I've been playing on the PTR for the last couple of days with my Archon wizard that has 182k buffed DPS. I've come to the conclusion after trying the various monster power levels that in nearly all circumstances MP0 will be the most efficient or, at most, MP1. I am in the process of collecting data such as XP per run/hour at the various MP levels, but what I've collected so far is definitely favoring the lowest MP levels.
Basically, the reason for this is the fact that wizards actually have to stop moving to DPS, unlike barbarians, and elite packs and the mobs with slightly more health such as phase beasts and golgors. At MP2 the regular trash mobs are melting nearly instantly, and at MP3 they are quick, but Elite packs still take several seconds. At MP0 even elite packs die nearly instantly, probably just as quickly as regular white mobs on MP3. So do the higher HP mobs like phasebeasts and golgors. Basically, this means that even with elite packs you are really only limited by movement speed, whereas at even MP3 you have to actually stand around quite a bit to kill things. Also, MP0 makes it significantly easier to use Storm Armor - Scramble instead of an energy armor, which I think can have a very big impact on run times.
I think at slightly higher DPS levels, 200-225K, MP1 might be worth it over MP0 for Archon. I think you will need truly astronomical DPS numbers for the higher MP levels to be worth it in terms of item or XP efficiency.
Yes, I've considered MF. The point is that you are killing things much quicker at lower MP levels and therefore are getting a higher quantity of loot drops, which is very likely to offset the slightly higher quality from higher MF and less drops on the higher MP levels.
For a super simplistic example; 10 opportunities to get something with a 25% chance of getting it on each opportunity is worse than 15 opportunities to get something with a 20% chance of getting it on each opportunity.
MP0 is not worth it over MP1 because at MP1 all items have affixes of lvl 63 items and you can farm act 1/2 (if one is bored of act 3) because at MP1+ all mobs are lvl 63
In act 3, all the mobs are already lvl 63 at MP0. I'm not talking about farming Act 1 or 2, I'm talking about doing high density efficiency runs in Act 3 at MP0.
I'm not one of the people who ever bitched about the game being to easy. I can't see myself running on anything above 3, other than to try it out and drop game immediately.
1) I have heard reports that volume of loot steps up dramatically at higher monster power, I'm not sure what your metrics for analyzing drops are, or how many runs you are doing to validate your findings beyond just RNG.
2) Do not discount the possibility that running Act 3 Hell on very high MP could potentially be more efficient than any setting in inferno.
3) While infinite archon thrives on the mob density in Act 3, do not dismiss the possibility that farming acts 1 or 2 at different monster powers could yield stronger results for other builds. There was an interesting proposal on this forum for a sans archon build attaining similar damage output using the newly buffed ray of frost (sleet storm) and getting slightly better damage returns than disintegration wave does without having to manage the archon buff.
Seems pretty basic to me that MP1 would be standard, since you get MF, GF, EXP, every monster is lv63, ilv58-62 items can roll better stats with the tradeoff that difficulty will still be below what it is in 1.0.4.
in act 3 at MP0 lvl 60 chest cannot roll 300 vitality on it, on MP1 it can, that's the difference because at MP1+ ALL items have their affix range same as lvl 63 items
Wrong. Affix lvl = monster level at MP0 too. MP0 different only for acts 1=2 and only for monster level.
This should be more than just pure archon build utilization on various MP settings. There are other builds, even archon builds can take a step back to the old blizzard kite builds and do MP10. The question is whether it is actually really worth it in terms of quality of loot. I don't really know how do you quantify that because a good rolled item vs a bad rolled item is a massive difference yet both of them can be ilvl 63. Probably the most accurate way to really quantify this would be by simply comparing the number of legends / set items you obtain per hour on various MP levels. That would require a solid amount of data to be even decently accurate.
If you are looking purely at amount of kills you can do vs time - then surely MP0 is the most efficient, however at various levels of DPS there will be a huge difference between the speed on MP1, MP2, etc. That is basically what you are saying, but how exactly did you account for the quality of loot between those? Quantity =/= quality after all, getting 5000 junky ilvl 58-62 is far worse than getting even 1 ilvl 63 legendary item.
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
This should be more than just pure archon build utilization on various MP settings. There are other builds, even archon builds can take a step back to the old blizzard kite builds and do MP10. The question is whether it is actually really worth it in terms of quality of loot. I don't really know how do you quantify that because a good rolled item vs a bad rolled item is a massive difference yet both of them can be ilvl 63. Probably the most accurate way to really quantify this would be by simply comparing the number of legends / set items you obtain per hour on various MP levels. That would require a solid amount of data to be even decently accurate.
If you are looking purely at amount of kills you can do vs time - then surely MP0 is the most efficient, however at various levels of DPS there will be a huge difference between the speed on MP1, MP2, etc. That is basically what you are saying, but how exactly did you account for the quality of loot between those? Quantity =/= quality after all, getting 5000 junky ilvl 58-62 is far worse than getting even 1 ilvl 63 legendary item.
I think there are some misconceptions here. At MP0, Act 3 mobs are still level 63, and in 1.0.5 affixes are determined by monster level, so every single rare that drops can roll level 63 affixes. This means that every single rare is essentially ilvl 63 except for its base stats.
On top of that, increasing monster level does not change anything about loot quality EXCEPT for increasing your magic find. So MP0 and MP10 are the same loot table, you will just have 250% extra magic find. So the only thing that needs to be measured is rares per hour. The increased magic find from higher MP levels will increase the percentage of your drops that are rares, but the increased health of the mobs on those levels will mean that you will get fewer drops per hour. The question is, at what point does it balance out? Like the title of my post says, I am pretty sure that it doesn't balance out at all after MP0 or, at most, MP1, but I am compiling data to show this and will post it when I have it.
1) I have heard reports that volume of loot steps up dramatically at higher monster power, I'm not sure what your metrics for analyzing drops are, or how many runs you are doing to validate your findings beyond just RNG.
2) Do not discount the possibility that running Act 3 Hell on very high MP could potentially be more efficient than any setting in inferno.
3) While infinite archon thrives on the mob density in Act 3, do not dismiss the possibility that farming acts 1 or 2 at different monster powers could yield stronger results for other builds. There was an interesting proposal on this forum for a sans archon build attaining similar damage output using the newly buffed ray of frost (sleet storm) and getting slightly better damage returns than disintegration wave does without having to manage the archon buff.
Regarding (2), Hell will never be a good farming act because the mobs will not be lvl 63, even with monster level. The boost to 63 only applies to Inferno, as indicated by the blue post. If you're looking to power level Paragon Levels, I suppose it would be worth consideration, but seems like it'd be a waste of potentially good rares.
Regarding other builds, I'm pretty confident that Archon is the fastest spec to farm with. No other build can compete with a 375% weapon damage ranged aoe for both single target and aoe packs. It takes one right click to kill an entire pack of mobs. What other build does that? The sleet storm build only does more damage than Archon for mobs near you, though I admit I have no idea what the range on that rune is. Archon lets you nuke elites at max range so you can nuke them before they reach you or just after they get to you. Also, the beam itself is single target so it takes much longer to kill 2-3 ranged mobs than with archon beam.
Really this new monster power just adds more complexity to farming efficiency. Each person will need to determine what level is best for them because we all have different MF levels. For example, at 0 paragon level, monster power 0 means you have 75% MF because of NV. Changing to power 1 means you have 100% MF, so you raise the number of legendaries by about 14% (200/175=1.14). If it only takes you 10% longer to farm power level 1, then it's worth it. However, if you have maxed power level then you go from 375 MF to 400 MF, which is only a 5% gain, so a 10% increase in farming time means less efficiency so you're better off staying at power 0.
For Archon, it seems that whatever power level lets you kill all white mobs in 1 sec or less would be most ideal, both for run speed and for ability to keep arcon active. I was expecting to farm somewhere between 2 and 4 when it goes live because my MF is going down as I swap from MF to dps to make Archon more efficient but I might end up just doing 0 or 1 if it is that much more efficient. Also Act 3 is hands down the best act to farm for an Achon wizard because of mob density. The other acts might have good elite density but Archon efficiency is all aout killing everything and keeping Archon active.
Regarding other builds, I'm pretty confident that Archon is the fastest spec to farm with. No other build can compete with a 375% weapon damage ranged aoe for both single target and aoe packs. It takes one right click to kill an entire pack of mobs. What other build does that?
Really this new monster power just adds more complexity to farming efficiency. Each person will need to determine what level is best for them because we all have different MF levels. For example, at 0 paragon level, monster power 0 means you have 75% MF because of NV. Changing to power 1 means you have 100% MF, so you raise the number of legendaries by about 14% (200/175=1.14). If it only takes you 10% longer to farm power level 1, then it's worth it. However, if you have maxed power level then you go from 375 MF to 400 MF, which is only a 5% gain, so a 10% increase in farming time means less efficiency so you're better off staying at power 0.
For Archon, it seems that whatever power level lets you kill all white mobs in 1 sec or less would be most ideal, both for run speed and for ability to keep arcon active. I was expecting to farm somewhere between 2 and 4 when it goes live because my MF is going down as I swap from MF to dps to make Archon more efficient but I might end up just doing 0 or 1 if it is that much more efficient. Also Act 3 is hands down the best act to farm for an Achon wizard because of mob density. The other acts might have good elite density but Archon efficiency is all aout killing everything and keeping Archon active.
One thing I'd note here is that Act 3 mobs on MP0 have incredibly low health right now on the PTR. I mean absurdly low. One way to look at this is that you can use Archon on higher MP levels without losing much farming time, because you will mostly be limited by movement speed. Another way of looking at this is that you can use builds that do less damage than Archon on MP0 without losing any killing speed but gaining movement speed in order to increase farm times. I made another post about a build using this concept, but I'm not sure whether it's worthwhile or not yet.
EDIT: Took out specifics about the % change between monster power levels, because I am not entirely sure yet that they are accurate. The basic point still stands.
If you read thru the magic find thread on these forums carefully - it is a derivation that higher MF leads to higher loot quality. To simplify that even further, according to what has been talked about so far, each MP adds approximately 25% MF/GF, with MP10 you gain an additional 250% MF, that is a very significant amount, provided you are capped on MF to begin with you should be expecting to see a fair bit more of legendary / set items. That is exactly the point i am trying to make. If you are looking at this matter from the perspective of purely farming paragon levels, then surely the lowest MP would be the most beneficial, however if you are more interested in loot rather than paragon levels - then significantly higher MP (provided you have the gear to kill it somewhat efficiently to begin with) might be far better.
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
If you read thru the magic find thread on these forums carefully - it is a derivation that higher MF leads to higher loot quality. To simplify that even further, according to what has been talked about so far, each MP adds approximately 25% MF/GF, with MP10 you gain an additional 250% MF, that is a very significant amount, provided you are capped on MF to begin with you should be expecting to see a fair bit more of legendary / set items. That is exactly the point i am trying to make. If you are looking at this matter from the perspective of purely farming paragon levels, then surely the lowest MP would be the most beneficial, however if you are more interested in loot rather than paragon levels - then significantly higher MP (provided you have the gear to kill it somewhat efficiently to begin with) might be far better.
I've followed and contributed to that thread so I am pretty familiar with the statistics behind it. The problem with the higher power levels is they will drastically reduce your farming time while barely increasing the number of rares/legendaries you find, especially if you already have a lot of MF from paragon and gear. The differences between MP 0 and MP 10 is +250% MF, compared to the 375% you can have base if you're capped, that's like comparing 375% MF to 625% MF, which leads to approximately 52% more legendaries for the same number of mob and elite kills (i.e., 725/475 = 1.526). Considering the HP increase is more like 10x or more from MP0 to MP10, your farming time will likely increase by about a factor of 10, so you'll get far far fewer legendaries at MP 10 in the same amount of time as someone farming MP 0.
If you don't have a lot of MF on gear and have a low paragon level, then farming higher MP might be more worthwhile, but even then once you start taking 10%-15% longer to farm at 1 higher MP level, you need to stop raising the level, as indicated by my calculation above for 0 MF on gear and just taking into account NV stacks+MP MF. For those who didn't read that post, you only get about 14% more legendaries at MP1 with 0 MF on gear and 0 paragon compared to MP0 with same stats.
Note that I use legendaries as an example because it should be linnearly affected by MF whereas rares suffer from diminishing returns and the relationship between rares and MF is a bit more complicated due to the #affixes. Also, comparing rares vs MF is additionally compicated by the guaranteed rare that elites drop, which is guarnteed regardless of MF level. In short, when you double your MF, you get less than double the rares so in terms of rares the increase in MF is even more indicative of farming a lower MP level.
Basically, the reason for this is the fact that wizards actually have to stop moving to DPS, unlike barbarians, and elite packs and the mobs with slightly more health such as phase beasts and golgors. At MP2 the regular trash mobs are melting nearly instantly, and at MP3 they are quick, but Elite packs still take several seconds. At MP0 even elite packs die nearly instantly, probably just as quickly as regular white mobs on MP3. So do the higher HP mobs like phasebeasts and golgors. Basically, this means that even with elite packs you are really only limited by movement speed, whereas at even MP3 you have to actually stand around quite a bit to kill things. Also, MP0 makes it significantly easier to use Storm Armor - Scramble instead of an energy armor, which I think can have a very big impact on run times.
I think at slightly higher DPS levels, 200-225K, MP1 might be worth it over MP0 for Archon. I think you will need truly astronomical DPS numbers for the higher MP levels to be worth it in terms of item or XP efficiency.
For a super simplistic example; 10 opportunities to get something with a 25% chance of getting it on each opportunity is worse than 15 opportunities to get something with a 20% chance of getting it on each opportunity.
In act 3, all the mobs are already lvl 63 at MP0. I'm not talking about farming Act 1 or 2, I'm talking about doing high density efficiency runs in Act 3 at MP0.
1) I have heard reports that volume of loot steps up dramatically at higher monster power, I'm not sure what your metrics for analyzing drops are, or how many runs you are doing to validate your findings beyond just RNG.
2) Do not discount the possibility that running Act 3 Hell on very high MP could potentially be more efficient than any setting in inferno.
3) While infinite archon thrives on the mob density in Act 3, do not dismiss the possibility that farming acts 1 or 2 at different monster powers could yield stronger results for other builds. There was an interesting proposal on this forum for a sans archon build attaining similar damage output using the newly buffed ray of frost (sleet storm) and getting slightly better damage returns than disintegration wave does without having to manage the archon buff.
If you are looking purely at amount of kills you can do vs time - then surely MP0 is the most efficient, however at various levels of DPS there will be a huge difference between the speed on MP1, MP2, etc. That is basically what you are saying, but how exactly did you account for the quality of loot between those? Quantity =/= quality after all, getting 5000 junky ilvl 58-62 is far worse than getting even 1 ilvl 63 legendary item.
I think there are some misconceptions here. At MP0, Act 3 mobs are still level 63, and in 1.0.5 affixes are determined by monster level, so every single rare that drops can roll level 63 affixes. This means that every single rare is essentially ilvl 63 except for its base stats.
On top of that, increasing monster level does not change anything about loot quality EXCEPT for increasing your magic find. So MP0 and MP10 are the same loot table, you will just have 250% extra magic find. So the only thing that needs to be measured is rares per hour. The increased magic find from higher MP levels will increase the percentage of your drops that are rares, but the increased health of the mobs on those levels will mean that you will get fewer drops per hour. The question is, at what point does it balance out? Like the title of my post says, I am pretty sure that it doesn't balance out at all after MP0 or, at most, MP1, but I am compiling data to show this and will post it when I have it.
Regarding (2), Hell will never be a good farming act because the mobs will not be lvl 63, even with monster level. The boost to 63 only applies to Inferno, as indicated by the blue post. If you're looking to power level Paragon Levels, I suppose it would be worth consideration, but seems like it'd be a waste of potentially good rares.
Regarding other builds, I'm pretty confident that Archon is the fastest spec to farm with. No other build can compete with a 375% weapon damage ranged aoe for both single target and aoe packs. It takes one right click to kill an entire pack of mobs. What other build does that? The sleet storm build only does more damage than Archon for mobs near you, though I admit I have no idea what the range on that rune is. Archon lets you nuke elites at max range so you can nuke them before they reach you or just after they get to you. Also, the beam itself is single target so it takes much longer to kill 2-3 ranged mobs than with archon beam.
Really this new monster power just adds more complexity to farming efficiency. Each person will need to determine what level is best for them because we all have different MF levels. For example, at 0 paragon level, monster power 0 means you have 75% MF because of NV. Changing to power 1 means you have 100% MF, so you raise the number of legendaries by about 14% (200/175=1.14). If it only takes you 10% longer to farm power level 1, then it's worth it. However, if you have maxed power level then you go from 375 MF to 400 MF, which is only a 5% gain, so a 10% increase in farming time means less efficiency so you're better off staying at power 0.
For Archon, it seems that whatever power level lets you kill all white mobs in 1 sec or less would be most ideal, both for run speed and for ability to keep arcon active. I was expecting to farm somewhere between 2 and 4 when it goes live because my MF is going down as I swap from MF to dps to make Archon more efficient but I might end up just doing 0 or 1 if it is that much more efficient. Also Act 3 is hands down the best act to farm for an Achon wizard because of mob density. The other acts might have good elite density but Archon efficiency is all aout killing everything and keeping Archon active.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
One thing I'd note here is that Act 3 mobs on MP0 have incredibly low health right now on the PTR. I mean absurdly low. One way to look at this is that you can use Archon on higher MP levels without losing much farming time, because you will mostly be limited by movement speed. Another way of looking at this is that you can use builds that do less damage than Archon on MP0 without losing any killing speed but gaining movement speed in order to increase farm times. I made another post about a build using this concept, but I'm not sure whether it's worthwhile or not yet.
EDIT: Took out specifics about the % change between monster power levels, because I am not entirely sure yet that they are accurate. The basic point still stands.
I've followed and contributed to that thread so I am pretty familiar with the statistics behind it. The problem with the higher power levels is they will drastically reduce your farming time while barely increasing the number of rares/legendaries you find, especially if you already have a lot of MF from paragon and gear. The differences between MP 0 and MP 10 is +250% MF, compared to the 375% you can have base if you're capped, that's like comparing 375% MF to 625% MF, which leads to approximately 52% more legendaries for the same number of mob and elite kills (i.e., 725/475 = 1.526). Considering the HP increase is more like 10x or more from MP0 to MP10, your farming time will likely increase by about a factor of 10, so you'll get far far fewer legendaries at MP 10 in the same amount of time as someone farming MP 0.
If you don't have a lot of MF on gear and have a low paragon level, then farming higher MP might be more worthwhile, but even then once you start taking 10%-15% longer to farm at 1 higher MP level, you need to stop raising the level, as indicated by my calculation above for 0 MF on gear and just taking into account NV stacks+MP MF. For those who didn't read that post, you only get about 14% more legendaries at MP1 with 0 MF on gear and 0 paragon compared to MP0 with same stats.
Note that I use legendaries as an example because it should be linnearly affected by MF whereas rares suffer from diminishing returns and the relationship between rares and MF is a bit more complicated due to the #affixes. Also, comparing rares vs MF is additionally compicated by the guaranteed rare that elites drop, which is guarnteed regardless of MF level. In short, when you double your MF, you get less than double the rares so in terms of rares the increase in MF is even more indicative of farming a lower MP level.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard