I saw the note in the latest update that active artifacts got a boost, so am relooking at all of them. Anyone uncover any gems?

For me, Triple Strike, Quad Strike are actually useful now, ie: worth using and waiting 16 hours.

Field Hospital is getting there. Uncommon 6%.

Inspire Mercenaries is starting to feel worthwhile ... but on the fence still. Probably only useful for the really big camps. Rare gives 12%.

In comparison, Damage Territory still feels underpowered. Uncommon gives 6%, so compared to Field Hospital, why ever use this? Instead drop a Field Hospital and get same 6% off neighbouring territories. Or find a way to leverage Trip or Quad Strike instead.

Supercharge Mine & Army camps - haven't used them much but seems like good value now, 30 mins each for Uncommon.

Market Raid still is fairly useless to me ... it's only at Uncommon level of 30%, but has 1 major problem that it shares with the Market Raid power itself but b/c this is only 30%, it's even worse, and the problem is: you don't know what you're going to get. I've used it in a few markets trying to get some good stuff for Techs, and come up pretty bare with 0/0/0/1 in quantities of items received. I get this for some Market Raid powers as well ... but 30% of that is understandably even less useful. It really needs to forecast what it will give you, so you at least know (A) don't bother using it on that market, or (B) use it on a different market of lower value items to at least get some reasonable quantities.

Resource Cache - same problem as Market Raid. Without knowing what it's going to give you and how much, it's just not really worth the 16h cooldown. Uncommon gives 60%. Overall just too hard to tell before using it if it's worth it at all, nevermind if it's actually going to give you something you need.

Time Warp - Uncommon level, 6 mins Time Warp. Has this actually changed? Seems the same as before. And 6 is simply just not useful _at all_ to then have a 16h cooldown. Even maxed out to Legendary would only get 48 mins, which even still is just simply not worth a 16h cooldown.

Discount Army Camp Common 6%, Discount Hospital Common 6%, Discount Mine Uncommon 12%. Just doesn't seem worth it vs. leaving Territory/Bonus Money Boost in slot for the same 16 hrs.

Anyone's results differ?

Damage Territory still feels underpowered. Uncommon gives 6%, so compared to Field Hospital, why ever use this? Instead drop a Field Hospital and get same 6% off neighbouring territories. Or find a way to leverage Trip or Quad Strike instead.

Damage Territory actually reduces the armies needed to conquer. Field hospital just lets you retain some armies.

Also, Damage Territory can be used multiple times on the same territory, whereas field hospital cannot. These two reasons are why the percentage is slightly lower.

@Krinid
They could also not seem very useful to you because of how low tiered your artifacts are. You mention mostly about the uncommon or common tiers for these artifacts not being very powerful, which makes sense considering how easy it is to get artifacts of those tiers. I'd say get them to about rare or epic tier and see what you think. I have 6 artifacts of either rare or epic tier, and of those 6, 5 of them are active, and I find them very useful when used right.

The ones I have, and their effects, are
Epic:
Market Raid: 120%
Resource Cache: 240%
Damage Territory: 24%
Inspire Mercenaries: 24%

Rare:
Supercharge Mine: 1 hour
Army Camp Boost (Passive): 40%

@Fizzer, Z
Using Damage Territory more than once on a single territory is nice (in fact, I'm doing this right now on the 403B massive territory on Europe Huge (as per this thread https://www.warzone.com/Forum/541592-huge-europe?Offset=0). I have it down to 333B after 3 attacks) but I've also used it 3 times and waited 48 hrs, so it's not really comparable. Doing a "value" calculation of #armies saved per hr of waiting would show decreasing returns for Damage Territory (b/c multiple activations of 6% saving is a diminishing 6% of the increasingly smaller value).

Now compare Field Hospital, where it's 6% of each bordering territory, the value calc will significantly higher if the same territory the Damage Territory is used on is one of the neighbouring territories. Anyhow, point being, imho Damage Territory is underpowered. It's not worth the 16h cooldown yet. Especially when compared to other Actives like Field Hospital which finally feel like they're reaching a useful spot. DT should be at least 2x the equivalent Field Hospital is to compensate for focusing on a single territory. In the end, the difference of reducing armies required vs saving armies is minor, and reusing on a single territory comes at an additional cost (another 16h) so is more akin to using Field Hospital, capturing those territories and then moving on to reuse FH elsewhere on the map, and the value calcs at that point will show that FH blows DT away. So outside of the use case of widdling down a single large territory, DT loses to FH every time.

Upgrading the FH & DT artifacts to higher levels won't change anything, b/c they'll both increase at the same rate. So DT epic 24% vs FH epic 24%, FH still wins. It's like asking if someone would 6% off admission to a theme park for himself only on 4 different visits, or would you like 6% off for your entire 4 member family on this single visit. 6% for 4 people (territories) now please - every time. "Multiple visits" (multiple attacks, multiple cooldowns) is additional and undesirable effort/cost, and as the % goes up to 24%, the money (armies) saved goes up accordingly.

Resource Cache epic 240% is nice -- but still has the problem of not knowing what you're getting for the 16h cooldown. You're still rolling the dice to get "something", and more often than not, it's not useful (meaning you can't immediately use it, it's not what you currently lack and were hoping to get with the resource cache, at best you can sell it, but ). The resource caches on the map of course have the same issue but at least you're just capturing territories so those are truly free, no cooldown cost to pay for receiving the benefit. Maybe 240% pushes this a better region of getting items of value/worth/being able to use them for Techs/etc, so maybe instead of rarely getting a good thing, you occasionally or maybe mostly get useful things (you tell me, Z, how is it?), but you still won't know until you activate it and now have to wait 16h. Compare to Time Warp, Inspire Mercs, Army/Hosp/Mine Discount, Q.Strike, DT, FH, etc, where the benefits are tangible and known and thus "safe" to use, you can never "lose" with those unless you make a bad decision. RC is always a gamble.

Market Raid epic 120% is also nice -- but also still has the problem of not knowing what you're getting for the 16h cooldown. As mentioned, the power itself (I feel sorry for the people who bought these with money, used them and got 0 quantity of the items they were targeting) has the same issue, so of course the artifact does as well, but being >100% may help with issue, as that makes it less likely to get 0. But you still don't know before invoking it, and that's the problem. Using powers and artifacts shouldn't have to be a gambling game of chance ... will it be worthwhile or did I just use a power/invoke an artifact and get nothing of value to me? Is it worth using the power/waiting 16h? Roll the dice and see. Similar to RC, MR is a gamble to invoke.

Supercharge army/mine of 1 hr seems pretty awesome tbh, so looking forward to those upgrades.

Army camp boost Rare 40% still doesn't so great (the Techs on the map still outweigh that a lot, as would Advancements, essentially making this Artifact somewhat useful at start of level and just a drop in the bucket from mid-game and beyond), but that's a Passive Artifact so not the topic of this thread, so that's all I'll say there.

@krinid
Can you please describe how exactly do you manage to obtain 0s from using market raids? It seems inconceivable to me that you would not know that using MR would yield such a bad result.

@SubLunar
The description of MR is "Steal a bunch of resources from a market of your choice" ... so in what context does "a bunch of resources of my choice" ever equal 0?

Okay semi-facetious question b/c I know that description is old from first invocation of the power when it gave 50 of each item which better matches that description, but admittedly was bad as it was underpowered for early markets and overpowered for late markets.

Now we know that the benefits are at least somewhat tied to how much of the items you can produce. But I don't know the formula tbh, don't know if it's dependent just on ore production, if I have the recipe, how many smelters and crafters I have, if they are idle vs smelting/crafting and if so if it needs to be what I want from the market or it needs to be something else, if how much I already have is a factor, if anything else is relevant, etc - just that it's dependent on some factors that maybe I could control if I knew the formula. I also know that WZI has nasty rounding, so 0.4 items is rounded to 0 (or maybe it's everything up to 0.9=0, don't know - I know in the past resource caches used to give partial items such as "1.5 lanthanum bars", which ended up as 1.0 bars in my inventory, thus the 0.5 was rounded down and lost), and since I don't know the formula, I don't know if it deems that I can produce 0.4 or 0.5 lanthanum bars until I click on MR and the market and find out 0 or 1 lanthanum bars were provided as a results.

Am I missing something? Do you have a way to precisely know how many of each item MR will provide you? The difference between 0/0/0/1 (I've actually some 0/0/0/0's but none recently so not sure if that could still happen or if it's been patched) vs 1/1/1/1 is huge, so important to know which you're getting beforehand.

@krinid
I believe some older blogpost by Fizzer said you get from a market raid what you could produce yourself in one day. Yes, I know, it's not much of a raid but at least you get something. Regarding rounding, I do not really know, although I would guess all the resulting figures are rounded down.

By the way, the partial bars or items resource caches used to give in the good old days were not lost. You could not use them of course but they were stored in your inventory and when there was enough material to combine those partials into at least one bar or item, you got it.

I've heard reference to that "what you can produce in 1 day" but never seen the actual reference, and I also question it because I've also:

(A) gotten items where I had no recipes of something and/or low ore production, so I couldn't produce any in 1 day

(B) gotten quantities of items that differ from my own calculations of what I could make in 1 day (sometimes higher, sometimes lower)

(C) still doesn't fully answer the question if it's just ore based/ingredient based, # of smelters, # of crafters, etc?

For (C), eg: if I have 5K/sec iron ore, 500M iron ore, 0 iron bars, 1 smelter, 0 crafters, do I get more, less or same # of screws from an MR if I have 25K/sec iron ore, 0 iron ore, 500 iron bars, 5 smelters, 5 crafters?

@krinid
(C) I'd say it only has to do with production - ore production, number of smelters or crafters. But to be honest I'd be guessing. Maybe Fizzer could shed some light on this.
If your raid fails again, could you post here any and all the relevant information regarding the bars/items you were supposed to get? Maybe we could crack this ourselves.

I'm wondering if it's a good idea to pair Market Raid with Supercharge Mine like it's a good idea to pair Free Cache with Supercharge Army Camp.

@asdfgh
It depends on what's holding up your production. If you don't have enough smelters to process what you're producing, it won't have any effect. Otherwise it could have pretty significant effect.

@asdfgh
I've tried that tbh. On one hand, I've seen results where it gave me boatloads of Thorium (27 bars if memory serves), but then in other cases where I was testing on different bars to see if I could get a similar effect, I got the same as without the supercharge mine powers (think this was Lanthanum), and I think with Chromium it might have given me 1 extra bar for total of 2, but not positive that my non-SM powered MR was 1 Chromium bar and not 2. It's hard to test because you (A) need to do an MR with no powers active as a baseline, and (2) need to do another MR with powers active, then measure the difference. So unless you have a lot of MRs, it's not a great test.

@SubLunar
Good idea, next time I get a disappointing MR, I'll screenshot it and we can analyze it. Honestly, it would just fix this whole issue if within the Stats dialog at the top of the Smelters window, a column was added that was directly responsible for what you get as a result of using MR (power or artifact), regardless as to whether it's in 1 day or however the formula actually works. There is a "Can make" column already, but all math on it simply indicates that that is just simply (for alloys) #oreYouHave / #oreRequired = Can Make, so not really useful b/c it's only telling you what you can make with what you have at that instant, whereas if you just an alloy smelting all day long, you might have "Can make=0" at the time you left it but several hours later come back to find you have 5 or 6 bars depending on your ore productions, ingredient requirements, etc. So unfortunately nothing I can see that would directly related to MR from "Can make". Fizzer, pls enlighten us how this works.

@Fizzer
Anyhow, while I disagree and still think DT is underpowered, I think the move to increase the effects Actives have was a good move. Consensus before the change was unanimous that Actives were simply not worth the 16h cooldowns. Now some of them are legit worth it, some are likely worth it in situational cases, some still need work (imho) but overall a good move.

The actives are good up to a point. Quadruple Strike saves 96% at Epic. I've heard that it says 192% at Legendary, but only actually saves 100%. If so, it's not worth it beyond Epic. The actives also have the multi-level limitations (as has been mentioned).

I like the balance this change brings. It makes a couple of actives worthwhile for the first year or so of play. Assuming you want to keep a slot free, you don't need 3 useful actives. After a year of play, the Quadruple Strike can be used as upgrade fodder for a Legendary. The three slots become free again.

That's some serious long game thinking. I like it.

I think Time Warp has been rebalanced, thought it could still be further improved.

Has it? Right now it's 15 mins @ Common (so 2 hr Epic) ... don't recall what it was before, but memory tells me the math was ~48 mins @ Epic, so would have been 6 Common, so yea, it got longer ... but agree with you that it's insufficient. It's not even close to being enough. I don't see any situation where 15 mins would be worth 16h.

That said, the Time Warp power itself which this is based on is severely underpowered, so not expecting much here.

Given the non-active nature of this thread, I guess no one else has found much value with the buff to Actives. A bunch of them got stronger, but seems like it still isn't enough in many cases.

I think Poor being one hour would be a good start.

Given the non-active nature of this thread, I guess no one else has found much value with the buff to Actives. A bunch of them got stronger, but seems like it still isn't enough in many cases.

The issue with active artifacts is - in my eyes - the same as with swapping vs. upgrading. As I said somewhere else before, upgrading artifacts is only objectively more beneficial if you are able to make use of at least two epic artifacts to compensate for the losses of sacrificing all your collected artifacts. The same holds true for active artifacts. But perhaps so to an extreme. Every active artifact of level uncommon or lower really isn't even worth equipping. Rares, too, in most cases don't give you anything that balances out 16h of a blocked slot. Given that the change to the active artifacts was very recently and prior to that most players were exclusively upgrading passive artifacts and given that collecting enough artifacts being worth an epic takes you at least six weeks, I'd argue that even if some players now would find value in some active artifact, most of those players hadn't had the time to experience those changes properly.

I appreciate that the active artifacts got improved slightly. I'd argue that there isn't much headroom left to improve them further (as we see with Quadruple Strike raising their effects comes with problems and lowering the cool-down would at some point break all active artifacts as they wouldn't pose a serious drawback anymore, and the drawback is what allows them to be more powerful than their passive counterparts). Assuming that the majority of players play without ML (most of the time) an "active" play-style might work out now, but we as a group just don't have enough experience yet. Give it time.

PS: An epic Quadruple Strike gives me a territory almost for free, while an epic Damage Territory reduces the army count by a measly 24%? An epic Triple Strike means a discount of 80% already, right? How can that be? I mean, sure, I need three or four neighbors to use the Strikes, but assuming I would use active artifacts, I wouldn't use them willy-nilly given the cool-down. So I would use them for the really big territories. And preferably use one artifact once instead of an artifact several times. So, unless the map doesn't offer me enough neighbors, why should I use DT then? I don't get it.

Edited 4/25/2021 23:57:55

@Phoenix
Agree with you RE: DT having no use case. The response from Fizzer was that you could use DT multiple times on the same territory ... but that's another 16h cooldown per addition invocation, and if a single DT isn't worth the cooldown for the damage it does on a single hit (which is the point we're making here), certainly any multiples of that usage at slightly reduced benefit each time for multiple equally long cooldowns isn't worth it either. This would only make sense if some map has a gigantic territory with only 1 or 2 bordering territories, to make Trip & Quad Strike unusable, and not enough armies available in a reasonable amount of time, making 6% multiple hits the "best" way to cap the territory (but it would take multiple hits stretching over multiple days with cooldowns and a downed artifact slot to achieve this). Beyond that ... agree, there's no reason to ever use DT.

Does anyone know if you can activate multiple copies of the same artifact? I never tried this but it has a potential for being completely game breaking with 3 high level time warps.