Please note that the perfekt bonus can be achieved with shortcuts as well.
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Depends on the shortcut, but yes it is possible to get perfect “bonus” although the damage of bonus hasn’t really been able to be test as far as I know, since runemage’s spells are varying by a wide margin in the first place.
But at a glance:
B fireball with Straight edges (As seen) I can probably get 50% “perfect” bonus.
B fireball with curved edges about 30%
D fireball 1 every 30 casts about I get perfect, sometimes more, sometimes less.
along with this with the P-frost cast I get about 30-40% perfect.
Some shortcuts achieve perfect better than others. and I do want to see if perfect means 1% or what or if it’s even noticable, maybe spell damage is based on how well you drew the spell in the first place (the game recognizing the points in the system) and based the damage off that, and “perfect bonus” was just the game giving an indication of the threshold of about 90% accuracy and actually didn’t give a bonus.
ex:
50-100%
22k-30k
78%= 23.4k damage
89%=26.7k damage (not perfect)
90%=27k damage (perfect “bonus”)
^ this is an example and just a hypthesis I had.
From the very little testing I did on runemage, the perfect is a 50% damage bonus, since a friend that thought about playing one asked before. I assume the intent was to give them a skill-based “crit” of sorts.
Did a lot more testing on scoundrel though, tbh. Learned that unboosted flint card gives ~5.2% effective damage boost due to the defense debuff.
I’m leaving this thread up despite people flaming each other earlier because there’s good, productive discussion and I think it’s really valuable to have (and the dev team is reading all your comments and thoughts on the state of balance too, we appreciate it!)
But from this point on if you’re hostile to somebody else or attacking them you’ll get a warning & potentially silence in order to keep the thread on track. Thank you.
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Perfect cast does not give 50% damage increase. I think you were noticing a crit which is at default 50% damage increase.
Just to show i slowed down and casted some nonperfect and some “perfect” also for some testing for the damage itself.
as you can see there does seem to be a damage increase from casting so my theory was just debunked but it’s defintely not 50%. (The numbers that go to the top right means its a crit.)
it looks like from the numbers itself however it’s anywhere between 4-10%? roughly. 4-10% is a big difference compared to 50%.
Edit: also shows that I get at least personally more “perfect casts” on sharp B’s and a little less on curved B’s and rarely on the D’s.
Edit: my hypothesis could be true actually just harder to know exactly since there isn’t any indication of what % of accuracy I had.
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@Archive I tested before in the past that the most perfect cast is 20% more damage then the most sloppy cast. on about halfway through it starts making the sparkle pop sound.
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Yes but without perfect casts the range of the damage is still high in variety is it not? I think it’s hard to give a solid number besides just the range, which I guess you could say it can range 20% difference, but has an average of: x%.
yes there is a range of 10% in the perfect cast and the non perfect cast area. so someone who casts non perfect casts very accurate can cast max 10% more damage then the sloppiest caster xD But it never happens in practice. getting on that border is really hard to do lol. so on average will be more like 5% for someone never casting perfects.
Learn something new every day. Though, like I said, I had little faith in my own testing since I had only tested for like an hour, so the whole three perfect casts I got were probably crits without me noticing because I had to focus on just casting at all, more than anything. The video is very insightful, too.
Okay, so I ran some numbers (again assuming the mage is using affliction to its best) to show kind of what I mean as far as depreciating effects go.
I took 1/s as a baseline; anything more than that received a reduced multiplier to the damage for that spell. For the first spell per second after 1, I reduced it by X (modifier) and for the second, I reduced it by X-.15. I also applied a multiplier for the first spell per second at 1.5x. e.g. for a 2.5/s mage, I assumed a 3/2/3/2 rotation on casts per second and the casts (and ticks, which always fell on a whole number) were multiplied by 1.5/0.75/0.6 in the X=0.75 case.
To achieve this, I had to break out the timelines into half and third seconds, so the data table is across 5 tabs now and would be difficult for me to put on. Some differences in damage appeared because I was now able to move the selfish boost to the right location (Trip2 doesn’t count towards it, AFAIK), amongst other small details.
The modifier of “1” was used to demonstrate the current situation, as I had been doing previously; in this case, the initial multiplier and subsequent mods were ignored.
As you can see, with this system, you can still reward skill but provide a slightly reduced amount. Some tweaking might be necessary to find the best initial damage increase and subsequent damage modifiers, but the point is to demonstrate.
Overall data table
| Class | Modifier | DPS | Average DPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5 | 0.25 | 1.659338182 | 1.509226415 |
| 1 | 0.25 | 2.644625455 | 2.419455381 |
| 1.5 | 0.25 | 2.854196667 | 2.762363042 |
| 2 | 0.25 | 3.241803333 | 3.059903757 |
| 2.5 | 0.25 | 3.372754667 | 3.286882835 |
| 0.5 | 0.5 | 1.659338182 | 1.509226415 |
| 1 | 0.5 | 2.644625455 | 2.419455381 |
| 1.5 | 0.5 | 2.994473333 | 2.89510552 |
| 2 | 0.5 | 3.538206667 | 3.334878387 |
| 2.5 | 0.5 | 3.870501333 | 3.743268967 |
| 0.5 | 0.75 | 1.659338182 | 1.509226415 |
| 1 | 0.75 | 2.644625455 | 2.419455381 |
| 1.5 | 0.75 | 3.13475 | 3.027847999 |
| 2 | 0.75 | 3.83461 | 3.609853016 |
| 2.5 | 0.75 | 4.368248 | 4.1996551 |
| 0.5 | 1 | 1.106225455 | 1.006150944 |
| 1 | 1 | 1.763083636 | 1.612970254 |
| 1.5 | 1 | 2.370386667 | 2.284050289 |
| 2 | 1 | 3.149213333 | 2.956517937 |
| 2.5 | 1 | 3.974226667 | 3.775383033 |
So i know you can get perfect casts from the shortcut. I was suggesting that the algorithm should be more strict on the upper end and less strict on the lower end.
If you make it so that you have a choice to cast slowly for major damage boosts or quickly for rapid fire, i think it would give some interesting changes to game play. You shouldn’t be able to get perfect casts from shortcuts… Thats just silly. I’m definitely fine with shortcuts being able to successfully cast, but i think there should be some sort of penalty for not doing the ‘proper’ rune (or at least a tradeoff)
They aren’t shortcuts. They are “alternative methods” 
. They still take time to learn and master, and in some cases they take longer to learn than the “intended” methods.
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that doesnt change my point. there should be a hefty bonus to damage if you spend the time to draw out the runes as intended instead of cutting corners on the spells.
This way you get to choose between being an ‘orthodox’ spellcaster and a speedcaster
Unless you provide seriously diminishing returns and a massive increase on “correct” casts you will never achieve an equality within the realistic realm of cast speeds. As shown in the data, a 1/s caster is like 28% less effective than a 2.5/s caster even with huge modifiers in place. Currently it’s like 58%
I completely understand your skepticism, given the damage most scoundrels pull. I took 2 approaches to estimating damage: an in depth damage model and in game testing. The model is the same model that I shared with the devs before the intitial scoundrel nerf, about which Riley said “Your numbers are pretty close to what I was tracking them as internally” (also referring to mage and ranger numbers). I simply adjusted the model for a newer rotation and changed the basic damage number inputs to account for the nerf. Scoundrel damgage in particular is rather easy to calculate: bullets do a fixed amount of damage, bullets regenerate at a fixed speed, charges take a fixed amount of time, and curves add a fixed multiplier. The only difficult part is calculating the average card damage, given that there are so many possible combinations of card sequences, and finding the optimal rotation. However, cards only make up about 15% of a scoundrel’s DPS (calculated with an allowance for choosing suboptimal cards with a given probability), so small errors in the card probabilities are negligible. Depending on which party buffs were applied, the model calculated a maximum scoundrel dps figure for a +4 iceheart of 65-80k (varies with buffs and how the buffs actually stack). You can easily make a similar model once you have the basic scoundrel numbers and theory down; if it becomes an issue you can just calculate card dps as 15% of overall as an estimate.
To ensure that the model was accurate and that buffs stacked properly, I tested actual damage numbers in game. Because I don’t actually play scoundrel, I can’t perfectly execute my rotation without missing any curves on the tiny target dummy. While a boss would be a different story, for testing purposes I simply didn’t use any curve shots or cards to record a base dps number. I calculated the curve buff separately and applied it retroactively. Because I wasn’t sure of how party buffs actually stack in practice (is the ranger buff + the bard buff a 1 + .05 + .05 multiplier, or a 1.05*1.05 multiplier?) I assembled a realistic party of a mage, scoundrel, and bard to apply all the buffs from those classes. When I executed my rotation mostly perfectly, with with no curves and no card usage, I got 39,500 dps over 1.75 minutes (I manually parsed the log and divided my total damage by the total time). Multiplying by the curve bonus and dividing by 0.85 to add the card estimated damage gives a total potential damage of 77,600 dps. I also didn’t use my super, which could’ve added even more dps if used correctly.
While executing everything perfectly in a real fight with curving is clearly a nigh impossible task, good scoundrels should be able to come close with practice. Fixing most of the errors scoundrels make that I listed previously will make a big difference in dps. Discipline and timing are almost as important as aiming for a scoundrel.
The data demonstrates that scoundrels have the potential to beat the current best rangers and even to reach the best mages in sustained damage. The top players in other classes are operating very close to their theoretical maxes (in terms of rotation/theory and speed for mages); scoundrels just haven’t caught up. By no means is the class so far off in damage as everyone seems to want to believe.
Your numbers are close enough that it’s probably just a difference from what starting/ending point we chose. However, another key difference is that I took DPS from the middle section of the rotation, rather than just the beginning. In a long fight, it’s realistic to assume that affliction will already be applied and about to wear off in order to phase out the initial damage reduction from having to apply the afflictions with none ticking in the background that is overstated by short term calculations.
I want to stress that skill and effort invested doesn’t linearly translate to casting speed improvements. As Archive demonstrated, it’s much easier to go from 0.5 to 1 spell per second than it is to go from 1 to 1.5 or especially 1.5 to 2. I’ve only improved my cast speed by at most 0.1 spells per second in the last month or so of regular practicing, because even small improvements are very difficult at this point.
The ability to develop our own spell techniques and ways to play the class is a huge part of what gives mage it’s depth. There is a huge variety of runes that are used by the community for the same spells: especially affliction. I know many mages who have made their own interesting techniques for spells that work for them, and sometimes them alone (the donut affliction, the tombstone affliction, and the spiral affliction are some unorthodox examples). The fact that they are all just as effective for people with different playstyles, controllers, ergonomics, and preferences makes the class that much better. If our techniques were punished simply because they weren’t close enough to “what they are supposed to be”, even though they work better, the class would be infinitely more boring. Rewarding people with extra DPS at slower cast speeds because they’re drawing the “right” rune only crushes the experimental core of learning to master mage.
Nobody is nearly this fast, lol.
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Yea please do, because as, like, the only high-end scoundrel left in the entire game there is sadly only theory left lol. Though everyone else I see playing scoundrel sucks so hard that it hardly matters if 1 or 2 players can rise up to ranger level. A new or average ranger will always be better than a new or average scoundrel, we tested this countless times because we played with a lot of fresh players, which are choosing these two classes.
The reasons why “theory” or standing in front of dummies is not really telling anything I stated over and over, but I am slowly tired… scoundrels fail because a) no dungeon except perhaps airship is designed for what a scoundrel would even need to curve high ranks, consistently and b) the group is normally so much faster on trash; until your dream-combo popped, your curve is applied or your buff the mob is long gone, that seems to be the major issue, all this card-‘preparation’ all the time for nothing.
On bosses it’s a bit better, but there’s a hard cap which is actually quickly reached. You can only bring in the cards and combos you get, it is so much more luck involved than skill here; the stack is so very slow that there’s hardly any thinking or choosing involved, a boss is mostly also down before anything is unfolding here; and if you curve rank Vs on a boss, consistently, than this is it. Any good ranger or mage can outdps this.
The next thing is the buff, if you wanna buff the whole group - which is normally better for scoundrel-mains - you are loosing out on personal dmg. So the full basket-dmg (which afaik Scott plays) is only pseudo-dmg which scoundrel mains don’t normally choose, except if there’s more than one scoundrel in their reg group…
Well sadly it is possible to reach the 70k+ like Cam said. I was at the test. The thing is now the curves difficulty, exact timing on shot releases, having all the boosts around you and having tiles that relly on a healer… Its actually a very high skill class to squeeze that damage up. But I still haven’t seen this same test for other classes though. Would also be interesting. Shaman test would be fun xD. I doubt any scoundrel would get that 70k anytime soon though.
(Ps 3 bullet vs 4 bullet the 4 bullet is only really better evn solo if the fights are short like GRINDING and getting that extra delay tile. So go 3 bullet normally anyway)
You can curve up in all the dungeons; don’t limit yourself to curving sideways. The boss rooms are all especially open, with very large targets, which is where most scoundrels are pulling low numbers in the logs.
This is one of the downsides of scoundrel, that the buff sticks to one enemy instead of you. However, curving on the next trash opponent shouldn’t take more than 2 shots and should just give you time to recharge your chamber after emptying it on the last mob. Furthermore, if you coordinate with the group which enemies are attacked by which players, you can have more time to kill something that everyone else isn’t focusing on to make full use of your buff.
As I mentioned, my calculation involved the different probabilities of different card possibilities. The dps from cards is an average number. In general, once you determine which cards need to be prioritized and which cards should buff others, there are many options to almost always get the same important cards buffed. Furthermore, card damage only makes up about 15% of the total damage, so even without using any cards scoundrels can still pull 66,000 dps at maximum.
My damage calculations and tests used the break shot talent, and still got this level of dps. It’s intended to accurately simulate scoundrel mains.
Not at all. I saw atro placing his charts all over the thread, but otherwise saw people mentioning DPS numbers without referencing anything, so I was curious if there was a widely-known and accepted formula that I just wasn’t aware of or something. Thank you for sharing your formula.
Agreed. Even in hallways, I purposely curve around allies (mainly tanks) because a smaller curve bonus is better than no curve bonus. It fixes the body blocking problem, and maximizes my damage, so it’s win-win.
Though I also have noticed that you can curve through some walls and ceilings, although you’re effectively doing so blind, you can still potentially get that damage increase.
The best idea I have seen for bringing rangers more in line with what mages and scoundrels are capable of is to reduce the remaining cool down of our special arrows and charged shot by a set amount of time whenever we successfully hit a weak point. This amount of time would need to be at least 1 second but more likely about 1.5 seconds. This would give more damage to the most skilled rangers who can successfully hit all weak points and make the class even more dynamic, fun, and challenging to play. I hope the devs are really looking at this as an option. It would be extremely fun and rewarding to play and would be the best change to the ranger class since weak points were introduced with Reborn.
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