Tankiest/ best bashing class

Ahmet

From the perspective of both a Bard and a Serpent, completely unartied (minus lvl1 pendant), I made the choice to survive, not to kill. 16 con 10 dex. Bashing is ass, but at least I don't die to Manara gnolls anymore (like I did when I went full dex). Neither of those choices is very appealing to me, and the middle ground is pretty horrid as well, whereas Bard hunting unartied aint half bad. As a Bard, I can do Zaphar Isle no problem. As a Serpent I get my assssss handed to me. 3.5 second garrote ftw.

Just saying.

Minifie

I feel pretty bulky as a main skill trans sylvan. A few propagates for health and WP regen, trans philo means I can thornrend for days, but I think thornrend falls into that area of being too slow to really bash expediately. 

I Think, from chatting with others, rune warden is a brick wall, even unartied. Is monk still awesome or did it get nerfed for bashing?

Kiet

How did you have trouble with manara gnolls  

Dortheron

Minifie said:

I Think, from chatting with others, rune warden is a brick wall, even unartied. Is monk still awesome or did it get nerfed for bashing?

It got nerfed. Monk was strong because of the high damage combined with each hit of the combo being able to crit made denizens die fast. But with the addition of battlerage things got tankier and the damage was equalized, so things take longer to kill. With leather armour (especially since armour stats have been standardized) being as shitty as it is, monks just don't have the DPS (or DPM as was mentioned previously) that other classes have. Plus they can't really use SoA like most other classes unless you're wielding on bal and unwielding before attacking, which is for the most part impractical.

1. Transmute. HUGE benefit hunting, as it turns mana into health. You are so much more tankier because of it. Biggest downside though is the willpower drain that, when combined with clotting, means you aren't doing huge stretches of nothing but hunting the tough stuff.
2. Numbness. While I mostly used it for hit-and-run, it let me survive stuff and clear rooms that normally I would of died or bursted on.
3. Vitality, or as I like to call it, my GTFO warning. Being able to survive burst damage when low is incredible. vitality+shield tat was the only way I could explore the northern part of Zaphar first time I visited
4. Roundhouse kick. Uses leg balance to break a shield for both adventurers and denizens. While all classes have a shield break battlerage ability, this lets monks to kill the shield, do more damage, and saves rage for the other battlerage abilities.

That's my two-cents. If anyone can think of more stuff about monks (good or bad) feel free.

P.S. Oh, I've also heard a lot about knuckles being bugged, but I haven't tested it out for myself yet. So might be a problem there.

Ahmet

Kiet said:

How did you have trouble with manara gnolls  

At 80 if I went full blown con spec + agile + nimble I would have trouble surviving 2 or 3 gnolls.

Finkle

Kiet said:

How did you have trouble with manara gnolls  

Gnolls went full dex spec and stole some pixie boots

Dortheron

Finkle said:

Kiet said:

How did you have trouble with manara gnolls  

Gnolls went full dex spec and stole some pixie boots

Pixie boots should totally be a radom drop in Minia that only the newb who killed it can use  

Kiet

Ahmet said:

Kiet said:

How did you have trouble with manara gnolls  

At 80 if I went full blown con spec + agile + nimble I would have trouble surviving 2 or 3 gnolls.

I don't know how, man. I'm mhun (ie lowest con dex race), full dex spec, had no arties, and gnolls were like filler bashing that I could go afk for.

Tolan

Sena said:

Int and collar don't do anything for bard bashing, accentato is purely based on jab damage now (assuming no unannounced changes).

I would like to know if this is true @Tecton ..

The HELP ARTIFACTS OFFENSIVE still says that the collar effects accentato.

Antonius

Int does affect it against adventurers so the HELP file isn't wrong exactly. However, for bashing, from Announce #4161:

 - Swashbuckling Accentato will now do damage against denizens based on the damage done by the
weapon strike, rather than a variable amount dependent on the user's maximum health. This results in
a substantial increase in damage done against denizens by Bards with low maximum health, but a
moderate decrease in damage done by Bards who have high maximum health.

Ahmet

Tolan said:

Sena said:

Int and collar don't do anything for bard bashing, accentato is purely based on jab damage now (assuming no unannounced changes).

I would like to know if this is true @Tecton ..

The HELP ARTIFACTS OFFENSIVE still says that the collar effects accentato.

 "These increase damage done to opponents from abilities that are magical in nature."

I know int doesn't affect it any more, but given that Accentato is magical damage, I'd be surprised if the collar didn't affect it.

Antonius

Tried out fully artied Serpent bashing. Used my gem to reincarnate to Rajamala (best combination of dexterity, constitution and strength [which I'm not sure even affects garrote damage, but I figured couldn't hurt] while maximising dexterity), upgraded my lash to level three, and bought some scalemail. Here's what I was working with in terms of stats:

Sir Antonius Agarwaen, Inquisitor of Heretics (male Rajamala Striker)
You are level 110 (2nd Stratum of Puissance) and 14.8% of the way to the next level.
Health:       5934 / 5934     Mana:         5934 / 5934
Endurance:   25700 /25700     Willpower:   25700 /25700
Strength: 15  Dexterity: 19  Constitution: 14  Intelligence: 14

It's... okay. It's about comparable to Bard in terms of clear time for Unsidhe, though felt a lot more risky and more of the time was spent outside of the room healing up; it would have been a lot slower if I hadn't gotten lucky with denizen placement, the occasional group of four happened to be split across three rooms, so I could solo two and then kill the remaining two (and got great luck with WSCs so they just exploded). I tried Sidhe, but fuck writhing, basically. I didn't feel comfortable doing it with the risk of not being able to run straight away since every round of hits was taking such a large chunk of my health away.

I'd still place Bard at the very top of the rankings for fully artied. Serpent seems too situationally good (low damage denizens and/or areas with a lot of single enemies rather than groups) to take the top spot. Bard is just an all-around monster capable of doing everything.

Tael

Penwize said:

And for those interested, here's a paste of the output based on the default values I picked (which I accept might not be 100% representative, please correct me if not):
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/1a4c8058 

First, what was "low crit rate"? What level did it approximate?

Second, I'll admit that, if that is an averagish level's crit rate, it does make a bigger difference than I expected.

But you still have to do pretty difficult analysis to know which attacks are actually superior - just choosing the faster one doesn't necessarily get you the best result. Look at the tables with crits: there's a trend upwards, but there's a also a point in each one where having faster attacks suddenly makes you less efficient (dramatically less efficient at higher crit rates). That's exactly the thing I was talking about. Speed and kpm aren't just monotonically increasing.

The reason you're seeing that is exactly what I described because it happens with crits too. The situations where the fast attack can kill and the slower can too, and the slow can kill but the fast can't - those happen with crits too. The calculation just becomes a lot more complicated since the existence of different levels of crit means that every attack has several different thresholds like this that apply with different probabilities.

Also, the difference in kpm is significantly lower at lower crit rates. Still higher than I would have thought, but still considerably lower.

And that's all looking at just one health value. Different health values will have these "drops" in kpm in different places, so actually optimising your kpm is going to involve comparing the different attack speeds and comparing the actual distribution of denizen health you're going to be hunting.

You could absolutely figure out which attacks are optimal. And I guess I was wrong that it wouldn't be worthwhile to do so, but the calculation involved is more complicated than just "faster attacks are better" because there are points where they clearly aren't, and those points will even vary depending on enemy health pools (so one attack might be better against gnolls, while the other is better against cultists).

Antonius

Ahmet said:

Tolan said:

Sena said:

Int and collar don't do anything for bard bashing, accentato is purely based on jab damage now (assuming no unannounced changes).

I would like to know if this is true @Tecton ..

The HELP ARTIFACTS OFFENSIVE still says that the collar effects accentato.

 "These increase damage done to opponents from abilities that are magical in nature."

I know int doesn't affect it any more, but given that Accentato is magical damage, I'd be surprised if the collar didn't affect it.

I honestly can't determine if it makes a difference or not since the (totally unnecessary) change to falcons, but my feeling is that it doesn't. I imagine that since accentato is such a small part (20%) of your hunting damage the boost from collar isn't going to make much of a difference even if it does.

Valkyn

Two moderately well artied dragons in serpent makes for some fun hunting.  

Dochitha

I hunt with Alchemist, Serpent, Bard, Dragon. Bard gives me the best hunting by far, good tankiness, hits hard, hits fast, crit a lot, kill things really quickly. It gives me the kind of adrenaline rush that I'd go non-stop and I got 20%+ a day hunting at level 107 (for 2 days when I had luckbinder).

I changed to Alchie and then Serpent... I can't get used to their hunt anymore. Bard spoiled me.

FYI
My bard has a soulpiercer, L2 gaunt, I go con spec.
My serpent has L2 lash, L1 dex, I go dex spec.
Alchie is just con spec. Int may work better but I didn't try more.
Dragon either gut or tfang. Well I could also wield tfang in alchie with all other alchie's goodness. But bard is just too good. I am back.

Austere

Is tfang really worth hunting with after they nerfed the damage on it? I keep hearing it brought up again, but it always felt super weak to be. 

Atalkez

Level 2 dirk was better than WoT, which was better than gut, from my testing. I imagine Tfang is even better.

Valkyn

Timing obliviate can make or break hunting as a serpent against harder things, might be why some people find it such a different experience, they're not using it at all?

I generally stick to my damage stuff, but when I end up with too many on me, or against a really nasty foe often I can kill one before obliviate wears off on it.

Penwize

Tael said:

Penwize said:

And for those interested, here's a paste of the output based on the default values I picked (which I accept might not be 100% representative, please correct me if not):
https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/1a4c8058 

First, what was "low crit rate"? What level did it approximate?

Second, I'll admit that, if that is an averagish level's crit rate, it does make a bigger difference than I expected.

But you still have to do pretty difficult analysis to know which attacks are actually superior - just choosing the faster one doesn't necessarily get you the best result. Look at the tables with crits: there's a trend upwards, but there's a also a point in each one where having faster attacks suddenly makes you less efficient (dramatically less efficient at higher crit rates). That's exactly the thing I was talking about. Speed and kpm aren't just monotonically increasing.

The reason you're seeing that is exactly what I described because it happens with crits too. The situations where the fast attack can kill and the slower can too, and the slow can kill but the fast can't - those happen with crits too. The calculation just becomes a lot more complicated since the existence of different levels of crit means that every attack has several different thresholds like this that apply with different probabilities.

Also, the difference in kpm is significantly lower at lower crit rates. Still higher than I would have thought, but still considerably lower.

And that's all looking at just one health value. Different health values will have these "drops" in kpm in different places, so actually optimising your kpm is going to involve comparing the different attack speeds and comparing the actual distribution of denizen health you're going to be hunting.

You could absolutely figure out which attacks are optimal. And I guess I was wrong that it wouldn't be worthwhile to do so, but the calculation involved is more complicated than just "faster attacks are better" because there are points where they clearly aren't, and those points will even vary depending on enemy health pools (so one attack might be better against gnolls, while the other is better against cultists).

Should be an estimate of around level 80 based on people I asked, but if anyone has hard numbers for that range it'd help a lot in properly estimating. 

Speed and kpm don't monotonically increase, that is true, but you can see a clear trend in the data, and it's the trend that's more important I think.  The data suggests that speed correlates to more frequent kill-shots in general, although yes there are certain situations where less speed would be better against certain enemies.  However, that's mainly just because we're isolating a single attack.  If the trend is that speed will get more frequent kill shots except at certain strict health ranges, the addition of something that will change that health range (such as, for example, using battlerage abilities to inflict additional damage, or bashing varying things) can mean that speed will, on average, improve your clear speed.  Sometimes less than other times though, that much is true.

Modifying the sim to use a set of health values and to include battlerage would probably illustrate that a bit clearer too actually.  If anyone knows the battlerage formula (it's based on attack speed far as I know), I'll add it in!  It'll help to have data to advise people who don't want to spend the time figuring it out.  Haha.

Ahmet

Penwize said:

Should be an estimate of around level 80 based on people I asked, but if anyone has hard numbers for that range it'd help a lot in properly estimating. 

Hard numbers for....

Penwize

Ahmet said:

Penwize said:

Should be an estimate of around level 80 based on people I asked, but if anyone has hard numbers for that range it'd help a lot in properly estimating. 

Hard numbers for....

Crit percentages for each level of crit.

Finkle

Is this what you're looking for @Penwize  ?http://pastebin.com/raw/55wBjUUs
Trevize's number sheet

Penwize

Oh yeah, that's perfect actually!

Alright, here's some data with L80 and L90 crits plugged in from that table:  https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/0153132f

The trend again is pretty clear there, attack speed does have a pretty significant impact on kills per minute when all other factors remain constant. 

If anyone knows the general formula for rage gain, I'll happily add battlerage usage into that to gather a bit more all-encompassing data as well.

Sena

From my limited checking, it basically averages 2 rage per second regardless of attack speed (before the bonus from groups or the rare mineral). So an attack that takes 1 second of balance (after all modifiers) would generate an average of 2 rage, an attack that takes 4 seconds would give an average of 8.

Penwize

Ah helpful!  Hrm, though now that I'm trying to implement it, I also need a sort of baseline battlerage damage estimate to go with my attack estimates.  It'll be hard to accurately represent the impact battlerage does if I don't have a good damage number estimate relative to the dps I'm estimating at.

Dochitha

Atalkez said:

Level 2 dirk was better than WoT, which was better than gut, from my testing. I imagine Tfang is even better.

Just tested with 20 STR Dragon:-

Gut did 34% over 5 hits at 3s balance, DPS: 2.67
Tfang did 20% over 5 hits at 1.9s balance, DPS: 2.10

Tfang is never better than a class's given bashing attack (also tested alchie), however, like Penwize shown, the speed does help substantially in getting better KPM, especially over improved crit (binder, lily, sip etc) kick in.

Sena

Penwize said:

Hrm, though now that I'm trying to implement it, I also need a sort of baseline battlerage damage estimate to go with my attack estimates.  It'll be hard to accurately represent the impact battlerage does if I don't have a good damage number estimate relative to the dps I'm estimating at.

http://forums.achaea.com/discussion/comment/258782/#Comment_258782 (also the slight correction on shaman a few posts below that)

I'd have to dig a bit to get the numbers for specific battlerage attacks, I don't have time to do it tonight.

Rangor

Penwize said:

Ah helpful!  Hrm, though now that I'm trying to implement it, I also need a sort of baseline battlerage damage estimate to go with my attack estimates.  It'll be hard to accurately represent the impact battlerage does if I don't have a good damage number estimate relative to the dps I'm estimating at.

Tricky indeed. Some classes have like.... Druid squirrels that hit 3-4 small hits on their damage ability, instead of one big.

Sarathai

Rangor said:

Penwize said:

Ah helpful!  Hrm, though now that I'm trying to implement it, I also need a sort of baseline battlerage damage estimate to go with my attack estimates.  It'll be hard to accurately represent the impact battlerage does if I don't have a good damage number estimate relative to the dps I'm estimating at.

Tricky indeed. Some classes have like.... Druid squirrels that hit 3-4 small hits on their damage ability, instead of one big.

Squirrels are the Sentinel one. Druid has a DoT as well, but it's strangling vines.