Power is Over-Powered

[RuQu]

Simply put, Power is just too good. It makes gearing uninteresting.

 

I created a calculator for the standard rotation of a Combat Medic (as far as a healer can have a rotation), and factored in all of our skills, buffs, etc, for use in the Combat Medic Guide.

 

I started with the basic assumption of a person in Tionese level gear at level 50.

 

The stock stats on that gear are:

 

• Cunning 100
  
• Aim 1209
  
• Crit 280
  
• Surge 40
  
• Alacrity 362
  
• Power 154
  

 

Going through the estimated rotation multiple times with +1 to each stat (all others held constant), and normalizing the HPS gains relative to power, we get stat weights of:

 

• Stat HPS Gain Normalized to Power
  
• Power 1
  
• Aim 1.00422467012099
  
• Cunning 0.081107951483687
  
• Crit 0.30344398335824
  
• Surge 1.05453787076889
  
• Alacrity 0.29102097406209
  

 

As we can see, Surge is slightly more of an HPS gain than Power, and you need about 3 Crit or Alacrity to equal 1 Power. Assuming equal budget weights, we clearly get a benefit of from removing points from Crit/Alacrity and dumping them into either Surge or Power. Assuming Aim and Cunning are constant for the rating of the gear, I iterated a few times, removing more and more points from anything with a value below 1 and adding them to ratings with values above 1, while maintaining the same total rating budget (ie remove 5 crit, add 5 surge). I did this until I ran out of points to remove from ratings below 1 and added sufficient points to those ratings above 1 to cause them to dip just below. The results were this:

 

• Stat HPS Gain Normalized to Power
  
• Power 1
  
• Aim 1.02946676260057
  
• Cunning 0.11242341085498
  
• Crit 0.64134927337768
  
• Surge 0.98889984690476
  
• Alacrity 0.55470726502958
  

 

Here we can see that Surge is almost identical to power (0.99:1), while Alacrity is still only half as good and Crit is in the middle. Note that adding any more points to Surge actually decreases its value, so a Surge of 50 is actually a HPS loss vs a Surge of 45.

 

What were the final changes to get here?

 

• Cunning 100
  
• Aim 1209
  
• Crit 0
  
• Surge 45
  
• Alacrity 0
  
• Power 791
  

 

It took a few iterations, but my HPS was maximized by dumping all of my crit and alacrity into power. If I reduce Surge to 40 it exceeds Power, raise it to 50 it drops down to 0.88:1. So this is the sweet spot right here for the stat budget on Tionese gear. Any point removed from Power or Surge and added to Crit or Alacrity is a HPS loss. Essentially, dumping all of your budget into Power is far superior to any other allocation, even with talents factored in.

 

This makes for rather uninteresting gearing choices, and should be looked into to keep gear decisions interesting.

[Bwice]

May I ask how to stacked so much Power? Now from my observation the only armour that possess the Mods to stack Power would also have Accuracy or Alacrity. Yours showed no Alacrity so I was interested if you chose to take Accuracy armour. Also when Power and Alacrity are matched up, the Alacrity is normally a larger amount than Power. The same with Accuracy and Power.

 

Thanks for the math though, I'm interested how this pans out.

[Somewherehiding]

Great post, it has peaked my interest.

 

Though I love my 5k critical heals (occur quite often when i pop my trinket), I might switch to power gear if it means sustained high heals...

 

Going to be hard though, I'm really attached to my crits

[Walldorf]

Let's talk about it.

 

Im a sorc in Columni and a bit rakata gear and a healer. My dark Infusion Crit for 6k (if it is due my "low" crit rating) and i only have 70% surge. My innervate ticks for 1,8k on krit. If i don't crit my heal is well.. all right ^^, but far from the effectivness than my crits.

 

Did you mention in your little math.... thingy... up there that your power benefit from a crit? Your power do some + dmg, yes, but if you crit it do much more + dmg. Allright im no bright light when it comes to math, but like i always say: Balance your stats until the DR make it worthless and stack power after, mathwise not ingame ^^. So go to a good ammount of haste, crit, surge untill the DR is arrived and than stack power and everything is fine.

 

At last TOR is so easy that you don't need to min/max

[RuQu]

May I ask how to stacked so much Power? Now from my observation the only armour that possess the Mods to stack Power would also have Accuracy or Alacrity. Yours showed no Alacrity so I was interested if you chose to take Accuracy armour. Also when Power and Alacrity are matched up, the Alacrity is normally a larger amount than Power. The same with Accuracy and Power.

 

Thanks for the math though, I'm interested how this pans out.

 

I should probably have mentioned that the second set isn't "real gear." I was simply moving the ratings around in the calculator to maximize HPS in sustained healing, and calculating the HPS gain from +1 to each rating and normalizing the results.

 

It is almost certainly impossible to swap out all of your other stats for Power, so there is still some interest in choosing what is "second best," but Power is so much better than the others as to still be uninteresting. In stock Tionese, Power is 3X as good as crit and alacrity, and with all the ratings moved to Power (except 45 in Surge), Power remains approx 2X as good as Crit/Alacrity even with those at 0 and therefore at their maximum gain per point.

[RuQu]

Let's talk about it.

 

Im a sorc in Columni and a bit rakata gear and a healer. My dark Infusion Crit for 6k (if it is due my "low" crit rating) and i only have 70% surge. My innervate ticks for 1,8k on krit. If i don't crit my heal is well.. all right ^^, but far from the effectivness than my crits.

 

Did you mention in your little math.... thingy... up there that your power benefit from a crit? Your power do some + dmg, yes, but if you crit it do much more + dmg. Allright im no bright light when it comes to math, but like i always say: Balance your stats until the DR make it worthless and stack power after, mathwise not ingame ^^. So go to a good ammount of haste, crit, surge untill the DR is arrived and than stack power and everything is fine.

 

At last TOR is so easy that you don't need to min/max

 

I'm sorry, but I don't quite follow what you are asking. Is English a second language for you?

 

The calculator is also for Combat Medics, and I don't know much about Sage (Sorc) healing.

 

I think you are saying your heals are only strong if you crit, and ask if my calculator takes into account crit's bonus effect to healing. This is what I do to do that:

 

I first calculate the average power of the heal, based on its (fixed) minimum-maximum component and scaling portions. Once I have an average heal, I multiply that by (1-Crit%) and by (1+Surge)*crit%, and sum those two values. Simply, those are the odds that you don't crit and therefore get a normal heal + the odds of a crit and the larger heal. The sum is then the average heal you should expect over time, with crit factored in.

 

So, in conclusion, yes I address how crit makes heals bigger and the odds of them, and, no, I don't know anything about Sage/Sorc healing.

[Sinemetu]

I don't know anything about trooper healing, but I'd point out that for agents alacrity is less valuable because it doesn't help instants, and crit is more valuable because of procs. After you get around 35% though crit rating starts losing value.

[MorgonKara]

Well obviously Power is going to have the greatest effect because it's a direct increase rather than a random % chance. The thing is that gear/mods come with certain stat allocations, you can choose gear that has Power on it but you cannot change the stat budget to only stack Power. If you could manipulate only crit and surge so that they both sat at 100% then that would be overpowered too. You can't do that in-game tho. Edited January 23, 2012 by MorgonKara

[Walldorf]

I'm sorry, but I don't quite follow what you are asking. Is English a second language for you?

 

The calculator is also for Combat Medics, and I don't know much about Sage (Sorc) healing.

 

I think you are saying your heals are only strong if you crit, and ask if my calculator takes into account crit's bonus effect to healing. This is what I do to do that:

 

I first calculate the average power of the heal, based on its (fixed) minimum-maximum component and scaling portions. Once I have an average heal, I multiply that by (1-Crit%) and by (1+Surge)*crit%, and sum those two values. Simply, those are the odds that you don't crit and therefore get a normal heal + the odds of a crit and the larger heal. The sum is then the average heal you should expect over time, with crit factored in.

 

So, in conclusion, yes I address how crit makes heals bigger and the odds of them, and, no, I don't know anything about Sage/Sorc healing.

 

 

Allright i try it agian .

 

Power is great, at this point we are on the same track .

 

Now lets see the things i asked about:

 

If you have 50% crit and 100% surge (fiction numbers ^^) you have a 50% chance to doubble the potency of your power. So my question is: Isn't it (maybe) worth to stack crit and surge as well because your power directly benefit from these skills? Allright alacety as well do something.

 

I simply don't understand why you are calculating ech point of power rawly to another second stat, that makes no sence for me because the stats are all interactive .

 

I hope you know now what i wanted to say.

[Shroudveil]

first of all i dont play a BH/trooper, so your assumptions may well be right.

 

but in your calculations you didn't factor that all 3 stats (power/crit/surge) affect one another.

 

 

to put it simply: if you heal for 0 and you double that through crit+surge, it is still 0.

 

crit affects the chance of you to crit and surge the amount that this crit would actually do. they go hand by hand and they have diminishing returns.

 

power affects all healing and it doesn't have diminishing returns.

 

the only correct way to find the "optimal" stat weight at this current point of this game is to make 3 equations where x1 is power, x2 is crit and x3 is surge and solve them to find the exact spot where power/crit/surge maximizes the y which is the throughput and is the constant of those 3 equations (along side with base heals and etc).

 

if p.e. you are soft capped in crit and you do the 1:1 method you used, it is obvious that crit would have very low weight. even if you have 10-15% crit and you do the 1:1 stat weight, the +hps you get from power is affected by it.

 

i am too bored to go through theorycrafting for another game to actually try to figure out the equations, just pointing out, that as far as pure theorycraft goes, your math seems flawed with a first glance.

[RuQu]

first of all i dont play a BH/trooper, so your assumptions may well be right.

 

but in your calculations you didn't factor that all 3 stats (power/crit/surge) affect one another.

 

 

to put it simply: if you heal for 0 and you double that through crit+surge, it is still 0.

 

crit affects the chance of you to crit and surge the amount that this crit would actually do. they go hand by hand and they have diminishing returns.

 

power affects all healing and it doesn't have diminishing returns.

 

the only correct way to find the "optimal" stat weight at this current point of this game is to make 3 equations where x1 is power, x2 is crit and x3 is surge and solve them to find the exact spot where power/crit/surge maximizes the y which is the throughput and is the constant of those 3 equations (along side with base heals and etc).

 

if p.e. you are soft capped in crit and you do the 1:1 method you used, it is obvious that crit would have very low weight. even if you have 10-15% crit and you do the 1:1 stat weight, the +hps you get from power is affected by it.

 

i am too bored to go through theorycrafting for another game to actually try to figure out the equations, just pointing out, that as far as pure theorycraft goes, your math seems flawed with a first glance.

 

Did you actually look at the math in the linked calculator?

 

The equations have all been sorted out and can be found here.

 

You can't actually do a simple system of linear equations because a) they aren't linear, and b) different abilities react differently to the different ratings. Cast-time spells have their GCD drop below 1.5s if their cast time drops below 1.5s, instant abilities are always a 1.5s GCD, therefore alacrity is completely worthless for any instant abilities. Different coefficients cause different spells to scale differently. You must do a simulated rotation to approximate the skill usage.

 

In the calculator, I do a separate simulated rotation for +1 to each of the skills, holding all of the others constant. This allows you to see what the total HPS for a rotation would be, if only that one stat changed. These HPS numbers can be directly compared. Assuming a fixed stat budget, you can then remove points from the field with the lowest weight and add it to the field with the highest and iterate that change to try and approach optimized.

 

As MorgonKara pointed out, most/all high level mods have two sets of stats, so you can't, in practice, stack one stat alone. Considering that mods exist that are crit+alacrity and crit+surge, etc as opposed to everything being Power + X, it would be nice if the stats were more competitive with each other.

[JLapp]

Looks like the HPS formula on the rotation tabs is dividing by a bacta timer instead of the elapsed time.

[Sheridyn]

RuQu is right, though. At least for us Commando healers, our set gear is far too heavily stacked with Crit Rating and Alacrity. I've dropped over 200 Crit from my gear by replacing mods, enhancements and colour crystal with their Power equivalents, and Power is still more beneficial per point than Crit. I've also added a decent amount of Surge by taking Power/Surge enhancements off of Smuggler gear. Edited January 24, 2012 by Sheridyn

[RuQu]

Allright i try it agian .

 

Power is great, at this point we are on the same track .

 

Now lets see the things i asked about:

 

If you have 50% crit and 100% surge (fiction numbers ^^) you have a 50% chance to doubble the potency of your power. So my question is: Isn't it (maybe) worth to stack crit and surge as well because your power directly benefit from these skills? Allright alacety as well do something.

 

I simply don't understand why you are calculating ech point of power rawly to another second stat, that makes no sence for me because the stats are all interactive .

 

I hope you know now what i wanted to say.

 

Acknowledging that 50% crit and 100% surge are fiction numbers, the problem comes from diminishing returns. From crit rating you are capped at 30% crit, plus 5% base plus any percent from skill trees and buffs, plus some from your primary stat and possibly a secondary (ie Aim and Cunning both add to Trooper crit). However, for every point you add of crit rating, it is worth less, and you can, mathematically, never actually reach 30%. You might have a HUGE crit rating putting you at 29.97%, and the next 100 points move you to 29.98%, then it takes 200 points more to reach 29.985%, etc (made up numbers).

 

Power and the Bonus Power from Aim (Str/Cun/Will for other classes) are linear, with no diminishing returns. 1 Power is always 0.17 Bonus Healing. 1 Aim is always 0.14.

 

Instead of using 50% crit and 100% Surge, let's use some actual numbers. Assume these are your stats:

 

• Cunning 100
  
• Aim 1277
  
• Crit 280
  
• Surge 80
  
• Alacrity 362
  
• Power 1289
  
• Level 50
  

 

You also have skills and some buffs on, so your derived stats are:

 

• Total Crit Chance 39.9145124705983
  
• Crit Size 63.8101139703752
  
• Total Bonus Healing 422.9392
  

 

Plus two of your heals are sped up via alacrity.

 

So how do we factor in the crit? Let's look at Hammer Shot which heals for exactly your bonus healing, but can crit. On average, HS=422.94*(1-0.3991)+422.94*(1+0.6381)*(0.3991). That's the odds of a normal heal times its strength plus the odds of a boosted heal times its boosted strength.

 

Doing that for every heal gives us the Average Healing with Crit, and a rotation approximation allows us to estimate how often an ability gets used, then we can sum all the healing done and divide it by the total cast time. We can then compare these total HPS estimates.

 

So what happens if we try and boost the crit chance? Adding 100 crit rating only boosts us to 42.66%, a gain of 2.75%. Adding another 100 crit rating gets us to 45.03%, a gain of only 2.37%. This 200 crit nets us an average of 27.96HPS gained. If we instead increased the Power, which will increase both critical heals and non-critical heals, we would get, for +200 Power, a gain of 57.03HPS.

 

This isn't a game breaking problem by any means, I guess I just wished it was a little more interesting of a question.

[RuQu]

Looks like the HPS formula on the rotation tabs is dividing by a bacta timer instead of the elapsed time.

 

Great catch, thank you! Fixing it now.

 

*edit* All better now. This is why I left the locked tabs visible. Stat weights don't appear to be changed much, so previous conclusions still stand. Thank you again. *edit*

Edited January 24, 2012 by RuQu

[RadDeBrun]

It appears that the buff to crits from potent medicine is never referred to in the calculations.

 

When I add this effect in, it appears that the optimal gear has 1963 aim, 83 surge and all other attributes at 0.

 

Aim remains better than power until about 6000 aim is reached.

 

 

Edit:

I just realized that you held aim constant. If you do that, it looks like 70 surge and the rest in power is optimal.

Edited January 26, 2012 by RadDeBrun

[RuQu]

It appears that the buff to crits from potent medicine is never referred to in the calculations.

 

When I add this effect in, it appears that the optimal gear has 1963 aim, 83 surge and all other attributes at 0.

 

Aim remains better than power until about 6000 aim is reached.

 

 

Edit:

I just realized that you held aim constant. If you do that, it looks like 70 surge and the rest in power is optimal.

 

You're right, I put in a field for SurgSkill (Surge from skills, ie Potent medicine) and then never called it. Simply change as it is additive. Calculator is now corrected.

 

Thank you for catching that.

[Zinfandel]

This was my assumption a long time ago, when comparing Power to crit or surge, as Power will effect both crits and non-crits.

 

I've raised that point to a few people, and some have responded that Power will not actually effect your crits(Meaning it would just effect non-crits). I believe that to be incorrect, but looking through the UI and tooltips, I cannot say that is the case, definitively.

 

Is there any evidence of this one way or the other, in game. I'm too lazy too test or do further statistical research myself.

 

PS.

 

That's awesome. I think that's the first time anyone has calculated any kind of APE-equivalent for this game! TY!

Edited January 26, 2012 by Zinfandel

[DanjaHokkie]

From my experience Power is a joke. It has a garbage ratio for HPS. 5.8 power=1 extra point of healing? I have 433 power. That gives me an abysmal +74 health on heals. While "Oh thats better than nothing" I did start off being straight power/alacrity. And I Didnt have a problem with that except i was constantly healing. But i started moving into the columi gear, and spent a crap load of money to get earpieces and implants with Augment slots, not to mention ripped out every mod that would best replace another. My stats are roughly 38%crit, 17%(+5% on proc) Alacrity, 71% surge. With this set up, i can top people off, refresh any shields/barriers, and dps for a while before going back into healing.

My plans are to reduce crit to 35%, alacrity to 10%(not including 5% proc) and 80% surge, and then putting everything into power. So in a sense, power is the last thing you need to worry about. I 100% disagree that it is "over-powered" especially in terms of healing. Fix the ratios to match the amount of +dmg gained through power (their 4.35/1 ratio)

 

I don't care that the "math" is there. It just doesn't feel like how it reads.

[isast]

I smile at people who love anecdotal evidence and hate blatant mathematics. A big smile. A 4" smile that I will say is smaller than your 3" smile because after measuring, your 3" smile just looks bigger.

Boy does that seem silly. *smile*

[Zinfandel]

From my experience Power is a joke. It has a garbage ratio for HPS. 5.8 power=1 extra point of healing? I have 433 power. That gives me an abysmal +74 health on heals. While "Oh thats better than nothing" I did start off being straight power/alacrity. And I Didnt have a problem with that except i was constantly healing. But i started moving into the columi gear, and spent a crap load of money to get earpieces and implants with Augment slots, not to mention ripped out every mod that would best replace another. My stats are roughly 38%crit, 17%(+5% on proc) Alacrity, 71% surge. With this set up, i can top people off, refresh any shields/barriers, and dps for a while before going back into healing.

My plans are to reduce crit to 35%, alacrity to 10%(not including 5% proc) and 80% surge, and then putting everything into power. So in a sense, power is the last thing you need to worry about. I 100% disagree that it is "over-powered" especially in terms of healing. Fix the ratios to match the amount of +dmg gained through power (their 4.35/1 ratio)

 

I don't care that the "math" is there. It just doesn't feel like how it reads.

 

If you read everything the poster said, you'll see that Surge is roughly equivalent to Power. I think after a very small amount, it was ~98% just as potent as power, point for point.

 

Power is over-powered to the extent that it makes picking it as a stat, a "no-duh"

 

I think further questions need to be asked though, but only to cover rare situations that will probably never happen, like the below:

 

I think with large amounts of alacrity, it's value might increase exponentially..The issue is figuring out how much alacrity is needed to fit your free heal in to your rotation more often, and how to fit that into a parsing calculator.

 

Yadda yadda.

[felirx]

From my experience Power is a joke. It has a garbage ratio for HPS. 5.8 power=1 extra point of healing? I have 433 power. That gives me an abysmal +74 health on heals.

 

You`re completely forgetting ratios. For instance, Rapid Scan has a ratio that is equivalent, or near enough to its base cast speed, that being 2.5 seconds. That paltry +74 now becomes ~185.

Edited January 27, 2012 by felirx

[RuQu]

If you read everything the poster said, you'll see that Surge is roughly equivalent to Power. I think after a very small amount, it was ~98% just as potent as power, point for point.

 

Power is over-powered to the extent that it makes picking it as a stat, a "no-duh"

 

I think further questions need to be asked though, but only to cover rare situations that will probably never happen, like the below:

 

I think with large amounts of alacrity, it's value might increase exponentially..The issue is figuring out how much alacrity is needed to fit your free heal in to your rotation more often, and how to fit that into a parsing calculator.

 

Yadda yadda.

 

There are caps on all of the rating effects, not on the rating itself. For alacrity, you can only approach (but never quite reach) 30% reduction in cast time from rating. Alacrity from skills is additive after the diminishing returns, so you can (as a Trooper) reach ~39% reduction in cast time, but the return on investment for those high levels of alacrity is very, very, very low.

 

In contrast, Power has no Diminishing returns, so it is always equally valuable.

[RuQu]

From my experience Power is a joke. It has a garbage ratio for HPS. 5.8 power=1 extra point of healing? I have 433 power. That gives me an abysmal +74 health on heals. While "Oh thats better than nothing" I did start off being straight power/alacrity. And I Didnt have a problem with that except i was constantly healing. But i started moving into the columi gear, and spent a crap load of money to get earpieces and implants with Augment slots, not to mention ripped out every mod that would best replace another. My stats are roughly 38%crit, 17%(+5% on proc) Alacrity, 71% surge. With this set up, i can top people off, refresh any shields/barriers, and dps for a while before going back into healing.

My plans are to reduce crit to 35%, alacrity to 10%(not including 5% proc) and 80% surge, and then putting everything into power. So in a sense, power is the last thing you need to worry about. I 100% disagree that it is "over-powered" especially in terms of healing. Fix the ratios to match the amount of +dmg gained through power (their 4.35/1 ratio)

 

I don't care that the "math" is there. It just doesn't feel like how it reads.

 

Math > Anecdotes.

 

As for the ratio of Power to +dmg/healing, every ability has a coefficient on it's bonus healing/damage use. So +1 Power = +0.17 Bonus Healing, but that doesn't mean a spell only increases by 0.17. For instance, Hammer Shot has a coefficient of 1, and increases by 0.17 per Power, but Medical Probe has a coefficient of 2.72, and increases by 0.46 per Power. So while Hammer Shot needs 5.88 Power to increase by 1, Medical Probe only needs 2.17.

 

This is why math is your friend, and building a rotation that approximates the ability usage is the only way to actually identify the value of stats. If you only used HS, you might say Power is worthless (as is alacrity, since it doesn't effect HS at all), but if you said you would ONLY use MP, you would over-value Power and Alacrity.