Ok bord so all you Scrappers out there a Flash Back Rikti Pylon challange

[hejtmane]

So I am bored hoping to get COH back and I am reading the web archive scrapper forum looking for the stuff like attack chains etc as I do my Mids builds I have faith we are getting the game back.


https://web.archive.org/web/20120906191553/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=130754
Any ways a scrapper we are obsessed with doing stupid scrapper tricks in coh. The Rikti Challenge solo ITF's, AV hunting etc etc

Anyways one of my all time favorite ones was the  Rikti Pylon single target DPS when we get the game back and I get IO out again this challenge is on. 


"I saw this formula posted by Werner somewhere.

( 38343.75 / time ) + 127.8125 = DPS

I assume the first number is the max health of the Pylon, and the second is the amount of health it regens per second. I don't know how accurate these numbers are but they should provide a benchmark regardless"


Here is a list this was prior to MA getting a buff and incarnates started changing numbers as well before other sets enter the picture they are further

289 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - _Mojo_
283 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - BrokenPrey
276 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Iggy Kamakaze
267 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - Igor The Mad
262 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Machine Man X
262 Dual Blades/Electric Armor - Shadowsylph
259 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Norse
255 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - Besserwisser
249 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - SkylineGTR
247 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Enots
243 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Primal Dark
242 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - MrLiberty
241 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - Powerforge
241 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - DR EVIL NA
239 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Effy On Malibu
236 Broad Sword/Shield Defense - Chaos String
232 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - Hejtmane
228 Claws/Super Reflexes - Iggy Kamakaze
227 Fiery Melee/Shield Defense - doyler
223 Dual Blades/Super Reflexes - Shred Monkey
219 Katana/Super Reflexes - Laevateinn
210 Katana/Regeneration - Iggy Kamakaze
209 Dark Melee/Shield Defense - pyrite
208 Dark Melee/Super Reflexes - DR EVIL NA
205 Claws/Super Reflexes - Powerforge
198 Claws/Super Reflexes - Iggy Kamakaze
198 Katana/Willpower - Wuigly Squigly
196 Dual Blades/Invulnerability - Nihilii
194 Claws/Super Reflexes - Bill Z Bubba
190 Dual Blades/Willpower - Myriad
189 Fiery Melee/Super Reflexes - Gaidin
185 Katana/Regen - Werner
184 Dark Melee/Super Reflexes - Larac
180 Dark Melee/Super Reflexes - Werner
177 Katana/Dark Armor - Werner
175 Katana/Willpower - Iggy Kamakaze
175 Katana/Fiery Aura - Mortal Prey
174 Katana/Willpower - AgentMountaineer
174 Martial Arts/Shield Defense - Broken Prey
174 Katana/Invulnerability - DSorrow
170 Claws/Regeneration - Iggy Kamakaze
167 Martial Arts/Super Reflexes - American Dynamo
165 Broad Sword/Invulnerability - Hopeling
160 Katana/Fiery Aura - Iggy Kamakaze
160 Dual Blades/Willpower - Soul Fane
158 Broad Sword/Invulnerability - Gaidin
152 Dual Blades/Regeneration - BrokenPrey
150 Katana/Dark Armor - ShadowBeast NA
149 Martial Arts/Regeneration - SpiderTeo OC
148 Dark Melee/Invulnerability - Aliana Blue

[Taceus Jiwede]

I did this on my blaster a couple months before the shutdown.  I don't remember exactly how long it took though, I do remember I needed some inspirations for healing and defense though.

Great way to test your DPS lol.

[Ankhammon]

I did this on my blaster a couple months before the shutdown.  I don't remember exactly how long it took though, I do remember I needed some inspirations for healing and defense though.

Great way to test your DPS lol.

Didn't the scrappers (elitists that they were. ) insist on no outside buffs/vitamins or anything like that?

Still, nice to hear blasters could do it.

[Lava-Lad]

My claws/SR had trouble with that because of the AoE damage, although I always took the pylon challenge as both a survival and damage exercise.

[Microcosm]

Didn't the scrappers (elitists that they were. ) insist on no outside buffs/vitamins or anything like that?

Still, nice to hear blasters could do it.

Yes, in order to be counted as "official", but you could still do it however you wanted to get a dps estimate. Lore pets were generally considered off limits as well.

[Taceus Jiwede]

Didn't the scrappers (elitists that they were. ) insist on no outside buffs/vitamins or anything like that?

Still, nice to hear blasters could do it.

Ya those were the official rules.  Personally I wouldn't even consider Lore pets cheating, its a power given to you and why you wouldn't utilize all your powers is a mystery to me.  I did mine without the lore pets to see if I could.  As for inspirations I feel part of being a good blaster is being able to utilize inspirations effectively.

[houtex]

BH the Brawl/WP brute couldn't hang with the DPS... Never enough Brawl for the Pylon. 

But he could just stand there all day long with it.    Standoff city.  The Pylon's brawl was weak ass.

I had hopes of IO and Incarnate enough that he could do it... but alas. 

Maybe I'll get another chance.

[hejtmane]

Ya those were the official rules.  Personally I wouldn't even consider Lore pets cheating, its a power given to you and why you wouldn't utilize all your powers is a mystery to me.  I did mine without the lore pets to see if I could.  As for inspirations I feel part of being a good blaster is being able to utilize inspirations effectively.

It is a scrapper thing we set up challenges we called then stupid scrapper tricks.

On av soloing we would do it with no inspirations it is how we tested the limits of our IO builds

We had another one we rounded up level 54 rikti mob packs and you would try to pull as many as you could and see how long you survived with out dying and no inspiration.

We where testing our dps with no outside buffs that is why the no inspiration scrappers had the survivability in the builds (I am sitting at 16 there)

The same rules did not apply to all classes I love that a blaster did it and using greens inspiration on a blaster I get

[Shenku]

We had another one we rounded up level 54 rikti mob packs and you would try to pull as many as you could and see how long you survived with out dying and no inspiration.

This was my usual test after respecing my Claws/SR Scrapper on numerous occasions just for a rough estimate on how the build would hold up under normal teaming(My SG tended to live dangerously...).

I never bothered with hard numbers or math or anything like that (I was told there would be no math!). I figured that if I could perform decently against a bunch of level 54 Rikti, I'd do just fine, and that was usually the case.

Sad to say I never was able to successfully pull of soloing AVs or Pylons, and I tried numerous times with various builds, but it just wasn't meant to be. For the most part my DPS was just too low to overcome their regen rates.

I don't even remember what my final build was, I always had to make small changes to my build from what I had in Mid's due to cost/availability of the IOs I needed...

[Taceus Jiwede]

It is a scrapper thing we set up challenges we called then stupid scrapper tricks.

On av soloing we would do it with no inspirations it is how we tested the limits of our IO builds

We had another one we rounded up level 54 rikti mob packs and you would try to pull as many as you could and see how long you survived with out dying and no inspiration.

We where testing our dps with no outside buffs that is why the no inspiration scrappers had the survivability in the builds (I am sitting at 16 there)

The same rules did not apply to all classes I love that a blaster did it and using greens inspiration on a blaster I get

Haha maybe I should have been a scrapper.  Cause I did these all the time too on my blaster after respecs.  Nothing better to test that build then some "Oh shit" action!

Although after soloing Neuron in the Maria Jenkins Arc, I was hooked.  I went out of my way to solo any and all AV's I could find.  I never did get Ms.Liberty though....she just had sooooo much defense that I couldn't out DPS her regen.  I got her with a shivan and some lore pets, but that didn't count as soloing anymore.......

[Arcana]

It is a scrapper thing we set up challenges we called then stupid scrapper tricks.

On av soloing we would do it with no inspirations it is how we tested the limits of our IO builds

We had another one we rounded up level 54 rikti mob packs and you would try to pull as many as you could and see how long you survived with out dying and no inspiration.

We where testing our dps with no outside buffs that is why the no inspiration scrappers had the survivability in the builds (I am sitting at 16 there)

The same rules did not apply to all classes I love that a blaster did it and using greens inspiration on a blaster I get

Although Scrappers were posting stunts in the forums since almost the beginning, I think I was the first one to actually create a "challenge" and call it a challenge  (in a thread called "Take the Arcanaville Super Reflexes challenge") which was a challenge extended first to SR scrappers, then all scrappers in the Storm Palace.  Then someone got the bright idea to go after the 54s in the RWZ, and then the pylon became the offensive challenge when that whole incident with Claws happened. 

Claws animations got "adjusted" to be "a little faster" and the devs said Claws would deal about 15%  more damage and I, using Arcanatime DPS calculations said it would be about twice as much damage, and BillZBubba asked me if I thought Claws could take down a pylon.  I scribbled some calculations and said "maybe" and then the bastard went out and took one down on the beta server without even any special slotting to prove the dev calculations were "a little off."  I think Castle actually watched Bill take one down and went "wow."

From that point on, Scrappers began trying to figure out how to take them down solo, and I think it was Werner that really popularized the feat.

Both the RWZ challenge and the Pylon challenge had one rule and that was there were no real rules.  If you wanted to compare to others doing the same thing, you had to of course do it under the same conditions.  But if you just wanted to challenge your build, most Scrappers said handicap the challenge however you want as long as you specify how you did it.  You were really only competing against your own building prowess.

Here's my pylon contribution: a 207 second run with my Ill/Rad using no offensive Incarnate powers (just Ageless).  That implies 313dps on the Werner-meter but of course there's no way Illusion is pumping out 313dps: its closer to 185 dps due to the regeneration debuffs offsetting pylon regeneration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajQrTjVC1ow

I think I tried it once with my MA/SR and gave up at the fifteen minute mark when I knew it couldn't kill me but using MA's offense I might have fallen asleep before finishing it off.

[Codewalker]

Here's my pylon contribution: a 207 second run with my Ill/Rad using no offensive Incarnate powers (just Ageless).  That implies 313dps on the Werner-meter but of course there's no way Illusion is pumping out 313dps: its closer to 185 dps due to the regeneration debuffs offsetting pylon regeneration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajQrTjVC1ow

When was that run made?

There's an engine bug in I23/I24 (and probably I22, I don't remember the exact timing) that causes Phantom Army and Decoy Phantasm to do considerably more damage than they should.

Phantom Army is supposed to be temporary illusory damage, healing the target for 75% of the damage done after 5 seconds.  Decoy Phantasm heals 100% of its damage done.

Both of these were set to do the "healing" by applying negative damage of the same type (Psionic) rather than using the normal Heal attribute. That's likely so that targets with high Psi resistance don't end up healing for more than the original damage.

However, when Absorb was added to the engine, the way it was implemented caused that to break. Negative damage for all types other than Heal and Special (which bypass Absorb) ends up being added to the character's Absorb attribute instead of HitPoints. Due to how Absorb is implemented, that attribute is reset to 0 every tick and amounts totaled up from any attribmods that grant it.

Long story short, when a target was supposed to receive the heal from PA or the Decoy, it instead got a tiny sliver of Absorb that only lasted one tick and then disappeared. So except for edge cases where there was other damage done on the same tick, PA was doing about 165% too much damage (would be 440% without enhancements, I'm assuming you enhanced PA for max damage), and Decoy Phantasm did infinitely more lasting damage than intended.

I can't tell for sure on your video as the resolution is too low to make out any flickers of white in the target's health bar, but I know for certain the bug existed in I23. It might have been in I22 as well, because IIRC Absorb was added to the engine at least a full issue before it was used for Magisterium and player powers (Nature Affinity).

[Arcana]

When was that run made?

March 27, 2012 on the live servers.  So just after the release of I22.  I vaguely remember something about an absorb bug similar to what you're referring to noted at some point after I23 (might have even been in I24 beta), but I'm not sure it existed in I22 (to be more precise, I wasn't aware of the bug when the run was recorded, so I wasn't looking for it). 

At high resolution playback, I don't see absorb ticks on the pylon but that could be because the visual effect wasn't added in I22, or it was too small or too short-lived to be rendered.  It could explain the high level of damage (even factoring in LR debuffs) implied by that run.  I never bothered to calculate the actual damage potential of that particular build, it was shortly after I respeced into a new build loaded with purples.