Guild Wars 2

This is quite popular topic nowadays and there seems to quite many wrong numbers and misconceptions. I’m no expert with build theorycrafting but here are some basics.

First some basic facts:

• Skills have a cast time, an aftercast time and a cooldown.
• Cooldown starts expiring AFTER aftercast has finished.
• Using another skill or doing an action may interrupt the aftercast (going to take a better look at this tomorrow).
• Quickness increases casting speed by 50%. This reduces cast times by 33%.
• Alacrity increases recharge speed by 66%. This reduces cooldowns by 40%.

For example traited Lava Font has a 4 second cooldown. If you just spam it on ground on cooldown you can use it every 6.5 seconds because it has like 1.5 seconds of aftercast. However if you also use Fireball the aftercast gets reduced to 0.4 seconds so you can use Lava Font every 4.4 seconds.

Alacrity removes 40% of cooldown so 4 seconds becomes 2.4 seconds. Because of aftercast you can use it every 2.8 seconds. The actual recharge was reduced by 36%.

Quickness removes 33% of the cast time. Lava Font after cast becomes 0.27 seconds so you can use it every 4.27 seconds. So on top of using it faster you can also use it more often!

The impact of alacrity and quickness varies from skill to skill. With long cast times quickness is more effective and with long cooldowns alacrity is more effective.

Let’s buff quickness to 66%. This means both cast times and cooldowns get reduced by 40%. This is basically same as watching a video on fast forward. Everything happens 40% faster. In this situation most builds would simply do 66% more damage.

Let’s nerf alacrity to 50%. Same as above but most builds would simply do 50% more damage.

Now, we know that the actual situation is worse then the first scenario but better than the second scenario. This simply means that most builds will do 50%-66% more damage with quickness and alacrity.

Builds relying more on autoattacks and high cast times benefit more from quickness and get closer to the 50% boost. Builds relying more on cooldowns benefit more from alacrity and get closer to the 66% boost. Most builds are probably between 55% – 60%.

So the alacrity nerf from 66% to 33% changes this 50%-66% boost to a 33%-50% boost.

Unfortunately it isn’t that simple because there are lots of stuff which won’t go fast forward. All kind of buffs and debuffs still last the same time. You will get increased upkeep on might, fury, vulnerability, banners and transformations which increases your damage further.

But it’s not all good. I’m pretty sure that internal cooldowns (sigils, runes and traits) won’t get affected by alacrity. Also when the speed goes up so does your inefficiency. Quickness and alacrity won’t improve your latency, micro skills or reflexes.

Also there is a concept I call rotational efficiency. Basically it’s about not being able to use your important skills on cooldown because of cast times. For example an autoattack with 0.75 s cast and an important skill with 1 s recharge. You can either use 2 autos and have the important skill waiting or use 1 auto and wait a bit. Either way it’s going to be less efficient than having an autoattack with 0.5 s or 1 s cast, even if DPS values were same.

I haven’t researched this extensively but here is what I think. Quickness reduces cast times compared to recharge so on average it improves efficiency. Similarly alacrity reduces efficiency. While your recharges get reduced you may not be able to benefit from it! At the momemnt alacrity is a bit stronger than quickness so most builds should experience reduced rotational efficiency.

All in all, I think that 55%-60% baseline, +5% if you rely on a transformation and -5% if you have all buffs capped is a good estimate for all builds. If anyone has something more sophisticated please let me know.

I would edit the first post but character limit Here is some stuff about aftercasts:

So using warrior greatsword autochain takes 2.45 seconds. Dodging takes 1 second. Autochain has 2.3 coefficients (with +10% damage from trait so 2.53). Reckless Dodge has like 0.85 coefficients (not sure what weapon it uses).

Spamming auto is 1.03 coefficients / s. Spamming dodge is 0.85 coefficients / s.

However the total rotation is 2.95 seconds when dodging right after Brutal Strike (last hit on the chain). This means dodging only added 0.5 seconds which gives it 1.7 coefficients / s.

Another example is warhorn. I’m sure most warrior users are aware of the gigantic 1.5 seconds cast time. Dodging right after it finishes or using for example Blood Reckoning reduces total cast to 0.8 seconds.

You forget to WARNING that:
These result start from the assumption of 100% quickness\alacrity uptime.

In other words it’s possible to get your result only in those situation:
1) 5 men party with a single chrono (aka istance\fotm)
2) 10 men raid with 2 chrono (1 for party)

In the normal situation of a raid with a single chrono the average raid dmg increase is 40% or less.

https://goo.gl/4HPjF8

hmm

ive been wondering about the numbers on this topic as it relates to engi. you see, not only are you getting 66% more casts (or however much), youre also reducing cds to the point where you can eliminate some of the weaker skills from your rotation. with quickness and alacrity, i simply do not have time to cast poison dart volley because better skills are always off cd. whereas with neither, i normally have enough time to frequently keep it on cd. intuitively, i would guess that purifying my rotation raises my dps very significantly.

The biggest point of this topic is that people think that quickness is 50% more damage and alacrity is 66% more damage so you get 150% more damage. Even when ~65% is the absolute maximum for having the both effects.

The Alacrity change pretty heavily affects current raid balance. (mostly health of the bosses) It’d be nice to have a ballpark as to how much damage each class will lose since our mileage varies. Using the current meta, most raid groups will probably do less damage after this patch but the question is how much? Is it enough to justify the bosses having their health reduced slightly? Probably.

Nokaru.7831:

Is it enough to justify the bosses having their health reduced slightly? Probably.

Surely you meant increased?

Wethospu.6437:

The biggest point of this topic is that people think that quickness is 50% more damage and alacrity is 66% more damage so you get 150% more damage. Even when ~65% is the absolute maximum for having the both effects.

ah, I see. I understand. thanks

RemiRome.8495:

Nokaru.7831:

Is it enough to justify the bosses having their health reduced slightly? Probably.

Surely you meant increased?

Does reducing the effectiveness of Alacrity increase our damage instead of reducing it?

Dude, most half-decent puggy teams kill VG comfortably with 1-2 mins left on timer… and need to stop sucking at gorseval, hint: dodge the aa.

One problem with this post is that it assumes 100% alacrity uptime no matter what. In reality the alacrity nerf is harder than you suggest, because reduced alacrity effectiveness on the chronomancer also reduces alacrity uptime for the entire party, especially in a raid scenario where he may be trying to provide for two separate groups.

Also you did touch on it in your post a bit, but the disparity between alacrity effectiveness on different classes is monstrously high. Alacrity on power Revenant and power Thief has virtually no effect since neither one uses cooldown skills at all (with a couple minor exceptions) in their max dps rotation, and so almost every bit of the cooldown reduction is wasted and the dps increase is probably like 2-3% or maybe even less. Condi engineer and Warrior on the other hand probably get close to the full 40% damage boost (or 36% or whatever depending on cast times), because they have high dps skills with low cooldowns, and can remove their lower dps skills from their rotations entirely. So an alacrity nerf by 15% or whatever is indirectly a damage buff to Rev and Thief by about that amount for many pve applications, since their personal dps will not suffer at all.

Other than that it’s pretty solid though. I doubt most players think about the actual dps boost provided by either of these buffs, they just know that they increase party dps by a whole lot, lol.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Condi engineer and Warrior on the other hand probably get close to the full 40% damage boost (or 36% or whatever depending on cast times), because they have high dps skills with low cooldowns, and can remove their lower dps skills from their rotations entirely.

this is approximately what i was asking. but after thinking about it more, what weth is saying is that high cd classes approach the higher upper bound of +66% damage almost regardless of quickness, while autoing classes approach the upper bound approach the lower upper bound of +50% damage almost regardless of alacrity.

when i have both buffs on a high cd class, i still do more damage because i am able to work in the lower dps skills i wouldnt have time to cast without quickness, but its still bounded by that number thats somewhere between 50 and 66%.

insanemaniac.2456:

Dinosaurs.8674:

Condi engineer and Warrior on the other hand probably get close to the full 40% damage boost (or 36% or whatever depending on cast times), because they have high dps skills with low cooldowns, and can remove their lower dps skills from their rotations entirely.

this is approximately what i was asking. but after thinking about it more, what weth is saying is that high cd classes approach the higher upper bound of +66% damage almost regardless of quickness, while autoing classes approach the upper bound approach the lower upper bound of +50% damage almost regardless of alacrity.

when i have both buffs on a high cd class, i still do more damage because i am able to work in the lower dps skills i wouldnt have time to cast without quickness, but its still bounded by that number thats somewhere between 50 and 66%.

I wasn’t disagreeing with that idea, I was actually saying something else altogether that I though deserved expanding upon from the original post. I was pointing out that a nerf to alacrity is actually a substantial buff to builds/classes if their max dps rotation already didn’t involve primarily skills with no cooldowns. I mean sure rev sword autos might be nerfed by 10% or whatever, but if the other highest dps classes got nerfed even harder by alacrity changes, then rev is going to actually become more desirable because rev will do more damage now relative to condi warrior, engineer, tempest, etc.