Sunday, July 13, 2008

Attack Groups

Today, a guild member asked me to join a group to take on an Elite. So I checked and found that the group already have enough attack and damage. When I posted the stats needed, he was more than willing to learn and asked me how to get the stats. I felt that what I explained is probably useful for everyone, so I'll post this entry and perhaps elaborate on it.

First thing first, when you form a group to kill Elites or Champions, the purpose is usually to get a drop. You are also using not only your stam, but those of your guild mates. As such, I strongly recommend getting a Find Item buff at the least, and possibly even a Four Leaf buff.

Now, how do you determine the creature stats? Well, if you're already in the same room as the creature, you can view it. Otherwise, this link provides the stats for most creatures (if not all) : http://fallenswordguide.com/creatures/

First stats, you must be able to hit the creature, so the group needs attack. Note that the leader's buff counts towards the group attack, so it will be nice to get a DC buff which reduces the creature defense.
1. Group Attack >= Creature Defense * 1.1053

Your damage needs to be at least higher than creature's armor, otherwise, you'll be doing only 1 damage when you hit.
2. Number of hits = Ceiling [(Group Damage - Creature Armor * 1.1053) / (Creature HP * 1.053)]

If you can kill the creature in 1 hit, then that's all the stats you need. However, if you need more than 1 hit, then you need to survive an attack. You can have either defense which means avoid getting hit, or armor which reduces the damage you take.
3a. Defense > Creature Attack * 1.1053
3b. Armor > Creature Damage * 1.1053

You only need defense or armor, not both.

Now, you can view your group stats if your guild has the Military Advisor structure. Otherwise, the group stats is the sum of the group leader's stats, and 20% of the stats of every other member. Note that the group stats is dynamic, and is the stats of the member at the time of the attack.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Value of Wither

I had questioned myself on the value of doubler 4 months ago. At that time, I was still 1-hitting, and Wither had no value there. Now that I have past the stage of 1-hitting (it stops at level 186), I had been getting Wither buffs. But what's the value of wither?

Without wither, I'll need 2 hits to kill a creature. With wither, when it activates, I kill the creature in 1 hit. A level 150 wither gives a 30% chance of activation. Is it worth getting a higher level wither? Does a level 155 wither make a big difference? Does the level 350 wither potion make a big difference?

If you face 10 creature without wither, you'd use an average of 20 stam. With a level 150 wither, on average, 3 of the 10 creature will require only 1 hit, while 7 of the 10 creature will require 2 hits, making a total of 17 hits. So the average hit per creature will be 1.7 hits.

The true value of wither is a little more complicated, since telling you the average hit still does not translate to something easy to measure and comparable to Adept Learner or Librarian.

Now, consider the case where you face an average of 3 creatures in a room on average. Without wither, you'd use 7 stam to kill 3 creatures (6 to hit and 1 to move). With a level 150 wither, you'd use an average of 5.1 stam (1.7 hit per creature as discussed earlier) to hit, and 1 stam to move into the room. Your effective gain is (7/6.1)-1. Expressed as percentage, that is 14.8%. This makes it comparable to getting a level 148 Librarian buff.

In terms of stam, that means if you used 1000 stam, you have gotten an additional 148 stam worth of xp and gold. This is like getting a level 148 librarian AND a level 148 merchant together!

Average \ Wither 150 155 160 165 170 175 350
0.5 8.1% 8.4% 8.7% 9.0% 9.3% 9.6% 21.2%
1.0 11.1% 11.5% 11.9% 12.4% 12.8% 13.2% 30.4%
1.5 12.7% 13.2% 13.6% 14.1% 14.6% 15.1% 35.6%
2.0 13.6% 14.2% 14.7% 15.2% 15.7% 16.3% 38.9%
2.5 14.3% 14.8% 15.4% 15.9% 16.5% 17.1% 41.2%
3.0 14.8% 15.3% 15.9% 16.5% 17.1% 17.6% 42.9%
3.5 15.1% 15.7% 16.3% 16.9% 17.5% 18.1% 44.1%
4.0 15.4% 16.0% 16.6% 17.2% 17.8% 18.4% 45.2%
4.5 15.6% 16.2% 16.8% 17.4% 18.1% 18.7% 46.0%
5.0 15.8% 16.4% 17.0% 17.6% 18.3% 18.9% 46.7%

Since everything is a percentage, its value really depend on the stam you'll be using. If you need to pay 30k more for a level 170 buff than a level 150 buff, and will be using 1000 stam. Assuming an average of 3 creatures in each room, you'll need to ask yourself will you pay 30k for (17.1-14.8 = 2.3) 23 stam?

With the blog entry on doubler, I had maintain a list of buffers. But really, I am just repeating what others had done better, so instead of listing the buffers here, I encourage players to use this tool provided by the Fallen Empire guild to find players selling the wither buffs (or any other buffs) :
http://fallen-empire.wzarlon.dk/find-buffers.asp?sorting=buffprice&skillbuffID=18