City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Best Xp for the Diff?

BeornAgain

By BeornAgain,
Posted on: 2011-02-12 08:24 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion

 

Posted

Purples drop from any mob capable of dropping level 50 recipes, which I believe is 47 and up. Level 49s certainly can.

It's not so much that you get a higher chance of one dropping off a 49 than a 50 so much as you can clear more 49s in a given amount of time, so you get more chances.

De minimis non curat Lex Luthor.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by crayhal View Post
IMHO, I think +1x8 gives a good xp over time ratio for leveling, but can be AT dependent.
Here's what you can do to test yourself.
1) Look in your paper for a steal something mission.
2) Pick the mission and set your difficulty to +0x8 ( or whatever you want )
3) Write down your XP.
4) At the mission door, write down the current time.
5) Enter and kill everything, but leave the glowie alone.
6) After all the kills, write down the time and your new XP.
7) Calculate your XP per minute. For example, old xp = 10000, new xp = 20000, and time in mission is 12 mins, so xp / min is (20000 - 10000) / 12 = 833 xp / min.
8) Don't click the glowie and exit the mission. Change your diff to +1x8.
9) Reset the mission and go to step (4).

I think you will find that +4x8 will give you the worst xp per minute since mobs take much longer to kill, but the xp rewarded doesn't scale by 4. Ie, if a minion gives 100 xp and takes 20 secs to kill at +0, it doesn't give 400 xp at +4. Instead, it gives something like 130 xp but takes 60 secs to kill.
Or you can run Hero Stats.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Roderick View Post
Not true.
....

I think perhaps you misunderstand.


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The level shift does NOT actually level you up. You get the exact same rewards as a 50, or as a common Alpha-slotted 50, or a Very Rare Alpha-Slotted 50. Don't believe me? Go test it out.
Yes. But what you are failing to understand is the difference between character level and combat level.

The level shift does not change your character level.
The level shift DOES change your combat level.

This is the exact same effect as when you level up in the middle of a mission. Even though you have not been to a trainer yet, and so your character level has not changed, everything turns blue!

Why? Your combat level went up immediately.

Why is this important? Because rewards in-game can be boiled down to how much damage you had to inflict to earn them. (Simplifying here.)

Even though your character level has not changed and you get the same rewards as any other 50, a level shifted toon is doing more damage per second because the villains are wimpier compared to them.

Thus, you get more rewards per time, because you are doing more damage per time.

Conversely, you can raise your difficulty by one and get more rewards per time because you are killing harder things at the same pace as you used to kill weaker things.

Thus, the calculated xp/damage 'sweet spot' used to be +2 with bosses. Now, it is +3 with bosses, because as far as game mechanics goes (and we know about), with a level shift it's exactly the same.

Does that clear things up for you?

 

Posted

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Originally Posted by BeornAgain View Post
So, purple drops, as in purple recipes?
Exactly yes, sorry, I was unclear.

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Forgive my ignorance, but how exactly would, for example, my 50(+1) widow get a larger chance for purple drops on -2/x8? Wouldn't that make the level effectively 49 and not 50?

If you're running a pure purple map at -1x8, yes, you are facing level 49 baddies. This means that all recipes that drop will be 49's, except purples, which are capped at 50. Purples can drop off mad guys all the way down to 47.

This is bad for cash, because 49's tend to sell slower and for less than 50's. It's great for things you plan to self-slot, since you can kill 49's faster and thus have more chances over time to get more stuff.


Quote:
I understand that the more mobs the higher a percentage of possible drops per mission, but the level thing confuzzles me.
If you fight L49 mobs with a 50+1 toon, you're fighting them at +2. You do a LOT more damages, and thus can fly through them at max pace.

The ideal is to be able to kill entire mobs in 1 attack.

Ignore stragglers, you should be firing every attack as soon as it refreshes upon the maximum number of bad guys you can get into it.

Moving at this (admittedly frenzied) pace maximizes your drops per day. (This assumes that map reset time is very minimal.)

If you like that kinda thing. I personally can take it or leave it.