Which & how many ongoing charms to use in 4v4 fight?

[lessigfan]

I was thinking about this when I saw someone get unlucky and play 4 buffs in a row, then get killed without using them. What mix of ongoing buffs & damage is right, and which ongoing buffs are worthwhile? I figure buffs are worthwhile when you do more damage with them than you would have if you'd simply played a high damage charm.

So I trolled through our last 15 guild v. guild battles & counted how many non-extra-action charms an individual got to play on average (other than the one against elitist jerks, which was just messed up). I didn't count where either team was playing with fewer than 4 players or where either team was at a 30/60/90% disadvantage. I also took into account battle tempos & kiai charms.

An average battle lasts 112 turns, with a high of 194 and low of 62. On average, 18 extra actions are used, with a high of 66 and low of 6. On average, a total of 93 non-ea charms are played. So an average player in an average fight gets to play 11 or 12 non-ea charms. At no point did anyone play more than 30 non-ea charms, so you'll probably be safe never including more than 30 or 35 non-ea charms.

Since charms are chosen randomly, buffs will have a uniform distribution across rounds. So if you get 11 or 12 charms, then the middle is round 5/6, so you'll get on average 5 or 6 rounds with each buff. Buffs that outdo the damage charms they displace in fewer than 5/6 rounds are worth using, those that don't, aren't worth using.

This overstates the value of buffs that don't have a damage component (e.g. hyphused v. release karma), since the non-damaging buffs won't benefit from prior buffs. I think it is a good rule of thumb, but it probably doesn't represent stuff like blood pact very well. And of course extra action buffs are always worth doing.

For example, lets look at the the hyphused gear. Lets say we can play either a glorious claymore or a hyphused slasher. The claymore does 60 damage. The slasher does 27, with +6 to future melee charms. So the claymore does 33 extra damage. The slasher would need 5 melee charms played afterwards to basically be even with the claymore. So they're about even, as long as you play mostly melee charms.

What about release karma v. a claymore? Release karma provides +15 ongoing buff, but you lose out on 60 damage. Releas karma will catch up in just 4 melee attacks, making it a good deal damage wise. Of course you lose 28 health, and get will (which is almost certainly useless). So if you have to make up the missing health, it'll take 6 melee attacks, in which case it is weaker than the hyphused slasher.

Blood pact is a bad deal in 4v4 guild battles. In 6 rounds release karma adds 90 damage (15*6), whereas blood pact has only adds 66 extra damage (+6, +8, +10, +12, +14, +16 = 66). In longer battles - like 2v2 or 1v1 - blood pact is a much better deal.

Battle dance is ok. In 6 rounds it adds 84 damage (+4 +8 +12 +16 +20 +24), which compares favorably to release karma's 90, given release karma takes 30 health

So release karma is about even, hyphused gear is about even, blood pact is a bad deal, battle dance is a good deal if you're only using spears.

How Many Non Damaging Charms Should be Used?

You get 11 or 12 non-ea charms. So if your deck is 20% buffs, you can expect to play 2 or 3 buffs and 9 or 10 damage charms. I wanted to run a monte carlo simulation to test out different mixes of buffs, but I don't have sas nearby, I haven't installed python, and I'm too lazy to learn R. So I did it in VBA (yuck, I know). I assumed you were using charms that do 60 damage (glorious claymore), and buffs that give +15 ongoing (release karma). I ignored any other effects, like loss of life due to buffs.

Anyhow, it turns out that about 15% buff is the right mix for this setup. If you go lower, you get closer to what you'd have without any buffs. If you go higher, the buffs start crowding out the damage charms. If you want the spreadsheet to play around with values, I put it here on box.net. I did it on excel 2007, I assume it'll work on 2003, no guarantees on openoffice.

So if you've got 35 non-ea charms in your guild deck, you won't want 5 or 6 buff charms that don't do melee damage. So pile on the hyphused stuff, but don't use too many blood pacts, battle dances, or release karmas. If there is interest, I'd be glad to modify this monte carlo simulator to evaluate other buff charms.

[Xyel]

Nice work, guess its time to consider excluding the ice/flame combo from the magic squad.

[lessigfan]

By themselves they're pretty weak, but vita banishment is still pretty great: -44 ongoing magic is pretty killer, so they may still be worth using. It wouldn't hurt to try dropping them and see how the squad does against magic users. The manastorms may make vita banishments really important. I guess it is just important we don't have too many, especially of the ice stones, and VB is just as likely to proc. Dropping both, to see how important VB is, seems like a good idea though.

If banishments are still important, we could swing this: anyone using AoE damage should 5x flame stones first, then whatever else you've got. Anyone using buffs should use 5x of their best AoE buffs, probably manastorm. For those without manastorm (just whanana I think), use 5x ice stones. Then we'd have enough flame stones in circulation to trigger VB whenever ice stones come out. That way VB is still likely to occur, but we don't waste our time with buffs instead of damage.

[lessigfan]

Did the numbers on blood pact - it is weak in 4v4 battles, though a good deal in 1v1 or 2v2 battles. Battle dance is ok in 4v4 as long as you use all spears, but much better in longer 1v1 or 2v2 battles. I'll be dropping blood pact from my guild loadouts as soon as I have release karma to replace them.

[Xyel]

If banishments are still important, we could swing this: anyone using AoE damage should 5x flame stones first, then whatever else you've got. Anyone using buffs should use 5x of their best AoE buffs, probably manastorm. For those without manastorm (just whanana I think), use 5x ice stones. Then we'd have enough flame stones in circulation to trigger VB whenever ice stones come out. That way VB is still likely to occur, but we don't waste our time with buffs instead of damage.

I came to the similar conclusion in the squads thread so I completely agree to everyone plays flame stones, someone ice stones - its not like flame stones are any damage loss, because they are still better than pyromaniacs sigil (and crest for that matter as well). Altho ppl wont play 5x non-dmg buffs but 10 - 5x manastorms (plays up on 5 damage charms, but from anybody in the team) + 5x erythic flames (effectively 268dmg charm xD), its just that the other pyros dont have erythic flames yet

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