PvE Analysis

Iocun

I guess I'm just extra bad at surviving. Wouldn't mind that if after a death I could just return and continue, but some of these quests reset so fast that if you die once or twice and have to embrace, the quest resets and you have to start all over again. That, plus in my current quest, dying actually seems to break some stuff.

Add to this that for fire, if you take too long, someone else will beat you to your quest line and you'll have to start over on the other one.

And well, if you still needed help with one part that means you needed help.

Keorin

It would be a little better now than when I first did fire, after the changes to how health is calculated. But I'm not convinced that an unartied person around Logosian can practically solo a Greater Fire elemental, at least not without the right class.

Iocun

Even less so four terraflame elementals.

Caelan

Minifie said:

Incantation’s raw damage at full arties is better, but what are you hunting? Where? Do you have figurine? Do you need your balance? How useful is battlerage? This is why serpent is so strong a hunting class: it has good damage vs insane speed, single hit battlerages, a CC brage in obliviate, and quick balance means you are able to make quick swap decisions. 2h runie is cool, but the difference between its fastest and slowest clear times is a lot wider than serpent. Unless you are going for every possible artie eeking out every second possible, class is mostly fine, anything that is top 5 (serpent, bm, shaman, knight, flord/airlord) is totally fine without killing your speed. Tekura, snb, dwalker, though? That’s just making your speed that much slower. 

Just play what you want, and have the arties for. If you truly want to min/max, there’s a lot more than class to think about.

I totally play what I want. I hunt in Sentinel 99.999%. Though I also have DWC Runie w lvl3s, monk, depthswalker, annnnd.. I think one other.  I've had people act incredulous that I hunt in lesser so I was curious wtf the big deal was.  I was curious if it was something that maybe hit a little harder, if drsgon might help me (also plannin to get elemental so figured I should see if dragom was better for the Tree).

Gallida

Keorin said:

It would be a little better now than when I first did fire, after the changes to how health is calculated. But I'm not convinced that an unartied person around Logosian can practically solo a Greater Fire elemental, at least not without the right class.

The ones you should be killing for Fire don't chase so you can hit and run. Just make sure to run on scalded and cure it completely before going back in.

Iaxus

Yeah, what @Gallida said. Prio scalded, hit and run. I definitely wasn't unartefacted in all fairness, but I'm not a whale either. Probably had base level 1 arties for most of those, except the latest I had level 2 weapons. 
Also fire is much better tuned for pre-dragon/soloing than it was on release. Ictinus had to hand hold me on release because the volcano mobs did chase, and stacked, and respawned way too quickly. 

Iocun

The firestorm elementals still do that though. (Not complaining about that though, since you don't have to fight them, but it certainly adds danger.)

Syrennia

Iaxus said:

Also fire is much better tuned for pre-dragon/soloing than it was on release.

Except when admin refuse to remove the aggro greaters scattered all over the planes, that were supposed to only be part of the great hunt.

Mizik

Any Fire Lords know wtf Battlerage Searingbonds does? It's definitely not damage/hinder.

https://ada-young.com/pastebin/0Kf4ZFk0

Syntax:            MANIFEST BONDS <target>

Works on/against:  Denizens

Cooldown:          42.00 seconds

Resource:          30 rage

Details:

Cast a net of flame about your target, causing them to take periodic

damage as they attempt to struggle free of the bonds.

Armali

It might be bugged to do no damage, or just does a very (very) small amount. Test on a rat or something if you can.

Iaxus

It's a web tattoo, and it's supposed to tick for a little damage every time they writhe, I believe. It should probably mostly be used as hinder, because I've never seen it do noticeable damage personally.

Iocun

It does extremely little damage, even though the damage can crit. But I just got a world-shattering crit on one of them and it did like 5% damage to whatever I was hunting.

Caelan

So it's kind of like the PESTER Sentinel b-rage.  Interesting.

Mizik

Except 30 battlerage and 42s cooldown. Can't be working as intended. 

Minifie

Should be a short, overall decent damage but DoT that also acts like a stun effect, really more battlerages should be situational but powerful, so many are fire and forget, and it’s blandtastic.

Therog

I am going to post my thoughts on the complaints I have seen about hunting differences, just how I think of things. A lot of classes have an easier time hunting, but a harder learning curve for combat. For example, serpent and dwc are very good at hunting, but in combat serpent has to have very good timing, and dwc has to keep track of limbs and venoms at the same time. Compare this to dw, which is bad a hunting, and generally considered an easier class to learn for combat, sense it largely does your aff tracking for you. Along with this, classes that hunt well, serpent and dwc for example, need more artifacts to get into combat than those that do not, dw or psion.
I understand that there are exceptions to this, but it does seem to follow a basic pattern. The better you are at hunting, the more artifacts/steeper learning curve you have for combat.
Note 1: I am by no means an expert, this is just my thoughts based on what I have read.
note 2: this is not to target a set person or persons, and is just some thoughts I thought I would share after seeing the annoyance at different hunting power levels.

Saonji

Therog said:

I understand that there are exceptions to this, but it does seem to follow a basic pattern. The better you are at hunting, the more artifacts/steeper learning curve you have for combat.

I think this is an example of "correlation does not imply causation"

Serpent has a relatively high cost to get it to be a great hunting class, whereas for combat it requires very little and a lot of those artifacts ONLY help for hunting.

DWC is a pretty average hunting class, I wouldn't say it's "very good". Two-handed is incredible though for both hunting and combat and doesn't require much investment for either.

DW / Psion are weird. Admin have been notoriously not great at balancing newer classes. Every single one (ele lords are hit or miss) of them have been average-at-best for hunting, whilst being incredibly strong for PvP. It's not a case of "having to be one or the other" and more a case of "they can't seem to decide what they wanna do with the class". The last time this wasn't true, was Blademaster who was a powerhouse for hunting when it was released, and also incredibly good for combat.

Honestly, going off my first line, I wouldn't say there's "exceptions to the list" really, nor is there a pattern... The entire spectrum can be chalked up to admin just not making great decisions when it comes to hunting (which they've even mildly admitted to). Not them wanting to balance PvP vs PvE capability.

Mizik

The you're searching for in balancing PVP and balancing PVE is that they are both completely unrelated and modified independently by different coders.

There is no correlation between a class' PVP capability and its PVE capability. People have ideas or spot inconsistencies, they present them to admin, and we move forward from there. 

Try to never offer subjective opinion in these discussions. Present data. Problem/Solution is a tried and true favorite format.

Exivus

Hi!

Was browsing through trying to find info on Dragon hunting (Gut vs Incantation). It seems this was from 2016. Are the numbers posted here still relevant?

Gallida

You want the numbers towards the bottom of page 8.

tl:dr Gut if you have strength or no arties, Incantation if you have all the int/magic/diadem arties.

Exivus

Thanks @Gallida!

Kafziel

I know I'm late here but how do you get denizens to tell you their health?

Atalkez

Added to a certain set of denizens for ACC members.

Kafziel

Atalkez said:

Added to a certain set of denizens for ACC members.

now that is some grade-A horse shit I tell u hwat

dunno why it's limited to ACC only. I'd like to test baseline 12 str/int damage and a bunch of other stuff

Saonji

Kafziel said:

Atalkez said:

Added to a certain set of denizens for ACC members.

now that is some grade-A horse shit I tell u hwat

dunno why it's limited to ACC only. I'd like to test baseline 12 str/int damage and a bunch of other stuff

You can. The little girl has 2160 health. If your attack does 10% to her, you know it did roughly 216 damage. The variance will be very minor (±~1%) not being in ACC, due to rounding stuff, but you can get a solid enough idea.

Kafziel

Saonji said:

You can. The little girl has 2160 health. If your attack does 10% to her, you know it did roughly 216 damage. The variance will be very minor (±~1%) not being in ACC, due to rounding stuff, but you can get a solid enough idea.

Yeah I know, still don't understand why it's only for ACC. I want accuracy in my tests

Saonji

Welcome to Achaea.

Saonji

Looks like gut got roughly a 10% damage increase. Still a little behind Thoth jabbing, though.

19 strength gut went from 842/3 = 280 dps (give or take like ~5 because I'm not ACC).

Up to 910/3 = 303 dps (again, not ACC)

Whip: 650/2.4 = 271 dps.
I'm 100% sure whip got nerfed in both damage and speed. When I last tested it a month or so ago, I was getting an even 300 dps at 19 strength.

Cooper

DPS of gut, accurate numbers:

18 strength - 297

19 strength - 318

20 strength - didn't do this one because I didn't want to waste a rare mineral

21 strength - 356

22 strength - 373

Saonji

Hmm the increase is pretty nice. 19str is higher than pre-buff 21 strength (311 dps going by Kez's numbers on page 8).

Seems the numbers spike a bit the more you go over 20. Issam's 23 strength guts were 326 dps.