About the skill regeneration endorsements (Gold is worthy)

Reading around on the Xbox forums about the most common endorsement setups, one thing seems to pop up often: if you want to pick skill regeneration, you should put it in bronze. The logic is understandable: bronze gives you 20% less cooldown, gold gives you 33% less. Doesn't seem like a big step up, does it?

Well, I'm not so sure about that, tbh. Being a stubborn guy, I decided to play around with gold skill regen anyway and I found it to be rather worthwhile. One thing you have to keep in mind is that reductions in cooldown do not scale linearly. Let's give an exaggerated example: suppose that bonze would give a 45% cooldown reduction and gold gave a 90% reduction. You might think that gold would be twice as good as bronze, but this is not true. Gold would give you the ability to spam skills 10 (TEN) times as often, while bronze would let you spam less then twice as often.

So how do the numbers really work out? What I consider to be most important is not the cooldown time but the Spam Rate (SR): how often can you spam a skill in a given time? After all, we're not interested in the cooldown of weapons either but in their RoF.

So let's look at bronze: a 20% reduction gives you an increase in SR of 1/(1-0.2) = 1.25
or a 25% higher Spam Rate. Now look at gold: this increases the SR by 1/(1-0.333) = 1.50 or 50% higher. So Gold is actually better than it looks.

Wait, I just fired up the MNC wiki to make sure of the numbers.
http://mondaynightcombat.wikia.com/wiki ... dorsements
Now it says, all of a sudden, that bronze gives 25% faster recharge and gold gives 50% faster. Seems like the numbers changed since last time. This gives an even better scaling than before:
Bronze: 1/(1-0.25) = 1.3333 or 33% more SR.
Gold: 1/(1-0.5)= 2 or 100% more SR.

So whatever the numbers are: remember that (for most classes) Spam Rate is more important and that the numbers work out better than they look. A tank with gold skill regen can spam tons of product nades. Feel free to try it out for yourself and don't be discouraged by people telling you that skill regen is only worthwhile in bronze!

Those numbers are guidelines, not fact.

Maybe, I guessed they were. But everyone who was saying that gold skill regen wasn't worth it, was basing that on those numbers. My point still stands that gold skill regen is worthwhile (if it suits you style, of course). Just play around with it and see if you like it rather than basing it off other people.

We're saying silver regen isn't worth it because it's barely an upgrade from bronze and is far behind gold.

I definitely noticed a difference between bronze and silver as well. Every time I step back from silver to bronze for comparsion, I notice my skills spam isn't nearly as effective as before. I guess it's personal preference, since real numbers are nowhere to be found.

Technically, they're found in the game files.

I was the one who updated the wiki to make it say Bronze is 25%, and Gold is 50%. All straight from the game files.

First off every single endorsements has it's pros and cons.

Second, even though you've gotten those numbers from the game itself I am sure there are other numbers that factor in so even those number aren't accurate.

Third, the XBox and PC version don't share the same exact numbers.

I've found that gold skill recovery is indeed worthy on assaults at least, taking this path does seem to lack early game, but once you get bomb 3/Charge 2 the setup really takes off, the fast cooldown of the bomb lets you setup and deny multiple areas very quickly.

I don't think you need Skill recover as gold for the bombs. I use bronze and i always have a bomb stocked up.

Skill reduction/regen works like this in every game afaik, when the reduction is in seconds. The more you have the better it is.

I don't know how involved you want to get with this Vleessjuu but would it be worth your while updating your post about the time reductions for every ability using gold? It might be useful for some and useless for others or it may not. It might not be a flat rate either, there might be other variables to it.

An interesting thread, a little unconvinced by your numbers..

Could you go in as a support, whip out a stop watch and measure the time taken for the hack skill to refresh with no skill regen, bronze skill regen, silver then gold?

Seeing times in seconds for the various placements and how they compare to no endorsement would certainly help clear up your thread and help people decide on the optimal endorsement.

I'd do it myself but am currently procrastinating from quite a bit of work due in tomorrow...

Code:

BAL_END_SKILL_1         =0.25
BAL_END_SKILL_2         =0.35
BAL_END_SKILL_3         =0.5

BAL_STRIKE_REGEN_A      =1
BAL_STRIKE_USE_A        =60
BAL_STRIKE_REGEN_B      =0.75
BAL_STRIKE_USE_B        =30.5
BAL_STRIKE_REGEN_C      =0.67
BAL_STRIKE_USE_C        =20.5
BAL_STRIKE_AQUIRE_TIME  =2

no need for a stopwatch, too lazy to calculate though; to whom it may concern.


Have a nice day!

TBH, I'm not really the type to pull out a stopwatch and measure all this stuff. I don't have much playing time as it is and I'm not bored enough to put my MNC time into that. I'll just assume the numbers above are correct, though there may be a bit of a debate if those numbers refer to skill cooldown or recovery rate.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to make this topic is to point out the importance of "spam rate" as opposed to cooldown time. A little bit of reduction in cooldown can lead to a surprisingly large increase in spam rate. You should keep that in mind when deciding if you want to run with just bronze skill regen or go for broke and put it in gold. Also: skills that stun or blind the enemy become much better when you can spam them more often. Product nades lvl 3 + gold skill recovery = nearly permanently blinded gunners.

My message is that you should play around with these things rather than going for the standard gold Rof/silver armour builds (or the other way around) that are considered to be the safe options. Yes, they work. But skill regen can really help as well, depending on your style. If it's worth a gold slot is up to you.

I just noticed that it said hack and not airstrike, my bad lol.

Code:

BAL_HACK_REGEN_A        =1
BAL_HACK_USE_A          =60
BAL_HACK_DURATION_A     =150
BAL_HACK_CHANNEL_A      =5
BAL_HACK_REGEN_B        =1
BAL_HACK_USE_B          =60
BAL_HACK_DURATION_B     =165
BAL_HACK_CHANNEL_B      =4
BAL_HACK_REGEN_C        =1
BAL_HACK_USE_C          =60
BAL_HACK_DURATION_C     =180
BAL_HACK_CHANNEL_C      =3

BAL_END_SKILL_1         =0.25
BAL_END_SKILL_2         =0.35
BAL_END_SKILL_3         =0.5

I feel you can throw bombs out left and right with gold skill regen on bomb 3. As Sunny Dove put it, it's the Unabomber build.