Idea for a skill for high levels

So if you have a maxed DB then you are essentially netting less damage because the DB is higher than the DR. Guess I'm gonna stick with the non-piercing agenda.

I think most people don't realise how good piercing weapons can be, especially if there aren't any low level players on.

I am typing this in a hurry, so may make a mistake but....
a vanilla +5 weapon does +50% damage.
a maxed out piercing +6 does (I think) +12% damage.

If the algorithm for damage is
Damage done = Damage * (1 + ('player damage bonus'- 'monster damage reduction')/200))
then a piercing is as good as a vanilla when 1.12=1.5*(1+((db-dr)/200))
or when -50.7 = (db - dr)
So, when the monsters dr is 50 greater than your db, switch to the piercing.

Now, the monsters level is min player level + 2*wave no, I believe, and monsters get +3.5 dr per level. (I am not sure if the first wave is wave zero or one - let's assume 1, it doesn't make much difference)
EDIT: monster level actually (min player level/4)+(2*wave no) - see post later.

First let's look at the scenario where we have a level 5 player in, all the way through to the end of the game. The monsters will go from level 7 in wave 1 to level 37 in wave 16, so their dr will be 24 in wave 1 and 129 in wave 16. So, if you have maxed your db to 80, and there is a level 5 player still around, on wave 16 the vanilla+5 and the piercing+6 do the same damage. If you do not have 80 db, or there isn't a level 5 player still alive (on wave 16?), then the piercing is better.
So, assuming we have a weapon that does 100 damage, the piercing will always do 112. The +5 will do 192 in wave 1 and 113 in wave 16 for a player with db 80.
EDIT: figures wrong. monsters go from level 3 to level 33, dr goes from 10 to 115.
+5 does 202 wave 1, 124 in wave 16
piercing+6 does 151 in wave 1, 112 in wave 16
So +5 always better than piercing.

If instead the lowest player currently alive is level 20, the monsters will have db starting at 77 going to 182. By wave 9 everyone gets more benefit from a piercing.
Using the weapon above, the piercing will do 112 damage. The +5 will do 150*(1+(80-77)/200) =152 wave 1, and 74 damage in wave 16.
And if you only have 50 db, the comparison is 112 against 130 wave 1 to 51 wave 16.
And if you have zero db, the comparison is 112 against 92 wave 1 to 14 wave 16.
EDIT: figures wrong. monsters go from level 7 to level 37, dr goes from 24 to 129.
+5 does 192 wave 1, 113 in wave 16
piercing+6 does 143 in wave 1, 112 in wave 16
So +5 is always better than piercing if you have db 80 and a level 20 player is on.

If you have less than 80db, or the lowest player is greater than level 20, it is time to start thinking about the piercing.

So, the lower your db, the quicker piercing makes sense.
Is there now going to be a run on piercing?

Wow, superb breakdown. Great info!

Vortex, can you confirm the math here?

Thanks for the info
It looks like, the best thing for the high level people to do is keep the lowest level player in the game alive!

Tactics wise to survive the wave, I don't know if you can get more exp for killing higher level monsters, but with some grouping and coordination it could make getting that bonus exp from winning the map more likely for everyone.
you just have to decide if thats more than you would get for going out with a bang!

as for piercing, I love it, i have been putting most of my points into addrenal and weapon speed, so piercing is esseential on later levels, that or another ability like protection, cause I have no dr

Grizzled_Imposter wrote:

Thanks for the info
It looks like, the best thing for the high level people to do is keep the lowest level player in the game alive!

Absolutely. The other day I was playing with a high level player with my LA char (low level). It came down to just the two of us on wave 16, so I ran like heck and just tried to stay alive so that the high level player could get the job done.

Shadow-X wrote:

give higher players a more db bonus

Woohoo! Redundancy. You said Damage Bonus bonus. Like the people who say ATM machine.

On the subject of damage and crap, I'll throw in my two cents.

First of all, the Piercing RPGWeapon. It does not remove Damage Bonus. It gets the original (no DB or DR) and the modified (with DB and DR), and just chooses the higher, and then multiplies by 1+(0.02*BonusLevel). So this simply means that if Damage Reduction outweighs Damage Bonus, default to normal damage.

Second, Monsters. The monster DB and DR is equal to 7*Wave+LowestPlayerLevel/4. So assuming 320 is level 150 (no idea, really) and alone on wave 16, monster damage reduction is 149, absolutely creaming his maximum of 80. This means all of 320's attacks will do 66.5% of their normal damage. If he had a +5 weapon, this would increase to 85.5%, and if he had a piercing +6, he would do 112%. Say he had a piercing weapon +0 against some random monster with 10 DR though, he would still do 135% damage, 151.2% is +6.

KohanX wrote:

Shadow-X wrote:

give higher players a more db bonus

Woohoo! Redundancy. You said Damage Bonus bonus. Like the people who say ATM machine.

On the subject of damage and crap, I'll throw in my two cents.

First of all, the Piercing RPGWeapon. It does not remove Damage Bonus. It gets the original (no DB or DR) and the modified (with DB and DR), and just chooses the higher, and then multiplies by 1+(0.02*BonusLevel). So this simply means that if Damage Reduction outweighs Damage Bonus, default to normal damage.

Second, Monsters. The monster DB and DR is equal to 7*Wave+LowestPlayerLevel/4. So assuming 320 is level 150 (no idea, really) and alone on wave 16, monster damage reduction is 149, absolutely creaming his maximum of 80. This means all of 320's attacks will do 66.5% of their normal damage. If he had a +5 weapon, this would increase to 85.5%, and if he had a piercing +6, he would do 112%. Say he had a piercing weapon +0 against some random monster with 10 DR though, he would still do 135% damage, 151.2% is +6.

Just so I understand you, you're saying the piercing wep will not ignore my DB as long as my DB exceeds that of the monster's DR?

My experience has been otherwise, but obviously I didn't have this info. Can someone (vortex?) confirm this?

KohanX wrote:

First of all, the Piercing RPGWeapon. It does not remove Damage Bonus. It gets the original (no DB or DR) and the modified (with DB and DR), and just chooses the higher, and then multiplies by 1+(0.02*BonusLevel). So this simply means that if Damage Reduction outweighs Damage Bonus, default to normal damage.

KohanX is correct. I had forgotten Druid changed it to work this way in version 183. So using a +6 Piercing weapon that does a base 100 damage will always do a minimum of 112 damage, but if your db is higher than the monsters dr, you will get the benefit. e.g. your db 80, monsters dr 20, you do 145 damage.
I will edit my above post to show the corrections.

KohanX wrote:

Second, Monsters. The monster DB and DR is equal to 7*Wave+LowestPlayerLevel/4. So assuming 320 is level 150 (no idea, really) and alone on wave 16, monster damage reduction is 149, absolutely creaming his maximum of 80. This means all of 320's attacks will do 66.5% of their normal damage. If he had a +5 weapon, this would increase to 85.5%, and if he had a piercing +6, he would do 112%. Say he had a piercing weapon +0 against some random monster with 10 DR though, he would still do 135% damage, 151.2% is +6.

I got the algorithm wrong I agree (I said I was doing it in a hurry - I should know better

ops: ). The monster level is (wave*2)+(lowestplayerlevel/4).
However, your maths looks wrong. Experience (and someone high level like 320 needs to confirm) says that once a level 150 player is on by himself, he does not do 66.5% damage. It is a lot less.
In your example, if 320 is level 150, the monster dr would be 3.5*((2*16)+(150/4)) = 3.5*(32+37.5) = 243 dr. This would mean 320s attacks would do 18% of their normal damage.
Again, I will edit my above post to show the corrections.

Szlat wrote:

However, your maths looks wrong. Experience (and someone high level like 320 needs to confirm) says that once a level 150 player is on by himself, he does not do 66.5% damage. It is a lot less.
In your example, if 320 is level 150, the monster dr would be 3.5*((2*16)+(150/4)) = 3.5*(32+37.5) = 243 dr. This would mean 320s attacks would do 18% of their normal damage.
Again, I will edit my above post to show the corrections.

On all weps, save for piercing, 18% sounds about right.

It does seem a bit of a shame though. With all the different weapon types that there are, on wave 16 which is the most difficult battle, the player is stuck with using just two types of weapon - the piercing and vorpal. It sort of detracts from the richness of the game.

Druid added the piercing weapon to help the high level players on later waves. And I think it has made a big difference. At least the players know they can do a reasonable amount of damage. But it does put a bit of a restriction on the gameplay - use this weapon type or die.

The initial suggestion in this thread was to allow high level players to get extra db. As has already been commented, because this would just allow more kills on monsters with low dr, I am not in favour.

What I would prefer to see would be a cap on monsters dr. If players have a cap at 80db and 50dr, if monsters were capped at 200db and 130dr, it would still make the last wave a challenge, but not such a distorted one. These figures could obviously be adjusted to get the balance right. Also, if the waves become too easy, the monster difficulty could be upped, or different more difficult monsters added.

I don't think anyone enjoys taking one minute just to kill a single 900 health monster with a mini. It sort of gets tedious. I say cap the monster dr and let the fraggin begin.

It sounds like you guys have got it figured out now.

I was unaware that Piercing had been changed to a
Max(Base Damage + Modifier, Player DB - Monster DR)
format. This is a welcome change as the piercing weapons as they stand in version 180 are lame when you aren't seriously outgunned and therefore I tend to discard them for new magic most of the time.

You have also discovered the facet of this server that I find to be very handicapping. The low DB and DR caps are not my favorite way of increasing challenge. The strategy of keeping low levels alive at DC is paramount and moreso than any other server I've played. It always helps to keep them alive but here you are totally screwed if you are above the caps and they die.

Capping the monster's to any stat caps would require a re-compile of the core RPG so it seems a shade unlikely Druid will bother. As hard as it may be at times, it's better to have them able to pass you. And with a Monster Adjust of .25 it will take a decent interval before they do.

My philosophy is that any given server will keep you coming back for more if you rarely ever win a map compared to one that every map is a winner and it just becomes something to trudge through once every hour.

Just my thoughts anyway.

V0rTex, i made a little trip on your server, and i can admit, ive never seen something so much fast paced.

Its very fun, but i can assure you i would have liked to get a Piercing. Your mobs have so much DR that its close to impossible to pass wave 4 as a level 15

(let alone trying wave 5 LOL)

[KitFox wrote:

]V0rTex, i made a little trip on your server, and i can admit, ive never seen something so much fast paced.

Its very fun, but i can assure you i would have liked to get a Piercing. Your mobs have so much DR that its close to impossible to pass wave 4 as a level 15 (let alone trying wave 5 LOL)

Yes we run something very "different". We show no mercy at all to low level players and until you are above 50 (which can be done in a couple of days if you persist) you won't live long past wave 4.

We use Monster Adjust of .35 so it requires more points into the stats.

v0rTeX wrote:

Capping the monster's to any stat caps would require a re-compile of the core RPG so it seems a shade unlikely Druid will bother. As hard as it may be at times, it's better to have them able to pass you. And with a Monster Adjust of .25 it will take a decent interval before they do.

I suppose if Druid was worried about it, he would have reduced the monster adjust from 0.25 to 0.1 or something.

The alternative would be to put the important bit of the piercing code into the OneDropWeapon class, so all weapons with a * are piercing when necessary. It would allow some variation in the weapons used on the final wave.

Szlat wrote:

In your example, if 320 is level 150, the monster dr would be 3.5*((2*16)+(150/4)) = 3.5*(32+37.5) = 243 dr.

Where'd the 3.5 come from?

Also, my vanilla +5 comparison may be incorrect (even if my general formula was), because I'm not sure if it adds 100 to Damage Bonus or if it compounds with the DB-DR result. If it just adds to DB, then a +5 in the instance I noted would result in 116.5%, instead of 99.75%, which is different from my original thoughts anyway... weird... but yes, where *did* the 3.5 come from?

Oh, and the 234 DR instance would result in a total of 13.61% damage with an unenhanced weapon.

Szlat wrote:

But it does put a bit of a restriction on the gameplay - use this weapon type or die.

Not necessarily. Different weapons are to be used in different situations. Force weapons are good at long range, Vampire Spread weapons are good, especially in tight maps, et cetera. This is just a way to make a given weapon enhancement shine. Do you use Piercing at any other time? And was it Piercing or Penetrating that people wanted to go through Queen shields? And are the Queens poly-for-poly from the original Unreal model?

I urge you to reread this post as you reply, so as to make sure you didn't miss anything.