Question about melee IP

OK. Maybe the question is a bit more involved than just IP. It is not quite a clone of all of those "please someone tell me what is the RIGHT thing to do with my IP as an enforcer" posts.

I played an enforcer to level 20 as soon as the game came out and then lost interest gradually since my ATI video card made every text box unreadable. Getting good missions was hard enough without adding the annoyance of not being able to actually read the text. Anyway, I had happened upon stun-batons on accident after seeing them on the vending machine when I was looking for an upgrade from my dual staffs. I was amazed by the damage increase I immediately saw and commenced to tearing through missions at 3/4 difficulty.

Well, I am back now with a GeForce and have had fun up to level 27 and now I read all this talk on the boards about beam this and sledgehammer that... I got to looking at the requirements for hammers and beams and saw that it looks like I would save a TON of IP by going with one of those weapons cause I would not have to invest in fast attack, melee energy, and sneak attack.

I am not all that concerned with the ownage factor since I am not that hard-core of a player, but I am attracted by the idea of ending up with lots of IP that I could invest in other things while possibly improving my damage output by restarting as a 2hb user.

Since there seem to be so many knowledgeable people on this board, does anyone know of a site that has a formula for figuring out how many IP it takes to increase a given skill to a given level for a given race/class. Basically I would like to figure out if a QL200 stun baton with requirements of
1hb 807
melee ener 538
sneak 449
fast 449
brawl 538
dimach 180
takes a lot more IP than a QL200 beam at
2hb 1008
brawl 605
dimach 202

It sure looks like it will take a huge amount more IP unless that last 200 points of 2hb costs a ton ane makes it even out. Sledgehammer of doom seems to clearly win the "save IP for other things" battle with its much lower requirements, but...

I may stick with my batons regardless just because I have not seen anyone with them since I got back. Even been asked about them twice 8). Plus I like the insane hit rate and the buzzing noises.

Thanks for any advice.

Zilo 27 Clan enforcer, RK1

Maybe at very high lvl you could switch out or something. They share half the reqs.

No formulas for you but i think you know the answer :) If you change to 2hb you *will* save IP. However you will look the same as everyone else and you wont be able to use your buzzing staffs.

stun batons are not viable at higher levels due to the damage cap you reach once your oponent's ac is high enough. most mobs and players get ac that will normally have the batons doing min damage.

i used batons into my low 40s. they looked cool, got a lot of stuns in, but are not worth the ip and damge capping; at least not until the current damage figuring system changes.

Thyrra,

How are batons different than a QL 200 sledgehammer of doom then? The minimum damage on that beast is 1 so does that mean that if a player's AC is high enough the hammer will be hitting for 1 every time?

There must be something that I am missing. Is it only critical hits that do any damage once AC is extremely high?

Maybe this is the reason that all of the mobs in missions are hitting me for exactly the same amount every hit. They never seem to miss me and if the guy hits me for 30 points I can predict that every single hit will be within 1-2 points of 30 points. Maybe their damage against me is capped to the minimum. Sort of takes the excitement out of combat to know after the first hit exactly how much damage will be done to you.

right now ac takes off a certain amount from damage ( i think the ratio is 10 ac points to 1 damage point reduced).

things look like this:

ac = armor class of attackee

md = minimum damage of attacker

dmg = damage dealt by attacker

hitdmg = damage taken by attackee


if ( dmg - (ac/10) ) > md
then hitdmg = dmg - (ac/10)
else hitdmg = md


the slower a weapon is the higher high range damage it tends to have.

yes hammers hit for really low damage at times and they are slow. the upside is that even with really high ac your opponent is not likely to have ac high enough to cap you at min damage.

on the other hand, fast weak weapons run into the min damage cap even they hit fast. over time a few large hits will do more cumulative damage than a lot of really weak hits will.

in theory a weak fast weapon could hit enough times to make the average damage output the same, or higher, than a slow hard hitting weapon. the problem is that there are almost no weapons like this. riders are the closest thing people on these boards have found to feel worthwhile.


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it is easy to have the mobs hitting for min damage at low levels. you can reduce a mob's damage to min with high ac, it only costs you money and time to get such armor. at some point, though, you can have the highest ql armor you can get and have the best implants for ac available in the game, and still have mobs hitting you above their min damage. mob difficulty does not progress at the same rate as the average player's ability to better their equipment, nanos, and skills.

the boredom of knowing how much a mob will hit you every time will go away if you go play with mobs that deal a lot of damage. if you are clan, go to mort ( just north of meetme dere in newland desert). if you are omni go to eastern foul planes or milky way ( just east and north, respectively, of pleasant meadows).

Quote:

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Originally posted by Thyrra
right now ac takes off a certain amount from damage ( i think the ratio is 10 ac points to 1 damage point reduced).

things look like this:

ac = armor class of attackee

md = minimum damage of attacker

dmg = damage dealt by attacker

hitdmg = damage taken by attackee


if ( dmg - (ac/10) ) > md
then hitdmg = dmg - (ac/10)
else hitdmg = md


the slower a weapon is the higher high range damage it tends to have.

yes hammers hit for really low damage at times and they are slow. the upside is that even with really high ac your opponent is not likely to have ac high enough to cap you at min damage.

on the other hand, fast weak weapons run into the min damage cap even they hit fast. over time a few large hits will do more cumulative damage than a lot of really weak hits will.

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Ah, I understand now. The minimum damage thing is so close to the average damage for a fast, low-damage weapon that it gets reached all the time where with a harder hitting, slower weapon it is reached much less often. Thanks for the explanation. Looks like I will just go with the crowd and swing a piece of building around with my new enforcer.

i don't throw around suggestion like the following, but here goes, just for you eudmin:

if you want to be different from the majority of enfs, try making a pistol adventurer. you like will be much different that way. :p

Quote:

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Originally posted by Thyrra
in theory a weak fast weapon could hit enough times to make the average damage output the same, or higher, than a slow hard hitting weapon. the problem is that there are almost no weapons like this. riders are the closest thing people on these boards have found to feel worthwhile.

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Excluding the min damage bug............. then not in theory, but in practice.

If you go check a range of weapons and work out their damage per second they are, give or take a little, identical. I can't remember the value but its something like Damage per Second = QL of Weapon / 2. This holds true for guns, swords, hammers, clubs etc etc. It must be the basic formula FC used to set weapon effectiveness.

e.g. QL200 hammer does up to 906 damage in just over 9 seconds (DPS=100) QL199 stun-baton does 177 in approx 2 seconds (DPS=88 *but* higher min damage which probably accounts for the difference)

What does vary is that some weapons have specials and some dont (which add to the damage output) and that some weapons need far more IP for the same damage output.

What a shame the min damage bug exists, looks to me like just about all weapons would be theoretically viable.

Yep.

Spot on.

Imagine like E-Blades! 251(250)dmg on 1.25/1.4 (2.65)
Better than a hammer, does energy damage too, and has specials - Too bad the way AC works.

Or a katana, 15-306, on a combined total of 2.8 secs - Thats nice damage over time also.

*Change the AC System FunCom*

:p

if they don't want to change the ac system, they could implement the same damge/time to ql ratio curve on weapons as they have on mobs.

that could make help even things out, and we would still have some weapon out there that would be useless.

they could have many choices for us that we could not, or would not, use. i think they derive some sordid pleasure from things not going the way players want, but rather the way FC 'envisions' them to go.

Quote:

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Originally posted by MiKEBoND
Yep.

Spot on.

Imagine like E-Blades! 251(250)dmg on 1.25/1.4 (2.65)
Better than a hammer, does energy damage too, and has specials - Too bad the way AC works.

Or a katana, 15-306, on a combined total of 2.8 secs - Thats nice damage over time also.

*Change the AC System FunCom*

:p

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I liked E-blades as well, but what about the sneak attack? have you EVER made a successfull sneak attack? anyone? I know I've never made it!

Take a look at the "skills chart" on Anarchylore.
If I've done the math correctly, looks like you'd save about 180k IP by going the 2hb route.

Just goto the AG damage calculator and lower the max damage of the weapon by about 180-200(represents the ruoghly 500-600 damage taken off by ACs). If your attack rating was much higer than the value they use(something like 1000) then you could probably subtract 150-170 from the max. I also lower the attack speed/recharge the amount that it should be(calculator currently does this wrong). Basically this means that any weapons with a low min dam and a max around 250 or less is unuseable past lvl 130.

The game favors weapons with around 2.5 atk and 3 sec recharge and high max damages or a minimum very close to the maximum damge.
This is why riders are so good.
Another good weapon is the tool of torturing...You will always hit for 2 different damages. The normal or the crit(which happens about 1/2 the time on MAs).
Also Once byom blades are fixed the best combo would probably be a Byom in main hand then a Rider in off hand.

id like to add on this thread that high dmg slow weapon seem to keep aggro on u easyer (like the nts) evne if the smaller hit other are hiting for more dmg in 10 hits ur 2 big hits keep better aggro.

Wow this thread is old.

I'm going to close it, as it may have some really old and no longer relevant information in it. I don't want someone to start reading it, thinking that Byom blades are still a common way to go :)

If you need more specific information, please start a new thread on the subject.