Tips for Gathering Power Data

So you're gathering data on your powers, mostly likely the actual damage. Here are some tips to help make the best use of your time:

Key Threads
Several threads on these boards contain very useful information for the number oriented. In case you didn't know it, you can mark a thread as a "Favorite" by using the "Favorite Thread! (toggle)" link at the bottom. This will store a link to that thread on your "My Home" page.

Power Data Standardization - This thread by Iakona contains information extracted from a reliable source. Tables of data on all sorts of things can be found. This thread also covers the Damage Scale system which is cleaner and less confusing to use than Brawl Indexes.

Defense - Arcanaville's thread about how Defense works. If you need to know the chance you have to hit something (or your chance of being hit), this is the place to look. It's a lot to read, but it's all good information and will help with your understanding of the game.

Enhancement ED Formula - Sometimes you'll need to know exactly how ED (Enhancement Diversification) is affecting your powers. I like the formula presented in the first post of this thread. It's a quick and simple formula that involves a single multiplication and a single addition. For example, if you have 3 DMG SO+++, each one contributes 0.383 (38.3%) for a total of 1.149 (114.9%). Using the fourth formula from that post (y = 80% + 0.15x ; (100%,229.77%]) we get:
y = 80% + 0.15 * (1.149)
y = 0.972, or +97.2% damage
The part I bolded tells you to only use this formula when the unmodified percent (114.9% in this case) is between 100% and 229.77%. The ( means do NOT include that value. The [ and ] mean you should include that value. So if I had a starting percent of exactly 100%, I would actually not use this formula, I'd use the third formula listed, which is for (90%,100%].

Researched Power Data - This thread is dedicated to data researched by the players - that's you! If you find the Damage Scales of any powers you have, post them here, please! The more we all contribute, the faster we'll get a complete picture of what our powers actually do. If you are at all uncertain of your math (and even if you are sure you did it right), I strongly recommend including the test data you used to determine Damage Scales (AT, power, your level, target's level, target mob type, damage dealt including decimel part). Also, the [ code ] tag is your friend for posting data like this.

Damage Scale
For the damage dealt, the value you want is called the Damage Scale (DS for short). In the simplest terms, this is a multiplier. Every AT has a fixed amount of damage dealt at each level (See the Power Data Standardization thread above). For example, at level 40 a Corruptor does a base of 38.18 damage. To determine how much damage a power does, take your AT's base damage for his level and multiply it by the power's DS. So a power with a 1.32 DS will deal 38.18 * 1.32 = 50.40 damage to a target with no resists.

Some ATs have two different base damages: one for Ranged attacks and the other for Melee attacks. As a result, if you aren't certain whether a power is consider Ranged or Melee by Cryptic, you may have two DS to pick from. For example, if you have a Dominator, he has a base Melee Damage of 35.63 at level 40, and 33.09 damage for Ranged attacks. You then use a cone attack such as Psychic Scream and it deals 34.42 damage. If a cone counts as Melee, the DS has to be 34.42 / 35.63 = 0.9660. If it is Ranged on the other hand, its DS would be 34.42 / 33.09 = 1.0402.

Since all DSs currently found only have two decimel places, the DS is ultimately either 0.96 or 0.97 for Melee, or 1.04 for Ranged. So we now reverse our math to double check:
If DS is a Melee 0.96 then: 35.63 * 0.96 = 34.21
If DS is a Melee 0.97 then: 35.63 * 0.97 = 34.56
If DS is a Ranged 1.04 then: 33.09 * 1.04 = 34.41

Only a Ranged 1.04 DS is close to the 34.42 damage we actually did, so that tells us Psychic Scream counts as a ranged attack. In my experience, cones and AoE attacks count as ranged, but PBAoE attacks count as melee. Other attacks are generally fairly clear as to being Ranged or Melee.

Normalized Damage Scale
While Damage Scales are nice, they aren't good for comparing outside of an AT. For example, both a Dominator and Controller can have Mesmerize. Mesmerize is a Ranged attack with a 1.00 DS. However at 40, a Controller will deal 28.00 damage while a Dominator will deal 33.09 damage. This is also a problem within a single AT that has different Ranged and Melee damage values. A /Psi Dominator will deal 54.27 damage with Subdue (Ranged attack) and 58.43 with Mind Probe (Melee attack), yet both have a DS of 1.64.

To solve this, a DS can easily be converted to a Normalized Damage Scale (NDS). Think of NDS as simply being the DS a Blaster's attack would need to have to do the same damage. Mind Probe for example has a NDS of 1.148. That means a Blaster with a 1.148 DS attack will deal exactly the same damage as my Dominator does with Mind Probe. Compare 1.148 to Subdue's NDS which is 1.066. The NDS makes it clear that Mind Probe will do more damage than Subdue. Not surprisingly, for Blaster powers, NDS is the same thing as DS. But for other ATs, multiply the DS of the attack by the relative base damage compared to a Blaster. For example, Dominators do 65% of a Blaster's Ranged damage (hence Subdue's 1.066 which is 1.64 * 0.65) and do 70% of a Blaster's Melee damage (giving Mind Probe's 1.148 which is 1.64 * 0.70).

See Level Divide for pre-level 20 implications.

Testing with Enhancements
While it is generally better to test without Enhancements (use the test server so you can pull all your damage enhancements out), sometimes it isn't practical. All you need to do to account for Enhancements is divide the damage you are dealing by the modifier your enhancements provide. This is generally easily found by hovering over the power on the Power Management screen. You can also use the ED formula in the post linked above. Remember that for each +1 level of an enhancement, it increases in effectiveness by 5%, while for each -1 level, it decreases by 10%.

Example, you deal 113.89 damage with Mind Probe on a level 40 Dominator, using 3 even level DMG SOs. 3 * 0.333 = 0.999, then using the ED formula we get 0.25 + 0.999 * 0.7 = 0.949. So step one is removing the 94.9% damage increase. We do that by dividing 113.89 by (1 + 0.949). That gives us 58.44 damage without enhancements. Now we divide by the base Melee damage of a Dominator (35.63) and that gives us: 58.44 / 35.63 = 1.64.

If all those SOs had been +3, they'd have given 0.333 * 1.15 = 0.383 each, and after ED we'd have come up with a modifier of 0.972, or +97.2% damage instead of +94.9%. Again, if you have the Power Management screen, that is certain easier than figuring it out by hand, but it may be advisable to double check the Power Management screen's value, just to make sure it's pretty close.

Level Difference
All of the above assumes you are targeting an unresistant, even level target. In general, resistant targets are more annoying to test against for various reasons, so try and avoid them. This also means Minions are often preferred because they tend to have fewer resistances. But when it comes to target level, you actually want to test against targets of as low a level as possible. The reason: you get a damage multiplier on lower level targets. A level 40 does 500% damage against a level 1 enemy (500% damage means +400% damage, or x4).

Suppose at level 40 you ran your Dominator up to a level 1 Hellion and landed a Mind Probe with three even-level DMG SOs. It would hit for 455.55 damage. Let's pretend we don't know the DS of Mind Probe. First we remove the level multplier of 4.00: 455.55 / 4.0 = 113.8875. We don't round to two places until we get to the final number. Now let's take out the 94.9% damage increase from enhancements: 113.8875 / 1.949 = 58.4338. Lastly we divide by our base damage of 35.63 so: 58.4338 / 35.63 = 1.64001, which we see rounds nicely to 1.64.

The advantage of low level targets is the huge multiplier you get. This makes it so the DS becomes very clear despite any rounding issues. For example, if Mind Probe was really a 1.65 DS, our level 1 Hellion would have taken 458.32, while a 1.63 DS would have delivered only 452.77 damage. The level multiplier has stretched the damage between each increment in DS so large that we can't easily mess it up, despite rounding.

Similarly, slotting up DMG enhancements helps too, however they are somewhat less desirable for this purpose since: 1) you may not have enough slots to put in 3 DMG, 2) it costs "money" to switch enhancements around, 3) the percent multpliers are "odd" numbers that aren't as exact as the level multpliers. To get the level multpliers, check out the Power Data Standardization link at the top of this post.

Level Divide
Up until level 20, the base damages of all ATs stay closer than normal. For example, at level 1, a Dominator's Melee attacks deals 94% of the damage a Blaster deals. But at level 20 and beyond, the Dominator only deals 70% of the Blaster's damage. All ATs are the same: they start at a percent in the 90's relative to Blasters, and their damage relative to a Blaster drops up until level 20 when it locks in to a fixed percentage of Blaster damage.

If you are testing to determine DS values, using a pre-level 20 character is fine since the base damage tables from Iakona take into account the level divide. And once you do get the DS, you can safely convert it to a NDS. However, if you want to see if your level 15 Mind/Energy Dominator's Bone Smasher is better than a level 15 Blaster's Incinerate, NDS won't work because only Blaster NDS values are correct for pre-level 20 comparisons. For the most part this isn't really a critical effect, especially because while NDS doesn't work between ATs pre-level 20, it does work within the same AT.

The Endurance Shortcut
As it turns out, there is a fairly nice shortcut that can help you guess or double-check DS values. Most powers in CoX have a specific relationship between the Endurance they cost and their DS. That value is, 5.2 END per 1.00 DS. So if you see a power that costs exactly 5.2 END, you can guess it probably has a DS of 1.00. Of course, you could be wrong. Psionic Dart costs 5.2 END but only has a DS of 0.60.

Also, powers with special effects (holds, fear and such) as well as cones, AoEs, PBAoEs are likely to cost more than 5.2 * DS endurance. But this gives you a good number to guess many powers. It also tells you if a power has an endurance penalty or not. Consider /Icy for Dominators. Ice Blast, Ice Bolt and Ice Sword all have the standard 5.2 * DS relationship. This means that at least for those powers, Ice doesn't use more endurance than most other sets. In fact, compared to the same three powers in /Psi, /Icy uses less endurance. Keep in mind that the activation times on /Icy's powers may be so low that you can burn through endurance a lot faster. But you'll still be dealing damage just as efficiently as any other normal power set, just faster. Kinda like a subtle perma-Haste.

Now where to get accurate Endurance values is another question. The Hero Planner has been pretty good so far when it comes to endurance values. You can also use the reverse of this relationship to confirm endurance costs. If you get a DS for a power of 2.00, but the endurance cost is listed as 7.00 instead of 10.4, it is probably wrong or the power is supposed to be massively endurance efficient.

Brawl Indexes
All this talk of DS and I never mentioned it. Brawl has a DS of 0.36 and counts as a Melee attack. This means you can actually convert a DS to a Brawl Index by dividing it by 0.36. So a 1.0 DS / 0.36 = 2.7778. Doesn't that number look familar? And isn't 1.0 easier to remember than 2.7778? Not only that, but a Dominator will deal 12.83 damage with a Brawl at level 40, and 54.27 damage with Mesmerize (ranged attack + sleep). 33.09 / 12.83 = 2.5791 BI. While that works great for a Dominator, you can't compare to anyone else because a Dominator does more damage with Melee than Ranged. Compare to a Controller who can also have Mesmerize. At level 40, a Controller does 10.08 damage with Brawl and 28.00 damage with Mesmerize. 28.00 / 10.08 = 2.7778 BI. Notice how the BI shows as higher on a Controller than a Dominator?

So don't use BI, it's bad and confusing

Common Powers
It should be noted that even if two ATs have a power with the exact same name, they don't necessarily have the same DS. This is apparently the case with Blaster's Bone Smasher having a higher DS compared to other EM sets in other ATs. This is also apparently the case in APPs that pull powers from non-APP sets. It is likely this will be the case for PPP as well.

Hopefully that helps you get started gathering data. Don't forget to post it in the data gathering thread listed! Good luck.

I did some work on calculating activation and recharge rates and the like, once. (Also, proving that there's roughly a .5 second "redraw" time after pool attacks.)

It was slow and laborious and I don't know if people without lab science backgrounds would get as much accuracy as I did.

I suspect demorecord files provide better info anyway, although their numbers always seemed to come out .1 second higher than mine and we never managed to figure out why.

Is there a handy thread explaining demorecord format?

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HOW TO MEASURE ACTIVATION AND RECHARGE TIME FOR YOURSELF:

Warning: Boring and/or obvious stuff follows.

I went to Test, took out all my damage from the relevant attack, and timed an "autofire" sequence against a good volunteer.

Good volunteers:

1) Don't interrupt [knockback, stun, etc. ]
2) Will survive at least five applications of the attack and preferably 10
3) don't run away
4) Don't kill you.

( This was a lot easier with an I4 scrapper. I was using armored Crey in Brickstown, because they resist Smash/Lethal. )

Test 1: Set to autofire, fire 8 times [or whatever you can manage.] Time them - start of first to start of last, start of first to end of last, whatever. Just be consistent. Repeat three times on three test subjects and average results, throwing out any obvious screw-ups. This is Result A.

Test 2: Same,but with fewer attacks- as few as two would work, but I'd use three or four. Repeat test three times and average. Be sure to use the same timing- start to start, start to end, whatever. This is B.

Subtract B from A: this will give you the time for the "middle" attacks. If A was eight attacks and B was three, this is five attacks plus five full recharges.
Divide by 5 to get C: One attack plus one full recharge.

Test 3: Same as test 1, but with three or four Recharge Reducers in the power. Go to the Enhancement screen and keep track of what the modified Recharge time is (As close to 100% as you can get it, ideally.) The time for test 3 is D.

Test 4: Same as test 2, but with Recharge Reducers. The time for test 4 is E.

From D and E, Calculate the time for one attack and one modified recharge; label this F.

Given Activation time A, Recharge modifier M, and true recharge time R:

[Basic Algebra Follows]
A+ R = C
A + (R/1+M) = F

Subtracting: C-F = R (1- (1/1+M)

Plug in C, F, and M and you can find R.

Once you find R, you can find A.

My errors were on the order of +/- .2 seconds; if you have a stopwatch that goes to .1 seconds, you can probably do better.

The whole procedure takes about an hour or so, per power.

Actually, Iakona has data that lists exact activation times of all powers. Each power's activation is based on the number of frames required to animate it, with 30 frames displayed per second. Therefore, every activation time can be measured as the total number of frames, and then divided by 30 to find the number of seconds. That means, for example, that you cannot have a 2.01 second activation time. 60 frames / 30 fps = 2.00 seconds and 61 frames / 30 dps = 2.03 seconds. Since the frame count is always a whole number, activation numbers step up in 0.0333 second increments (1/30th of a second).

Hard data is also available on which frame impact occurs on for powers (or which frame the projectile is launched on). Example: Telekinetic Thrust has 62 frames in its activation animation. That means it takes 2.07 seconds to activate. It has an "impact" frame count of 16, meaning the power "lands" only 0.53 seconds after the animation begins. Interesting, Mesmerize has 50 frames of animation but an impact frame of 51. So it actually "lands" a fraction of a second after the power finishes animating.

I believe Iakona posted a link to a website with all this type of information, but last I checked the site was down. Link is on the last page of the Power Data Standardization thread.

Are there any powers where animation time and activation time are different?

[ QUOTE ]
Are there any powers where animation time and activation time are different?

[/ QUOTE ]
Fire Sword Circle, Ice Sword Circle, Confuse all seem to have different activation and animation times. I'm sure there are others.

Wonderfully done!

Some powers "seem" like their animation ends even though you remain rooted and unable to act longer than expected. I've only been able to attribute this to poor animation sequences that don't clearly indicate when they truly finish.

There are other powers (Confuse, RI and Ice Circle Sword for example) that prevent you from acting for their entire animation/activtion period (176 frames in the case of Confuse), but suddenly allow you to move at some point. I don't know of any way at present other than trial-and-error to determine if a power has this property. For Confuse, it works out that impact occurs at 45 frames, you become unrooted after 86-90 frames*, and finally after 176 frames you are free to activate other powers. It may be possible to use a demo recording to catch the exact moment you become unrooted, but I am unfamilar with how to parse demo recordings at this time. A project for another day probably.

* Timed with a stopwatch and then converted into frames, so not super accurate.

Thanks to the Dominators over on the Dom board who correctly pointed out that Psychic Shockwave, a PBAoE power, actually counts as ranged (confirmed due to the test server increase in Dominator melee damage by 7.1% that failed to affect Shockwave). As a result, I'd suggest considering PBAoE powers to be ranged by default when gathering power data. Below is the paragraph in my original post which changes, bold indicating the change:

"Only a Ranged 1.04 DS is close to the 34.42 damage we actually did, so that tells us Psychic Scream counts as a ranged attack. In my experience, cones and AoE (Point Blank, Ranged and Targeted) attacks count as ranged. Other attacks are generally fairly clear as to being Ranged or Melee."

I would like to mention the Shockwave has a fairly large radius, so some PBAoE powers may actually still be melee, you'll have to test and figure it out.