starkerealm wrote: »

Heelie wrote: »

You do realise that the comment about true crit chance was made about MMOs in general?

You do realize that video was ESO content, right?

Not WoW.

Not FF14.

Not TSW, AOC, STO, Neverwinter, Rift, BDO, EVE, Archeage, EQ2, AO, or any number of other MMOs that are completely irrelevant to making, or "critiquing," a build in ESO.

It was for ESO. If you want to discuss mechanics in ESO, it would be helpful if you don't accidentally reference concepts that don't exist here, or try to kludge systems into the game that don't really reflect the nature of this game.

EDIT: I do like the irony of you using a spreadsheet to argue that you're not using a spreadsheet, though. That part's nice.

Well the part of the video you're refering to I am talking about why crit in general is considered good in pve content and the logic about it. So it totally makes sense to bring up other games. That is how you build an ethos in an argument. If something is the case across the board in games, there's usually a good reason for it. If crit was not used in pve in any other MMO. It would be harder to make an arguement for why exactly it's good in ESO.

As for the spreadsheet, your entire arguement against it was build on the fact that we were discoussing theoretical dps without testing. But it seems to me from your comment you're entirely against spreadsheets and data in general "honestly, logic as well". There is really no point discussing this further if you can dismiss probably the most thorough public data on stamina race comparisons from the fact that it's presented in a spreadsheet.

starkerealm wrote: »

At that point, simply put, it's easier to prototype stuff on the PTS and test it, than it is to develop the model and run the numbers.

Could you please elaborate on how to "prototype stuff on the PTS and test it" and why it is fundamentally different than the approach by Heelie?

starkerealm wrote: »

Heelie wrote: »

So it totally makes sense to bring up other games.

Not so much, really. It's worth remembering that each game is its own creature, and trying to forcibly graft your expectations from one onto another is a fantastic way to make some catastrophic mistakes.

It's why we see people talking about BiS in ESO. The concept really doesn't apply, but, they know, Best in Slot is a thing in other MMOs, so "it must be true here, too, right?"

Heelie wrote: »

As for the spreadsheet, your entire arguement against it...

I didn't make an argument against the spreadsheet. I just find it amusing that you literally presented (screenshot of) a spreadsheet to argue that you don't use "spreadsheet magic."

It also doesn't change the fact that you're a healer main. Healing, Tanking, and DPS are all significantly different skillsets in ESO. So, any accusation that you might not be the best person to talk about DPS is, kinda supported by your signature.

For posterity: When I wrote this post, it was:

Most OwOrated healer of all time

So because I don't list a bragging signature like

TTT Breton Templar healer carry run but no profit
TTT Nord Templar healer carry run don't remember profit
TTT warden healer carry run 3 million profit

IR Breton Templar healer
IR Nord Templar healer carry run 3 million profit
IR Nightblade dd
IR Sorc healer carry run 2.5 million profit

GH Breton templar healer
GH Nord templar healer carry run 3 million profit
GH Sorc healer carry run 2.5 million profit
GH Warden healer carry run 2.5 million profit

vMoL 18:10 167.355 former "World Record"
vCR 8:53 123269 former "Word Record"

Flawless Donker on all chars

You're just going to assume I don't know anything about the game outside of healing?
This was just what I remembered of the top of my head. I find listing achievements or anything in the signature disgusting.

starkerealm wrote: »

Heelie wrote: »

So because I don't list a bragging signature like

Yeah, "Best healer of all time," is very modest.

My signature literally says most overated healer of all time

starkerealm wrote: »

Heelie wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Heelie wrote: »

So because I don't list a bragging signature like

Yeah, "Best healer of all time," is very modest.

My signature literally says most overated healer of all time

Is that what OwO is supposed to mean these days?

To be fair, it's probably for the best that you don't have all of that in your signature, as selling runs does carry a certain stigma about it. Though, I suspect you already knew that.

it might have carried a stigma over a year ago. But everyone has done them now. We even set up a discord to monopolise the EU market with a shared player pool among the top guilds, so that no other group of players could compete with us. We then hired a bunch of players to find the carries for an equal take in the cut.

starkerealm wrote: »

The only hickup is when the PTS is set up for a future build. Usually ahead of a DLC release. At that point, you're testing what your build will do under that build, not the live version.

Yeah, you didn't elaborate on how you actually do these tests.

You see, I'd do it by testing and thus generating and collecting data. I'll hypothesize which skills and rotations will be effective, so I'd test them. After reviewing my data and interpretation, I'd re-evaluate my hypothesises, re-formulate, devise new tests and the process begins anew until I am satisfied.

However, such a process would be only strengthened by making use of math and joining the crew from Captain Spreadsheet to interprete it.

So I'd like to know how you gather and interprete the data you gain by testing differently than Heelie etc.

Because if I were to prototype on PTS, I'd do it exactly like Captain Spreadsheet, or at least I would, if I had the time for that.

vesselwiththepestle wrote: »

Yeah, you didn't elaborate on how you actually do these tests.

Okay, that's fair.

What you do is you get a dummy, like I said you can go to a house. If you don't own one (which can happen), you can use the PTS crown store to grab the house of your choosing for 1 crown.

You download and install combat metrics.

Then you practice your rotation on your dummy in your house. You practice a lot.

You may also want to try alternate sets, to see if some perform better than expected.

vesselwiththepestle wrote: »

However, such a process would be only strengthened by making use of math and joining the crew from Captain Spreadsheet to interprete it.

Yeah, but, @nefas proved that Captain Spreadsheet doesn't play the game anymore. I mean, I get it, with his real life obligations, I doubt he has time to even log in, these days. So, maybe you should pick a new leader? One who actually plays, and has time to test their builds in game? Just a thought.

T3hasiangod wrote: »

You literally just described how every single end-game player tests their builds.

This is patently untrue as many endgame players don't create their own builds. They make minor tweaks on an existing build, but creating one from scratch? No, the vast majority of endgame players don't do that.

T3hasiangod wrote: »

The difference is that some end-game players go through and determine ability metrics first to see how different set combos will compare to each other so they don't test weaker permutations.

Something you might want to read:

starkerealm wrote: »

First, the game is idiosyncratic.

An example of this was back before Summerset released. While I was at ZOS, I remember asking if it was intended that the short duration poisons scaled with Master-at-Arms, while the lingering poisons scaled with Thaumaturge, and was told yes, that was intended behavior. I think I was asking Eric, but it's been over a year, So the answer may have come from Rich or Finn.

If you're going to model the game, you need to know all of the idiosyncrasies that affect your build. This isn't impossible, but does require you have a, frankly unrealistic, encyclopedic knowledge of how the game works. At that point, simply put, it's easier to prototype stuff on the PTS and test it, than it is to develop the model and run the numbers.

The poison thing is one example, there are literally hundreds of others, and some of these change with each patch. The introduction of Jump Points competently screwed up any previous CP models, and the entire false jump point thing is just a nightmare to test. If you're trying to model the game, all of this stuff becomes immediately relevant.

Further, this stuff distorts people's understanding of how the game works. One of the funnier examples were the cries about how bleeds were buffed this summer. Fact is, if you were running heavy bleed set ups in PvP before that, you took a nerf. The reason is that bleeds used to ignore resists. They were flagged like Oblivion damage, and so the damage on the tooltip was the damage your enemy would take. Also, at one point, bleeds were actually bugged so they couldn't be cleansed.

So, here's a very specific question, and if you can't answer it off the top of your head, you should start to see why these idiosyncrasies are important for modeling: Can Undaunted Infiltrator (and Undaunted Unweaver) crit?

This might sound like a stupid question. Of course, proc sets cannot crit, and UI is a proc set.

Except, UI doesn't, actually, deal damage. It causes your light and heavy attacks to do more damage. Normally, your light and heavies can crit. And we've seen in other cases (such as imbue weapon) that abilities (and buffs) that modify your light and heavy attacks simply bake into those attacks, and those attacks can still crit.

So, if your first response was, "no, that's stupid, of course it can't," you should start to be able to see why modeling this externally is more trouble than it's worth. (You'd also be wrong, because the bonus damage is baked straight into your light and heavy attacks, just like with a number of other sources that modify your basic attacks.)

Just something to keep in mind, while you're working on your models.

Heelie wrote: »

I would say carry runs are about as stigmatized as selling your gold for crowns. Sure it's not really what zos intended. But it's done none the less.

No, a better comparison would be the skyshards or skill lines for crowns crowd. There's a lot of people who either look at the entire process of paying for carries as a scam, or as cheapening their own clears. Most of the gripes about selling crowns revolve around there being no secure system to trade crowns for gold.

So, no, that's an entirely different example.

Let's go through this one at a time and systematically break down why you are wrong.

starkerealm wrote: »

T3hasiangod wrote: »

You literally just described how every single end-game player tests their builds.

This is patently untrue as many endgame players don't create their own builds. They make minor tweaks on an existing build, but creating one from scratch? No, the vast majority of endgame players don't do that.

Do you fault car manufacturers for releasing new cars every year? No? This is almost the exact same concept. Your standard car model is more or less the same each year, just with new technology, a slightly new look, a new engine, etc. As the adage goes "if it isn't broken, don't fix it".

If a patch comes along that doesn't introduce any sets that are potentially stronger than old sets, then clearly there's no need to explore those; I'm not going to explore Crafty Alfiq as a set for magicka DPS because it is strictly weaker than Necropotence and Mother's Sorrow.

I don't need to start from scratch because I don't need to reinvent the wheel each patch. There is nothing wrong with taking what you currently have and making small tweaks to make it stronger. Especially if you can mathematically ascertain that such-and-such skill and this-and-that set are strictly weaker than what you already have from last patch.

Not to mention that your precious Xynode does the exact thing you are accusing us of. If you track his builds over time, they are sometimes literally just carbon-copies from one patch to the next. Isn't that a bit hypocritical of you to blame us for doing something someone you are actively defending is doing?

starkerealm wrote: »

T3hasiangod wrote: »

The difference is that some end-game players go through and determine ability metrics first to see how different set combos will compare to each other so they don't test weaker permutations.

Something you might want to read:

starkerealm wrote: »

First, the game is idiosyncratic.

An example of this was back before Summerset released. While I was at ZOS, I remember asking if it was intended that the short duration poisons scaled with Master-at-Arms, while the lingering poisons scaled with Thaumaturge, and was told yes, that was intended behavior. I think I was asking Eric, but it's been over a year, So the answer may have come from Rich or Finn.

If you're going to model the game, you need to know all of the idiosyncrasies that affect your build. This isn't impossible, but does require you have a, frankly unrealistic, encyclopedic knowledge of how the game works. At that point, simply put, it's easier to prototype stuff on the PTS and test it, than it is to develop the model and run the numbers.

The poison thing is one example, there are literally hundreds of others, and some of these change with each patch. The introduction of Jump Points competently screwed up any previous CP models, and the entire false jump point thing is just a nightmare to test. If you're trying to model the game, all of this stuff becomes immediately relevant.

Further, this stuff distorts people's understanding of how the game works. One of the funnier examples were the cries about how bleeds were buffed this summer. Fact is, if you were running heavy bleed set ups in PvP before that, you took a nerf. The reason is that bleeds used to ignore resists. They were flagged like Oblivion damage, and so the damage on the tooltip was the damage your enemy would take. Also, at one point, bleeds were actually bugged so they couldn't be cleansed.

So, here's a very specific question, and if you can't answer it off the top of your head, you should start to see why these idiosyncrasies are important for modeling: Can Undaunted Infiltrator (and Undaunted Unweaver) crit?

This might sound like a stupid question. Of course, proc sets cannot crit, and UI is a proc set.

Except, UI doesn't, actually, deal damage. It causes your light and heavy attacks to do more damage. Normally, your light and heavies can crit. And we've seen in other cases (such as imbue weapon) that abilities (and buffs) that modify your light and heavy attacks simply bake into those attacks, and those attacks can still crit.

So, if your first response was, "no, that's stupid, of course it can't," you should start to be able to see why modeling this externally is more trouble than it's worth. (You'd also be wrong, because the bonus damage is baked straight into your light and heavy attacks, just like with a number of other sources that modify your basic attacks.)

Just something to keep in mind, while you're working on your models.

You keep using the word model, but I'm talking about metrics. A metric is not a model. A model implies that we are taking certain inputs with uncertainties and creating some estimated output using an estimated formula. A metric implies we are taking fixed inputs and creating a fixed output by using a known formula.

The ability metric formula has been known for the better part of two years. It has been worked out years ago by Asayre, and has been confirmed by multiple theorycrafters since.

Our inputs are fixed. They are: max resource pool, weapon/spell damage, weapon/spell crit, crit damage, damage done modifiers, penetration, damage taken modifiers. All of these are fixed values, so there is zero estimation involved.

Not to mention that, through the efforts of literally dozens of theorycrafters and end-game players, we have an immense working knowledge of how things work in the game. There is very little that is uncertain about game mechanics because there are dozens of us testing various things. Hell, just a few days ago we "discovered" (or rediscovered? I already knew this but others did not) that while Mystic Orb's tooltip scales off of Master-at-Arms, the damage scales off of Thaumaturge.

Through this collective effort, many uncertainties that you claim exist have been completely demystified.

Through the work of many individuals, we have created a framework that can be used to accurately predict which sets and skills are worth running, what your ideal CP distribution is, etc. While trials and dummy testing is important and provides raw data, using this framework helps to reduce the workload and guesswork involved with creating new builds.

Everything that you have stated is in direct contradiction to the hundreds of hours put in by multiple end-game theorycrafters. I would say it's even an insult to our collective efforts and knowledge. This is what bothers me the most, and this is why I will continue to debunk and fight misinformation and misconceptions.

bakthi wrote: »

T3hasiangod wrote: »

Not to mention that, through the efforts of literally dozens of theorycrafters and end-game players, we have an immense working knowledge of how things work in the game. There is very little that is uncertain about game mechanics because there are dozens of us testing various things. Hell, just a few days ago we "discovered" (or rediscovered? I already knew this but others did not) that while Mystic Orb's tooltip scales off of Master-at-Arms, the damage scales off of Thaumaturge.

Is there some even slightly convenient place bits of information like this are gathered? There's an incredibly high entry barrier for people who want to make their own builds, or even make minor adjustments to other people's builds, or even understand why other people's builds do certain things and whether that's good or not. But things as "basic" (and obviously with the Uh-oh Spaghetti Code at play here, nothing is basic, but yeah) as this can be quite hard to find, and one has to look for them individually. It would be ludicrously helpful to have a place where I can look at, say, Thaumaturge and get a list of what it affects. Or even if something like ESO Skillbook listed this for each skill (it does list some of the CP trees for Mystic Orb in particular, but it doesn't have that), ESO Sets listed it for equipment, etc.

But as it stands, unless I'm missing something, the only options seem to be:

- Spend hours testing on the PTS yourself
- Read every forum post and watch every video
- Just blindly accept someone's build

Particularly since, as demonstrated by this (and by the way things like Leeching + Bahraha work...and I'm sure the list goes on, except there isn't a list), the catalogue of information attempting to be understood here is basically insane. Pretty frustrating for someone who wants to think for themselves, to some extent, but also has a job, family, house, etc.

Much of this stuff is not centrally documented; there is no "information database". There are many sources out there, but none of it is in a single Google Doc or website. A lot of it is considered "common knowledge", but if you ask any end-game player, they are more than happy to share that knowledge.

The best way to get started is to join in the various Discords where end-game players tend to congregate; we don't normally post on these forums or the subreddit. Two of the best Discords for this are TRE and Nefas and Atsona's ESO Academy. Particularly the latter is a great place for centralized information and to get started in the end-game community.

Play the game, not spreadsheets.

@Bakthi, start with AlcastHQ, Dottz site, or Xynode's site, if you want to get started. You'll get a higher quality of information than a Discord server where anyone wandering through can spout off bad info.

bakthi wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

@Bakthi, start with AlcastHQ, Dottz site, or Xynode's site, if you want to get started. You'll get a higher quality of information than a Discord server where anyone wandering through can spout off bad info.

See, I did though. But then I start to look at an Alcast build and wonder e.g. "Why does the Necro tank have zero points in Thaumaturge? It seems to me like the class has some useful DoTs, certainly enough to put a few points in it rather than continue to push the diminishing returns of a ton of points into Blessed. Wouldn't at least something in Bone Tyrant benefit?" And I find I lack sufficient knowledge to understand the decisions, so I go delving (har) in search of answers. And find both yes, and no, and many other things having nothing to do with what I was looking for in the first place.

The answer to that question is simple: Your tank doesn't care about outgoing damage. You stack into Blessed because there's shockingly little in the blue stars that's useful for your tank. (Foresight 75pts in The Apprentice, Tactician 120 in The Attronach, and Last Stand 120 in The Ritual) are the only things you might find useful. Of the three, Tactician is probably the least useful.

Edit: In addition to Blessed, anyway. Blessed scales any healing you do, including your self heals.

Also, in the case of Alcast's site, I was referring to the general game resources themselves, not his builds. It's not all encompassing, but it is a very good, and usually pretty concise place to start. I'm not a huge fan of his builds, but he does know his stuff.