Obitus
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Quote:Yes, it isn't a mysterious or malevolent phenomenon. It's a survival mechanism. Primitive humans were better off in packs or tribes. Our distrust of those we see as outside of our pack or tribe is just a natural side-effect of our instinctive desire to trust and support our tribe.Originally Posted by Enyalios
Human beings by nature look for people to "Other" and exclude from their groups. Membership in the us (non-othered) group provides some sort of satisfaction to them. Its just how people are structured.
We're also prone to interpret our personal experiences as emotionally charged life lessons, rightly or wrongly. Back when personal experiences were limited to events like, "That black bear tried to maul me," our visceral response to personal experiences was a pretty darn good thing. Now, though, the world is much more complicated. The older I get, the more instinctive generalizations I find myself making, because this-or-that industry/company/interest group helped or harmed me -- or seemed to do. I have to make a conscious effort to try to evaluate each incident on its own merits, which can be difficult at times.
You mix all of the above together in the information age, and we can find a large group of like-minded people to form a virtual, echo-chamber tribe -- no matter how off-the-wall our views are.
Doesn't mean we're incapable of using reason to overcome (or if you like, retune) the filter of our biases (or our chosen tribe's biases). At least in Western society, most people are, I think, inclined to give the other side a fair hearing. Some people -- maybe even most people -- are, in fact, very reasonable about most subjects. But there is a temptation to listen only to those people you already agree with, and for the bulk of human history, those in power could and often did outright destroy all contrarian views or view holders.
Unfettered discourse is a wonderful, rare thing. It's also a comparatively new thing that humanity isn't necessarily hard-wired to like.
You're not one of us!Quote:Welcome to being an imperfect being who is pulled as much by hormones and instinct as reason. We call ourselves humanity (which is derived from latin roots which meant the same as me). 
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Quote:Blue doesn't understand the concept of factual inaccuracy -- at least not where it applies to him. I post a breakdown of why his build is sub-optimal, and he says I'm insulting him. The truth is that I like concept builds. I usually, to some extent, play concept builds (picking a concept and min/maxing it as much as I can without compromising the concept too much).Originally Posted by Arbegla
I wasn't presenting assumptions about your play experience, nor style. I was merely pointing out what a top tier dark melee/invuln would do.
MG->Smite->Siphon life->Smite is the highest DPS chain a dark melee can put together, based on damage per activation. It would actually be very possible to hit with the recharge numbers your looking at.
I'm sorry for assuming you were going to use your top end (as in top 1%) build to actually follow what top end (again, top 1%) players have stated to be factual evidence on how it should run. That's all I was using to state.
But B_C's isn't a concept build. Fit-every-most-expensive-thing-into-your-build-for-no-good-reason isn't a character concept. It's willful inefficiency, which is fine if that's what you want, but let's not pretend that he's theme-bound, here. A DM/INV without Hasten is a fine character without a single purple.
No one would be criticizing B_C's build if he weren't whining that his inefficient build is too expensive. We've offered to help him make his build better for a fraction of the cost, but noooo. We're evil, profiteering ad-hominem machines.
Nevermind that the only person who's accused anyone of criminal behavior in this thread is B_C. Nevermind that the only person who's used politically-charged rhetoric to label opponents as greedy bastiches is B_C.
As for build concerns? B_C's experiences trump any mathematical evidence you can throw at him. Shaving an extra 3 seconds of downtime off of Soul Drain's cooldown is clearly better than having soft-capped DEF. Shaving a few extra seconds off of Dark Consumption is clearly better than slotting Miracle, Numina, and Performance Shifter so that you rarely have endurance concerns at all. (If my INV/SS Tanker has no endurance problems with double-stacked Rage, then you can bet your bootie that a DM/INV will have no problems even with no recharge enhancement in Dark Consumption.)
B_C is a self-proclaimed expert on the market and on build strategy, even though he's provably and fundamentally ignorant of both. -
Quote:Well said. I'll take it one step further: The only time there's a problem is when you really enjoy having uber loot for the sake of having uber loot. As the IO system currently stands, build performance is highly skewed toward the low-to-mid-cost sets.Originally Posted by seebs
What you get from the game isn't a matter of how wealthy you are, or what enhancements you have. It's a matter of how well you pick your goals to meet your preferences, and your activities to meet your goals. The only time there's a problem is if, say, you really enjoy having Uber Loot, but don't want to do any of the things that produce it. A WoW player who hates crafting, marketing, and raiding would have similar problems.
In general, the performance difference between a super-expensive, purples-bursting-from-its-ears build and a build with just oranges/yellows is probably less than 10%. The difference in cost ranges from probably 400 to 1000%. That's assuming you know what you're doing with the items in question. If you don't know what you're doing, then you can actively hurt your build's performance by just throwing money at it willy-nilly.
Unfortunately, a lot of players don't seem to know what they're doing. Blue_Centurion falls firmly in that category. He wants all the best stuff, and he wants it yesterday -- but he hasn't even stopped to think about whether the supposed best stuff is the best for his particular build. But boy, don't tell him that, you capitalist pig!
I'm sure there are exceptional cases wherein a skilled min/maxer can wring large performance gains out of the upgrade to purples, but DM/INV isn't even close to qualifying. More recharge is always good for your attack chain, but INV only has one important power (Dull Pain) that is in any way affected by recharge enhancement, and that power is available often enough even at middling global +recharge bonuses. In any case, simply taking Hasten would help B_C more than all the purple sets in the world.
His build almost certainly wants for defensive bonuses, too. It's sorta like watching a guy on welfare complain about not being able to afford lobster -- when he's allergic to lobster. Comical. -
Quote:For what it's worth, I can't remember the last time I even paid attention to broadcast. And I don't even belong to a bona-fide Supergroup (all my SG mates left long ago, on both servers, which left me the bases -- and so I don't want to leave themOriginally Posted by all_hell
I belong to about 8 or 9 channels not counting coalition chat. Almost always, that's where I get my teams. Broadcast is sort of a last resort for me. I do use it, but only when I have trouble finding a team in channel.
Are you in a super group or villain group?
).
Triumph Watch (and/or Triumph Watch 2), and JFA2010 (IIRC that's the name of the one on Justice) get me all the team offers I'd ever want or need. Global channels really are the way to go. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Nethergoat
There we go.
I'm stealing that one the next time this topic comes back around.
=)
I'm still chuckling over that bit about onion rings. -
Quote:Don't read much history, then, do you?Originally Posted by ricktu
I don't think I have ever seen so much effort to rationalise a morally ambiguous act.
Morally ambiguous is probably an apt term. I assume you intended it pejoratively, but market acts are, truthfully, irrelevant to morality. The whole idea behind a free market is that self-interest furthers the greater good automatically.
And that's exactly what we see in the CoH market, in principle. In practice, there are instances where unscrupulous marketeers can do annoying things to the Market for short periods of time, but that's only because there isn't enough competition from other marketeers, unscrupulous or otherwise.
Even when that manipulation occurs, though, the person responsible is likely to end up losing as much as he gains from it. Sometimes, I gather that people try and fail to manipulate the market just for the sake of disproving that manipulation is effective. There simply is no controlling supply when everyone has equal capacity to produce everything.
I'll never understand some players' fascination with victimhood. Everyone is equally buyer and seller in the game's market. Everyone is equally capable of producing the goods that are ultimately sold on the market. It's not like anyone on this forum is cornering the market on food or water or clothing, or really anything anyone needs to play the game, much less live.Quote:By their own admission marketers end up stinking rich. Which means people are paying more than they need to without you. That 600 million per day doesn' come out of thin air it comes from the virtual pockets of other players.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich, there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. Personally, I rarely have more than about 200 million onhand at any time. Why? Because I spend it. I spend it happily and often. What good does pixelated money do you if it's just sitting there?
And then when I'm done spending, I become a seller again, and the cycle continues.
Stability is the lifeblood of any market. It attracts participants, which drive up both supply and demand, which ensure that the market is useful both to buyers and sellers.Quote:Okay so you add a little stability to the price ranges. This stability obviously comes at a great cost to the rest of us or else how could you make so much money doing it?
You guys have fun playing the market and this is a game so go for it. But for crying out loud stop trying to sell us on the fact you're the good guys. The cold hard facts are for every hundred million you make out of the markets is a hundred million the rest of us had to pay more than we really had to.
The only hard fact is that people who believe that there is some arbitrarily lower-than-the-market-average price to which they're entitled, or which can be described as the objective "fair price" -- are hopelessly out of their depth. Without a stable and active market, you might not have any items to buy at all. Prices are defined by what people are willing to pay. Period.
No one put a gun to your head when you hit the "Make Offer" button. No one threatened to evict your poor sainted grandmother if you didn't play ball.
Why is it that this forum's victimologists always look at the market from the (supposedly ripped-off) buyer's perspective? Why is the seller always ignored? Why is the seller's time worth less than the buyer's -- even despite the obvious fact that the buyer in question was clearly willing to pay the seller's price? To take a cue from an ingenious poster from another thread, let me ask you: What would you, oh great moral authority, charge for a Gladiator's Armor PvP +DEF IO, if you had one?
Would you look at that item as a representation of two or three months of your time (the most valuable resource), as the devs seem to think you should -- or would you take one for the team and sell it for peanuts with the understanding that your buyer is probably going to sell all of his drops for the best possible price? Or would you horde it for yourself? What's it going to be?
I'm not a regular Marketeer. I've done it in the past, but it's really not my cup of tea. I prefer to earn fictional money by beating up bad guys, with the occasional trip to the market to craft and sell what drops. But you're darn tootin' that I appreciate the Market and all that comes with it, after several years of playing this game with no economy at all -- with a very shallow system of character-advancement-through-equipment.
And after seeing what the Villain-side market was like before the merge, you're gosh-darn right that I appreciate every effort made -- whether intentionally or not -- to promote stability and activity in the market. I'm sorry you don't. -
Quote:1.Originally Posted by Intrinsic
I've done crafting and selling. I've done it in other MMO's too, and I use those other MMO's to help provide a basis on what is a reasonable markup. Based on my own experience and knowledge of what others on this board have been charging, I judge that the markups we charge are way out of proportion with the value added to the process. There's also flipping, which you didn't mention in your reply but I've also done, in which no value is added. I attribute the degree of profitability of both endeavors to the inefficiencies of CoH's market system. Like I said, I have no problem with that; I didn't design the system, I just profit from it.
I assume when you talk about mark ups that you're referring to crafting cheap recipes and selling expensive IOs. Yes, as a rule we (and I use the term loosely, as I only very sporadically play the market) do mark up items a lot, but who's to say it's too much? If I'm going to take the time to price and buy the salvage, run to the nearest crafting table (or use the crafting Accolade power, which is more convenient but also requires a significant time investment to acquire), craft the IO, and come back to the market to list, then don't I deserve something for my extra time and effort -- time and effort that buyers are apparently happy to pay to avoid?
2.
The fundamental disconnect, I think, between pro-market players and anti-market players is that there really can only ever be one primary commodity in any MMO -- time. Time spent playing the game to level, time spent grinding for in-game money, time spent learning the ins-and-outs of the game's mechanics to optimize a build, time spent learning the ins-and-outs of the market -- whatever your poison, the bottom line is that we all only have so much free time to play the game. And yeah, if I've been around the block more than a few times, and I'm unusually savvy or knowledgeable about the market or the game's mechanics and I'm offering a service to other players, then just like in real life, I will be rewarded for it.
If anyone doesn't wish to pay my asking price, then -- again as in real life -- he's free to look elsewhere. The fortunate difference between the game and real life is that everyone has equal access (note that access is not equivalent to entitlement) to all of the goods sold in the game. There can be no effective monopolies. Market manipulation of any kind is virtually impossible over any meaningful length of time. CoH delivers free-market purity beyond the wildest dreams of Adam Smith.
In fact, if there is a solution to disproportionate mark ups on crafted IOs, then the solution is more marketeers, not fewer of them. The more people who try to eek a profit out of crafting, the more the margin will fall, until eventually we'll reach a point where people stop trying to craft for a profit (because why should I bother crafting your IO for you if I'm not making any more money than I would by selling the uncrafted recipe?). Then the cycle begins again. An equilibrium is reached.Flipping salvage may not add value to the items in question -- doesn't add value, in fact. What it does is add stability to the market, which is good for everyone; stability encourages people to participate in the market because it gives people a fairly consistent idea of what a given item is worth at any given time. They can decide on the fly whether this-or-that drop is worth trudging to the market to sell, or whether they have enough money at the moment to buy this-or-that item -- rather than feeling like they have to relearn the pricing scheme for every drop every time they open the Market interface. In my view, it isn't the high prices on the market that drive people away; it's the feeling that you have to do a chore every time your recipe inventory fills.
In fact, even if you just go to the market and list everything for 1 inf, you'll do pretty well. (Not so much low-traffic recipes, but even with those you can get lucky.) And if everyone did list everything they had, then the increase in supply would actually lower some of the prices about which anti-marketeers complain. But that's neither here nor there.
As before, what we see now in the market is not enough flipping. That's how we end up with the frustrating dance where you're trying to craft the eleventy billionth IO for your new build and those last couple pieces of salvage are all over the place. That's how we end up saying "Screw it" and overbidding on those items by a factor of ten or even a hundred. -
Quote:Heh, well the power is called "Hot Feet" and if I recall correctly, the flavor text does say that you need to be on the ground to use it. If anything, it sounds like a bug that you can hover afterwards.Originally Posted by Lothic
I agree that most of these things would be better if they were "fixed". On the other hand I've lived with these things for so many years that I've long since adapted to or worked around most of them for the most part.
Out of all of these your "The Ouroboros portal can only be summoned while on the ground" is the one that annoys me the most, but not because of that particular power. I find it annoying that you have to be on the ground to summon Vet Pets and Hot Feet. Hot Feet really bothers me because once it's started you can Fly/Hover with it on and use it that way perfectly fine. If that power was ONLY supposed to work while grounded I could see limiting its activation to being on the ground as well. But why do I have to land in order to start a power I use 95% of the time while Hovering?
That said, I have to agree that we should have fewer powers that are limited arbitrarily by theme; the entire direction of the game over the last couple of years has been slanted towards customization. The devs' flavor text for powers and sets is less and less important as time passes. There isn't even a good thematic reason that on-the-ground powers shouldn't work when you're hovering at ground level. (Unless the code forbids that distinction, which is more than likely.)
Failing that, I'd rather see all such restrictions lifted entirely. Making people disable the Hover/Fly toggle seems like a gratuitous annoyance that serves no mechanical purpose. Would it really be unbalancing if people could use Hotfeet or Footstomp in the air? How often does (mutual) flying combat even arise in this game?
YMMV. Neat thread.
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Quote:Sure he does. After all, you're clearly a sociopath -- reclining on your Blue_Centurion-skin couch, being hand-fed by the scantily clad daughters of oppressed newbies whilst sipping on their distilled tears, and all the while preaching cynical nonsense like, "Buy low; sell high."Originally Posted by SwellGuy
My shrink takes me VERY seriously.
Monstrous. -
Quote:And before that, there was effectively no crash at all if you overlapped the buff. Those were the days.Originally Posted by Jade_Dragon
Yeah, the crash used to keep you from attacking at all. There were complaints, though, that you could not use Taunt, or (possibly) other click powers such as heals. It was changed to its current incarnation, which allows you to attack, but with a huge damage debuff.
As there is a minimum damage for attacks, you have probably never noticed it, since orange numbers still come up. But they are single digit numbers, maybe 4 or 6 or the like.
Vet Rewards are immune to this effect, which is why a lot of people recommend taking Sands of Mu for use during the crash. I personally just wail away with Brawl to keep Fury up, since it costs no End, and proportionally speaking it's probably not really that much less damage than some other attack under such a high debuff. IIRC, the no-attack (or more accurately, the only-affects-self) thing was relatively brief; it may not have even survived the testing phase.
In the end, the devs decided to allow us to Taunt and whatnot during the crash. The side effect is that we can use Vet powers at full effect, but those can be annoying in their own way if your build has endurance management issues. (You obviously can't slot Vet Rewards for endurance, and even Sands of Mu can look pretty pathetic as a damage power if you're used to spamming Fury-and-Rage-fueled Footstomp/Ball Lightning/KO Blow.)
The only thing I really want to add is that the Tanker equivalent of spamming Brawl during the crash is to spam Jab - which maintains the 20% resistance debuff on the target, and keeps some measure of Punch-Voke goodness on surrounding foes. Well worth the minor endurance cost, arguably better even than the Brute's reasoning for spamming Brawl. Both are sound uses of Rage's enforced downtime. -
Quote:All of that is true, but none of that is required to use the Market. Drag the item to the market interface, set a price at some arbitrary level lower than the last five, and you will make money. Depending on how much you play, you'll make lots of money.Originally Posted by DevilYouKnow
It has obviously been a long time since you guys have been new to the game. While I agree that the premise is pretty simple, (Put stuff on market sell for what you think you can get) it is more complicated than that.
I have been playing 18 months and for the first year or so I tried to use the market, wondering why I could never get my stuff to sell or if it did why I didn't seem to make much money when I did.
There is a layer of complexity involved in reading the last 5 sales, trying to determine the flippers from the buyitNAOs, calculating the price based not on just the last five but number of bidders, items for sale, and how fast items sell and lastly having some idea of what an item should be worth regardless of what the last 5 sold for. Add into that market craziness caused by in game events and players doing counter profit activities and you have quite a few factors that the Went's NPCs don't brief you on.
I'm not saying it's impossible to learn it. It isn't. But you can't learn it from the tutorials. You either trial and error you way through until you figure it out or come to the forums and read the guides. (The guides are much quicker)
If the market is so simple, why in the world do you guys write all these guides?
There's more to it than that if you want to marketeer your way to billions, obviously. There's more to it than that if you want to make the best possible coin for your drops, even -- but nothing about the market even comes close to the complexity and counter-intuitiveness of the Invention system or even Enhancement Diversification.
Heck, all the different names for SOs can be confusing to a new player. Even the real numbers the devs finally gave us in the game interface can be outright misleading, even if you're seasoned enough to know what all of them mean (or should mean). An understanding of the game's mechanics will obviously increase one's understanding of the items being sold, and thus increase one's ability to make money on the market -- but none of that is strictly necessary to sell stuff for comparatively large gains.
The point here, I think, is that people who know enough to get full use out of the rarest and most expensive items in the game shouldn't be complaining that the Market is too complicated to use. That's an inherently self-conflicted position; either they really don't know enough about CoH builds to get full use out of those items -- in which case the game is actually doing those players a favor by delaying their acquisition of said items -- or they're overestimating how intimidating the market really is. -
Quote:See, when you exploit like that, I don't know how anyone can take you seriously. Supply and demand? LOL, crazy talk.Originally Posted by SwellGuy
Not only that but I put 2 level 50 common Recharge IOs in Hasten.
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Quote:I'd go one step further: The market itself is one of the most intuitive aspects of the game as a whole. It's endlessly amusing to me that some players (not necessarily Heraclea) will complain that the Market is too complicated for them to earn the shiny IOs -- but they completely gloss over the fact that the IO system is about a thousand times more complicated than the Market is.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Which means what to you, that they're supposed to have an immediate, intuitive understanding of how all the game systems work without having to explore them?
The market is a very simple system. The in-game help provides ample guidance to get started. The pretense that it presents an impossibly complex face to new players is comical.
Granted, a full understanding of the Market will require an understanding of IO sets, but the latter is by far the higher bar to entry. If Mids' didn't exist, how many players would realistically even be able to think of a min/max IO build? -
Quote:I think just as a common-sense matter, the max attainable will always tend to favor the higher-damage, lower-defense ATs simply because there's a threshold beyond which a player is likely not to care anymore about his defenses -- unless he is a group-minded aggro-management kind of player, in which case he's probably not going to care all that much about DPS.Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
You're correct of course, and I agree that average to average on tank/scrapper damage it's probably going to end up not too terribly far from a 50% advantage to the scrapper. The OP was talking about the maximum attainable however, and that really skews things when you start talking about the bleeding edge.
I don't know Iggy personally, but from what I've seen he doesn't mess around. I'm sure his Tanker build has a good deal of influence invested in it -- but I don't know that he's gone out of his way to optimize his Tanker for offense to the same degree that he has his Scrappers. I'd be inclined to doubt it.Quote:I did see a post by one of the scrapper regulars on DPS from a tanker:
So I guess 150+ dps is possible on a tank, at least under optimal conditions and undoubtedly an absolutely optimized build.
As for what's possible, here's a build I drew up kind of haphazardly, with some napkin-calc theory thrown in for good measure (the slotting for Health/Stamina is thrown in just cause I'm using the unofficial I19 Mids' patch, so you might not be able to see those powers on import):
Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.81
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Level 50 Natural Tanker
Primary Power Set: Shield Defense
Secondary Power Set: Super Strength
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery
Hero Profile:Level 1: Health- (A) Miracle - +Recovery: Level 40
- (40) Numina's Convalescence - +Regeneration/+Recovery: Level 50
- (48) Regenerative Tissue - +Regeneration: Level 30
- (A) Performance Shifter - EndMod: Level 50
- (48) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Recharge: Level 50
- (50) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy: Level 50
- (50) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End: Level 50
With that build (or some variant of it; I'm sure it could use a lot of improvements), you can run a chain of: Jab, Gloom, KO Blow, Haymaker, Gloom, Punch, Haymaker -> repeat. With the above slotting and with fully saturated AAO and one instance of Rage, that's 2056.34 damage in 11.22 seconds, or 183.274 raw DPS.Code:| Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1463;723;1446;HEX;| |78DA8D934973124114C77B98C109300408216483842C2C012690F26012972A4DA28| |989468939A9D4045AA042118AA54A6F5EBC79D22A3DB9959FC2F2C3E15B1A529A8B| |14FC7FFDDEF4EBB70C7DF47AC712E2ED1DA159F79A4EB75B3E715AE7B2633E727AF| |D8ED314A61022C6BEF28E7C255B5D6997EA0DD9AC0ECD39F5F44836253CEBB7615D| |EA7564ABD6AB87F65B7509CB9E3D5CF88F2F2E9AF65EA356EF355A358BAC43E9B4C| |1F092516A4B590D0CFD55D9E9D61BEDE86EBB51B1EF76FA3D592E5DF49BE523A7DB| |939D37D3505D067E3B7E100D7E62E016115814856B9211241861C24A1C9012C99C4| |02BE715EA0351925C468D70ADCE780C58126359175A635D42DEAB524194E6D03EEF| |19A342B0AA0C3E719CA36C88D25594AE9E709220A70C72AE8973B226384A83F1BB3| |94AB807F011F7A153933B75995B0043178BFFF001ECF1685E8AF224E8BC7D70F938| |CCF07969168971C27280E167F80851C8EB5779FD947717CC001FA00778C2D33CDA7| |91EF43C4F78092243AABE509672CFFE8522D41556830827A9CBC914234D98CA30D6| |08D35CFF141C1BE1634584D3EBE08AAA96A2B88889C529426243C70DC902ED4BAE1| |11E420333AAA599593A74034A99D3343A61EE27A54B7C23ACFC20AC7F2714BF120C| |4818532388710D711E419C4710E7111C42A605CEA42DA4E90FB7B24A0899F88AB98| |6251AEB752861554D637593D2A4B618DB84CC4DC62DC63B4205FA4BABA8749E5C6B| |36639D5120E48A0C9EE11ED4955503CB3EA352734F08F912838BCD73B107B0DD56C| |5DADCEE32D45F50AE02D53F6F8CAE107CD17378C5736C8C2E8CD0C8933146D775E0| |098E2EC6FF7CDCE628541D7FED8AC7BCF4B8C40135933AA506D66FD31F64EC72832| |E3EF0ABFEC8AFFA13E333E19735DCE7798AD7E904E518EFFF29AE9EA3BC40F325AE| |1C9433342B74F77E5BC349046E60C39B285B28DB2811685CBCC79DA60FC48762A1F| |851C6510228419430CA2CCA1794C11FE69DF03F| |-------------------------------------------------------------------|
(Incidentally, the best Scrapper on the list is at 291 DPS, which is about 59% higher than 183.)
If we account for Bruising, then our number jumps to:
((2056.34 - 153.69) * 1.2 + 153.69) / 11.22 = 217.19 DPS for the first attack chain (not counting the debuff for the first Jab), and 219.9 DPS thereafter.
But then we have to take into account Rage crashes. If we assume that the player in question has Rage timed exactly to give one copy of the buff and no more than that, then we're looking at a damage modifier of basically 120 / 130 (you can't attack for ten seconds out of every 130), or 12/13.
217.19 * (12/13) = 200.5 DPS
Which gives the 291 DPS Scrapper on that list a ~45% advantage.
I'm not even going to get into the possibility of perma-double-Rage, which is possible on the above build (or some slight variant thereof). With all of that extra +damage from AAO, the second Rage isn't going to add all that much proportional damage -- i'd imagine barely enough to offset the increased crash frequency (12/13 falling to 6/7).
Likewise, we could get cute and talk about how Pylons don't resist psionic damage (they have 20% RES to all other damage types), which would theoretically lower this build's time-to-kill number (because of psi procs), but wouldn't alter its DPS. I'm pretty sure Iggy posted before Bruising was introduced, come to think of it. I'd have to go dig through the Pylon thread to be sure, though, and that's definitely a task for another night.
Build Theory Disclaimer: I'm not a Shield Defense player. I'm sure that build could use some work. In fairness, I admit up front that it doesn't have infinite endurance sustainability; by my rough calcs, the above attack chain should drain the build's endurance in about 125 seconds, which is good enough for any regular player, but doesn't quite meet the standards of a lot of hard-core Scrapper-build posters. The main point was to emphasize some of the non-standard Tanker slotting options that are available to increase offense.
Yup.Quote:We are however drifting into the realm of theorycrafting instead of practical applications. I think the original premise, that scrappers have roughly a 50% damage advantage, is as the saying goes "close enough for Government work" -
Quote:The Scrapper forum is a hot bed of edge-case builds. Going from memory, most if not all of the really high Scrapper DPS numbers posted in that Pylon thread come from DM/* and/or */SD builds with fully saturated AAO and/or Soul Drain. Even if the players in question routinely play to maximize those abilities, we are by definition talking about exceptional style of play.Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
True but you also have the fact that scrapper attacks generally recharge faster. I was looking at the DPS results that top end scrappers are showing in the scrapper forum compared to top end DPS of tankers. A few edge case scrappers are managing ~300 dps; I don't offhand know of any tanker builds that can top ~150 dps. That's what I was basing my statement on top end scrapper/tanker damage. Do you know of any tanker builds that can top 150 dps? The best I can come up with, Shield/Fire, comes in somewhere in the 130's with a ton of recharge.
Then we have selection bias: Tanker players (going by the forum) are less inclined to maximize DPS to begin with -- and in those cases where Tanker players do maximize offense, they're less likely to care as much about single-target DPS. From what I've seen, Tanker players are generally less inclined to maximize their builds at all (whether it's for defense, offense, or just generally) than the average Scrapper-forum poster.
And then, of course, there's the most obvious factor: Those numbers are posted in the Scrapper forum. How many Tankers even showed up there to report their numbers?
All of that said, and if we just look at the system logically, there's no reason to assume that the IO system generally favors Scrapper offense over Tanker offense. If anything, the IO system tends to favor Scrappers defensively -- in the sense that Scrappers can enjoy a larger proportional defensive gain than Tankers can. Damage procs favor Tankers more (proportionally), because their attacks have lower damage to begin with, and Tankers generally have access to more damage procs per attack (we can slot Taunt sets in every attack). Global damage bonuses tend to favor Scrappers, but they're hard to stack to a meaningful level.
And obviously -- as noted previously -- for a given defensive build goal, the Tanker has an advantage, which means that the Tanker is likely to have more build resources available to spend on offense.
If what you say is true about Scrapper attacks generally recharging faster, then +recharge bonuses would also tend to favor Tankers. But I don't think your premise is accurate. Attacks are balanced based on a formula. Yes, it's true that Tanker sets are more often characterized by one or two very slow, very heavy hitters (like KO Blow and Total Focus), but DPS is damage averaged over time, and so that metric shouldn't especially penalize those big hitters. Quite the opposite.
And lower-tier Tanker attacks generally aren't inferior to Scrapper analogues, leaving aside the difference in the AT modifiers. If we compare like-to-like -- that is, sets with similar mechanical strengths, like Martial Arts versus Super Strength -- Tankers do pretty well, even at the high end.
Are there are exceptions? Yeah, and I acknowledged that. Powers like Soul Drain and AAO are more impressive on Scrappers because Scrappers have a higher AT mod to build on -- but the proportional difference assuming equal investment and equal play styles remains the same. If Scrapper damage is ~50% higher at base, then adding another 50% to each doesn't change that: 1.5 * 1.5 / 1 * 1.5 = 1.5.
I wouldn't put much stock in the highest DPS numbers in that thread, is all. They're neat to read, and they give you a decent idea of what is achievable under certain circumstances with a certain build -- but they're a far cry from proof or even evidence that high-end Scrappers necessarily out-damage high-end Tankers by a factor of two.
Yeah, not a hard mistake to make.Quote:Doh! Yes, you're right; I did screw up my numbers a bit going from memory. Still, I was understating the advantage if anything. -
Quote:DM/Invuln? The second-most recharge-intensive build in the game? LOL. I feel like Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride: "You keep using these words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean."Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Thank you for your offer of assistance. For this particular build I do not need help. There is a frankenbuild bouncing around my head that I will be begging for help with once I am done with this guy. But this guy is very simple. Recharge, and recharge. I absolutely know that it is a law of diminishing returns. However, except for this Brute, only Doms could possibly benefit from recharge more. I am not going to present my theories for this again, I know many consider thm wrong, the way I am doing it wrong, whatever. I am chasing the dragon with this build, and whether or not i catch the beast I will not go off the hunt.
You need help with your build more than you need to have twenty or more of the most extravagant items in the game. But hey, suit yourself. I'll just content myself playing characters that are two or three times more effective than yours for a tiny fraction of the cost.
That said, you've just proven how silly your premise is. You admit you're chasing the dragon (whatever that's supposed to mean), perhaps even to spite your own mechanical effectiveness. You admit that you may never catch the dragon, even though you (claim to) already have five purple sets. Still, you insist that they should be easier to obtain.
It never occurs to you that your build is the problem, and not the price of the enhancements. This thread is a monument to ignorance. People keep offering you good advice -- about the market, about builds, about making money even without marketeering. You blindly refuse to acknowledge any of it. -
Just a couple of nitpicks, in support of the general theme:
Quote:All else being equal, a Scrapper's damage is 50% higher than a Tanker's (1.125 * 1.075 / 0.8 = ~1.5). There are obviously exceptions going both ways, but IO investment generally doesn't change that fundamental relationship; if anything, a spare-no-expense Tanker build will tend to have a comparative advantage because he has to use fewer resources on supplementing his defenses.Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
Top level scrapper damage would be close to double top level tanker damage, and top level scrapper durability would be about half top level (Stone Armor Granite) tanker durability. At the peak of scrapper durability you're probably about in the average range of tanker durability. And you're spending probably 100/1 in inf to get it, possibly considerably more. (100 inf on the scrapper vs 1 inf on the tanker)
Tankers have 40% more base HP than Scrappers do (1874 / 1339 = 1.399), which is analogous to (but not quite equivalent to) ~29% resistance. Obviously, extra HP doesn't stack with bona-fide resistance in the same way that resistance stacks with itself.Quote:Oh heck yes. By your own example the scrapper at resist cap is taking TWO AND A HALF TIMES the damage that a tanker at the resist cap does; and that tanker has 25% more base HP. Additional HP can be looked at as resistance to all damage types as well.
Let's take a simple case of a scrapper vs tanker HP. We'll assume that neither has any defense or resistance... the tanker survives 25% more damage due to his higher HP. You could look at that as the tanker has 25% resistance while the scrapper has 0% if you like and the numbers still come out the same.
Defense and resistance do multiply the effectiveness of your HP, though. The more of each you have, the more valuable all of them become.
33% greater effectiveness on his armors (100 / 75 = 1.33) and 40% more hitpoints. Which means that if we assume both ATs are using one-dimensional defensive sets (just DEF or just RES), then we're looking at 1.33 * 1.4 = 1.862, or 86% more survivability for the Tanker.Quote:On average a tanker will survive double the punishment of a scrapper thanks to a combination of 25% greater effectiveness in his armors and 25% more hit points.
If we assume that both builds are using layered defenses (like Invulnerability or any number of other sets), then we're looking at 33% more DEF, 33% more RES, and 40% more hp for the Tanker, which works out to ~147% more survivability.
In practice, and if we factor in extreme, high-end builds, the comparison obviously isn't that simple, but those simple calculations give us a decent ballpark understanding of the survivability difference. For good reason, the devs seem to give more weight to offense than they do to defense, so it wouldn't be fair to say that the Tanker wins simply because his survivability advantage is larger than his offensive disadvantage. If defense and offense were balanced on a 1-to-1 ratio, then Blasters would need something like a 200% base-damage buff -- and we all know that ain't gonna happen.
As before, which side of the offensive/defensive equation you favor is ultimately subjective. But you really can't go wrong with any melee character, except perhaps for a Stalker. -
For the last few days, I've played about five hours, running alignment missions on two characters (at +0/x1, no bosses). I'm switching them over to the Villain side to unlock Patron Pools, so I haven't even eligible for A-merits in that time. Just from crafting and selling drops, I've made about 150 million in that time, with probably another 5-10 in influence from kills. Comparatively speaking, that's about as slow as inf gain gets on this forum, but it would still allow me to IO out a build in a matter of weeks.
It's clear that discussing economic theory -- real-world or in-game -- with you is pointless, B_C. So post your build. Seriously, post it. I'll help you. I'm sure others will too.
You don't need all of those super-expensive IOs. Sometimes, throwing influence at a build can even hurt its performance. -
Quote:What you have to keep in mind about some of the exploits described on the forums is that they often feature cherry-picked builds or situations. That's especially true of the Scrapper forum; most of the prolific posters over there put even hardcore min/maxers to shame -- which is great, even admirable in its own way, but you shouldn't get too caught up in what goes on there.Originally Posted by InUse
I had to google 100 fold; as my math is not as good as yours but are you saying a tanker is 1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376 tougher than a scrapper?
No I have not seen the test with regards to RWZ.
I have seen post where a scrapper has been able to tank multiple AVs
"Tankers shine on hard content when you lack support. Simple."
That is why I was asking about issue 19. I would love to laugh at a non Tank class trying to fill my role instead of laughing at myself.
I also saw a post where a corruptor Fire/traps tanked three AVs.
Every build has areas of weaknesses. At the high end of IO investment, you can mitigate some of your weaknesses, maybe even eliminate some of them, but you'll still be weak to something -- whether it's end drain or DEF debuffs or recharge debuffs or psionic damage or hard controls or whatever. You'll probably be weak to several things, in fact.
Tankers aren't necessarily the best at surviving in every imaginable situation. Survivability, after all, is a very broad category of performance. On the melee forums we tend to confine our discussions to what is easily quantifiable, because every melee AT has a whole powerset devoted to what I like to call passive survivability -- how much damage you can avoid, resist, and/or heal -- but we all understand that there's more to it than that.
So yeah, occasionally you'll see an example where a Corruptor survives in a situation that might give even your Tanker pause. That's because support ATs have a lot of proactive survivability -- but proactive survivability is generally less reliable than passive survivability; it relies on the player to recognize and neutralize threats often before those threats are even realized, and it is subject to its own set of situational weaknesses. What if the target has hold protection? Resists ToHit debuffs? Spams mez effects?
Squishies, in other words, have a much lower margin for error (or if you prefer, bad luck) than any melee AT. They also tend to bloom a lot later, and even when they do bloom, you must understand that their defensive options are comparatively unimpressive. A Blaster with 45% Smash/Lethal DEF may cruise through most common situations, may even be able to farm cherry-picked mobs, but throw her up against something that doesn't rely on S/L attacks and all of that defense becomes suddenly useless.
All else being equal, a Tanker is easily three or four times more survivable than a Scrapper. On teams with good buff support, a Brute can come close to a Tanker's survivability, but otherwise the Brute is just a Scrapper with higher hitpoints and slightly lower damage. That Tanker advantage does matter in practice; the only question is whether that advantage is important enough, to you, to offset the Tanker's offensive disadvantage.
No one else can answer that question for you. It depends on your playstyle and your teaming habits. For what little it's worth, I can tell you that I have an INV/SS Tanker and an SS/WP Brute, and though it's true that the Brute does more damage (particularly in an AoE), I found that the extra defensive build investment required on the Brute almost offsets the Tanker's damage disadvantage. The Tanker is in a better position to take advantage of double-stacked Rage (which provides Tankers more benefit than it does Brutes because of the slightly higher base-damage AT modifier and the lack of Fury to dilute the proportional damage bonus), and has Bruising in his back pocket for single targets.
So when it came time to trick out one of those similarly themed builds, I decided to focus on the Tanker first. Your mileage may vary. -
Quote:Unless you make ink for a living.Originally Posted by Heraclea
In a real world economy, the devaluation of currency by inflation is somewhat less of a problem; you do as Zimbabwe did and just multiply by ten billion. If I lived in Zimbabwe, I'd vote for a rock for President myself:
-
Yeah, on a Brute double-stacked Rage is very questionable. You have so much extra +damage buffs (from Fury, from the first Rage) already that even the extra +80% from a second Rage amounts to a pathetic proportional gain.
If the extra damage were free then that'd be one thing, but it's not. You should be shooting for just enough overlap on Rage that you can mitigate the DEF debuff. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
2) I am not sure what world you live in. This one is rigged (Primal Earth, not the game). Those with money ensure teir children get better education, better degrees, better looks, socialize with better people, and make better money. Politicians routinely gut the education system, bloat the defense budget, and send the half educated populace off to war, to die. Can a natural genius frm the ghetto with a penchant for studying rise above, yes, but the system is rigged against it. How many well educated people in america are jobless over the last couple years because of market manipulation?
- Life isn't fair, but happily, the game is. We all have equal access to the goods sold in CoH. Thus, high prices equal high revenue for anyone who bothers to sell his drops on the Market.
- Your build, from what I've heard of it, would likely be better if you applied a little more thought to it, and a little less bitterness-laced profligacy. People in this game are far too obsessed with the most extravagant items in the game; they usually don't add all that much (relatively speaking). You can generally build a character with non-purples that performs at ~90+% of an analogous multi-billion-inf build.
Feel free to ask build questions here or elsewhere. There's no shortage of people willing to help.
- It's interesting you should bring up education, because you've demonstrated an unwillingness to be educated about the game's market. No one is oppressing you but yourself, in this instance.
- You're treading dangerously close to political rhetoric. Please keep your RL bitterness to yourself, or else you risk one of our friendly neighborhood mods coming in to close your thread -- and I'd hate to see you given an excuse to whine about how The Man censored you in the Market forum.
- Life isn't fair, but happily, the game is. We all have equal access to the goods sold in CoH. Thus, high prices equal high revenue for anyone who bothers to sell his drops on the Market.
-
Quote:Heh, that may well be. Whether he's disingenuous or not, though, he does have an almost self-destructive (to the extent that anything in a game can be considered destructive) obsession with extravagant items.Originally Posted by Nethergoat
As an aside, the OP in that thread is a serial fibber. Were he to engage in the activities he claims to have engaged in in the quantities he puts forth, he'd be able to afford whatever he wants.
Yeah, there are people who're genuinely hung up on 'the good stuff' who don't understand why it's so seemingly impossible to obtain, but that dude isn't one of them. The polite term for that OP is "disingenuous", the colloquial internet term involves a green nonhuman living under a bridge. -
Quote:Context is paramount. This whole discussion (for me) proceeded from Uber's premise that the increased price of purples increases the divide between Haves and Have-Nots. That's how I arrived at the comparison between SO builds and IO builds, with or without purples. We're discussing the entire range of performance, and players' perceptions thereof.Originally Posted by Young_Tutor
Obitus, its not that I think its *controversial*. I totally agree with you that in comparison to a SO build, a non-purple build is competitive with a purple build. That's obvious.
My point was that in general if you have a level 50 SO build, whether or not to use purples is way beyond your pay grade. The *last* thing you want to do if you hit level 50 with an SO build is try to buy a set of purples. You are absolutely right, this is *not* controversial. I don't think there would be a single informed poster who would argue otherwise. If you are level 50 with an SO build, you ought to focus on getting the awesome rare recipes (LOTG, Miracle, etc) and either frankenslotting or vanilla uncommon IO sets before you even think of purple sets.
But such a player ought to have been doing this a long, long time ago.
Players' perceptions may well be that purples are of paramount important. I believe that is the perception, in fact. But that perception is wrong.
The term "casual player" is rather vague. There are many different degrees of casual, and you seem to err on the side of the complete noob. That's fine. When I use the term, all I mean is someone who has not a lot of time to play. I define myself as more-or-less casual, even though I've subscribed to this game since its launch.
You needn't be new or clueless to place too much importance on purples. For an example, I give you the 2 billion per enhancer thread in this very forum. The OP of that thread has (by his account) been around for a good while; he doesn't seem to be incapable or unwilling to make influence -- but he has a bizarre obsession with the most expensive IOs in the game, even (seemingly) to the detriment of his own build.
That sort of player would be much happier if he just forgot about purples and PvP IOs, at least initially. He may even find, after he's played awhile with a well-built non-purple IO build, that he doesn't want the more extravagant items. You seem to agree. Uber doesn't.
Depends on the build and the goals. If you can't get as much recharge as you want with a given set of goals, then you either have to accept it or modify your goals -- and then maybe think about adding purples. For instance, even with purples, I have difficulty finding a satisfactory ranged-DEF build for my Fire/Mental Blaster, and not just because it's hard to squeeze +recharge in with ranged +DEF bonuses. So I went with S/L DEF, which happens to complement the assets in my secondary better anyway (Drain Psyche, Psychic Shockwave).Quote:But that wasn't my point. My point was that there are significant tradeoffs.
There all sorts of considerations, of which mechanical trade offs are only one.
Three-slotted Hasten is very very close to permanent with +90% in global recharge bonuses. Five-slotted Hasten is basically permanent with +90% in global recharge bonuses. Again, we're talking about a fairly small practical consideration.Quote:For one thing, @ 90% global recharge hasten isn't perma, so the 70% bonus isn't absolute.
Uber's argument was that extra +recharge bonuses provide disproportionate benefit to certain builds with long-recharging "key powers." If the power in question is a key power, then presumably you will fully slot it for ED-capped recharge enhancement.Quote:Second, you might not have 100% recharge slotted in a power.
If it's not fully slotted, then it isn't that important, which leads us back to where we started.
With respect, this quote is provably false. Finding five different purple sets to fit into a build is not always easy, and thus will often require undesirable tradeoffs. Remember, purples are unique. So once you've covered melee damage, PBAoE damage, ranged damage, targeted AoE damage, you still have to come up with at least one less commonly appealing attribute to enhance -- like confuse or stun or sleep.Quote:Third (most importantly) using 5 purple sets to get +50% recharge is *always* a more efficient way of using your slots than using 8-10 rare sets to get + 50% recharge.
That's why I used three purple sets instead of five in my offhand recharge example. Three seems like the most realistic number over the broad range of builds.
I never mentioned the Alpha slot, but I believe Incarnate content will increase supply simply because more people will be playing their 50s. The Alpha slot is unlikely to lower demand for purples; if anything, purple demand may go up somewhat if Incarnate content is sufficiently time-consuming. After all, if you have to go to all sorts of trouble to unlock Incarnate bonuses with one character, then you might as well go whole hog with that character.Quote:[stuff about the Alpha Slot]
Time will tell. -
Quote:In a vacuum, perhaps they would be, but if you have a number of RES powers that you have to enhance anyway, and you're looking for typed DEF bonuses, Reactive Armor is the way to go.Originally Posted by Derangedpolygot
I always thought the numbers were too small to be worth it. *shrug*
To each their own.