Question about SP Drain stacking (or maybe a bugged item?)

[En1gma]

Or Vraes to offset a FEROCITY and BR build...

[wascalwywabbit]

A 50% crit Vraes will gain 175 dmg with ferocity 10 (100sp) vs ssw 1 on average, but if you go jugg 10 (82sp) then instead you're gaining (edit:) 58 dmg vs ssw 1, but with many extra attacks possible. Any fight with more than 5-9 opponents will typically favor jugg, depending on other party damage, due to the extra attacks in my experience, plus jugg will typically return more sp per attack if your drain is below 30% or so thanks to juggs built in sp return. Ferocity is just freakishly hard to get self sufficient, probably harder the higher you go...

[Cory Trese]

Meh, freakishly hard is a massive overstatement. It helps to have SP Drain and Sacrifice, but it's a great Talent for end game builds.

[xdesperado]

wascalwywabbit
With right gear a Dual wield Vraes could get around 35%+ SP Drain with the Heartbeats, probably around 30%+ with single weapon...

[wascalwywabbit]

Mar 16, 2016 16:33:38 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Meh, freakishly hard is a massive overstatement. It helps to have SP Drain and Sacrifice, but it's a great Talent for end game builds.

Says one of the two people most familiar with the underpinnings... What's trivial for you can be freakishly hard for me, ok.

[wascalwywabbit]

Mar 16, 2016 16:40:51 GMT -5 xdesperado said:

wascalwywabbit
With right gear a Dual wield Vraes could get around 35%+ SP Drain with the Heartbeats, probably around 30%+ with single weapon...

Still wouldn't gain the extra attacks for finishing moves though.

[Rashar]

Very true, however Jugg gets "useable" around level 7... any points into it upto 6 is basicly wasted on gambling or praying. If you have a lategame respec and you're able to throw 7-10 points into jugg at once then I'd say yes. Otherwise ferocity will atleast still do its job reliable at any level aslong as you can sustain the sp cost.

[wascalwywabbit]

Mar 16, 2016 16:57:15 GMT -5 Rashar said:

Very true, however Jugg gets "useable" around level 7... any points into it upto 6 is basicly wasted on gambling or praying. If you have a lategame respec and you're able to throw 7-10 points into jugg at once then I'd say yes. Otherwise ferocity will at least still do its job reliable at any level aslong as you can sustain the sp cost.

Level 1 Jugg is actually quite good, decent sp return rate avg nigh 12 back per ten spent if kill (can help power other buffs slightly), acc between ssw1 and 2, plus damage = cb 1 and 20% chance to gain 1 mp gain per kill, 4 and up are also interesting cause you can start getting extra hits then (up to 20% chance per kill, 50% at level 7, and 66% level 10), but I'm of the opinion that getting level 2 and 3 are not especially worth while, you get the mp return chance but at a higher avg. net sp cost per attack than the same talent points into ssw. 

[Rashar]

Well call me biased but I personally think that Juggernaut is the worst talent in Vraes his arsenal.

(1)It only does something when you score a killing blow, making the talent situational so the return investment needs to be really good in order to justify investing talent points. The returning investment only starts paying of consistently at rank 10, even at rank 7 the % of gaining actual ap is not high enough to justify making sure that Vraes scores 3 killing blows.

(2)Compared to crushing blow the SP cost of Juggernaut is very high, even with the sp returns you are likely to turn to a strategy that revolves around %sp drain. If you intend to go for %sp drain then ferocity makes far better use of that and has a higher damage potential @ rank 2 then Jugg has @ rank 10...

(3)CB, SSw and Ferocity get better when investing talent points to get rank ups as to where Juggernaut you go from 1 to 4 to 7. Making it so that precious talents points are not being used in order to save SP. So Jugernaut is very ineffective when it comes to talent points spend versus actual gains.

(4)While taking the place of the enemy killed and gaining sp/mp is certainly a very nice feature, I think it is overrated imo. Once Vraes enters melee he usually stands there to make sure all melee enemies keep fixating him. This means that some times MP points are "wasted" and when he has the chance to use them most of the enemies should be dead by then.

(5)The % of gaining AP's is rather small. @ rank 4 there is 25% you gain 1 ap, that is just to low even when using a 2ap weapon, then @ rank 7 the chance of gaining 1ap is 50% it is worth it HOWEVER this means you need to kill atleast 2 enemies per turn with Vraes and you have to make sure that you do not spend your 7th ap point on moving (with all the mp gained this is the least of the worries). Once it hits rank 10 the chance goes upto 67% and the talent becomes decent because it FINALLY has reached a point as to where you consistently get +1ap.

(6)It requires your whole team to bring stuff in lethal range, any talent that requires to make sure enemy mobs are withing death's breath is just to tedious... I would call it fancy play syndrome at best. It is great when it works, but it is still sub-par. Ofcourse it all depends on the team setup, but doing reliable consistent aoe damage > making set ups for a juggernaut kill. A high rank of CB or Ferocity only require some form %sp and are self reliant. Especially in round 1-2 some of your heroes will focus on cursing/debuffing and that means they can not take part in the "Hulk SMASH!" party. While other heroes have aoe abilities and don't really have the time to make sure that mobs don't die to their attacks.

(7)Hedging on multiple types of attacks is bad, when you take Juggernaut you can not use Jugg for every attack (if you actually do that, then ferocity > Jugg) this means that you need to sink talent points into another attack, ferocity rank 2 orso prolly most logical seeing the nature of the heavy %sp requirement of both strategies. But it means that you are putting talent points into multiple forms of attack and Vraes has much better filler talents in the form of BoS, Nm and SS. Where as an additional bonus when you choose BoS you get extra movepoints so you dont need Jugg to gain more.

I am fairly negative towards the Jugg skill, it is not meant as being negative towards you. Just as a level 18 talent it is a massive letdown for me. Giving Vraes a cleave ability where he can hit 1 enemy adjacent to his initial target seems to make more sense to me and then at rank 10 a 3rd target while gaining +3,5dmg/rank and upto 7 accuracy orso or maybe give him an aoe attack that hits the 2 squares in front of him (earth shatter or w/e) and then over the course of 10 ranks improves to a small cone... and dealing additional +xx earth damage orso.

Anyway guess I will copy paste this shizzle into wishlist at some point My hate vs Jugg is strong.

[fallen]

Rashar - fascinating appraisal of the Talent. I think it is Vraes' best attack Talent far and away, but everyone plays a different style. If you are building an effective Juggernaut-Vraes, I have found that you don't need to spend any time worrying about other heroes not killing targets. Sure, after they unleash an attack or two, locate some juicy targets and move Vraes in (+MP is important), but Vraes is dealing 400-500 on his own and can easily get his kills just by stepping in mid-round during before a Lightning Storm finishes.

And wow, once he gets warmed up - kill-kill-kill.

[Cory Trese]

That's so interesting. I love how you will find multiple groups of players playing the same game, having opposite opinions about the strategies.

There are people who swear Juggernaut is the best ... and the worst, Talent in the game.

[wascalwywabbit]

At level 4 jugg with 2 ap weapon you'll average almost 1 extra attack per turn and ~36-48 sp returned for 3-4 attacks with attack acc and sp costs between ferocity and ssw and dmg between cb and ssw at the same level and ~3 mp gained a turn, at 7 you're gaining ~2 extra attacks per turn and like 5mp a turn plus the sp returns. At 10 it's ~5 extra attacks plus the other bonuses... If my math is right a - I'm not perfectly clear headed atm.

Seeing as how BR is THE biggest damage increasing buff in the game jugg is a not too shabby pair. I agree that some things could be ironed out like ap chance at lower levels, and that half the time you may want another attack talent, but there's always ssw and cb 1 and 1 pt. in ferocity is not too much, plus almost every single mob will be brought to nigh death at some point and if you 'accidentally ' kill one instead of putting it on life support no biggie...

I'm on record for saying that the first mp chance should be swapped with the final ap chance to balance it out. Large mobs jugg is better and high hp/armor mobs ferocity is better. Sp efficiency jugg 1 or CB whatever lvl is best if you have the acc otherwise ssw is best if you need both acc and sp efficiency.

You can always run around with nm, ssk, pshld, bos and br with a 1ap dagger of doom and avoid the debate altogether... :-D

[Ironman4do]

Woah! This thread blew up since I asked the initial question! *laughs*

Glad my little noob self stirred up some lively discussion, and didn't realize that DW'ing SP drain was a "new" idea to people. I love theory crafting in games like this.

Obviously I'm no where near high enough level to even spend a first point into the 18th level talents, but I've combed through pretty much all the info I could get my hands on in the Players Guides: Heroes and Monsters (Tables) thread.  My basic take on Juggernaut was that it seemed a more then a bit lackluster, to be sure.  I mean, just compare it to the other warrior option, Kincaid's, level 18.  Both abilities are designed to do one thing, hit multiple targets for pure damage.  Both characters have FAR better single target options available (example: Ferocity level 3 has the same damage output as Jug level 10 for anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 the SP cost) such that you'd never use either of these abilities unless there were more than 1 target to consider.  Kincaid's just flat out does it better.  And I mean, a LOT better.  

With 1 talent:

Jug hits 1 target, rewards at most 1 MP, and refunds between 0-33 SP.  It's cheep....or it's not, depending on your luck with the refund role. 40% of the time you're getting nothing refunded.  Importantly though, it's not fulfilling it's role of the multiple target damage ability yet.  It's still costing you 2 AP for every enemy hit with it, because you need to recast it each time.

Storm hits up to 5 targets, depending on enemy positioning.  Based on my, granted limited, playing experience so far...I could pretty easily hit 2 targets regularly with this 2 AP use.  More is just gravy. It's already fulfilling it's multiple target damage role.



Now lets take a look at level 10, where in theory Juggernaut should shine.  

Jug still hits 1 target, refunds 0/1/2 AP, 1-2 MP, and 17-33 SP.  That means that *if* you're using only 2AP worth of weapons, and *if* you hit the 33% of the time it refunds 2 AP, you get a "free AP" attack. Since you're only getting this *if* you killed the target, using it repeatedly on the same target is useless.  This first attack costs between 49-65 SP to hit that 1 target, but every follow up attack costs another 49-65 SP (98-130 for 2 targets, 147-195 for 3, etc).  Mind you, you're only using it to hit multiple targets for the 2 initial AP investment *if* all those "if's" are successful on each hit. 33% of the time, it's handling it's multiple target damage role. The rest of the time you're bleeding AP.

Storm hits a freaking BLOCK of targets. Up to 9 targets.  Uh...what?  This can easily hit 3+ targets at this point, reliably. It costs 86 SP to do this, no matter how many targets are hit and no matter if it actually killed any of them or not.  This means you don't need to worry about softening up any of the targets, because it doesn't rely on killing blows to be effective.  Got 4 targets that won't die from 1 use, but would from 2?  With 2 AP worth of weapons (same as we're assuming for Jug), those 2 uses will cost you 172 SP and 4 AP....and hit 8 times.  To get 8 Jug hits out of 4 AP, you need to spend 392-520 SP, be *insanely* lucky with your AP refunds, and...oh by the way, have double the targets because hitting the same thing twice does nothing with Jug. *laughs*

And what happens if you're using 3 AP worth of weapons?  Absolute and utter breakdown of any power similarity whatsoever.  Storm wins, hands down, without question. With even only 3 targets available, you're getting 3 3AP hits for the cost of 3 AP and 82 SP.  Juggernaut would average out to costing 6AP for those same 3 hits (and even on perfect refund roles, 2 AP per swing, would only break even at a total cost of 3 AP) while costing twice as much SP on average.



On paper, Storm just flat out wins when you compare the two warriors level 18 talents. In most cases, it doesn't just win...it shames Juggernaut into standing in the corner and contemplating what a looser it is.  Now I haven't played the game long enough to be able to compare the two warriors *as a whole* to each other, but I can only assume that the rest of the abilities in Vrae's toolkit make up for this complete disparity in other ways.  But when you're just talking about Juggernaut on it's own merit, compared to his direct warrior competition's 18th level talent on it's own merit, I can completely understand why people would think Juggernaut is lackluster.  It's because, mathematically, it is. *laughs*

[ironman4do]

By the way, that^ is me. Figured I may as well register, heh.

[Rashar]

Welcome and enjoy!