at how fast Rage recharges, and therefore for how long it will overlap. Damage for single and double-stacked rage is of course different.

So then I add up the damage for the five chains with double Rage and the one chain for single Rage. I add up the Arcanatime for those chains, plus the Arcanatime for Rage itself, plus the time of the Rage crash. Divide the two, and you have DPS.

Now, the DPS here is a little overstated for a couple reasons. First, I don't actually have perma Hasten. Second, Hasten itself takes a little time to activate. I added in a little fudge factor for the second bit, but didn't do a thing for the first.

As far as Against All Odds, it appears to be 10% + 5.5% for every target, so five targets should give you a 37.5% damage buff. That isn't a DPS buff; it's just like any other enhancement. So put a +37.5% in each of the attack damage calculations where all of the other damage enhancements are.

Plugging that into the calculation I did for Invulnerability/Super Strength, I get 147 DPS. So if you could somehow have everything exactly the same, but ADD Against All Odds with five targets, that would be the DPS. That's not how it will work in practice, but it might be in the ballpark for what a Shield Defense/Super Strength tanker might be able to achieve.

Assuming perma Hasten (it's not quite there), I'm calculating a survivability score of 2284 for ValBlademaster's build. That's in comparison to 1963 for my own build. So on further analysis, yep, definitely more survivable than my build and by a significant margin. Yay progress!

So now I need to give serious consideration to just pimping Werner out again instead of one of my new scrappers. I wonder how much accuracy and over the soft cap melee defense I can pick up without heavily compromising everyday survivability. Hmmm.

[ QUOTE ]
Ultra Violet-

When she makes her descent on the compound in the end of the movie and hacks thousands of men to bloody chunks.

I love it when she enters the security checkpoint, walks onto the weapons detector and the computer scans her and says:
"Number of weapons found... MANY!"

[/ QUOTE ]
Ah, yeah. It DID have a lot of fun scrapping.

It's a shame that “Ultraviolet is the Worst Movie Ever Made”.

(Methinks they've never seen Highlander 2.)

The actual activation times are the ones published by the devs in the real numbers.

Arcanatime is essentially a lag BETWEEN powers – after your attack FINISHES activating, this is how long you have to wait before you can START activating the next attack. When talking in terms of attack chains, it is convenient to think of attacks as just taking longer than published to activate. But that's technically not what's going on.

Not that that is what you were asking, of course. But Broken Prey already answered that.

[ QUOTE ]
If the repairmen become an issue, I have no objection to nuking the towers. One nuke per tower should be enough to weaken it to out damage the repairmen's heal.

[/ QUOTE ]
Bah. I'll go grab some nukes.

[ QUOTE ]
numbers crunching is pathetic! I play for fun.

[/ QUOTE ]
LOL. I crunch numbers for fun.

[ QUOTE ]
You do realize that, just to prove to some players that he could, he solo'd AV Ghost Widow with a Claws/Invuln without temps, insps, or anything without dieing 3 times in a row. And it was verified.

[/ QUOTE ]
Huh. Well, I guess he'd have capped hit points, decent resists, and probably cranked up his passive regeneration a lot. I suppose it would work. I survived her death hold once on Werner. I assume I had Dull Pain and Instant Healing up at the time, but it was a long time ago. I wasn't able to beat her, though.

Is Castle the developer that was doing Rikti War Zone challenges on his newly minted Dual Blades/Willpower back before those sets went live?

There aren't many hard caps that you're likely to reach. Depending on the build, some may reach the hit point cap at 2410 or the resistance cap at 75%. We also talk about a “soft cap” of defense at 45%, but there's no actual cap involved. It's just that more defense than that won't help against most enemies up to +5 to you, though there are definitely a number of exceptions to that rule (pets, to hit buffs, defense debuffs). There's a recharge cap at 500% recharge I think? Or is it +500%? I've never hit it. About the best you can get on your own on a scrapper is around 400% with some very crazy expensive builds. I don't know the defensive hard cap or regeneration hard cap. I've never been close. I assume there are some other caps out there, but I don't know what they are and I don't think they've ever affected me.

Oh, wait, one so common that I didn't even think of it. Your maximum chance to hit an enemy is 95%.

I guess I'm selfish. I'm not often playing on teams anyway, so I want this.

Well, those certainly look better than my current build, and by a decent margin. Mind you, I suppose that's to be expected given how old mine is (I12). I've also learned some things since then, such as coming around to Umbral's way of thinking about the regeneration rate, which is to say that it's very low on the totem pole, and therefore my 792% regeneration is a completely ridiculous waste of resources. I really should bring my build up to date some time.

Five slotted Golden Dragonfly makes me sad, though. So does being below 95% to hit +4s. Heck, with the I16 difficulty levels, I'll probably want 95% to hit +6s or +7s? I really want to see just how high uplevel I can hunt. I'll need at least 55% melee defense, probably higher. Hmmm. Boy does I16 open up a lot of possibilities.

Why the damage/recharge in Gambler's Cut instead of damage? I did the same thing in mine, but my global recharge is much lower, and I wanted a lot of extra recharge in my chain to handle recharge debuffs. It doesn't seem like that would be the explanation here.

I should calculate a Wernerscore for both of them, but I'm tired and lazy and headed off to bed soon.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The Crow, the scene above the bar with the band playing below. “You're all going to die.” (4:10 if you want to skip right to the violence)

[/ QUOTE ]

Great scene for sure. Brandon Lee was definately more scrapper like in Rapid Fire, though(just meaning less ranged attacks).

My favorites include: Much of Kung Fu Hustle, both for entertainment value, and some nifty Martial Arts. And most Jackie Chan movies for the same reason, especially Drunken Master, and Rumble in the Bronx(pretty terrible movie, superior fighting).

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm a big Dual Pistols + Katana + Martial Arts scrapper fan. And the Dual Pistols attacks weren't much more than the seven feet of most scrapper attacks. Besides, they were borrowed pistols. He didn't come in with any weapons. They must have been temp powers.

Rapid Fire was fun too. Ditto Kung Fu Hustle, Drunken Master, while Rumble in the Bronx sucked, the fighting was fun.

Hmmm, with customizable powers, I'm going to need to finally start a Martial Arts scrapper.

[/ QUOTE ]

I feel as though you're hinting at something you'd like done with this post...

[/ QUOTE ]
Never!

(I'd be satisfied with an epic.)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
this better mean TF/SFs are startable solo.

[/ QUOTE ]

Negative ghost rider, the pattern is full.


[edit: Dangit, ninjaed.]

[/ QUOTE ]

So leave the minimums in place. That means I HAVE to set my diff level at 7 members of team before I can go start Manticore's TF by myself.

The label of "You must have 7 players on your team" still does the job of warning the newbie, and the newbie won't be running around with missions set for 7 teammates anyway.

C'mon, Castle... the min teammate mentality needs to go away. It's nothing but a nuisance.

[/ QUOTE ]
I agree entirely. What newbie is going to set their teammates up to the level of soloing task forces? Then not read the team size requirement and just jump right in? Even if they do, and accidentally start a task force they can't handle, SO? So they fail! Oh noes! Lesson learned! Maybe they'll even show up on the scrapper board asking for help. Maybe they'll end up going back and creaming the thing with a better build, more experience and some key temp powers. How is this bad?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The Crow, the scene above the bar with the band playing below. “You're all going to die.” (4:10 if you want to skip right to the violence)

[/ QUOTE ]

Great scene for sure. Brandon Lee was definately more scrapper like in Rapid Fire, though(just meaning less ranged attacks).

My favorites include: Much of Kung Fu Hustle, both for entertainment value, and some nifty Martial Arts. And most Jackie Chan movies for the same reason, especially Drunken Master, and Rumble in the Bronx(pretty terrible movie, superior fighting).

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm a big Dual Pistols + Katana + Martial Arts scrapper fan. And the Dual Pistols attacks weren't much more than the seven feet of most scrapper attacks. Besides, they were borrowed pistols. He didn't come in with any weapons. They must have been temp powers.

Rapid Fire was fun too. Ditto Kung Fu Hustle, Drunken Master, while Rumble in the Bronx sucked, the fighting was fun.

Hmmm, with customizable powers, I'm going to need to finally start a Martial Arts scrapper.

[ QUOTE ]
How do you figure up DPS? I want to try and do math on some builds for tanks and see what I can come up with.

[/ QUOTE ]
Examples of DPS calculations in this spreadsheet.

[ QUOTE ]
wait,wait,wait... Is that Werner on the tanker forum?

[/ QUOTE ]
Wait, who am I? Where am I? Who all are you people?

Yeah, I'm not sure what happened. I must have gotten drunk and blacked out.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm sure you could perform similarly, Werner, but I hear that you've shelved your Kat/Regen?

[/ QUOTE ]
I wouldn't say “shelved”, but he doesn't get a whole lot of play these days, and still has an I12 build. I pulled him out for the ITF last weekend. I've been spending most of my time leveling up a bunch of alts. I'm trying to decide if I want to IO out my Broad Sword/Shields or wait until my Katana/Dark gets to 50, or do both, or do something completely different, so in the end, I do nothing. Analysis paralysis, I suppose. Or maybe nothing's quite caught my fancy.

Actually, with the customizable difficulty level, my Broad Sword/Shields becomes more attractive to IO out. Suddenly plenty of enemies to buff Against All Odds, and 85% melee defense to deal with +6s and up. Assuming they let us have +6s on 50s. The intent was really to handle custom AE enemies with pets (75% to hit?) and to-hit buffs. The down side is that my DPS would only be about 150 when facing a single enemy.

Sorry, I'm a bit off topic.

It's hard to know what the guy meant, and what he thought YOU meant.

For instance, when you talked about total positional defense, his answer of “no they don't... otherwise u would have over a 1000” to me says that he thought YOU were telling him that the game just added up all of your defenses (45% melee + 45% range + 45% AoE + 23% smashing + ... = 1000% defense!). If that's what he thought you were saying, then of course he thought you were an idiot and didn't want to listen to you.

He knew the 1000% defense couldn't be true, so I guess he figured that instead they had to occur sequentially in some way – 55% of attacks go through his melee defense, 55% of those got through his ranged defense, etc. Or maybe something else, like every melee defense power individually, 93% getting through Weave, 97% getting through the Steadfast Protection IO, and so on. I can't tell what he was thinking. I can just tell that it was almost certainly wrong.

Anyway, no, you're not missing anything. He doesn't know what he's talking about and apparently didn't know what you were talking about. You don't want Acrobatics on a Super Reflexes.

Oh, hey. Yeah, anyway, Claws on brutes and a massive difficulty slider. Should be fun.

Yep, I've only done the two (Hro'Dtohz and Nemesis). Grats!