Pylon Damage Thread

[StrikerFox]

I can definitely understand the sentiment of wanting to see the set by itself on its lonesome.  But, not to be uh... rude or confrontational or anything, but it seems like a weird place to draw the line at APP/PPPs when, in your videos, you were using Hasten, Assault, Quickness, and Incarnate passives.  Not to mention all the set-bonuses that come from non-SM powers.  I think at that point APPs/PPPs are all fair game since you have everything else any primary can have.

 

And I went into Waterspout since... in best case scenario, Shred you have to continously activate to get its -Res debuffs and it's a long, slow attack, so much that you're way overslotted for recharge in your Hemmorage-less videos versus 'Spout having roughly same up-time from pseudo-pet ticks while you do other things.  Worst case, Shred's low cooldown means it's harder to maintain the -Res debuffs due to PPM while Waterspout pretty much applies them 100% of the time for a looooot less animation time over the course of a fight.

 

You use Shred for your debuff, you use it a loooooot, and its low DPA/S may potentially be negating the usefulness of the proc over a naturally stronger ST chain.  Especially since Shred is going to be affected by the "area factor" that reduces its PPM since it's a cone.  (Waterspout is affected too, but seems like less of a big deal since you fire it and then it does it's thing instead of needing a recast every 5 seconds.)

 

Mind, I'm not 100% sure what the superior option is since there's frustratingly little information on how current PPM works in any real detail and Paragon Wiki's equations are probably outdated.  I'll try to make note of looking into it myself whenever my wrist stops being a dick lest someone beats me to it.

 

Hasten, Assault, and Incarnates are available to every character, across any AT. WS is only available to Scrappers/Stalkers but not Brutes/Tanks (Among SM users). Quickness is part of SR which I chose to test SM. It only provides recharge, no damage bonus.

 

You're welcome to test any way you like when your wrist gets better. You can take or leave the info I provided. I hope you leave it if it will end the rude and confrontational responses. Haha!

[@Ghost]

But you can probably answer this: does the recharge buff from spiritual affect the recharge rate of the other incarnate powers?

 

Since nobody else picked on this one: it doesn't. Judgment and Lore are the only ones that benefit from your slotted Alpha's effects, but neither are impacted by recharge bonuses of any kind (including Alpha slotted ones.) The healing and stun portions from Spiritual might matter depending on your picks, but that's all.

 

Musculature would increase their damage, though. Interface also applies to Judgment and Lore, but Interface's damage and effects aren't buffed by Alpha themselves.

[Dismiss]

I'm very sorry, but I cannot agree with this at all as it goes completely against all my statistical, and research-oriented, training. I can fully agree with you that you've played this game "long enough." I can fully agree with you that you've been part of Pylon Testing for a long time.

 

But to say that you already know what to expect in variance and can come to a generalized conclusion from a single data point for each condition? I absolutely cannot agree with that, no matter what level of expertise a person might have. That simply goes against all reasonable conventions of testing/verifying. Experts in the "hard science" fields, or any statistician, with enormous amounts of expertise, would never be able to make that claim. We're obviously not talking about hard science here with CoH, but "some" level of verification/replication is needed to make ANY sort of conclusion when we're talking about "how good is X compared to X?". If we disagree on this, then I have nothing more to add on this point unfortunately other than "We disagree."

 

I couldn't resist doing some quantification around this.

 

The setup is for my FM/SD numbers. I ran a monte carlo simulation of kill times with crits modeled as a random function and critical strikes proc modelled as a random function. I did not model build up into this, but just scaled my damage up appropriately. Modeling the proper gaussian's proc chance would increase the variability some since I don't think it's 100% chance on activation.

 

Note Fiery Melee is about as predictable as you can get for a scrapper set. If you are using a set like titan weapons or anything with a combo mechanic, the irreducible 5% chance to miss is going to increase variance because you can miss your combo/momentum/whatever builder. I don't have that problem with FM, and I didn't feel like modeling it, honestly.

 

Anyway, to the graph.

 

The y axis is the cumulative percentile of the distribution. The x-axis is the time in seconds to kill the pylon. The 80% confidence interval ranged from 160 seconds to 190 seconds. The translates in dps from 330-370 dps. Note that the DPS curve is not linear in time, and when you start dropping under 150 seconds the curve from seconds to DPS gets very steep (larger change in DPS number for smaller changes in seconds to kill).

 

The blue curve is the theoretical pylon kill time in seconds for the result of 10,000 trials on a MC simulation. The orange line is the mean of that distribution.

 

For fun I added the range of means you can expect doing a 5 trial sample (grey curve). It improves your results relative to a 1 trial sample (blue curve), but still has a decently wide distribution.

 

 

I won't weigh in much more on this other than to say my position about drawing conclusions from a single number is probably clear if I bothered to go to this effort. I realize the irony that I have posted a single number in this very thread.

 

One edit: I assumed this was a two roll system for hit and crit like XCOM 1, and not a single roll system like XCOM 2. A single roll system would reduce variance.

 

[Kaeladin]

Beta Server (Justin)

 

Psionic Melee/Bio Armor Scrapper

 

T4 Musculature Core Paragon

T4 Reactive Radial Flawless Interface

T4 Ageless Core Epiphany

T4 Assault Radial Embodiment (I did not use the clicky/toggle on any tests; just the passive damage bonus)

 

Offensive Adaptation

No outside buffs, no recovery serum, no inspirations. Strictly just what my character has.

 

Ah, Psi Melee. One of our new sets, and also with some wonky documentation attached to it.

 

I'll be perfectly honest; I had done some homework on this set. I knew that Pine's + the in-game info was incorrect; it always calculated the extra insight-based damage in each case (meaning it was greatly inflating the DPA/Damage of psi melee's moves). But the question was; what kind of uptime could we model for psi melee?

 

At first, I initially pegged insight's uptime at about 40% (meaning the psi melee moves were benefiting from insight additional damage 40% of the time). After modeling this, I decided to test it out myself on these pylons to see what we got.

 

As always, the build used a pretty standard template similar to my other /bio scrappers, oriented towards general PvE (e.g. softcapped s/l defenses). This one was almost a carbon copy of my fiery melee/ice melee characters (in terms of slotting).

 

How I started every attempt: Hasten + Ageless (prepull stage) - Begin timer as soon as I hit Build-Up.

 

Attempts with following rotation: Psi Blade - Telekinetic Blow - Psi Blade - Greater Psi Blade - repeat

 

Attempt 1: 2:43 = 368.05

Attempt 2: 2:47 = 362.42

Attempt 3: 3:29 (yikes) = 316.28

Attempt 4: 3:12 = 332.52

Attempt 5: 2:57 = 349.44

Attempt 6: 2:51 = 357.04

 

Wow. For comparison, CLAWS did better ST DPS consistently while packing a stronger AOE kit. So what's going on here?

 

Insight. Specifically, insight uptime.

 

Psi Melee is effectively "two" sets; it's either a very mediocore set (DPA-wise) outside of insight, and a great set within insight. It's obviously very satisfying to see a large insight-boosted greater psi blade chunk someone.

 

But consistency is the issue here; I originally modeled insight uptime at about 40%, but this turned out to be a substantial overestimation. It has a lockout of 15s after it's triggered (either from naturally wearing off or being consumed by greater psi blade). However, there would be stretches where I'd literally wail on the pylon for 15+ seconds, OUTSIDE of lockout, without triggering insight. I'd place insight uptime probably closer to 15-20%, and that actually still might be an exaggeration.

 

You'd honestly see better results with something like psi blade - telekinetic blow - psi blade - mental strike (lol) and completely phase out greater psi blade, but I'm not entirely sure and it'd still be aggressively mediocore.

 

In real gameplay, psi obviously has the advantage of being a damage type that isn't commonly resisted. In addition, you have time between pulls for your lockout to wear off. However, it also brings the disadvantages of insight being unreliable in its proccing, and when psi damage is resisted (e.g. Rikti, robots), it is resisted hard.

 

This is definitely a set where I hope the devs will be able to do a a pass on, at some point. It's a cool set aesthetically (although I prefer psi blades more than psi fists!), but it has some mechanical issues that are detracting from some of its potential strengths.

 

[marcussmythe]

Somone should cosider starting a new pylon damage thread, with the top post by someone active and editing in new times.

 

Im loving watching the times come in for all the scrapper sets.  Im wondering how much we can generalize from them?

 

If Bob the Bioarmor is rocking a 50% Buff from Bio - Offensive, and everyone is at roughly 100% in Enhancement Bonuses and maybe another 30% from uptime on Buildup (or w/e) and a free 10% Dam debuff (also Bioamor - goooo Bioarmor!) does that mean (assuming a hypothetical set X doing 100 DPS before buffs and enhancements) does it mean that Bob is gonna do about 308 DPs (base plus buff * 1.1) and Ned the Ninjitsu is gonna push 230?

 

Similarly, if Sammy the SR tank take the same hypothetical offensive set, is that set is gonna do about 2/3 as much damage as Ned was doing (inasmuch as Ned has about 1.25 base mod after crits, and higher bonuses from buildup, etc - while Sammy has a .8 base, but probably also has some bruising uptime) - thus Sammy SR tank is doing about 155 DPS if Bob the Bioarmor Scrapper is pushing 308?

 

...

 

Id need to test it (and be able to run rotations as smoothly as you guys - a thing I cannot do)...  but to drop back to the general case:

 

After accounting for enhancements, built in res debuff, ant the like - my anticipation is that switching from SR/Invuln/WP to Biooffensive is worth about a 33% Damage Out Bonus.  Does this seem reasonable, if true?  Does Bioffesive give up enough resilience to other sets to justify the damage (aside from the fact that at IOs Biooffensive can +4/x8 general content solo, which is ‘all the tough that matters)

 

Switching from a Tank to a Scrapper looks like about a 50% damage buff - again, reasonable if true?  Does the tank gain enough survival to justify doing  2/3 the Scappers Damage?  (Same caveats as above)

 

 

 

[Sir Myshkin]

Somone should cosider starting a new pylon damage thread, with the top post by someone active and editing in new times.

 

Switching from a Tank to a Scrapper looks like about a 50% damage buff - again, reasonable if true?  Does the tank gain enough survival to justify doing  2/3 the Scappers Damage?  (Same caveats as above)

 

While it would be interesting to have a culminated post with all the times for reference, if this thread goes in the direction that it did on Live, we'd be looking at well-over 100 pages of posts to try and keep up with. Now that was over a course of three years, but the likelihood of someone keeping up with that is probably not going to happen. One thread will be fine, and if someone wants to try and create a unified post that can be quoted back to on occasion to bring forward into the post-history, that'd probably be a more realistic, and sane way to approach it.

 

As for the other half of your question, if you're chasing Damage, go Stalker, you'll get the most impact, and that's about as far as that conversation really goes. Bio Armor has a decent way of helping supplement a Tank or Brute, making Scrappers even better, and amplifying Stalkers a ridiculous amount, but that's just the one adaptation of a unique set. I wouldn't say we all need to just toss all the other sets out of the window and all go Bio Armor, there's still reasons that other sets have tremendous value. My Rad/DA Scrapper might not have the +Dam from Bio, but I'd wager him more survivable, and my Claws/Regen from back on Live is still the only character I (or anyone I've ever spoken to, including my 39 witnesses) have ever seen survive Titan Tyrant (iTrials) during his mass AoE lightning strikes (the AoE alone does 10% of a player's max HP every second).

 

Edit, clarifying more to the point/original question:

 

Basically my point is Bio Armor definitely can help shore-up some weaknesses, and has a nice layered toolkit, but you can build a lot of characters to be flexible in a wide array of situations. Take Offensive Adaptation out of Bio Armor and it's really nothing more than a different iteration of Willpower. So if you really do want that +Dam, it'll work out well for Tanks/Brutes. Does the added survivability matter if you take a Scrapper instead? No, not really. It's nice, but a Tank still isn't going to perform at Scrapper levels with that trade off. Better to do a Brute and live with needing to build Fury first in order to get to Scrapper Damage. But again, at that point, just go Stalker if you're just seeking DPS.

 

One thing important to point out: Bio Armor doesn't have Defense Debuff Resistances. That set will fold like a house of cards to a soft breeze. Slowly at first, then crash down hard once the weight starts coming down. So sets like SR with neigh-impregnable DDR are going to fair much better in those scenarios. Bio Armor only has one major resistance (S/L) and its Regen to fall back on, and depending on your mob mix, that might not be enough to kite out of. So there's some strong pluses, but gaping negatives, and being a Tank, Brute, Scrapper, Stalker, isn't going to matter.

[Kaeladin]

Beta Server (Justin)

 

Radiation Melee/Bio Armor Scrapper

T4 Musculature Core Paragon

T4 Reactive Radial Flawless Interface

T4 Ageless Core Epiphany

T4 Assault Radial Embodiment (I did not use the clicky/toggle on any tests; just the passive damage bonus)

 

Offensive Adaptation

No outside buffs, no recovery serum, no inspirations. Strictly just what my character has.

 

And another one of the new sets; this time Radiation Melee is up!

 

While facing a somewhat similar consistency issue as Psi Melee, I knew that Radiation Melee's "contaminated" mechanic was at least a bit more noticeable in terms of its proc rate. However, testing it (to understand the mechanic) made me realize that, even when the contaminated effect is active on a target, you do not always benefit from the extra damage (and burst) it is supposed to give your moves. Similar to Psi Melee, its moves via tooltip and Pine's assume constant uptime on contaminated, which is not true.

 

By virtue of the contaminated mechanic, and its toolkit, it has some reasonably good AOE. But what does its ST DPS look like?

 

How I started every attempt: Hasten + Ageless (prepull stage) - Begin timer as soon as I hit Fusion (Build Up)

 

Attempts with following rotation: Devastating Blow - Proton Sweep - Radioactive Smash - Contaminated Strike - repeat

 

1) "Kael, why not do DB - CS - RS - CS - repeat?" you might ask. The reason is that, by using two CS, you end up with a pretty notable delay on your next DB at the recharge levels I'm modeling at (about 262.5% recharge in devastating blow). Proton Sweep actually ends up utilizing that "gap" space quite well, while doing more damage (despite having less DPA), and therefore ends up doing more damage with the recharge level I have.

 

2) "What about radiation siphon?" you might also ask. While it's a nice move, especially for the self-healing component, it does also remove the contaminated effect on the target. Since the damage of all of radiation melee's ST moves is contingent on contaminated being up, I wanted to maximize the amount of uptime on contaminated; my hypothesis is that adding radiation siphon would slightly decrease overall DPS.

 

Attempt 1: 2:42 = 369.502

Attempt 2: 2:34 = 381.797

Attempt 3: 2:40 = 372.46

Attempt 4: 2:37 = 377.04

Attempt 5: 2:13 = 421.11 (I didn't miss a single move on this attempt! How do I know this? I'll show you in a moment...)

Attempt 6: 2:30 = 388.437

Attempt 7: 2:52 = 355.741

 

Not too shabby!

 

If they tweaked contaminated to be more consistent with its proccing, this would probably end up doing reasonably strong ST DPS AND having nice localized AOE. As it is, it's a bit erratic in its mechanic but it can produce some nice ST and AOE output.

 

Before I conclude, you may wonder how I knew I didn't miss a single move on that 2:13 attempt. Well dear readers, it's because of...

 

 

Go check it out if you're interested! Its tracking of your damage abilities, particularly in terms of how much each move contributes %-wise, as well as stats such as hits/misses, is really nice for this type of testing situation!

 

Gooo Devastating Blow!

[Kaeladin]

Beta Server (Justin)

 

Savage Melee/Bio Armor Scrapper

 

T4 Musculature Core Paragon

T4 Reactive Radial Flawless Interface

T4 Ageless Core Epiphany

T4 Assault Radial Embodiment (I did not use the clicky/toggle on any tests; just the passive damage bonus)

 

Offensive Adaptation

No outside buffs, no recovery serum, no inspirations. Strictly just what my character has.

 

And finally, we come to the scrapper version of Savage Melee.

 

In testing SavM as a stalker, I knew it was a superb set in their hands; it had excellent ST DPS while while still retaining decent AOE capability. I had a feeling the scrapper variant would be a bit weaker on the ST front, given that it had a worse version of hemorrhage compared to stalker + stalker having AS + stalker's savage strike (for some reason) scaling better with crit compared to the scrapper version. In general, I also knew that SavM's crit scaling (on each of its moves) was not the same as other sets; whereas a crit Clobber does double damage (x2), for example, a crit Vicious Slash only does 1.6493x more damage. However, SavM moves tend to be stronger in DPA when compared to most other sets.

 

So how did it do?

 

How I started every attempt: Hasten + Ageless (prepull stage) - Begin timer as soon as I hit Blood Frenzy (Build Up)

 

First Series attempts with following rotation: Vicious Slash - Maiming Slash - Savage Strike - Vicious Slash - repeat (using hemorrhage at 5 stacks of BF)

 

Attempt 1: 2:32 = 385.07

Attempt 2: 2:27 = 393.65

Attempt 3: 2:34 = 381.8

Attempt 4: 2:22 = 402.84

Attempt 5: 2:26 = 395.44

 

Now at this point, I was about to end my testing here as it felt like these results had given me "some" confirmation that this set was definitively weaker in ST than its stalker variant by far, but still produced some reasonably solid ST output for scrapper. However, something bothered me about the rotation: the VS - MS - SS - VS rotation required a fairly hefty amount of recharge in Vicious Slash to achieve "gapless" (close to 280% recharge in Vicious Slash), and my Vicious Slash was an important move because it was used 2 times to every 1 of the others + it had been slotted with the full Superior Critical Strikes set. Hemo really seemed to slow down the rotation, despite its theoretical DPA gain at 5 stacks of blood frenzy; I then remembered that blood frenzy's two effects were to provide an endurance discount AND increase recharge. At that point, I decided to buckle down and do one more series of tests.

 

Second Series Attempts with following rotation: Vicious Slash - Maiming Slash - Savage Strike - Vicious Slash - repeat (no hemorrhage; maintain my stacks of blood frenzy)

 

Attempt 1: 2:14 = 418.96

Attempt 2: 2:16 = 414.75

Attempt 3: 2:16 = 414.75

Attempt 4: 2:10 = 427.76

Attempt 5: 2:14 = 418.96

 

Whaaat?

 

Now it's entirely possible that, in my tiny hemo testing sample, I had just gotten very unlucky and received the "lower performance" range of testing during those times and the opposite for the non-hemo condition. However, this did make me consider the real benefits of maintaining blood frenzy for scrapper (in terms of what you'd gain: increased global recharge + a solid endurance discount), and what I could gain if I dropped hemorrhage completely and utilized those slots elsewhere. If it ended up being virtually identical sustained DPS, then I know which decision I would make!

 

Overall, I believe this set is still stronger in the hands of the stalker (and probably brute, given that brute doesn't have to worry about its crit scaling issue on its move but can take full advantage of its high base damage values) but this is still not too shabby! Reasonably solid ST damage and some decent AOE tools, along with excellent endurance efficiency (and the recharge bonus is nice), makes for a decent set for scrappers.

 

Gooo...not hemorrhage!

[Bill Z Bubba]

Just wanted to verify that the claws fu, focus, slash, shockwave chain backed by musculature and the chance for -resistance in both slash and shockwave is apparently the way to go.

 

Which kinda sucks, honestly. Might as well go build a beam/bio sent at this point.

 

On a happier note, I still greatly enjoy ripping up +4/x8 spawns with my venerable claws/sr brute and scrapper. Brute still seems a bit more on the fun and sturdy side.

[Rumors]

Okay, so, Kaeladin's recent post inspired me to just say screw my wrist and investigate my curiosities.

 

...and I also realized I can just navigate with my right hand and then just click my powers instead of using my left hand >.>

 

 

So, I threw together a quick build to test Hemmorage, Shred, and Waterspout with Savage.  I think Kael's post is proof enough that Hemmorage at 5 stacks all the time = bad, which is what I suspected, but is kinda sad.  But there was still a few other things I wanted to check out.  So, I threw together a quick (and very bad) build with all the powers on it (to eliminate possible variables from differing enhancement bonuses).  Used Savage/Regen, since A) Regen has no offensive benefit and B) ...well, my main is Savage/Regen.  I did not slot any procs save for Achilles -Res on Shred and Waterspout to remove possible randomness from proccing (and to really tank my times, I imagine).  Only used T4 Spiritual Core (to perma-haste since my build is bad) and T4 Hybrid Core Passive (no toggle, just passive) to speed things up a little.  No other incarnate powers.  Build ran Assault and Hasten, but no other pool powers to boost damage.

 

My build is really, really bad, so these times won't be great.  Heck, my main's times are better  But, the point is to compare individual powers with as few variables as possible.

 

 

So, for baseline, used attack chain of Vicious > Main > Savage > micro gap while using Blood Thirst on CD.  I was a little inefficient at the start, so could probably shave a few seconds or so off of 8:24.  I think Vicious > Savage > Maim > Savage would have done much better, or if I had a little more recharge to remove the gap but, eh, no biggie.

 

So Kael's test showed using Hemmorage at 5 stacks all the time resulted in lower DPS.  But what about Hemmorage > Bloodthirst whenever the latter is about to come off CD?  This would get the DOT while maintaining 5 stacks.  Using same chain as above with that thrown in, and doing things more efficiently, my time came to...  8:38.  Actually worse despite not being thrown off from different recharge times than on the normal servers. 

 

So... Hemmorage is either a DPS drop regardless it seems.  :/  Or, assuming a change of the base chain affects things for it, might be DPS neutral at best.

 

 

Okay, now Shred!  Is it worth using it with resistance debuff procs?  It can take up to two at once, but the second one is not identical to the second one Waterspout takes, so I only used Achilles in both to remove potential varibles.  So, the chain here was Vicious > Main > Shred first attempt and second attempt was Vicious > Shred > micro gap.  What were the results?  Did the Achilles debuff give a massive boost to damage?  Would this make my poor, lazy, half-assed build actually do decently?

 

Well...

 

1st attempt:  13:03  (Probably closer to 12 since the Dropship made me pop Moment of Glory three times)

 

2nd attempt:  Gave up at around 7:50 with the Pylon at ~50% HP.  Looked like it'd be a 16-18 minute run.

 

...yeah, Shred is awful for single target damage.  Even with the proc, it's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.  Using both -Res procs ought to be an improvement, but I doubt it'd be a 4+ minute improvement, especially since I'd have to unslot an enhancement giving stats to the move.  And even if I did that, I could take three of Shred's slots to put them into the single target attacks for procs or more stats/bonuses, which ought to give a good boost to the original time.

 

...yes, the ST attacks in this build are only 5-slotted. 

 

Shred is probably still worthwhile if you can nail multiple targets.  But, we can't squeeze multiple Pylons together to test AoE damage so... dunno!

 

 

Ooookay, so, what about Waterspout with the -res debuff?  So far, everything's pointing to "just use the basic three attacks for ST only".  Is this true?  Is this the only way to do things when it comes to big, beefy targets that Savage encounters?  Well...

 

7:21

 

Hoooray, an improvement by about a minute over the original time!  Yes, my first time was a little inefficient, but I didn't know the best time to pop Spout in my chain, so there's probably improvements to be made here too.  And this is only with an Achilles, it too can also take a second -Res proc.  As far as Pylon times go, Waterspout is by far the superior option, especially if you can somehow squeeze enough recharge in your build to keep it up all the time (I had around ~15-20 seconds downtime).

 

For other situations though, Waterspout might not be so viable for general use since it might go chasing minions, knock things away, or whatever else.  Still though, if your AV is cooperative, it could be useful for AV soloing.

 

 

There's still one thing I wanna test, but I need to stop and go do other things.  But basically, I'm wondering if Blood Thirst's activation time might be causing the move to be DPS-neutral or a DPS-drop.  I mean, even if it is, it's still good for alpha strikes or doing double maxed Rending Flurries for clearing crowds in a pinch.  But, definitely need to compare my time to alpha-only and maybe Blood Thirst + Gaussian proc.

[Frosticus]

Beta Server (Justin)

 

Psionic Melee/Bio Armor Scrapper

 

T4 Musculature Core Paragon

T4 Reactive Radial Flawless Interface

T4 Ageless Core Epiphany

T4 Assault Radial Embodiment (I did not use the clicky/toggle on any tests; just the passive damage bonus)

 

Offensive Adaptation

No outside buffs, no recovery serum, no inspirations. Strictly just what my character has.

 

Ah, Psi Melee. One of our new sets, and also with some wonky documentation attached to it.

 

I'll be perfectly honest; I had done some homework on this set. I knew that Pine's + the in-game info was incorrect; it always calculated the extra insight-based damage in each case (meaning it was greatly inflating the DPA/Damage of psi melee's moves). But the question was; what kind of uptime could we model for psi melee?

 

At first, I initially pegged insight's uptime at about 40% (meaning the psi melee moves were benefiting from insight additional damage 40% of the time). After modeling this, I decided to test it out myself on these pylons to see what we got.

 

As always, the build used a pretty standard template similar to my other /bio scrappers, oriented towards general PvE (e.g. softcapped s/l defenses). This one was almost a carbon copy of my fiery melee/ice melee characters (in terms of slotting).

 

How I started every attempt: Hasten + Ageless (prepull stage) - Begin timer as soon as I hit Build-Up.

 

Attempts with following rotation: Psi Blade - Telekinetic Blow - Psi Blade - Greater Psi Blade - repeat

 

Attempt 1: 2:43 = 368.05

Attempt 2: 2:47 = 362.42

Attempt 3: 3:29 (yikes) = 316.28

Attempt 4: 3:12 = 332.52

Attempt 5: 2:57 = 349.44

Attempt 6: 2:51 = 357.04

 

Wow. For comparison, CLAWS did better ST DPS consistently while packing a stronger AOE kit. So what's going on here?

 

Insight. Specifically, insight uptime.

 

Psi Melee is effectively "two" sets; it's either a very mediocore set (DPA-wise) outside of insight, and a great set within insight. It's obviously very satisfying to see a large insight-boosted greater psi blade chunk someone.

 

But consistency is the issue here; I originally modeled insight uptime at about 40%, but this turned out to be a substantial overestimation. It has a lockout of 15s after it's triggered (either from naturally wearing off or being consumed by greater psi blade). However, there would be stretches where I'd literally wail on the pylon for 15+ seconds, OUTSIDE of lockout, without triggering insight. I'd place insight uptime probably closer to 15-20%, and that actually still might be an exaggeration.

 

You'd honestly see better results with something like psi blade - telekinetic blow - psi blade - mental strike (lol) and completely phase out greater psi blade, but I'm not entirely sure and it'd still be aggressively mediocore.

 

In real gameplay, psi obviously has the advantage of being a damage type that isn't commonly resisted. In addition, you have time between pulls for your lockout to wear off. However, it also brings the disadvantages of insight being unreliable in its proccing, and when psi damage is resisted (e.g. Rikti, robots), it is resisted hard.

 

This is definitely a set where I hope the devs will be able to do a a pass on, at some point. It's a cool set aesthetically (although I prefer psi blades more than psi fists!), but it has some mechanical issues that are detracting from some of its potential strengths.

 

it may have changed as I haven't run a pylon since well before incarnate content was added on live, but back then they had resistance to everything except psi. As a result I had to account for that when testing my ill/cold/ice which simar to psi melee didnt do entirely psi damage, but the psi damage portion was skewing things a bit.

[Sir Myshkin]

Seeing some times for Rad/Bio, and having feared that I just wasn't going to be happy with ST output on Rad without outside damage buffs, decided to take my Rad/DA Pylon Hunting. Didn't go the same path of DB > PW > RS > CS that Kaeladin did. Even with Ageless the recharge just wasn't there long-term. I stuck to keeping Ageless around just to kill the last 15/s of Hasten and that's the only purpose it served for me. Verified I do have the recovery to sustain my build without its other benefits, but for these purposes, I used it, since I ported over to test to get access to it.

 

My build as it sits currently on Everlasting (no Incarnates): 7:15 (215) using (BU > DB) CS > PS > RSip > DB, and BU pops up exactly to fit right before Siphon every third cycle. Intentionally starting with DB to try and set Containment, and then flipping so it becomes the "end" with Siphon (consume) into Blow (rebuild). Stuck with using Siphon because of its practical application in a chain, its the better attack (overall), and despite it "absorbing radiation," it still triggers containment due to the way it stacks (Hit with two types, proc containment, then heal, and absorb radiation from target). Confirmed it repeatedly in the combat log that so long as DB sets containment, Siphon would trigger containment before it absorbed. I'd dare say this was the only situation where containment seemed consistent since the power was forced to acknowledge and react from it.

 

So I took to modifying some things from what I planned, just to see. I have -Res proc in Irradiated Ground (power lays a pet down every 5/s, combat log showed consistent proc at least once every 20/s, so matched duration I needed). Achilles Proc in CS, +50% Critical in Siphon.

 

T4 Musculature Core, T4 Ageless Core (for minimal rech), T4 Degen Core, T4 Hybrid Radial (passive only).

 

Now for the "this didn't make any sense so I kept killing Pylons and it never made sense, so I quite trying" numbers:

 

6:05 - 232 <-- Got KB a lot

5:43 - 239 <-- Ran again cause, KB sucks even when you have 7pts against it

5:12 - 250 <-- Got bombarded by Drop Ship, activated DR just once, and ended up with a best time? Strange!

5:28 - 244 <-- Ran another because the last time was stupid different

5:20 - 247 <-- Now I'm jealous of the 5:12, what the hell

5:51 - 237 <-- So it looks like this is what happens when you miss DB enough

5:08 - 252 <-- And this is apparently what it looks like when you run perfect, my last run breaker cause I was 3 v 3 on two sides of the spectrum

 

So I guess that shows how much the added +Dam of Bio's Offensive really twists Radiation as well, and I had Death Shroud adding into the mix. I now have to go figure out how to repair some of the configuration scramble I caused to fit Achilles into the build.

 

Edit: Removed a random line missed from deletion before posting.

[Auroxis]

Doesn't Irradiated Ground being a pseudo-pet allow its achilles' -res proc to stack with an achilles' from your attacks? Since it's technically a different caster?

 

Slotting both -res procs into Irradiated Ground seems like a good idea regardless.

[Kaeladin]

Doesn't Irradiated Ground being a pseudo-pet allow its achilles' -res proc to stack with an achilles' from your attacks? Since it's technically a different caster?

 

Slotting both -res procs into Irradiated Ground seems like a good idea regardless.

 

I remember hearing about that as well. Regardless of whether the two procs stack or not in this specific case, I did fit an achilles into my irradiated ground during my testing.

[jjolin01]

Fire/Energy Aura Stalker.

 

Tier 3 Musculature, Ageless, Interface, and assault. No Lore or judgement used.

 

Rotation was Greater Fire Sword, Cremate, Firesword, Assassin's strike.

 

240 seconds, give or take 2 seconds. Only did one run, and missed a few attacks. Damn you 5%!

 

If anyone has any input, I'd be happy to hear it.

 

 

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[Dan Petro]

2:17 with a Martial Arts/Fire scrapper PvE Build (not pylon specific).  DPS of ~407

 

Tier 3 musculature / tier 3 degen/ tier 3 ageless / tier 3 +dmg hybrid.

[Sir Myshkin]

Doesn't Irradiated Ground being a pseudo-pet allow its achilles' -res proc to stack with an achilles' from your attacks? Since it's technically a different caster?

 

Slotting both -res procs into Irradiated Ground seems like a good idea regardless.

 

I remember hearing about that as well. Regardless of whether the two procs stack or not in this specific case, I did fit an achilles into my irradiated ground during my testing.

 

I hadn't initially done it thinking they wouldn't stack. Respec on my Rad/DA today while test is down, grabbed an extra Achilles Heel and parked up next to a Pylon with Power Analyzer open with the IG patch going. Gave a good 20/s to see a consistent pattern and then tossed Contaminated Strike on auto with another Achilles. Only ever got one active stack, and which-ever was the most recent successful trigger was what stayed "on top." Given that, though, it was pretty much Irradiated Ground dropping both procs consistently. A few instances where it dropped for five seconds, and then both -20% procs reapplied again. Whether that's just a stacking issue with Power Analyzer, or what, the Pylon never went below -12%, I'm going to assume it still considers IG as "Me" and only applies the one source. With how consistent IG was though (watched it for six minutes), I think its a safe call to rely on that for both and use that sixth slot in CS for some other proc.

[Auroxis]

Doesn't Irradiated Ground being a pseudo-pet allow its achilles' -res proc to stack with an achilles' from your attacks? Since it's technically a different caster?

 

Slotting both -res procs into Irradiated Ground seems like a good idea regardless.

 

I remember hearing about that as well. Regardless of whether the two procs stack or not in this specific case, I did fit an achilles into my irradiated ground during my testing.

 

I hadn't initially done it thinking they wouldn't stack. Respec on my Rad/DA today while test is down, grabbed an extra Achilles Heel and parked up next to a Pylon with Power Analyzer open with the IG patch going. Gave a good 20/s to see a consistent pattern and then tossed Contaminated Strike on auto with another Achilles. Only ever got one active stack, and which-ever was the most recent successful trigger was what stayed "on top." Given that, though, it was pretty much Irradiated Ground dropping both procs consistently. A few instances where it dropped for five seconds, and then both -20% procs reapplied again. Whether that's just a stacking issue with Power Analyzer, or what, the Pylon never went below -12%, I'm going to assume it still considers IG as "Me" and only applies the one source. With how consistent IG was though (watched it for six minutes), I think its a safe call to rely on that for both and use that sixth slot in CS for some other proc.

 

Really speaks volumes about Rad vs. Spines for farming, too.

[DSorrow]

Doesn't Irradiated Ground being a pseudo-pet allow its achilles' -res proc to stack with an achilles' from your attacks? Since it's technically a different caster?

 

Slotting both -res procs into Irradiated Ground seems like a good idea regardless.

 

I remember hearing about that as well. Regardless of whether the two procs stack or not in this specific case, I did fit an achilles into my irradiated ground during my testing.

 

I hadn't initially done it thinking they wouldn't stack. Respec on my Rad/DA today while test is down, grabbed an extra Achilles Heel and parked up next to a Pylon with Power Analyzer open with the IG patch going. Gave a good 20/s to see a consistent pattern and then tossed Contaminated Strike on auto with another Achilles. Only ever got one active stack, and which-ever was the most recent successful trigger was what stayed "on top." Given that, though, it was pretty much Irradiated Ground dropping both procs consistently. A few instances where it dropped for five seconds, and then both -20% procs reapplied again. Whether that's just a stacking issue with Power Analyzer, or what, the Pylon never went below -12%, I'm going to assume it still considers IG as "Me" and only applies the one source. With how consistent IG was though (watched it for six minutes), I think its a safe call to rely on that for both and use that sixth slot in CS for some other proc.

 

I have a vague memory about the -Res procs not stacking even across several players, but I could be wrong about that.

[Obitus]

I have a vague memory about the -Res procs not stacking even across several players, but I could be wrong about that.

 

Ditto.  Pretty sure I mentioned this in one of my big attack-chain comparison posts years and years ago.  Of course the wayback machine is down for maintenance right now, so I can't double check.  (EDIT:  here it is.)

 

Given that the -Res procs aren't team-stackable, I think they're a little overrated.  Or rather the capacity to slot Res procs in a given set's attack chain is a little overrated.  They help a lot in Pylon tests, and when soloing AVs, but in general play the Res procs are unlikely to provide much in the way of noticeable benefit.  There's a solid chance that they'll be redundant in high-end teams, even against extremely hard targets (either because teammates are already using the -Res procs specifically, or because the hard target's been debuffed into the stone age generally.)

 

None of this is to say that long-term single-target DPS isn't a fun, interesting, and useful basis for comparing sets.  This thread has always been one of my favorites; I especially appreciate Kaeladin's testing efforts over the last few weeks.  Basically I'm just repeating a variant of Nihilii's sensible caution about Water Spout.

 

While I'm here, I'd like to echo a previous poster, RE Psi melee.  My memory of the Pylon is that it has 20% resistance to everything except Psi, which means that the Psi scores in this thread are probably inflated a bit.  Take for example, Kaeladin's best result in his recent Psi post:

 

Attempt 1: 2:43 = 368.05

 

If psi damage is unresisted by the Pylon, then a pure-psi character with that time would have scored ~290 DPS.  Of course, Psi melee's attacks appear to mix damage types, so the 290 number isn't quite realistic either; it represents the lower bound, with Kaeladin's being the higher bound.  Still, if 368 was a sad result, then the reality is probably a good bit sadder.

[marcussmythe]

Some general observations (mostly extracted from Kaledin's Numbers, since they are all tested under the same conditions, and by the same person - leveling any questions of player connectivity/lag/execution - note that these are very rough spitballs)

 

Moving from Scrapper to Stalker was worth ~15% Final Damage (for the two sets, DB and Savage, that were tested on both Scrapper and Stalker)

Moving from 'not Bioarmor' to 'Bioarmor - Offensive' was worth ~27% Final Damage (for the one set, DB, that was tested on both Bio and not-bio)

Moving from 'not TW' to 'TW' was worth at LEAST ~47% Final Damage (This is War Mace, the #2 Scrapper Set, to Titan Weapons)

 

The best damage set is Titan Weapons, second best is WM.

The best Stalker set is Dual Blades.  If WM or TW were Stalker sets, they would outperform DB.

 

Testing Ideas:

What does a TW/Bio Brute put out?  What does a TW/??? Brute put out?  I'm curious as to how much Brutes 'pay' for easier leveling and 90% Resist Caps.  Im also curious to how much tanks pay in damage for an easier trip to resist caps and more HP.

 

 

Predictions: 

TW/Bio Brute= ~ 600 DPS

TW/??? Brute= ~ 500 DPS

TW/Bio Tank= ~450 DPS

TW/???? Tank=  ~350 DPS

 

If the above numbers pan out (they are WAGs based on eyeballing of Build Momentum buff and uptime, and the above observed ratios) then I THINK we are going to see Titan Weapons push even the likes of a Dark or Invuln Tank up near Psi/Bio Scrapper performance, and TW Brutes, even in NON-Bioarmor putting out DPS on par with the better scrapper and decent bioarmor sets.  I'll try to do some testing, but until I can manage the same DPS numbers as Kael (I cant, I dont know if execution or connection issue) any data I bring to the table is 'dirty'

 

 

[Kaeladin]

Given that the -Res procs aren't team-stackable, I think they're a little overrated.  Or rather the capacity to slot Res procs in a given set's attack chain is a little overrated.  They help a lot in Pylon tests, and when soloing AVs, but in general play the Res procs are unlikely to provide much in the way of noticeable benefit.  There's a solid chance that they'll be redundant in high-end teams, even against extremely hard targets (either because teammates are already using the -Res procs specifically, or because the hard target's been debuffed into the stone age generally.)

 

An excellent point, and this is also one of the reasons why the high DPS sets even without -res procs (e.g. Martial Arts, Fiery Melee, Ice Melee) are still pretty strong because of what actual damage they can output in a real gameplay setting. Pylons are fun to beat up, but they should be taken with some measure of caution (and for fun observations, particularly about how the sets actually operate e.g. psi melee). A combination of sustained ST DPS, "feeling the sets out" in a general gameplay setting, and spreadsheet data (which I'm still working on finishing mine) can be used in combination to draw some reasonable conclusions about how the sets are doing.

 

And at the end of the day, concept + a good build supercedes raw potential numbers, from my perspective. Much as I will continue to emphasize, and discuss, the numerical aspects of the game, we each define what is our version of "fun" and actualize it to the best of our abilities. This data can simply help us make more informed decisions and comparisons, when called for.

[Auroxis]

Keep in mind that while the -res procs don't stack from multiple casters, they're still -res procs which scale your whole team's damage. So if you do happen to be the only one with -res procs in a team of 8, the advantage is massive.

[marcussmythe]

Keep in mind that while the -res procs don't stack from multiple casters, they're still -res procs which scale your whole team's damage. So if you do happen to be the only one with -res procs in a team of 8, the advantage is massive.

 

A good point, they are pretty 'swingy' in their value that way.  And of course, each proc being present on the team after the first adds some value (though diminishing) as it reflects increased uptime.

[Kaeladin]

If psi damage is unresisted by the Pylon, then a pure-psi character with that time would have scored ~290 DPS.  Of course, Psi melee's attacks appear to mix damage types, so the 290 number isn't quite realistic either; it represents the lower bound, with Kaeladin's being the higher bound.  Still, if 368 was a sad result, then the reality is probably a good bit sadder.

 

Tossing a power analyzer on a pylon reveals 20% resistance to all (including psi and toxic). Not sure if this was an update at some point, but it might at least save a little face to what psi melee has.