City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Blaster performance test.

-Urchin-

By -Urchin-,
Posted on: 2012-03-26 11:39 in Blasters

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Little_Whorn View Post
hehe, I can't be the only one amused that a thread about blaster performance contains posts about the extent to which Kepler's physics discoveries were influenced by Tycho.
The problems of using an analogy in an argument on the internet.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Another_Fan View Post
The error between the predictions of Ptolemaic system as calculated in the Almagest, and Mars's actual position peak at roughly 30 arc minutes. Kepler indeed needed to be driven crazy by the problem but that was mostly just being directed at it by someone who wanted him spinning his wheels. He needed Tycho's data to get other people to agree and to show the behavior was "Universal".

You have to remember even after he published his full work, which IIRC was post his conversion to Catholicism, Tycho's Geo Helio model was still picking up steam. Just on the basis that it kept the earth in the center of things even if it had planets orbiting the sun, and corrected the predictive problems that were in the Copernican model, and the Ptolemaic model. It's a really a great example of how large volumes of data can be completely deceiving.
Its really more a case where Tycho was an excellent observer but a poor analyst. Tycho's data didn't "deceive" him so much as the skill needed to derive a good theory from them was beyond his ability. Kepler was the better mathematician and the better analyst of the data.

Ultimately, the data demonstrated that circular orbits of any kind couldn't work for all planetary bodies, and that geocentric models couldn't be made to work with actual observed planetary motion once they were known above a certain level of accuracy. Observational data didn't just suggest a heliocentric model with elliptical orbits, it much more importantly eliminated all other theories from contention.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Its really more a case where Tycho was an excellent observer but a poor analyst. Tycho's data didn't "deceive" him so much as the skill needed to derive a good theory from them was beyond his ability. Kepler was the better mathematician and the better analyst of the data.

Ultimately, the data demonstrated that circular orbits of any kind couldn't work for all planetary bodies, and that geocentric models couldn't be made to work with actual observed planetary motion once they were known above a certain level of accuracy. Observational data didn't just suggest a heliocentric model with elliptical orbits, it much more importantly eliminated all other theories from contention.
This was already known. Mercury had its own model in the Ptolemaic system just to deal with its orbit. When criticizing Tycho, you have to remember what his goals were. He wanted to preserve the earth at the center of the universe while reducing errors between observation and prediction. His model was a great success by that standard, was widely adopted and made better predictions than the Copernican model.

Now if you go back to the Original analogy Tycho's model provided better predictions of the observed position of the planets in earths night sky than either Kepler's platonic solid theory, or Copernicus's theory, but if you tried to get there using Tycho's system you would be really out of luck, but with either of the Heliocentric systems you would do much better.

That is the problem with using snapshot statistics of how players are playing anything in the game when you want to make a change. You stop just trying to fit curves to your data and comparing how things are, you are voyaging someplace new. When you make the change player behavior also changes, how little or how much is anyone's guess but you are always betting it is too little to invalidate your model.

My favorite RL example was Bill Clinton's luxury tax. The idea being if you put a large tax on luxury goods, rich people would just pay it because they wanted the goods and could afford it. Well the people it was supposed to tax were perfectly willing to take a little time to find ways to avoid the tax, and all it wound up doing was nearly killing several industries in this country.

 

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Originally Posted by New Dawn View Post
This kind of test possibly won't be conclusive. I did 2 lvl 50s, one a TA/A Defender and one a A/TA Corrupter, built the similarly. Gave them the same arc, and alternately played them, each doing a mission for the first time etc. My conclusion was that it was harder to solo a Defender and since Defenders have been buffed since; that's not a bad conclusion considering:

1) For each character the missions did differ despite being the same name, setting etc.
2) I did not try out other Defender/Corrupter combos with the same test.

If you so much as give different travel powers things differ.

The tester could be more skilled with a Stalker and certainly as playing a Blaster correctly solo is so much less obvious so I will go with that anyway. Blasters need a team to truly be able to unleash their true power safely it is written.

A Stalker being able to solo easier than a Blaster would be as expected given the archetype description of a Scrapper talking of which a Stalker closely resembles.

There will be opportunities to make a Blaster pull out in front of a Stalker solo, but which Blaster versus what Stalker or will the factions that unwittingly produce these opportunities be faced? Will the Blaster be built to make hay with the factions limitations?
THB's test has one common variable, THB.

Its but a single test of a stalker vs blaster solo. I am interested in seeing how it turns out. I would probably run scrapper vs blaster but this has been more informative than all the bickering and threadjacks.

H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD

 

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Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
I've been using inspirations equally on both as they're needed. No temporary powers on either, no XP boosters on either, veteran powers and ninja run on both.
I don't know if it was mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but you probably shouldn't be using veteran powers or ninja run.

These abilities aren't intrinsic to the power sets so including them has probably affected your results in some ways compared to how they would have been if you stuck to the characters' inherent abilities.

I think a bare-boned comparison, limited as much as possible to abilities any new player would have as part of their sets and similar pool powers for the characters when possible, would yield better results.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
Honestly a lot of it is probably that I'm playing the Blaster first and playing the Stalker directly after, doing essentially all the same things. I've already memorized exactly where everything is having just done it on the Blaster by the time I do it again on the Stalker... Especially the Dr. Graves missions and the Bocor arc so far. The difficulty is exactly the same. Another thing is that the Blaster has Hover and Combat Jumping, and I still haven't set up binds yet to switch between those and Ninja Run. The Stalker doesn't have any conflicting toggles. This might not seem like it would be a big deal, but I think the time toggling back and forth is adding up. Next, the Stalker has much more defense than the Blaster, so the Blaster uses rest more often. I find I'm getting a bit more "bang for my buck" inspiration wise on the Stalker. Finally the Blaster has to take a more indirect route to missions to avoid aggroing enemies on the streets sometimes (like was mentioned above) which may be leading to longer transit times between missions, but I haven't really felt a noticeable time gap there. All that being said, as of right now both characters are within 2 XP bars of each other, so while the difference might be noticeable it's hardly a large discrepancy when it comes down to it, at least at this point.
Well, even if you took an extra 1 second per mob setting up the position for a cone attack, over the course of one mission that may add anything from 10 seconds (in these low missions) to half a minute. Compounded over multiple missions, that could also be a factor, compared to ninja-running in, electric fists blazing.

 

Posted

If anything the veteran powers likely favor the blaster over the stalker, I suspect.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by -Urchin- View Post
I don't know if it was mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but you probably shouldn't be using veteran powers or ninja run.

These abilities aren't intrinsic to the power sets so including them has probably affected your results in some ways compared to how they would have been if you stuck to the characters' inherent abilities.

I think a bare-boned comparison, limited as much as possible to abilities any new player would have as part of their sets and similar pool powers for the characters when possible, would yield better results.
This isn't meant as a "be all, end all" sort of thing, or anything even remotely close to it. Those veteran powers will be useful up to like, level 20 max. I've hardly used them at all since level 10, and with travel powers available early now I don't see NR being a huge issue either. I'm not expecting to provide flawless results meant to simulate the experience of every single potential Blaster player vs. Melee player, that would probably take me like two years and by the time I finished the game will have changed so much (more than likely) that everything I found out would be irrelevant anyways.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
This isn't meant as a "be all, end all" sort of thing, or anything even remotely close to it. Those veteran powers will be useful up to like, level 20 max. I've hardly used them at all since level 10, and with travel powers available early now I don't see NR being a huge issue either. I'm not expecting to provide flawless results meant to simulate the experience of every single potential Blaster player vs. Melee player, that would probably take me like two years and by the time I finished the game will have changed so much (more than likely) that everything I found out would be irrelevant anyways.
I did not suggest you simulate the experience of every single potential Blaster player vs. Melee player, nor did I suggest you collect flawless results as it would be impossible for you to do so, or anything close to either of those two overblown exaggerations.

My suggestion was intended to make this one particular comparison you chose to do provide as useful and flawless data as possible by keeping the characters as pure to their base as they can be, and to keep them as similar as possible with pool powers in the spirit of "all other things being equal".

That the veteran powers "will only matter to 20 max" is irrelevant as the comparison goes from 1-50 and the data should be as accurate as possible for all those levels, not just those above 20. These powers give the characters access to non-intrinsic abilities that compromise the comparison. Ninja Run provides for extra mobility within missions not intrinsic to the compared pair which corrupts the data further.

If you're going to be sloppy in your methods, thus compromising your collected data and any observations made from it, why bother with the exercise at all.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by -Urchin- View Post
I did not suggest you simulate the experience of every single potential Blaster player vs. Melee player, nor did I suggest you collect flawless results as it would be impossible for you to do so, or anything close to either of those two overblown exaggerations.

My suggestion was intended to make this one particular comparison you chose to do provide as useful and flawless data as possible by keeping the characters as pure to their base as they can be, and to keep them as similar as possible with pool powers in the spirit of "all other things being equal".

That the veteran powers "will only matter to 20 max" is irrelevant as the comparison goes from 1-50 and the data should be as accurate as possible for all those levels, not just those above 20. These powers give the characters access to non-intrinsic abilities that compromise the comparison. Ninja Run provides for extra mobility within missions not intrinsic to the compared pair which corrupts the data further.

If you're going to be sloppy in your methods, thus compromising your collected data and any observations made from it, why bother with the exercise at all.
tl;dr I used ninja run and shadow maul so this is now completely pointless and nothing interesting or potentially useful can be had from this thread for anyone. Got it. Move along.

 

Posted

This was never intended to be a scientific study.
This, if I'm correct, was more intended to be a 'how do they compare in feeling and performance to me' kind of journal.
One we can continue to use as a catalyst for discussion.

I happen to find this experiment to be interesting and useful just for my own perceptions, YMMV.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by TwoHeadedBoy View Post
tl;dr I used ninja run and shadow maul so this is now completely pointless and nothing interesting or potentially useful can be had from this thread for anyone. Got it. Move along.
No, but its worth noting because its not likely to be controversial to state that faster travel reduces the penalty of dying, and decreasing damage output lengthens fights which benefits the characters with better survivability. So all other things being equal, using veteran attacks and ninja run should slightly mute the difference between a blaster and a stalker, if the stalker was intrinsically more survivable to start.

At the moment ninja run can only contribute to a small differential in death, so its probably worth no more than a couple minutes tops. Its less clear how sands of mu affects things, although it will largely become a non-issue probably before level 20 regardless.

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Posted

I decided to skip over the enemies as often as possible for both characters (the Blaster has pool stealth so this is doable) during the Radio's arc because I was hoping the end-of-the-arc XP would be a greater benefit by the end. Unfortunately the Radio doesn't give any 'arc complete' XP so I'm a moron.

I'm sure some of you might object to this, but at level 17 I'm going to slot generic level 20 IO's on both characters. This might mean my experiment isn't perfect, blah, blah, outrage, SO's, etc. but I'm not doing this for the increased performance, and I'm not using any sets or global unique bonuses. I just freaking hate how quickly TO/DO/SO's expire, I'm doing this to save myself some time. I'll be slotting generic IO's at levels 20, 35, 40, and 50 on both characters. Right now they're both very close to level 14 (within 2 bars on each.) Once they hit 17, I'll post what the builds will look like at level 20.


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

The Radio
9:02 Steal Outbreak from Lost
9:08 lvl 13

9:10 drop off canisters

9:20 Beat Wyvern Rep

9:25 Force tech to get codebreakers
9:31 defeated (trapped on map)

9:34 get hit list

9:47 take out wyvern financer

9:51 bust up legacy initiation

9:57 learn spy identity

Elec/Ninj Stalker
10:01 complete
Total levels: 0
Total defeats: 0

The Radio
1:06 Steal Outbreak from the Lost

1:13 drop off canisters

1:27 take out Wyvern financer

1:30 bust up legacy initiation

1:35 beat Wyvern rep for info

1:55 catch council spy

1:39 Force tech to get codebreakers

1:44 get the hit list

1:52 learn spy identity

1:55 catch council spy

1:59 The Radio complete

1:59 Circle of Thorns defeat boss Newspaper

2:04 complete

 

Posted

Generic level IOs are fine IMHO as long as they're all that's used on both characters. This is because any VIP player can get them. If you used all DOs then your results would be less, but still relevent.

It's when players start speccing out with Uniques and hundreds of millions in set IOs that I begin to object.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fulmens View Post
Level 20 isn't where I'd pick and stick: three level 25's give roughly the effect of four level 20's, so there is a significant difference in performance.
The thing is that right now the characters are both struggling (mainly with endurance) and I want to get something slotted in them ASAP. I'll consider upgrading from level 20's to 25's when I hit 22 also though.

 

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Originally Posted by Fulmens View Post
Yeah, that's what I usually do with any character that I'm doing much soloing on- DO's at 15, IO's at 20, SOs or new IOs at 25.
I do something like that for the most part, but I tend to stick to SOs until 32 or so when I can just slot the 35 IOs and mostly forget about things until I decide to delve into the set IOs (usually in the late 40s).

MA Arcs: Yarmouth 1509 and 58812

 

Posted

I don't make alts often, but not counting this project, the last couple of times I've made new characters I've slotted 3% uniques, KB protection IO's, miracle/numina uniques, and a mix of frankenslotted sets that were upgraded throughout the 20's and beyond. Needless to say this whole thing is outside my comfort zone.

 

Posted

Most of the time I'll stick to SOs till 47, besides a KB protection. Refresh them every time I can.

 

Posted

Time to level 13: Blaster: 40 min, 1 death. Stalker: 41 min, 0 deaths.

Total time from level 3 to level 13: Blaster: 286 min, 6 deaths. Stalker: 268 min, 4 deaths; 259 min, 4 deaths adjusted for Bocor mission

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Posted

Good work being done here.

All things being equal, small differences before 20 should become magnified after 20, since archetypes are less differentiated before 20.

(Of course, not all things are equal, since critters after 20 are different from critters before 20, and may very well pose more of a challenge to one archetype over another. We'll have to wait and see for that.)

Code: 
Player&Level Blaster Stalker
THB 2 to 3    13m    13m
THB 3 to 4      7m     5m
THB 4 to 5     14m   11m
THB 5 to 6     13m   15m
THB 6 to 7     11m   13m
THB 7 to 8     27m   27m
THB 8 to 9     27m   26m
THB 9 to 10   42m   46m
THB 10 to 11  48m   39m
THB 11 to 12  57m   45m
THB 12 to 13  40m   41m
Diel 2 to 3      5m      5m
Diel 3 to 4      8m      8m
Diel 4 to 5     10m   10m
Diel 5 to 6       9m     9m
Diel 6 to 7     14m   14m
Diel 7 to 8     18m   15m
Paired t-test yields a two-tailed p-value of 0.21. Not really a significant result (
Last edited by Rigel_Kent; 04-10-2012 at 01:14 PM.

 

Posted

Indeed, I have no issue with basic IO's being used, to keep from having to re buy every few levels.

I'd be willing to say I was okay with sets being used, as long as they were the same for both, if it wasn't for the base levels being different that is.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rigel_Kent View Post
Crunched the stats on Arcanaville's 3 to 13 times. I didn't take off the 9 minutes for the stalker's bad defeat all because I didn't know which level it happened on.
Between 10 and 11. I wouldn't mention it, except for the fact that its an obvious massive outlier. The two characters are tending to run missions within a couple minutes of each other most of the time, but on this mission the blaster ran it in about 7 minutes (or rather, the time from entering it to entering the next mission was 7 minutes so there's some travel in there) while the Stalker ran it in 19 minutes, with a note that some critters couldn't be found and it was eventually autocompleted. The stalker leveled at the 10 minute mark so I know a kill happened there, and so I assumed the remaining 9 minutes was just searching the map. For completeness sake, I mention both times with and without that extra time.

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