Attack Rate Cap - Problems in future Chaos + When Orbs outscale Medallions

SHORT DESCRIPTION OF ENTIRE POST FOR THOSE THAT DO NOT LIKE READING:

Once you have enough Ascension levels Orbs will become better than Medallions for DPS for almost every Defence.

I was originally complaining that the Ascension level at which parity in DPS between Orbs and Medallions is reached, was increased with this patch, which is wrong, I did not consider the massive Crit Damage increase to the DPS change.

For Rammsters according to my calculation, Orbs will be stronger at arround Ascension Level 430. (Calculation can be found HERE) I will still make Charts for other Defences, so we know when Orbs will be better than Medallions. For most Defences Orbs will be better at arround Ascension level 400-550.

The Problem I pointed out in original post (quoted below, with edits): Once we get to higher Chaos levels Orbs will reach the Attack Rate Cap that was introduced for many defences now. Same will Medallions at which point Orbs will become useless. This is in the future still, but Trendy needs to consider it now before introducing new Chaos Tiers.

Let's discuss it here

ORIGINAL POST WITH EDITS: (OBSOLETE AND CONTAINS ERRORS):

EDITED:

The quoted part of my original post, below is wrong due to an ERROR in my calculation, while the numbers are right, the ascension Levels you need to reach parity between Orbs and Medallions are different, due to the fact that I did not consider that with ascension levels not only the Defence Power but also the Defence Crit damage goes up rapidly, calculating in the massive increase in Crit Damage you gain, the correct ascension level, at which Orbs are as strong as Medallions and at which they start outscaling medallions is exactly between 429 and 430. After this point, due to the massive Crit damage increase, on most defences Orbs are stronger (excluding Flamethrower Towers).

Here my calculation file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nhjkol14l7fhxq3/ramster%20new.xlsx?dl=0

If anyone knows how the AttackRate is calculated by using the Defence Speed values then please tell me. I am going to expand the file and make it look good and usable for all Defences.

One last thing I need to mention, the Calculation does not take into account that some people might skill into the defence range which lowers the Defence Power and which will mean that it takes a few more Ascension levels to reach parity between Orbs and Medallions.

The Problem that will still occur is under this quote of my original post which I kept:

@exploreforce quote:

I was really excited for the new attackspeed rework, as I wanted to use my rammsters with an Defence Speed Orb, because they just are awesome like that.

I did the maths before and figured out that an Orb can outscale a Medallion once you put 6000 defence power into a certain defence from ascension power points. That means, before this update, once you reached ascension lvl 864, you were at the point where the power of an Orb and a Medallion with similar shards breaks even. After that the Orb slowly outscales the Medallion, as it should be, since Defence speed can only be achieved by having orbs and not medallions. This was actually something I thought is cool, as it makes Orbs viable for DPS over Medallions at some points, for those hardcore players like myself.

Now with the new cap in attackspeed everything regarding the orbs has changed however:

Before the update, with a C5 medallion (with Def Speed and def HP) together with a Defence Speed shard put a Rammster to an Attack Rate of 0,84. An C5 Orb with the same Shard put the Attack Rate to 0,57. This results in an Attack Rate difference of 0,27.

With the new Update, a Medallion reaches 1,05 Attack rate.

An Orb alone reaches an Attackrate of 0,95 and with the Defence Speed shard 0,75 which is the current cap of defence Speed.

The difference in attackrate here is 0,3

Now the problem is that with the Defence Speed Shard, without the cap in Attack Rate, the Attackrate would be at approximately 0,66 (did not do the propper maths now, so do not quote me on that), but it would be much lower than 0,75.

While one might think that this 0,03 increase in Attackrate difference will help speed up the process of making the Orb equal to the Medallion, due to the changes to the Attackdamage Scaling per Defence Power (was 6 attackdamage per 1 DP, now is 7). The Initial Gap between Medallion and Orbs was increased that much, that you now need at least 8720 defence power through Ascension points so the Orb breaks even with the medallion. This can be reached at an ascension lvl of 1308. So the gab was widened extremely here.

[......]

PS.: My calculations were done for Rammster Specific but in fact apply to all defences I have tried although the ascension level at which Orbs can have as much DPS (crits included in calculation) as Medallions for towers (also applies to Earthshatter) varies and is however always between 1100-1900. As a result right now Orbs need some love. Also who does not love rapid fire Defences?!

This Part of my concerns is still valid and Trendy needs to think of a way of changing this:

"Another Problem that we will see because of the attackspeed cap the way it was introduced right now is the scaling into C6,C7C8 etc.

If attackspeed rates on Orbs in future Chaos difficulties will increase the same way they did before, an orb in Chaos 6 would be arround 10000 defence speed, at which the Attack Rate of a Rammster would be roughly arround 0,75. A Chaos 7 Orb would already be useless due to that, as there is no Attack Rate increase any more by the time we reach it. This will make Orbs useless for future diffiuclties.

I want to bring this to the attention of Trendy, so this can be addressed.

Sorry for long post, here is a potato:

Within the next two days I will redesign my excel file that states DPS, Attack Damage etc. for all Towers, showing the difference of DPS and damage that Orbs and Medallions have, taking into account the Crits that can come more frequently and everything else, then I will also add Marks to the table and publish it in this thread, so you all can see the difference for each tower. Additionally I am thinking of adding some buttons to allow to chose specific shards for a defence to see which kind of DPS the tower would have with them. This should allow a good visible comparison between Orbs and Medallions to prove my point. Maybe it can also help finding solutions to make all the different Relics viable and change the way defences work and the role of certain defences with different relics.

I am thinking of something like this:

 PDT with Orb has massive attack rate and because of that attacks all targets on a lane and is good for killing low HP small Goblin targets, PDT with Medallion does massive overtime damage but hits fewer enemies because of the lower attack rate and is good for killing Orcs and such medium HP enemies, PDT with Mark does massive crits but no overtime damage and is amazing for killing sinlge targets with big health (bosses).

That is the ultimate goal I guess, but that's gonna take long.

they mentioned in patchnotes that the speedshard will no longer break the max defencespeed maby that helps or i got your point wrong ;D

@WarSlammer quote:

they mentioned in patchnotes that the speedshard will no longer break the max defencespeed maby that helps or i got your point wrong ;D

That was my point. I will put it simply:

Before patch Orbs were better than Medallions when you reach ascension lvl 864.

Now with different scaling of Defence Power, Orbs will not be better than Medallions until ascension lvl 1308.

Only a few hardcore players will ever reach that.

Additionally, if scaling stays the same and they introduce Chaos 6 and Chaos 7, the Chaos 6 Orbs will reach the max attackspeed. Chaos 7 Orbs will go over the max and so be useless.

Also Chaos 7 Medallions will have enough attackspeed stat to reach maximum attackspeed and have the same attackspeed as Orbs with more Defence Power, and that means Orbs will be completely useless.

If they do not change that they can remove orbs from the game.

@exploreforce quote:

@WarSlammer quote:

they mentioned in patchnotes that the speedshard will no longer break the max defencespeed maby that helps or i got your point wrong ;D

That was my point. I will put it simply:

Before patch Orbs were better than Medallions when you reach ascension lvl 864.

Now with different scaling of Defence Power, Orbs will not be better than Medallions until ascension lvl 1308.

Only a few hardcore players will ever reach that.

Additionally, if scaling stays the same and they introduce Chaos 6 and Chaos 7, the Chaos 6 Orbs will reach the max attackspeed. Chaos 7 Orbs will go over the max and so be useless.

Also Chaos 7 Medallions will have enough attackspeed stat to reach maximum attackspeed and have the same attackspeed as Orbs with more Defence Power, and that means Orbs will be completely useless.

If they do not change that they can remove orbs from the game.

Though are you very sure aobut your calculations, I just logged on to test this cause I was exceited to see how it changed, and with Orb(DCD and DP), 238k DPS, Medallion(DCD and Speed), 234k DPS, and I am only 413 ascension level, my orb is stronger than Medallion now. (This is specially tested with Ramster only)

Exact same shards.

Though I still agree with you that at high chaoses Orbs will lose their advantage over speed, as Medallions will also hit that 0.75 cap

Thanks for the info. Guess I'll be putting my orbs into long term storage for the time being.

I've now tested it over and over, Orb is still better than Medallion for me on Ramsters, Medallion without rate = 1.36 atkrate, Medallions with rate=1.02, Orb without rate=0.95, Orb with rate=0.75, Both are max c5 legendary perfect relics, My Orb beats the medallion with 4k dps due to my ascension and my ascension is 413 and not 1308. You might have forgotten to remove rate shard in one of your tests? or bad orb?

@Exo dus quote:

I've now tested it over and over, Orb is still better than Medallion for me on Ramsters, Medallion without rate = 1.36 atkrate, Medallions with rate=1.02, Orb without rate=0.95, Orb with rate=0.75, Both are max c5 legendary perfect relics, My Orb beats the medallion with 4k dps due to my ascension and my ascension is 413 and not 1308. You might have forgotten to remove rate shard in one of your tests? or bad orb?

I was not getting max values from my Medallion, as I have not had any legendary c5 medallions drop ever yet. rest of the values are the same I got. I am currently at ascension level 269 and my Orb has a 25k lower damage rate than my Medallion. I am using an Orb and Medallion with Def health Def Power and Def Speed, and using Vampirc empowerment, Destruction and attack rate shards on both.

I am currently working on an excel file that can do the maths completely exactly although I am currently stuck with the Attack Rate forumlar. Maybe someone can help me here, the forumlar people pointed out in the wiki for attack rate is:

APS(attacks per second) = bDS(Defense's base attacks per second) * ( 1 + ( DS (Defense Speed) - (Perfect Speed) ) * (Growth %) )

So this means

APS = 1/AttackRate

bDS= 1/Baseattackrate (1/3 for Rammster)

DS for an Orb should be 8644 I figure

But what is the Perfect Speed and the Growth. I wanna do the maths exactly and want to do it without having to manually enter the attack rates, so I can calculate what the difference would be if there was no AttackRate Cap.

I see why you had such a big diff on the Orb and medallion, you need to go pure dp dcd and rate for the maximum best dps values, orb will be better than medallion with dcd stats cause orb will crit more often than a medallion as it hits more times per second.

From just viewing an Orb dps on a dummy, I've seen it go up to 600k dps on t1.
What I noted from this update Crit is a lot better than HP now. Unless you really need the hp on certain towers.

@Exo dus quote:

I see why you had such a big diff on the Orb and medallion, you need to go pure dp dcd and rate for the maximum best dps values, orb will be better than medallion with dcd stats cause orb will crit more often than a medallion as it hits more times per second.

From just viewing an Orb dps on a dummy, I've seen it go up to 600k dps on t1.
What I noted from this update Crit is a lot better than HP now. Unless you really need the hp on certain towers.

Thank you a lot for your post. I have found an error in my calculation and edited the original post at the top.

The break even point for most defences is 429-430 Ascension levels right now. I did not put the new increased Crit damage values in my chart yesterday and was doing the calculation with the old crit damage values, this created a massive gap in average DPS. If you had 3% crit chance and no points in crit damage, then the break even point would be at 1308 Ascension levels.

If anyone is interested in the maths, I made a very bad excel file for calculating it, which can be found here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nhjkol14l7fhxq3/ramster%20new.xlsx?dl=0

You the orange colored fields are the values that can be changed and are not created through calculations.

I will make a more sophisticated Excel file for all defences so we know at which point an Orb is better than a Medallion and which shards are the smartest to use.

429-430 sounds a lot more correct, realized I achieved even point earlier because a pet with def p is worth 30 ascension levels.

@Exo dus quote:

429-430 sounds a lot more correct, realized I achieved even point earlier because a pet with def p is worth 30 ascension levels.

Yes. If you want you can check the excel file, you can change the ascension level and will see the differenc in DPS depending on your Ascension level, the -1500 def power from range levels were not taken into account though. At Ascnesion lvl 800 Orbs will already have 33k more DPS average.

Just wanted to note that irrespective of massive calaculations, Orbs will never hold up if looking far into the future for the simple reason that, due to hard caps, the stat will not scale infinitely.

At some point, you will hit the cap with a C6 or C7 orb, and any more powerful orbs beyond that will give zero stat benefit due to the cap.

There's a reason speed is usually a secondary stat. Damage numbers and monster health can always scale infinitely. Speed cannot in any balanced way do the same.

Given that [[4370,users]] stated numerous times yesterday that Chaos tiers beyond C5 are coming "very soon," I think it's important to leave this quote here from Hom-Sha-Bom.

3. Chaos 6 & Beyond

In if gear progression continues beyond Chaos 5 the same way it progressed up to Chaos 5, we're going to have a problem...

So from a legendary item going up a chaos level adds roughly 44.5% more stats.

See Max Gear Values by Difficulty. 

If we add another 44.5% on top of C5, a C6 Orb would have around 12,492 DS. And by the way 44.5% is an under-estimate. We only need our Relic to add 12,000 DS in order to reach the cap. If you use an Orb you do not even need the Defense Rate shard.

And "Primarily utility defenses" are already at the cap before C6 with any relic that has DS.

In C7+ We would no longer need an Orb to reach the cap on "Primarily damage-dealing defenses." DS as a secondary stat plus Defense Rate shard would put us at the cap.

C9+ Any relic with Defense Speed as a secondary stat would put us at the cap on every defense even without using Defense Rate.

https://dungeondefenders.com/2/topic/144434/trendy-you-are-still-doing-defense-speed-wrong

If Trendy continues with the same stat curves that they're using in C1-5, then Orbs will be phased out by C7. This is completely regardless of Ascension. The very moment a non-orb relic becomes capable of capping the attack rate of damage-dealing defenses, orbs immediately become worthless.

@calmchaos quote:

If Trendy continues with the same stat curves that they're using in C1-5, then Orbs will be phased out by C7. This is completely regardless of Ascension. The very moment a non-orb relic becomes capable of capping the attack rate of damage-dealing defenses, orbs immediately become worthless.

@Krueger quote:

Just wanted to note that irrespective of massive calaculations, Orbs will never hold up if looking far into the future for the simple reason that, due to hard caps, the stat will not scale infinitely.

At some point, you will hit the cap with a C6 or C7 orb, and any more powerful orbs beyond that will give zero stat benefit due to the cap.

There's a reason speed is usually a secondary stat. Damage numbers and monster health can always scale infinitely. Speed cannot in any balanced way do the same.

That's exactly the point I am trying to make now. the Cap will be reached with C6 orbs already (well 0,04 sec off for most defences, if I finally understood the formular). And that's where the problem will be. If Marks and Medallions can reach the max defence speed then orbs are pointless. I hope trendy will find a possibility that this does not happen. I mean, marks were not in a good spot before, they now really are good, but Orbs kind of feel like they will not have a spot for the future, if stats continue to go up at the same speed.

I think a good suggestion would be to make the def speed increas propotional instead of linear and give orbs higher secondary stats instead. That would allow orbs to still be a thing, even when max values of def speed can be reached.

The way they're dealing with defense rate is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.  Even if speed were balanced right now, this kind of crunching is setting up for disaster.  What happens when they release chaos 11, or chaos 20?  We'll be right back where we started, and speed scaling will need to be recalculated again or else orbs will be useless (or overkill.)  And then because of it, everything below these chaos levels suffer because all of a sudden your defenses are attacking way slower to account for what they can do later on.  My skyguards took a horrendous hit this patch, leaving me to basically ignore anti-air defenses and just deal with them myself.  Say no to range and rate caps.

Speed attack shouldn't go to 0, but have to go to infinity. Instead atk rate should show how many tower do hits per second, like dps but hps :) 

Make ALL orbs, NO MATTER WHERE THEY DROP OR WHAT CHAOS TIER THEY DROPPED FROM, give 8k speed at a level 60 upgrade, and all other relics with speed as their secondary stat give 4k speed at a level 60 upgrade.  No matter what chaos tier or campaign level they come from.

Problem solved.

Very nice. they do need to consider that adding caps at these "low" chaos lvls will make the certain relics useless for upper lvls.