Combat effectiveness

one thing i have noticed in carrying my various arguments against the increased death point timer is that people talk as if completely avoiding death is the easiest thing in the world, with the exception of the occasional bug. This stance has alternately mystified and enraged me simply because i have found that death is unavoidable if one is going to hunt creatures at useful levels/quantities.

however, since i ascended to Ancient last week, i have managed to gain only two death points, both of which i got because all my heals decided not to cast at an unfortunate time. I have had a few close calls, but unless my heals self-cancel, i haven't died, and i suspect it will only get easier once i have a full set of crystals.

it would seem that, as one might expect, an Ancient dragon is hugely more survivable in combat than an Adult.

the thing is, not everyone has a 100adv Ancient, but on the forums, combat is debated as if everyone were at least on par with one. So might we remember in future debates that when someone talks about getting multiple deathpoints in one session, it might just be because their character's survivability is lower than yours?

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Originally Posted by Shur

one thing i have noticed in carrying my various arguments against the increased death point timer is that people talk as if completely avoiding death is the easiest thing in the world, with the exception of the occasional bug. This stance has alternately mystified and enraged me simply because i have found that death is unavoidable if one is going to hunt creatures at useful levels/quantities.

however, since i ascended to Ancient last week, i have managed to gain only two death points, both of which i got because all my heals decided not to cast at an unfortunate time. I have had a few close calls, but unless my heals self-cancel, i haven't died, and i suspect it will only get easier once i have a full set of crystals.

it would seem that, as one might expect, an Ancient dragon is hugely more survivable in combat than an Adult.

the thing is, not everyone has a 100adv Ancient, but on the forums, combat is debated as if everyone were at least on par with one. So might we remember in future debates that when someone talks about getting multiple deathpoints in one session, it might just be because their character's survivability is lower than yours?

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It still comes down to what you are hunting and how you are hunting. As in the other threads people have made several suggestions. My suggestion: Don't take on more than you can handle. :eek:

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Originally Posted by Hoberton

It still comes down to what you are hunting and how you are hunting. As in the other threads people have made several suggestions. My suggestion: Don't take on more than you can handle. :eek:

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So what of the newly 80 dragon that needs T5 comps but only has T4 scales? Would anyone like to hunt 40 Blue Vexator Fringes, 20 Veteran Ghost Vapors and 40 Veteran Abomination Chest skulls for me? Probably not, but help is often offered.

Regardless, using this type of thinking, they should not even go in at all and wait for someone else to get the comps for them.

Sometimes death is unavoidable. And Shur, I was planning on not ascending merely because I like the look of my adult better. Have not tested to see if she gets that horrid beheaded look yet though, but your post makes me reconsider.

Preface: I don't have any ancient dragons, nor any uberpeds. My highest dragon is a 74 adult with 300 training points in Power, 312 in Primal, 228 Tooth and Claw, and 48 Focus. My highest biped has both ratings under 20. My permadeath character is a level-20 TnC/Strength/Primal hatchling - among the weakest of the weak.

Playing a character with self-imposed permadeath opens one's eyes to how avoidable death is.

When one knows the consequences to death aren't permanent, one's psychology allows one to do things one shouldn't do, and one dies of that.

On my non-permadeath characters, the vast majority of deaths are caused by little mistakes on my part that could've been avoided if I'd just been paying more attention. I am not a good fighter, and the few cases where that fact hasn't caused a character of mine to die were the results of miscellaneous stupidity instead of combat ineptitude.

Despite that, perhaps I'm a more conservative fighter than others. I generally don't attack things more than twenty levels higher on my 74 adult dragon, and only three levels higher on my other characters. I don't try to farm, i.e. the maximum number of Giant Ice Beetles I'll fight at once is three, and that gets me pretty close to death so if I had permadeath to worry about on the character that can hunt them I'd be cautious of having even two at once. I rarely go into deadlands.

99% of the time I don't group, though.

The largest number of Death Points I've had recently was four, which was because I made mistakes while hunting arbotus near Feladan. Probable examples of those mistakes:
1. Chose the wrong position to pull arbotus to, leaving myself in the midst of a path additional arbotus would wander through.
2. When overwhelmed by more than three or four arbotus, I didn't start trying to escape until it was too late.
3. I'm too hesitant to use Spiked Scales. With its two-minute recycle, I don't want to squander it when it's less than necessary, but I often fail to realise when it has crossed the border from wanted to needed.
4. I forget to use Primal Health sometimes because I don't expect it to have as short a recycle as it does.
5. Didn't maintain breezes constantly enough.
6. Confused targeting, i.e. still having myself targeted after casting a heal or Cleanse-teched resist booster and failing to realise this before it's too late to fire off an attack that would've made the arbotus die instead of me. Or maybe I do realise it, but waste time trying to select the enemy visually instead of via the target nearest key. Or I can't retarget the enemy I was attacking before because another one closer to me is blocking the key and making it difficult to click on the right one.
7. I didn't balance the direction of my damage output so that the opponents would die in an optimal order related to their differing strengths and amounts of remaining HP.

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Originally Posted by Hoberton

It still comes down to what you are hunting and how you are hunting. As in the other threads people have made several suggestions. My suggestion: Don't take on more than you can handle. :eek:

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Originally Posted by Shian

So what of the newly 80 dragon that needs T5 comps but only has T4 scales? Would anyone like to hunt 40 Blue Vexator Fringes, 20 Veteran Ghost Vapors and 40 Veteran Abomination Chest skulls for me? Probably not, but help is often offered.

Regardless, using this type of thinking, they should not even go in at all and wait for someone else to get the comps for them.

Sometimes death is unavoidable.

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Have no idea how you drew that conclusion from my post. Satyr Islands are deadly for just about anyone and I suggest waiting a bit further along than just a level 80. I repeat: Don't take on more than you can handle.

it would seem that, as one might expect, an Ancient dragon is hugely more survivable in combat than an Adult.



Im sorry but the difference between adults and ancient is tiny at best. The only major difference is the ancient breath wpn is really powerful and they get a slight increase in armor. The new drain strike and spiked scales are hardly that much more powerful than the ones an adult dragon would get if they didint ascend. Adults still have access to all the best abilities that ancients have (gold rage, silver strike, ravage, etc.).

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Originally Posted by Xoshara

Preface: I don't have any ancient dragons, nor any uberpeds. My highest dragon is a 74 adult with 300 training points in Power, 312 in Primal, 228 Tooth and Claw, and 48 Focus. My highest biped has both ratings under 20. My permadeath character is a level-20 TnC/Strength/Primal hatchling - among the weakest of the weak.

Playing a character with self-imposed permadeath opens one's eyes to how avoidable death is.

When one knows the consequences to death aren't permanent, one's psychology allows one to do things one shouldn't do, and one dies of that.

On my non-permadeath characters, the vast majority of deaths are caused by little mistakes on my part that could've been avoided if I'd just been paying more attention. I am not a good fighter, and the few cases where that fact hasn't caused a character of mine to die were the results of miscellaneous stupidity instead of combat ineptitude.

Despite that, perhaps I'm a more conservative fighter than others. I generally don't attack things more than twenty levels higher on my 74 adult dragon, and only three levels higher on my other characters. I don't try to farm, i.e. the maximum number of Giant Ice Beetles I'll fight at once is three, and that gets me pretty close to death so if I had permadeath to worry about on the character that can hunt them I'd be cautious of having even two at once. I rarely go into deadlands.

99% of the time I don't group, though.

The largest number of Death Points I've had recently was four, which was because I made mistakes while hunting arbotus near Feladan. Probable examples of those mistakes:
1. Chose the wrong position to pull arbotus to, leaving myself in the midst of a path additional arbotus would wander through.
2. When overwhelmed by more than three or four arbotus, I didn't start trying to escape until it was too late.
3. I'm too hesitant to use Spiked Scales. With its two-minute recycle, I don't want to squander it when it's less than necessary, but I often fail to realise when it has crossed the border from wanted to needed.
4. I forget to use Primal Health sometimes because I don't expect it to have as short a recycle as it does.
5. Didn't maintain breezes constantly enough.
6. Confused targeting, i.e. still having myself targeted after casting a heal or Cleanse-teched resist booster and failing to realise this before it's too late to fire off an attack that would've made the arbotus die instead of me. Or maybe I do realise it, but waste time trying to select the enemy visually instead of via the target nearest key. Or I can't retarget the enemy I was attacking before because another one closer to me is blocking the key and making it difficult to click on the right one.
7. I didn't balance the direction of my damage output so that the opponents would die in an optimal order related to their differing strengths and amounts of remaining HP.

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well, certainly if one gets pleasure out of being obscenely precise with their play-style, death can be avoided. but most people play games to relieve stress/relax/have fun. and a lot of people don't consider minding every nitty gritty detail about what's going on in a game fun.

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Originally Posted by Ebonfyre

it would seem that, as one might expect, an Ancient dragon is hugely more survivable in combat than an Adult.



Im sorry but the difference between adults and ancient is tiny at best. The only major difference is the ancient breath wpn is really powerful and they get a slight increase in armor. The new drain strike and spiked scales are hardly that much more powerful than the ones an adult dragon would get if they didint ascend. Adults still have access to all the best abilities that ancients have (gold rage, silver strike, ravage, etc.).

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oh really? so you mean, ascending my character to ancient actually gave me, the player, improved skills?

AWESOME!

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Originally Posted by Shur

oh really? so you mean, ascending my character to ancient actually gave me, the player, improved skills?

AWESOME!

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It may have, actually. With the expectation that ancienthood might bring you greater survivability, a placebo effect in your psychology could've temporarily increased your competence in order to fulfill the expectation.

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the thing is, not everyone has a 100adv Ancient, but on the forums, combat is debated as if everyone were at least on par with one.

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You are mistaken. Everyone talks (just see the "hard mobs thread") off his rating 150+ biped main or alt. After so many years, this is the "de facto" standard.

What you will experience with something less than that standard is that easy mobs are perfectly doable (i.e. beetles, wolves) even in multiple amounts.

Where you'll bite the dust - expecially as dragon, since dragons have NO WAY to improve - is at enhanced mobs that require wards, resists, cleanses and crowd control.

Even with a level 80 dragon or 1 school biped you may survive a "statyr isle" level 80-90 mob, but those mobs are group friendly and often times hard to pull alone.

So, when real mobs come into play, you need a real character to fight them.

Without going for the extreme and trying to solo 3 bosses at a time (a la Galem), you will feel the difference when your character is not multischooled enough to be considered "standard" (that is druid + healer + spiritist + paladin...)

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Originally Posted by Ebonfyre

Im sorry but the difference between adults and ancient is tiny at best. The only major difference is the ancient breath wpn is really powerful and they get a slight increase in armor. The new drain strike and spiked scales are hardly that much more powerful than the ones an adult dragon would get if they didint ascend. Adults still have access to all the best abilities that ancients have (gold rage, silver strike, ravage, etc.).

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Really, if you wanted, you could get a majority of the Ancient abilities without ascending, so long as you almost finish your rites. But yes, I agree that when I ascended I saw very little change in how my combat went. No significant changes, to be sure. The only thing I really liked was Drain Strike going from 45% health returned to 100%... and of course that costs hoard now. But hey.

Which is why i would like to see something for ancient dragons like i suggested in this thread.

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=18550

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Originally Posted by Vahrokh

What you will experience with something less than that standard is that easy mobs are perfectly doable (i.e. beetles, wolves) even in multiple amounts.

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This is exactly the problem for me. These kinds of fights boor me, I can't stand farming, and farming is the only reason I can come up with for going after the 'safe' fights. Unless I am helping someone else I am going after fights that are a challenge. Sometimes it works out, sometimes not. Of course, I am trading a death for knowledge, so its all good.

Well, it was all good before the change to death points, anyway.

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Originally Posted by Ebonfyre

Which is why i would like to see something for ancient dragons like i suggested in this thread.

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=18550

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<---- has maybe 4 million hoard. And don't anyone start saying it's easy to get; even with Ice Beetles, you get NO hoard if you can't be on for a reasonable time.

Anyways.

I like that idea as a way to make ancients stronger; however, it most certainly leans to the advantage of a handful of players rather than all ancients. But it's a good idea, and it's a start!

It shouldnt lean to the majority of players. If you want tha extra power then it should be available to those who are willing to put the effort in to obtain it.

And hoard is incredibly easy to get no matter what. The ice beetles are dropping hoardables almost every other fight.

Apparently, then, I've been fighting the wrong groups of beetles to get hoard, then. Ice beetles are great.....but I can kill maybe 1 or 2 before they kill me. I don't quite have the levels/fighting skills needed to stay alive while hunting them, I guess. Other than that, I suppose I could hunt wolves/beetles closer to my level, but they don't drop hoard quite as often.

I have a 65-70% chance of dying if I try to take on monsters at or slightly above my level; this is a bit depressing as I'm now a lvl 52 dragon hatchling.
Granted, some of this could be fixed with a bit better armor, but I usually have a fairly conservative hunting style and prefer soloing. The new DP's mean that I stop hunting after 3 or so deaths, and after that all that's left for me is craft-grinding, or maybe parking myself somewhere and just chatting for a while. Kinda boring after a while.

Dont worry within the next 50 lvls you outgrow most of the enemies in terms of power. Only some of the WA mobs can really hurt you as an ancient dragon.

i notice that well many dragons belive spending tp in dex or str will give them the upper edge, and well i beg to differ.

i have been lvl 100 for along time and as an adult i focused my tp on health and tooth& claw. i also got myself some health crystals, armor crystals and str crystals. with the last patch i have my teched healing spell with cleanse and recycle which i do cast every 10 sec. due to my high armor and health i had no problems taking a few elite blights at a time. i am capable of suviving fanfir;s scorch and living from agoldrage blow from relkar.

once i became ancient i can now take 4 elite bligts at the same time and more if they slowly add. if your really into the hunt to obtain items to improve your stats id recommend adding tp into health, i have 570 points into it and well it makes a huge difference on escaping with my life and surviving a wicked epic boss attack.

I have a few tps in health, but my combat scales are on a health base so I can easily get 3400-3500 with full buffs and gifts. My armor isn't as strong, but I get 75 per scale. I can't say how well it stands up to super strong foes as I don't fight them... but I'm sure if I get 25 mil hoard it'll be even easier. Too bad that's a long way off.

It'd be interesting to find out how my setup compares to other ones. Since buyback points come back... If I ever get around to making another set of combat scales, I'll try an armor base and see how much I like it. Then I can move tps around to make up for what I lost on my scales.

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Originally Posted by Machariel

i notice that well many dragons belive spending tp in dex or str will give them the upper edge, and well i beg to differ.

i have been lvl 100 for along time and as an adult i focused my tp on health and tooth& claw. i also got myself some health crystals, armor crystals and str crystals. with the last patch i have my teched healing spell with cleanse and recycle which i do cast every 10 sec. due to my high armor and health i had no problems taking a few elite blights at a time. i am capable of suviving fanfir;s scorch and living from agoldrage blow from relkar.

once i became ancient i can now take 4 elite bligts at the same time and more if they slowly add. if your really into the hunt to obtain items to improve your stats id recommend adding tp into health, i have 570 points into it and well it makes a huge difference on escaping with my life and surviving a wicked epic boss attack.

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i still disagree wit your assessment that strength is as worthless as you say it is. i've found that just 20 str points can be the difference between one-shotting that blighted blight and getting chain-mezzed by all his buddies that show if you sit for more than two seconds.

I also agree that str/dex etc are important, however I never spend TP in them anymore, due to them being more expensive than the others. I currently put half into TnC and half into HP. My scales are/will be Armour base with TnC + Dragon Breath (not everyones idea of useful I know but it fits for me) and Dexterity. Those that can take sockets are triple-socketed and crystals that interest me are those that fit the above teched scales for stats anyway.

My other dragons will have different setups, when I get around to playing them. None of them are set up to be 'leet', merely to attempt to have as different playstyles as you can get between dragons. I used to have pev set up as Dex/Evasion on her TP, which was great fun, just took me a while to kill stuff but I got hit much less and didn't miss that much either. I'm thinking of doing something like that again with one of my hatchies.

I'm never someone in a game who can do all the highend stuff, but even I have been soloing giant ice beetles since lvl 75-ish, and at lvl 60 took out one WA mob lvl 80 (mainly luck ;)). The argument about not being able to get the tech comps for lvl 80 for your T5 stuff by hunting alone... well I always thought you weren't meant to anyway. You turn lvl 80, get plain, unteched T5 scales and as you get higher level you start adding in teched stuff. One way I levelled up so far for most of the way was to start hunting for my comps when I hit the appropriate tier level. It can be tough, and sure isn't the fastest way, but it's fun. And at the end of it I not only have a new scale to show for it, but I also gained some levels.

I'm still an adult, level 82 at the moment, and I do remember those helpless hatchie days where even at level 50 I couldn't take much on above me, and groups of things were super scary. But since being adult/growing in levels it's definately easier, and back on Unity I saw dragons my level AoE grinding huge groups of things. It's all on your setup, your scales and what you want to do.

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Originally Posted by Shur

i still disagree wit your assessment that strength is as worthless as you say it is. i've found that just 20 str points can be the difference between one-shotting that blighted blight and getting chain-mezzed by all his buddies that show if you sit for more than two seconds.

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Don think i didnt do my tests before posting:) Xanthia iand i have the same scales and clae. the only difference between us was the fact that she had 150 more str over meue to dp. after testing against eachother in the arena. her gold rage dmg was only 15 or so on avarage more than mines. we both use stat xtas with str, armor and health.
when we decoded to duel to the death she could not take down me down due to my extra health.(we dueled a few times using our ceremonial scales).

investing 600 tp for 150 str is NOT worth the investment. well nor is dex.

as for elite blights , like i said i can take 4 elites at the same time with no problems. the ONLY time i miss is when they use foresight. I easly 1 shot even the lvl 120 blights.

the rest of my scales are all with t&c, str and health. Dex really does not help with maxed t&c *also tested*

as for dragon breath, all it does is increase your chance to hit with fire breath, so getting alot amassed will only ensure your bof will hit (your ancient one also) ammasing alot for 1 skill that you use every 30 sec and well the other 2 , faction being every 10 min and ancient being every 3. those are the only skills that benifit from it.

I even use wiskey to give me a huge boost to my str while lowering my dex to 69% and i still dont miss T&c plays a major factor to ouch chance to hit and dmg. and it is even possible to take it over the 1700 mark with is more than enough to hit any mob, well save the mobs with high evasion ,purple necroflies on which we hunted together once {shur} and we both missed just as much. or enemies that use an evasive ability, that as soon after it wears out they are more than dead.

but if getting dps is your major consern, drop the dex, get health. get dark dimond, light dimond and dark ruby armor and jewelry crystals. push some tp into health and outlive or escape some bad pulls. Give it a shot then come here and let us know how often your getting dps. because the only ones i get is when relkar goldrages me with low health or fanfir scorches me when i havent recuperated from a previous scorch. and were talking about attacks that do over 3500 dmg.

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Originally Posted by Machariel

but if getting dps is your major consern, drop the dex, get health. get dark dimond, light dimond and dark ruby armor and jewelry crystals. push some tp into health and outlive or escape some bad pulls. Give it a shot then come here and let us know how often your getting dps. because the only ones i get is when relkar goldrages me with low health or fanfir scorches me when i havent recuperated from a previous scorch. and were talking about attacks that do over 3500 dmg.

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Just for clarity, DPS = Damage Per Second. Health wont increase it.

I make the distinction because Twelvebagger and I tested this too, extensively. I have a defensive build, not to be confused with a survival build. In other words, I am high AC/Evasion, but I do not have anything in extra health other than a few event crystals that happen to have it. I also traded some TnC for Dex, because Dex aids Evasion as well as accuracy. It is a trade-off because it takes a lot of Dex to make up for a little TnC, but my dex is high enough that I don't miss T6 critters any more than those with max TnC. Against critters where evasion is useful I survive better than those with high health, but mostly high health with out-survive me if the fights go long or the incoming damage is high.

Twelve, on the other hand, was all about DPS. His survivability was almost zero, but it didn't come to that very often because his DPS was so grossly high that he would usually mow stuff down before he got hit much. I am not sure I remember his exact build, but I know strength was his major stat, as was TnC I think. It took a few revisions before he perfected it so I am a little fuzzy on which were the final details, but I know that he was predominately strength based. His Gold Rage and Ravage abilities did considerably more damage than mine, and his normal combat hit for about 1/3 more than mine. Keep in mind all my scales are teched with Str, so the difference was mostly due to TPs. At one point he used Str scales teched with armor, but I think he ended up going AC teched with Str just to have some survivability.

And yes, triple-teched scales, level 100's. I can't recall if we were Ancient at the time, he left long ago and I don't recall if Ancients were in yet. We were maxed out though, for what was in game.

I am not arguing for or against either of these builds, I just thought I would share some of our findings, especially since the term DPS was being used incorrectly.

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Originally Posted by Theolaerynn

Just for clarity, DPS = Damage Per Second. Health wont increase it.

I make the distinction because Twelvebagger and I tested this too, extensively. I have a defensive build, not to be confused with a survival build. In other words, I am high AC/Evasion, but I do not have anything in extra health other than a few event crystals that happen to have it. I also traded some TnC for Dex, because Dex aids Evasion as well as accuracy. It is a trade-off because it takes a lot of Dex to make up for a little TnC, but my dex is high enough that I don't miss T6 critters any more than those with max TnC. Against critters where evasion is useful I survive better than those with high health, but mostly high health with out-survive me if the fights go long or the incoming damage is high.

Twelve, on the other hand, was all about DPS. His survivability was almost zero, but it didn't come to that very often because his DPS was so grossly high that he would usually mow stuff down before he got hit much. I am not sure I remember his exact build, but I know strength was his major stat, as was TnC I think. It took a few revisions before he perfected it so I am a little fuzzy on which were the final details, but I know that he was predominately strength based. His Gold Rage and Ravage abilities did considerably more damage than mine, and his normal combat hit for about 1/3 more than mine. Keep in mind all my scales are teched with Str, so the difference was mostly due to TPs. At one point he used Str scales teched with armor, but I think he ended up going AC teched with Str just to have some survivability.

And yes, triple-teched scales, level 100's. I can't recall if we were Ancient at the time, he left long ago and I don't recall if Ancients were in yet. We were maxed out though, for what was in game.

I am not arguing for or against either of these builds, I just thought I would share some of our findings, especially since the term DPS was being used incorrectly.

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Goldrage is based off t&c as well as many other abilities we have. str doesnt really help as much, dex does help raise t&c a bit but not much to see a difference.

my scales do have str,t&c and health and with wiskey well fully buffed i exceed over 2100 str. have 1751 t&c and over 3k armor i have even hit over 5000k health.

as for dex and evasion , unbuffed they are slightly over 700 points once you hit lvl 100. even if you put all you can into dex and evasion your still going to get smacked constanly bt t5 and expecially t6 mobs, were not bipeds with alot of evasion and dex. 50 str constitutes to 1 t&c while 1 dex xtal can give you 4 t&c, however str does raise your dmg a bit more than dex does.

as i said before xanthia had the best build i know for str every xtal, tps in str, wiskey all buffed to the teeth yet only did 15 more dmg per goldrage avarage hit than i did.

while any build can still 1 hit kill most mobs out there since gr basicly does that itself, the problem comes when more than a few mobs attack at the same time. thats where armor and health come in, yet still hit as hard as the rest. t&c factors our strongest attacks and gorging all you can on it.

curently ill be testing to see if 50 t&c contribues more to my overall dmg than 130 str(planning on taking off my 2 str armor xtals which pushes me to the 1751 T&C)

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Originally Posted by Machariel

Goldrage is based off t&c as well as many other abilities we have. str doesnt really help as much, dex does help raise t&c a bit but not much to see a difference.

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You can easily cap your ability to hit your target and have enough left to bump strength up significantly. Another reason our mileage may vary on strength is because we tested self-buffed, no potions or other devices. Real world tests. I believe using potions and buffs and other such things which are entirely situational will just skew the results.

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Originally Posted by Machariel

while any build can still 1 hit kill most mobs out there since gr basicly does that itself, the problem comes when more than a few mobs attack at the same time. thats where armor and health come in, yet still hit as hard as the rest. t&c factors our strongest attacks and gorging all you can on it.

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I only hunt named solo, everything else is in multiples. Our tests were done during normal hunts, and again, reflected our real world situations.

i dont recall me saying in the tests xanthia and i did we used potions or ped buffs.

we didn't just pure dragon skills:). different scale sets with Only one stat. Truth is all our skills depend on either T&C or Primal. we have NO dex based attacks NO str based ones. Even Drain strike is based on T&C. This leads to the reason many players who want to play casters complain they well they have little skills to play with and the hard hitting ones are based on a stat they refuse to lose which is why they are suggesting for the old skill gold burst and a few others to be made.



go ahead and make yourself a power set with str teched on it. take a friend to the arena, have him strip his weps and scale and you add just those scales. smack him for a while and take avarages. then take avarages of you hitting him without the scale. then tell me how 250 str faired out. Because we have NO skill based on our str.


keep in mind the built i posted is in responce to some questioning dragon survivability. how from ancient to adult there is a huge difference when its only a few skills obtain. I have soloed thistleface unbuffed, even umyarr. took mobs down mobs what i was told i had to wait as an ancient to take them down.
Even shur, who has his str/dex based scales, dex xtals has to admit he missed as much as i did to purple necroflies.

(Btw did you know that the Highest amount of T&C possible which can hit 1950+ can be only achived by aquireing the demon claw, ceremonial scale and after you kill umyarr for the arop, the ancient head scale which adds fangs of fury. This is the only time a dragon can use both demon claw and fangs of fury at the same time making the ADULT dragon MORE powerful than an anceint can ever be. )

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Originally Posted by Machariel

go ahead and make yourself a power set with str teched on it. take a friend to the arena, have him strip his weps and scale and you add just those scales. smack him for a while and take avarages. then take avarages of you hitting him without the scale. then tell me how 250 str faired out. Because we have NO skill based on our str.

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Strength is directly involved in damage calculations of (I believe) all physical attacks. Others who are more familiar with the calculations please correct me if I am wrong. The devs posted them a long time ago, but I don't remember if that was on here or on Tazoon.

I have never had problems based with lack of damage output; it has been my experience that in epic hunts, dragons are the preferred choice due in fact to a high damge output and fairly sustainable rate of attacks. However, i also note that there are issues both with survivability of dragons and with the fact that our combat effectiveness is directly linked to hoard.

Dragons are often described as 'glass cannons' because whilst we can dish out damage, we cannot withstand any form of concerted attack. We have no inherant defensive abilities aside from Shield of Gold, which consumes bucketloads of hoard and has a long cooldown, albeit it is extremely effective. Our buffs are underpowered and non-combinable, a major problem when fighting W/A mobs because they will use both elemental and spirit/blight/ethereal and we can choose to defend against only one set of attacks. We have no buffs that protect against melee damage and have to rely on killing our opponent before they can inflict too much damage. Dragons have negligable evasiveness against attacks of all kinds (an 8% chance to evade an incoming attack against a mob of the same level or something similar).

This could be resolved by the inclusion of new buffs, or the improvement of the existing ones. I have often speculated that dragons would not need melee buffs simply because such large creatures would be difficult to engage in combat in any case- it is easy to imagine them assailed by swarms of small critters, but injuries that could incapacitate a biped would be little more than scratches to a dragon-sized being.

There is also the problem of hoard. Hoard is integral to a dragon's existance on Istaria, but our most powerful abilities consume it at a rate of knots. For every hour of intense fighting we might have to spend as much as half an hour farming hoard mobs in order to maintain our effectiveness. Players want to play, not to have to undertake the chore of farming hoard which can be a lengthy process and is often already camped by another player in similar straits.

The hoard burning is a topic that has been done to death in other threads so i will not comment on it, aside from reiterating the fact that when 'bugged' drops on giant ice beetles and icy dire wolves are fixed, dragons will not be able to support current levels of hoard consumption. Dragons will lose a great deal of their offensive capability.

There is the issue of Deathpoints, which dragons cannot self-remove. Whilst the deathpoint itself is not a barrier to combat effectiveness, it is a metaphorical sword of Damoclese that makes adventurers less inclines to play whilst in effect. The Death penalty significantly reduces our ability to adventure. There is no way to remove it save for waiting over a day to fade or sitting and buying food at expense (sometimes up to 60s) in a tavern and consuming it. This is a lengthy process at best due to the 16min cooldown on foods and can easily consume two hours for the removal of a single death point.

The Devs have hinted in no uncertain terms that dragons are due a boost to help resolve issues in their combat ability. I cant wait to see what they have planned :)

abilities are based on skills, no ability (hotkey related attack form, damage shield, buff, etc.) is based on a statistic. statsitics add to skills and are related to damage including damage shields and boosting heals, to hit, and evasion.

Read this old thread from Smeglor, who did really good work on Horizons and is truly a loss to the team:

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...at+calculation

Here is a specific excerpt that I recall, and the calculation that can be found further down:

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Originally Posted by DeathTiny

Attributes:
Note that all skills are slightly increased by some or all of the four main attributes, so they have that value in addition to the specifics below.
Strength: Increases damage with physical attacks. It is 50% more effective than attack skill in this respect.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by DeathTiny

Damage: Weapon/Spell damage + Strength/Power * Attack Delay + Attack Skill * Attack Delay - Target's Armor * Attack Delay
All the modifications are divided by values that I'm not going to reveal at this time, but as stated originally, Strength/Power is 50% more valued than Skill, and Armor is slightly more valued than Strength/Power.
The above result is then put through a Gaussian randomizer to give greater variety.

When damage is being calculated for a damage over time effect or a damage shield, the Strength/Power and attack skill are inherited from the values used to give the target that effect. For instance, the Engulf effect will have damage based on the Power and flame skill of the caster, because that was the attribute and skill used in the Engulf attack itself.

Edit: Clarified parry's requirement for a melee weapon.
Edit 2: Added mentioning of randomizing of damage."


(c) smeglor posted on tazoon.com/releaseforums
should not be lost so i put it in here hope it will help in some way to other players.

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Thanks to DeathTiny I will not have to quietly go insane looking for a post we would no longer have access to if he had not copied it from Tazoon (where I remember it from) to these forums.

So then, why would it seem like strength makes little difference in the attack damage? Is it just a fluke of the random numbers?

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Originally Posted by Favoran

So then, why would it seem like strength makes little difference in the attack damage? Is it just a fluke of the random numbers?

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All I can say is my experience has been that strength makes a very noticeable difference. Your mileage may vary.

so i did read the post of deathtiny's and well notice one thing you other may have failed to notice. theres no explination of tooth and claw and primal on which our attacks are BASED on.


Yes str raises our dmg out put. i have never denied that, im only stating its not as much as you may think it is. Does that make it a useless stat. NO it does not, however 150 str is NOT going to give you a huge boost. i do have my scale sets with str and str xtals when i want to do my optimal., however dropping some for survival yet still hit just about as hard is what i have been aiming my post at for those who claim dragons have no survivability.
Dex for me is useless but thats my view on it, because it raises our pathetic evasion, we cannot get enough to make a huge difference especailly noticable on the mobs that count. yes fighting t4 mobs it may be noticable youll dodge alot, but against t5 and t6 your gonna get hit as much as someone without it because our evasion is downright pathetic. If you have over 1600 t&c after buffing yourself your not going to notice a difference on your misses vs t6 mobs with max dex as in without it. Heck I even use Wiskey that drops my dex to 69% if its norm for the str boost it gives and still not notice a difference.
but then this isnt the reason why im replying.

This is to address Melanth.

Speak for yourself . if you have no survival rate and if you consider yourself a glass cannon. that is you. It quite angers me when its clear that someone does not use all the options given ingame for us.
Have you ever heard of resists. or carrying various resist sets and crystals.? Have you ever tried to use crush resists scales and xtals vs gigaroth or flame resist and crystals vs relkar?. High chance you may have not if you consider dragons to be glasscannons and have low survivability. because if you have used it . gigaroth can hit you with his specials for only 600 to 700 dmg while without em you getting hit for over 11k dmg. relkar can 1 hit kill you with his gold rage while with the resists he does a pathetic 1.7k dmg with it.
Why is it so hard to make different armor sets to use vs different situation and macro em for quick changing. really how hard is that. all of this is accesable to every dragon, these are not rare epic drops. I carry a set of scales for each resist (save etheral) with t&c, str and the said resist)if i want i can aggro all the giant fire beetles in drakul and crush them all at the same time. while our survivability is not that of a maxed out multiclassed biped we are not that far off. they use everything to their disposal, so why cant we. think outside the box for a moment. get some resist scales while hunting then come back and tell me if we are glass cannons.
adapt to the situations that come along, there is no One set does it for all the situations out there.
the new heal spell boosted our survivability alot. and for all the many dragons who are smart to carry different scale sets for different situations know perfectly well were not as weak as you claim us to be in terms of survival.

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Originally Posted by Machariel

so i did read the post of deathtiny's and well notice one thing you other may have failed to notice. theres no explination of tooth and claw and primal on which our attacks are BASED on.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Theolaerynn

Damage: Weapon/Spell damage + Strength/Power * Attack Delay + Attack Skill * Attack Delay - Target's Armor * Attack Delay
All the modifications are divided by values that I'm not going to reveal at this time, but as stated originally, Strength/Power is 50% more valued than Skill, and Armor is slightly more valued than Strength/Power.
The above result is then put through a Gaussian randomizer to give greater variety.

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I think you misread this. Attack Skill for Dragons is TnC.

To Machariel:

Note that I am specifically addressing buffs and Withered Aegis mobs, not scales and Epics. I have said that dragons are the preferred choice (in my experience) for epic hunting, usually backed up by a healer or two. Often on Chaos dragons are specifically requested for epic hunts. Regular monster mobs pose little real threat unless you are incautious or downright foolhardy. A decent scale set is necessary to privide survivability in even simple combat situations and is a must have for any concerted adventurer, but i do not see that it should be necessary to carry a multitude of specifically crafted sets to attain a set 'ideal' combat effectiveness.

When engaging in specific combat situations, vis epic mobs, the combat situation can be reliably predicted and acted upon accordingly (pediction being a necessary asset of prevention) however in more generalised combat situations the flow of battle is unpredictable and it is not always possible to respond in the way you are suggesting. Take for example a hunting trip to ED, where you are unfortunate enough to be rooted by a caster mob who then draw aggro from an abomination. You have the option of magic resist or melee resist, either way you are looking at a sound pummeling. Such events, or similar, are not unheard of occurances. There is also the problem that by teching resists to scales you compromise on offensive aspects of combat effectiveness, and T5 crystals are a rare commodity. I have spent somewhere in the region of 6 months searching for radiant slash resist armour crystals and have only found one on the consgner and otherwise.

It would seem much simpler to me to improve buffs and make them stackable, rather than having to completely change your scales every time you encounter a different mob, but that is just my opinion.

A bit of a late response, but in no way are we glass cannons. I have stats similar to Mach's (though I do have a lot of str, but we're very similar) and I also carry a few resistant xtals of each type. I find myself not dying as much as I did when I did not do this. I too can survive Fafnir's scorch, and I find that very handy. As long as you have the scales-or if you don't want to spend the time making scales-the crystals for it, and a bit of HP, there's a large survivability increase.