[X] My Assistant

I think Cold Strike is best against normal enemies but it's not fully proven. I found a mistake in your original Research for 1H elemental comparison. So it needs to be proved again for today's monster population. The answer does not depend on player level but it depends on average encountered monster PL.

At the time of Research for 1H your result was that Cold Strike and Dark Strike are almost exactly equal, after I tried to fix your method. Today, Cold Strike should be better. But if a lot of new players make weak PL monsters, then Dark Strike could become better again.

Since you have new rapiers now, a Shocking and an Ethereal one, you can repeat the old test without the mistake. The mistake is that when your script gathers the average damage of each element, it artificially favors the First Element. So if you gather data with your Shocking rapier, your result is biased and wrong towards Shocking.

If you gather data with your Ethereal rapier and use 2 infusions, the result will be biased towards the element you infuse first. The bias comes from the order in which the strikes hit the enemy in the battle log.

CODE

==============================================================================
                  |      Setup A |      Setup B |      Setup C |      Setup D
==============================================================================
           Rapier |     Shocking |     Shocking |     Ethereal |     Ethereal
           Burden |         61.6 |         55.3 |         55.3 |         55.3
     Evade Chance |        5.7 % |        8.2 % |        8.2 % |        8.2 %
                  |              |     Feather- |              |    Haste and
                  |              |       weight |              |  Shadow Veil
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              Day |     Saturday |     Saturday |       Monday |       Monday
         Strike 1 |  Elec Strike |  Elec Strike |  Dark Strike |  Dark Strike
     Spike Shield |        Flame |        Flame |        Flame |        Flame
         Strike 2 |  Cold Strike |  Cold Strike |  Cold Strike |  Cold Strike
==============================================================================
            Kills |        8,349 |        8,336 |        8,336 |        8,362
            Turns |       17,400 |       17,349 |       17,358 |       18,679
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comparing Setup B and C, this suggests that Elec Strike is better than Dark Strike. I predict the Dark Strike grindfest should be 1% faster. I guess it could be very bad luck? Perhaps OFC created randomness.

We can estimate the theoretical loss in turns due to the 25% Evade of Shadow Veil. Using some of your old Research for 1H typical data, the loss is 25%*0.75/(0.75+2.4) ≈ 6%. Another way to calculate it is [2.4+0.75/(100%-25%)]/[2.4+0.75] ≈ 1.08 = 8%. For your test today I believe the 6% number is appropriate.

Your Setup D used Haste and Shadow Veil. The turn difference is 18679 / 17358 = 7.6% this means about 6% comes from Shadow Veil and 1.6% comes from Haste.

You proved that 2.5% Evade is not noticeable to your turns. This is pretty easy to believe. This is 1/10 of Shadow Veil so the difference to turns should be 0.6% you should not notice it.

In general, Haste is much better than Shadow Veil, Wind Shield, or Cold Shield for a 1H player. Turn off Shadow Veil first if you are strong enough. As I tested recently, Haste is very good on 1H. I believe Haste is better than Spirit Shield below level 400.

Typical monsters at level 500 have between 70%~75% PMit and reaching 80% with chaos upgrades; we might assume they likewise have a similarly high amount of MMit. So I was wondering, how are non-Imperil holy and dark mages viable? Aren't they supposed to be faster than Imperil holy and dark mages, or Imperil elemental mages?

How do mages get through that humongous MMit without Imperil? Prof factor only affects elemental mitigation right?

brute force. Holy has 'breached defence' which helps a bit. But dark, it's just not optimal and brute force through all that MMit is all we have. It just saves casting imperil all the time, that's all.

Mind you, in arena's brute force rocks. Only in PFFEST does dark mage suck without imperil. Rich bored players just throw in a couple of gums at the end and that's how it's viable.

I'm thinking that Breached Defense will help way more than one might expect at level 500, because when monsters have 80% MMit (albeit most will have lower) then a 10% Mitigation Reduction actually results in a whopping 1.4x damage improvement.

I'm having a hard time envisioning how brute force can be faster. Wouldn't it only take like 3~6 turns to Imperil all the monsters? And in exchange you can cut their MMit from 80% to 40% which is basically doing 3x damage. The numbers are a bit simplified and exaggerated but that's how I'm currently calculating it.

I guess it won't matter if Holy mage just blows everyone away in a few turns but I have no idea what maging looks like yet. The damage of the Holy and Dark spells seem roughly the same as elemental spells. I think the holy and dark staffs happen to be better, though I'm not sure by how much.

If most monsters really have 70% MMit (no chaos) then the MMit halving from Imperil only results in 2x damage. Brute forcing seems more viable under this comparison. Still, this analysis might suggest that if Tenboro increased the maximum player level, or increased the stats of monsters, that elemental mages could become better than Holy and Dark.

This post has been edited by BlueWaterSplash: Oct 22 2019, 12:38

I'm thinking that Breached Defense will help way more than one might expect at level 500, because when monsters have 80% MMit (albeit most will have lower) then a 10% Mitigation Reduction actually results in a whopping 1.4x damage improvement.

I'm having a hard time envisioning how brute force can be faster. Wouldn't it only take like 3~6 turns to Imperil all the monsters? And in exchange you can cut their MMit from 80% to 40% which is basically doing 3x damage. The numbers are a bit simplified and exaggerated but that's how I'm currently calculating it.

I guess it won't matter if Holy mage just blows everyone away in a few turns but I have no idea what maging looks like yet. The damage of the Holy and Dark spells seem roughly the same as elemental spells. I think the holy and dark staffs happen to be better, though I'm not sure by how much.

If most monsters really have 70% MMit (no chaos) then the MMit halving from Imperil only results in 2x damage. Brute forcing seems more viable under this comparison. Still, this analysis might suggest that if Tenboro increased the maximum player level, or increased the stats of monsters, that elemental mages could become better than Holy and Dark.

So part of the reason non-imperil can work compared is that mages have lots and lots of damage. Imperiled monsters are 1shot by the T3 in almost all cases - possibly excluding max-level giants, and when they get a 50% resist. This means that beyond the threshold required to reach that sort of damage - relatively low! - there are few turn savings from things like peerless-level EDB, radiant phases, DD levels, etc. You do still gain a few turns here and there against pesky giants (see sssss2's numbers - for comparison, as a lower geared but still fully forged elec mage with a very nice redwood staff - I do a similar number of T3s, but more T2s and T1s - maybe 200 of each more).

Non-imperil, however, can make the full use of that raw damage on every round. But it may also be faster in real-time because it avoids the tedium of casting imperil (though it's also more dangerous and will require more healing, because of spell time modifiers).

Elemental is about as good as dark, if not marginally better, for non-imperil. The dark debuff is not that good. Some of the problems faced by dark players include not being able to reach 1.0 prof factor as 4+1 unless you're using a Katalox staff rather than Willow, and slower natural spell cast speeds on their damaging spells making them take more attacks.

In contrast, elemental mages do the same amount of damage, but with arguably better debuffs (elec for raw damage, cold and wind both have excellent survival increases) and can reach 1.0 using more common elemental redwoods (staff distribution is equal across types, but elemental prefixes are 15% each rather than holy/dark's 10%, and while Katalox has 1 fewer suffix it has even distribution across them, while Redwood is weighted towards Destruction). Elemental mages also use less mana! for what little that matters (both as a dark mage and elec mage I have been comfortable grinding fests without using mana elixirs at all, nor ever using coalesced mana).

I cannot comment on how holy actually plays in non-imperil, because I have neither experience nor data. But likely it is still slightly faster than optimal imperil setups, while also requiring less input to actually play.

This post has been edited by lestion: Oct 22 2019, 13:06

Thanks for that detailed reply. Despite never seeing maging, I think am getting a decent idea of what it might be like. Everything you say makes sense, and what scares me is that by now I think I can almost understand everything you say haha.

Maging is still very far off for me but I'm starting to think about it and keep an eye on interesting items that might appear. Sometimes the mechanics of maging and melee can be slightly related; for example lately people have debated the merits of Imperil in melee and this brings up similar ideas in maging. I'm not decided on what element I would use, but I've also considered nearly all the ideas you brought up. Maybe I would use whatever I found on the ground from monsters.

Or if monsters gave me nothing but 500m credits fell out of the sky into my pocket that would be great, too. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

Thanks for that detailed reply. Despite never seeing maging, I think am getting a decent idea of what it might be like. Everything you say makes sense, and what scares me is that by now I think I can almost understand everything you say haha.

Maging is still very far off for me but I'm starting to think about it and keep an eye on interesting items that might appear. Sometimes the mechanics of maging and melee can be slightly related; for example lately people have debated the merits of Imperil in melee and this brings up similar ideas in maging. I'm not decided on what element I would use, but I've also considered nearly all the ideas you brought up. Maybe I would use whatever I found on the ground from monsters.

Or if monsters gave me nothing but 500m credits fell out of the sky into my pocket that would be great, too. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/heh.gif)

I agree with Lestion - however don't underestimate the sheer power of dark. It does a lot of damage. That means that in arena's they all die in the same time it would take me to imperil the lot. So non-imperil is a lot faster in arena's. And, bear in mind that we do play imperil against SG's. All mages. There is no non-imperil play against SG.

So basically, with my 0.958 prof factor 4+1 set, I can breeze through 500 rounds of PFFEST, and then it gets dangerous. But proficiency is still not at max, and it will improve further. We'll see how 'bad' non-imperil dark is when I'm at 600 base prof, and at DD VII.

By the way - elemental spell damage is not the same as dark. T1 and T2 are a tiny bit less powerful.
https://ehwiki.org/wiki/Spell_Damage

Tiny bits are important in HV

This post has been edited by DJNoni: Oct 22 2019, 14:57

By the way - elemental spell damage is not the same as dark. T1 and T2 are a tiny bit less powerful.
https://ehwiki.org/wiki/Spell_Damage

Tiny bits are important in HV

Dark Willow of Destruction is also significantly more powerful than any *element* Redwood of Destruction.
0 MDB difference
+ 4.82 EDB - 2.14 prof (they even each other out)
+0.9 WIS - 1.50 INT (minor difference, well below 0.5% damage in favor of Redwood)
+13.59 CR (at least 3% damage in PFUDOR)

(Katalox is crap, lower EDB and no CR, prof alone can't compensate that)

Dark also has DoT in the form of Ripened Soul, which adds a low but still visible amount of damage.

Dark Willow of Destruction is also significantly more powerful than any *element* Redwood of Destruction.
0 MDB difference
+ 4.82 EDB - 2.14 prof (they even each other out)
+0.9 WIS - 1.50 INT (minor difference, well below 0.5% damage in favor of Redwood)
+13.59 CR (at least 3% damage in PFUDOR)

(Katalox is crap, lower EDB and no CR, prof alone can't compensate that)

Dark also has DoT in the form of Ripened Soul, which adds a low but still visible amount of damage.

Redwood and Katalox are essentially analogous: the EDB rolls are the same, the MDB rolls are the same, and the lack of CR is obviously the same. Even disregarding the prof difference (though it does make a difference), Redwood/Katalox should beat out Willow for non-imperil, and I will show you the numbers for this in a subsequent post. (Note: actually it's not! See the tables for proof.)

The DoT is basically negligible in all my time playing dark (it added up to something like 0.06% damage) but that is for imperil play. For non-imperil play, it may be slightly more significant (though whether this actually adds up to a turn saved in real play, I strongly doubt).

If any of my numbers are wrong regarding the differences between Katalox and Redwood, please do tell me. I do not have conclusive game evidence of this - only wiki formulas and peerless redwoods to compare against.

This post has been edited by lestion: Nov 1 2019, 00:36

Edit! This post has been superceded by my newer post about staff comparisons for non-imperil here.

This post has been edited by lestion: Nov 13 2019, 03:34

Dark DOT through ripened soul: 3.7% of all damage inflicted. That is better than upgrading DD2 to DD3!

I worries me that your conclusion seems to be that katalox would be better for non-imperil dark play. That has been tested many times in the past, and that never seemed to be the case?

Dark DOT through ripened soul: 3.7% of all damage inflicted. That is better than upgrading DD2 to DD3!

I worries me that your conclusion seems to be that katalox would be better for non-imperil dark play. That has been tested many times in the past, and that never seemed to be the case?

I'm willing to own up to a mistake and accept that non-imperil dark may benefit significantly from the DoT after all. (It is quite hard to simulate, though...)

Also: my previous post now reflects more correct results, which are in favour of Willow definitively.

This post has been edited by lestion: Oct 23 2019, 01:07

Higher cast speed build (29% vs 19.3%), less DOT (3.4%)

Not much data, but still plausible that it works similar to bleeding wound.

-snip-

I added more detailed data about the strike damage.

For non-imperil play, it may be slightly more significant (though whether this actually adds up to a turn saved in real play, I strongly doubt).

From what I remember slotting the ability was saving me ~100-150 turn out of 4000-5000.
Not insignificant in any way.
Obviously if you're using imperil most monsters die after the T3 so the DoT doesn't really add much.

If any of my numbers are wrong regarding the differences between Katalox and Redwood, please do tell me. I do not have conclusive game evidence of this - only wiki formulas and peerless redwoods to compare against.

You're way off with the resist you calculated on the monsters.
The monster resist is calculated as such:

Thats cus resist is multiplied. In 3 parts.

1. One of 3 which is lower:
a. 10
b. WIS/ 100
c. (WIS - Level) / 75
2. monster ability * 0.5%
3. Difficulty (another 10%).

So full formula is:
1 - (1 - min(10 , (WIS/ 100) , (WIS - Level) / 75) / 100) * (1 - ability * 0.5%)*(1-0,1 in case of pf)
And thats why max is 1 - (0,9)*(0,9)*(0,9) which is 27,1% instead of 30%.

So tough monster @ PFUDOR will pretty much always have >20 resist.
More than 2 years ago I calculated the resist at 22.7%, now it's probably higher (24 or 25%) but I don't really want to do the test again, the methodology is this post.
With the unrealistic 12% your cutting the CR efficiency in half.

I also don't think you can calculate the Cr from sssss2's result since he could have still attacked even if a few monsters have resisted the imperil, you really need to get the resist data yourself to get any meaningful result.

You're also comparing apple to oranges if you're extending redwood vs willow for elec to katalox vs willow for dark.
Willow has higher dark EDB than elec EDB (8.1 base value difference).

This post has been edited by Sapo84: Oct 22 2019, 22:38

From what I remember slotting the ability was saving me ~100-150 turn out of 4000-5000.
Not insignificant in any way.
Obviously if you're using imperil most monsters die after the T3 so the DoT doesn't really add much.
You're way off with the resist you calculated on the monsters.
The monster resist is calculated as such:
So tough monster @ PFUDOR will pretty much always have >20 resist.
More than 2 years ago I calculated the resist at 22.7%, now it's probably higher (24 or 25%) but I don't really want to do the test again, the methodology is this post.
With the unrealistic 12% your cutting the CR efficiency in half.

I also don't think you can calculate the Cr from sssss2's result since he could have still attacked even if a few monsters have resisted the imperil, you really need to get the resist data yourself to get any meaningful result.

You're also comparing apple to oranges if you're extending redwood vs willow for elec to katalox vs willow for dark.
Willow has higher dark EDB than elec EDB (8.1 base value difference).

Oops... good call on both counts. I forgot to add the PF resist bonus (and I also didn't notice the willow dark EDB being higher). I'll now fix those things and update my findings accordingly... apologies for some very misleading results, in that case!

That said - I'm guessing sssss2's method involved simply imperiling until all monsters were affected, partly because the numbers I extrapolated from it agreed with my own personal data, too.

Honestly, I don't understand why you people approach with average damage.

In the real cases, it's how the combination of damage and CR affects turns. If not in terms of turns, the method you determine better styles in terms of average damage could be misleading.
For my part, I believe willow(oak for holy) is better for all cases. The more damage you do, the more resist hinders your speed in terms of turns.

Lestion's method of mage analysis seems to be very similar to what I do with melee: take sssss2's experiment data and calculate further interpreted results from it. As well as calculate interpreted results from the game formulas directly when possible. Then try to mathematically compare and logically explain any differences.

Since I can actually understand some mage stuff nowdays I'd like to cross-check his calculations but unfortunately with me having zero mage experience, I'm not worthy. I can only hide under the blankets and watch. Maybe Sapo84 will be able to fix any mistakes. Edit: guess he did

The question of how much Resist monsters have mirrors the question of how much Parry monsters have, which I've discussed with Sapo84 before. I plan to return to this topic eventually. Some new Overpower data would be welcome, but it won't be easy to gather because someone has to temporarily make Overpower 5 weapons and it wastes a lot of credits. Let's wait before doing it.

And, bear in mind that we do play imperil against SG's. All mages. There is no non-imperil play against SG.

Dark DOT through ripened soul: 3.7% of all damage inflicted. That is better than upgrading DD2 to DD3!

Thanks, this all makes sense to me. I recently calculated that School Girls actually have less PMit (and probably MMit) than typical monsters but the difference doesn't matter here; it's still enough. Because they have way more HP they can't be blown away in a few turns, so all styles of maging benefit by casting Imperil on them first to lower the MMit.

This post has been edited by BlueWaterSplash: Oct 23 2019, 00:34

Honestly, I don't understand why you people approach with average damage.

In the real cases, it's how the combination of damage and CR affects turns. If not in terms of turns, the method you determine better styles in terms of average damage could be misleading.
For my part, I believe willow(oak for holy) is better for all cases. The more damage you do, the more resist hinders your speed in terms of turns.

My post has now been corrected and you will find that your belief is correct even in the case of average damage.

But if you would have done me the courtesy of fully reading my post, it did say on MANY occasions that this is the case only for raw damage output, and NOT for the actual effect this has on turn counts. I did explain that there are other factors that weigh into that because of the nature of mage's damage delivery (AoE) and that if you would've overkilled everything with either staff, then one resisting monster can cost you a turn to cast an extra spell.

sssss2 added new elemental comparison data, thanks!

CODE

- Setup B: Attacks with 3 strikes
======================================================================================================================
      Setup B |   total |       damage |  average ||     hit |  average ||   crit |  average |  crit rate |     bonus
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
          You |  11,979 |  315,356,105 |   26,326 ||   5,415 |   19,006 ||  6,564 |   32,364 |    54.80 % |  170.28 %
  Elec Strike |  11,979 |   55,752,039 |    4,654 ||  11,979 |    4,654 ||        |          |            |          
  Cold Strike |  11,979 |   55,113,393 |    4,601 ||  11,979 |    4,601 ||        |          |            |          
  Void Strike |  11,979 |  110,848,085 |    9,254 ||  11,979 |    9,254 ||        |          |            |          
======================================================================================================================

- Setup C: Attacks with 3 strikes
======================================================================================================================
      Setup C |   total |       damage |  average ||     hit |  average ||   crit |  average |  crit rate |     bonus
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
          You |  12,027 |  315,848,858 |   26,262 ||   5,538 |   19,361 ||  6,489 |   32,151 |    53.95 % |  166.06 %
  Dark Strike |  12,027 |   62,400,600 |    5,188 ||  12,027 |    5,188 ||        |          |            |          
  Cold Strike |  12,027 |   55,748,816 |    4,635 ||  12,027 |    4,635 ||        |          |            |          
  Void Strike |  12,027 |  111,966,181 |    9,310 ||  12,027 |    9,310 ||        |          |            |          
======================================================================================================================

Elec Strike 55,752,039 total 4,654 average
Cold Strike 55,113,393 total 4,601 average

Dark Strike 62,400,600 total 5,188 average
Cold Strike 55,748,816 total 4,635 average

What happened? These results are way different from before! And Cold Strike has Flame Shield and it's about the same as Elec Strike? Edit: I found the reason. Because this is tested on Electric Day and Dark Day, the result is difficult to interpret.

I think that on the -10% mitigation Element Day the damage is roughly increased by 20%. So in today's monster population Cold Strike with Fire Shield is 8% better than Dark Strike? That's a huge change from Research for 1H.

Can sssss2 repeat this test on element neutral days? For example use Elec+Cold and Dark+Cold on the Fire, Wind, or Holy day. Maybe also use Haste so that it's the same as Research for 1H those years ago. (I don't know if you used Shadow Veil before).



I notice Void Strike still does only 9254/19006 = 48.69% or 9310/19361 = 48.09% of the main hit. This is better than before, because we fixed the 3 strikes problem. But it's still not 50% so maybe there is another problem that I don't understand...

In your original Research for 1H data, the elemental strikes only do 96% damage when they crit. I don't know why. Can you separate the elemental strike crits in this new data?

Maybe everybody these days made weak PL monsters, or everyone made Celestials? There is an unanswered question of how the game chooses monsters. Can your script check how many monsters of each species you met? Did you meet more Celestials than Giant? Or did all monster species appear equally?

This post has been edited by BlueWaterSplash: Oct 23 2019, 07:48

The conclusions here invalidate my earlier findings and my hypothesis altogether: this is a very clear ruling in favour of the status quo - that counter-resist has a significant benefit on damage which is not outweighed by the EDB differences between staffs.

My previous post now reflects more correct results, which are in favour of Willow definitively.

Since it's not quite as good on Willow, what about Arctic? Is Peerless Arctic Willow Staff of Destruction better or worse now than Peerless/Legendary Arctic Redwood Staff of Destruction/Niflheim?