[X] My Assistant

Endgame Cleared!


So I took some of core's advice and gave my Abilities an overhaul once I hit Level 100. Freed up all my elemental AP, maxed out HP and MP, then maxed out my Elec, Holy, and Soul spells. Wasn't sure how mana intensive Endgame would be, so I went in with 2 Superior Spirit Potions, 4 Superior Mana Potions, and 4 Superior Mana Draughts (I generally use Greaters for day-to-day stuff, save anything stronger for bosses). I came out with both Spirits, 2 Draughts, and 1 Potion left.
I kinda forgot core's warning that Manthras are resistant to both Holy and Elec, but they reminded me, by showing up 3 rounds in a row, and right before the final round, no less. If I had figured out sooner that Soul seems to a work a bit better than either of those, I might have saved on a Potion or two.
Got Mithra for the boss, and I thought having no AP in Spirit/OC would make things rough, but no. Weakened her while I took down everything else, triggered PA on her, and then a Poison+Spirit+Holy combo wiped her out in a few turns. I don't think she even got a big attack off.
Now I'm off to work on this Forbidden prof. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

I'm wondering what style you use for Grindfest and Heroic/Exquisite IW. I can easily do 150+ rounds of Normal/Exquisist with few items, but that's mostly because the monsters die so fast to my spells that they get almost no attacks in against me. Doing it on Heroic would give them far too much HP for me to take them down quickly enough, so I'm very curious about how you do it. It's obviously working out extremely well for you.

Basically, just xp to lvl 180+. My gameplay didn't change since the beginning : DW or 1H+S if you have a ~40% block shield.
lvl 130-140 i couldn't go farther than 120-130 rounds on a normal average IW in DW.
What helped me a lot are in order :
- finding a good shield
- better overall stats/proficiencies/regen from new pieces of gear and leveling
- having heartseeker (casted with mystics gems)
- getting every aura perks (just bought rainbow aura yesterday)

I wear 4 clothes and 1 light (because i didn't find a good cloth for that slot).

To be honest, i don't see how the full plate way can be better without being exquisiste/magnificient.

Exemple with physical mitigation :
The best damage reduction i saw on an item is 10 physical absorb + 5% physical reduction + average of 3% for the other type of physical damage.
So, even if you have 5 pieces like that (i do not), it gives you ~22% reduction + 50 absorption for every incoming physical damage, + ~14% reduction average for every specific type of physical damage.
Throw in a 200 prof for heavy gear and you get a 26.4% damage reduction + ~17% for the other types, or a ~40% total damage reduction + 50 absorb (monsters hits you for 500-1000 and bosses for 1000+ before reduction). But! you do not have any single % of evade on heavy gear, and you have at least ~20 interference and burden per piece. Even with 200 prof you're looking at 50 interference/burden at least, without taking into account the weapons.

With my current gear, far from being only exquisite phase, and say, 200 prof in light/cloth, i have 13% total physical reduc. + 11 absorb. + 24% avoidance. But, with only 11.4 burden and 2 interference (always without weapons). So my regen ticks for quite more than being in full plate, and my action speed is ~40 faster (which is a lot at high level).

But where the real difference is, is when you use Shadow Veil. Shadow Veil stack additively with your evade %, so if you have 0%, shadow veil will decrease incoming damage by an average of 25%. But if you have 50% , it will decrease incoming damage by 50% !

Currently, stacking evade is the way to go. If you have 5 pieces with 8% evade (i've never see one with that much, but it seems that ~15% gear existed before, omg), you would get 40% evade from gear only + 10% from agility (250) + 2% from ascended title + 4% from yellow aura, or 55% total evade. With shadow veil at max prof, it gives 81%. If you have 50% block chance with a good shield and high prof, it's over 90% chance of not being hitten by any incoming damage, not accounting parry/resist. That's pretty much overpowered.

But if you get one piece with 15% evade, evade from gear gets to 45%, or a 86% total evade with shadow veil, or 93% in 1H+S. WAY overpowered, and will probably be nerfed in some way soon enough, even if only guys like hito can really benefit from it, if they have the required gear.

So, principle is simple : Max cloth items with max avoidance + good protection leather items in slots where you don't have good cloth + 1 good MH rapier with a nice proc chance and either a good dagger, or a good shield (shield prefered). And, before eveything else, focusing on xp, which simply changes the game by itself, without you doing anything special.

Complete gear link :
Fine Ruby Rapier of Slaughter
Average Ruby Kite Shield of the Barrier
Fine Gossamer Cap of the Fox
Fine Silk Robe of the Fleet
Fine Phase Gloves of the Elementalist
Average Silk Pants of the Fleet
Fine Dragon Hide Boots of Negation

Current stats :
Physical Attack
+45.7 % damage
+49 % hit chance
+3.5 % crit chance
Magical Attack
+7 % damage
+21.3 % hit chance
+0 % crit chance
Physical Defense
23.2 points absorbed
12.3 % mitigation
Magical Defense
30.9 points absorbed
12.2 % mitigation
Avoidance
+39.9 % evade
+46.6 % block
+15 % parry
+22.5 % resist
Compromise
12.4 interference
27.5 burden

This post has been edited by vaelh: Jan 21 2010, 04:43

I'm pretty sure your wrong about how Shadow Veil works. With 50% evade and 50% block a maxed out (25%) SV will bring you from 75% avoid to 81% avoid. Not 90+.

It is not additive, and it is also physical damage only, comparable to parry.

so

But where the real difference is, is when you use Shadow Veil. Shadow Veil stack additively with your evade %, so if you have 0%, shadow veil will decrease incoming damage by an average of 25%. But if you have 50% , it will decrease incoming damage by 50% !

Yes its 25% at 0% base evade, but if you already have 50% base it brings you up to an effective 62.5% (an additional 12.5%, which is 25% of the remaining average damage you would have taken statistically with 50% evade). For physical damage only.


Otherwise I agree, avoidance stacking is the way to go in my opinion as well.

On a completely unrelated note... gblargh every piece of my equip is better than yours, but your exp bonuses own me D:

It seems that Shadow Veil does stack additively with you evade. At least, sonic's latest calculator count it this way.
It would be great to have a confirmation using actual ingame stats.

Atleast from the statistic testing I've done with cmal's HV STAT script it is not additive. It is also be decreasing enemy accuracy, not increasing your evade.

Still, I'm just going off the tooltip and the statistics I recorded myself, has Tenboro ever mentioned this before? Always nice to have the official word on how the game mechanics work.

Complete gear link :
Fine Ruby Rapier of Slaughter
Average Ruby Kite Shield of the Barrier
Fine Gossamer Cap of the Fox
Fine Silk Robe of the Fleet
Fine Phase Gloves of the Elementalist
Average Silk Pants of the Fleet
Fine Dragon Hide Boots of Negation

Current stats :
Physical Attack
+45.7 % damage
+49 % hit chance
+3.5 % crit chance
Magical Attack
+7 % damage
+21.3 % hit chance
+0 % crit chance
Physical Defense
23.2 points absorbed
12.3 % mitigation
Magical Defense
30.9 points absorbed
12.2 % mitigation
Avoidance
+39.9 % evade
+46.6 % block
+15 % parry
+22.5 % resist
Compromise
12.4 interference
27.5 burden

Relative to our different levels, you essentially have the same stats as myself, except that your rapier and (especially) your shield are superior to mine. For that reason, I'm still baffled by how you get so much farther into Exquisite/Heroic IWs than I can. How many ranks of Innate Arcanna do you have? What are your proficiencies? How do you balance your primary stats?

Here's my total stats:
Fighting Style
One-Handed
Mainhand Damage Type
Piercing
Offhand Damage Type
N/A
Physical Attack
+27.4 % damage
+45.6 % hit chance
+2.5 % crit chance
Magical Attack
+7 % damage
+29.5 % hit chance
+0 % crit chance
Physical Defense
14.9 points absorbed
8.5 % mitigation
Magical Defense
19.1 points absorbed
9.8 % mitigation
Avoidance
+40.1 % evade
+31.3 % block
+12.8 % parry
+9.4 % resist

12 Inteference
22 Burden

Weapon proficiency
One-handed 111.26
Two-handed 56.92
Dual wielding 103.85
Staff 99.64
Armor proficiency
Shield 111.98
Cloth armor 121.99
Light armor 84.30
Heavy armor 104.72
Magic proficiency
Elemental 110.37
Divine 86.92
Forbidden 28.87
Deprecating 102.40
Supportive 101.11
Curative 102.20


BTW, I recently talked to Sonic about Shadow Veil, and he confirmed that Tenboro told him that it's effect is added to your general evade stat, and that the tooltip saying it only works for physical attacks is wrong. I really should pick up SV again. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

EDIT: Out of curiosity, how much EXP do you get from 9-monster rounds in Heroic/Exquisite IWs? I get 2200-2500 in Normal/Exquiste.

This post has been edited by coredumperror: Jan 21 2010, 06:00

Seriously? So broken lol. I guess I hit a statistical anomaly when I tried it out.

Time to respec. Again. :/

So I just accidentally started Longest Journey while the difficulty was still on Heroic. I figured that I didn't stand a chance, but after a long, grueling battle that I might not even be able to finish. But in the end, it came down to the very last monster, and I just barely pulled it off!!

Bringing a Mana Elixir in my last item slot, which I've been doing for as long as I've had one, finally paid off. I never would have been able to take down ManBearPig if it had been anything smaller.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, how much EXP do you get from 9-monster rounds in Heroic/Exquisite IWs? I get 2200-2500 in Normal/Exquiste.

~8000 xp for a 9 monster round in heroic/exquisite IW.

I currently have 2 ranks of innate arcana, but only put haste on autocast, to not loose too much mana in the first easy rounds.
For being able to do 140 IW rounds on an exquisite item in heroic, as i already said, leveling did the trick. Even with a 40% block shield at lvl 135 (that i didn't have), i would never have been able to go farther than the round 60-70. Gaining a larger mana pool + health pool + regen + damage stats are all tied to your level, which confirm my theory that tells "in any rpg game, focusing on xp until you're in the endgame domain must be your primary objective". For HV, i think it's just after being godslayer.

For shadow veil, i compared 2 full heroic IW clean with and without it in an autocast slot.
Here are the stats :
Without :
Overall chance of getting hit: 21.54%
Miss chance: 10.31%
Evade chance: 32.94%
Block chance: 23.25%
Parry chance: 4.9%
Resist chance: 7.76%

With :
Overall chance of getting hit: 15.73%
Miss chance: 29.6%
Evade chance: 25.41%
Block chance: 17.52%
Parry chance: 3.98%
Resist chance: 5.92%

My Shadow Veil add in theory 22.5% chance of being missed.
We can conclude multiple things from thoses stats :
- Shadow Veil does not add additively to your evade, but to your chance of being missed (not fully). It's also confirmed that it works against spells. In my case, it reduced incoming damage by ~27%.
- Evade chance is a lot higher than the theory, my block chance is 10% higher than my evade in my equipment pan, but in both case i evade a lot more than i block (when both block physical and magical damage). So there might be some evade % directly added after the different multiplications, but i don't manage to find this number.

From what i see, chance of being missed is fixed, and the different other avoidance stats are then multiplied by 1-miss_chance. So if you evade 30% when you're missed 10%, you'll evade 30*0.7/0.9=23.33% when you're missed 30%.

Also, the biggest difficulty gap i've seen so far between 2 arenas in nightmare is between Longest Journey and Dreamfall. Exile, Feast for Crows and Sealed Power are about at the same difficulty (i do them in heroic), New Wings and Crusade too (in hard). Then you have the arenas with legendaries.

This post has been edited by vaelh: Jan 21 2010, 15:55

Ah yeah I was pretty sure it added to miss chance, not evade. So my statistics weren't off. I just didn't know it effected magic, good to know.

Since it is not additive, I think I'll pass on it for awhile longer, cause it has diminighing benefites the higher your other avoid stats are (when I said that with 50% evade and 50% block a maxed out (25%) SV will bring you from 75% avoid to 81% [+6%]) I was right. I doubt I would use it unless I had arcana IV.

The reason your evade shows higher than block is the order HV runs the avoidance in. Lets just assume 10% miss 50% evade 50% block for easy calcs.

First HV checks miss. 10% missed attacks, the other 90% go through.
Then HV checks evade, which will come into play for the remaining 90% that gets through, so 50% or 90 (45%)
Then HV checks block, which effects the remaining 45%, 50% of 45 is 22.5%

so your stats would display

10% miss
45% evade
22.5% block

even though your evade and block are equal because of the order and multiplicative stacking (the same reason SV doesn't directly add 25% to effective damage avoid).


D: I get 800 exp for heroic exquisite. Baw.

Power Flux Cleared!

[img.photobucket.com] (IMG:[img.photobucket.com] http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v390/Anv/th_PowerFlux.png)


PS: Copy, paste and forgot the editing (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

This post has been edited by Jonavrek: Jan 22 2010, 19:50

Endgame Cleared!

[img.photobucket.com] (IMG:[img.photobucket.com] http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v390/Anv/th_PowerFlux.png)

(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Oh, you.

This whole evade vs tank thing is ridiculous. I'm wearing my Kevlar and Phase since I finished capping 1H, 2H, and DW so I figured I'd work on armor. I just did all the Boss arenas hardly using any items and my kit isn't even spectacular (between 1 and 3 evade on 4 pieces). It just might get nerfed as hard as the invincible plate tanks of lore, though I don't know how he'd do it without screwing over people who don't rely so much on evade.

This post has been edited by cmal: Jan 21 2010, 22:07

I actually think heavy plate was made too weak // is also missing a phase and kevlar equivalent. Seeing as a high level player can get 40-50% evade at very low burden and interference, a plate tank should be able to get 40%+ physical mitigation or its not really worth it (ie. not really worth it currently compared to cloth/light at the moment unless you're hito, and only in certain cases then). Tank characters should also have a significant hp advantage over lighter styled characters, which isn't true as the only hp boost is available to everyone.

Currently tankers have the disadvantages of the traditional heavy tank class (crappy casting, slow attack speed) but none of the advantages (survivability, hp pool, single hit physical damage output)

---

Also lol Jon, I don't think that is endgame.

Tank characters should also have a significant hp advantage over lighter styled characters, which isn't true as the only hp boost is available to everyone.

Don't forget that plate has gobs of STR and END, which lighter armors tend not to have. That means tanks get larger health pools, stronger attacks, and (importantly) higher Shield Rating. However, you're right about the heavy armor getting too nerfed. From the results of cmal's experiement, it obviously doesn't have enough extra STR, END, and direct mitigation stats to make up for the power of high evade.

BTW, with regards to Vaelh's experiment with Shadow Veil: While the specifics of how Sonic and I thought it worked are now obviously wrong (adding to evade stat), the fact that it adds to miss is better. As marcho pointed out, miss is calculated first, so it gets the most benefit from additive buffs. Adding to evade would make the built-in miss chance take away some of the power of SV.

This post has been edited by coredumperror: Jan 22 2010, 00:46

Endgame Cleared!

Also lol Jon, I don't think that is endgame.

Seeing as he is level 80, it CANT be.

Originally, Tenboro didn't make a "special grade" for Heavy because it was already OP. LOL, not any more. Tanks can still get by, but this obvious disparity between evading everything and tanking damage as means of survival is seriously unbalanced. My equip profs weren't even half of my cap (my Light will be soon, though) and I was still evading like a madman. And good god are people gonna be fighting so hard for the rare heavy gear should they ever get put in. I know I'll be offering artifacts for them if they're better than what I'm currently wearing.

Don't forget that plate has gobs of STR and END, which lighter armors tend not to have. That means tanks get larger health pools, stronger attacks, and (importantly) higher Shield Rating. However, you're right about the heavy armor getting too nerfed. From the results of cmal's experiement, it obviously doesn't have enough extra STR, END, and direct mitigation stats to make up for the power of high evade.

BTW, with regards to Vaelh's experiment with Shadow Veil: While the specifics of how Sonic and I thought it worked are now obviously wrong (adding to evade stat), the fact that it adds to miss is better. As marcho pointed out, miss is calculated first, so it gets the most benefit from additive buffs. Adding to evade would make the built-in miss chance take away some of the power of SV.

D: actually it has the opposite effect. The idea with multiplicative is that a single high stat is going to be better than 2 lower stats that add to the same amount. Take base 10% miss and 25% evade, and an sv that gives 25%

sv evade doesn't exist, but is what it would do if sv added directly to your evade rather than miss.

basic 10%/25% gives overall 32.5% avoid
sv miss 35%/25% gives overall 51.25
sv evade 10%/50% gives overall 55%

a more extreme example
base 10%/50% gives overall 55%
sv miss 35%/50% gives 67.5%
sv evade 10%/75% gives 77.5%


If SV effected evade directly it would be much more powerful. So yes, I'm still passing on it.

Currently tankers have the disadvantages of the traditional heavy tank class (crappy casting, slow attack speed) but none of the advantages (survivability, hp pool, single hit physical damage output)

Yeah, you're right.
I always thought that the heavy pieces should have a attack damage multiplier bonus like the cloth have attack damage accuracy bonus.
But if Tenb change anything, I believe that what is probably going to made, is evade only effecting physical attacks (like parry). making the high evader users remake their gear in a balance between evade and resist for better results instead in evade alone thus being a class less effective. (because you can't have 40% evade and 40% resist with the same gear I think)

This post has been edited by cmdct: Jan 22 2010, 01:07

a more extreme example
base 10%/50% gives overall 55%
sv miss 35%/50% gives 67.5%
sv evade 10%/75% gives 77.5%
If SV effected evade directly it would be much more powerful. So yes, I'm still passing on it.

Shoot, I got caught up in the idea that it's better to add to the avoidance stat which gets calculated first. Silly me.

Still, let's break down exactly what you get from keeping SV active. I know your supportive prof is in the low 100s, so you get 15-16% +miss from SV. Let's say you also have 40% evade, 35% block, and 10% parry, which seems reasonable from what I know about your gear.

Without SV, that puts your total chance to be hit at:
(1 - 0.10)*(1 - 0.40)*(1 - 0.35)*(1 - 0.10) = 31.6%
If SV gave +evade, you'd have:
(1 - 0.10)*(1 - 0.555)*(1 - 0.35)*(1 - 0.10) = 23.4%
Since SV gives +miss, you'd actually have:
(1 - 0.255)*(1 - 0.40)*(1 - 0.35)*(1 - 0.10) = 26.1%

That means you're taking (31.6-26.1)/31.6 = 17.4% less hits with SV active. If it gave +evade, you'd be taking 25.9% less hits with SV. So SV is about 1/3 worse because of giving +miss instead of +evade.

Now, lets compare that to the benefit from Haste, which costs the same amount of mana as SV (and I'm pretty sure it has the same duration, but I can't test that atm). Since you wear all cloth and have a bunch of phase, I can safely assume that you have about 25 burden. At your level, you likely have about 110 base AGI and 20 bonus AGI from gear and Snowflake. That puts your Action Speed at 100 + 130/3 = 143. Finally, you're a melee fighter, and you have X-Attack, speeding up your attack time by 25%. So, your base time units per turn is:
(300 - (143) + (25 - 20)) * 0.75 = 121.5

With your supportive prof, Haste provides ~60 bonus action speed. That changes your time units per turn to:
(300 - (143 + 60) + (25 - 20)) * 0.75 = 76.5

(121.5-76.5)/121.5 = 37% decreased attack time, which translates to 37% less monster turns taken over the course of a battle.

That means Haste is about twice as good as SV, in terms of long term damage reduction per MP.

BTW, an additional note about Haste is that it's benefit increases as your burden decreases. Imagine if marcho had 75 Burden, which would be pretty avg for a heavy tank at his level. That'd change the formula to:
(300 - (143) + (75 - 20)) * 0.75 = 159
vs.
(300 - (143 + 60) + (75 - 20)) * 0.75 = 114

The difference there is only (159-114)/159 = 28% decreased attack time. That's another reason that all-cloth, high-evade builds are stronger than heavy tank builds.

Except that i'm pretty sure that haste doesn't exactly works like this, or else it would be possible to have a 0 time unit per turn.

I currently have 180 action speed, 177 supportive prof and 30 burden. So i'm at (300-(180+91) + (30-20))*0.75 = 29.25 time unit taken per turn.
But what if i were lvl 230 with 200 action speed, 200 supportive prof and 20 burden ? That would give exactly 0 time units taken per turn. So the formula must be a little different than that.