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guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob

litany of gulps posted:

How much HP do you typically run around with? I wouldn't personally mess with having a million tiny HoTs, but nothing changes how frail you feel as much as adjusting your HP. I've got some buddies that run around with 3-3.5k HP in full purple gear, which may make you have a big damage e-peen, but also means you die as easily and quickly as someone in greens.

First up: my figures are generally for full purples, we've mostly all had full custom gear for a while.

1970 HP is standard dungeon glass cannon build. There are a few fights (like Recursia) where a tank piece is nice but usually if you are dying with 1970 HP in a dungeon it's because you are not executing properly.

I run with one tank piece when questing, which puts me somewhere around 3.2k. This is not glass cannon, this is padding you out with some extra survivability.

I cannot imagine questing with more HP than that and I am confused by the idea that 3.5k HP strikes you as too little.

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Exmond
May 31, 2007

Writing is fun!

guppy posted:

First up: my figures are generally for full purples, we've mostly all had full custom gear for a while.

1970 HP is standard dungeon glass cannon build. There are a few fights (like Recursia) where a tank piece is nice but usually if you are dying with 1970 HP in a dungeon it's because you are not executing properly.

I run with one tank piece when questing, which puts me somewhere around 3.2k. This is not glass cannon, this is padding you out with some extra survivability.

I cannot imagine questing with more HP than that and I am confused by the idea that 3.5k HP strikes you as too little.

What if you dont have a full 10.4 purple set?

Variable Haircut
Jan 25, 2012

Exmond posted:

What if you dont have a full 10.4 purple set?

Some suggestions for the goon deprived end game:
1 - Check the AH for cheap green talismans with the stats you want.
2 - Check the AH for a primary blue weapon with the stats you want, or a blue weapon toolkit and blue glyph kit.
3 - There are welfare purple items (10.1 custom) for sale from the Envoy of Ca' d'Oro, which you get a free one of each when you complete each issues 6, 7, and 8 for the first time.
4 - If you are truly insane, you can get a cheap 10.0 weapon from PvP. Only downside is you can't upgrade it outside of pvp, but it is still better than nothing.

I'm sure there are other options, those are just a couple suggestions that shouldn't require much investment.

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe

guppy posted:

First up: my figures are generally for full purples, we've mostly all had full custom gear for a while.

1970 HP is standard dungeon glass cannon build. There are a few fights (like Recursia) where a tank piece is nice but usually if you are dying with 1970 HP in a dungeon it's because you are not executing properly.

I run with one tank piece when questing, which puts me somewhere around 3.2k. This is not glass cannon, this is padding you out with some extra survivability.

I cannot imagine questing with more HP than that and I am confused by the idea that 3.5k HP strikes you as too little.

Get some perspective here, this is responding a guy that is dying to combat during The Last Train to Cairo and wondering about holding up in elite dungeons.

There are going to be mistakes in execution, and there's nothing more frustrating than getting one shotted by a mechanic you've never seen or happen to have trouble with, or getting an add while fighting and dying because you simply can't deal with more than one enemy at a time.

I've always felt strongly impaired by trying to work heals of any sort into a damage build, although as others have attested, that's not the only viewpoint.

If you wear nothing but attack rating gear, you're gonna be sitting at about 2k hp. Swapping a minor talisman to HP is going to put you in the 3k range. I'm at 4.2k with just HP on my neck piece. If you're in greens and blues, probably more like 3.5k.

Anyway, point is, you can get a lot of HP without trading more than a single piece of gear and maybe a signet. The DPS gains/losses from these tradeoffs usually aren't huge. How much are you honestly losing from one minor talisman? From one major talisman? Quick comparison in game tells me that one minor would be about 5% less damage and a major about 10%.

There are plenty of situations where 10% or 15% of my overall damage output is basically irrelevant if I am genuinely two or three times more durable. There are also situations where I likely will make a mistake in execution and being able to walk away from those mistakes means I can continue to deal damage, versus spectating from the spawn point.

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob

litany of gulps posted:

Get some perspective here, this is responding a guy that is dying to combat during The Last Train to Cairo and wondering about holding up in elite dungeons.

There are going to be mistakes in execution, and there's nothing more frustrating than getting one shotted by a mechanic you've never seen or happen to have trouble with, or getting an add while fighting and dying because you simply can't deal with more than one enemy at a time.

I've always felt strongly impaired by trying to work heals of any sort into a damage build, although as others have attested, that's not the only viewpoint.

If you wear nothing but attack rating gear, you're gonna be sitting at about 2k hp. Swapping a minor talisman to HP is going to put you in the 3k range. I'm at 4.2k with just HP on my neck piece. If you're in greens and blues, probably more like 3.5k.

Anyway, point is, you can get a lot of HP without trading more than a single piece of gear and maybe a signet. The DPS gains/losses from these tradeoffs usually aren't huge. How much are you honestly losing from one minor talisman? From one major talisman? Quick comparison in game tells me that one minor would be about 5% less damage and a major about 10%.

There are plenty of situations where 10% or 15% of my overall damage output is basically irrelevant if I am genuinely two or three times more durable. There are also situations where I likely will make a mistake in execution and being able to walk away from those mistakes means I can continue to deal damage, versus spectating from the spawn point.

You misunderstand me. I'm replying to two separate threads of conversation here.

Regarding Moreau's position: I maintain that around 3k HP is fine for... basically any quest content. If you find something here and there where a bit more is useful, fine, so be it. In 99+% of cases I think you're better off doing the damage than having more health. Greens will give you much more, I think they generally have some health built in; at that point all DPS pieces might be fine, since you'll still end up with a bunch of health. It's been a while so I may be misremembering. I also think that build could stand a lot of improvement, but I'm also one of those people who uses whatever weapons are good together instead of whatever I feel like. You can generally get through the quest stuff with a suboptimal build, though.

My comment about purples and glass cannon vs. not is about you:

litany of gulps posted:

How much HP do you typically run around with? I wouldn't personally mess with having a million tiny HoTs, but nothing changes how frail you feel as much as adjusting your HP. I've got some buddies that run around with 3-3.5k HP in full purple gear, which may make you have a big damage e-peen, but also means you die as easily and quickly as someone in greens.

That you think 3-3.5k HP in full purples is low HP boggles my mind.

Moreau
Jul 26, 2009

I usually run with 4-5k in health.

I've only made it as far as Egypt, so most story content feels very easy, but as I've been working through Issue 6 content - I've been dying frequently. I usually die in the Pumping Station if I attract more than one group, I can't defeat the mid-level boss and his rocket launching buddy on the Last Train, the Atenist patrols are bad news, the Quantum golem in the Scrapyard breaks me down, etc.

At the moment, I don't really understand gear - the difference between DPS, Heal, and Tank gear (or even how to identify gear as such), which Glyphs I should access... I'm a big old bag of "I Dont Know".

I have started getting signet rewards from quests, but I haven't applied any yet as I don't want to waste what could be a good signet on a bad piece of gear.

I'll work towards picking up the AR and Blade skills mentioned - they do seem like they good pickups.

orcane
Jun 13, 2012

Fun Shoe
IIRC you end up with like 4500 HP in full QL10 green DPS talismans, there's no reason to ever wear tank greens for missions at least.

And running elites in full greens is fine to gear up to a set of blues, unless they're Facility or Slaughterhouse.

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe

Moreau posted:

At the moment, I don't really understand gear - the difference between DPS, Heal, and Tank gear (or even how to identify gear as such), which Glyphs I should access... I'm a big old bag of "I Dont Know".

Greens work a little differently than other items in that they'll have two stats, while blues and purples only have one stat.

Tank gear at green quality is mostly HP with a small amount of attack rating. At blue and purple quality, it's a lot of HP and nothing else.

DPS gear at green quality is a balance of HP and attack rating, or pure attack rating for blue and purple quality. Attack rating just directly increases the damage your abilities do.

Heal gear at green quality is a balance of HP and heal rating, or pure heal rating for blue and purple quality. Heal rating directly increases the healing that your abilities do.

Generally people wear 6 pieces of DPS gear and 1 piece of HP gear, for a regular damage dealing build.

Glyphs are cheap and easily replaced early game, and they provide other stats, like block or crit or hit. If you want to boost your damage output, hit and penetration are probably your most important stats to focus on.

Signets can be combined in sets of 10 to make higher quality types, so even green signets can often have a lot of value. Some signet types are subpar and don't cost much. Most of the minor signets that boost specific types of damage only cost a few thousand pax for a green, for example. Major talisman signets are expensive in general, because there aren't many types of them. Head and weapon signets vary wildly in price and effect.

guppy posted:

That you think 3-3.5k HP in full purples is low HP boggles my mind.

It is, though. That means you've devoted one minor talisman to HP. That is the lowest amount of HP you can have without running the actual baseline default amount of HP. It's also about 1k less than the typical hit you'll take from effects in a nightmare dungeon.

If you wear one minor HP piece, you trade about 5% of your damage for 50-75% more HP over the baseline. If you wear one major HP piece, you trade about 10% of your damage for 75-110% more HP over the baseline. As a damage dealer, it is incomprehensible to imagine situations where having twice as many hitpoints as you would otherwise have is worth doing 10% less damage?

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob

litany of gulps posted:

It is, though. That means you've devoted one minor talisman to HP. That is the lowest amount of HP you can have without running the actual baseline default amount of HP. It's also about 1k less than the typical hit you'll take from effects in a nightmare dungeon.

If you wear one minor HP piece, you trade about 5% of your damage for 50-75% more HP over the baseline. If you wear one major HP piece, you trade about 10% of your damage for 75-110% more HP over the baseline. As a damage dealer, it is incomprehensible to imagine situations where having twice as many hitpoints as you would otherwise have is worth doing 10% less damage?

You're now talking about dungeons, and Nightmares at that, which changes things a bit. But either way, yes, I stand by my advice.

If you are going back to talking about questing, more HP is just not necessary. Slotting a minor talisman is plenty.

In Nightmare dungeons, though, maximizing DPS is the name of the game, and a 10% damage difference is enormous. Nightmare DPS is so important that healers and tanks often build for it. Sometimes this is because Funcom sucks at administering games, and encounters are severely overtuned; other times it's because high DPS allows you to skip some otherwise burdensome mechanics. For example, in an NM group, if you have to deal with Ur-Draug's night phase, it is because your group is extremely bad. And skipping it is important, because the NM night phase is not very well designed and can easily wipe your group. Furthermore, many NM mechanics hit so hard that 4500 HP won't save you anyway. There are also some fringe cases with less obvious benefits that are still nice -- for example, the faster you kill... is it Flagellatrix in Hell Eternal?, the less time your runner has to tango with the tyrants without loving up the kiting and getting waxed.

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


litany of gulps posted:

It is, though. That means you've devoted one minor talisman to HP. That is the lowest amount of HP you can have without running the actual baseline default amount of HP. It's also about 1k less than the typical hit you'll take from effects in a nightmare dungeon.

If you're taking a hit from anything in a nightmare dungeon as a dps it's because either you or your tank hosed up. The DPS should never be getting hit by any regular attacks ever and most AoE's will one shot you no matter how much HP you slot.

Edit: Granted there are some fights where you'll get a gimmick that does a hit to the entire party but those often won't kill you at 3k hp. Hell 1950 hp will keep you up in most of those situations.

orcane
Jun 13, 2012

Fun Shoe

guppy posted:

You're now talking about dungeons, and Nightmares at that, which changes things a bit. But either way, yes, I stand by my advice.

If you are going back to talking about questing, more HP is just not necessary. Slotting a minor talisman is plenty.

In Nightmare dungeons, though, maximizing DPS is the name of the game, and a 10% damage difference is enormous. Nightmare DPS is so important that healers and tanks often build for it. Sometimes this is because Funcom sucks at administering games, and encounters are severely overtuned; other times it's because high DPS allows you to skip some otherwise burdensome mechanics. For example, in an NM group, if you have to deal with Ur-Draug's night phase, it is because your group is extremely bad. And skipping it is important, because the NM night phase is not very well designed and can easily wipe your group. Furthermore, many NM mechanics hit so hard that 4500 HP won't save you anyway. There are also some fringe cases with less obvious benefits that are still nice -- for example, the faster you kill... is it Flagellatrix in Hell Eternal?, the less time your runner has to tango with the tyrants without loving up the kiting and getting waxed.
Then again her damage reduction shield is up like what, 90% of the time? You can't make her die that much faster with full glass cannon over someone with 3500 HP even if you wanted to :(

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe

Len posted:

If you're taking a hit from anything in a nightmare dungeon as a dps it's because either you or your tank hosed up. The DPS should never be getting hit by any regular attacks ever and most AoE's will one shot you no matter how much HP you slot.

guppy posted:

Furthermore, many NM mechanics hit so hard that 4500 HP won't save you anyway.

This is the standard reasoning, although I've never noticed it to align with reality. I've walked away from all sorts of one-shot mechanics just by virtue of the fact that the NM ones often do about 4-4.5k damage.

If I'm questing in one of the open air nightmare areas, like the hell invaded villages or the Roman baths, sometimes I even use Forged in Fire! I'd rather give up a small % of my DPS to guarantee that I can fight and win if I get an unexpected add, because I probably will.

In a game that's all about versatility, I don't understand how people get locked into such rigid mindsets. A single mistake in your rotation or picking a single bad passive can cut your DPS by more than wearing a major with HP on it, and using an HP major can allow you to walk away from all sorts of things that would otherwise be disaster, but this is unthinkable.

KaneTW
Dec 2, 2011

Back when I played skipping Ur-Draug night phase wasn't common at all :(

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe

KaneTW posted:

Back when I played skipping Ur-Draug night phase wasn't common at all :(

Honestly I don't expect that it is even now, but who knows.

Variable Haircut
Jan 25, 2012

litany of gulps posted:

Honestly I don't expect that it is even now, but who knows.

When we were running NM Polaris and had a night phase, we wiped and tried again. It is possible to dps him down before the transition. This was also a group that was pretty heavy with 10.5.5's and stupid expensive signets, so other people might have a different experience.

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob
Let me put it this way: there is a reason most of the player base, including the game developers themselves, ain't rockin' Warchitect swag.

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


litany of gulps posted:

This is the standard reasoning, although I've never noticed it to align with reality. I've walked away from all sorts of one-shot mechanics just by virtue of the fact that the NM ones often do about 4-4.5k damage.

If I'm questing in one of the open air nightmare areas, like the hell invaded villages or the Roman baths, sometimes I even use Forged in Fire! I'd rather give up a small % of my DPS to guarantee that I can fight and win if I get an unexpected add, because I probably will.

In a game that's all about versatility, I don't understand how people get locked into such rigid mindsets. A single mistake in your rotation or picking a single bad passive can cut your DPS by more than wearing a major with HP on it, and using an HP major can allow you to walk away from all sorts of things that would otherwise be disaster, but this is unthinkable.

Are you talking about nightmare mobs in quest zones or nightmare dungeons. Because one of those if you're getting hit by one shot mechanics like I said you're doing it wrong. You shouldn't be getting hit by literally anything in nightmares and that fraction of a DPS means the difference between a night phase and no night phase.

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe

HughGRect posted:

When we were running NM Polaris and had a night phase, we wiped and tried again. It is possible to dps him down before the transition. This was also a group that was pretty heavy with 10.5.5's and stupid expensive signets, so other people might have a different experience.

Seriously? Your decked out group just suicided rather than face the night phase? How many times would you typically do this?

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob
I don't remember wiping on purpose but we also did not generally see a night phase at all.

Eventually you reach the point where you aren't even close to a night phase -- we actually wiped once or twice because we DPSed him so fast that he'd pull in and shatter the rocks at the same time and we were not appropriately positioned to hide in the rubble, which is in fact possible but you have to position yourself so that when you get pulled in the rubble stops you -- but when you're just getting to that point every little bit matters. And an across-the-board group DPS cut of 30% -- remember, there are 3 of you -- is a big deal.

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe

guppy posted:

I don't remember wiping on purpose but we also did not generally see a night phase at all.

Eventually you reach the point where you aren't even close to a night phase -- we actually wiped once or twice because we DPSed him so fast that he'd pull in and shatter the rocks at the same time and we were not appropriately positioned to hide in the rubble, which is in fact possible but you have to position yourself so that when you get pulled in the rubble stops you -- but when you're just getting to that point every little bit matters. And an across-the-board group DPS cut of 30% -- remember, there are 3 of you -- is a big deal.

I don't think anyone is questioning the idea of it being possible to kill him before he does the night phase.

I think your math is a bit fuzzy, as well. If you have 3 DPS players doing 2000 DPS each, and each of them gives up 5% of his damage (which is about what you'd lose going from one HP piece in the minor slot to one HP piece in the major slot, or from no HP piece to one HP piece in the minor slot) then your group's damage would go from 6000 DPS to 5700 DPS (5% loss). Perhaps this damage is a big deal, but then again maybe the group with more hitpoints doesn't commit seppuku when they miss their own made up fight DPS benchmarks.

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob
You're right about my math being wrong, it's still a 5%/10% drop if 5%/10% is the difference.

You are again, though, responding to something I didn't say. I didn't say that to argue that it was possible to skip the night phase, that's not under contention. I said it to clarify that you aren't necessarily always on the razor's edge of making it or not.

EDIT: At this point I've stated my position, a lot. I'm just going to leave it at that.

Variable Haircut
Jan 25, 2012

litany of gulps posted:

Seriously? Your decked out group just suicided rather than face the night phase? How many times would you typically do this?

Once a week, running daily. Sometimes wiping less.

Edit: The reason we preferred to kill him before the night phase was not because we wanted so stroke our e-peens. The biggest reason is to avoid the RNG that is night phase, so much can go wrong when the fog comes in that can't be controlled or predicted. Ur-draug can blow up a pillar, he can sometimes see through pillars and insta-gib, the adds can zerg rush and kill.

So yes, if the group has the ability to avoid that RNG poo poo show we push buttons hard and kill it quick.

Variable Haircut fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Aug 5, 2014

Marx
Oct 24, 2003

This was the greatest day of my life. Finally I could stand on my soapbox and tell you American scum that you got exactly what you deserved.
P.S. Sorry Osama that Americans were not compassionate enough to take you in peacefully. You deserved better.
Frankly, every group I've ever been in would probably kick a dps dude running with more than a minor talismans worth of HP. In a NM, If I'm getting hit that probably means either the tank hosed up or they suck and I need subtlety or something. Some fights, sure, extra hp helps - but like 95% of them don't need it.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

so what exactly is a tank build for nightmare dungeons?

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob

tuluk posted:

so what exactly is a tank build for nightmare dungeons?

That depends on who you ask. Historically tanks have maximized survivability, but it turns out healers tend to overheal an awful lot, so many endgame tanks have started gearing and building decks for damage, with enough survivability to not die.

Or are you asking about a spec? Let us know what weapons you want and we can probably provide one along one line or the other. (If you are new, I suggest emphasizing survivability. I think others will back me up.) Generally tanks will use some combination of Blades, Chaos, Hammer, or apparently Fist now?

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe

tuluk posted:

so what exactly is a tank build for nightmare dungeons?

Some tanks wear huge amounts of HP gear, like completely head to toe HP and defensive stats, but they can't hold aggro well.

Some tanks heal themselves, and hold aggro incredibly well but can't handle burst damage well without good support from their DPS.

Some tanks also DPS, presumably in response to their inability to hold aggro against DPS going with extreme glass cannon builds as a cultural standard.

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


litany of gulps posted:

Some tanks wear huge amounts of HP gear, like completely head to toe HP and defensive stats, but they can't hold aggro well.

Some tanks heal themselves, and hold aggro incredibly well but can't handle burst damage well without good support from their DPS.

Some tanks also DPS, presumably in response to their inability to hold aggro against DPS going with extreme glass cannon builds as a cultural standard.

I tank with 9.5 hp and am specced very defensively. I don't know when the last time I lost aggro that wasn't due to me missing an aggrowipe ability was. My dps regularly run with the bare minimum hp they can usually 1950. You know how many die from things that aren't standing in poo poo? None.

You have a flawed argument. You do not need HP in dungeons if you have a tank that isn't a sack of poo poo. You do not need HP in dungeons if you know how to not stand in poo poo. If you're failing at not standing in poo poo you need to step your game up not slot more hp.

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob
Threat is not exactly difficult to hold in this game if you know what you're doing.

I wear mostly tank gear with a few pieces of DPS gear, I don't remember the exact mix.

Tanks aiming to maximize DPS are generally not about threat but rather are about finishing the fight faster for the reasons we discussed above. Rhan is your go-to guy on that here if you want to build that way.

quantumfoam
Dec 25, 2003

guppy posted:

That depends on who you ask. Historically tanks have maximized survivability, but it turns out healers tend to overheal an awful lot, so many endgame tanks have started gearing and building decks for damage, with enough survivability to not die.

Or are you asking about a spec? Let us know what weapons you want and we can probably provide one along one line or the other. (If you are new, I suggest emphasizing survivability. I think others will back me up.) Generally tanks will use some combination of Blades, Chaos, Hammer, or apparently Fist now?

i am nowhere near ready to do nightmare dungeons, thanks for the offer though.

Tank & healer terms keep getting thrown around.
Since secret world doesn't do dedicated classes....I was curious how people defined tank + healer builds,
and how that how dps/survivalibity matters for tank + healer builds.

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob

tuluk posted:

i am nowhere near ready to do nightmare dungeons, thanks for the offer though.

Tank & healer terms keep getting thrown around.
Since secret world doesn't do dedicated classes....I was curious how people defined tank + healer builds,
and how that how dps/survivalibity matters for tank + healer builds.

Okay. You can tank with just about anything early on but I strongly recommend the weapons I named.

There are passives that increase your threat generation (Agitator and Fuel to the Fire). Starting out I suggest using both, though you can drop FttF later. You definitely need at least Agitator to tank. There are abilities that make it easier (Crimson Theatre and Reality Fracture are nice to have as a beginning tank) but your goal is to generate more threat than your DPS however you can.

To me, survivability + holding threat are a tank's first priorities. If you are comfortably ahead of the game on both, you can start thinking about more DPS-oriented stuff or utility abilities. Interrupts will become important in NMs but are not so big for you now.

Once you get to endgame you can start to blur the lines -- healtanking and other tricks like that. Early on, though, you tend towards MMO orthodoxy.

EDIT: I wrote a big tanking post like a month ago, here http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3552793&pagenumber=117&perpage=40#post431953663 Don't miss the commentary and corrections after.

guppy fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Aug 6, 2014

Exmond
May 31, 2007

Writing is fun!
So as a person who did Nightmares way back when and I have some 10.0 purple gear, how do I gear up? I have done issue 6,7,8 and 9 for some purple gear but am still using a blue pistol nad a green auxiliary. How much hit do you need for nightmares? (I used to heal them so hit didn't matter)

guppy
Sep 21, 2004

sting like a byob

Exmond posted:

So as a person who did Nightmares way back when and I have some 10.0 purple gear, how do I gear up? I have done issue 6,7,8 and 9 for some purple gear but am still using a blue pistol nad a green auxiliary. How much hit do you need for nightmares? (I used to heal them so hit didn't matter)

Black Bullion. Fuckloads of Black Bullion. Which means more Nightmares than you ever thought possible.

If your purple gear is not custom, then you will need to buy new custom gear from your faction vendors. This gear can be upgraded with upgrade kits, also from faction vendors. It is super grindy and really dumb. You will also want to craft Nightwatch glyphs for the custom gear you buy. Those glyphs will also need to be upgrade with kits purchased with Black Bullion, because Funcom sucks.

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe

Len posted:

I tank with 9.5 hp and am specced very defensively. I don't know when the last time I lost aggro that wasn't due to me missing an aggrowipe ability was. My dps regularly run with the bare minimum hp they can usually 1950. You know how many die from things that aren't standing in poo poo? None.

You have a flawed argument. You do not need HP in dungeons if you have a tank that isn't a sack of poo poo. You do not need HP in dungeons if you know how to not stand in poo poo. If you're failing at not standing in poo poo you need to step your game up not slot more hp.

You know you've got a no aggro tank if he has 15k HP. You know you've got some sort of hybrid if they've got 8-10k HP. That hybrid could be heals or it could be DPS, but just be aware that the DPS version is Stockholmed into having to defend even their meager accumulation of life from lunatics. The healtanks have probably been burned for witches. Possibly pressed under stones like that guy from that Hawthorne story.

DO NOT STAND IN THE poo poo, CITIZEN

Mercurius
May 4, 2004

Amp it up.

guppy posted:

Black Bullion. Fuckloads of Black Bullion. Which means more Nightmares than you ever thought possible.

If your purple gear is not custom, then you will need to buy new custom gear from your faction vendors. This gear can be upgraded with upgrade kits, also from faction vendors. It is super grindy and really dumb. You will also want to craft Nightwatch glyphs for the custom gear you buy. Those glyphs will also need to be upgrade with kits purchased with Black Bullion, because Funcom sucks.
Yeah, last I looked as someone in mostly 10.1 gear (about half custom) it would take me around 35 days of running 18s every day to upgrade everything to 10.4.4. :effort:

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


litany of gulps posted:

You know you've got a no aggro tank if he has 15k HP. You know you've got some sort of hybrid if they've got 8-10k HP. That hybrid could be heals or it could be DPS, but just be aware that the DPS version is Stockholmed into having to defend even their meager accumulation of life from lunatics. The healtanks have probably been burned for witches. Possibly pressed under stones like that guy from that Hawthorne story.

DO NOT STAND IN THE poo poo, CITIZEN

I can tank and hold aggro against 10.4/4 using 14k hp. Aggro is not hard to handle. Stop being bad.

Fewd
Mar 22, 2007

#vmp #opsec #kolmiloikka #happoo

Mercurius posted:

Yeah, last I looked as someone in mostly 10.1 gear (about half custom) it would take me around 35 days of running 18s every day to upgrade everything to 10.4.4. :effort:

There's no need to limit yourself to 18s only. HE, SH and Ankh are all good bullions and quite doable. At least as long as you stay away from LFG channel and do them with #noobmares instead.

RE: tankchat
I've both healed and tanked a lot lately, and from what I've seen, around 8k seems to be the sweet spot for tank health assuming he has otherwise proper gear. If a tank dies with that, then either the healer screwed up or the tank has a horrible build item/skillwise, like stacking magical protection instead of blocking and not understanding when to use defensive cooldowns.

Recently I was leeching for this one 24 or 30 group that had a tank with only 6.2-6.3k health. I dunno how he did it but he was extremely survivable and probably one of the easiest to heal tanks I've met lately. But I guess going even that low is okay as long as your stuff is otherwise solid. Personally I'll stick at bit over 8k, for healer comfort if nothing else.

Frankenstein Dad
Jul 4, 2008

Dad of Frankenstein
There are two main reasons why everyone is so hype about maximising their DPS. They both stem from it resulting in shorter fights. Firstly, shorter fights mean less mechanics to deal with, thus less opportunities to die. Sometimes high DPS can mean avoiding the key mechanics of a fight entirely. Like the second to last boss in NM Polaris, the squid guy. He has annoying add phases and invulnerability phases. If you kill him fast enough, you don't have to deal with either and are less likely to die. Also, there are honestly a lot more fights where non-tanks can avoid taking significant damage without much difficulty than fights where taking a lot of damage is hard to avoid, so extra hp is usually unnecessary. Fights where extra hp is desirable for non-tanks are simply uncommon. It probably averages out to around one per dungeon. Facility is the exception due to its dungeon wide damage-on-glance mechanic.

Secondly, shorter fights are desirable because the gearing process for the endgame is incredibly grindy. To get to full 10.4/10.5 gear, you will need to repeat the same dungeons hundreds of times. Naturally, the content eventually gets stale and most people come to want to get through it as quickly as possible.

So yeah, you can gear/build however you want. I'm just explaining the reasons WHY the culture around NMs places so much importance on DPS. I guess the third reason is that it's just fun to do things like 5000 damage per second as a healer and wave your e-peen around. It's pretty difficult to quantify and brag about how often extra hp saves your life. Conversely, measuring DPS is pretty straightforward.

I should also emphasise that this entire post only applies to nightmare dungeon content.

Frankenstein Dad fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Aug 6, 2014

Mercurius
May 4, 2004

Amp it up.

Fewd posted:

There's no need to limit yourself to 18s only. HE, SH and Ankh are all good bullions and quite doable. At least as long as you stay away from LFG channel and do them with #noobmares instead.

RE: tankchat
I've both healed and tanked a lot lately, and from what I've seen, around 8k seems to be the sweet spot for tank health assuming he has otherwise proper gear. If a tank dies with that, then either the healer screwed up or the tank has a horrible build item/skillwise, like stacking magical protection instead of blocking and not understanding when to use defensive cooldowns.

Recently I was leeching for this one 24 or 30 group that had a tank with only 6.2-6.3k health. I dunno how he did it but he was extremely survivable and probably one of the easiest to heal tanks I've met lately. But I guess going even that low is okay as long as your stuff is otherwise solid. Personally I'll stick at bit over 8k, for healer comfort if nothing else.
Doing additional dungeons may reduce the number of days to get stuff but it doesn't reduce the total amount of time spent grinding dungeons for bullion at all.

Fewd
Mar 22, 2007

#vmp #opsec #kolmiloikka #happoo

Mercurius posted:

Doing additional dungeons may reduce the number of days to get stuff but it doesn't reduce the total amount of time spent grinding dungeons for bullion at all.

Maybe so, it does add some variety though which is important on not getting burned out. Also HE and SH give out more bullions that 18 dungeons. I think it was 15 bb per HE/SH vs 10 bb per 18 dungeon. Might remember that wrong.

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Marx
Oct 24, 2003

This was the greatest day of my life. Finally I could stand on my soapbox and tell you American scum that you got exactly what you deserved.
P.S. Sorry Osama that Americans were not compassionate enough to take you in peacefully. You deserved better.

Frankenstein Dad posted:

To get to full 10.4/10.5 gear, you will need to repeat the same dungeons hundreds of times. Naturally, the content eventually gets stale and most people come to want to get through it as quickly as possible.

Yeah, I'm working my third guy through 10.4/.4 gearing. I'm not looking to experiment, I'm looking to do what works most expeditiously.

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