[X] My Assistant

Magnificent * Rapier
Legendary * Rapier

Magnificent * Wakizashi
Legendary * Wakizashi

Magnificent * Buckler of the Barrier
Legendary * Buckler of the Barrier

Magnificent * Shade * of the Shadowdancer
Legendary * Shade * of the Shadowdancer

Magnificent * Shade * of the Fleet
Legendary * Shade * of the Fleet
Please MM or PM to me.

Looking at his request list, this is identical to what I used in isekai season 1. I already knew from way back then that some players had similar ideas to me. Isekai is no longer as competitive (just reach floor 50 to get pabs) so when I have time I want to discuss various things, as the isekai Tower provides a better tangible way for us to measure survivability and what can matter.

For my part, I do not play and advance enough for true survivability to matter, but the Tower still helps me to try things and makes theorizing easier. For season 2, I had to use a Force shield for the first time ever (semi-regularly) because it was all I could drop: a high rolled mag force shield was just too much better than low rolled exquisite buckler of barrier. (I dropped a similar mag force shield at the start of season 3 and gave it away).

So there are a number of old melee debates that should be revisited. Is force shield better than buckler of the barrier? How does 1H Light compare to 1H Heavy (which could be plate or power, and/or feathered) both on offense and defense? When is spirit shield worth it, or can I just go without it and spark a lot?

Most players feel that they have obvious answers to these questions, but I don't think popular thought has ever been absolutely correct, in a perfectly strict sense. Popular thought may be correct for nearly all situations and builds, but the reality is that Player level affects a lot of these things as well as Difficulty level, and behavior of monsters. At certain odd/rarely/never encountered ranges of player level and difficulty level (this could include theoretical difficulties, or theoretical alterations to monster behavior that do not actually exist) there can be different results.

And not everything is about 1H (fusrodah is rightfully disabled in isekai). Practically speaking, DW can easily clear the Tower floors I'd ever get to. Though once monsters get tough to the point where they can't all be blown away by Frenzy Blows (which was past Floor 100 in season 1, but probably much lower in season 2) then DW is in trouble.

2H Mace should be another competitor, especially if you target carefully. And I've never completely given up on the unorthodox idea of DW Club with spread stun targeting. (In theory monster behavior and population could theoretically be altered to screw 1H by making all monsters magical, drastically reducing counter attacks and stuns).

Another interesting thing I think I noticed in isekai is that Stun probability upon a successful counter attack seems to increase with player level or stats. When I transition from DW to 1H every season and first reach 30% overwhelming and 75% counter attack, my stun rate is still pretty bad. I can beatdown schoolgirls without ever stunning them. This might be due to having pathetic block/parry stats but I don't feel that explains it, as I see the counters happening.

Is force shield better than buckler of the barrier?

You said some time ago that force shield decrease chance of resist(or messing with resist in some other bad way). So assuming this, i think that for 1h light buckler better because light armor have a lot of resist - you have much to lose if you choose force shield, and from my experience with 1h heavy - most of noticeable damage comes from magic spells(all those holly/void spells, you know), so resist seems useful. Especially for shade of negation and arcanist buckler is preferable in this regard.

While 1h heavy have low resist and you lose not so much choosing force shield, also it is trade off: resist for block, and block blocks both magic and melee damage and also stun and counterattack(geez 1h such an OP...), so probably for 1h heavy you lose nothing in the end.

This post has been edited by Mud attheBaseofLotus: Dec 23 2021, 22:51

2H Mace should be another competitor, especially if you target carefully. And I've never completely given up on the unorthodox idea of DW Club with spread stun targeting. (In theory monster behavior and population could theoretically be altered to screw 1H by making all monsters magical, drastically reducing counter attacks and stuns).

Unfortunately neither of these are good enough for high tower - DW club slightly moreso, but 2H is fucked. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

I played it to floor 50 last season. It was worse than expected, sadly, and I already thought it was pretty bad. Not doing that again any time soon.

I've never really tried it so I don't know exactly what happens with 2H Mace. Can't you just stun everybody (like 5~7 guys) with one ordinary attack, or does it not work that way? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

The main issue with force shields is interference (which arguably works better with heavy armor since that already has more interference to start with, and can also be reduced by feathering). I don't think force shields interact with resist in any way, but I could be wrong. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

I've never really tried it so I don't know exactly what happens with 2H Mace. Can't you just stun everybody (like 5~7 guys) with one ordinary attack, or does it not work that way? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

The main issue with force shields is interference (which arguably works better with heavy armor since that already has more interference to start with, and can also be reduced by feathering). I don't think force shields interact with resist in any way, but I could be wrong. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

They all attack at once when the stun expires (and stun can't be refreshed), so even if you did get some amazing domino strike stuns, you're still in danger. The biggest reason 2H is weak in tower is specifically because of domino strike, honestly - even if you attack from the bottom, you're still gonna wake up a considerable amount of sleeping monsters.

I think force shields can add slightly more avoidance than they cost in burden, with feather, so a force shield would be slightly better in general, and for 1H, mana costs are not that much of a concern so I don't think the interference is a problem either.

However on isekai... force shields take DMMs to upgrade, bucklers don't. If you could get a good mag reinforced buckler of the barrier, you could upgrade that really easily and have a better time with it than a lowly-forged legendary of any kind.

Force shields have better defenses than bucklers of barrier. They have 1% more block (which equates to 1.66% more block after level scaled and forged). Actually it's effectively much more than that because of multiplicative block stacking. A peerless force shield provides 64.04% actual block, which means that an extra 1.66% additive block is truthfully an extra 4.4% multiplicative block, and truthfully a 4.4% reduction in damage taken compared to peerless buckler of barrier.

Force shields also have about 1% more physical and magical mitigation than bucklers of barrier. This equates to about an extra 1.66% reduction in damage taken after level scaled and forged (the multiplicative argument used for block does not apply significantly here because the total amount of provided mitigation is low to begin with).

Force shields also have the suffix which provides additional mitigation of 2.1% for protection or 4.62% for warding, which is about 3.5% for protection or 7.7% for warding after scaled and forged.

Peerless reinforced bucklers add about 3.2% mitigation for crushing/slashing/piercing which we can arguably be considered almost as useful as protection, but could also be argued to be useless. That would be equivalent to 4.25% after forging (level scaling does not apply). Peerless agile bucklers instead add 3.62% attack speed which for pure damage reduction purposes is just as good as block, though it could be unwanted for the loss in offense.

Force shields have an elemental prefix which is quite nice with heavy armor builds, but arguably useless. Peerless provides 26.1% elemental mitigation, or 34.71% after forging. Let's divide this by 6 elements to get a fair estimate of its value, that's 5.79% per element.

Peerless force shields have the same burden as peerless bucklers.

Force shields have minimum 28 interference compared to the minimum 1.4 interference of peerless bucklers. This means force shields cause a naked wielder to use 14% more mana (7% if feathered). A peerless warrior has 87.5 interference from power armors, so in reality a force shield uses 9.21% more mana than a buckler, or 5.74% if fully feathered (4.36% if you just feather the shield).

It is arguable whether or not interference actually means anything in practice. I leave this topic for a post in the near future. However, things are looking favorable for force shield. Even if we say a buckler's 5.74% mana savings somehow translates to 5.74% more survivability (in certain extreme or theoretical survival situations), a force shield reduces damage taken by an extra 4.4% plus 1.66% = 6% (multiplicative stacking) compared to a buckler of barrier.

That 6% damage reduction could theoretically result in 6% less mana used, which means that most optimically a feathered force shield uses the same mana as a buckler. In reality, the damage reduction typically has no effect on mana, because most of the mana expenditure is from keeping buffs and debuffs active. However in extreme survival situations, where cure and even useless spells (this cheats cooldown) are continuously cast, mana reduction with force shields could happen.

Truth be told, Isekai is just so different anyway.

I've made the observation that rolling with exquisite instead of mag is actually not that bad, as you can upgrade that MUCH easier. Obviously all depends on the rolls. This season I got myself a very high block mag Kite shield. All things considered, it'll do.

Also, sidenote for the previous post. I don't think mana is an issue for 1h warrior with a force shield. I have 126.8 interference and get twice the draughts I use. Never use any potions or elixirs. Early on, the interference can hit hard though (as in, in Isekai), but that's mostly a "you take what you get" thing anyway.
---

Regardless, my personal melee adventures in persistent will also soon check out light armor. My 1h melee is in a spot now, where I can easily pfudor IW with using less cures than you can count with one hand. It's not even all that great and/or upgraded. Level does that.. and my newly acquired 10% damage hath perk. (doing way more than what I thought, making me regret not getting it earlier) Plus, the game gave me quite a lot of light armor drops. So.. I figured I might as well. I have that luxury now.

I understand why everyone is saying "go 1h". As someone having restarted to play this at around lvl200 I can definitely agree how good 1h is, especially with relatively quickly being able to clear high difficulties. It took a while (heck, my isekai build was superior to my persistent build quite a bit), but once you have a decent rapier and shield, it only gets better. Still, looking at numbers and light armor, I feel like if you can assemble a decent collection, it could be working faster. 2h for non school girl, DW for school girl.
So, here's where I'd like to try out something, mostly from drops and as such only okay gear. I'm really curious how this'll work, at first completely without forge upgrades and only the weapon IWed.

My current plan for now is using: A Legendary Ethereal Mace of Slaughter (currently IWing it) and
-Legendary Jade Shade Helmet of the Fleet (replaced by Legendary Agile Shade Helmet of the Fleet if things work, as it's currently 5 levels too high for me)
-Peerless Savage Shade Breastplate of Negation
-Magnificent Agile Shade Leggings of the Shadowdancer or Legendary Savage Shade Leggings of the Fleet
-Legendary Agile Shade Gauntlets of the Fleet
-Legendary Agile Shade Boots of the Fleet

Obviously relatively messy gear, but I'm curious. Some people swear on their DW, and I'm curious to see how 2h works. Mostly in terms of lazyness + speed compared to a very typical 1h build.

This post has been edited by killi890: Dec 28 2021, 01:32

Still, looking at numbers and light armor, I feel like if you can assemble a decent collection, it could be working faster. 2h for non school girl, DW for school girl.

---

Obviously relatively messy gear, but I'm curious. Some people swear on their DW, and I'm curious to see how 2h works. Mostly in terms of lazyness + speed compared to a very typical 1h build.

The difference in ADB between light and heavy kinda negates any fighting style advantage DW, 2H or Niten could have, especially since 1H can perma-stance, those others cannot.

You can check out the Battle Records thread for a little reference - heavy DW only comes out very slightly ahead of 1H against schoolgirls. I haven't recorded DW IW/fest yet this way because it's just... a lot more dangerous, and a little slower so far. Light would be significantly slower and leave 1H clearly dominant.

Niten can get away with heavy in arenas, too (although I'm not sure how well it'll fare in SPL). 2H isn't really so lucky, and that is a significant impediment. lololo16 told me before that niten plays fastest in the non-SG arenas, while DW is fastest against SGs.

It's also worth noting that I don't think my DW clears would have been faster than 1H without Manehattan Project. In that case, 1H would have beaten it quite cleanly. Vital Strike is really, really good, combined with perma-stance, and while Frenzied Blows is also fantastic, it's not quite as strong a precision tool, so it's much more RNG-dependent in terms of SG positioning.

I started off as a DW player on persistent and played that up til level 450, and then returned to it at level 500. In season 1 of isekai, I played dual wield using light armors up til floor 90, where I switched to 1H light. It's better than people think, and it can go faster than you'd expect too, but it does take some effort. It's not even remotely close to 1H light in terms of survival, and 1H heavy is still comfortably ahead, but it's still a strong competitor and certainly the closest to it.

I played 2H light on isekai season 2 up til floor 50 in the Tower, which should be roughly comparable to part way through a pfest. It's not pleasant at all, and much weaker than I expected - and I already expected it to be weak. On persistent, you can leverage FRD with a longsword for a little more damage and safety than you can get with just a mace on its own. The lack of avoidance is a killer.

2H, DW and Niten all take significantly more attention than 1H if you want even remotely comparable results. They're not often comfortable and they're certainly not lazy.

This post has been edited by Nezu: Dec 28 2021, 02:07

Just finished sacrificing 40 Precursor Artifacts and the Stat Bonus I get is:
STR +2
DEX +2
AGI +1
END +4
INT +4 (fokk, I am not a Mage (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/cry.gif))
WIS +2
So in total it's 15 out of 40 tries, not bad I guess (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

This post has been edited by Adhinferno Bloodmoon: Dec 28 2021, 05:55

The difference in ADB between light and heavy kinda negates any fighting style advantage DW, 2H or Niten could have, especially since 1H can perma-stance, those others cannot.

You can check out the Battle Records thread for a little reference - heavy DW only comes out very slightly ahead of 1H against schoolgirls. I haven't recorded DW IW/fest yet this way because it's just... a lot more dangerous, and a little slower so far. Light would be significantly slower and leave 1H clearly dominant.

Niten can get away with heavy in arenas, too (although I'm not sure how well it'll fare in SPL). 2H isn't really so lucky, and that is a significant impediment. lololo16 told me before that niten plays fastest in the non-SG arenas, while DW is fastest against SGs.

It's also worth noting that I don't think my DW clears would have been faster than 1H without Manehattan Project. In that case, 1H would have beaten it quite cleanly. Vital Strike is really, really good, combined with perma-stance, and while Frenzied Blows is also fantastic, it's not quite as strong a precision tool, so it's much more RNG-dependent in terms of SG positioning.

I started off as a DW player on persistent and played that up til level 450, and then returned to it at level 500. In season 1 of isekai, I played dual wield using light armors up til floor 90, where I switched to 1H light. It's better than people think, and it can go faster than you'd expect too, but it does take some effort. It's not even remotely close to 1H light in terms of survival, and 1H heavy is still comfortably ahead, but it's still a strong competitor and certainly the closest to it.

I played 2H light on isekai season 2 up til floor 50 in the Tower, which should be roughly comparable to part way through a pfest. It's not pleasant at all, and much weaker than I expected - and I already expected it to be weak. On persistent, you can leverage FRD with a longsword for a little more damage and safety than you can get with just a mace on its own. The lack of avoidance is a killer.

2H, DW and Niten all take significantly more attention than 1H if you want even remotely comparable results. They're not often comfortable and they're certainly not lazy.

Shade definitely have a LOT less adb, that's for sure. Power of slaughter has about twice. Doesn't help that 2h's prof based attack bonus is lower, and that domino is capped at 90%.
I'd still love for it to work, though. But it may really be more wishful thinking than anything else. This is where it'd be actually kinda neat if you could mix armor types. But alas.

As for the Vital Strike thing: It may just be my luck, but I have too many runs where Vital Strike refuses to bleed (and as such also crit). There's a huge random variance with that ability.

As for the Vital Strike thing: It may just be my luck, but I have too many runs where Vital Strike refuses to bleed (and as such also crit). There's a huge random variance with that ability.

If I remember right, it's about 50/50 on the bleed, and obviously crit depends on your crit rate, but spirit Vital Strikes are still provably extremely effective both for high level players and low level players - Greshnik posted an excellent example of lower level 1H play.

If I remember right, it's about 50/50 on the bleed, and obviously crit depends on your crit rate, but spirit Vital Strikes are still provably extremely effective both for high level players and low level players - Greshnik posted an excellent example of lower level 1H play.

Speaking of lower level. I just switched from 1h heavy to 1h light in Isekai, and the difference is actually quite significant. I feel like leather > plate is likely a thing, especially on lower level.

-No burden above 70, so full crit-rate + light crit. When your crit-rate isn't that great yet, the difference can be massive. Also more accuracy when it still matters.
-Resistance against heavy hitting spells

From struggling on Hell (1h heavy) to relatively straight forward Nintendo (1h light). Level 240 in this case. Below level 250 you don't have the actual useful Weaken yet, nor a reliable spirit shield. Feels good, to say the least.
Iwbth is stressful, but doable once the full weaken is there. Until then too many enemies are a problem, though a scroll could help. This is largely because of the difficulty difference at level 240 is pl ~1500 at Nintendo to maxed pl past that. All of the good old enemy names I see on persistent start to appear there.


As for dwd speed and the respective link there, it's hard for me to compare. I use a cold Rapier, no imperil, no Infusion, but Haste. I generally just hover over a school girl until she has double pen. armor, and vital strike. (right click of mouse -> impulse Vital Strike) So when Vital Strike doesn't bleed it usually means I need to continue with the hover for quite some time.
Last 30 rounds I do the same if cannon is on cooldown, otherwise proc pen. armor on each girl and shoot.

That run in question uses a holy Shortsword, Imperil with Aether Shard, an Infusion, no Haste and absolutely no cannon. It couldn't be more different. The time seems really high, but that might be because of connection or mobile or something. That said, some of the other posts about DW make me feel like my 1h days are probably not going to be over anytime soon.

If I remember right, it's about 50/50 on the bleed, and obviously crit depends on your crit rate, but spirit Vital Strikes are still provably extremely effective both for high level players and low level players - Greshnik posted an excellent example of lower level 1H play.

Althought I don't have much 1H play experience and data, but the bleed chance should be higher, yesterday there were 70 bleeds in 118 Vital Strike of my Eternal Darkness play, and actually the chance could be higher, because some of the target directly killed before bleed could happen. Also it may only my guess, the bleed could probobly connected to Stun status of the monsters, I haven't saw monster bleed without stun. So depend on your attack damage and monster status the bleed chance of Vital Strike may be big different.
For the crit chance, it should be correct that connected to your attack crit chance. In my DW play experience the overall Frenzied Blows crit chance is little lower than the attack crit chance, and I guess it because the crit Frenzied Blow overkill monsters that make it less blows. But that should not affect the crit chance of Vital Strike

Speaking of lower level. I just switched from 1h heavy to 1h light in Isekai, and the difference is actually quite significant. I feel like leather > plate is likely a thing, especially on lower level.

Funny, I've actually had the opposite experience last season, where plate was clearly better than leather at very low level, and then it evens out somewhere around level 200. But this is very anecdotal so not really research.

From struggling on Hell (1h heavy) to relatively straight forward Nintendo (1h light). Level 240 in this case. Below level 250 you don't have the actual useful Weaken yet, nor a reliable spirit shield. Feels good, to say the least.
Iwbth is stressful, but doable once the full weaken is there. Until then too many enemies are a problem, though a scroll could help. This is largely because of the difficulty difference at level 240 is pl ~1500 at Nintendo to maxed pl past that. All of the good old enemy names I see on persistent start to appear there.

I dunno, man, I'm running 1H heavy this season and I've been comfortably doing PFUDOR since before that level, without using Weaken or Spirit Shield at all. I think you might just be either mismanaging your gear, or at the very least, very very unlucky with your drops to not have any useful exquisites yet.

Althought I don't have much 1H play experience and data, but the bleed chance should be higher, yesterday there were 70 bleeds in 118 Vital Strike of my Eternal Darkness play, and actually the chance could be higher, because some of the target directly killed before bleed could happen. Also it may only my guess, the bleed could probobly connected to Stun status of the monsters, I haven't saw monster bleed without stun. So depend on your attack damage and monster status the bleed chance of Vital Strike may be big different.

What weapon were you using, out of interest? I wonder if the bleed chance from a weapon proc is included in the calculation for some reason. (As far as I know it doesn't trigger other procs, but I can't say I've looked that closely.)

But yeah, it could very well be higher than 50/50, that's just my experience with it.

And yes, Vital Strike only causes the bleed against stunned enemies, although it's not guaranteed.

For the crit chance, it should be correct that connected to your attack crit chance. In my DW play experience the overall Frenzied Blows crit chance is little lower than the attack crit chance, and I guess it because the crit Frenzied Blow overkill monsters that make it less blows. But that should not affect the crit chance of Vital Strike

All damage crits as normal unless otherwise stated (the only cases I can think of being counter-attacks, and merciful blow against <20% HP targets, since critting them would be redundant).

What weapon were you using, out of interest? I wonder if the bleed chance from a weapon proc is included in the calculation for some reason. (As far as I know it doesn't trigger other procs, but I can't say I've looked that closely.)

Rapier, the bleed should only come from Vital Strike

I've been comfortably doing PFUDOR since before that level, without using Weaken or Spirit Shield at all. I think you might just be either mismanaging your gear, or at the very least, very very unlucky with your drops to not have any useful exquisites yet.

I didn't get very good drops. Quite a bit is from the bazaar. My first noodles went to a shield. Ended up a mag kite shield, which is better than nothing, but yeah. The plate armor was bad, and the power armor even worse.
Isekai is really just about getting by with whatever the bazaar and drops give you.

But yeah, it could very well be higher than 50/50, that's just my experience with it.

It's probably higher, because of crit = bleed, like with normal weapon procs. It's hard to say what the actual non crit bleed rate is. 50/50 might very well be true. It's 50% bleed damage.. so maybe.
Let's just say I don't think I've ever seen a crit Vital Strike that didn't bleed, so there's at least that.


edit: I just tested 2h @pfudor, the 25 round arena.

A random check of 1h: 474turns
2h mace without upgrades: 702turns

So first of all: Doable. However unfortunately you get forced into needing to use cure too often. Probably because monster lab offers both accuracy AND evade ignore for monsters, and evasion isn't as good as block.

Comparison of stats:
1h vs 2h
8426 abd vs 5828 abd
191.8% hit vs 179.8% hit
42.8% crit vs 42.2% crit
2% speed vs 32% speed
28245 health vs 21105 health
1745magic vs 1802 magic
1404spirit vs 1296 spirit
77.2% phys mit vs 69.4 phys mit
71% magic mit vs 62.7 magic mit
39.7% crush vs 25.1% crush
49.6% slash vs 24.8% slash
48.8% pierce vs 0% pierce
3.2% evade vs 52.8% evade (+shadow veil so.. 64.6% evade effectively)
64.4% block vs 0% block
57.7% parry vs 37.9% parry
17.4% resist vs 68.8% resist

If we look at those stats, 2h is obviously taking more physical damage, and has more trouble ignoring it, too. In exchange it should be very rare for magic to fully hit. Although depending on the type, even a single resist trigger could not be enough to mitigate enough to keep up with 1h's superior mitigation. (are there "physical" spells? I never actually paid attention if "spells" could be crush, slash or piercing damage for monsters)
Attack damage of 1h is 44.5% more, all the while 2h needed 48% more turns.

And with that the experiment ends. It basically said what people figured out already. When you just start out in Isekai, low level, 2h performs really well. But much later in the game, you have way too tanky enemies. Not even 2h's Shatter Strike can keep up with that. I used a little bit of imperil as well, but with its miss-rate, you have to spend a lot of turns, as even just missing one enemy takes quite a long time. Or rather, that's where 2h sucks at anyway, single enemies being beefy.
Being adamant with Imperil can probably shave off a few turns, but I seriously doubt that it'd be enough to make 2h worthwhile. Doubly so because I COULD do that with 1h as well after all. (and it'd help reduce turns, but probably cost more actual time)

I don't think even gear upgrades can mitigate this. It'd help, yes. Especially getting hitrate to a better value, getting some more evasion (though most evasion comes from stats) and obviously attack. But given that the idea was that 2h ideally performs better than 1h against relatively big amounts of normal enemies, that feels unlikely, even with heavily upgraded and good gear. The market price difference for upgrades of shade vs. power isn't limiting power armor enough to make a big enough difference. To be fair, you also get shade much cheaper in auctions, so that'd be a "free" 30-50 or so levels of ADB raising, compared to a power of slaughter piece.
But in the end, even fully upgrading ADB of all gear I have right now would not make 2h better. The turn difference and time difference is too big.

2h really needs love. It's definitely "playable", with a good set of gear assembled, but 1h is playable way earlier, can handle school girl arenas without issues and it feels like there's literally no disadvantage compared to 2h in any way. 2h could still have a weird niche in low difficulty play. I'm trying that in Isekai. Unfortunately I only have a Katana. For that you'd ideally want an Estoc.. I think. Especially before level 310.

This post has been edited by killi890: Jan 1 2022, 10:29

Wrong stuff was here once.

This post has been edited by killi890: Jan 19 2022, 11:39

Noni edit: this thread is for research: calculations & experiments with sufficient scale. Please use other threads for (casual) theory crafting etc

This post has been edited by Noni: Feb 2 2022, 08:44

I've tracked for interval of new riddlemaster

first : 2~5, 21~101 round
next : +20~100 round

the distribution of rounds for two riddlemaster is seems to uniform, as like as old riddlemaster.

We know about arcane score for comparing mage builds. Even better is looking at the mitigation 75% score vs maximum monster resist (for fests) or the appropriate row vs schoolgirl (for sg arenas), since that takes into account prof factor and counter-resist. However, in fests dealing consistent damage is also important. I propose another metric I call min9 score for comparing mage builds for festing, based on the expected amount of damage dealt to the least damaged monster out of nine monsters after one spell. The assumption here is that speed of clearing a round is primarily based on the result of one T3 spell.

(Math warning)

My inspiration came from [math.stackexchange.com] this page about expected maximum dice roll when rolling multiple dice. In HV, there are eight possible outcomes for damage: 2 for crit (crit or no crit) multiplied by 4 for resist (resist 0, 50, 75, or 90), and with current crit chance ranges they always follow the same order of damage dealt:

no crit resist 90 < crit resist 90 < no crit resist 75 < crit resist 75 < no crit resist 50 < crit resist 50 < no crit resist 0 < crit resist 0.

(It's straightforward enough to calculate the probability and damage for each outcome.) Number these outcomes 1-8 in order of damage, and let d1, d2,..., d8 be the additional damage dealt over the next lowest outcome. Like with the dice example, let Xmin be the minimum outcome among 9 rolls, and let Xi for i=1,2,...8 be the random variable whose value is 1 if Xmin≥Xi and 0 otherwise. Here, Xmin equals the sum of Xi*di over i=1,2,...8. By a similar argument to the dice problem, the expected value of Xmin equals the sum of P(Xmin≥i)*di over i=1,2,...8, each of which we can calculate fairly easily.

(End math warning)

So how does this work out in practice? Since we already know willow >>> redwood for imperil fests, I calculated these min9 scores for my (terrible) nonimperil cold mage with willow and redwood. Since nonimperil cold is bad, I only used equipment I already have forged to some degree, namely prof shoes and pants, charged phase hat and radiant phase robe and gloves. To make up for the bad equipment, I lowered the difficulty (I did account for reduced monster resist chance) and played on cold day. Here are my results:



The redwood has higher average damage, but the willow had similar min9, suggesting it might perform as well if I had enough damage or lowered the difficulty sufficiently. It turns out I didn't have enough damage for one T3 spell to primarily determine the speed of the round, but the performance gap did decrease as I reduced difficulty. Maybe some of you with more damage can help me test.

I also calculated min9 scores for some endgame builds to make some predictions. (I assume 600 prof and 100% rolls except where otherwise specified.) First off, mystic gear suffers badly by this metric due to inconsistent damage. Mystic is a good budget option vs SGs, but should perform poorly in fests. Considering the ludicrous prices for holy radiants, here's a comparison of radiants, 0% edb radiants, and mystics with a HOH:



This suggests that even terrible radiants may perfom better than mystics in fests. Now what about holy staff options? HOH is known to be the best, but let's compare a HOH with 0% roll on EDB and MDB vs other staff options:



This suggests that while a holy katalox staff might be great vs SGs, even a terrible HOH may still be better for festing. Even lowering the difficulty (and maximum monster resist) only narrows the predicted gap.

Finally, let us consider elemental nonimperil builds:



Redwood of the elementalist had been touted as potentially the best elemental nonimperil staff due to highest arcane score and mitigation 75% score, but then tests showed that willow is much faster. Indeed, elec/wind willow has a much higher min9 score than any redwood. Even fire/cold willow may be better. Interestingly, the focus suffix does well with min9 score since more consistent crits means more consistent damage, however the overall damage is still too low to compete.

I hope some more experienced players can share their experiences and let me know if this stuff makes any sense or is remotely helpful.

This post has been edited by mathl33t: Jun 9 2022, 03:57