Let's play "Arcana's Min/Max Skillz Suck"

Damnit, Iggy....

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze I hate to be the bringer of bad news... but Willpower sucks!!! you're better off rolling a regen

With regard to Hasten, setting aside the AoE question for a moment, the attack chain I had in mind for this build was:

SK->CS->CK->SK->EC->CAK

If my back of the envelope calculations are correct, this chain generates about 168.7dps without Build Up, counting the procs, and counting the 0.33 crit increase from EC. Not bad for MA.

Factoring in ArcanaTime, and also the base crit chance in all cases (5%, 10% for Storm Kick, 15% for EC) I get DPA for each power (again, including the procs) of:

Storm Kick: 194.7
Cobra Strike: 154.6
Crane Kick: 157.0
CAK: 169.2
Eagle's Claw: 131.9
CAK (special): 219.9

The special CAK is when it follows EC. Now, EC is the poor performer in there but its also buffing CAK strongly. Hasten could compress EC out but it would also nullify the buff on CAK. So the question is what is the average DPA of the EC->CAK sequence: its 167.1. Notice how close it is to the DPA of the other powers. Stork Kick and CAK beat that combo, but CS and CK don't. So actually, removing EC can't increase DPA by very much on its own: you'd have to stack enough recharge to take out not just EC but also one of CS or CK (at least part of the time) or else the two effects will seem to largely offset. So recharge won't help this build unless its *a lot* more recharge, I would think (but I haven't done extensive attack chain calculations to prove it).


Its true that having Hasten will speed up Dragon's Tail which would speed up AoE output. But that's sort of a secondary issue: its a bit one-dimensional to focus solely on AoE damage. And to be honest, its mostly uninteresting. It devolves to pure recharge (and the endurance to power it) for most powerset combinations.


The question of Build Up is more interesting. Build Up's effect on average damage over time is not as strong as commonly believed. Of course, I've been saying that since I5. I don't want to do an attack-chain analysis of BU, so I'm just going to do the average calculations for now. My build's BU has a total cycle time of 40.07 seconds (pending the recharge analysis still ongoing ). That means its up for 10, down for 28.9, and idle for about 1.17 (meaning you can't attack during that interval). All my powers have different damage strength buffs, so I'm just going to average them to about +100%, which is about right for the slotting and set bonuses. In that case, BU's over-time performance looks like this:

10s * (200% + 100%) + 28.9s * (200%) + 1.17s * (zero) = 8780%s
Averaged over the 40.07s cycle time, we get: 8780%s/40.07s = 219%

In other words, BU is acting like a +19% damage buff over time. What happens if I add Hasten. Well, Hasten won't be up perma, but lets assume it is just for fun. In that case, BU's recharge drops to 29.87s and its cycle time drops to about 31.04s. BU's performance then becomes:

[10s * (200% + 100%) + 19.87s * (200%) + 1.17s * (zero)] / 31.04 = 224.7%.

In other words, adding perma-hasten to Build Up increases its damage buffing effect from +19% to +24.7%, and increase of 5.7 percentage points. Meaning: you could get the same result adding two +3% damage set bonuses to the build somehow.

Build Up's damage over time effect is one of the most consistently overestimated effects in the game. It is a great burst damage tool, but actually the effect of adding Hasten's buff to build up (at these levels of recharge) is lower than the effect you'd get from taking Assault.


Well, this MA/SR has pretty much done everything, for every iteration of MA or SR that has ever existed. Not going to stop now.

This one seems to be another example of trading a little bit of regen for endurance, although this one doesn't sacrifice regeneration itself but just a tiny bit of health. And it loses a little positional defense, but not too much. Its an interesting trade.

Question: what do you think the extra recharge brings to the table? Do you have a feel for how much improvement it might make to the build overall? Also, do you think the gain in recharge and damage strength in Storm Kick compensates for the loss of the damage proc overall? Ok, that's three questions.

You might want to check out Lord Cyclones build.

Well, I still have 1.0 health/sec better regen, nyah nyah. Otherwise, hmm, all that extra endurance looks attractive. Although 45.4% defense to AoE is cutting it close for a debuff cushion. Also, it would probably take me ten years to build it.

What do you have the damage of that build clocking out at? Mine's running a slightly different and longer chain (due to having less recharge strength probably) of SK->CS->CK->SK->EC->CAK (or if you prefer, SK->EC->CAK->SK->CS->CK). I seem to be getting 168.7dps from that one (counting everything: EC crit bonus, procs, and assuming the baseline crit chance of 5% for most attacks, 10% for SK and 15% for EC).

I'm definitely swapping focused accuracy for conserve power in my build after looking more carefully at the endurance burn rates. It can't be made perma, but its probably of greater benefit than focused accuracy (which honestly I just tossed in there to get PP).

I thought about that one. I would lose 0.38% health (like, 5 points) and gain 4% regen (at these health levels, about 0.32 h/s). I'd also lose about +6% accuracy.

The health and regen changes seemed to be sufficiently minor (and slightly offsetting) that I decided to keep the +Accuracy. Its kind of a toss up there.

Yeah, totally forgot about that. A gimme - and actually, I have one slotted in many of my characters.


If it wasn't going to alter survivability or offense at all, I didn't really bother, but the HO seems to be the way to go there. For that matter, there seems to be a very tiny improvement when replacing the non-proc Glad from Weave with a Ribo now that I think about it and try it. Also probably a ton cheaper.

Some where between a lot of ebil.

Damn beat me to my idea, I thought of that when I posted up the first one and then I was like eh I'll come back to it later lol

Well my Aidself is 1.6% better and 2.2 seconds faster... so there :P
Yeah couldn't get any more aoe defense
Only 10 years? I took those Shield Wall out on the second post. Lost some recovery and HP in the process


interesting.....
I'm only coming up with 167 dps on that build, so it's looking like you have a better chain. But don't count my math on calculating DPS though... this why I spend so much time on the Pylons, cause 95% of the time I'm wrong...

must be nice to be able to put up bids for those and call yourself broke...

Ah I see now. You are trying to build an AV solo'ing build because that (well EB's and up) is about the only place you are going to be employing drawn out attack chains and factoring buildup as an average buff over time...

Now if you are looking for a build that is playing other parts of the game then indeed having your highest dpa attacks up more often can be a tremendous increase in performance. At the same time having attacks up that eleminate foes in the least number of moves (not necessarily the same as best dpa) can be of benefit.

The former is self explanatory, but the latter I'll use an example. If you could have killed something with CAK had it been recharged, but instead because you dismissed the benefits of hasten you need to use storm+crane (which together still average better dpa than CAK) you just slowed yourself down.

If however, you are only planning on fighting huge sacks of hp, then it might be best to just ask for AV solo'ing advice. Just a thought.

I guess... But since no one has suggested to focus "purely" on aoe damage you are off base with your comment...

If you are however looking for a min/max ma/sr that focuses on ST damage even when the aoe it could do would be a better choice then again you may want to focus your questions more to something like:
Help me min/max my st focus concept build ma/sr.

I say "concept build" because you have taken most of the st attacks, which is largely unwarranted if your goal is min/maxing.

Of course if you are ST focus then it begs the question of why even bothering to include DT unless it is an IO mule? If you are including DT because it is a quality attack when there are multiple foes then it seems a bit...well hypocritical...to then say you aren't looking to improve your aoe capabilities.

I'm of the conviction that there is little purpose to overbuilding survivability at the cost of kill speed. Dead things don't do damage to you. Finding the balance point is the challenge, which imho you've shot way short of simply for more paper survivability. Which again, unless you meant to ask for an AV spec build?

Unfortunately the vast majority of the game isn't played with "average build up time" or drawn out dps chains. I'm sure you know as well as anyone that the game is set up with tight little clusters of enemies that are conveniently spaced out from each other. This configuration benefits burst* damage more than it values dps, or averaged out burst damage buffs.

*where burst is defined as a shortish output of damage that defeats the group as quickly as possible with little concern for chain-ability because you know there will be x amount of downtime before you face the next spawn.

Knocking ~10 sec off of buildup is a huge benefit when you face spaced out groups because it can alter your entire rhythm.

In a scenario where you constantly faced a flow of enemies (or an AV) then yes you are absolutely right that buid up's average damage buff isn't nearly as spectacular as many believe. But that isn't how the majority of enemies are configured.

If you are looking for an AV spec that is still good at the rest of the game then that is the question to ask. If you are looking for an build that excels at the rest of the game but can still take on AV's then increasing your aoe output and adding hasten are the biggest advantages that your already heavily IO'd build can add.

You don't have to take the advice, but I just want to make sure you understand what you are passing up. Your comments about the buff of buildup averaged over time and drawn out dps chains, causes me to worry that you might be doing too much paper analysis and not enough analysis of what actually happens in the game outside of fighting sacks of hp, or the elusive never ending ambush of enemies.

Well I have about a third of the characters you have and 2 out of 5 are boarder line retired. I'm considering stripping my Ice/ice/cold blaster of all of his enhancements, he frustrates me to no end. So I rarely spend any of my money, until I have a fun project

You do if you want high DPS (which is sorta the whole point of a Scrapper min/max build)

You seem to be operating under a couple of misconceptions that I should clear up. First of all, I'm not specifically looking for someone to help me build an MA/SR scrapper. I've been playing MA/SR since practically the beginning. Its not my main, but its my second character to 50. Its not my only scrapper, I have tons of those. But whenever I think about a balance, performance, or just general scrapperish problem, unless the issue is tied to a specific power set or situation, Violet is the character I think about. She's been the test bed for some really funky ideas (try that with no inventions and no fitness).

I'm extremely well aware of the mechanics of offense and defense. So don't worry, I understand things like AoEs and how to take down AVs vs how to take down numerically large spawns. This whole exercise started off as a way for me to investigate the claim that getting inherent fitness without more discretionary slots would have only a minimal effect on min/maxing. I didn't think that was the case, so I dug up some of my older builds, tweaked them a bit, then went back to the drawing board and rethought them with inherent fitness. This build was the result.

Now, if you have a build that you think beats this build, or even better have a build that doesn't presume inherent fitness and still beats this build, and you can articulate why you believe that build is better, I'm all ears. But if you're going to try to explain to me why you think my understanding of how the game works is faulty, I would suggest sending me a PM to take that particular conversation offline.

Fair warning: if you're one of those people that thinks I'm primarily informed by paper analysis, and not, say, several thousand hours of scrapper play (and scrappers are not the only thing I play either), I would suggest reevaluating.

For example:

Actually, the paper analysis tends to *overestimate* the value of Build Up. Unless you're soloing a sparse mission where you are spending a lot of time moving between spawns, and less time actually fighting them, Build Up tends to be worth even less than my numbers state. Its measurable. I know because I wrote a program to analyze my combat logs and actually measure, several years ago. A modified version of that script is what I used to demonstrate that with one modification, Kinetic Melee's siphon power actually behaves exactly as theory predicts, under virtually all combat conditions from sparse to highly dense missions.

And probably more critically:

The reason why you're the only one asking me this question is that I think most of the scrapper builders here know that building for defense significantly above the soft cap on SR *isn't* for AVs or for "paper survivability." Its actually for things like going up against large spawns of Cims up on the walls, something that was at one time a scrapper torture test. Its for going up against high-density spawns of debuffers. That defense would be almost worthless against most of the single hard targets in the game. That makes this more of a general purpose torture test build capable of multi-purpose sustained activity against a spectrum of foes from AVs to large spawns.

Now, if I wanted to roll something from scratch and wanted a farming build, I'd make something like, say, Claws, or a /Shield. Or I would just respec one of those that I already have. I know how to make an AoE build. MA isn't an AoE-powerhouse. Its never going to have superior, or even average AoE. Given that, sacrificing AoE for single target damage on a build intended to be more general purpose and isn't ever going to win an AoE contest is actually rather pointless.


But as I said, if you have a build, I'm more than happy to look at it to see if it contains some build concepts I haven't seen before. And I would like to see where you would place the "balance" between offense and defense in a real build with real numbers that can be critiqued objectively. But if you're just concerned about my apparent lack of knowledge of gameplay, rest assured your worries are unfounded.

Its one thing among many. Given that you don't see too many MA scrappers outside of AAO-saturated MA/Shield scrappers pushing far past about 190dps, I don't think generating about 169 means I flushed my offense down the toilet.

But I suppose if I don't post my hasten build, I'm going to have to deal with the notion that I don't understand how they work. Very well: this is an updated version of the last "speed build" I was playing with to compare to the one I posted.

Still more than 46% defense to all positions, but sacrifices heavily on health and regen (health down to 1802.5, regen down to 280% or 21.1 h/s). But it has true perma-hasten (meaning, it has enough global recharge to turn Hasten itself perma with plenty to spare) so Hasten has no downtime, and the build itself has a permanent +182.5% global recharge. With special slotting in CAK, this build can do: SK->CAK->SK->CS, and generate 186.3 dps. It also has Dragon's tail recharging in 3.68 seconds and Fireball recharging in only 9.18 seconds. And to top it off it has 25.3 second Build Up and fits Assault in there as the cherry on the top. It doesn't get much more offensive than that for MA/SR.

Of course, it can't sustain that AoE output for any length of time, which is a problem with most AoE-heavy builds built around powersets without an efficient means of generating AoE. And you aren't really going to get the benefit from BU you might think with 25s recharge. And with the lower regeneration and no Aid Self something luckier than you is probably going to tap you on the shoulder at some point and make you run for the hills or empty your insp tray.

But yeah, anyone who normally plays staccato spawn snuffing and doesn't mind collecting blues can probably burst themselves happily along with this build.

You seem more than capable of using mids and you don't actually want advice so I don't see a reason to pursue this avenue.

FWIW I know a thing or two about min/maxing. You're welcome to disregard what I say and chalk it up to your superior knowledge and handwave away what I'm saying, but then again you can just take a look at the rikti pylon thread.

The top 2 toons are all mine and they sit well above everything else. They can both devour things like the cim wall, solo ITF, multiple AV's at the same time, +3 versions of most AV's, GM's, run +4/x8 of most enemy types (+2/x8 of everything I've tried). When it comes to min/maxing and unlocking potential of a toon I'll put my skills up against anyone in this game.

I respect that you've spent countless hours on your ma/sr, but at the same time you posted asking about min/maxing the toon. I'm flat out telling you that the biggest in game gains you can get with that toon based on where you have gotten it to so far are with hasten and increasing your aoe damage. If you want to interpret that as me suggesting you reroll as a farming toon then you are free to do that, but I wasn't.

Even if I were to sit down and design an ma/sr for you it will be disregarded because you are approaching the game in a fundamentally different way. You don't actually want a min/max build (well unless you are going for minimum rate of killing things against the maximum inf you can spend), you just want a build given the specific conceptual confines of your playing preferences. There is really nothing min/max about what you are asking for because you are missing half the equation when it comes to min/maxing. Not a big deal, but you are setting everyone up to fail at the task you laid out. So congratulations I guess?

FWIW you also disregarded what Silverado said and he is probably the most noted min/maxer on these boards and has been doing absurd things with numerous different AT's for ages now. So you have two of the more recognized min/maxers telling you the same thing. So either we're both wrong or you aren't actually looking to min/max your toon. Since it is the latter, then I don't really have anything else to offer you. But if you ever want to actually min/max that toon, or any other (and I happen to be around) I'll gladly assist however I can.

I think what Silverado will say if he takes the time to type it out is similar to what I'm about to say.

You have the same weakness that many people on these boards (and in game) exhibit. It's that once you have a strong chain that is governed by animation time you feel that additional recharge isn't of much value.

DPS is only one measure of your actual damage dealing ability. It is one that is overused primarily because it is so easy to quantify, but in actuality it doesn't play that large of a role in the majority of encounters.

Players that abide by 'dps' chains in actual play stick out like a sore thumb to me. Their combat inflexibility is very visible. The vast majority of encounters are resolved best with burst aoe and/or moderate duration burst st damage; assuming one has tailored the scenario to their strengths. Granted some people do take their st toons into encounters better suited to an aoe focus, but they recognize that they are handicapped and/or they will attempt to leverage whatever aoe they have to help out the situation.

Tha build is sacrificing too much survivability and sustainability for what the player would gaining in recharge from my view. I wouldn't trade off 100% regen and over 100 HP just to have my attacks recharging faster than they can animate. Most likely, the player will not be able to fully leverage the recharge because he/she would be bleeding off end very very quickly. With Assault running and in severe situations where we would want extra mitigation, which means Tough is running, it just gets worse - only about 1.8 net endrec. That's simply not enough. On an MA character, this is not a path I would seriously pursue. Other primaries probably, and other ATs certainly but not in this test case, no.

Of course you know this, but it is fun to look at an extreme recharge build that still meets the fundamental requirements. Would I trade off this amount of regen and +hp for that level of offense. Of course, I am someone who happily trades of 5 seconds on build up recharge to get a tasty defense and regen bonus so I may be all wet.

From my view, given your primary and secondary choices, I think you would be better off for the majority of game situations with my build, Sant's build or Iggy's build (if he could find a way to get a little more net endrec out of it).

Cheers

Hmmm, I don't see your name in that thread. A search doesn't show you posting in that thread. A search only shows you posting in a single Scrapper forum thread - this one. Are you saying you're the second account of Frosticus or something? You'd almost have to be, since you seem to be claiming that you're one "of the more recognized min/maxers", and it's hard to be recognized when you only have a handful of posts. So should I call you Frosticus? Frosticus, neither of those top two numbers are Scrappers, very few non-Scrappers are posting in that thread, and thus your results have no real competition. Your numbers MAY be awesome, top of the heap. But that thread gives zero evidence of that, and I don't have enough experience with other ATs to have any idea.

I don't think Arcanaville was telling you that you don't know how the game works. You may have a deep understanding and serious play skills. I believe what Arcanaville was doing was laughing at the idea that she doesn't know how the game works.

It seems you want to say that Arcanaville asked the question wrong, and should have asked for an AV soloer, or whatever. Yet it seems like a whole lot of people in the thread understood the spirit of the build challenge, and have submitted reasonable builds for consideration. I'm not saying that Arcanaville couldn't have been more clear, but perhaps the communication problem is not entirely on her side?

It also feels like your putting min/max in a smaller box than I'd put it in. You seem to be saying that a min/max toon is an optimized AoE machine designed for destroying large spawns. Then there are AV soloers. Then there's everything else. That seems a bit too restrictive to me.

I do STRONGLY support what you say about DPS being only one measure, and a typically overused measure of damage output. In regular play (whatever that is), DPS is not what matters. AoE is king, and burst is queen.

That said, I abide by my DPS chain in actual play. My recharge rates are generally carefully tailored, and I've trimmed out all other single-target attacks. If I'm attacking a group, I'll use any AoEs I have, assuming I even have AoEs, as frequently as possible. But other than that, it's the DPS chain, because to do otherwise is to simply skip attacks, wait for preferred attacks to recharge, and simply do damage more slowly. This may not be the case with most people's builds, as most people take more attacks than I do (such as Arcanaville in this example). But I'm a minimalist when it comes to attacks, so the resulting toon is "stuck" using the DPS chain only. Another thing to note is that I rarely fight whites on a mature toon. I'm often fighting as much uplevel as I can, quite often +4x8. I'm not going to burst my way through anything. The time it takes is well into the DPS realm, and I'm going to be using my DPS chain, and for quite a while.

That said, if all I'm after is kill speed, I'll drag out my Fire/Shield with massive recharge and go to town with AoEs. It's what he was designed for. But I don't consider him any more or less min/maxed than my single-target specialists, or my general-purpose-with-AoE-but-not-AoE-focused Scrapper.

If I feel like doing AoE to plow through spawns as quickly as possible, I'll dig out an AoE toon. What I WON'T do is try to optimize EVERY toon for AoE, even if AoE is king. Not every toon is suited for that role. If I feel like playing them anyway, like my DM/SR, I don't think that means I'm not min/maxing the toon. A DM/SR min/maxed for AoE in regular team play would probably be a pretty retarded build, beaten by a huge number of alternatives.

Bah, late for work.

Sorry to threadjack but now I'm curious: what are those 2 characters? I don't follow the rikti pylon stuff, apart from a very dim recollection that either Smurphy or TopDoc built a purpled-out Widow that was awefully impressive.

Arcanaville? Werner? Noobs, I tells ya.

More seriously: even incredibly knowledgeable folks can be wrong or just not have every permutation of a concept occur to them. I'm finding this thread is quite educational. I have to admit I do get a bit of a chuckle from kamikrazy's attitude, but that's pretty mild compared to Fire Kin Master, who just pegged the fun-o-meter for me. His combination of a penchant for typing in 72 point boldface, aggressive ignorance and boundless narcissism was awesome to behold.

This. To me, a min/maxed character doesn't mean any one thing. I don't consider a character min/maxed because it can solo an AV or clear +4x8 spawns.

I consider a character min/maxed if you, you know, minimize or negate your weaknesses and maximise your strengths for whatever goal you're aiming for.

The ability to solo AVs, have a maximised DPS attack chain or whatever are good benchmarks, but they're just that. Benchmarks.