New efforts!

[Arcana]

Look at this power (Poison/Poison Trap): http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/summon.php?id=Pets_Poison_Poison_Gas ... the web page shows it as a 100% Endurance Drain with a mag of 10. Mid's displays this at 1000% Drain. It can easily be made permanent since it has a 30 second duration (plus more... gas lasts for 30 seconds, but the stats don't show how long the debuff lasts, I assume at least 1 second so that it's permanent while the gas is active). So if I understand the power correctly, it can deliver a permanent 1000% debuff, which is enough to floor a level 50 AV's Recovery.

I'm not sure *I* understand the power correctly.  Which is to say, that attribmod appears to be broken as I understand it.  Essentially, if I'm looking at it correctly, that attribmod is designed to apply a Scale -1 Cur recovery debuff on the target.  Its also designed to use the Ones table and its also designed to be a Mag type attribmod.  That means the Scale value should be interpreted as a magnitude and not a duration, so that's a -100% recovery debuff.  But it has no duration specified.  It also has a redundant (and I believe ignored) Magnitude of 10.  My guess is that it was supposed to be a 10 second duration debuff and the Mag was supposed to be a specified duration.  Instead, I believe a dev hit tab one time too many and put a Mag in the spreadsheets when they were supposed to put a Duration.  Mids is confused by the strange values and is reporting the value as -1000% when it is not.  In fact, since the Mag is 10 and not -10 if the game engine used it at all the power would apply a recovery *buff* not debuff.

Sometimes the game engine has special case logic to handle what appears to be bogus data - like 999999.  But in this case, I believe the power was supposed to apply a 10 second duration -100% recovery debuff that was refreshed every second you were in the area of effect.  Meaning, you would be debuffed while you were in the effect and for 10 seconds after you left it or it died.  However, what it *actually* does, I believe, is apply a -100% recovery debuff for one clock tick which promptly expires, and does so every second.  In other words, it applies an average -3% recovery debuff while you're in the effect.

Assuming this isn't some clever piece of engine shenanigans, if the power works the way I think it should, its worthless as a recovery debuff.  If I'm wrong and the engine does some behind the scenes correction for attribmods like this (and there are many examples of it *not* doing that) and the debuff was continuous, its resistable so the -100% recovery debuff would be only -15% vs an even conning level 50 AV.  Still not much.  Unfortunately, there's no way for me to test that and report back, so all we can do here is informed conjecture.  Either way, though, I don't think  this gets us to an AV sapper.

In addition, it might be interesting to try an Ele/Psy perma-Dom if you slot up Drain Psyche so that it gets at least 600% Endurance Drain, as that will also floor an AV's recovery.

I was actually looking at Electric/Psi dominators for a different reason: static field makes this potentially viable in real life, but I haven't run the numbers yet.  While it would be slow going it might be possible for an Electric/Psi dominator to very slowly sleep and drain the AV while also pegging recovery to a low enough value for the drain to eventually work.  Might take a significant amount of time though.

This wouldn't work in team play, obviously, because anyone shooting at the AV would wake it up.  But I have to admit I didn't consider this possibility until today, when I was running the numbers on Electric/Kin.  Static field is too slow to be a genuinely effective drain, but it does put the AV to sleep.  If you can also floor the AV's recovery without waking him up, you now have a sapped AV.  Eventually.  However, you also have only 40 seconds to kill it after you wake it up before its next recovery tick gives him the ability to attack again, and it would be very difficult to sap out that recovery tick before the AV could get at least one, probably several attacks off.  So you'd have to sleep, drain, drain, drain, attack attack attack sleep, drain, drain, drain, attack attack attack sleep, drain, drain, drain...  At least drain psyche floors regeneration also.

This would be very interesting to test, if we ever get the game servers back.  I don't think  this is exactly what people were thinking about when they were thinking about an AV sapper, but if you're not in a big hurry this might be the closest thing that actually works.

[Arcana]

So does Electric/Psi dominator work as an AV sapper?  Kind of.  Here's how I think it would go.

First, I'm going to assume its possible to build an Elec/Psi that can perma-drain psyche without actually building it.  It requires a ton of recharge, but perma-doms build for that kind of recharge all the time.  That means every 30 seconds you'd be hitting the AV with enough recovery debuff and regeneration debuff to floor both.  At the floor, the AV will be recovering about 53.4 end every 40 seconds, and 1413.6 health every 150 seconds.

We also spam static field on the AV, which sleeps the AV and applies a 50% chance for 3% drain every four seconds.  The field lasts for 25 seconds.  Since it doesn't deal damage I think it can be stacked, so I'm going to assume you have enough recharge to have it always stacked on the AV.  So every four seconds you should get two 50% drain ticks of 3% unslotted, or say about 6% slotted.  That mean on average you have about 6% drain every four seconds.  Unfortunately that is resisted to about 0.9% every four seconds.  To completely drain a 6.67% endurance tick will take about 7.4 ticks, which means you need 8 (on average).  That's 32 seconds.

So the AV is asleep and recovers an end tick.  32 seconds later that endurance tick is drained away.  You now have about eight seconds to attack before the next tick when the AV can't attack back.  You then have to stop attacking so the sleep takes hold again.  For this to work at all you have to deal more than 5% of the AV's health - 1413.6 - every 150 seconds.  Within that 150 seconds you will have about 4 cycles of end ticks during which you will be attacking 20% of the time.  In other words, on average you'll be attacking 30 seconds out of every 150.  Dealing 1413 in 30 seconds is 47 dps.  That's definitely possible.

Let's say you can manage about 150 dps with this build.  I think that's being generous given the pressures on the build to keep up drain, but damage tends to be something that's easier for builders to get.  You'll deal 4500 damage in every 150 second regen cycle, which is 3087 net of regen.  Given 28271 health for an AV, that means you'd need about 9.2 cycles.  Considering fencepost effects, I'm going to guestimate it can happen in about 9 cycles.  That's 1350 seconds, or about 22.5 minutes.

However, the last thing to consider is that before any of this happens, Static field has to sap away the initial bar of endurance.  In every 40 second recovery cycle it nets about 2.33% endurance drain.  It will take 43 cycles of recovery to do that, or 1720 seconds.

Therefore, a hypothetical Electric/Psi dominator that wants to kill an AV by sapping all of its endurance away and keep it drained to zero so it can attack the AV with impunity without the AV being able to attack back could theoretically do that, assuming the build is constructed so can do what I describe above, and at 150dps will defeat the AV in about 3070 seconds, or about 51 minutes.

An hour seems like a long time for a sapper to take down an AV safely and things have to go perfectly for an hour for it to work right, but technically speaking I have to revise my earlier statements about being able to sap an AV.  Its not numerically impossible, although it is borderline ludicrous.  I'm curious now if a theorycrafter can improve on this to the point where it becomes something other than technically possible but mostly impractical.

[MM3squints]

I actually made a Ele/Psi for PvP reasons, but it worked just as well in PvE. With my build I could stack drain Psyche that actually drained the AVs in BAF. I always thought it was funny even with 0 end, they still used attack and cheated.

[Ankhammon]

Interesting problem.

The Elec/ Dom might be helped by taking a secondary which has power boost and by going Mu, but then it loses it's ability to floor the recovery (or even dent it really). All the Elec. control powers that affect recovery are only a % chance. 

Even the defender/corrupter sappers only get % chances at -recovery.

[Rejolt]

Interesting problem.

The Elec/ Dom might be helped by taking a secondary which has power boost and by going Mu, but then it loses it's ability to floor the recovery (or even dent it really). All the Elec. control powers that affect recovery are only a % chance. 

Even the defender/corrupter sappers only get % chances at -recovery.

Nyet

Tesla cage and short circuit stop recovery.

[Arcana]

Nyet

Tesla cage and short circuit stop recovery.

Defender (and Corruptor) Tesla Cage and Short Circuit both have 100% chance for -100% recovery, however that effect is resistable.  Those powers stop recovery for most things) but for our discussion purposes of attempting to drain an even con level 50 AV those generally have 85% resistance to recovery debuffs (among other things).  You'd have to stack those effects six times to reach the -90% recovery debuff floor.  Even at high recharge that would be extremely difficult to pull off.  Short Circuit's debuff is only up 50% of the time base.  You can probably double stack Tesla Cage, but I don't think you could get Short Circuit the rest of the way.  You could get close, but not to the floor.

[Rejolt]

Defender (and Corruptor) Tesla Cage and Short Circuit both have 100% chance for -100% recovery, however that effect is resistable.  Those powers stop recovery for most things) but for our discussion purposes of attempting to drain an even con level 50 AV those generally have 85% resistance to recovery debuffs (among other things).  You'd have to stack those effects six times to reach the -90% recovery debuff floor.  Even at high recharge that would be extremely difficult to pull off.  Short Circuit's debuff is only up 50% of the time base.  You can probably double stack Tesla Cage, but I don't think you could get Short Circuit the rest of the way.  You could get close, but not to the floor.

Draining an AV's end bar is more of a sign of poor dps than a viable tactic, but some GMs like the Gremlin in Cap (ironically enough) could be drained from constantly using Lightning Rod. This issue with draining tough mobs you can't kill fast is their AI makes like Bruce Campbell after hearing "Join Usssssss..." In the Evil Dead 2 (aka: Look around... /Ruuuuuuuuuuun!)

[Arcana]

Draining an AV's end bar is more of a sign of poor dps than a viable tactic, but some GMs like the Gremlin in Cap (ironically enough) could be drained from constantly using Lightning Rod. This issue with draining tough mobs you can't kill fast is their AI makes like Bruce Campbell after hearing "Join Usssssss..." In the Evil Dead 2 (aka: Look around... /Ruuuuuuuuuuun!)

The question, far far upstream, was whether it was possible to sap AVs.  I originally stated it was likely not possible in the general case.  After further discussion, I now think its possible in theory to sap an AV to zero end in such a way that they cannot fight back.  However, its only on paper and I'm not recommending it tactically.  I'm simply furthering the discussion that it seems more possible now than I originally assumed - although still somewhat ridiculous.

[Arcana]

I actually made a Ele/Psi for PvP reasons, but it worked just as well in PvE. With my build I could stack drain Psyche that actually drained the AVs in BAF. I always thought it was funny even with 0 end, they still used attack and cheated.

I'm not in a position today to double check those AVs, but in the general case AVs could not "cheat" - the game engine offered no such possibility.  It would only be possible if they possessed attacks that cost no end.  That's possible, easy to check, and in every case in the past where I looked that was not true.

The problem is that its extremely difficult for a player to confirm cheating.  First of all, some players believed it was possible to eliminate recovery completely.  Its not: the recovery floor for AVs (and most things) is 10%.  You cannot debuff the last 10% of recovery away by any means.  Its a hard floor no different than the 90% tanker resistance cap.  Secondly, endurance (and health) bars did not update instantly.  Second, an AV could attack while its *visible* endurance bar was still zero because it was lagging behind.  And third, as I mentioned, AVs recover end in 6.67% ticks - just like players - but AV end bars are 800 points big: their 6.67% is almost 54 points of end.  A level 50 AV would resist drains by 85% - you'd need a single powerful 44.5% drain power to instantly take that end away before the AV could use it: stringing together multiple drains won't work if the AV is awake because they'll use that end before you can drain it.

And that 85% resistance keeps getting higher with combat level.  What were the AVs in BAF; level 54?  At that level (or 55) the resistance increases to 87%: you'd need a 51.3% drain to take out a single endurance tick - which you have to do all at once.  And that's before combat modifiers: if you face those AVs when they are +2, say (assuming you have level shifts), combat modifiers would reduce the drain to 80%: now you need a 64.1% endurance drain power to sap out that recovery tick before the AV can use it.  And you have to land that debuff the instant the recovery tick occurs, or within about a half second of it.  You cannot "bank" endurance drain: once the AV hits zero, all drains have no effect until the next recovery tick, and then you have to drain that tick when it happens.  The timing has to be precise, and as I said you can't rely on visual cues to do it because the visual bars update lag the actual recovery tick by a significant amount of time (up to a second).

In actual combat its actually far more likely the AV itself will drain its own end bar quickly enough to run dry when under the influence of drain and recovery debuffs not quite strong enough to zero it out, but enough to make its own end drain higher than its debuffed recovery.  If that's the case, it will always have a chance to attack periodically because nothing around it can eliminate its own recovery ticks quickly enough.  But its own attacks, particularly AoEs, would drain that 54 point recovery tick fast enough to make it look like it was "cheating" endurance occasionally.

[MM3squints]

I'm not in a position today to double check those AVs, but in the general case AVs could not "cheat" - the game engine offered no such possibility.  It would only be possible if they possessed attacks that cost no end.  That's possible, easy to check, and in every case in the past where I looked that was not true.

The problem is that its extremely difficult for a player to confirm cheating.  First of all, some players believed it was possible to eliminate recovery completely.  Its not: the recovery floor for AVs (and most things) is 10%.  You cannot debuff the last 10% of recovery away by any means.  Its a hard floor no different than the 90% tanker resistance cap.  Secondly, endurance (and health) bars did not update instantly.  Second, an AV could attack while its *visible* endurance bar was still zero because it was lagging behind.  And third, as I mentioned, AVs recover end in 6.67% ticks - just like players - but AV end bars are 800 points big: their 6.67% is almost 54 points of end.  A level 50 AV would resist drains by 85% - you'd need a single powerful 44.5% drain power to instantly take that end away before the AV could use it: stringing together multiple drains won't work if the AV is awake because they'll use that end before you can drain it.

And that 85% resistance keeps getting higher with combat level.  What were the AVs in BAF; level 54?  At that level (or 55) the resistance increases to 87%: you'd need a 51.3% drain to take out a single endurance tick - which you have to do all at once.  And that's before combat modifiers: if you face those AVs when they are +2, say (assuming you have level shifts), combat modifiers would reduce the drain to 80%: now you need a 64.1% endurance drain power to sap out that recovery tick before the AV can use it.  And you have to land that debuff the instant the recovery tick occurs, or within about a half second of it.  You cannot "bank" endurance drain: once the AV hits zero, all drains have no effect until the next recovery tick, and then you have to drain that tick when it happens.  The timing has to be precise, and as I said you can't rely on visual cues to do it because the visual bars update lag the actual recovery tick by a significant amount of time (up to a second).

In actual combat its actually far more likely the AV itself will drain its own end bar quickly enough to run dry when under the influence of drain and recovery debuffs not quite strong enough to zero it out, but enough to make its own end drain higher than its debuffed recovery.  If that's the case, it will always have a chance to attack periodically because nothing around it can eliminate its own recovery ticks quickly enough.  But its own attacks, particularly AoEs, would drain that 54 point recovery tick fast enough to make it look like it was "cheating" endurance occasionally.

So with that last 10% was it like an unseen reserve? On my end looks like the end bar was completely depleted.

[blacksly]

I'm curious now if a theorycrafter can improve on this to the point where it becomes something other than technically possible but mostly impractical.

Conductive Aura, also in the Electric Control set, saps about 18% every two seconds, I think, once slotted. So that would greatly lower the time required to sap each tick, giving you more time in which to freely put out damage.

[Ankhammon]

I'm not in a position today to double check those AVs, but in the general case AVs could not "cheat" - the game engine offered no such possibility.  It would only be possible if they possessed attacks that cost no end.  That's possible, easy to check, and in every case in the past where I looked that was not true.

The problem is that its extremely difficult for a player to confirm cheating.  First of all, some players believed it was possible to eliminate recovery completely.  Its not: the recovery floor for AVs (and most things) is 10%.  You cannot debuff the last 10% of recovery away by any means.  Its a hard floor no different than the 90% tanker resistance cap.  Secondly, endurance (and health) bars did not update instantly.  Second, an AV could attack while its *visible* endurance bar was still zero because it was lagging behind.  And third, as I mentioned, AVs recover end in 6.67% ticks - just like players - but AV end bars are 800 points big: their 6.67% is almost 54 points of end.  A level 50 AV would resist drains by 85% - you'd need a single powerful 44.5% drain power to instantly take that end away before the AV could use it: stringing together multiple drains won't work if the AV is awake because they'll use that end before you can drain it.

And that 85% resistance keeps getting higher with combat level.  What were the AVs in BAF; level 54?  At that level (or 55) the resistance increases to 87%: you'd need a 51.3% drain to take out a single endurance tick - which you have to do all at once.  And that's before combat modifiers: if you face those AVs when they are +2, say (assuming you have level shifts), combat modifiers would reduce the drain to 80%: now you need a 64.1% endurance drain power to sap out that recovery tick before the AV can use it.  And you have to land that debuff the instant the recovery tick occurs, or within about a half second of it.  You cannot "bank" endurance drain: once the AV hits zero, all drains have no effect until the next recovery tick, and then you have to drain that tick when it happens.  The timing has to be precise, and as I said you can't rely on visual cues to do it because the visual bars update lag the actual recovery tick by a significant amount of time (up to a second).

In actual combat its actually far more likely the AV itself will drain its own end bar quickly enough to run dry when under the influence of drain and recovery debuffs not quite strong enough to zero it out, but enough to make its own end drain higher than its debuffed recovery.  If that's the case, it will always have a chance to attack periodically because nothing around it can eliminate its own recovery ticks quickly enough.  But its own attacks, particularly AoEs, would drain that 54 point recovery tick fast enough to make it look like it was "cheating" endurance occasionally.

From a practical sense, I saw a lower level version of this all the time on my Elec/Earth Dom. It took very little time to drain a full group to zero, but I still got hit plenty as the mobs would tick some end and hit then they would be drained again. Took quite a bit of the big damage powers they might have had out of the equation, but I would still get Brawled (or whatever they did like that) fairly consistently.

Eventually, I just used Synaptic Overload on every group so they hit each other when they had a dab of endo.

[Ankhammon]

Nyet

Tesla cage and short circuit stop recovery.

Oops. I stand corrected.

Figures it would be by Jolty. Knower of all things elec.

[Tyger42]

Okay, so I've been watching the "update" at the top of the first post for the date to change, but paying no attention to the timeline. Has there really been zero news since May 1? 

[Rejolt]

Oops. I stand corrected.

Figures it would be by Jolty. Knower of all things elec.

Just to put a period on this discussion from my 7 years of practical electric sets play: draining AVs is possible but not as useful as you think due to their resistances.

Yes, our last update was late 2014 that proof the Hail Mary group could run the game was accepted.

After that it's pages of us obsessing, remembering and theory crafting. There is a non-disclosure agreement that prevents the group from talking.

I do hear Valiance Online enters alpha this week and (*When it's Ready[tm]) a launcher ready through Steam in the coming weeks.

[Balince]

Okay, so I've been watching the "update" at the top of the first post for the date to change, but paying no attention to the timeline. Has there really been zero news since May 1? 

You can look at downix profile then see posts and there's a couple interesting ones but other than that not much.

[blacksly]

Okay, so I've been watching the "update" at the top of the first post for the date to change, but paying no attention to the timeline. Has there really been zero news since May 1? 

Remember, they're under a NDA. Theoretically, there should be NO news until an agreement is reached or the talks comprehensively fail.

There have been a few other posts that have stated, roughly, that talks are slow and that if they had failed they would have let us know... which, without actually giving out any concrete information, can be parsed to say that talks are still going on.

[Zerohour]

watching people post ad nauseum about builds, and resist bonuses, end regen, etc. crunching all kinds of numbers...i guess this is all thats left to say

[Tyger42]

All the theorycrafting is what's making me twitchy for news. ;p

[ivanhedgehog]

All the theorycrafting is what's making me twitchy for news. ;p

Im gonna hold my breath till they tell us...please hurry..I look bad passed out