Friday, July 25, 2014

Illusionary Dice MoI Area 11 Treasure Effect


When I first heard that the Maze of Illusion treasure was increase in attack speed, my first thought was, "oh really, again?" :P My second thought was that it was one of two possible effects:
  1. DPS (damage per second) of the ranger would remain the same, but the hit rate increases. Exmaple: Without the treasure, if Ranger X's DPS is 10000 and he hits once every 5 seconds, then his damage per hit is 50000. Assume that with the treasure his hit rate doubles, then he would hit once every 2.5 seconds while his DPS remained the same, then each hit would cause only 25000 damage. This scenario causes no total damage gain, but has its perks as hitting more often can be advantageous. 
  2. Damage-per-hit remains the same while the hit rate increases. Example: If without the treasure Ranger X's DPS was 10000, he hits once every 5 seconds, then his damage per hit is 50000. With the treasure, assume the treasure causes hit rate to double, then he is doing 50000 every 2.5 seconds. His new DPS would be 20000, effectively doubling it.
One way gives us just marginal benefits while the other gives us significant gains. So which way is it?

Our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 has done the research for us! The text you find contained in the box below is an interpretation of their new article, Increased Attack Speed Treasure Comparison.
Article comes from: LINE Rangers 台灣社團
Author: 小為,黃郁弘
Research participants: 黃郁弘,小為,為執著,張家銘,黃名楊
Editor: 小為

Summary

LINE Rangers 台灣社團's testing has indicated that Maze of Illusion's treasure effect increases the rate of attack while preserving the amount of damage per hit. Each ranger's "attack" in the profile card represents its DPS (damage per second), and the damage per hit is derived from this number. The treasure preserves the ranger's damage per hit value according to its original DPS, but because the treasure causes an increase to the number of hits the ranger produces in a time period, it effectively is increasing its "true" DPS value. We can multiply the profile DPS value by the ranger's attack speed to find out how much the DPS has increased. For instance, Alice's profile lists her DPS as 53128. With 100% Illusionary Dice benefit, her DPS becomes 96693*.

* This value was obtained by using the attack speed value discovered via research method discussed below.


So how good is this treasure? Since this area is so tough, many players have had trouble getting it. Once you get to stage 129, you have a chance to unlock it 100%. Not to disappoint, the raid team has finally obtained 100% of the treasure and solved the mystery of its benefits.

The Method

The test method used recordings of the rangers attacking as researchers watched them in 10x slow motion to see the attack speed of each ranger. They recorded it many times and took averages of their observations so as to minimize error. Their original attack speed values were posted in their first article on the topic here, which I discussed on my blog here. Here is a sampling of their findings post-treasure (measured in time between hits):
  - Sol's speed is now 2.38 seconds, down from 4.33 s
  - Witch Cony's speed is now 1.47 seconds, down from 2.67 s
  - Alice's speed is now 2.55 seconds, down from 4.63 s
  - Opera James's speed is now 1.50 seconds, down from 2.73 s

Compare that to the original attack speed and you will see that obtaining 100% Illusionary Dice results in a 0.55 attack time reduction.

100% Illusionary Dice Attack Speed Coefficient

By battling a friend who does not have the Illusionary Dice treasure unlocked, the testers (who all obtained 100% of the treasure) saw that the Damage-Per-Hit value has not been changed, which is key to understanding how the treasure changes our ranger's damage.

Example: Level 70 Witch Cony
  - Without treasure, Witch Cony's damage-per-hit against the tower is 35648 
  - With 100% Illusionary Dice treasure, Witch Cony's damage-per-hit against tower is still 35648

From this, we can deduce that the treasure does not affect base damage values. Witch Cony's original no-treasure attack speed is one hit every 2.67 seconds while with 100% treasure, she hits once every 1.47 seconds. Since the treasure increases attack speed while preserving her damage-per-hit value, it means that her true DPS value has been increased. Based on damage-per-hit:
  2.67 sec/1.47 sec = approximately 1.82 times
...which means that if you take her profile DPS and multiply it by 1.82, you will get her new DPS. The treasure increases DPS by 1.82 times. 

Other rangers' attack speed changes also reflect the 1.82 coefficient:
  Sol 4.33/2.38 ~ 1.82
  Witch Cony 2.67/1.47 ~ 1.82
  Alice 4.63/2.55 ~ 1.82
  Opera James 2.73/1.50 ~ 1.82

This is how we arrived at the previous example with Alice: 
   53128 (original listed DPS) * 1.82 = 96693

Afterword

Line Ranger stages 109 - 120 of the Skyscraper area originally released with the treasure "increase attack speed" but because they reduced the damage at the same time, they finally changed the treasure altogether to something else, increase attack range. The present treasure for Maze of Illusion carries the same description as the old treasure, but it is vastly different and very beneficial to players. Once you obtain 100% of the Illusionary Dice, go back to Skyscraper and you will realize just how much easier the area becomes with the treasure effect. 

But the treasure effect is not just a DPS increase. It has substantially decreased the amount of time it takes for previously "slow/very slow" attack speed rangers to produce one hit. For instance, before the treasure, there was a very good chance that Sol would be knocked back or totally killed before landing even 1 hit of his red bomb. But now his hits are only 2.38 seconds apart (down from 4.33 seconds), so one quick burp and the enemy loses 250k! 

Conclusion

Long story short, the new treasure is the second scenario that I posed at the start, the effective DPS is increased by a factor of 1.82. 

Regarding Castle in the Sky

What about the 1.4545 multiplier from the Castle in the Sky treasure? Where does it fit in? 

Rest assured, the Castle in the Sky treasure is still in effect and it is still a factor in our rangers' damage-per-hit. The new attack speed is simply doing that amount of damage-per-hit more often.

The calculation of our rangers' damage is getting more and more convoluted as they add more treasure effects and multipliers. And it's getting all the more challenging to backtrack because they took away the enemy tower HP values that we used to measure against >:O It's all bit mind boggling, but we're getting more powerful all the same so I can't complain! 

Thanks again to the gurus at LINE Rangers 台灣社團. They work tirelessly to find out all this cool information.

21 comments:

  1. Yep confirms my suspicion about the videos of clearing each stage with free rangers. All the ones I have seen are by players that have already cleared the whole area and thus already have the treasure. That's why when free ranger teams try it (without having cleared everything) we get our butts handed to us!

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    1. That's a good point. The treasure changes your overall damage by a huge amount.

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  2. No wonder I cannot cross stage 128 with free rangers as suggested by the the video I saw. Never thought that they could have already gotten the treasures... Sigh guess I will continue to be stuck.

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    1. It is possible, but you need to be pretty high player level. This Thai player did it with free + event rangers, no Illusion treasure, and he is not level 99. Probably high 80s, though.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKJL4ivPBSQ

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  3. No wonder why the stage is easier when I got 100% treasure for maze of illusion.
    It helped a lot, especially ksm attack became significantly faster
    Thanks for the article panicbutton

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  4. Damn that is a huge bonus, too bad you need to have spent hundreds of dollars for mastered premium rangers to get it.

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  5. i always wanted to ask u guys about dps. what does it mean? i know it sounds stupid but i dont understand.

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    1. Dps means Damage per Second
      You can read the article from link below:
      http://linerangers.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-meaning-of-attack-stats-in-ranger.html

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  6. Sorry didnt find how to msg directly but id like to bring you up to date on the creation of
    http://linerangers.wikia.com
    idk if youre interested

    btw i have no affiliation with nobody, just interested in maybe seeing more community and more english content, so far this is the only blog ive found with good info.. keep it up!

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    Replies
    1. Ah that's cool. Doesn't look like there's much there yet. I'd love to see more English content out there!

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  7. sorry for out of topic, i can't comment on rangers' list topic :(, but has anyone ever gotten elf cony from friendship gacha? thanks

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    Replies
    1. No, elf Cony is limited one only from invitations

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  8. Hey Panic,
    Any news if there are coming new rangers this week?

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    Replies
    1. I suspect new ones are coming, however, no new files have hinted at new rangers yet. Line Rangers know we are watching very closely the new resources when the game downloads, so they are much more careful about releasing files now.

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  9. Panic, how do we contact you if we have content? I dont see an email contact anywhere.

    New event coming on august 1st with new rangers (summer themed swims suits oh my!) based on new gatcha panels we just downloaded.

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    1. Hi Alexander. Yes, I just saw! They're adorable. That ice cream toting Cony is a "splash" ranger if the animated stickers are any indication :)

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    2. BTW, I have been playing around with contact avenues. Decided that the best way is to let YouTube handle private messages, so I have now posted on the right side bar a link to my Youtube channel for messages. :)

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    3. Excellent I'll just use that in the future if I catch something before you do.

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  10. Is this treasure affect on PVP Mode?

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    Replies
    1. It does affect pvp, yes. You can tell most prominently when 2 Dumpy face off. The faster Dumpy gets a shot off while the slower one never fires in time.

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