[X] My Assistant

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?

Edit - this post has been superceded by newer, better models. Please see my post here for more data about staffs.

This post has been edited by lestion: Nov 13 2019, 03:35

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.

Now that I think about it and did more secret calculations, I think this is a believable result with a stronger PL monster population, but such a huge change should still be confirmed if possible.

CODE

Cold Strike |  18.74% | * Flame Spike
Dark Strike |  18.60% |
Holy Strike |  18.51% |
Fire Strike |  17.93% | * Shock Spike
Elec Strike |  17.17% |
Wind Strike |  17.12% |
Cold Strike |  16.90% |
Fire Strike |  15.47% |

If the change is this great, then Fire Strike + Shock Shield would also become better than Dark Strike and Holy Strike, 17.93% x 1.08 = 19.36%

Cold Strike would be 18.74% x 1.08 = 20.24%

And my belief is that it's also worth it to use Cold Shield and Wind Shield if you have a Tempestuous/Shocking rapier. By my calculation there will be a penalty of 6% due to the counter attacks problem. So Elec and Wind Strike would be 19.00% (estimated since never tested with shield) x 1.02 = 19.38%

So it may already be true that Dark and Holy Strike are the weakest elements against regular monsters! In the future as typical monster PL continues to grow, Dark and Holy Strike will continue to get weaker.

Maybe I can test it also, or anyone could test it. I don't think I have the same script so I would have to test in a less accurate way, but it should still be good enough to verify if Dark Strike and Holy Strike became the weakest elements now.

-snip-

That's interesting.

I also want to remind about dark and holy imperil in case of calculations about imperil style.

-snip-

Added some data to the original post.

CODE

Void Strike: almost 50 % (9,511 - 9,665)
Dark Strike (day bonus): 27.87 % (5,396 / 19,361)
Cold Strike (day bonus): 26.61 % (5,097 / 19,157)
Elec Strike (day bonus): 25.17 % (4,783 / 19,006)
Cold Strike (spike shield): 24.73 % (4,701 / 19,006), 0.2488 (4,817 / 19,361)
Dark Strike (lacks shield): 22.67 % (4,342 / 19,157)

Void Strike is 50% now, great! I guess the elemental crit mystery caused the problem.

It seems my previous estimate that Cold Strike is 8% stronger than Dark Strike was correct. Your new data shows 24.73% / 22.67% = 9%.

So it's probably really true that in today's world, Dark and Holy Strike are the weakest elements against normal monsters. I'm pretty sure even Fire, Wind, and Elec are stronger if you use the correct shield. I estimate they are 4~5% stronger with their shield.

Of course without spike shield Fire, Wind, Elec, and Cold are about 10% weaker than Dark and Holy. This should not change much from Research for 1H many years ago.

The reason for the big change with spike shield is that when monsters' PL rises their average mitigation rises. In Research for 1H the average Dark not-mitigated was 52% today it has become 22.67% x 2 ≈ 45%. In the future if most monsters are PL 2250 it will reach 40%. This means that after 20 more years Dark and Holy Strike will receive the same weakening a second time.

The spike shield -25% mitigation is additive, therefore its effect becomes much larger after this happened. The day bonus -10% is also additive. And you found an interesting result: Dark strike on Dark day is stronger than Cold Strike on Cold day. I expected this because if you stack the day and spike shield together their effect won't improve as much.

Most days won't match your bonus so that's not the main important result. I think Dark and Holy melee prices should drop after this.

Dark and Holy are still way better against School Girls, this will never change. They are 4x damage (+300%) compared to elements. With Imperil the difference is about 1.5x damage (+50%).

And you found an interesting result: Dark strike on Dark day is stronger than Cold Strike on Cold day.

I turned off a flame spike shield when testing a cold strike on Wednesday.

So, Dark strike on Dark day without Spike shield is stronger than Cold Strike on Cold day without Spike shield.

This is an obvious result.

Most days won't match your bonus so that's not the main important result. I think Dark and Holy melee prices should drop after this.

I think Ethereal is the best prefix for 1H.
SG Arenas: Holy and Dark strike
GF, IW: Cold strike with Flame spike shield and other strikes which match their day bonus.

And I still think Hallowed/Demonic is better than Arctic or other elemental prefixes.
Most low-mid level melee players spend most of their time clearing SG Arenas.
Even if they sometimes try GF or IW with Hallowed/Demonic weapons, the penalty will be very small.

A player who spends hours clearing GF?
Go mage.

I think it is better to bring following thread (for research about riddlemaste)
https://forums.e-hentai.org/index.php?showtopic=229352

Oh you turned off flame spike shield? But I feel your results are what I would expect if you did use flame spike shield on Wednesday. Maybe next week you can turn flame shield on and compare.

I feel it is strange that Cold Strike with day bonus is so much stronger than Elec Strike with day bonus, without spike shield. 26.61% / 25.17% ≈ 6%. In your old Research for 1H, Elec and Cold are about the same without spike shield.

It might still be possible to argue that Dark and Hallowed could be as good as Arctic in regular arenas; my idea from long ago is to infuse the strike of the day bonus, then switch your spike shield to match this element. Only Dark/Hallowed weapon has the freedom to choose this. Arctic weapon must always keep the flame shield.

I am planning to discuss that idea more later. Right now I'd still like to study the new results and check for mistakes.

This post has been edited by BlueWaterSplash: Oct 24 2019, 16:08

Average Resist of Monsters

A couple of years ago I did lots of tests, and calculated that the base resist of monsters are
- Weakest: 13~ %
- Average: 20~ %
- Strongest: 27.1 % (maximum)

So I inferred that
- Weakest: WIS 4 % * TOKEN 0 % * PFUDOR 10 % = 13.6 %
- Average: WIS 7 % * TOKEN 5 % * PFUDOR 10 % = 20.48 %
- Strongest: WIS 10 % * TOKEN 10 % * PFUDOR 10% = 27.1 %

[attachembed=135277]



Recently I did 20 x PFUDOR grindfest as a cold mage.

CODE

===============================================================
        - |    cast |   target |    gains |  resists |    rate
---------------------------------------------------------------
  Imperil |  68,570 |  192,266 |  179,919 |   12,347 |  6.42 %
===============================================================

===================================================================================================================================
           - |    cast |          damage |  resisted |   target ||     hit |  average ||   blast |  average |     rate |     bonus
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Freeze |   2,830 |     502,814,269 |    9.64 % |    3,047 ||   1,404 |  120,783 ||   1,643 |  202,821 |  53.92 % |  167.92 %
    Blizzard |  15,690 |  10,234,004,969 |    9.06 % |   41,875 ||  19,052 |  177,658 ||  22,823 |  300,104 |  54.50 % |  168.92 %
  Fimbulvetr |  19,940 |  48,241,533,735 |    8.91 % |  153,362 ||  69,538 |  228,653 ||  83,824 |  385,825 |  54.66 % |  168.74 %
===================================================================================================================================

It seems that the average resist has increased.

Average Deprecating Resist
- Estimated: 6.09 %
- Actual value: 6.42 %

Average Damage Reduction
- Estimated: 8.39 %
- Actual value: 8.91 % ~ 9.64 %

Average Resist of Monsters

A couple of years ago I did lots of tests, and calculated that the base resist of monsters are
- Weakest: 13~ %
- Average: 20~ %
- Strongest: 27.1 % (maximum)

So I inferred that
- Weakest: WIS 4 % * TOKEN 0 % * PFUDOR 10 % = 13.6 %
- Average: WIS 7 % * TOKEN 5 % * PFUDOR 10 % = 20.48 %
- Strongest: WIS 10 % * TOKEN 10 % * PFUDOR 10% = 27.1 %

[attachembed=135277]
Recently I did 20 x PFUDOR grindfest as a cold mage.

CODE

===============================================================
        - |    cast |   target |    gains |  resists |    rate
---------------------------------------------------------------
  Imperil |  68,570 |  192,266 |  179,919 |   12,347 |  6.42 %
===============================================================

===================================================================================================================================
           - |    cast |          damage |  resisted |   target ||     hit |  average ||   blast |  average |     rate |     bonus
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Freeze |   2,830 |     502,814,269 |    9.64 % |    3,047 ||   1,404 |  120,783 ||   1,643 |  202,821 |  53.92 % |  167.92 %
    Blizzard |  15,690 |  10,234,004,969 |    9.06 % |   41,875 ||  19,052 |  177,658 ||  22,823 |  300,104 |  54.50 % |  168.92 %
  Fimbulvetr |  19,940 |  48,241,533,735 |    8.91 % |  153,362 ||  69,538 |  228,653 ||  83,824 |  385,825 |  54.66 % |  168.74 %
===================================================================================================================================

It seems that the average resist has increased.

Average Deprecating Resist
- Estimated: 6.09 %
- Actual value: 6.42 %

Average Damage Reduction
- Estimated: 8.39 %
- Actual value: 8.91 % ~ 9.64 %

Could you please update HV Utils with this information?

Recently I did 20 x PFUDOR grindfest as a cold mage.
...

Thanks for separating your data into casts, and targets. This is really interesting and useful.

Looking at the imperil data in particular: 68,570 casts over 20 fests is an average of ~3429 casts per run, which in turn is ~3.4 casts per round. That's enough for me to assume that these tests assume you recast until everything is affected by imperil.

Thanks to this data, we can assume the actual average monster resist is currently somewhere around 21.6% (6.42/0.2972 = ~21.6).

This post has been edited by lestion: Oct 24 2019, 16:44

Monsters Statistics

- 2,513 monsters / 167,318 times for 20 x PFUDOR grindfest

CODE

========================================================
      Class |  Count |  Average |  Encounter |    Ratio
--------------------------------------------------------
      Giant |    362 |       60 |     21,575 |  12.89 %
  Dragonkin |    248 |       74 |     18,369 |  10.98 %
  Celestial |    249 |       73 |     18,112 |  10.82 %
     Undead |    220 |       75 |     16,457 |   9.84 %
  Arthropod |    260 |       63 |     16,426 |   9.82 %
  Mechanoid |    188 |       68 |     12,692 |   7.59 %
  Elemental |    152 |       68 |     10,322 |   6.17 %
      Beast |    154 |       66 |     10,125 |   6.05 %
     Daimon |    142 |       71 |     10,069 |   6.02 %
   Humanoid |    128 |       75 |      9,648 |   5.77 %
     Sprite |    124 |       68 |      8,449 |   5.05 %
  Reptilian |    152 |       55 |      8,299 |   4.96 %
      Avion |    130 |       52 |      6,741 |   4.03 %
       Rare |      4 |        9 |         34 |   0.02 %
========================================================

==================================================================
    PL |  Count |  Average |  Encounter |    Ratio |  Accumulated
------------------------------------------------------------------
  2250 |     46 |      479 |     22,049 |  13.18 % |      13.18 %
  2150 |      2 |      479 |        957 |   0.57 % |      13.75 %
  2100 |      3 |      459 |      1,378 |   0.82 % |      14.57 %
  2050 |      1 |      410 |        410 |   0.25 % |      14.82 %
  2000 |      2 |      401 |        802 |   0.48 % |      15.30 %
  1950 |      5 |      361 |      1,806 |   1.08 % |      16.38 %
  1900 |      1 |      309 |        309 |   0.18 % |      16.56 %
  1850 |      4 |      302 |      1,209 |   0.72 % |      17.28 %
  1800 |     89 |      232 |     20,685 |  12.36 % |      29.65 %
  1750 |      5 |      261 |      1,304 |   0.78 % |      30.43 %
  1700 |     29 |      162 |      4,699 |   2.81 % |      33.23 %
  1650 |    221 |      129 |     28,558 |  17.07 % |      50.30 %
  1600 |    156 |      100 |     15,675 |   9.37 % |      59.67 %
  1550 |    323 |       70 |     22,611 |  13.51 % |      73.19 %
  1500 |    564 |       50 |     28,480 |  17.02 % |      90.21 %
  1450 |    327 |       24 |      8,010 |   4.79 % |      94.99 %
  1400 |    301 |       16 |      4,939 |   2.95 % |      97.95 %
  1350 |    117 |       11 |      1,329 |   0.79 % |      98.74 %
  1300 |    291 |        4 |      1,152 |   0.69 % |      99.43 %
  1250 |      6 |        1 |          6 |   0.00 % |      99.43 %
------------------------------------------------------------------
  1200 |      5 |       59 |        295 |   0.18 % |      99.61 % # MONSTER DATA IS OUT OF DATE
  1150 |      1 |       14 |         14 |   0.01 % |      99.62 % # MONSTER DATA IS OUT OF DATE
  1100 |      1 |      112 |        112 |   0.07 % |      99.68 % # MONSTER DATA IS OUT OF DATE
  1050 |      2 |       33 |         65 |   0.04 % |      99.72 % # MONSTER DATA IS OUT OF DATE
  1000 |      2 |       61 |        121 |   0.07 % |      99.80 % # MONSTER DATA IS OUT OF DATE
   950 |      1 |      100 |        100 |   0.06 % |      99.85 % # MONSTER DATA IS OUT OF DATE
   900 |      4 |       52 |        209 |   0.12 % |      99.98 % # MONSTER DATA IS OUT OF DATE
------------------------------------------------------------------
     0 |      4 |        9 |         34 |   0.02 % |     100.00 % # BOSS
==================================================================

=====================================
  Mitigation |  Average |  Imperiled
-------------------------------------
        fire |  59.91 % |    21.83 %
        cold |  56.01 % |    19.01 %
        elec |  59.11 % |    20.64 %
        wind |  57.38 % |    18.75 %
        holy |  53.35 % |    28.66 %
        dark |  51.51 % |    26.83 %
=====================================

================================================
  Rank |          Trainer |  Count |  Encounter
------------------------------------------------
     1 |         Nero-Arc |    200 |     16,332
     2 |          serorin |    127 |     14,135
     3 |         morineko |    182 |     13,296
     4 |           sssss2 |    200 |     12,230
     5 |          gc00018 |     97 |     11,336
     6 |      FreeloaderV |    101 |      9,213
     7 |     MidNightPass |     78 |      8,951
     8 |         RoadShoe |    200 |      6,409
     9 |         NerfThis |    200 |      6,384
    10 |            Koaen |      7 |      3,298
    11 |          danixxx |     17 |      2,953
    12 |        qdjseh001 |     66 |      2,874
    13 |         Mantra64 |     27 |      2,250
    14 |     Sushilicious |    116 |      1,980
    15 |       Hina Amano |    175 |      1,969
    16 |           DJNoni |     33 |      1,943
    17 |          Godde?? |     32 |      1,901
    18 |       Petal_Kiss |      7 |      1,744
    19 |        .@_@.@_@. |     49 |      1,663
    20 |         cylinnia |     28 |      1,490
    21 |         tempasdf |     14 |      1,428
    22 |         StonyCat |      4 |      1,423
    23 |         Honeycat |      5 |      1,345
    24 |           ddwiki |      4 |      1,255
    25 |   Kira.Yoshikage |     22 |      1,180
    26 |          lestion |     10 |      1,133
    27 |      Void Domain |      6 |      1,030
    28 |        sabregimp |     12 |      1,025
================================================

This post has been edited by sssss2: Oct 24 2019, 23:04

With sssss2's latest data, I was able to build an imperil simulator. I will remain vague about how this was achieved (parts of it could be adapted for unscrupulous means, if I did).

I simulated 10,000 fests for various levels of counter-resist, and compared how many imperil casts this actually saves.

I recommend skipping straight to the tables if you don't care about disclaimers for what parts may not be accurately modelled.

First, I want to talk about the part with the most questionable accuracy: with no data for round size distribution, I made some guesses.
- Using sssss2's T3 target count (which, judging by his previous data on page 3, is cast almost exactly once per round - probably excluding the very early rounds very the monster count is low enough that imperil coverage doesn't give enough time for it to come off cooldown) we can assume an average monsters per round of ~7.67.
- From this, I used some guesses about the distribution of monsters per round in order to give a similarly matching average. In this case, it was ~10% 5 monsters, 12% 6 monsters, 16% 7 monsters, 25% 8, 35% 9 and 2% 10.
- Obviously, we cannot have much confidence in these values. If anyone has actual data, I can easily re-run these tests to give more accurate results.
- I do think they're reasonable accurate, though, and should not make enormous changes to the results.

There is also another small problem: monster resist values may average out to 21.6%, but obviously this is not the case for every monster, and max resist count monsters may have unexpected effects on how many imperils have to be recast. (If you can't visualise this problem, just take my word for it!) To combat this, I used two methods for resist distribution.
- In one set of data, I populated all monsters with a static 21.6% resist.
- In another, I used random distribution equidistant from the 21.6% mark - up to the 27.9% max, and down the same distance to 15.3%. This is also unrealistic in practice because of plvl skewing, but it essentially offers a 'chaos' mode that should properly represent whether outliers with different resist chances have a strong effect on actual casts required.

In actual practice, it turned out these averaged out nicely over the large data set anyway, so they probably don't need urgent fixing.

Anyway - the most relevant parts of these tables are the CR and the average casts per fest. They're actually slightly off from sssss2's real data, but this could be put down to a difference in imperil behaviour or just variance in a smaller data set (I did not model it on a per-fest basis, so I do not know how much difference there could be between runs).

CODE

==========================================================================================================
|All monsters have 21.6% resist                                                                          |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|CR  | Casts    | Targets  | Hits     | Resists  | TargRes% | CastRes% | P.Loss   | P.Loss% | Avg Casts  |
|0%  | 43381929 | 98221939 | 76901036 | 21320903 | 21.71%   | 49.15%   | 15380941 | 54.93%  | 4339       |
|40% | 36739443 | 88364557 | 76903901 | 11460656 | 12.97%   | 31.19%   | 8738228  | 31.21%  | 3674       |
|70% | 32275652 | 82242668 | 76904786 | 5337882  | 6.49%    | 16.54%   | 4274489  | 15.27%  | 3228       |
|84% | 30263292 | 79654004 | 76898862 | 2755142  | 3.46%    | 9.1%     | 2264861  | 8.09%   | 3026       |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Monsters have randomly distributed resists between 15.3% and 27.9%                                       |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|CR  | Casts    | Targets  | Hits     | Resists  | TargRes% | CastRes% | P.Loss   | P.Loss% | Avg Casts  |
|0%  | 4350610  | 98421050 | 76898733 | 21522317 | 21.87%   | 49.41%   | 15561855 | 55.58%  | 4357       |
|40% | 36788146 | 88417084 | 76900713 | 11516371 | 13.03%   | 31.3%    | 8788060  | 31.39%  | 3679       |
|70% | 32287168 | 82254298 | 76901115 | 5353183  | 6.51%    | 16.58%   | 4287638  | 15.31%  | 3229       |
|84% | 30266374 | 79653003 | 76897175 | 2755828  | 3.46%    | 9.11%    | 2266277  | 8.09%   | 3027       |
==========================================================================================================

Key:
CR - Counter-resist
Casts - Imperils cast total
Targets - Total number of targets imperil was cast against (does not include already-afflicted targets)
Hits - How many of the imperils hit against their target.
Resists - How many of the targets resisted imperil.
TargRes% - The rate at which individual monsters resisted imperil.
CastRes% - The rate at which casts of imperil were met with a resist by any of its (up to) 3 targets.
P.Loss - the amount of extra casts needed as opposed to a theoretical perfect run with absolutely 0 resists.
P.Loss% - same as above, expressed as a % increase in turns compared to the perfect run.
Avg Casts - the average amount of imperil casts per fest.

Hopefully this is adequately explained. Again, if you have feedback on the methods I used to model uncertain parts, I will happily re-run the simulation given better data regarding these problems.

edit: note that the max is actually 27.1%, not 27.9%. I'm not sure if I used the correct figure in the calcs and just wrote it wrongly here, or if it was wrong in there too. that said it doesn't really make any significant difference to the results (if anything, greater distance between min and max values still coming out roughly the same just serves to highlight that it doesn't matter which way it was simulated)

This post has been edited by lestion: Nov 16 2019, 00:13

That monster data is amazing, thanks! I assume sssss2 gathered it playing as mage because the average elemental mitigations are slightly lower than his recent 1H tests. For example Dark mitigation is 51.51% instead of 1 - 2 * 22.67% = 54.66%.

Monster Selection

The game tries to artificially balance out the PL of monsters you encounter. Therefore I expect average PL will not increase much in the future. So Demonic/Hallowed melee should not continue to get worse.

The game does not balance species like I expected. Players have made tons of Giants; so you will fight lots of Giants. This explains why Arctic could do more damage than Shocking compared to years ago. If players made different monsters, the relationship can change to anything.

The weakening of Demonic/Hallowed compared to years ago is not because of monster species, but because of spike shield: it is more effective against high PL monsters with more elemental resistance.

The "Average" column isn't equal among species and its variation is complex. Assuming there is no Natural Weighting to favor some species, I believe it's instead the result of the game trying to balance the encountered PL. The 4 species maximum per round can also affect it.

Giant: 362 total, 60 average. Most common by far, but most have a low PL.
Dragonkin: 248 total, 74 average. Common and tending to have high PL.
Celestial: 249 total, 73 average. Common and tending to have high PL.
Undead: 220 total, 75 average. Common and tending to have high PL.
Arthropod: 260 total , 63 average. They are common, but their PL is low.
Mechanoid: 188 total, 68 average.
Elemental: 152 total, 68 average.
Beast: 154 total, 66 average.
Daimon: 142 total, 71 average. Tending to have a high PL.
Humanoid: 128 total, 75 average. Though few in number, I think many have PL 2250 so are selected often.
Sprite: 124 total, 68 average. Though few in number, I see many have PL 2250 so are selected often.
Reptilian: 152 total, 55 average. Few in number and selected rarely due to 4 species maximum.
Avion: 130 total, 52 average. Few in number and selected rarely due to 4 species maximum.

Monster Selection Rules

1. Choose a random desired PL between 1500 and 2250.
2. Choose a random monster who is close to this PL from the pool of all monsters.
3. Repeat until all monsters or 4 species are chosen.
4. If 4 species are chosen then future selections are restricted to those species.

This is my guess for the rules.

What is the Future of Monsters?

1. PL gap between 1800 and 2250 may fill in. This might increase the average PL a little more, but it definitely will never be all 2250 or even close to that, because the game always rebalances it.
2. Army of stupid Giants will get stronger. Fiery and Arctic may regress and get weaker.
3. Army of primitive Arthropods will get stronger. Fiery could turn to crap.
4. Giants might be good at killing mages or something, so people might make even more.

I think there have always been tons of Giants. In Research for 1H I wondered why Arctic was the same as Shocking/Tempestuous without spike shield. If you look at the original Monster Lab elemental resistance table then Cold should be the best elemental and Fire also good. The easiest way to explain it was Giants, but why should they be most important? Sure they have a lot of HP and PMit but I felt it wasn't enough. Now that I saw the population it makes sense.

If the army of stupid Giants rises in PL not only will their elemental resistances increase, but they will also be selected more often. In effect there will be more Giants.

I previously estimated that 1/4 of monsters have the burn ailment at any given time. Against a PL 2250 Giant that means Cold on average does (25% + 25% + 25% + 50%) / 4 = 31% damage while Dark/Holy does 38% damage. This means Dark/Holy could actually improve in the future again.

Recent data suggested Cold became 6% stronger than Electric when it used to be the same. This is probably because players made more Dragons and Arthropods, who are weak to Cold.

Upon further thought, Cold with flame shield became 9% stronger than Dark but it's likely 6% of this is due to more Dragons and Arthropods. So the phenomena of increased PL over many years only made a 3% difference.

I confirm this is expected with a separate calculation: In Research for 1H, 18.60% / 16.90% = 1.10 so Dark was 10% stronger than Cold. Flame shield gives 18.74% - 16.90% = 1.84% improvement to Cold, or 1.5 * 2 * 1.84% = 5.52% adjusting scaling for consistency.

Typical Dark non-mitigated damage dropped from 52% to 45.34%. Ignoring the Dragons and Arthropods change, Cold would otherwise have dropped almost equally, 0.91 * 45.34 = 41.22%. With flame shield it becomes 46.74%. Comparing to Dark this is 46.74%/ 45.34% = 1.03 = 3% improvement.

Therefore, improvement in Cold over Dark is actually mostly due to species, just like Electric. Since players can change this as they wish, we should not overreact. Maybe next year Cold will be worse. Or it could be stronger because of the Arthropods and Reptilians currently growing.

I think innately, Cold should be best because it has the best original value in the elemental resistance table. Later I will try to calculate it theoretically when all monster species are made equally.

@BlueWaterSplash

Do not trust the numbers on my data.
I tested each 1h setup once.

Just say that Cold strike is 'a little' better than Dark, not 'xx.xx %'
Use 'about 50%' instead of '48.52%'

Whenever you do a test, the numbers will change.

Optimal Infusion Strategy for Demonic/Hallowed Weapons

In the past the elemental relationships were roughly Dark/Holy being 10% stronger than Cold/Electric/Wind and another 10% stronger than Fire. Spike shield adds +15% to Fire, and +10% to Cold and Electric/Wind (plus speed penalty). Except for Imperil usage, Dark/Holy were superior or almost equal in all aspects; no further analysis required.

Given recent evidence I will guess all elements stayed the same except Cold improved 5% due to changed monster species. I'll guess spike shield adds +20% to Fire, and +15% to Cold and Electric/Wind due to PL increase. With day boost I think spike shield returns to before. Cold with fire shield is now almost 10% stronger than Dark/Holy.

The optimal infusion strategy for an Arctic weapon is obvious. Let's try to compare it with infusion strategies for a Demonic weapon.

Friday (Void/All), Wednesday (Cold), Monday (Dark) - Arctic user will infuse Dark, and Demonic user will infuse Cold, so it will be the same.
Sunday (Holy) - Day mitigation bonus 10% means Holy damage +20% so it's best for Demonic user to infuse Holy. The day's winner is Arctic by 10%.
Tuesday (Fire) - Demonic can use electric shield so his fire does 15% better damage than Arctic user. The day's winner is Demonic by 5%.
Thursday (Wind), Saturday (Elec) - If the Demonic user believes flame shield is still best, then the days' winners are Arctic by 10%.

If Demonic user uses cold/wind shield he will get 10% more element damage. Overall this is 1% more damage to the main attack. I studied recently that if using Haste this is around 0.8% of all damage, and if not using Haste surprisingly just 0.5% of all damage. Meanwhile I think the shield creates a loss of 0.6% damage due to counter attacks.

It seems now that cold/wind shield has very little benefit. For players who use Haste it may provide 2% bonus damage to Wind/Elec Strike. Overall the days' winners are still Arctic by 8%.

Ultimately I guess Arctic is superior against today's regular monster population. But a Demonic user can reduce the difference to 2 or 3 days by using infusions and changing spike shield on Tuesday.

Demonic/Hallowed are still quite superior to Shocking/Tempestuous/Fiery, perhaps even more so than years ago.

This post has been edited by BlueWaterSplash: Nov 5 2019, 00:05

I have been experimeting with Zebra mage (black, with white stripes)

Hoveraction:
Strongest([Cast('Paradise Lost'), Cast('Ragnarok'), Cast('Disintegrate'), Cast('Corruption')])

This works quite well in IW100 - same number of rounds, free holy proficiency. Not good for SG, with Imperil:200rounds extra.

For PFFEst, I would like to set it up like
start of round
1st: Cast Paradise Lost,
2nd: cast Ragnarok
3rd - start hover with Disintegrate & corruption until end of round

Would that be possible with monsterbation? I can't figure out that 'n' in the settings.... Sicken has made it a bit complicated by making so much possible! Does anyone know how this would be possible?

I have been experimeting with Zebra mage (black, with white stripes)

Hoveraction:
Strongest([Cast('Paradise Lost'), Cast('Ragnarok'), Cast('Disintegrate'), Cast('Corruption')])

This works quite well in IW100 - same number of rounds, free holy proficiency. Not good for SG, with Imperil:200rounds extra.

For PFFEst, I would like to set it up like
start of round
1st: Cast Paradise Lost,
2nd: cast Ragnarok
3rd - start hover with Disintegrate & corruption until end of round

Would that be possible with monsterbation? I can't figure out that 'n' in the settings.... Sicken has made it a bit complicated by making so much possible! Does anyone know how this would be possible?

move the paradise lost and ragnarok on the imperil routine?
instead of 123 as imperil monster 258 (347), it's 12 as paradise lost monster 1 (0) ragnarok monster 1 (0)
if you still use imperil, move it to 4 and 5.
while the hover is only disintegrate and corruption

This post has been edited by Fudo Masamune: Oct 27 2019, 12:06