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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 5:14PM
#211
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Date Joined:
Jan 24, 2010
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Single target combat.
You are overrating Bloodiron for the average game, which will feature multiple enemies, often spread out across a map. Look through any number of LFR modules or other prepublished adventures for examples.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 10:53PM
#212
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Date Joined:
Feb 26, 2011
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You're overrating Bloodiron for almost all games. Apparently except yours. But you go gaga over moon armor, which is just inane.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 04, 2012 - 11:05PM
#213
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Date Joined:
Sep 17, 2007
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Single target combat.
You are overrating Bloodiron for the average game, which will feature multiple enemies, often spread out across a map. Look through any number of LFR modules or other prepublished adventures for examples.
And a Fighter is not gonna benefit from Bloodiron against multiple enemies because...?
Mountain Cleave Rule: You can have any sort of fun, including broken, silly fun, so long as I get to have that fun too (e. g., if you can warp reality with your spells, I can cleave mountains with my blade).
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6 months ago ::
Dec 05, 2012 - 12:17AM
#214
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Date Joined:
Jan 24, 2010
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Fighters have burst 10 attacks and can turn all attacks against their NADs to AC now?
-edit- but seriously, the expectation that Bloodiron is going to work on most to all of the enemies in an encounter is pretty unrealistic. I'd rather have something dependable like Dwarven or Black Iron. Optimising purely for solo fights is pointless, especially most solo fights are easy single target beatdowns, or have extra monsters to add challenge and actual interesting combat.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 05, 2012 - 11:00AM
#215
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Date Joined:
Sep 17, 2007
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The thing is, Bloodiron is likely to work on all enemies...that matter. Here are the assumptions I made when rating Bloodiron:
A) You are optimizing for hitting. I figured this would go without saying, but after Qsoe's argument was 'well, if you don't hit Bloodiron sucks!', I started to have doubts and decided to make it clear.
B) Your party is, at least, highly competent. It might not be a CharOp's Best group, but you can reliably count on the controller(s) locking down one to three monsters out of their actions either via penalties or status effects (post hitchance, not pre), you can assume your Strikers are gonna blow up either one monster in round 1 per two of them or one monster each depending on how many resources they are burning, and that your Leader is either gonna get you all into position or give you the bonuses so you can get yourself into position. If you're reading this forum, you have much better odds than most of ensuring this is the case.
C) You have a logical target to aim for. Whether it's 'everything in the encounter I can target' as a controller who somehow has heavy armor (BCL I guess?), 'the enemy team's Most Wanted' as a Striker, 'the biggest clump of threatening enemies I can find' as a Defender or 'whatever the hell's close by that isn't a minion and my team can liquidate' as a Leader, you're gonna go fulfill your 'combat objective'. Assuming B goes according to plan, you will be getting Bloodiron's bonus against most of the enemies that should be capable of targeting you, or you will have blown them the hell up already.
So, those are the assumptions that went into rating the armor as it has been. I don't feel as if any of these assumptions are all too crazy - B is the biggest stretch, but it should be apparent from the fact that I have listed Boons and items like the Zaarani Solitaire that I'm making a hidden assumption of D) that 'You won't be playing with randoms', simply because I feel like rating based on randoms is a fool's errand, and if you aren't playing with randoms you can influence your group a bit to make B a reality over time. Teaching a player how to idiot-proof his builds so that a team made up of a Seeker, a Bladesinger, a Vampire and a Sentinel won't spoil his day is outside the scope of this handbook, and indeed all handbooks not focused on metagame strategy. You shouldn't be working to alleviate failure, but to maximize success. Do you feel like any part of this spiel is unreasonable, Ruins?
Mountain Cleave Rule: You can have any sort of fun, including broken, silly fun, so long as I get to have that fun too (e. g., if you can warp reality with your spells, I can cleave mountains with my blade).
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6 months ago ::
Dec 05, 2012 - 3:28PM
#216
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Date Joined:
Apr 25, 2002
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You shouldn't be working to alleviate failure, but to maximize success.
To use LFR as an example, at 8th level, I can pick up Bloodiron Armor +2. At 9th level, I can pick up Magic Armor +3. Maybe at 8th-9th, I can pick up a level 11-13 magic armor. I won't be able to upgrade Bloodiron until 13th-14th and at that point, I might find a 16-18 armor.
This is even more of a problem if I'm trying to upgrade multiple items at the same time - many characters are very dependent on a particular weapon or implement, and armor is 2nd choice - if the choice is waiting 3 more levels to upgrade your armor or get another +1-+2 right now, it isn't a difficult choice. I think Bloodiron's value is very dependent on the DM giving you exactly the items you want when you want them.
And that makes it less than Sky Blue imo. Particularly in the context that thing you're attacking has to actually want to attack AC.
NETH4-1 Containing Shadow (co-author) Handbooks
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6 months ago ::
Dec 05, 2012 - 4:01PM
#217
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To put it also in the striker's mindset, the more successful of a striker you are, the less you're going to care about Bloodiron's conditional benefit. In general, if you can muster a build with .5 at-will KPR, it reasonably follows that you can pretty much kill the thing you're opening on using encounter resources/AP/team focus fire. Doubly so with a 2-striker party, which I've found to be the norm.
So the better opped you are, the better you are at removing the thing you're getting the bonus against, gaining zero benefit from Bloodiron. Thus, the better opped you are, the more worthless you'll find Bloodiron. If you're going to assume high-op and high-tier play from a table, you'll find that the heavy armor strikers just don't care all that much for it.
Aside:
Get a load of Karach Armor from D414. It may as well be the same thing as +1 speed as a static property, and is thus my current favorite generic/default go-to for heavy armors.
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6 months ago ::
Dec 07, 2012 - 5:11AM
#218
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Belt of Vim is harshly treated.
As an untyped bonus it should be rated well above red. Other item bonus items are certainly not strictly superior.
Just mho of course.
All we know is.....he's called The Sig
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5 months ago ::
Dec 18, 2012 - 1:33AM
#219
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Date Joined:
Apr 18, 2006
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The thing is, Bloodiron is likely to work on all enemies...that matter. Here are the assumptions I made when rating Bloodiron:
Of course you optimize to hit, and control, and target. What you forget, these are not binary options, you will not always hit, the controller will not always lock down, and some of the enemies will be out of your reach. Let us make generous assumptions, you only miss on 1 and 2, the controller shuts 4/5th of the enemies down, and you can target 4 of 5 enemies (enemies tend to have greater reach). This means 0.9*0.8*0.8=0.576. This is more like 0.2 on level 8.
Also my argument was Bloodiron sucks even if you hit all enemies on the grid 40% of the time, as Mommy was an Orc pointed it out.
Alltogether this is 0.3456 chance, multiplied by 2 as the bonus, equals a bit less than 0.7 bonus on average to AC. Very far from awesome.
I would give it Blue if the bonus was against all enemies, not just the target. Now it is probably Black.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 18, 2012 - 8:16AM
#220
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Date Joined:
Sep 17, 2007
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Belt of Vim is harshly treated.
As an untyped bonus it should be rated well above red. Other item bonus items are certainly not strictly superior.
Just mho of course.
You're not getting any competition on the typed bonus front as far as a diamond cincture goes though. It's effectively untyped, which means the Vim belt is hot garbage.
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@Qsoe: You can try to do theorycraft math a lot, or you can go and look at how Bloodiron plays out in a game (AKA 'hey I just used Come and Get It, I have a bonus against all these dudes'). Also, you're getting the math wrong by trying to multiply Bloodiron's bonus against an average. Math does not work that way when applied to a binary state.
Mountain Cleave Rule: You can have any sort of fun, including broken, silly fun, so long as I get to have that fun too (e. g., if you can warp reality with your spells, I can cleave mountains with my blade).
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