Tanker solos Giant Monster - Film at 11!!

How do you know your tactics haven't landed you into a suboptimal local maxima?

Because the other option is to not have debuffers and go with more damage types, which is already accounted for in the data I generated. With just at tank, kin and melee dps, the total team dps output was low.

The entire point of the program was to try to figure out how much do debuffers help.

There is the related case of using SoA's, which can provide debuff and still be in melee range, utilizing their damage at the full damage cap, plus doing more damage - that isn't a case I've explored yet considering SoA debuff and damage are really a bit at odds with each other. Should they be spending more time debuffing, or more time doing damage? Their debuffs don't last very long so they need to be cast more often than those by fenders/corrs/trolls.


Of course, to find the global maxima, we have the related discussion, which I believe would involve trying out all team combinations and run a simulation with all.

If you could send me your code, I could convert it to C++, make it a library call and expand my code to brute force the data with your simulator.

Because of the way its written, I doubt it. But I will 2to3 the thing and make sure it still works, and figure out a way to get it to you. Perhaps you can give it a better graphical display, because I just hacked one into it with pygame. It used to be downloadable, but the download link seems to have gone bye bye, so I will have to upload it somewhere again. Fortunately, the primary engine is only 846 lines long.

Its also a damage mitigation simulator, not an attack simulator, so it might be even less useful. I was going to get around to reversing it and simulating the other way, but that code was never completed. But I would recommend stealing the clock trigger trick at least: it gives me millisecond time resolution but without having to simulate a thousand clock ticks per second.

As long as I'm going to do that, I should update the scrapper numbers in there as well. The thing dates back to I7. I should also clean up the code, but nope, still too lazy to do that.

It's a fair assumption in principle. It's just that the number you chose to represent that assumption is arbitrary.

And as Arcana notes, you make no distinction among different builds, which is understandable, but by the same token you haven't proven anything. The very premise on which the bulk of your assumptions are derived -- that survivability can never be an issue before the Tank's inclusion -- is designed (intentionally or not) to marginalize Tankers.

I believe it's fair to say that a really high-end, heavy buff/debuff team will have survivability well under control for the vast bulk of the game's content. I believe it's fair to say that such a team, generally, doesn't benefit much from adding a Tank, and will probably even lose some sliver of efficiency in the deal. Again, through most content.

I don't believe it's fair to say that all high-end teams are necessarily degraded by the inclusion of a Tanker, or that no high-end team can benefit more from a Tanker than from a hat-picked DPSer. I don't believe anyone here has argued (as you asserted in a previous post) that a Tanker would necessarily increase overall team speed, just that there are instances where a Tanker can increase overall team speed.

By this point, the starkness of your original statement (which may not have been fully intended) has degraded into a rather tepid position, over which it's hardly worth arguing. We're down to splitting hairs. All I will ask is that you consider the following two team loadouts; look at them and think about whether the one without the Tanker is necessarily better-suited to run something like, say, the Lord Recluse Strike Force in a good time.

Team 1

2 Kinetics Defenders
2 Storm/Sonic Defenders
1 Rad Defender
1 Fire Blaster
2 SR Scrappers

Team 2

2 Kinetics Defenders
2 Storm/Sonic Defenders
1 Rad Defender
1 Fire Blaster
1 SR Scrapper
1 INV/SS Tanker

Both teams satisfy the general offensive requirements of your calculations. Neither one has a whole lot of buff/debuff-derived mitigation that translates well to a fight against multiple level 53 AVs. The task is certainly possible for both teams, even easy depending on the specifics of each build and the skill of the players -- but one team has a distinct, and potentially very important, advantage. The other just has imperceptibly more damage.

Team 2 might actually finish off the Phalanx faster because it has an easier time bunching them together.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Sure, if you don't have illusion trolls, you absolutely need a tank or a scrapper/brute with taunt. With enough buffs though, I've seen a scrapper with taunt hold recluse with all towers up. Of course, that is not ideal, considering that means we're losing damage on the two towers.

A pair of ill/colds/ill/rads on recluse means, they throw their debuffs on the towers, and then hold recluse with decoys; their personal damage wasn't too high to start with, so the team isn't losing much there.

On a LRSF, 6 decoys, 7 AV's, works rather well
Gathering them is useful, but as long as the illusions 'know' how to play their toon, you'd be surprised on how well one can control his decoys (I not being one of the better ones, but I've seen some amazing ill trolls).

Of course, considering we 'don't have illusion trolls, given the team compositions, both on LRSF and STF, I'd go with team 2 - but that's mostly because the buff/debuff on that team is already rather low (not in terms of -resistance, but usually having a sonic resonance and/or cold toon really helps team survivability). Also the scrappers are SR, so they'll have a harder time surviving. On STF, it would be a really bad idea to go with team 1 I actually would not run either team without modifications, unless I knew at least five out of the eight really well and knew they were superb players.

But all of that was true pre-i20; post i20, I wouldn't particularly root for team 1, but I wouldn't care much either way - since if even with 2-3 people having T4 barrier/rebirth, the teams survivability would jump incredibly.

I usually don't count post i20 though, I think the incarnate powers achieved their purpose, made our teams literally gods.


So long story short, yes, tanks can be useful, I never said they aren't. Usually on my teams though, again I iterate, I am only speaking of teams that I usually put together, they are not particularly a +, at best, they're not much of a -. Which brings me back to my point, would I take a tank on a high end team? Naah.

I should've probably have stated clearly though would I take one on a high end team that I built for record runs and considering no one really wanted to bring their tank and I didn't have first hand knowledge of the damage capability of the people who wanted to bring their tanks and all the players I was getting were good at their toons which I knew either directly or indirectly and the scrappers and brutes were really high dps and we had one very good kin or 2 kins and we had 4 solid debuffers and...

..it just seemed simpler to state, that the fact that post i20 a tank has solo'd a GM, is well, an achievement, it does count as solo, but does it change the fact that I'd bring a tank along on a high end team now? No. Essentially this entire conversation started with my trying to put across that even with T4 incarnate powers, I do not consider a tank any more or any less of an asset than I did before; when compared to an equally T4'ed and well built scrapper/brute/debuffer/SoA.

I do suppose I did go overboard with the "tanks are just crutches" statement, that could have been phrased better. I also admitted that after doing more analysis 'after' reading people's viewpoints on this thread, I did admit that I was wrong about the 'amount' that a tank would hurt the damage of said team.

It's a matter of semantics, then. I don't consider my Team 2 example to be less than a "high-end team" in the grand scheme of things. Generally, I consider anything with that amount of buff/debuff to be in the very upper echelon of possible team compositions. You may not personally wish to run that team. Hell, ideally, I'd want to tweak it too just to account for user error -- but at the end of the day what matters is that team is capable of doing crazy things, in principle.

Fair enough; I've been too strident at times in this thread too.

(Also, as an aside -- the last time I checked, anyone with Hover and a means of holding Recluse's attention can tank him. Poor AI FTW.)

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Well, not anyone. I've seen Illusion controllers sniped out of the sky during that moment in perma-PA when aggro hands off to the new pets and for a moment LR sets his sights on the controller.

In fact, I was one of those Illusion controllers a while ago when I was on an LRSF and found myself trying to control LR aggro while very much out of practice on my Ill. It took a few zaps before I recovered my double-decoy timing.

(Perma-PA isn't a guaranteed method of holding aggro, because the old group despawns as the new group spawns, but the new group doesn't get aggro until they actually attack the target which can sometimes unpredictably create a couple of seconds of gap no matter how solid your perma-PA recharge is. The only surefire way to permanently lock aggro on the pets and not have it spill to yourself is to use the Phantasm decoys as the bridge across PA castings, which takes some practice to get the timing consistently right.)

You really want the hoverer to have taunt though; Recluse can get frisky. I *have* tanked him with a blaster before, but I sure would never want to do that again.

In fact, for safety sake, if we don't have illusion trolls on casual speed runs (I know, 'casual speed', sounds contradictory), we take along a stoney (sometimes I even take mine), just to be able to autopilot through the TF. Since we have kins all the time, even a Stone/Fire or Stone/Dark can do some serious damage. Again, not as much as a scrapper or brute :P but enough to not to worry about too much. With all the data gathered on this thread, I think I'll start running with stoney's more, considering it seems the damage loss is minmal, plus a superb experienced player on a stoney is probably going to give the team more damage than an average player on a scrapper or brute.


I did say, I do like playing my stoney once in a while

Actually, it gets better; on our STF's, we never take out the flier before recluse (we take it out after the TF for the 2 merits if someone 'really' wants them).

So my illusion troll is usually tanking recluse AND is taking flier aggro; which is why having capped ranged defense and 30-50% s/l resistances helps (Ill/Cold FTW!) With that aid-self and the one shot rule allow him to survive.

Even then, we usually keep 2 illusion trolls on recluse, because even though recluse really isn't as much of a danger (I shoot straight up way out of his range right before my decoys are about to die, and then recast them in the air, letting them fall down on recluse), that switch to new pets, is sometimes laggy enough that he loses aggro completely and moves to the rest of the team. If another set of decoys are already up, he aggros on them instead.


Of course, barrier is a godsend here

EDIT: Oh yeah, I hit the phantasm too before the decoys are about to go out. He usually gets one shot if he gains recluse aggro, but it does help bridge that gap between decoy casts. The problem is, DESPITE the phantasm, sometimes in laggy conditions, even then recluse can de-aggro and go after team members.

I wouldn't rely on that: the one shot rule ignores DoT and multiple damage components.


The trick is to recast the phantasm about 15-20 seconds before the PA will despawn. One of the first things the Phantasm will do is cast his own decoy. That decoy taunts, and will therefore be next in line to get aggro when the PA despawn, and before the next cycle of PA reacquire aggro.

To make this work for long periods of time, the phantasm should have about the same recharge as the PA. Otherwise eventually the system will stagger itself out of sync and you'll be exposed. Note: the phantasm decoy lasts only 30 seconds. The Phantasm will eventually recast it, but there will definitely be a gap between. Thus the recommendation above to cast the Phantasm about 15-20 seconds before the PA is going to despawn. Too much earlier and you could have both despawn at the same time. Too much later and the Phantasm might not cast it quickly enough to lock in aggro. Which is why this takes a small amount of practice to get the timing right.

Oh, I guess I kinda neglected to mention the other over-powering reason to have the second illusion troll. Um once in a while, one 'does' die

You're forgetting the big badass flier usually hovering over our heads (usually right in front actually since we're hovering fairly high up). If I cast the phantasm too early, he doesn't always stay on recluse, he switches to the flier at times.


Usually casting more than 3 times is actually moot, since the team usually gets one tower down in about 30-40s, the other in a similar time, then they're all on recluse. I usually get to about 3 casts, sometimes 4 on a slow team - this is of course on the increased recharge.

FAI The first sentence isn't true. The second sentence doesn't mean that all Scrappers need to be buffed.

My SR scrapper can easily tank all the AVs and do the entire STF without dying so SR is not a set that has to have trouble surviving.

*shrug* I'll rephrase that; if you don't have illusion trolls, you really want a toon with taunt on a LRSF or STF. Cool?

Not all scrappers need to be buffed, but SR scrappers typically would if they are going to take on Recluse or the Freedom Phalanx.
Again, need is subjective - an SR scrapper could load up on large oranges and manage it, but that is um, less than ideal.

Not everyone speeds, nor enjoys it. There are plenty of awesome players that actually don't "like" to speed.

But, if you are really into speeding like I am, picking AT's is quite gratifying.
I've actually had a time when I had a whole bunch of people on Virtue hating me because they thought I was an AT'ist (some of them still do! :P). It is in the end about playing how you want. This is how I want it, I don't enforce it on anyone else, and yes, luckily our population is small enough to escape the big looming hammer of nerf

Yet power sets usually have more to do with performance than ATs. You talk of 'debuffers' but what you really mean 'Cold Domination' and 'Kinetics'. You're so hot to get a Defender, but not if they're TA/Elec.


.

TA/Elec is a great combo. TA on its own is really good, what with all kinds of debuffs. Combining it with elec means the defender can always light his own tar patch and that he can stack holds with Ice Arrow.

Let me play my game the way I want to and you play it yours?

He can't play the game his way. His way would be a tanker soloing a GM without using anything more than brawl and sprint.

and the biggest problem with that is your 'facts' trying to prove that tankers are hurting teams more then they benefit teams. You want to play things you way, but your also trying to prove that your way is better then everyone elses.

Once you started doing that, its pretty hard to go back to the 'well, you play your way and i'll play mine' and it really shreds up any facts you may or may not have discovered.

Context? Hurting very well optimized team by a little given a certain number of debuffers. I still stick by that, what's your point?

Should I be caring about people's feelings being hurt by implying that their beloved tank toons are not really viable in every single situation?


I really think you are slightly confused here.
Stating that someone should play the game they want to and let me play it my way somehow shreds all the facts I have discovered?
I usually don't use l33tspeak much but I believe this would express what I want to say best,

...wut?

Tankers aren't supposed to sprint. They pull the Earth towards them until their destination arrives underfoot.