Werner

Thanks, I'll have a look!

Generally speaking, I've used it for keeping a herd of minions under control while soloing an AV. But I figure it's in the background helping out some against regular spawns as well. I notice a lot of cowering minions in regular play. Yeah, minions aren't a huge threat, but if they're 15% of the damage, that's 15% of the damage I'm not taking. Well, maybe 5-10% since I tend to leave Death Shroud on in regular play. But I turn it off for AV soloing to have a nice, passive herd.

I'll grab the I19 version today if it's out and take a second look at the endurance. Thanks for letting me know.

While I appreciate it, mine wasn't a mathematically-derived answer, simply "very likely". So in that sense Bunny's point stands, at least in the sense that I never did answer the question mathematically (though not that I am incapable of doing so).

With a mitigation calculation, and with some qualitative instead of quantitative observations about damage types and so on, this can be answered mathematically if you know how much enemy damage output the person expects to face. Since All Hell seemed unlikely to face such a small amount of damage as is required to be at the break even point, my "very likely" answer seemed sufficient. Basically, the question was simple enough that it could be answered based on experience (me), or by simple reference to the basics of damage mitigation (Shred Monkey and BunnyAnomaly).

With a survivability calculation, we CALCULATE how much enemy damage output the person should be ABLE to face. So instead of assigning an arbitrary value based on gut instinct or something lower in the intestinal tract, we calculate it. To calculate it, we need to know your defense, resistance and regeneration. And since in this case it differs by type, we even need to know this data by type. For that matter, we need a reasonable estimate of how much damage enemies put out by type. Fortunately, someone (Edit: Besserwisser) has already done the heavy lifting to gather that information, and I have that table of data. So this method involves a whole nebula of variables. It's unnecessary for a case this simple, but necessary in the general case. Fortunately, other than the mentioned table, everything you need is in Mids', so this isn't a practical problem when evaluating actual builds you're considering.

I of course don't have all those variables for All Hell's build, so Bunny is correct that I cannot definitively answer the question. But since everyone already agrees on the answer, this is just a demonstration, and we'll make some assumptions.

regeneration and healing = 30 HP/S -> 23.3 HP/S
toxic/psionic resistance = 0%
other resistance = 20%
smashing/lethal defense = 15.5% -> 33%
positional defense = 0%
fcen defense = 27% -> 33.3%
toxic/psionic defense = 0%

Given that, here's what my survivability calculations say on the subject, with the usual cautions in regard to immortality-line-based mathematics that I won't go into unless someone wants more background:

current build survivability = 111
defense build survivability = 146

So go with the defense.

Now, I can certainly choose numbers that say otherwise. To take a trivial example, let's say we didn't have inherent regeneration or greens or any default way to recover health, and All Hell was discussing changing his regeneration from 6.7 HP/S to 0 HP/S. Hopefully it is obvious that in this case, the regeneration is the way to go, else you have no damage recovery and will eventually be killed. But we don't actually have to guess and assign this variable arbitrarily as I've done. We can instead just plug in All Hell's real numbers, if we had them.

Hmmm, I intended to post the spreadsheet with the calculations, but I'm having trouble uploading it. Apologies for posting numbers without the calculations. Hopefully I'll get it uploaded later. My spreadsheet actually uses Bunny's definition of mitigation rather than the one in common use on the forums, because like him or her, it made sense to me to calculate from enemy damage output instead of in comparison to a character at 0% defense and 0% resistance. If you want what I'd call forum standard numbers, just divide my given survivability by 2. Since the relationship is that trivial, I never felt the need to change my spreadsheet to match forum consensus on the definition of mitigation.

I should also mention that the spreadsheet isn't overly useful for low levels of survivability running easy content. In cases like that, time exposed to danger is very short, and you're in a kill them before they kill me scenario. The survivability number here is INDEFINITE survivability. What you can just stand there and take for minutes on end. That's what tends to matter for the high end survivability folks, because we're getting ourselves into fights that last a long time. But it isn't what's important for low survivability, low difficulty play. Based on the assumptions I've made above, All Hell's build options are probably on the lower end of what I'd want to give the immortality line treatment. Something like 60 second survivability might be more appropriate, but I've never bothered with such things, because every Scrapper I care about is well into the immortality line realm. And now we're also into a discussion of the weaknesses of the immortality line approach to survival, which I wasn't going to go into, so we'll let that go for now.

Edit: I can upload again, so here is the spreadsheet.

I promise I'll take a look, though probably not tonight. Considering both Katana chains I want to run, I need at least:

Golden Dragonfly: 5.94 seconds, 103% recharge
Gambler's Cut: 1.58 seconds, 90% recharge
Soaring Dragon: 6.34 seconds, 43% recharge
Divine Avalanche: 3.43 seconds, 0% recharge

And we're fairly certain we're calculating recharge slightly wrong at this point, even if we don't have a correct methodology (Arcanaville is working on it). So a margin of safety would be nice, but probably a tenth or a couple tenths is plenty.

Hmmm, well, I'm not just in the endurance alpha for the endurance - I'm also in it for the resistance. I wanted high resistance numbers, and the alpha slot looks to be getting me about 5% smashing, lethal, negative, psionic, fire and cold. Since I'm hovering around 50% already damage type frequency averaged, I figure that's about a 10% survivability boost.

But spiritual, of course, brings my heal back faster and makes it stronger, at least when fighting a single target or heavily to-hit debuffed. On paper at least, it probably equals out. I prefer not taking damage in the first place, but I can live with healing it back. Also, I'm a huge fan of passive regen, and hated sacrificing it in the build I posted.

Well, first, let's see if the reduced endurance consumption really does let us go with spiritual. Hmmm, there seems to be a problem with the I18 version adding up the toggles. I can match all the ED calculations and resulting values, but when I sum them up, it's somewhat higher than Mids' shows. I also can't tell how you've slotted Health and Stamina. So I'm not certain what the recovery is like. But making some guesses, I'm showing myself burning out in barely over a minute, and that's with some optional toggles off. So I don't think I'll be able to use spiritual unless something is very different looking at it in the I19 version.

Going with the cardiac uncommon, the situation is slightly better than before. Now he can go about 8 minutes before burning out, and the down time is shorter. So it's more practical, almost good enough just with the uncommon. The very rare has him very sustainable. He can't quite run everything, but he's in very good shape as long as he can play toggle games, and is less likely to have to slow down if he gets unlucky with procs.

Unfortunately, needing the cardiac boost kind of goes against what you were after with the build. Now things are slower instead of faster since we weren't actually able to pick up the spiritual boost, so we're just not getting the benefits you were hoping for. Thanks for trying, though!

Scanning for other ideas, I suppose I really could consider short changing Divine Avalanche for slots. The set bonuses I'm getting aren't critical. The set was more of an afterthought to fill in slots after I plugged in some defense, and I just didn't consider actually removing slots and going full frankenslot. Use two level 53 Nucleolus (I think I have some lying around) and a Mako's quad. Divine Avalanche's accuracy goes up, even if other attack accuracies go down. Divine Avalanche is THE most critical attack, so that's probably a decent trade. Accuracy is still 95% or higher on the main attacks against +4s. I lose 15 hit points, but I can stick another Ribosome in Tough to get about 2.5% more smashing/lethal defense, bringing me to my smashing/lethal resistance goal. Endurance improves slightly. I like it!

Hmmm, you went Gladiator's Armor in Obsidian Shield and Steadfast Protection in Tough. So what if I do that to free a slot. Down to 59% smashing/lethal resistance. Psionic resistance drops to 51%, still over my goal. Endurance use goes up to what it was again, but still comfortably sustainable with the very rare. But poof, free slot. I'm very tempted to stick a L53 Endoplasm in Cloak of Fear for accuracy and mez. It would make it much more reliable when fighting +4x8. 79% accuracy against them. Lasts 13.11 seconds, but they resist it, uh, purple patch says 48%, so lasts 6.3 seconds. That's really not bad for +4s. But is it enough better than just one Endoplasm? One would be 67.5% accuracy and 4.9 seconds. Might be something better to do with the slot. I could add another Luck of the Gambler somewhere for 10% regeneration and the last tiny bit of AoE defense. I could put it back in Tough and get 61% smashing/lethal resistance. Hmmm, 2% smashing/lethal resistance or a better fear? 61% smashing/lethal resistance is just too tempting. There might be a better option, though, so I'll keep looking.

OK, here's the build with the new tweaks. Thanks for the ideas, Moonlighter, even if they weren't the core of what you were shooting for.

All I know is we don't have it yet. But yes, my assumption is it will probably be I20. I'd doubt later. It wouldn't surprise me if it's sooner.

I haven't calculated, but my thinking is that I'll get most of the way on the uncommon alpha slot. If I have to pop blues now and again through I19, I'm OK with that. But maybe I'm being silly, and should get endurance sustainability now instead of later. But then later, I have too much! It's non-optimal! My brain won't let me!

Edit: I plugged in the numbers for the uncommon cardiac radial boost, and as expected, endurance is not sustainable even with the normal amount toggled off. Based on the average contribution from the procs, he can last about two and a half minutes, then has to use Conserve Power. That takes him to full in a minute and a half, then he gets two and a half more minutes. He's then a minute away from being able to use Conserve Power again. So he has about six and a half minutes of fight with the uncommon as I'd normally play him. He'd probably still be able to take out AVs by just sitting there for a minute attacking slowly, but it's iffy and not a lot of fun.

With the very rare, there's likely no problem. Conserve Power comes back about a minute earlier than he needs it instead of a minute late. I do want overlap, of course, but a minute sounds like a good safety margin.

Well, it's sort of coming up in I18. It doesn't show the slotting for either health or stamina, but I guess I can see them in the post. It looks very good in general, with higher resists than I'd gotten, for instance. The ranged defense though, yeah, I don't really want to give that up. Maybe missing by a little, but not by over five percent.

But you know, I never really thought to slot up Cloak of Fear to get the ranged defense and recharge that way. To me, it was a power I was trying to short change, but maybe that was a bad idea, particularly since I've decided I'd like it to work a little better than it does in my current build. I've had a different idea for being even more survivable at the cost of some DPS floating in my head, and what the idea really needed was a way to get some more ranged defense, which I just couldn't figure out. So at the very least, you've given me serious food for thought. (Edit: Doh! That's a to-hit debuff set, not a fear set. My poor fear!)

Oh, something I haven't tested, and maybe someone knows for sure. If I stick the Shield Wall in vengeance, is it treated as a set bonus, or as a proc? Paragonwiki has it as a proc, which would require the power to be active, I believe. But Mids' treats it as a st bonus. I was planning to test before I commit to a new build, but if someone knows for sure...

But what happens if we change the incoming damage?

Compare 10 regen/second to 5% defence, assuming 500 dps incoming before defence factored.

0% defence to 5% defence.

You take 225 hp/s of damage (base 500 * 45%).

0%, but with an additional 10 hp/second of regen.

You take 240 hp/s of damage (base 500 * 50% - 10)

Answer: Take the defense (15 hp/s better)

Next up:

40% defence to 45% defence.

You take 25 hp/s of damage (base 500 * 5%)

40% still, but with 10hp/s regen.

You take 40 damage (Base 500 * 10% - 10)

Answer: Take the defence (15 hp/s better)

You are 15 hp/s ahead regardless of your initial defence.

So when making this comparison, the incoming damage has a dramatic effect on whether you should take the defense or the regeneration. If I can just randomly pick a value to get either answer, surely this is no better than a magic 8 ball at answering the question. What we NEED to make this method more reliable is a WAY of choosing an amount of incoming damage that this player would actually see IN THE GAME.

Hey, wait, I just though of a way we could do that! We could assume that the player likes a challenge, but doesn't like to face plant constantly. So we could assume that the player will be facing an amount of incoming damage that would provide that challenge without killing them. It's a little over simplistic, but we could use an immortality line calculation to figure out how much DPS the player can survive, and plug THAT in as the enemy damage output instead of picking at random!

Hmmm, that's strange. When we do THAT, it gives us a different amount of damage to plug in depending on what the player current has for mitigation and regeneration. But then that means that the answer to this question would depend not on some randomly-chosen value for damage, but instead on the current level of mitigation and regeneration. But that's different at different levels of defense!

Ah, well. It must be wrong then, because we already know that additional survivability can have nothing whatsoever to do with our current level of defense. Pity, it seemed like such a promising way to avoid a random variable in the survivability calculation. Guess we'll keep picking numbers at random, keep shaking that magic 8 ball.

Must I provide more proof? Just because you can plug in a random number that supports your answer to a question doesn't make it any less stupid to do so.

No, the first method provides AN answer. So does a magic 8 ball. Providing an answer, even a CORRECT answer, doesn't mean that the method used was correct. Also, it only provided an answer because we plugged in a random value, an assumed amount of enemy damage output. This assumed amount was fixed regardless of the current level of damage mitigation and regeneration, which has nothing to do with the way people actually play, which is looking for a challenge but not suicide. Therefore, in actual play, someone with no mitigation is going to be facing much less incoming damage than someone with 95% mitigation.

This is a discussion of survivability. Methods two and three represent survivability in terms of what enemies you can survive. Survivability. What you can survive. What you can survive is your survivability.

I think that most people, when asking questions of survivability, care about what the build can survive. I honestly think that when someone asks a question like, "which is better to add, this mitigation or this regeneration", what they care about is what each would allow them to DO. What each would allow them to SURVIVE. THAT answer depends on what existing mitigation and regeneration you have.

What I think most people DON'T care about when asking a question about survivability is how well they mitigate and regenerate one boss, or any one specific fixed level of enemy damage. In table #1, they already have sufficient survivability at 0% defense. In our overly-simplistic terms that ignore discrete effects, their green bar never moves. It doesn't matter if they have 0% defense or 45% defense, because either way, the boss can't kill them. So table #1 tells us nothing useful as is, because it doesn't tell us how much we can SURVIVE. To know what we can survive, we need to take the extra step of calculating the maximum possible incoming damage based on our mitigation and regeneration. That takes us to tables #2 and #3.

Do you not agree that tables #2 and #3 are reasonable representations of what these levels of mitigation and regeneration allow us to SURVIVE?

Do you not see how most people might care more about what they can ACTUALLY SURVIVE than about what table #1 tells them?

Do you really not care about what your mitigation and resistance allows you to actually survive? Is that really not a concern to you when talking about survivability?

30% defense and 20 HP/S regen will let you survive 1 boss as previously defined.
35% defense and 20 HP/S regen will let you survive 1.33 bosses.
30% defense and 25 HP/S regen will let you survive 1.25 bosses.

It is better to be able to survive 1.33 bosses than 1.25 bosses.

You should take the 5% defense.

Well, I suppose I'll have to read and understand the whole wikipedia entry, but I'm short on time. So for now, at the risk of sounding ill informed and regretting this later, I'll just refer back to what I said earlier.

It appears that to you, adding a boss to what you can currently fight, whether that's one boss to two bosses or one AV to an AV plus a boss, the same increase in survivability. Nothing technically wrong with that point of view. It's certainly correct in some sense.

To me, doubling what I can currently fight, whether that's one boss to two bosses or one AV to two AVs, is the same increase in survivability. Regardless of how strong I am now, if I can fight twice as much, I'll feel twice as super. But if I can currently solo two AVs, two bosses, a few lieutenants and a crowd of minions, and I make some build changes that allow me to add one more boss to that mix, I'll barely feel better at all. Chances are I won't even notice. But if my character can currently only solo a lieutenant and three minions, and I make some build changes that let me solo a boss, a lieutenant and three minions, I'll notice. In fact, I'll feel MUCH more survivable, much more super. Taken to perhaps an impossible extreme, if I can't even solo a minion due to survivability issues, changes that allow me to solo a boss will represent a massive improvement. If I'm already soloing 15 bosses at once, changes that allow me to add another to the mix will pass mostly unnoticed.

Or using a financial example (again at risk since I haven't read the entry), if I have no money, adding a million dollars will make a very noticeable difference. If I already have a billion dollars, adding a million dollars will pass mostly unnoticed.

Again, at risk of being very ill informed about IRR, this sounds like a poor analogy to survivability. Here's the in game analogue as best I can see - I provide you with two character choices. One has recently been given an extra 100% survivability. The other has recently been given an extra 50% survivability. Sadly, you cannot actually decide based on those %s. They are meaningless without knowing scale (what survivability we started at in each case).

True, but irrelevant. Regardless of what our current survivability is, we are investing it ALL. Our calculations are based on all the survivability that we have. This isn't a case where you say "it's double!" and then inform me that it's only double for 0.1% of my current survivability. If I have a million dollars, every investment we're looking at takes a million dollars. If I have ten thousand dollars, every investment we're looking at takes ten thousand dollars. If in the first case, my investment earns me a hundred thousand dollars, that's a nice return. If in the second case my investment earns me a fifty thousand dollars, that's a much better return, and will probably affect my life to a greater extent. The scale in this case is most reasonably based on how much money we already had, because we're all in.

Gah. Time.

(Edit: Oops, my examples are arguing against completely the wrong camp. The one boss = one boss camp is actually the complete polar opposite of the 5% defense = 5% defense camp. I'm in the middle, at the double the survivability equals double the survivability camp. I'll try to clarify later.)

(Edit2: Bah. So late to work. Ah, well. Let's say a boss puts out 100 DPS, you have no resistance, and you can heal 50 HP/S. Here are how the three camps consider added defense. I'm in the middle camp.

)

No, I think it's how you pretty much called us a bunch of egotistical liarmouths. You've now said:

"I'm skeptical that a scrapper will be able to solo an AV without temps, inspirations, or -regeneration debuffs"
"Sounds like ego stroking with no base to me"
"I couldn't see how you could solo an AV without temps/inspirations"

So, as I read this, you don't believe us when we tell you we do it. You're saying we're lying. And you're saying we're lying to stroke our big egos.

Can you SEE how that could get a reaction?

Look, you are simply, factually WRONG about Scrappers not being able to solo AVs no temps no insps. We do it ALL THE TIME. We do it SO all the time that IT'S NO BIG DEAL, which is how you'll get a casual conversation about it, with nobody treating it like it's anything special. IT'S NOT SPECIAL. It's common. We're not stroking our egos and we're not lying. This is normal, run of the mill stuff, like chatting about what we had for breakfast.

If you really don't believe it still, and you want to see some no temps no insps Scrapper AV soloing, I have some videos in my signature. Maybe it was special back when Werner and Sergei were doing it in I12 I13. It certainly isn't special by now. So I'm not trying to impress you with how uber I am in my home movies. I'm just trying to clue you in to what we're saying. I'm just shocked that you haven't gotten clued in to something that's been going on since at least I12, and shocked that you're SO out of the loop that you'd accuse us of lying for casually mentioning it in a thread.


Ah, you added this with an edit after I wrote the above. OK, here's how it works. The vast majority of combinations are capable of doing it, and the specifics vary. Generally speaking, there are some basics, though:

soft cap either positional or typed defense (45%)
grab some resistance
try to get your hit points to at least, say, 1750
have a heal in your primary or secondary or add aid Aid Self
run a decent attack chain
have sustainable endurance

These aren't necessarily trivial to pull off in a build, but they aren't difficult either. As far as the easiest (read cheapest) combination to do it with, probably Fire/Super Reflexes with Aid Self and Tough. Fire can run a good attack chain at low recharge requirements, is fairly endurance efficient on the attacks, and Super Reflexes makes the soft cap easy. Add Tough and Aid Self and you're good to go, at least for a lot of AVs. Many will kill you, sure, but you can win against a lot of them a lot of the time.

My most survivable AV soloer is my Katana/Dark. In I17, I had soft-capped positional defense (that was the hardest part), the very good resistances from Dark, and Dark Regeneration healing me to full every 15 seconds or so. It was very expensive, and I18 broke him. I19 is fixing him for the most part, but I don't think my endurance will be sustainable again until we get the vary rares for the alpha slot. It might work, though. Still to be seen, and I haven't finalized the build. I can post what I have so far it if you really want to see how it works in more detail, though.

They nerfed the ultra ambushing OMG dead mission? Nooooooooooooo!

Seriously, even dying in that mission was cool. Haven't run it on any of my survivability specialists. My leveling toons die on it regularly. My damage specialist survived by running like mad, and then being careful how many he pulled as he went back in.

Wait, what? You mean either of THESE AVs, or ANY AV? Because AV soloing is done no temps, no insps ALL THE TIME. Though yes, probably most of the time stuffed to the brim with pricey IOs. Never heard of it done with SOs, though on an all SOs build with Werner, I think I did get an AV down to half before dying on my best run of about ten. So it's possible with enough attempts. (Edit: Hmmm, bet I can take an AV on Werner no temps no insps with the Alpha slot and just SOs. Currently focused on Alexei, though. Plus it's kind of meaningless since "nobody" plays with just SOs any more.)

I don't know about my damage output, but I'd be surprised if I couldn't tank either of these AVs indefinitely, and perhaps both at once for some time. I WAS tanking them both at the same time for much of the fight. I think I took a small green or two, maybe a purple at one point, and definitely some blues. We'd unwisely killed off all my Dark Regeneration fodder, so my heal was kind of piddly compared to normal, which is why I needed anything but blues. I believe I remember some defense debuffs, but I can stack my defense a lot higher than 45%. My main problem was that I haven't fixed my build after the IO nerfs, so I'm no longer soft capped to ranged or AoE, and no longer endurance sustainable. So even if I could put out the DPS, at the moment I can't do it for long enough to finish an AV.

Call it ego stroking if you want, but then, I hardly think I'm the only one that could likely pull it off. I think the simultaneous AV record is up to 8 or 9 (Edit: Dev-created AVs. Simultaneous player-created AVs was aggro cap.). Also, my mains have lower DPS than most AV soloers. I bet a lot of people could do it.

While I'd argue that the percentage difference in DPS taken IS more meaningful than the percentage of enemy damage output that was mitigated, there's nothing wrong with BunnyAnomaly's math. BunnyAnomaly understands the facts of the situation just fine. I believe it's only on what the facts MEAN to actual game play that this can rise to anything more than a semantic disagreement.

If you calculate survivability in immortality line terms, as damage recovery / (1 - damage mitigation), I think it's a matter of whether you think your PERCEPTION of increased survivability will more closely match the absolute increase in this survivability number, or the percentage increase in this survivability number, or fall somewhere in between. I personally think my perception will more closely follow percentage increases. I believe that regardless of what survivability I have now, if I double it (based on the formula above), I'll feel like I've gotten the same amount more survivable.

As an example, if I can survive one boss now, and I make some changes and can then survive two bosses, I think this will FEEL about the same as if I can survive one AV now, and I make some changes and can then survive two AVs. The second case has a much greater increase in absolute terms (damage output of an AV vs. damage output of a boss), but the same in percentage terms.

But as a counter example, if player X can survive one boss now, and they make some changes and can then survive two bosses, maybe this will FEEL about the same to them as if they can survive one AV now, and they make some changes and can then survive one AV plus one boss.

Neither way of looking at it is wrong, because it's only about how people PERCEIVE survivability increases. I care about percentage increases in survivability. Player X cares about absolute increases in survivability. For me, double the survivability is double the survivability. For player X, adding a boss is adding a boss. Both are right.

Well, I agree with the facts you presented and reach the same conclusion, so that's good enough for me.

It's semantics, but I would say "enemy damage output" instead of "incoming damage", since people may interpret incoming damage as "damage you otherwise would have taken", which isn't what you're saying. For instance:

Syntax42 appears to be referring to "incoming damage" as "the damage you'd have taken with 0% defense and 0% resistance." This is consistent with an ancient forum consensus definition of mitigation as the percentage of damage you actually take of what you would have taken had you had 0% defense and 0% resistance. So in this case, 16% defense provides 32% mitigation of the damage you'd have taken with 0% defense and 0% resistance. And yes, it provides 16% mitigation of enemy damage output. The facts are the same either way, so it's just semantics. Mostly we just need to realize which version people are using, and realize that everyone is saying the same thing based on their different definitions.

Well, let's say you're at 50% resistance, with 100 DPS being put out by the enemy:

With no defense you are taking 25 DPS.
With 16% defense you are taking 17 DPS.

You've mitigated 8 DPS instead of 16 DPS, so only 8% of the enemy damage output. So if you have 50% resistance, if 8% of enemy damage output > the regen amount, you should take the defense.

It's not going to make any difference in practice, though, which may be why you ignored it, kind of like I'm ignoring, say, knockback. Just thought it might be relevant to others that the question does depend on more variables than just enemy damage output, defense amount and regen amount.

It's very tasty. Promise.