I like the 10 round if for no other reason because its a nice, round metric (see what I did there?). I don't think going below 5 is a good idea, since at that point you are more or less in the encounter nova territory (especially when we are already granting a round of setup followed by a round of boom). Perhaps I'm wrong, but I always felt the who point of the at-will DPR wasn't to measure what a build could expect to average on any given encounter, but what they can expect to do at a bare minimum, all other resources expended.
I think the point was to include (encounter) nova damage, and avoid setup rounds. To get a more "realistic" comparison.
So 4 rounds (no setup) to deal as much damage as you can. No dailies, no AP's. Normalized to rounds per kill.
Total / 4 / (8*lvl+24). err, that can be simplified. Total / (32*lvl + 96)
F-111 Interdictor Long (200+ squares) distance ally teleporter. With some warlord stuff. Broken in a plot way, not a power way. Thought Switch Higher level build that grants upto 14 attacks on turn 1. If your allies play along, it's broken. Elven Critters Crit op with crit generation. 5 of these will end anything. Broken. King Fisher Does an excellent job at keeping an enemy disabled in a few ways. Strong. Boominator Fun catch-22 booming blade build with either strong or completely broken damage depending on your reading. Very Distracting Warlock Lot's of dazing and major penalties to hit. Overpowered. Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square. Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong. Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked. Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic. Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation. Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses. Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. Sir Robin (Bravely Charge Away) He automatically slows and pushes an enemy (5 squares), while charging away. Hard to rate it's power level, since it's terrain dependent. Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof. Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it. Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways. Battlemind Mc Prone-Daze Protecting your allies by keeping enemies away. Quite powerful. The Retaliator Getting hit deals more damage to the enemy then you receive yourself, and you can take plenty of hits. Heavy item dependency, Broken. Dead Kobold Transit Teleports 98 squares a turn, and can bring someone along for the ride. Not fully built, so i can't judge the power Psilent Guardian Protect your allies, while being invisible. Overpowered, possibly broken Unnamed Avenger|Runepriest/Hammer of Vengance Do lot's of damage while boosting your teams. Strong to slightly overpowered. Charedent BarrageA charging ardent. Fine in a normal team, overpowered if there are 2 together, and easily broken in teams of 5. Super Knight A tough, sticky, high damage knight. Strong. Super Duper Knight Basically the same as super knight, only far more broken. Mora, the unkillable avenger Solid damage, while being neigh indestuctable. Overpowered, but not broken. Swordburst Maximus At-Will Close Burst 3 that slide and prones. Protects allies with off actions. Strong, possibly over powered with the right party.
F-111 Interdictor Long (200+ squares) distance ally teleporter. With some warlord stuff. Broken in a plot way, not a power way. Thought Switch Higher level build that grants upto 14 attacks on turn 1. If your allies play along, it's broken. Elven Critters Crit op with crit generation. 5 of these will end anything. Broken. King Fisher Does an excellent job at keeping an enemy disabled in a few ways. Strong. Boominator Fun catch-22 booming blade build with either strong or completely broken damage depending on your reading. Very Distracting Warlock Lot's of dazing and major penalties to hit. Overpowered. Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square. Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong. Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked. Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic. Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation. Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses. Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. Sir Robin (Bravely Charge Away) He automatically slows and pushes an enemy (5 squares), while charging away. Hard to rate it's power level, since it's terrain dependent. Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof. Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it. Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways. Battlemind Mc Prone-Daze Protecting your allies by keeping enemies away. Quite powerful. The Retaliator Getting hit deals more damage to the enemy then you receive yourself, and you can take plenty of hits. Heavy item dependency, Broken. Dead Kobold Transit Teleports 98 squares a turn, and can bring someone along for the ride. Not fully built, so i can't judge the power Psilent Guardian Protect your allies, while being invisible. Overpowered, possibly broken Unnamed Avenger|Runepriest/Hammer of Vengance Do lot's of damage while boosting your teams. Strong to slightly overpowered. Charedent BarrageA charging ardent. Fine in a normal team, overpowered if there are 2 together, and easily broken in teams of 5. Super Knight A tough, sticky, high damage knight. Strong. Super Duper Knight Basically the same as super knight, only far more broken. Mora, the unkillable avenger Solid damage, while being neigh indestuctable. Overpowered, but not broken. Swordburst Maximus At-Will Close Burst 3 that slide and prones. Protects allies with off actions. Strong, possibly over powered with the right party.
I like the 10 round if for no other reason because its a nice, round metric (see what I did there?). I don't think going below 5 is a good idea, since at that point you are more or less in the encounter nova territory (especially when we are already granting a round of setup followed by a round of boom). Perhaps I'm wrong, but I always felt the who point of the at-will DPR wasn't to measure what a build could expect to average on any given encounter, but what they can expect to do at a bare minimum, all other resources expended.
I think the point was to include (encounter) nova damage, and avoid setup rounds. To get a more "realistic" comparison.
So 4 rounds (no setup) to deal as much damage as you can. No dailies, no AP's. Normalized to rounds per kill.
Total / 4 / (8*lvl+24). err, that can be simplified. Total / (32*lvl + 96)
Total would allow nova people to be comparable to at-willers. Something that I think would result in alot of hatred. Encounter candidates (8*lvl+24) / Median damage of N rounds. At-willers it's just (8*lvl+24) / DPR
DPR = Damage Per round ~= Chance to hit * damage on a hit KPR = Kills Per Round. 1 Kill = 8*Level+24 damage = DPR/(8*level+24) KPNR = Kills Per N Rounds. How many standards can you kill in N rounds?
Mello: if that is the plan, then ye. I agree. I was still working under the assumption of differentiating between nova dpr and at-will.
Borg: Funny. If I can through out an early vote, I would suggest the following. Instead of the current at-will/nova distinction, require king builds to submit to metrics: their encounter nova (maybe 2-4 rounds), followed by a pure at-will dpr that would come after the nova and last infinity turns. This would give several benefits. 1) Direct comparison of how quick builds can go boom or sustain their power in a grind. 2) Allows for a psuedo-setup for both nova andat-will (since the at-will still benefits from everything that occured during nova). 3) Clearly highlights if a build has weakspots (can't pop a bad right-here-right-now when necessary / can't do anything after gibbing one or two). 4) Would most accurately model how the build would perform at a real table (assuming a slightly unreal generic encounter).
It would add a little extra effort on the part of submitters, but not terribly much. Plus, it will greatly open up the optimization space, so I feel the people who do participate in these shenanigans already will hardly even notice.
You could even include the normalized number of standards killed after x rounds. So say we get 4 nova turns to burn encounters, then 6 rounds of at-will, we then also include over that 10 round period how many mobs we can expect to drop (or any other number of rounds. I feel the at-will should be about half-again as long as the burst, but that's my preference. So like 2/3, or 4/6. I'm sure others might want a 50/50 split.)
F-111 Interdictor Long (200+ squares) distance ally teleporter. With some warlord stuff. Broken in a plot way, not a power way. Thought Switch Higher level build that grants upto 14 attacks on turn 1. If your allies play along, it's broken. Elven Critters Crit op with crit generation. 5 of these will end anything. Broken. King Fisher Does an excellent job at keeping an enemy disabled in a few ways. Strong. Boominator Fun catch-22 booming blade build with either strong or completely broken damage depending on your reading. Very Distracting Warlock Lot's of dazing and major penalties to hit. Overpowered. Pocket Protector Pixie Stealth Knight. Maximizing the defender's aura by being in an ally's/enemy's square. Yakuza NinjIntimiAdin: Perma-stealth Striker that offers a little protection for ally's, and can intimidate bloodied enemies. Very Strong. Chargeburgler with cheese Ranged attacks at the end of a charge along with perma-stealth. Solid, could be overpowered if tweaked. Void Defender Defends giving a penalty to hit anyone but him, then removing himself from play. Can get somewhat broken in epic. Scry and Die Attacking from around corners, while staying hidden. Moderate to broken, depending on the situation. Skimisher Fly in, attack, and fly away. Also prevents enemies from coming close. Moderate to Broken depending on the enemy, but shouldn't make the game un-fun, as the rest of your team is at risk, and you have enough weaknesses. Indestructible Simply won't die, even if you sleep though combat. Sir Robin (Bravely Charge Away) He automatically slows and pushes an enemy (5 squares), while charging away. Hard to rate it's power level, since it's terrain dependent. Death's Gatekeeper A fun twist on a healic, making your party "unkillable". Overpowered to Broken, but shouldn't actually make the game un-fun, just TPK proof. Death's Gatekeeper mk2, (Stealth Edition) Make your party "unkillable", and you hidden, while doing solid damage. Stronger then the above, but also easier for a DM to shut down. Broken, until your DM get's enough of it. Domination and Death Dominate everything then kill them quickly. Only works @ 30, but is broken multiple ways. Battlemind Mc Prone-Daze Protecting your allies by keeping enemies away. Quite powerful. The Retaliator Getting hit deals more damage to the enemy then you receive yourself, and you can take plenty of hits. Heavy item dependency, Broken. Dead Kobold Transit Teleports 98 squares a turn, and can bring someone along for the ride. Not fully built, so i can't judge the power Psilent Guardian Protect your allies, while being invisible. Overpowered, possibly broken Unnamed Avenger|Runepriest/Hammer of Vengance Do lot's of damage while boosting your teams. Strong to slightly overpowered. Charedent BarrageA charging ardent. Fine in a normal team, overpowered if there are 2 together, and easily broken in teams of 5. Super Knight A tough, sticky, high damage knight. Strong. Super Duper Knight Basically the same as super knight, only far more broken. Mora, the unkillable avenger Solid damage, while being neigh indestuctable. Overpowered, but not broken. Swordburst Maximus At-Will Close Burst 3 that slide and prones. Protects allies with off actions. Strong, possibly over powered with the right party.
Total would allow nova people to be comparable to at-willers. Something that I think would result in alot of hatred.
Why would you think that? It seems like a good thing to me...
Not that i'm telling you what to do with your awsome thread or anything.
Using total / 4 means you're calculating an average, and average is biased to outliers (nova). Median would force nova people to be in a seperate category all themselves.
I feel that nova and sustained DPR are very different representations of a striker's capability to do his job. Throwing them into the same basket is like comparing apples to oranges. Using LDB's encounter nova sequence to increase his total, and thus average, DPR does not represent well how this build would do against a block of tofu. While it's true that X damage dealt in round 1 accounts to the total damage dealt as much as the Y damage dealt in round N, but X damage in round 1 is much more important than the Y damage in round N. Nova is very important in ending encounters, but should not be mixed with sustained DPR. Median is the happy middle ground to allow encounter power based candidates to compete with at-will people.
DPR = Damage Per round ~= Chance to hit * damage on a hit KPR = Kills Per Round. 1 Kill = 8*Level+24 damage = DPR/(8*level+24) KPNR = Kills Per N Rounds. How many standards can you kill in N rounds?
I personally like both Mello and Mojo's thoughts...
I don't think there should be such a distinction between a nova build and an at will build - after the nova, the build needs to be able to put out enough at will to be playable, and likewise, a build with decent at will (but which can't compete with a nova build over 4 or 5 rounds) is nowhere near as good at the table as one is led to believe.
If a build can at-wil 80 DPR, and has zero nova capability (so 80 DPR is it, forever), and you compare it to a build with 500/4 round nova damage, and then 60DPR at will afterwards... well in any real world table the nova build is superior.
Also, if it is to be truly at-will, I don't think any setup rounds should be allowed. If it requires set-up, it really isn't "at-will" because you simply cannot do it without said setup (which could be prevented for any number of reasons) and is thus situational.
4 rounds may be a bit light; but then again maybe not - I think 5 or 6 is closer to a real world average in my experience over the past 4 or 5 years...but 4 is common enough that those 5, 6, 8, and even up to 10 round combats which raise the average up from 4 are rare enough that they aren't nearly as important/significant to a real world table.
So, have the 4 round AVG damage, and the 10 round AVG damage, as well as 'At Will' or 'infinite' damage after that. Using the random numbers I used above, the 80/rnd build with no nova potential would be 320 (80/rnd) | 800 (80/rnd)| 80/rnd, while the nova build would be 500 (125/rnd) | 860 (86/rnd) | 60/rnd. And no, those numbers aren't based on any actual builds, just random numbers I pulled out of a random orifice.
It would be much more useful to the casual Op'er who is looking for a build to play.
So I have been sitting on a level 16 build. I continued the riposte style of my previous builds, but switched it up with some White Lotus variety. I also might've stole some goods ideas from the previous king of 12 and 16, the Archer (Painful Oath & Pelor's Sun Blessing are just insane). I really haven't had the chance to sit down and write it all up, but after today's talk of possibly switching everything up, I thought I really ought to post the build before the format doesn't matter anymore. The build successfully utilizes crit-fishing, multi-attacks, and frost/radiant cheese. All I am missing is a little bit of charge-cheese and maybe some revenant/dancing weapons to hit absolutely every damage boosting trick there is. But those will have to wait till the 24 and 30 variants to squeeze those in.
Lvl 16 Half-Elf Avenger Morninglord 24 Wis 18 Dex Dilettante- Eldritch Strike, Censure- Pursuit Feats- Adept Dilettante, Cunning Stalker, Mark of Finding, Two-Weapon Fighting, White Lotus Riposte, Versatile Master, Painful Oath, Two-Weapon Opening, Lasting Frost Items- Pelor's Sun Blessing, Bracer's of Mighty Striking (paragon), Ring of Giants, Gloves of Ice, Melegaunt's Darkblade Greatsword +4 with Shard of Merciless Cold (paragon), Radiant Gauntlet Axe +3 with Shard of Radiance (paragon), Frozen Whetstones (heroic)
Some assumptions: -Your target is only adjacent to you and you have them oathed. -At 100g a pop and a minor action, you can afford to apply a Frozen Whetstone to the greatsword every combat at the start. I like being able to throw up this damage from the start, so no whetstone on the gauntlet axe, though. If you wanted to assume you added it on a later round, it would add 2.642 DPR. -Assuming frost vulnerability from the start is the norm here, so I went ahead and did the same. If you miss your target or attack a new one, subtract 4.689 from the expected damage. -Utilizing a bit of cheese with the guantlet axe; doesn't require proficiency (so I just lose the +2 prof bonus). Keeps hands free to hold/use other things. While I do not get the bonus damage from TWF (since TWF specifies a weapon in each hand), it qualifies for TWOpening, which only specifies mainhand/offhand weapons. So when I crit with greatsword, I let go of it with my OH as a free action and make my OH attack with the axe, followed by using another free action to regrab the greatsword. This isn't absolutely necessary for the build, it just so happens to be the most elegant at tying several elements together with the limited resources available at 16 that I am trying to cram in. If there is a qualm with the build, I anticipate it being here. -For WLR, I have made a couple of assumptions. 1) It can stack from making multiple successful attacks against the enemy, each then applying an effect that deals x damage if the target tries to attack me. 2) That the auto damage from WLR (as a no action) will resolve after the immediate interrupt granted by WLMR, potentially adding 1 or 2 additional hits, each applying another iteration of WLR that will resolve after the interrupt. Honestly, this is a very small fraction of the DPR, so if a point of contention, it wont effect much. All it really does is make it an extremely bad choice for the enemy to choose to attack you, meaning the OA attack is the default option.
Now we get into the bonus damage based on the monster's choice of taking the WLMR and however many WLR procs, or, trying to escape and triggering the bonus to damage from Censure of Pursuit being added into the OA and your expected damage on the following turn.
OA (+8 to all damage till end of your next turn) We will calc by taking chance OA hits plus chance OA crits and OH hits. Since the OA/Main attack are the same, we will then double this to get the total added damage if the bad decides to draw the OA. 0.9375*8 + 0.19*0.7975*8 = 7.5 + 1.212 = 8.712*2 = 17.424
WLR (7 damage of the same type as attack when target attacks you) Since the initial attack is both cold and radiant, we get to tack on 15 damage from the vulnerabilities, 10 from the OHs. And since we are doing damage to a target vuln to radiant, we also get to tack on another 7 from Pelor's boon to all of them. To calc, we will take damage for that iteration times the chance the first hit, plus chance WLMR hit, plus chance that either drew a crit, plus chance both drew a crit. 0.9375*29 + (0.7974*0.9375)*29 + (0.19 + 0.7475*.19)*29 + (0.19*0.19)*29 = 27.188 + 21.679 + 9.629 + 1.047 = 59.543
Final Expected DPR 141.827 (draw OA) / 183.946 (attacks back)
If anyone sees any mistakes or has any questions, please let me know. I do not doubt the likelihood I goofed somewhere on some math, since there was a ton of it that was a bit complicated. But assuming it wasn't a massive, gross error....I am pleased with the new king.
Just out of curiousity, in the current DPR King rules, are items like Pelor's Sun Blessing allowed? I was purposefully avoiding it, but I guess there was no reason to think I had to.
In terms of the 4-round median...consider this nova: round 1: pure setup round 2: activate a "until EoNT" power (like OoE via Disciple of Divine Wrath), do tons of damage round 3: do tons of damage round 4: do normal at-will damage
I think a 2-round-long nova of this kind is actually pretty common, and it'll affect the median by a bit (and you can get away with having that setup round because it doesn't affect the median at all).
Maybe you actually want this to be the case, because you want to let novas have an effect...I'm just pointing out the possibility. I would recommend a slightly higher number of rounds (even just 5 would do) to avoid these types of issues. Otherwise, MC avenger is half as good as actually being an avenger for most characters.
In general, I get the idea behind using the median, but I think "median of 4 rounds" will just make people optimize toward the median (e.g. with setup rounds so that the damage is "created" on one turn and then dealt later, or by moving a power to a different turn so the median goes up even though you're dealing exactly the same amount of damage) and you'll again end up with candidates that don't represent normal play. You're forgetting the type of people who are going to be making these builds
The average is, I think, a more accurate representation of what you can do. Maybe a 6-10 round average. Fewer rounds are more representative of typical combat, more rounds show how reliable your damage is.
...Though I don't feel like 6 rounds, whether average or median, can really be called "dpr" anymore. But "Damage Kings" is an interesting optimization problem of its own.
I am okay with you saying my argument is stupid, or commits the munchkin fallacy, or any other bad thing you want. Particularly if you give a reason/explanation for it.
However, I will ignore any post that calls me stupid, or a munchkin, or what have you. Not because it bothers me; I've just found that people only start name-calling when that's the best argument they have left.
With a few hundred, possibly even a couple of thousand, hours of game time these past few years, fairly equally divided between DM and player, and slightly biased towards home play vs. LFR play, but also fairly even... I'd say in my experience 4 rounds is an accurate assumption of encounter longevity. Even at a table of non-optimized characters, who weren't used to adventuring with one anoher, 3-4 rounds is the most common duration I have seen. The ocassional 2-round, 5-round, and the rare 6-10 round encounters exist, but are not what I would consider 'normal'.
That's just based on my experience, though - but since I wasn't the one who initiated the idea of a 4-round encounter, obviously others feel it is normal as well.
