Pylon Damage Thread

[SomeGuy]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

I sent a DM to a few folks for their thoughts, but I might as well ask here. 

1. Are we talking about the pylon that's to the left as you exit the RWZ VG base? (choice of two at the moment; I thought there was a third, but it's not there) Or the "wild" pylons, that are needed to be taken down for MSR? 


I'm just at a loss as what to think. Surely they were mistaken. I see no way any blaster is going to be able to do that in a minute if they aren't using Reds, Hybrid or other external buffs/debuffs.  To be clear: No insps, no temps, just my blaster. No incarnates, other than alpha, reactive radial, Assault Core, Musculature Core. 

 

 

1. Yes. Not the ones in the wild. You can definitely get sub-2 minute, even sub-1 minute, times as a blaster. I've done it and Blasters aren't even my specialty. And I'm talking just straight build. No outside buffs for end, damage, or recharge. 

 

As for end? I almost always go the Ageless: Recovery route on my damage dealers. Also, the recovery serums are dirt cheap at the P2W vendor. 

Edited 22 hours ago by SomeGuy

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 hours ago, SomeGuy said:

1. Yes. Not the ones in the wild.

 

WTH? These must have been added during my last break. Had no idea we had training pylons now. Not sure how I feel about that. I always considered the incoming damage/knock from the real pylons to be part of the test. As I'm typing this out and kept testing, I realized I like them. I can bring out my squishies I never really bothered with before.

 

BZB Scrapper still sits at the 2:10 to 2:30 mark with hybrid enabled. Claws/SR/Nrg. Standard Followup, Focus, Slash, repeat attack chain but I'll do followup, focus, pyronic if it's up. I'm happy with those times. I know I could change things up, go proc heavy, take dark mastery, but Bill's been happily stuck in his ways for decades.

 

HK-666, claws/bio/nrg, got 1:50 to 2:00 with the same attack chain.

 

Took my fire/time blaster, Incendema Tempa, in there. I have no idea how to play her for maximized killing efficiency.

Future Pain does 376.36 damage. If I use Time Wall before FP, FP does 391.64 and TW does 76.73. Not sure TW is worth the time to cast it.
Kinda settled on Future Pain, Blazing Bolt, Blaze, Flares, throwing in Chronos, Aim and Pyronic instead of Flares when able. She sits around 2:15 with Assault Core enabled. Honestly, I expected better than that.

 

Question for my pylon killin/number crunchin brethren.
When it comes to incarnate powers for best killing times I settled on the following.

Musculature Core for everyone.
Assault Core for Blasters, Scrappers, Corruptors and Stalkers. Assault Radial for everyone else.
Degen Core for everyone.

Are these still considered the best choices for maximum DPS?

 

Edit: Heh. My Dark/Pain Controller using Dark Grasp, Arcane Bolt, repeat with Umbra Beast and Haunts out when available got it done in 9:30 with Control Total Core Graft.

Edit2: Nrg/Bio/Soul scrapper gets around 1:30. Or 1:00. Lots of lucky crits making ET short.

Guess going proc monster is the only way to improve all these times?

Edited 18 hours ago by Bill Z Bubba

[Auroxis]

Welcome back @Bill Z Bubba!

 

The incarnate choices you listed are on point.

 

Yes, proccing out the slower recharging attacks of your chain and adding a snipe from Mu/Soul/Psi will do wonders for your DPS.

 

Ston created a good resource for optimal rotations here:

 

 

[Ukase]

7 hours ago, SomeGuy said:

As for end? I almost always go the Ageless: Recovery route on my damage dealers. Also, the recovery serums are dirt cheap at the P2W vendor. 

Thought using incarnates and temps and such were a no-go for the test? 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

3 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Thought using incarnates and temps and such were a no-go for the test? 

 

 

I'm of both minds on this. On the one hand, unslotting my passive incarnate powers is a PitA and I fire off Assault and Pyronic constantly in my normal game, so why not play normally to get a idea what kind of DPS I'm pushing out? On the other hand, this all started back in the before times and the rules were no temps, no insps, no nothin but your base powers and your SOs and HOs.

 

Does make me curious though. Gonna go get some times with all incarnates unslotted on BZB Scrap.

That's another thing about the test pylons, though. A real test means I'm spending time firing off Practiced Brawler to avoid getting knocked around. With the test pylons, I don't even need to do that. Or even have any toggles on at all.

A lot has changed since the SOHO days, back when I was running permalude before ED and the GDN. But we should all be generally ok with letting folks use the test as they see fit, methinks. Long as data isn't being skewed by folks withholding info.

[Bill Z Bubba]

BZB Scrapper - Unslotted my incarnate powers, fired off PB after hasten autofires like always, 6:03 as per the NPC chat. Compared to the 2:20 average earlier.

Edit: Reslotted incarnates but didn't click hybrid assault: 3:30. That's probably why I started testing with it on. Also did not use pyronic on either of these runs.

Edit2: Yikes, pyronic is DEFINTELY improving my DPS. Hybrid yes, pryonic no, 3:08. Lots of misses on last two runs though. RNG is mad at me.

Edited 15 hours ago by Bill Z Bubba

[Ukase]

So, using hybrid (core assault, t-4) and judgement (core pyronic, t-4) and crafted ageless radial, t-4, got the time down to 2:16. 

I'll tinker around with it. I have no idea how I can get this time under a minute with this powerset combo; I would have to respec to find something that would help negate the pylon's regen, and maybe slap an achilles' -res proc into one of my earth secondary powers. intellectually, I see this kind of adjustment as self-sabotage. Taking a pylon down solo, that doesn't even hit back seems more like an intellectual exercise - which I am learning a few more things about my character - but the changes aren't really going to help me in any content, other than malevolent fogs, which also don't hit back. But that's just a 5-15 minute part of the labyrinth, and there wouldn't be time to swap builds, or use unslotters and reslot in that scenario. (not without being a freeloader for a minute) 

I'm going to reslot the damage procs, and perhaps armed with the ageless and the hybrid assault, it may be a better time. 

I put the procs back in, with ageless, assault and one pyronic (I forgot to use it, lol) 


It's better, but not by as much as I would have hoped. I may have to invest some time with my ice/MA and my fire/MA to see how they do in comparison. 

Edited 14 hours ago by Ukase

[SomeGuy]

5 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

1.WTH? These must have been added during my last break. Had no idea we had training pylons now. Not sure how I feel about that. I always considered the incoming damage/knock from the real pylons to be part of the test. As I'm typing this out and kept testing, I realized I like them. I can bring out my squishies I never really bothered with before.

 

2.Question for my pylon killin/number crunchin brethren.
When it comes to incarnate powers for best killing times I settled on the following.

Musculature Core for everyone.
Assault Core for Blasters, Scrappers, Corruptors and Stalkers. Assault Radial for everyone else.
Degen Core for everyone.

Are these still considered the best choices for maximum DPS?

 

 

1. I personally like them a lot since they respawn pretty fast and give you a measured time. But I did consider that part a part of the test myself, but I've personally always done this thing as sort of a "benchmark" to give myself an idea what to expect in actual gameplay.

 

2. Pretty much. 

 

4 hours ago, Auroxis said:

Welcome back @Bill Z Bubba!

 

The incarnate choices you listed are on point.

 

Yes, proccing out the slower recharging attacks of your chain and adding a snipe from Mu/Soul/Psi will do wonders for your DPS.

 

Ston created a good resource for optimal rotations here:

 

 

This chart definitely doesn't play well with builds that are useful outside of Pylons. It's a good starting point, but not realistic for a lot of gameplay.  The rotations being annotated is really good though. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

Thought using incarnates and temps and such were a no-go for the test? 

 

 

I know for myself personally if I can't have it perma, I don't consider it part of my build/run. I know I collect data for myself out own intrinsic value. That may be a part of the rules for it? But I know I personally don't care as long as people share their times and annotate what they did/didn't. Like, when I see a REALLY low time and things aren't annotated, I can normally sus it out that they had hybrid on or lore out. Or both.

 

I'd definitely argue killing pylons makes you a better player cause your muscle memory starts to optimize attacks chains and what not. Let's you more easily pivot in a combat situation when things get weird.

Edited 13 hours ago by SomeGuy

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

I see this kind of adjustment as self-sabotage.

 

That's exactly how I view going proc-monster. The loss of set bonuses I have in place would be a major hit to my damage mitigation and just not worth the effort.

[Ukase]

9 hours ago, SomeGuy said:

I'd definitely argue killing pylons makes you a better player cause your muscle memory starts to optimize attacks chains

Wouldn't a player just automatically use the highest dpa attack available? (assuming they know it)

Aside from farmers and my ill/rad none of my characters use ageless. It's kind of pointless for a blaster (in my way of thinking) because of our sustain, the number of attacks we have, it could be argued we don't even need hasten. I just get hasten because I want the higher dpa attacks to be up faster, and I'm already in the pool for super speed.

I noticed in using it, my normal solo attack chain was a little off, because some powers were up a little sooner than expected. When I solo, I tend to do things fairly routinely. But teaming, with so many external buffs, the only real solution is to just mash the highest dpa attack that's recharged. There is no muscle memory at play - at least, not for me in a team environment. One day you have a kin, the next you don't. Maybe your memory is better than mine, lol. 


Oh- in the spirit of transparency, apparently I've been running around with the "aura of mot", and will be for a few more days. Never realized I got a 9% damage buff from doing Dream Doctor's arc. 9% recovery buff, too. Only just realized that now. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Ukase

[BrandX]

13 hours ago, Auroxis said:

Welcome back @Bill Z Bubba!

 

The incarnate choices you listed are on point.

 

Yes, proccing out the slower recharging attacks of your chain and adding a snipe from Mu/Soul/Psi will do wonders for your DPS.

 

Ston created a good resource for optimal rotations here:

 

 

 

Should be noted for the masses, he's using the Hybrid and a lot of these make use of Crosspunch, which I honestly don't see in many builds myself, and I know I don't use it.

 

It does give a good idea on where the sets lie in terms of DPS, but again, Crosspunch will move some up over others.

 

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

21 minutes ago, BrandX said:

It does give a good idea on where the sets lie in terms of DPS, but again, Crosspunch will move some up over others.

 

I'll admit, if attempting to measure powerset to powerset, I'd have to call foul on using any powers outside of said AT powers. Tests should be done with X attack set, with a common Y defense set, as Ston did, but power pool and epic attacks shouldn't be in the mix.

 

We all know gloom/moonbeam are broken in comparison to actual AT powerset powers. One can argue that they're OP for all sets, but given that they're skewing the results for some sets more than others should be taken into account.

[BrandX]

17 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I'll admit, if attempting to measure powerset to powerset, I'd have to call foul on using any powers outside of said AT powers. Tests should be done with X attack set, with a common Y defense set, as Ston did, but power pool and epic attacks shouldn't be in the mix.

 

We all know gloom/moonbeam are broken in comparison to actual AT powerset powers. One can argue that they're OP for all sets, but given that they're skewing the results for some sets more than others should be taken into account.

 

Well, we do have multiple snipes to choose from now (and I believe Ston uses Zapp) and while not listed in here, a proc'ed out Ring of Fire is really good on Scrappers too.

 

That said, I feel the snipes/gloom/and proc'ed out holds as well, are fine to use, it's crosspunch I feel skews the times a bit and is the least likely of attacks to be used by anyone.

[SomeGuy]

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

Wouldn't a player just automatically use the highest dpa attack available? (assuming they know it)

Aside from farmers and my ill/rad none of my characters use ageless. It's kind of pointless for a blaster (in my way of thinking) because of our sustain, the number of attacks we have, it could be argued we don't even need hasten. I just get hasten because I want the higher dpa attacks to be up faster, and I'm already in the pool for super speed.

I noticed in using it, my normal solo attack chain was a little off, because some powers were up a little sooner than expected. When I solo, I tend to do things fairly routinely. But teaming, with so many external buffs, the only real solution is to just mash the highest dpa attack that's recharged. There is no muscle memory at play - at least, not for me in a team environment. One day you have a kin, the next you don't. Maybe your memory is better than mine, lol. 


Oh- in the spirit of transparency, apparently I've been running around with the "aura of mot", and will be for a few more days. Never realized I got a 9% damage buff from doing Dream Doctor's arc. 9% recovery buff, too. Only just realized that now. 

 

Re DPA: Most of the time that's the case. Sometimes you choose a lesser DPA attack due to it's animation time so you can cycle back to a better DPA attack as seamlessly as possible.

 

Re muscle memory: You definitely learn what stuff you can forego/need depending on team makeup and buffs by doing stuff like this. Like, I know with enough outside recharge my 

TW/ENA scrapper can definitely lay down some crazy hurt. My claws/bio? Doesn't benefit from extreme recharge as much as that other character. Just the way it is some times.  I do know if I'm damage capped with my Claws/Bio I'm not even going to use Follow-Up in the chain. Same with my DB/ENA. Just doesn't make any sense.