Shadow (warrior) skill slvl

[Crystalion]

I've noted oddities with Shadow skill slvls (e.g. observed #shots synergy on a trap after increasing my test chars skill in the synergy). Others have posted questions about shadow slvls and still others have given various answers.

Code reading would be helpful, but would still need to be verified by testing, when possible.

Testing is a pain, in this case.

But I had an idea for a test earlier that seemed pretty straightforward.

v1.10 lan pvp test, modded skills.txt, monstats.txt

Concept: have a hostile sorc deliver fire, cold or lightning damage of known quantity vs. a fixed HPs shadow warrior that is using some unknown level of Fade as her only source of resist and observe how many damage units it takes to kill the shadow (whose regen has been disabled).

I probably should have modded just ice blast (convenience of freezing shadow in place) but I instead made fire bolt, lightning and ice bolt into a constant 10 damage (lightning required eliminating a synergy also, and I noticed surprising damage min/max/level parameters, other than emin/emax, which I also zeroed, but need to remember to play with at some point, as I don't grok their purpose).

I turned off the Warrior regen, fixed her HPs to always be 100, and changed Fade to have linear 0% at slvl 1 plus 10% resist per slvl.

The test sorc' and 'sin were -act 5 clvl 33s, testing in blood moor, just outside town. The Assassin helpfully goes hostile and turns it off, so the shadow can be attacked (but doesn't attack). This trick can also be used to force a new shadow to turn on the Fade aura (on right mouse for the 'sin).

With and without Fade the sorc' also attacked the 'sin 6 times, with each element, checking the damage delivered, to verify that I had correctly gotten them all to a constant 10. After this tests were conducted using this constant damage to verify that I had made the Warrior have a constant 100 HPs, regardless of slvl cast at.

I also verified that the 10% per slvl on Fade "worked" by pvp vs. the 'sin.

So here's the raw test data, in format fade/sw/#hits (fade slvl, shadow warrior slvl, #hits taken to kill shadow):

Code:

none, 1 and 5, 10 (verification of 100 HPs constant before and during the other testing...)
 1,  1,  10  (0%)
 5,  1,  12  (shadow almost dead on 11th, according to LCS(TM), so probably 10%)
 5,  5,  13  (20%)
 6,  6,  17  (40%)
13, 6,  34  (70%)
13, 7,  34
14, 7,  50  (80%)
14, 8,  50
15, 8,  50
16, 8, 100 (90%)
16, 9, mu  (100% i.e. 'sin immune.. btw, with a poisoned dagger I confirmed immune to poison also)

Someone else should probably verify this or at least my "fit" for the data, but here's what it looks like to me...
(bear in mind that I can goof in my experimental procedures, or even transcription, etc.)

slvl 1 should be 0% resist, slvl 10 should be immunity. It looks like 5/1 might have been slvl 2 (almost dead on 11th hit) and 16/9 is slvl 10 with the other points in between. Clearly boosting either Fade (*my* skill points in the skill the warrior is copying) or boosting the clvl for casting the warrior has an effect, if you do it enough.

I'm assuming that either the 1..8 slvl warrior doesn't ever get resists on their equipment, or I just didn't get any in these tests. Note that my clvl 33 'sin was "naked" in the sense of only having the initial katar/shield from character creation (iirc someone said the warrior copies your base armor types on some slots).

The implied slvl of Fade, from my % comments above...

Code:

 1,  1,   1
 5,  1,   2
 5,  5,   3
 6,  6,   5
13, 6,   8
13, 7,   8
14, 7,   9
14, 8,   9
15, 8,   9
16, 8, 10
16, 9, 11

For this limited dataset I see bumps in slvl output from Fade input only on even transitions, but I see both odd and even transitions for SW. If I guess, therefore, that my Fade is div 2 and my SW is div 3, and then truncate, etc., so a spot check is...

int(16/2) + int(9/3) = 11
int(16/2) + int(8/3) = 10
int(15/2) + int(8/3) = 9
int(13/2) + int(7/3) = 8
int(6/2) + int(6/3) = 5
int(5/2) + int(5/3) = 3
int(5/2) + int(1/3) = 2
int(1/2) + int(1/3) = 0 (and there is probably a minimum of 1 check)

Seems likely to be a fit!

Whether this is correct, and if so, applies to all shadow warrior skills, synergies, and shadow master skills, is rather open to question. Still, it is a reasonable theory, and can be used to make predictions and do more testing (or code reading, I suppose).

If it is true, then your level in a skill is more beneficial than your level in warrior (and, presumably, master). But since the points in shadow help everything the shadow does, I don't find this surprising (i.e. that's the way I'd expect a reasonable formula to bias). Aside from a couple of other quirks/differences between warriors and masters, which might be more important, this does suggest that being able to bias a shadow toward using a skill you know well is valuable.

I'm very suspicious, actually, that the Master's ai is a bit of a copycat (or, at least, biased by the slvl of her skills in selection). Understanding how this works, *if* it is true, could be very helpful.

I certainly don't understand the (obsolete?) specific skills and levels mentioned in monstats.txt for shadows.

Lots more to figure out here (and I'm not the man for the job).

edit: misc. touch ups and this parting thought...
if shadow (warrior at least) gets synergy levels from this formula, a huge investment in getting your slvl for shadow warrior up (presumably when cast, fyi, though could be dynamic) might result in insane synergy to fire blast (you should also max fireblast, of course). In such a build--if my guess is correct--the value of teleport would be enormous (teleport on your right mouse, fire blast on your left mouse, teleport whenever you want to reset the shadow warrior, attempting to get her back into spamming fire blast). The fireblasts from the shadow, due to the huge number of fire blast synergies, would vastly exceed the damage from your own (master might work here, it depends on the ai bias toward skills with high slvl theory etc.)

edit2: still plugging away at testing aspects of this (can't report yet, too many things to figure out)... the formula:
shadow (warrior) skill level for their casting of a skill = int(player_current_skill_level/2) + int(shadow_slvl/3)
seems to hold up so far. Of special note is that it is level, not blvl (i.e. the bonuses to slvl are included). Also the shadow slvl is from when they were cast and the player's skill level for the skill the shadow is casting is current (i.e. "sampled" at the time the shadow casts). My big perplexity, still, is in figuring out how the synergies do/do not fit in. I have conflicting indications so far, so I guess I need some sleep and *more testing* ;D

[Crystalion]

Testing is a pain, in this case.

But I had an idea for a test earlier that seemed pretty straightforward.

...

edit2: still plugging away at testing aspects of this (can't report yet, too many things to figure out)... the formula:
shadow (warrior) skill level for their casting of a skill = int(player_current_skill_level/2) + int(shadow_slvl/3)
seems to hold up so far. Of special note is that it is level, not blvl (i.e. the bonuses to slvl are included). Also the shadow slvl is from when they were cast and the player's skill level for the skill the shadow is casting is current (i.e. "sampled" at the time the shadow casts). My big perplexity, still, is in figuring out how the synergies do/do not fit in. I have conflicting indications so far, so I guess I need some sleep and *more testing* ;D

Got it.

Amazing results actually, I'll have to make a non-technical post in the Armory soon.

I'll edit here later with a link to that post, for those of you whose eyes glaze over in this one. :D But you'll still have to wait a while, since some relevant sub-questions to the main "solution" to the mystery are still open, and (insert chorus here!...) need more testing.

edit as promised, link to "simplified" discussion of shadow synergy discovery

The formula continues to hold up in all test cases, as noted in edit2, main post.

I did a brief test with monstats where it lists a bunch of skills for warriors/masters, bumping all those for a master to 20 (from 1) and took a brand new -act 5 clvl 33 'sin with slvl 1 master out for a spin. Then I did the same in an unmodded game. I have to say that subjectively there appeared to be no difference, so I dropped that line of inquiry.

I did note, however, that her killing speed, given that she likes to melee so much, is much better when she has Venom active. Duh. :)

My formula matches even when I've never cast the skill in question, iirc (e.g. I believe many of my Fade tests were run without my ever having cast Fade--just tricking the warrior into casting it). However no skill I've probed for the shadow's level of has not been on my right mouse action. This leaves open a question I've not yet answered for the following revelation (i.e. must shadow use, or is it sufficient to communicate the skill) but I believe my guess is correct...

A shadow "remembers" the skill level of a skill when used (which is set by the formula).

I've shown this in testing without a doubt (sp v1.10 release lan modded pvp).

The memory resets if the shadow dies (that is the next one doesn't have the old values).

If the skill has not been used (in-progress the first time counts as "used") then its level is considered zero.

Hmm, I need to do a test showing that this fact causes synergies (but I believe it is likely to, given the way I am testing, and given a report once that a high level master was obliterating things with *Shock Web*).

This is obviously an important test, and I'll run off and do it... ah yes, as I expected, it works.

Incidentally, the test was done unmodded, pvp v1.10 lan -act 5 clvl 33 by a different methodology (given the formula, and the "fact" that synergy skills need to be "burned in" try a selection of points into synergies of fire blast, then summon a warrior and set both your left/right mouse to fire blast... the testee, hostile, runs into and out of town, accumulating 6 hits from fire blasts and reporting net damage).

An additional obvious test to do is to confirm that using +specific_skill dual claws when the shadow is casting the specific skill records a higher memory for it. For the warrior, this perhaps implies a "regimen" of forcing casts of various traps at highest possible slvl (via a "library" of claws for the purpose) in order to maximize the synergy levels for another skill.

edit: this means, mostly likely, that knowing the skills to enable the shadow to have a synergy from them is irrelevant (you can use +specific_skill on a claw to train the warrior, and the master probably doesn't care much... depends on the ai choices). i.e. the "library" of claws could probably be used to save on skill point investment in a build.

For the Master it implies that keeping them alive long enough for them to cast a variety of skills means their synergies are falling into place, and their damage going up. So their ai decision process for choosing skills to use could be very relevant (as well as for the warrior, because you apparently can't get them to copy some skills).

But clearly maxing shadow warrior, including extreme +shadow skills when casting her (literally a stash swap of GCs between shadow and traps charms would be in order) will potentially cause her later "burn in" of synergy skills to fire blast to be at maximum level.

The math looks very favorable for SW having an obscenely good Fire Blast via this method, just as I originally pointed out in the first post.

At this point the base theory and details have been confirmed to my satisfaction, so only an actual test of this extreme needs to be done to confirm the uber consequences. (not to mention that if someone does this it will provide additional confirmation of my results and theory).

...

Any questions? (might as well open it up, before I make the "weenie" post off of the workshop ;) )

...

edit p.s. just to be clear, in my unmodded tests I also tested grabbing a few +skill (+3 ass, +1 shadow, iirc) and dumped one point into each fire blast synergy (showing skill of 4 on all)... with no "memory" for the warrior, she would, in theory, match my slvl 11 skill in fire blast (int(11/2) + int(18/3)) given my point distribution, but come in under my pvp damage with it (as I get synergies).

In fact, her damage was 33, pvp, net over 6 FBs (within expected range).

I then ran her around, "burning in" her traps at slvl 8 (int(4/2) + int(18/3)). That would be 6 synergies each at 8 times +9% damage or a net expected result of +432% damage.

In fact, her damage was 176, pvp, net over 6 FBs (within expected range).

Bear in mind this is a clvl 33 char, with no quest skill points, and (making up for it) fairly modest +skills. At such a level, a shadow doing 176 fire damage in an AoE blast is pretty studly. But my point distribution would have been much better, afaik, maxing FB and taking 9 points away from SW. Feel free to run that test, or calculate various possibilities and give us a table. ;)

In other words, everything is "confirmed" except some fairly "minor" issues, including the "all important" (to the masses) max. possible damage, from extreme equipment (and swap procedure).

edit2: I see I'm not clear again... although the 1/2psX + 1/3psS formula only achieves 5/6rds efficiency from +all gear, there are several mitigating factors...

a. the sS is set at time of casting the shadow
b. the ssX is set at time of shadow "burning in" a skill, when psX can be tuned for it
c. the psX of the primary skill should typically be maxed and boosted when shadow is using it
d. the shadow is getting potentially vastly more synergy points from her psS factor than are possible for you
e. the synergy level may or may not be capped at 20 each, but even if it is, the formula means you have to have pretty extreme equip before you hit it (e.g. ignoring psX, you'd need slvl 60 shadow)

In other words, +1080% damage synergy to slvl 40 Fire Blast certainly seems possible to me (and I don't know how much farthter you can go). These are, of course, many thousands of points of damage each (from a shadow, so you're not even paying the mana... teleport charges would indeed be very useful here), and your investment in skill points is only ~50, leaving quite a lot left over to play with.

hehe, I know that's not clear, to many of you, what with all the unexplained abbrieviations. :D