[X] My Assistant

Any suggestion to fix mage?
At this point it is: Be dark mage, have Hitos Staff or GTFO

Holy is a little better than dark because it consumes less MP and SP (juggernaut+cure bonus).

nothing 100 destruction binds & 200 Crystallized Phazon can't fix.

How long does it take to collect 200 Phazon and necessary hg cloths? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/dry.gif)

Money or time? Alot

Funny story, on the last hourly I did I got 9 mobs, and it was on BT difficulty. Just for the hell of it I marked down how many turns it took. I finished it up in 28.

To be fair, your DW weapons aren't exactly bad. (quite the opposite)
Using comparable weapons, DW shouldn't be faster in rounds with 4+ monsters. Of course, in schoolgirl arenas DW winds, hands down, quite easily. Although someone who has those comparable weapons and the prof to boot, will surely know better than me. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

Are mages really in a bad spot right now? Reading stuff about clearing DwD IWBTH in 15mins gives the impression that they are quite powerful. (I know that's probably only what the top geared ones are capable of, but still way faster than what melees can do)
I guess their problem is -for a lack of better word- sustain to complete long GF and possibly IW runs?

This would be weird to program. Just make it a percentage chance based on AP invested (5/10/15/20/25%).

Deprecating and absorb were the only two things that didn't get any kind of bonus from channeling them. Another thing that could be done: If cast channeled, the ward restores 1.5x as much mana on being triggered, but i guess it has the same "weird to code" problem?

Also, would you be OK with making the vase last, say, 350 turns with diminished effect? I'm simply trying to get the usefulness of the item to match the rarity. Powerful, rare consumables was the vibe I got.

This post has been edited by DarkDespair5: Dec 27 2012, 01:00

Deprecating and absorb were the only two things that didn't get any kind of bonus from channeling them.

Deprecating spells last 50% longer and bypass resist/evade when cast with a channeling proc. I'd say that's enough of a bonus.

If cast channeled, the ward restores 1.5x as much mana on being triggered, but i guess it has the same "weird to code" problem?

Yep. Tenboro would have to add a second spell ID since it's a different function.

350 turns with diminished effect? I'm simply trying to get the usefulness of the item to match the rarity.

The duration can be 30 turns and it would still be very potent since it stacks with AF/HS.

Joe: Eh, you know the "breaks cap" is mostly to the benefit of light armors anyway. Most non-light players won't have to worry about doing that without double haste.

For 'permanent', it comes down to how much it helps to go deeper in battle series for determining value, so it'd actually be worth setting item shop bot - having a rare item that even at sth like 30 turns it will be more valuable bazaared is quite a joke, not sth you can call "yay" to get. *shrug*

Temchy: You're correct. Besides, that speed is for highly forged mages - and forging things work differently for mages than melees. Unforged mage can beat the BT speed of melee as long as they have mana pots and spirit pots tbh, as the cloth's lack of mit makes spark get triggered much more often I believe, so cannot do too many mobs at once - but after that, ET or bye bye. Also, getting equip drops should be done on BT and with this patch grindfest is now much more melee-oriented than it was before.

I still am not giving up my speed that easily though (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/smile.gif), at most I'd be balanced build. The value of doing your all your arenas fast is quite significant for me.

To be fair, your DW weapons aren't exactly bad. (quite the opposite)
Using comparable weapons, DW shouldn't be faster in rounds with 4+ monsters. Of course, in schoolgirl arenas DW winds, hands down, quite easily. Although someone who has those comparable weapons and the prof to boot, will surely know better than me. (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

This is true, my weapons are among the best you can get...

But when I beat DWD on BT, I didn't have this rapier yet. I was using a Magnifi-shit Battlecaster one, and I still managed to beat it.

I'll be marking down the statistics for 3-5 mob rounds for the next couple days. I assume that using the rounds in Arenas is fair?

So we know how trollish bleed is right now.

We could do the normal thing and nerf PA into oblivion, and then everyone would scramble for the next best thing, maybe it is going to be maces again, and they get buffed to do 25% more damage or something. Maybe it will be mages and it will be Return of the Magi II, I CAST FIST. Who knows, maybe it will be sword and board since it will be the only way to live, but let us hope it never comes to that, cause let us face it, who is that masochistic. Ooh Ooh, pick me, pick me! Shut up skillchip, adults are talking.

As I was saying...



This graph compared PA and Bleed across different levels of Mitigation.
It assumes:
same damage with both weapons
50% crit rate
20% monster avoidance (parry)
Long term damage rates
Monsters are training dummies, infinite HP (not realistic)
30% bleed rate
9 monsters

So around 62% mitigation, PA = Bleed, which happens around level 340, with monsters that have 14 STR/END, lots of assuming huh? Of course if the round is much shorter then forever, the break even mitigation happens sooner, at around 10 turns/round the break even is 53% mitigation, around level 295. Of course this happens sooner with chaos upgrades, or higher stats, but lets ignore that for now.

The problems off course show up in the application of the weapons in battle. PA is much stronger in application then it is on paper, since it can destroy the main target much faster, while bleeders do a more average damage overtime to all mobs. In other words, PA has a much higher standard deviation then bleeding, which in this case wins out, because it kills the dangerous targets faster, leaving the little ones easy pickings. The other issue with bleeding is that it ticks after the monster takes an action, which is a real determent to bleeding. Also, in occasions with less monsters, bleed falls further and further behind. The final issue with bleeding is that crit has no effect on it except to help it proc, which is not very helpful in most cases.

So let us beat the dead horse!

Ways we can improve:

Chosenuno's suggestion:
Bleed stacking:
Bleeding wound stacks up to 3 times. First time is 100%, second is 50%, third is 25%, maxing out at 175% damage.

This does a good job of bringing up overall damage on bleed up without destroying PAs focused target damage, but still doesn't fix the issue with bleed not scaling with crit.

Skillchip's suggestion:
Crit scaling:
Bleeding wound now scales with critical strike. Doing x% more damage per crit chance.

ie: if you have 50% crit, and it scales with crit at 1/2% more damage per crit, 30% bleed would become 0.30*(1+50/200)=37.5% bleeding wound.

Maybe have this scale with proficiency, to go from 1/2% more damage per crit, to 1% more damage with crit at 250 prof.

Both of these would work at making bleeding work well high mob count rounds, and much better then it is currently, while keeping PA strong in both high mob count and low mob count rounds. And it leaves the fatal flaw of bleed alone (the fact it ticks before monster attacks), but that is up to you to fix, or not.

- Give shields with elemental potencies that chance to inflict that elemental debuff when attacked.

I highly support buffing bleeding because it will make NI as effective as TH and DW, and also make 80% weapon types usable. Right now, bleeding weapons are just craps that would be thrown to bazaar no matter the stats. Bleeding DOT should be scaled to player level at a high rate like PAB.

So we know how trollish bleed is right now.

Another suggestion: make bleed be a percentage of monster's maximum hp, reduced against bosses by their hp modifier. Scythes and katanas were already subpar before the elimination of crysfest, now they're almost useless. (Unless people still do normalfest? (IMG:[invalid] style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif) )

This post has been edited by fishinsea: Dec 27 2012, 06:28

How about: When landing a critical hit on a bleeding foe the bleeding damage is doubled.

Or Skillchips suggestion but make it scale with the difficulty setting. It is already pretty OP for normal framing.

Why would melee normalfarm over throwing over some clothes and casting spells?

Thats why it is imbalanced. Even with shitty gear you can go far in normal as melee while you NEED awesome gear and forge it a lot to do the same as mage.
Sure mage is very fast but so is melee if you know what you are doing.

Problem with scaling with difficulty, is why would it do 10x more damage on a mob at a higher difficulty then normal? I'm not saying that its not a bad thing for the game, but then it would be the only damage in the game that scales up as difficulty goes up

Funny story, on the last hourly I did I got 9 mobs, and it was on BT difficulty. Just for the hell of it I marked down how many turns it took. I finished it up in 28.

Would have taken much longer if Eila 501st, Noihara, Deadly Moth, Liselotte, etc. were there of course.

Can't remember if I took off the 2 turns for casting regen/heartseeker or not.

On BT with a leg demonic estoc and full power slaughter, which resulted in about 7k damage, I cleared BT rounds in 12-15 turns at most. Less than 6 if I had spirit stance on.

Thats why it is imbalanced. Even with shitty gear you can go far in normal as melee while you NEED awesome gear and forge it a lot to do the same as mage.
Sure mage is very fast but so is melee if you know what you are doing.

Are you sure about the melee part? I don't think that's the case. Both will cost about the same, tbh.

Meanwhile, you can clear rounds about 2x faster as a mage.

Problem with scaling with difficulty, is why would it do 10x more damage on a mob at a higher difficulty then normal? I'm not saying that its not a bad thing for the game, but then it would be the only damage in the game that scales up as difficulty goes up

10x would be too much.

Are you sure about the melee part? I don't think that's the case. Both will cost about the same, tbh.

Meanwhile, you can clear rounds about 2x faster as a mage.

Yep. As Melee you just need some so lala pieces and don't bother with upgrades and still can do well.



This post has been edited by Ichy: Dec 27 2012, 17:35

Mage you can put together exquisite elemental set with mag staff for around 200k and oneshot normal with fair regularity as well *shrug*