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Are Particle generators not boosting sci skills properly?
kikanass
Member Posts: 45 Arc User
Recently I noticed that my gravity well 3 seemed really weak despite having 313 particle generator skill and particle manipulation trait to boost crits so I had another sci captain help me run some tests to see what kind of dps gravity well was doing with different amounts of particle generators and the results seem really messed up. For the record as I said I have 313 particle generators and 99 graviton generators and the other science captain had 173 particle generators and around 170 graviton generators and we both had the particle manipulation trait to boost crit rate based on particle generator skill.
The testing seemed to show that our gravity well 3's did virtually the same dps (Only a 16 dps difference between us after averaging everything out) despite much higher particle generator skill on my part and almost 90% crit rate vs his 47% crit rate which of course doesn't seem right sense particle generators are supposed to boost damage and graviton generators are supposed to boost repel/pull. Furthermore I tried removing several of my particle generator consoles and replaced them with graviton generator consoles and ended up averaging higher dps despite dropping my particle generators down to 213 and rasing my graviton generators to 178 which of course also lowered my crit rate down to under 50% compared to the previous 90%.
Anyone else notice this or have any insight on why this seems to be the case? Is it possible there are diminishing returns on particle generators skill? Would love a devs feedback on this if possible.
The testing seemed to show that our gravity well 3's did virtually the same dps (Only a 16 dps difference between us after averaging everything out) despite much higher particle generator skill on my part and almost 90% crit rate vs his 47% crit rate which of course doesn't seem right sense particle generators are supposed to boost damage and graviton generators are supposed to boost repel/pull. Furthermore I tried removing several of my particle generator consoles and replaced them with graviton generator consoles and ended up averaging higher dps despite dropping my particle generators down to 213 and rasing my graviton generators to 178 which of course also lowered my crit rate down to under 50% compared to the previous 90%.
Anyone else notice this or have any insight on why this seems to be the case? Is it possible there are diminishing returns on particle generators skill? Would love a devs feedback on this if possible.
Post edited by kikanass on
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That's interesting, I hadn't noticed but I'm going to have to check it out.
The other questino here though is it only effecting Grav Well, all Grav Wells, or all powers that use Part Gens... like FBP and TBR
You get the 100% CritH as long as you keep the same stats.
The issue with difference is mostly piloting quality, same group quality and doing the same thing.
If you are not min/maxer DPSer you will not notice a difference in DPS. I have seen players who deal below 10k DPS deal almost the same DPS with their FAW3 and FAW1. But FAW3 and FAW1 in the hands of high DPSer you will see a large difference.
If you have different teams, you might end up with different debuffing, different dps groups and different finished time.
Another factor is the variable if you are not doing the same thing. In your first try you triggered Grav Well with 10 spheres and second try you did it with only 5 spheres.
And finally, another factor would be lag. The current lag sometimes prevents abilities to be triggered even though the ability goes into CD.
Maybe I should clarify the testing procedure I used for the parsing. My testing involved a single target standing still only using gravity well 3 no cd reduction doffs or anything. both I and the other sci captain had same traits, aux power level ect... only difference was our pgen and grav gen skills yet our grav well 3's did virtually the same dps despite the big diffference in our pgen skills. Piloting played no part in the results. I did my best to eliminate all other possible factors (no moving, neither of us ran any buffs or anything). We just stood still and used gravity well on a stationary target with no buffs on us or the target and parsed the dps of a single activation of gravity well 3 over numerous attempts then averaged them together to get an average dps as to avoid the results being skewed by crits ect... and in the end we had virtually same dps from our grav well 3 activations despite the big difference in pgens skill then as I sai I repplaced some of my pgen consoles with grav gens consoles and averaged higher dps than with all pgen consoles.
I should probably also state that I'm not saying grav well is weak in general but that it seamed weak given my particle generator skill level and the results of my testing with my partner seemed to indicate that the damage boosting from pgens wasn't working as our dps for our gravity well 3 was virtually identical despite big difference in pgen skill between the 2 of us. Again that's with everything else virtually the same between the 2 of us except for pgen and grav gen skill. If it'd been an actual combat situation I'd agree with everything you said about those different variables but this wasn't a combat situation. In fact after the testing me and my partner faced off and actually did fight and I tore him apart with my combination of piloting and other skills I use in conjunction with gravity well 3, but the testing only involved gravity well 3 with no other skills, buffs, or anything as we did our best to remove any other possible contributing factors other than pgen and grav gen skill differences in order to get an accurate parse of gravity well 3 alone.
That is a very bad way of testing an AOE ability in a single target. testing also as solo rather in teams when all if not most of the STFs are team missions.
AoE abilities will likely deal less DPS in a single target rather than multiple mobs. Dont force dealing a lot of DPS on a single target with an AoE ability.
Your missing the point. We were testing the damage of gravity well not it's effectiveness as an aoe or team support ability and given particle generator skill is supposed to boost the damage of gravity well my gravity well should be doing more than my testing partners due to a large difference in skill between us. 313pgens vs his 178 yet they did virtually the same dps (only 16dps difference). Using a single target is best way to get accurate results as using multiple targets could skew the results. As I said I'm not claiming gravity well in general is weak as it's not. it does some decent dps, but with a difference of 135 pgen skill between me and my testing partner which also results in almost 50% difference in crit rate between us as well then my gravity wells should be doing more damage than his yet they are virtually identical.
Hmmm... I think I may see the issue here...
Grav Well... all of them... does more damage the closer you are to the center of the grav well... even an unmodified grav well III should be doing more dps then 16 then a grav well II.
So part of it seems to be when you increased your grav gens you made the ship sit closer to the center therefore increasing your dps on it... and when you lowered it your test subject had more wiggle room and sat on on the outside edge of it.
So it kind of had to do with where it was sitting at the time. The difference of a part gen on the outside fringes is the same, but because of the drastic drop off in damage and the like you'll see a lot less dps because it's doing a more massive swing. It's even possible for ships to leave the damage envelope of a grav well, and get pulled back in.
I think that's where you're seeing the issue
I'd agree with that assessment if their was movent involved but target wasn't moving at all. everything was stationary so target was dead center in the grav well every time.
Then I don't know what to tell you if it didn't move at all... though that seems very very unlikely with only 170 Grav Gen... there should always be some movement in there, even if it's in the center it's doing a circle thing on mine all the time. Edit: ANd with only 99 grav gens that's almost non-existant in Grav Well terms.
So honestly I don't know... it's working fine for me on my science character... as is TBR and Tyken's.
Sorry
Again that is bad for testing. an AoE is design to do AoE. By your own admission, there is a difference in DPS in single target. But AoE isn't optimal for single target. Theoretically, If you use the AoE for 10 targets you will have 160 Dps just by using your stats. How much more if you do it in an optimal environment.
Because what you are doing is like questioning the difference of CSV3 and CSV1 in a single target in a non mission environment. When we know CSV Is optimal for AoE. You are also comparing stats between two different pilots by your own admission.
Not only that, the lower your DPs the lower the difference is. For example, If you are only capable of doing 10k Dps, 1% increase would be 100 Dps while if you are doing 100k dps 1% increase would be 1k Dps.
But then again if your aim is Dps the sci com shouldnt be grav well 3.
Putting everything into partigens means you do massive damage but only if the target is dead center and not moving.
All that said though your test is interesting. And it perhaps needs somebody like virusdancer to come in here with some math-fu and show us what's really happening.
To be honest I'd not be at all surprised if something is broken, it is the Crypitc way!
Except the sometimes math doesn't add up. Everybody's math points to T6 ships dominance in DPS. Ss3 superiority over faw3/apo3. But in practice it has never happened. So either someone's math is wrong, or the test done or data gathered to calculate the math is wrong. Since even Upto now the best t5s are still superior to the best t6s in terms of Dps.
For now, we are still in the data gathering stage where we are still questioning the viability of data gathered by the OP, testing AoE optimal abilities on a single target non mission environment using data from two different players instead of one.
But if they both have the exact same setup (aside from the difference in grav and partigen skills) from using no buffs, rep traits etc then this is as close to a good test as you're going to get.
It doesn't mater that grav well is primarily an AOE attack, against a single target it works just as well and assuming two parties had different skills it should do different damage. The AOE part doesn't mater with a single stationary target. The damage done should still scale with the skill that affects damage.
The issue here is whether that scaling is wrong or is there's some other mechanic in play here and it turns out a balance of the two gives a better result than putting everything into one skill.
I agree a better test would be to use the exact same player + ship but with different skill values for each test. But that is not possible unless someone wants to go and blow 500Z on a skill respec just to run a test.
If you still have a respsec (from wherever) and access, copy the character to Tribble and test it there.
GW does not do that much damage, no matter what you do. The bulk of GW damage is done by shooting mobs and chaining warp core breaches. The problem could just be that adding 50% more damage to 100 dps is only 150 dps. .....
When Bort fixed GW2 and 3, he changed the original GW DPS formula and kicked up the damage on the low end with part gens and lowered it on the high end because "a GW3 could destroy 3 Frigates". So on the high end, you'll see more DPS, but not as much as on the low end.
Personally, I'm still upset at his change since I can destroy 3 frigates in a second using CSV1 on a tac toon. With the NPC boost that DR brought, the old formula should make a comeback.
The R&D trait from the sci school will give you the most bang for your buck, but TBR is a way better to dish out damage then GW. Tyken's is supposed to be good too, but you'd have to keep the target close to it to hurt it.
everyone gets tribble access. they only limit it to subscribers right before a huge update like DR.
not to mention that was all before DR and NPC HP has changed dramatically since then. I do think GW needs another look at as it's balanced for pre-DR NPCs
I don't know who's math suggested that. SS3 is not stronger than FAW3/APO3, according to my math. And SS3/FAW3+APO1, even with OSS, isn't going to beat out FAW3x2+APO3, let alone FAW3x2+APO3 with 8 weapons.
If there was a ship with a commander intel/tac that had 8 weapons and a battle cloak available to romulans, T6 ships might beat out T5-U ships. But until there's a 5/3 ship with a Commander Tac/Intel, Lt. Tac, Lt. Commander Engineering, Ensign Engineering, and Lt. sci/Intel (or the ability to work like such), a frigate hangar bay, and a battle cloak, Scimitar's gonna stay king.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
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To try and illustrate what I'm saying here's some basic math no formula's or anything fancy or difficult to understand. My 313 pgens with 87% crit rate averaged 808 dps from gravity well 3 on a single target and my testing partner with 135 less pgens (178 pgens and 47% crit rate) averaged 792 dps which is only a 16 dps difference then lets assume I'd used 3 targets 3x808=2424 while 3x792=2376 for a dps difference of 48 between us which is roughly a .02% dps increase regardless of whether it's 1 target or 3 from having 135 more pgens and 40% higher crit rate. The point as I've tried to point out numerous times isn't that dps in general is week but rather that it's not gaining much by adding more pgens having 135 more pgens than my partner not only is considerable higher pgen skill which alone should be boosting gravity well but it also results in 40% more crit rate than my testing partner due to trait. The combination of that much more crit and pgen skill should be much bigger difference between our dps. If .02% dps increase is supposed to be the proper dps increase from having 135 more pgens and 40% more crit rate that just seems awefully bad IMO. I mean we talking tenths of a percent dps gains from an investment of 3 console slots and a trait.
When my partner is available again I intend to do some further testing including testing without the particle manipulation trait involved to further isolate gravity well 3 from any and all potential buffs/traits/skills ect... that could skew the dps results.
Finally just to be clear incase it's lost on ppl in the wall of text the point is the dps gain from adding large amounts of pgens and crit rate from trait is extremely bad to say the least.
What I would do is change your own particle gen rating to see the different DPS at different ratings, especially if you can go near zero with a respec on Tribble. Also try out GW 1 and 2 for further comparisons, then have your friend to the same. See if you can both get the same particle gen rating and test them all at that rating too, to see if there is some other potential issue between your characters. And don't forget testing it out at different Aux power settings. It is time consuming and tedious, but you learn a lot about how the skill works and whether or not it is worth your time to invest in the consoles and/or the skills and/or the trait.
I used to test these things all the time when they would break or change science powers patch after patch, and these are the kind of things you want to look at. Unfortunately I stopped bothering with this years ago. I don't know the answer to this issue myself so I am curious what you find out.
Never take for granted that science skills/ratings actually do anything because at many points through this game's history, there was virtually no reason to invest in certain skills when using a power related to those skills. Science skills have always been the worst designed and worst implemented.
The particle manipulator trait will add to the crit rate a player already has so if his is initially higher that will give him higher overall chance of crits.
You need to remove absolutely everything from your builds that could affect the crit chance or crit hit, and even things like accuracy skill and aux performance need to be considered too. All of these could easily throw numbers off.
Basically you need to make both parties' build look identical except for the skills you want to be different.
Then you can start testing.
I'm not misunderstanding what you are saying, and to start with it looks like something is broken here, ut you've got to make sure absolutely nothing is throwing off your numbers. When working out DPS you're looking at damage over time, so even doing 1 point of damage different can over a period of a few minutes make a massive change in the final DPS number.
Completely understood which is why we did our best to make things as close to the same as possible other than pgen and grav gen skill. Was only slome slight differences in our skill trees as changing those would require respecs and I nor my partner are gonna spend money to respec to test something that should be fully tested internally by cryptic themselves. As for crit chance without trat as I said everythings the same, but when you throw in particle manipulation trait my crit chance was 87.xx and my partner with 135 less pgens was 47.xx, but as I said in my last post I fully intend to do some further testing when time permits for me and my testing partner taking particle manipulation out of the picture as well. I'm gonna attempt to keep everything as close as possible other than pgen/grav gen skill short of spending any money to test as it's not my responsibility to spend money to test these things.
Another thing to consider is the length of the testing, a number I have used is average across 10 minutes of firing to really see the better average. Also if the particle manipulator skill give critical chance based on part gen, does it pull from your crit severity for how much your exotic damage will crit for?
If that is true coupled with the fact that they have nerfed sci to hell over and over again...most recently being nerfing the effects PG's and Aux power has on the abilities so the DPS monster that probably sets their Aux to 15 and has no PG's to speak of can have a GW in their extra Lt Cmdr Sci slot and still be very effective.
They've never cared about Science and never will...if it doesn't affect your energy weapons they don't care about it and very well may nerf it if it gets good. Look at IT and it's nerf...yet SS is still going strong.
^^ Good post!
I hope you get some real answers soon. I love to hear the effect on R-TBR's too, btw. 135 extra partgens is quite a lot: if it hardly makes any difference, then it's good we know about it.
That's irrelevant for testing whether an ability is working and scaling correctly. If you hit the same target with the same ability and the same stats a thousand times and average the result, you get a baseline value. If you then increase one of the stats and repeat the test, you should get a higher number that comes reasonably close to the increase defined by that stat change. Whether or not the test is optimal doesn't matter, because you're not testing for the maximum potential of the ability -- you're testing the effect of changing the stat.
OP -- the one variable I wonder if you're testing for is whether the target is identical. Were you and your partner using GW3 on the same target, or were you using it on each other? If you were using it on each other, were your defensive stats identical?
I wonder also if a ship's inertia value affects how much GW moves it around, which could affect the "distance from center" modifier (assuming the ability moves the ship around at least a bit even if it starts stationary -- it may not).
Important Target ship stats
Ship type - Voth Palisade Science Vessel
Hull 96.277
Kinetic resists - 50%
Stationary - Yes
My ship stats
CrtD - 50%
Bonus ACC - 16.7%
Aux Pwr - 122
DPS with 265 pgens - 227.95/s
Pgen difference - 131
DPS difference - 24.9
DPS per point of pgen - .190
That's the best testing scenario I have time for and can do at the moment and though I'm no expert or anything IMO the results are horrid. Rounding off each point of pgens appeared to add only .19 dps for a total of 24.9 dps gain by adding 131 pgens.
Additionally I ran the same tests with the addition of particle manipulation trait and the results are as follows :
DPS with 265 pgens and PM Trait (66.3% crit)- 287.32
Pgen Difference - 131
crit rate difference - 30.3
DPS Difference - 74.62
DPS per point of pgen - .569
So Obviously Particle manipulation makes a huge difference in dps as you increase pgens yet still only yielded roughly .57 dps per point for a total dps gain of 74.62.
I'm not doing anything but basic math on here but IMO these numbers seem rather pathetic especially given the current game state with moves with the large numbers of hps and all. Granted these are base figures without full gear traits and buffs ect..., but you can get an idea of how bad the gains are. Slipped my mind to do a test to see what the full potential of my grav well 3 is with current gear and buffs, but I can tell you based on my first test iI ran that initiated this post that the dps is quite bad at roughly 808 dps with 313 pgens fully geared and buffed ( a single beam array on a cruiser can do more dps than that and doesn't have a 1min cooldown nor need a lvl 15 R&D trait to even be effective.
Any feedback, opinions, or criticism of the results is welcome as long as it's constructive.
Thing is they didn't nerf Grav Well II or I as much... so I'd be curious to see who PGens effected those two as well...