Confuse, and the XP loss
By
Ammon,
Posted on: 2010-09-24 14:07 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
I confuse whenever I can.
I try to start punching faces the second I'm confident the players on mission map can handle it. I prefer not to wait for anyone ever unless it's the final fight in a TF. If I'm not in mission I hope the team do the same - I'm not getting XP when I'm en route or getting a sandwich anyway, and this way I'll get the completion bonus early. And eventually the merits early.
I'm trading money and time for Monopoly money and having a great time. Confuse and starting early both give me (and everyone on my team) more Monopoly money per unit of real time.
There may be RP reasons not to do these things, but I contend there's no valid rewards optimization reason.
I feel kind of stupid for not using my confuse for so long. Im going to test it out and see how much my xp decrease is when soloing, but if all the math in this thread is right then it shouldnt be bad. Crud, so much wasted potential.
Solo is where you'll see the most "loss", because you'll do less damage yourself than a team would. However, you'll lose far more XP paying off the debt from dying to those guys you didn't confuse, and even more while you're not killing anything as you run back from the hospital.
In most cases, if there's a confuse in your powersets, the only good reason to not use it is "I'm not high enough level to select it yet."
@Roderick
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Highly hypothetical argument that does not reflect reality. I've completed *at least* 500 ITF/LGTF/BSF/LRSF/etc runs, about half of which were done during the past few months since Going Rogue came out. In anycase, I can count on one hand the number of times where the team actually made it a point to literally kill everything. Not even on Shard runs. |
Originally Posted by Ammon
However, the argument that Confuse supporters are missing is that TFs and SFs are not infinite mobs and missions. If I run a TF that would normally give 15 bars of XP, then with a confuser on the team, that same TF will probably only give around 12 bars of XP, a 20% reduction.
Yes, I might finish the TF 20% faster, so a fifty minute TF takes 40 minutes, but that doesn't change the fact that the XP on any finite task will have been lowered. |
Now you could say that people who run the lower level TF/SFs would care about the potential experience loss except, who really runs TF/SFs for exp? On the rare occasion that I do join a sub-50 TF, it is even more rare for me to come across a difficulty setting that's not +0. This is in comparison to your average paper/radio/arc/AE experience team running at no less than +2.
Bottom line, kill all TFs are a myth and if they do exist, still a waste of time. If I ever join a team that's committed to a 2+ hour kill everything TF/SF, I will hit the quit button faster than the team leader can type "just kidding".
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Haha. I'm not sure if you meant that as a joke or not, but either way, that's funny. Leaping to your death to snag 100 XP. Like the "Ice Age squirrel thing" after an acorn.
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Originally Posted by SonofSpam
Upon reflection, some of those players may have been freaking out over presumed "lost XP" rather than presumed aggro, but the difference was academic, as the result was the same.
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I looked it up. They are named him called Scrat.
I did a little testing with my plant/emp, teaming with a ~lvl 40 blaster running scanner missions. Run a mish not using confuse, then run one using confuse as much as possible. Our xp+inf/minute was pretty consistent, with slight variance in the spawns. Tried again with a 50 tank and the inf/minute was still consistent.
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If you're going to test it, you should do it in a controlled environment. Pick an AE mission and run it a number of times using confuse, then a number of times without it. Change absolutely nothing about what you do (even follow the same path).|
Originally Posted by Mr_Kingkillaha
I did a little testing with my plant/emp, teaming with a ~lvl 40 blaster running scanner missions. Run a mish not using confuse, then run one using confuse as much as possible. Our xp+inf/minute was pretty consistent, with slight variance in the spawns. Tried again with a 50 tank and the inf/minute was still consistent.
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You can't rely on scanner missions because there are too many variables unaccounted for, and you need to do more than just a handful of runs to account for any possible anomalies.
We did a few runs in ae, but even there the spawns weren't consistent. All of our runs were against council, and I feel confident in saying there is no significant loss of xp/minute using confuse. Of course I didn't do do rigorous enough testing to provide exact consistency, but it is close enough that I'm in no hurry to do more detailed testing.
benefits for confuse powers:
malta sappers and gunslingers, longbow nullifiers, PPD protectors, rikti guardians, any longbow boss, CoT bosses and earth thorn casters, carnie illusionists and dark ring mistresses and steel strongmen, night widows and bane spider scouts and executioners, etc.
to the naive or uninformed: there are many enemies, especially in the high levels that can frustrate or slow down teams due to a variety of buffs and debuffs they cast, or some other special ability. confusing them flips those frustrations to benefits. best example i can think of is that nasty -resist AoE grenade longbow nullifiers shoot, which doesn't disappear when they are defeated.
only thing that sucks is when enemies aren't touched by players and we don't get the drops, but that's not usually a problem on teams, and solo you can control that with great precision.
50: Ill/Kin(A+,R,J)-1047 badges RE/Dark(A) Fire/Elec Warshade BS/Regen Necro/Poison Ice/Fiery(A+) Son/Son Bane(A) FM/DA(A) DM/Nin Grav/Icy
lvling: Inv/EM DM/Sheild Arch/MM Bane NW Elec/Earth Grav/Elec Elec/FA Rad/Ice
Paragon Elite/Rogue Elite Joined Oct 2004
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You forgot the beauty of confusing Sky Raider shield drones. Instant MASSIVE defense buff.
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Originally Posted by Soul_Stormer
benefits for confuse powers:
malta sappers and gunslingers, longbow nullifiers, PPD protectors, rikti guardians, any longbow boss, CoT bosses and earth thorn casters, carnie illusionists and dark ring mistresses and steel strongmen, night widows and bane spider scouts and executioners, etc. |
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hence the etc at the end. i knew there was more but couldn't remember any more off the top of my head.
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
You forgot the beauty of confusing Sky Raider shield drones. Instant MASSIVE defense buff.
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50: Ill/Kin(A+,R,J)-1047 badges RE/Dark(A) Fire/Elec Warshade BS/Regen Necro/Poison Ice/Fiery(A+) Son/Son Bane(A) FM/DA(A) DM/Nin Grav/Icy
lvling: Inv/EM DM/Sheild Arch/MM Bane NW Elec/Earth Grav/Elec Elec/FA Rad/Ice
Paragon Elite/Rogue Elite Joined Oct 2004
It's okay, there's no need. XP loss is a myth.
Lolz, didn't realize the post had hit page 4.
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It's okay, there's no need, XP loss is a myth.|
Originally Posted by Mr_Kingkillaha
We did a few runs in ae, but even there the spawns weren't consistent. All of our runs were against council, and I feel confident in saying there is no significant loss of xp/minute using confuse. Of course I didn't do do rigorous enough testing to provide exact consistency, but it is close enough that I'm in no hurry to do more detailed testing.
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Any time I see a mass confuse hit a spawn, damn right I dive into it, but it's got nothing to do with aggro or xp loss. It's because most (or all) of the enemies are mezzed! What better time to attack them?
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Originally Posted by SonofSpam
The one problem with Confuse effects that I've run into before is that a lot of players, new and old, don't seem to know that the majority of them don't draw aggro. Hell, some of them don't even break stealth. I can't count the number of times I've run up slightly ahead of the main group, thrown out a Confuse / Mass Confusion / Blinding Powder / etc. to soften them up before we wade in, and then watched as one or more teammates freaked the f**k out and dove into the mob prematurely because they assumed that any activity whatsoever from the NPCs meant that someone had aggro'd the entire bunch and we were about to wipe. It isn't a problem on steamroller teams, but in the less savvy, less powerful and/or more cautious groups, it sometimes led to the very team wipes I was trying to avoid in the first place. Upon reflection, some of those players may have been freaking out over presumed "lost XP" rather than presumed aggro, but the difference was academic, as the result was the same.
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@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
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correct
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Originally Posted by Quasadu
Any time I see a mass confuse hit a spawn, damn right I dive into it, but it's got nothing to do with aggro or xp loss. It's because most (or all) of the enemies are mezzed! What better time to attack them?
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Fiery Aura is only good for farming, I'm cereal
@Caucasiafro
I think tp foe should confuse said foe
that is all
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That's reason #1, but a far distant reason #2 is that you want to make sure you do some damage to any foes attacked by the confused foes to get that bonus XP that you didn't earn. |
Originally Posted by Quasadu
Any time I see a mass confuse hit a spawn, damn right I dive into it, but it's got nothing to do with aggro or xp loss. It's because most (or all) of the enemies are mezzed! What better time to attack them?
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The one problem with Confuse effects that I've run into before is that a lot of players, new and old, don't seem to know that the majority of them don't draw aggro. Hell, some of them don't even break stealth. I can't count the number of times I've run up slightly ahead of the main group, thrown out a Confuse / Mass Confusion / Blinding Powder / etc. to soften them up before we wade in, and then watched as one or more teammates freaked the f**k out and dove into the mob prematurely because they assumed that any activity whatsoever from the NPCs meant that someone had aggro'd the entire bunch and we were about to wipe. It isn't a problem on steamroller teams, but in the less savvy, less powerful and/or more cautious groups, it sometimes led to the very team wipes I was trying to avoid in the first place. Upon reflection, some of those players may have been freaking out over presumed "lost XP" rather than presumed aggro, but the difference was academic, as the result was the same.