Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

I have been testing various damage modifier traits at the raid test golem, and I keep getting surprising results. I’ll just post the results of one trait I tested, ele’s air grandmaster trait, ‘bolt to the heart’. I gave my ele 25 might, fury, quickness, 3 grace of the land stacks, spotter, frost spirit, empower allies, banner of strength, banner of discipline, and alacrity. I was wearing full ascended gear, no infusions, and scholar runes, with my weapons being dagger+warhorn. In order to keep the tests consistent I moved my ele to the golem, pressed 1, and then took my hands off the keyboard and did not touch anything.

health: 100%-80%
dps: 12.4k

health: 80%-60%
dps: 12.4k

health: 60%-40%
dps: 12.7k

health: 40%-20%
dps: 13.2k

health: 20%-0%
dps 13.3k

Now, bolt to the heart is suppose to be a 20% modifier below 50% enemy health. Clearly we can see the trait turning on. But if we take the dps for 80%-60%, I thought we could predict the 20%-0% dps like this:

12.4k * 1.2 = 14.88k

So, what gives? Do modifier traits not work multiplicative, but rather additively? As in, is my bolt to the heart modifier added to my scholar rune modifier (and all the others) and then used as one single modifier?

thrag.9740:

Hey everyone,

I have been testing various damage modifier traits at the raid test golem, and I keep getting surprising results. I’ll just post the results of one trait I tested, ele’s air grandmaster trait, ‘bolt to the heart’. I gave my ele 25 might, fury, quickness, 3 grace of the land stacks, spotter, frost spirit, empower allies, banner of strength, banner of discipline, and alacrity. I was wearing full ascended gear, no infusions, and scholar runes, with my weapons being dagger+warhorn. In order to keep the tests consistent I moved my ele to the golem, pressed 1, and then took my hands off the keyboard and did not touch anything.

health: 100%-80%
dps: 12.4k

health: 80%-60%
dps: 12.4k

health: 60%-40%
dps: 12.7k

health: 40%-20%
dps: 13.2k

health: 20%-0%
dps 13.3k

Now, bolt to the heart is suppose to be a 20% modifier below 50% enemy health. Clearly we can see the trait turning on. But if we take the dps for 80%-60%, I thought we could predict the 20%-0% dps like this:

12.4k * 1.2 = 14.88k

So, what gives? Do modifier traits not work multiplicative, but rather additively? As in, is my bolt to the heart modifier added to my scholar rune modifier (and all the others) and then used as one single modifier?

It doesn’t modify your overall total dps it modifies each actual Hit. And they are all multiplicative.

Also the DPS that shows is your DPS for the whole fight up to that reading. So while each hit will do 20% more, the DPS shown won’t increase by 20%, but closer to 10%.

ohhhh I see, the dps number is accumulative. I went and did the test again, and the highest number I saw on a single hit was 4.1k before 50% health, and then 4.9k after 50% health. Ok, it is all working as I thought it would.

Antinomy.8456:

Also the DPS that shows is your DPS for the whole fight up to that reading.

Exactly this.

In addition to that you also have some rng in how hard your attacks hit as weapon strength is an intervall, but in general the explanation is in what Antinomy wrote