We're down to the final two weeks in our Blood Bowl league, where the top 3 in each division will advance to the playoffs. Finishing in the first seed is worth a bye which will heal your guys and earn some SPP so it's pretty clutch to get all the way to first, but it's still important to hit the top 3. My division currently has 4 teams mathematically eliminated and 4 teams clumped up near the top. 4-0-1, 4-1, 4-1, 3-1-1. The 4-0-1 team still has to play both of the 4-1 teams in the last two weeks. The draw came between the 4-0-1 and 3-1-1 teams. And the 4-1, 4-1, 3-1-1 form a cycle where each beat one of the others. I was planning on looking at all the different ways the last 2 weeks could play out when I remembered the Sports Club Stats website. It simulates the games in the regular season of the NHL (and many other leagues) to paint a picture of who's likely to be making the playoffs. It also has a feature allowing you to upload your own rec league so I decided to look into creating a league on there to see if it could handle our league. It turned out to be fairly easy to do (I had to type out all the games for every week and include the scores for finished games) but I actually like doing repetitive data entry and it didn't take very long.
The results are here.
I believe the simulator places a fairly large emphasis on prior goal differential being a predictor of future results. He's been running the simulator for many years so I imagine this predicting method works well for real sports. There's been some debate about how reasonable it is for Blood Bowl. In hockey if you get ahead by one goal early you can't reasonably expect to just hold onto the puck for the rest of the game. In Blood Bowl it can happen, and can be the right play. In my game against Randy I went up 1-0 in the first half, got the ball in the second half, and refused to move. My dwarves just stood in a big pile punching any elf that dared try to get at the ball. If I'd tried to score then there would have been a reasonable chance at winning 2-0 or 2-1, but it would have opened up an opportunity to tie 1-1 or maybe even lose 2-1 since elves can do all sorts of crazy things. I took my guaranteed win (I think I took a shot to score at the end of the half and failed) and only added 1 to my goal differential. Is that actually worse than when Robb ran up the score and won 4-0? I don't know. My team doesn't have the explosive ability to score 4 times and his does, so maybe it is reasonable.
At any rate, my group (group 2) has the 4 teams sitting between 72 and 80% chance of making the playoffs. The simulator pegs the odds of the 3-1-1 team losing another game at 2.3%. That seems really low, and is likely a result of the goal differential thing. His opponents are a combined 3-7 with a goal differential of -10 so maybe that makes sense? I did enter the odds of a tie at 25% which seems to be playing out in his numbers. Maybe that number is too high? Group 2 has only had 1 tie in 20 games. On the other hand group 1 has 5 ties in 20 games. Oh, small numbers of dice.
Despite currently having the second most points in group 2 I am currently the slight favourite to make the playoffs and to finish first. I have the advantage of still playing Sceadeau who is the only person ahead of me. If I win both of my games I'm guaranteed to finish first. Sceadeau is in the same boat. Win out and come first. On the other hand Sceadeau has two 'hard' games on the schedule since he has to play both the 4-1 teams. Lose them both and he's in a world of trouble. The other 4-1 team is really hoping we draw. I think that's his best chance at the first seed. Win out, and have us draw. Otherwise he needs to win out while Sceadeau beats me, or win out which I beat Sceadeau and then lose to a currently 1-4 team. All quite plausible, and he does have a 26% chance of finishing first.
The other division is more open. One team is eliminated. One team is guaranteed to make the playoffs and is 93% to finish first. Even if he loses both of his games he still has a good chance of finishing first. The other 6 teams all have paths to the playoffs and there's lots of interplay between them still. This week alone has current #2 in points against #3, #4 against #7, and #5 against #6. I think the large number of draws to date is what's causing the clumping and the craziness. Most everyone there wants to win while seeing everyone else tie again.
As far as my team is concerned winning this week would be awesome, but a tie is still really good. I'm guaranteed in the playoffs with a tie this week and a win next week. A draw will damage my chances of coming first and getting that precious bye... But I like playing games so maybe I don't even want a bye? We're playing cross groups for the first round of the playoffs so I'd get to play someone I haven't played yet. Sceadeau is playing Khemri and only has one guy with an agility above 2. I need to aggressively target that guy and hope he doesn't regenerate! Alternatively it's tempting to spend some money on petty cash in order to drug test his 'passers'. I don't want him to get a second guy who can handle the ball, or a first guy who can really handle the ball!
Monday, March 04, 2013
Sunday, March 03, 2013
Diablo III: The Infernal Machine Event
Back in patch 1.0.5 Blizzard added in a new end game event to Diablo III. They added four new purple elites to the game, one in each act, which each drop a different bind on account item. Collect the 3 keys from the first 3 acts and a crafting recipe from Act IV and you can build yourself an infernal machine item which is also bind on account. Then going forward you just need the three keys again to make another one (meaning you can skip farming Act IV). Each of these items drops at X*10% where X is your monster power level, and only drop if you already have 5 stacks of the Nephalim valour buff.
Once you get a bunch of these infernal machines the real fun starts. Using an infernal machine opens a portal to a new zone which contains a new boss fight. There are three different boss fights beyond the portals and each one drops a different bind on account crafting item, again with a X*10% chance of a drop in any given kill. Collect all three of these items, buy a recipe for 2 million gold, and you can craft up a bind on account ring. These rings are bind on account and have 170-200 of a stat (your choice when you make it), a chance to shoot a fireball, 35% bonus experience gained, and 4 random ring mods. Oh, and no level requirement... Hello, alts!
Yesterday Randy put a little group together to try out the boss fights. Sceadeau, Tom, and I went along, though Sceadeau and I haven't played enough to have a lot of machines to use so we mostly just leeched off the items. I mean, we did help win the fights, don't get me wrong. But we didn't pull our key grinding weight. We did the first set at monster power 6, found it was pretty easy, and went up to 7. The fights on 7 took longer and were sketchier (but with only 1 wipe in 13 tries it was still pretty easy). Maybe we should have gone up to 8 for the better drop chance? On the other hand if we couldn't win on 8 it would have been really bad since we'd lose 4 shots at 70% (2.8 items) while hoping to earn 4*3*.1 = 1.2 items. I would have tried, as I'm always willing to try crazy things, but it may not have made sense. And since they weren't my machines it really wouldn't have been my place to make that call.
At any rate, we used 15 machines, did 16 fights, and I got the pieces to make 3 rings. I couldn't afford the 2 million for the recipe right away, but I ended up selling some gems I had lying around to get there. (And then finally sold a set belt I'd found for 6.8M so I'm flush with cash now!) But I'm in a bit of a quandry. My current build relies almost exclusively on having high amounts of attack speed and crit chance to function properly. My rings give me 7% of my 35% crit chance and 13% of my 44% attack speed. Swapping those out for other rings, even ones that give me 70% more experience, are going to make me worse. Perhaps so much worse that I can't function properly in this spec? On the other hand, getting 170-200 int is going to give a decent boost to my damage so maybe it'll be ok if I lose some of my stunlock? And if I have to start soloing at a lower MP level but with 70% more experience gained I bet it will be ok. Maybe I should keep my better stunlocking rings for the next time I run infernal machine bosses? Or maybe I can just get lucky and roll up some +xp rings with attack speed and crit! Alternatively I could just find a new spec entirely. I do miss shooting laser beams at people...
Well, what did I get on my rings?
ring 1 - int/vit, life on hit, crit damage, socket
ring 2 - str, vit, dex/vit, socket
ring 3 - damage, dex, cold resist, armour
No attack speed, no crit chance at all. The first ring seems really good, though. Really, really good. It rolled pretty high on the int, life on hit, and crit damage rolls and the socket is a reasonable bonus. The second ring has too many wasted stats. I don't need strength or dexterity on my ring. I'll give it to my follower for sure, and it'll be awesome on an alt. The third ring also has two wasted stats but I do need more defenses so getting armour isn't terrible.
I may research some other builds that can use two rings, but for now I think I'm going to try replacing my worst ring with ring 1 and sticking the other two on my follower and see how that works out. I can try to make up for the lost attack speed by using some of my newfound cashola on a better amulet or maybe buy a witching hour belt.
EDIT: Turns out they're unique equipped, so I will definitely just use ring 1 no matter what I end up doing, and giving just one of them to my follower. That makes things easier!
Once you get a bunch of these infernal machines the real fun starts. Using an infernal machine opens a portal to a new zone which contains a new boss fight. There are three different boss fights beyond the portals and each one drops a different bind on account crafting item, again with a X*10% chance of a drop in any given kill. Collect all three of these items, buy a recipe for 2 million gold, and you can craft up a bind on account ring. These rings are bind on account and have 170-200 of a stat (your choice when you make it), a chance to shoot a fireball, 35% bonus experience gained, and 4 random ring mods. Oh, and no level requirement... Hello, alts!
Yesterday Randy put a little group together to try out the boss fights. Sceadeau, Tom, and I went along, though Sceadeau and I haven't played enough to have a lot of machines to use so we mostly just leeched off the items. I mean, we did help win the fights, don't get me wrong. But we didn't pull our key grinding weight. We did the first set at monster power 6, found it was pretty easy, and went up to 7. The fights on 7 took longer and were sketchier (but with only 1 wipe in 13 tries it was still pretty easy). Maybe we should have gone up to 8 for the better drop chance? On the other hand if we couldn't win on 8 it would have been really bad since we'd lose 4 shots at 70% (2.8 items) while hoping to earn 4*3*.1 = 1.2 items. I would have tried, as I'm always willing to try crazy things, but it may not have made sense. And since they weren't my machines it really wouldn't have been my place to make that call.
At any rate, we used 15 machines, did 16 fights, and I got the pieces to make 3 rings. I couldn't afford the 2 million for the recipe right away, but I ended up selling some gems I had lying around to get there. (And then finally sold a set belt I'd found for 6.8M so I'm flush with cash now!) But I'm in a bit of a quandry. My current build relies almost exclusively on having high amounts of attack speed and crit chance to function properly. My rings give me 7% of my 35% crit chance and 13% of my 44% attack speed. Swapping those out for other rings, even ones that give me 70% more experience, are going to make me worse. Perhaps so much worse that I can't function properly in this spec? On the other hand, getting 170-200 int is going to give a decent boost to my damage so maybe it'll be ok if I lose some of my stunlock? And if I have to start soloing at a lower MP level but with 70% more experience gained I bet it will be ok. Maybe I should keep my better stunlocking rings for the next time I run infernal machine bosses? Or maybe I can just get lucky and roll up some +xp rings with attack speed and crit! Alternatively I could just find a new spec entirely. I do miss shooting laser beams at people...
Well, what did I get on my rings?
ring 1 - int/vit, life on hit, crit damage, socket
ring 2 - str, vit, dex/vit, socket
ring 3 - damage, dex, cold resist, armour
No attack speed, no crit chance at all. The first ring seems really good, though. Really, really good. It rolled pretty high on the int, life on hit, and crit damage rolls and the socket is a reasonable bonus. The second ring has too many wasted stats. I don't need strength or dexterity on my ring. I'll give it to my follower for sure, and it'll be awesome on an alt. The third ring also has two wasted stats but I do need more defenses so getting armour isn't terrible.
I may research some other builds that can use two rings, but for now I think I'm going to try replacing my worst ring with ring 1 and sticking the other two on my follower and see how that works out. I can try to make up for the lost attack speed by using some of my newfound cashola on a better amulet or maybe buy a witching hour belt.
EDIT: Turns out they're unique equipped, so I will definitely just use ring 1 no matter what I end up doing, and giving just one of them to my follower. That makes things easier!
Friday, March 01, 2013
Diablo III: More Numbers!
Both Snuggles and Sky have commented recently with mechanic based information for Diablo III that is pretty informative. My new build has been working out spectacularly and I want to know more about how things work so I know where the best places to invest money would be in order to get more powerful. Should I be saving up for a socketed weapon? A set source? Should I just be crafting more gloves/bracers/shoulders? I don't really know how things work so it's really hard to accurately answer those questions. I've read some guides and such so I know what other people think I should do, but I hate listening to just other people. I want to understand things myself so I can make decisions!
First off, proc rates on things. Snuggles found a post from a guy who did a lot of testing on the 'life on hit' mechanic. It turns out the amount of life you gain on hit isn't what is listed on your gear. Instead every skill in the game has a 'proc coefficient' number (listed in this spreadsheet) which determines what ratio of your 'life on hit' you actually get. So while my gear says hits add 893 life in actually wicked wind is only adding 112 life per hit because it has a .125 pc. It works similarly with the critical mass passive which makes crits knock a second off of all my cooldowns. Apparently some people on the forums have been doing some testing and think the chance is actually twice the pc here. I don't know why, and people are still testing. But for now I'm willing to assume that a quarter of my wicked wind crits will reduce my cooldowns by 1 second. The other spells I'm using are storm armor/shocking aspect which has a 0 pc, diamond skin/diamond shards which has a .167 pc, and explosive blast/chain reaction which has a .111 pc.
Ok, but what counts as a hit? Chain reaction is easy. It pulses for damage three times, and therefore is 3 hits for one spell cast. Each hit has a .111 pc, so every time I hit the chain reaction button I heal for 300 life per enemy near me and do 291% damage. (On a time delay, but you can stack up a bunch of them if the cooldown refreshes often enough.) Diamond shards is also easy. It has a similar delay (when the shield runs out or when you cast it again) and does damage to everyone around me once for 150 life and 210% damage. This is worse than chain reaction, except it also puts up an 11k shield and has no resource cost. I also think it's off the GCD? And I can cast it while frozen which is nice when I screw up. Wicked wind, on the other hand, is super complicated. You cast it and it spins around for 6 seconds. How many times it ticks over those 6 seconds depends on your attack speed according to the formula/chart in this thread. I currently have 2.187 attack speed, which means I get 28 ticks per cast. This means each cast of wicked wind heals me for 3126 per enemy hit. It also does 252% damage which means it does less damage than explosive blast. (And has a smaller area of effect.)
All those extra ticks also mean big things for my 'chance on crit' effects. I have a 31% crit chance and have 28 arcane power on crit on my gear. This also uses the same pc ratio as life on hit. This means chain reaction, in the long run, will return 3*.111*.31*28 = 2.89 arcane power per enemy it hits. It costs 20 arcane power, so I can't spam this. Diamond shards gives .167*.31*28 = 1.45 arcane power, on average, per enemy it hits. Diamond shards is completely free. Wicked wind gives 28*.125*.31*28 = 30 arcane power, on average, per enemy it hits. It costs 35 arcane power. So against a single target I'll run myself out of arcane power by spamming wicked wind, but if you add in a second enemy I'll have infinite arcane power in a very short amount of time. In practice I find I have infinite arcane power all of the time except when something goes wrong. If the enemies get out of stunlock for an instant and blink away, or if I'm in a party and they knock the enemies out of my winds it can set me back. Or if I just hit the wrong buttons because I'm bad or my hand cramps up or something. I'm wondering if I can afford to drop the 8 arcane power on crit from my source and buy a more powerful one. I may test it out at some point. I know if I get more attack speed and crit I shouldn't need all 3 pieces, but I'm still pretty low on both values. The guides have recommended getting up to 36 ticks per wind as a baseline and I only have 28.
As far as cooldowns go, dividing each of the above numbers by 14 should give me the number of cooldown seconds shaved off per cast. Which means chain reaction should take off .2 seconds per cast per enemy, diamond shards should take off .1 seconds per cast per enemy, and wicked wind should cut 2.1 seconds per cast per enemy. My spells have cooldowns of 10.2 seconds (frost nova), 12.75 seconds (diamond shards), and 5.1 seconds (chain reaction). With full diminishing returns a monster will break out of frost nova in 1.05 seconds, which means I need to shave off 9.2 seconds from the cooldown every second in order to maintain stun lock. With only 2.187 attack speed this means every second spell needs to be worth 9 seconds of cooldown. Well, except I think diamond shards is off the GCD so I can just spam it when the cooldown refreshes. And by looking at the guide closer it claims explosive blast is also off the GCD, so I can spam it too. (I just mash all the buttons constantly!) This isn't enough reduction to stun lock one monster, which is definitely something I've noticed. I can keep a single elite mostly locked down but if he has teleport he'll often get away which is a big pain. Three enemies is absolute gold since a single wicked wind is then worth 6.3 seconds of reduction. Note the initial frost nova is a full 3 second stun so I have a ton of time to get winds up and ticking! Also reality is discrete, not continuous, so I don't get .1 second of reduction per diamond shard. Mostly I get nothing but sometimes I get a full second off.
Ok, fine, so I can see that getting some more crit chance will up my cooldown reduction more, and will give me more arcane power. Upping my attack speed will let me both cast more spells and get way more life, arcane power, and cooldown reduction. Dropping some arcane power on crit is probably a fine thing to do, especially if I get more attack speed or crit chance. But given that I can mostly stun lock stuff as is, and I can survive most single hits, how can I do more damage?
Sky pointed out that the item mod 'adds X% to {elemental} damage' works in ways I didn't expect. I have a Storm Crow hat with 'adds 8% to lightning damage' and my thinking was that it would increase any lightning damage I did by 8%. Storm armor does lightning damage so this seems like a small boost. Not so! It turns out it adds 8% extra damage (from your physical damage) to every attack you do! It won't even be lightning damage if the spell has a different damage type. So my wicked wind (which does arcane damage) will be getting a damage buff from the hat. As best I can tell I have 443 physical damage on my gear and 408 magical damage on my gear. This means about 52% of my damage is eligible for this bonus, which makes this stat on my hat a 4.16% damage boost. That's pretty hot! The issue here is most of the damage on my weapon is +fire damage, and that's by design of the weapon. Theoretically I could get a different weapon to make this mod better, but that would drastically reduce my attack speed and that just seems wrong. Stunlock first, kill things later!
One of the things I like to do to work out how good stats are is build a spreadsheet and then vary the numbers a little to see what the incremental worth of a stat is going to be. You have to build assumptions as far as what you expect your rotation to be, and I think I'm going to assume 2 wicked winds for every frost nova with the other two damage spells being spammed on average based on expected crits. I'm also going to assume 100ms between casts even when stuff is cooled down. I'm really not good enough to keep that up but it should at least give a decent relative ranking of the stats. I am considering using my gaming keyboard to macro all of the spammy spells onto one button to save my poor left hand which would probably help bring things more in line with this mythical expected value.
Man, I must say, some of these numbers in my sheet get pretty absurd. A WW+WW+FN rotation with 1 target does 175k DPS, but the mob gets to run around some. A WW+FN rotation with 3 targets does 237k DPS per target and locks them all down forever. If somehow you got 20 mobs to stand around me I'd be looking at doing 18M DPS per target! (Ok, that's right insane, since the sheet now assumes I can cast chain reaction 191 times in a little over a second. This probably means the way I'm dealing with cooldown reduction from crits is wonky for big numbers.) Not like 20 mobs would live very long regardless.
Anyway, here's the DPS gain for the WW+WW+FN case on a single dude:
100 Int = 10626
6% crit = 20007
50% crit damage = 27236
3 base attacks per second (maxxed chantodo) = 2322
9% attack speed = 13462
4% damage to elites = 7806
8% damage as elemental = 8113
33 min damage = 4080
I tried to use what seemed like the max possible roll for a stat on a secondary item like a ring. It turns out the stuff I've been trying to keep an eye for is the best stuff. Int does have the advantage of also being damage reduction. The %damage as elemental stuff is interesting for sure, but it doesn't look like something I need to be targeting. The problem is definitely with my weapon, as the same 8% damage as elemental would be worth around 23k if my weapon did purely physical damage. Chantodo maxxes out at a base of 1.65 attacks per second and has to come with fire damage. The fastest other weapon is 1.5 from a rare dagger. Daggers can't roll arcane power on crit, so there are two big problems to deal with if I switched weapons: needing more attack speed to maintain the same number of wicked wind ticks, and needing to keep arcane power on crit stats on my hat and offhand. It's not inconceivable (Triumvirate is a ludicrous offhand for that plan since it can add 18% to elemental damage) but not really in my budget right now. I can't afford great pieces for one gear set; there's no reason to go branching out into a second one.
It's also important to point out that the DPS numbers here are only for once a fight gets rolling and I have enough wicked winds spinning to grant enough arcane power to keep casting all this stuff. It actually makes me pretty terrible at fighting regular easy guys. But wow, when I'm able to teleport onto a group of champions and go to town on them does it ever feel good.
As far as where I should go with my gear, I think short term goals are going to be:
First off, proc rates on things. Snuggles found a post from a guy who did a lot of testing on the 'life on hit' mechanic. It turns out the amount of life you gain on hit isn't what is listed on your gear. Instead every skill in the game has a 'proc coefficient' number (listed in this spreadsheet) which determines what ratio of your 'life on hit' you actually get. So while my gear says hits add 893 life in actually wicked wind is only adding 112 life per hit because it has a .125 pc. It works similarly with the critical mass passive which makes crits knock a second off of all my cooldowns. Apparently some people on the forums have been doing some testing and think the chance is actually twice the pc here. I don't know why, and people are still testing. But for now I'm willing to assume that a quarter of my wicked wind crits will reduce my cooldowns by 1 second. The other spells I'm using are storm armor/shocking aspect which has a 0 pc, diamond skin/diamond shards which has a .167 pc, and explosive blast/chain reaction which has a .111 pc.
Ok, but what counts as a hit? Chain reaction is easy. It pulses for damage three times, and therefore is 3 hits for one spell cast. Each hit has a .111 pc, so every time I hit the chain reaction button I heal for 300 life per enemy near me and do 291% damage. (On a time delay, but you can stack up a bunch of them if the cooldown refreshes often enough.) Diamond shards is also easy. It has a similar delay (when the shield runs out or when you cast it again) and does damage to everyone around me once for 150 life and 210% damage. This is worse than chain reaction, except it also puts up an 11k shield and has no resource cost. I also think it's off the GCD? And I can cast it while frozen which is nice when I screw up. Wicked wind, on the other hand, is super complicated. You cast it and it spins around for 6 seconds. How many times it ticks over those 6 seconds depends on your attack speed according to the formula/chart in this thread. I currently have 2.187 attack speed, which means I get 28 ticks per cast. This means each cast of wicked wind heals me for 3126 per enemy hit. It also does 252% damage which means it does less damage than explosive blast. (And has a smaller area of effect.)
All those extra ticks also mean big things for my 'chance on crit' effects. I have a 31% crit chance and have 28 arcane power on crit on my gear. This also uses the same pc ratio as life on hit. This means chain reaction, in the long run, will return 3*.111*.31*28 = 2.89 arcane power per enemy it hits. It costs 20 arcane power, so I can't spam this. Diamond shards gives .167*.31*28 = 1.45 arcane power, on average, per enemy it hits. Diamond shards is completely free. Wicked wind gives 28*.125*.31*28 = 30 arcane power, on average, per enemy it hits. It costs 35 arcane power. So against a single target I'll run myself out of arcane power by spamming wicked wind, but if you add in a second enemy I'll have infinite arcane power in a very short amount of time. In practice I find I have infinite arcane power all of the time except when something goes wrong. If the enemies get out of stunlock for an instant and blink away, or if I'm in a party and they knock the enemies out of my winds it can set me back. Or if I just hit the wrong buttons because I'm bad or my hand cramps up or something. I'm wondering if I can afford to drop the 8 arcane power on crit from my source and buy a more powerful one. I may test it out at some point. I know if I get more attack speed and crit I shouldn't need all 3 pieces, but I'm still pretty low on both values. The guides have recommended getting up to 36 ticks per wind as a baseline and I only have 28.
As far as cooldowns go, dividing each of the above numbers by 14 should give me the number of cooldown seconds shaved off per cast. Which means chain reaction should take off .2 seconds per cast per enemy, diamond shards should take off .1 seconds per cast per enemy, and wicked wind should cut 2.1 seconds per cast per enemy. My spells have cooldowns of 10.2 seconds (frost nova), 12.75 seconds (diamond shards), and 5.1 seconds (chain reaction). With full diminishing returns a monster will break out of frost nova in 1.05 seconds, which means I need to shave off 9.2 seconds from the cooldown every second in order to maintain stun lock. With only 2.187 attack speed this means every second spell needs to be worth 9 seconds of cooldown. Well, except I think diamond shards is off the GCD so I can just spam it when the cooldown refreshes. And by looking at the guide closer it claims explosive blast is also off the GCD, so I can spam it too. (I just mash all the buttons constantly!) This isn't enough reduction to stun lock one monster, which is definitely something I've noticed. I can keep a single elite mostly locked down but if he has teleport he'll often get away which is a big pain. Three enemies is absolute gold since a single wicked wind is then worth 6.3 seconds of reduction. Note the initial frost nova is a full 3 second stun so I have a ton of time to get winds up and ticking! Also reality is discrete, not continuous, so I don't get .1 second of reduction per diamond shard. Mostly I get nothing but sometimes I get a full second off.
Ok, fine, so I can see that getting some more crit chance will up my cooldown reduction more, and will give me more arcane power. Upping my attack speed will let me both cast more spells and get way more life, arcane power, and cooldown reduction. Dropping some arcane power on crit is probably a fine thing to do, especially if I get more attack speed or crit chance. But given that I can mostly stun lock stuff as is, and I can survive most single hits, how can I do more damage?
Sky pointed out that the item mod 'adds X% to {elemental} damage' works in ways I didn't expect. I have a Storm Crow hat with 'adds 8% to lightning damage' and my thinking was that it would increase any lightning damage I did by 8%. Storm armor does lightning damage so this seems like a small boost. Not so! It turns out it adds 8% extra damage (from your physical damage) to every attack you do! It won't even be lightning damage if the spell has a different damage type. So my wicked wind (which does arcane damage) will be getting a damage buff from the hat. As best I can tell I have 443 physical damage on my gear and 408 magical damage on my gear. This means about 52% of my damage is eligible for this bonus, which makes this stat on my hat a 4.16% damage boost. That's pretty hot! The issue here is most of the damage on my weapon is +fire damage, and that's by design of the weapon. Theoretically I could get a different weapon to make this mod better, but that would drastically reduce my attack speed and that just seems wrong. Stunlock first, kill things later!
One of the things I like to do to work out how good stats are is build a spreadsheet and then vary the numbers a little to see what the incremental worth of a stat is going to be. You have to build assumptions as far as what you expect your rotation to be, and I think I'm going to assume 2 wicked winds for every frost nova with the other two damage spells being spammed on average based on expected crits. I'm also going to assume 100ms between casts even when stuff is cooled down. I'm really not good enough to keep that up but it should at least give a decent relative ranking of the stats. I am considering using my gaming keyboard to macro all of the spammy spells onto one button to save my poor left hand which would probably help bring things more in line with this mythical expected value.
Man, I must say, some of these numbers in my sheet get pretty absurd. A WW+WW+FN rotation with 1 target does 175k DPS, but the mob gets to run around some. A WW+FN rotation with 3 targets does 237k DPS per target and locks them all down forever. If somehow you got 20 mobs to stand around me I'd be looking at doing 18M DPS per target! (Ok, that's right insane, since the sheet now assumes I can cast chain reaction 191 times in a little over a second. This probably means the way I'm dealing with cooldown reduction from crits is wonky for big numbers.) Not like 20 mobs would live very long regardless.
Anyway, here's the DPS gain for the WW+WW+FN case on a single dude:
100 Int = 10626
6% crit = 20007
50% crit damage = 27236
3 base attacks per second (maxxed chantodo) = 2322
9% attack speed = 13462
4% damage to elites = 7806
8% damage as elemental = 8113
33 min damage = 4080
I tried to use what seemed like the max possible roll for a stat on a secondary item like a ring. It turns out the stuff I've been trying to keep an eye for is the best stuff. Int does have the advantage of also being damage reduction. The %damage as elemental stuff is interesting for sure, but it doesn't look like something I need to be targeting. The problem is definitely with my weapon, as the same 8% damage as elemental would be worth around 23k if my weapon did purely physical damage. Chantodo maxxes out at a base of 1.65 attacks per second and has to come with fire damage. The fastest other weapon is 1.5 from a rare dagger. Daggers can't roll arcane power on crit, so there are two big problems to deal with if I switched weapons: needing more attack speed to maintain the same number of wicked wind ticks, and needing to keep arcane power on crit stats on my hat and offhand. It's not inconceivable (Triumvirate is a ludicrous offhand for that plan since it can add 18% to elemental damage) but not really in my budget right now. I can't afford great pieces for one gear set; there's no reason to go branching out into a second one.
It's also important to point out that the DPS numbers here are only for once a fight gets rolling and I have enough wicked winds spinning to grant enough arcane power to keep casting all this stuff. It actually makes me pretty terrible at fighting regular easy guys. But wow, when I'm able to teleport onto a group of champions and go to town on them does it ever feel good.
As far as where I should go with my gear, I think short term goals are going to be:
- Get enough attack speed to reach the next wicked wind tick breakpoint. That's an extra 8% on top of what I already have, but my offhand currently has none on it.
- Try subbing out one of my sources of arcane power on crit. Like, say, my offhand. It only has 8 while my other two have 10 each.
- Putting those two together, the Chantodo's Force offhand has a set bonus worth 130 int and 7% damage reduction from elites. It comes with damage, int, attack speed, max arcane power, crit chance, an irrelevant wizard spell modifier, and one random mod. I've been trying to buy one with the arcane power on crit random mod but they're all really expensive. It also rolls with a minimum of 8% attack speed, which seems just perfect for the first point. So I think looking for a cheap one with a garbage random mod instead of a perfect random mod could be fantastic.
- I don't have any bonus crit damage at all, and it looks like my best damage stat right now. So, investing in something that has it might make a lot of sense. Amulet/ring/gloves are the options for rare slots. Maybe I should try to make some of the crafted stamina gloves and see what comes out. All of my amulet/ring/gloves currently have attack speed and crit chance on them and two already have life on hit so I worry that finding one that keeps those stats while adding in crit damage will be very pricy. So maybe trying to get lucky on gloves really is right.
- I could still use some more defensive stats. I should look to see if I can trade int in some slots for defensive stats. 100 int is worth 10 resist all, which is good, but the max roll in a slot for resist all is 80. 80 is a lot more than 10 and it feels like int isn't as good an offensive stat as I'd been thinking it was so making some trades there may be both right and cost effective. If I craft gloves it'll definitely be vitality ones!
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Ehrgeiz: God Bless The Ring
It took me several hours to figure out but I eventually found and installed all the pieces required to run a PlayStation emulator. It took forever to get it properly configured in part because it has a terrible UI. If you load up a game then you can no longer access any of the options menus, but it doesn't tell you why you can't do it. They're just greyed out. It made it seem like I needed to go install more plugins or something to configure my xBox controller and set it to windowed mode. (I have a wide screen monitor and therefore full screen mode is terrible.) None of the various Google searches I made were much help with the reason either. They'd all just suggest using the options menu which was disabled for me. Eventually one forum post pointed out that you have to do all this stuff before starting a game. Why I can't change my controls after a game is loaded I don't know, but at least I could launch the game.
Ehrgeiz was apparently an arcade fighting game made by another company entirely that somehow convinced Square to lend them some characters. Cloud, Tifa, and Red XIII. Eventually it got ported to the PS by Square who added in some more FFVII characters and added in some sort of dungeon quest mode. I only tried the standard fighting mode a bit today and was pretty disappointed. It just seemed like a mediocre fighting game. It didn't help that I didn't know what any of the buttons were and how, if possible, to do any special moves. I did manage to beat several fights with Tifa before giving up. She is still unbelievably proportioned in this game which was more than a little off-putting. If I play straight fighting mode again it'll probably be as Sephiroth, though I think dungeon mode is probably the place to go for the marathon.
I found a FAQ for the different moves, and now know how to throw for next time. Seems simple... Hold guard, do a full 360 on the controller, then hit the top and bottom attack buttons! Yeah... Not really something I have the skills to do. I was rarely able to pull off Zangeif's spinning piledriver and this seems harder! My hand isn't good at hitting a trigger and two different buttons at once. Thumbo is great at some things, but not that! But at least now I know there actually is a guard button, and I know how to run and jump. And from the move list I see that Sephiroth has a 'draw sword' move and then lots of sword attacks. I feel like Tifa is a better fit for a fighting game since she just punches things but that chopping people with a sword has to do more damage than punching them. Man, that reminds me of Bushido Blade! CHOP!
Ehrgeiz was apparently an arcade fighting game made by another company entirely that somehow convinced Square to lend them some characters. Cloud, Tifa, and Red XIII. Eventually it got ported to the PS by Square who added in some more FFVII characters and added in some sort of dungeon quest mode. I only tried the standard fighting mode a bit today and was pretty disappointed. It just seemed like a mediocre fighting game. It didn't help that I didn't know what any of the buttons were and how, if possible, to do any special moves. I did manage to beat several fights with Tifa before giving up. She is still unbelievably proportioned in this game which was more than a little off-putting. If I play straight fighting mode again it'll probably be as Sephiroth, though I think dungeon mode is probably the place to go for the marathon.
I found a FAQ for the different moves, and now know how to throw for next time. Seems simple... Hold guard, do a full 360 on the controller, then hit the top and bottom attack buttons! Yeah... Not really something I have the skills to do. I was rarely able to pull off Zangeif's spinning piledriver and this seems harder! My hand isn't good at hitting a trigger and two different buttons at once. Thumbo is great at some things, but not that! But at least now I know there actually is a guard button, and I know how to run and jump. And from the move list I see that Sephiroth has a 'draw sword' move and then lots of sword attacks. I feel like Tifa is a better fit for a fighting game since she just punches things but that chopping people with a sword has to do more damage than punching them. Man, that reminds me of Bushido Blade! CHOP!
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
A & C Games
There's a vintage video game store in downtown Toronto called A & C Games. They have a ton of cool stuff going on and when I checked out there webpage last month I found a spreadsheet listing their inventory. It claimed they had 4 copies of Ehrgeiz, 2 copies of Chocobo Dungeon 2, and a copy of Chocobo Racing. It did have a warning stating the list was last updated in September but what are the odds that they've actually sold 4 copies of an obscure game no one likes? I don't know, but it happened. I went downtown after work today and they didn't have any copies of any of the games I want for my Final Fantasy marathon. This makes me sad, and puts me in a bit of a quandry. All the other stores I know of are pretty much out of the PS1 business. This leaves me with three options that I can think of...
- Skip these games and go straight on to Final Fantasy VIII.
- Try to find a PS1 emulator.
- Put the marathon on pause while trying to buy them on eBay.
I feel like the plan should be to spend a day or two trying to see about an emulator and then move on to the game I actually want to play on the bus. Oh man, do I ever want to shuffle and/or boogie...
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Final Fantasy Tactics: Conclusions
I finally got back into playing Tactics on the bus after giving up on the Cloud quest chain. It turns out I was only about 10 story battles from the end of the game when I diverted myself to work on Cloud which I'm pretty sure was a big mistake. The 15ish levels I gained from random encounters coupled with getting all of the math skills pretty much trivialized the end of the game. Frequently I would win a fight before the enemy even got a turn. The final boss had a couple of different stages and his final super-powerful stage didn't even get to resolve an action. Ramza got 3 actions each of which was to attack with dual-wielded Ragnarok+Excalibur for about 800 damage per round. Add in a couple mathed up holys and it was all over rather quickly.
The combat in Final Fantasy Tactics was awesome. The combat in Final Fantasy Mathed Holy was really boring. Part of the strategic interplay in the early fights was working around the different attack ranges of people and trying not to get engaged on first. With the math skill you can kill anyone from across the map in one fast action. And by fast I mean no cast delay, not in terms of time spent in the fight. It took a non-trivial amount of time to pick the right math skill (I'd one shot my own guys if I chose anything that targeted any ally) and the holy spell animation wasn't exactly fast even with the PSP hack I was running. Often random encounters near the end of a Final Fantasy game get trivial but then you just hold down the attack button and win. Here it still took time and thinking but with no real rewarding payoff.
I love job systems, and this one is definitely better than FFV or FFIII. Character power levels kept fluctuating up and down as I'd switch to new jobs and get worse immediately but with the promise of getting better in the future. You learn new jobs not at predetermined plot points but as you level up other jobs which meant different characters would be in different spots on the power curve which was nice. It also meant you couldn't just switch everyone to a single job that trivialized a fight without putting in an awful lot of job point farming.
The plot was certainly different from a core Final Fantasy game, but was still interesting. There ended up being an ultimate evil dude trying to rise to power but it was buried beneath layer after layer of political subterfuge. We're talking fake princesses, patricide, manipulated wars, and backstab after backstab. For the most part you only get to find stuff out when the main character finds out, and he's a bit of a wandering doofus so he's pretty in the dark for most of the game. I guess Delita ends up actually being the remembered hero but for good chunks of the game he seemed to be either dead or evil. (And in a scene after the credits he's actually victim of a murder-suicide by his wife, the queen!)
The ending was nice and vague like all the PlayStation era games. The ending implies that Ramza and Alma survived the final battle where the gates of hell exploded around them, in an area with no escape. But other than one brief glimpse by Orran they're never seen by anyone ever again? And the rest of my party, which featured a lot of important people, also never turned up? I feel like they're probably all dead and Orran was hallucinating when he saw them wander by. And then when Orran tries to tell the truth and gets burned at the stake by the church because it might paint them in a bad light? So good. The game had a very anti-nobility/anti-church/anti-power theme running through it and it was nice to see it pay off in the end with even more murder for the sake of power.
Side quests were a big let down. Going on the Cloud quest and doing some of the errands made me frustrated with the game. The game seemed to time out pretty well in terms of hitting peak power right at the end of the plot assuming you didn't try to power up at any point along the way. But doing the side quests meant extra powering up which skewed the difficulty of the story missions, didn't actually accomplish anything of use, and weren't challenging in any way. I actually feel like the game would have been better without the errands in the taverns. Alternatively, remove random encounters from the world map entirely. You still want a place to go to level up for people who need it, so leave a couple spaces off in the wilderness to grind random dudes, but making me fight stupid fights over and over just because I want to go from Goug to Gariland was a really bad idea.
The music was pretty good, but unspectacular relative to the core games. Nobuo Uematsu wasn't involved, which may have something to do with it. Or everything to do with it. The music did feel like it fit the mood of a lot of the game, it's just missing that extra something to push it over the top.
The played time on my saved game was over 33 hours which is the most of any game thus far in the marathon. And that number is really deflated considering just how many times I died and had to reload on some of the earlier fights. And for the most part I was having a lot of fun while playing. Especially while dying! I think intentionally keeping my level down at the start was a good idea. I lost track of that plan in the middle when I started going crazy with shouting myself which eventually lead to being too powerful when I did those extra random encounters. I think the game makes a great puzzle game where you need to figure out how to possibly beat some of the fights. Like the fight very early on where black mages first show up! Or male thieves! I want to play again with a more strict rule set in terms of what I can do to make it really hard. I read one thing about beating the game at level 1, where pretty much you have to use a secondary character to spill off monk JP to your main party and then they run the counter strike ability to kill everything without gaining experience for it!
Now the big question... Where should it fall in my ranking? This is a tough one, and one I wasn't expecting to find tough at all. It's a spin off game, how can it compete? Well, it turns out I really, really like tactical combat. The level system and combat in this game were the best of any played thus far by a mile. Sure, powering up made it too easy but that's true of all the other games too. Maybe not FFVII because it actually had stupidly challenging side bosses to kill, but the main storyline of FFVII gets really trivial if you power up at all. So while this is a strike fresh in my mind for FFT it's not one that's actually any different from other games. The character development and epic plot are weak points, though. As is the fact I had to hack my PSP to play the game without massive amounts of graphical lag. So while FFT wins in some categories that feel like they should be the important ones I think the overall picture drags it down enough to keep it below the major contenders thus far. I think it beats the last game with a job system, and therefore slots in at #4 thus far.
Next up, whatever Ehrgeiz is. I need to go out after work to the vintage video game store and see about buying a copy of it.
The combat in Final Fantasy Tactics was awesome. The combat in Final Fantasy Mathed Holy was really boring. Part of the strategic interplay in the early fights was working around the different attack ranges of people and trying not to get engaged on first. With the math skill you can kill anyone from across the map in one fast action. And by fast I mean no cast delay, not in terms of time spent in the fight. It took a non-trivial amount of time to pick the right math skill (I'd one shot my own guys if I chose anything that targeted any ally) and the holy spell animation wasn't exactly fast even with the PSP hack I was running. Often random encounters near the end of a Final Fantasy game get trivial but then you just hold down the attack button and win. Here it still took time and thinking but with no real rewarding payoff.
I love job systems, and this one is definitely better than FFV or FFIII. Character power levels kept fluctuating up and down as I'd switch to new jobs and get worse immediately but with the promise of getting better in the future. You learn new jobs not at predetermined plot points but as you level up other jobs which meant different characters would be in different spots on the power curve which was nice. It also meant you couldn't just switch everyone to a single job that trivialized a fight without putting in an awful lot of job point farming.
The plot was certainly different from a core Final Fantasy game, but was still interesting. There ended up being an ultimate evil dude trying to rise to power but it was buried beneath layer after layer of political subterfuge. We're talking fake princesses, patricide, manipulated wars, and backstab after backstab. For the most part you only get to find stuff out when the main character finds out, and he's a bit of a wandering doofus so he's pretty in the dark for most of the game. I guess Delita ends up actually being the remembered hero but for good chunks of the game he seemed to be either dead or evil. (And in a scene after the credits he's actually victim of a murder-suicide by his wife, the queen!)
The ending was nice and vague like all the PlayStation era games. The ending implies that Ramza and Alma survived the final battle where the gates of hell exploded around them, in an area with no escape. But other than one brief glimpse by Orran they're never seen by anyone ever again? And the rest of my party, which featured a lot of important people, also never turned up? I feel like they're probably all dead and Orran was hallucinating when he saw them wander by. And then when Orran tries to tell the truth and gets burned at the stake by the church because it might paint them in a bad light? So good. The game had a very anti-nobility/anti-church/anti-power theme running through it and it was nice to see it pay off in the end with even more murder for the sake of power.
Side quests were a big let down. Going on the Cloud quest and doing some of the errands made me frustrated with the game. The game seemed to time out pretty well in terms of hitting peak power right at the end of the plot assuming you didn't try to power up at any point along the way. But doing the side quests meant extra powering up which skewed the difficulty of the story missions, didn't actually accomplish anything of use, and weren't challenging in any way. I actually feel like the game would have been better without the errands in the taverns. Alternatively, remove random encounters from the world map entirely. You still want a place to go to level up for people who need it, so leave a couple spaces off in the wilderness to grind random dudes, but making me fight stupid fights over and over just because I want to go from Goug to Gariland was a really bad idea.
The music was pretty good, but unspectacular relative to the core games. Nobuo Uematsu wasn't involved, which may have something to do with it. Or everything to do with it. The music did feel like it fit the mood of a lot of the game, it's just missing that extra something to push it over the top.
The played time on my saved game was over 33 hours which is the most of any game thus far in the marathon. And that number is really deflated considering just how many times I died and had to reload on some of the earlier fights. And for the most part I was having a lot of fun while playing. Especially while dying! I think intentionally keeping my level down at the start was a good idea. I lost track of that plan in the middle when I started going crazy with shouting myself which eventually lead to being too powerful when I did those extra random encounters. I think the game makes a great puzzle game where you need to figure out how to possibly beat some of the fights. Like the fight very early on where black mages first show up! Or male thieves! I want to play again with a more strict rule set in terms of what I can do to make it really hard. I read one thing about beating the game at level 1, where pretty much you have to use a secondary character to spill off monk JP to your main party and then they run the counter strike ability to kill everything without gaining experience for it!
Now the big question... Where should it fall in my ranking? This is a tough one, and one I wasn't expecting to find tough at all. It's a spin off game, how can it compete? Well, it turns out I really, really like tactical combat. The level system and combat in this game were the best of any played thus far by a mile. Sure, powering up made it too easy but that's true of all the other games too. Maybe not FFVII because it actually had stupidly challenging side bosses to kill, but the main storyline of FFVII gets really trivial if you power up at all. So while this is a strike fresh in my mind for FFT it's not one that's actually any different from other games. The character development and epic plot are weak points, though. As is the fact I had to hack my PSP to play the game without massive amounts of graphical lag. So while FFT wins in some categories that feel like they should be the important ones I think the overall picture drags it down enough to keep it below the major contenders thus far. I think it beats the last game with a job system, and therefore slots in at #4 thus far.
Next up, whatever Ehrgeiz is. I need to go out after work to the vintage video game store and see about buying a copy of it.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Diablo III: Item Mods Per Slot
One thing I quickly noticed when trying to build an item set for the wizard build I found was how few slots actually have attack speed or crit chance as options for rare items. Frustratingly, legendary/set items can sometimes break the rules that rare items have for mods/slot but the auction house interface won't let you search for them! For example, The Witching Hour is a legendary belt with attack speed and is the only way to get attack speed on a belt. But if you don't know about that item and you just want to find a belt with attack speed you simply can't use the AH to find it. It also means you can't filter all of the available The Witching Hours to get one with a max attack speed roll. My current belt is significantly worse than The Witching Hour could be, and until I went looking right now for an example item I didn't know it existed!
I want to know which slots can have which stats so I can go about properly upgrading my gear. I feel like I need more life on hit in particular, and more max health. But a couple hours of internet searching on the weekend did little to actually find information in an easy to use form. So, I've decided to go through all the possible rare mods and all the legendary items to build a nice list of the mods I care about and build a bit of a shopping list.
I want to know which slots can have which stats so I can go about properly upgrading my gear. I feel like I need more life on hit in particular, and more max health. But a couple hours of internet searching on the weekend did little to actually find information in an easy to use form. So, I've decided to go through all the possible rare mods and all the legendary items to build a nice list of the mods I care about and build a bit of a shopping list.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Diablo III: Crafting
Now, I like to make things in video games when given the chance. Last time I played Final Fantasy XI I hardly killed any mobs at all. I played a lot, but I spent my time almost exclusively crafting. Diablo III has a couple of different ways to craft but they were all incredibly stupid at launch. I don't know if it was a problem with the AH being new or what, but it didn't make any sense to make your own stuff. The question is, does it now?
First stop, gems. Does it make sense to level up to the top tier of gems on your own, or would you be better off selling the gems you find and buying the best stuff on the AH? Does it make sense to crush your gems and sell them on the AH yourself even accounting for the 15% cut. I ran the numbers in a spreadsheet and for the most part you don't want to do either thing. The 15% cut makes it so it's not worth selling anything beyond the first level of crushed items, and then only if you want to sell off your gems/tomes. I don't want rubies, so I'm doing that. If you do want a high level gem you're better off making your own, which is nice.
Next, salvaging. Do you want to vendor all the gear you pick up, or salvage it for parts? Do you want to pick up blues? Well, it would seem that the salvaged stuff has settled into a nice spot where it's right to salvage the cheap stuff and vendor the expensive stuff (and then buy salvaged mats on the AH if you want them). I tried to do this for a while, but it was adding too much time to my 'in town' time. So for now while I need money I'm just going to vendor everything. If I run out of my stash of materials then maybe I'll reconsider. I'm also not picking up blues, but I think if I was salvaging everything I would.
Finally, crafting. Most of the stuff back in the day was too low level to be worth making, and I think that's still true of the old stuff. But they've added some new patterns in the last patch which are totally worth making if you don't have a nutty item in that slot. I actually think the int+5 bracer pattern I found is possibly best in slot. I made a really good set with crit chance which makes me happy. These are bind on account, and are made with a bind on account material, so I will probably make more just to use up the stuff I find in case I get a truly awesome thing.
First stop, gems. Does it make sense to level up to the top tier of gems on your own, or would you be better off selling the gems you find and buying the best stuff on the AH? Does it make sense to crush your gems and sell them on the AH yourself even accounting for the 15% cut. I ran the numbers in a spreadsheet and for the most part you don't want to do either thing. The 15% cut makes it so it's not worth selling anything beyond the first level of crushed items, and then only if you want to sell off your gems/tomes. I don't want rubies, so I'm doing that. If you do want a high level gem you're better off making your own, which is nice.
Next, salvaging. Do you want to vendor all the gear you pick up, or salvage it for parts? Do you want to pick up blues? Well, it would seem that the salvaged stuff has settled into a nice spot where it's right to salvage the cheap stuff and vendor the expensive stuff (and then buy salvaged mats on the AH if you want them). I tried to do this for a while, but it was adding too much time to my 'in town' time. So for now while I need money I'm just going to vendor everything. If I run out of my stash of materials then maybe I'll reconsider. I'm also not picking up blues, but I think if I was salvaging everything I would.
Finally, crafting. Most of the stuff back in the day was too low level to be worth making, and I think that's still true of the old stuff. But they've added some new patterns in the last patch which are totally worth making if you don't have a nutty item in that slot. I actually think the int+5 bracer pattern I found is possibly best in slot. I made a really good set with crit chance which makes me happy. These are bind on account, and are made with a bind on account material, so I will probably make more just to use up the stuff I find in case I get a truly awesome thing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)