iDB Community Forum

This is an explanation of how I approach rating weapons.

As a believer in consistency in weapon ratings, and a long time fan of sirhatter’s work*, I feel it is important to have a critical theory and system in place when rating weapons. To some degree ratings will always be somewhat subjective, but I’d like to have mine be less so than many have been previously, so I’ve worked out a scale I intend to use and apply as consistently as possible.
If any of the other new (or old) raters want to use parts of this or modify it for their own ratings, please feel free.

To fit weapons into a 1-10 scale, I will assign points thusly:

• Power 0-4
• Price 0-2
• Tactical Use 1-3
• Another Angle 0-1
  

Power:

This is the most important factor in determining a weapon`s usefulness, and thus it is assigned the most points of any category.

• Power Rating 0 - In most cases, weapons with 0 power rating are not worth using. Weapons can receive a 0 rating for power if they fall under these criteria
  
  • Weapon averages less than 9 total combined offensive and defensive icons
  • Weapon averages less than 6 offensive icons
  • Weapon is a healer that heals fewer than 25 hp
  • Weapon is a reflector that reflects less than half of one icon type
    
• Power Rating 1 - weapons can receive a 1 rating for power if they fall under these criteria
  
  • Weapon averages from 9 to 12 total combined offensive and defensive icons
  • Weapon averages from 6 to 9 offensive icons
  • Weapon is a healer that heals 26 to 40 hp
    
• 2 weapons can receive a 2 rating for power if they fall under these criteria
  
  • Weapon averages from 13 to 20 total combined offensive and defensive icons
  • Weapon averages from 10 to 12 offensive icons
  • Weapon is a healer that heals 41 to 80 hp
  • Weapon fully blocks one icon type
  • Weapon reflects half of one icon type
    
• 3 weapons can receive a 3 rating for power if they fall under these criteria
  
  • Weapon averages more than 20 total offensive and defensive combined icons
  • Weapon averages from 13 to 20 offensive icons
  • Weapon fully blocks one icon type and also has additional effects
  • Weapon reflects more than half of one icon type
  • Weapon heals more than 80 hp
  • Weapon heals from 50% to 99% of total HP
    
• 4 weapons can receive a 4 rating for power if they fall under these criteria
  
  • Weapon averages more than 20 offensive icons
  • Weapon fully blocks more than one icon type
  • Weapon reflects half (or more) of more than one icon type
  • Weapon is a 100% freezer
  • Weapon is a full healer
    
• Other notes about power ratings
  
  • Once per battle, one use or fragile icon-based weapons will receive a one point deduction.
  • Multiple use freezers, stealers and healers will receive an additional point
  • Species and stat restricted weapons will usually receive a deduction of a point - in some few cases the restrictions may not be meaningful enough for this to apply
  • Percentage freezers are evaluated as a percentage of 30 offensive icons, so a 20% freeze chance is equivalent to a 6 icon weapon -- this is somewhat arbitrary, but seems to be a fair estimate of the advantage a freeze gives.
  • Stealers are evaluated as stealing chance * 15 offensive icons -- this is totally arbitrary and I am making it up right now, because that’s still better than making it up each time I rate a weapon.
  • Item generators will be evaluated as if they did the damage of the item they generate directly, as the loss of a turn before dealing damage is roughly equal to gain in endgame options and safety against stealers
    

Price

Another important factor, this is not always as straightforward as it seems, due to the constantly changing weapons market and the exponential cost of successive upgrades.

• A Weapon will receive a 0 rating for price if it:
  
  • Costs more than 5x what equivalent weapons cost
  • Costs substantially more than what substantially better weapons do - thus many 0 power weapons will automatically receive a 0 price rating
    
• A Weapon will receive a 1 rating for price if it:
  
  • Costs from 1x to 5x as much as equivalently powerful weapons cost
  • Is subject to such price fluctuations that a more accurate rating cannot be determined
    
• A Weapon will receive a 2 rating for price if it:
  
  • Costs less than equivalently powerful weapons cost
  • No equivalent weapons exist. This point is important as it means that some of the dream level weapons will be rated as price bargains
    

Tactical

This is a measure of how strong a particular weapon is likely to be against other common weapons in the same range of battling. You can think of the contrast between power and tactical as quantity vs. quality. This category is far more subjective than the power category, but it can be just as important -- there’s been at least one match where I was in trouble because my opponent swapped in a 9-icon Essence of Esophagor to replace his 18.2 average icon Pirate Captains Cutlass, as EoE got more damage through my defenses.

Unlike the other scales, this one has 1 as the lowest rating. All weapons get at least a 1, because no weapon is ever so bad that you can`t at least put it into your first slot and hope your opponent steals it.

• A weapon will receive a 1 tactical rating if
  
  • The weapon is hopeless and the only use is if your opponent wastes a turn stealing it.
  • The weapon loses in head-to-head matchups against many common, well-known or important weapons that opponents can be expected to carry
    
• A weapon will receive a 2 tactical rating if:
  
  • The weapon wins head-to-head matchups against some common or important weapons, but is weak versus others and/or has well-known easy counters
  • The weapon is not generally good against common weapons, but has one or more important uses in specific cases
    
• A weapon will receive a 3 tactical rating if
  
  • The weapon wins most head-to-head matchups against other weapons of its level
  • The weapon cannot be effectively countered by any cheaper weapon
  • The weapon is abusively powerful within a given niche, such as many multihealers when battling below the 55 Str boost
    
• Other notes about tactical ratings
  
  • Due to the limited space for ratings, I am usually assuming that weapon vs. weapon matchups are in fights between two pets with even stats who have both trained their defense to be balanced with their strength. Be aware that this is not always the case, and fighting against pets with different strength boosts or higher/lower defense can drastically affect the outcome.
  • I am also usually just comparing single weapon to single weapon matchups. This can also be misleading, as in real battles, pets use two weapons and an ability each round and the interaction matters. Yooyuball Players Sling beats Scuzzys Comb by one icon, Scuzzys Comb ties against itself and Steam Shield cuts Scuzzys Comb in half, but the combo of YYPS + Scuzzys + Steam Shield beats Scuzzys + Scuzzys + Berserk by 24 (effective) icons to zero.
  • The weapon market changes constantly, and this has a drastic effect on what weapons are common at any level of battling. Be cautious of older dates on tactical ratings, as newer weapons may have become common since that rating was written.
    

Another Angle:

This category is a subjective measure of other factors;

• A weapon receives a 0 here if there is nothing special about this weapon, I don`t like it
• A weapon receives a 1 here if for some reason, I personally like this weapon. This can let me adjust a weapon which I think my other categories have rated unfairly low, or it can let me add a point to a weapon which is good for galleries, or it can just be because I like the art, the name, or the description.
  

Alternatives

This is a short list of links to other weapons that are somewhat similar in price and usefulness.

Upgrades

This is a short list of links to other weapons that are somewhat better in usefulness, but probably cost more. In many ratings this will be merged with the “Alternates” category.

Defenses/Countermeasures

This is a short list of weapons, shields or strategies that are effective against the weapon rated. In some cases it will offer further explaination of the factors involved in my tactical rating.

*For comparison of methodologies, please see the immortal sirhatter’s original article and system at: http://idb.finalhit.org/?searchtype=page...es&a_id=91

Thanks for the explanation.

Thank you very much for this well explained article, but I am very attached to how I rate my weapons

Wow , it's indeed systematic

I think some of the old ratings (Pre-2005) should be deleted. Not because they're bad ratings, but because weapons get upgraded/Downgraded, change in price, or now have a counter or cheaper alternative. That will give us an average rating that reflects the current battledome situation.

Those ratings are left as a testament to what a weapon may once have been. Raters can personally update their rating if they choose to.


Rabid, after seeing that you beat me to rating a myriad of weapons how you took the power number into consideration, I'm not sure I agree on basing a 1 on Scarab Ring (which isn't matched until Golden Compass, and technically isn't matched there due to fractionals) and basing a 4 on Ghostkersword on up. Though that's primarily because I've been rating each weapon based on how it fits in its range.

On a more helpful note, the value of a freeze can be calculated by the following equation:


Turn(s) Prior To Freeze: (Freezer + Accompaniment) * Stance (or + Species Ability) = F (Damage on each turn before the freeze)

Normal Turn: (Primary + Accompaniment) * Stance (or + Species Ability) = N (Normal turn's damage)

Freeze Turn: (Primary + Secondary) * Stance = D (D for freeze turn's Damage)

T = Turns Prepping Freeze (1 for guaranteed freezers, X for chance freezers based on their percentage)

D - (N*(T) - F*(T)) = Damage advantage via freeze



I hope that equation is translatable. I doubt you want to risk having to change numerous Freezing ratings, but I thought it was something you might be interested in.

This has been under some discussion in the private forums.

Part of the reason myself and the other new raters were brought on was to help update such things. If only the rest of them would quit being so lazy we'd have them all done by now We've made significant progress on doing so within our first month and I think the improvement shows.

The old ratings are not going to be deleted, but there may eventually be a system which marks ratings over 2 years as older ratings, possibly displaying them in a different color. That's still under debate though.

Are you disagreeing with the use of such a range, or where I drew the dividing lines within the range ?

I'm fairly well prepared to defend my judgement on where I put the lines, given the current weapons pool.

Of course using a "power scale" which is based out of absolute value when my own price and tactical scales are based on relative value does produce some unusual results.

I can only really defend that as a matter of personal choice with the intent to provide a wider variety to the ratings on IDB. Or perhaps with an appeal to the positive neomails I've gotten for it so far. 2 people have neomailed me to say they liked the work I'm doing as a rater, and nobody has yet sent me any neomail saying how badly I misrated their favorite weapon.

In your ratings, you certainly do seem more inclined to rate weapons almost entirely on a relative scale to other weapons. I don't think that's wrong, I just think that enough raters have already done that for it not to be something I personally want to do in my own ratings. Part of the point of having multiple raters is to get multiple opinions*.

No, actually it can't, but thanks for playing.

The flaw in your method is that you are only calculating damage against Punchbag Bob, in cases where his average stance is 1.0.

The value of a freeze is that it negates one of your opponent's turns, and therefore must be given in terms of that opponent's weapons, both offensive and the defensive weapons which may negate parts of your attack on non-frozen turns. That's actually impossibly to predict accurately by any model and why I chose an arbitrary value.

If I am interpreting your formula correctly, then our numbers are not all that far off from each others in the "best common case" for percentage freezers, where 2 opponents are battling with 10 icon constants, honey potion, 4-6 icon species abilities and considering swapping out a 10 iconer for a Black or Rainbow Frost Cannon.

Oh, I'm definitely interested, but I'd rather we didn't debate formulae back and forth here, as that could drown out other valid critiques of my methodology.

I'll be watching to see how you rate the various percentage freezers using your methodology.

Both. As I said, I rate weapons comparatively. I'm also bothered by the range because of how much it narrows everything. It takes the 13-icon range to get a even a 2 on your Power scale, and almost no weapon can receive a 4. I think several weapons in their range deserve a perfect score, and you're automatically discounting that possibility. (On the other hand, I'm probably being too liberal with some of my scores.) Scarab Ring, based on raw icons, isn't matched until Golden Compass (and its technically undershot by GoC). Having the upper-end power rating being at Ghostkersword and above limits it to something like six weapons (additionally more that fit another requisite).

::.Faceplants.:: I knew something looked wrong with that. I'll PM you the rest of my thoughts freezing.

Gotta love watching two high-quality raters go at it with their theories!

I like Rabid's systematic theory for rating weapons as it removes the ability for a weapon to get a good (or a bad) rating due to a personal bias for or against it. Although, I have to agree with Shattered's relative scale approach, as Scarab Ring is pound for pound the best weapon in the game and is well-deserving of a 4 in Rabid's power rating

It still boggles my mind why price should be a factor at all in the rating of weapons (with the exception of 1-of-a-kinds/non-existant weapons and those that have an identical, yet cheaper alterative... a la Castle Defenders Shield and Thyoras Tear). I feel that weapons should be rated on the effectiveness for those than can afford them. Price seems to be way too heavy of a factor for many of the raters.

I think all weapons that have a downgrade and upgrade need a price rating- if the cost of getting this weapon over its downgrade for whatever reason is worth the added advantage, the price rating is high and if the cost of getting the upgrade is small then it deserves a low price rating. The effectiveness of a weapon is covered in its effectiveness catagory-

The weapon should get an entirely new rating if that's the case. Once again I don't see why price should be the deciding factor for rating it.

Also, to clarify my previous post... Rabid's rating theory satisfies my "effectiveness for those than can afford them" for the most part. That was mostly directed to those that rate weapons without a set way of rating. People are far too inconsistant with how heavily they value the stats of the weapon compared to the price.