Bill Z Bubba

Here's my take on insps. I don't use them for testing. Period. Ever. I do, however, use them when playing.

Testing is what we do when studying powerset comparison. If I want to to "cheat," I can fire up my brother's account with some emp defender on autofollow spamming me with heal other, fortitude and the two RAs. (Yes, there are ways to set more than one power on auto, but they aren't even remotely legal and will get you in trouble.) I don't do this, of course, because it trashes any hope of me determining what the sets I'm using are capable of under normal circumstances.

Another example: One of the things we're trying to determine here is whether SS's aoe output is actually all it's stated to be. We all know that rage is part of that equation. If I'm going to spam myself with reds to punch up to the damage cap I can do so without bothering with rage at all. Then I don't have to deal with the rage crash at all, either.

It skews the results of the test. You're going to run out of your favored inspiration when you're mowing through a few hundred enemies on a map. You're going to end up with different tiered insps and run into situations where you don't have 3 to bind into 1.

If you want to know the max aoe output, just know it. Get your attack chain, ignore the 5% miss rate, calculate it at the damage cap, done. But that doesn't tell us much.

That's what I would expect to see. Now do the same with fu/spin/eviscerate/death shroud versus rage/footstomp/blazing aura.

/tips a Guinness

Be well, man.

Ignore mitigation. Be the bomb. Get a single -KB IO in there somewhere. Mag 3 only works on LTs and lower, I believe.

Soul Drain, Fiery Embrace, Burn, Shadow Maul, RotP

And full circle we have come.

So the question: Why is the perception of SS's AoE dominance so prevalent when it doesn't stand up to scrutiny?

I realized you were correct while outside smoking. The variable, rage, coming off of A affects both C and D. Same way that the variable, followup, coming from B affects C and D.

You were correct to correct me. My bad.

Edit: However, the posts containing actual math stand. Claws doesn't have particularly awesome AoE and comes out on top even adding in a damage secondary and an APP aoe. I'm very curious as to whether some of the other aoe-centric primaries show similar damage output.

So you're going to argue against my analogy when you aren't even aware of what the variables I used stood for and then state that I'm correct anyway?

Ok.

For the record, if you take the time to go through my posts, you'll see what those variables actually mean.

But I'll save you the time.

A is super strength.
B is claws.
C is fiery aura.
D in this case, is pyre mastery.

B + C + D is greater than A + C + D as the last post has shown.

I'm going to start by noting that I just got done running 2 scanner missions with council, meaning large wolves thrown into the mix at +4/x8 diff. I found that if there was 10 enemies to be hit, the spin was hitting them with the expected 5% chance to miss. So again, I'm finding this thought that the radius is playing a huge role to bit a bit overstated. I also saw many occurences of eviscerate hitting 5 enemies due to the way enemies swarm the player up until they began to thin out. So I am willing to play around with those numbers. As we've seen with the AI recently, those that choose to leave melee tend to get quite a ways away before turning and attacking from range.

Let's examine BunnyAnomaly's post then, completely, using double stacked rage. We've already stated that you have to have 300% total recharge in rage for a true doublestacking. (240/1+3=60)

We've already shown that the rage crash kills 1/7th of damage output when double stacked. (lasts 120 seconds, fires off every 60, crash occurs for 10 every 60)

To get that 300% recharge, we're going to need a few things.
ED-capped rec-red at 95
Hasten for 70
5 LotG +recharge for 37.5
5 purple sets for 50

Still short 47.5% global rec-red, but we'll assume you've got it. And we'll assume that each of your attacks has somehow managed to get 95% rec-red slotted AND 95% damage slotted AND you're at the tohit cap so you only miss 5% of the time. (A rather tall order, but we'll roll with it.)

We'll also assume the brute went blue side to get pyre mastery.

Recharge on footstomp at 300% recharge is now 5 seconds from 20 with a 2.244 second arcanatime cast.
Recharge on fireball at 300% recharge is now 8 seconds from 32 with a 1.188 atime cast.
Recharge on burn at 300% recharge is now 6.25 from 25 with a 2.244 atime cast.

Total activation time: 5.676 seconds
Max targets: 10, 16, 5
Base damage: 59.23, 37.54, 103.48

With those weird recharge times, you don't have a solid chain. Even AT 3005 recharge in everything. But again, we'll roll with it assuming that recharge starts after the power's activation. (There's some question about that but we haven't gotten a definitive answer.)

What we're really looking at is around 10 seconds for fireball's activation + recharge and in that 10 seconds, we get to use each attack once.

Blazing aura does 9.18 every 2 seconds so 45.9 during chain with max target of 10.

160% from rage
150% from fury
95% from enhancement

Total base damage: 59.23 + 37.54 + 103.48 + 45.9 = 246.15
With Damage buffs: 246.15 * 5.05 = 1243.06 Now that's against one target with all attacks and DoT ticks hitting it for a DPS of 124.31. But we can not ignore the 1/7th drop to zero damage output when doublestacking rage. This drops it down to 1065.48 or 106.55 DPS.


Let's move on to claws. Same rules. 300% recharge.

There we're adding fireball, burn and blazing aura to spin and eviscerate. Same 10 seconds. Do all 5 powers fit in that 10 seconds?
Spin atime: 2.64
Evisc atime: 2.508
+ burn and fireball = 8.58 total chain time

Guess I do get to add 1.054 for followup. Single stacked due to length of chain.

Base damage: 78.83 + 90.96 + 37.54 + 103.48 + 45.9 = 356.71
30% from followup
150% from fury
95% from enhancement
Damage buffed = 1337.67 or 133.78 DPS

Hmmm. Ok. Let's deal with the aoe sizes now.

SS: Hell, it's all pbaoes, so let it have the full size even though we know that the numbers drop as the spawn size drops and as enemies run to range.

New damage totals for SS hitting everything:
(592.3 + 600.64 + 517.4 + 459) * 5.05 * 6/7 = 9390.14

For claws, we'll say spin only hits 9. Eviscerate only hits 3.
(709.47 + 272.88 + 600.64 + 517.4 + 459) * 3.75 = 9597.71

Guess what kills SS? The rage crash. If you single stack rage so you only get 1 crash every 120 seconds you end up with:
(592.3 + 600.64 + 517.4 + 459) * 4.25 * 12/13 = 8510.49
Well cool, double stacking still wins over single stacking.

This is fun. But.... what if adding fireball and burn isn't the most efficient way for a claws to run when he's got 300% recharge? New chain is fu, spin, eviscerate, using same targets hit as above... but the chain only takes 6.24 seconds.
(709.47 + 272.88 + 459) * 4.05 = 5837.47 but the new DPS is 935.49

bahh, better to leave in burn and fireball

Again, I'm using claws because it's my favorite set and the one I number crunch the most. Anybody can do this with the other sets.

All I'm trying to show is that the love of SS's aoe output doesn't really seem to correlate to the math behind the game. I don't need 300% recharge to do followup, spin, eviscerate repeat. For the SS user, the moment you go below that 300% global recharge in Rage, that double stacked buff goes away but the length of time between crashes increases.

All true. To counter, because of fitness going inherent, Invul will be able to take hasten earlier for more DP up time on top of grabbing tough/weave earlier as well. Since we're talking brutes here, QR won't enter into the picture until level 20. Until then, it looks like invul has the better resists backed by hastened DP while WP has the obviously better regen but the resists aren't that hot.

I've started to post several times in this thread, but chose to sit back and watch for a while instead.

I find that I have agree that quartz crystals, while a serious pain the in the butt in their own right, don't need to get nerfed. If they do, they rularuu observers need to be nerfed and any attack that autohits needs to lose its autohit status.

And although I am on record in the past stating that ALL autohit powers should be removed/altered, I no longer feel that way.

Ian, if you are ever facing more than one quartz crystal in a mission, it's because you're facing a team sized spawn and should either have buffs from those teammates or the teammates should be assisting in their destruction. Arguing that angle is a non-starter.

Once we could say that defense debuffs were too prevalent and too much of a an issue for SR and its one-trick ponyness. With 95% DDR, we can't make that claim anymore.

That leaves tohit buffs and autohits. I can think of TWO autohit attacks in the game that I run into. Romulus' fluffy in the last mission of the ITF and that Rularuu AV with his autohit pbaoe aura. Not common enough to mess with and both are team based content.

That leaves tohit buffs. What do we got? Quartz crystals, Nemesis vengeance and Rularuu observers? Oh, and enemy pets sitting at 75% tohit instead of the 50% they're supposed to hit at? And weapon sets that have higher base accuracy... and then we found out some of the new enemies in tip missions are sitting at 64% base tohit instead of 50%....

Wait, which side am I arguing for again?

Anyone else getting extremely slow response times from anything on the Titan Network at cohtitan.com?

Been trying to use CoD in the last hour and having little luck.

Edit: Back to normal. Please disregard.

SS: Foot stomp: rec-red needed to get it down to 5 seconds for 2 stomps per 10 seconds: Base recharge is 20sec.
5 = 20 / 1+X
5 + 5x = 20
x = 3 300% global recharge needed in footstomp. Yea, that ain't happening.
How about 7 seconds? 186% recharge needed, yea, that's completely doable.

So FS fires off every 7 seconds on a decent build.

It does 59.23 smashing damage (highly resisted) at base hitting up to 10 enemies.

75% fury is the new baseline. That's 150% damage buff. Double stacked rage adds another 160%. (Note: for it to double stack, it has to fire off every 60 seconds. This means after every 60 seconds, there's a 10 second dead period. 1/7th of the time, the brute will deal 0 damage with foot stomp.

Amount of damage the SS user now dishes out IF it hits all 10 targets and assuming you've also managed to get 95% worth of damage enhancement slotted:

59.23 * 1+.95+1.5+1.6 * 10 = 2991 points of damage pushed out. But we have to account for the rage crash: 2991*6/7 = 2564 total damage every 7 seconds

Raged-Furied-Fully slotted foot stomp DPS = 366


I don't know crap about electric melee, so I'm not going there. But I will do claws cuz that I know.

I use followup, eviscerate, spin as my aoe chain. I won't even bother with FU's damage, but I will consider its double stacked buff of 60% on a brute.

Spin does 78.83 lethal, also up to 10 enemies.
Eviscerate does 90.96 lethal, but only to up to 5.

The total animation time of the chain is less than 7 seconds, but we'll call it 7 for the hell of it.

150% from fury, 95% from enhancement, 60% from followup, against target cap.
Spin: 78.83 * 1+1.5+.95+.6 * 10 = 3193 damage
Eviscerate: 90.96 * 1+1.5+.95+.6 * 5 = 1842 damage
Total damage dealt in 7 seconds is 5035 or 719 DPS

719 versus 366.

Looks like claws kicks the crap out of super strength on AoE output.

But does this show the whole story?

Nope. Foot stomp's radius is much large than spin's. It has an easier time affecting 10 enemies at a time. However, this is often grossly overstated by the proponents of SS.

This also ignored aoes taken from the APP/PPPs which any good farmer would. Foot Stomp + Fireball or Foot Stomp + Ball Lightning + Elec Fences is certainly going to bring the SS farmer much closer to the claws user. Of course, the claws user can go get those as well, can't he? Sadly for him, he will have to suffer through redraw issues.

The electric melee user won't.

EDIT: Yea, I ignored fiery embrace. It's proc damage. Slap it on top if ya like, but it's going to benefit those using more aoes in a given time period than those using less.