Strong Corruptors

[Diantane]

About a weak ago I wrote a post called, "Weak Blasters." Today I was looking at making a Corruptor, because I've never created one before. I started looking at the attacks and notice that the second one on the list said "Superior Damage." Also noticed extreme damage on a lot of attacks on each corruptor. Has it always been this way or did the developers finally gave you some love in the last patch?

[Psyonico]

"superior", "extreme", etc. Are a little bit meaningless, they're meant to compare damage of powers within a set, not a baseline of raw damage output.  Example: snap shot in archery says (I think) "light" damage for every AT, however, when you compare the damage of snap shot between a defender and a blaster you'll see a difference in damage.

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, Diantane said:

About a weak ago I wrote a post called, "Weak Blasters." Today I was looking at making a Corruptor, because I've never created one before. I started looking at the attacks and notice that the second one on the list said "Superior Damage." Also noticed extreme damage on a lot of attacks on each corruptor. Has it always been this way or did the developers finally gave you some love in the last patch?

Basically, it has always been this way.
As I mentioned in your Blaster thread @Diantane, those terms such as "superior", "minor", "extreme" etc. actually mean very little.

If you take the time to ask around or dig through the old forums or look through enough historical patch notes etc... you'll find that many, many years ago there was a whole stink in the CoH playerbase about lack of transparency. At that time, players couldn't tell what their powers actually did and had to datamine or guess at everything... (For Example: "Combat Jumping" increases a character's defence. If you go by the in-game text, then you might think it raises it by a worthwhile amount. But in reality it's extremely tiny). Eventually (in Feb 2008) the devs agreed. And they ended up giving us goodies like the "Real Numbers Display" (AKA the Combat Attributes Window) so that players could finally tell what effects powers grant and compare everything properly.

It is generally considered extremely unwise to go by the text descriptions of powers. They're something of a "noob trap".
(Veteran CoH players will know that many of those descriptions are downright erroneous and contain misleading/outdated information. Group Fly was a prime culprit of this for decades. Dark Nova Emanation is STILL waiting for a fix...)

Instead, take a look at the actual effects of the power. You can do this in multiple ways:

(i) Out of the game.
Visit this website and click on the different archetypes to see a detailed breakdown of exactly what each power does.
Or just download Mids Reborn and flick between the different view modes (Damage Per Activation is the one that's actually useful).

(ii) Inside the game.
Whenever you're viewing a power, such as on the character creation or level-up 'power selection' window or the enhancement screen... click on one of the "Show Detailed Info here" buttons (sometimes labelled with a green "i" symbol). Just make sure to set the slider to level 50 for an equal comparison across ATs.


"Damage per Activation Time" is the main thing to consider for comparing two different powers, since that shows you what their actual damage output will be in an attack chain.
(It's also possible to calculate manually: Divide the "Average Damage" by the attack's activation/animation time rounded up to the nearest 0.132 seconds)

Edited November 6, 2021 by Maelwys

[Diantane]

I was about to train the tier 8 power for Ice Blast called, "Bitter Freeze Ray." But something stopped me . Even though the words below said extreme damage, the description reads medium damage. I knew them that something was a miss and abandoned the corruptor until I found the truth. You all have pretty much uncovered that. 

[Maelwys]

Good Stuff! Certainly sounds like a bit of a eureka/lightbulb moment 🙂 

That's actually a very good example of why everyone started using "Damage Per Activation" as the measuring stick. Bitter Freeze Ray takes more than twice as long to animate as Freeze Ray... (2.64 seconds compared to 1.188 seconds) but it only does 38% more damage. So if you're trying to deal the most damage in the shortest amount of time (like chaining your attacks together in the most optimal way) then using Bitter Freeze Ray is usually worse.

As you've probably discovered by now, in the Corruptor version of the Ice Blast powerset, the single-target powers with the highest DPA are Bitter Ice Blast (72.04) and Freeze Ray (70.21). Bitter Freeze Ray is a long way behind (43.60), just a tiny smidge ahead of Ice Blast (37.01) and Ice Bolt (35.11).
If you go by the power text descriptions, you'll see: Extreme, Extreme, Extreme, Superior and High.
However realistically it's closer to: Extreme, Extreme, Medium, Medium and Medium.
So those descriptions are indeed rather misleading.

An in-depth examination of things is probably beyond the scope of this thread, but:

Spoiler

The usual advice is for a character to try to build an attack chain out of a small number of extremely-high-DPA abilities. However in some cases it can work out better to take a larger number of abilities instead - and then slot them up with multiple Damage Procs rather than lots of +Recharge% enhancement. This can result in a bit of a balancing act, and some power sets are better at it than others.

For example: every power in Ice/ can take the Impeded Swiftness proc and the Gladiator's Javelin Proc - and there's a new IO set coming out shortly called Ice Mistral's Torment which will contain yet another proc. Both the holds can also take Neuronic Shutdown and Ghost Widow's Embrace. Throw in Decimation, Apocalypse and Unbreakable Constraint and you could end up with a very nice bit of additional damage!

Archetypes with lower base damage (such as Defenders) will see a greater improvement from leaning towards more Damage Procs than Archetypes with higher base damage (such as Blasters); but there's usually a "sweet spot" for each build. Many procs-per-minute calculators exist, but I've found MacSkull's PPM list google sheet to be one of the easiest to use.

 

Edited November 7, 2021 by Maelwys

[Aurora_Girl]

On 11/6/2021 at 3:57 PM, Maelwys said:

Basically, it has always been this way.
As I mentioned in your Blaster thread @Diantane, those terms such as "superior", "minor", "extreme" etc. actually mean very little.

If you take the time to ask around or dig through the old forums or look through enough historical patch notes etc... you'll find that many, many years ago there was a whole stink in the CoH playerbase about lack of transparency. At that time, players couldn't tell what their powers actually did and had to datamine or guess at everything... (For Example: "Combat Jumping" increases a character's defence. If you go by the in-game text, then you might think it raises it by a worthwhile amount. But in reality it's extremely tiny). Eventually (in Feb 2008) the devs agreed. And they ended up giving us goodies like the "Real Numbers Display" (AKA the Combat Attributes Window) so that players could finally tell what effects powers grant and compare everything properly.

It is generally considered extremely unwise to go by the text descriptions of powers. They're something of a "noob trap".
(Veteran CoH players will know that many of those descriptions are downright erroneous and contain misleading/outdated information. Group Fly was a prime culprit of this for decades. Dark Nova Emanation is STILL waiting for a fix...)

Instead, take a look at the actual effects of the power. You can do this in multiple ways:

(i) Out of the game.
Visit this website and click on the different archetypes to see a detailed breakdown of exactly what each power does.
Or just download Mids Reborn and flick between the different view modes (Damage Per Activation is the one that's actually useful).

(ii) Inside the game.
Whenever you're viewing a power, such as on the character creation or level-up 'power selection' window or the enhancement screen... click on one of the "Show Detailed Info here" buttons (sometimes labelled with a green "i" symbol). Just make sure to set the slider to level 50 for an equal comparison across ATs.


"Damage per Activation Time" is the main thing to consider for comparing two different powers, since that shows you what their actual damage output will be in an attack chain.
(It's also possible to calculate manually: Divide the "Average Damage" by the attack's activation/animation time rounded up to the nearest 0.132 seconds)

 

Bless you and your patience. 

[Tsuko]

On 11/6/2021 at 9:57 PM, Maelwys said:

Basically, it has always been this way.
As I mentioned in your Blaster thread @Diantane, those terms such as "superior", "minor", "extreme" etc. actually mean very little.

If you take the time to ask around or dig through the old forums or look through enough historical patch notes etc... you'll find that many, many years ago there was a whole stink in the CoH playerbase about lack of transparency. At that time, players couldn't tell what their powers actually did and had to datamine or guess at everything... (For Example: "Combat Jumping" increases a character's defence. If you go by the in-game text, then you might think it raises it by a worthwhile amount. But in reality it's extremely tiny). Eventually (in Feb 2008) the devs agreed. And they ended up giving us goodies like the "Real Numbers Display" (AKA the Combat Attributes Window) so that players could finally tell what effects powers grant and compare everything properly.

It is generally considered extremely unwise to go by the text descriptions of powers. They're something of a "noob trap".
(Veteran CoH players will know that many of those descriptions are downright erroneous and contain misleading/outdated information. Group Fly was a prime culprit of this for decades. Dark Nova Emanation is STILL waiting for a fix...)

Instead, take a look at the actual effects of the power. You can do this in multiple ways:

(i) Out of the game.
Visit this website and click on the different archetypes to see a detailed breakdown of exactly what each power does.
Or just download Mids Reborn and flick between the different view modes (Damage Per Activation is the one that's actually useful).

(ii) Inside the game.
Whenever you're viewing a power, such as on the character creation or level-up 'power selection' window or the enhancement screen... click on one of the "Show Detailed Info here" buttons (sometimes labelled with a green "i" symbol). Just make sure to set the slider to level 50 for an equal comparison across ATs.


"Damage per Activation Time" is the main thing to consider for comparing two different powers, since that shows you what their actual damage output will be in an attack chain.
(It's also possible to calculate manually: Divide the "Average Damage" by the attack's activation/animation time rounded up to the nearest 0.132 seconds)

 

Just be carefull with Cor numbers, they often include Scourge.

Edited November 11, 2021 by Tsuko

[Outrider_01]

Bitter freeze ray can slot 5 damage procs with an ACC, hits pretty decent if not reliable with proc rate.  Got several Doms using the hold ad a ranged attack, puts boss/EB down fast when under domination