MPR and the Upper Ranks (in General)

I posted this in another thread, but here it is again:

"The strange thing about the top 20 at the moment is that MPR/PR is no indication of strength. Lower MPR teams are skinning alive much larger teams. For instance I have FTW on my fightlist. There's a difference there of over a million MPR. And yet we are both using similar strats. On paper at least I shouldn't win. And yet I do easily. And in the case detailed above with King Of Pain, again quite similar strats with a similar MPR gap and yet the lower MPR strat is winning.

Very odd. "

Fighting up has always been possible, recorded MPR isn't actually what is happening in reality: things such as AMF against a tank becoming negative MPR in reality is usually the reason. Wasted MPR is possibly the reason for it at the moment too. But what about when strats are similar. How does my team beat FTW?

5 minions, GA and SG.

I don't know, how DOES your team beat FTW? What does the log show?

I have no idea how Shipping up to Boston beats KoP, but it must be with very large blows (to overcome the lame PL stuff going on there).

Here is my very vague theory on why we are seeing what you are talking about -- it all goes back to threshold/binary based things. For example, used to be that Evasion was much stronger, so a pure physical ranged team could get beaten by a much lower Evasion team.

In other other words, it comes down to "effective" PR, and the more rock-scissors-paper the game becomes, the more "effective" PR dominates. I am pretty worthless against a team with no DEs, especially if they invest in AMF or DM (or both, check out the genius that is Lega -- great balance!). Yet I can beat NWO and Dixie Cousins with relative ease because my DM is more effective.

Is this a good thing? Most seem to think so. I see posts about people liking the rock-scissors-paper aspect. Then again, I also see posts of people saying "how the heck is this guy beating me?" So maybe people aren't as thrilled with the rock-scissors-paper as they used to be...

I don't have a problem woth R-S-P per se. My main beef is with things like PL where a 20-HP minion can be kept alive with very few foils (thouse Shipping must have certainly found one). There are certain things in the game that just smack of "that ain't right", and keeping 20-HP minions alive, to me, is one of them.

Other than that, most things have foils. Some foils are easier to train than others, some foils are NW based and hopefully controlled by ENC. That's where the devil comes peeking out of the details.

PL does have a few limitations, like no GA or doesn't redirect GA/AMF damage etc.

it must be how some of the XP are split. Maybe you have just enough to get a kill at the rounds, etc. I don't think 4m MPR and 3m MPR differ by that much XP wise, also I think equipments/PR at the right armor piece would make a lot of difference.

for example, a SFBM with a 100m AG would probably be more effective than one with a 100m TG, bad example, but I think it shows that having NW on the right equipment improves your "effective PR" more than what is shown on the PR.

Shipping beats KoP because the RoBF is an odd creature, and because Mikel doesn't seem to care much anymore.

Many ED type teams beat the upper level teams because they don't have DM. That's what I'm noticing at least.
Shipping beats KoP because he has a monster tank. And KoP only relies on his RoBF to do damage if his opponent doesn't use any magic or physical abilities.

Basically, I beat him with AC. My RoBF does enough damage to get around the monster regen, without taking backlash. A near 80% reduction from AC ruins all physical damage including the RoBF.

Sting burns from the flames surrounding Peg (643415)
Sting regenerated 328,953 HP

My Wooden Leg burns from the flames surrounding Roxanne (260785)
Topsails absorbs damage [260785]
Topsails regenerated 112,185 HP

That's enough to barely get him, I actually need some base weapons to finish off his team quickly before his RoBF can finish me. (Or the Ablative Shield that I had trained until this morning.)

you are right, i really didn't care much at the moment.

Well a look at my play by play shows me getting rid of LA's damage dealers quite early on with a combo of my SG, GA and AMF (8 million extra damage from my GA/AMF) and then several rounds to chip away at the rest of the team.

Why do you beat LA JohnnyWas? Prolly the same way a character with 2.6M PR and a fairly low NW beats you.

do RBF still cancel each other?

I don't think so.

"I don't think 4m MPR and 3m MPR differ by that much XP wise"

3m MPR -> ~14.90m trained levels
4m MPR -> ~21.36m trained levels (~43% extra)

The word "similar strat" is just what you could inspect on char page. Unless both JW and FTW post their exact trained levels and everything, this discussion is moot. After all, I hope you do realize that this game has a vast amount of strat choices where one counters another, MPR is a relatively weak comparison point to judge who should win more.

I suppose MPR comparison would mean something in the absense of other data, but yes, predicting result based on MPR would not be very accurate.

MPR is a bid deal, but as people get smarter other elements become more important.

In the end we should look at it in terms of effective MPR against other people, and even then that's not fool proof.

It all boils down to who has a better strat.

I bet RoBF still protects from RoBF, but it's that small 25% or so.

Better is relative, so I suppose 'efficient' would be a better word to use in that phrase.
How many people can farm you vs. how many you can farm; thats what should be looked at. PR vs. the PR of whom you fight is a good estimate, but sometimes certain strategies are good against certain other strategies; that is, every strategy relies on something, and therefore has a weakness that can be exploited. Finding that weakness and overcoming it gives you an advantage against said character. Every strategy can be beaten in the current system, however, certain strategies take advantage of certain 'arguably overpowered' aspects, and are thusly more difficult to defeat and exploit. These are the current 'best' strategies at the current moment in time, but who knows via next change-month.
The basic idea is to create a strategy to minimize the amount of people that can farm you. As it is, my current strategy is unfinished, and thusly not very efficient at this time, so it may seem hypocritical for me to suggest this.

In the higher game, PR means almost nothing. PR is based on how many minions you have and how much heavy weighted mage equips you have decided to thow on them.

I'd say most people's NW mainly depends on the size of their tattoo.

Correction: PR not NW...

that's true, forgot that tats add a set number to PR