Played my first armor-only character, and I'm disgusted by it.

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Zrevnur wrote:

Please explain how to do that. Because I do not have access to effective monster damage numbers.

If you play HC without enough empirical knowledge, you will die quickly.

The good news is that Mark_GGG's shiny new code is coming in 2.4.2.

ill rejoice AFTER testing it. not before.

i have a lot more faith into GGG coding than balance but this bug is ~1year old and it it hasnt been caught by internal testing so.. ill just wait and see

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Starxsword wrote:

Yes, it is my opinion and also my observation. People who play HC take into consideration of rare occurances, but exceedingly rare? Never heard of such a case.

The primary argument is about a one time theoretical consideration. IMO you are obfuscating by turning it into 'hypothetical popularity' and into 'frightened attitude during gameplay' things. It is not. It takes (if you know the math and have done it for a 2K hit) maybe 5 minutes to calc a 10K hit with the same formula. Obviously (for me - you were talking specifically about me) this is worth it.

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Starxsword wrote:

It is like saying you are scared of 10 white skeleton archers, because they could in theory kill if they all crit. Which is true. But how many players do you know play with that in mind?

I dont care about the popularity of such a thing. And the example is just wrong due to mathetmatics/distribution. I have no idea how to guess the likelihood of a big hit. But (assuming independent/correct implementation) I can guess the odds of the group just by playing the game. There is no potential "unknown long tail" distribution for the group case.

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Starxsword wrote:

The case of it happening is exceedingly rare, because the archers will likely die before they all fire at you simulteously, but it could happen and in that instance, it could also happen that they all crit you and you have to reroll. But people don't play taking that into consideration.

Slightly off topic for this discussion but: I have seen reports of successful "group alpha strikes" on reddit which killed HC players. So it actually is (or used to be at least) "a thing". I was also group alpha striked at least once after whirling into a group of zombies and staying there for like 1 second doing nothing (player screwup). I survived but it made me consider the thing as more relevant for character build.

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Starxsword wrote:

"

Please explain how to do that. Because I do not have access to effective monster damage numbers.

Strange you ask this question. You don't need access to exact monster damage to be able to tell how much damage you are taking. This season for instance, monsters are hitting harder. But did GGG tell us that? I don't believe so. You figure it out by seeing how much your life drops when you fight them. This is especially true if you are playing HC, you notice these differences.

With that same experience you learn how threatening each monster is, so you know what you are dealing with when facing against specific monsters.

I have two problems with your answer:
First: Access: Example: In essence league I have only played HC. No exercising in Standard. There were hordes of new bosses with new mechanics which I did not know. There are still some I have not done. How do you suggest I approach this? Obviously I read up other peoples reports. But obviously I will miss important stuff. In last league I almost died to pale council because I missed the most important stuff (the tome) when reading about the fight.
Second: Logic: This works fine vs normal mobs or rephrased: When you have a huge amount of samples. Unfortunately I do not know the right side of the damage distribution. It could be a long tail or a short tail. I can only get an "educated guess" of the kind you describe by dying to it often enough. So rephrased: Your method (which I also use) works fine for normal mobs but not for (example) telegraphed boss attacks. And just to be clear: If I can build to survive such a telegraphed boss attack then I will do so. Furthermore I want to have the knowledge - whether I can survive such an attack. There are also cases (especially Izaro 3rd stage) where facetanking (if I can) is the safest way to do it.

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Starxsword wrote:

"

Did it ever occur to you that considering 10K hits could potentially be necessary for these "countermeasures"? Basically you are saying we should not consider countermeasures or what? I do not understand your attitude here at all. What is wrong with considering 10K hits?

Not at all. I begin to wonder if you are a HC player with these kinds of questions.

Countermeasures do not mean face tanking the mob in question, that is a SC mentality and that is how you die. Countermeasures means you either practiced against that specific combination of buffs in standard or you avoid the attack entirely.

Example: Someone (without godly skills) makes a HC lab runner. And wants to run every day if possible. Its a "charges + gargoyles" day. Your suggestion simply does not work for this case. Due to the speed boosts from charges and gargoyles normal players cannot consistently avoid all big hits from this - especially in stage 3 with other stuff going on. Whether it is too costly to build to survive this or not is another question. But in order to determine it one needs to know the cost. And in order to know the cost one needs to do the math first. And you say "dont do the math". I really dont see your point. Some people even strive for knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself. You say: Do not strive for that knowledge.

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Starxsword wrote:

"

Very obviously (from my POV which is superior as you are addressing me and saying things about how "I" do stuff) you are wrong. I consider both - multi hit spikes and big single hits. And I try to find a balance between the two.

Everyone considers multi hit spikes and big single hits, this is not at all special.
10k pure physical hit is a massive physical hit which only occurs in exceedingly rare circumstances. This is why there is little reason to take it into consideration, because these are the hits you avoid.

How many HC players do you think will stand still and let core Malachai do his teleport slam? The question becomes, why are you considering these hits if you should be avoiding them?

What does popularity ("how many") matter? You were talking about me. And lets not talk about core Malachai. The (teleport?) slam used to do alot more damage than 10K. I do not know how much it was nerfed. Merciless Malachai Slam can probably do enough to warrant a 10K calculation. Obviously I try both: I try to avoid the big hit and I try to be tanky enough to survive it. It does not get much more obvious for me. And to answer your "why" question: Because a) I might screw up and b) I might lag and c) I have seen some weird bugs with the Malachai fight and I do not trust it to work correctly.

--

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Fruz wrote:

"

Zrevnur wrote:

Please explain how to do that. Because I do not have access to effective monster damage numbers.

If you play HC without enough empirical knowledge, you will die quickly.

What is your point here? No one here (far as I know) says otherwise.

"

Zrevnur wrote:

"

Fruz wrote:

"

Zrevnur wrote:

Please explain how to do that. Because I do not have access to effective monster damage numbers.

If you play HC without enough empirical knowledge, you will die quickly.

What is your point here? No one here (far as I know) says otherwise.

You did.
You (at least) seemed to imply that one needed to have effective monster damage numbers to know what and what not to do with a character.
Which isn't the case, because it's empirical, and it's most likely the way GGG wants it to be, which is why we don't have actualy numbers imho.


You better toy in standard before trying hard content, Ziz didn't go to shaper directly to be the first to kill him, he attempted in standard first.

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Fruz wrote:

"

Zrevnur wrote:

"

Fruz wrote:

If you play HC without enough empirical knowledge, you will die quickly.

What is your point here? No one here (far as I know) says otherwise.

You did.
You (at least) seemed to imply that one needed to have effective monster damage numbers to know what and what not to do with a character.
Which isn't the case, because it's empirical, and it's most likely the way GGG wants it to be, which is why we don't have actualy numbers imho.

The context was 10K hits. Not normal gameplay. 'Starxsword' appears to be obfuscating this by extrapolation of "generic normal gameplay wisdom" onto large hits.

Whether you call it "empirical" or not - there are hard numbers behind it. They dont matter much for normal gameplay vs mobs - empirical knowledge is much more important there. But for one shot prediction math is superior. Or would be if there was access to the numbers. That is where the question (which the forum interface forced me to remove) is coming from.

And math with hard numbers is also helpful for finding bugs. Like the one this thread is about.

I do not understand this argumentation against "numbers knowledge". Some people just want to play. Some people want numbers. Its a choice by the player.

Appart from balance and bug issues ( like the armour bug, or some overtuned monsters making it through the testing eventually ), such hits are probably supposed to be manually dodged though.

"

Zrevnur wrote:

The primary argument is about a one time theoretical consideration. IMO you are obfuscating by turning it into 'hypothetical popularity' and into 'frightened attitude during gameplay' things. It is not. It takes (if you know the math and have done it for a 2K hit) maybe 5 minutes to calc a 10K hit with the same formula. Obviously (for me - you were talking specifically about me) this is worth it.

That is correct, it takes a short time to do the calculation.
But this is originally a response to your response to the question of what hits for 10k, not directed at you specifically.
Hence, some of my examples are not directed at your personal want to know about larger hits than 10k and instead directed at threats in general.

"

Example: Someone (without godly skills) makes a HC lab runner. And wants to run every day if possible. Its a "charges + gargoyles" day. Your suggestion simply does not work for this case. Due to the speed boosts from charges and gargoyles normal players cannot consistently avoid all big hits from this - especially in stage 3 with other stuff going on. Whether it is too costly to build to survive this or not is another question. But in order to determine it one needs to know the cost. And in order to know the cost one needs to do the math first. And you say "dont do the math". I really dont see your point. Some people even strive for knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself. You say: Do not strive for that knowledge.

If you are going to Uber Izaro with the intent of face tanking the guy, then yes, you would need to know exactly what damage he can do at maximum output. I am unsure if uber Izaro + Gargoyle can hit the 10k physical mark, but it seems possible.
Just like if you intend to do this against Core Malachai or Twinned Core Malachai. You need to know their maximum output and see if you can face tank the thing. This is a challenge that some players do. And in this specific scenario, yes, you would need to calculate damage beyond 10k physical.

But for an HC uber lab running, I don't think this scenario happens. The runner, I assume, would likely have exceedingly high damage and will never see Izaro with more than a couple of charges. Unless, they are purposely slowing down their farming speed and let Izaro charge up to max charges, which is the only way to get the extra key I think.
I haven't seen any HC uber lab runs, so I cannot tell you if it is worth it to slow down and let Izaro gain his charges over just killing him in a couple of seconds.

"

What does popularity ("how many") matter? You were talking about me. And lets not talk about core Malachai. The (teleport?) slam used to do alot more damage than 10K. I do not know how much it was nerfed. Merciless Malachai Slam can probably do enough to warrant a 10K calculation. Obviously I try both: I try to avoid the big hit and I try to be tanky enough to survive it. It does not get much more obvious for me. And to answer your "why" question: Because a) I might screw up and b) I might lag and c) I have seen some weird bugs with the Malachai fight and I do not trust it to work correctly.

I am talking about Core Malachai, because Merciless Malachai might reach maybe 5k physical damage. I am relatively sure Malachai's strongest attack, the teleport slam is fire/physical.

I am unsure if Core Malachai's attack even hits for 10k physical.
But this is unkonwn for me, since monster damage are definitely higher this season and I play too casual to face Core Malachai.

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Starxsword wrote:

If you are going to Uber Izaro with the intent of face tanking the guy, then yes, you would need to know exactly what damage he can do at maximum output. I am unsure if uber Izaro + Gargoyle can hit the 10k physical mark, but it seems possible.

With mace + charges + gargoyles: I do think so. In terms of physical one shot potential this is the worst combination. And it can be powered up further with Darkshrines. Some people like to add Darkshrines so that they get more IIQ/IIR from the chests. Which often makes Izaro harder.

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Starxsword wrote:

But for an HC uber lab running, I don't think this scenario happens. The runner, I assume, would likely have exceedingly high damage and will never see Izaro with more than a couple of charges.
Unless, they are purposely slowing down their farming speed and let Izaro charge up to max charges, which is the only way to get the extra key I think.

Yes you have to let him get all the charges to get the extra key. Lab runners try to maximize profit. So anything they cant do is a disadvantage.

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Starxsword wrote:

I haven't seen any HC uber lab runs, so I cannot tell you if it is worth it to slow down and let Izaro gain his charges over just killing him in a couple of seconds.

Most HC uber lab runners are not fast enough for the speed advantage to overcome the extra key advantage. You can look at the uber lab HC ladder to get some idea. Although it only has the best time and not the average time of the runners.

"

Starxsword wrote:

I am talking about Core Malachai, because Merciless Malachai might reach maybe 5k physical damage. I am relatively sure Malachai's strongest attack, the teleport slam is fire/physical.

I am unsure if Core Malachai's attack even hits for 10k physical.
But this is unkonwn for me, since monster damage are definitely higher this season and I play too casual to face Core Malachai.

The numbers I remember (from reddit posts mostly) are >4.7K for cruel Malachai and ~20K+ for core Malachai (before the nerf, dont remember about map mods if any). I do not know how much of that (if any) is elemental.
Uber Izaro (probably mace with charges + essences or charges + conduits) also got ~20K (including elemental damage, dont know the details, some people tested it with a high ES build).