Unlocked Knight last week, finished Cryomancer and started putting points into Knight this week. Tried an HT tanking with Knight a day or two ago with maybe half of the effective tank talents and didn't really care much for it (switched back to Paladin after a not-really-tanking-related wipe on the last boss). Did an MSM earlier today with a few extra talents and abilities I didn't have before (most notably, Barrier II) and it went much smoother.
Barrier II is the real make-or-break-point. It was actually just recently nerfed but not to the point where Knight is inviable. The recent patch reworked Inspiration (previously, the diminished Willpower regeneration from Barrier is removed for 6 seconds after using an ability that consumes Willpower) to Counter-Grip (the bonus effect of Barrier II lasts 1 second longer and Lunge restores 2 extra Willpower). The important component of Barrier II (that's missing from regular
Barrier) is that it doubles the damage reduction (30% to 50-55%--depending on if the bonus takes Rockwall into account) for 4
seconds after using an ability that consumes Willpower. From what I understand, with the right talents you could maintain a very high uptime on the Barrier II bonus due to enough Willpower regeneration which is now a bit nerfed.
Frankly, between a competent support, judicious management of the Barrier II bonus and Tantrum/Resolute Defense, and Whiplash being an OP-as-fuck underdog ult for backup, you should have plenty of sustain to survive any fight a Paladin can.
Which is better? Eh, I dunno yet.
It's hard to peg either one into a role yet too. For example, Knight has much better AOE options but no AOE taunt. Paladin has a low-cooldown, on-demand emergency shield but Knight has constant damage reduction. Paladin and Knight can both get 4 and 3 seconds of invulnerability with a 16 and 15 second cooldowns respectively (with varying utility; Paladin can extend that invulnerability to allies, Knight can reflect a huge chunk of damage). Neither seems to have a particular advantage at tanking single targets.
I feel like Knight is much more safer at tanking, but I also feel like I have more control over what's going on as Paladin. So we'll have to see how things go as I finish up Knight and play around with it more.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Skyforge Block stat - Is it worth it? & Tanking stat discussion & Recommended Chapels
Sitting here with my first spare okki tablet trying to decide where to drop a second superfluous chapel. The question on my mind is which tank stat is least valuable and thus most amenable to being replaced by an alternate chapel. But that decision's not super interesting with regards to this post, here we're gonna look at Block specifically.
It's hard to find information on how all the tank stats work, but Block is especially nebulous. At face value without doing any calculating, I actually assumed Block would be hella useful for tanking--it usually is in most MMOs and proc'd damage reduction is usually pretty high priority--so I was surprised to find a lot of people claiming that Block is worthless (tl;dr for below: it probably is indeed worthless).
But here's some theoretical math:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ttemNuGG8TlLqYEOLGcxK5PItUFaOroqWnnnNCkiPFQ/edit#gid=0
Edit: Should be fully viewable now and anyone should be able to edit the yellow boxes. Let me know if you have any trouble with it.
Here's what we know:
-Block "occasionally" reduces damage
-Decreases "incoming damage" by a "certain" percent of Stamina
Here's what we don't know:
-How often "occasionally" is; ie the proc rate
-What specific percent of Stamina is applied
Here's some assumptions I'm making:
-The stat value of Block refers to the % of stamina by which damage is reduced, and that this value is a flat number (ie when blocking occurs with 15% Block you're reducing damage by a 0.15*Stamina flat amount)
-There's no other sources of straight up damage reduction (ie incoming damage is not modified at all)
Here's the variables involved:
-Proc rate; I wrote in samples for varying proc rates from 10% to 100% in 10% intervals
-Incoming damage magnitude; it's obvious right off the bat that fewer, larger hits make Block less worthwhile and conversely it's better suited to more frequent, smaller hits (basically, means there's more chances for Block to proc)
---
Now I set out to write this about Block to get a better idea how much of an impact it might be having but I decided to just go ahead and try to look at Shield Power, Adaptation, and Endurance as well--since knowing how Block works doesn't mean much without comparing it to the others. Here's some notes based on these very rough calculations
-Shield Power: I'm assuming it modifies all incoming shields and not just personal sources
-Shield Power: Since the determinant of the usefulness of Shield Power is how many times a shield is applied, I modeled it as effective HP gained per minute--ie the shield being used as soon as the cooldown is available for Celestial Shield and Unstable Shield (including the Rain of Fire talent). Note that with Paladin talents, Celestial Shield cooldown can be reduced if the shield is destroyed, which makes the eHP/min potentially higher in practice. I don't have Alchemist unlocked to compare those shields unfortunately. Knight shields are smaller and less consistent so I didn't really take the time to throw those in for now.
-Block vs Shield Power: Block needs a very high proc rate even in high frequency/low damage situations in order for it to be better, point for point, than Shield Power
-Adaptation: "Incoming damage is temporarily reduced if you take consistent hits." Working assumption: Adaptation% damage reduction for subsequent hits beyond a short time period.
-Adaptation vs Block: At a constant proc rate (ie a situation where all incoming damage qualifies for Adaptation damage reduction), Adaptation seems to be comparable to Block at ~50% proc rate on a percent-by-percent basis
-Endurance: Assuming the % value is the damage reduction percent.
-Endurance vs Adaptation: On paper and in each stat's ideal situation, they appear to be the same value percent-by-percent, however one needs to consider that they are useful in opposite situations. It's also worth considering that you can get Endurance in larger chunks via chapels than Adaptation. Personally, I think it's more common to take larger amounts of damage, so I prefer Endurance when it's a choice between them.
-Nothing here takes healing into account, so there's probably some fudging there maybe.
AFAIK none of these stats are available from rings, so the real discussion here is chapel selection. Based on all of the above, here's what I would recommend:
Province: First choice > Second choice
Dawn Plateau: Endurance > Block
Kesalia: Shield Power
Symerlis: Shield Power > Block
Ithanos Archipelago: Shield Power
Hallaghi Valley: Endurance > Adaptation
Fjord Kangher: Shield Power > Block
Thyrthon Plain: Endurance
Damon Wasteland: Adaptation > Regeneration
*Shield Power reportedly caps (soft or hard?) at 25%, so you may or may not want to pick one Block chapel over a Shield Power when you start upgrading to purple chapels. I'm not aware of any other stat caps at this time.
Honestly, if you want to be prepared for all situations I'd recommend grabbing both first and second recommendations for each province to have maximum versatility (also, in the future we'll be able to activate multiple chapels in a province) but it's naturally up to you if you want to have DPS or support stats on backup first.
It's hard to find information on how all the tank stats work, but Block is especially nebulous. At face value without doing any calculating, I actually assumed Block would be hella useful for tanking--it usually is in most MMOs and proc'd damage reduction is usually pretty high priority--so I was surprised to find a lot of people claiming that Block is worthless (tl;dr for below: it probably is indeed worthless).
But here's some theoretical math:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ttemNuGG8TlLqYEOLGcxK5PItUFaOroqWnnnNCkiPFQ/edit#gid=0
Edit: Should be fully viewable now and anyone should be able to edit the yellow boxes. Let me know if you have any trouble with it.
Here's what we know:
-Block "occasionally" reduces damage
-Decreases "incoming damage" by a "certain" percent of Stamina
Here's what we don't know:
-How often "occasionally" is; ie the proc rate
-What specific percent of Stamina is applied
Here's some assumptions I'm making:
-The stat value of Block refers to the % of stamina by which damage is reduced, and that this value is a flat number (ie when blocking occurs with 15% Block you're reducing damage by a 0.15*Stamina flat amount)
-There's no other sources of straight up damage reduction (ie incoming damage is not modified at all)
Here's the variables involved:
-Proc rate; I wrote in samples for varying proc rates from 10% to 100% in 10% intervals
-Incoming damage magnitude; it's obvious right off the bat that fewer, larger hits make Block less worthwhile and conversely it's better suited to more frequent, smaller hits (basically, means there's more chances for Block to proc)
---
Now I set out to write this about Block to get a better idea how much of an impact it might be having but I decided to just go ahead and try to look at Shield Power, Adaptation, and Endurance as well--since knowing how Block works doesn't mean much without comparing it to the others. Here's some notes based on these very rough calculations
-Shield Power: I'm assuming it modifies all incoming shields and not just personal sources
-Shield Power: Since the determinant of the usefulness of Shield Power is how many times a shield is applied, I modeled it as effective HP gained per minute--ie the shield being used as soon as the cooldown is available for Celestial Shield and Unstable Shield (including the Rain of Fire talent). Note that with Paladin talents, Celestial Shield cooldown can be reduced if the shield is destroyed, which makes the eHP/min potentially higher in practice. I don't have Alchemist unlocked to compare those shields unfortunately. Knight shields are smaller and less consistent so I didn't really take the time to throw those in for now.
-Block vs Shield Power: Block needs a very high proc rate even in high frequency/low damage situations in order for it to be better, point for point, than Shield Power
-Adaptation: "Incoming damage is temporarily reduced if you take consistent hits." Working assumption: Adaptation% damage reduction for subsequent hits beyond a short time period.
-Adaptation vs Block: At a constant proc rate (ie a situation where all incoming damage qualifies for Adaptation damage reduction), Adaptation seems to be comparable to Block at ~50% proc rate on a percent-by-percent basis
-Endurance: Assuming the % value is the damage reduction percent.
-Endurance vs Adaptation: On paper and in each stat's ideal situation, they appear to be the same value percent-by-percent, however one needs to consider that they are useful in opposite situations. It's also worth considering that you can get Endurance in larger chunks via chapels than Adaptation. Personally, I think it's more common to take larger amounts of damage, so I prefer Endurance when it's a choice between them.
-Nothing here takes healing into account, so there's probably some fudging there maybe.
AFAIK none of these stats are available from rings, so the real discussion here is chapel selection. Based on all of the above, here's what I would recommend:
Province: First choice > Second choice
Dawn Plateau: Endurance > Block
Kesalia: Shield Power
Symerlis: Shield Power > Block
Ithanos Archipelago: Shield Power
Hallaghi Valley: Endurance > Adaptation
Fjord Kangher: Shield Power > Block
Thyrthon Plain: Endurance
Damon Wasteland: Adaptation > Regeneration
*Shield Power reportedly caps (soft or hard?) at 25%, so you may or may not want to pick one Block chapel over a Shield Power when you start upgrading to purple chapels. I'm not aware of any other stat caps at this time.
Honestly, if you want to be prepared for all situations I'd recommend grabbing both first and second recommendations for each province to have maximum versatility (also, in the future we'll be able to activate multiple chapels in a province) but it's naturally up to you if you want to have DPS or support stats on backup first.
Monday, August 10, 2015
If You're Cappy And You Know It, Cap Your Hands
Had another cap discussion again and found two new responses: 1) farm equipment and 2) but leveling orders IS important!
1) I don't know if my situation or strategy is unique but I'm actually much higher in proficiency than than I should be for my prestige, which means stuff is easier than it's listed difficulty would imply (having too much prestige without enough proficiency creates the opposite problem where everything feels too hard and you become unable to equip new gear you find). Now, this doesn't guarantee I have gear that matches my proficiency, but at the least a) my stats outpace the content, b) it is indeed noticeably easier than it probably should be, and c) I only ever need to do Normal level content to be assured rewards.
Basically, yes I could farm better gear, but I neither want nor need to when I can slowly accrue better gear organically as I progress.
2) Order levels only have an important impact on temple level caps. Now, my temple levels are hitting caps, but it's because I'm hamstrung by Greatness, not order level. In fact, my order level is currently double the requirement for the next level temples.
You get Greatness from the upper atlas, and thus need Sparks of Insight. So again...
1) I don't know if my situation or strategy is unique but I'm actually much higher in proficiency than than I should be for my prestige, which means stuff is easier than it's listed difficulty would imply (having too much prestige without enough proficiency creates the opposite problem where everything feels too hard and you become unable to equip new gear you find). Now, this doesn't guarantee I have gear that matches my proficiency, but at the least a) my stats outpace the content, b) it is indeed noticeably easier than it probably should be, and c) I only ever need to do Normal level content to be assured rewards.
Basically, yes I could farm better gear, but I neither want nor need to when I can slowly accrue better gear organically as I progress.
2) Order levels only have an important impact on temple level caps. Now, my temple levels are hitting caps, but it's because I'm hamstrung by Greatness, not order level. In fact, my order level is currently double the requirement for the next level temples.
You get Greatness from the upper atlas, and thus need Sparks of Insight. So again...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)