Decay, harvesting, and the wardrobe...
Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2004 10:03 pm
Over my time of playing tank and other combat related skills, I have come to notice a number of things in the game, and how various people play.
Decay...
Decay happens, no doubt about that. How fast it occurs is up to the player. Fighting things more closely in level with your gear can greatly reduce this decay. Chain pulling lvl 150-200 mobs while using q80-100 gear is just not good for your stuff. Weapons break on their much tougher hides, and their big nasty teeth and claws quickly shred apart your armor. Yea, you get 3kxp a kill for the next umpteenth levels and level really fast that way, but obviously your underleveled gear is going to poof out of existance in a very short amount of time.
I remember way back when....fighting level 100-120 critters, wearing q50 gear and being shocked at how fast it decayed. Went back after getting q80-90 gear, and low and behold, that same gear was lasting MUCH MUCH longer. All the while was duoing with a healer. No blinder, no stunner, no enchantments. Just a straight tank, and straight healer. Getting 1-2kxp+ xp was just dandy, and the levels still flew by, and we were getting more mats per level earned. Fetching us a tidy sum from the town vendors. So replacing the now slowly decaying gear was much easier, and didn't run into the feeling that I was barely affording my next set of armor.
The other problem that killing things that only give 3kxp (thank Jena for that xp cap), is that while you do level at a nice fast clip, you are outleveling the crafters, so you will be stuck with a decay problem until the crafters can catch up in level with you.
Harvesting and the wardrobe...
Similair lines for the harvesters, yea you can level ultra fast pulling the higher Q mats, but you also get less mats/time spent. And you get mats that are no more useful to the crafters than mats that are of the quality that the crafter can make (i.e. HarvesterX: Here's a stack of q250 mats for you to grind with! CrafterY: Gee thanks! Now I'll go grind out some q150 pikes...). On a -32 credit extraction, you can either get a) 6x q99/100 mats or b) 4x q148/150 mats over the same period of time (this is using agg speed 3/agg rate 3/agg quality 4 vs agg speed 1/agg rate 3/agg quality 5, patch 1 will change this, and I'm looking forward to playing around with it, didn't pre-order woe is me). Now, while pulling (b) i do get 2k+ xp a pull at lvl 120ish harvest, while pulling (a)I get around 800. Sure (b) may level my harvest faster (and increase how much dp I get), but (a) allows me to keep my dp at a lower level, and lets me harvest mats for crafting at a 50% faster rate (since I can only craft q80-90 gear at the moment, there is no benefit to my crafting to pull q150 mats).
Now on to the new system that is coming in patch 1. I've seen a couple of people testing out the new system on the ATS. Normally they were going with a lower speed than rate for their extractions, and were not pulling the max Q their action allowed. Has anyone tried using a higher speed but lower rate? With the current live system, I use a agg 1/3/5, I wont hit max Q til the quantity is 1.8. Using 3/1/5 I hit max Q at 1.3 quantity. Both were done on source mode 0, and both had 1 explosion for 645 and 719 respectively (I have noticed with the same actions getting a 150-200 dmg variance in the explosions force). I did not use any specialization, or increased source time. Currently on live servers, mat spec extractions are not in effect, so I have not been able to test out their impact on this.
Hope this post has been somewhat informative to some of you.
P.S. My applicable levels to this information are:
133 2h pierce, 105 1h pierce, 118 close combat
119 lakeland forage 122 prime roots forage
Zzei~
Decay...
Decay happens, no doubt about that. How fast it occurs is up to the player. Fighting things more closely in level with your gear can greatly reduce this decay. Chain pulling lvl 150-200 mobs while using q80-100 gear is just not good for your stuff. Weapons break on their much tougher hides, and their big nasty teeth and claws quickly shred apart your armor. Yea, you get 3kxp a kill for the next umpteenth levels and level really fast that way, but obviously your underleveled gear is going to poof out of existance in a very short amount of time.
I remember way back when....fighting level 100-120 critters, wearing q50 gear and being shocked at how fast it decayed. Went back after getting q80-90 gear, and low and behold, that same gear was lasting MUCH MUCH longer. All the while was duoing with a healer. No blinder, no stunner, no enchantments. Just a straight tank, and straight healer. Getting 1-2kxp+ xp was just dandy, and the levels still flew by, and we were getting more mats per level earned. Fetching us a tidy sum from the town vendors. So replacing the now slowly decaying gear was much easier, and didn't run into the feeling that I was barely affording my next set of armor.
The other problem that killing things that only give 3kxp (thank Jena for that xp cap), is that while you do level at a nice fast clip, you are outleveling the crafters, so you will be stuck with a decay problem until the crafters can catch up in level with you.
Harvesting and the wardrobe...
Similair lines for the harvesters, yea you can level ultra fast pulling the higher Q mats, but you also get less mats/time spent. And you get mats that are no more useful to the crafters than mats that are of the quality that the crafter can make (i.e. HarvesterX: Here's a stack of q250 mats for you to grind with! CrafterY: Gee thanks! Now I'll go grind out some q150 pikes...). On a -32 credit extraction, you can either get a) 6x q99/100 mats or b) 4x q148/150 mats over the same period of time (this is using agg speed 3/agg rate 3/agg quality 4 vs agg speed 1/agg rate 3/agg quality 5, patch 1 will change this, and I'm looking forward to playing around with it, didn't pre-order woe is me). Now, while pulling (b) i do get 2k+ xp a pull at lvl 120ish harvest, while pulling (a)I get around 800. Sure (b) may level my harvest faster (and increase how much dp I get), but (a) allows me to keep my dp at a lower level, and lets me harvest mats for crafting at a 50% faster rate (since I can only craft q80-90 gear at the moment, there is no benefit to my crafting to pull q150 mats).
Now on to the new system that is coming in patch 1. I've seen a couple of people testing out the new system on the ATS. Normally they were going with a lower speed than rate for their extractions, and were not pulling the max Q their action allowed. Has anyone tried using a higher speed but lower rate? With the current live system, I use a agg 1/3/5, I wont hit max Q til the quantity is 1.8. Using 3/1/5 I hit max Q at 1.3 quantity. Both were done on source mode 0, and both had 1 explosion for 645 and 719 respectively (I have noticed with the same actions getting a 150-200 dmg variance in the explosions force). I did not use any specialization, or increased source time. Currently on live servers, mat spec extractions are not in effect, so I have not been able to test out their impact on this.
Hope this post has been somewhat informative to some of you.
P.S. My applicable levels to this information are:
133 2h pierce, 105 1h pierce, 118 close combat
119 lakeland forage 122 prime roots forage
Zzei~