Minecraft: Upgrade for Explosive Mobs

[Nemo212]

It doesn't. The Ender Dragon is physically superior because of the sizable AP gap, as I brought up in a previous post.

In a fight with End Crystals, it's a near-endless stalemate that the Wither would eventually win once it inadvertently manages to knock out all of the End Crystals. It would take a hell of a long time though.

>Does that mean that in a battle without End Crystals the Wither is instantly superior because it's regenerative capabilities render it pretty much undefeatable by the Ender Dragon?




In a fight with or without End Crystals, but also with the Wither's Regenerationn disabled, Ender Dragon stomps.

 

[Eden_Warlock99]

The wither would have Low 7-C durability tho

 

[Nemo212]

Well, yes. Of course. It tanks the initial explosion, and can tank Ender Dragon attacks. Don't see why it wouldn't.

 

[Saikou_The_Lewd_King]

Doesn't ******* matter if they can't beat the draogn 1v1.

They are still remotely comparable. And therefore scales to the Low 7-C. Not just 9-A.

Mobs don't instantly die from the dragon. They can harm things that can survive the dragon. They can harm the player, even with full armor.

Anything that tries to pretend that the dragon is potentially infinitely above anything else in the verse just due to the crystals is pure headcannon. Period.

 

[DaSmileKat]

Also, hostile mobs simply aren't comparable to the Ender Dragon or the Wither. Some of them can hit the Wither, but you need dozens of them, all aggro'd at once, to get past the Regenerationn. I'll detail my experiences with the Ender Dragon below.

The Ender Dragon has some sort of force field that prevents hostile mobs from getting close to it. If you go to the End and fight the dragon, you'll notice that over the course of the fight, it will piss off a few Enderman who will try to attack it.

I went to the End, took out all the crystals, and regenerated the Ender Dragon back to full health. Then I started experimenting with mobs. Endermen couldn't lay a finger on the Ender Dragon. They would try, but they would get pushed back and damaged whenever they got close.

Then I figured maybe it was a range issue, and spawned in a few skeletons. They weren't able to hit it, but they did retaliate against it. Then all hell broke loose because the skeletons started to fight each other, like they usually do when you spawn a lot of them in. So basically, failure.

I spawned in some ghasts next. They're pretty big targets, so the Ender Dragon would definitely hit a few and aggro them. The fireballs would then probably land on the Ender Dragon's hitbox and do some damage. Nope. The ghasts didn't do jack squat.

So Endermen didn't work. Skeletons didn't work. Ghasts didn't even try. Would Blazes?

I spawned in as many of them as I could without my computer breaking. The result was hell on Earth (or End, I suppose). The blazes did get aggro'd when the Ender Dragon hit them, and curiously, almost all of them got aggro'd at the same time. The End was quite literally, ablaze. Hundreds of fireballs, all aimed at the Ender Dragon.

Not a single hit. All of the Blazes were eventually killed. I have no idea how the Blazes could have missed, especially when the dragon was standing still, so my only explanation is that it must be immune to Blaze fireballs.

Does anyone have any bright ideas besides spawning in a Wither? I tried that, and it slowly chips away at the Ender Dragon, and gets distracted by Endermen often. But they're both boss mobs, and I'm trying to see if there's any normal monster comparable to the Ender Dragon.

@DaSmileKat Will test the Ghast fireballs again in a closed environment in a bit.

The reason why the Ender Dragon is this powerful is because of her speed and flight. Melee mobs can't reach, and the Ender Dragon just dodges the projectiles of ranged mobs easily. Also, the Ender Dragon have a lot of immunities, so blazes, potions, the Void, and probably other stuff can't harm her. You can try spawning some elder guardians on a pool of water beside the portal and also some evokers.

 

[Nemo212]

@Saikou Let's calm down a little here. This isn't anything to get worked up about.

First of all, this situation isn't a viable use of powerscaling. We cannot scale the Wither to the Ender Dragon.

Note the following examples.

"Character A is City level, and Character B was able to survive attacks from or harm Character A. However Character A was holding back, restricting themselves, not putting their all into their attacks or was in a weakened state during the fight, then it is not safe to assess that Character B has City level AP or durability. As this would clearly indicate that the two do not have comparable power and that one is much superior to the other."

The Ender Dragon is in a weakened state during this fight, and can't use its End Crystals to regenerate, which would otherwise make this a stalemate. The Ender Dragon also doesn't put its all into its attacks, as it doesn't actively pursue the Wither during this fight; rather, the opposite is true: the Wither pursues the Ender Dragon while it flies around aimlessly. If the Ender Dragon actively and continually attacked the Wither, it would be a stomp in the Ender Dragon's favor.

Let's also review some viable uses of powerscaling and why this doesn't apply.

"Character A performed a feat of destroying a City and has City level durability. Character B has overpowered, critically injured and is portrayed as physically superior to Character A. In this case, it is safe to assess that Character B has City level Attack Potency, despite not having feat of City destroying themselves."

The Wither cannot overpower the Ender Dragon. It cannot critically injure it without the End Crystals not being active, and even this is small chip damage accumulated over time from 9-A attacks (which is explicitly debunked in the Game Mechanics page). It is not portrayed as physically superior to the Ender Dragon.

"Character A has a FTL speed feat, and Character B outpaces or speed blitzes Character A, then it is safe to assess that Character B has FTL speed as well."

Inapplicable to our situation for two reasons. The first: we're discussing AP and tiering, not speed. The second is that we also have speed values for every living entity in Minecraft, and the Ender Dragon outpaces the Wither (Wither flies at about 28.5 m/s, Ender Dragon flies at about 30.1 m/s.).

"Character A has a City level feat. Character B lost to Character A, yet still put up a considerable fight, was able to harm him and clearly made Character A exert effort into defeating Character B, then it is safe to assess that Character B has City level Attack Potency and Durability as well."

Inapplicable to our situation, as we want to see if we can scale the Wither to the Ender Dragon (no), not the Ender Dragon to the Wither.

"If Character A has a City level feat and Character B has been reliably stated to be superior to Character A, it is safe to assess that Character B is City level as well."

The Wither has not been reliably stated to be superior to the Ender Dragon.

You state that mobs don't instantly die from the Dragon. However, as stated previously in this thread, several do. Of note are silverfish, which we scale all of our low-tiers to (Regardless, I don't think this is a good idea, if you'd like to see why, go in this thread and talk there). You mention they can harm things that can survive the dragon, but keep in mind that the dragon is not concentrating all of its power on a singular mob, and not putting its all into that attack. This was discussed in the first example, and is not a valid use of powerscaling.

Scaling fodder mobs to an endgame player because they can slightly damage them isn't a valid use of powerscaling since fodder mobs cannot possibly put up a considerable fight one-on-one.

I am not "pretending that the Ender Dragon is infinitely above everything else in the verse." Don't strawman my argument. I've provided an amount in Joules for its most powerful feat. It's not headcanon, it's a simple calculation.

 

[Nemo212]

@DaSmileKat It's because the Ender Dragon is immune to everything except player-based attacks and explosions.

 

[DaSmileKat]

Energy in Minecraft seems to be around proportional to the Minecraft damage raised to the fourth power. But Minecraft durability is calculated based on Minecraft damage and not energy, so the Ender Dragon not killing zombies and skeletons in one hit is Game Mechanics. The Wither can chip away at the Ender Dragon without End Crystals is somewhat Game Mechanics. It's because the reason above (the gap between the Ender Dragon's durability and the Wither's AP is way more than what pure damage shows), and that most Minecraft mobs doesn't have a slow passive Regenerationn to completely negate weak and slow attacks.

 

[Crabwhale]

@ Nemo

Honestly, you keep mentioning End Crystals as a valid method of proving the Dragon's superiority, which is wrong, considering what we've already said about the Wither and it's Regenerationn. And before you make the same point again, the difference is that the Ender Dragon has what is essentially an environmental advantage while the Wither has an inherent part of it's biology (if you can call it that) to call on.

The Dragon being bloodlusted killing the Wither is not an AP advantage kill. It is a method of attack and speed kill. The Dragon has a larger hitbox, the Wither's skulls aren't fast enough to tag it when it's moving unless it's point-black, and the Dragon can just swoop, get a shot, retreat, repeat.

There's nothing about AP in how two opponents fight in this case. It's just two styles of fighting that severely inhibit one of the fighters. The Wither can kill the Ender Dragon in certain circumstances and vice-versa. How specific those circumstances are doesn't matter. The point is, it's an inconclusive bout at best in regular circumstances.

And that in my book is good enough for scaling their AP.

 

[Nemo212]

It is an environmental advantage for the Ender Dragon, yes, but it's undeniable that the Ender Dragon is in a weakened state without them thanks to its regen being gone. You mention that its just their methods of fighting that inhibit the Ender Dragon, but yet again, it's still invalid because the Ender Dragon isn't putting its all into attacks. It's not bloodlusted in-game.

That's already two reasons why scaling would be invalid as discussed on the Powerscaling page, but the third? Game mechanics. Simple as. The Ender Dragon undeniably has at least Low 7-C durability, but the Wither is able to put it down with explosive attacks calculated at 9-A. The chasm between those two tiers is vast, and yet, the Wither is able to do it by accumulating minor damage over time, which is directly discussed in the Game Mechanics page.

I strongly implore you to reexamine this.

 

[Crabwhale]

And the Player can put down the Ender Dragon with sword strikes calculated at 9-A, and possibly not even that given how long it takes to mine stone without a proper tool. And that's also done with chip damage.

You're claiming an AoE fallacy. It's not game mechanics just because the Wither's explosive attacks don't go above a certain AP, if the Wither can still reliably hold it's own against the Dragon.

The only thing that would change if the Dragon was bloodlusted would be the amount of times it attacked and how determined it would be to chase the Wither. Just because it's attacking x amount of times more than the previous y amount, doesn't mean the z amount of damage is changed, just multiplied with x amount of attacks. Again, this is a style of fighting stomp, not an AP. The Ender Dragon can't do anything but chip away at the Wither's HP, which constantly regenerates and if the Wither scores a hit with any of it's skulls, only gains health faster.

 

[Nemo212]

Do you mean absence of evidence or appeal to emotion?

Here's a direct quotation from the Game Mechanics page: "HP doesn't exist, that's not how durability functions outside of games. You can't chip away at something and hope to break on through if the fire power that you are packing isn't sufficient enough." To clarify, there's no reason that the Ender Dragon should be damaged by the Wither skull explosion when it isn't damaged by its own attacks, which are about 1430 times more powerful, except that it's game mechanics (the Ender Dragon also isn't affected by the durability-negating Wither effect).

If you want math for the 1430 value, then take the 12870000000000 joules value from the Ender Dragon attack and divide it by the 9000000000 joules from the Ghast fireball, as Wither skulls have the same explosion strength as one .

 

[DaSmileKat]

Now, don't forget that the Wither can break obsidian.

 

[Nemo212]

The Wither can break obsidian with blue Wither Skulls by ignoring the durability of any block that isn't unbreakable. They have the same explosive strength as a black one, though.

 

[ZacharyGrossman273]

Alright, I need to get this out of the way. We shouldn't use heat resistance as durability.

 

[Nemo212]

You're right, we really shouldn't.

But that's a CRT for another day.

 

[Nemo212]

Okay, so let's just review here.

Wither is still a point of contention because of powerscaling issues, as are Ghasts, presumably.

Crabwhale said Creeper durability scaling has to go, and I'd like to hear more from him on that before we go adding this to their page.

It doesn't seem like anyone has a problem with the Ender Dragon calc or the Ender Crystal calc. Is there anybody that does? If not, are those okay to add, or is this supposed to be all at once?

 

[Crabwhale]

I've been informed that me saying nothing should scale to the Creeper may have been wrong, considering the amount of damage it does is given as the maximum from the wiki when in Hard Mode.

 

[Nemo212]

Actually, the attack strength on the Creeper's wiki page is on Normal difficulty. The damage variations between the three difficulties can be seen here.

 

[Nemo212]

I've been informed that me saying nothing should scale to the Creeper may have been wrong, considering the amount of damage it does is given as the maximum from the wiki when in Hard Mode.

Could TNT scaling work? I could calc it real quick, write a blog, and make a profile for it if so.

 

[Crabwhale]

I'll just wait for people to comment here again. I'm not too confident in continuing without some extra judgement right now.

 

[DaSmileKat]

The Wither's and Ghast's AP should be upgraded to around the Iron Golem's AP, at least that's what in-game damage shows. Why their AP is so low is because diamond have such a high pulverization energy, and glass's pulverization energy is nothing compared to diamod's.

 

[DaSmileKat]

Creepers are a weird case. Looking at in-game damage, it does way more damage than anything else, but their AP is less than the Ender Dragon's. However, there's a problem. Not all of the Creeper's AP is used for destroying the diamond blocks. Some energy is wasted as heat when the shockwave expands outward. So there should be an improved calc on that and also the rest of explosion attacks.

Also, now that I think about it, is Minecraft explosions pulverization or vaporization? The blocks mostly disappear without a trace, and there are a lot of white vapory particles rising.

 

[Nemo212]

Iron Golems scale to Lategame/Endgame Steve, who scales to the Ender Dragon, and I definitely don't support Ghasts scaling to the Ender Dragon.

Ghasts are dangerous primarily because of fire, which ignores durability. Their shots are easily dodged or deflected, and they don't deal too much damage. Even a midgame (unenchanted iron armor + tools, no potions) Steve can take care of Ghasts without a hitch.

Wither Skulls do less than a quarter of the Iron Golem's maximum damage output physically. The real damage from Withers comes from the Withering effect, which ignores durability. While you need to be late in the game to reliably fight the Wither, it's because of the Wither effect, its Regenerationn, flight, and projectile shields.

 

[DaSmileKat]

What? Iron Golem's damage is 7-21, and wither skulls' explosion damage is somewhere around 10 or 16, I think. Using vaporization for explosions is more consistent with damage in-game, and seems pretty likely.

 

[Nemo212]

Ah, no. Okay. I see where you're thinking. That's damage from the Withering effect. The Wither skulls have a physical output of two and a half hearts . The explosion strength value I believe refers to the initial explosion as well, which is Low 7-C.

The wiki tells me that the white particles are "shockwave" particles, so still no evidence of vaporization. If it was vaporization, though, we'd kind of be screwed because we don't have vaporization values for glass or diamond. I guess we could use iron blocks in that case, but it doesn't really matter because it's not vaporization.

 

[Eden_Warlock99]

The Ender Dragon might be vaporizing the blocks

 

[Nemo212]

...Maybe?

That's going to be less J/cc than the original, though, since we don't have a vaporization value for diamond and I'd have to resort to iron instead. I'd prefer to stick with the original calc.

 

[DaSmileKat]

The Wither's physical damage is 8 damage. 5 damage is for easy difficulty., and 8 is for normal. And where did it say that the explosion particles are the shockwave and not vapor?

 

[Nemo212]

Yeah, but those extra three damage points are for the Withering effect. That doesn't happen on Easy (note the red hearts versus the black Wither hearts on normal and hard). AFAIK, the physical damage is the same on all three difficulties, but the Withering effect is what changes.

Got that from here. Third sentence .

They'd also have a 0% chance of dropping the block if it was vaporized, since, you know. Vaporized. And given that explosions drop blocks some of the time, I think it's safe to say it's pulverization.

 

[DaSmileKat]

The Ender Dragon is vaporizing the blocks, since there are vapor particles.

 

[Nemo212]

Alright, well, I can't calc that. We don't have vaporization values for glass or diamond, and the vaporization value for iron is less than the pulverization value for diamond. Should it just be "At least Low 7-C, possibly higher"?

 

[DaSmileKat]

That seems good. Someone should do an explosion calc that takes energy lost as heat into consideration, because I'm not sure if it will make a big difference or not.

 

[Nemo212]

I don't think that'll make a difference. I've literally never seen a calc that does that.

 

[DaSmileKat]

Well, I can try to calc it myself...

 

[Nemo212]

Okay, Ant approved the calc on the blog post and said it's okay to use. So the math is okay, but I need to figure out scaling now before I start implementing it.

Is Creeper scaling okay? I know Crabwhale has doubts, but I'm unsure what the problem would be with them. What mobs can survive a point-blank Creeper blast, and get 8-A durability as a result?

End Crystals have variable damage depending on difficulty (The explosion size remains the same, though). On Hard mode, they can even kill a player with fully enchanted diamond armor, and cause significant damage to both the Wither and Ender Dragon. What do we make of this? Should player durability scale down to End Crystals, or should End Crystals scale up to the bosses? What difficulty do we assume our Minecraft profiles are on? Hard?

Let's also open discourse about the Ghast and the Wither explosions back up, unless nobody has anything else to say.

 

[DaSmileKat]

Creepers (or any explosions) cannot be used for scaling yet. They have 8-A AP, and the Ender Dragon has Low 7-C AP, yet the Ender Dragon does only 10 in-game damage while the Creeper does 49. But the thing is, the Creeper's in-game damage sharply decreases as distance increases, so there must be quite a lot of energy lost as heat as the shockwave expand outwards. Same goes for the End Crystal, Charged Creeper, Ghast, and Wither.

 

[Nemo212]

So you're saying they would all be Low 7-C/8-A/9-A at the epicenter, and then scaling down the further out you go? I can't say I've ever seen anything done like that before.

Also, we need to discuss difficulty because explosion damage varies depending on it. Personally, I'd say Hard because we assume all the profiles are at their peak, but I've got to know if someone's made a judgement call before me.

 

[DaSmileKat]

I'd say Normal because that's the damage that mobs do to other mobs.

 

[Nemo212]

That's just for direct physical attacks, though. Explosions vary in damage depending on the difficulty no matter what the source is (End Crystals are considered a mob and their explosion damage varies significantly depending on difficulty). Might be why me and Saikou got different results for the creeper killing the Enderman (he might've had it on Easy mode where it can't).

So I ask because if we do Normal, End Crystal is 8-A. If we do Hard, it scales up to Low 7-C.