aethereal
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Posts posted by aethereal
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I killed some 20 or so AVs with an ice/bio stalker (not scrapper). A few comments:
- People make way too big a deal of taunt. I did this on a stalker. It was fine.
- In general, you do not need to absolutely max your ST DPS to do a fine job killing AVs. It's easy for a scrapper/stalker to get above the regeneration rate of an AV, and it's largely impossible to get such high DPS that you can race it and kill it before it kills you. You need to be able to survive ~indefinitely against an AV in order to kill it, and you need to be able to stay above its regeneration rate, and if you're a little less than top DPS, it'll take longer but you'll be no less successful. There are a few AVs who are particularly tough and you may want to eke out every possible bit of DPS, but that's not at all the majority of them.
- The weakness of Bio is its lack of DDR. AVs who had defense debuffs were very hard for me, and usually I could only do them with purple insps to avoid cascading defense failure.
- Enjoy Ghost Widow.
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1 hour ago, Haijinx said:
You can slot the Scrapper ATOs around 10, not 50. Just for those underwhelmed by Scrapper performance.
However, the non-superior proc has half the PPM of the superior proc, and your global recharge will be much worse. There really is a sharp cliff of power at 50 for scrappers.
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4 hours ago, Bananiac said:
Digging out this old thread in search of a workable build for DB/Nin on a scrapper.
@aethereal, you would have the build to share here, would you?
Or anybody, for that matter. It's pretty hard to find combo.
Thx!
I'm on a mac so I don't use Mids. Also I've changed computers since I last played CoH.
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Don't put slots in brawl.
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8 hours ago, RelativeQuanta said:
True, but check out the up-time of the proc in my test. None of them are at 100% and most hover in the 40-70% range. It would take two people with the ridiculous slotting I'm testing here to have a hope of saturating the bonus.
But that just means that the loss isn't literally "the entire proc is completely wasted." If the proc is conflicting 70% of the time, that reduces its value by a little more than a factor of three.
I think that the resistance procs are the prime example of something that looks better on paper than it plays. The combination of "doesn't take effect during the opening salvo," "best on big teams which don't really need help on damage output anyway," "popular and non-stacking," and "best on rare big opponents" is pretty brutal. But feel free to test it out and see if at the end of the day you feel a difference with them.
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14 hours ago, RelativeQuanta said:
Ok, here are my latest results after including the Average Adjusted Resistances for level 40+ minions, LTs and bosses from Galaxy Brain's post (linked above)
TL; DR: The purple patch is now showing a greater difference. -Res proc wins against even con enemies and minor damage wins against +4. Likely due to "double dip" penalty against -Res that drops the duration AND the magnitude. However, a difference in performance is unlikely to be noticeable for a solo player and still hugely in favor of -Res in groups.
I have no doubt that the first Achilles Heel proc that you have in a group leads to a big gain in group DPS. However, if you're analyzing it for its results in a group, you have to weight the chance that other people are also running the same proc, and it does not stack. It's a popular proc! This clearly mitigates its power, in probably unquantifiable ways since it's hard to know how many people will be packing it.
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Reliable online source: https://cod.uberguy.net
In-game: There are test dummies in the Vanguard base and I believe you can get a temp power to summon them. People also use Pylons to test DPS, or the Trapdoor test. You can just fight random enemies and look at the combat tab, though lots of information gets dumped there.
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6 hours ago, Maelwys said:
Consider:
+ A solo Scrapper without ATOs but with a Musculature Core Alpha and a /SD secondary (AAO vs 1 Foe) @10% Crit Rate will remain ahead of a Brute until 83+ Fury.
+ A solo Scrapper without ATOs but with a Musculature Core Alpha plus a /Bio Secondary (Offense + Hardened Carapace) @10% Crit Rate will remain ahead until 88+ Fury.
+ If we ignore Damage Buffs from the Secondary (Scrappers gain 1.25x the buff from self +DamageStrength compared to a Brute; so it could be seen as unfair) and just take the Musculature Alpha then the Scrapper would require an additional +17% damage (@80 Fury) or +32% Damage (@85 Fury) to begin to pull ahead. Those are trivial numbers to reach solo with Set Bonuses, let alone with outside buffage from teammates/pets.
Therefore there is definitely a point that is pretty trivial to reach for many powerset combinations where Scrapper ATOs are just "icing on the cake".No, you're just ignoring all the things that weigh in for Brutes. For example, Brutes get more damage from damage auras (which don't crit), and the DoTs of Savage and Fire, and their damage works with things like Energy Transfer and Total Focus, which get nerfed crits. They get their Fury bonuses on non-critting attacks from pools. Because their damage is less feast-or-famine than Scrappers, they also are less likely to "waste" hits on overkill attacks on low-health opponents. They get their full damage against the most numerous enemies of the game, etc.
Again, actually try this. Go do a pylon or a trapdoor or whatever with a Scrapper who isn't using the ATOs. It's a whole different AT.
(Note also: Brutes have real survivability advantages over Scrappers, and punchvoke and taunt. Scrappers don't just need to be able to stay about even with Brute damage, they do need a damage advantage over them. Just not the gigantic damage gulf that they have with optimized 50 builds.)
6 hours ago, Maelwys said:I'm not sure where you're getting that from?
Damage Procs ignore Enhancements and other Buffs; including Fury.
Therefore if a Brute deals "X damage" and a Scrapper deals "Y damage" with an attack... and both slot the same damage proc... then all that will do is raise each of their damage by exactly the same amount (e.g. You just end up with "X+ProcDamage" and "Y+ProcDamage". ProcDamage itself remains constant regardless of Buffs or Fury - the only thing that would affect it is resistance buffs/debuffs on your target)Damage procs do not eat into Brute fury, they do eat into Scrapper crits.
6 hours ago, Maelwys said:If your argument is that "Brutes tend to perform better with their attacks 6-slotted with damage procs"...
For any number of damage procs, they benefit a Brute more than a Scrapper.
6 hours ago, Maelwys said:Now you're just messing with me.
Surely there is no way in hell that any build is consistently averaging "50% Crit rate"??!?
As far as I'm aware, the highest Crit Chance you could conceivably reach is with a few specific T9 attacks vs LTs+ and a SSS ATO (+21%) plus a Critical Strikes ATO Proc (+50%) for 71% chance for that single attack to crit.
Aside from that, you could maybe fit an additional low-Arcanatime attack into the same Critical Strike Proc buff window (+16%+50% = maximum 66% chance for this second attack to crit), depending on what your T9's 'Animation Time Before Effect' value is.
However the SSS Proc itself has a maximum 90% chance to activate even under perfect conditions, so in reality you'd instead be looking at an average of +63.9% and +59.4% crit chance at *best*.
Then the proc-triggering attack itself along with any other attacks in the chain would have at most +16% chance to crit.
Therefore even with a hypothetical 3-attack chain, you'd be looking at an *extremely* best case average crit rate of 46.4%.I'm not trying to make a very exact "what is precisely the crit rate of a scrapper overall." But the best builds have absolutely absurd effective uptime of the ATO2, and specifically they get it for their heaviest-hitting attacks. The natural PPM of the superior ATO2 is 4. With 180% global recharge (and no local recharge), its effective PPM is more than 11. Its buff window is 3.25 seconds, so we would expect more than 50% uptime for it. But you can finagle it so that some of your "downtime" from it is eaten by the tail end of the animation of attacks that were effected by it. So if you have let's say 60% uptime with the ATO2, then your crit rate overall is .16 * .4 + .66 * .6 = 46%. If the attacks that benefit from the higher crit rate are disproporionately your heavier-hitting attacks, you'll see that as the equivalent of an above-50% crit rate. You'll probably only really achieve that in a pretty controlled circumstance where you don't have to move and can concentrate on cycling your attacks absolutely optimally, like a pylon, yes, the upper limit is somewhere around a 50% overall crit rate.
And that's what you're seeing. You're seeing effective crit rates of 30%, 40%, yes, even 50% in top Scrapper builds, in their pylon times and trapdoor times and just their holistic performance in play, and then you back yourself into imagining that that performace doesn't come mostly from ATO2, because it seems impossible. But it really is true. Like 2/3rds or more of the crits that an effective level 50 Scrapper build come from one source: the ATO2. People just imagine that the basic class chassis must be better than it is, because it seems so crazy that so much of the Scrapper's performance comes from just this one proc. But that's actually the case, and Scrappers really are pretty anemic without their ATOs.
So: Scrappers need more than a 10% crit rate. They just don't need a 50% (or 40%) crit rate.
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16 hours ago, Maelwys said:
/jranger
I literally posted the comparative numbers earlier in this thread.
Purely with SOs alone and a basic (non ATO) crit rate, attack-for-attack Brutes will draw equal at ~80% Fury.No that's not what your own post showed. Scrapers draw even with Brute damage with a 10% crit rate at about 65 fury. Brutes easily get and maintain 80-85 fury, which as it turns out is a significant amount better than 65 fury.
Sure, build up is better for Scrappers than Brutes. And damage procs are better for Brutes than Scrappers.
Scrappers need more than a 10% crit rate. They just don't need the kind of de facto 50% crit rate that the top builds can achieve.
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8 hours ago, Maelwys said:
And then came the Fury nerfs.
No. Fury in its present state is just fine to make a Brute handily outdamage a scrapper who isn't using the ATOs. You're just wrong.
If you want, you can go ahead and post a pylon time or whatever else without the ATOs -- heck, even with ATO1, or with both but with the ATO2 proc in an attack you don't use, if you want its set bonuses. You simply have an incorrect view of where the scrapper's power comes from.
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2 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:
Are we having an conversation about the long, long, long ago or are we talking about here, today? Because 2010 was a long time ago. And last I looked, ATO do exist and the AT with the the absolute worst is Brute, not Scrapper. Not even remotely.
People can believe two correct things, we aren't forced to believe a correct thing and an incorrect one.
Right now, Scrappers are absurdly more powerful than Brutes at 50, they outdamage Brutes by a million miles and the small Brute compensatory advantages don't come close to outweighing the Scrapper damage. But also, below 50, Scrappers have little or no damage advantage over Brutes.
People really, really want it to be the case that either Scrappers outdamage Brutes 1-50 or Brutes outdamage Scrappers 1-50, but that's not so. The 50 and 1-49 experiences are very different.
2 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:And since it flies by on most ATs quickly (one wonders how the Brutes can be so absurdly overpowered if it is flying by), one wonders what the complaint is? That Scrappers have a 10-20 level range out the gate where they do not outshine Brutes for DPS, like they will for the rest of eternity?
I was agreeing with you. There's no point in worrying about the Brute or Scrapper 1-20 experience.
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25 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:
I am not sure the picture painted of low level Brutes is accurate. But I am pretty sure the time spent running up from level 1 to 20 is pretty short in the existence of a character, regardless of AT. Meanwhile at level 40, with nothing beyond SOs slotted, I have a level 40 scrapper whose routine is to toss out damage like the following, which Brutes can dream of:
Meh. Brutes at level 40 with just SOs and Fury can do like 317 and 407 damage base with shatter and clobber. Sure, they do less damage than scrappers when scrappers crit twice in a row, but they do it every time, while a scrapper with just SOs critting those two attacks one after another is a 1% chance. The odds of either attack critting is less than 20%.
And don't just look at whatever particular scenario someone brings up here. We know what the situation was holistically back when Scrappers had the same damage scalars they do now, but no ATO's -- it was that way for years on live with thousands of players. And the exhaustive result of that was: "Brutes are just better Scrappers."
You need better than 10% crit chance to make Scrappers worth it.
25 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:So if a Brute gets to level 20 in 3 hours versus 4 hours on a scrapper (numbers pulled out of the air, but honestly, it is just not that long regardless of AT), I have to question how meaningful that really is.
This however is correct. Like, if you're someone who turns off XP and exhaustively plays levels 1-20 as the entirety of your gameplay, by all means enjoy a Brute's better scalars at very low levels. But I used to solo all my characters through missions, no teams no farming, and levels 1-20 still went by like lightning. And levels 1-10, which is where Brute scalars really shine and they're absurdly overpower, are both over in the snap of your fingers and also are easy for all classes, it's not like scrappers suffer for the low level experience.
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5 hours ago, C U R S E said:
Scrapper ATO' can be slitted like another Arche Type at level 10, including the critical strikes. You will have all the benefits of those nasty crits at level 10. In my opinion fury will not surpass that damage.
Sort of, but note that the Scrapper ATO, perhaps more than any other ATO, really cares a lot about the difference between regular and superior versions (because +1 PPM is a much bigger deal for going from 3->4 than from 5->6 or whatever). Also, the performance of Scrappers at 50 through their ATO has a ton to do with the usual global recharge-based PPM abuse, and you really can't have anything like the global recharge that you have at 50 earlier on, because the +10% recharge options (superior ATOs and purples) are locked to 50, which in turn means that you don't have perma-hasten before 50 -- so just the difference between 49 and 50 for a Scrapper is probably like roughly a 25% optimized crit rate?
The way they could address this is to lower the power of the +50% crit rate ATO and push some of that crit chance into the other ATO and the basic class feature. This would both increase the floor and lower the ceiling on scrapper performance, which would overall be good.
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2 minutes ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:
The game engine probably checks once every 10 seconds, just like for tactics.
The wild card would seem to be whether or not it checks for activation of the proc with every mob that gives you a buff for invincibility or just for that one mob that gives you the highest bonus. Not sure how that might be coded.It'll check for chance to activate for every target of Invincibility. Invincibility has Max Targets 10, so at most 10. But Invincibility has a smaller radius than Tactics, so that helps.
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Here's the chance of the proc firing in Tactics under various different number of friendly targets.
Yes, it's just a 5 second buff, not a 10 second like the power Build Up.
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Base crit rate against lieutenants, bosses, EBs, AVs, and GMs is 10%. It's only 5% against minions and underlings.
There are also a substantial number of powers that have a different crit rate, usually 15%.
There are a substantial number of powers that have some kind of odd crit damage (not "the base damage again").
The PPM rate of a proc is more or less a lie. What procs actually have is a chance of activation. There's nothing that actually counts their number of activations in a minute, for example. The chance of activation depends on the modified recharge time of a power, counting in "local" recharge enhancements. The chance is such that if you activate the power on cooldown, you'll average the PPM number of procs per minute (subject to a ceiling and floor). But global recharge does not affect proc rate, so in practice you can vastly exceed the listed PPM.
I believe, but am not sure, that you get the enhanced crit rate from the proc if your power is activated within the window of the proc's effect, not if it finishes activating within that window.
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Bane spiders are conceptually similar to Mace stalkers, if you're interested in approximating the character today.
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8 minutes ago, Luminara said:
The flag was broken. It had to be fixed.
If that's true, it would be easy enough to fix the flag and also remove it from the stalker's ATO effect.
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It's not a ton of damage, but it's "free" damage on top of your normal rotation, that you aren't spending animation time on. That makes it pretty valuable in situations where you're facing a single foe or small group. In its old incarnation as a clicky, it was worthwhile but involved a LOT of management and it was kind of frustrating. In its new incarnation as a toggle, uh.... if you get mezzed, it's worthwhile but involves a LOT of management and is kind of frustrating. Sentinels and grouped or late-game Blasters/Corruptors/Defenders who get mez protection from an ally or from Incarnate powers, on the other hand, should have a pretty easy time with it.
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By the time that you're calculating a chance to hit, to-hit debuff (that has applied and is landed) and defense (that is applicable to this attack) are the same thing. They're 1:1 interchangeable.
That is: of course whether they apply is very different. To-hit debuffs have to be applies, and have to go through debuff resistance and so forth. Defense has to be applicable. But once you've got all that sorted out and the values exist on a given attack roll, they're the same thing. Your enemy's base chance to hit + to hit buffs - to hit debuffs - defense is a value from 5-95 and it is then multiplied by accuracy.
So, long story short, if you've hit the softcap on defense to this particular attack, then to-hit debuffs do you no good at all.
A debuff that would be compatible with softcapped defense (ie, would offer further damage mitigation) would be an accuracy debuff. But as far as I know, there are no accuracy debuff powers in the game.
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On 10/1/2023 at 3:21 PM, Story Archer said:
For the purposes of this discussion, let's exclude Incarnate abilities.
So, discounting Defense De-Buffs, if I've got 45% Defense it doesn't really make a difference if I'm being attacked by an even-level foe or a +4 level foe, I've gotten the full defensive benefit I can?
45% defense gives you the most defense you can get, against opponents that do not have to-hit buffs.
Enemies do not get to-hit buffs for being +1 to +4 to you, and they do not get to hit buffs for rank (that is to say, lt/boss/ev/av).
Enemies do get to-hit buffs for being incarnate or hard mode.
Some enemies also just get to hit buffs from their powers (or the powers of their allies). This is fairly rare, though far from unknown. For example, Nemesis Lts give to-hit buffs to their allies when they die. The quartz pet gives to-hit buffs to Devouring Earth.
So the upshot: having above 45% defense does not help you against normal bosses or normal +4 enemies, except as buffer for defense debuffs. It can help you against a smattering of enemies who get to-hit buffs.
Just trying to clearly answer your initial question.
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Yeah, I think @nihilii is right here: it is indeed the case that partial crits are a relative disadvantage for scrappers compared to brutes. But that relative disadvantage isn't so high as to erase the inherent advantages of scrappers over brutes, just mitigate it.
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Again, the pylon results are incredibly skewed not by procs in general, but by -res procs in particular. Two of the top six contenders have fifteen instances of -res procs firing. Against the "always on-level" pylons, this produces considerably outsized results compared to the "usually +3 or more" level of most other hard targets.
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A lot of it is just, "-res is massively more impactful on pylons than it is on the rest of the game."
If you look at the pylon portion of the spreadsheet that the guy there linked, he noted how many -res procs he included. It's, uh, pretty stark.
DEDICATED AV HUNTER
in Scrapper
Posted
I quasi-beat her. Definitely couldn't without insps, but with a tray full of reds I just killed her before she got lucky and landed her stupid hold on me.