59 replies to this topic

[GuanglaiKangyi]

GSSB Lunaspike, on 03 December 2012 - 10:12 AM, said:

Could you add a note to the thief part that this is only in Spvp/Tpvp. In wvw/pve the numbers for thief are actually higher.

As far as I know guardians don't have any abilities that deal less damage in the mists, but thieves do.

Lobby damages are for PvE versions of skills.  They don't change until you actually go into a match.  There are a few differences between Mists lobby and PvE in terms of stats (primarily for crit damage and gear you can't get exotic jewelry for) but it doesn't change the relative values that much.  It primarily affects comparisons between condition damage and direct damage, and engineer DPS (since they lose weapon stats with kits equipped in PvE but not in PvP), but since neither of those things are relevant to my calculations I haven't bothered to note it.  When I do add condition damage to the mix I will.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

I just realized I made a mistake with hammer tooltips.  Mighty Blow was displaying the damage without the Berserker's Amulet included.  I'm not sure how that happened in the first place but I've fixed it anyway.  I think either I did the calculation before I wrote the tooltips down or something else happened though cause the end result doesn't change that much.

[GSSB Lunaspike]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 03 December 2012 - 06:02 PM, said:

Lobby damages are for PvE versions of skills.  They don't change until you actually go into a match.  There are a few differences between Mists lobby and PvE in terms of stats (primarily for crit damage and gear you can't get exotic jewelry for) but it doesn't change the relative values that much.  It primarily affects comparisons between condition damage and direct damage, and engineer DPS (since they lose weapon stats with kits equipped in PvE but not in PvP), but since neither of those things are relevant to my calculations I haven't bothered to note it.  When I do add condition damage to the mix I will.

That is wrong with the thief skill cnd. If you want to test this you can take the thief completely naked with no talents, and check the tooltip damage on cd. Then use a dagger on one of the tests to get a general idea of the damage. Now if you go do that outside of the mists you will see it deals more.

I'm not explaining it well, but I will give you two shots of the tooltips.
http://img803.images.../4103/gw538.jpg
That one is outside the mists, no talents, no gear. More importantly no bonus power, since cnd has a .37 ratio I wanted to make sure I got it accurate.
http://img248.images.../2954/gw536.jpg
That is the one from the mists. In PvE cnd deals 33% less damage than in PvP(not including wvw).

To check I took the PvE damage at 365.  365*.33=120.45  365-120.45=244.55 The damage shown in the mists screen shot. The reason there is a small problem is because the initial damage isn't actually 365. It's roughly 364.5 or so.

I also tested the actual damage, and it reflects this as well.


I hope you can understand I'm not posting this to be offensive. I have a great respect for what you are doing. I've been doing something similar in private. I'm trying to get all of the ratios for bonus power to damage. It helps me actually see how much more damage things give versus just guessing. In that case 20 power would only give me 7.4 damage on cnd. I don't mean any offense by posting this, and I will continue to read this thread because you are doing really great work.

edit:

Actually I think using a thief in general is a bad idea for your comparisons. I've been looking at a few things and some of their numbers are off by as much as 10%. I've calculated the actual numbers, and then checked them with tests and the tooltips are just wrong. That might be because of the pvp/pve switch, or it might just be tooltip bugs. I think you are doing a fantastic job of comparing them to warriors.

Edited by GSSB Lunaspike, 04 December 2012 - 11:16 AM.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

GSSB Lunaspike, on 04 December 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

That is wrong with the thief skill cnd. If you want to test this you can take the thief completely naked with no talents, and check the tooltip damage on cd. Then use a dagger on one of the tests to get a general idea of the damage. Now if you go do that outside of the mists you will see it deals more.

I'm not explaining it well, but I will give you two shots of the tooltips.
http://img803.images.../4103/gw538.jpg
That one is outside the mists, no talents, no gear. More importantly no bonus power, since cnd has a .37 ratio I wanted to make sure I got it accurate.
http://img248.images.../2954/gw536.jpg
That is the one from the mists. In PvE cnd deals 33% less damage than in PvP(not including wvw).

To check I took the PvE damage at 365.  365*.33=120.45  365-120.45=244.55 The damage shown in the mists screen shot. The reason there is a small problem is because the initial damage isn't actually 365. It's roughly 364.5 or so.

I also tested the actual damage, and it reflects this as well.


I hope you can understand I'm not posting this to be offensive. I have a great respect for what you are doing. I've been doing something similar in private. I'm trying to get all of the ratios for bonus power to damage. It helps me actually see how much more damage things give versus just guessing. In that case 20 power would only give me 7.4 damage on cnd. I don't mean any offense by posting this, and I will continue to read this thread because you are doing really great work.

edit:

Actually I think using a thief in general is a bad idea for your comparisons. I've been looking at a few things and some of their numbers are off by as much as 10%. I've calculated the actual numbers, and then checked them with tests and the tooltips are just wrong. That might be because of the pvp/pve switch, or it might just be tooltip bugs. I think you are doing a fantastic job of comparing them to warriors.

That may be true actually.  Anet never updated the Save Yourselves tooltip for PvP so I assumed it was the same for all PvP skills.  I'll have to go back and check the numbers.  As for general tooltip inaccuracies, I can't speak to that.  If you can confirm which tooltips are inaccurate and give me the actual damages I can go back and estimate the skill damage coefficients.  That's not particularly high on my priorities list though.

[KaptainO]

I have a couple of questions about the terminology/format you use for your data.

When you say:

"Greatsword (10/30/30/0/0):
Auto: 645 + 645 + 968 = 907/s
WW = 3363 total, 1549 net, 129/s (WW actually hits 14 times but tooltip only shows damage for 9. Number listed appears to be for the 7 spin hits plus 2 projectiles. I've approximated the damage from the other 5 projectiles accordingly)
Symbol = 2215 total, 1308 net, 62/s
Bind = 806 + 2320 (non-crit), 2219 net, 72/s (Binding Blades appears to tick a set amount based on power and is unaffected by crits or damage boosting traits)
DPS = 1166 base, 2224 overall"

What do you mean by "3363 total, 1549 net"? or "2215 total, 1308 net"?

What do you mean by "DPS = 1166 base, 2224 overall"?

I understand how you can determine the relative "d" value (Damage Done) for attacks, but how did you determine the "s" value (Time) in order to calculate d/s for an ability?

Very interesting thread, just wanted to get some clarity on those things, thanks!

[GuanglaiKangyi]

KaptainO, on 04 December 2012 - 07:15 PM, said:

I have a couple of questions about the terminology/format you use for your data.

When you say:

"Greatsword (10/30/30/0/0):
Auto: 645 + 645 + 968 = 907/s
WW = 3363 total, 1549 net, 129/s (WW actually hits 14 times but tooltip only shows damage for 9. Number listed appears to be for the 7 spin hits plus 2 projectiles. I've approximated the damage from the other 5 projectiles accordingly)
Symbol = 2215 total, 1308 net, 62/s
Bind = 806 + 2320 (non-crit), 2219 net, 72/s (Binding Blades appears to tick a set amount based on power and is unaffected by crits or damage boosting traits)
DPS = 1166 base, 2224 overall"

What do you mean by "3363 total, 1549 net"? or "2215 total, 1308 net"?

What do you mean by "DPS = 1166 base, 2224 overall"?

I understand how you can determine the relative "d" value (Damage Done) for attacks, but how did you determine the "s" value (Time) in order to calculate d/s for an ability?

Very interesting thread, just wanted to get some clarity on those things, thanks!

Total = How much damage the skill actually does.
Net = How much more the skill does versus just auto-attacking.
Base = Damage before crits and damage-boosting traits, (weapon damage and power stats only)
Overall = Damage with crits and damage-boosting traits factored in

As for time, I just went ahead and timed the skills to get the total active time (startup + recovery) and then added that to the cooldown since the skill doesn't actually start recharging until it's done casting.  Then I divided the net damage by that sum to get how much damage the skill does on average over time.

So let's say hypothetically a skill does 1000 damage in one second and your auto-attack deals 500 damage in one second, the net damage is 500 damage.  If the total cooldown for the skill is 5 seconds then that means you're doing 500 damage every 5 seconds, or 100 damage per second.  If those are your only two skills that deal damage then your total DPS is 600 damage per second.  Then if you crit 50% of the time for double damage your average damage multiplier from crits is 1.5x.  If you have a trait that makes you deal +10% damage all the time you then multiply by 1.1x.  Your overall DPS then is 990.

[Voradors]

I have been thinking about making a Guardian recently. After reading through this, i dont really understand why so many people insist that a Guardian isnt a good DPSer.

Could anyone shed some light on if i am missing something?  It seems that with good base damage and group synergy a Guardian could be more effective than a Warrior all around.

My only real concern is the lack of good range for WvW....

[Ark211049]

I think vorados its more to do with what other people want, i myself have after taking a break from the game due to the sheer boredem of my war rolled a guar with the firm intention of making it dps focused, what ive learnt on this forum, on others including the offical ones and in game from other people, is that people just want a guardian to turn up in some crummy full support build, for all of Anets much vaunted hype of no set class roles and no holy trinity, the majority are still working under the basis that you, a guardian is just ther for support, and the war is there for dmg.
This basis is not entirely unjustified mind you, dosent mean we have inferior dmg, we are a bit below war in pure numbers true but that is yet another case of anets failings, what it means is that we as the dps minded guars have to try even harder to dispel the stereotype.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Voradors, on 13 December 2012 - 09:40 PM, said:

I have been thinking about making a Guardian recently. After reading through this, i dont really understand why so many people insist that a Guardian isnt a good DPSer.

Could anyone shed some light on if i am missing something?  It seems that with good base damage and group synergy a Guardian could be more effective than a Warrior all around.

My only real concern is the lack of good range for WvW....

A lot of people aren't capable of accurately measuring DPS.  They see a big number (Hundred Blades, etc.) and assume it must be high DPS, disregarding the other factors, the most obvious being startup time.  Hundred Blades can hit for giant numbers but it takes 4s to cast, which is the same amount of time as what it takes to do 5 auto-attacks.  Which isn't to say it isn't massive damage, it's just not as good as what a lot of people think.

[CepaCepa]

Voradors, on 13 December 2012 - 09:40 PM, said:

I have been thinking about making a Guardian recently. After reading through this, i dont really understand why so many people insist that a Guardian isnt a good DPSer.

Could anyone shed some light on if i am missing something?  It seems that with good base damage and group synergy a Guardian could be more effective than a Warrior all around.

My only real concern is the lack of good range for WvW....

There are a few "problems" when Guardians go full glass cannon dps (which is the criteria for achieving the posted numbers) in real situations:

1. Going full glass cannon on Guardians means that a lot of outstanding defensive capability unique to the profession are overlooked. A pure dps set up according to these numbers would be Greatsword in melee/aoe and scepter + focus/torch/shield at range, and traits setup in a manner where your shouts/consecration won't be as useful as they could be. This means that you'll be a good dps, but not much beside being "yet another melee dps". (Well, that's not very fair, you are still a guardian afterall so you can always provide some nifty stuff... But not nearly to the extend of a more balanced or defensive specc). Is that a viable option? Definitely. But essentially there are lots of goodies that you're "giving up" to achieve that dps. You may argue that "every profession is like that, a dpser would have little to no utility", that is not the case. Some professions, such as mesmer and rangers, obtain MOST of their utilities even as glass cannons, and in some situations they provide better utilities as glass cannons.

2. Guardians have no evade other than renewed focus, which is on 90 sec CD and roots us/stops dps. We also don't have quick getaway skills (not even whirlwind that warriors have), our survival in melee rely on good aegis timing, good blind timing, dodges, as well as toughness/vitality for those inevitable misses. As glass cannon your aegis is limited, blind is limited, dodges may or may not be limited, and vitality --- it's a joke in pure glass cannon spec/gear since guardians have the lowest tier of health, 8000 away from our warrior cousins. In comparison, even a glass cannon thief can survive longer in melee, so can a shatter mesmer, and even a sword ranger can potentially do it better if he is very familiar with his animation rooting timing. I'm not saying that good guardians can't go glass cannon in dungeons without dying, I've tried and it's possible, frankly all you need is vigor + good dodges. But the whole experience is just not as synergetic as other professions and feels a bit "awkward" at times.

3. A lot of the dps listed depends on symbols (for GS particularly), which are rather unstable sources of damage. You hear staff elementalist complaining that whenever mobs move around too much, their lava font/eruption often misses, now add in the additional requirement that a guardian in GS can ONLY place these circles beneath your own feet, this means that a big chunk of the highest damage weapon that we have relies on volatile environments. This is a problem for ANY melee characters you may say, but characters can move out of red circle and jump back in, or follow a mob around and keep slashing at its back, symbols can't, so that's a very realistic problem for guardians in dungeons.

4. Despite all that, I mean, yes of course guardians can be good damage, as the OP has demonstrated. I don't think most people think to themselves that "guardians are horrible at damage" and proceed to build their guardians defensively, rather they may be very wary of giving up the goodies and sometimes blatantly OP defensive options that guardians have such that they compromised some of their damage. Playstyle is also an important thing too, you know that feeling that thieves get when they roll for initiative out of range when the boss does aoe and steal back into range to continue doing dps? They'd feel a tiny bit of warm and fuzzy inside, they'd feel that they are mastering their profession by making good use of the mechanisms and skills. As a pure dps guardian it feels sometimes quite awkward, yes I can dodge but so can everyone else. I've got aegis that is unique to me, but it is not buffed at all, so I'd have to save it for myself instead of having the luxury to use it liberally to save team mates (a sword ranger rooted in the animation and fully expect himself to die, only to find my aegis saving him, ohhhhh that feels so good every single time)... For me personally, since I've got every profession in the game, I'd like to explore each of their strength and unique features. And hence even though I am a sucker for high damage, I still try my best to juggle around dps and defensive mechanisms on my guardian.

Edited by CepaCepa, 14 December 2012 - 10:07 PM.

[TheKnox]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 27 November 2012 - 02:57 AM, said:

I believe the second number on Symbol of Protection's tooltip is the damage from both symbol and hammer swing combined.  I just subtracted the first number (which is definitely the hammer swing alone) from the second to get the symbol damage.  This is my best explanation for why the second damage tooltip is listed as x4 when the symbol actually only hits three times.

Coming back to this... After doing some testing with steady weapons in the mists, the tooltip is definitely messed up.  It is displaying the correct values if you were traited for longer symbols (4 ticks) as listed.  If you are not traited for longer symbols, the numbers do not change, and the math for damage per tick of the symbol remains consistent if you take the tooltip damage and divide by the 4x that is listed.  This means that it uses the tooltip damage for application of the symbol and additionally uses tooltip/4 times number of ticks (3 or 4 depending on traits) for the symbol itself.

I grabbed 2 screenshots for reference using the steady weapons with a soldier's amulet.  Tooltip values were 84, 94, 104, and 208 (x4) for the symbol.  Ignore the crit on the second symbol application.

It looks like your most updated numbers reflect this, but I just wanted to clarify for anybody who may be messing around with this info.

Also worth noting, the longer symbol duration trait is worth about 12% additional DPS to a hammer guardian who does nothing but chain auto attacks.

Attached Files

•  Hammer.jpg   32.2K   27 downloads

Edited by TheKnox, 02 January 2013 - 08:11 AM.

[Elysen]

Voradors, on 13 December 2012 - 09:40 PM, said:

I have been thinking about making a Guardian recently. After reading through this, i dont really understand why so many people insist that a Guardian isnt a good DPSer.

It's not that Guardians are not a good DPSer, its that they SHOULDNT be a good DPSer. Our capabilities lie elsewhere. Bringing in this "high" DPS means we have to give up so much support and survival its unbelievable. This is why its best left to Warriors & Thieves, as their Damage outdoes our damage, and they don't have to give up the sheer number of support we would have to. Not to mention Warriors will have a much higher survivability than us in glass cannon builds.

[indure]

Xephenon, on 02 January 2013 - 07:12 AM, said:

It's not that Guardians are not a good DPSer, its that they SHOULDNT be a good DPSer. Our capabilities lie elsewhere. Bringing in this "high" DPS means we have to give up so much support and survival its unbelievable. This is why its best left to Warriors & Thieves, as their Damage outdoes our damage, and they don't have to give up the sheer number of support we would have to. Not to mention Warriors will have a much higher survivability than us in glass cannon builds.

I have to disagree with this. What constitutes a build? Trait Allocation, Armor, Weapons, and Utilities.

Trait Allocation:
Due to the structure of the Guardian's trait lines, there is very little DPS differences between a full DPS build and a support/tank build, largely because the builds share 40-60 of the same trait allocation. Meaning a guardian can be very support oriented without sacrificing hardly any damage loss.

Armor:
Armor is the largest contributing factor in damage output for a guardian. Since there is no helpful "support" attributes on armor (because Healing Power is terrible), there is very little reason not to use high damage gear once you cross your own comfort level of personal survivability.

Weapons:
Weapons play a large role in your damage and support abilities, but since you can have two weapons equipped it is easy to have a support weapon and a DPS weapon equipped at the same time and switch between them when they are needed.

Utilities:
Utilities are very important for support and would be one of the only places that you would have to sacrifice large portions of support for DPS gains, although the damage loss wouldn't stop a guardian from outputting strong damage numbers.

TLDR: Guardians sacrifice very little support when speccing for higher damage. They do lose a lot of survivability if they are a glass cannon, but the same holds true for all classes, warrior and thieves included.

[lmaonade]

Xephenon, on 02 January 2013 - 07:12 AM, said:

It's not that Guardians are not a good DPSer, its that they SHOULDNT be a good DPSer. Our capabilities lie elsewhere. Bringing in this "high" DPS means we have to give up so much support and survival its unbelievable. This is why its best left to Warriors & Thieves, as their Damage outdoes our damage, and they don't have to give up the sheer number of support we would have to. Not to mention Warriors will have a much higher survivability than us in glass cannon builds.

I disagree here, there's nothing wrong with taking support based traits and going glassy with equipment, as equipment hardly increases supportive abilities even if you fully go healing power. That's mostly dependent on individual skill though, since while it's true that you don't lose any supportive abilities, your ability survival will definitely go down also, and if you can't handle the squishiness then you'll be face down on the floor with 0 support capability.

So guardians SHOULD be good DPSers, but first and foremost they should be good supports

[TheKnox]

GuanglaiKangyi, on 08 October 2012 - 05:51 PM, said:

Greatsword (20/30/20/0/0):
Auto: 677 + 677 + 1016 = 948/s
WW = 3530 total, 1160 net, 93/s (WW actually hits 14 times but tooltip only shows damage for 9.  Number listed appears to be for the 7 spin hits plus 2 projectiles.  I've approximated the damage from the other 5 projectiles accordingly)
Symbol = 2330 total, 1382 net, 66/s
Bind = 847 + 2390 (non-crit), 2289 net, 74/s
DPS = 1181 base, 2342 overall

Hammer (10/30/30/0/0)
Auto = 645, 726, 807, 1209 = 924/s
MB = 1412 total, 488 net, 103/s
DPS = 1005 base, 1965 overall

A few notes from some more testing and more math:

It looks like you aren't considering the bonus damage from the vulnerability from symbols on the 15 point Zeal trait.  For the greatsword, that would add roughly 1% additional damage to the overall number (4 stacks for about 25% uptime).

I also have a hammer build that spits out quite a bit more damage than the one you have listed.  The build is 20/25/0/25/0.  The only major traits that really matter from a DPS standpoint are Zeal II and Honor VII

Using your same basic formula from above, the hammer damage would be as follows:
Hammer (20/25/0/25/0)
Auto = 678, 762, 847, 1696 = 1086/s
MB = 1482 total, 396 net, (5.75 seconds cooldown because of no 2H mastery) 69/s
DPS = 1155 base

The scaling comes from 49% crit chance, 32% extra crit damage (total of 1.82 multiplier on crits) and the following flat scaling factors:

Fiery Wrath - 10%
Radiant Power - 10%
Elusive Power - 10%
Symbolic Exposure - 4%

Total Multiplier = [1 + (0.49 x 0.82)] x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.04 = 1.94

DPS = 1155 base, 2241 overall


If you add Symbolic Exposure into the GS calculations you'd end up with

Fiery Wrath - 10%
Radiant Power - 10%
Greatsword Power - 5%
Symbolic Exposure - 1%

Total Multiplier = [1 + (0.55 x 1.02)] x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.05 x 1.01 = 2.003

DPS = 1181 base, 2366 overall

Total Overall damage of the Greatsword is only 5.5% higher than the Hammer in the highest DPS spec for each.  That's certainly closer than the 19.2% gap from the other numbers.  You're also able to keep up an average of 3 additional stacks of vulnerability that will benefit your group as well as yourself.

Edited by TheKnox, 09 January 2013 - 04:29 AM.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

TheKnox, on 09 January 2013 - 04:28 AM, said:

A few notes from some more testing and more math:

It looks like you aren't considering the bonus damage from the vulnerability from symbols on the 15 point Zeal trait.  For the greatsword, that would add roughly 1% additional damage to the overall number (4 stacks for about 25% uptime).

I also have a hammer build that spits out quite a bit more damage than the one you have listed.  The build is 20/25/0/25/0.  The only major traits that really matter from a DPS standpoint are Zeal II and Honor VII

Using your same basic formula from above, the hammer damage would be as follows:
Hammer (20/25/0/25/0)
Auto = 678, 762, 847, 1696 = 1086/s
MB = 1482 total, 396 net, (5.75 seconds cooldown because of no 2H mastery) 69/s
DPS = 1155 base

The scaling comes from 49% crit chance, 32% extra crit damage (total of 1.82 multiplier on crits) and the following flat scaling factors:

Fiery Wrath - 10%
Radiant Power - 10%
Elusive Power - 10%
Symbolic Exposure - 4%

Total Multiplier = [1 + (0.49 x 0.82)] x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.04 = 1.94

DPS = 1155 base, 2241 overall


If you add Symbolic Exposure into the GS calculations you'd end up with

Fiery Wrath - 10%
Radiant Power - 10%
Greatsword Power - 5%
Symbolic Exposure - 1%

Total Multiplier = [1 + (0.55 x 1.02)] x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.05 x 1.01 = 2.003

DPS = 1181 base, 2366 overall

Total Overall damage of the Greatsword is only 5.5% higher than the Hammer in the highest DPS spec for each.  That's certainly closer than the 19.2% gap from the other numbers.  You're also able to keep up an average of 3 additional stacks of vulnerability that will benefit your group as well as yourself.

I think you may be right about 20/25/0/25 dealing more than 20/30/20.  That will affect the GS numbers too though.  Let me see:

Greatsword (20/25/0/25/0):
Auto: 677 + 677 + 1016 = 948/s
WW = 3530 total, 1160 net, 110/s
Symbol = 2330 total, 1382 net, 81/s
Bind = 847 + 2390, 2289 net, 91/s
DPS = 1230 base, 2432 overall

That does still put hammer considerably closer than before though.  I didn't bother to count the vulnerability just because it really isn't that good.  It's a 2-3% boost at most even for hammer.  On a boss it's literally only one stack at any given time.

[TheKnox]

I'm easily able to keep up 4-5 stacks of vulnerability using the hammer with the longer duration symbols.  The greatsword can get 4 stacks up, but it's really for a small percentage of the time.

I think you may be selling the vulnerability short.  It is basically a 4% bonus for your own damage, in addition to the direct damage of the people around you.  If you assume that everyone else is doing the same damage that you are, it can be as much as a 20% damage increase (4% x 5 people).  It obviously doesn't do anything for condition damage builds, but it is worth noting that if you're using it in a setup where the other people in your run are doing more damage than you, you'll actually end up contributing even more than an additional 20% of your own damage.  It is clearly a large variable depending on who you're running with, but it's a fairly large damage boost to the group particularly for the mace and the hammer, which can keep the symbols up basically 100% of the time.

It is obviously less useful on bosses (because of the half duration), but it still has full impact on any adds that pop up.

I'm also curious about the cast times you're using for the Greatsword skills, as they don't really seem to math out to the numbers I'm expecting.  It is possible that you've just edited the numbers enough times that they don't all match up anymore.

Specifically, it looks like you're using a 1.675 second activation for the WW.  I've timed it several times, and pretty much always end up right around 12.25 seconds between casts (10 second cooldown and 2.25 second animation).

Edited by TheKnox, 09 January 2013 - 07:34 AM.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

TheKnox, on 09 January 2013 - 07:17 AM, said:

I'm easily able to keep up 4-5 stacks of vulnerability using the hammer with the longer duration symbols.  The greatsword can get 4 stacks up, but it's really for a small percentage of the time.

I think you may be selling the vulnerability short.  It is basically a 4% bonus for your own damage, in addition to the direct damage of the people around you.  If you assume that everyone else is doing the same damage that you are, it can be as much as a 20% damage increase (4% x 5 people).  It obviously doesn't do anything for condition damage builds, but it is worth noting that if you're using it in a setup where the other people in your run are doing more damage than you, you'll actually end up contributing even more than an additional 20% of your own damage.  It is clearly a large variable depending on who you're running with, but it's a fairly large damage boost to the group particularly for the mace and the hammer, which can keep the symbols up basically 100% of the time.

It is obviously less useful on bosses (because of the half duration), but it still has full impact on any adds that pop up.

I'm also curious about the cast times you're using for the Greatsword skills, as they don't really seem to math out to the numbers I'm expecting.  It is possible that you've just edited the numbers enough times that they don't all match up anymore.

Specifically, it looks like you're using a 1.675 second activation for the WW.  I've timed it several times, and pretty much always end up right around 12.25 seconds between casts (10 second cooldown and 2.25 second animation).

WW is 2.5s cast, so with 2HM it's 10.5s total.  The numbers should be right.  That particular number anyway.

Interestingly, Writ of Persistence actually seems to have about the same effect on overall DPS as Two-Handed Mastery.

[TheKnox]

With neither 2H Mastery or Writ of Persistence using the 20/30/20/0/0 setup:


Auto: 677 + 677 + 1016 = 2370 total, 2370/2.5 = 948/s
WW = 3530 total, 3530/2.5 = 1412/s, 1412 - 948 = 464 net, 464 / 12.5 = 37.1/s
Symbol = 2330 total, 2330 - 948 = 1382 net, 1382 / 21 = 65.8/s
Bind = 847 + 2390 = 3237 total, 3237 - 3237 = 2289 net, 2289 / 31 = 73.8/s
DPS = 1124.7 Base
Total Multiplier = [1 + (0.55 x 1.02)] x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.05x1.01 = 2.003
DPS = 2252.7741 Overall - 2547.4455 with Fury



20/25/0/25/0 with 2H mastery to reduce the cooldowns of all of the net damage increasers:

Auto: 677 + 677 + 1016 = 2370 total, 2370/2.5 = 948/s
WW = 3530 total, 3530/2.5 = 1412, 1412 - 948 = 464 net, 464 / 10.5 = 44.2/s
Symbol = 2330 total, 2330 - 948 = 1382 net, 1382 / 17 = 81.3/s
Bind = 847 + 2390 = 3237 total, 3237 - 3237 = 2289 net, 2289 / 25 = 91.6/s
DPS = 1165.1 Base
Total Multiplier = [1 + (0.49 x 0.82)] x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.05x1.01 = 1.98
DPS = 2306.898 Overall - 2549.2388  with Fury



20/25/0/25/0 with Writ of Persistence adding 2 ticks of symbol damage for 7/5 of the original number:

Auto: 677 + 677 + 1016 = 2370 total, 2370/2.5 = 948/s
WW = 3530 total, 3530/2.5 = 1412, 1412 - 948 = 464 net, 464 / 12.5 = 37.1/s
Symbol = 3262 total, 3262 - 948 = 2314 net, 2314 / 21 = 110.2/s
Bind = 847 + 2390 = 3237 total, 3237 - 3237 = 2289 net, 2289 / 31 = 73.8/s
DPS = 1169.1 Base
Total Multiplier = [1 + (0.49 x 0.82)] x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.1 x 1.05x1.01 = 1.98
DPS = 2314.818 Overall - 2557.9908 with Fury

The difference between the 2H mastery setup and the Writ of Persistence is pretty much 0.  I'd imagine with that information that most people would prefer to grab the cooldown reduction because it allows you to use your utility skills more often.

Feel free to double check my math.  If the cast times for any of the other abilities are not 1 second, I can easily update the numbers.

I added in the difference you would see if you had fury supplied by somebody else, just to point out that the crit damage build scales better with that buff, making it basically equivalent to the other two when Fury is up.

Edited by TheKnox, 09 January 2013 - 08:46 PM.

[LocoDice81]

although this thread has been sitting for a little while i would like to ask why you do not factor in burn as part of the overall dps?
since you assume that you will get a constant 10% damage increase of zeal II burn has to be a given and in that case raises dps by 328+100(250 conditon damage from zeal) which would mean a 18% increase. or do you leave it out because you expect that the burn could have diffrent sources?

in either case zeal II seems a little unreliable as a damage modifier.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

LocoDice81, on 19 March 2013 - 06:48 PM, said:

although this thread has been sitting for a little while i would like to ask why you do not factor in burn as part of the overall dps?
since you assume that you will get a constant 10% damage increase of zeal II burn has to be a given and in that case raises dps by 328+100(250 conditon damage from zeal) which would mean a 18% increase. or do you leave it out because you expect that the burn could have diffrent sources?

in either case zeal II seems a little unreliable as a damage modifier.

Because burn sucks.

[LocoDice81]

okay.

another question:

In you OP you said Auto: 645 + 645 + 968 = 941/s
if I followed the thread correctly the chain is done in 2.5 secs. so shouldn't the auto attack dps 903,2? therefor increase the dps sum even more?
just want to understand your formular.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

LocoDice81, on 19 March 2013 - 08:05 PM, said:

okay.

another question:

In you OP you said Auto: 645 + 645 + 968 = 941/s
if I followed the thread correctly the chain is done in 2.5 secs. so shouldn't the auto attack dps 903,2? therefor increase the dps sum even more?
just want to understand your formular.

No, I think you're right.  Honestly?  I'm pretty sure I had a reason why it was 941 but now I forget what it was, because it's been so long.  I think one of those two numbers was out of date and I revised it in a subsequent pass but didn't correct every figure.

[Kovares]

I just stumbled across something weird on the official forums. Someone actually advocates full carrion gear over berserker's for solo farming. The berserker's still performs better, but the margin is surprisingly close.

The calculations do seem reasonably close, but I can't wrap my head around it, because that goes totally against my personal impression.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

Kovares, on 20 March 2013 - 09:14 PM, said:

I just stumbled across something weird on the official forums. Someone actually advocates full carrion gear over berserker's for solo farming. The berserker's still performs better, but the margin is surprisingly close.

The calculations do seem reasonably close, but I can't wrap my head around it, because that goes totally against my personal impression.

There's a reason I don't post on the official forums, and that's because everyone there is totally clueless.  I have no idea what that guy's even doing but his numbers are all over the place and vastly misinformed.  I'm not even going to try to make sense of them, but suffice to say carrion gear is bad.  I'm not going to bother making sense of the numbers so you can just look at it this way:

Replacing Zerker with Carrion:
- Minus 300 power
- Minus 700 precision
- Total loss of the crit modifier
- Plus 1000 condition damage

300 power is worth about 16% damage in this case, and the total loss of crits will cost you about 72% damage.  This thread is a bit outdated; in the current revision of the game it's most efficient to go 25/25/20/0/0 in terms of raw DPS, which will net you about 2763 per second in terms of raw damage, if my halfassed napkin math is correct.  Add 390 per second from burn to that and you get roughly 3.1k/s.  By comparison, with carrion, you lose a huge chunk of direct damage, dropping your direct damage to 1385.  In exchange, you add about 250 burn damage, so your total is about 2025/s, give or take.  3100 versus 2025, and that's a bit of a stretch, since you're assuming you can maintain 100% burn duration while retaining the damage boosts from a 25/25/20/0/0 trait spread.  In actuality you'll probably end up losing both Fiery Wrath and 25 in Radiance, which will drop your DPS more than 250 points, leaving you with less than 1800 all together.  That means carrion actually gets less than 60% of what zerker gets.  You can also forget about using anything with an on-crit effect, so no lifesteal or might on crit.

Good enough for solo farming?  Probably.  Optimal?  Not by a long shot.

Edited by GuanglaiKangyi, 20 March 2013 - 09:59 PM.

[keithstoneheart]

Nevermind. 12chars

Edited by keithstoneheart, 22 March 2013 - 02:03 PM.

[Bloodgruve]

Hey Guru's

Long time lurker, first time poster.

TYVM for this thread, its great to see some numbers here.

I run Hammer and I've been messing around with a few builds. Been messing with some calculations also using your equation. Not sure if I'm doing this right so please correct me if I'm wrong.

Hammer (25/15/0/30/0) - Writ of Persistence, Empowering Might, Fiery Wrath
Auto = (694+780+867+1736) / 3.6sec = 1132.5 dps
MB = 1518 total, ? net, 65/s(ratio of increase as I wasn't sure exactaly how you got this calculation)
DPS = 1197.5 base, 2776 overall
-or-
DPS = 1197.5 base, 1746.7 overall (using paper doll crit damage value)

Calculation 1197.5 x (1+(0.45 x 1.82)) x (1+(.10+.10+.075)) = 2776.1 dps
45% crit rate
32% crit dmg + 150% base crit dmg = 182% actual (is this value correct?)
10% Fiery Wrath
10% Elusive Power
7.5% Empowering Might
Superior Sigil of Force not taken into account.
Berserker's Amulet and Divinity Runes used.

Again, please correct this where needed. I think something is off here but not sure what it is.

Best regards,

Blood~

Edited by Bloodgruve, 02 April 2013 - 09:45 PM.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

I was going to make a DPS calculator spreadsheet, sorta like what TheKnox has but more user-friendly.  Then you'll just be able to plug in your gear, traits, and sigils and it'll give you your overall damage output.

Bug me about it if I haven't uploaded it in a few days.

[Nespinha]

Interesting post indeed! Do you have base and overall damage for the torch?

These stats just show that scepter is a lot of times an undervalued dps weapon

Edited by Nespinha, 04 April 2013 - 11:54 PM.

[Karazul]

So, this means that even after the revealed nerf, thiefs are still the top dps class?