Guild Wars 2

Builds:

GS + A/M: 30/25/0/0/15, V, IX, XI | V, X | None.

A/M DWA: 30/30/0/10/0, V, X, XI | I, V, XIII | VI

Assumptions:

Both: 25 might, both banners, permanently bleeding targets, permanent fury, permanent 15% from Berserker’s Power. Same sigils, same runes, same anything.
Round up/down Float -> Int for Critchance and Critdamage. Full ascended berserker equipment, 6 power infusions, 8 precise infusions.

GS: 10% Slashing Power, Forceful Greatsword cooldown reduction, bladetrail using GS traits, even while on A/M, 58% uptime (round down from 58, 1/3%)
A/M: 5% from Mace. 42% uptime (round up from 41, 2/3%)
A/M DWA: 5% from Mace, 10% Critdmg from Axe Mastery, 8.2% from DWA, 3 boons permanently for Empower, 2 signets permanently for Deep Strikes.

Test:

10 minutes of attacking the indestructible golem in the mists, counting each damage hit on each weapon set, for both, GS +A/M and A/M DWA. Golem was permanently bleeding. This was just to get coefficients/time with hopefully low variance (kitten you critchance/weapon coefficient) for each set.

Results of HotM tests:

383838 damage over 600 seconds by GS + A/M, 238706 damage by GS, 145132 by A/M.
340740 damage over 600 seconds by A/M DWA.

Results (E-Power):

59470.5 E-Power for GS + A/M, 67k for GS, 51k for A/M.
58688.0 E-Power for A/M DWA.

Fazit:

Using ingame values instead of wiki coefficients, GS + A/M is actually stronger than pure A/M DWA by 1.33%

Anyone is welcome to test this himself, I surely had quite a few human errors in my rotations, aswell as I’m not sure about the bladetrail hits, counting for which weapon set.

Hi, Dub,
First of all, thanks for your effort!
Yes, you’re right but it works only in the situation were the mob is not moving, ccing nor hitting … like with the golem in the mist.
So in dongeons you need to take in consideration those facts! 100blades with war for instance is a very demanding skill your war can’t move or dodge or … you need to stay still to make the most damage possible it can work but in some dongeons only not all of them. so with the 6/6/0/2/0 you’re always ready to dodge and you are ready for any situation that can help your group and of course the damage on the boons that your group can give you.
This is only my point of view some players are more confortabale with gs and are very good with their rotations ….

Both hundred blades and axe auto have backloaded damage, so you need to not dodge to make your axe auto do as much damage as possible.

Hundred blades does not have backloaded damage.

Dub for president

Curious, so with whirlwind into wall GS would pull ahead a bit more. Though I imagine for the empower allies build, pure axe would still come ahead.

Why is this in the Dungeons subforum instead of the Warrior’s?

Axelwarrior.9084:

Why is this in the Dungeons subforum instead of the Warrior’s?

Healshout warriors do not care for this type of information.

Axelwarrior.9084:

Why is this in the Dungeons subforum instead of the Warrior’s?

Because the warrior subforum isnt a good venue for intelligent conversation.

My numbers, after discussing a lot with Dub, look like this…

GS Burst portion = 15,338 dps x .58 = 8,896
GS Axe Portion = 11,591 dps x .42 = 4,868
Total dps = 13,764

Pure Axe = 13,982

The only thing I differed with on my assumption was I assumed boss against a wall, so I gave credit for WWA but did not use blade trail.

The differences aren’t that much, well within the range of human rotational error, dodging, and the various vicissitudes of combat.

My advice is the following…

1. Run an EA warrior as your main warrior.
2. Your second warrior should be another ele.
3. If you must run a pure dps warrior, run the one whose rotation you will mess up the least.

Tree.3916:

My advice is the following…

1. Run an EA warrior as your main warrior.
2. Your second warrior should be another ele.

I said the exact same thing to Dub just now. lol

The other thing I mentioned to him is that in a group setting, where Ele’s are capping might, Forceful GS is gonna replace the Ele’s long-lasting might with a bunch of short-might. So while the a/m + GS build Dub used to solo-test here used Forceful GS to give it more might than the a/m DWA build, in a group setting, the DWA build will have, on average, higher might than the GS build. So, in a group setting, the DWA build will work better than the GS build, contrary to Dub’s solo-results here.

Missing the point. The point is 6/5 is still superior to 6/6 for pure damage. You would only run one warrior in a speedrun anyway so it doesnt matter.

And GS is far superior to A/M in everything else but a vacuum (where it also would be, if might didn’t drop). Even before the patch the raw axe dps was comparable to gs + a/m dps and that didn’t make us use raw axe builds. Using raw axe builds now doesn’t make much more sense than before the update. Nothing changed, 30/25 is far superior in everything besides raw dps vacuum tests and even there, assuming might stays at 25, it’s stronger aswell.

Edit: Also, with a Phalanx Strength warrior, your might won’t drop, even if you’re using forceful gs. Which you can swap out for almost no dps loss, by the way. My rotations have not been using 100b on cooldown, just Bladetrail and Rush might cause a little loss.

Edit 2: My calculation has actually been with 2-3 whirlwind attack hits, you even hit those on asura sized bosses. 3 is about average for most bosses, 4 for bigger sized/in a corner one’s.

Nike asked me to chime in with my numbers but I don’t care enough to try to copy-paste kitten on a phone. You can ask him yourself but the numbers I came up with were 10-18% higher for 6/6/0/2/0 A/M+DWA than for 6/5/0/0/3 GS+A/M, assuming all the tooltip numbers are correct. I can’t speak for the coefficients but maybe you want to try to figure out exactly which tooltip is apparently incorrect, as it may make a big difference overall for figuring out the best warrior builds.

The best warrior build, for any realistic casual dungeon run, is 30/25/0/0/15.

And for tooltips, there’s just not one wrong. They all are.

Dub.1273:

The best warrior build, for any realistic casual dungeon run, is 30/25/0/0/15.

And for tooltips, there’s just not one wrong. They all are.

This is relatively sad. So does this mean we basically have to test absolutely everything now in game since the spreadsheets do not account for what is truly happening in game?

Dub.1273:

The best warrior build, for any realistic casual dungeon run, is 30/25/0/0/15.

And for tooltips, there’s just not one wrong. They all are.

That’s massively unhelpful since for the most part the tooltips are correct. In this case we have basically two possible scenarios:

1) Axe auto deals less than the tooltip claims = warrior is much weaker than we originally thought.

2) HB deals more than the tooltip claims = warrior is actually much better than we originally thought.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like to know the answer to that question.

We can’t even know what critchance and what critdamage our character actually has. And as for the tooltips, I can’t think of a single right one.

Dub.1273:

We can’t even know what critchance and what critdamage our character actually has. And as for the tooltips, I can’t think of a single right one.

the only scaling skill damage tooltips have is power and your level. of course it wont be the damage you’re actually going to hit for since it has to calculate opponent armor, your weapons attack variance, and crits

So I just tested the tooltips in Mists. All of the relevant ones seem fine dude. There’s some margin of randomness to account for but I don’t see any reason why the results should be radically different from what the tooltips say they should be.

These builds have different purposes, so I think it’s silly to outright say one is better than the other. The axe warrior build may be better when you do not need the defensive utility from the greatsword and want a relatively simple playstyle, but I think 30/25 is a superior build for solo content and encounters where the extra evade or repositioning from GS 3/5 are beneficial.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

These builds have different purposes, so I think it’s silly to outright say one is better than the other. The axe warrior build may be better when you do not need the defensive utility from the greatsword and want a relatively simple playstyle, but I think 30/25 is a superior build for solo content and encounters where the extra evade or repositioning from GS 3/5 are beneficial.

Per Nike: In an optimal group running 1 warrior, bring the 4/6/0/4/0 build (can sub in gs+a/m for pure axe if you feel more comfortable doing it, although from what I understand, there’s a dps loss). For groups w/ more than 1 warrior, use the 6/6/0/2/0 build (could likely sub in “old” meta here as well, w/ scholar instead of strength), and for soloing stuff, do the “old” meta w/ strength runes instead of scholar for perma 25 might stacks. Colsey also tested the new phalanx trait, and he said it’s viable in dungeon running as well.

I think that Tree said it best: “Go with whatever build you’ll screw up the rotations the least” (or something to that effect). I love my gs, and personally, unless my guild is going for a record clear, i.e. a casual run, I’m going to be running the “old” meta, or a gs modified new meta as I screw up the rotations the least.

I’ll be interested in seeing more testing like Dub is doing. The “real world” results are always different than the results done in a vacuum.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

So I just tested the tooltips in Mists. All of the relevant ones seem fine dude. There’s some margin of randomness to account for but I don’t see any reason why the results should be radically different from what the tooltips say they should be.

You might not have tested casttime, in that case. Using tooltips (with corrected casttimes) says pure axe is ahead of gs rotation by 10-15%, using ingame testing, gs rotation is 1,5% stronger, up to 5% even if you adjust traits for more personal dps – after applying builds and stuff.
Just doing the test completely without traits, no more than base stats (only Fgs/Dwa, Fast Hands), GS rotation is even ~13% stronger, from just direct damage.

GS rotation

Cyclone axe = 3
Crushing blow = 2
100b = 3
WWA (4 hits) = 2
Blade Trail = 1
Rush = 1
Axe Auto = 2
Chop = 1

Total GS Coefficients = 25.30
Total Axe Coefficients = 14.80

Power = 3923
Crit chance = 88%
Crit Damage = 1.27
GS Damage mods = 2.50
Axe Damage mods = 2.39

Total GS DPS = 7761.00
Total Axe DPS = 4141.17
Total DPS = 11,902.17
_______

Axe Rotation

Cyclone Axe = 4
Crushing Blow = 2
Impale = 1
Rip = 1
Auto Attack Chain = 7

Total Coefficients = 42.05

Power = 3923
Crit Chance = 94%
Crit Damage = 1.27
Damage Mods (3 boons) = 2.46

Total DPS = 12,691.00

30/30 pure axe about 6% better dps than 30/25 Gs+a. Having a boss against the wall would make it a little closer since the gs rotation would be better, but WWA did hit this boss 4×. I think this is an accurate enough measurement to be valid.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Once again testing in a vacuum.

And any real world boss fight would have enough variables and imperfections to be nitpicked into meaninglessness.

Once again testing in a vacuum.

Dub.1273:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

So I just tested the tooltips in Mists. All of the relevant ones seem fine dude. There’s some margin of randomness to account for but I don’t see any reason why the results should be radically different from what the tooltips say they should be.

You might not have tested casttime, in that case. Using tooltips (with corrected casttimes) says pure axe is ahead of gs rotation by 10-15%, using ingame testing, gs rotation is 1,5% stronger, up to 5% even if you adjust traits for more personal dps – after applying builds and stuff.
Just doing the test completely without traits, no more than base stats (only Fgs/Dwa, Fast Hands), GS rotation is even ~13% stronger, from just direct damage.

Why are you testing it without traits dude?

I think rather than assume that the tooltips are incorrect (because they’re not, I tested them last night) you should take another look at your own methodology, since you’re the one using a sample test instead of mathing it. If the game says I’m going to average 100 damage per hit, I’d trust my calculator that tells me that 100 hits will deal 100 × 100 damage = 10000 damage than the guy who went and hit something a hundred times and went back and manually counted the popups.

To be fair, maybe you found some huge error in the tooltips that changes everything but, unless you can identify that, I don’t have any reason to believe the math is wrong.

Is this the end of the spreadsheet era?

Will we start using actual boss fights as DPS tests?

I nominate subject Alpha. It’s simple enough but requires dodging so we can see which build can maintain rotations the best and which build loses the least DPS by interrupting its rotation. Also, if we record from the first damage of the (class) we get the actual DPS of them, not just the imaginary 25 might 25 vuln that we do on spreadsheets which like never happens.

also

GS rotation
Cyclone axe = 3
Crushing blow = 2
100b = 3
WWA (4 hits) = 2
Blade Trail = 1
Rush = 1
Axe Auto = 2
Chop = 1
Total GS Coefficients = 25.30
Total Axe Coefficients = 14.80
Power = 3923
Crit chance = 88%
Crit Damage = 1.27
GS Damage mods = 2.50
Axe Damage mods = 2.39
Total GS DPS = 7761.00
Total Axe DPS = 4141.17
Total DPS = 11,902.17

you interrupted your auto chain in the axe/gs rotation which kind of wrecks your DPS

hendo.1940:

Is this the end of the spreadsheet era?

Will we start using actual boss fights as DPS tests?

I nominate subject Alpha. It’s simple enough but requires dodging so we can see which build can maintain rotations the best and which build loses the least DPS by interrupting its rotation. Also, if we record from the first damage of the (class) we get the actual DPS of them, not just the imaginary 25 might 25 vuln that we do on spreadsheets which like never happens.

also

GS rotation
Cyclone axe = 3
Crushing blow = 2
100b = 3
WWA (4 hits) = 2
Blade Trail = 1
Rush = 1
Axe Auto = 2
Chop = 1
Total GS Coefficients = 25.30
Total Axe Coefficients = 14.80
Power = 3923
Crit chance = 88%
Crit Damage = 1.27
GS Damage mods = 2.50
Axe Damage mods = 2.39
Total GS DPS = 7761.00
Total Axe DPS = 4141.17
Total DPS = 11,902.17

you interrupted your auto chain in the axe/gs rotation which kind of wrecks your DPS

You can’t use any one boss because it’ll only give you relevant data for that specific boss. Alpha is easily walled, cleanses conditions, and forces a straight dodge every few seconds. He also randomly freezes people which means sometimes your DPS test will get straight-up ruined if he happens to freeze you.

That’s why a “vacuum” is the most accurate way to forcecast DPS, because even if it gives an unrealistic picture, it’s still a baseline. With a spreadsheet, you can forecast effectiveness against, say, Alpha because you know how much Alpha’s mechanics will affect the way you deal damage. If all you have is data from fighting Alpha himself, you’ll have to guess whether the impact of being able to wall him, etc. offsets a boss like Lupicus being bigger but necessitating more dodges, etc.

Not to mention Dub’s methodology in general is fishy as hell.

If only we had a dps meter for these sorts of things…

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

That’s why a “vacuum” is the most accurate way to forcecast DPS, because even if it gives an unrealistic picture, it’s still a baseline.

The problem with that is that we never play in a vacuum. The closest we get to that situation is in a speedrun where things often go wrong due to pushing yourselves to knock off every last second. In regular runs it is almost never worth taking this so called new meta build.

Gyler.8150:

If only we had a dps meter for these sorts of things…

2toxic2eleetist

Tree.3916:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEzEKiOi7Ps

The gs rotation (execution) was horrible.

Also, you forgot having your target bleeding and the test was way too short to draw any conclusions. Even my twenty minute footage is too short to eliminate variancy to a really low level, you could do your test two times and get two different results, differing by 10%.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Not to mention Dub’s methodology in general is fishy as hell.

And yet gives more reasonable results than any of your calculations.

And how exactly are tooltips correct? Do you play another game? Rush with a casttime of 2 seconds, all gs autoattacks with 0.5 seconds each? If you used those for all of your calculations yet, it explains why they are that far from reality.

hendo.1940:

you interrupted your auto chain in the axe/gs rotation which kind of wrecks your DPS

You’re better off interrupting after the first chop in the one sequence to swap back to greatsword. What would wreck your dps is staying in axe for a moment longer than you had to. Are you seriously suggesting on the rotation I swapped back to GS after Chop that I should have let the axe auto play all the way out? If so, I think you’re mistaken.

dub

The gs rotation (execution) was horrible.

OK.

dub

Also, you forgot having your target bleeding

I didn’t use damage floaters or combat log to calculate dps, the only traits I used were FGS and fast hands (where appropriate) and DWA (where appropriate). I recorded it solely to see how many hits of each attack I landed in a 30 second window. I am fairly convinced the coefficients derived from the tool tip are accurate enough that we can draw accurate conclusions from them.

dub

you could do your test two times and get two different results, differing by 10%.

I could improve the rotations with practice, the biggest mistake I made was swapping to axe when I could have used blade trail and I could have done a second Impale/Rip on the other build. I’m not particularly convinced my results are so easily dismissed.

We are at an impasse. You say the coefficients as we know them are wrong. You haven’t said how they are wrong or what the correct values are. This is a serious problem because it means either…

1. Axe coefficients are higher on the tool tip than reality. This means that warrior is even lower on the overall dps rankings relative to other classes.
2. Greatsword coefficients are higher in reality than the tool tip. The implications of this are that GS is significantly underrated and I wonder why people bother swapping to axe at all when a 30/30/0/10/0 gs camping build would have the highest dps of them all?
3. Both of the above are true and 30/30 gs camping build is the best dps build for warrior

I’m a bit vexed in the entire time the game has been out and people had access to steady weapons that you believe no one bothered to double check the skill coefficients. I don’t think you calculated the skill coefficients individually, you derived an average coefficient/time number by backing out the damage done on your screen vs the average weapon strength or something. To be honest that seems incredibly OTT complicated way to do it, and since you’re not calculating it on a skill by skill basis it makes me doubt you can be so sure that coefficients are wrong since the experiment doesn’t have enough controls. Either calculate the actual skill by skill coefficients and tell us what they are or we can’t move forward.

The tooltips are right, I tested them after Dub claimed they were wrong. It sounds like he has an issue with the tooltip cast times which we’ve all known have been wrong for years, if you haven’t been accounting for that all this time then lol.

If there is anything that is potentially wrong, it’s the skill coefficients listed on the wiki, because someone listed them incorrectly or whatever. But that’s not an issue if you just use the raw damage number listed on the tooltip itself.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

The tooltips are right, I tested them after Dub claimed they were wrong. It sounds like he has an issue with the tooltip cast times which we’ve all known have been wrong for years, if you haven’t been accounting for that all this time then lol.

If there is anything that is potentially wrong, it’s the skill coefficients listed on the wiki, because someone listed them incorrectly or whatever. But that’s not an issue if you just use the raw damage number listed on the tooltip itself.

Having tested all the staff and s/d ele skills and a good number of their utilities, I agree with Guang on both points.

Tooltip cast times are completely useless but it a completely accurate term for what it does. It usually just gives you the “cast time” and channel time of the skill rounded to the nearest 1/4 second. It ignores aftercasts, which are non-negligible for every skill other than instants.

For movement skills, the tooltip cast times have very little relation to the actual duration of the skill animation, and the duration of the skill animation for target-based movement skills varies directly with your distance from the target (duh).

Tooltip damage reports are useful though unstandardized. Yes, it uses weapon damage, character power, and a 2600 (or maybe 2597) armor target as its assumptions, and that is constant and I believe is calculated based on the coefficient. However, some skills give you aggregate data for the whole attack, others give you per-hit damage, and it’s up to the player to figure out which case it is. And then there are some skills that just have useless tooltips such as the AoE on Lightning Hammer.

For all the skills that I tested on Ele, if using the same build to test coefficients, the ratio between the tooltip damage of one skill and the tooltip damage of another skill exactly reflected the ratio between the actual damage of those skills using a steady weapon on a PvP indestructible golem.

And there are coefficients on the wiki that are wrong.

If the damage coefficients are all correct, there’s a fault in calculations. I think my 10 minutes of testing per set are accurate enough to eliminate any chance of being 8% wrong.
To be honest, I’m getting tired of paperwars 2, nothing we get up with we can be absolutely sure about. 30/30/0/10/0 doesn’t make any sense anyway, 30/25/0/0/15 is suited for other circumstances than maximal dps.

How can you test the coefficients without steady weapons? Please explain xd

Dub.1273:

If the damage coefficients are all correct, there’s a fault in calculations. I think my 10 minutes of testing per set are accurate enough to eliminate any chance of being 8% wrong.
To be honest, I’m getting tired of paperwars 2, nothing we get up with we can be absolutely sure about. 30/30/0/10/0 doesn’t make any sense anyway, 30/25/0/0/15 is suited for other circumstances than maximal dps.

It does make sense. The rotation is simpler, you’re not rooted 30% of the time, and you get better scaling with more boons.

In all seriousness, I don’t see how you can claim that 30/25/0/0/15 is superior in practice when such a huge chunk of the DPS relies on getting a full, uninterrupted HB channel on cooldown and making sure the boss is always pushed up against something you can Whirlwind on.

Yeah, you get the extra Whirlwind dodge, but if you’re constantly interrupting your HB/axe channel to do it, you might as well just run 30/30/0/10/0 and just eat the 10s swap cooldown.

Its actually easier to get full 100b’s off inbetween dodges than it is to completely avoid interrupting the axe auto chain. This is another small reason why it is superior.

Don’t marry a concept. Keep an open mind.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

So I just tested the tooltips in Mists. All of the relevant ones seem fine dude. There’s some margin of randomness to account for but I don’t see any reason why the results should be radically different from what the tooltips say they should be.

Actual damage always gets floored where as tooltip gets rounded. That may explain some of your results.

The damage decrease by interrupting 100b is was smaller than when interrupting your axe chain, it deals similar dps from first to last hit, which certainly isn’t true for axe autoattacks.

As for 30/30/0/10/0 being an impractical build, let’s consider there’s two different kinds of runs, record and casual. For record runs, you will use one warrior, arguably with EA. For casual runs, playing a build that does slightly more damage, considering never dodging, always 25 might and vuln on but loses extremely on mobility, playing “fun, to most” and versatility does not make sense to me. It’s like playing 0/20/25/25/0 on an elementalist, impractical for any real run purpose ‘but highest damage’!!1!!!!11!!

Edit: And oh, let’s not even start about pug and duo runs.

Dub, please. This isn’t even something I should have to break down, but fine, I’ll take the bait.

HB is about 80/20 in terms of damage between the channel and the last hit. Axe is about 50/20, which means the last hit deals about 30% of the total damage, so at worst you lose 10% more damage compared to interrupting HB. It’s not nearly as big of a disparity as you’re making it out to be. Also:

1) The “interrupt window” for axe is only on the Triple Chop. If you dodge during the first two skills in the chain, it’ll interrupt that skill but not reset the chain unless you actually use a skill. You’ll only lose out on the “big” hit if you interrupt Triple Chop itself. Compare that to HB where you lose the entire thing if you interrupt at any point in the channel.

2) Axe chain is your auto and has no cooldown. The absolutely worst case scenario is that you interrupt the chain and have to start rechanneling. By comparison, HB is a cooldown skill, which means if you interrupt it, you’re stuck with auto-attack for the remainder of the swap cooldown duration.

3) HB also roots you. A fair few bosses have attacks that can be avoided simply by circlestrafing them, which means you can channel axe constantly in circles.

4) HB is much less flexible if you want MAX DEEPS. For HB to be worth the swap, you have to be able to channel it immediately on cooldown at the end of an axe chain. So it’s not just losing the damage if you interrupt it, but you also lose damage if you delay it too.

So yeah, GS gives you a “third dodge” which is cool, and maybe you want to take it for that reason alone, but in terms of raw DPS output axe is much more practical to sustain. If you need that extra block/dodge, you may even want to consider running A/S on your offhand instead and just use Riposte, if the situation is one that allows for that.

Thats why in game GS always yields better results? 100b doesnt have backloaded damage so you dont lose much by interrupting it before the final hit. GS has other skills other than auto attack to fill the gaps between 100b. The auto attack isnt that bad and it stacks vuln. With GS, axe + mace you never have to auto attack with GS anyway. The rotation allows plenty of space for dodges while never being forced to gs auto and any half decent player can time their 100b so they dont have to interrupt it. If you know an attack is coming use ww, bladetrail or rush then dodge, then use 100b.

FWIW Interrupting 100b isn’t mathematically bad. First 8 hits have a coefficient of .55 each. Last hit has a 1.1, but it takes twice as long, so the last hit is essentially the exact same as the others.

Thats why in game GS always yields better results?

Is that for sure? You’ve done extensive testing in controlled settings with both builds in optimal group comps? Maybe you have, probably you haven’t. Hard to make such a statement though.

Its quite obvious why GS is superior in suboptimal team comps and/or casual runs, it can self-buff better and has innate mobility skills to make you faster. I don’t think anyone has argued otherwise.

I am curious, as I mentioned above, that the gs portion of the gs+a rotation is almost double the dps of the axe portion. Makes me wonder if it’s better dps, even in a group where the self-Might isn’t needed to even swap. Clearly Goku and Dub and the other lupi warrior solos have unscientifically figured out that it’s better when solo especially with strength runes, but I will go back in and do the math to see if it’s better in groups too.

What would make you more bummed out: having to camp gs and never swapping, or camping axe?

Second question… If 6% dps isn’t enough to make sacrificing a Fast Hands build worth it (i.e. you’re willing to play a technically worse dps build for the sake of utility/fun) at what point would the DPS gap have to be before you reconsidered? 10% I feel wouldnt be enough to change your tune for casual runs but probably enough in record runs. My guess is that if the gap was 15% or more you’d just suck it up.

Quite absurd to say that interrupting 100b isn’t bad. Feel free to interrupt your every 100b.

It’s bad in the sense that the rate of 100b over the whole channel is amazingly good so missing out on any of the channel is a big loss. But people seem to be under the impression that the last hit is the best dps (not just the best damage). My point is that the 100b channel dps is evenly distributed and not backloaded. I wouldn’t recommend interrupting your 100b for the same reason I wouldn’t recommend missing out on any of your dps rotation, but there is a difference between the 100b rotation and axe auto chain in terms of damage distribution.

Quite absurd to say that interrupting 100b isn’t bad. Feel free to interrupt your every 100b.

I dunno about fun, but I personally would actually sacrifice 6% DPS to not have to watch the HB animation for 4 seconds every ten seconds. At least I can move around during the axe auto.

I’d rather run pure gs with sword/warhorn as secondary set than camp axe for a whole fight.
Even if it was 10% dps, it’s arguably still the a better choice than running pure axe.

Tree.3916:

I am curious, as I mentioned above, that the gs portion of the gs+a rotation is almost double the dps of the axe portion. Makes me wonder if it’s better dps, even in a group where the self-Might isn’t needed to even swap. Clearly Goku and Dub and the other lupi warrior solos have unscientifically figured out that it’s better when solo especially with strength runes, but I will go back in and do the math to see if it’s better in groups too.

Its better for the same reasons as in solo. You rarely have perma 25 might and vuln in casual runs. Obviously if you are doing a record or you are super keen every casual run like DD do then its not the best choice.

Spoj The Second.7680:

Tree.3916:

I am curious, as I mentioned above, that the gs portion of the gs+a rotation is almost double the dps of the axe portion. Makes me wonder if it’s better dps, even in a group where the self-Might isn’t needed to even swap. Clearly Goku and Dub and the other lupi warrior solos have unscientifically figured out that it’s better when solo especially with strength runes, but I will go back in and do the math to see if it’s better in groups too.

Its better for the same reasons as in solo. You rarely have perma 25 might and vuln in casual runs. Obviously if you are doing a record or you are super keen every casual run like DD do then its not the best choice.

That isn’t good enough for me. I want to test it. It might be the best dps even in a record run but I won’t rely on conventional wisdom to decide that for me.

Edit: Forgive the badness of this dps rotation (and Swiftpaw audio), it could obviously be tightened up, but I was on my lunch break and didn’t have time to record something perfect, though it hardly matters once you see the results.

GS Rotation

100b = 3
WWAx4 = 3
BT = 2
Rush =2
Auto Chain = 4
GS First Auto = 2

Total Coefficients = 40.4

30/30/0/10/0

Power: 3,919
Crit Chance: 94%
Crit Damager: 117%
Damage Mods: 2.58
Coefficients/30 = 1.35

Total DPS: 12,727

Well that settles it for me. 30/30/0/10/0 GS camping is the top DPS warrior build. You can even have Axe/Mace on swap and start fights with #2 + #4 for vuln burst and then swap to GS camp the whole fight. Either way, this is the best dps you’re going to do.