Scrapper Melee Primary Testing: "Standard" environment

[Galaxy Brain]

MELEE DAMAGE SET TESTING: 

Link to Rankings

 

Hello everyone, 

 

It has come to light that the current metrics for testing performance are not reflective of normal game play conditions. Common metrics such as fighting a Pylon or clearing a Farm map do not take into account the realities of playing through a mission, which is 90% of the normal content players would be going through. In other threads, we often see these metrics tossed about to claim the power of certain sets over others, but rarely do we see... or rather even have metrics on "Normal Game Play".  

 

Pylons have unique properties that don't reflect "real" ST damage for most content, as shown by wild DPS swings from person to person on them (due to their stationary nature, and other factors). Farm maps similarly do not reflect how moving through a map, or just fighting different types of enemies can affect performance which leads to certain sets seeming much better when thrown at those specific environments. That said, mission environments can vary wildly as well which makes testing on them rather unreliable.   (Luckily, we are able to pick maps in AE.)

 

 

PREMISE:

After conversations with @Infinitum, @TheAdjustor, @Steampunkette, and @GM Sijin, it seems that the balance of attack sets has become a bit clouded by the current meta. IO bonuses, Procs, Incarnates and the like have lead to outlier cases and combos that make sets seem much better or worse than they possibly should be. It is tossed around that the game should be balanced around SO's, but to our knowledge there have been few tests to actually gather data in a realistic setting on them. 

Spoiler

 

Starting with the melee damage sets, Scrappers have the most straightforward game plan that leads well to testing out performance over time. This is where we need your help!

 

Between @Hopeling and I, we believe we have come up with a Standardized Missions Simulator using AE on the Pineapple Test Server that we need player input on. The task is simple:

 

1. Defeat all the enemies in the map as fast as you can given the restrictions to SO's, Difficulty settings, and /Willpower (more on this below)
2. Record 10 clear times on the mission to average out variables such as spawn size / misses / runners / etc (you can try the mission out once or twice to get familiar)
3. Post your times and primary set used here, as well as any notes!

 

It is our hope that the data points gathered can give a more accurate representation of how melee sets should perform at a baseline. Everything else that gets added onto these baselines can only improve them further, but it is somewhat unknown how they all stack up against each other at the basic level.

 

MISSION ID 3281: MISSION SIMULATOR

 

 

Using a unique Warehouse map fits several criteria for traversing a mission that will provide more realistic challenges for players as they try to quickly defeat all enemies. Several boxes / railings / walls get in the way of enemy placement, there are several " T " shaped sections where enemies can spawn on either end, and there is a large circle area with two entrances which provide further choices and spawn points to realistically spread enemies around. There is also a vertical ramp section that will split up a mob into sections that the player will need to traverse. Enemies are not usually neatly grouped, nor the map as linear as can be so this should help replicate your "average" mission.

 

This Defeat-All testing ground comes with special "Punching Bag" enemies of Hopeling's design. There will always be 2 Boss Punching Bags and 1 Elite Boss Punching Bag in the mission on top of the randomized regular spawns throughout the map. These enemies have no resistances, and only have the T1 street justice attack. They should behave as normal enemies with standard HP values, aggro to you as normal, but otherwise not really provide much of a threat as the purpose is to quantify the Damage Sets in a realistic setting.

 

The difficulty of the mission should be run at +0/x3 based on our testing to best balance between ST and AoE leaning sets. At x3, the mobs can come in spawns of between 5 and 10 enemies, which line up perfectly with the target caps of almost all Melee AoE powers while also not being an overwhelming amount of enemies for more ST oriented sets. The guaranteed 2 Bosses and EB should likewise provide a venue for ST damage to shine. The x3 setting also provides a variety of spawns as shown in the quoted post below:

 

 

After running 10 missions, we found:

• About 30% of spawns were +1 lvl compared to +0, with no pattern of what types were +1
• About 30% of spawns were groups of 5 Minions, and 2 LT's
• About 20% of spawns were groups of 8 Minions, and 1 LT
• About 20% of spawns were groups of 4 Minions, and 1 Boss
• About 10% of spawns were groups of 10 minions
• About 10% of spawns were groups of 3 Minions, and 3 LT's
• About 10% of spawns were groups of 4 Minions, 1 LT, and 1 Boss (the last group in a typical "Defeat the bad guy!" mish)

 

So over time, the enemies in a mission would provide varied challenges for any set's strengths to overcome, and on occasion the +1 will provide harder targets or annoyances like those enemies with 1 hp left and all you have are your big attacks to swing with 😉 

 

The map and enemy spawn sizes should give a healthy variance that over multiple tests give a solid "average performance". Ideally, players should run the mission 10 times to get a solid average and account for variable spawn types / runners / misses / etc. Each player's time will be recorded and added to a master list for comparison. Any notes from players will also be recorded!

 

Ex: 

 

 

Each primary should have all their attacks slotted with even-level SO's to emulate the "Normal Slotting" expected: 3 Damage, 1 Accuracy, 1 End Reduction, and 1 Recharge.

 

Build-Up style powers should have 3 recharges, and certain powers may have slight alterations depending on the power type (to be discussed). However we should be aiming for the "average / intended" slotting and avoiding IO's to gather the baseline data on sets for a first run of these tests. Inspirations, unique IOs, and pool powers except for Combat Jumping (due to extreme popularity/commonality) should not be allowed in order to focus on the primary set's performance.

 

As for the secondary, Willpower is the least invasive choice as it offers no offensive perks aside from +Recovery. WP, Regen, Rad and Bio all offer +Recovery options. Elec, EA, Fire, and Ice all offer an End Drain, and Ninjitsu offers a +End button, making 9/13 secondaries offer endurance tools, so that actually makes WP the ideal choice to mirror "average" performance. We may consider adding other "non offensive" secondaries to this list in the near future, but for now WP should be the go-to.

 

Willpower Slotting should also mirror the average. 3 primary defensive SO's + 1 Endurance Reduction in the toggles, 3 slotting your sustain passives, and so on. Something like this: 

 

 

 

*Note: Parry and other such unique powers may offer better performance slotted not as a pure attack

 

 

Anything without slotted enhancements (except for SPRINT) is not used in the tests to keep variables to a minimum. This means I did not use:

• Confront
• Resurgence (if I died, I restarted the mish and made note)
• Strength of Will
• Pool powers besides Combat Jumping
• Ancillary / Epic Powers

 

Players should feel free to run the map 1-2 times before marking down their 10 test times to get familiar with the primary set / map in question. Every set getting 10 run times per player should give us plenty of data, and the map / difficulty / secondary / slotting choices should ensure we get a wide array of scenarios that test the primary's capabilities with minimal outside effects.

 

 

Caveats:

• Doing these tests on the Pineapple server also grants the character passive Accolades to boost Endurance. Technically, anybody can get these just by playing, but they are an X factor to consider.
• Inherently, there is randomness at play per mission in terms of +1 Spawns, Misses, Critical Hits, spawn layout and the like. The more test results we get though, the more we can iron out odd times.
   

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

We are looking forward to having people give this a shot and refine the process. Please share your thoughts about this so we can come up with the best test of "normal gameplay" possible!

 

Thank you,

@Galaxy Brain

 

 

 

 

Copied from Beta:

 

---

 

(The rules of this test are better described here: )

 

 

Overview & Biases:

The above link will go into a bit more detail, but the goal of this test is to provide benchmark tests for Scrapper Primaries in a more or less neutral environment (no gimmicks, no enemy resists, etc) that aimed to emulate a standard mission experience. This means a 4-floor defeat-all mission with slight variations to mob placement, size, and level room to room as well as a mix of enemy ranks with a mandatory defeat of 2 boss spawns and a final elite boss spawn.

 

With /Willpower and no pools/epics besides Combat Jumping (for the SO test, IO's had hasten), the enemies and difficulty setting were just enough to get "Safety" as a metric as many sets have clear design intention of trading damage for utility or mitigation, or vice versa, and allowing myself to actually experience or mitigate damage I felt is a worthy point of interest. Given this is an "everyday" sort of benchmark, ignoring the impact that Ice Melee's safety provides I feel would be unjust compared to if I just made myself invincible and went  to town to track raw output. Likewise, a set like Fire Melee really showed where it can struggle if it's not constantly killing.

 

This test has less mobs than a farm, but more to deal with than a Pylon, so results may vary wildly from the expectations provided by those popular trials. Both of those I feel do not provide a full picture between the mix of AoE and ST output, favoring the extremes on either end. The office map simulation just as well does not highlight certain sets in the way you'd expect either. Something like the new Energy Melee may massacre Pylons but end up on the low/mediocre end here or vice versa with other sets.

 

I hope you find the following enlightening in some ways, and let the results speak for themselves when it comes to the changes to multiple melee sets we see here in Beta.

 

---

 

 

 

Results on SO's only:

All sets were played with a SO build with /Willpower as a secondary and no pool powers/epics except Combat Jumping, in order to isolate the primary set as much as possible.

 

(except for Claws and Kinetic Melee which were given Overwhelming KD IO's + a lvl 50 damage IO to have the same slotting + knockdown on their ranged cones. These were ran due to the incredibly common practice of slotting for KD, and only 2 melee sets actually "needing" it.)

 

 

Results without the IO in Claws can be seen here:

Spoiler

 

As you can see by some of the names, we have been testing these changes internally for quite a while now to make sure things land in the desired spot!

 

Breaking down this chart, each column represents a different aspect:

• AVG = the average clear time of the mission from all 10 runs (minutes : seconds : milliseconds)
• SWING = How far away from the Total Average the set performed
• SD Deviation = Standard Deviation from run to run, measuring how consistently each set performed despite the 10 runs having slightly different mob formations and placements
• BEST TIME = the best run time of the set, shows the max potential
• WORST TIME = the worst run time of the set, shows the minimum potential
• SAFETY = This counts the number of deaths in the 10 runs. A score of 0.50 means that I took substantial damage but never died, a 0.00 means I was practically invincible!
• SAFETY ADJ = Each point in the Safety column is multiplied by 20 seconds, and then added to the average to show an Adjusted Safety Average.

 

With those all factored in, we can rank the sets against each other on more than just the average clear time:

 

 

From left to right, we have the results with Claws KD, Claws "Pure", and the average between the two. 

 

 

 

Now, lets see how this changes when we jump to an IO build:

 

Results on a "Mid Level" IO Build:

All sets were played with a n IO build with no purples, winter sets, or "special" procs beyond a single Damage Proc like Mako's or Obliteration that *any* Melee attack could slot. 

All sets achieved 72.5% global recharge (142.5% most of the time with Hasten up, only a 20s cooldown there). 

All sets had the normal uniques like Numina, Kismet, etc slotted

All sets ran the tests at +3/x5 difficulty

 

 

With recharge and procs thrown into the mix, the top sets become a LOT closer in clear times, and safety really isn't a concern outside of Energy Melee where rapid ET's kinda hurt lol.

 

Like above, lets see how all the factors weigh in:

 

 

The margins are so close for the "top tier"  that with more than 10 tests a piece I'm sure they'd all be near dead even! 

 

 

Combined Results:

 

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[Hopeling]

I'm excited about this project because, to my knowledge, nobody's ever really attempted to do anything like this before. I'm sure the original devs had some kind of internal metrics, but I don't know what they were.

 

If you're skeptical that +0/x3 with SOs is representative of "normal" gameplay conditions, so are we, but don't worry: this is only the initial setting for the test. We plan to explore relevant variables like pools and epic powers, IO slotting, global recharge, secondaries, difficulty settings, ability to mitigate incoming damage, and Incarnate powers, as well as further testing for other ATs. Altogether, this should give a reasonably comprehensive picture of how each set does under all kinds of parameters. This, in turn, can inform future changes, like long-needed buffs to underperforming powersets. (This isn't just hopeful speculation: we already have GM and dev interest in the project.)

 

The thing is, at about 5 minutes per run, and wanting 10+ runs for each powerset under each condition, this is just too big a project for two people. Plus, I just plain don't know how to play eg Psi Melee, so any data I could generate for it myself would probably be garbage.

 

A few other random notes:

• Goodhart's Law is relevant here: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." I am absolutely certain that the Scrapper board regulars can find ways to break this test in half, but the point here is to see how a powerset does rather than how hard you can game the test. 6-slotting Sprint and Swift for run speed may get you faster clear times, but it isn't really in the spirit of what we're trying to do. (If you want to game the test for bragging rights, let's keep those runs separate from regular test data.)
• Herding groups together IS allowed, and in some places can't even be avoided, because this is a thing people do in regular missions too. But due to the layout of the map, it isn't always be the best choice... I think. If you're herding so much that you are at serious risk of dying from enemies that have only a single attack, again, that's probably not in the spirit of the test.
• You're not required to use the standard slotting if it doesn't make sense for that power; for example, Lightning Rod is probably better slotted 3dam/3rech so its recharge matches Build Up.
• Some cross-validation is going to be necessary; if I'm clearing with Broadsword in about 7 minutes, and somebody else is doing it in 5, then something is wrong on one end or the other. So it absolutely does not hurt to run something that somebody else has already tested and see if we're all on the same page.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Hopeling

[Haijinx]

Interesting Battle Axe and Broad Sword are so close so far - considering the sets are extremely closely related

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

Interesting stuff.  Can I ask, what is the motive and what is the end game?  I view the Pylon testing mostly as a competition, but is your system intended to identify under/over-powered sets?  And if so, is the intention to ask the devs to standardize those sets so that all sets do the same or similar damage?

[DSorrow]

45 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

is your system intended to identify under/over-powered sets? And if so, is the intention to ask the devs to standardize those sets so that all sets do the same or similar damage?

Basically, yes. The pylon test is one metric among others, but it's extremely limited in the sense that it barely represents average gameplay. For example, Spines is a low-end outlier on the pylon test but I don't think anybody seriously thinks it's underpowered because it gets a whole lot of AoE potential to make up for the rather abysmal single target damage. TW (which sparked this whole thing) on the other hand appears to be extremely good on a pylon test and at the same time it gets a lot of AoE and soft control so it seems there isn't really any downside to the set. However, it might turn out that in a simulated average gameplay environment the momentum mechanic doesn't actually benefit TW nearly as much as it does in a sustained DPS race against a static target and we're just overestimating how good it actually is.

 

In the interest of balance I think it's a very good idea to perform this test and then look at the outliers (if any are found) and then figure out what to do with them to reach parity with other sets. Perfect balance is obviously impossible because everyone will have different weights for different things, but I think with a bunch of good metrics and some brainstorming it's possible to achieve reasonable parity between sets after differences in AoE / ST / utility and active mechanics are accounted for.

Edited September 20, 2019 by DSorrow

[Galaxy Brain]

36 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Interesting stuff.  Can I ask, what is the motive and what is the end game?  I view the Pylon testing mostly as a competition, but is your system intended to identify under/over-powered sets?  And if so, is the intention to ask the devs to standardize those sets so that all sets do the same or similar damage?

As DSorrow said, the goal here is to gather data on melee sets in a "Baseline, Standard environment" rather than in a test that weighs certain aspects much more than others. The motive is to determine what sets perform better or worse, and to weigh in X factors as well (such as Ice Melee's safety making up for lower performance, if it comes up).

[Hopeling]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Can I ask, what is the motive and what is the end game?  I view the Pylon testing mostly as a competition

The motive is "Kaeladin's DPS spreadsheet, now with more empiricism in every bite!"

 

Information like this is also probably useful for balance/design reasons, but players have always been interested in things like this. Pylon times have become a minigame in themselves, but they're also used to benchmark DPS on archvillains. This is great if you want to take down an AV, but sustained single-target DPS is pretty niche metric in a game consisting mostly of short multi-target fights. Yet there aren't actually any widely-used metrics for the latter.

 

Hopefully, this will allow us to figure out exactly how true some common wisdom is, like "Battle Axe is a weaker version of War Mace", "Scrappers get more mileage from Dual Blades than Brutes do", or "Titan Weapons loves recharge".

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

is the intention to ask the devs to standardize those sets so that all sets do the same or similar damage?

Roughly yes, although "standardize" has unfortunate connotations. If eg Broadsword needs a buff, making it even more like Katana is probably not the way to go.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I’m all for data, even data for data’s sake.  I *think* part of the motivation of this is specifically, “let’s demonstrate if TW is too strong,” and I’m all for that and nerfing the set if it’s significantly stronger than the mean.  What I’d hate to see is going to the devs with the request to, say, “increase damage on dual weapons by 3% and nerf martial arts by 1%.”  Honestly, even that would have no real impact on my game play, but aesthetically I like the diversity of sets.  I also get perverse pleasure by playing “underpowered” sets.

 

Good work on the project!  I hope you discover some surprises!

[Hopeling]

2 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

What I’d hate to see is going to the devs with the request to, say, “increase damage on dual weapons by 3% and nerf martial arts by 1%.”

I don't think anybody wants to do this, or even expects to get that level of precision out of the data.

[hejtmane]

To be fair the pylon test started of pre incarnate days as a way to check our ST damage for soling AV's it just morphed into something else; it was great for testing while what we originally where testing against ; but I love the idea of  testing things  with normal slotting.

Edited September 20, 2019 by hejtmane

[nihilii]

I wonder if there is truly anyone who considers Pylon tests as a competition. It seems like one of these ideas we assume about other people, while in reality there isn't any such people. i.e., we've seen claims from player A that player B is making a dedicated Pylon build, but very rarely is player B saying directly "I have made this character to be the destroyer of Pylons, and destroy Pylons exclusively he shall". Some people want something efficient at all levels, some people want a ST monster at level 50. If competition exists, I think it's some sort of underwater competition where we argue OUR build is the best at things *other than Pylons* (while still getting a decent time on a Pylon). 😉 

[Yomo Kimyata]

9 minutes ago, nihilii said:

I wonder if there is truly anyone who considers Pylon tests as a competition. It seems like one of these ideas we assume about other people, while in reality there isn't any such people. i.e., we've seen claims from player A that player B is making a dedicated Pylon build, but very rarely is player B saying directly "I have made this character to be the destroyer of Pylons, and destroy Pylons exclusively he shall". Some people want something efficient at all levels, some people want a ST monster at level 50. If competition exists, I think it's some sort of underwater competition where we argue OUR build is the best at things *other than Pylons* (while still getting a decent time on a Pylon). 😉 

Oh, I’m absolutely one of those people, for good or bad.  It’s not that I’m overly competitive, but I like to know how I rank!

 

To one of @Hopeling‘s points earlier, “if I'm clearing with Broadsword in about 7 minutes, and somebody else is doing it in 5, then something is wrong on one end or the other.”  It’s highly possible that one player is significantly better than another, and I think the variance in player ability is FAR greater than that in melee sets.

 

 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Yomo Kimyata
Finishing my thought.

[Infinitum]

16 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Oh, I’m absolutely one of those people, for good or bad.  It’s not that I’m overly competitive, but I like to know how I rank!

 

To one of @Hopeling‘s points earlier, “if I'm clearing with Broadsword in about 7 minutes, and somebody else is doing it in 5, then something is wrong on one end or the other.”  It’s highly possible that one player is significantly better than another, and I think the variance in player ability is FAR greater than that in melee sets.

 

 

Agree 100% to both points, though with enough tests run variances in player ability should be averaged out to a baseline eventually, however with newer sets like TW and sets that have mechanics that affect damage and recharge, the baseline could vary wildly because there is a certain level of skill needed to maximize those. The trick to those will be where should the balance point be?

 

My stance for TW is high level performance should not be penalized because if it does bring the outlier in line the low skill or novice will suffer those versions of TW out of existence.

 

I'm hoping that this will be a tool to illustrate what needs buffs moreso than what needs to be balanced down.

[Infinitum]

Where are the numbers reported again?

[Hopeling]

28 minutes ago, nihilii said:

I wonder if there is truly anyone who considers Pylon tests as a competition.

I don't think anyone literally builds a character just to kill pylons, but top pylon times often involve weird tricks. Like, Water Spout is great for pylon DPS, and I'm sure it's also great for DPS on an AV, but I would call it a pretty significant tradeoff against something like Fireball or Conserve Power.

19 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

To one of @Hopeling‘s points earlier, “if I'm clearing with Broadsword in about 7 minutes, and somebody else is doing it in 5, then something is wrong on one end or the other.”  It’s highly possible that one player is significantly better than another, and I think the variance in player ability is FAR greater than that in melee sets.

Yes, but I don't think this is a game with an especially high skill cap, at least not at the level of "clear a mission on +0/x3". As long as it's a set you're reasonably familiar with and you don't have super high ping, I would be surprised if performance varies widely between players. If I'm wrong and it does, I agree that creates issues for the project.

1 minute ago, Infinitum said:

Where are the numbers reported again?

The plan is to collect them in this thread.

[Galaxy Brain]

This thread will be used to gather data from players who would like to join in. I don't expect there to be a huge amount of parity between players for most sets either, though if there is it would be worth discussing what they did differently!

[Yomo Kimyata]

52 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

I don't think anyone literally builds a character just to kill pylons, but top pylon times often involve weird tricks. Like, Water Spout is great for pylon DPS, and

I digress, but I would absolutely dedicate a character build to minimize killing pylon time if it were a metric that mattered to me.  I can't possibly be the only one.

 

I also disagree on your assessment of skill parity across players, but that might be a bias on my part.  Like Lake Wobegon children, we all like to think we are above average.  Ideally, your experiment would be done by a single person, and you would run lots more than ten tests per set, but I'd be the first to agree that would be a thankless and un-fun task.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Yomo Kimyata
replaced speed with time

[Galaxy Brain]

The trouble with 1 person is that it is also just 1 data point unless that person is a master of all sets.

 

What I mean by parity though is like... I dont expect like massive 2 minute average swings unless somebody is really bad vs somebody really good. On average it should wiggle a little but not that much.

[tinytim1183]

I have only just started trying to gather some data for this, but I think you will have a problem with the incoming damage being trivial. Many of the sets secondary abilities, and balancing points, revolve around their secondary effect. 

 

The other problem with trivial incoming damage is it then lends itself to herd and burn. If you are never worried about death, then more enemies around you only becomes a detriment to ST focused sets.

[Infinitum]

7 minutes ago, tinytim1183 said:

I have only just started trying to gather some data for this, but I think you will have a problem with the incoming damage being trivial. Many of the sets secondary abilities, and balancing points, revolve around their secondary effect. 

 

The other problem with trivial incoming damage is it then lends itself to herd and burn. If you are never worried about death, then more enemies around you only becomes a detriment to ST focused sets.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing, thats why I was wondering if the test couldn't be increased in difficulty as an additional metric so there is a threat and then a reaction to a threat.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Infinitum

[Galaxy Brain]

Hm, that is fair. If we gave the enemies a few more attacks here or there to increase the threat, then we could quantify say... Battle Axe keeping foes on their butt vs Broadsword's Parry vs Ice's Slows, etc. The safer sets may have an edge between mobs being healthier vs more DPS ones that have to possibly heal up or approach differently.

 

The original goal of course was to just see how the primaries could be pushed for damage, but what do you think @Hopeling?

Edited September 20, 2019 by Galaxy Brain

[tinytim1183]

Would it be better to take the secondary out of it completely? Something like use Super Reflexes, only take the toggles, but don't use them. Fill in with power pools that you again won't use. It would also let the end cost part of any balancing still count in the tests, as well as secondary effects. Pick a difficulty where you can survive the EB, and then test from there?

[Galaxy Brain]

32 minutes ago, tinytim1183 said:

Would it be better to take the secondary out of it completely? Something like use Super Reflexes, only take the toggles, but don't use them. Fill in with power pools that you again won't use. It would also let the end cost part of any balancing still count in the tests, as well as secondary effects. Pick a difficulty where you can survive the EB, and then test from there?

This could be something separate, where we purposefully design a "Squishy scrapper" that has to fend off enemies with only their primary, to test the defensive power vs the pure offense 🤔

 

If we were to only quantify that, I suppose there could be like an EB with no protections, but they deal a ton of damage somehow..... and maybe they have a power to neutralize base regen on the player? The Scrapper's Secondary would be offline and they then have to rely on the primary to keep them alive either through a Kill, Mitigation, or at least time how long it took to die. Like a reverse Pylon lol.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Galaxy Brain

[Hopeling]

2 hours ago, tinytim1183 said:

I have only just started trying to gather some data for this, but I think you will have a problem with the incoming damage being trivial. Many of the sets secondary abilities, and balancing points, revolve around their secondary effect. 

 

The other problem with trivial incoming damage is it then lends itself to herd and burn. If you are never worried about death, then more enemies around you only becomes a detriment to ST focused sets.

Testing with nontrivial incoming damage is part of the plan, I just intended to do it as a separate test condition. Maybe Fiery Melee clears fastest when not in danger, but drops to middling when it has to pace itself for fear of dying, for example.

 

How much herding are we talking about? I picked a warehouse map in the hope that herding would be self-limiting; spawns are far enough apart that it didn't seem to me like herding saved time unless it was eg two spawns already in the same room. If you're doing the whole map in one pull and clearing in three minutes, yeah, maybe I do need to give enemies more than the one attack.

1 hour ago, tinytim1183 said:

Would it be better to take the secondary out of it completely? Something like use Super Reflexes, only take the toggles, but don't use them. Fill in with power pools that you again won't use. It would also let the end cost part of any balancing still count in the tests, as well as secondary effects. Pick a difficulty where you can survive the EB, and then test from there?

That is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how informative it would be, since we'd be getting pretty far from "realistic conditions" here. If you try it, let us know how it goes!

Edited September 21, 2019 by Hopeling

[tinytim1183]

First off, I want to say as I should have the first time, that I think this is a great idea and I'm going to test and help as I can. I just want to poke as many holes into the testing method as I can, because it will help get the most useful data we can. If we test, and endurance and damage taken are a non issue, then it isn't a "real world non-IO" test.  In the current testing environment, as an example Ice Patch or Dark Consumption, would be useless, but nobody using these sets in the real would would say they are useless while playing in a non IO world. 

 

If you then set up the test to need a secondary to survive, then you might get into a realm of synergizing a primary to a secondary. Take willpower as given in this test, put spines with it, and quills end cost becomes irrelevant, and you just added an ability in to the mix that comes with no downside, so it will push its clear to the top, but in the real world quills is fraking expensive and you have to "pre-io" build around being able to move forward and not suck air.

 

I did a run just to see if this "felt" the same as I thought it would. First run on claws, my very first attempt, I didn't run the map effectively and had to run back to the ramp to kill two guys at the top i missed, 6:24. Second Run, no problems 5:04. Switched to Kin, the run took 6:44, longer than a lost claws. Partly, claws is flat out better, but secondly how i run and herd to maximize. Third, claws just optimizes i think the best of all sets on its own. You can make a full attack chain without the softer attacks.

 

It kind of plays out like this if damage doesn't matter, run through the first group to the second group, 10 mobs around you, funnel all attacks though the toughest target. Spin twice kills all the minions, but two Bursts leaves a sliver of health. Burst also has a longer recharge. In this test, burst is useless. In the real world, knocking half the mobs down matters to being alive, cuz dead deeps do no deeps.

 

There are primaries that can kill minions without ever targeting them or slowing down, will always be faster, unless they have to slow down for other "real world" reasons ie end or hp. I also don't see how to pick any secondary that wouldn't give at least a few primaries and inherent advantage.