[Defender-WIP] Suvivability Theory (Modified for TQ from CoH)

[Xaece]

Alright everyone, I'm working on making a Survivability Theory. Seeing as TQ has many intricacies compared to CoH (City of Heroes), this will take sometime. A lot of Defenders seem to look down upon skills such as Adrenaline for their low return. However, having taken theories I have learned from my time in CoH (Linked below), and adapting them to TQ I have found survivability to not be as hard as many claimed it to be from the get-go.

Catwhoorg's DRR Theory (CoH)

Between Death and You (CoH) by Starsman

Now, in CoH for those who are unfamiliar. There are three basic defenses that melees have.

Defense (In TQ this would be Dodge Attacks, Avoid Projectiles, Fumble attacks, and Impaired Aim)
Resist (Fairly simple cross over)
Regeneration (Again, fairly simple crossover, this would be like Adrenaline, and our ever so popular health potions)

Catwhoorg explains his theory in a very simple fashion

Originally Posted by Catwhoorg

Cats theory is best thought of as “survivability is a stool, with one leg it wobbles, with two it can still be knocked over, with three legs it is as steady as a rock”.

It took me a trip back to the CoH forums before I could remember why his theory just made so much sense to me. And that was because of his analogy there.

I do plan to get into very in-depth number-crunching as these two fine fellows did in their threads. The reason I am starting this -now- in its current format is to try and make sense for all the times I have said "Your ability to survive is not dependent on any single skill, it is the sum of the skills and passing on Adrenaline because 'by itself' it looks weak is truly going to weaken your survivability. There is no one form of defense in this game that by itself stacked to high levels will allow you to survive, that is why you need layer yourself with different types."

Those two threads above are why I've been advocating using several different types of "defenses". I'm hoping the intial start of this thread (and by no means the end of this thread!) will allow others to see what I've been trying and failing to explain so far about just why I love high Adrenaline. Its not because of Adrenaline itself, its because it heals the damage that does slip past my other equally formidable defenses. I'm not outhealing the full damage of what enemies do, I'm outhealing the portion of damage that does slip by.

I am hoping in time, this theory taken from CoH, will be applied here in TQ in all its glory. So, for now, happy hunting to all, I hope some of this has made more sense then what I have said in the past about defenses, and I look forward to thoughts from others after having read how the two above much more eloquently describe how to make a truly survivable character (Though in terms of CoH and not TQ, I plan to do that bit of conversion in time).

[Dulak]

More great info Xaece ...
Let us know what your findings are ... I'm interested to see how it works in game.

How's your defender doing?

[Prito]

Xaece, I coudnt agree more. However that mostly apply on a well balanced game, which at its current state TQ is not.

Mmorpgs rely on balance in order to create "fairness", it is mandatory if you want customers to pay each month. It also applies to TQ types of games but not to the same extent.

Im sure TQ will get balanced, making the theory more precise.

Let me come up with cpl examples why I think TQ is unbalanced and can in special cases be almost invurnable with very few skills (sometimes 1 skill)

-100 recharge equipment let the player totally ignore cooldowns/timers, which are there initially for balance issues.

Take for example spammable regrowth / rally. With the right gear Iv managed -100 recharge -90 energy cost. I can spam rally so no pet / myself / party memeber dies. (There is of course flaws like stun, skill disruption, but during most of the game this is like god mode.) You can also walk around in perma colossus form, giving nice dmg absorption + spammable rally.

That is 2 skills that in most cases almost equals god mode. I wish you had to rely on alot of skills / strategies etc for ultimate defense, but in certain cases TQ has holes that enables certain very imbalanced builds when it comes to survival.

[Dulak]

I Agree Prito ... it's sad that I must force myself to play a certain way with a certain class so I feel a sense of balance and accomplishment ...

ie trying to give myself the diablo 2 HC feeling

[Lillis]

In the case of -100% recharge/-X% Energy Cost, doesn't equipment selection suffer a bit? Which in turn makes sure you don't kill your foes as fast as you could've with other gear = recieve more hits? Or doesn't this matter due to the skill's (in question) power?

[Kiyoko]

Originally Posted by Lillis

In the case of -100% recharge/-X% Energy Cost, doesn't equipment selection suffer a bit? Which in turn makes sure you don't kill your foes as fast as you could've with other gear = recieve more hits? Or doesn't this matter due to the skill's (in question) power?

well, i don't have 0 recharge time but with items and adrenaline triggered my batter has 0 cooldown which means i can use it as my normal attack. now this is a very simple, basic skill but it still gives you the ability to hit three enemies with you weapon AND shield, potentially doing ~6x as much dmg with each hit. that says a lot about how powerful low recharge is.

[Xaece]

Alright. I am releasing the ALPHA of my excel I have made. Please understand this does NOT take everything into account. The reason why Catwhoorg's DRR is harder to apply to TQ is not because TQ is "unbalanced" but more because theres far more factors that apply to a characters survivability.

Even with the "unbalanced" build Prito uses. While he may have incredibly high "regeneration" from Rally, he still needs to maintain a modicum of resists to survive one-shotting, or quick deaths from a couple hits. This is why Catwhoorg's theory still works here in TQ, because there isn't a single defense that is end all be all that we have access to. While we can use a few skills to achieve high survivability, as is the case with Prito's build, for those without such incredibly specific equipment we can use several skills to still achieve high survivability.

PS: WOW, I never realized just how small a factor Armor is for survivability until now. Again this NOT a finished product, merely an alpha. It contains calculations for Armor, Max HP (via Mastery and Gear), Shields (Calculates max number of shield blocks), Regeneration (Calculating the 'max' number of times Adrenaline can proc and adding that in too), Damage Resist (using the non-additive methods with a display showing the 'actual' damage resist rate), and of course Primary Resists.

Todo List:
Figure how to scale Shield Blocks for the "Block Chance" (Within my experience its not block rate, but recovery rate that limits my blocks)
Figure how to scale Adrenaline for the "Proc Chance" (Within my experience its not proc rate, but recovery rate that limits number of Adrenalines)
Calculate Rally, Regrowth, Health Potions, and other Healing sources. (Note: Healing, NOT Health Leech)
Calculate in "Dodge Attacks" and "Avoid Projectiles".

So, here it is: ALPHA Survival Calc

EDIT:
My color coding I use in all excels I make.
Yellow BG = Description Text, so do not edit.
Orange BG = Formulas do NOT edit.
Green BG = Editable.

Please notice to the right of each editable (and formula) square I have written a note detailing things I have felt should be 'noted' for that square.

EDIT2:
The "extrapolated" ratings that it creates to the right of your character stats.

If you have a 0.5 rating for Fire, and a 2.0 rating for Physical. What it means is you can twice as much damage compared to "yourself without gear/skills and exempt from Epic/Legendary Resist penalty". This is also how you can get say, a 0.5 rating for Fire it means your fire resist is below 0% Meaning you can only take half as much as yourself exempted from Resist Penalty.

Since you can not undo Mastery Points, and any Attrib points, it DOES use that Health Maximum (instead of some arbitrary number). So, those with +100% HP Max, are getting a 2.0 Rating for all damage types assuming they are otherwise not wearing any armor, and have 0% resist (neither negative nor positive). I hope this'll make some sense.

EDIT3: Last edit I swear.
Just wanted to put another rating example out there. If you have say, 50% Fire Resist, your rating is a 2.0 with Fire compared to your "naked" self. With 80% Fire Resist, your rating is a 5.0. This should make pretty obvious sense. With 80% Fire resist you are only taking 1/5th of the fire damage, meaning you can take 5 times that amount to equal someone with 0% Fire Resist.

[Kiyoko]

Originally Posted by Xaece

crap load of text

very nice! there are of course a lot variables that vary from fight to fight but this way you can try different situations and see what your weak points are.

[Galefury]

I will look through it and bash any weaknesses in your sheet I find in your face.

Suggestions (added while I look through it):
1. Add a reset button (maybe even a seperate reset button for each data group). Can be done via Macro that you bind to a button. With the standard settings most people wont be able to use this, so add a note telling people to set macro security to medium if you do this.
2. Health is missing a field for the quest reward. I'm not sure how much health you get on each difficulty, but the total seems to be 425, as that seems to be the health difference on my char with no other explanation. I think you get 75, 150, 200.
3. You are missing dodge modifiers. Basically the stuff you listed in your first post as "defense" is missing.
4. Relation of DA to enemy OA is missing. Needed for shield calculations, criticals and dodging.
5. Fight parameters are missing. Especially for armor this is important. Lots of low damage hits are reduced more by armor than a single high damage hit (not total amount reduced, but percentage, and as your extrapolation numbers are a kind of percentage this is important). Also the number of hits in a certain timeframe are important for scaling adrenaline and shield blocking to their proc rates. Add fields for average damage and number of hits per 10 seconds or something like that. Another thing you could do with those values is put in a calculation how long it will take until you die in that fight. If you add that you will also need a field for the various damage types, though. A cool feature would be fields for about 3 to 5 enemies where you could input their stats (average damages of the various types, attack speed, ranged or melee (for differentiating between dodge melee/ranged and correctly apply stuff like impaired aim)) and the amount of enemies of that type. Would make calculations more complicated, though.
6. A field for reduction to enemy damage would be good (examples: Triumph, Fatigue), and - if you add the fight parameters - also a field for attack speed reduction.
7. Doubling or Tripling all of your stuff and putting the extrapolated survival values next to each other for easier comparison would be great.
8. Adding fields for various skills could be nice. For example for Rally you could scale it with the recharge gear, for Onslaught (resist pain) it could be always on, stuff like that. Depends on how complicated you want to make your calculations of course.
9. Change the default fight duration, 120 seconds of non-stop fighting is pretty uncommon.
10. If you add most of the stuff in 5., support for "burst fights" would be nice. Generally I don't need more than 3 to 10 seconds for each small group of enemies, more for larger groups of course. Then there's a pause of 10 seconds, then the next fight. Would be another important factor for shield blocking and adrenaline procs.

Conclusion: As it is now the sheet is pretty useless, but it's an alpha, which makes that OK. Fight parameters are a must-have feature.

[EasymodeX]

Main notes are:

1) No avoidance factors (re: Dodge, etc).
2) Scaling of Armor to multiple hits, also as noted above; armor will have a more significant impact on several small physical attacks.
3) Composite survivability metric. The current breakout of "survivability vs. X type of damage" is useful, however for holistic character planning, players would need some overall sense of survivability, which would include damage from all sources, scaled to their frequency of occurrence.

Of course, that determination is a bit subjective and also depends heavily on the player's playstyle. Including some sort of baseline would be helpful though.