Testing SF I
(Note: this originally started out as some sort of Alchemist analysis. Due to the very large scope of such a project, a lack of previous work to build on, and my own PA armory limitations, I've decided to cut that down into some more general topics/tests of interest. So if you're wondering about the Alchemist focus, that'd be why...)
Alchemist: Basic Questions#
Iframes
Alchemist's first skill notes that "Alchemist is invincible while the skill is being performed." It has a 12-second cooldown, so I'm inclined to wonder how long these attacks last. If they take longer than 12 seconds to execute, she should remain permanently invincible, after all.
Test at level 1 (44 ROF, 0.88 attacks/sec): Alchemist's skill activates at 13.27s. She touches down after making her attacks at 15.43s (2.16s later), and receives an attack (taking damage) at 15.83s.
Test at level 90 (104 ROF, 2.14 attacks/sec): Alchemist's skill activates at 16.77s. She touches down at 18.93s (2.16s later), and receives an attack (taking damage) at 19.40s.
Conclusion: there's no trickery where you can get a permanently invincible Alchemist by keeping her at a low level. Her skill has a fixed delay between its attacks, and they come much faster than her normal attacks.
More Iframes
To have a consistent reference, I looked for the first frame where Alchemist touched the ground in the tests above. This isn't necessarily when her invincibility ends - it could go on for a bit, or it could have worn off already. To test this, I'll run her against a few high-volume enemies and see when damage numbers start appearing. The previous tests put an upper bound on this at 2.56s and 2.63s, respectively.
The SWAP SF stack from Theater 5/6's Core 8 is an easy pick for lots of incoming fire. Here, her skill activates at 6.00s, taking no damage from a bullet 1 frame away. She lands at 8.17s (+2.17s), stays immune for a moment, and first takes damage at 8.67s (+2.67s total).
Running it again: skill at 6.07s, touchdown at 8.23s (+2.16s), damage at 9.00s (+2.93s)
So there's some variability, but her skill seems to last for about 2.5 seconds, giving it ~20% uptime.
Shields per Second
Next question. Alchemist has several ways of generating shields, with all sorts of conditionals attached. How much shielding does she actually generate? How much does her evasion help those shields?
Alchemist generates shields from:
- Attacking targets marked with "Organism." (6 points, for 18 seconds, no stack limit). A mark of "Organism" is inflicted whenever Alchemist scores a critical hit. Her base crit rate is 40%/attack.
- Being in Defense Mode (6% of max HP every second (72 points at lv100), for 5 seconds)
At level 100, Alchemist has 111 ROF (13f, 2.308 attacks/second). Let's start by assuming every attack Alchemist makes is on a target affected by Organism. In that case, she'll gain, on average, 2 hits/attack \(\times\) 2.308 attacks/second \(\times\) 6 shield HP/hit = 27.7 shield HP/second.
This will rather simply scale down by whatever percent of her attacks are not on marked enemies. Performance will of course be weaker against larger/low HP hordes - good luck getting a second attack in against Dinergates - but easily hits this number against bosses.
So Alchemist can generate 72-100 shield HP/second, depending on how many attacks she can get in on marked targets. She has between 162-173 EVA (lv90-100, no petals) which goes a long way to extending these:
| Alchemist's EVA | Enemy ACC | Percent of attacks on marked targets |
|---|---|---|
| Dodge chance | Raw shield generation | Effective shield HP |
|---|---|---|
| ?% | ? Shields/sec | ? SHP/sec |
Shield HP can also stack up while executing her active or while enemies are walking. No singular value can represent how much shield HP she generates fight-to-fight, or how much that helps her.
Ringleader DPS#
Alchemist is allegedly all about defense and tanking. You may still be interested in how much damage she can deal, so let's run a few tests against a single target (target practice dummy), with varying health. Some ringleaders are oathed and have a ~5% penalty applied to balance results. A lv1 XS Jaguar was used to eliminate any walk time while not dealing a significant amount of damage.
There are a lot of factors that will mess things up, so these are very imprecise. This certainly doesn't establish some threshold like "Hunter>Alchemist for enemy HP>X points." However, it does give us the sense that Alchemist can deal respectable single-target damage compared to some other ringleaders.
Let's do one more against a decent group - the 56x Strelet mob from Theater 1-4 Core 8.
Once again, these are extremely rough. Notable takeaways:
- Intruder's summoned dinergate waves don't suddenly become super OP at dealing damage when fighting groups.
- Destroyer's AOE seemed much better than Architect's here, different than their 8-2 performance.
- Alchemist's shields worked very well. Any damage taken came from the run-up. After that, her shields never went below half. Even Destroyer with the ~10s clear took much more damage.
- You shouldn't deploy ringleaders alone. These results don't necessarily map onto real combat results all that well (you can tank with Manticores, get AOE from Jaguars/Manticores, add single-target DPS with Nemeums, and so on).
Jaegers and Nemeums#
Jaegers are a basic DPS unit with 4 cost, backline targeting, and a skillshot. Nemeums are a basic DPS unit with 6 cost, frontline targeting, and bonus damage based on target HP/building stacks. Let's run them against some different Target Practice dummy settings to see how they stack up.
Alchemist's tiles give machines 9% ROF and ACC. Assuming the accuracy is negligible and ignoring frame weirdness, this favors Nemeums a little more:
Note that frontline targeting isn't always the greatest, so Jaegers may still be preferred for their backline targeting. Their skillshots may also be useful, and these charts assume the Nemeum is never switching targets (benefitting more from their first skill).
More like this
Armor requirements, maps, routes
Probability estimates and math