It's ok if you disagree But how I said, I'm running CA too when I run with my mates...
And yeah... be sure I know what you mean... and I don't said it's wrong. That's the reason I still grind for the sellsword gear to set it as "all time companion"... but until I get all the pieces I want, I still go with my combination.
I run IG too (not much but something is something lol) to see what I can get for my GF's dancing shield (getting to almost 9k armour pen with bonding procs + legacy axe beak (I'm thinking of pvping someday so got it a while ago) isn't precisely optimal lol. Also, I want more double slotted crit power rings for both con artists Rngeesus is way too powerful though! It doesn't help that lately (I pug IG 99.99% of the times I run it) randoms seem to think that bronze is the way to go, it has happened like 3 times out of the last 5 or so and they won't beleive me is better to take a bit longer and go for gold o.O
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greywyndMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 7,095Arc User
hey this isn't out of line. remember when they called everyone an exploiter for looking in the chest at the end of a dungeon and deciding not to take the loot? lol
No. I recall them saying it was a bug that hadn't been fixed yet.
I'm not looking for forgiveness, and I'm way past asking permission. Earth just lost her best defender, so we're here to fight. And if you want to stand in our way, we'll fight you too.
hey this isn't out of line. remember when they called everyone an exploiter for looking in the chest at the end of a dungeon and deciding not to take the loot? lol
No. I recall them saying it was a bug that hadn't been fixed yet.
and then they went on to call everyone who had done that as "exploited" that bug. I remember the outrage over that. go re read the thread.
Interesting. I haven't even looked much at companion abilities to be honest, assuming that all they are good for is to proccing bonding, not dying, and posibly doing a bit or aggro. Kind of assumed that the old CW guide (which recommended a Zhentarim Warlock for fast proc) is still good enough for budget players...
Now are these companions already good enough at blue quality or going epic gives a noticeable improvement?
Also, out of the three, and given the Xbox1 prices for the blue rebel mercenary is around 100-150k, and the others are sold as white so they blue cost is around 300k, which one is better for a SS Renegade CW - e.g. having other useful abilities, stats, better at survival, proccing faster?
Interesting. I haven't even looked much at companion abilities to be honest, assuming that all they are good for is to proccing bonding, not dying, and posibly doing a bit or aggro. Kind of assumed that the old CW guide (which recommended a Zhentarim Warlock for fast proc) is still good enough for budget players...
Now are these companions already good enough at blue quality or going epic gives a noticeable improvement?
Also, out of the three, and given the Xbox1 prices for the blue rebel mercenary is around 100-150k, and the others are sold as white so they blue cost is around 300k, which one is better for a SS Renegade CW - e.g. having other useful abilities, stats, better at survival, proccing faster?
The benefit of upgrading those companions is getting more stats (through companion's gift) out of whatever you put on them but their uncapped debuff skill unlocks at blue so if at the moment you can't afford getting it higher than that at least you'll have their 10% boost.
I see you are on console like I am. If you check posts of page 2/3 regarding diminishing returns on power you'll see the missing 3rd offence slot of the con artist is something trivial at best in powersharing groups (anointed champion DC, dark rewelry SW and aura gifts pally) because of that reason so if you don't have the gear for sellsword/rebel mercenary the con artist is a very viable alternative as it still is superior to any non uncapppped debuff companion because of its group wide dps boost. Con artist has x3 ring slots (just keep in mind underdark rings don't work with companions anymore) so it is easier to get stuff for him, if you can run fbi/msva you can get very good items for them. If you can't run those but can sva those epic ostorian rings of power crit are decent to have while you get your stats up to run t3 content. If you can't run sva then with even etos epic rings (power crit) you can get decent stats while you upgrade your toon.
The fights that matter the most are boss ones and in a good group the aforementioned companions should have no problem staying alive as much as possible, even when I run with randoms, say fbi, my dancing shield/con artist does not die to the turtle. If you often run with friends then it gets better because the debuff of the 10% companions stacks up to 5 times, one of them could and should use a dancing shield though so it'd be 4 10% pets then.
Don't worry about bonding proc speed, yes they're a bit slower than the fire archon/zentharim warlock to get the bonus but their group wide dps boost makes up for it especially in boss fights, you're looking at an effectiveness increase of 50%/60% (depending on whether the team has a dancing shield, it should) and no alternative companion mix can match that, that's the reason you can see videos on page 1 every single group member is running any of the aforementioned companions.
As a plus, if you pug CN a lot, any of the 10% pets will make you able to kill Orcus without help from any player (in case teammates are horribly underpowered) as provided that they attack him, he will ignore you. With the fire archon and other ranged pets Orcus will ignore them and 1 shot you.
As CW, you are the class that benefits the most from Aura of Courage and as it does benefit from buffs it is safe to assume that uncapped debuff make it more powerful too, you can see you have plenty of benefits if switching to those companions. I think I still have screenshots of my SW alt's AoC hitting for 200k + so I can try showing them to you if you want.
The Con Artist you all run with lowers the defense or dr of the enemy and that works great if the group lowers their own RI to increase other more useful stats. Otherwise why get our RI to 60% since that seems to be the sweet spot for most end game content. If players are not lowering their RI and are at 60%, a companion like the Greenscale Bowmen and others providing other buffs maybe a better option. It is why I use the companions I have as all of my characters are around 60%.
I wonder if anyone did any testing to see which companion based on the group makeup provides best bonus. I believe a group running the 2 Con Artist, 1 Moonbow Priestess, 1 GreenScale Bowmen and a Harper Bard may preform just as good or better than the a group running 5 Con Artist.
Others can explain better, but the debuff does not cap at 60%. It increases the damage your team does beyond negating the targets resistance ignored.
My understanding is if you are at 60% resist ignored and your strike normally does 10,000 damage, with 5 conartists you would get a 50% damage bonus and hit for 15,000 damage.
The Con Artist you all run with lowers the defense or dr of the enemy and that works great if the group lowers their own RI to increase other more useful stats. Otherwise why get our RI to 60% since that seems to be the sweet spot for most end game content. If players are not lowering their RI and are at 60%, a companion like the Greenscale Bowmen and others providing other buffs maybe a better option. It is why I use the companions I have as all of my characters are around 60%.
I wonder if anyone did any testing to see which companion based on the group makeup provides best bonus. I believe a group running the 2 Con Artist, 1 Moonbow Priestess, 1 GreenScale Bowmen and a Harper Bard may preform just as good or better than the a group running 5 Con Artist.
It's not exactly clearly documented in the game, but there are two types of debuffs that are completely independent. A good primer is here:
The short of it is that uncapped debuffs apply separately from capped debuffs. The oversimplified formula is (final damage) = (base damage)*(sum of capped debuffs)*(sum of uncapped debuffs)*(some other stuff)
So no, you don't have to reduce your capped debuffs to benefit from uncapped ones. In fact, in order to maximize your damage, you should definitely have capped debuffs capped, and then stack as many uncapped debuffs as you can.
Bonus: you touched on a very subtle wording that often hints at the capped/uncapped nature of debuffs (not 100% true, but pretty good rule of thumb). If a debuff says "Damage Resistance" it's usually capped. If it says reduces or shreds "defense" or "deflect" then it's usually uncapped. I believe notable exceptions are the new WEs, which got their verbiage changed to "Damage Resistance" recently, but are still uncapped. They used to say "defense" (for example PF) and "deflect" (for example frost).
Greenscale bowmen= capped debuff. Con artist= uncapped debuff.
Priestess of Sehanine Moonbow= decent if dps have 70% crit chance or lower, useless for endgame dpsers with 100% crit chance (at that point it isn't "chance" though as all hits will crit).
Harper Bard= Proven to be signficantly inferior to 10% uncapped debuff pets, @rjc9000 tested it with ACT.
No current alternative companion mix can match nor come close to uncapped debuff pets in terms of group and personal effectiveness boost (Sharpedge explains that on page 2 of this thread)
The Con Artist you all run with lowers the defense or dr of the enemy and that works great if the group lowers their own RI to increase other more useful stats. Otherwise why get our RI to 60% since that seems to be the sweet spot for most end game content. If players are not lowering their RI and are at 60%, a companion like the Greenscale Bowmen and others providing other buffs maybe a better option. It is why I use the companions I have as all of my characters are around 60%.
I wonder if anyone did any testing to see which companion based on the group makeup provides best bonus. I believe a group running the 2 Con Artist, 1 Moonbow Priestess, 1 GreenScale Bowmen and a Harper Bard may preform just as good or better than the a group running 5 Con Artist.
Uh... no.
The sword trio's debuff "reducing enemy defense" is not the same as reducing the amount of Resistance Ignored needed to do full damage. An example of what you are describing is prepatch Bear your Sins.
Both Greenscale and Bard give numerically inferior debuffs to the sword trio and aggro stealing shield. The former is mitigated versus level 73 enemies (which hurts the quality of the debuff), the latter has horrendus uptime
You are pretty much best off with running 1 Dancing Shield then (N) many sword trio companions.
When they reworked the enchantments, they also bugged their stacking behaviour. I’d appreciate if you help me reporting them, since these bugs have been there for several months. Plague Fire: If two players attack the same target using PF of different ranks (for example a Trans and a Pure) the debuff is canceled. If instead they use two PF of the same rank, the debuff doesn’t stack, as it’s supposed to do. Before the rework, different ranks of PF stacked. Frost: If two players attack the same target with two Frosts (same or different ranks), they don’t stack for 20 seconds, then they start stacking.
I forgot to mention that also Terror has something weird. If for example a player uses Greater (5% debuff) and the other Trans (6% debuff), the first who hits the target apply the debuff and the other can’t overwrite it until it expires, so if the player with Greater attacks first the debuff is only 5%. This said, the strange thing is that the two enchantments occasionally stack, probably when the two players apply the debuff at the same time.
My main is cleric and my current roll is buffing companions. I can tell you range companion are bad. companion need to fight near the boss, so i can buff both the players and companions (you will get up to 3X more with bonding). fire archon range is not that bad. but i prefer any mele companion over it. also rings are not the esay best option now.
I havent read all the comments and this may have been already said. Personally i dont like Sellsword/Con Artist/Rebel Mercenary. For one reason, this combination of summoned companions is by far the best, no other combination comes even close. It is killing the variety and in my opinion it should not stack. Sure the speed runners welcome this and consider it a must. Same way everyone used Fire Archon now everyone needs to use one of that trio... I would personally use (Drow)Mercenary if it wasnt suicidal with its teleport ability. More variety in companion segment please.
I havent read all the comments and this may have been already said. Personally i dont like Sellsword/Con Artist/Rebel Mercenary. For one reason, this combination of summoned companions is by far the best, no other combination comes even close. It is killing the variety and in my opinion it should not stack. Sure the speed runners welcome this and consider it a must. Same way everyone used Fire Archon now everyone needs to use one of that trio... I would personally use (Drow)Mercenary if it wasnt suicidal with its teleport ability. More variety in companion segment please.
No matter what you do, people are always going to gravitate towards a "best".
Before Bonding comps were a thing, everyone had a stone floating around their heads.
When Bonding comps were first a thing, everyone rolled around with a Zhentarim Warlock, Paranoid Delusion, and the oddball Lightfoot Thief.
When Bondings got buffed, everyone swapped to a Fire Archon.
Now that everyone knows how powerful the sword trio debuff is, everyone's rolling a sword trio companion, with minor variation in the Fire Archons from people who haven't swapped, Dancing Shields, or the oddball Harper Bards/Ambush Drakes.
Someone, somewhere will always be able to find a BiS and you'll see everyone using it due to it being the "best".
@dupeks thanks for the links and explanations, I was wondering why it is not just get to 60% and call it a day...I might resurrect my Con Artist, I think I recall liking it, I just didn't feel like putting the diamonds in to go from blue to orange.
Can we rename this "THE SHARPEDGE FANBOY SUPER THREAD"? Just in case someone stumbles across it and thinks this is actually a debatable topic and not just an opportunity for 1 guy to belittle an entire community whilst stroking another dude's...ego.
@rjc9000 You are right and i agree with everything you said but in those earlier stages choosing companion which is not bis was more forgiving and not choosing bis didnt make the gap as big as it is now. Summoned options were Lightfoot thief, Zhentarim Warlock, Mercenary, Paranoid Delusion, Harper Bard, Death Slaad, Cambion Magus, Shadow Demon, Blink Dog... At those times you could pick any of those as summoned option and you would be close to BiS option. Current trio is r1 hands down, 9 ranks free and then whatever comes next, nothing is even close. Difference when no one in party uses them and when full party uses them is huge. As long as their debuff stacks i dont see how any other option is going to beat them. Maybe a boss with opposite mechanic to mSP's 2nd boss, ability to kill melee companions instead ranged ones is the only end i can see for the current trio or eventually non-stackable debuff.
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dread4moorMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,154Arc User
The irony is "less-then-BiS shaming" is what caused the locust-plague of Fire Archon in the first place.
Thanks for the sellsword info though. Very useful.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
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mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
1:)IF the primary damage dealers wear vivified- giant glyphs does really matter in fbi if the those two dps use sellsword for team or other companion for personal damage? 2:) Critical severity after some point return lesser values for increased damage isnt the same for the power and the effectiveness? 3)If YOU have 300% effectiveness which is better for a dps sellsword or personal damage companion?
1:)IF the primary damage dealers wear vivified- giant glyphs does really matter in fbi if the those two dps use sellsword for team or other companion for personal damage? 2:) Critical severity after some point return lesser values for increased damage isnt the same for the power and the effectiveness? 3)If YOU have 300% effectiveness which is better for a dps sellsword or personal damage companion?
1) Assuming good uptime for Consumbed by Battle, the sellsword would be better than any personal damage companion. From another page #imasharpfanboy:
For the purposes of looking at the dps increase of the uncapped debuff pets, you can ignore all capped debuffs, hell, you can even ignore arp, to calculate the dps increase of uncapped debuffs, you only need to look at the uncapped portion of the formula. This is because it is multiplicative with base effectiveness.
So for example, if you only have 1 sellsword, the sellsword will always boost the teams damage by 10% regardless of what capped debuffs you have, since you are multiplying by 1.1.
So, to calculate the dps increase of adding another capped debuff, you only need to look at: [(1+newsumcappeddebuffs)/(1+oldsumcappeddebuffs)-1]*100
For example, if you have 4 sellswords and are curious what the team dps increase will be by adding a 5th, it is, [(1+0.5)/(1+0.4)-1]*100=7.14285714286% dps increase. As you can see, in a 5 man party, even in the event that 4 other people are using a sellsword, the dps boost from the sellsword is still greater than every single percentage dps increase pet.
2) Crit sev has the same issue as power, yes. Since it's presented as a % increase to a base value. So the more you already have, the less incremental improvement for each additional 10%.
You can think about this in terms of driving speed. Let's say drive at a base speed of 50 km/hr. If I get 10% increase (+5 km/hr) I'm driving at 55 km/hr. But the next increase +5 km/hr (which is still 10% of my 50 km/hr base speed) isn't a full 10% anymore. It's (60 - 55) / (55) = 0.090909 ~ 9%. And if I'm going 100 km /hr, that +5 km/hr is (105 - 100) / (100) = 5% increase. This same math works for any stat the scales linearly and is presented as a % increase over base (so crit sev, power, debuffs, attribs). Only direct damage buffs are always multiplicative and don't have this behavior.
3) Let's assume 300% effectiveness. Effectiveness formula is
(sum of capped debuffs) * (sum of uncapped debuffs) = final effectiveness.
I'm assuming you capped the capped 200% debuffs. So we can solve for your uncapped ones:
(200%) * (X) = 300%
Solve for X = 1.5 meaning your uncapped debuffs are 50% right now (assuming you capped the 200%).
So what does adding another 10% uncapped get you?
(200%) * (150% + 10%) = 320% effectiveness
And impact to damage?
(320% - 300%)/(300%) = 0.06666666666 ~6.67%
(or using Sharp's formula)
[(1+0.6)/(1+0.5)-1]*100 = 6.66666666667%
That's better than most pet active damage buffs available
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mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
1:)IF the primary damage dealers wear vivified- giant glyphs does really matter in fbi if the those two dps use sellsword for team or other companion for personal damage? 2:) Critical severity after some point return lesser values for increased damage isnt the same for the power and the effectiveness? 3)If YOU have 300% effectiveness which is better for a dps sellsword or personal damage companion?
1) Assuming good uptime for Consumbed by Battle, the sellsword would be better than any personal damage companion. From another page #imasharpfanboy:
For the purposes of looking at the dps increase of the uncapped debuff pets, you can ignore all capped debuffs, hell, you can even ignore arp, to calculate the dps increase of uncapped debuffs, you only need to look at the uncapped portion of the formula. This is because it is multiplicative with base effectiveness.
So for example, if you only have 1 sellsword, the sellsword will always boost the teams damage by 10% regardless of what capped debuffs you have, since you are multiplying by 1.1.
So, to calculate the dps increase of adding another capped debuff, you only need to look at: [(1+newsumcappeddebuffs)/(1+oldsumcappeddebuffs)-1]*100
For example, if you have 4 sellswords and are curious what the team dps increase will be by adding a 5th, it is, [(1+0.5)/(1+0.4)-1]*100=7.14285714286% dps increase. As you can see, in a 5 man party, even in the event that 4 other people are using a sellsword, the dps boost from the sellsword is still greater than every single percentage dps increase pet.
2) Crit sev has the same issue as power, yes. Since it's presented as a % increase to a base value. So the more you already have, the less incremental improvement for each additional 10%.
You can think about this in terms of driving speed. Let's say drive at a base speed of 50 km/hr. If I get 10% increase (+5 km/hr) I'm driving at 55 km/hr. But the next increase +5 km/hr (which is still 10% of my 50 km/hr base speed) isn't a full 10% anymore. It's (60 - 55) / (55) = 0.090909 ~ 9%. And if I'm going 100 km /hr, that +5 km/hr is (105 - 100) / (100) = 5% increase. This same math works for any stat the scales linearly and is presented as a % increase over base (so crit sev, power, debuffs, attribs). Only direct damage buffs are always multiplicative and don't have this behavior.
3) Let's assume 300% effectiveness. Effectiveness formula is
(sum of capped debuffs) * (sum of uncapped debuffs) = final effectiveness.
I'm assuming you capped the capped 200% debuffs. So we can solve for your uncapped ones:
(200%) * (X) = 300%
Solve for X = 1.5 meaning your uncapped debuffs are 50% right now (assuming you capped the 200%).
So what does adding another 10% uncapped get you?
(200%) * (150% + 10%) = 320% effectiveness
And impact to damage?
(320% - 300%)/(300%) = 0.06666666666 ~6.67%
(or using Sharp's formula)
[(1+0.6)/(1+0.5)-1]*100 = 6.66666666667%
That's better than most pet active damage buffs available
I Dont know better for a dps is to have near to 100% damage buff bonuses( or if you prefer increased damage by %xxxx) than to wait 3 wicked strike from sellsword to apply the debuff.
I Dont know better for a dps is to have near to 100% damage buff bonuses( or if you prefer increased damage by %xxxx) than to wait 3 wicked strike from sellsword to apply the debuff.
Everyone is certainly entitled to play the way that they want
In my opinion the only time "max damage" really matters is on boss fights, which are usually long enough for the debuff to proc. And trash in my experience melts before many classes can apply most of their debuffs anyway.
But as I said somewhere else in this thread, for soloing I think that damage companions can be better quality of life, so I'm definitely not against them Especially now that we have some more +dmg pets to choose from (although they nerfed wild hunt rider).
And at the end of the day a few seconds here and there in a dungeon is probably splitting hairs. Trivial content is trivial, you don't need to be BiS to grill cheese.
im too lazy to swap out bondings on archon and put on sellsword. So what if SVA last a few min less, im nearly done getting those marks. and why i need to speed run FBI when i got all that vilified HAMSTER? heck why does fbi need to be speedran at all? guess my real question is, why should that (sellsword) really even matter at endgame when near BIS u faceroll everything as is? maybe this why i hardly see any one running sellsword, cuz they lazy like me and dont like swapping out stuff, just a guess
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mamalion1234Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,415Arc User
Point being that at 300% effectiveness in your example, any debuff that contributes to the cap is practically useless, while the sword trio is not. They are always "effective".
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Now are these companions already good enough at blue quality or going epic gives a noticeable improvement?
Also, out of the three, and given the Xbox1 prices for the blue rebel mercenary is around 100-150k, and the others are sold as white so they blue cost is around 300k, which one is better for a SS Renegade CW - e.g. having other useful abilities, stats, better at survival, proccing faster?
The benefit of upgrading those companions is getting more stats (through companion's gift) out of whatever you put on them but their uncapped debuff skill unlocks at blue so if at the moment you can't afford getting it higher than that at least you'll have their 10% boost.
I see you are on console like I am. If you check posts of page 2/3 regarding diminishing returns on power you'll see the missing 3rd offence slot of the con artist is something trivial at best in powersharing groups (anointed champion DC, dark rewelry SW and aura gifts pally) because of that reason so if you don't have the gear for sellsword/rebel mercenary the con artist is a very viable alternative as it still is superior to any non uncapppped debuff companion because of its group wide dps boost. Con artist has x3 ring slots (just keep in mind underdark rings don't work with companions anymore) so it is easier to get stuff for him, if you can run fbi/msva you can get very good items for them. If you can't run those but can sva those epic ostorian rings of power crit are decent to have while you get your stats up to run t3 content. If you can't run sva then with even etos epic rings (power crit) you can get decent stats while you upgrade your toon.
The fights that matter the most are boss ones and in a good group the aforementioned companions should have no problem staying alive as much as possible, even when I run with randoms, say fbi, my dancing shield/con artist does not die to the turtle. If you often run with friends then it gets better because the debuff of the 10% companions stacks up to 5 times, one of them could and should use a dancing shield though so it'd be 4 10% pets then.
Don't worry about bonding proc speed, yes they're a bit slower than the fire archon/zentharim warlock to get the bonus but their group wide dps boost makes up for it especially in boss fights, you're looking at an effectiveness increase of 50%/60% (depending on whether the team has a dancing shield, it should) and no alternative companion mix can match that, that's the reason you can see videos on page 1 every single group member is running any of the aforementioned companions.
As a plus, if you pug CN a lot, any of the 10% pets will make you able to kill Orcus without help from any player (in case teammates are horribly underpowered) as provided that they attack him, he will ignore you. With the fire archon and other ranged pets Orcus will ignore them and 1 shot you.
As CW, you are the class that benefits the most from Aura of Courage and as it does benefit from buffs it is safe to assume that uncapped debuff make it more powerful too, you can see you have plenty of benefits if switching to those companions. I think I still have screenshots of my SW alt's AoC hitting for 200k + so I can try showing them to you if you want.
I wonder if anyone did any testing to see which companion based on the group makeup provides best bonus. I believe a group running the 2 Con Artist, 1 Moonbow Priestess, 1 GreenScale Bowmen and a Harper Bard may preform just as good or better than the a group running 5 Con Artist.
My understanding is if you are at 60% resist ignored and your strike normally does 10,000 damage, with 5 conartists you would get a 50% damage bonus and hit for 15,000 damage.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1226436/pve-damage-resistance-debuffs-effectiveness/p1
The short of it is that uncapped debuffs apply separately from capped debuffs. The oversimplified formula is (final damage) =
(base damage)*(sum of capped debuffs)*(sum of uncapped debuffs)*(some other stuff)
So no, you don't have to reduce your capped debuffs to benefit from uncapped ones. In fact, in order to maximize your damage, you should definitely have capped debuffs capped, and then stack as many uncapped debuffs as you can.
Bonus: you touched on a very subtle wording that often hints at the capped/uncapped nature of debuffs (not 100% true, but pretty good rule of thumb). If a debuff says "Damage Resistance" it's usually capped. If it says reduces or shreds "defense" or "deflect" then it's usually uncapped. I believe notable exceptions are the new WEs, which got their verbiage changed to "Damage Resistance" recently, but are still uncapped. They used to say "defense" (for example PF) and "deflect" (for example frost).
@mebengalsfan#9264
Greenscale bowmen= capped debuff.
Con artist= uncapped debuff.
Priestess of Sehanine Moonbow= decent if dps have 70% crit chance or lower, useless for endgame dpsers with 100% crit chance (at that point it isn't "chance" though as all hits will crit).
Harper Bard= Proven to be signficantly inferior to 10% uncapped debuff pets, @rjc9000 tested it with ACT.
No current alternative companion mix can match nor come close to uncapped debuff pets in terms of group and personal effectiveness boost (Sharpedge explains that on page 2 of this thread)
The sword trio's debuff "reducing enemy defense" is not the same as reducing the amount of Resistance Ignored needed to do full damage. An example of what you are describing is prepatch Bear your Sins.
Both Greenscale and Bard give numerically inferior debuffs to the sword trio and aggro stealing shield. The former is mitigated versus level 73 enemies (which hurts the quality of the debuff), the latter has horrendus uptime
You are pretty much best off with running 1 Dancing Shield then (N) many sword trio companions.
They've said that buffs and debuffs will need to be overhauled at some point, but basically agreed to not start nerfing things piecemeal.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
companion need to fight near the boss, so i can buff both the players and companions (you will get up to 3X more with bonding).
fire archon range is not that bad. but i prefer any mele companion over it.
also rings are not the esay best option now.
I would personally use (Drow)Mercenary if it wasnt suicidal with its teleport ability. More variety in companion segment please.
Before Bonding comps were a thing, everyone had a stone floating around their heads.
When Bonding comps were first a thing, everyone rolled around with a Zhentarim Warlock, Paranoid Delusion, and the oddball Lightfoot Thief.
When Bondings got buffed, everyone swapped to a Fire Archon.
Now that everyone knows how powerful the sword trio debuff is, everyone's rolling a sword trio companion, with minor variation in the Fire Archons from people who haven't swapped, Dancing Shields, or the oddball Harper Bards/Ambush Drakes.
Someone, somewhere will always be able to find a BiS and you'll see everyone using it due to it being the "best".
OP - Sunshine: 16000 IL
Casual Dailies
Current trio is r1 hands down, 9 ranks free and then whatever comes next, nothing is even close. Difference when no one in party uses them and when full party uses them is huge. As long as their debuff stacks i dont see how any other option is going to beat them.
Maybe a boss with opposite mechanic to mSP's 2nd boss, ability to kill melee companions instead ranged ones is the only end i can see for the current trio or eventually non-stackable debuff.
Thanks for the sellsword info though. Very useful.
I am Took.
"Full plate and packing steel" in NW since 2013.
2:) Critical severity after some point return lesser values for increased damage isnt the same for the power and the effectiveness?
3)If YOU have 300% effectiveness which is better for a dps sellsword or personal damage companion?
2) Crit sev has the same issue as power, yes. Since it's presented as a % increase to a base value. So the more you already have, the less incremental improvement for each additional 10%.
You can think about this in terms of driving speed. Let's say drive at a base speed of 50 km/hr. If I get 10% increase (+5 km/hr) I'm driving at 55 km/hr. But the next increase +5 km/hr (which is still 10% of my 50 km/hr base speed) isn't a full 10% anymore. It's (60 - 55) / (55) = 0.090909 ~ 9%. And if I'm going 100 km /hr, that +5 km/hr is (105 - 100) / (100) = 5% increase. This same math works for any stat the scales linearly and is presented as a % increase over base (so crit sev, power, debuffs, attribs). Only direct damage buffs are always multiplicative and don't have this behavior.
3) Let's assume 300% effectiveness. Effectiveness formula is
(sum of capped debuffs) * (sum of uncapped debuffs) = final effectiveness.
I'm assuming you capped the capped 200% debuffs. So we can solve for your uncapped ones:
(200%) * (X) = 300%
Solve for X = 1.5 meaning your uncapped debuffs are 50% right now (assuming you capped the 200%).
So what does adding another 10% uncapped get you?
(200%) * (150% + 10%) = 320% effectiveness
And impact to damage?
(320% - 300%)/(300%) = 0.06666666666 ~6.67%
(or using Sharp's formula)
[(1+0.6)/(1+0.5)-1]*100 = 6.66666666667%
That's better than most pet active damage buffs available
In my opinion the only time "max damage" really matters is on boss fights, which are usually long enough for the debuff to proc. And trash in my experience melts before many classes can apply most of their debuffs anyway.
But as I said somewhere else in this thread, for soloing I think that damage companions can be better quality of life, so I'm definitely not against them
And at the end of the day a few seconds here and there in a dungeon is probably splitting hairs. Trivial content is trivial, you don't need to be BiS to grill cheese.