Legends Analysis Guide Discussion

Discussion in 'Battle of the Legends (PvP)' started by The Enquirer, Apr 3, 2015.

  1. The Enquirer Steadfast Player

    One of the things I'm currently working on is a guide explaining the process I use, and a lot of the things I take into account when really looking into legends and how to make them function at their best. How the guide is being written is I'm going to go over a ton of basic things, then have a very, very long third section explaining how it all comes together.

    Since this guide really is for the community so people can start to get more involved in the discussions about balancing legends, I figured it makes the most sense to reach out to the community to see what they want talked about.

    I took a couple sections of my guide and posted them below here involving some of the things I'm going to be talking about and explaining. If there's something you want added in, just drop a comment and I'll add it in.

    Survivability Intro

    Survivability is the measure of just how hard it is to kill a legends character. Typically a character with higher survivability, if properly balanced, will have a lower damage output. Survivability takes a number of things into account:
    • Health
    • Shielding
    • Damage Mitigation
    • Dodges and Mobility
    • Damage Splitting
    • Healing
    • Buffs and Debuffs
    • Power efficiency
    Damage Output Intro

    Damage output is simply the amount of damage a legend character is capable of. Typically a character with higher damage, if properly balanced, will have a lower amount of survivability. Damage output takes several things into account:
    • Area of Effect Damage
    • Buffs
    • Clipping
    • Power Combos
    • Damage Over Time
    • Finishers
    • Jump Cancelling
    • Pets
    • Power Efficiency
    • Safe Damage
    • Single Target Damage
    • Weapon
    • Like x 7
  2. MrWon Committed Player

    Shouldn't pets be added to the survivability section too?
  3. Sabigya Steadfast Player

    That falls under damage splitting,
    • Like x 3
  4. zeroman New Player

    Where do you come up with this information?
    • Like x 1
  5. Brother Allen Loyal Player

    Sooooo Catwoman is all shades of wonky in terms of balance then huh E :p...lol.

    6224 Health
    Shield capable of absorbing 3 hits or 1652 damage while reflecting damage back
    Backflip which grants Dodge for 2 seconds
    Capable of 3600-3900 burst damage

    And for the record you should go to school to be a teacher if you aren't E. You got the passion to help people learn :).
    Testing testing testing and more testing. Of course Shiny Mackerel has done most of the leg work for everyone and all that wonderful information is posted in his Legends Guide located here:
    https://forums.station.sony.com/dcu...s-and-power-descriptions.193517/#post-2345884
    • Like x 5
  6. The Enquirer Steadfast Player

    That'd fall under damage splitting. I'll rework the title of that section to pets though as it'd make it more clear.

    Duh :p
    • Like x 3
  7. zeroman New Player

    So these are independent test done on your own and not game facts put out by DCUO?
    • Like x 1
  8. The Enquirer Steadfast Player

    Correct. Extensive testing has been done from various players, predominantly using this as a guide. The developers for whatever reason don't give the math out for these things. However my guides focus less on the numbers and more on theory-crafting.
    • Like x 1
  9. zeroman New Player

    So there is no concrete facts to this and people should just take your word for it? Why should I take your word for it? Sell me on that and I take what you have to say into consideration.
    • Like x 1
  10. Brother Allen Loyal Player

    There is no "concrete proof" per say for E's guides because as he stated his guides are mostly "theory-crafting". With E's type guides you kind of have to take a "take it or leave it" approach.

    However, guides like Shiny Mackerel's or Talve's are concrete as they deal in numbers. All the info posted in their guides can be found in game through extensive testing.
    • Like x 6
  11. Sabigya Steadfast Player

    Are you not the same guy that believes that Batman is the best Legends character?
    That's the beauty of guides. You don't have to follow it. You can make up your own playstyle. It is intended for players new to the game or a player who would like to see how an experienced player plays.
    None of us seek "consideration" from players.
    • Like x 6
  12. The Enquirer Steadfast Player

    I'm not going to force you to take it. However I will challenge you to find more effective techniques.
    To correct a small portion of this, in many cases, things such as counter punishment combos can be extensively proven because you're dealing in numbers. With theory crafting it comes down to me trying to find the most useful way to utilize the tools a character has. However, my guide doesn't cover every single situation that can arise. That's where taking the tools I've given in the guide and experimenting on your own come into play.

    As an example basic shields, such as Felix Faust's can be used to just flat out absorb damage, however I've found them to be the most useful in conjunction with the breakout trinket. When I get countered I pop the trinket, then the shield. Against a character like Batman it'll shave about half of his burst damage off against me (much to Shaw's dismay :p).
    • Like x 5
  13. Brother Allen Loyal Player

    Well see there's your problem. You got countered. tsk tsk...:D
    • Like x 4
  14. MrWon Committed Player

    Oh, I was looking at this whole thing from a 1v1 perspective, so I thought putting Pets would make more sense. But I get what you mean.
  15. The Enquirer Steadfast Player

    Yea, legends is balanced around 2v2s predominantly. To a lesser extent 1v1s, but that's mostly because there's maps where there will be 1v1 and 2v2 combat such as Inner Sanctum and Ace Chemicals. So all my legends character guides are written from that perspective.
    • Like x 1
  16. Talve Dedicated Player

    Then people like me would die to boredom. :<

    It's not like he would earn money off you reading his guide. Enquirer is not the one who should be selling guide to you. You should be the one who looks for the guides like his when you are interested.
    No one asks you to take everything in those guides as facts. The same way when you read information from Wikipedia, read newspapers or watch on TV, you should look everything from a critical point of view. People make mistakes, no information is bulletproof, not even scientific theories.
    And the best medicine, if its a possibility, is to always test yourself. That's how science works. When multiple people over the globe working separate from each other find the same results, then those numbers gain increased value. So test yourself, compare numbers to Enquirer's, and if they are similar - much more likely that information is good.

    For example...even though calculations in my Healing Calc are done by using 10000+ input numbers, even i do not completely trust outcome numbers. Maybe i have messed up somewhere in between collecting data or typing down formulas. Until someone else creates the same thing and results are very close together, every time i use it i'm very critical about it. Even now i constantly find errors to fix or things to improve. The only thing that holds me back is that very important resource called time.
    • Like x 8
  17. JZtheDragon Well-Known Player

    Just a thought, but you might make for a third category distinct from straight damage output or survivability, maybe call it 'utility', to encapsulate things that affect allies or increase offense or defense indirectly, like Batman's pot, grounding effects, buffs and debuffs, etc. It's already accounted for, but might serve to consider it it's own category.
    • Like x 3
  18. The Enquirer Steadfast Player

    That's actually a pretty good idea. I'll end up with probably only a few things in there, but that could help keep it a bit more organized.

    EDIT: That's actually where I'll probably describe things that can be used both offensively and defensively, such as clipping for example.
    • Like x 4
  19. Ninja'd Dedicated Player

    Ideally it is best for survivability and damage output to have a indirect relationship. Some legends (Batman, Robin, Huntress, and Harley) fit this category well but the rest ... not so much. Hopefully this can influence the devs on the imbalanced legends.

    Will you also take in the cooldown of each power in account for this guide? Some legends have similar abilities but one may have a larger cooldown than the other.
  20. The Enquirer Steadfast Player

    What exactly did you want me to do regarding cool downs?

    How the guide is going to work is there's going to be a 3 section glossary explaining different key things that are going to be discussed in the actual guide portion.There are now Damage Output, Survivability and Utilities (things that can be used both offensively and defensively and miscellaneous things).

    From there the actual guide portion will sort of piece together a prioritized list of the things that you're going to be looking for and how to link them together to try and do some of the theory crafting you'll see in my guides and also through my gameplay because not every single tactic is discussed in each character guide, just the ones people may not think of or the better ones.