MUST READ: Trickshaw's Testing: Why Con is useless & the hidden DPS blastcap.

trickshaw

So, after a participating in a few threads today whilst at work my curiosity was piqued in regards to proper itemization for endgame so I threw a few bucks into my Zen Wallet and decided to respec a couple times to test out various bits of information that have been nagging me that I wanted sorted out. This is what I've discovered.

First and foremost, as the title states, Constitution is either bugged or working as intended. Eithe way I formally request PWE to put some Zen into my account to compensate me for my time. Because if it's bugged then that would be a nice thank you for finding this for you. If it's not bugged then it would be a nice "We're sorry for blatantly misleading you".

The Resistance Ignored portion of Con, for GWF's, is a percentile multiplicative. Meaning, if you have 50% Armor Penetration (which if you do I will lick your boots right now) and you have a 20 constitution it will raise your Armor Penetration by 5% for a total 55% Armor Penetration. 20% ArP + 20 Con = 22% ArP.

It's not additive as the tooltip suggests.

And by the way, this is me giving Cryptic the benefit of the doubt. My numbers suggest that Con may actually be HURTING my Resistance Ignored in some cases. It's difficult to nail down. There seems to be an RNG factor going on with mitigation that is giving a + or - up to .5% which I'm not seeing. I don't know where this might be coming from. My testing included a fresh clean slate no point investment character and then incrementally adding Armor Pen/Regen gear by increments of 2% at a go up to 18% ArP. Then repeating the process and adding 1 con point at a time (minus the global +1's because there's no way to avoid those).

I was absolutely flabbergasted as I was recording numbers and checking the mitigation increases (and in some cases decreases).

So... again, it would be nice for a, "thank you" or a "we're sorry" because you guys are seriously misleading people. As far as I can tell this is a global problem spanning across all the classes. I'll know more later as I continue testing.

What else have I discovered, for GWF's anyway (TRs will have to wait until I'm done testing them):

1.) Armor Penetration is the single most important offensive stat modifier you can invest in. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. It trumps power, by a metric ton, and it trumps crit% unless you're WAAAY past the 50% mark.

2.) Not really super important but interesting. Feats which provide a flat % bonus are multiplicative with stat dmg bonuses being applied first. This looks to be globally across all classes. For example, GWF's Disciple of Strength is applied to base damage and then Endless Assault being applied afterwards.

3.) Subsequently, because Con does diddly ****, Constitution Focus does exactly zip aside from increasing HP pool.

4.) I wouldn't have thought this need be said but I'm going to say it anyway in case there are people derping it up out there. The number 1 DPS contributor, regardless of class or build, is weapon damage. Period. End of story. There is no reason--none what-so-ever--to pass on a weapon with a higher base damage regardless of it's stats. Unless the weapon in question has a damage difference ranging in the single digits to extremely low double digits (i.e. pre +20dmg) I don't care if it has 2,000 points of recovery and only 20 points of Power... you pick that fracking weapon. The DPS increase, point for point, is exponential. There is no stat, ability modifier or feat in this game which will increase your DPS more than this one factor.

So start doing it.

And finally,


5.) Student of the Sword is, hands down, bar-none, without a doubt the single greatest DPS increasing Feat we have in the entirety of the Swordsman trees. That one feat contributes more DPS than any other feat we have available to us. No exceptions. I'm not one for saying, "this power or feat is a must have" but I will make an exception in this case. If you do not have this feat and have a few extra bucks burning a hole in your wallet... spend the $6 and respec. This feat NEEDS to be moved up to Tier 4 with Defiance. It's that insane. The only comparable Feat in all of our trees that comes remotely close to this kind of DPS gain is Group Assault.

What makes it more ridonkulous is the fact that the more GWFs you have in your group with it, the crazier your damage gets because, apparently, it stacks.

I could almost forgive Cryptic/PWE for breaking Constitution (or blatantly misrepresenting it) because of Student of the Sword.

Almost...

That's it for now. Will update further after I finish this strongly worded letter to Cryptic and crunch some more numbers. Then I have to run through my rogue parses. So... yeah... I'll be back in a bit.


UPDATE:

So I will answer a couple questions and then try to explain how exactly Student of the Sword is working as best as I can figure it.

First, there is no cap for ArP. Secondly the "soft cap" everyone is referring to stems from a thread in the Rogue forums. Whilst I will not say that number is wrong per se I will say that the number presented is a bit simplified. At 2200 ArP is when the DR on ArP becomes salient but the exact level of diminishing returns is pretty lenient. I stacked far faaaaaaar past this point after further testing last night and around 4,000 ArP I noticed a deviation of just over 2%. Even with that deviation ArP was superior in investment to Power by a massive margin. Compared to Crit it's a bit trickier because that depends entirely on your Crit Multiplier in conjunction to your Crit%.

It's safe to say if all you're interested in is DPS then you should be stacking Crit with ArP for the most bang for your buck. Keeping them equal or with a focus on ArP or Crit won't steer you wrong. The moral of the story being putting points into Power is just silly unless it can't be avoided.

Secondly, ArP cannot bring mitigation into negatives. At least as far as I can tell from the given data points.

Thirdly, this is how Student of the Sword, and I would imagine Enfeeble, works:

Let's presume you have 20% ArP. Let's also presume your mob has 20% damage resistance. ArP is applied first. Knocking your target's mitigation down to 0%. Now your target's mitigation is driven to 0% but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a defense score. That score is still there, it's effects are just negated.

This is where Student of the Sword kicks in. First let's pretend for the moment that we have no ArP. Just so you can understand how this is actually working. Student of the Sword applies a 45% debuff to the target's Defense. In this case that would drive the target's Defense, presuming we didn't have ArP, down to 11% for a 9% damage gain. With me so far?

What is happening is that 9% mitigation debuff is being applied AFTER ArP has done it's job causing the illusion of "negative" Defense. So now instead of us having a flat 20% damage bonus to said mob (thanks to ArP) we have a 29% damage bonus to said mob. Because the Defense score of the mob is STILL there.

Now, after further testing with a buddy of mine Student of the Sword is stacking but not additively. It's stacking multiplicatively. Again, as far as I can tell with the given data points. So, with the numbers provided previously, our mobs Defense contribution is down to 11%. Enter in second GWF. He applies his stacks of debuffs for a 45% drop of 11% Defense contribution and we end up with 6% Defense contribution for a total gain of 34% DPS. Now, it's important to note that your entire group isn't going to see this increase unless you're all at the exact same ArP score. Some may have less. If a group member has 0% ArP all they're going to see is a benefit from the stacking Student of the Sword (in this case a 14% DPS increase).

The TRULY beautiful part of how this is working is that the HIGHER the targets Defense score and the higher your ArP% the MORE of a DPS increase you're going to see. So on trash and low defense PvP targets the bonus will be there, of course, but far less than... for example... a GF.

THIS is why GFs are starting to get face planted in PvP. The higher your defense the more vulnerable you are to Defense Debuffs and ArP. This is also why a players damage tally can absolutely sky rocket during a boss fight.

So, if you're a PvP nut, the morale of the story being... stack DEFLECTION over DEFENSE as that's where you're going to get the most survival point for point.

To simplify it for you, if you're fighting a target with 40% Defense, you yourself have say 35% ArP. you're looking at a 48% DPS increase vs. everyone else in your party who isn't stacking ArP.

I want to point out that this is how I'm presuming Student of the Sword and similar debuffs are working. It may work differently but this is the only way I was able to make the math add up to the results I am seeing. Again, as noted in the main post, there is a % deviation I'm seeing intermittently and I don't know where this is coming from.

ALSO I'm assuming that flat % defense bonuses, such as the Human's racial trait, aren't affected by this process. Again, it's the only way I can make the math add up. Some mobs and/or bosses in the game may have similar flat bonuses which would explain some of the variants I'm seeing in testing.

If Cryptic ever streamlines their in-game combat log this would make nailing these things down INFINITELY easier. So, that's how that works. Gotta go back to work now.

Tonight I'll continue reviewing what I've found for TRs. I will say this, if what I found is what I think I found I won't be posting about it. It will go straight to Cryptic because what I THINK I found can't possibly be intentional design.

maximilious

thanks for testing We GFs also have some skills that are not doing what they're suppose to be doing :P

radiantknight1

thanks man, this is much needed info for the GWF player.

dev1lbat

+1 very very interesting.. thanks for the info! please keep us updated

jrelthewise2

Student of the sword + Greater Plague Fire Enchantment = Where your defense go?!?

talvos38

Interesting read Trickshaw. I am curious if there is any indication of a cap for armor pen, such as, after a certain percent of defenses reduced (student of the sword, armor pen, and plague fire) does it start to do nothing because you have them at 0% for defense, or can it be taken into the negatives?

maximusfine

Kind of knew this already. Another hint is plague fires stack to and its basically the same thing as student of the sword. Yes defenses go into the negatives.

knoteskad

They really need to nerf those defense reductions lol. It's no coincidence that CW's damage sky rockets once they get Enfeeble, or GWF's become decent at lvl 30. And to think people can just spend a little money to get SotS on any class, yuck.

Btw what were you testing this on?

bananachef

SotS and Plaguefire alone can't take defense into the negatives can it? I assumed the way it worked was that -def reduction from both would scale defense down by -60%, i.e. 2000 defense --> 800 defense. Which is around 16% + whatever base you have from AC, lets say ~20% total. Then armor pen gets tacked on at the end. With ~2100 Arpen, that gets reduced to -1% damage resist.

It would be pretty disgusting if -60% worked additively against damage resist, since most people barely scratch 30%

aierrs

I read somewhere that arpen is only useful to 22%. After which its us3less. But if u are saying it will go to negatives....

bananachef

aierrs wrote: »

I read somewhere that arpen is only useful to 22%. After which its us3less. But if u are saying it will go to negatives....

I imagine it doesn't stop becoming useful past 22%, but at 2000 Arpen it's around ~100 arpen per 1% ignore and starts diminishing moderately.

churchilligc

GPF and SoS don't work in the negative the way you're thinking. They kind of do, but they remove defense itself and is separate from Armor Pen. You would still need 22% AP, regardless of SoS, GPF, Wicked Reminder, etc.

Edit: thanks for testing though, you should be given some compensation as should anyone who has bought a respec. ****ing <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> to be testing classes and bugs and have to pay to do it.

aierrs

churchilligc wrote: »

GPF and SoS don't work in the negative the way you're thinking. They kind of do, but they remove defense itself and is separate from Armor Pen. You would still need 22% AP, regardless of SoS, GPF, Wicked Reminder, etc.

Edit: thanks for testing though, you should be given some compensation as should anyone who has bought a respec. ****ing <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> to be testing classes and bugs and have to pay to do it.

But trickshaw is suggesting there is no cap to arpen. Even if we go up to 50% arpen. I.e. mob A have 22% armor and a gwf have 50% arpen. Mob a will get hit for X dmg - (22%-50%). Resulting in X dmg being amplified with X dmg + 28% (result of -(-28%)). Of course I am simplifing the maths... but I am just illustrating my point... hope some experts here can clarify.

aierrs

Basically. I am trying to ask is arpen capped at 22%? Any more will be wasted or not?

knoteskad

It's not that it's capped at 22% the stat just starts diminishing quite a bit.

aierrs

Well... lets say gwf got 25% arpen. The question is not the DR. The qns is do we stop at 22% because he addtional 3% is useless?

knoteskad

aierrs wrote: »

Well... lets say gwf got 25% arpen. The question is not the DR. The qns is do we stop at 22% because he addtional 3% is useless?

I don't think so.

churchilligc

22% comes from the fact that most enemies in the game float at that number of resistance.

klixan

This is absolutely fascinating! So you're saying Armor Penetration is superior to Power. Would this apply to a Guardian Fighter as well?

knoteskad

klixan wrote: »

This is absolutely fascinating! So you're saying Armor Penetration is superior to Power. Would this apply to a Guardian Fighter as well?

Probably, I think the way it works is Power basically adds a little bit to your weapon damage, which is a huge portion of your abilities' damage, but GWF probably have the highest weapon damage so power would add very little to your overall damage.

Arm Pen is giving you % dmg gains. Power just doesn't diminish.

So it's sort of like Aion. Attack Damage just added a tiny flat amount to your already giant hits, then crit adds a % amount, thus crit was always better til a point when attack damage would be good to stack.

klixan

I'm going to experiment with this, cause up till now I've been stacking Power on my GF. I'll try stacking Armor Pen instead and see if it makes a difference.

I just gotta say, people who are good at maths impress the hell out of me. I can't add two and two together. So it's really awesome when somebody with the knowledge actually crunches all the numbers and figures out how all this stuff works. Huge thanks!

chronomancer

Very interesting. That means we have to invest in a good Bladestorm set for our armor.

extinction777

trickshaw wrote: »

So, after a participating in a few threads today whilst at work my curiosity was piqued in regards to proper itemization for endgame so I threw a few bucks into my Zen Wallet and decided to respec a couple times to test out various bits of information that have been nagging me that I wanted sorted out. This is what I've discovered.

First and foremost, as the title states, Constitution is either bugged or working as intended. Eithe way I formally request PWE to put some Zen into my account to compensate me for my time. Because if it's bugged then that would be a nice thank you for finding this for you. If it's not bugged then it would be a nice "We're sorry for blatantly misleading you".

The Resistance Ignored portion of Con, for GWF's, is a percentile multiplicative. Meaning, if you have 50% Armor Penetration (which if you do I will lick your boots right now) and you have a 20 constitution it will raise your Armor Penetration by 5% for a total 55% Armor Penetration. 20% ArP + 20 Con = 22% ArP.

It's not additive as the tooltip suggests.

And by the way, this is me giving Cryptic the benefit of the doubt. My numbers suggest that Con may actually be HURTING my Resistance Ignored in some cases. It's difficult to nail down. There seems to be an RNG factor going on with mitigation that is giving a + or - up to .5% which I'm not seeing. I don't know where this might be coming from. My testing included a fresh clean slate no point investment character and then incrementally adding Armor Pen/Regen gear by increments of 2% at a go up to 18% ArP. Then repeating the process and adding 1 con point at a time (minus the global +1's because there's no way to avoid those).

I was absolutely flabbergasted as I was recording numbers and checking the mitigation increases (and in some cases decreases).

So... again, it would be nice for a, "thank you" or a "we're sorry" because you guys are seriously misleading people. As far as I can tell this is a global problem spanning across all the classes. I'll know more later as I continue testing.

What else have I discovered, for GWF's anyway (TRs will have to wait until I'm done testing them):

1.) Armor Penetration is the single most important offensive stat modifier you can invest in. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. It trumps power, by a metric ton, and it trumps crit% unless you're WAAAY past the 50% mark.

2.) Not really super important but interesting. Feats which provide a flat % bonus are multiplicative with stat dmg bonuses being applied first. This looks to be globally across all classes. For example, GWF's Disciple of Strength is applied to base damage and then Endless Assault being applied afterwards.

3.) Subsequently, because Con does diddly ****, Constitution Focus does exactly zip aside from increasing HP pool.

4.) I wouldn't have thought this need be said but I'm going to say it anyway in case there are people derping it up out there. The number 1 DPS contributor, regardless of class or build, is weapon damage. Period. End of story. There is no reason--none what-so-ever--to pass on a weapon with a higher base damage regardless of it's stats. Unless the weapon in question has a damage difference ranging in the single digits to extremely low double digits (i.e. pre +20dmg) I don't care if it has 2,000 points of recovery and only 20 points of Power... you pick that fracking weapon. The DPS increase, point for point, is exponential. There is no stat, ability modifier or feat in this game which will increase your DPS more than this one factor.

So start doing it.

And finally,


5.) Student of the Sword is, hands down, bar-none, without a doubt the single greatest DPS increasing Feat we have in the entirety of the Swordsman trees. That one feat contributes more DPS than any other feat we have available to us. No exceptions. I'm not one for saying, "this power or feat is a must have" but I will make an exception in this case. If you do not have this feat and have a few extra bucks burning a hole in your wallet... spend the $6 and respec. This feat NEEDS to be moved up to Tier 4 with Defiance. It's that insane. The only comparable Feat in all of our trees that comes remotely close to this kind of DPS gain is Group Assault.

What makes it more ridonkulous is the fact that the more GWFs you have in your group with it, the crazier your damage gets because, apparently, it stacks.

I could almost forgive Cryptic/PWE for breaking Constitution (or blatantly misrepresenting it) because of Student of the Sword.

Almost...

That's it for now. Will update further after I finish this strongly worded letter to Cryptic and crunch some more numbers. Then I have to run through my rogue parses. So... yeah... I'll be back in a bit.

Awesome awesome post Trick thanks for the info. So it would seem to me then that the destroyer fear that converts recovery to armour pen would be very strong then?

Any insight how this feat stacks, if its working correctly?

trickshaw

UPDATE:

So I will answer a couple questions and then try to explain how exactly Student of the Sword is working as best as I can figure it.

First, there is no cap for ArP. Secondly the "soft cap" everyone is referring to stems from a thread in the Rogue forums. Whilst I will not say that number is wrong per se I will say that the number presented is a bit simplified. At 2200 ArP is when the DR on ArP becomes salient but the exact level of diminishing returns is pretty lenient. I stacked far faaaaaaar past this point after further testing last night and around 4,000 ArP I noticed a deviation of just over 2%. Even with that deviation ArP was superior in investment to Power by a massive margin. Compared to Crit it's a bit trickier because that depends entirely on your Crit Multiplier in conjunction to your Crit%.

It's safe to say if all you're interested in is DPS then you should be stacking Crit with ArP for the most bang for your buck. Keeping them equal or with a focus on ArP or Crit won't steer you wrong. The moral of the story being putting points into Power is just silly unless it can't be avoided.

Secondly, ArP cannot bring mitigation into negatives. At least as far as I can tell from the given data points.

Thirdly, this is how Student of the Sword, and I would imagine Enfeeble, works:

Let's presume you have 20% ArP. Let's also presume your mob has 20% damage resistance. ArP is applied first. Knocking your target's mitigation down to 0%. Now your target's mitigation is driven to 0% but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a defense score. That score is still there, it's effects are just negated.

This is where Student of the Sword kicks in. First let's pretend for the moment that we have no ArP. Just so you can understand how this is actually working. Student of the Sword applies a 45% debuff to the target's Defense. In this case that would drive the target's Defense, presuming we didn't have ArP, down to 11% for a 9% damage gain. With me so far?

What is happening is that 9% mitigation debuff is being applied AFTER ArP has done it's job causing the illusion of "negative" Defense. So now instead of us having a flat 20% damage bonus to said mob (thanks to ArP) we have a 29% damage bonus to said mob. Because the Defense score of the mob is STILL there.

Now, after further testing with a buddy of mine Student of the Sword is stacking but not additively. It's stacking multiplicatively. Again, as far as I can tell with the given data points. So, with the numbers provided previously, our mobs Defense contribution is down to 11%. Enter in second GWF. He applies his stacks of debuffs for a 45% drop of 11% Defense contribution and we end up with 6% Defense contribution for a total gain of 34% DPS. Now, it's important to note that your entire group isn't going to see this increase unless you're all at the exact same ArP score. Some may have less. If a group member has 0% ArP all they're going to see is a benefit from the stacking Student of the Sword (in this case a 14% DPS increase).

The TRULY beautiful part of how this is working is that the HIGHER the targets Defense score and the higher your ArP% the MORE of a DPS increase you're going to see. So on trash and low defense PvP targets the bonus will be there, of course, but far less than... for example... a GF.

THIS is why GFs are starting to get face planted in PvP. The higher your defense the more vulnerable you are to Defense Debuffs and ArP. This is also why a players damage tally can absolutely sky rocket during a boss fight.

So, if you're a PvP nut, the morale of the story being... stack DEFLECTION over DEFENSE as that's where you're going to get the most survival point for point.

To simplify it for you, if you're fighting a target with 40% Defense, you yourself have say 35% ArP. you're looking at a 48% DPS increase vs. everyone else in your party who isn't stacking ArP.

I want to point out that this is how I'm presuming Student of the Sword and similar debuffs are working. It may work differently but this is the only way I was able to make the math add up to the results I am seeing. Again, as noted in the main post, there is a % deviation I'm seeing intermittently and I don't know where this is coming from.

ALSO I'm assuming that flat % defense bonuses, such as the Human's racial trait, aren't affected by this process. Again, it's the only way I can make the math add up. Some mobs and/or bosses in the game may have similar flat bonuses which would explain some of the variants I'm seeing in testing.

If Cryptic ever streamlines their in-game combat log this would make nailing these things down INFINITELY easier. So, that's how that works. Gotta go back to work now.

Tonight I'll continue reviewing what I've found for TRs. I will say this, if what I found is what I think I found I won't be posting about it. It will go straight to Cryptic because what I THINK I found can't possibly be intentional design.

churchilligc

I actually have a good idea of what you found for TR, lol. idk, it might be intentional. Well, I'll say it seems as intentional as making Power nearly useless seems intentional.

spacejew

So even if they have 15% armor, you would still suggest stacking ArP even though ArP from gear can't take them negative? (Which I'm not 100% convinced of, unless Training Dummies have a ton of armor, it seems to take them negative.)

Because logically there is a limit of how much more armor you can penetrate depending on the armor they're wearing, whereas there is no limit to how much more power you can stack on. I'm genuinely curious here, but ArP stacking seems to have several limiters in place that make it less desirable to me. I believe power scales differently for different abilities, so really I don't think you can ever afford to ignore it completely.

Good thread though. Food for thought.

supjeremiah

spacejew wrote: »

So even if they have 15% armor, you would still suggest stacking ArP even though ArP from gear can't take them negative?

Or can it? I know SotS can take them negative, but just plain jane ArP doesn't seem to.

Because logically there is a limit of how much more armor you can penetrate, whereas there is no limit to how much more power you can stack on. I'm genuinely curious here, but ArP stacking seems to have several limiters in place that make it less desirable to me.

If you're PvPing I wouldn't stack more than 2k armor. That's enough to do true damage to anyone other than another GF, which you should probably be ignoring anyways.

spacejew

supjeremiah wrote: »

If you're PvPing I wouldn't stack more than 2k armor. That's enough to do true damage to anyone other than another GF, which you should probably be ignoring anyways.

I'm not, I care 0% about PvP. Stacking Power is also 100% unavoidable since you can't change the bonus on your armor and all the armor stacks power. It's literally impossible unless you dress yourself in greens, which means you can't queue for the dungeons. Just saying.

slicerdicerold

Yet another game with math fail. I don't know how many games i have been in alpha/beta (a real beta not this "open beta" for f2p game b.s) that don't have a clue. It's like the developer's put the game together they make things cool sounding then try to make the math fit.

Cryptic did it with City of Heroes. Initially Energy Tanks could out damage everyone. It was eventually fixed with massive redesigns.

Similar thing happened in Fallen Earth but that was discovered in beta rather then after launch. The best weapon in the game was an air pistol. They had to redo all the weapon tables.

Since this is "Open Beta" probably the best thing to do is release their combat formulas, the real ones, and let us math geek players have a crack at them and balance them.

knoteskad

They really do need to nerf these defense reductions and mitigations though, it's just crazy how much they rip apart defenses making them worthless in pvp.

Although the part that still confuses me is, are you sure things like SotS are just reducing defense or DR by a % like that?

Even w/o armor pen my Enfeeble and SotS bring things from positive reduction to negative.

I've noticed a lot of things that SAY they "reduce" defense, like nimbus of light feat for cleric, but actually just gave me a FLAT % boost. Like it says -10% defense for 5 seconds, but was really just a flat -10% damage taken regardless of the target.

trickshaw

spacejew wrote: »

So even if they have 15% armor, you would still suggest stacking ArP even though ArP from gear can't take them negative?

Or can it? I know SotS can take them negative, but just plain jane ArP doesn't seem to.

Because logically there is a limit of how much more armor you can penetrate, whereas there is no limit to how much more power you can stack on. I'm genuinely curious here, but ArP stacking seems to have several limiters in place that make it less desirable to me.

Exactly this.

In other threads I've iterated exactly what you just stated here. ArP > Power so long as we know what the Defense % of our targets are. In PvP it's pretty safe to say that every player will be sporting a minimum of 20% defense. This is also part of the reason why in the Rogue threads they encourage people to stack ArP until 2200ish.

Now, as for the second portion of your post, as stated in my update post, the effects of ArP + Student of the Sword grow exponentially dependent on the target's mitigation. My testing was exclusively on "tough" open world mobs and the mobs found in Cloaked Tower.