Guild Wars 2

Well, I’ve calced a bit, too. Not gonna post some pages with sub-results, but the final ones. The settings were

• Rarity: Rare, Exo, Ascended (full set each)
• Prefix: Zerk, Assassin, Dire (only malice)
• Traits: 20/20/20/20/20 (200 pow, 200 prec, 200 malice, + 20% crtdmg)
• Foods, Infusions, Buffs, + x% dmg: None
• direct damage formula: pow * wpnAtk * ((1-crtChance) + crtChance * (1.5 + crtDmg))
• condition mix: 10 bleeds + 1 poison + 1 burn

Results

• Zerker
  • Rare to Exo: + 25.1% dmg
  • Rare to Asc: + 42.7% dmg
  • Exo to Asc: + 14.1% dmg
• Assassin
  • Rare to Exo: + 24.3% dmg
  • Rare to Asc: + 42.2% dmg
  • Exo to Asc: + 14.3% dmg
• Dire (condition mix; malice major)
  • Rare to Exo: + 12.9% dmg
  • Rare to Asc: + 18.5% dmg
  • Exo to Asc: + 5.0% dmg
• Dire (bleeding only; malice major)
  • Rare to Exo: + 6.3% dmg
  • Rare to Asc: + 11.5% dmg
  • Exo to Asc: + 4.9% dmg
• Zerker (bundles & phants; no weaponAtk)
  • Rare to Exo: + 10.8% dmg
  • Rare to Asc: + 20.4% dmg
  • Exo to Asc: + 8.6% dmg
• Assassin (bundles & phants; no weaponAtk)
  • Rare to Exo: + 10.1% dmg
  • Rare to Asc: + 20.0% dmg
  • Exo to Asc: + 8.9% dmg

Conclusion:
Direct damage get a bigger boost. Conditioneers/ Bleeders get a far smaller boost than zerkers and assassins. the bundle troop (conj ele, kit engy, phant mesmer, minion necro) are pretty much in the middle of that. They don’t benefit from the + 5% weaponAtk, but do get the triple stats – unlike conditioneers.
But you have to keep in mind that conditioneers usually get more toughness (or vitality), which makes them a bit more resistant to direct damage/ condition damage. It won’t balance the 10% difference, but at least a bit – assuming they directly fight each other.

But as always, ANet is telling us to use Zerker and nothing else.

Special

• Exotic
  • Zerk to Assa: – 4.7%
• Ascended
  • Zerk to Assa: – 4.4%

Vanthian.9267:

eisberg.2379:

2- Weapon Damage of Ascended is 5% more than Exotic, so mathematically it would still be 5% more.

More what? I will assume damage and if it is, then in that case….

Wow just no…. If you are looking at the whole thing, as the op stated, then this is grossly false. The weapon damage is indeed 5% higher but when grouped together with stats and the current armor values for the game the damage increase is 10%.

You and the nah sayers have been proven wrong countless times. You are not fooling anyone who can do simple multiplication.

In case you don’t know the damage formula (why would you even step into this argument if you don’t…)

Damage done = (Weapon Strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Now if you look at a full exotic thief vs a full ascended thief hitting a cloth target with backstab with max weapon damage, the 2.4 coefficient, 20 might stacks you will get from signets, full bloodlust stack from sigil, with full berserker gear, and ruby orbs as upgrades on everything with the 25/30/0/0/15 build.

Exotic:
Weapon Damage: 984, Power: 3,239, Skill Coefficient: 2.4, Critical Damage: 104%

Ascended:
Weapon Damage: 1,030, Power: 3,309, Skill Coefficient: 2.4, Critical Damage: 112%

Cloth base armor: 1,836

So it follows the damage of a critical hit is:

Exotic: Critical~10,582
Ascended: Critical~11,672

You are going from Exotic to Ascended so the fraction we look at is…

11,672/10,582~=1.103 which means…… it is a 10.3% damage increase.

You have been prove wrong. As stated before, conditions are mostly linear so of course ascended will not have as much of a great affect as it will for direct damage but if you look at the increase from this direct damage plus condition damage it is quite the increase.

EDIT: To make sure you fully understand this post, this is for currently available Ascended gear versus exotic. There is no fluff guessing about what Ascended armor will be nor hyper inflated numbers with traits that deal +% damage. It would change anything if you choose to add in the +% damage traits.

You are assuming a critical hit on every hit, which doesn’t happen. Take into consideration all the hits the player will do, and it will be closer to 5% overall more damage then it would be 10% overall more damage.

eisberg.2379:

Vanthian.9267:

eisberg.2379:

2- Weapon Damage of Ascended is 5% more than Exotic, so mathematically it would still be 5% more.

<snip>

You are assuming a critical hit on every hit, which doesn’t happen. Take into consideration all the hits the player will do, and it will be closer to 5% overall more damage then it would be 10% overall more damage.

If you go back to all mind numbing arithmetic I did on the previous page, I did take that into consideration. The 5% increase from weapon damage will boost all direct damage. If you are a crit build, it will boost more than 5% to in the range of ~13%. If you are a condi build, you see almost no real gain in your total dps (not in my math, but others have already made that case).

Any power (or precision or crit damage) that you stack in both cases (ascended vs. exotic) will have more weight in ascended (they each scale linearly, but your direct damage will not because its “roughly” a product of those three things) compared to condition damage.

I did not read the full discussion because I do not have time for that at this moment. I noticed however allot of people forget this: direct damage is affected by toughness and condition damage is not. This might seems insignificant but it is not since guild wars 2 does not know demising returns. This means for every point of toughness opponents get more due to ascended equipment, people who are damage by using direct damage will do less damage. In my fast screening I did see no-one who did actually take this into consideration. So most of this theory crafting only counts towards people who are using no equipment pieces with toughness. And especial in wvwvw and spvp the amount of people who are using full zerker are not that big, especially when you hit the organized guild playing.

morrigana sedai.2091:

I did not read the full discussion because I do not have time for that at this moment. I noticed however allot of people forget this: direct damage is affected by toughness and condition damage is not. This might seems insignificant but it is not since guild wars 2 does not know demising returns. This means for every point of toughness opponents get more due to ascended equipment, people who are damage by using direct damage will do less damage. In my fast screening I did see no-one who did actually take this into consideration. So most of this theory crafting only counts towards people who are using no equipment pieces with toughness. And especial in wvwvw and spvp the amount of people who are using full zerker are not that big, especially when you hit the organized guild playing.

That is true, but sadly the difference in toughness won’t reduce the extra damage gains by that much.

Just doing something very, very quick (I don’t have that kind of time to write another novel…man I hope I didn’t make a silly/stupid mistake somewhere in there).

Warrior, full exotic knights gear (no runes or jewels in the trinkets or armor) with +300 toughness. 2166 toughness [3377 armor] or 45.63% damage reduction (compared to a scholar in exotic armor w/ no toughness)

Upgrading the trinkets (and weapon) to ascended knights gives, 2389 toughness [3600 armor], or 49% damage reduction. So a ~10.3% increase in toughness [only a 6.6% increase in armor] only increased the DR by ~4%.

And assuming that the stats I found for ascended armor are correct (I still have my doubts, it seems too small) they gives an extra +21 for the main stat, but I have no clue about the defense ratings. Just to take a guess: rare heavy armor has a defense of 1071, exotic heavy armor has a defense of 1211. A 13% increase in defense. I’m going to assume that, that’s going to be a greater increase than going from exotics to ascended. Using a 5% (10%) defense increase we get 1272 (1332.1) armor. Add in the extra +21 toughness from the major stat in ascended armor and we get: 2410 toughness [3682 (3742) armor]. A 11.26% increase in toughness compared to exotics (0.9% increase over ascended trinkets/weapon), which is a 9.03% (10.81%) increase in armor over exotics, or a 2.2% (3.94%) incraese over ascedned trinkets/weapons. This leads to a 50.14% (50.94%) DR.

So from full exotics with a 45.63% DR, to ascended weapon/trinkets with a 49% DR, to full ascended with a ~50-51% DR. It sadly doesn’t compete with the damage gains.

Assuming that your bleed tick calculation really is correct:

1/ Condition in pve is weak, anyone semi serious about pve wont go condition.

2/ The only place condition really matters is wvw, in which case bleed stacks usually dont reach to 25, due to all the massive aoe cleanse. Therefore, it is important to add in the effect of precision

3/ 5% is not small, especially when it comes to roaming in wvw.

Vanthian.9267:

eisberg.2379:

2- Weapon Damage of Ascended is 5% more than Exotic, so mathematically it would still be 5% more.

More what? I will assume damage and if it is, then in that case….

Wow just no…. If you are looking at the whole thing, as the op stated, then this is grossly false. The weapon damage is indeed 5% higher but when grouped together with stats and the current armor values for the game the damage increase is 10%.

You and the nah sayers have been proven wrong countless times. You are not fooling anyone who can do simple multiplication.

In case you don’t know the damage formula (why would you even step into this argument if you don’t…)

Damage done = (Weapon Strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

Now if you look at a full exotic thief vs a full ascended thief hitting a cloth target with backstab with max weapon damage, the 2.4 coefficient, 20 might stacks you will get from signets, full bloodlust stack from sigil, with full berserker gear, and ruby orbs as upgrades on everything with the 25/30/0/0/15 build.

Exotic:
Weapon Damage: 984, Power: 3,239, Skill Coefficient: 2.4, Critical Damage: 104%

Ascended:
Weapon Damage: 1,030, Power: 3,309, Skill Coefficient: 2.4, Critical Damage: 112%

Cloth base armor: 1,836

So it follows the damage of a critical hit is:

Exotic: Critical~10,582
Ascended: Critical~11,672

You are going from Exotic to Ascended so the fraction we look at is…

11,672/10,582~=1.103 which means…… it is a 10.3% damage increase.

You have been prove wrong. As stated before, conditions are mostly linear so of course ascended will not have as much of a great affect as it will for direct damage but if you look at the increase from this direct damage plus condition damage it is quite the increase.

EDIT: To make sure you fully understand this post, this is for currently available Ascended gear versus exotic. There is no fluff guessing about what Ascended armor will be nor hyper inflated numbers with traits that deal +% damage. It would change anything if you choose to add in the +% damage traits.

First off your calculation completely ignores crit chance, so it is quite flawed. See the post above your for the correct calculation of zerker gear differences. It is closer to 17% as I couldn’t find any errors in the above posters post.

I agree with you that weapon damage increases 5% which increases direct damage, which when combined with power gains, precision gains, and crit damage gains makes it even higher.

However that has absolutely nothing to do with the OP, or the numbers I have come up with. Great so my direct damage increases 10%+ (looks like ~17% for full zerker as the previous post seems to be correct in the calculation) except that direct damage only makes up ~1% of my overall dps. So no matter how much you increase my direct damage it isn’t going to change the final answer.

For condition users, switching from full exotic to full ascended is only a 5.2% increase. You can copy and paste your post about 100% crit chance changes in zerker builds all you want, but it really has very little bearing on anything to do with condition damage dps.

The biggest problem I see here (in PvE) is that zerkers are gaining a 17% increase in damage while condition users are only gaining 5%, with other mixes of gear gaining somewhere between those numbers.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So I’ve seen a lot of really bad math, outrageous claims and all sorts of speculation concerning ascended gear and how much it increases your damage. I decided enough is enough, it is time to put the rumors to rest and show the actual numbers.

This is a quote from your first message in this thread. I had interpreted it as meaning that ascended equipment doesn’t give a big advantage over other gear, i.e. that the ascended tier doesn’t move GW2 towards vertical progression, where you have to keep updating your gear to be able to keep up. (The people arguing this are the people arguing that you can do everything in PvE in rare gear. I assume they mean to exclude Tequatl, though.)

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The biggest problem I see here (in PvE) is that zerkers are gaining a 17% increase in damage while condition users are only gaining 5%, with other mixes of gear gaining somewhere between those numbers.

Here it sounds like you’re arguing that the biggest problem is that ascended armor makes condition builds even less viable compared with zerker for PvE. Unfortunately, that is an argument I tend to agree with.

IMO — even if it’s only 5%, that is a big deal for WvW. Superior numbers will out-weigh this for overall victory, but in WvW I do some 1v1s — and if you lose those, it makes it harder to carry out small-group operations.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

First off your calculation completely ignores crit chance, so it is quite flawed. See the post above your for the correct calculation of zerker gear differences. It is closer to 17% as I couldn’t find any errors in the above posters post.

And you are absolutely wrong. Either you can’t multiple or choose to ignore the numbers. Trying to play on a law of average with critical chance is little more than guessing (statistics) and doesn’t prove anything. You can plug and chug with saying every other hit is a critical due to the 50% chance to critically hit, but you are guessing point blank.

Looking at a single instance of a critical hit then at a normal hit will give you more information than what you are trying to argue. Also, the 10.3% damage increase from what I was stating is in reference to a very specific build/gear set up and is not intended to be taken for all classes with any type of gear. The damage and build I use are laid out plan as day so people would not assume I am talking about x when in reality it only holds for y.

Are there builds out there that can extrapolate the difference more? Yes.
Are there builds out there that deal a minor difference in damage? Slightly.

You would need to argue the difference and of what slightly means. In general though, every build will increase by at least 5% in direct damage whether you want it or not. So saying you gain nothing from ascended weapons as a condition user in general is wrong.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I agree with you that weapon damage increases 5% which increases direct damage, which when combined with power gains, precision gains, and crit damage gains makes it even higher.

However that has absolutely nothing to do with the OP, or the numbers I have come up with. Great so my direct damage increases 10%+ (looks like ~17% for full zerker as the previous post seems to be correct in the calculation) except that direct damage only makes up ~1% of my overall dps. So no matter how much you increase my direct damage it isn’t going to change the final answer.

For condition users, switching from full exotic to full ascended is only a 5.2% increase. You can copy and paste your post about 100% crit chance changes in zerker builds all you want, but it really has very little bearing on anything to do with condition damage dps.

Either you didn’t read what I wrote or chose to ignore it. I said condition builds won’t gain very much of anything form Ascended. In the grand state of the game at the moment you are only gaining a partly 96 extra condition damage if you have all major condition damage ascended gear, which is roughly equal to around 5 extra bleed damage a tick. That as a percentage is roughly 5.3%.

The point being however, it is a very minimal change. I don’t’ think anyone on these forum would argue that 5 extra points of damage a second is very “Game Changing”.

Also, the build I posted is far from a 100% critical chance build (which can not happen in this game as critical chance is hard capped below 100%).

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The biggest problem I see here (in PvE) is that zerkers are gaining a 17% increase in damage while condition users are only gaining 5%, with other mixes of gear gaining somewhere between those numbers.

They are gaining maybe 10% or slightly more (I wouldn’t go anywhere above 15%) on top of what they can how now, if they meet ideal situations. On most attacks the damage difference will only hover around 6~7% (normal attacks) while critical hits can hover between 10~15%. Only on the extreme outlaying cases that I may not be aware of can a 17% damage increase happen. As in, so particular it might happen a couple times in a dungeon run.

Trying to argue that the damage increase in a single instance is how it will be for a entire set of skills is faulty. I looked at a general build that some Thieves play and will use with the ascended gear because a lot of WvWers hate Thieves and their mechanics. Rightly so I might add. I looked at a single skill in a single instance to gather how much it will effect that skill. The math is correct.

However you are completely overlooking the difference in how these two builds play in the game.

Direct damage does not affect a blocking, invulnerable, dodging, evading or in some cases a LoS(ing) target. While conditions will always tick unless cleansed. Some will say that is not fair, but with the amount of conditions most classes have in this game massive condition clearing is not a problem. The last thing this game needs is a huge bump to conditions when they are already ruining the games PvP.

I will say that Anet should overhaul how bleed stacks are handled as it is quite silly for people who don’t spec into conditions to be able to over write a person who does.

eisberg.2379:

You are assuming a critical hit on every hit, which doesn’t happen. Take into consideration all the hits the player will do, and it will be closer to 5% overall more damage then it would be 10% overall more damage.

I am assuming a single instance of one attack (as stated if you read). You injected what you want to believe into the situation. I merely proved that in that situation a Thief with ascended gear could easily gain 10.3% higher damage than one in Exotics.