[X] My Assistant

At your level, 2h and DW are good choices. At about lv 200 monsters get so strong and hit so hard, you need some more defence to survive. 1h is strong because of block of shield. The higher the block, the better it is. Rapier makes it even stronger, because the parry kills monsters that you are not attacking. And shield stuns them sometimes. And penetrated armor makes them weak. I advice that style for players above lv. 200.

btw, is this your first time here? Then welcome to this forum. If not, then welcome back. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Thanks, I've haven't been on forums much, kinda just poked around. Just started putting the levels into hentaiverse.
Do I need a high block shield, or will anything work?

This post has been edited by Deathglass: Oct 9 2017, 19:45

Do I need a high block shield, or will anything work?

The higher the better. Force shield is prefered.

Sure as sure, until now i did get to fuse everything i wanted to be fused and never did buy a single fragment. So my guess is, SF from bazaar are just planned as a credit sink and nothing else.

I rather think bazaar SF as a way of telling you "these things are expensive and not that easy to obtain, don't spend them lightly".

What do I need for 1h to be strong, and how does it deal with multiple mobs? Does it give better defensive stats than dual wield rapier/wakizashi of nimble? DW seems to let me do higher difficulty than 2h because of the speed, evade and parry.

As DJNoni said - at your level 2H and DW are more preferred, because you need to kill enemies as fast as possible to get to higher level quickly.
However as soon as you start playing on higher difficulties you will find that monsters can hit you hard. Very hard.
Shield is a good compromise here - it gives you an extra defense (mitigation), but most importantly, it gives you BLOCK stat.
BLOCK stat serves two purposes:

• It helps you to avoid enemies' attacks (you will block their attack, or nullify them if you will);
• Whenever you successfully blocked (or parried) enemy's attack you will counterattack it back (max 3 counterattack in one turn). Counterattack deals an extra damage to enemy and also stuns it, making it skip next few turns. Also counterattack boost your Overcharge meter a little, make you use Spirit Stance longer. (At some point, One-handed is so powerful that can be in permanent Spirit Stance because he counterattacks a lot);

The best friend of One-handed is rapier, because of two reasons:

• It has Penetrated Armor proc that allows you to cut enemies' defense a little and kill it faster;
• It has a PARRY stat that helps you to avoid attacks and counterattack back;

So as you can see - with good shield and nice rapier, One-handed can avoid lots of attacks (thanks to block and parry stats), kill enemies faster (thanks to Penetrated Armor proc from rapier), deal extra damage to enemies and stun them (thanks to counterattack), and finally be in permanent Spirit Stance (thanks to counterattacks, again).

Also, speaking of which, because One-handed WANTS to be attacked (for making the counterattacks back), he don't need Shadow Veil buff-spell and on later levels he don't need Haste buff-spell either.

However do not jump higher your head - if can't afford rapier, use Shortsword instead. If can't find shield with great block stat, then use whatever you can find.
(IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Sure as sure, until now i did get to fuse everything i wanted to be fused and never did buy a single fragment. So my guess is, SF from bazaar are just planned as a credit sink and nothing else.

I rather think bazaar SF as a way of telling you "these things are expensive and not that easy to obtain, don't spend them lightly".

Agreed with both (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Tbh neither do i. But i guess it is all that reading about dont soulfuse that, it is not worth it, dont soulfuse this it is a waste of fragments and so on. And they believe it, so they dont soulfuse anything that is not endgame gear, because they dont want to waste the fragments. Instead they replace the whole set they are using every weeks because they have outlevel it in a way the stats could be near zero and think, boy good that i didnt soulfuse that stuff. That is at least what i guess does happen.

As a still relatively new player, I can confirm that the trend of advice given encourages this thinking. "Soul shards are rare/expensive, don't waste them. Wait until you have something worth spending them on."

Getting something worth spending them on and avoiding the constant "get the next tiny upgrade" is very appealing. Ergo, try to get an end-game weapon ASAP to follow the advice in the most straight-forward manner.

There is very little advice given on how to appraise a piece of gear, even though that really is the core behind the advice given. Appraising a piece of gear involves quite a few different factors, and those factors each matter a different amount. ADB, PABs, crit stats, and so on for weapons, mitigation values, PABs, and damage contributions (Phase/Shade/Power) for armors.

Extended reading, conversation, and figuring things out for ourselves generally tends to reveal the overall community heavy bias towards DPS and Glass Cannon-style builds. Start out 2h/DW for strong DPS until the game gets too hard and you have to scale back to 1H for survival. But keep raising damage on it until you can turn it into a DPS build, and eventualyl drop it for the ultimate glass cannon in the game, Mage. This forms the bulk of the end-game mentality, and like in every game community every, the end-game players' access to all options in the game and the most wealth allows them to play such skewed builds and get the best benefit. Most new players want to do whatever the end-game players are doing, because it is clearly the best.

While there are some formulas listed in the wiki, I don't really see any extensive guides written, tons of data collected and interpreted, and "weight" assigned to various stats. This kind of behavior does happen in a lot of games I've played. While HV has a reasonably complex set of mechanics, there doesn't seem to be very much tinkering, exploring, and sharing of data. Instead there appears to mostly be a whole lot of band-wagon "this is the best" and everyone gravitating towards that.

In most games I've played, critical stats are usually a very hot topic. The debate between base damage and critical stats is one I've seen many times over the years, and in most games it generally results in the answer of "base damage gives the most return low levels, but at high levels, critical stats are crucial for generating the most DPS." So far it feels like this isn't true in HV; base damage is king. End-game is Slaughter, not Balance.

Instead of all that expected "game nerding" going on, there are a few helpful folks who have likely seen scores and scores of noobs (like me) come and go, and are tired of giving lengthy explanations. The wiki seems to be written with a "don't say too much" approach. And there aren't really any guides to give that "lengthy explanation."

Lack of in-depth information, and fairly unanimous advice to follow the community-approved path as well as a lot of cross-game normal attitudes and expectations all contribute to this mindset. Skip the early stuff, rush out of the early stuff, get into the end-game/level cap asap. Do what the top players are doing, and grow into their performance as fast as possible. No one of those things is good/bad/right/or wrong. Changing any of them would still leave the other factors, and some of those factors are impossible to change. They're just the way things are.

*Good critique analyse of the community-driven advice and hints*

Quite good thinking, no jokes.
I agree with you that current community of pro-players are, mostly, gives same advice to newcomers, like
1. Start as light + 2H
2. Switch to heavy + 1H. Look for Slaughter, Rapier and Shield
3. Switch to mage, first dark, then elemental, then holy.
4. The end.
But most probably because at current patch/balance/system, those advice are most effective and less time consuming? Expert are giving them not because of some meta, paradigm and loose mind, but because those setups and builds are tested by lots of players and giving best income (in both credit and time terms).

On other hand, newcomers may play whatever they feel best and nice, but if they are asking their question in "Ask the Experts", they should expect to receive the answers that were tested by lots of players. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

It is true that wiki has not enough in-deep information and analysis apart from lots of formulas, however you can find some good analytic thread in forum itself, for example sssss2's 1H research thread.
The problem here is that lots of good data are scratched and divided between lots of threads (some of them not even English-based). We should, in theory, aggregate all analytic in one-two-three-four threads and keep them clean and straightforward, but lots of players here are guys and ladies with business and problems in RL and they could not afford spending too much time on some porn-forum in aggregating, searching, compilating, parsing and publishing some heavy math-based stuff. Some folks (like me) are not fluent in English and they have some communication and explanation problems, and so on...

As a newcomer (who almost have 300 level (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) ), what you want to see at forum and wiki?
What kind of advice, hints, articles and explanations would help newcomers?
What kind of data forum and wiki lack?

This is not engineering at NASA.

if they are asking their question in "Ask the Experts", they should expect to receive the answers that were tested by lots of players

i'd be surprised if this was not the case.

It is true that wiki has not enough in-deep information and analysis apart from lots of formulas

erm... just wondering, what exactly a formula is, if not a summary of a theory/analysis? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

There is very little advice given on how to appraise a piece of gear, even though that really is the core behind the advice given.

Well, it is actually quite simple. A good weapon just as an example is most of the time a rapier with elemental strike, ethereal just for DW, as 1H you want burden so ethereal dont benefit your fightstyle. And you want it as Slaughter. Or if you want a DW offhand Nimble or balance arent preferet. So that is for the name alone. Most important stats you should look at are damage and parry. And you should watch at the base stats and use this as help.
https://ehwiki.org/wiki/Equipment_Ranges#Rapier

So lets say see a Leg Elemental Rapier of Slaughter you are looking at has 51.02 damage and 18.70 parry. You look at the equipment ranges and notice. Damned this is a good weapon. There stats dont matter that much. They are a nice bonus but no one would buy a weapon with low damage and low parry just because all other stats are high. And that is it more or less what you should do with any other equipment if you want to know if something is good. Take a look at prefix sufix and at the important base stats and you will know what is good and what not.

This is not engineering at NASA.

I just like this post xD

i'd be surprised if this was not the case.

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

erm... just wondering, what exactly a formula is, if not a summary of a theory/analysis? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

Probably I said something wrong. What I meant is wiki has lots of formulas (long and short), has lots of data (big and small), huge tables, but wiki lacks some quirk guidelines and friendly explanations, like how good Fatality comparing to Butcher, or what weapon is preferred for One-handed, or what type of mage better to other and why, or should One-handed cast Shadow Veil and Haste or nor. It has, let's say, broad terms, formulas and data, but not enough small details and examples of real-life use. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

We have Advice page and Advice Advantage pages, I know, and thank to latter few "white holes" were closed, but there are still not enough real-life examples.
I would like, for example, read the page fully dedicated to 1H/Heavy build with lots detail about forging, stats, spike shield, potencienes, buffs and debuffs - what is better, what is worse, meta, paradigm, etc. Like, based on how counterattack works - One-handed should no cast Haste and Shadow Veil, but if someone made a test-run with time and turns to support or disapprove this thesis, I would *LIKE* to read it, no matter how math-heavy it would be.

I KNOW it is a deep theory (and it is not the NASA (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)), and noone want to dig into this shit and I am not sad or offend because of it - I don't want to waste my time on writhing this article either. But I am just saying that we could have page like this and that page would be useful for hardcore players to optimize their builds (or get solid proof for their current management) and for novice to understand all quirks in the game.

This post has been edited by f4tal: Oct 9 2017, 21:08

well... personally i think wiki is a bit more for static things, and forums for more dynamic things. stat ranges belongs to the first, analysis of meta and its equilibrium/optimizations to the second.

The reason why mixing is good is just to balance out your physical and magical mitigation. At low level the weakness of heavy armor is magic, and the most damaging monsters are magical (celestials and sprites). Warding suffixes give more bonus than protection suffix, so it's a waste not to mix in a couple.

Well, in my playtime with 1H I hardly saw magical damage being a problem (and even then, a magical spirit attack can still be easily countered by having spirit shield on), and overall damage is probably somewhat like 90% physical and 10% magical (hard to measure since HV doesn't say if the damage is magical or physical), so imho mixing still isn't that useful.
Unless proven wrong by data collecting I would suggest going for warding only if the warding armor is cheaper.

The reason why I feel power is worse after the patch is that monsters die fast enough without it. Yet they do the same damage as always, so it's nice to first tank up with plate, and migrate to power as both player and monster defenses scale up with level.

They still die even faster with power.
More damage is good even with lower health monsters.
And consider the fact that the less time you take to kill monsters the less mp/sp attacks you receive.
It's a fine balance but I still think that by level 300 it's worth going for full power build, which makes <70 burden possible and also grants more damage, crits, crit chance, STR, DEX.
I don't think anyone wants to do DwD with a couple of plate around.

There is very little advice given on how to appraise a piece of gear, even though that really is the core behind the advice given. Appraising a piece of gear involves quite a few different factors, and those factors each matter a different amount. ADB, PABs, crit stats, and so on for weapons, mitigation values, PABs, and damage contributions (Phase/Shade/Power) for armors.

The formulas are in the wiki, we all started from there asking advises for the things we didn't understand.
I don't think there's anything wrong in requiring a bit of effort from "newbies".

Extended reading, conversation, and figuring things out for ourselves generally tends to reveal the overall community heavy bias towards DPS and Glass Cannon-style builds.

For most people time is limited, so the faster you can clear things the better it works out.
And I never heard anyone asking for the safest style so I'm not sure what you are implying, it's obvious that people go for the more time efficient styles and I don't think that there is anything wrong with that (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)

I don't really see any extensive guides written, tons of data collected and interpreted, and "weight" assigned to various stats.

You mean like the research for 1H by sssss2? The weighted hp for mages by sssss2 (done in some old post of this very thread), the research on T3 - T2 - T1 damage and resist tests done by me, simrock87 and morineko (see here for the findings) etc etc (in the past nec1986, Superlatanium and many other users wrote informative posts about HV mechanics).
The real issue is that no one has ever compiled a list of those posts.

Instead there appears to mostly be a whole lot of band-wagon "this is the best" and everyone gravitating towards that.

Most suggestions have math calculations behind them or pratical evidence.
It's just that most things have been discussed over and over again, and no one wants to write about it again.

Instead of all that expected "game nerding" going on, there are a few helpful folks who have likely seen scores and scores of noobs (like me) come and go, and are tired of giving lengthy explanations.

Pretty much, but if you search around you can find some in-depth discussions.
It's just not easy to do.

The wiki seems to be written with a "don't say too much" approach. And there aren't really any guides to give that "lengthy explanation."

You have to consider that the high-level players can't write a real guide for low-medium level players since they can't replicate the same conditions.
And later patches may change the meta around.
Not saying too much prevents wrong information and makes the wiki much easier to read for newbies.
If you want to improve you then need to do self-research while asking around.
Again, I see nothing wrong with that.

This post has been edited by Sapo84: Oct 9 2017, 21:25

well... personally i think wiki is a bit more for static things, and forums for more dynamic things. stat ranges belongs to the first, analysis of meta and its equilibrium/optimizations to the second.

True enough. I could play a jerk and say that Tenboro may release new patch tomorrow that will rewrite whole game with new rules, sets and ideas in that case our static wiki will be fully dynamic for looooong time, but I agree with your way of thinking.

For me it doesn't matter where information would appear - at forum or in wiki as long as it is easy to find. Wiki has advantage over forum - anyone can modify it to make its content up-to-date, neutral and correct - with forum we cannot do it (if you are not a moder or admin, of course). (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It is all deep theory and kind of meta-question, I know, and is not a big issue, more like a long-term planning - it is not like something I am forcing all you to do, - saying just for make things clear.

The real issue is that no one has ever compiled a list of those posts.

Double that.

Most suggestions have math calculations behind them or pratical evidence.It's just that most things have been discussed over and over again, and no one wants to write about it again.

I still waiting for max-AXE versus max-RAPIER in 1H thread (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

You have to consider that the high-level players can't write a real guide for low-medium level players since they can't replicate the same conditions.

Damn straight. Sadly.
For example, I cannot remember anything from my level 0-370 levels apart from "I was 1H/Heavy from level 1, played with sword too long, switched to Power too soon" and that is mostly all (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

This post has been edited by f4tal: Oct 9 2017, 21:29

I still waiting for max-AXE versus max-RAPIER in 1H thread (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

If someone "lends" me 95 BoS and enough HGM I can test
https://hentaiverse.org/equip/118329973/5ed848e064 + featherweight charm
vs
https://hentaiverse.org/equip/102883915/75c79866b4
(after losing years to get a decent IW)

This post has been edited by Sapo84: Oct 9 2017, 23:54

There is very little advice given on how to appraise a piece of gear, even though that really is the core behind the advice given. Appraising a piece of gear involves quite a few different factors, and those factors each matter a different amount. ADB, PABs, crit stats, and so on for weapons, mitigation values, PABs, and damage contributions (Phase/Shade/Power) for armors.

At your level I had a WTB out for Magnificent Armor around my level, with a price range of 10-50k. Didn't care what it was, mostly, as Magnificent >> superior.

After I had mostly filled that itch, I looked for better armor than what I had. Criteria?

1. Legendary with Decent Attack. I figured a 50% Legendary was better than a 90% of max Magnificent.
2. Decent PABs. Strength + Dex + Endurance ideal.
3. Better if it already had some IW.
4. Something people were not fighting over in auction.
5. Something I could wear in 30-40 levels without soulfusing.

Longer term:

1. Power Protection heavy armor with an attack > 90%. Would do min bids when I could, at auction.

But the simplest approach is that of DJNoni, who simply asks:

Is this a better piece of gear than what you are wearing now?

Mu (.) (.) y

But the simplest approach is that of DJNoni, who simply asks:

Is this a better piece of gear than what you are wearing now?

should always be your main question, yep.
if answer is yes, you may even start to think about how much you're actually earning, btw - and if such a gain is worth the price.
if answer is no, uh... what are we even speaking about?

Cryo, I think the advice wikis go into the appropriate amount of depth, players come here for the rest as mentioned. My only critique is the overpromotion of power armor and force shield, which I think is exaggerated until past level 300. It's a bandwagon as you said. In my experience a lot of other game populations are that way, too.

Sapo, you can tell if a monster does a magical or physical attack because the game says "casts" instead of "uses" in the log. All normal attacks are physical but a decent proportion of special attacks are magical, and those are the ones that kill. I rarely notice physical attacks from monsters due to specific mitigation.

Sapo, I agree spirit shield is another way to survive magics, but don't forget that at level 200 to 239 your spirit shield is crap (or at best, functioning differently). Then it's arguable how spirit shield performs as it evolves from level 240 to 285. I didn't find it that useful, and Cryo had to play on slightly lower difficulties despite doing everything by the book with spirit shield, power, and force. Even ALL_MIGHT at level 350 with endgame 1H equipment disliked it.

There's a fine balance as you said, and I concur that level 300 is a good time to start changing to power. I still have plate gloves and shoes, it's all I own. However the traditional thinking is to be power and force from level 200 when you have crap gear and high mana costs. Cryo went through a mini-hell because of that. (But surely not as painful as the rainbow mage).

Hey guys, haven't been playing for a while. When is the next Halloween event due? 31 October? Thanks (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/cry.gif)

Iason Mink casts Jupiter, and crits you for 5858 elec damage

You've got a couple ways to know if an attack is magical, but casts/uses is the definitive one. Wanted to point this out because I only had to go into my next random encounter to find this attack which would have been fatal to me had it not been for my warding leggings. Instead, it does laughable damage due to my high magical mitigation and 50% total electric mitigation. (I may still switch to the slaughter leggings later if I don't sell them, according to my plan of converting to offense gradually).

Admittedly I could have easily killed Iason Mink (humanoid) if I had wanted to. I waited a long time for someone to hit me so I could make this post.

Elementals and humans are probably overlooked, but they are maybe the fourth and fifth most damaging monsters around, so you've possibly got four out of the top five dangerous monster classes as magical. (And six and seven can also go magical if they choose). Plus schoolgirls and boss monsters have a lot of magical.

Plus schoolgirls and boss monsters have a lot of magical.

When they still do any damage you do notice, they wont do this for long. Because i cant remember when those still were any threat to me.