GU50, Tunso Testing, and Player Testing

12 pages and the devs will not respond here?

i was about too ask the same thing. figure we get an update too whenever we see it Hotfix on Live

I these are private conversations. And besides, Sore only said we completed testing last night. I'm sure he has a report that the devs wouldn't have to sift through 13 pages to get the info.

Probably we will get a hotfix on Friday.

The Devs are aware. The information is being shared with them directly. When they are ready to respond, they will. Don't look for a hotfix this week, FWIW.

It's gonna take some time to get these powers properly looked at

Just out of curiosity, does someone know what rotation is being used to test Quantum?

Off hand I couldn't tell you, I tried my hand at a rotation but it just sucked so bad that I got someone else to do it to give a better result. Surprisingly the result still wasn't overly great.

Quantum at Range(Actual Range) is actually one of the better powers save for a few, but for whatever reason its melee sucked compared to it. Closing in to a Mid-Range to Melee distance doesn't seem to offer that much of a gain.

Can't give enough thumbs up for this thread, and all the time and effort spent by people to get the test results.

This thread should be a sticky.

Any updates or progress to report on this?

I'm hoping to get everything out in a day or two. I don't want to drop anything over the weekend. I want to make sure Daybreak has the opportunity to be at work if they choose to respond.

Just to add some color to that commentary. The Melee/Range vs. Melee/Midrange/Range topic is still central to the perception of balance. It is a very illuminating and well understood consideration at this point. While that is front and center, there are other considerations too. There are imbalances within Tunso Testing results that warrant addressing within that methodology. There are inconsistencies between Tunso Test results and Live Test results that warrant consideration. There are inconsistencies within powersets where balanced variety is expected and that warrants consideration. It kind of all makes sense where we are right now and how we got there. A+B+C=D. We have the testing, feedback and most importantly dialog that can bring everything together. I am very hopeful. It's a situation that can be spun by trolls and supporters alike. But the key thing is that I feel we've really established a promising circumstance. I think this is a timeframe that "balance" advocates will want to stay tuned to. This thread for sure.

Thanks for your response and the update. I look forward to hearing where this goes.

I've got a few posts incoming. Stay tuned.

Please wait until they're fully posted. No single post is comprehensive. Early responses may be addressed in later posts or simply fail to initiate a conversation with full context.

Tunso Testing Results (7/27/2015)

Many players assess powersets based on Midrange performance. Just to put yourself in the right mindset. Pretend, just for a moment, that midrange doesn't exist. We'll get back to it later. There are two distances. Melee and Range. With well-executed rotations, Range should be your lowest damage and Melee your highest. Let's just say Midrange is somewhere in-between and you can't even begin thinking about it without the extremities first being balanced.

So the people in this thread and a few others came together to test every powerset at Range and Melee doing Tunso tests. Granted, maybe we didn't get the best test for each powerset. Feel free to step up and do your own test to show where any given result could be improved. This is a dynamic / evolving conversation.





The baseline for a Tunso Test is...
Melee: 20,644 DPS
Range: 14,120 DPS

The idea is that there's a +/- 5% variation. In other words, 95%-105% damage variation. In other words...
Melee: 19,612 to 21,676
Range: 13414 to 14,826

So here's how those rotations come out in terms of variation...



Note: The powersets are as of what's on PC Test right now (including #GU51 Rage tests)

According to just Tunso Tests...

Range:
> Too Strong: Celestial, Nature, Sorcery, and Gadgets
> Too Weak: Rage, Quantum, Mental, Earth

Melee:
> Too Strong: Rage, Nature
> Too Weak: Gadgets, Munitions, Sorcery, Mental, Celestial, Quantum

But...

Scaling (7/27/2015)

There's reasonable concern whether Tunso Tests are an adequate methodology. The primary question is whether those results will hold true to the experiences of people on Live servers. Specifically once you're using RD mods, affinities, mainframe mods, etc. To articulate that, we conducted a series of Live Tests using a specific spec at around 160 SP with all those components added in.

Generally speaking, these factors shouldn't be too much of a concern
> Might will go up
> Precision will go up
> Core Strength will give you greater damage
> Escalating Might will give you more might
> Relentless Precision will give you more precision

Specifically speaking, these factors will cause things to not scale well
> CR-based pets are already at max damage in a Tunso Test
> Weapon DPS (not counting precision) is already at max in a Tunso Test
> Might and Precision don't scale at the same rate between a Tunso Test and Live Test

Generally speaking, I'm concerned about these factors but can't illustrate them mathematically
> Percent-based buffs
> Crit chance and magnitude differences

So these are how the powers scaled up differently based on our testing...



In my opinion, these scaling irregularities demonstrate why I would prefer that Live Testing was focused on as a methodology instead of Tunso Testing.

So here are the Live Tests...

LIVE TESTING RESULTS (7/27/2015)





The baseline for a Live Test is...(I chose these myself)
Melee: 29,989 DPS
Range: 20,347 DPS

The idea is that there's a +/- 5% variation. In other words, 95%-105% damage variation. In other words...
Melee: 28,490 to 31,488
Range: 13,330 to 21,364

So here's how those rotations came out in terms of variation...



According to just Live Tests...

Range:
> Too Strong: Gadgets (WM), Celestial, Quantum
> Too Weak: Munitions

Melee:
> Too Strong: None
> Too Weak: Gadgets, Munitions, Quantum, Mental, Earth, Sorcery

Maybe I could have picked a slightly lower Melee baseline

RAGE TESTING (7/27/2015)

Pre-GU51, Rage was doing 17K melee and 11K Range. That's WAY below the 20.6K and 14.1K targets. It's no surprise in this methodology that Rage was addressed next. It was the worst. GU51 clearly buffed them.



So we see now on PC Test that range is still a little under where it needs to be (94%) and melee is way over (113%). Just by these number, I would guess we're going to see an adjustment down of Rage melee based on what's on PC Test.



So now it's doing 30.3K Melee and 19.6K Range. That puts melee right within the 29.9K Melee target (101%) and 20.3K Range target (96%). So if Rage gets adjusted based on the Tunso Test results, you may not find the resulting Live Test performance preferable. Why? Scaling.

NATURE TESTING (7/27/2015)

So I made sure I tested as much of Nature as I could find time. I tried a lot of loadout variations. I always hear a lot of criticism about cookie cutter loadouts and 1 2 3 4 5 rotations. I embrace variety, especially in Nature. It's probably the best powerset for having variety (if only that variety was balanced).

It's no surprise given all we've learned that the Nature Tunso tests are all reasonably close to each other.



Heck, their variations from baseline look real nice in terms of 95%-105%



And then scaling gets its hands on those results. This is really all over the place.



So you end up with these Live Test results. Notice how you're only getting to that Melee baseline by using Wolf/Dog or Human form with Brawling.



So that's where you can see just a couple rotations to be viable if you want to be within baseline.

Midrange

So let's be honest. Midrange is this little hybrid idea. It's about using ranged weapons + powers effective within 12.5m but not powers within 7m. That's where Ice is interesting. It is able to take 100% of its melee damage out to 12.5m and it does the best melee damage in a Live Test. Other than maybe Sorcery WM and Celestial, no other powersets can scoot back to 12.5m (or further) without giving up some of their damage potential.

Do what should they do? I do think they need to balance Range and Melee first just to set the extremities. After that, should they just get rid of midrange? That'd balance things in terms of players just doing melee or just being range. All those midrange players would just switch to range. That'd be a general nerf to everyone but it would be consistent and fair. However, it'd probably be unpopular too. They could balance midrange. I'm betting that takes a lot of effort and revamps. We'd probably be looking at another 12 months of changes and less focus on fun things like Atomic and Water. I'm sure there's other options. But that's where we need to get our heads together.

But for me, honestly, I'd like to see them adjust their methodology and balance using Live Tests. I think it is significantly more accurate.