Pylon Damage Thread

[Sovera]

4 hours ago, StriderIV said:

I have such a love/hate relationship with the Blood Thirst animation. On one hand, it’s so cool and really RAGE like. On the other, it takes fooooorrrreeeeeevvvveeerrrr to animate.

 

...which would be okay as long as the power is adjusted. But no, it's slower -and- weaker. I see this legacy all over the sets where something is slower -and- weaker than a counterpart.

 

It makes more sense that fast animations mean the power is weaker and slower animations compensate with a larger result, but this logic was apparently not sound.

[Carnifax]

Hi folks. I'm not here to contribute. but to scrounge data (and not to derail).

 

I done wrote this over the last few days : 

 

Now I know things are being calculated wonky but to figure out why data always helps. So if you've got a Log file synced with a Pylon run, or if you wanna run one (use /local STARTPARSE and /local ENDPARSE) and upload it to this tool. Then PM me with the UUID and what you calculated your DPS as and hopefully it'll help tweak / fix. 

 

We now return you to your regular broadcast. 

 

[Krisfang]

On 3/13/2021 at 9:49 AM, EidoIruson said:

Finally got my DM/SD from live finished and just did a single run

 

343.25 dps - Assault Hybrid slotted, but not active

 

I was Tektronics on the old forums, this is from almost 10 years ago lol

https://web.archive.org/web/20120906194613/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showpost.php?p=3554843&postcount=1434

I just booted homecoming up for the first time - I was Igor the Mad, many years ago. Maybe less mad now but we'll find out. Working on a energy melee/shield scrapper and am excited to see what it can do. Warms my heart to see all these names still here after all those years. 

[Krisfang]

First pass with a few of the incarnate abilities slotted, 2:58 which comes to 343-ish? 

Will update when I finish incarnate build. Energy transfer hits hard. 

[Ratch_]

TW/ENA/MU Scrapper.

Crit Strikes and FFB proc in FT.

Goal is to sit at recharge cap as much as possible so that you can do the dream chain of:

Build Momentum: FT -> Rend -> (Snipe/Arc/Whirling) -> FT -> Rend -> (Snipe/Arc/Whirling) on repeat. FT will benefit off of it's own Crit Strikes proc which is honestly kinda insane. 

On average, build momentum was active half/half since it last for 10s and kept recharge around every 20s. 

Hybrid Assault Radial (off), Degen Radial, Ageless Core, Musc. Core -> Avg. 1m 55s.

Hybrid Assault Radial (on) -> 1m 30s.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Ratch_

[Kanil]

rad/bio/mu scrapper

 

t4 muscle/degen/ageless core/assault radial off

recovery serum used

 

avg: 1m42s

 

Spoiler

 

-- newstring

1m35s (trying new string)

1m42s (1 devblow whiff)

1m44s (1 devblow whiff)

1m48s (3 devblow whiffs)

1m38s

1m47s (2 devblow whiffs, 2 siphon whiffs)

1m48s (2 devblow whiff, 1 snipe whiff)

1m32s

1m38s

 

 

 

so, this build has... some real big caveats - it's only permahasten with ageless AND applications of FF from radioactive smash. it's so end heavy that it needs to use recovery serum for prolonged ST strings if there's no parasitic aura. it has crit strikes on devastating blow so your opener is slow as fuck.

 

it's passable enough when it comes to ST damage and super fun in live play ultimately because of how much damage devastating blow like, does (and crit atom smasher->ball lightning) but it's definitely the roughest ride i've had on a bio scrapper in terms of end management.

 

the string is devastating blow->rad smash->rad siphon->zapp, alternated with DB->smash->siphon->smash->zapp.

 

there's a build up proc in zapp that fires off bizarrely regularly, so that has to be accounted for too. overall a super, super proc heavy build with tons of issues related to how much proccing has to be done to get the powers up to par damage wise.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Kanil

[Ratch_]

So has anyone tried this with leadership* assault toggled on and toggled off? I've done several runs on this tw/ea/mu scrapper and literally had no difference in overall pylon clear time with assault on or off. I'm still in the same 1m52-1m58 clear range very consistently. I was expecting my time to drop above 2mins but I'm not experiencing this at all. 

 

Hearing others experience on this would be helpful because I am thoroughly confused 😕

Edited April 20, 2021 by Ratch_

[Pzn]

6 hours ago, Ratch_ said:

So has anyone tried this with assault toggled on and toggled off? I've done several runs on this tw/ea/mu scrapper and literally had no difference in overall pylon clear time with assault on or off. I'm still in the same 1m52-1m58 clear range very consistently. I was expecting my time to drop above 2mins but I'm not experiencing this at all. 

 

Hearing others experience on this would be helpful because I am thoroughly confused 😕

Really annoying when this happens.  I think it's just RNG.  There's a pretty big variation in pylon times when criticals are involved.  You are probably getting more criticals on the runs with hybrid off which evens them out.  If you keep testing you should see some difference, especially with T4 core on a scrapper.  When you finally hit that run with good crits and hybrid running your time should drop.

[Ratch_]

1 hour ago, Pzn said:

Really annoying when this happens.  I think it's just RNG.  There's a pretty big variation in pylon times when criticals are involved.  You are probably getting more criticals on the runs with hybrid off which evens them out.  If you keep testing you should see some difference, especially with T4 core on a scrapper.  When you finally hit that run with good crits and hybrid running your time should drop.

That's my bad, I meant leadership assault. I was curious on how big of a difference a 10.5% dam difference would really be and I don't notice a clear time difference. I'll run more tests since what you said would probably still apply!

Edited April 20, 2021 by Ratch_

[StrikerFox]

1 hour ago, Ratch_ said:

That's my bad, I meant leadership assault. I was curious on how big of a difference a 10.5% dam difference would really be and I don't notice a clear time difference. I'll run more tests since what you said would probably still apply!

 

Don't expect Leadership Assault to perform miracles, +10.5% isn't a lot. Couple additional misses from one run to the next could negate that bonus. I recommend just hitting a pylon a few times, with each one of your attacks, with Assault on and off. Then do a damage comparison from the logs. It would eliminate rng from your assessment. 

 

There's also things like BU, crits, Achilles' or other debuffs you can try to test/factor in.

[Ratch_]

1 hour ago, StrikerFox said:

 

Don't expect Leadership Assault to perform miracles, +10.5% isn't a lot. Couple additional misses from one run to the next could negate that bonus. I recommend just hitting a pylon a few times, with each one of your attacks, with Assault on and off. Then do a damage comparison from the logs. It would eliminate rng from your assessment. 

 

There's also things like BU, crits, Achilles' or other debuffs you can try to test/factor in.

That's understandable and I can see dmg differences. I was just hoping to be able to see a measurable difference in overall clear time to know if the damage buff (however slight) would end up saving me an attack or so. I figured I'd at least see a somewhat noticeable time differential i guess

[Ratch_]

Oh, I forgot to mention that I did some runs on a TW/BIO scrapper with the only intent being seeing if the new Enflame would be a time saver or not.

I did about 15 pylons in total, 8-9 of them with enflame and 6-7 without enflame.

WIth enflame I was averaging around 1m25 -> with the outliers being 1m42 and one outstanding run at 1m16s.

Without enflame I was averaging around 1m32 -> with less variability most likely due to me having had practice from the previous pylons. I never hit 1m25s without enflame. Fastest I got was 1m28s.

Overall, enflame was cutting my time down by ~5s...10s at most. I would only cast it once since I was never going longer than 2mins so retoggling enflame would be a time loss since I wouldn't get the full DPS out of it.

[SomeGuy]

I just tested Moonbeam, Water Spout, and Melt Armor on a DM/BIO scrap. All got similar enough times for me to personally say it comes down to preference.

[DarknessEternal]

Anyone got any tips for sifting through this thread for actual data?  Did it all get consolidated anywhere?

[Ratch_]

Got really curious about Crit strikes locations in EM and there was some curiosity from others in the discord for me to run some tests and check the pylon time differences between crit strikes in ET or BS. Unsure of how to build a string for TF crit strikes but I think we can just reference nihilli's post for that.

All these runs used t4 musc core, t4 degen radial, t4 ageless core, t4 assault radial hybrid (off). 15 runs with each build.

(EM/BIO/SOUL)

> Recorded Time || Time in seconds

Crit Strikes in ET

Spoiler

1m14    74
1m33    93
1m33    93
1m26    86
1m14    74
1m09    69
1m13    73
1m22    82
1m23    83
1m16    76
1m22    82
1m24    84
1m25    85
1m19    79
1m20    80

Avg: 1m20-1m21    80.8

Crit Strikes in BS

Spoiler

1m21    81
1m30    90
1m13    73
1m28    88
1m29    89
1m13    73
1m24    84
1m08    68
1m19    79
1m32    92
1m28    88
1m20    80
1m31    91
1m15    75
1m23    83

Avg: 1m22-1m23  82.6

The overall conclusion I'm drawing is that EM is badass and does some pretty absurd amounts of damage....

Note: if I ended up converting the mm:ss format incorrectly anywhere, please let me know and i can update the averages accordingly.

Also, thanks @Monos King for hanging out with me! haha 🙂

Edited May 7, 2021 by Ratch_

[brasilgringo]

9 hours ago, Ratch_ said:

Got really curious about Crit strikes locations in EM and there was some curiosity from others in the discord for me to run some tests and check the pylon time differences between crit strikes in ET or BS. Unsure of how to build a string for TF crit strikes but I think we can just reference nihilli's post for that.

All these runs used t4 musc core, t4 degen radial, t4 ageless core, t4 assault radial hybrid (off). 15 runs with each build.

(EM/BIO/SOUL)

> Recorded Time || Time in seconds

Crit Strikes in ET

  Hide contents

1m14    74
1m33    93
1m33    93
1m26    86
1m14    74
1m09    69
1m13    73
1m22    82
1m23    83
1m16    76
1m22    82
1m24    84
1m25    85
1m19    79
1m20    80

Avg: 1m20-1m21    80.86

Crit Strikes in BS

  Hide contents

1m21    81
1m30    90
1m13    73
1m28    88
1m29    89
1m13    73
1m24    84
1m8      68
1m19    79
1m32    92
1m28    88
1m20    80
1m31    91
1m15    75
1m23    83

Avg: 1m22-1m23  82.6

The overall conclusion I'm drawing is that EM is badass and does some pretty absurd amounts of damage....

Note: if I ended up converting the mm:ss format incorrectly anywhere, please let me know and i can update the averages accordingly.

Also, thanks @Monos King for hanging out with me! haha 🙂

 

I've got my CS in TF and it *feels* like it goes off more there -- which give a crit to EM and let me fit in 1-2 more quick attacks that benefit from higher crit %, such as BS and FireBlast or Fireball and BS.  Curious if you test it with TF.

[Ratch_]

I did not, mainly due to being unsure of how to proc slot TF in regards to utilizing the Crit Strikes proc, but even moreso to just not certain what a sustained attack string would look like for that.

I could probably figure out the slotting easy enough. For the string I'm assuming something like:

TF -> BS -> Snipe -> ET -> BS -> TF

(double energy store)

TF -> ET -> Snipe -> BS -> EP -> ET -> TF

I only worry about slotting it in TF since EM gets a massive amount of damage out of double fast ET and with this slot location TF wouldn't be able to benefit from the extra crit chance.

[brasilgringo]

7 hours ago, Ratch_ said:

I only worry about slotting it in TF since EM gets a massive amount of damage out of double fast ET and with this slot location TF wouldn't be able to benefit from the extra crit chance.

Fair point.  I wanted to make sure that I could rely on it triggering more so that I could hit Fireball after it, more than anything else (turns out, as far as I can tell, that GZ and RadTherapy won't crit).  I typically go TF(running up to mobs) -> Fireball -> BS -> ET for normal mobs as ET doesn't seem to benefit that much from crit damage, as far as I can see in combat logs.  For a Pylon, I suppose you're chain is likely better or put TF->BS-[filler]->ET ?  I just felt that I got more consistent crits with the proc in TF than BS.   And getting that crit on Fireball in groups makes me giddy.

[LeapingLigers]

Been playing around with a grav/storm controller after they buffed singularity. I've been getting 1:50 - 2min times on him. It's actually pretty fun. Tornado + Storm on cd and then fish for impact procs.

[SomeGuy]

EM/ELM/Gloom Brute

Agility/Reactive/Ageless

2:40

 

Considering the only brute I've had get better times in the past were TW/FA and TW/ELM I'm pretty happy with this, especially considering how survivable electric armor is.

 

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[SomeGuy]

All these are T4 Muscle/Ageless/Reactive.

 

EM/BIO/MB

1:20

 

DB/BIO/MB

1;40

I'll probably go to a melt armor build with this one (or water spout). I was getting 1:30s with melt armor before. Before the snipe changes I was getting 1:20s with DB.

 

Claws/Bio/MB

1:41

 

DM/BIO/MA (Melt Armor)

2:20

I really like this build for some reason.  I did moonbeam, waterspout, and melt armor with this guy. All times were similar enough for me to go with melt armor/fireball.

 

Yeah, I know these would be better with degen, but whatever. I had a pretty strong suspicion the scrapper epic snipe changes were really going to effect dual blades and claws. I was right. EM seems pretty uneffected by it.

 

Claws is straight up a murder machine in normal play because of how heavy it's AOE is. Taking fireball on DM is a real game changer for the build too. Either way, you are absolutely just dumping tons of damage with these combos. Maybe I'll try these with assault running.

Edited May 12, 2021 by SomeGuy
Anecdotal stuff.

[Sovera]

On 5/12/2021 at 3:19 AM, SomeGuy said:

All these are T4 Muscle/Ageless/Reactive.

 

EM/BIO/MB

1:20

 

DB/BIO/MB

1;40

I'll probably go to a melt armor build with this one (or water spout). I was getting 1:30s with melt armor before. Before the snipe changes I was getting 1:20s with DB.

 

Claws/Bio/MB

1:41

 

DM/BIO/MA (Melt Armor)

2:20

I really like this build for some reason.  I did moonbeam, waterspout, and melt armor with this guy. All times were similar enough for me to go with melt armor/fireball.

 

Yeah, I know these would be better with degen, but whatever. I had a pretty strong suspicion the scrapper epic snipe changes were really going to effect dual blades and claws. I was right. EM seems pretty uneffected by it.

 

Claws is straight up a murder machine in normal play because of how heavy it's AOE is. Taking fireball on DM is a real game changer for the build too. Either way, you are absolutely just dumping tons of damage with these combos. Maybe I'll try these with assault running.

 

After some testing Reactive seems to have no impact on regular play (more testing from different ATs required) and zero influence on an AV. The 75% chance for dot version does for maps however. Degenerative with 75% for DoT is a middle ground that shaves some time off maps while having a substantial impact on AVs.

 

This is of less import on pylons who gobble up every scrap of -res thrown at them which is why -res effects are disproportionately important for those tests. Even so Degenerative will probably be a bit better (and still work on AV/GMs).

[ScarySai]

Now that videos are back, I do hope the enthusiasm for this thread picks back up.

[SomeGuy]

13 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

After some testing Reactive seems to have no impact on regular play (more testing from different ATs required) and zero influence on an AV. The 75% chance for dot version does for maps however. Degenerative with 75% for DoT is a middle ground that shaves some time off maps while having a substantial impact on AVs.

 

This is of less import on pylons who gobble up every scrap of -res thrown at them which is why -res effects are disproportionately important for those tests. Even so Degenerative will probably be a bit better (and still work on AV/GMs).

 

This is actually a very old conversation (with one of the people working under the hood here now that I think about it), but I just go reactive on things at this point because EBs and below, degen does a % of HP. Monster/AVs is a set/flat amount. So, regular HP AVs degen wins. But stuff starts ramping up in HP? You start to lessen the gap between degen and reactive. And there is absolutely a tipping point. Hence, I don't even think about it and just go reactive because I do play these guys outside of punching pylons. Also, I don't value (this is a personal thing, each their own obviously) how fast I clear trash/bosses/EBs, within reason. This is a big reason why I never enjoyed sets like spines, They just seem to stop in their tracks once a boss or higher shows up. Also, I REALLY enjoy melee sets like Dark Melee and defender blast sets like sonic,, Basically, I want high HP stuff to die. I've never failed a TF/trial when there was enough DPS for the big bad. I've seen a lot of things fail because of a lack of strong single target DPS. AOE DPS means nothing on this stuff.

[Sovera]

1 minute ago, SomeGuy said:

 

This is actually a very old conversation (with one of the people working under the hood here now that I think about it), but I just go reactive on things at this point because EBs and below, degen does a % of HP. Monster/AVs is a set/flat amount. So, regular HP AVs degen wins. But stuff starts ramping up in HP? You start to lessen the gap between degen and reactive. And there is absolutely a tipping point. Hence, I don't even think about it and just go reactive because I do play these guys outside of punching pylons. Also, I don't value (this is a personal thing, each their own obviously) how fast I clear trash/bosses/EBs, within reason. This is a big reason why I never enjoyed sets like spines, They just seem to stop in their tracks once a boss or higher shows up. Also, I REALLY enjoy melee sets like Dark Melee and defender blast sets like sonic,, Basically, I want high HP stuff to die. I've never failed a TF/trial when there was enough DPS for the big bad. I've seen a lot of things fail because of a lack of strong single target DPS. AOE DPS means nothing on this stuff.

 

I'm just reporting what I've tested. This is not math or spreadsheet talk.

 

Reactive OR Degenerative had little to no measurable effect on regular enemies. Tested by clearing farm maps and checking the times. Differences in clearing times happen once switching to the 75% DoT chance instead of 75% debuff time. There was no difference between runs done with no Interface slotted and runs with Reactive 75% debuff. With 75% DoT it lowered the times in one minute (from seven minutes to six minutes, no Assault clicked, no inspirations in order to make it repeatable). Degenerative with 75% debuff showed no difference from runs with no Interface slotted. With 75% chance for DoT it lowered the times in about 30 seconds. So, not much, but it's a measurable effect at least.

 

Tested on multiple different +4 (+3 with Alpha) AVs Reactive 75% DoT or debuff had zero effect on killing time, same times as doing a test with no Interface slotted. Degenerative had a large impact on AVs be it 75% DoT or 75% debuff (1+ minute difference). The uptime of the debuff stacks obviously was enough to make do with only 25% chance for them to happen.

 

So from what I've tested Degenerative 75% DoT helps killing more quickly regular mobs and helps killing more quickly AVs.

 

 

I only tested on Tankers. It is not difficult to test on different ATs though, as long as we use the PTS. Just do a run without Interface slotted. Then a run with the Reactive of your choice, then one with Degenerative 75% DoT.

 

My only point is that Degenerative works on both scenarios while Reactive only for maps, and only with the 75% DoT implying the fact it is a Medium DoT (instead of Degenerative's Minor DoT) that actually makes an effect rather than the -res debuffing.

 

Which makes sense since the -res effect is small to begin with, then needs to stacks (and mobs probably died by then) and the -res is then nerfed by the purple patch.

 

 

But it's like I've said in the past: testing instead of gut feelings or spreadsheets is the best. If you do decide to test let us know since more data is always welcome.