Deadly Strike Works Via Extra Hits

TLDR: see the title?

I've never been 100% certain how Deadly Strike works.  Does Deadly Strike multiply an "existing" autoattack hit, or does it provide an extra hit that is multiplied, the way that Slowdown and Heavy Blow work?

I did a test last year that seemed to indicate the latter (extra blow), and since the other two talents work that way, it makes the most sense to me.  But it's better to have a rigorous test.

Since I have some data with Boss3 tests, I figured to test it next.

To test, I needed a hero with both scatter (to stop the boss proccing) and heavy blow.  Since my Harpy Queen has scatter as her talent, and I have already tested her, she's perfect.

To set the test up, I took off her Berserk 4 crests and replaced them with Deadly Strike 2.  As such, we can expect a slightly longer ramp-up time, so perhaps slightly less damage.  However, the difference should be not more than a second or two of damage at most.  A second's damage in the Boss3 test is ~200000 hitpoints.

Now the actual test.  In the previous test, HQ scored 64953661 damage.

Here's the setup:

Test setup.  Pity you can't see the cresting.

And here's the score:

Boss3 score with Deadly Strike

67936102 damage.  That's 2982441 more damage than the original run without DS crests.  Over 175 seconds (this is approximated time of engagement to account for PD having to amp up), it is 17042 DPS.  In terms of extra hits, it is 0.487 HPS extra.  This is almost exactly the 0.5 extra HPS predicted.

Conclusion: Deadly Strike works via extra hits.

Tested Trixie Treat for Max Speed Hits per Second

I did the "Boss3 test" for Trixie Treat last night.  The "Boss3 test" is ... I think I need to write a post about that.  OK, done.  Read that.

Actually I did my first run at testing TT a few nights ago.  But it failed horribly: I put it down, then looked and PD was dead!  Oops, oh yeah, you can't test summoners using the "standard" boss3 test.  The problem is that whenever a hero summons, the heroes that are summoned are now "last".  And thus the "last-hero-scatter" trick fails.

On that run, I quickly added a few random devoes and did the run.  It did not test anything, but I did at least get the honor badges.

So how to test TT?  Well, at max speed, 2 heroes plus four pumpkies should be adding 450 energy/s to the boss. Then the boss adds another 15 from his own hit. To get rid 465energy/s, we need 93 energy scattered per 200ms. That's challenging. With scatter4 crested on TT, would need 73 from some other hero. I can do that with HQ because mine has scatter8. There's no other way I can do that.

So I decided to run three heroes for the TT tests: PD, HQ, and TT.  Adding a third hero has the downside that the boss will run out of hitpoints. So I'll have to make more assumptions to get a decent number. Challenge accepted.

Testing HQ

First things first, though.  I did a run with just PD and HQ.  This gives me a good baseline to work from.

Boss3 testing HQ.

Here's the result:

Boss3 HQ result.

64953661 damage.  We know that at max speed HQ gets 5.5 HPS (hits per second).  PD gets the minimum 5 HPS.   Somewhat arbitrarily, I am estimating the ramp-up by removing 3 seconds from PD, and 5 seconds from other heroes.

(How long does my PD ramp up take?  He starts out hitting every 600ms; because he is being hit he'll proc after his first or second hit.  I am guessing 2nd.  So, 1200ms to one stack.  Then his speed is 400ms.  Over the next 2 seconds the boss hits him twice, and he hits 5 times.  Then he procs again: 2 stacks.  Now his speed is 200ms.  PD is fully ramped at this point.  Over the next 1.2s, the boss hits him once and he hits 6 times.  Then he procs to 3 stacks.  At this point he has spent 3.4s.  It takes him 4.6s to reach 4 stacks, and 5.8 to reach 5.

Even 3 stacks is enough to get 30000 damage on Boss3 from any reasonably high level hero.  But speedwise, TT and HQ both need 5 stacks to get to 200ms.

All in all, because damage is ramping up exponentially no hero will get very much until almost fully ramped in speed.  So, as an estimate I am going to use 5 seconds as the ramp-up time, and pretend that all heroes get zero damage during ramp-up and full damage (and speed) after it.  PD similarly gets 3 seconds as his ramp-up.)

OK, now we have enough numbers we can compute.  First we compute DPS for PD as follows.  PD and HQ together got 64953661, in 180s.  So, that is 177s of PD damage (at 5HPS), and 175s of HQ damage (at 5.5HPS).  Thus, total hits applied are estimated to be 1847.5.  (Multiply by 35000: this checks out very well with the actual damage applied.)

Testing TT

OK, with HQ's number in hand we proceed to the TT test.  TT gets Scatter 4.  HQ has her talent, scatter 8.   That, along with the pumpkies, should hopefully be just enough.

Boss3 testing HQ+TT.

I did the run and it worked -- no procs.

Here's the thing partway through:

Boss3 HQ+TT test almost done.

The result?  120m damage exactly: killed the boss, just the 3 of them.  (TT does a lot of damage.)  I knew this would happen, and so was carefully watching the time.  There were 53 seconds left when it ended.

53 seconds left out of 180.  So, 127 seconds spent.  But some of that was spent when PD was ramping up, and we need to account for that.  As above, we assume PD ramps in 3 seconds, others 5 seconds.

So now we can compute what TT got.  Over a run of 127s, PD should have gotten 124s of damage, and HQ 122s.  Thus, they should have totaled 21700000 damage and 23485000 damage respectively.  Total: 45185000.  The remaining damage is TT's: that is 74815000 damage.  This was done by TT in 122s (effectively), so her DPS is 613238.  We divide by 35000 to convert this to HPS: 17.5.

Conclusion: at top speed, Trixie Treat (and her pumpkies) average 17.5 HPS.  Trixie herself gets 5.1 HPS.  So the remaining 12.4HPS are coming from pumpkies.

The Boss3 Test

For most heroes, we can understand what they do fairly well by reading their skill description and thinking about it.  However, sometimes these descriptions are misleading or incomplete, or the function of a hero is very complicated.  It is nice to have an empirical test of a hero's performance.

The Boss3 test is a test designed to test a hero for the effective number of hits he or she generates in conditions of maximum speedup.  This is typical of boss fights of various sorts, where you use a Pumpkin Duke to speed up everyone to maximum speed.

The test uses a PD and one hero to be tested.  The PD has the same configuration every time.  This team faces Boss3, which you can do once per day.  The total damage they do can be compared to that of heroes that have already been tested to compare the tested heroes.  We can also (with some assumptions) use it to estimate heroes' hits/second.

Ingredients:

Here are the heroes I am using for the test, along with their configurations.

Pumpkin Duke: 200ee.  Skill 10/10.  Berserk 8.  Revite 4 crests.  Blitz Scroll.  Angi.

The PD is configured to speed up the "ramp up" period to a minimum.  This makes it easier to compute with than a slower ramp-up.  Angi is there to keep PD alive.  Boss3 does not do huge DPS, but it's plenty to kill your PD in 3 minutes unless there is a bit of healing.

Hero to be tested: any level, any talent other than "extra hit" talents (slowdown, heavy blow, deadly strike).  Scatter 4 crests.  Artifact (if any) does not matter.  Don't assign a damaging pet.  (So, can have Angi, Yule, Doom Balloon, Bubblow; all the others do damage.)

The to-be-tested hero is configured mainly to prevent the boss from proccing.  This is done via the "last hero scatter trick".  Scatter is applied after energy is raised by hits, and truncation to 100 energy max happens after each hero goes.  Thus, if the final hero hitting a boss has scatter 4+, that boss will always end up below 100 energy and can thus never proc.

It should be obvious, but if the to-be-tested hero has an "extra blows" talent, you can still test, you just need to account for that.  Also, if the to-be-tested hero has scatter, then you can use whatever crests you want.

Deployment:

Drop both heroes right on the boss and immediately hit Invigorate.  Drop PD first, so that the boss aggros on him (which speeds the ramp-up), and also so that the hero being tested is the last hero dropped, meaning the boss cannot proc (due to scatter) once you hit max speed.  Also dropping PD first means he tanks, which means that you can test very low-hitpoint heroes.  Just be sure that their damage per hit is maximum once PD is spooled up.

Documentation:

Take a snapshot of the final screen, showing total damage done.  Also take a snapshot during battle, so you record which heroes are being tested.  (On my phone, and probably yours, snaps are stored by date; so these two will be next to each other.  This helps you remember later which hero was being tested that got the total damage.)

If the damage done is 120m, then the battle will end early and you need to carefully note the seconds left.  This requires watching the battle like a hawk.  (This should not happen except for extremely damaging heroes.)  It also requires careful computation afterward.

Tests I have done:

Here's a rundown of the Boss3 tests I've done:

• Phantom King and Heartbreaker -- showed that PK and HB have the same number of hits,
• Medusa -- showed that her snakes do in effect get two auto hits.  Also, strangely, shows that snake hits either don't add energy or they hit early enough so that her scatter makes the boss not proc.
• Harpy Queen -- done to have a baseline to work with for TT.  TT needs special handling due to her pumpkies being summoned, and thus nullifying the "last hero scatter" trick.
• Trixie Treat -- same post as HQ, since I did HQ to do TT.
• HQ again with Deadly Strike -- done to test how deadly strike works.  Concluded it works via extra hits, just like Slowdown and Heavy Blow.
• Vlad -- done to test his proc.  It gets more hits than was previously believed.
• Immortep -- gets more proc hits than was previously thought.  Unclear why.
• Beast Tamer -- confirmed he works as predicted.

I plan to update this listing as I add tests.

Personal Record in GW

Since I have been cheesing, my GW scores have shot up quite a bit.  I used to snipe.  I would rarely be able to deal with any base above 200000 might, and usually I'd be down in the 170000 range looking through many bases for my 5th.

These days, I look at many fewer bases.  Usually I can't cheese the really high ones, say, 220000+, because their Ghoulem or DD is too strong, and/or they are aware of cheesing and either leave off Ghoul and DD entirely, or they put them in the middle of the 6 heroes in a way that I cannot get at them without pulling at least one other hero.  (If that hero happens to be really weak, then cheesing is still possible.   But usually it's SK, Grim, or some other hero that my team can't handle safely.)

Sometimes I can cheese a base on the first try, but it's much more typical for it to take multiple tries (and sometimes a rather high number) to get my Ghoulem to path successfully.  But I do find that cheesing is faster overall than sniping, because I am looking at fewer bases and I am not subject to the RNG as much later in the run.

Anyway, here's my latest and greatest GW result.  It's a testament to the power of cheese.  In this war I hit bases mostly in the range 220000-230000.

Pity my guild ain't getting it done.  

2682.

Medusa Hits Single Targets Twice

Recently Mr__Perfect posted a handy reference post at reddit showing the amount of hits you can expect from each hero at max speed over 10 seconds, against a single target.  (This is an update of an original post by panpiksel.)

While I was discussing it there, I reinvented my own idea on how to empirically test this.  That is: do a run with PD and one other hero of interest.  Put Scatter 4 on the hero being tested, to stop the boss from proccing.  Put Angi on PD so he doesn't die.  Since my PD is basically maxxed (skill 10, Berserk 8, Revite 4), the only factor changing is the second hero.  So we can compare them.

I've already done exactly this to compare Heartbreaker to Phantom King, trying to figure out how HB works.  But because I did that, now I can extend the comparison to other heroes.  One per day!

Here's the first: Medusa.  Here's her result:

Medusa result.

PD and Medusa score 99,165,922.

From the older post, HB and PK got 94,734,436 and 95,073,376 respectively.   According to what I know, both get the same hits.  They should be the same, and (within 0.5%, experimental error) they are.

Obviously Medusa is getting higher.  But how much?  We need to factor out the effect of PD.  But we can do that.  PD is getting 50 hits per 10 seconds over the period where he is max speed.  HB/PK are getting 100 hits over the same period.  So, of the damage done by HB/PK, exactly 1/3 is PD.  The rest is HB/PK.  Taking the average of HB/PK damage as "the" damage expected for 150 hits/10s, we find an expected value of 31,634,635 for PD.  The rest (63,269,271) is HB/PK.

We expect PD's damage the same regardless of which hero he is with.  Thus, we conclude that Medusa did 67,531,287.  That is roughly 6.7% higher than HB/PK.  This concords well with the 5% higher that we expected.

Conclusion: Medusa is certainly auto-hitting twice against a single target.  She is doing 5% more damage than HB/PK in this situation (one target, max speed, low damage cap).

Where next?

I have come to a decision point in CC.  (Here's my latest progress post.)  I have finished Heartbreaker experience-wise; she's now at 200ee.  She still needs a good talent, but experience-wise she's done.  Meanwhile, I have built up a sizeable reserve of experience books.  So, I can bring up quite a few heroes quite a bit quite quickly.

My shard reserve is about 100000 right now.  My fame is 25000.  Herowise, I have 9 useful devoes (I also devoed Succubus for books), and another 12 useful evos.

I need to make a decision as to where to focus resources.  As I see it, there are basically three alternatives.

First, I can continue pumping resources into my LBF team.  I score above 900 most seasons but have never broken 1000.  I am hoping that with HB and some other recent additions, I will be able to do that.  My team is currently limited by the lack of a Revite 5 Aries; on the last few days of a season it is hard to win 2 of 3 when you lose one almost automatically.

The gain from increasing LBF is marginally more fame, about 100 per week perhaps if I can normally break 1000, and an additional 190 gems per week.  Pretty low rewards, but on the other hand it's fame, and the cost of doing this is low.

Second, I can built out my base to do Challenge III in HBM.  This may need Vlad (who I have now and a dupe for, so I can single evo him).  Mainly it needs blue and green heroes.  It's not clear to me whether you might get by without them, so I am assuming I need at least level 4 garrison levels, and perhaps level 5.   Currently I have two blue heroes and one green hero well above that (the useful ones, Ice Demon, Shaman, and Frost Witch).  The other heroes have skill 3 and level 50-60 for garrison 2.  So it will take 62600 shards to get to a full level 4 garrison.  (Here's the wikia on Garrison.)  If I need level 5, it will take a lot more: 117600 shards and 990000 honor badges.

The gain from increasing HBM (assuming I can get through AF, which is by no means certain) is better sweeps.  Currently I sweep T, getting 90 shards and (on average maybe) 900000 experience per sweep.  AF gives 120 shards and perhaps 1.2m per sweep.  The increase in daily income would be 180 shards and 1.8m experience per day.  So, a decent increase in both things, but nothing to write home about.

My remaining option is to attempt again to push to Insane Dungeon 5-10.  I tried this about a month back, and was shut down over many attempts by ID 5-9.  I was close a few times though usually slaughtered with 12%.  It's really hard, and it appears you need a Skull Knight to tank the enemy SK.  Al_fun used a SK and says it takes a lot of tries.  I still have no SK so I can't do what he did.  What I might do is evo my Santa.  I am not really keen on this, since I have but one dupe for SB.  So it requires 40000 shards, and I don't use SB that much.  I can also possibly sub in a different 6th hero.  (I assume PD/Cupid/Druid are required for amp-up, SB for damage, and a tank to, uh, tank.)  One DPS slot is potentially changeable.  Currently using TG for this.  I could try my shiny new HB here, or perhaps some other hero.  PK?  I could also try increasing a few heroes' skills.  All of them are at least at 8, but I might buy a 9 for Druid, or TG.  And I could potentially buy a 10 for DD, Cupid or SB.

So what would it get me?  Currently I sweep ID 4-10 for 88 shards/HB and 113610 EXP.  If I can get to and 3-star ID5-10, that would increase to 96 shards/HB and 138010 EXP.  I use most dungeons per day, and my amount will increase with the new compendium bonus.  Assuming I get to 66 of them, my daily income increases by ~158 shards/HB and 1610400 EXP.

UPDATE: Consulted with reddit, and their assessment is that Vlad is not needed for HBM.  So, decided to go after HBM using level 4 garrisons.  I figure the experience the garrison heroes will get doing the HBM tries will help bring them to 140, so I can go after level 5 garrisons on the cheap.

Mid April Progress

My Heartbreaker is now almost done with experience, currently at 199ee.  So it's time for a progress post.  Here's the last progress post.  Two days after that post, I rolled this:

Heartbreaker goes to college.

Oh my!  My Heartbreaker had a mediocre talent and I was bringing her up anyway.  So, obvious place to put it.  (As I said before, HB is now almost done.  Got a lot of books from this enlightenment.)

I went ahead and spent big fame to bring Harpy Queen's scatter talent to 8.  This prepares me for HBM III when I am ready for that.  Meanwhile, it's useful in LBF.

Ready for demon scattering.

Also I evo'ed and booked her to 180e.  Later I brought her up to 181e so she'd be easier to find among all my other heroes at 180.

Literally the next day, I rolled this:

Grimfiend gets more dangerous.

Another Scatter 5!  Nice.  I wish I'd have rolled it before spending all that fame on HQ.  But oh well.

There have been three Spend Gems and Win events.  In the first, didn't get much.  I did get a Pixie dupe:

Spare Pixie #3

This is my 3rd Pixie dupe, so now I can double-evo her without paying shards.  Not sure I will do it, though, because fame is quite finite and she seems distinctly C grade at this point in the game.  I no longer snipe much, so I see little need for her.  Currently I use her only as bait for the Rage Goblin.  This does use her scatter, but otherwise could be many heroes.

In the second SG&W, I rolled an Aries:

Aries dupe.

This was my third dupe.  So, given the books I was getting from HB I went ahead and devo'ed Aries.

Another day, another devo.

Aries is now 199ee.

Here's a roll from the most recent SG&W, last Monday:

Double purple.

The GF is my first dupe for him (he's already evo'ed though; paid shards).  So that's nice but won't be used for some time.  The Vlad is a first dupe and my Vlad is still non-evo level 1.  So that is quite welcome, assuming I do bring him up.  Not sure I will yet.  Vlad seems nice but rather outdated.  I'd use him in HBM for sure.  Not sure about LBF.  And pretty sure nowhere else.

On the talent front, I got a Revive 4 which I put on my Valentina.  I have a level 4 Revite crest set on her, and she is now helping me in Arena (go ahead and laugh) and the Lost Battlefield.

Valentina ready for battle.

I got two Level 5 Talent Chests.  One was from the Lucky Goblin (in Castle Crisis) and the other was from a Fortress Feud.  The first contained Lifedrain 5.  This is not an awful talent, but all of my top guys already have a decent talent.  Except my Aries, with Lifedrain 3.  Lifedrain 3 really is enough for most of my uses.  Still, what the heck, it doesn't hurt him.  

The second Level 5 Talent Chest yielded up Tenacity.  Also pretty crap as talents go.  On the other hand... now that I live by cheese alone in GW, I was reasonably content with it:

Ghoulem gets 30% more hitpoints.

Corrode was always a placeholder on my Ghoulem.  Tenacity is not GH's best talent, but it's quite decent on him.  I have not decided whether to spend the 3000 fame for 15% more hitpoints.

I did a quest in between writing this.  Heartbreaker made it to 200ee.  And look, I just happened to have a level 5 talent sitting around!

I didn't tell you about this level 5.

Well, it's something.  Enlightenment is nothing at this point.  So on it goes.

One other thing worth mentioning: my highest GW score to date by far:

Cha-ching.  Cheesing FTW.

This is purely due to cheesing.  This is one of the rare GWs when I could cheese many bases well above 200000 might, and I cheesed all five bases successfully.  (That is, all three stars.  It's easy to screw it up and get two.)