The Case for the 1.5 mil Dummy

[KeyboardNinja]

In lieu of a community-standard leaderboard, which is in turn waiting on torparse to add an actual log view, most of us seem to be carrying over the pre-3.0 standard of parsing on the 1 mil dummy with full modifiers and quoting the result as "our DPS". I am going to attempt to make the case that this is both insufficient and highly misleading.

 

If you're in full 192s with a 198 off hand (not a high bar!), nearly all DPS classes are going to be breaking 4.4k on the 1 mil, with some outliers pushing 4.8-4.9k. That's just where the cards have fallen. Here's the problem: a 4.8k parse on the 1 mil dummy requires only 3 minutes, 28 seconds. A 4.9k parse requires 3 minutes, 24 seconds. That's just four seconds separating the two! At 4900 DPS, 4 seconds worth of time is 19.6k damage. In other words, this means that if you're parsing as a Tactics Vanguard, the difference between a 4800 and a 4900 is just three crit vs non-crit Cell Burst hits. That is way, way too volatile. It makes getting a top parse almost entirely about waiting for god-mode crits, and less about knowing your rotation or having any actual skill.

 

You can make the argument that getting a top parse has always been about waiting for the best crits and damage rolls to come your way, but on a longer parse, even the process of "waiting for crits" required the ability to almost autonomously execute your rotation, without fail, every single time. A parse on the 1 mil dummy has almost 50% fewer changes for someone to be imperfect (due to the combination of HP and DPS deflation on the 1.5 mil), diminishing the skill rather than luck/persistence factor involved in high parses by that much more.

 

At three and a half minutes, a parse is also enormously unduly influenced by the strength of the opener. Most burst classes have a roughly 20-25 second window in which they do radically above-par DPS. Take the first 15 seconds of a Telekinetics parse, for example, where you're doing almost 75% more DPS (within that window) than you can reasonably sustain over the long haul. A 20 second window is almost 10% of a full parse on the 1 mil at these DPS levels. This means that sustained, long-setup classes are punished very noticeably, skewing the perceived balance picture and endgame meta.

 

More problems appear in short parses when you start to consider sustainability. At three and a half minutes, resources are a non-issue for a much greater percentage of the parse (for non-linear regeneration classes) and a complete non-issue for the entirety of the parse for sages/sorcs. You know the whole "use Force Storm/Force Quake" as a filler rotation? Yeah, that doesn't work if you try to do it for more than a couple of minutes. It's fine for the 1 mil dummy though! So balance is skewed and we get an inaccurate picture of the classes at endgame, not just with respect to mutual balance, but even down to the level of what rotations and cooldown timings are optimal.

 

Finally, the shorter the parse, the greater the inflation of powerful cooldowns. This is especially true when cooldowns overlap, as in everyone's opener. It's even more true when cooldowns align nicely with the parse duration. With the pre-2.0 class meta, Lightning sorcs had a very interesting alignment with Recklessness, the adrenal and Polarity Shift on the 1 mil dummy, where even a "lucky" parse (with a shorter average CD on PS) could be basically no-better than an "unlucky" parse due to the fight ending prematurely. There was this magic threshold at which your DPS skyrocketed, because you managed to kill the dummy at exactly the right time and had exactly the right crits and proc rates to have things expiring at that time. This effect existed on the 1.5 mil dummy as well, but it was DRAMATICALLY less pronounced. This inflation of cooldowns is much worse now that the DPS levels are up across the board, and it unduly penalizes some classes while unduly rewarding others.

 

In summary, I honestly believe that parsing on the 1 mil when you're doing over 4.4k DPS is nothing more than ego stroking. It's not an informative thing to do! Your DPS will vary too much for it to be an accurate measurement of your skill, and the time involved is only an accurate simulation of certain very specific fights, none of which have a serious DPS check. The 1.5 mil dummy has its problems, but it is far more accurate since the RNG is smoothed by the extra time. Even better, now that our DPS is climbing toward the 5k mark, the 1.5 mil dummy is remarkably close to giving us back our 300 second (5 minute) parse boundary that was standard before the HP modifiers.

 

Thus, I would recommend that the inevitable DPS leaderboard threads adopt the 1.5 mil HP standard when they start up again, in order to avoid making the contest entirely about one or two good crits and whether or not your class has the right cooldown alignment. Using the 1 mil dummy now is no different than using the 500k dummy back in 2.4, when HP modifiers were first added to the game. No one would conscience the 500k dummy then, and we shouldn't be validating the 1 mil dummy now.

Edited January 4, 2015 by KeyboardNinja

[Darth_Dreselus]

But 1m is such a nice round number.

 

But ye, probably a good idea.

[KeyboardNinja]

But 1m is such a nice round number.

 

…until parsec/starparse/torparse randomly decide to either add or not add the final hit of damage, in either case resulting in a number that is decidedly not round. :-)

[Bagleplayer]

I'm not really arguing for or against the 1.5 mil but i do think you are wrong on some points

 

Top parses are not just luck, no one gets top spot with luck alone , you need to know your rotation/class very well and you wont ever see someone at number 1 and think "oh well they don't know their class, they just got lucky."

 

You bring up sustainability and mention force storm filler parses but don't mention any other specs.

It's also very obvious to spot a storm filler parse (hint apm) I don't mean do insult anybody who uses that particular rotation, but some people don't take those seriously or maybe as seriously would be a better way of putting it.

I also don't see it as viable in raid settings simply because of resource management

 

I don't see 1 mil parsing as ego stroking at all, it's more of a friendly competition and a way to see who knows

the class the best or who you could seek help from if you don't know it so well, its also about testing yourself

and this will be true for any health amount whether its 1 mil or 10 mil and sticking to 1 mil adds more convenience

time wise and credit wise (adrenals/stims, this is the only point i'll make in favor on 1mil).

 

I also believe that top parses have ALWAYS been about god crits and rng but the top parses aren't pure luck and

unless some spec is found that is pure faceroll it NEVER will be pure luck, you have to know your class very well to

make that luck count

 

"This inflation of cooldowns is much worse now that the DPS levels are up across the board, and it unduly penalizes some classes while unduly rewarding others." could you give some examples from 3.0?

 

BUT I do agree that the time difference between a 4800 parse and a 4900 parse or so is very small, but it still isn't all about luck.

[TACeMossie]

"This inflation of cooldowns is much worse now that the DPS levels are up across the board, and it unduly penalizes some classes while unduly rewarding others." could you give some examples from 3.0?

 

Tactics VG/AP PT. A 3:46.5 parse is the perfect length to unload 21 SC missiles, but if you drop below 3:28 you may as well delay the second missile spam until the attack adrenal. You also have to fire a bunch of missiles without Battle Focus on a 1 mill dummy parse as well because the set bonus was changed.

 

On a 1.5 mill dummy parse though, that 3:28 parse will now go for 5:12, allowing 3 uses of shoulder cannon, 3 uses of battle focus, and 2 uses of an attack adrenal. In fact, as long as your DPS is better than 4458, you won't be able to inflate your DPS on a 1.5 mill dummy parse by firing a bunch of missiles outside of battle focus, while a 1 mill dummy parse can get the next set of missile's 'inflation' from anywhere from 3876dps to 4619dps

[NogueiraA]

I think the more closer to a real boss fight the better.

Some fights with no adds each dps does 600~750k damage.

Fights with adds it's up to 900~1.2mil.

 

So the 1.5mil dummy IMO is pointless.

[foxnuvi]

not to mention all those parses on a 500k dummy showing up in top 50. lame

[SnickerJew]

First things first.. we need a reliable website that can provide us a more detailed log analysis than Torparse currently is. Until then, meh.

 

I do agree once most classes reach the 5 minute mark on the 1.5m dummy that is a great time to adapt said debuff, but "most" in my eyes means roughly 75% of the specs. This is just my personal opinion, but very good argument, KBN. I agree 3:30 min parses are a bit short, but we shouldn't punish those who can't achieve those times just yet.

[KeyboardNinja]

I'm not really arguing for or against the 1.5 mil but i do think you are wrong on some points

 

Top parses are not just luck, no one gets top spot with luck alone , you need to know your rotation/class very well and you wont ever see someone at number 1 and think "oh well they don't know their class, they just got lucky."

 

Not really, no. Back in the day (right around 2.0), I saw a combat sentinel parse which was almost 3.2k at the 5 minute mark in Underworld gear. Not that insane for the time, but impressive. Here's the weird bit though: the rotation was terrible. Downright, crazy, awfully terrible. Not just me saying that either. I could line the rotation (such as it was) up against every top parsing marauder/sentinel in the world at the time, and all the top parsing players were doing one thing, this log was doing another. It was almost just "pushing buttons". But it was also one of the highest parses in the world.

 

It was lucky. Drippingly hilariously lucky. Analysis of the log indicated the player in question was understatting on accuracy by almost 2%, but none of their serious abilities missed (even minor abilities, like the Cauterize DoT tick, had insanely low miss rates). Every damage roll was at the high end of what was possible in their gear. Their crits were significantly above average. Incidentally, I had known the player in question for a long, long time, and I'm confident they didn't alter their log. I do know, however, that they needed almost two weeks of 5-ish hour parsing binges every day to get that record.

 

There have also been several parses even in a more recent era which have had remarkably good numbers, but an unequivocally suboptimal rotation. Not as suboptimal as my example sentinel parse, but still suboptimal. Luck plays a huge role in record parsing, and the 1 mil dummy throws luck under a microscope and makes skill play second fiddle. When you're talking about two or three activations critting vs not critting being the sole determiner of hundreds of DPS, the RNG factor has gone too far.

 

You bring up sustainability and mention force storm filler parses but don't mention any other specs.

It's also very obvious to spot a storm filler parse (hint apm) I don't mean do insult anybody who uses that particular rotation, but some people don't take those seriously or maybe as seriously would be a better way of putting it.

I also don't see it as viable in raid settings simply because of resource management

 

Exactly. If it's not viable in a raid, why are we intentionally using a combat dummy which fails to represent those raid constraints. Specifically, the constraint of having to sustain your rotation for more than 200-ish seconds.

 

Regarding other specs... All of the specs with non-linear energy regeneration can burn at a substantially higher rate with a shorter parse, simply because they only briefly hit the "lull" between energy recovery cooldowns, and that lull comes following out of their opener. After their second cooldown use (for those with a 2 minute CD), they can essentially just continue unsustainably to the end of the parse. Sages/Sorcs are simply the most direct and clearest example of this.

 

I don't see 1 mil parsing as ego stroking at all, it's more of a friendly competition and a way to see who knows

the class the best or who you could seek help from if you don't know it so well, its also about testing yourself

and this will be true for any health amount whether its 1 mil or 10 mil and sticking to 1 mil adds more convenience

time wise and credit wise (adrenals/stims, this is the only point i'll make in favor on 1mil).

 

I agree that this is what parsing in general is supposed to be about. However, the 1 mil dummy, for the reasons I gave, is not substantively about skill anymore. Not with the DPS numbers people are getting. The value of luck and crits is vastly, vastly over-inflated due to the short time duration. Why perfect your rotation and seek help when you can just run another parse and try your luck again?

 

The standard, bare minimum parse time prior to dummy modifiers (i.e. pre-2.4) was 5 minutes. That was the minimum. In practice, the median time was probably somewhere around 5:20. Anything less than this was considered unacceptably short. When dummy modifiers came out, the 1 mil was chosen by the world board, and the 500k was basically only ever considered by a few outlier players who were immediately shot down. The 500k dummy would have yielded parses at the time that would have been almost exactly the same length as a 1 mil parse is today. Why have our standards shifted so far?

 

We weren't wrong back then to shoot for five minutes, and we wouldn't be wrong now. The 1 mil dummy yields parses that are too far below the 5 minute mark. The 1.5 mil dummy yields results that are above it, but no longer by as much above as the 1 mil is below. It's time to switch conventional modifiers.

 

I think the more closer to a real boss fight the better.

Some fights with no adds each dps does 600~750k damage.

Fights with adds it's up to 900~1.2mil.

 

So the 1.5mil dummy IMO is pointless.

 

Go off of time, not hit points. What are the only fights that are below the 4 minute mark? Bulo, Malaphar, Sparky with a good group, Torque with an insane group. Of those, only Torque has a meaningful DPS check, and if you're killing it in under 4 minutes, the DPS check has ceased to be meaningful for your group. Everything else in the game, including all of the fights with real DPS requirements, are around the 6-10 minute mark. The 1 mil dummy is far far less representative.

 

I do agree once most classes reach the 5 minute mark on the 1.5m dummy that is a great time to adapt said debuff, but "most" in my eyes means roughly 75% of the specs. This is just my personal opinion, but very good argument, KBN. I agree 3:30 min parses are a bit short, but we shouldn't punish those who can't achieve those times just yet.

 

Here's the problem though... When a player is hitting the 5 minute mark on the 1.5 mil, they will be pushing the 3:10 minute mark on the 1 mil. That's just completely unacceptably low. That's equivalent to parsing a 2.5k and doing the 500k dummy. If the 500k dummy was unacceptably short during the days of sub-3k parses, then the 1 mil dummy is unacceptably short now. The situations are the same.

 

I don't think that asking someone to parse for 6 minutes (still less than 4.2k!) is all that onerous. Most of the old "5 minute minimum" parses where a little closer to 6 minutes anyway for cooldown reasons. In other words, asking someone parsing a 4.2k to do the 1.5 mil dummy is hardly punishment, and the resulting numbers are substantially more representative.

 

I think if everything shakes out and we discover that, somehow, certain disciplines are just massively under-performing in full 192s, then maybe we should consider keeping the 1 mil modifiers. However, if the top three parses for every discipline are coming out in the >4.4k range (as I'm relatively confident they will before long), then I think we can safely say the 1 mil has lost its relevance.

 

And in other news, yeah, torparse as it stands is largely useless. With a log view, I think it would be just useful enough to run a board (since we could validate), but only barely.

Edited January 4, 2015 by KeyboardNinja

[Tirozulu]

500K dummy is for burst, 1.5 million dummy is for Sustained dps. The 1 million dummy is a combination of both. The system is fine the way it is! No reason to change it, though with the dps increases the dummy does go down much quicker then the past. Edited January 4, 2015 by Tirozulu

[cs_zoltan]

Even if some specs don't quite hit the mark for the 1.5m dummy yet they will in a few more gear tiers (maybe even in full 198). Best time to change dummy health modifier is a new xpack I say.

 

/signed

[Citruzz]

Go off of time, not hit points. What are the only fights that are below the 4 minute mark? Bulo, Malaphar, Sparky with a good group, Torque with an insane group. Of those, only Torque has a meaningful DPS check, and if you're killing it in under 4 minutes, the DPS check has ceased to be meaningful for your group. Everything else in the game, including all of the fights with real DPS requirements, are around the 6-10 minute mark. The 1 mil dummy is far far less representative.

 

torque hc in under 4 min seems to be very hard, even in min maxed 198.

 

btw: torque hc is a perfect example for viability of using force storm on mass without any problems in resourcemanagement :-)

 

back to topic: i think the step to parse at 1.5mil dummy is the right thing. real meaningful dps parsing is something for a little playerbase at current maximum gear level. this people are trying to individuate themselfs by challenging fate or something, to get the best rng and the best parse.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Citruzz

[SBR_QuorTek]

The matter of parsing is to see how much damage you can burst out in an enviroment free zone that only require hitting a target that wont move or force you to run out of a circle of doom when you look upon it.

 

It is a tool to see how much damage in numbers you can do over that duration... if it mean you do 4.5k dps on that then you have your max, the rest is about doing it on a live boss, and honestly with alot of them you can't really be anywhere close on hitting your max due to mechanics, but with exception of a very few bosses of course, unless you hits ads as well.

 

You have 4 DPS and 2 tanks in a group of 8... if the boss have like 2.4million HP it means that you can roughly divide that into 600k per DPS minus what the tanks do to it as well is what matter the most... a live parse in parsec or a similiar program running with a group I guess you can use those numbers better, that what any dummy parse do with looking at it in a different way... technically one could only parse 3K dps on the dummy where as his friends does 4k... but when it comes to combat itself... then if the 3k person lets say keep at 2.6k dps on boss and the 4K'ers only do roughly 2.4k in live you can look into what is the most efficient.

 

500k, 1.000.000 and 1.500.000 parses in my eye share the same value depending very much on class and spec and situation in live.

 

If you need and only can hit your max going at a 1.5m dummy and same with a 500k and 1m... then what is it about everything if the boss only have like 2.5m hp and die in 7 minutes??

 

But alot might disagree, but whenever it comes down to stuff then it is about if you can actually accomplish the mission putting in the extra factors as well.

 

Usually only parse for an hour when have gotten a couple of upgrades or three though, but when in Ops we usually use the parsec group parse thing to see what we reach, good to analyze for after the boss is downed in how one can do better and give one self and others goals to archieve.

Edited January 5, 2015 by SBR_QuorTek

[DawnAskham]

I still find it interesting how much the SWTOR community is into 'parsing' as a way to gauge player / class potential and / or skill.

 

Then again, we are a much smaller community and don't have things like shared sites with live logging that allow full raid groups to upload full raid data such that useful comparisons can be made across tens of thousands of boss kills as to the performance of individuals and classes across actual current content.

 

I wouldn't mind more options for parsing dummy HP pools, but unless they add a dummy that drops circles, spawns adds, uses knock-backs and interrupts, and returns fire at the player, the usefulness of dummies is rather limited in doing anything more than providing comparative data points for potential damage in a non-movement, non-mechanic, non-add fight - of which there are exactly zero in current content.

Edited January 5, 2015 by DawnAskham

[SBR_QuorTek]

I agree with the keyboardninja though.

 

Current parsing method is invalid, valid parse should be full 7.5minutes, as the time for parsing on a dummy is to short... I mean I at times go like 2m10s on a 500K one and other assorted crazy stuff... was more happy back in the day when went full 8 minutes getting 3k+

 

Our current parsing tools should have have some kind of available timer instead inwhich you can set it to 7 minutes or something when you start and it stop calculating when you reach the limit.

Edited January 5, 2015 by SBR_QuorTek

[Ardarell_Solo]

Ah, where are the good old days pre Dummy health modulator, when I parsed Watchman until I got to the highest spot of the parse at say 46 min 6 secs and hit "Enter" so chat would send /stuck so the parse ended at that exact point.

 

Which meant, sometimes I'd parse to the 90mins mark and get no peak. A bit like youknowwhat ^^

[Sindariel]

The only way to get realistic and competitive parses is by doing several parses in a row and then taking the average DPS from those.

Otherwise, parses will always be inflated and skewed by "lucky" crits, proccs, etc.

 

And adrenals need to be forbidden in parses until they fix alacrity.

[wainot-keel]

And adrenals need to be forbidden in parses until they fix alacrity.

 

What's wrong with Alacrity ?

[Khevar]

What's wrong with Alacrity ?

My guess is that Sindariel is referring to the fact that if you trigger an ability that increases alacrity, and then use an adrenal, it lowers the cooldown of the adrenal.

 

But since this is something that works in an actual fight, I don't really see why adrenals should be forbidden.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Khevar

[KeyboardNinja]

My guess is that Sindariel is referring to the fact that if you trigger an ability that increases alacrity, and then use an adrenal, it lowers the cooldown of the adrenal.

 

But since this is something that works in an actual fight, I don't really see why adrenals should be forbidden.

 

Yeah, this is just a part of the class, honestly. As far as I know, this also works in reverse (alacrity *does* retroactively reduce cooldowns, there is just significant rounding error that screws up CD-sensitive specs, like Assault/IO). Lightning/Telekinetics in particular needs to be balanced with respect to the cooldown reduction on the adrenal.

 

Regarding the taking of averages… I would be SO happy if parse boards adopted this form. Even better would be medians (rather than means). Unfortunately, because parsing is self-reported, this is simply impossible to achieve with any kind of sane accuracy. It's a lot easier to just talk in terms of peaks, unfortunately.

[Sameria]

I'm with KBN... Time to up it to the 1.5m debuff. TTK is only going to drop from here on.

[DieGhostDie]

I didn't read too carefully about the OP, but I certainly think if everyone, including I, are decked out in full 198s, I would gladly switch over to the 1.5 mil dummy.

 

Who knows if BioWare will introduce higher tier HP modifiers as we progress in iLVL gear (2 mil, 2.5mil, 3mil. etc.)?

 

EDIT: I'll eventually have more thought about the 1.5 mil issue. I just wanted to get my initial reactions out.

Edited January 5, 2015 by DieGhostDie

[KTap]

I didn't read too carefully about the OP, but I certainly think if everyone, including I, are decked out in full 198s, I would gladly switch over to the 1.5 mil dummy.

 

Who knows if BioWare will introduce higher tier HP modifiers as we progress in iLVL gear (2 mil, 2.5mil, 3mil. etc.)?

 

Just do some 1 mill dummy parses and upload to Torparse

 

It's so broken that it's combining mine into 2 mill parses!

 

Voila

Edited January 5, 2015 by KTap

[Nostroo]

I'm with KBN. If you argue with no Bossfight is longer than 4Min and so you don't need the 1,5Mio Hp Modifier, so could you argue that there are two bosses in the new OPs which get killed by Zorz in SM within 1 Min 40 (according to the Videos they posted on there Youtubechannel) and the 500k Modifier would be the best to test the Dps.

[SBR_QuorTek]

I'm with KBN. If you argue with no Bossfight is longer than 4Min and so you don't need the 1,5Mio Hp Modifier, so could you argue that there are two bosses in the new OPs which get killed by Zorz in SM within 1 Min 40 (according to the Videos they posted on there Youtubechannel) and the 500k Modifier would be the best to test the Dps.

 

But eg. a 10 minute parse would reveal better for what numbers you need to hit and actually be a better tool for the general population...

 

a 2minute burnout doesn't prove anything other than you can fit all your junk into it way to easy, so technically a short parse is cheating or not revealing the full potential of a class/spec.

 

Which could be fun would be putting out new DPS caps meaning no matter how hard you try you could not exceed lets say 4k DPS in any boss fight, meaning if hitting above parsed on a dummy would just say you have hit this or that tier and can more easy sustain constant damage going on in a fight.

 

Hard caps instead of people going wild or the likes.