Jump to content

G3 Parry notes (mostly for Guardian)


Recommended Posts

It's years late but I figure this could be useful for someone replaying the earlier games. After reading the linked threads in strategy peripheral, I found differing opinions on Parry. Being the 'sperg that I am, I tried looking for more specific info, but I wasn't satisfied with what I found. So I did my own testing. I'm of course not sure on some of these, as I didn't look at game files or anything, I just did some in-game testing.

 

It's known that Parry gives a 2% chance per point of blocking a melee attack entirely. The tooltip says it reduces physical damage received as well but I didn't have the will to test if it did. What about ranged attacks? I used turrets for testing and it's 1% per point. I also tested against Greta's firebolt & searer, also 1% per point. It seems that Parry chance is still capped at 50%.

 

Is it worth putting points over Endurance? The accurate answer is probably more trouble to find than it's worth. A rough estimate shouldn't be too time consuming to find out though. So to compare Endurance and Parry I used a very simple (and most probably inaccurate) formula to get effective HP due to Parry: EHP = HP / (1 - Parry * 0.02). I am aware that this ignores several factors like exact incoming damage but it should be good enough.

 

BTW, the Guardian's HP formula in G3 seems to be 24 + End * 0.75 * (level+1).

 

So for example if our Guardian has 200 HP and 15 Parry while the enemy does 40 melee damage (at 30% chance to be parried), 200 / (40 * 70%), it should take around 7 attacks on average to kill our Guardian. Meaning 7 * 40 is his effective HP.

 

I did computations for Parry at 10, 15 and 20. Of course since EHP is largely dependent on base HP, and HP is dependent on level, I also did this on differing levels (10, 20, 30 & 40) and differing amounts of Endurance already invested (0 - 7 and so on). What I found out was that up to 8 Endurance, 12 skill points worth of Parry (total amount to reach 10) adds less EHP than just investing those points into more Endurance. This is taking into account both melee and ranged parry chance. And that up to 15 Endurance at least (I did not make any further calculations) it's not worth getting Parry from 10 to 15.

 

Edit: some mistakes, look at post #5 for corrections

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very interesting. So...if I'm understanding you:

 

As a guardian, until you hit 8 Endurance, you get more survivability from Endurance than from Parry. Then, if you want defensibility beyond that, it can be worth getting Parry up to 10. But then you go back to being better off investing in Endurance, at least until you raise End to very high levels? Correct? Parry beyond 10 doesn't give as much value for skill points as Endurance?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, raising Endurance to 8-10 first then Parry to 10 seems to be the most economical use of points. After that I did computations for different use of points, 10 End 15 Parry vs 13 End 10 Parry, 13 End 15 Parry vs 15 End 10 Parry. Endurance comes out a little better because while vs melee EHP is almost always higher with high Parry, it's also significantly lower vs ranged attacks. Note that this does not take into account HP from Augmentation or Essence Armor, which are both equal to around 2.5 points of Endurance each at character level 30 judging from my save (not sure if level has any effect on these). So considering that 15 End 10 Parry is better than 13 End 15 Parry unbuffed, if we adjust for both buffs, 10 Endurance 10 Parry still seems to be the best.

 

I did higher numbers: 12 End 15 Parry and 14 End 10 Parry, both when buffed, are pretty close with the latter still somewhat better because of low Parry for ranged attacks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

More 'sperging.

 

After realizing that I forgot to take into account that Parry starts at 4 as a Guardian (meaning my 'no investment in Parry' EHP values were off a bit) and that doing calcs only for 5/10/15/20 Parry would result in a few skill points possibly going to waste, I redid calculations, this time also taking into account Augmentation (+58) and Essence Armor (+54, potion). I did the calculations at character level 30, no investment in Endurance & Parry, comparing EHP gained for every point invested in Endurance against if those points were put into Parry instead. Results:

 

Until 10 Endurance, it's not worth putting any points into Parry (same as my earlier conclusion). There's a point where the first 2 points in Parry, being so cheap, would probably be ok but the gain should also be miniscule. Also, since I did the calcs based on Endurance values, a 4 skill point investment (+1 End or +3 Parry) is the lowest I started in.

 

At 10 Endurance, going to 11 (worth 7 skill points) adds less EHP than +4 points to Parry (6 SPs). So our Guardian is now at 10 Endurance and 8 Parry.

 

Going further, until 15 Endurance it wasn't worth getting Parry from 8 to 10. I ended my calcs with the following values:

 

16 End and 8 Parry (94 skill points)

508 HP || 604 melee EHP || 552 ranged EHP

 

-vs-

 

15 End and 11 Parry (94 skill points)

484 HP || 620 melee EHP || 543 ranged EHP

 

I didn't do further calcs as 94 skill points is a lot and further investment is probably impractical. Personally after all this I wouldn't get Parry past 8.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

First question, did you test whether parry reduce damage received or not? If yes, by what percentage? Or do you simply assume that there is no such effect?

Second, do you take account that each additional Parry is more powerful if your parry skill is higher, but the reverse is true for End? There are a lot of items will boosting your parry and Endurance for your melee character.

Third, you have not taken healing into account, right? Doubling your HP and halving damage taken is similar is healing is impossible, but the latter is way better otherwise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good questions. I'm willing to bet Parry does reduce damage received -- we know it did in G2, and we also know it did in A4, which pretty much used everything from G3 that it could. I also wondered about healing, but I note there is a second scenario with similar impact to "healing is impossible" -- "you can heal full HP with high Endurance nearly as easily as full HP with low Endurance." That might not apply to super high End but it is probably relevant for moderate boosts to End.

 

That said...

 

"Last Active Jan 18 2014 02:27 AM"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

For agents and shapers, it is possible fully heal with a healing spell. But never for guardians, who has high HP and low effective healing spell level.

Also do not forget regeneration spell, vampiric touch, and potions/ spores are also part of healing. They cannot fully heal you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm willing to bet Parry does reduce damage received -- we know it did in G2, and we also know it did in A4

 

"Last Active Jan 18 2014 02:27 AM"

 

I tested parry on the first worm in the academy. A parry of 4 takes the same damage as parry at 14 on average. I think it does not reduce damage taken in G3.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...