24 replies to this topic

[matsif]

Quote

• Weapons now continue to grant bonus stats while bundles are equipped.
  
• Bundles from player skills (engineer kits, elementalist conjured weapons, warrior banners) now have base damage that is consistent with the highest rarity weapons available at the level of the player.

sounds like it's time to run some numbers on direct damage grenades again, and some more on the flamethrower.

[TGIFrisbie]

It doesn't appear that having a higher level weapon has any effect.  Since my engineer is my last alt that I play and I have played her like 0 real hours since she hit 80 a few weeks ago, can anyone confirm the difference with a white upgradable weapon of low level is any better than a fully blown exotic level 80 when you have a kit, like Flamethrower, in use?

The way i read it is there is no reason to buy anything if you are an avid kit user, you get max level effect with anything.

Edited by TGIFrisbie, 28 January 2013 - 09:33 PM.

[matsif]

TGIFrisbie, on 28 January 2013 - 09:32 PM, said:

It doesn't appear that having a higher level weapon has any effect.  Since my engineer is my last alt that I play and I have played her like 0 real hours since she hit 80 a few weeks ago, can anyone confirm the difference with a white upgradable weapon of low level is any better than a fully blown exotic level 80 when you have a kit, like Flamethrower, in use?

The way i read it is there is no reason to buy anything if you are an avid kit user, you get max level effect with anything.

I'm at 2% on the update so no real info yet, but you are reading it wrong.  the way it goes means the kits have a base damage of the highest available damage to the player, AND weapon extra stats (the +x power, +y precision, etc) take effect now.

for bullet 1:
-if you had an exotic berserker's rifle, you would get +179 power, +128 precision, and +9% critical damage.  all weapon stats like this apply to kits now, so when you pull out a kit you won't lose any stats you'd have on your rifle.  

for bullet 2:
-the base damage stat (that rifle's 986–1,205 damage on a tooltip) for a kit is now of the highest rarity available to the player at his current level. so, at level 80, since kits replace your whole bar, I would assume they count as 2 handed weapons now, and would also get that base damage stat of 986–1,205.  I could be wrong here, they might just count as a pistol, which would be lame.

so, yes buying a weapon is worth it now other than just being a sigil holder, because your weapon stats count on the kits.

Edited by matsif, 28 January 2013 - 09:53 PM.

[TGIFrisbie]

Shall see, I was actually testing this last night as I was finally working on gearing out my Engi.  Stopped at rare 80 pistols since I saw no benefit to getting exotics.  Gonna monitor what peeps are finding with this patch.

[CepaCepa]

matsif, on 28 January 2013 - 09:48 PM, said:

so, yes buying a weapon is worth it now other than just being a sigil holder, because your weapon stats count on the kits.

So that's 6% crit, 9% crit damage (or condition damage), nearly 10% damage increase due to power, AND upgraded weapon damage --- A total of about 20% damage increase for engineers. WoW. I don't know yet about berserker vs conditions without some numbers, but with the extra condition damage on par with other professions --- Necros, watch out, we're now officially taking over lol...

[FoxBat]

Weapon Damage on Engie bundles is still 969 according to the character screen (attack power) and tooltip damage. Albeit it's possible this is lying. Weapon stat bonuses are being factored correctly there.

[GuanglaiKangyi]

I am guessing that this means that, rather than being more powerful at level 80, that when you are downscaled, your kit's stats downscale with it.  So if you are level 80, you will get the damage stat of a level 80 exotic, while if you are level 50, you will only get the damage stat of a level 50 rare.

[FoxBat]

Exotic pistols have average weapon damage of 952, so I think guang is right. We already had our "exotic" (1h)  bundle weapon damage all along, this was just part of their strengthening scaling efforts.

Edited by FoxBat, 29 January 2013 - 07:46 AM.

[Gerroh]

Kits had a weapon damage stat before this update, can't remember what it was for the kits I used, but I remember seeing it. It was like 950 or something.
I think what's going on is what Guanglai said, about it scaling... or something, I have no idea. Whatever, we'll see. The stats going from your weapon onto your kit is definitely a bonus, though.

[Killyox]

Well, in PVE flamethrower is pretty decent.

I recently tried gearing  PWR THG VIT on armor with runes to Magic Find and jewelery is full PWR PRC CDM. Now i also throw in around Flame Turret for higher Burn uptime since they now scale with out stats. +15% dmg from FT and Juggernaut to help with direct dmg and dots from FT and turret.

Not the best dmg but still really good and you are tough.

Gerroh, on 29 January 2013 - 07:49 AM, said:

Kits had a weapon damage stat before this update, can't remember what it was for the kits I used, but I remember seeing it. It was like 950 or something.
I think what's going on is what Guanglai said, about it scaling... or something, I have no idea. Whatever, we'll see. The stats going from your weapon onto your kit is definitely a bonus, though.

I depended on the kit but they didng have power, precision crit dmg etc

[Fenice_86]

So... is anyone noticing the difference and maybe provide some screenshots?

[Killyox]

Fenice_86, on 29 January 2013 - 09:36 AM, said:

So... is anyone noticing the difference and maybe provide some screenshots?

tbh difference is quite big.

with rifle 2h pwr prc cdmg that 9% more dmg on crit ore crit chance and higher power is really noticeable, also turrets benefitting from condition dmg and duration are ok. Rocket turret and flame are a lot better now. Now if only they also scaled with power/crit/crit dmg and could crit. Might make rifle and thumper useful too

matsif, on 28 January 2013 - 09:26 PM, said:

sounds like it's time to run some numbers on direct damage grenades again, and some more on the flamethrower.

Well, my FT direct dmg can go as high as 3100 in single channel (burn EXCLUDED). that is with pwr/vit/thg armor and MF runes so no additional stats from this. jewelery is pwr/prc/cdm with similar stones.  Traits 0/30/20/20/0 with +15% dd from FT and juggernaut.

Rifle has sigil of blood so 7-11(14with more swaps) stacks of might constantly. Even better when i also drop flame turret because obviously juggernaut bonuses from condi dmg are applied

My guess is that with full pwr/prec/cdm build FT would hit a lot harder so maybe 4k+ channels

Edited by Killyox, 29 January 2013 - 11:48 AM.

[Thaddeuz]

Ya the difference is quit big. But sorry i don't have screenshot.

The average weapons damage for a Engineer's Kit was 916 before. Now at level 80 its 1095 for a rifle and 952 for pistol. After that you need to take into account the huge boost in stats from your weapons.

The thing i still don't know is what Average Weapons damage is used. I need to make more test to figure it out. Does your kit take the highest weapon damage possible? or of does it depend on the actual weapon you have.

[FoxBat]

Thaddeuz, on 29 January 2013 - 04:09 PM, said:

Ya the difference is quit big. But sorry i don't have screenshot.

The average weapons damage for a Engineer's Kit was 916 before. Now at level 80 its 1095 for a rifle and 952 for pistol. After that you need to take into account the huge boost in stats from your weapons.

At level 80 It was 969 and it still is. Your gear weapon damage still isn't used at all.

Doing a little more digging it looks like the "buff" to kits happened at low levels. They likely had a table that started lvl 1 kits off around a white and smoothly scaled up to an exotic at 80. But now that's been changed to "jump" up when a new gear tier becomes available (which I guess is how gear downscaling works?) So it's a boon both for leveling and when playing downscaled. Don't have old numbers to compare but at least now I can see that kits have more weapon damage at 30 than exotic pistol.

[Thaddeuz]

FoxBat, on 29 January 2013 - 08:54 PM, said:

At level 80 It was 969 and it still is. Your gear weapon damage still isn't used at all.

And where do you get your 969. Don't get me wrong, I'm just curious. I did a lot of testing and research for other player who tested the numbers and 920 (sorry its wasn't 916 i made a error) was the number that come out the most. Maybe i missed something.

[Killyox]

Btw. When using FLAMETHROWER in PVE use that food that has 36-40% chance to grant might on crit. It has no Internal CD. With flamethrower i often had 25 Might stacks (7 came from jggernaut).

Makes a reaaaalllll difference. Had 44% crit. With fury up it's even easier.

Have fun

[FoxBat]

Thaddeuz, on 29 January 2013 - 09:00 PM, said:

And where do you get your 969. Don't get me wrong, I'm just curious. I did a lot of testing and research for other player who tested the numbers and 920 (sorry its wasn't 916 i made a error) was the number that come out the most. Maybe i missed something.

I fail, the char screen's weapon damage comes from max not average.

Maybe some testing is in order... tooltip damage @ 80 in pvp is unchanged though.

[coglin]

Lets clear something up that seems to be confusing everyone

they said
"base damage that is consistent with the highest rarity weapons available at the level of the player"

They did not say
"base damage that will now be equal with the highest weapon equipped by the player"

Thus they adjusted certain skill coefficients on certain kits to get them to that point.

Edited by coglin, 29 January 2013 - 11:55 PM.

[FoxBat]

Every skill coefficient I've checked so far at level 80 based on 920 weapon damage and the coefficients here is creating the expected tooltip (aka no change.) Not a super scientific test but the difference between tooltip and lion's arch dummies seems consistent compared to rifle. Some weird stuff might be going on at lower levels, but I don't know what armor value is being calculated against there.

[Thaddeuz]

Ok i tested it in length yesterday guys. I used the same SSC than you Foxbat. I tested all grenade (except grenade 3) with 4 scenario.

1) Without armor or weapons
2) With armor but without weapons
3) With armor and 2 exotic pistols
4) With armor and 1 exotic rifle

This give me a Average Weapons Damage of 925 with a maximum error of 0.4% between my results and the tooltip damage. If you want to check my result and my method, I invite you in this topic. I will post my latest version of my spreadsheet (in about 1 hour), which gonna include this test.

http://www.guildwars...mg-spreadsheet/

[Kuskah]

So, is the direct dmg, a.k.a. Berserker's Grenadier viable again?

[FoxBat]

Kuskah, on 01 February 2013 - 12:30 PM, said:

So, is the direct dmg, a.k.a. Berserker's Grenadier viable again?

Don't really know why people pretended it wasn't.viable before. Direct damage is still favorable compared to flamethrower or rifle, a little behind bombs but you got range, life steal procs, and way more vulnerability. Sure it's not going to wear down bosses as fast as condi grenades, but condis limitations are well known too.

Anyway so far I don't think weapon damage has changed for level 80 kits, so while the weapon stats help, they aren't that big a deal, and boost condi nades just as much as power ones. You might see better results than before when downscaled in lower dungeons, not really sure though.

[Kuskah]

FoxBat, on 01 February 2013 - 12:44 PM, said:

Don't really know why people pretended it wasn't.viable before. Direct damage is still favorable compared to flamethrower or rifle, a little behind bombs but you got range, life steal procs, and way more vulnerability. Sure it's not going to wear down bosses as fast as condi grenades, but condis limitations are well known too.

Anyway so far I don't think weapon damage has changed for level 80 kits, so while the weapon stats help, they aren't that big a deal, and boost condi nades just as much as power ones. You might see better results than before when downscaled in lower dungeons, not really sure though.

Well, it got significantly weaker after the 30% damage nerf. That's the reason I switched to FT, because it actually feels stronger (to me anyway) than nades after the nerf.

Maybe I chose wrong wording of the question. What I was ultimately getting at was whether the active Sigils & Weapon stats offset the 30% damage reduction from before...

Edited by Kuskah, 01 February 2013 - 01:02 PM.

[FoxBat]

Kuskah, on 01 February 2013 - 01:00 PM, said:

Well, it got significantly weaker after the 30% damage nerf. That's the reason I switched to FT, because it actually feels stronger (to me anyway) than nades after the nerf.

Well there's how you feel, and then there's math. FT does have a number of upsides, but bottom line is the autoattack does 1.50 x damage in the same time that nerfed grenades deal 2.0. Jugg offers 7-8 might stacks, but having just as much vuln on defiant bosses does much more for your party, meanwhile you'll have double that on everyone else.

If you keep comparing to old grenades you'll probably be disappointed, but there was some reasoning behind the nerf. They were previously so far ahead of other kits, that even in their current nerfed state, they are still arguably a little better than the alternatives.in power spec (to speak nothing of their condition spec.)

Edited by FoxBat, 01 February 2013 - 11:33 PM.

[Thaddeuz]

You can be mad as much as you can for the 30% nerf for the grenade, but they were overpowered vs other kit. Now with sigil + weapons stats, grenade are pretty much as devastating as pre-nerf nade was, but a better balance exist now between the different kits. Maybe not perfect, but way better.