I'm not really interested in a theorical analysis of attack chains like it's currently done over there, attack chain calculations should involve (in my opinion, *need* to involve in order to be useful) everything. At the very least, procs, DPE and the maximum chance to hit (which is 95%), but it's best to consider damage buffs from the primary, time spent using clicks and the whole build as well.
I firmly believe DM is head and shoulders above other secondaries. It's even easier to saturate SD on tankers, because they do less damage with SD (killing mobs slower) and have much higher mitigation (able to handle lieutenants, which won't die from SD).
Out of the two worthy contenders on scrappers imho (Katana and FM), Katana isn't available and FM lacks Cremate.
SM might slightly beat DM in pure DPS (esp. for the highest DPS combos, Shield/SM and Shield/DM ; SM doesn't buff up as much as DM, so it benefits more from AaO), I don't know ; but, being pure S/L it's going to have a much lower effective DPS against many AVs.
As for the other secondaries, I just don't see any of them near DM in ST damage output.
I asked for someone from the scrapper forums to post on that thread to see if s/he could add any light to the discussion. It stemmed from knowing where to begin my theorycraft on whether or not I can create a DA/DM build to solo kill AV's. Oddly enough, it stemmed from that same or similar thread.
You asked for someone from the scrapper forums to post... third post you got someone from the scrappers forum.
[edit: oops it was third not second]
50's: Heroes: Ozmeth DB/WP; Black Decker DM/Regen; Shado-Strike DM/SR Scrapper (13 AV soloed); Desert-Shock Claws/Elec Scrapper; Shado-Shriek Dark/Son Def
Villains: Bokken Nin/Nin
Current project(s):
I'm very well aware and I'd like to thank Werner for replying in that thread. My second post here was meant to explain in slightly greater detail why I posted here in the first place and to respond to what nihilii stated as he has tanks which have soloed AV's and didn't want to discount him or any other tanker of their theorycrafting. But thanks for keeping me apprised of how many posts it took before Werner replied. It's not like you noticed that he posted there nearly a half hour before I reposted in this one or anything.
Problem is, I wasn't able to stop myself from going look, you don't know what you're doing. Which means I'll probably be ignored, and will have to leave the thread rather than get stuck in a flame war that I contributed to. I suck. 
And Nihilii is a big time scrapper, so I'm sure that's what Ozmeth was saying.
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
.... I was about to say "Ask Werner." but then I found out he posted already =x
[ QUOTE ]
Problem is, I wasn't able to stop myself from going look, you don't know what you're doing. Which means I'll probably be ignored, and will have to leave the thread rather than get stuck in a flame war that I contributed to. I suck.
[/ QUOTE ]
The problem is that Kruunch really has no clue what he's talking about, and Stars is completely unwilling to actually admit that most people that care about the numbers use attack strings rather than priority lists. Kruunch really needs to just learn what the hell Arcanatime is. His constant blathering of "add 1.25 seconds" was making me facepalm while reading it (plus his arguments that we're being idiots because we're calculating the numbers using variable inclusive formulas and that anyone that does math professionally is perfectly willing to fudge it pretty damn significantly).
[ QUOTE ]
It stemmed from knowing where to begin my theorycraft on whether or not I can create a DA/DM build to solo kill AV's
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sure you can. Tanker DM by itself can reach ~130-140 DPS without help from the primary, with a saturated Soul Drain and the Smite - SL - Smite - MG chain, and survivability shouldn't be a concern as gathering mobs for SD will also mean more fodder for Dark Regen.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Problem is, I wasn't able to stop myself from going look, you don't know what you're doing. Which means I'll probably be ignored, and will have to leave the thread rather than get stuck in a flame war that I contributed to. I suck.
[/ QUOTE ]
The problem is that Kruunch really has no clue what he's talking about, and Stars is completely unwilling to actually admit that most people that care about the numbers use attack strings rather than priority lists. Kruunch really needs to just learn what the hell Arcanatime is. His constant blathering of "add 1.25 seconds" was making me facepalm while reading it (plus his arguments that we're being idiots because we're calculating the numbers using variable inclusive formulas and that anyone that does math professionally is perfectly willing to fudge it pretty damn significantly).
[/ QUOTE ]
While I don't want to defame anyone and I appreciate the effort that the folks over on the tanker forum have made to inform the community, there's a reason why people come to the scrapper forum to ask for clarification on issues: the folks here are focused on emperical results.
We don't just postulate that it's possible to solo AVs; we solo them. We don't merely compare attack sets in theoretical analysis; we build scrappers, solo pylons, and measure DPS according to the results.
It's tangible, empirical, and in no way intellecutally dishonest.
While I appreciate the work that Starsman has done, his analysis "showed" that Energy Melee's single-target damage output was only slightly reduced by the changes to ET and EP. Once the changes had been implemented on live, those of us who had truly high-damage EM tankers with lots of recharge, multiple procs in EP, etc., could see that this was nonsense.
(Yet confoundingly, people insist to this day that we're lying; that the nerfs only reduced DPS by a small margin, and so on--citing Starsman's charts as "proof" of their point.)
In his AoE powerset comparisons, he placed SS squarely in the middle of the pack, absolutely refusing to account for stackable Rage and the enormous area of Foot Stomp. Yet farmers interested in actual AoE output continue to favor SS over many of Stars' "better" sets--not because they're blithely ignorant yokels, but because they get their hands dirty observing the sets under actual in-game conditions, and draw conclusions from those observations, not solely from statistical analysis.
Especially not when the analysis ignores obviously crucial data, like optimized, static attack chains for ST DPS, or the area of AoE attacks.
It's sad but true: even the "experts" don't always know what they're talking about.
[ QUOTE ]
It's sad but true: even the "experts" don't always know what they're talking about.
[/ QUOTE ]
Especially when the "experts" are purposefully ignorant of certain variables. That why I like us over here in the Scrapper forums. We're one of the few groups of number crunchers I've seen that, if pushed, will put our noses to the grindstone and incorporate all of the previously ignored variables just to show how little they actually mean, especially within the context of stable, survivable builds.
I believe it would be unfair to say Starsman doesn't know what he's talking about - his numbers are applicable in certain circumstances, most likely situations he encounters with his own playstyle or that he feels represent average gameplay.
It does get annoying to see people quoting his charts in situations where his numbers are completely irrelevant - most of the time, extreme performance situations. It's unfortunate people do that, but on the other hand it's to be expected ; he's the only one who provided easy to read graphs including all powersets.
Now, I think it'd be better for everyone if he added a few disclaimers showing these charts aren't representative of the high end game, explaining the whole methodology as well. Something like BillZBubba did with his own analysis is perfect, it takes only a few paragraphs to explain and everyone can draw their own conclusions from it.
The other option is that someone W should E step R up N and E do R full charts with pretty graphs and all for everything, maybe if we all donate a bit of money this someone could quit his day job and spend time doing attack chains calculations. 
[ QUOTE ]
I'm sure you can. Tanker DM by itself can reach ~130-140 DPS without help from the primary, with a saturated Soul Drain and the Smite - SL - Smite - MG chain, and survivability shouldn't be a concern as gathering mobs for SD will also mean more fodder for Dark Regen.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm feeling very confident about it now. Up to this point I had never entertained the idea of soloing an AV because I've been busy making builds for DA which demonstrate its viability for every facet of the game except soloing AV's. I've found a strong appeal to DA while at the same time noticing that Justice lacks DA tankers. I figured I'd get the word out by example but can't really convince people to join a tf with a squishy DA tank. Now taking this avenue into consideration, soloing an AV I believe would help greatly in reversing this stigma.
Im clearly not in any legue for number crunching and pretty much follow suit with recommendations, try them and adjust my builds based on results. If I changed them based on numbers, I'd be a numerologist- not a gamer (bad illusion to the movie "Pi").
That being said, BillZ and others did a fantastic job with the comparisons of brutes and scrappers (see the stickies for "results are in" and "results are in take 2" on scrapper forum main page), so using brute AT modifiers and ignoring fury, isnt that enough post-hoc analysis for a theoretical build? String your best moves, compare it to AV regen and if string > regen = attack!
I'd think that with dm/da the most limiting thing would be endurance (or maybe enough recharge in/for DC), not damage, but... well... see my first sentence.
Miss Arc #147491: Rise of Bedlam
AKA Iron Smoke @Champion Server
[ QUOTE ]
Problem is, I wasn't able to stop myself from going look, you don't know what you're doing. Which means I'll probably be ignored, and will have to leave the thread rather than get stuck in a flame war that I contributed to. I suck.
[/ QUOTE ]
You're terrible! Terrible!
The tanker forums are a guilty pleasure for me, I must admit. I've been there since launch, but the players there over the years continue to fit less-than-appealing attributes of the archtype rather well... hard headed, defensive, egotistical...
Anyhoo. I apologize for contributing to the flame war. I just about fell out of my chair laughing when I saw 3 long posts responding to you and Sarrate's critiques essentially saying, "noo! tankers are different! You're wrong! These numbers don't 'matter'"!
Still, I'm interested in the results. I will never solo an AV, on any character, it's just not my cup of tea, but I like knowing things.
[ QUOTE ]
so using brute AT modifiers and ignoring fury, isnt that enough post-hoc analysis for a theoretical build? String your best moves, compare it to AV regen and if string > regen = attack!
[/ QUOTE ]
I'd say you want at least more than 130 DPS for an AV soloer, under that you're going to have to pick the specific few AVs without resistances/heals/t9.
IIRC, BillZ's analysis didn't include maximum tohit chance, so you have to remember to multiply the final numbers by 0.95 (including buff mods for DB). On the other hand, it also lacks procs which are big on tankers - proc damage is the same on every AT, so it benefits lower damage ATs the most.
As for endurance, it shouldn't be a problem as long as the AV doesn't drain end. A DA/DM shouldn't be running the damage aura while fighting AVs, as it would kill the fodder. Having 11-12 mobs (10 being the cap for DR/SD, 1-2 more to avoid misses) around all the time for Dark Regen should result in an average 20 end boost everytime you use DR - which isn't too hard to get down to that cost to stay even. The levels of recharge required to run Smite MG Smite SL will also give you Conserve Power up half of the time.
That's how I see it anyway, based on my experience with Shield/DM. To me, it looks like the two toons would play the same against AVs (except DA, lacking defense debuff resistance, might have to be cautious with the kind of mobs you use to fuel SD and DR).
[ QUOTE ]
While I appreciate the work that Starsman has done, his analysis "showed" that Energy Melee's single-target damage output was only slightly reduced by the changes to ET and EP. Once the changes had been implemented on live, those of us who had truly high-damage EM tankers with lots of recharge, multiple procs in EP, etc., could see that this was nonsense.
(Yet confoundingly, people insist to this day that we're lying; that the nerfs only reduced DPS by a small margin, and so on--citing Starsman's charts as "proof" of their point.)
[/ QUOTE ]
NOnonononono... My first analysis did show this, but my first analysis was wrong and I openly noted this. Not to mention at the time of the first analysis the Energy Punch nerf was an unintentionally stealth one. I no longer keep the old EM in my charts to compare, but the change was step indeed. The combined impact of those to changes was huge for the set, but the set was already doing huge damage.
I have been rather vocal about my disappointment with EM after that nerf. I also have noted several times that EP's cast time change was a bigger nerf for EM than Energy Transfer, although ET was also a considerable nerf, specially for high recharge builds. It still is a top contender for the ST damage spot, but given it horrid AoE performance and self imposed damage, I think it's not where it should be. If it is meant to inflict damage on itself, it should be also be ahead of the curve in nearly all cases.
As for procs and other external build options, I would really love to include them as options but Google Docs does not really give me the tools to go that far. I have been working sloooowly on another project that should make many happy on this, but given my limited time allocation lately, it may not be ready anytime soon. For the time being, I build the charts as reference point for casual builds, not extremely optimized ones (other than moderately high recharge) and I have noted this plenty of times.
As for AoE comparisons: I weight radius. I test them in game. I have one of each primary tanker set but Ice Melee and stone at high enough level to test their AoEs. (EM is on a brute but it counts for those comparisons.) I can very easily and realistically fit 10 foes within 8ft Whirling attacks. Foot Stomp makes it slightly easier but not able to do nothing I cant do easily with ET. I seen enough videos of people saturating Invincibility without effort (8ft radius too) to know this is not just me.
That being told, in my recent Dominator analysis I skeweed my AoE radius modifier to try to force 10ft attacks under 15ft attacks and 8ft attacks under 10ft. Result is something you may be more happy with. I'm currently working on a way more pumped up version that includes endurance efficiency and a more dynamic damage buff casting that will be able to accurately account for billion stacked rage if needed. It's almost ready and may be out today or tomorrow.
That version will also be less time dependent (so far I been averaging what fits within a 60s window, the new version is more perpetual) which will change the discrepancy between sets on it's own but not by an insane amount.
I listen to the complaints people have about my charts, some I don't find that valid but still consider them. I just am limited on what I can do with the tools at hand. The good side is: I'm becoming a pro at Google Docs loopholes. Procs are out of the question, though, because they have to be something that can be added/removed by the viewer or I'd have to do 100 versions of each power set with different builds. Again: that's a goal for another project but I myself would not hold my breath.
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm sure you can. Tanker DM by itself can reach ~130-140 DPS without help from the primary, with a saturated Soul Drain and the Smite - SL - Smite - MG chain, and survivability shouldn't be a concern as gathering mobs for SD will also mean more fodder for Dark Regen.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm feeling very confident about it now. Up to this point I had never entertained the idea of soloing an AV because I've been busy making builds for DA which demonstrate its viability for every facet of the game except soloing AV's. I've found a strong appeal to DA while at the same time noticing that Justice lacks DA tankers. I figured I'd get the word out by example but can't really convince people to join a tf with a squishy DA tank. Now taking this avenue into consideration, soloing an AV I believe would help greatly in reversing this stigma.
[/ QUOTE ]
Hey Jebe, mind shooting me some aoe oriented builds? I'm trying to enhance DA's survivability on a tanker.
[ QUOTE ]
I'd think that with dm/da the most limiting thing would be endurance (or maybe enough recharge in/for DC), not damage, but... well... see my first sentence.
[/ QUOTE ]
Socketing for endurance would keep me from adding recharge. However my current team build which still isn't complete in game but has so much endurance that it makes me think I can replace some for rechange and still be fine.
[ QUOTE ]
Hey Jebe, mind shooting me some aoe oriented builds? I'm trying to enhance DA's survivability on a tanker.
[/ QUOTE ]
It'll have to wait till later, can't use Mid's at work. Were you looking for a specific secondary?
Fire melee and Pyre mastery (fireball).
I'm toying with a 45.5% S/L, 37% melee, 28.5% range, 27% e/ne, 23% aoe defense build that lets me keep everything I want... but it means I have to 4slot either incinerate or GFS, so it won't be soloing much.
[ QUOTE ]
NOnonononono... My first analysis did show this, but my first analysis was wrong and I openly noted this. Not to mention at the time of the first analysis the Energy Punch nerf was an unintentionally stealth one. I no longer keep the old EM in my charts to compare, but the change was step indeed. The combined impact of those to changes was huge for the set, but the set was already doing huge damage.
[/ QUOTE ]
My humble apologies then. Honestly, and I don't mean this in a backhanded way, I stopped listening when the analysis turned out not to be right in the case of my own tanker.
[ QUOTE ]
As for AoE comparisons: I weight radius. I test them in game. I have one of each primary tanker set but Ice Melee and stone at high enough level to test their AoEs. (EM is on a brute but it counts for those comparisons.) I can very easily and realistically fit 10 foes within 8ft Whirling attacks.
[/ QUOTE ]
Again, please forgive me if I've made a mistake, but I stopped watching when your analysis was, by design, not weighting for radius.
And I understand your logic: yes, it's quite easy to saturate PBAoEs. Absolutely agreed. But consider: your analysis is of AoE damage output over time. And it takes some moments to herd groups into smaller radii in order to saturate them--moments that aren't (or weren't, when I, with all due respect, stopped listening) accounted for in your analysis of AoE damage output over time.
For instance, you might herd groups to a corner or obstacle to bunch them up for Whirling Hands. Problem solved, right? Whirling Hands is saturated; let her rip. The time spent herding pays dividends through the results: more targets are struck.
But Foot Stomp allows you in many similar cases simply to jump into the middle of a group and hit it. Bam: target cap. By the time tankers with smaller AoEs have herded their identical group to a corner, or let the mobs collapse into their AoE, or whatever, the SS tanker's Foot Stomp has been recharging for some time already.
I hope you're able to see how this does indeed make a difference to AoE output over time?
And then there's Rage. It applies to literally every iteration of Foot Stomp. It stacks with itself. It contains +ToHit that's always going to be there so that the attacks themselves can be slotted with less accuracy than non-SS attacks need, [/i]and still hit targets as accurately or more accurately all cases.[/i]
I shouldn't have to explain what a huge difference this can make in practice: the enhancement slots not needed for accuracy in the attack powers can be designated for more recharge, more procs, more minion-munching power than non-SS tankers can reasonably afford to slot (because they need more accuracy). It's disingenuous to argue that people are just going to slot an IO set and be done with it: because those who truly know how to leverage SS powers don't do that. They slot partial sets and min-max accuracy (not needed) vs. recharge (needed) and procs (the more, the better).
I hope I'm not coming off as a cynic or raving critic of your work, Starsman. I appreciate the work you've done to draw baseline comparisons of the powersets.
But to be fair, they are incomplete comparisons, which by design ignore data crucial to in-game performance, and as such, don't always inform an understanding of the way powersets really compare, especially at the high ends of performance.
There's a reason why single-target DPS tanks are now going with Dark Melee or Stone Melee in preference to Energy Melee, just as there's a reason why farming tanks still prefer SS to powersets which compare more favorably in your charts.
And the reason, to be blunt, is this: results.
They often don't agree with the predictions made by your analysis.
[ QUOTE ]
That why I like us over here in the Scrapper forums. We're one of the few groups of number crunchers I've seen that, if pushed, will put our noses to the grindstone and incorporate all of the previously ignored variables just to show how little they actually mean, especially within the context of stable, survivable builds.
[/ QUOTE ]
It hasn't always been so. But over the very long haul, the one thing that seems to separate the scrapper forums from the other forums is a much more evolutionary acceptance of mathematical analysis, provided that it turns out to be sufficiently accurate to be useful.
Its worth noting that attack chain math first shows up (to the best of my knowledge) in serious form on the blaster forums, not the scrapper forums. But it was much more rapidly refined and accepted on the scrapper forums. Mitigation calculations first show up on the tanker forums - and in a much more sophisticated form than the scrapper forums in general - but they were much more quickly refined and accepted on the scrapper forums ("quickly" is a relative term though: my scrapper comparison articles took three issues to become generally accepted). Really, no one picked up where Havok and Circeus left off on the tanker forums, but its pretty clear if I disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't be taking all of scrapper-mathdom with me.
It reached the point fairly quickly on the scrapper forums where someone like Stupid_Fanboy says "Claws is broken, here's why" and posts calculations, the scrapper forums are generally open to the discussion (and this was years ago). Werner faced (relatively) little resistance with his attack chain + pylon calculations, and he's now considered a reasonable authority on the subject because his calculations were tested in-game by enough people with very little controversy. Provided only that you put enough effort into it to convince the (scrapper) forums that you've put reasonable thought into it and you aren't posting a mess of numerical gibberish *and* the calculation attempts to measure something interesting, the scrapper forums will test almost anything (which reminds me, I still have to work on that all-SO Regen AV build).
For the most part, there is a presumption that calculations are useful when done right and are worth discussing, but few people invest too much emotionally in them on the scrapper forums to make them seriously controversial. At the moment, that environment is still fairly unique; however, that's slowly changing: I think the Defender forums would be equally accepting of calculation-based analysis if it wasn't for the fact that the things they have to calculate are often an order of magnitude more complex at times**; they are almost as accepting as the scrapper forums are in general set analysis with soft-calculation guidence.
** Sitting on my computer is a spreadsheet with calculations for a Defender primary/secondary comparison which is an extrapolation of the PeakDR + MitigationFactor analysis I did back in I10ish. However, it currently can't pass reasonable scrutiny and I haven't had the time to fully test in-game many of its assumptions. Its incredibly difficult to make something workable that actually makes useful predictions on that side of the fence. I wish I could make it work, because I think the Defender forums have generally the right mindset to make good use of it if I could: they would probably accept reasonable calculations if they could be demonstrated to reflect in-game reality, and conversely they would tend to suppress the urge to use the numbers to "prove" particular sets "not worth playing" which is always a danger of analysis like that.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
[ QUOTE ]
I think the Defender forums have generally the right mindset to make good use of it if I could: they would probably accept reasonable calculations if they could be demonstrated to reflect in-game reality, and conversely they would tend to suppress the urge to use the numbers to "prove" particular sets "not worth playing" which is always a danger of analysis like that.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah. It's good to avoid the trap of drawing too broad a conclusion from some calculations.
As a random example, take DPS. No matter how accurately calculated, it isn't very representative of many or most in-game situations. Pylons? Yeah. AVs? Mostly. Running around on a team doing missions? Nope. That's AoE and front-loaded damage. It won't matter if your Dual Blader does twice the DPS as my Broadsword if it takes 20 seconds before your Blinding Feints stack up and catch up to my built up initial chain. It won't matter if my Broadsword does a lot of burst damage to one or two targets if someone's Spines scrapper is just tearing the whole crowd apart. And I think the scrapper forum overall, despite a fascination with DPS and more recently AVs, does realize these things. Nobody is saying Spines Sux because of its comparatively poor DPS.
[ QUOTE ]
the scrapper forums will test almost anything (which reminds me, I still have to work on that all-SO Regen AV build).
[/ QUOTE ]
Way off topic, but likewise. I've backed off of my even level SOs personal requirement and have a bunch of 52 and 53 SOs now. Took a bunch of runs on Werner against Marauder. No luck so far. I'm thinking Sergei will have a better chance since there are a couple easy AVs that are susceptible to negative energy damage, but I haven't found a build I'm happy with. And I just keep doing other things.
"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
Videos of Other Stupid Scrapper Tricks
Re: defenders numbers.
Do eeeeeet!
I don't even know if I could properly understand it, but it'd be fascinating nonetheless.
Plus ... I think that (de)buff sets haven't seen the same kind of intra-set balancing that, say, scrapper secondaries have had. I also have a pretty strong suspicion that a thorough analysis would show some weirdness and outliers.
On the other hand, it scramables my head to think of the permutations you'd have to consider. Team size, spawn size, purple patch, resistances, Repel, team make up, what Fluffy's up to, slots, synergies and lack thereof with secondaries ...
Yeesh.
But I digress.
My spines / WP scrapper, made on a whim, turned out to be one of my favourite toons. Most of my other "made on a whim" toons end up getting deleted because I can't quite find the synergy between primary and secondary, but I like this scrapper precisely because it's so hard to put together a bad combo for scrappers.
So ... thank you scrapper forums 
I just want to thank all the scrappers that came over to help our discussion. I'm not a numbers person, but I do appreciate the discussion. It has provided a springboard for us to go through and attempt something that scrappers, and to a lesser extent, other ATs, have been doing for a while.
Ever since I saw Nihilii do it on his Tanker, I've been building up resources to attempt the same thing on my tanker. I was planning to do it on my SD/Dark tank, but now that I see it is potentially viable with other secondaries, I want to try and see if I can do it with another secondary. Time to put the theory to the test.
So thanks again for coming over.
over to this thread pretty please. I'd rather have the experts settle this.
We know it's possible, we're just not agreeing on which secondary can put out the most sustained damage over time.