Trapdoor Test Results - the other half of Pylon testing?

[Galaxy Brain]

[salt]

 

Man, I made a mission downright analagous to this that can be things other than arachnos and nobody likes it 😞

 

[/salt]

[Kanil]

49 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

[salt]

 

Man, I made a mission downright analagous to this that can be things other than arachnos and nobody likes it 😞

 

[/salt]

ya just can't beat the appeal of beating up nazis in caves, i guess

 

anyways, decided to try and run some of my admittedly weak blasters. death is unfortunately still super, super common on them.

this is more a venting post than anything because it wasn't really useful as a scope of comparison because these chars just die. the only thing i really grasped is just how drastically different having aim+BU and a nuke vs only having BU +nuke is in terms of survival and the "kill them before they kill me" buildset, which should already be pretty obvious.

 

 

like, across maybe 50+ attempts overall i've never managed to complete a single one, haha. something inevitably goes wrong and i just die

soooo, i decided to use a defensive amplifier to see if that mez protect does anything stabilize the results.

bad news: it doesn't! despite starting with near softcapped s/l from the scorp shield, AND the bonus 5% def from defensive amplifier the poor chars still just explode like paper.

 

dp/tac arrow/scorp shield + defensive

 avg: death (only 2 real results out of 5 attempts, not enough data)

Spoiler

death

6m20s

death

6m30s

death

 

AR/time/scorp shield

avg: death (only deaths)

Spoiler

death

death

death

death

death

death

death

death

death

 

beam/time/scorp shield

avg: 5m28s

Spoiler

5m29s

death - messed up here, didn't hold tarantula mistress first

5m44s

5m15s

5m29s

5m25s

 

[Kanil]

psi/ena/fire scrapper - a rare non-bio scrapper for me! my actual first char to hit 50, revamped in the test server to try and maximize their performance.

avg:

6m30s

Spoiler

6m30

6m34s

6m20s

6m30s

6m35s

 

hilariously consistent despite the random insight nature of psi melee.

one of the weirder parts of the way psi melee works in insight seems to have little effect on the actual AOE portions of the damage. it's interesting, but it makes sense after multiple runs - the burst damage you are doing is more important than the added DOT from mass levitate or psi blade sweep.

honestly, i thought mass levitate did more damage so i'm kind of surprised how often it fails to like, kill enemies even with crits? theoretically it should be doing heinous damage all procced out but it seems to constantly disappoint and really prolong fights. it's strange!

 

anyways. psi melee is overall one of those sets that sits in an awkward spot. i should test this with bio for a stronger comparison point between the other sets but there's nothing really standout here that i'm noticing in terms of performance from that part.

 

energy aura's DDR and layering made things really a breeze when clearing in terms of target priority though - didn't have to spend any time focusing tarantula mistresses because they barely did jack squat to the def on the char. so, that was a nice change of pace.

[jojogladco]

On 3/13/2021 at 2:17 AM, Galaxy Brain said:

[salt]

 

Man, I made a mission downright analagous to this that can be things other than arachnos and nobody likes it 😞

 

[/salt]

Is that the Brutal Simulator or is there another one that we can run? 

[Galaxy Brain]

12 minutes ago, jojogladco said:

Is that the Brutal Simulator or is there another one that we can run? 

 

Yep! Which is an offshoot of the normal office sim with Punching Bags to just test offenses. The main thing with each of these are that with the trapdoor mission, the mix of enemy types and the custom enemy at the end may end up causing certain biases that a more controllable one may not.

[jojogladco]

Kat/ENA/Soul Brute 3 runs average time 7:24

Rad/EM/Energy Tank 3 runs average time 7:16

SS/ENA/Soul Brute 3 runs average time 6:38

Rad/WM/Soul Tank 3 runs average 5:53

SD/SS/Soul Rank 3 runs average 5:22

Rad/SS/Soul Tank 3 runs average time 4:36

 

This was a fun test and makes a nice AOE counter part to crushing Pylons.  The test does feel like it skews heavily toward AEO centric toons. The 1st two toons on my list can pull consistent 1:45 pylon times with hybrid up. The last is more like 2:35-2:40, but in this test he pulls ahead by a mile due to being able to just spam AOE's while cycling Gloom/KoB on bosses. He is in fact my farmer for PL'ing alts that doesn't see play in regular content.   

[Ratch_]

I was playing a lot with my fire/fire/soul blaster today and I had the thought, I like burn, fire sword circle, and fireball...but what if they could crit?

And here are those results (if fiery aura has a taunt aura for scrapper these times could easily get cut down to ~4:30) - the amount of damage you do is very satisfying.

Fire/Fire/Fire scrapper (avg. 5:42)
 

Spoiler

6:16
5:32
5:42
5:26
5:31

 

I really can not understate just how much extra time is spent chasing after a runner or two. Werewolf bosses really are hell on CoH. I would like to avoid guerilla warfare plz. Just stay right next to me and let the fire embrace your heart

Edited March 22, 2021 by Ratch_

[Ratch_]

Took a fire/bio/fire scrapper for a few runs and then proceeded to try out my fire/fire/soul blaster (alpha slotted only).

fire/bio/fire scrapper

Spoiler

5:06
4:26
4:35
4:29
4:40

fire/fire/soul blaster (alpha only, defense amplifier)

Spoiler

4:15
3:59
3:44
*DEATH* (trap door got a lucky 3 hits back to back against my 35% melee defense lol...sucks to suck)
3:58
3:57

I could probably get 3:30 on this blaster after getting the rest of my incarnates.

As a side note, i'm not sure how many people slot slow in hot feet but I highly recommend you do. For example, my build uses intution radial for the damage, range, slow and my hot feet has a +5 slow enhancement in there. It is a godsend. Seriously. I also picked up oppressive gloom for my blaster, effectively turning all minions into slow walking dummies (-130% runspeed + stun = immobilized essentially) so this saves sooo much time since the runners you have are practically non existent. Not only that, the combo saves you lots of hp because of less attacks coming your way. My blaster did not use any inspirations outside of yellows and an occasional blue (since I was lacking my ageless radial).

Edited March 23, 2021 by Ratch_

[KaizenSoze]

@Kanil

 

I am running my Fort through the mission. I would love to see your Fort build.

 

I think it's because I am old and slow, but my times aren't as good as yours.

[Kanil]

4 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

@Kanil

 

I am running my Fort through the mission. I would love to see your Fort build.

 

I think it's because I am old and slow, but my times aren't as good as yours.

a lot of it is being able to alternate psychic wail and mass confuse leveraged with psychic tornado for force feedback alongside abusing follow up 2 stacks -> dark oblit->spin

 

Spoiler

| Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build |
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		|-------------------------------------------------------------------|

 

[Kanil]

speaking of fortunatas, here's their extremely-worse counterpart: night widows!

turns out not having any crit power beyond hides and have a 'worse' spin and no shockwave/other claw AOEs besides eviscerate really neuters them in the AOE department.

what's annoying is that they're also worse or equal in the ST department too, with a chain that mostly requires being in melee range... it's quite annoying how bad they are comparatively to the quite overall top tier fortunatas!

 

on the plus side, this lets me headcanon the char concept decently in terms of power so that's cute i guess

 

night widow/soul

avg: 7m1s

Spoiler

6m45s
7m41s
6m57s
7m22s
6m38s
6m45s

 

i'm not even sure what exactly is causing the large deviations in time - possibly evisceration luck w/ gathering groups of enemies?

Edited March 24, 2021 by Kanil

[brasilgringo]

On 3/14/2021 at 10:58 PM, jojogladco said:

Kat/ENA/Soul Brute 3 runs average time 7:24

Rad/EM/Energy Tank 3 runs average time 7:16

SS/ENA/Soul Brute 3 runs average time 6:38

Rad/WM/Soul Tank 3 runs average 5:53

SD/SS/Soul Rank 3 runs average 5:22

Rad/SS/Soul Tank 3 runs average time 4:36

 

This was a fun test and makes a nice AOE counter part to crushing Pylons.  The test does feel like it skews heavily toward AEO centric toons. The 1st two toons on my list can pull consistent 1:45 pylon times with hybrid up. The last is more like 2:35-2:40, but in this test he pulls ahead by a mile due to being able to just spam AOE's while cycling Gloom/KoB on bosses. He is in fact my farmer for PL'ing alts that doesn't see play in regular content.   

I just tried this and had about the same experience on my Rad/SS/Soul tank ... i also farm with him when I need to PL toons.  He's really a buzzsaw/invuln for this type of mish, with the AOE from Dark Oblit, Foot Stomp, Ground Zero, Rad Therapy ...plus double-stack rage.  Fun times.

[brasilgringo]

I did a pretty unoptimized run on my EM/Rad/Fire scrapper in 6min.  Rad Armor seems pretty well built for these mobs.  Being blinded was the biggest inconvenience.  The AOE of Rad (the way I slotted Rad Therapy and GZ) helps (with Fireball) take out the minions/Lts, while EM basically destroys the bosses.  Especially Trapdoor.  I'm sure I could get the time down if I wasn't on my laptop and got a few more runs in to get a better feel for the mish.  The key thing though is I never really felt I was in danger of dying at all - just no fears on that front.

Edited March 27, 2021 by brasilgringo

[Ratch_]

Okay, i did a few more runs tonight with some...fairly nonstandard combos. 

First up: Blastshade.  This is a Energy/Dark/Soul blaster with no slotted KB->KD ios, and Dark Pit has been slotted with Stupefy set so it also has a 90% chance 6.25 kb. To boil down the character, it's as close as I could get to being a warshade without being a warshade. It's using two sets which I don't regard as very highly effective in comparison to other combos with outputting damage but I did get some suprisingly (happy) results. It's no fire/fire, but with all the KB/Stun the game really does feel like your playground. Teaming not recommended...the amount of KB you do is uhhh...not okay xD.

Energy/Dark/Soul blaster (defensive amplifier)
 

Spoiler

6:13
6:00
5:15
5:45
6:18
5:39

I was honestly surprised to be getting fairly avg. scrapper times...maybe I am underestimating those sets. Particularly soul drain.

Next up:

Time to take a stalker around for a few runs..also with a primary I know many aren't too fond of. Fire Melee.

Fire/Ice/Fire Stalker

Spoiler

7:01
6:45
7:06
6:50
7:02

Honestly...i do have some thoughts on why stalkers have such a hard time getting close to scrapper times. I hear a lot about how stalkers are just better from having been around the discord for a bit but from seeing some data in here and from testing that I've done with them I would still prefer a scrapper for solo/smaller teams. 
I went fire melee because FSC is notoriously amazing on scrappers, and having just done a fire/fire and a fire/bio scrapper - this seemed like a decent option to get some valuable data to compare against. Fireball...is well, fireball <3. BUUUTT, the one thing that is really holding back the stalker is the 10s lockout on that ATO chance to re-hide. Seriously. What made the scrapper so effective at this was getting insanely high crit chances on AoE attacks with a high cycle rate. A stalker gets 2 reliable chances, 1 at opening cuz they are hidden and another once they get the proc. The issue is that at opening they won't always be grouped around for full target saturation, and if on mission start you won't have your Chance for Build Up proc up and running because for *some* reason you have to use that power per zone.... why? There is the issue of no taunt as well, but in all honesty with chilling embrace being heavily slotted for slow there weren't too many issues, YMMV.

All in all, the two melee ATs fit in damage roles but their strengths are still clearly defined. I would imagine in a full team saturation that a stalker could arguably be doing more due to just base higher crit chance (30%) without needing any sort of reliance on a proc activation.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Ratch_

[Kanil]

rad/ninja/mace blaster w/ def amplifier

using t3 muscle/clarion radial/assault (off)

avg: 5m51s

times:

Spoiler

5m28s

6m30s

death

5m35s

death

death

5m50s

 

i said it before in the pylon thread, but the 'weak' times on this set really bother me for blapping purposes - even with the additional help of a defense amp there are still deaths and the times are still overall just on the 'good but not great' side which feels gross as a blaster with that kind of survivability

 

i dunno, it's.. annoying.

 

21 hours ago, Ratch_ said:

Honestly...i do have some thoughts on why stalkers have such a hard time getting close to scrapper times. I hear a lot about how stalkers are just better from having been around the discord for a bit but from seeing some data in here and from testing that I've done with them I would still prefer a scrapper for solo/smaller teams. 

I went fire melee because FSC is notoriously amazing on scrappers, and having just done a fire/fire and a fire/bio scrapper - this seemed like a decent option to get some valuable data to compare against. Fireball...is well, fireball <3. BUUUTT, the one thing that is really holding back the stalker is the 10s lockout on that ATO chance to re-hide. Seriously. What made the scrapper so effective at this was getting insanely high crit chances on AoE attacks with a high cycle rate. A stalker gets 2 reliable chances, 1 at opening cuz they are hidden and another once they get the proc. The issue is that at opening they won't always be grouped around for full target saturation, and if on mission start you won't have your Chance for Build Up proc up and running because for *some* reason you have to use that power per zone.... why? There is the issue of no taunt as well, but in all honesty with chilling embrace being heavily slotted for slow there weren't too many issues, YMMV.

All in all, the two melee ATs fit in damage roles but their strengths are still clearly defined. I would imagine in a full team saturation that a stalker could arguably be doing more due to just base higher crit chance (30%) without needing any sort of reliance on a proc activation.

 

crit strikes very much puts scrappers in a very solid and clean area for their role, which is nice - it's a thing you see missed a lot in buildmaking/concepting where it's disregarded entirely when it's basically the thing that makes scrappers outperform stalkers for crowd clearing. having a power that reliably procs it is such a gamechanger.

 

it's very notable especially on things like DB where being able to do crit strikes SS->typhoons edge over and over and over with the BF damage bonus makes a huge difference in output overall

 

 

Edited March 29, 2021 by Kanil

[KaizenSoze]

On 3/23/2021 at 8:48 PM, Kanil said:

speaking of fortunatas, here's their extremely-worse counterpart: night widows!

turns out not having any crit power beyond hides and have a 'worse' spin and no shockwave/other claw AOEs besides eviscerate really neuters them in the AOE department.

what's annoying is that they're also worse or equal in the ST department too, with a chain that mostly requires being in melee range... it's quite annoying how bad they are comparatively to the quite overall top tier fortunatas!

 

on the plus side, this lets me headcanon the char concept decently in terms of power so that's cute i guess

 

night widow/soul

avg: 7m1s

  Reveal hidden contents

6m45s
7m41s
6m57s
7m22s
6m38s
6m45s

 

i'm not even sure what exactly is causing the large deviations in time - possibly evisceration luck w/ gathering groups of enemies?

I don't even take Evisceration on my Night Widow. It really meses up the attack rhythm.

 

I use those slots for more AOE, usually Mu.

[Kanil]

55 minutes ago, KaizenSoze said:

I don't even take Evisceration on my Night Widow. It really meses up the attack rhythm.

 

I use those slots for more AOE, usually Mu.

its one of those things where gloom/dark oblit is just way better than any of its competing options for ST with some AOE as a bonus-  without gloom the ST damage on widows is lower than fortunatas with gloom by a lot and that bothers me too much, haha

 

id be curious to see how much adding electrifying fences and the cone from mu would shake things up though

Edited March 30, 2021 by Kanil

[Ratch_]

Okay, this is a pretty far off the road kinda run but I was curious.

I've been looking at seeing what it's like solo'ing the game with absolutely no incarnates at 4/8 difficulty. And to put it short, it's hard as hell. After four scrapper iterations i finally landed on something that I think has a real fighting chance at doing it. To satiate my curiosity, I decided to take it on a few trapdoor runs just to see how much of a time differential incarnates really make...and here are my results.

Claws/Dark/Soul Scrapper (4/8, no incarnates, only yellows for blind) - avg. ~10:40

Spoiler

11:45
11:11
10:34
10:40
10:36
10:42

It took a bit to get used to, but after the first few initial runs I was getting pretty consistently almost sub 10:42.

Runs slotted with alpha, destiny, and hybrid (not toggled) - avg. ~6:05

Spoiler

6:05
6:23
5:51
5:43
6:09
6:13

Runners greatly attributed to the large variance of times here.

Incarnates shaved my clear times by about 4 and half minutes....

Edit: Also slightly unrelated, in case your curious this character has consistently gotten around 7 minute pylon times.

Edited April 1, 2021 by Ratch_

[Nemu]

Are judgements allowed?

[Kanil]

Just now, Nemu said:

Are judgements allowed?

 

generally they're not used but if you wanna run tests with 'em go nuts. it'll just be a weird sense of scale for comparison since none of the other tests are usin' em.

 

[tellania]

On 3/10/2021 at 2:33 PM, Bopper said:

 

The description looks very good. If anyone needs pictures, these might help. 

 

Go to Ouro, expand the level 50 category:

 

Then scroll down to 19.03 to find Power Overwhelming

anyone know where this mission in ourobous is located at, red side?

[Kanil]

8 hours ago, tellania said:

anyone know where this mission in ourobous is located at, red side?

 

19.03 - slightly diff spot and lower on the list.

 

anyways, made a savage/bio because i'm an insane person i guess.

been wondering about this for awhile. it's okay, i guess - good AOE timing but the ST is kinda miserable. pylon times average a little over 2m with some dips into the 1m55s range. really annoying.

 

savage/bio/fire (fireball) scrapper

t4 muscle t3 ageless/degen/assault (off)

avg time: 4m55s

times:
 

Spoiler

 

4m50s

5m10s

4m36s

5m17s

5m6s

4m34s

 

 

[Sir Myshkin]

Haven't played anything in a while but reading this had me a bit curious and I had a small window of free time this afternoon so I decided to hop on and shake off a bit of rust just to see. Since most of what's been attempted was primarily Melee, I wanted to take in my MKS1 Storm Defender and my Ice/Atomic Blaster for a quick run.

 

10:15 in one run for MKS1, first thing I've played in months, and it's a character that doesn't take well to collecting dust so I'm not surprised I was super rusty. I found this mission's map to be super frustrating for this character, although I get the way it lays out is kind of in the spirit of controlling spawn areas and herding prevention which absolutely goes against what this character does. I can 4/8 full-clear everything but the ambush of the ITF's first mission in ~25 minutes with this. Only used Clarion for mez, no inspirations at all.

 

6:06 for one run on Ice/Atomic. Spent around 30-45/s kiting/held which I realistically could have avoided, but... rusty. Also added 5/s to the clock waiting for BU on the last mob just because I wanted to BU+Nuke and run over to Trapdoor. Melee Hybrid for mez protection, no yellows needed (didn't even have any in the tray anyway). If I swapped to Clarion I'm pretty sure I could clear this in 5:00-5:20 pretty consistently but that character only has Ageless at the moment.

 

On 3/14/2021 at 7:48 PM, Galaxy Brain said:

 

Yep! Which is an offshoot of the normal office sim with Punching Bags to just test offenses. The main thing with each of these are that with the trapdoor mission, the mix of enemy types and the custom enemy at the end may end up causing certain biases that a more controllable one may not.

 

I've obviously been out of the loop a bit, I assume you have these in AE floating around?

[Galaxy Brain]

15 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I've obviously been out of the loop a bit, I assume you have these in AE floating around?

 

Yep! Current one that has been up is the "Brutal Mission Simulator" (Coined due to being used for specific Brute stuff)

[KaizenSoze]

On 3/23/2021 at 8:48 PM, Kanil said:

speaking of fortunatas, here's their extremely-worse counterpart: night widows!

turns out not having any crit power beyond hides and have a 'worse' spin and no shockwave/other claw AOEs besides eviscerate really neuters them in the AOE department.

what's annoying is that they're also worse or equal in the ST department too, with a chain that mostly requires being in melee range... it's quite annoying how bad they are comparatively to the quite overall top tier fortunatas!

 

on the plus side, this lets me headcanon the char concept decently in terms of power so that's cute i guess

 

night widow/soul

avg: 7m1s

  Reveal hidden contents

6m45s
7m41s
6m57s
7m22s
6m38s
6m45s

 

i'm not even sure what exactly is causing the large deviations in time - possibly evisceration luck w/ gathering groups of enemies?

My vague impression of the power order of VEATs. When I say power, I mean combined dps/defense  

1. Crabberminds - king of VEAT DPS

2. Forts - ranged or melee hybrids

3. Huntsman/Petless crabs/Night Widows - depends wildly on build

4. Pure mace banes - the lack of good AOE is crippling, but using huntsman attacks causes DPS eating redraw