atomicstorm
Slayer
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- Aug 21, 2013
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- MeLoveYou LongTime FiveDolla
[Disclosure: I am making my own opinion based on the data. It is up to you how that influences your behavior. I did this journey full well knowing I would likely be losing a good amount of PEDs. Luckily I have land areas to help me minimize. Hope it helps.]
When I got the Improved MAKO Fal, I decided to address the question whether or not you can get away with using unmaxed weapons and my returns be similar to the maxed counterpart of the same DPP. Today, I will share with you my results since Sept 11th, 2015 and my assessment based on this data. I will also share my current struggles, including ones that might eventually cause me to no longer play.
The Preamble
Swords: L51 Swordsman Hit, L55 Swordsman Dmg
Evader: L47
The Results (By The Numbers)
All results are with the Mako only
Duration: 2015-09-01 to 2016-08-17
Highest Loot Recorded by the Mako: 1672 PED Teladon Young (L56)
Total Cycled: 656,796.50 PED
Total Return: 636,699.84 PED
P/M: -20,096.66
TT Return: 96.94%
Defensive Cost: 4,050.68 PED (0.6167%)
Stats: 550 Skill Boosts, 1942 Globals, 22 HOFs
Run Rate: 120+ 206- (36.81% Positive Run Rate)
Trend By Month
Trend By Week
Logarithmic Graph
Candlestick
For this graph, you can see it is loss trend until around June when I started approaching L95 then it became level and pivoting to a positive trend.
------------------------------------------------------
Subsets
Beginning to Kill Strike
Duration: 2015-09-01 to 2016-03-17
Total Cycled: 140,574.22 PED
Total Return: 131,181.31 PED
P/M: -9,392.91
TT Return: 93.31%
Defensive Cost: 1,767.08 PED (1.257%)
Stats: 146 Skill Boosts, 401 Globals, 8 HOFs
Run Rate: 30+ 85- (26.09% Positive Run Rate)
------------------------------------------------------
Kill Strike to L90
Duration: 2016-03-18 to 2016-05-16
Total Cycled: 254,074.92 PED
Total Return: 248,623.45 PED
P/M: -5,451.47
TT Return: 97.8544%
Defensive Cost: 622.52 PED (0.245%)
Stats: 198 Skill Boosts, 868 Globals, 10 HOFs
Run Rate: 41+ 55- (42.71% Positive Run Rate)
------------------------------------------------------
L90 to L95
Duration: 2016-05-16 to 2016-07-04
Total Cycled: 127,022.36 PED
Total Return: 120,985.88 PED
P/M: -6,036.48
TT Return: 95.2477
Defensive Cost: 471.15 PED (0.3709%)
Stats: 106 Skill Boosts, 336 Globals, 3 HOFs
Run Rate: 23+ 32- (41.82% Positive Run Rate)
Summary: Hurt by real bad run on Dotty where I used damage enhancers heavily.
------------------------------------------------------
L95 to L100
Duration: 2016-07-04 to 2016-08-17
Total Cycled: 139,069.58 PED
Total Return: 140,200.53 PED
P/M: +412.61
TT Return: 100.2967%
Defensive Cost: 1,199.42 PED (0.8625%)
Stats: 104 Skill Boosts, 353 Globals, 1 HOF
Run Rate: 26+ 35- (42.62% Positive Run Rate)
------------------------------------------------------
Full Data from the Journey
Duration: 2015-09-11 to 2016-08-17
Condition: For all swords, including the Mako. (Sparkbite ELM, Niflheim, Embras ELM, Imp Mako FAL)
Total Cycled: 1,400,052.25 PED
Total Return: 1,351,422.63 PED
P/M: -48,629.62
TT Return: 96.526%
Defensive Cost: 10,069.79 PED (0.7192%)
Markup Earned: 46,184.98 PED (103.47% Avg MU)
Final P/M: -2,444.64 PED (99.83%)
Stats: 1055 Skill Boosts, 4219 Globals, 45 HOFs
Run Rate: 234+, 419- (35.83% Positive Run Rate)
------------------------------------------------------
Assertions
Assertion #1
Theory: You can use an unmaxed weapon and as long as the DPP is high enough, you will be okay.
Assessment: MIXED, Mostly FALSE
Summary: Each weapon, seemingly because of the DPP, operates like a quantity/condition slider. This is proven by a test done by Slithered and ultimately a pattern that we all recognize. Example being when you take an Omegaton Swine Deluxe and global like crazy (but still lose) or use an IMK2 and you don't global at all and do just fine. With that being said, there are 4 specific ways you lose peds with an unmaxed weapon:
Improved Mako FAL + X Amp = 3.172DPP
Total Cost Per Swing = 28.920PEC
Reason 1 and 2: Loss of Hits, Ergo Loss of Crits
Crits offset the loss from evades. Hit skill also effects the frequency of the crit skill. Also, if your weapon misses, you lose the peds from the miss. My weapon was 29pec a swing, every miss costs me that in my return. 1 miss on a 3ped mob is a 10% loss.
At L65 Swordsman Dmg and Hit w/No Rings or Buffs (2.914DPP)
- My crit rate is 1.81% instead of 2%. That's .19% of my swings not resulting in crits to offset evades (@ 2250 swings an hour, I have 40.64 crits on average instead of 45)
- My hit rate is 86.5% instead of 90%. That's 3.5% of my swings resulting in misses ontop of the evades (9%). (@ 2250 swings an hour, that's 78.75 extra misses)
PED Leakage from Misses: 22.77 PED an hour (650.7ped/HR turnover) is a TT loss of 3.5%
Reason 3: Loss of Damage
Everyone seems to miss the part of losing average damage. We focus on the loss of hits, but there are more components than just hit ability.
At L65 Swordsman Dmg and Hit w/No Rings or Buffs (2.914DPP)
- Rather than the average damage of 75% of max damage, it is 71.5%. Base DPS is lowered from 76.45 to 69.751. Therefore, I am paying the cost to generate 76.45 but only get 69.751 DPS instead. To quantify this, I would lose 6,591.46 damage per hour (Total Swings * Effective Dmg Theory * Damage Loss Rate) (2250 * 83.701 * 0.035) if I were maxed, it would be 91.74 instead of 83.801.
PED leakage from Damage Loss: 22.77ped an hour (650.7ped/HR turnover) is a TT loss of 3.5%. Now we are at a 7% TT loss. My returns from the IMK2 and Mako at this level matches this finding.
Reason 4: Enhancer Compound Effect
If you don't use enhancers, you are already at a 7% disadvantage. However, if you do use enhancers, every miss and every damage loss is compounded. You additionally do not get the full benefit of the enhancers because:
- You will burn enhancers for less hits
- You will burn enhancers to lose more damage.
- You cannot crit (accuracy enhancers) on a miss.
- The cost (because of TT and markup of the enhancer) is greater per swing.
During my journey, any time I loaded up enhancers, I always lost. I had a 0% positive run rate when using full damage enhancers. My biggest losses also came at these times.
Why do I say it is mixed? Because once I hit L85 and opened kill strike, my returns became mostly tolerable. It would be possible, with the current climate, to at least break even and sustain the skilling OR pay the TT for the skills (instead of chipping up) with the losses after markup. The advantage is only if you have a good weapon that you are growing into and you do not have any other alternatives. However, know that the further away you are from maxed, the more you must rely on high markup that might not be easily available and the emotional toll might not be worth it. For me, it wasn't. That is why I turned to a Niflheim and Embras ELM to get me to L90. After L95, the leakage was minimal enough for it to be tolerable for me. What is unclear is if being unmaxed hinders your multipliers. I found data inconclusive for this assertion and it is likely that such big hits are few and far between with a weapon with the base eco as the Improved MAKO FAL.
------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion
Would I do a similar experiment again? No. This journey caused me quite a bit of stress. I think the hunting profession in general is stressful and that is for a few reasons. First, I do not have confidence in my gear. This is the only profession that I have been unable to do well. The margins are slim and that is because of major overfarming. But because it is a challenge, I will continue to see how things go especially since L95 to L100 gave near expected results. Also, there are few mobs to hunt that I consider fun. Almost all of them are on Arkadia and of course, a few of those are on my land area. I can certainly relate to the distress of players on Calypso. It's just plain dull. I found the plethora of loot from Robots recently to be a nice addition. Arkadia has similar behavior. It feels as if you are at least farming stuff instead of mobs on Calypso always having nothing as if you are just looting remnants of your own ammo except for the animal that has a gun up its ass.
Size of mobs also gives me some concern. Clearly this sword does not work well for mobs greater than 10ped. That is part the amount of time I can give to the game each day and also my tolerance for boring loots. I would like to get HOFs more often and I chose the wrong weapon and killing too low of cost to kill mobs for that to be common. Even though that seems to not be a problem for others.
All in all, I found using an unmaxed weapon, at least in the earlier stages, to be painful. To use a weapon like Gravis at L35 because it is available and cheap is foolish. Weapons such as these should not be in the game. It is far better to use a UL Piron maxed with low DPP (condition) than an unmaxed Gravis that ends up being the same DPP (leakage).
I will create a video or stream a Q/A on twitch like I did before to explain my graphs if there is enough request or there are a lot of questions.
When I got the Improved MAKO Fal, I decided to address the question whether or not you can get away with using unmaxed weapons and my returns be similar to the maxed counterpart of the same DPP. Today, I will share with you my results since Sept 11th, 2015 and my assessment based on this data. I will also share my current struggles, including ones that might eventually cause me to no longer play.
The Preamble
Swords: L51 Swordsman Hit, L55 Swordsman Dmg
Evader: L47
The Results (By The Numbers)
All results are with the Mako only
Duration: 2015-09-01 to 2016-08-17
Highest Loot Recorded by the Mako: 1672 PED Teladon Young (L56)
Total Cycled: 656,796.50 PED
Total Return: 636,699.84 PED
P/M: -20,096.66
TT Return: 96.94%
Defensive Cost: 4,050.68 PED (0.6167%)
Stats: 550 Skill Boosts, 1942 Globals, 22 HOFs
Run Rate: 120+ 206- (36.81% Positive Run Rate)
Trend By Month
Trend By Week
Logarithmic Graph
Candlestick
For this graph, you can see it is loss trend until around June when I started approaching L95 then it became level and pivoting to a positive trend.
------------------------------------------------------
Subsets
Beginning to Kill Strike
Duration: 2015-09-01 to 2016-03-17
Total Cycled: 140,574.22 PED
Total Return: 131,181.31 PED
P/M: -9,392.91
TT Return: 93.31%
Defensive Cost: 1,767.08 PED (1.257%)
Stats: 146 Skill Boosts, 401 Globals, 8 HOFs
Run Rate: 30+ 85- (26.09% Positive Run Rate)
------------------------------------------------------
Kill Strike to L90
Duration: 2016-03-18 to 2016-05-16
Total Cycled: 254,074.92 PED
Total Return: 248,623.45 PED
P/M: -5,451.47
TT Return: 97.8544%
Defensive Cost: 622.52 PED (0.245%)
Stats: 198 Skill Boosts, 868 Globals, 10 HOFs
Run Rate: 41+ 55- (42.71% Positive Run Rate)
------------------------------------------------------
L90 to L95
Duration: 2016-05-16 to 2016-07-04
Total Cycled: 127,022.36 PED
Total Return: 120,985.88 PED
P/M: -6,036.48
TT Return: 95.2477
Defensive Cost: 471.15 PED (0.3709%)
Stats: 106 Skill Boosts, 336 Globals, 3 HOFs
Run Rate: 23+ 32- (41.82% Positive Run Rate)
Summary: Hurt by real bad run on Dotty where I used damage enhancers heavily.
------------------------------------------------------
L95 to L100
Duration: 2016-07-04 to 2016-08-17
Total Cycled: 139,069.58 PED
Total Return: 140,200.53 PED
P/M: +412.61
TT Return: 100.2967%
Defensive Cost: 1,199.42 PED (0.8625%)
Stats: 104 Skill Boosts, 353 Globals, 1 HOF
Run Rate: 26+ 35- (42.62% Positive Run Rate)
------------------------------------------------------
Full Data from the Journey
Duration: 2015-09-11 to 2016-08-17
Condition: For all swords, including the Mako. (Sparkbite ELM, Niflheim, Embras ELM, Imp Mako FAL)
Total Cycled: 1,400,052.25 PED
Total Return: 1,351,422.63 PED
P/M: -48,629.62
TT Return: 96.526%
Defensive Cost: 10,069.79 PED (0.7192%)
Markup Earned: 46,184.98 PED (103.47% Avg MU)
Final P/M: -2,444.64 PED (99.83%)
Stats: 1055 Skill Boosts, 4219 Globals, 45 HOFs
Run Rate: 234+, 419- (35.83% Positive Run Rate)
------------------------------------------------------
Assertions
Assertion #1
Theory: You can use an unmaxed weapon and as long as the DPP is high enough, you will be okay.
Assessment: MIXED, Mostly FALSE
Summary: Each weapon, seemingly because of the DPP, operates like a quantity/condition slider. This is proven by a test done by Slithered and ultimately a pattern that we all recognize. Example being when you take an Omegaton Swine Deluxe and global like crazy (but still lose) or use an IMK2 and you don't global at all and do just fine. With that being said, there are 4 specific ways you lose peds with an unmaxed weapon:
Improved Mako FAL + X Amp = 3.172DPP
Total Cost Per Swing = 28.920PEC
Reason 1 and 2: Loss of Hits, Ergo Loss of Crits
Crits offset the loss from evades. Hit skill also effects the frequency of the crit skill. Also, if your weapon misses, you lose the peds from the miss. My weapon was 29pec a swing, every miss costs me that in my return. 1 miss on a 3ped mob is a 10% loss.
At L65 Swordsman Dmg and Hit w/No Rings or Buffs (2.914DPP)
- My crit rate is 1.81% instead of 2%. That's .19% of my swings not resulting in crits to offset evades (@ 2250 swings an hour, I have 40.64 crits on average instead of 45)
- My hit rate is 86.5% instead of 90%. That's 3.5% of my swings resulting in misses ontop of the evades (9%). (@ 2250 swings an hour, that's 78.75 extra misses)
PED Leakage from Misses: 22.77 PED an hour (650.7ped/HR turnover) is a TT loss of 3.5%
Reason 3: Loss of Damage
Everyone seems to miss the part of losing average damage. We focus on the loss of hits, but there are more components than just hit ability.
At L65 Swordsman Dmg and Hit w/No Rings or Buffs (2.914DPP)
- Rather than the average damage of 75% of max damage, it is 71.5%. Base DPS is lowered from 76.45 to 69.751. Therefore, I am paying the cost to generate 76.45 but only get 69.751 DPS instead. To quantify this, I would lose 6,591.46 damage per hour (Total Swings * Effective Dmg Theory * Damage Loss Rate) (2250 * 83.701 * 0.035) if I were maxed, it would be 91.74 instead of 83.801.
PED leakage from Damage Loss: 22.77ped an hour (650.7ped/HR turnover) is a TT loss of 3.5%. Now we are at a 7% TT loss. My returns from the IMK2 and Mako at this level matches this finding.
Reason 4: Enhancer Compound Effect
If you don't use enhancers, you are already at a 7% disadvantage. However, if you do use enhancers, every miss and every damage loss is compounded. You additionally do not get the full benefit of the enhancers because:
- You will burn enhancers for less hits
- You will burn enhancers to lose more damage.
- You cannot crit (accuracy enhancers) on a miss.
- The cost (because of TT and markup of the enhancer) is greater per swing.
During my journey, any time I loaded up enhancers, I always lost. I had a 0% positive run rate when using full damage enhancers. My biggest losses also came at these times.
Why do I say it is mixed? Because once I hit L85 and opened kill strike, my returns became mostly tolerable. It would be possible, with the current climate, to at least break even and sustain the skilling OR pay the TT for the skills (instead of chipping up) with the losses after markup. The advantage is only if you have a good weapon that you are growing into and you do not have any other alternatives. However, know that the further away you are from maxed, the more you must rely on high markup that might not be easily available and the emotional toll might not be worth it. For me, it wasn't. That is why I turned to a Niflheim and Embras ELM to get me to L90. After L95, the leakage was minimal enough for it to be tolerable for me. What is unclear is if being unmaxed hinders your multipliers. I found data inconclusive for this assertion and it is likely that such big hits are few and far between with a weapon with the base eco as the Improved MAKO FAL.
------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion
Would I do a similar experiment again? No. This journey caused me quite a bit of stress. I think the hunting profession in general is stressful and that is for a few reasons. First, I do not have confidence in my gear. This is the only profession that I have been unable to do well. The margins are slim and that is because of major overfarming. But because it is a challenge, I will continue to see how things go especially since L95 to L100 gave near expected results. Also, there are few mobs to hunt that I consider fun. Almost all of them are on Arkadia and of course, a few of those are on my land area. I can certainly relate to the distress of players on Calypso. It's just plain dull. I found the plethora of loot from Robots recently to be a nice addition. Arkadia has similar behavior. It feels as if you are at least farming stuff instead of mobs on Calypso always having nothing as if you are just looting remnants of your own ammo except for the animal that has a gun up its ass.
Size of mobs also gives me some concern. Clearly this sword does not work well for mobs greater than 10ped. That is part the amount of time I can give to the game each day and also my tolerance for boring loots. I would like to get HOFs more often and I chose the wrong weapon and killing too low of cost to kill mobs for that to be common. Even though that seems to not be a problem for others.
All in all, I found using an unmaxed weapon, at least in the earlier stages, to be painful. To use a weapon like Gravis at L35 because it is available and cheap is foolish. Weapons such as these should not be in the game. It is far better to use a UL Piron maxed with low DPP (condition) than an unmaxed Gravis that ends up being the same DPP (leakage).
I will create a video or stream a Q/A on twitch like I did before to explain my graphs if there is enough request or there are a lot of questions.
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