Scepter Discussion

Anette

So, to keep from further derailing the Sale thread I thought i'd split myself off here about the scepters.

To reiterate, the damage comparison:

Anette's stats

 Str: 16/13  Int: 11/10  Dex: 11/10  Con: 16/14

Lvl1 broad, combo slash slash (templar):

You exert superior mental control and will your wounds to clot before your eyes.
Your aura of weapons rebounding disappears.
You slash viciously into a skeletal soldier with a shining silver broadsword.
Damage dealt: 81 Remaining: 59.45%
You swing a shining silver broadsword at a skeletal soldier with a powerful strike.
Damage dealt: 81 Remaining: 40.79%
Balance Taken: 3.82s

L2 (now) scepter, scepter point

You point a tanari scepter at a skeletal hound and a bolt of raw Sukhder energy shoots forth at
    him.
Damage dealt: 95 Remaining: 78.12%
Balance Taken: 3.20s

Attunements you can attune the scepter to:

Valid choices are: animal, demon, ghost, giant, goblin, horde (need scepter level 5), ogre, orc,
    skeleton, spirit, undead (need scepter level 10), vermin, and zombie.

Attunements take quite a time to go through and can randomly attune to the wrong thing:

You attempt to attune your scepter towards targets called 'skeleton'. This will take effect within
    the next 5 minutes.

Your scepter attunes itself to targets called 'ghost'.  < NOT WHAT I SAID!

Damage with Attunement:

You point a tanari scepter at a skeletal soldier and a bolt of raw Sukhder energy shoots forth at
    him.
Damage dealt: 114 Remaining: 73.75%
Balance Taken: 3.20s

Attunements have a 25% miss chance at level 7, which at the market average of 25cr each represents an investment of 175cr. At level 15 they are instant and do not fail, for an investment of 375cr.

At level 2, I have yet to get the scepter to attune to something I want it to. And it isn't lying about that 5 minutes.

[edit]: It worked after about ten tries.


SOME MATH:

Raw damage:
control dsl/lvl1 weapon = 162 / 3.82s approx= 45.40~ DPS
scepter = 95/3.20s = 28.9676 DPS
scepter w/applicable attunement = 114/3.2s = 35.625 DPS
l6 scepter = 95/(3.2*.85) approx= 34.92 DPS
l6 scepter w/applicable attunement = 114/(3.2*.85) approx= 41.91~

I can't comment on the specials because I don't have the credits to go that deep into this even if I wanted to.


THOUGHTS:
* This seems a pretty significant downgrade to Anette's bashing as is. 28.9675 DPS w/scepter versus 45.40~ DPS w/DSL. This represents an approximate 36% reduction in my damage output - more than a third of my damage. Level six puts it at "only" around 1/4
* Attunement is a PITA and needing a relatively high level scepter to do undead rules out buffs from attunement in Necropolis, Zh'serurn, and other places.
* Missed attunements are a complete pain and the five minutes is overlong.
* I don't see a way to see what the current attunement is other than attaching bells and whistles to the initial message when it does attune, which makes it even more of a pain since it takes a while, can fail, and might reattune itself at random.
* Why did I pay for something that's much more work for bashing than my class skill works for what turns out to be a damage penalty?

Well, for SCIENCE! - but I wouldn't recommend anyone else get one unless you're going to go in deep.

@Jeremy / @Eoghan et al - is this by design or is it out of whack? Because paying to take a 1/3-1/4 damage hit seems like a very silly idea.

Tyden

It's why I was hoping to see it changed to work beside our skills not against them.

Anette

Tyden said:

It's why I was hoping to see it changed to work beside our skills not against them.

IMO they need to either buff it so it starts on par with class skills, and is seperate, or they need to make it work alongside class skills and give you specials on top of them.

It's probably much easier, from a coding perspective, let alone a balance perspective, to do the former.

Jeremy Saunders

Sorry. Getting hit by a storm on the west coast today and my power just came back on. I expect it to go back out again soon as the real storm does not start until tomorrow. If not, I'll take a look at the code for this a bit closer in the morning.

Anette

Stay safe @Jeremy! I at least can be patient

Jeremy Saunders

After some testing, getting a scepter to level 9 made a HUGE difference in damage. Most of the skills I tested ranged from 55-65 DPS. All my stats are at 25.

A level 1 scepter did about 30 DPS.

Level 9, NOT attuned to the target, and set to strength was about 63 DPS.

Level 9, attuned to the target, and set to strength was about 76 DPS. The biggest help was setting the what stat to scale from.

I am going to make some changes to this. Lots of equations involved though, so it will be a while.

Anette

Jeremy said:

After some testing, getting a scepter to level 9 made a HUGE difference in damage. Most of the skills I tested ranged from 55-65 DPS. All my stats are at 25.

A level 1 scepter did about 30 DPS.

Level 9, NOT attuned to the target, and set to strength was about 63 DPS.

Level 9, attuned to the target, and set to strength was about 76 DPS. The biggest help was setting the what stat to scale from.

I am going to make some changes to this. Lots of equations involved though, so it will be a while.

That makes sense.

If I had anything else I might suggest it's two things

A: Please make what it is currently attuned to show up in PROBE or WEAPONPROBE, something like "It is currently attuned to ogres." or something like that is fine. If there is a way to find this out as is now I didn't see it in the help and it doesn't appear to be in WP or PROBE.

I would go out on a limb and assume that the other specials aren't there either. Weaponprobe is probably an appropriate place to stick this information IMO

This strikes me as something relatively easy to do, but I don't have familiarity with the codebase involved, so.

[edit] WRT weaponprobe, I invision something quite simple like:

A tanari scepter has the following toxins or effects on it:
This scepter is attuned to ogres.
This scepter is scaling to your strength.
This scepter is ablaze and will engulf enemies in flames!

Or whatever wording of messages takes your fancy!

[edit2] IDEA'd this - it's in report #61963.


B: The random changing of attunements is really punitive for lower level scepters. To be clear, I do not mean how it can "fail" and attune to something else. I mean how it can randomly change to something else through no player intervention. It's already frustrating enough to spend 20 minutes poking attunement until it's gone to the right thing, so spending all that time getting it to the attunement you want only for the RNG to decide you actually meant Animals five minutes into a bashing area is something I could see resulting in a lot of desk flipping or peripheral abuse.

I understand the idea is to incentivize people upgrading to the higher level scepters, but for me, having the attunement failures AND the random re-attunement crosses the line from "fussy but I can deal with it" into "yeah not gonna bother"

Jeremy Saunders

I'll have that stuff added to probe or something like that.

Lartus

This scepter is attuned to @Anette

Aysari

Jeremy said:

All my stats are at 25.

Hax. Wtb.

Jeremy Saunders

Aysari said:

Jeremy said:

All my stats are at 25.

Hax. Wtb.

It's cause I'm amazing.

Aysari

Jeremy said:

Aysari said:

Jeremy said:

All my stats are at 25.

Hax. Wtb.

It's cause I'm amazing.

If avatars are anything to go by, you are Je-remy-sus.

Jeremy Saunders

SCEPTER INFO is a thing I guess. Need to put that in the help file.

Jeremy Saunders

Okay. I made some changes to damage for the scepter. The base damage is slightly higher. In addition the base damage will increase as you add gems to the scepter.

In my tests, with the astute statpack, DPS was something like this:

Level 1: 35.9
Level 5: 37.2
Level 10: 45.1
Level 15: 55.9
Level 20: 58

For comparison to a broadsword DSL DPS which was 28.2.

Of course, there are a TON of modifiers that don't show up in the DSL. You had the athletic statpack I think and a level 1 sword. The goal here was to make it slightly better at level 1 then most basic bashing skills with some optimizations via race and artifacts. That will not always be the case though.

Please let me know if you notice any crazy numbers (low or high) as you use this item.

Thanks.

Tyden

@Jeremy

Can I ask what about players that are heavily invested in the game? Sure these Scepters seem fine and dandy for players looking for an alternative route to their class skill hunting #'s. Considering to get a level 20 scepter would cost 500 credits(using 25 credit per *market price*), it doesn't really seem to appeal to those players. IE (500 credits) is a lot, and doesn't come cheap

I appreciate the buff, but I am finding myself once again questioning the Scepter and why it works as it currently does?


Edit:

I'd also like to know if those DPS figures are once again with 25 stat base? Does that factor into the level 1 equation you gave? Or is that the 12/12/12/12 that astute provides?

Kiskan

The scepter fragments were part of a promo (I think even above and beyond a credit bonus, and there might have even been gladiator tickets? I forget. I was like "what are these gem things"?), and any pricing on them is going to be based on "this was a bonus", not promo market (promo market is a strange place anyway, because most people pricing their stuff are just basically trying to guess what prices they should put on things).

I feel like the goal was "neat little thing to bash with", not anything that gives you a serious edge over everyone else. And I am all about making sure I get my money's worth in these games, and I don't like being squeezed. But on this one? I am kind of pleasantly surprised we're getting what we're getting.

EDIT: Basically, if they made something that was a regular artifact, I'd say the value should be based on price? But they probably won't, because it would be considered problematic to have yet another bashing artie. I have a level 20 scepter and it's... eh. I think I'd recommend level 15 if you're serious about having one. They ARE kind of nice. The crits are insane... And as a knight, I like that I don't slash into a second target and aggro it.

Tyden

Kiskan said:

The scepter fragments were part of a promo (I think even above and beyond a credit bonus, and there might have even been gladiator tickets? I forget. I was like "what are these gem things"?), and any pricing on them is going to be based on "this was a bonus", not promo market (promo market is a strange place anyway, because most people pricing their stuff are just basically trying to guess what prices they should put on things).

I feel like the goal was "neat little thing to bash with", not anything that gives you a serious edge over everyone else. And I am all about making sure I get my money's worth in these games, and I don't like being squeezed. But on this one? I am kind of pleasantly surprised we're getting what we're getting.

If it under performs your current bashing with your class-skills, how is that getting your money's worth? From my understanding these things are meant to aide you or enhance your gameplay, but if the item doesn't do that what is the attraction outside of a inferior way to hunt?

Kiskan

It's basically marginally better than my class skills because it can be scaled to stats (and I have level 3 everything), and shines with targets that have huge health but are not immune to crits, has nice flavor. If I didn't hate bashing, I could probably do fun things with its other effects too (I just can't be bothered). It's not going to outperform monk though, for example (almost certain). It's totally a toy for someone who already has EVERYTHING, basically.

Tyden

If that is the intended use, for it to be a toy for a player who has everything so fair enough.

Kiskan

With how crazy that promo was and how much crap I got out of it, I feel like that may have been the idea. I will take the buffs though. The scepter messages you get are hilarious, and you will be a rock star with big, tanky mobs. My baby RG has a lamiran one (it came that way, so she doesn't dare change it).

Jeremy Saunders

Tyden said:

@Jeremy

Can I ask what about players that are heavily invested in the game? Sure these Scepters seem fine and dandy for players looking for an alternative route to their class skill hunting #'s. Considering to get a level 20 scepter would cost 500 credits(using 25 credit per *market price*), it doesn't really seem to appeal to those players. IE (500 credits) is a lot, and doesn't come cheap

I appreciate the buff, but I am finding myself once again questioning the Scepter and why it works as it currently does?


Edit:

I'd also like to know if those DPS figures are once again with 25 stat base? Does that factor into the level 1 equation you gave? Or is that the 12/12/12/12 that astute provides?

12 stats. Not sure why you mean 'why it works'. This item is just an extra item you can win from wheel spins and/or from trading. Originally it was a bonus item when purchasing credits. It is a bashing alternative for players if they want it. You could ask 'why' we have a lot of things in Imperian. Why do we let people put custom descripts on things? It does not really serve a functional purpose, but it is fun. The scepter is not necessarily for everyone.

Do not overlook all of the other abilities on the scepter as well.

Anette

Jeremy said:

Okay. I made some changes to damage for the scepter. The base damage is slightly higher. In addition the base damage will increase as you add gems to the scepter.

In my tests, with the astute statpack, DPS was something like this:

Level 1: 35.9
Level 5: 37.2
Level 10: 45.1
Level 15: 55.9
Level 20: 58

For comparison to a broadsword DSL DPS which was 28.2.

Of course, there are a TON of modifiers that don't show up in the DSL. You had the athletic statpack I think and a level 1 sword. The goal here was to make it slightly better at level 1 then most basic bashing skills with some optimizations via race and artifacts. That will not always be the case though.

Please let me know if you notice any crazy numbers (low or high) as you use this item.

Thanks.

A fairer comparison would seem to be with athletic or strong, if you're using DSL, since those are the two recommended statpacks for templar.

I'll do some tests with my scepter if I can get stable enough internet - my ISP has been about as reliable as a politician the past week or so.

Would 1/5/10/15/20 be the proper breaks for damage then?

I'm assuming that's base damage you mean, without attunement/scaling?

Jeremy Saunders

No, everything 10 and above was scaled.

I agree on the DSL. That was just a side thought on that. I understand with a different statpack it would be better, which is why the level 1 scepter DPS is significantly better then the DPS for the DSL listed here.

Anette

Okay, testing.

For the sake of being very, very thorough:

ANETTE

 Guardian Anette Ashtear, Lost Huntress
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Race     : Selkie            Gender      : Female
 Statpack : Athletic

[...]

 Str: 16/13  Int: 11/10  Dex: 11/10  Con: 15/14

This includes Inspiration, l1 arties. She has a level one broadsword.

I didn't really twink anything with defences and setups here:

Current Defences:
You are benefiting from a guild experience bonus.
You are benefiting from a guild reserve bonus.
You are benefitting from 5 percent bonus damage to mobiles.
You are blind.
You are deaf.
You are protected by a waxy coating.
You are protected by the power of a Frost Spiritshield.
You are protected by the power of a Thermal Spiritshield.
You are protected by the power of an Earth Spiritshield.
You are protected from hand-held weapons with an aura of rebounding.
You are protected from the freezing elements.
You are tempered against fire damage.
You are walking on a small cushion of air.
You are walking with the blessing of the stars.
You have activated the moss tattoo.
You have eaten the quince fruit and are extremely energetic.
You have insomnia, and cannot easily go to sleep.
You will attempt to parry attacks to your head.
Your armor offers you 63% increased protection to cutting and blunt damage.
Your limbs are suffused with divinely-inspired strength.
Your sense of time is heightened, and your reactions are speeded.
Your senses are heightened.
Your soul is protected by divine redemption.
Your veins burn with immunity to deadly venoms.
Your wounds are tightly bandaged in cloth.
You are protected by 25 defences.

In the interests of a baseline comparison, I also forged a broadsword with smithing to include in the test results. That said though, most people bashing are GOING to have at least a L1 weapon. Most I see have L2s or L3s in hand.

The sword was forged out of 7 stehl 1 crystehl which is pretty much the standard. This didn't have enhancements or the smithing bonus stuff like sharp either, another thing that frankly I don't think anyone would be without but I doubt anyone that is buying a scepter is using such trash kit tbqh. But in the interests of "baseline", there it is.



WEAPONS

Weapon: A strong broadsword (broadsword146925)
Damage: 145  Speed: 165
A strong broadsword is made up of mostly stehl and some crystehl.

Weapon: A shining silver broadsword (broadsword305657)
Damage: 145  Speed: 165
This weapon provides a 10% bonus to damage.
This weapon is heavy and sharp.
This item has a charger attached to it.
This item has a wriststrap attached to it.
You may use this item to parry with.
You may use the following commands with this weapon: swing, hack, slash, jab.
A shining silver broadsword has the following toxins or effects on it:
This weapon has been purified to mirror the afflictions of its victim.
This weapon has been purified to burn its targets.

A tanari scepter has no toxins or effects on it.
This is a level 3 scepter.

TEST #1: L1 BROADSWORD

You swing a shining silver broadsword at a skeletal soldier with a powerful strike.
Damage dealt: 81 Remaining: 81.33%
You swing a shining silver broadsword at a skeletal soldier with a powerful strike.
Damage dealt: 81 Remaining: 62.66%
Balance Taken: 3.82s

TEST #2: FORGED BROADSWORD

With a lightning-quick motion, you slash a skeletal soldier with a strong broadsword.
Damage dealt: 67 Remaining: 84.56%
You slash viciously into a skeletal soldier with a strong broadsword.
Damage dealt: 67 Remaining: 69.12%
Balance Taken: 3.50s

TEST #3: L3 SCEPTER

You point a tanari scepter at a skeletal soldier and a bolt of raw Sukhder energy shoots forth at
    him.
Damage dealt: 117 Remaining: 73.10%
Balance Taken: 3.20s

TEST #4: L3 SCEPTER ATTUNED

You point a tanari scepter at a skeletal soldier and a bolt of raw Sukhder energy shoots forth at
    him.
Damage dealt: 140 Remaining: 3.18%
Balance Taken: 3.20s

RESULTS
L1 Broadsword DPS: ((81*2)/3.28) approx= 49.3902 DPS
Forged Broadsword DPS: ((67*2)/3.5) approx= 38.2857 DPS
L3 Scepter Base DPS: /3.2 = 117/3.2 = 36.5625 DPS
L3 Scepter w/Attunement DPS: 140/3.2 = 43.75 DPS


CONCLUSION
It definitely feels a lot punchier with attunement now, but the base damage makes the attunement changes very penalizing. Given the thing changes pretty frequently (seems like every 10min or so?) this would get annoying quick. I'd either try to ramp up base damage while keeping attunement the same, or get rid of the random attunement changes, personally.


I'm not really able to test above L3 unless someone feels like donating to the Bank of Anette for purposes of SCIENCE!

Kiskan

I might test with my level 20 in a bit. But basically, that thing is pretty nice. I don't know that the scepters were really even intended to be used with just a few gems. Once I realized what they were, I immediately felt it was going to be a level 15 item, minimum (and that is probably the right level to have if you really want one). Level 20 is total overkill unless you think you're really going to play around with the stuff up there a lot.

Anette

Kiskan said:

I might test with my level 20 in a bit. But basically, that thing is pretty nice. I don't know that the scepters were really even intended to be used with just a few gems. Once I realized what they were, I immediately felt it was going to be a level 15 item, minimum (and that is probably the right level to have if you really want one).

Before the changes @Jeremy made, you did have to have quite a buy in I think. Now I'd say they're pretty viable at lower levels, though I'd still probably want to get it to about 6 if you could for that sweet percent boost.

Individual results will probably vary on class. Templar seems like a good measuring stick. They not super great bashers, but they're not awful bashers either.

[edit]
As far as what purpose the scepter serves, for me it's just a thing I got on a lark, but I imagine for someone that wants to have good bashing without the large investment of a weapon artifact (for the classes that use weapons) or more significant buy-ins for others, it kind of fills that niche. It is a niche, given the credit-laden nature of many people still playing, but it has a purpose. And then you'll also have people like me who are just intrigued by the novelty of it.

[edit2]

Said screw it and put the last of my credits into getting it to l5

Base damage went 117->119 (36.5625 -> 37.1875)
Attuned damage went 140->143 (43.75 -> 44.6875)

Balance time remained the same.

So there's some general improvement as you level it in addition to the specific stated improvements. But it's small.

Kiskan

Another guy with a high level scepter I see on right now is Arakis. I think his is actually a 20 too.

Tyden

L6 is the aiming point to get the 15% balance buff.

Ozreas

The true power of the scepter doesn't show itself until level 20, where you can comfortably cycle through all the special effects to help yourself avoid taking damage.

Anette

Having used the scepter for a while now, the big thing to me is that many of the bashing areas at the top end don't really have an affinity on the scepter, or if they do, I can't figure it out. For instance, the critters in Iaat Valley/Crevonix's Tower. Is it possible to have some sort of affinity added for these, @Jeremy?

Kyraic

Ozreas said:

The true power of the scepter doesn't show itself until level 20, where you can comfortably cycle through all the special effects to help yourself avoid taking damage.

The damage from pretty much any of the bashing areas is utterly insignificant if you have even moderate artifacts, and if you have an L20 scepter you almost certainly have the basic tanking set.

This is because the major bashing areas do waves of trash mobs, and the ridiculously huge boost of the shrines system means that those areas are just utterly trivialized for anybody in Flame/Leechwood/Conquest.