Blaster performance test.

Very interested in seeing how this pans out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy Why would you pick /Dark instead of /Cold if you wanted a super-corruptor?

This is a good question, actually. I'd personally opine that for a strictly solo Corruptor, Dark may be a better choice - Dark Miasma only has one power that has no application for a solo player while Cold Domination has three. Tar Patch duplicates the most important part of Sleet (the -RES), Shadow Fall's resistances are arguably slightly more useful than Arctic Fog's, Dark Miasma has two mezzes (one soft, one hard), and Dark Miasma's -regen has better uptime (if I'm right about you being able to use Howling Twilight without dead allies present).

Cold does have more -RES debuffs, but one of them only has 50% uptime at best on SOs, and three of its powers are skips for a solo-only corruptor. It's also relatively light on debuffs which reduce your enemy's ability to hurt you, which is where Dark excels with all the stacking -tohit and -dmg.

On a team, though, Cold Domination is likely miles better, and the inclusion of IOs would slant things further in Cold's favor I think.

Still, I'm not confident enough to say that Dark is better for soloing with conviction. I think it stands a solid chance of being more survivable but also probably does a little less raw dps.

I did a quick read over the posts and don't think I saw this pointed out. I'm guessing you are running the level 1 - 15 ish type content. Isn't it well documented and pretty much common knowledge that at this point the blaster AT is at its strongest. More attacks than any other AT, damage scale vs. foe HP is much more friendly, and incoming damage is much more manageable.

Its something like level 22 ish up, where AT damage modifiers kick in, foe HP scales and their damage starts to increase much faster than blaster damage.

I realize that all of us are different and we are quite likely to play our toons differently. We all have different resources at our disposal, different experiences and not all players are likely to use a blasters rain of fire or Ice storm as a damage mitigation tool as opposed to additional damage.

I feel quite certain that each of us that has played several types of blasters has all the data we need at our disposal. The question would seem to me a matter of how to interpret the data.

Comparing a blaster to a stalker is like comparing cookies to cake. Both are good alone or with ice cream. Both archetypes have strengths and weaknesses.

You can take the very best stalker and compare it in a pylon test with the very best blaster.
Surely you can compare DPS, provided both characters can handle the splash damage from the pylon. Most likely, the stalker could, but the blaster would have a rougher time of it.

I certainly appreciate the view that a blasters damage isn't king, particularly at the higher levels. And I am irritated for my blaster that a brute or a tank, or any other AT for that matter can get a nuke (judgement) with no end crash. So can my blaster, but now, a blasters ultimate weapon can be replaced with any other AT.

All that said, I would suggest that player A may adapt to playing a stalker with far more ease than a blaster. Whereas, player B may prove better at playing a blaster. One players experiences with comparisons are interesting, but hardly conclusive, even with a hundred different players. The data set would still be too small.

Once again, the Blaster died once, but it didn't have an impact on the experience gained. It was actually a fluke death during the (I think) third Dr. Graves mission, I didn't remember that a Hellion would spawn in the beginning of the map, I went to run straight to the computer half-paying attention and reading help and he stomped me. >.> I played the Stalker second so I didn't make the same mistake twice. I'm still counting the defeat in the interest of fairness though.

DP/Dark Blaster
Total levels: 2
Total defeats: 1

3:35 Dr. Graves (1 defeats)
4:02 lvl 8

4:09 COT glowie Newspaper (0 defeats)

4:16 Hellions glowie Newspaper (0 defeats)

4:25 COT hostage Newspaper (0 defeats)
4:29 lvl 9

4:34 complete

Elec/Ninj Stalker
Total levels: 2
Total defeats: 0

4:54 Dr. Graves (0 defeats)
5:21 lvl 8

5:29 COT defeat boss Newspaper (0 defeats)

5:37 Hellions glowie Newspaper (0 defeats)

5:44 COT hostage Newspaper (0 defeats)
5:47 lvl 9

5:52 complete

Quick question for you by the way. I know the other day you played using the default difficulty settings (and I assume you did today too), but is there a pre-set point where you plan on upping that, are you playing at default the entire way or are you just going to play it by ear? If the two do ever end up playing on different difficulties it might be easiest to just note it in the bold section with the powersets and AT.

As an aside, I am surprised you've had more deaths with the blaster at this point. I was expecting them to be about even until the late teens or so.

I'm interested in seeing more results from THB, but there are far too many uncontrolled variables for the experiment to mean anything when it comes to relative blaster performance.

First, the experiment is completely longitudinal and contains no analysis of any of the other powersets available to blasters (or stalkers). As a result, the experiment is completely irrelevant as to whether blasters are underperforming as a whole. Taking a single representative of a group and pitting it against a single representative of another group says very little about comparing the groups. Stats 101.

Second, there's other uncontrolled variables. What if THB is worse at playing blasters than stalkers, as in one playstyle is easier for him to play than the other? What if he plays one variable while he is awake and alert and the other while he is tired and sleepy (or drunk :P)? What if THB is a great player (or crappy) in general and is not representative of average skill required to play each build? What if the differences in kill rate/death rate (if any) are more attributable to a ST vs. AoE analysis? Playing at +0/x0 with fewer enemies benefits ST much more than playing at -1/x8. It's possible then that THB could find his lone stalker to outperform his lone blaster at +0/x0 simply because blasters perform better against more enemies. I'm reminded of the scenario in which it's often better to turn up the enemy count and lower the enemy levels when playing a brute simply because of the way Fury works. What if the proximity of spawns in missions favors powers that are more frequently usable than powers that are stronger but recharge less often? I'm reminded of the old farming threads asking whether FSC or LR was better for the non-AE farms. And this list is far from exhaustive.

Just way too many variables that could affect the outcome of THB's results in such a small sample-size experiment. This is why Arcanaville argues for relying on large scale statistical data mining to determine AT performance issues rather than small scale model comparisons. With this many variables at play, THB's experiment logically cannot provide any larger conclusions than "THB's DP/Dark blaster died more/less often on the same missions than THB's Elec/Nin stalker." That's useful and interesting on its own (hence my enjoyment of this experiment; I plan on asking which story arcs were his favorites so I can give em a try), but applying that conclusion to the much more complex issue of general blaster under-performance would be a clear fallacy.

Is this where I point out that gathering data with a clear bias on what you want that data to prove makes the results less credible. I suppose it is very 'statistics' like though. snarf snarf