DA Stacking and the Crucible

[Avyctes]

Nerf DA and bring back OA’s old glories, suicidal DW builds was the best thing ever, now they are only good at suiciding.

Fuck yes. This whole defensive meta is so dull.

[MrTek]

I’d love a unique powerful item like that , in the new mod maybe. But you can’t make it usable in campaign. I would favor too much players that moved away from campaign and to mods like this.

Unless it’s a super challenge in the main campaign or something

I don’t see why it wouldn’t be usable in the campaing mode!
Depends what kind of power the item gives I’d say!
As for the item, it could be a unique augment (or more) for the medal slot or 1-3 more slot).

[x1x1x1x2]

I have a sneaking suspicion they might nerf the CDR on star pact if they’re going this route.

You saw ABCbarbecue’s binder? It had 2.3k DA, and no Star Pact. Still crushes cruci. He’s prolly the only one that can pilot that thing though.

[thepowerofmediocrity]

“DA stacking promotes build diversity”

Did…did i just read this right? This is the exact opposite. Pretty much all the builds posted in the last several months that beat Gladiator 170 are just DA stackers. It’s no longer about what skills you use, it’s about stacking enough DA to lower the enemy damage greatly.

I bet a majority of these builds wouldn’t beat 170 Gladiator if they didn’t had over 4k DA. It’s a crutch and bad one at that. I literally can link builds where the posters couldn’t beat 170 Gladiator but then decided to DA stack to around 5k. And guess what happened? They beat Gladiator 170 with some ease.

What’s even worse is the OA and DA formula. OA gets worse the more you have but DA gets way better the more you have. That’s stupid.

We have 19 pages of discussions and nobody caught wind of this tidbit. It’s nigh impossible to have a constructive path forward if Praetorians are seriously trying to argue that increasing build diversity lowers build diversity. I put the above in bold because having builds that couldn’t be able to beat 170 in the past now have it possible to beat 170 thanks to heightened DA is literally the definition of increased diversity.

There are numerous offensive skills in this game that rely on shotgun mechanics to make the most of their DPS (at least enough to handle the toughest Crucible waves). These builds simply can’t afford to spend 90% of their time kiting because kiting negatively affects their DPS much worse than Forcewave or Bone Harvest builds that do their damage in one swoop or DoT builds that can stack separate sources which add together.

Off the top of my head, here are the offensive skills that absolutely require the player to be in the enemy’s face in order to pull off:

• Builds that heavily rely on Brimstone and other projectiles that break off into smaller fragments.
• Mortar Trap
• Thermite Mines
• Runes
• Sigil of Consumption
• Ravenous Earth
• Aegis Set
• Any Nightblade build that has good modifiers on Veil of Shadow
• Any Inquisitor build using Aura of Censure
• Any Channeling Spell (AAR, Drain Essence)
• Inquisitor Seal

For many builds, high DA was the only way that they can lure enemies into the areas they needed to be in order for the skills’ DPS to work properly. There’s no point in stacking more modifiers into a skill like Mortar Trap if 50% of the Mortars aren’t going to be anywhere near the opponent because the player has to be kiting 24/7.

Here’s a quote from Cmak’s Mortar Trap Purifier to illustrate this concept:

“Mortar trap is an awesome skill and does insane damage (including aoe), but suffers massive dps loss if it misses its enemies. To solve this issue, i make my character as tanky as possible and do not kite”

However you decide to nerf the worst PTH excesses while buffing Crucible defenses, it needs to be done in a way that players that must get close to the enemy to have their skills even work can do so without having to worry about dying in milliseconds.

[Norzan]

We have 19 pages of discussions and nobody caught wind of this tidbit. It’s nigh impossible to have a constructive path forward if Praetorians are seriously trying to argue that increasing build diversity lowers build diversity. I put the above in bold because having builds that couldn’t be able to beat 170 in the past now have it possible to beat 170 thanks to heightened DA is literally the definition of increased diversity.

Because what i said is 100% true. It’s a crutch and a really bad one. If the only way to increase build diversity is by overusing a single stat, that’s NOT build diversity. Just love how you ignore other people that said the same thing i said and what i said above that to try to give your argument any weight. Nice :rolleyes:

Most of your build setup (the thing that makes build diversity exist in the first place) becomes nigh irrelevant when the major thing that even keeps you alive is a single stat. Basically nothing else of your build setup matters except for DA. That’s BAD design. The builds i mentioned changed their setup so much to stack DA that they became nigh identical. The only actual difference they have is a few skills, everything else is nearly the same.

People already complain about the physique meta, this is a million times worse. You are literally forced to use the same 80% of the items and devotions everyone else uses. Ugdenbog Leather, Runebound Topaz, stuff with Protection, Stalwart and Readiness. Devotions like Wolverine and Solemn Watcher. That’s what you call build diversity? I sure as hell don’t.

[Mator]

Because what i said is 100% true. It’s a crutch and a really bad one. If the only way to increase build diversity is by overusing a single stat, that’s NOT build diversity.

You have a point, but it’s out of scope. Your point is that there’s only one viable defensive stat for certain types of builds when it comes to clearing waves 150-170 of crucible. We agree with this, but nerfing that stat doesn’t create a better situation. Rather, other defensive stats should be buffed so there are other viable approaches to clearing 150-170 crucible for these types of builds.

Buffing of other defensive stats is an entirely separate discussion that should be covered at some point. That said, nerfing DA to oblivion isn’t a solution, it’s a step backwards. Nerfing crucible/buffing blessings similarly doesn’t fix the issue that certain class combinations/types of builds have vastly superior defensive capacities than others. If we want to talk about balance, DA is an incredible balancing factor in that it allows a wide variety of builds to reach a similar level of defensive effectiveness. Maybe the upper cap of EHP achievable through DA is too high, so a slight formula tweak is necessary, but gutting DA as a whole (as currently suggested by Zantai) seems like an overreaction and a mistake (from my perspective).

[Norzan]

Actually, it’s 70% of the builds that i have seen posted recently that use DA stacking. The rest are CDR users and shields users. And even some shield users and CDR users use DA stacking.

If the only way for some build types to reach the same tankyness other build types reach with not much effort is through DA stacking, there’s something seriously wrong here.

I’m not saying DA should be nerfed to hell. Just saying having to use such a broken mechanic to even stay alive is really bad design and indicative of something really wrong going on here.

[Dioarchet]

Alright guys, I’ve done it!

Here’s the PERFECT SOLUTION to the DA scaling problem:

if (pth < 90)
	pth = 90*exp((91/360000)*(oa - da)) + (140/9)*(log(oa) - log(da));

This involved some painstaking work in multivariate calculus to figure out, but here’s roughly how I got it:

[spoiler]Let:

x = OA
y = DA

PTH = ((((x/((y/3.5)+x))300)0.3)+(((((x3.25)+10000)-(y3.25))/100)*0.7))-50

dPTH/dx = 90/(x+(2y)/7)-(90x)/(x+(2y)/7)^2+91/4000
dPTH/dy = -(180x)/(7*((2*y)/7+x)^2)-91/4000

---

When x = y,

PTH = 90

dPTH/dx = 140/(9x)+91/4000
dPTH/dy = -140/(9y)-91/4000

Linear Solution:

PTH = 90 + (91/4000)(x - y) + (140/9)(log(x) - log(y))

Exponential (Decay) Solution:

PTH = 90exp((91/360000)(x - y)) + (140/9)*(log(x) - log(y))[/spoiler]
As you can see, it exploits the fact that when OA = DA, PTH is always 90 and the partial derivatives for both OA and DA are quite simple. So it makes perfect sense to transition from the existing equation to the “new” equation when PTH < 90.

The resulting surface is astonishingly beautiful in how it exactly matches the existing surface in both value and slope at PTH = 90, while gracefully decreasing to highly reasonable values as DA increases relative to OA.

Source:
https://academo.org/demos/3d-surface-plotter/?expression=90exp((91%2F360000)(x-y))%2B(140%2F9)*(log(x)-log(y))&xRange=100%2C6000&yRange=100%2C6000&resolution=52

[x1x1x1x2]

@Dioarchet: How do you even come up with that math? Do you just plug in random numbers and functions until you make something work or there’s a fixed procedure for this? Asking this cause my I’m more inclined to do the opposite (modelling, which is not that applicable in this situation) so I can’t quite figure out how people create these equations from nothing.

[actuanpanda]

^ Actual original formula for degenerates like me without a built-in parser in their heads:

Edit: Got bored at work so I made this, @Dioarchet 's surface is the red one, it matches with the old one along the OA = DA line but scale differently as OA and DA differ as you can see.

Code to generate the figure: https://gist.github.com/suicao/3dc9fa318bb8d8d19d4fa6288c236219

[thejabrixone]

@diocarchet:

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

[Dioarchet]

@Dioarchet: How do you even come up with that math? Do you just plug in random numbers and functions until you make something work or there’s a fixed procedure for this? Asking this cause my I’m more inclined to do the opposite (modelling, which is not that applicable in this situation) so I can’t quite figure out how people create these equations from nothing.

I used these tools for symbolic computations, mostly for derivatives and some integrals:

Wolfram|Alpha: Making the world’s knowledge computable

https://www.derivative-calculator.net/

Then I combine that with a combination of guesswork, common sense, looking at graphs/charts and actual prior coursework in multivariate calculus, which I barely remember but somehow it came in handy here.

Also:

[Superfluff]

It’s nigh impossible to have a constructive path forward if Praetorians are seriously trying to argue that increasing build diversity lowers build diversity. I put the :

• Builds that heavily rely on Brimstone and other projectiles that break off into smaller fragments.
• Mortar Trap
• Thermite Mines
• Runes
• Sigil of Consumption
• Ravenous Earth
• Aegis Set
• Any Nightblade build that has good modifiers on Veil of Shadow
• Any Inquisitor build using Aura of Censure
• Any Channeling Spell (AAR, Drain Essence)
• Inquisitor Seal

1. You’d be surprised to know how few out of all testers care about this DA thing. Mainly because most don’t touch crucible, rarely, if ever.

2. You’d be surprised to know how little Crate cares if one or two testers complain about an issue of such magnitude especially with a small player base(gladiator). I say care in the sense of “taking action”. It is only now that the DA issue has become a thing amongst many crucible players out of the few total that Crate takes any action. And it’s normal. Now there are enough samples to see that there is a reoccuring pattern that hurts build diverisity in crucible gladiator (won’t get into again why, there are plenty of posts here that do that including from crate)

3. You would again again be surprised to know that some of the builds you mentioned above have been posted on the forum doing crucible gladiator without mass DA hoarding. 3-3.5K max. Some of them have been posted by me as well or recently updated i.e: 2h Purifier, Aegis Purifier, Drain essence(this one was so easy),

And Ravenous earth, especially on a vitality build has no place in that list. RE is really easy if done right. Runes are also easy.

AAR is the only culprit and that is the fault of the skill itself

The example you gave that some builds failed until they got 5k DA is actually the problem. I mean, grandma could stack 5K DA + and dance around 2x reapers, poke them with a stick to death.

[Ceno]

Here’s the PERFECT SOLUTION to the DA scaling problem:

if (pth < 90)
	pth = 90*exp((91/360000)*(oa - da)) + (140/9)*(log(oa) - log(da));

Great, now do it without logs/exponents since the engine doesn’t support those operations.

It’s nigh impossible to have a constructive path forward if Praetorians are seriously trying to argue that increasing build diversity lowers build diversity.

Praetorians don’t have any greater say on balance than anyone else, we just get an earlier say.

[toilagamer852]

Disclaimer: I agree DA meta is too OP right now and need a moderate nerf.

Until now I still have no idea why there are people claiming DA meta lowers build diversity. Nerf this meta a bit, there is still some diversity left, but as many pointed out, nerfing DA meta to the ground basically means 1 thing: 70% of the existing builds won’t survive past W155.

Many dudes here are trying very hard to confuse the population that DA meta breaks build diversity. It doesn’t, it makes gearing and devotion diversity worse, while increasing build diversity. So overall diversity indeed decreases a bit. I can only say 1 thing: only idiots cannot distinguish build diversity from overall diversity. DA meta appears, more build can clear W170, that is a f**king obvious increase in build diversity, unless the person fails his English and Maths class throughout 12 years of education. Please make it damn clear what you are talking about, stop blabbering about build diversity getting worse, it is the overall diversity (build+gear+devotion) that is getting worse.

Done with the emotional bullsh*t, back to the topic, DA meta needs a nerf, no denying that. Nerf by how much, probably to make it as good as current CDR or DoT. I did mention in my previous post that there are a few ways to nerf DA, besides applying the formula proposed @Dioarchet:

• Reduce effectiveness of DA on AoE, meaning at 6k DA, you literally don’t get hit from single attack, thus some high single damage nemeses become a joke, but good luck with tanking mobs within pools of AoE, not to mention DA reduction and other debuffs. Come on, it’s just logical and common sense that no matter how much dodge chance you have, it’s next to impossible to dodge a whole pool of AoE when the damage received is literally everywhere.

• Create an inverse correlation between OA and DA. In the case of super DA, make it affect OA negatively, meaning even though you cannot die in W150-170, you also have no hope of clearing it. Players are then forced to strike a balance between OA and DA. Sounds illogical? If anyone ever read Dragon Ball, some can recall that Songoku complains how bad 3rd Super Saiyan form is, making him powerful but reducing his agility. This is one example of how extreme OA can affect DA negatively and we can apply the same logic to make extreme DA affect OA negatively, to the point where players find it not worthy to push for extreme DA. I leave the maths to people like Dioarchet since he seems to be good at it.

• Stalwart prefix is OP not exactly because it adds up a lot of DA, but because it is a yellow affix. Change it to green affix will solve a part of the problem as it is much harder to get the right affix combination. Same goes for Readiness, nerf it a bit. Those absurd number should appear in Drangoul and not a yellow suffix like Readiness. Stalwart of Readiness, both are now green affixes, good luck to get that, unless people cheat with GDStash of course.

Afterall, game nerfing and buffing are to achieve overall equality among class combinations, so that for the same amount of effort, you won’t fall too much behind the meta builds (perfect balance is impossible). Anything beside that, just to satisfy the greed for fame and recognition of a small elitist group, is STRICTLY out the the question. Don’t make the mass feel helpless and cheated, that is how past dynasties failed.

[Rhylthar]

Many dudes here are trying very hard to confuse the population that DA meta breaks build diversity. It doesn’t, it makes gearing and devotion diversity worse, while increasing build diversity. So overall diversity indeed decreases a bit. I can only say 1 thing: only idiots cannot distinguish build diversity from overall diversity. DA meta appears, more build can clear W170, that is a f**king obvious increase in build diversity, unless the person fails his English and Maths class throughout 12 years of education. Please make it damn clear what you are talking about, stop blabbering about build diversity getting worse.

Before you insult people, give a clear explanation what a build is.

a) The chosen Masteries.
b) The chosen Devotions and Itemization.
c) A mix of a) and b)

When I look up a “new” build which promotes clearing Crucible I stop when looking at 1st page of Grimtools: DA >4000+. ´nough seen, thanks.

[Superfluff]

DA meta appears, more build can clear W170, that is a f**king obvious increase in build diversity, unless the person fails his English and Maths class throughout 12 years of education.

…no comment on this I guess.

However, it is not build diversity when you use a single mechanic, single minded gear and devotions. And a lot of builds(not all, but a good chunk of them) doing this become a caricature of what the base build normally is. Doesn’t even matter what class combo you use or what skills. What matters is that you have the DA and enough dmg to snail through crucible.

That is not diversity. It’s same shit with a different wrapping over and over. I did fail math a lot so take my words with a grain of …salt I guess;)

[toilagamer852]

Before you insult people, give a clear explanation what a build is.

a) The chosen Masteries.
b) The chosen Devotions and Itemization.
c) A mix of a) and b)

When I look up a “new” build which promotes clearing Crucible I stop when looking at 1st page of Grimtools: DA >4000+. ´nough seen, thanks.

A build is defined mainly by class combination with skill selection, followed by how many points to put in each skill, then come the core gears (a legendary set 99% of the time). Those are what create build diversity.

The rest of the items to fill up the vacancy, either to further support a certain skill selection (and its corresponding points invested) or to get more offense/defense. This is gear diversity.

Devotion diversity: self-explanatory.

I put it very clear in my disclaimer that extreme DA meta is a bit broken and need some nerf, but not to the ground.

When you see a 4k+ DA, you turn away, that is YOUR CHOICE. This game doesn’t have a f**king leaderboard like D3. Who cares about your choice? Elitists who would like a decent level of challenge, go ahead and play your own build. All I see in this whole thread is:

A plays the game with godly reflex and good skill combination (aka meta builds). A feels superior to others. A is an elitist.

B discovers a general formula so that B-Z can succeed without that much (hardcore) skills and calculation. Mass satisfaction is achieved.

A feels cheated because no one cares about his showoff of knowledge and skills anymore, because anyone can be successful. A demands change. This is fair, talent should be appreciated.

Instead of just nerfing the formula to make A feels more appreciated, the government completely disables the formula, forcing B-Z to either follow the way of A, possess A’s skills, or get eliminated.

The people complaining about DA meta are 80% logic and 20% jealousy. This 20% is too obvious to miss.

Anyway, I ask for expert’s opinions here about my proposed methods of nerfing DA. Expert and objective comments are always welcome. Thanks.

[Superfluff]

A plays the game with godly reflex and good skill combination (aka meta builds). A feels superior to others. A is an elitist.

B discovers a general formula so that B-Z can succeed without that much (hardcore) skills and calculation. Mass satisfaction is achieved.

You seem very driven with your opinion of people who post end game builds so there is no use trying to change your mind.

Posting builds is not charity work really (unless one takes the time to make a massive guide, some do that)

But your sentiment on this issue does not let see you 2 things:

1. Whatever Crate comes up with will not favor any one type of builder (I wasn’t aware there were 2 types, but we’ll keep it as you said for the sake of simplicity). Anyone will be able to make any class combo with whatever skills once chooses with good use of everything the game offers you in terms of offense and defense (the whole point of this type of game).

2. again the DA thing dilutes overall build identity in crucible. Casters with untouchable and 3x stalwarts snailing through crucible. Fighters with Stalwarts and defensive devotions and barely enough dmg to say, hay i finished it. They are all pretty much the same in the end. Just the way you deliver dmg is different.

Yes DA gives you means to finish gladiator if you can;t be bothered or want other ways, mechanics or the fact that there are builds that can finish 170 without DA cheese or Time dilation cheese but others that simply cannot and step into the DA muddy waters just to be able to say, hey, finished it.

DA is a choice not meta only for SOME builds. This is where all the crucible problems start. With proper balance in 0.6 builds that used to need 4.5K DA will no longer benefit from it but will also no longer need it! They can get creative, get more dmg etc.

[Rhylthar]

The people complaining about DA meta is 80% logical and 20% jealousy. This 20% is too obvious to miss.

What jealousy?

There is no jealousy. Nearly nobody cares if somebody clears Crucible. It´s a modable game, so what?

What DA-Meta does is killing creativity. You don´t need to think about anything if you get enough DA and some damage. Like Superfluff said.

And this is boring as hell.