User talk:Jdavis

Hi! If I left you a message at your talk page, then please respond there; I am watching it. If you leave a message for me here, then I'll respond here, so please check back. Jdavis 21:51, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Cutter Charge

The cutter lines do NOT have a terrible charge. It has a highly SITUATIONAL charge--Trying 15:22, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I spent a lot of time using a DVS in the old days. I could never learn to use the charge attack well. Some people claim that they can use the charge attack well, but I have not seen compelling video of this. I tell you what: I know from your forum posts that you are not a newbie or an idiot. So I'll look into it again, and maybe refine my opinion. Regards. Jdavis 16:20, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

did you look at the last post here? [1]--Trying 15:23, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I never watched that last video, but I have now. My conclusion: You can release Cutter charges on slow monsters, when there are no fast monsters aggro'ed on you. Do you agree? There is only one other kind of example in that video, of using a charge against two gremlins in a deconstruction zone. What's your opinion on faster enemies like this? Jdavis 15:36, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah it's pretty much only for bosses and slow enemies, though I think if you charge up and have a bunch of greavers spawn and charge at you in one direction, you might be able to pull it off.--Trying 18:28, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, so I'll refine my advice to take all of this into account. Thanks, Trying. Jdavis 21:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Armor Page Additions

Hi Bopp, this is just a suggestion for your armor guide, but what do you think of including Antistone's research on armor mechanics? It would be useful to have the information from that page in an easy-to-read format for those interested in the main idea of the subject but not the details surrounding it, and also it would be good to have an experienced player draw conclusions from the research and explain the implications to a swordmaster, gunslinger, or bomber role. Whether this latter suggestion should be included in your armor page or the respective swordsmaster, gunslinger, or bomber pages is up to you. The link to Antistone's page is at the bottom of the swordmaster's guide.

Anyways, just thought it would be a nice addition to your armor page if you are still working on it. Take care! - Blaisem 22:37, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Blaisem. I am aware of Antistone's research. See also Kalaina-Elderfall's research, here and here, if you haven't already. I really admire them for doing such tests. If I understand correctly, the current thinking is that the damage blocked by a helmet or suit is proportional to the displayed statistic bar on the helmet or suit. In other words, we can trust appearances (unlike in some parts of Spiral Knights).

I am still working on my armor guide, but slowly. I have decided that quantifying damage protection at the bar/pixel level should not be part of my guide. It is too detailed of information, especially since my advice is to go for offensive bonuses rather than optimal defense. I mean, whether a helmet offers 6.3 bars of piercing or 7.3 bars of piercing should not be a major consideration. But you are probably right, that I should include some mention of this issue in the "Basic Concepts" section of the guide.

Thanks for writing, and for your recent edits to the Swordmaster Guide. Jdavis 03:09, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Great! I hadn't seen that second link by Kalaina-Elderfall!

Well, they did show that the bars are proportional to the defense blocked, but the biggest discovery was that armor scales linearly. Linear scaling means that the more you stack armor, the more valuable it becomes, and the less you stack it, the smaller the difference it will make.

A Skolver armor + Divine Veil combination might very well do no more than allow you to withstand one additional hit, while a double Skolver set has the potential of applying not only double piercing bonuses, but also versatile double normal bonuses. If we can say that one approach to preparing your armor loadout not better than another, then it's just not worth it to take armor into consideration for your load out, until you can afford to make specialized load outs. It's just more evidence that armor type should be subservient to offensive bonuses, and perhaps dangerous status effects like shock or freeze that can result in your death with one untimely proc.

The test also showed that UV-medium +defense bonuses (such as trinkets) struggled to display even a half bar difference in damage taken, and UV-max! was about 3/4 of a bar difference in damage. This is possibly not even capable of making a difference in how many hits you can survive before dying, unless you are making a specialized loadout where you stack two or three sources of them. So, worrying about these UVs or trinkets probably shouldn't be worth a newbie's time.

I don't know if you think it worthwhile to put into your guide, but I agree a link might not be a bad idea. Anyways, hope this could be of some use to you. Cheers! --Blaisem 05:24, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Right: When you combine armors, their defense bars combine linearly, and the research by Antistone and Kalaina-Elderfall suggests that defense bars are proportional to the hit point reductions. So everything about damage defense is proportional and easy to understand. But, as you note, what one really cares about is how many hits you can sustain before dying. The same thing is true on offense, of course. You don't care about your sword's damage-per-second, but rather kills-per-second or hits-per-kill.

The problem is that it's hard to measure, analyze, and communicate hits-until-death and kills-per-second, because they are sensitive to slight changes in the tactical situation. For example, does a damage increase on an Acheron actually decrease the number of hits needed to kill a jelly? When I'm fighting solo on a specific depth, I can easily measure this. But the answer may vary with depth, the number of knights in my party, which weapons those knights are using, which knights are poisoned, etc. And if we're talking about armor, the same thing goes for poison on monsters, rate of heart drops, presence of damage from fire and shock, etc.

So I agree with everything you're saying, but I'm not sure what to say in my guide. Maybe I should repeat what you've said about status. If you're shocked, then you can go from full health to dead in a few seconds, even if your armor is matched to the damage type of the monsters. So status defense is really important. Jdavis 13:58, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I think what you might want to say is that the further you go the more important status resists are and the less important armor defenses are.--Trying 15:09, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that might be a good rule of thumb. I'll continue thinking about it. Thanks for your advice, too. Jdavis 16:23, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Armor in Lockdown

Since we were speaking of armor before, what do you make of this:

http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/63022

So far, it seems to go against what we learned from the past studies. I am reluctant to think Kalaina and Antistone could both have been wrong, and they presented their studies with well-defined conditions, so I am still a little speculative of the new study. But assuming it is correct, perhaps Lockdown just has a completely different set of rules than PvE.

But Kalaina and Antistone did do their studies a long time ago. Do you think there is a chance that OOO changed things without mentioning it? Presumably, a player like yourself would have likely noticed a change in the damage you were taking since you have been around since the beginning...--Blaisem 17:12, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm very interested. Cooperation between two Lockdown teams seems like the ultimate way to gather damage and armor data. But very few of those tests have known resistances attached. I would want to know the exact armor on the victim.

Three Rings is often accused of "stealth patches" that change the rules without announcement. I believe that these changes are largely unintended consequences filtering through the software. Anyway, I have not noticed any big change to Lockdown damage. But I am far from the best Lockdown player. Jdavis 23:04, 28 August 2012 (UTC)