Guild Wars 2

SO in the research I have come across what is being said to have as the “Optimal” or high end DPS gear set is actually a mix of Berserker and Assassin

I do not doubt this. I was actually hoping to pry a little information out of you all.

What is the formula that you are using to come to these results?
How is it that it works?
With the pending changes via crit damage to ferocity has this formula been, or going to be altered?

I ask because I would love to know and have more knowledge on the subject. That and I am working on the ascended armor finally. and wanted to make sure I got the right pieces for the right things. .

They are nerfing critical damage so it may just be best to stick with full zerk imo.

Go zerk and pray they don’t nerf it too hard in the future because you won’t enjoy having to craft another set of gear.

I believe most people use effective power to check. Thats what I do atleast. But yeah with ferocity changes its unlikely that assassins will be optimal. Although I can see it still being better for mesmer and guard. Will have to see.

I could be wrong in my quoting. But it was something to the effect of the idea of 3 of the pieces were berserker, and 3 of them assassin. I do not recall which was which.

With the up and coming changes though I suppose it would alter the numbers slightly and tweak what would be best for each build. When I did a basic comp for my Mesmer, a little while ago, I went with full Assassin, (mostly due to the cost at the time with intentions of getting the berserker set as I went along. ) basic numbers via Power and Precision was something to the tune of full assassin would give 5 percent more crit chance. but gives up 5 percent in power, With berserker being 5 percent more power but 5 percent less crit chance.

Mostly it was me experimenting with the idea of attempting to get as high of a crit chance “static” as I could. Given that I do a lot of Pugging and Have to more or less rely on my own buffs.

Yeah for most classes at the moment its beserker with helm, chest and legs as assassins. However for guard it is full assassins in most situations (I was surprised about this when NoTrigger told me so i checked it myself and it is true despite guards having very little invested in power due to their traits).

This could all change though. And even if effective power is lower with full assassins you have to consider reflect damage in some situations.

So when you say you “checked it”, I think that was the math i was looking for.

What numbers are you looking at and how are you arranging your formula?

((learnings!))

Generally people are calculating effective power, something like:

AddedPower + 916 + (AddedPower+916) * (.5 + WeightedCriticalDamage/[100*Weight]) * (.04 + AddedPrecision/2100)

This gives you a number that allows you to compare damage, assuming that traits and weapons are constant.

Just check effective power on buildcraft. No need to calc it manually yourself. If some traits and modifiers dont work properly on buildcraft it allows you to input extra modifiers and stats if needed.

spoj.9672:

Just check effective power on buildcraft. No need to calc it manually yourself. If some traits and modifiers dont work properly on buildcraft it allows you to input extra modifiers and stats if needed.

That works too

maxinion.8396:

Generally people are calculating effective power, something like:

(attack + critical immersion) * (critical chance + 50%) * (2 * toughness + vitality – 5) + (healing shouts/scholar runes + 0.41)^2

This gives you a number that allows you to compare damage, assuming you aren’t elitist.

Fixed.

Wethospu.6437:

maxinion.8396:

Generally people are calculating effective power, something like:

(attack + critical immersion) * (critical chance + 50%) * (2 * toughness + vitality – 5) + (healing shouts/scholar runes + 0.41)^2

This gives you a number that allows you to compare damage, assuming you aren’t elitist.

Fixed.

Sorry, typo. The keys are like, right next to each other.

I won’t craft any gear nor finish to gear up my alts in any way until the changes are made, because I’ve no intention to waste anything, less of all, Fine transmutation stones.

damage=power*weapon strength*skill coeficient*modifiers*crit modifier/target armor
skill coeficient=skill specific modifier. usually they’re on wiki but I think you can calculate them by deducing them from the above formula and the damage shown on the tool-tip. Not sure if trait modifiers affect it or not. Probably not. Crit modifier certainly doesn’t. Game assumes target armor to be 2600.
modifiers=any damage modifiers like 5% sigil of force, scholar runes blabla..each multiplied with each other
crit modifier=chance*(crit damage+1.5)+(1-chance)

To make things easier you model them like this: if your chance is 65% and your crit damage is 50% the crit modifier will be=0.65*(1.5+0.5)+0.35. Basically calculate the division so 10% being 10/100 becomes 0.1 etc.
Please don’t use the “attack” thing from hero panel as any sort of reference, it’s just a silly thing no one cares for.
Remember to factor in your rotations. Easiest way to do this is mindlessly attack the training things in LA.
The zerker/assassin split was done because it allowed for almost max critical chance without any perception sigil stacks, given certain things like food, banner, spotter maybe and the like. So people could stack bloodlust instead.

Effective Power is very easy to calculate, but it has limitations. The primary limitations is that it will only give you meaningful comparisons for the same profession with the same weaponsets using the same rotation. This sounds more limiting than it is. The best use of it is to quickly see the effect changing a runeset or gear prefix for a piece of gear.

I prefer it over dps calculations because for the most part players pick professions for their party comps based on non-dps factors, and dps is only relevent to the discussion within the profession and effective power is useful for comparing, say, one axe warrior build to another.

The EP formula someone posted earlier is overly complicated and a bit intimidating, the one I use is a bit more user friendly…

EP = (Power*(1+(CritChance*CritDmg)))*DmgMods

Crit chance, Crit damage should be expressed as decimals. 75% chance to crit = .75.

Notes:

There is (for now!) a base 50% critical damage modifier. So if your hero panel says your crit damage is 100%, it’s actually 150% and should be expressed as 1.5.

Damage modifiers are combined multiplicatively. If you have two modifiers of 10% each, you do not just put “1.2” in the damage modifiers, it has to be “1.1*1.1”. The difference seems small, but once you account for Runes, Sigils, Traits, Frost Spirit, Potions, Vulnerability there are a lot of them and your calculations could wind up quite different.

Also, in the dungeon community, unlike the WvW community, we tend to assume certain party-wide buffs as a given in our calculations. The WvWers usually look at solo numbers. Dungeoneers typically assume both warrior banners, 25 Might stacks, and 25 Vuln stacks as a given, along with max food and dungeon potions. Some of the things, like Vuln and slayer potions are probably safe to ignore since they cancel out, but the other buffs are essential.

There is a ratio of Power to Crit Chance to Crit damage that exists which lets you know whether your build would benefit more from adding Power or adding Precision. As a result of assuming banners and 25 Might, we have so much Power and crit damage in most builds that the only limit to how much Precision we want is the 100% hard cap. This is why a lot of builds in the current meta utilize 3 pieces of assassins gear to exchange 64 Power for 64 Precision since at that level of Power (3500+) adding more precision is worth more than Power.

Anyway, good luck with your theorycraft.

Thanks Nike for the nicer formula than what I provided