Impact of mage champion point rebalances

GilGalad

Asayre wrote: »

There are jump points for every 15%, 25% and 35% star so yes to Elemental Expert, Staff Expert, Hardy, Elemental Defender, Shadow Ward and Thick Skinned. It seems only the 5280 stars do not have jump points (i.e. Piercing, Spell Erosion etc.)

Im pretty sure they just added the jump points to make optimizing CP a challenge again!
The plot is actually really funny, telling us that every point between 80 and 99 is useless.

RoyJade

GilGalad wrote: »

The plot is actually really funny, telling us that every point between 80 and 99 is useless.

In order to promote spreading instead of stacking


Joke aside, as usual these informations are really useful. Thanks Asayre !
Now I'm waiting for all the jump point, but it seem that they're on every 1% gained if I understand well.

Erock25

Asayre wrote: »

There are jump points for every 15%, 25% and 35% star so yes to Elemental Expert, Staff Expert, Hardy, Elemental Defender, Shadow Ward and Thick Skinned. It seems only the 5280 stars do not have jump points (i.e. Piercing, Spell Erosion etc.)

@Asayre Wait, seriously? According to your graph up there this is no difference in putting in 20, 21, or 22 points into a CP that maxes out at 25% even though the in game tool tip states otherwise? WHY, OH WHY would they do this?

Asayre

I'm pretty sure @GilGalad is right. it was to make it way more fun to optimise. No more simple gradient descent for us. We have to do weird stuff to get the right CP distribution. Here are all the jump points, @RoyJade

RoyJade

Ah, perfect, thanks a lot

Erock25

Asayre wrote: »

I'm pretty sure @GilGalad is right. it was to make it way more fun to optimise. No more simple gradient descent for us. We have to do weird stuff to get the right CP distribution. Here are all the jump points, @RoyJade

This can't be intentional. I refuse to believe it. @ZOS_GinaBruno can you enlighten us on this when you get a chance?

Minno

Asayre wrote: »

There are jump points for every 15%, 25% and 35% star so yes to Elemental Expert, Staff Expert, Hardy, Elemental Defender, Shadow Ward and Thick Skinned. It seems only the 5280 stars do not have jump points (i.e. Piercing, Spell Erosion etc.)

Thanks!

A few threads back a few people were able to find out the jump points for the 25% and 15% stars:

• 15%: 4, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, 32, 43, 49, 56, 64, 75, 100
• 24 useless values between 14-15%

• 25%: 0, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23, 28, 31, 34, 37, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 61, 66, 72, 81, 100
• 19 useless values between 24-25%

they did not test for the 35% stars. They also figured out the PTS rounds down now instead of rounding up like on live (For example with a random number, instead of 12.8% Elfborn you'll need 13.15%)

EDIT: @Asayre beat me to it with that comprehensive list. Cheers!

Izaki

xD ZOS OP

Lovin the jump points

Asayre

The way I see it, elfborn has jump points on Live so to make things more fair and consistent everything should have jump points. It makes sense ... really

Izaki

Asayre wrote: »

The way I see it, elfborn has jump points on Live so to make things more fair and consistent everything should have jump points. It makes sense ... really

Indeed. Just need to put a little thought into it and you end up realizing how logical it is!

dpencil1

Are we sure that the tenth and hundredth values aren't actually doing anything? Could it just be simplification of stat numbers on the UI side?

Rinmaethodain

@Asayre I got curious and went to PTS, Shadow Ward does not follow this pattern, adding single CP even at far end between 81-100 CP would be reflected in reduced block cost.

I tested from 0 to 25CP in shadow ward and then from 75 to 100CP in shadow ward. Each CP invested visibly reduced block cost (block cost taken out from Combat Metrics resource report) up untill 95CP where adding single CP did not yeld change in block cost simply because the %reduction gained from 1CP was too small to have any effect at a resulting block cost.

This test was done on all naked toon with only base block cost 2160, i believe this could change if i had my full sturdy setup with other block reductions in there. But then, it seems that as far as Shadow Ward, if there are such jump points (which would appear starting from 95CP) they could start showing up earlier with more block cost reductions stacked.

Tommorow ill verify damage reduction stars.

Minno

MaximusDargus wrote: »

@Asayre I got curious and went to PTS, Shadow Ward does not follow this pattern, adding single CP even at far end between 81-100 CP would be reflected in reduced block cost.

I tested from 0 to 25CP in shadow ward and then from 75 to 100CP in shadow ward. Each CP invested visibly reduced block cost (block cost taken out from Combat Metrics resource report).

Tommorow ill verify damage reduction stars.

I thought the understanding for "jump points" was to help players understand the value of the points they are adding to the star. For example, why waste 24 champion points to go up 1% in the 15% max stars, when those 24 points can be added to get 10% from the 25% star or 6% from another 15%?

I think the values do go up per point, but at what level can we say those points are worth spending? I believe this is the value of the "jump point" system of understanding the champion points.

GilGalad

Asayre wrote: »

The way I see it, elfborn has jump points on Live so to make things more fair and consistent everything should have jump points. It makes sense ... really

I have the feeling that it is related to the formula they use to add up additive values. Elfborn is additive with other crit dmg boni on live, while the other % stars are multiplicative. With the change of making all dmg CP additive it introduced jump points.

That would also explain @MaximusDargus find that shadow ward is not suffering the problem, since blockcost reduction is usually multiplicative.

Rinmaethodain

Minno wrote: »

MaximusDargus wrote: »

@Asayre I got curious and went to PTS, Shadow Ward does not follow this pattern, adding single CP even at far end between 81-100 CP would be reflected in reduced block cost.

I tested from 0 to 25CP in shadow ward and then from 75 to 100CP in shadow ward. Each CP invested visibly reduced block cost (block cost taken out from Combat Metrics resource report).

Tommorow ill verify damage reduction stars.

I thought the understanding for "jump points" was to help players understand the value of the points they are adding to the star. For example, why waste 24 champion points to go up 1% in the 15% max stars, when those 24 points can be added to get 10% from the 25% star or 6% from another 15%?

I think the values do go up per point, but at what level can we say those points are worth spending? I believe this is the value of the "jump point" system of understanding the champion points.

Graph on previous page suggest more literal meaning, that each CP in between jump points gives no visible increase in actual stat. @Asayre will need to clarify

Erock25

Minno wrote: »

MaximusDargus wrote: »

@Asayre I got curious and went to PTS, Shadow Ward does not follow this pattern, adding single CP even at far end between 81-100 CP would be reflected in reduced block cost.

I tested from 0 to 25CP in shadow ward and then from 75 to 100CP in shadow ward. Each CP invested visibly reduced block cost (block cost taken out from Combat Metrics resource report).

Tommorow ill verify damage reduction stars.

I thought the understanding for "jump points" was to help players understand the value of the points they are adding to the star. For example, why waste 24 champion points to go up 1% in the 15% max stars, when those 24 points can be added to get 10% from the 25% star or 6% from another 15%?

I think the values do go up per point, but at what level can we say those points are worth spending? I believe this is the value of the "jump point" system of understanding the champion points.

Yeah someone needs to explain this to me because the line graph and chart are not making sense for jump points. The chart in particular makes no sense as to me it implies (in the 25% chart) that you need 3 points to make it to 1% increase but then only 2 additional points to reach 2% increase. I see no other way to interpret that chart.

Br1ckst0n

Asayre wrote: »

I'm pretty sure GilGalad is right. it was to make it way more fun to optimise. No more simple gradient descent for us. We have to do weird stuff to get the right CP distribution. Here are all the jump points.

You will still get a near perfect result if you calculate for a system without jump points. Just take that result and remove all the points that give you no benefit in a jump point system and then do an accurate calculation just for those points you removed. There is your "fun"

wimhwimladimf

Tbh, all their work is just waste of time. At some point someone will make guide for perfect dps setup and everyone will copy pasta it, leading to the exact same situation as we have now but visually it will be a bit different due to more passives being used.

Izaki

wimhwimladimf wrote: »

Tbh, all their work is just waste of time. At some point someone will make guide for perfect dps setup and everyone will copy pasta it, leading to the exact same situation as we have now but visually it will be a bit different due to more passives being used.

No because CP is never perfect for everyone. It depends on the player.

Asayre

Thanks @MaximusDargus , it seems I over generalized from my testing. I tested the damage related stars in the Mage, Arcanist, Tenacity and a couple of damage reduction stars (like Ironclad and Elemental Defender) and found jump points for all of them so I thought it would apply to all others as well. I guess cost reduction works differently.

And yes, there really is no increase if you are between a jump point. The graph below shows the damage done when I crit as I spend more points into Elfborn. There is nothing to be gained by putting points in between the jump points.

You are interpreting it correctly @Erock25, in the 25% chart there is no reason to spend 1 or 2 points. You should spend 3 points or nothing and then you should spend 5 points or 3 points but not 4 points etc.

And how I solved it in the webpage is to do gradient descent on the relaxed function (without jump points) and then search all nearby jump points (actually nearest 2, it works out better) and find the best solution.

The webpage if anyone is interested is http://solinur.de/AsayreCP/CPOptimisation.html. And thanks to @decay for hosting it!

Feanor

The real question is - why does the game itself explain nothing of this at all. Obviously ZOS is expecting everyone having a math major to figure out stuff themselves. It's a very poorly documented game.

Minno

Feanor wrote: »

The real question is - why does the game itself explain nothing of this at all. Obviously ZOS is expecting everyone having a math major to figure out stuff themselves. It's a very poorly documented game.

Well I mean computer science/programming is itself a math major. You are at the mercy of number-nerds my friend lol.

akray21

Long story short... I will still be severely disadvantaged with 300 CP compared to those with 630 CP. Sweet...

Xvorg

Feanor wrote: »

The real question is - why does the game itself explain nothing of this at all. Obviously ZOS is expecting everyone having a math major to figure out stuff themselves. It's a very poorly documented game.

It's an Elder Scrolls game... having pop up dmg numbers is something I've never seen

amasuriel

Masel92 wrote: »

A thing I experimented with a lot is the spell erosion/piercing stars. I have been using non sharpened weapons with spinner on live for alt chars because I didn't want to move gear all the time and it was very close to the old BiS setups. Now with 50 Points in one of the Penetration cps you get 5160*0.75=3860. This is very close to spinner and in raids with all Buffs applied you get to 19128 Spell Penetration without using any sharpened weapons, which is still 928 too much. So the question is: does this frontloaded cp star allow for non-sharpened weapons to be viable?

In raids you will still most likely invest to unlock the exploiter passive, so 75 points in thaumaturge. Leaves 135 points: 50 in spell erosion, 25 in Elfborn, 50 in elemental expert, 10 in staff expert? Or take out a few from elemental expert and 0 in staff expert and put them in master at arms?

On magblades with higher critical rating it might be better to put more into elfborn and take them out of ele expert or Master at arms.

For stamina builds this could enable to use a lot more builds. So with sharpened weapons you can put into piercing and drop twice-fanged serpent or use twice-fanged serpent and use non-sharpened weapons without losing too much damage.

Any thoughts on this?

This is my main hope for build diversity as well, that the front loading of erosion will allow some non-sharpened setups to work (and by work I mean be within 5% of BiS). Would add a lot to diversity if you would make crit builds, ulti builds, enchant builds etc.

Br1ckst0n

Did some tests on non blue trees, will do the rest later.

Here some conclusions:

• Bastion: Jump point
• arcanist: jump point
• healthy: jump point
• mooncalf: jump point
• tenacity: jump point
• bashing focus: gradient
• sprinter: gradient
• shade: gradient
• tumbling: gradient

Minno

Br1ckst0n wrote: »

Did some tests on non blue trees, will do the rest later.

Here some conclusions:

• Bastion: Jump point
• arcanist: jump point
• healthy: jump point
• mooncalf: jump point
• tenacity: jump point
• bashing focus: gradient
• sprinter: gradient
• shade: gradient
• tumbling: gradient

Nice find. So I assume with "gradient" that any CP point will increase the bonus?

Br1ckst0n

Minno wrote: »

Nice find. So I assume with "gradient" that any CP point will increase the bonus?

Exactly.

Br1ckst0n

Finished all the testing. I had to use a 2nd person to test some of the stuff so there is always a higher risk in getting false values. Here are the full results.

Affected by "jump points":

• arcanist: yes
• mooncalf: yes
• healthy: yes
• tenacity: yes
• bashing focus: no
• sprinter: no
• shade: no
• tumbling: no
• siphoner: yes
• warlord: no
• shadow ward: no
• befoul: yes
  
• bastion: yes
• expert defender: yes
• ele defender: yes
• hardy: yes
• iron clad: yes
• thick skinned: yes
• quick recovery: yes

Would be cool if someone could double check that stuff.

Wreuntzylla

Feanor wrote: »

The real question is - why does the game itself explain nothing of this at all. Obviously ZOS is expecting everyone having a math major to figure out stuff themselves. It's a very poorly documented game.

The jump points in CP have always been there to a greater or lesser extent. Probably the easiest to understand explanation of how it affects point allocation on live is by @Gottbeard who was patient zero for the wave of overperforming blazing shield builds. It's a long video but I don't really see it as a build video, I see it as a mechanics explanation video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZDzhIR1tnU&feature=youtu.be

The lack of documentation has been a problem since release. Interestingly, even the streamers who popularize certain build still show allocations of 100 points in, for example, Mighty.

I think the greatest impact on the average player is the complete lack of even an in-game mention of animation cancelling by ZoS. It was a long time before they even admitted it existed and was unintended, but something players needed to accept, because removing it would require a huge allocation of resources.