What if there were no low levels on INV?

[Seven_of_69]

I have not been able to look at this for several days so unless something has changed, I stand by my previous findings. Piercing used to work fine regardless of monster level. Even a non-maxed piercing did the job (I point once again to Holy Shard kills on wave 13 using piercing link+5 against level 520 monsters). Numbers are much more convincing than adjectives. :swink: Finally piercing did all that without needing a triple.

Yep, I just looked at this the other day testing with a level 1500 character, the Piercing (0-10) worked fine at this level, but the Piercing (-2-6) was being reduced to basically nothing, so need to look a bit more and see why that may be the case.

Wow, I'm glad that you were able to reproduce what I experienced. :snod:

no, nrg is not effective at all when levels are very high.

Why should they be? Energy weapons being effective = Players being invulnerable. As if Energy weapons weren't dominant enough, and player invulnerability & monster time out weren't cheesy already.

My sentiments exactly! Globing with energy is great but without some risk or challenge, it's just too easy to "earn" XP wave after wave. The "old" 0-10 piercing wouldn't necessarily keep you alive indefinitely against high level monsters but at least it was able to damage the highest level monsters (and still earn XP) when energy and most other magic modifiers become ineffective.

[tasty]

Capped monsters level - reject proposal.
Increase energy weapons effective at high levels - reject proposal.

My vote
- Make piercing weapons more effective at insane high levels - in progress.
- Once piercing weapons more effective. Decrease piercing weapons loaded weapons or lockers chances. And also magic weapon rolling chances.

My why vote
- We all know monsters do one to three hit kills at insane high levels. We are lucky and felt contented with a piercing weapons to keep us alive for alittle while. Time to pray for monsters timeout.
- Piercing that do enough damage would then be able to regain some health for wm.
- Piercing with a double magic will then do more damage plus some kills to keep up the adren.

WM out in battle - stand a chance to regain some health but get owned when surrounded by huge amounts of monsters.
AM out in battle - that few kills help to globe for a little while but get owned in the end.

Piercing would own if you stand in a good camping spots, without or without much monsters on top, bottom, left, right and behind. Just front.

What about ...
MM - get owned.

[warhead2]

hmmm, k sry i thought u couldn't copy it b4 i'll take your word for it.

so still no one has answered a question i have been asking for a while now. can someone who really knows, once and for all just state how piercing is supposed to work? Does it totally ignore DR? Partially? Should piercing hit sounds remain the same regardless of monster level? Aren't hit sounds based on ammount of damage?

What about Franky's and Krneki's comments that the 1-10 piercing was not effective at high levels? I think this issue has been around for a while.

I think if piercing does ignore DR and actually works that way on the field, I would be a very happy camper. I also would like to see it continue to work with triple, as that means as a WM i can use that as my primary weapon, which increases my likelyhood of even having a piercing.

without a triple the weapon was not so hot. i can see why triple is disable for vorpal and rage, as those weapons have damage thats high like a triple, but this was not the case with piercing so i don't understand why triple would be disabled for it. if the final result of any fixes results in piercing scoring damage like a rage or vorpal, then i'm fine with triple being disabled for it.

i don't think piercing chance should be restricted any more than it is, like it's not hard enough as it is to roll things.

Wail, i think you have made a well reasoned arguement for not wanting nrg to be effective at high levels, and so I accept what you have said. but i only like that idea if piercing works good, and to this date, i have not found it so in my own experience. i am ready and eager to have my experience changed :shappy:

[DW_WailofSuicide]

hmmm, k sry i thought u couldn't copy it b4 i'll take your word for it.

so still no one has answered a question i have been asking for a while now. can someone who really knows, once and for all just state how piercing is supposed to work? Does it totally ignore DR? Partially? Should piercing hit sounds remain the same regardless of monster level? Aren't hit sounds based on ammount of damage?

The effect of the weapon is to ignore damage reduction that monsters gain as a result of their level.
The hit sounds thing is part of the 0-10 Piercing, as this version of the Piercing weapon actually has a scaling percentage of the value of the damage done that is piercing (ie, it works like the special effect of every other weapon), whereas the -2-6 version starts and ends at 100%.

What about Franky's and Krneki's comments that the 1-10 piercing was not effective at high levels? I think this issue has been around for a while.

This is false. It becomes quite obvious when you are not being assaulted by 100 monsters at one time and you are level 250 and your shock beams that normally do ~120 damage are reduced to ~20 and your Piercing weapon is still doing ~120.

without a triple the weapon was not so hot. i can see why triple is disable for vorpal and rage, as those weapons have damage thats high like a triple, but this was not the case with piercing so i don't understand why triple would be disabled for it. if the final result of any fixes results in piercing scoring damage like a rage or vorpal, then i'm fine with triple being disabled for it.

The triple being disabled was something that later versions of Druids did, which I happen to agree with. Past a certain point, Piercing becomes so powerful (relative to other weapons) that it's already doing say 10x the damage of other weapons (see my example above, that's only at 250). It doesn't need to be doing multiple times that multiple more damage. Of course, completely disabling Udamage effects adversely affects the weapon's performance the more common scenario (on MM) where the monster level is low. Allowing it to be used at low levels but scaling the effect back at higher levels is something I'd been meaning to do for awhile to make it more general-purpose useful.

[Seven_of_69]

hmmm, k sry i thought u couldn't copy it b4 i'll take your word for it.

Np. FYI piercing never had a * after its description. :swink:

without a triple the weapon was not so hot. i can see why triple is disable for vorpal and rage, as those weapons have damage thats high like a triple, but this was not the case with piercing so i don't understand why triple would be disabled for it. if the final result of any fixes results in piercing scoring damage like a rage or vorpal, then i'm fine with triple being disabled for it.

I had very good results with the 0-10 piercing variety. No triple necessary! And the triple isn't even the issue. The "new" max+6 piercing is nerfed. It's so ineffective now that I'm actually rolling my piercing weapons.

What about Franky's and Krneki's comments that the 1-10 piercing was not effective at high levels? I think this issue has been around for a while.

This is false. It becomes quite obvious when you are not being assaulted by 100 monsters at one time and you are level 250 and your shock beams that normally do ~120 damage are reduced to ~20 and your Piercing weapon is still doing ~120.

I concur with Wail and I disagree with "the 1-10 piercing was not effective at high levels". In my experience, the 0-10 piercing damaged monsters regardless of their level.

[Seven_of_69]

... Piercing used to work fine regardless of monster level. Even a non-maxed piercing did the job (I point once again to Holy Shard kills on wave 13 using piercing link+5 against level 520 monsters)....

For reference, the above quote referred to the 0-10 variety of piercing a few weeks ago on Hold the Crypt. I also had a piercing mp5+10 as referenced even earlier.

Well today I had a similar "setup" with the main difference being having a piercing mp5+3 of the max +6 variety. It was wave 13 on Watch Your Back with level 529 monsters. I couldn't even get a single kill let alone double kill or better. I could barely damage a volcanic slith. I was shooting a single isolated slith for a good 30+ seconds just to get its HP from about 500 to 20 before it went out of range. IIRC each mp5 bullet did maybe 2 HP of damage, unlike the previous piercing which dealt something like 5-10 times that.

[warhead2]

I am so sorry maybe i am just mistaken but my experience with the old piercing, and appartantly that of some others, is totally different from what seven and wail says. I suppose how it used to work won't be so important, as getting the current one to work ok and everyone's happy with it is the most important thing atm.

i would really like to understand, if that's okay.
Wail, can you please elaborate some more about how the +10 and the +6 piercing work? I'm not comprehending what you are saying if you could just go into some more detail and maybe give an example or two.

Also, can you confirm that hit sound is based on ammount of damage?

Here's an example of one of my experiences: I had a piercing mp5 and was hammering away on some monster, and while i was doing that, some low level guy died, and apparently he was the one low level left, and immediately while i was firing on the same monster, the hit sound pitch went up way high. sorry, i don't have an exact memory of what the damage meter was doing, except that i got the impression the damage got totally nerfed, and so i had to switch out to some other weapon/tactic. i have many memories however in a very high level situation that when i used the piercing i felt like i was just using a pea shooter against an elephant, but i don't have concrete numbers to give you.

I am hoping that a better understanding of the +10 piercing can explain this to me, and clarify where maybe my parts of my memory is just wrong.

Thanks a bunch, I appreciate it.

[Seven_of_69]

My understanding is that the old max of +10 and the new max of +6 are supposed to be equivalent in terms of damage; only the number should have changed. However there are some issues which Wail said he's looking into.

The equivalency formula is simple. To convert from a +10 variety to a +6 variety, multiply by 6 and divide by 10. E.g. Piercing 10 x 6 / 10 = Piercing 6. The full table is below. Obviously there are no fractional piercings but you can see that a 0-10 piercing of +5 is the same as a -2-6 piercing of +3.

[table=border:1px;][tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]Piercing 0-10[/td][td=width: 200;]Equivalent Piercing -2-6[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]10[/td][td=width: 200;]6[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]9[/td][td=width: 200;]5.4[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]8[/td][td=width: 200;]4.8[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]7[/td][td=width: 200;]4.2[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]6[/td][td=width: 200;]3.6[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]5[/td][td=width: 200;]3[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]4[/td][td=width: 200;]2.4[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]3[/td][td=width: 200;]1.8[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]2[/td][td=width: 200;]1.2[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]1[/td][td=width: 200;]0.6[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;]0[/td][td=width: 200;]0[/td][/tr]
[tr=text-align:center;][td=width: 200;](does not go negative)[/td][td=width: 200;](can be -1 or -2)[/td][/tr][/table]
Also, regardless of whether it's +10 or +6 piercing, monsters are still harder to kill as their level goes up, even with piercing, and therefore the hit sound should increase in pitch. However either piercing variety should still damage monsters regardless of their level but just not as easily as their level increases. E.g. level 500 monsters will be harder to kill than level 300 monsters but piercing should always do damage.

I also don't understand why there is disagreement on whether the 0-10 or -2-6 is better than the other especially when they're supposed to be the same. IMO bringing numbers to the table is what we need to make comparisons. So here are some more. :stongue:

Earlier today on FrostDeck17, my level 529 WM spawned on wave 1 with a piercing shock (+3 I think). The only other player was a low level who died early on wave 1. End result? We lost the map on wave 1! How embarrassing. :sblush: While I was able to damage and kill a few monsters (with various magic types), the piercing shock was no more effective than my non-piercing arsenal. Unfortunately I don't have any concrete anecdotes of the 0-10 piercing being a life saver on wave 1 but it used to work more effectively than it does now.

[warhead2]

the statements "The effect of the weapon is to ignore damage reduction that monsters gain as a result of their level" and "monsters are still harder to kill as their level goes up" seem to be conflicting ideas, which is why i hope that some detailed explanations from the coder(s) can help clarify exactly how it is supposed to work, both then and now. Hopefully, finding and resolving the current issue with the +6 will shed a lot of light on these mysteries.

Also, one thing that occured to me from my own coding experiences, is that things like client/server replication issues can account for our differing experiences, as such things would manefest themselves differently at different times for different people. important thing is we understand how it's supposed to work so we can report the bugs when we find them.

[DW_FrankyTheFly]

All the discussion regardimg piercing is interresting. But i will have to agree with Seven of 69 and Wail view.

My opinion on piercing is that it SHOULD NOT make u able to kill monster above a certain level. My idea for a good piercing weapon would be to ignore monster DR up to 200 level, for monsters with more then 200 level it should not because dying is part of the game.

And yes, i can comfirm that the piercing 1-10 and the 1-6 where both copyable (they never had the *).

It's also right that the energy weapon become inneficient when the monsters level is over 200 and once again, it is a good thing. We don't want the game to be easy, but chalenging. But they are not totally inneficient when combined with a redeemer for instance. In fact, even with monsters at level 600+ I can regen my adrenaline from 50 to 700 by shooting a redeemer in a pack of monsters and switching to an energy weapon, making the blast an energy powerhouse, and if i can do that and survive ALONE 4 or 5 wave in a row (yes i did that multiple time).... well anyonne else can do it.