recharge Recharge Guide

[Ulysses Dare]

3 hours ago, arcanaville said:

Well, the scrapper forums were one of the few places on Earth where math was a spectator sport.

That brings to mind a question: why did the scrapper forums in particular draw this kind of scrutiny? Was it just random chance or was there something about scrappers in particular that drew in the players most prone to being analytical?

[Redlynne]

1 hour ago, Ulysses Dare said:

That brings to mind a question: why did the scrapper forums in particular draw this kind of scrutiny? Was it just random chance or was there something about scrappers in particular that drew in the players most prone to being analytical?

DPS.

Max DEEPS.

 

In order to figure out who does the most the fastest, you have to resort to math.  Consequently, Scrappers were more "prone" to making math arguments to support (and refute) their assertions, since the math was essentially a "neutral arbiter" of what was true and what was false (or at least, somewhat misleading in its implications).

 

So when you're trying to squeeze that last +1% performance out of a build that's already screaming for mercy, in order to theorycraft your way to a better Scrapper ... you resort to math to back up what you're saying.

 

After that it was all DPS and DPA and DPE and spreadsheets and ... math.

[arcanaville]

2 hours ago, Ulysses Dare said:

That brings to mind a question: why did the scrapper forums in particular draw this kind of scrutiny? Was it just random chance or was there something about scrappers in particular that drew in the players most prone to being analytical?

In my opinion coincidence and circumstance.  First of all, defense sets were easier to look at analytically than any other, so originally it was the scrapper and tanker forums that had more math.  Attack sets were actually the first that people wrote things like guides on, but very quickly the mathematical tools to look at those ran out, until people like TopDoc came along with his attack timing thread and I came along with my invention of DPA-focused analysis (in fact, I was the one that coined the acronym "DPA" which stands for "damage per activation-second" to distinguish from "DPS" which was "damage per second" and was used to describe an attacks damage over its recharge time).  And looking at things like Control sets or Buff/Debuff sets with mathematical tools was simply beyond the scope of the kind of work most players would or could do.

 

Originally it was tankers that had more focused discussion on the math surrounding mitigation sets, not scrappers.  But over time the discussion shifted towards Scrappers in part because I think Scrappers became the much more popular archetype, and in part because coincidentally many of the quantitative tankers retired and many of the newer quants happened to play scrappers.  And when people started looking more closely at attack sets analytically, Scrappers could now look at both primaries and secondaries.  Tankers could too, but for a long time Tankers were more focused on mitigation and crowd/aggro control, and less on offense (which was a mistake, but that's another story).

 

Scrapper mitigation sets were also more "interesting" to compare and quantify.  Stone tankers were in the early days dominated by granite armor, and there were no SR or Regen tankers.  Scrappers had an interesting set of mitigation sets to choose from: Regen, SR, and Invuln in particular seemed to be mechanical caricatures: heal, defense, resistance.  Dark of course was always the odd one out, but still, if you wanted to analyze any part of the game mathematically, the obvious and "cleanest" thing to look at was heal/defense/resistance.

 

Over time the Scrapper forum gained the reputation of having the most quantitative discussion, and that reputation encouraged and amplified more of the same.

 

Of course, I was a regular on the scrapper forum, so in all honesty that had to contribute something.  But conversely, initially I posted mostly on the Blaster forum, as that was what my main was.  My second alt was a scrapper.  But the scrapper and tanker forums were more receptive to most of my early mathematical ruminations, so that became a feedback loop of sorts.

[Ulysses Dare]

So a little from column A and a little from column B then. Thanks Arcanaville.

[Call Me Awesome]

Glad to see you back Arcana, you even got ME to understand how Defense and Soft Capping worked and I'm hardly a numbers nerd.  Well, beyond focal lengths, f-stops and how much recording time I had left... something I had to do on my day job.😜

[arcanaville]

16 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

Glad to see you back Arcana, you even got ME to understand how Defense and Soft Capping worked and I'm hardly a numbers nerd.  Well, beyond focal lengths, f-stops and how much recording time I had left... something I had to do on my day job.😜

If only I could have got the devs to understand them ... just kidding (in case they are still lurking about).

[Leo Darkheart]

On 11/18/2019 at 2:19 PM, SlimPickens said:

Opened the post, made a quick observation of the formulas. Shook my head and promptly closed the post. Kudos, @Bopper