Pylon Damage Thread

[nihilii]

Fire/Rad/Psi Sent

T4 Musc, T4 Degen Core, T4 Ageless, T4 Assault Radial

Blaze -> Dominate -> Fireball -> Blaze -> Mind Probe -> Flares

Flares and Fireball are replaced as needed by misc clicks. Whenever Aim is up, Blaze -> Inferno follows.

 

Hybrid ON

2:08 = 427 DPS

2:32 = 380 DPS

2:16 = 409 DPS

2:19 = 403 DPS

2:15 = 411 DPS

2:17 = 407 DPS

2:12 = 418 DPS

Hybrid OFF

2:42 = 364 DPS (had the Time Lord day job)

2:39 = 368 DPS

3:10 = 329 DPS

2:56 = 345 DPS

About ~+15 DPS from the previous build, which checks out with the changes made: filling up Fireball with procs (which also enhances the chance for Annihilation's -RES to go off, by virtue of having no recharge slotted anymore), dropping Meltdown for Vengeance and grabbing slightly more recharge bonuses in the process, turning the attack chain gapless for most of Ageless' duration.

But tradeoffs have been made: I lost about 15% melee defense, and endurance is tighter as well.

Build

Spoiler

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[oldskool]

13 minutes ago, nihilii said:

Fireball with procs (which also enhances the chance for Annihilation's -RES to go off, by virtue of having no recharge slotted anymore)

That's a direction I started to take with a new Fire/Energy Aura I'm experimenting with.  I didn't go nearly as all-in as this build does, but adding procs to Fireball is definitely a way to go.  

[Dismiss]

To add to the fun:

 

Rad/claws tanker.

 

T4 Reactive Radial

T4 Ageless Radial

T4 Assault - not clicked

 

Recovery serum was used. Chain was Follow Up, Slash, Gloom, Focus. Interject Radiation Therapy when cooled down.

 

3:16

 

I think I got lucky with some procs on this one.

[Bopper]

I don't know if anyone cares about this kind of stuff, but I hate to use rounded numbers in my calculations and the fact we're using 102.26 HP/sec as regen has always bugged me slightly. No complaints on the OP, the formula is great, but I just like exact numbers. So if anyone is interested, I wanted to share two of my formulas for use on Pylon times. One is a simplified version of the formula we use now for calculating the DPS when given the Time, and the other is an inverse formula used for calculating the Time when given the DPS.

 

New Pylon Formulas

 

HP = 30677.15

Resistance = 20%

Regen = 5% of HP every 15 seconds

 

DPS = (HP + Time*Regen) / Time / (1 - Resistance)          *Original Form

DPS = ( HP + Time*HP/300) / Time / (1 - Resistance)          *Plug in Regen in terms of HP

 

DPS = HP * ( 1 / Time + 1 / 300 ) / (1 - Resistance)             *Simplified Form for New Formula

Time = HP / [ DPS * (1 - Resistance) - HP / 300 ]                *Inverse formula, for finding out the time to kill given the DPS

 

 

Plugging in the Pylon numbers:

 

DPS = 30677.15 * ( 1 / Time + 1 / 300 ) / 0.8

Time = 30677.15 / ( DPS * 0.8 - 30677.15 / 300 )

 

 

Example:

Time = 180 seconds

DPS = 30677.15 * (1/180 + 1/300) / 0.8 = 340.8572 damage per second

 

DPS = 340 damage per second

Time = 30677.15 / ( 340 * 0.8 - 30677.15 / 300 ) = 180.727 seconds

[Bill Z Bubba]

Sitting around 3:45 with my fire/bio sentinel now. BB, Flares, Blaze, Flares, repeat. Musc Core, Degen Core, Assault Core (used at start.) Pyronic Core thrown in when available.

 

Edit: Just for giggles I hit a 2nd tower and threw out my Carnie Radial Lore ... 1:15 was the time.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Sir Myshkin]

On 5/23/2020 at 10:38 PM, Bopper said:

New Pylon Formulas

I'd dare say many of us old-timers are still using the "original" simplified formula from back in the Retail days:

( 38343.75 / time ) + 127.8125 = DPS

 

Do enough Pylon Run calculations and this number is super easy to memorize, and super easy to punch through the calculator without having to get parenthesis involved.

 

There was a bit of discussion about a marginal variance that's not really accountable which the formula bulk-adjusted for over on this page. The short end of it is "The Pylon regenerates in bulk chunks, and where you are before or after that chunk alters the true value of the return DPS" In the end though, we're talking .1 variance at best between the more raw formula, and the above 'bulk adjusted' formula, which is entirely meaningless considering everyone just ends up typing the rounded value either way. This formula outputs 340.8333 compared to 340.8572 of the extended version.

 

Oh, and here is the link back to the OG Pylon Thread where it first gets talked about!

[Bopper]

19 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I'd dare say many of us old-timers are still using the "original" simplified formula from back in the Retail days:

( 38343.75 / time ) + 127.8125 = DPS

 

Do enough Pylon Run calculations and this number is super easy to memorize, and super easy to punch through the calculator without having to get parenthesis involved.

 

There was a bit of discussion about a marginal variance that's not really accountable which the formula bulk-adjusted for over on this page. The short end of it is "The Pylon regenerates in bulk chunks, and where you are before or after that chunk alters the true value of the return DPS" In the end though, we're talking .1 variance at best between the more raw formula, and the above 'bulk adjusted' formula, which is entirely meaningless considering everyone just ends up typing the rounded value either way. This formula outputs 340.8333 compared to 340.8572 of the extended version.

 

Oh, and here is the link back to the OG Pylon Thread where it first gets talked about!

Thanks, i'll have to derive that some time. I did see that formula, and I assumed the 38343.75 (I calculate 30677.15/0.8 = 38346.4375...am I doing that wrong?) must have been an outdated HP for the pylon, so I didn't give it a 2nd look. But yes, an easier way would be to simply divide total HP by the time to kill and add the regen of the pylon to equal the dps. 

 

I'm just punching numbers into my phone, but I would think the formula would be:

 

38346.4375/Time + 127.82145833333 = DPS

 

I do agree on properly modeling the the actual dps by measuring the time after a refen tick. Ill look over that later when I get free time.

[Bopper]

2 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I'd dare say many of us old-timers are still using the "original" simplified formula from back in the Retail days:

( 38343.75 / time ) + 127.8125 = DPS

 

Do enough Pylon Run calculations and this number is super easy to memorize, and super easy to punch through the calculator without having to get parenthesis involved.

 

There was a bit of discussion about a marginal variance that's not really accountable which the formula bulk-adjusted for over on this page. The short end of it is "The Pylon regenerates in bulk chunks, and where you are before or after that chunk alters the true value of the return DPS" In the end though, we're talking .1 variance at best between the more raw formula, and the above 'bulk adjusted' formula, which is entirely meaningless considering everyone just ends up typing the rounded value either way. This formula outputs 340.8333 compared to 340.8572 of the extended version.

 

Oh, and here is the link back to the OG Pylon Thread where it first gets talked about!

Thanks again @Sir Myshkin and as well as @Werner. I actually do like how you guys simplify it more than my method. I used my version since it was easy to plug into a spreadsheet and to not have to worry about repeating decimals, but I greatly like the idea of having something that is simple enough to use on a basic calculator (which is how I do most of my forum math haha). This is also a lesson for me that I should not be so anal about the rounding; after all, the whole seconds of time we're measuring in offer far more variance than a fraction of a HP and a fraction of regeneration.

 

That being said, I'll probably use these formulas going forward and call it good enough:

DPS = 127.82 + 38346/Time

Time = 38346 / (DPS - 127.82)

 

That will be much easier for me to memorize and run numbers on my phone's calculator.

 

As for Werner's approach to getting a better DPS number using regeneration ticks, it looks like a great approach. I have reservations like Werner does, as we can't be certain of how exactly the regeneration ticks are accounted for in the game. Do regeneration ticks average 15s over time, or does arcanatime cause the interval to actually be 15.048s? Ultimately, that is such a small difference, it won't impact numbers so I'll probably just use 15s.

 

The thing that impacts numbers the most is the gap between when you actually start the run and when the pylon takes its first damage. Werner's technique implies the start of the run is at the moment the pylon takes its first damage; however most runs start before this, usually with buffs like Destiny, Hasten, Build-Up, etc. Then you also have to factor in the cast time of that first attack between when you started the animation and when the damage is applied. 

 

Ultimately, the best formula to use in that regard would be something like this:

 

( FLOOR [ ( Time - TimeBetweenStart_and_FirstDamage ) / 15 ] * 1917.321875 + 38346.4375 ) / Time

 

To illustrate my point, let's do a very extreme example. Let's say that time to kill an enemy was 16 seconds. Using Werner's formula would produce the following:

(floor(16/15) * 1917.321875 + 38346.4375)/16 = 2516.5 DPS

 

But now let's say the cast time of the first attack took 2 seconds. That means the regeneration clock did not start until 2 seconds into the run, thus the pylon actually dies before it gets to regenerate any health. That means the actual DPS would be:

(floor[ (16-2)/15 ] * 1917.321875 + 38346.4375)/16 = 2396.7 DPS  (120 less DPS)

 

That is an unrealistic example, so let's look at the same situation with a more reasonable pylon time of 151 seconds (2:31).

 

Original method:

127.82 + 38346/151 = 381.8 DPS

 

Werner's method:

(floor(151/15) * 1917.321875 + 38346.4375)/151 = 380.9 DPS

 

Proposed method:

( floor[ (151-2)/15 ] * 1917.321875 + 38346.4375)/151 = 368.2 DPS

 

So that winds up being 12.7 DPS added that wasn't really there.

 

Ultimately, this is nitpicking, but the lesson learned seems to be we probably have far more over-compensation between the actual DPS and the DPS measured by simply using the OP's/Original method. All of those numbers are on the high end as it implies regeneration is happening every second. Werner proposed an excellent approach on how we can back out some of those generous numbers to match closer to their true DPS times, but some fine-tuning is needed to really capture the exact number of regeneration ticks. That's what my proposed formula aims to address.

 

All that being said...there's still no way of truly getting dead-on-balls accurate. We could ask folks to measure the time (in whole seconds based on combat log) at which they cast their first power to represent the start of the run, measure the time at which the pylon takes its first damage, then the time at which the pylon takes its last damage. But since we're dealing with times in whole seconds (as opposed to fractions of a second), we would really only be able to come up with a formula that would cage the range of DPS values the run actually achieved. My guess is people prefer their run as being equal to a "true" single DPS as opposed to a range within which their true DPS resides. If that is of interest, then we can work towards that type of formula, but it would mean starting from new with all pylon times going forward.

[Sovera]

As I said several pages back, we can skip the math and just say 'takes the pylon down in X seconds'. We have the whole gradient of 'pylon down in seven minutes' as unoptimized, unprocced, random PvE build, down to 4-5 minutes of 'Gosh I love my Sentinel/Tanker!', to 'pylon down in 3 minutes' being trying to optimize a unoptimizible set, to 'two minutes' of darn good killing machine, to '1:30 best of the best there is on offer, to under 'one minute ohai TW'.

[Bopper]

Pylon DPS 

a range of outcomes

---

This will be a confusing formula, but let me try to break it down. For Pylon testing, what we have to work with are combat logs that provide us with times truncated to the whole second. This is somewhat limiting as we get a time of 00:12:32, but don’t know if that is 12 minutes and 32.00 seconds exactly, or if it is 12 minutes and 32.999 seconds. For this reason, the DPS for Rikti Pylon times cannot be calculated exactly. Instead, we have a range of values that the true DPS lies within. To determine the bounds of this range, we must incorporate some logic that will help determine what is the worst possible DPS we can achieve and the best possible DPS we can achieve given the times shown in our combat log.

Before we get into calculating those bounds, we need to go over the parameters for calculating the DPS. We have the following information for the Rikti Pylon target:

The formula used to calculate the true DPS is a variation of @Werner formula, which is:

The  is the time at which the Rikti Pylon is defeated. The startTime is the time at which you start the Pylon run (you must specify what is the start of your run; it can be when you activate a buff, activate an attack, etc). The  is the time at which the Rikti Pylon takes its first damage, which starts the clock for its regeneration (which will occur 15 seconds later…barring any regeneration debuffs).

This formula would calculate the DPS exactly, however the times in the combat log are truncated to the whole second. Since we cannot be certain of when the exact times are, we must limit ourselves to calculating the best- and worst-case scenarios.

 

Worst-case scenario:

Achieve the worst possible DPS by attempting to make the run time as long as possible while also trying to minimize the number of regeneration ticks in an effort to ensure the amount of damage inflicted is minimized. To achieve this, we will always round down (to the nearest second) the  and round up the , while also rounding up .

To ensure we do not gain a potential extra tick of regeneration between the  and , I will round up by adding 0.999s to the  and will only add 0.998s to the round up of . The 1/1000^th of a second will not matter in the long run, but it will ensure that if the seconds between the  and  would result in a regeneration tick, the Rikti Pylon will be defeated 1/1000^th of a second before that regeneration tick would fire. 

_{Note: My use of 0.001, 0.999 and 0.998 was based on personal preference. I picked numbers small enough to not impact the final result while still providing the mathematics necessary for the Floor formula logic to work.If you want, you could use 0.00001, 0.99999, and 0.99998. Whatever pleases you.}

 

Best-case scenario:

Achieve the best possible DPS by attempting to make the run time as short as possible while also trying to maximize the number of regeneration ticks in an effort to ensure the amount of damage inflicted is maximized. To achieve this, we will always round up the  (+0.999s) and round down the , while also rounding down .

To ensure we gain a potential extra tick of regeneration, the  will have 0.001s added to its rounded down time. Realistically, an extra tick of regeneration occurring 1/1000^th of a second before the Rikti Pylon is defeated is unlikely to happen. But who knows, maybe your proc’d out Crushing Uppercut finished animated right after the regeneration tick occurs and you finish the Pylon off anyways.

 

Centralized Best- and Worst-case scenario:

We have shown how to bound the extreme limits of our DPS by round up and down the times given to us in our combat log. Now, let’s aim for something in the middle by assuming our , , and  all line up right in the middle of our “whole-second window”. We can show this by adding 0.5s to the combat log. However, this is an unnecessary step as we are working in relative differences already and those shifts would cancel each other out. So it turns out, our Centralized scenario is in fact our original formula, however we will caveat it by incorporating whether-or-not the extra regeneration tick occurs. Typically, these numbers will be the same, but 1 out of 15 will give you different +/- results.

 

Example Calculations:

I have never been good at explaining things, so I always felt like it’s easier to show how to do something by incorporating examples. Here is an example run of one of my Pylon Tests. I will provide snippets of my combat log, and show how to run the above formulas to get my range of outcomes.

00:28:34               Activated Hasten

00:28:35               Activated Ageless Destiny

00:28:36               Hit Rikti Pylon with Mud Pots for 14.93 points of damage

00:28:37               Activated Rage

00:28:38               Hit Rikti Pylon with Mud Pots for 21.02 points of damage

…

00:32:47               Activated Knockout Blow

00:32:49               Hit Rikti Pylon with Knockout Blow for 394.98 points of damage

00:32:49               Hit Rikti Pylon with Perfect Zinger for 57.39 points of damage

00:32:49               Hit Rikti Pylon with Ghost Widow’s Embrace for 57.39 points of damage

00:32:49               Hit Rikti Pylon with Hecatomb for 85.66 points of damage

00:32:49               Defeated Rikti Pylon

 

In this example, I actually hit the Pylon with my Mud Pots before I activated Rage, so we have to decide if we want to call the start of the run when we activated Hasten, activated Ageless Destiny, or when the Mud Pots damage did its damage (which would make  and  the same). For this example, we’ll use Hasten as out start time, thus:

Example #1:

 

 

In this example, my DPS was fairly tight on its bounds. That’s thanks to being fairly low DPS but also thanks to the fact I was 13 seconds away from the last regeneration tick. Let’s pretend I actually defeated the Rikti Pylon at 32:51, thus 255 seconds after the initial damage and at the same moment of a regeneration tick.

Example #2:

 

 

This shows an interesting effect as despite having a longer time to kill (257s), the best-case scenario for DPS is actually higher than that of the faster time to kill (255s). At the same time, it shows the worst-case scenario as having worse results than the faster kill time. Also, since our delta between the  and  landed on the same time as a regeneration tick, the centralized best- and worst-case scenarios now shows two results.

Let’s finish off with one more example. This time, we will have the  at 32:52 (258 seconds), which will guarantee the extra regeneration tick will occur.

Example #3:

 

 

Well wait now, how is that possible? We are 3 seconds slower than our original Pylon time, and yet the worst-case scenario for the 258s time is better than the best-case scenario for the 255s time. What gives? This illustrates the ebbs and flows of an attack chain. The instantaneous DPS of an attack chain will always be fluctuating, and it is possible that you could kill a pylon while at the lower end of your DPS chain and you just missed out on using your best DPA attacks to bring your average DPS higher.

With that lesson learned, I know of no better way to conclude this than….WTF.

[Bill Z Bubba]

6 hours ago, Bopper said:

With that lesson learned, I know of no better way to conclude this than….WTF.

I can only assume that we were never told that there would be no math.

 

@BopperYour work is wonderful but it's starting to feel like we're diving into Heisenberg levels of silliness.

[Bionic_Flea]

8 hours ago, Bopper said:

*Maths*

 

With that lesson learned, I know of no better way to conclude this than….WTF.

My head hurts.  I think I feel smarter.

[Rathulfr]

10 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

My head hurts.  I think I feel smarter.

My head hurts.  I definitely feel dumber.

[Werner]

<grabs some gasoline for the fire> I don't actually use logs or my proposed formula or the "official" formula. I use my phone's stopwatch and 38344 / time + 128. Close enough. Easy to remember. Accuracy vs. precision when so much of the damage is random. Blah blah blah. I've even mostly abandoned pylons when doing comparative testing of my DPS. Instead, I time beating five basic L54 AVs in a row in AE on beta. That gives me a better picture of the average contribution from things like Assault and non-perma-Hasten. I also wanted to be certain, rather than fairly certain, that what I was learning was relevant to L54 AV fights.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Werner

[Bopper]

18 minutes ago, Werner said:

<grabs some gasoline for the fire> I don't actually use logs or my proposed formula or the "official" formula. I use my phone's stopwatch and 38344 / time + 128. Close enough. Easy to remember. Accuracy vs. precision when so much of the damage is random. Blah blah blah. I've even mostly abandoned pylons when doing comparative testing of my DPS. Instead, I time beating five basic L54 AVs in a row in AE on beta. That gives me a better picture of the average contribution from things like Assault and non-perma-Hasten. I also wanted to be certain, rather than fairly certain, that what I was learning was relevant to L54 AV fights.

I'm surprised you wouldn't use the combat logs for a start and end point, but perhaps I haven't looked at the features of my phone's stop watch. Can it start and stop using voice recognition? If so, then yeah, that would be a great way to measure. There would be some lag, but nothing like a full second.

 

Fighting numerous AVs in a row can certainly be viable for measuring one's performance, although I'm not certain on the controllability of such a test. But with enough samples, you can certainly gain confidence in the performance. Given how over-tuned characters have become, I would have to lean on agreeing with you that Pylon testing may not be the best way to determine DPS. Perhaps Giant Monster killing will need to be the next metric to use. An enemy that can move around a little while having similar debuff resistances of a pylon and twice as much Hit Points would certainly offer up information on how well a character can provide sustained DPS. Of course, you'd have to account for the GMs having resistances that are not constant across all damage types, and there is the philosophical discussion on "who cares about sustained DPS, burst is where it's at", but that's for others to argue. 

[Werner]

21 minutes ago, Bopper said:

I'm surprised you wouldn't use the combat logs for a start and end point

Lazy, maybe? For start, I click Hasten, Assault, Start on my phone, Golden Dragonfly. For stop, I just glance down the moment the pylon goes boom. I figure I'm within a second or two on each run, and with runs often differing by tens of seconds anyway due to other random factors, it just never felt worth reading back through a log. What mattered to me was that I was being consistent. I could have instead always started the clock before clicking Hasten and Assault, for instance. I'd have gotten different numbers, but my relative performance would have been the same.

22 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Fighting numerous AVs in a row can certainly be viable for measuring one's performance, although I'm not certain on the controllability of such a test.

I'm not sure what you mean by controllability? The AVs occasionally jog off briefly. There's time to travel between the AVs. Entering the mission after the mission clock starts takes a few seconds. But again, what matters to me is that I'm being consistent in the measurement. There was another unintended random factor, in that I had given them Dark Melee powers, and some of my builds couldn't sustain 95% to hit when debuffed. But I decided to call that a pro of the measurement instead of a con - if you can't hit, it does indeed reduce your practical DPS.

24 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Perhaps Giant Monster killing will need to be the next metric to use.

Giant Monster killing I think remains outside of my capability on any of my characters. I might have a shot at very slowly doing it on my current Katana/Dark Brute on giant monsters not resistant to lethal damage. I'll have to find out.

25 minutes ago, Bopper said:

and there is the philosophical discussion on "who cares about sustained DPS, burst is where it's at"

Burst AoE is where most of the game is at, I think. For AoE I'll grab my SS/Fire/Mu Brute, built to handle regular content, not built for farming. But I don't grab him much anymore, even if he has the most veteran levels of my characters at this point. I usually have more fun playing my single-target specialists for some reason, even solo. I'm not sure why. It's slow and inefficient. In any case, the Pylon testing is about sustained single-target DPS, mostly relevant for uplevel AV fights, but that's still something reasonable for some people to care about.

[Bopper]

2 minutes ago, Werner said:

Lazy, maybe? 

haha, I'm not sure if you're being lazy if you're actually doing more work. 

 

4 minutes ago, Werner said:

I'm not sure what you mean by controllability? The AVs occasionally jog off briefly. There's time to travel between the AVs. Entering the mission after the mission clock starts takes a few seconds.

Those were the things I was thinking about. Also, I am not sure which AVs you had, so I don't know what resistances they might have, resistance debuffs, if they had debuffs (sounds like yours did), if they has status effects (Pylon you just have to protect against KB, maybe that's not the case against an AV). So ultimately, there seemed to be additional variables. But it sounds like this is intended as a personal test, not an all encompassing test, in which case it sounds like it fits your needs perfectly.

 

7 minutes ago, Werner said:

Giant Monster killing I think remains outside of my capability on any of my characters. I might have a shot at very slowly doing it on my current Katana/Dark Brute on giant monsters not resistant to lethal damage. I'll have to find out.

A GM might be a tad too much of a test. Maybe it's more of a test for those who are posting sub 2 minute times on pylons. I'm working with a team on building a simulator for pylon testing (give no credit to me, I just help with mechanics, the others are doing the real work) that has shown promise so far. If it gets mature enough, I could see the user being able to add more health to the pylon and see how their results do when they have to attack for a full 4 minutes+. 

 

10 minutes ago, Werner said:

Burst AoE is where most of the game is at, I think. For AoE I'll grab my SS/Fire/Mu Brute, built to handle regular content, not built for farming. But I don't grab him much anymore, even if he has the most veteran levels of my characters at this point. I usually have more fun playing my single-target specialists for some reason, even solo. I'm not sure why. It's slow and inefficient. In any case, the Pylon testing is about sustained single-target DPS, mostly relevant for uplevel AV fights, but that's still something reasonable for some people to care about.

I agree with you there. I am trying to balance my toons to be able to do both now. I had a defender that was a pure AoE monster, but when it came time to defeat a hard target it drug on slowly. I had to incorporate single target optimization while trying to maintain as much AoE as I could. In the end, I love it for the hard targets, but for typical mobs I do miss the mass melting. It's all balance, but overall I also am leaning more towards ST specialty as I grow within the game.

[Werner]

2 hours ago, Bopper said:

I am not sure which AVs you had, so I don't know what resistances they might have, resistance debuffs, if they had debuffs (sounds like yours did), if they has status effects (Pylon you just have to protect against KB, maybe that's not the case against an AV). So ultimately, there seemed to be additional variables. But it sounds like this is intended as a personal test, not an all encompassing test, in which case it sounds like it fits your needs perfectly.

Yeah, personal test only. I made my own AVs with no resistances or debuff resistances. They did accidentally have to-hit debuffs, and I'd initially used Nictus Romulus, so they had Cimerorans with them so there were defense debuffs as well, but I didn't bother tweaking further. I put it together quickly for me personally and specifically for my Katana/Dark Brute. I probably spent 40+ hours trying to find the best combination of attacks, the order in which to make those attacks, how best to slot and proc those attacks, which incarnate powers to use, and so on. Then once I finished the respec on live, I switched to my DM/SR Brute and have been playing him instead mostly, trying to finish up his incarnates.

2 hours ago, Bopper said:

I'm working with a team on building a simulator for pylon testing (give no credit to me, I just help with mechanics, the others are doing the real work) that has shown promise so far. If it gets mature enough, I could see the user being able to add more health to the pylon and see how their results do when they have to attack for a full 4 minutes+. 

Yes, please! I'd tell it 100 billion hit points, no regeneration, no resistance, and see how many years that took. Convert to sustained DPS. Emphasis on sustained. 😉

[Dismiss]

On 5/27/2020 at 5:44 PM, Werner said:

Yeah, personal test only. I made my own AVs with no resistances or debuff resistances. They did accidentally have to-hit debuffs, and I'd initially used Nictus Romulus, so they had Cimerorans with them so there were defense debuffs as well, but I didn't bother tweaking further. I put it together quickly for me personally and specifically for my Katana/Dark Brute. I probably spent 40+ hours trying to find the best combination of attacks, the order in which to make those attacks, how best to slot and proc those attacks, which incarnate powers to use, and so on. Then once I finished the respec on live, I switched to my DM/SR Brute and have been playing him instead mostly, trying to finish up his incarnates.

Yes, please! I'd tell it 100 billion hit points, no regeneration, no resistance, and see how many years that took. Convert to sustained DPS. Emphasis on sustained. 😉

I'm the one coding the simulation. My ideal outcome in the end is that you can basically specify exactly what the target is and simulate against that. That's probably a long way off as my initial goal for a beta is to just get the melee classes in against a pylon. It's a crazy amount of stuff to code and I'm the only one doing the coding (although Bopper understates his help). Without him, @modest and @RubyRed's help I would have given up a while ago. I can't make any promises as to timelines, but I'm doing what I can as I get time to work.

 

Right now I need to iron out some weird things happening with debuffs (I think), code in psi melee, street justice, dual blades and titan weapon special mechanics, brute's fury and then... basically the whole UI. So it's not going to be soon....

 

[Tsuko]

On 5/27/2020 at 10:22 AM, Sovera said:

As I said several pages back, we can skip the math and just say 'takes the pylon down in X seconds'. We have the whole gradient of 'pylon down in seven minutes' as unoptimized, unprocced, random PvE build, down to 4-5 minutes of 'Gosh I love my Sentinel/Tanker!', to 'pylon down in 3 minutes' being trying to optimize a unoptimizible set, to 'two minutes' of darn good killing machine, to '1:30 best of the best there is on offer, to under 'one minute ohai TW'.

You forget the less than 40 seconds "Holy shit Masterminds" 😉

[Sir Myshkin]

21 hours ago, Tsuko said:

You forget the less than 40 seconds "Holy shit Masterminds" 😉

I pose the same challenge to all Masterminds that I tried myself of approaching a Pylon with no pets, start the timer and then do a full summon, buff, and assault on the pylon. I found that to be a much more impressive evaluation of their ability to not only deal with an immediate "oh crap, no pets!" situation, but also reflect their speed to dealing with that said immediate threat.

[Microcosm]

Claws/Ice Scrapper, Musc/Ageless/Degen/Pyro/Assault (off) all T4 Core

2:15 412
2:20 400

 

I had recently done a Svg/Ice stalker thinking the sets had good synergy and realized Claws had similar synergy with Ice, though not quite as much.

 

Chain was FU > Focus > Shockwave > Eviscerate, with Water spout whenever available. Trying to maximize procs. Conventional wisdom says to use Slash with Achilles, but the recharge and cast time are so low on that I figured I'd get better mileage putting Achilles in Water spout and focusing on the other attacks. I've not used Claws much in the past, but I think it's underrated.

[Maxzero]

On 6/3/2020 at 10:58 AM, Sir Myshkin said:

I pose the same challenge to all Masterminds that I tried myself of approaching a Pylon with no pets, start the timer and then do a full summon, buff, and assault on the pylon. I found that to be a much more impressive evaluation of their ability to not only deal with an immediate "oh crap, no pets!" situation, but also reflect their speed to dealing with that said immediate threat.

 

Honestly that is pretty reasonable though it favours Thugs since Demons for some reason need 10+ seconds to summon.

 

But yeah the clunkiness of MMs mechanics is probably the archetypes biggest weakness.

 

Compare that to my Crabbermind who seems to have almost all of the perks of having pets with none of the drawbacks...

Edited June 5, 2020 by Maxzero

[VertigoIguana]

BR/Devices/Mace Blaster (on Brainstorm)

 

Best run: 1:07

 

Others: 1:15, 1:20, 1:21, 1:30, 1:50, 2:06

 

T4 Musculature (Core)

T4 Degenerative (Core)

T4 Assault Hybrid (Not used - Passive boost only)

No Lore

T4 Barrier (Core) (Used once at the start for the faster times)

 

Getting the fastest times was very dependant on the pets (Spiderlings and Gun Drones) not falling over immediately, so this probably doesn't transfer that well to normal play but it was a fun experiment. the 1:50/2:00 times were where the pets got blasted right away either from the dropship or the pylon.

 

I started the fight with 3 gun drones out (two can be out most of the time, and used burnout for a third), popped barrier, and hover blasted from there. (Disintegrate>Snipe>Lancer>Single Shot...Aim when available).  Keeping the Spiderlings out of the line of fire wasn't difficult, but the gun drones like to fly right in and taunt the pylon so barrier was the only thing keeping them in the fight longer than 15 seconds.

 

Overall, pretty happy with it. I don't normally play blasters so I just wanted to see how much I could get out of the combo.

 

Blaster - Beam Rifle - Devices.mxd

[Bionic_Flea]

Wow!  67 seconds!  That's very impressive. 

 

Is anyone keeping track of times?  I'd love to see a ranking or top ten of times and the players/builds that got them.