Debuting on Today's DING!s we have the freshly respeced:
War Furnace, level 10 Battle Axe/Fiery Aura Brute
Having all four of the inital attacks in Axe is helping, but low-level Axe is still very poor at generating Fury. But I now know things do even out later on, so I just have to hang in there.
I can't wait to roll Mace. LOL
Monday, October 6, 2008
Looking At Brute Sets By Fury Generation
In having trouble building and maintaining Fury with my Axe Brute once again, I decided I would put to the test my hypothesis that Battle Axe is a poor Brute set as it generates Fury more slowly than the other sets.
Taking damaging powers from each set (leaving out things like Clobber, Hand Clap, Rage, Buildup, etc.), we can take their cast time and add to it their recharge time to get a raw Fury Generation Rating (shown in "Total"). We can then adjust this number to normalize the FGR in order to account for sets that have more or fewer attacks by dividing the Total by the number of damaging powers in a set (this eliminates the artificial advantage attack-lite sets have over attack-heavy sets):
Battle Axe
Chop 8.33
Beheader 5.33
Gash 11.5
Swoop 13.83
Whirling Axe 16.67
Cleave 17.33
Pendulum 17
Total 89.99
Powers Divisor 12.84
Super Strength
Jab 3.07
Punch 5.2
Haymaker 9.5
Knockout Blow 27.23
Hurl 10.5
Foot Stomp 22.1
Total 77.6
Powers Divisor 12.93
Dual Blades
Nimble Slash 4.03
Power Slice 6.03
Ablating Strike 7.03
Typhoon's Edge 14.27
Blinding Feint 13.2
Vengeful Slice 10.43
Sweeping Strike 12.23
1K Cuts 18.3
Total 85.79
Powers Divisor 10.72
War Mace
Bash 5.33
Pulverize 9.5
Jawbreaker 11.83
Whirling Mace 16.67
Shatter 14.33
Crowd Control 14
Total 71.66
Powers Divisor 11.94
So we can take the final adjusted FGR of each set (of course this list is incomplete) and show which ones generate Fury better than others:
1. Dual Blades 10.72
No surprise here. Dual Blades is famous for its fantastic Fury generation.
2. War Mace 11.94
Surprise number 1! War Mace is a Fury Generating beast. This is the Issue 12 number, of course. Dual Blades is 10% better at generating Fury than it.
3. Battle Axe 12.84
Surprise number 2! My hypothesis is falsified. Axe is 17% worse than Dual Blades at Fury generation, but:
4. Super Strength 12.93
Axe is actually 1% better at Fury generation than Super Strength, and Super Strength is also 17% behind Dual Blades.
This tells me that it isn't Axe, but me. This calls for redoing my power picks on my Axe Brute because I've apparently done the set an injustice. I think I'll drop Whirling Axe out of my plans, and pick up the first three attacks in the set and see how things go.
Can you say, "Respec at level 8?" LOL
Of course, Fury building chains (especially in the early game where my Axe Brute is right now) usually consist of the first two or three attacks in a set, plus brawl (yep, I'm an old-school Brute player. Of course when you solo as much as I do, you must generate Fury on your own. On large teams where there no other Brutes, there are so many mobs that it doesn't matter how fast your set generates Fury. But on small teams, solo, or where there are a lot of other Brutes, it becomes very important to take responsibility for your own Fury).
So in the early game, as you can see from the initial three attacks in each set above, Super Strength is ahead of Battle Axe in the Fury building attack chain metric. But as you level and you gain all of your attacks, this difference smooths out and Axe catches up (eventually overtaking by 1%). So maybe it isn't 100% me, the low-level Battle Axe really isn't all that great at generating Fury. And I skipped Chop, trying to make room in my build, but that is probably making a bad low level experience even worse by artificially creating a bigger gap than would otherwise be there (compared to my SS/WP Brute who has all three of the lowest level attacks, and no Fury generating problems).
But yeah, respec at level 8. LOL
Still, it's nice to know that it isn't Axe's fault. At least not completely.
Taking damaging powers from each set (leaving out things like Clobber, Hand Clap, Rage, Buildup, etc.), we can take their cast time and add to it their recharge time to get a raw Fury Generation Rating (shown in "Total"). We can then adjust this number to normalize the FGR in order to account for sets that have more or fewer attacks by dividing the Total by the number of damaging powers in a set (this eliminates the artificial advantage attack-lite sets have over attack-heavy sets):
Battle Axe
Chop 8.33
Beheader 5.33
Gash 11.5
Swoop 13.83
Whirling Axe 16.67
Cleave 17.33
Pendulum 17
Total 89.99
Powers Divisor 12.84
Super Strength
Jab 3.07
Punch 5.2
Haymaker 9.5
Knockout Blow 27.23
Hurl 10.5
Foot Stomp 22.1
Total 77.6
Powers Divisor 12.93
Dual Blades
Nimble Slash 4.03
Power Slice 6.03
Ablating Strike 7.03
Typhoon's Edge 14.27
Blinding Feint 13.2
Vengeful Slice 10.43
Sweeping Strike 12.23
1K Cuts 18.3
Total 85.79
Powers Divisor 10.72
War Mace
Bash 5.33
Pulverize 9.5
Jawbreaker 11.83
Whirling Mace 16.67
Shatter 14.33
Crowd Control 14
Total 71.66
Powers Divisor 11.94
So we can take the final adjusted FGR of each set (of course this list is incomplete) and show which ones generate Fury better than others:
1. Dual Blades 10.72
No surprise here. Dual Blades is famous for its fantastic Fury generation.
2. War Mace 11.94
Surprise number 1! War Mace is a Fury Generating beast. This is the Issue 12 number, of course. Dual Blades is 10% better at generating Fury than it.
3. Battle Axe 12.84
Surprise number 2! My hypothesis is falsified. Axe is 17% worse than Dual Blades at Fury generation, but:
4. Super Strength 12.93
Axe is actually 1% better at Fury generation than Super Strength, and Super Strength is also 17% behind Dual Blades.
This tells me that it isn't Axe, but me. This calls for redoing my power picks on my Axe Brute because I've apparently done the set an injustice. I think I'll drop Whirling Axe out of my plans, and pick up the first three attacks in the set and see how things go.
Can you say, "Respec at level 8?" LOL
Of course, Fury building chains (especially in the early game where my Axe Brute is right now) usually consist of the first two or three attacks in a set, plus brawl (yep, I'm an old-school Brute player. Of course when you solo as much as I do, you must generate Fury on your own. On large teams where there no other Brutes, there are so many mobs that it doesn't matter how fast your set generates Fury. But on small teams, solo, or where there are a lot of other Brutes, it becomes very important to take responsibility for your own Fury).
So in the early game, as you can see from the initial three attacks in each set above, Super Strength is ahead of Battle Axe in the Fury building attack chain metric. But as you level and you gain all of your attacks, this difference smooths out and Axe catches up (eventually overtaking by 1%). So maybe it isn't 100% me, the low-level Battle Axe really isn't all that great at generating Fury. And I skipped Chop, trying to make room in my build, but that is probably making a bad low level experience even worse by artificially creating a bigger gap than would otherwise be there (compared to my SS/WP Brute who has all three of the lowest level attacks, and no Fury generating problems).
But yeah, respec at level 8. LOL
Still, it's nice to know that it isn't Axe's fault. At least not completely.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Friday, October 3, 2008
War Furnace's New Look
He's lookin' pretty good now. Maybe a bit more tweaking, but I'm pretty happy with the look.
Starsman Analyses I13 War Mace
Here's the chart. Notice how much better War Mace I13 is over the current War Mace. Wow! It's the seventh-best single-target sustained set (up from 13th), and the single-target burst is even more impressive: third-best (up from 12th), behind only Energy Melee and Fiery Melee!
I13 War Mace is a viable PvP set because of that (single-target burst is the measure of how well a set will do in that environment, since that's the single most important metric for PvP).
Yeah, I'm so rolling War Mace in I13.
P.S. War Mace has some of the best customization options in the game, too.
I13 War Mace is a viable PvP set because of that (single-target burst is the measure of how well a set will do in that environment, since that's the single most important metric for PvP).
Yeah, I'm so rolling War Mace in I13.
P.S. War Mace has some of the best customization options in the game, too.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
October Calendar Wallpaper Time!
Here's the whole collection of calendar wallpapers, and here's October! As you can see, the Rikti Invasion event ends today. w00t!
Ah, Issue 6! The Issue when I started playing. Found out about the game through word-of-mouth (that's how 99% of people discover it since they don't advertise lol) and the description of a Mastermind making their pets do emotes and talk was enough to get me to sign up. I had just left Galaxies in frustration (IIRC) over the NGE, and City of Villains was a breath of fresh air.
I actually rolled a SS/INV Brute (Satan's Robot-- long since deleted) for my very first character after giving serious consideration to Masterminds and Stalkers. Droid Engineer (Bots/FF MM) was my second character (she's still around, but I rarely ever play her). I'd go on to discover the blue side of the game (it was kind of dissappointing how blueside felt far less polished than redside, but it was the older half of the game after all) and roll one of my favorite characters of all time and my first 50, Daemodand (MA/SR/WN Scrapper).
Good times!
Ah, Issue 6! The Issue when I started playing. Found out about the game through word-of-mouth (that's how 99% of people discover it since they don't advertise lol) and the description of a Mastermind making their pets do emotes and talk was enough to get me to sign up. I had just left Galaxies in frustration (IIRC) over the NGE, and City of Villains was a breath of fresh air.
I actually rolled a SS/INV Brute (Satan's Robot-- long since deleted) for my very first character after giving serious consideration to Masterminds and Stalkers. Droid Engineer (Bots/FF MM) was my second character (she's still around, but I rarely ever play her). I'd go on to discover the blue side of the game (it was kind of dissappointing how blueside felt far less polished than redside, but it was the older half of the game after all) and roll one of my favorite characters of all time and my first 50, Daemodand (MA/SR/WN Scrapper).
Good times!
New Font
I decided Courier doesn't look very good after all (it looks better on a printed page than on screen) so I'm going to use the default font from now on. Excuse the two-tone look of the blog until the older posts scroll off. ;)
Lineup Changes
Another roster change. This time Fury Flames (Fiery/Fiery Brute) is out, and War Furnace (Axe/Fiery Brute) is in. I decided I didn't want to replicate the Fiery/Fiery play of Funky Flames after all and went for something a little different. Axe/Fiery is a "classic" combination (axes and fire go together well for some reason) so we'll see how I like this. It'll save me from rolling another Tanker, too lol.
I'm already reminded of how Battle Axe eats lots of Endurance and doesn't generate that much Fury, though. And I'm not entirely happy at my first pass at the costume, but that at least is easily fixed.
I'll get a Mace Brute going once I13 hits. Or sooner if War Furnace doesn't work out.
I'm already reminded of how Battle Axe eats lots of Endurance and doesn't generate that much Fury, though. And I'm not entirely happy at my first pass at the costume, but that at least is easily fixed.
I'll get a Mace Brute going once I13 hits. Or sooner if War Furnace doesn't work out.
Castle Talks I13 PvE Power Changes
In this article at the official forums, Castle tells us some of the PvE highlights to the power changes coming in I13 (I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg):
I would like to see SR get an increase in movement slow resist based on other sets getting its once-iconic 20% slow resistance. Maybe buff it to 30%?
At any rate, Issue 13 is proving to be a terrific Issue! I can't wait to see more about it!
- Energy Aura gains Toxic Resistance and a small self-heal (4% per target when fully enhanced).
- Invulnerability loses the Defense debuff, is given more Defense for fewer surrounding opponents, 50% Defense debuff resistance, 25% Endurance Drain resistance, and 20% movement slow resistance.
- Kheldians get to use their Inherent in forms instead of just in human, get a range increase in human form, damage increase for all 3 forms, and can shift into Dwarf form even if mezzed. Also, toggles will not drop if mezzed. Khelds just might be playable now! I'll give them another go in I13.
- War Mace has Crowd Control max targets increased from 5 to 10, and Clobber becomes a good damage power rather than a control power. However, the set also, inexplicably, gets nerfs: Shatter's targets go from 10 to 5, and Clobber's disorient duration is cut basicly by half. The disorient duration cut I can understand, but the reduction in targets for Shatter? The set has damage problems and I don't see how this helps. Also, how does this affect Bane Mace I wonder? Will Banes be allowed to Crowd Control 10 targets with Crowd Control? I hope so!
- Temperature Protection from Fiery Aura gets a 20% movement slow resist. Something tells me this is going to be changed to 20% recharge resistance before all is said and done. Fiery Aura is very vulnerable to -recharge.
- Dark Melee's Midnight Grasp gets burst damage with some DoT, and the set overall gets a damage increase (I don't know if this will make it fun to play; I prefer actual attacks over utilities, YMMV).
- Energy Melee's Barrage gets an increase in Damage Per Activation. I always did like this power as it's one of the few fun animations in a very boring-animation set. Not everyting is about numbers, people! How a power looks and sounds is just as important in its fun factor if you ask me.
I would like to see SR get an increase in movement slow resist based on other sets getting its once-iconic 20% slow resistance. Maybe buff it to 30%?
At any rate, Issue 13 is proving to be a terrific Issue! I can't wait to see more about it!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
I Fall For It Every Time
I make a Tank, it invariably doesn't work out because I just don't like the Tank play style, and I delete. Time passes, I forget what a boring/frustrating experience it was previously and I look at the fun Tank powersets (I've most recently been fantasising about Fiery/Battle Axe) and imagine how much fun that would be to play. I roll it, and it invariably doesn't work out because I just don't like the Tank play style, and I delete. Time passes, I forget...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)