Mission Diffuculty & Reputation for Solo Play
By
Amberyl,
Posted on: 2005-01-22 19:16 in Player Guides
HAS ANY of this stuff been changed since Issue 3?
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HAS ANY of this stuff been changed since Issue 3?
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The mission difficulty slider came out IN issue #3. I'm pretty sure nothing major has been changed since it's release.
However, when they finally roll back the boss changes they've been saying they're going to roll back for a the last month or so, that might change some of the numbers.
-Garrik
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...However, when they finally roll back the boss changes they've been saying they're going to roll back for a the last month or so, that might change some of the numbers.
-Garrik
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The boss changes were rolled back almost a week ago (February 1st). Check out the Recent Updates link on the home page.
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...However, when they finally roll back the boss changes they've been saying they're going to roll back for a the last month or so, that might change some of the numbers.
-Garrik
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The boss changes were rolled back almost a week ago (February 1st). Check out the Recent Updates link on the home page.
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*cough*cough* As I was saying, now that they've rolled back the boss changes, these numbers will probably change....
Thanks for the heads up. I was ill during that update and didn't scan the updates page with as much zeal as usual.
-Garrik
The XP per minute will vary heavily depending on your build, in my opinion. Significant factors include:
- To what extent are your attacks overkill?
- Are you single-target or AoE?
- How much downtime do you incur because of the need to heal or recover endurance?
Overkill is a particularly critical factor when you judge how much of a time difference it takes to kill a +1 vs. a +2 vs. a +3 -- and this will differ based on villain group resistances to damage. If it takes you two shots to kill a +1, for instance, it may still only take you two shots to kill a +2 -- for instance, it could be that with the +1, your first hit is taking most of their HP and the second attack is just a finisher, whereas to kill the +2 requires almost the full damage of both attacks.
Single-target vs. AoE is not just a matter of what types of attacks you have; it's also a matter of what your supporting powers are. For example, are your defenses stronger against smaller mobs or bigger mobs? Such things will impact how much damage you take and how much endurance you use in the fight. This, in turn, will affect your downtime between fights.
For instance, I find that with my regen scrapper, I finish solo missions on Unyielding just as fast as I finish them on Tenacious. While I get hurt more on Unyielding, I've nonetheless regenerated it all by the next mob, so there's no difference in downtime. Moreover, because of my overkill factor, I can rip through +2s just as quick as I go through +1s. This thus translates into significant more XP per minute for me.
So these numbers are nice, and it's cool to see them, but everyone should try out the various difficulty levels for themselves and see which suits them the best. HeroStats is probably the most effective way to watch XP per minute stats.
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...However, when they finally roll back the boss changes they've been saying they're going to roll back for a the last month or so, that might change some of the numbers.
-Garrik
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The boss changes were rolled back almost a week ago (February 1st). Check out the Recent Updates link on the home page.
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My mission did not have any bosses at any difficulty.
In terms of these particular numbers they will not be affected one iota by boss changes.
In reality, if you throw in a boss you can change "Invincible" to "Impossible" for my build, and "Heroic" to "Hope I Have Enough Inspirations". But that's just me. My main loves 'em all at Invincible--AV's, Monsters, Elite Bosses, Bosses, Lieutenants, Minions, Underlings.
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Overkill is a particularly critical factor when you judge how much of a time difference it takes to kill a +1 vs. a +2 vs. a +3 -- and this will differ based on villain group resistances to damage.
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Overkill is over-rated.
I did the exact same mission against the exact same types of mobs with the exact same types of resistances 13 times, to include twice at each difficulty. I kill maybe 50-60 mobs per mission. The time factor for each mission will take into account how much damage I'm doing compared to their HP. You know how? Because the ones that I do enough damage to will die, and I will move on to the next one. The ones I don't will take longer, and the mission will take longer. Overall this produces a number of minutes per mission based on damage output vs mob HP. Yes, against one mob, that is not enough data, but against 60, it will affect the overall time.
Easiest way to look at this is to look at the times...each difficulty increase took longer than the one before it, without exception. That is due 100% to the phenomenon you are speaking of. In other words, every extra second of mission-complete time was due to a decrease in the ratio of my damage to their HP.
Otherwise, what calculations would you suggest that I use to come up with a "true" table of time taken that accounts for mob HP and overkill?
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So these numbers are nice, and it's cool to see them, but everyone should try out the various difficulty levels for themselves and see which suits them the best. HeroStats is probably the most effective way to watch XP per minute stats.
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People are lazy. They would rather read about me doing the same mission over and over than do it themselves.
Please change the O.P. to read:
INDIVIDUAL RESULTS MAY VARY.
When you talk of XP per minute, I consider a whole 4 hours of play. If you do the missions faster on Tenacious, thats more time you spend traveling between contacts and missions. My guess would be that XP per minute would decline because of the time you spend running to and from missions and contacts. I do not have the time to test this thory, but maybe someone can deduce some conclusions based on this thought.
I personally think that if you do the missions on a tougher level, you could spend more time fighting and gaining better xp per minute. However, if you throw in the multiple mission bonuses that you could recieve in the time it takes you to do one at a harder level, would you net better xp? Please state what you think would happen.
There are a couple of things to consider in XP per minute. One of them is the amount of time it takes to kill an enemy. Another is the time spent between enemies, both within a mission and getting between missions.
I find, for instance, that my scrapper can generally kill a yellow in two attacks, but the first attack generally takes them down to a tiny sliver of life. A critical will one-shot the yellow. I can also kill an orange in two attacks; a critical will still one-shot the orange. There's no difference in downtime with most villains. So generally, my highest XP per minute is going to be running from mob to mob, all within short distances of each other, and whacking moderately-sized groups of oranges, with mission complete bonuses coming at a nice, steady pace.
My blaster, on the other hand, lives on AoE'ing blues and whites, in as dense a spawn as possible, depending on alpha strikes for quick kills (and thus downtime reduction).
Some missions have denser spawns than others. The office building layouts, for instance, usually are good for lots of spawns in quick succession. Tunnels, on the other hand, tend to suck, especially since you are going through twisty passages a bunch, slowing down how fast you can really run from place to place, and you generally find spawns only in caverns.
Downtime between missions depends on lots of things, depending on whether you stop to sell (and how picky you are about where to sell), whether you can call contacts or have to run to them, where the contacts and missions are located, and the like. Your travel power also matters here, as does how quickly you zone.
I watch my XP/minute counter on HeroStats pretty closely. It's a great guide to whether or not I'm making efficient use of my time.
Each individual's mileage will vary, and it will even vary from level to level, depending on your power choices and how you have them slotted, as well as what villain groups you're fighting (villain resistances to various damage types).
Yeah I guess it really depends on a lot of things. I get pretty good xp right now because I went form 29 to halfway through 30 in what I guesstimate to be 6-8 hours of play all from soloing missions. I think that is awesome personally. I am an inv/ss tank and I have my missions set on rugged eventhough it is the worst setting as stated above.
I am going to try setting it to tenacious and see if I improve, stay about the same, or get worse. I think I will slow down, but everyone else thinks things will get better. We shall see...
Note that if you were to use a character who had Phase Shift for this sort of testing, you could probably do it faster--at least some portions of it. Don't bother fighting the mobs, just wander through the mission and take census, then leave and reset.
Ah yes, of course.
Invis would work, too, for 90% of mobs. And even with the ones that can spot you, you could probably peek around a corner and make notes, then run past, take a couple hits, and duck around the next corner.
That won't work with Rikti if you get mezzed or with Nemesis, because they can shoot like 1.237 miles away. Being 6 levels higher is always the best defense.
You want a nice open map, too. I would never try this in a cavern.
Unfortunately, I still think XP/Minute is the best indicator. Saying, "well, there were 25 mobs at 27th level and 25 mobs at 28th level" doesn't really tell me how able I would be to take them on. Would I die, would I finish the mission really fast? Really slowly? Etc.
Another problem with the sneaky idea is, unless your map is very straightforward, you may not always be sure if you counted guys or not. Easiest way to make sure of that is to kill them.
If you check out Mantid's (see above) thread, he simply did the mission and then /copychat.
That is an almost infallible system.
He did his on test, so he actually completed the mission, too, and could get mission XP awards at each difficulty. As I did mine on live, I couldn't do that.
Any updates on this awesome guide?
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Any updates on this awesome guide?
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The way spawns spawn in relation to the difficulty slider has changed. So, the info from this guide is completely out of date. Someone would have to repeat the steps taken and take down the new data points.
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Excellent post I can confirm that the final mission reward does not scale up which is disappointing. Watch being Invincible when your nearing the end of a story arc Invincible AV are more than a little challenging.
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Yes and no. It does not scale up for the mission holder, but it does scale up for others. I believe this is a known bug. A level 32 char gets about 4k XP for completing a mission. They get 4k Debt Removal if exemplared down to level 1 to do a Heroic mission. But they get about 7k if exemplared down to do a level 1 mission on maximum difficulty. The XP reward jumps at difficulty 3 and 5, which corresponds to full level jumps in the mobs. I tested this exemplaring and with chars near my own doing my missions. When doing my missions, I always got the same XP, but my teammates got more XP at Difficulty3 (Rugged) and again at 5 (Invincible).
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.
I've moved on to Diablo 3, TopDoc-1304