Diminishing Returns of Damage Modifiers and Debunking Flawed Arguments

[Zeklo]

1 hour ago, Friendly Grass said:

"Dark swords can also be replaced with “percent of resources”.

This includes all resources. You can replace 100 dark swords with 100 potatoes or football helmets or whatever in your mind. It still works the same -snip- @Zeklo. Sorry if I was unclear.

Not sure I appreciate being tagged due to liking a post, but I'll say this one thing: You can't just replace Dark Swords with anything.

Dark Swords have a finite set of uses where as plenty of other resources are used depending on the outcome of the fight—as already stated by others the most valuable thing in a fight is ending it quick. I might only use a single healing item in the span of "70 Dark Swords" but I might slip and get hit a bunch in the last "30 Dark Swords". You can easily math away something with durability, but everything else is extremely variable—and naturally, time saved goes beyond being invaluable.

Apart from that, yeah I agree for the most part.

[saimsadeek]

 taking your own example a wolfgang w jelly saves 30 swords on normal wolfgang, but what youre not mentioning (and quite deliberately) is he is saving 80 swords on the normal wilson. 
yes jelly version not that op.

[Frosty_Mentos]

I just don't think that Wolfgang's slightly bigger sanity loss than other players (10%) gives any challenge to weight against the thing like his 2x constant multiplier he can have while he's stuffing his face with potatoes all the time for size, health and damage which is literally all he needs.

He doesn't really have Big Risk - High Reward factor in his character kit, only that he gets spook ma-gooked a bit more than others. If you get decent sanity management overtime while you learn the game eventually you can feel how broken this character's damage is compared to what big withdraws others have. It's not that his hunger drains that fast while he has all the damage, even the Enlightened Crown has a drawback on all players to loose sanity upon use summoning a gestalt.

But really you don't need to rely on your own damage in this game, there's pigs, bunnies, lobsters and what now that can help in fights, though a lotta people for some reason still tend to go on their own for this when ya can raise armies to conquer enemies. (Not saying that it works with everyone of them, but still is very useful.)

To put case in point - Wolfgang has very selfish character perk that breaks compared damage to anyone else to able to solo anything without really needing much help. He's a one man army and by enslaving a local cook to make him spiced jellies breaks everything about the struggle that characters are set in to deal with. Nightmares, bosses, normal mobs - nothing really matter cause only needs to chug throatful of potatoes or any other food and just win.
 

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

I just don't think that Wolfgang's slightly bigger sanity loss than other players (10%) gives any challenge to weight against the thing like his 2x constant multiplier he can have while he's stuffing his face with potatoes all the time for size, health and damage which is literally all he needs.

He doesn't really have Big Risk - High Reward factor in his character kit, only that he gets spook ma-gooked a bit more than others. If you get decent sanity management overtime while you learn the game eventually you can feel how broken this character's damage is compared to what big withdraws others have. It's not that his hunger drains that fast while he has all the damage, even the Enlightened Crown has a drawback on all players to loose sanity upon use summoning a gestalt.

Wolfgang's large hunger drain is a lot more of a downside than most of the cast has.

1 hour ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

To put case in point - Wolfgang has very selfish character perk that breaks compared damage to anyone else to able to solo anything without really needing much help

Wendy can solo things a lot better than Wolfgang can (in addition to being able to do a lot more than just fight bosses) & she has even less of a downside of -25% damage against shadows. Also, anyone can solo anything without help.

[Frosty_Mentos]

4 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

Wolfgang's large hunger drain is a lot more of a downside than most of the cast has.

Wendy can solo things a lot better than Wolfgang can (in addition to being able to do a lot more than just fight bosses) & she has even less of a downside of -25% damage against shadows. Also, anyone can solo anything without help.

tbh I feel like there's need to be done a science comparison videos to make these arguments at this point ._.

[Cheggf]

18 minutes ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

tbh I feel like there's need to be done a science comparison videos to make these arguments at this point ._.

I can give you mathematics. Even ignoring crowds, Bee Queen, and Ancient Fuelweaver who Wendy absolutely trivializes and is incomparably better than Wolfgang, against a single target Wolfgang expends far more resources for a 4% damage boost over Wendy. If multiple players are present Wendy will actually add more damage than Wolfgang since she buffs everyone's damage by 10%, so even a single player other than Wendy will surpass that 4% mark.

Players attack inconsistently, but it's about 2.22 times per second. Beefalo attack a consistent 2 times a second. Wolfgang, expending armor, a ham bat, and a ton of food (three things Wendy is not expending) will do 59.5*1.94*2.22=256 DPS (hambat*wolfgangbuff*attackspeed). Wendy on a beefalo will do 66*1.54*2+40=244 DPS (ornery*abigailbuff*attackspeed+abigail). That's all assuming the ham bat is perfectly fresh, too, so Wolfgang's damage will fall while Wendy's will be consistent. If Wolfgang were to instead use a dark sword he'd get a 19% damage boost over her, but now he's using a bunch of living logs & nightmare fuel in addition to all the other additional resources he's expending just for that minor damage boost.

And, once again, that is ignoring the fact that Wendy can do this and this and she can literally AFK through hound waves, and she can clear out bee biomes at an insane speed, and she can have Abigail farm both shadow and non-shadow splumonkeys insanely easily, and a bunch of other stuff. Wolfgang expends a ton of resources to achieve at best the same result Wendy gets for free and at worst an enormously worse result such as in the BQ & AFW fight.

[clickrush]

2 hours ago, Cheggf said:

I can give you mathematics. Even ignoring crowds, Bee Queen, and Ancient Fuelweaver who Wendy absolutely trivializes and is incomparably better than Wolfgang, against a single target Wolfgang expends far more resources for a 4% damage boost over Wendy. If multiple players are present Wendy will actually add more damage than Wolfgang since she buffs everyone's damage by 10%, so even a single player other than Wendy will surpass that 4% mark.

Players attack inconsistently, but it's about 2.22 times per second. Beefalo attack a consistent 2 times a second. Wolfgang, expending armor, a ham bat, and a ton of food (three things Wendy is not expending) will do 59.5*1.94*2.22=256 DPS (hambat*wolfgangbuff*attackspeed). Wendy on a beefalo will do 66*1.54*2+40=244 DPS (ornery*abigailbuff*attackspeed+abigail). That's all assuming the ham bat is perfectly fresh, too, so Wolfgang's damage will fall while Wendy's will be consistent. If Wolfgang were to instead use a dark sword he'd get a 19% damage boost over her, but now he's using a bunch of living logs & nightmare fuel in addition to all the other additional resources he's expending just for that minor damage boost.

And, once again, that is ignoring the fact that Wendy can do this and this and she can literally AFK through hound waves, and she can clear out bee biomes at an insane speed, and she can have Abigail farm both shadow and non-shadow splumonkeys insanely easily, and a bunch of other stuff. Wolfgang expends a ton of resources to achieve at best the same result Wendy gets for free and at worst an enormously worse result such as in the BQ & AFW fight.

You’re comparing a fully trained ornery beefalo with a hambat and then go on to say that darkswords are expensive.

If we’re being fair and objective: Wolfgang outshines Wendy in most bossfights except for those who swarm like FW and BQ. Those also happen to be some of the hardest and most rewarding bosses, so that’s a good tradeoff.

Wendy can offset her lower damage by training a Beef and by using Nightshade on Abigail, but first year you wont be fighting on a fully trained ornery Beefalo with a War Saddle on, at least not for most of the time. Wolfgang can scale his damage to numbers that are completely out of reach for her and any other character with high tier weapons and consumables, but he uses up much more resources overall.

[Friendly Grass]

9 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

11.11 more darkswords means 1,100 more hits. Thats a lot.

Please try to understand. 11.11 means percent of all resources saved. How many times must I say this?

9 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

The you presented the group data with 1 wilson+ 1 Wolfgang and your data was misrepresented as this brought Wolfgangs dps down. What you should of done to keep it from being misrepresented is 2 Wolfgangs vs 2 Wilsons, essentially quadrupling the effect Wolfgang has. 

 

I already did 1 Wilson vs 1 Wolfgang and that was my main point. The last part was a bit weird, I admit. It was comparing Warly + Wolfgang vs Warly + Wilson fighting together. To show that Wolfgang still benefits the most from jelly when fighting in a group. But not hugely.

9 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

He cuts resources down essentially in half. This is what's op.

My whole post was just about how that half makes less and less of a difference as you add more damage modifiers. For now we’re just focusing on the 6x damage argument.

9 hours ago, Shosuko said:

@Friendly Grass I think you get off on the wrong foot b/c you're talking about something that isn't really the issue.  Few people actually have a problem with stacking multipliers, they have a problem with just how OP Wolfgang is.  All the bickering both ways about that has reduced some ppl to accept his constant OP presence with a minimal request to at least flatten the edge cases ie stacking multipliers so that other characters come a bit closer when they've gone through so much effort.

People are probably going to be frustrated without a bigger discussion.

Except it is the issue because that’s what I see brought up on forums on a weekly basis. And even explaining how simple math invalidates this claim has caused riots soo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

9 hours ago, CossonWool said:

Would an accurate summary be: "Wolfgang is ~2x damge, but if you add a Wilson then it's ~1.5x average"? Wolfgang damage has diminishing returns on average when you add things that aren't Wolfgang - is that a good description of the misconception? I don't mean that in a sarcastic way, the original post is just confusing with the example so I'm not sure I get the point.

Yep this is a confusing example, my apologies. It’s mostly just to explain that Wolfgang benefits the most from jelly in a group but not immensely. It’s not my main point at all.

8 hours ago, Zeklo said:

Not sure I appreciate being tagged due to liking a post, but I'll say this one thing: You can't just replace Dark Swords with anything.

Dark Swords have a finite set of uses where as plenty of other resources are used depending on the outcome of the fight—as already stated by others the most valuable thing in a fight is ending it quick. I might only use a single healing item in the span of "70 Dark Swords" but I might slip and get hit a bunch in the last "30 Dark Swords". You can easily math away something with durability, but everything else is extremely variable—and naturally, time saved goes beyond being invaluable.

Apart from that, yeah I agree for the most part.

I’m really sorry about the tag. In my mind it’s just the same as quoting someone. I did it because it was a huge misunderstanding that I wanted to clear up. But I think you still don’t fully understand. Dark swords means “percent of all resources”.

8 hours ago, saimsadeek said:

taking your own example a wolfgang w jelly saves 30 swords on normal wolfgang, but what youre not mentioning (and quite deliberately) is he is saving 80 swords on the normal wilson. 
yes jelly version not that op.

I compared Wolfgang with jelly to Wilson with jelly. To show that Wolfgang actually gains less from jelly, not more. And that the potential high damage modifier is a flawed argument.

[Cassielu]

The point isn't how Wolfgang shortens the time, it's that the developers have to give boss monster so much health that almost every other character has to spend more and more time.

[HowlVoid]

3 hours ago, Friendly Grass said:

My whole post was just about how that half makes less and less of a difference as you add more damage modifiers. For now we’re just focusing on the 6x damage argument.

I think you're the one not understanding at this point, its pretty clear and no math was needed to be done. You're only proving what we already know.

Wolfgang almost does more x2 damage. I don't understand why you keep saying that the more damage modifiers you add the less difference it makes? Damage modifiers are multiplicative in this game. The jelly and the spice don't matter when compared to another character because they cancel each other out, but the 2x damage remains. You don't need math to explain that. On average Wolfgang will finish fight in almost half the time. 

You cant try to spin it any way you like the videos are out there. The evidence is out there.

Also I don't think you understood with the Wolfgang+Wilson example with what happened. Wilson ends up making Wolfgang's damage on average less than the 2x. Not even sure why you brought up group damage when where talking bout Wolfgang. If we go back to your first example of Wolfgang vs Wilson then wilson uses 33.33 of resources and Wolfgang uses 16.67. That's half. 

The other point I don't think you understand is that this all accumulates throughout a persons game session. Its half resources saved for 1 boss, then half for the next, and the next, and the next , and the next. Saving resources matter because it adds up at the end!  

[ArubaroBeefalo]

more damage=less penalty for making mistakes and less chances of making mistakes

ofc it saves materials but for someone newbie has more impact to be able to kill bosses like fw, ck or antlion without being trapped in an infinity loop of making mistakes->boss full health

also, in boss fights like df, beequeen or klaus, it reduces the chances of getting a hound wave or, if you get one, you can kill them easily

[Cheggf]

4 hours ago, clickrush said:

You’re comparing a fully trained ornery beefalo with a hambat and then go on to say that darkswords are expensive.

Everyone here is looking at someone who has infinite volt goat horns and character switches. But yes, dark swords are expensive compared to a fully tamed beefalo, because a fully tamed beefalo is like 3 stacks of twigs. That's nothing compared to the stacks of nmf & living logs dark swords go through.

4 hours ago, clickrush said:

If we’re being fair and objective: Wolfgang outshines Wendy in most bossfights except for those who swarm like FW and BQ

If you are playing singleplayer & rushing them or using volt goat chaud-froid.

4 hours ago, clickrush said:

Those also happen to be some of the hardest and most rewarding bosses, so that’s a good tradeoff.

And everything else Wendy has, too. Don't forget those.

4 hours ago, clickrush said:

Wendy can offset her lower damage by training a Beef and by using Nightshade on Abigail, but first year you wont be fighting on a fully trained ornery Beefalo with a War Saddle on

I tamed an ornery beefalo before Deerclops spawned like 20 times in a row on Klei servers until I got bored of it. A lot of the time they had war saddles on. You might not be fighting on a fully tamed ornery beefalo if you want to rush a boss first autumn, but on foot she still has a ~46% damage boost so she might be a bit worse than Wolfgang on the first autumn dragonfly fight but she way more than makes up for it with the first autumn bee queen fight.

1 hour ago, Cassielu said:

The point isn't how Wolfgang shortens the time, it's that the developers have to give boss monster so much health that almost every other character has to spend more and more time.

You think the fights are balanced around lasting 6 seconds? How come they didn't scale the bosses' HP up when VGCF was released? And why didn't they do it again when the enlightenment crown was released?

[DrMcGillacactus]

13 hours ago, Friendly Grass said:

Sure. But my point still stands? Replace 100 dark swords with 100 minutes in your mind (doesn't work for the last bit but that wasn't my main point anyways). Tada. But, ending the fight a couple minutes faster is not the point in the forum arguments. The goal is to debunk said arguments.

I wasn't trying to argue, but agree with you by making another point

[Guille6785]

9 hours ago, Cheggf said:

I can give you mathematics. Even ignoring crowds, Bee Queen, and Ancient Fuelweaver who Wendy absolutely trivializes and is incomparably better than Wolfgang, against a single target Wolfgang expends far more resources for a 4% damage boost over Wendy. If multiple players are present Wendy will actually add more damage than Wolfgang since she buffs everyone's damage by 10%, so even a single player other than Wendy will surpass that 4% mark.

Players attack inconsistently, but it's about 2.22 times per second. Beefalo attack a consistent 2 times a second. Wolfgang, expending armor, a ham bat, and a ton of food (three things Wendy is not expending) will do 59.5*1.94*2.22=256 DPS (hambat*wolfgangbuff*attackspeed). Wendy on a beefalo will do 66*1.54*2+40=244 DPS (ornery*abigailbuff*attackspeed+abigail). That's all assuming the ham bat is perfectly fresh, too, so Wolfgang's damage will fall while Wendy's will be consistent. If Wolfgang were to instead use a dark sword he'd get a 19% damage boost over her, but now he's using a bunch of living logs & nightmare fuel in addition to all the other additional resources he's expending just for that minor damage boost.

And, once again, that is ignoring the fact that Wendy can do this and this and she can literally AFK through hound waves, and she can clear out bee biomes at an insane speed, and she can have Abigail farm both shadow and non-shadow splumonkeys insanely easily, and a bunch of other stuff. Wolfgang expends a ton of resources to achieve at best the same result Wendy gets for free and at worst an enormously worse result such as in the BQ & AFW fight.

wolfgang is still much better than wendy for bq and fw

also I'd appreciate if you didn't use me or my friends' videos to back up your wendy op propaganda

[clickrush]

14 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

wolfgang is still much better than wendy for bq and fw

also I'd appreciate if you didn't use me or my friends' videos to back up your wendy op propaganda

I don't play Wendy but after seeing some of those videos it seems like you are able to get BQ with very little resources and pretty fast without any shenanigans and panflute is not used either as far as I remember?

I can see however that the FW fight might be better as Wolfgang, however Wendy is certainly convenient there assuming you're much quicker at dispatching the crawling thingies.

Also I wouldn't read the above comments as propaganda, but rather as appreciation!

[Guille6785]

14 minutes ago, clickrush said:

I don't play Wendy but after seeing some of those videos it seems like you are able to get BQ with very little resources and pretty fast without any shenanigans and panflute is not used either as far as I remember?

I can see however that the FW fight might be better as Wolfgang, however Wendy is certainly convenient there assuming you're much quicker at dispatching the crawling thingies.

Also I wouldn't read the above comments as propaganda, but rather as appreciation!

Wolfgang can do BQ with even less resources expended and no pan flute with the right strategy, and neither character matters after you set up a bq oven

the resources that wolf uses for fw are just faster to gather and that makes him objectively better than wendy, and once again neither character matters if you farm fw

[Frosty_Mentos]

Alright alright... What about... if we DON'T nerf Wolfgang's damage if we keep it, but rather a bit more learning curve on making his sanity drain faster as his only nerf? It's only 10% at the moment for the addition he has, maybe increase up to 25% or something? 
I went to Glermz's stream today to discuss about this sorta thing, he kinda gave his fair point on the PVE action (by the way I understand nothing and acknowledge nothing about deep DPS amounts soo... lol sorry)
He should be kept for advanced players to play later on as I suppose rather than having it all easy still, keep the damage, add minor nerfs.

[Friendly Grass]

3 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

I think you're the one not understanding at this point, its pretty clear and no math was needed to be done. You're only proving what we already know.

Wolfgang almost does more x2 damage. I don't understand why you keep saying that the more damage modifiers you add the less difference it makes? Damage modifiers are multiplicative in this game. The jelly and the spice don't matter when compared to another character because they cancel each other out, but the 2x damage remains. You don't need math to explain that. On average Wolfgang will finish fight in almost half the time. 

You cant try to spin it any way you like the videos are out there. The evidence is out there.

You’re spending more resources on jelly and buffs for less other resources saved, netting you a loss. I clearly explained how Wolfgang saves 30% resources while using jelly while Wilson saves 60% resources. And I’m just describing the inaccuracies of the particular argument of the 6x damage modifier. 

3 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Also I don't think you understood with the Wolfgang+Wilson example with what happened. Wilson ends up making Wolfgang's damage on average less than the 2x. Not even sure why you brought up group damage when where talking bout Wolfgang. If we go back to your first example of Wolfgang vs Wilson then wilson uses 33.33 of resources and Wolfgang uses 16.67. That's half. 

What if I told you this is a multiplayer game. Just because a multiplayer scenario might not be ideal for Wolfgang doesn’t mean I wont include it.

That’s half. The whole main point I explained in my post was that that half in this situation is only 16.66% of resources saved. So Wolfgang only saves 16.66% resources here for a 3x hunger drain and no other character perks.

The dark swords example didn’t make sense to you. If percent resources doesn’t either and you’re still saying “that’s half” then I don’t know what else to say.

[Guille6785]

2 minutes ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

Alright alright... What about... if we DON'T nerf Wolfgang's damage if we keep it, but rather a bit more learning curve on making his sanity drain faster as his only nerf? It's only 10% at the moment for the addition he has, maybe increase up to 25% or something? 
I went to Glermz's stream today to discuss about this sorta thing, he kinda gave his fair point on the PVE action (by the way I understand nothing and acknowledge nothing about deep DPS amounts soo... lol sorry)
He should be kept for advanced players to play later on as I suppose rather than having it all easy still, keep the damage, add minor nerfs.

how about we don't nerf anyone because nerfs are never fun

[Friendly Grass]

4 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

I think you're the one not understanding at this point,

4 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

I don't understand why you keep saying that the more damage modifiers you add the less difference it makes

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Guille6785 said:

wolfgang is still much better than wendy for bq and fw

also I'd appreciate if you didn't use me or my friends' videos to back up your wendy op propaganda

If anybody's spreading propaganda it'd be the person who's argument is "Wendy is much worse, you just need the right strategy" without explaining the mysterious strategy that gives Wolfgang a "much better" BQ kill than 150 seconds of mindlessly holding F only expending 2.5 marble suits.

[Third Porkus]

Example: 5x damage is 20% of a total mobs health, 6x is about 17%. This difference is really small. The amount of time it costs to make chili spices would lower a mobs health by 3% compared to the volt goat jelly lowering a mobs health by 30% as Wolfgang. It keeps getting less and less difference the higher damage multiplier you have (10x damage would be 10%, and 20x would be 5%, creating a mere 5% difference between two massively different damage boosts). Damage may be nice to save time but usually going with cheapest speedboost (Wolfgangs) that still makes sizeable difference (50% mob health) is much more time saving than spending time getting volt goat jelly or chili spice, especially early. These may be good to speed up ruins clearing late game since bee farm and volt goat killing is something you should already be doing,  so the switch to Warly is quite cheap, but this Wolfgangs strength with these damage boosts shouldn't be seen as super OP, more just justifiably useful in certain circumstances.

1 minute ago, Cheggf said:

If anybody's spreading propaganda it'd be the person who's argument is "Wendy is much worse, you just need the right strategy" without explaining the mysterious strategy that gives Wolfgang a "much better" BQ kill than 150 seconds of mindlessly holding F only expending 2.5 marble suits.

Wolf only takes 1 marble suit if done right, and this strat is OP so we keep it hidden. If you are thinking spreading propaganda is explaining a better way to do something your wrong, constantly using ill informed points to persuade others to share your opinion is propaganda.

[Guille6785]

3 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

If anybody's spreading propaganda it'd be the person who's argument is "Wendy is much worse, you just need the right strategy" without explaining the mysterious strategy that gives Wolfgang a "much better" BQ kill than 150 seconds of mindlessly holding F only expending 2.5 marble suits.

you can find it if you look hard enough, I don't want to showcase it because that would result in tons of people saying "wolfgang op" the same way my wendy videos have made a lot of people think she's op

[Cheggf]

5 minutes ago, Third Porkus said:

Wolf only takes 1 marble suit if done right, and this strat is OP so we keep it hidden. If you are thinking spreading propaganda is explaining a better way to do something your wrong, constantly using ill informed points to persuade others to share your opinion is propaganda.

I know of a secret technique where Wendy can use zero marble suits & kill the bee queen in only seven seconds. I won't tell you, though.

2 minutes ago, Guille6785 said:

you can find it if you look hard enough, I don't want to showcase it because that would result in tons of people saying "wolfgang op" the same way my wendy videos have made a lot of people think she's op

Your videos are irrelevant, it was simply the first result I found searching for a demonstration.

[Third Porkus]

1 minute ago, Guille6785 said:

you can find it if you look hard enough, I don't want to showcase it because that would result in tons of people saying "wolfgang op" the same way my wendy videos have made a lot of people think she's op

Exactly

Just now, Cheggf said:

I know of a secret technique where Wendy can use zero marble suits & kill the bee queen in only seven seconds. I won't tell you, though.

You can find the Wolf strat if you look hard enough, or I'll post it when I get World Record, but obviously people won't believe you tell you demonstrate it or show it.