by shannong

For more information on these concepts (and a peek at the hairy math behind them), check out this article by Satrina written for WoW tanks back in the day: http://evilempireguild.org/guides/diminishmath.php

Basically, there are Nightmare-mode tanks here in TSW now asserting that what they observe about Protection so far seems to follow the same basic formula as that used in WoW (for armor mitigation), but perhaps with the constant being derived differently.

What does all this mean in "plain words"? Physical Protection might be very good to prioritize over Defense/Block/Evade. To the point of as much as 1000 total Physical Protection being a "sweet spot" to shoot for (still under debate), with remaining Glyph stat points being spent primarily in Defense, with Block/Evade coming in last and used mainly to ensure a desired number of Block- or Evade-reactive procs (either from abilities or for bosses that are adversely affected when you proc a Block or Evade against them). And remember, you get 249 Physical Protection "for free" from having Skill 10 in Minor Talismans, so that means only +750 Physical Protection needed on your gear glyphs to hit that asserted "sweet spot".

My advice? Keep your eye on the following thread on the official forums. Once the dust settles, I'll be revising my FAQ somewhat based on the results. http://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?t=51071

by shannong

On a different note, I've also updated my Talisman Mechanics guide to clarify that in the Live environment, the actual percentage ratio of stats conferred by your talismans is actually 21/16/10 and not 25/15/10. Details in the guide. I also took this opportunity to add two sections on Tips for farming up a starting set of blue talismans and Tips for farming up a set of purple talismans.

by shannong

Once you reach enough Penetrate rating you reduce the chance that your attacks will be blocked down to such a negligible rating it should never happen. The DPS numbers from ACT collaborate this theory as with 0-200 Pen rating a Straw Dummy will block 13-15% of the time. At 300 Pen rating it will only block around 8-10% of the time. At 400 Pen rating you are down to 5% block. At 950 Pen rating you're not only at 0% blocks but you're also at a whopping 40% odd Pen chance with skills like Iron Maiden can easily push you into the 50% range entirely reliably (against a Straw Dummy).

Naturally as the difficulty of your encounters goes up so does the base Block %. For example tonight in Nightmares with 499 Pen Rating I was at a 5% block rate over all on average. This only furthers the problem described where you need ever increasing amounts of Penetrate and Hit Rating to mitigate factors like Glancing and Block.

If I was a betting man I'd wager that you need around 600 Pen and 600 Hit Rating to never get Glanced or Blocked. Eyeballing Glyph Kit amounts that'd mean out of roughly 1900 odd stat points (280 Head, 280 Weapon, 250 Major x3, 200 Minor x3 as rough estimates based on upgrades so far towards 10.4 glyphs) you could go 600 hit, 600 pen, and then have 700ish odd stats to play around with. You could dump that into Crit, but then you'd have no Crit Power to back it up. If you go with more Pen that'll leave you with about 300-400 of extra stats with nothing to do with them. Probably would put it into Crit still (roughly 20% crit total) enough to handle buffs/debuffs like in Darkness War's protection.

This still leads to the same invariable scenario where basically Crit is just garbage as a stat compared to Pen.

by shannong

One number not shown in the screenshot below is the number of link-thrus coming from the official forums, which is 17,426. This means a lot to us because for some unknown reason, Funcom forum moderators are refusing to provide an "uber guide to all guides" thread that compiles all the great guides and FAQs and guide sites into one convenient sticky post in the General forums there. They seem to be pointedly ignoring all the good external websites such as this one and also Aela's and Rhyal's very fine TSW Guides site, even though both of our guide sites are non-commercial (no monetization or ads at all) and pure labors of love for the community.

Anyway, thank you to everyone, and please keep helping other players by pointing them to this site (and the tswguides) site when you know we've got answers to a pain point or question that somebody is asking/complaining about on the forums. We all want to help TSW succeed because Funcom has really created something truly new in the MMO genre, and we'd love to see it be a big enough financial success to entice other development shops to take similar risks and improve/expand this genre we all love so much.

Yokai and Sarcan salute you!

by shannong

• What is the hit roll order? What hit types are mutually exclusive?
• Which hit type is the strongest to build around?
• How does Hit Rating differ from Attack Rating?

To summarize the essential new/changed info for those of you already familiar with the preceding FAQ details:

• For better clarity, what I formerly referred to as Glancing Chance I am now calling Enemy Glance Chance, because the hit roll mechanics are identical to Enemy Evade Chance, and because Funcom probably just wasn't careful with their naming conventions in the Closed Beta Character Sheet when Glancing Chance was still listed there. (It really should have been Enemy Glance Chance all along.)
• There are no longer any stats related to Glance Chance or Enemy Glance Chance in the live Character Sheet. So these are conceptual stats that we know only from glimpses in CB and statements by devs in CB and by some more recent testing by several dedicated players.
  • Your (hidden) base Glance Chance is 10% at 0 Defense Rating. Increasing Defense Rating to a positive value will also increase Glance Chance to a positive percentage value.
  • Your (hidden) Enemy Glance Chance is 0% at 0 Hit Rating. Increasing Hit Rating to a positive value will also increase Enemy Glance Chance.
  • During the "glance roll" portion of combat, the attacker's Enemy Glance Chance is subtracted from the defender's Glance Chance. The resulting percentage is the chance of the attackers hit to glance.
• Since it's apparent now that Evade rolls and Glance rolls work in identical ways with identical underlying "Chance" percentages, I think it's safe to extrapolate those same details to the Block and Penetration Rolls too. So I've expanded on the details of those two rolls in the What is the hit roll order section.

by shannong

I've therefore revised the Why aren't multi-hit abilities inherently better than single-hit abilities? answer in my FAQ, in the Combat Mechanics section.

by shannong

BTW, in case some of you wonder whether I play it too "fast and loose" with my builds:

• By design, build mechanics are very fluid and flexible. There are core "themes" that make any build work, but there are always one or two passives that are "least important" and can be situationally swapped out with any other passive to suit the encounter or the type of gameplay you're aiming for. This applies specifically to my 5 decks in the "easter egg" page in that the core "heal engine" can be stronger or weaker as needed to make room for other passives, and the core "penetration stacker engine" can likewise be made stronger or weaker as needed to make room. Specifically: Leech Therapy is the passive that can be removed from the "heal engine" as needed, and Dark Potency is the passive that can be removed from the "penetration stacker engine".
• It's tough to communicate these nuances and decisions in written form without a lot of successive revisions to the page, which takes time. And I've been too busy playing the game since early-access to spend much time here doing wiki updates. ^.^
• The Post-Op nerf threw me for a loop and I needed to find a couple hours on TestLive to really hone in on a suitable alternative. I previously preferred Anima Shot over Anima Burst because Anima Shot puts out more damage per attack, and because Post-Op and Leech Therapy both made Anima Shot heal essentially on par with Anima Burst and Healing Sparks.

by shannong

by shannong

The Post-Op ability is intended to work with Leech abilities which apply a buff. Abilities such as Anima Shot which trigger a heal based on the damage dealt will not trigger the heal from the Post-Op ability.

by shannong

Edit: After extensive testing just now (Tuesday afternoon) on TestLive, the best sheer healing output for the fewest healing-based actives and passives is currently as follows:

Actives: Anima Burst (Rifle 16 AP) as your heal+damage builder. Shot of Anima (Rifle 9 AP) as your heal consumer.

Passives: Increased Dosage (Rifle 12 AP) to make Shot of Anima much stronger (the leech component of Shot of Anima is useless), Healing Sparks (Fist 21 AP) to add a moderate +heal to every activation of Anima Burst, and finally, if you have a dependable Affliction mechanic in your build (either Anticoagulant or Bloodsport), then Leech Therapy (Rifle 9 AP) adds another nice +heal to every activation of Shot of Anima.

That's it. Everything else in Rifle is crap by comparison, if you're going for the minimal amount of healing abilities to leave room for other things. Although of course if you're looking to stack as many heals as possible in a pure healing build, then of course there are some other Rifle heals that can be worthwhile additions.

by shannong

by shannong

by shannong

by shannong

• Added more details about how things work for characters on different dimensions. Check out the Dimensions, instances, and grouping mechanics section of my FAQ. Cabals will be especially relieved to learn that you can invite someone to your cabal regardless of what dimension they "live" on.
• I added a few more useful Synergy combos to my build mechanics guide, and also added a list of the most useful Subtype passives.
• I've received quite a few emails asking me to repost the old "Community Decks" page that I started and later pulled from the site for a variety of reasons, or failing that, to at least post my own Blade/Rifle "deck" that I'll be starting with for my initial vertical progression. It's actually difficult to prescribe cookie-cutter decks for people in this game because the game itself challenges you to use several different builds (or variations of a core build) along the way. You'll see. Regardless, since I wanted to record the easy-to-forget details of my own set of five starter decks (tested extensively on TestLive) that I know will be useful during my initial vertical progression, I figured there was no harm in sharing those details. However, I will pull a "Funcom" on you and make it a wee bit of an "Investigation Mission" on this site to find those details. Good luck and have fun!

by shannong

by Sarcan

by shannong

by shannong

I have added my Philosophy on Weapon Choices, which is a guide on how to choose your first two weapons based on what you like to do without getting to detailed in the advanced mechanics of the game. This is designed for new players.

I have also started to fill in my guide on Faction Decks, which lists all the Factions decks, what they look like, how they are used.

Check back often to see want new information we will make available.

by Sarcan

by shannong