Guild Wars 2

Excelsior comrades!

Last updated on 02/12/13

I would like to gather in this thread all the data available about our skills that is not available in the tooltips ingame. My intent is to make the efficiency of each skill known to the community, so that elementalists can make better decisions based on this data. This information is useful for anyone, whether you are a beginner or an advanced theory crafter. It is a contribution thread: I will edit the original posts as the data is updated, feel free to contribute!

For each skill, I would like to disclose the following characteristics:
-Cast time
-After cast off-time (animation)
-Damage/Heal coefficient of power
-Base heal
-Cooldown (included for convenience, although disclosed in tooltips)
-Effects

Some notes will then be added to provide quality information about the skills.

I am aware that a substantial amount of this data is available on the Wiki. However there is much more available on the web. This thread will concentrate this data and make it as available as possible for all elementalists.

Format:
Spell: coefficient (base + coefficient for heals) | cast aftercast | cooldown {effect}
[notes]

Disclaimer: Work in Progress!
I am gathering the data for the skills. I can find most of the coefficients and base damage easily, but I need data on casts and aftercasts. If you are willing to test, please contribute!

Special thanks to DEKeyzToChaos.7381 and other contributors.

- reserved for future use -

- reserved for future use -

Conjures

Lightning Hammer
Swing: 4 (total) | cast+aftercast=2.82s (total)
Lightning Leap 1.00
Lightning Storm 0.50
Wind Blast 0.33

Fiery Greatsword
Weapon damage compared to one-hand weapons: +1.7%

Flame Wave: 0.62 (4 hits) | cast+aftercast=3.0
[360 degree attack window]
Fiery Rush without target: 0.32 ? (per tick) | ? | cd=10
[70 ticks with flash/wall trick (aka hardest hitting skill in the game)]
[Traces targets even if they become invisible]
Fire Storm: 0.62 (9 ticks to unlimited targets) | ? | cd=15

Downed
Discharge Lightning 0.80
Grasping Earth 0.30?

Utilities

Tornado
Dust: ?
Electrified: 0.55?
Debris: ?

Traits

Sunspot: 0.5
Electric Discharge: 0.7
Earthen Blast: 0.3
Healing Ripple: 1302 + 1.0

Trident
Same weapon damage as one-handed weapons

Fire
Magma Orb: 0.40?+0.40? | ?
Boil: 0.50 (5 hits?) | ? | cd=10
Steam: 0.25 | ? | cd=25
Lava Chains: 0.50 | ? | cd=30

Water
Water Missile: 0.40 | ?
Ice Globe: 1.00 | ? | cd=10
Ice Globe: Detonate: 2.00
Ice Wall: Detonate: 2.00
Undercurrent: 0.50 | ? | cd=25
Tidal Wave: 1.00 (per hit) | ? | cd=25

Air
Forked Lightning: 0.30 (3 hits) | ?
Electrocute: 1.6? | ? | cd=10
Air Pocket: 0.75 | ? | cd=12
Lightning Cage: ? | ? | cd=35

Earth
Rock Blade: 0.05 (3 hits) | cast=? aftercst=0.2 {stacks bleed to 12?}
Rock Spray: 1.50 | ? | cd=12
Magnetic Current: 0.50 | ? | cd=18

- reserved for future use -

Nice to see someone putting so much effort into it. Thanks in advance :-)

Thanks!
I am looking for people willing to contribute.
Mainly I am looking for the cast and aftercast times.
Any help is appreciated!

Technically, you only need to list the coefficient for the damage of a skill. Although I’m impressed by the consistency of your base values: multiplying the (total) coefficient of a skill by 335 is consistently within about 5 of the expected damage.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by only having to list its coefficient to calculate the damage of a skill: the base has to be included in the calculation, doesn’t it?

As for the values themselves, I am not the one who calculated the vast majority of them, I just gathered them here and I take no credit for their calculations. I have rechecked a lot though, and I am confident that the authors calculated them accurately.

Updated staff with info from the wiki. I will update again with info from gw2db.

Zelyhn.8069:

I am not sure I understand what you mean by only having to list its coefficient to calculate the damage of a skill: the base has to be included in the calculation, doesn’t it?

As for the values themselves, I am not the one who calculated the vast majority of them, I just gathered them here and I take no credit for their calculations. I have rechecked a lot though, and I am confident that the authors calculated them accurately.

Ah. Let me refer you to this wiki page, especially the formula

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

The thing to note here is that there isn’t a “+ Skill-base / Target Armor” term in there or anything. Often when the term ‘base damage’ is used in the context of GW2, it just means the damage against a target with standard armor (I think it’s 2600, because that’s what tooltips use, but I’m not sure) and the lowest amount of power possible at level 80, or 916.

It’s still sort of misleading though, since the general usage of ‘base damage’ and ‘scaling’ implies a sort of 500 + 0.6*<stat> type of formula like what you might see in League of Legends or something, and GW2 just doesn’t work like that. Skills are just the 0.6*<stat> part, with the understanding that you’ll always have a non-zero value of that <stat>.

Zelyhn.8069:

I am not sure I understand what you mean by only having to list its coefficient to calculate the damage of a skill: the base has to be included in the calculation, doesn’t it?

As for the values themselves, I am not the one who calculated the vast majority of them, I just gathered them here and I take no credit for their calculations. I have rechecked a lot though, and I am confident that the authors calculated them accurately.

The damage formula is [Mod]x[SkillCo-efficient]x[Power]x[Weapondamage]/[Armor].
Where [Mod] = Sum([TargetModifiers])xProd([AttackerModifiers]).

As you can see there is nothing called “Base damage” in the formula. This “base damage” you are writing down the damage with base power of 916, average weapon damage and target with 2600 armor. Aka useless information. Co-efficient and cast time tells everything

Chain Lightning is 0.66 + 0.66 + 0.55.

Fiery Greatsword: Average Weapon Damage 969
Flame Wave: 0.62, 4 ticks | cast+aftercast=3.0s
(lightning whip 2*0.7/1.15 = 1.22 > 0.83 = 4*0.62/3 flamewave)

Fiery Rush without target: ~0.32 (can’t calculate this from tooltip so would need to do full data gather to make sure)
70 ticks with flash/wall trick (aka hardest hitting skill in the game)

Fire Storm: 0.62, 9 ticks to unlimited targets

I’ll leave cast times to you.

Wow, I feel dumb.
I read the wiki countless times and I even made a spreadsheet to calculate damage output. I always ignored base damage because I thought it was somewhat negligible. It turns out I was right without knowing it. I will re-edit everything.
But what about heals?
Thank you so much for your attention!

Zelyhn.8069:

Wow, I feel dumb.
I read the wiki countless times and I even made a spreadsheet to calculate damage output. I always ignored base damage because I thought it was somewhat negligible. It turns out I was right without knowing it. I will re-edit everything.
But what about heals?
Thank you so much for your attention!

Heals work on a base + scaling with healing power system. With the exception of heals that don’t have any scaling at all. :P

Really, direct damage is just special.

Updated.

The last patchnotes mentioned many reductions in aftercast times. It seems that for most skills 0.2 is the norm. Can we assume that 0.2 is a “universal” aftercast time ?

About the chance to hit per meteor, I calculate a 6% chance if the radius data is correct, can anyone confirm this? Also what is the duration of the shower?
I am thinking that it could be possible for a fireball + lava font + meteor shower rotation to have a coefficient/s on par with lightning whip.

Edit: meteor shower coefficient per offtime, assuming a 0.2 aftercast, is: 1.3×24/34=0.92, if the chance to hit of a meteor is 6% then the skills results in a 0.06 c/s, which is incredibly weak on a single target and actually results in a dps loss due to the cast time.

Zelyhn.8069:

Updated.

The last patchnotes mentioned many reductions in aftercast times. It seems that for most skills 0.2 is the norm. Can we assume that 0.2 is a “universal” aftercast time ?

About the chance to hit per meteor, I calculate a 6% chance if the radius data is correct, can anyone confirm this? Also what is the duration of the shower?
I am thinking that it could be possible for a fireball + lava font + meteor shower rotation to have a coefficient/s on par with lightning whip.

Edit: meteor shower coefficient per offtime, assuming a 0.2 aftercast, is: 1.3×24/34=0.92, if the chance to hit of a meteor is 6% then the skills results in a 0.06 c/s, which is incredibly weak on a single target and actually results in a dps loss due to the cast time.

Don’t think you could say it’s universal just probably common.

EDIT: I GUESS without check/proof here that player hitbox is 90 range. Cos I did a calculation mistake but that assumption fixes it and fits the small bit of empirical data we got.
Chance for a single meteor to hit a single target inside the circle is 25%, assuming uniform fall, and 90 and 360 are correct and that the target is near the center. pi*(90+90)^2/(pi*360^2) = 0.25
Write “binomial distribution n=24, p=0.25” in wolframalpha. So 6 hits ofc is the most probable outcome, but its not sharp for just single Meteor Storm. Tested 10 storms averaging out 5.8 hits on a single target per storm.

Hmm, you don’t determine strength of a skill DPS wise with Damage/cooldown :P. What you are after is on average 6*1.3/4s = 1.95 1/s, number more than triple of Fireball. It ofc requires your target not to run out of the storm.

On the subject of fire rotations

Maybe I am calculating things completely wrong, but a I see it the math should be like this:
[pi . (90/2)^2] / [pi . (360/2)^2] = (1/4)^2 = 0.0625
And that is correct only if the meteor’s aoe is not reaching out of the 360 radius of the shower (they fall in a 270 radius area, so their effect can reach the 360 radius without exceeding it): the aoe of the meteor is always fully inside of the aoe of the shower.
But you have tested it empirically (with small numbers) and my theoretical results seems to be disproved. Maybe this is because the target itself is “an area” and just touching it applies the damage.
Do we have any data on the size of targets?
Or maybe the recent optimization of the skill hasn’t been mirrored on the wiki (the aoe values of meteors is likely not 90).

Edit: I tested my self and I get the same results as you did. I guess I can’t do maths anymore! And the effect of the meteor actually exceeds the shower aoe.

hah yea brainfart should square the chance ofc… But actually thats not the whole story because the character has a hitbox aswell but I dont know how large it is.
So the true probability should be actually [player hit box radius + meteor radius]^2 / 360^2. Aka draw circle for player, draw a meteor circle that touches the player circle. Draw the larger circle with radius playerhitbox+meteoritehitbox, if meteor drops inside that circle, it hits the player.

Lets just say the player hit box is 90 range aswell, to show 6 hits on average is still plausible. area/area = pi*(90+90)^2 / pi*360^2 = (180/360)^2 = 0.25. This is actually true only if the target is inside the circle, so the 90+90 circle is fully inside the area, but that can be assumed for a single target boss dps situation. I’ll fix details on my post above later when I have time. But I think this seems the correct path, to the same answer :P.

Glad we are on the same page!
A 90 radius player hitbox is very very large. I know this game was made in the US, but still!
Also I don’t think I agree with your way of doing the calculation, even though the result is right. I think that we should not add the player hitbox radius to the meteor aoe, but rather stick with the 0.0625 chance to hit a single point and then decide that the player hitbox is made of many of these single points, I think 4 squared points, so that the chance for the hitbox to be hit is 4*0.0625=25%. This is mathematically more accurate and the hitbox assumption is more plausible

Edit: this is completely stupid. In fact you calculate it correctly! I’d say the radius of the hitbox is smaller, but you have to add it twice to the meteor radius to get the effective radius, so your calculation makes sense.

Zelyhn.8069:

Do we have any data on the size of targets?

Just for funsies, I took my necromancer to HotM and tried to figure out the hitbox size for some of the target golems. As far as I can tell, heavy golems have a radius of about 60, while light golems are closer to 30.

Softspoken.2410:

Zelyhn.8069:

Do we have any data on the size of targets?

Just for funsies, I took my necromancer to HotM and tried to figure out the hitbox size for some of the target golems. As far as I can tell, heavy golems have a radius of about 60, while light golems are closer to 30.

Nice, thanks!
Next step: same test on player ?

Thanks for doing this. There are also many interesting properties/tricks you can talk about for each skill. But I understand sometimes people don’t want to share these out of the fear of further nerfing.

Zelyhn.8069:

Softspoken.2410:

Zelyhn.8069:

Do we have any data on the size of targets?

Just for funsies, I took my necromancer to HotM and tried to figure out the hitbox size for some of the target golems. As far as I can tell, heavy golems have a radius of about 60, while light golems are closer to 30.

Nice, thanks!
Next step: same test on player ?

Looks like the player hitbox is about same as the circle on the players feet when targetted. You can test quite well with necromancer staff marks. It triggers about when the player circle line is fully inside the mark (or half of line is enough, the animations not that exact). And you can easily fit 2 player circles side by side on the radius of small Mark (radius 120). So player hitbox is about 40-50 radius. This gives 13-15% hit chance. Heavy golem clearly has larger hitbox, which explain higher higher hitrates on tests.

If the player hitbox is about 45 then the 25% chance is consistent: you have to add twice the radius to get the extended reach of the meteor.

Edit: Updated. Added base stacks, trident, downed, tornado.

I was looking at the warrior’s forum when I came across this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Build-The-REAL-maximum-DPS-warrior/first#post1911421
At the end of the first message you will find an impressive spreadsheet. A lot of new data is available there. While I think the dps calculation of the spreadsheet is not that useful, there are many cast times disclosed in it. I don’t know how accurate they are though, and while it seems quite up to date, I believe many aftercast times are missing.
Can anyone take a look?

@Sabull
For the fire staff rotation where do you get that 31s total time from? Empirical tests? All I can come up with is the 29.8

Empirical yea, just one or two tries but I couldn’t find any mistakes or delays. So in practise the rotations take abit longer than the theoretical.
gw2 cast times abit iffy anyway. It’s quite common casting some spells like double speed once cos of lag/animation off or something.

Hm interesting
But spell queuing is made so that it counters the effects of lag.
Well then if this 1.2s difference comes from the aftercast then it must be either a mistake in the fireball or meteor aftercasts, since the patch notes clearly states the cast and aftercast time of lava font (but we never know with patch notes). Obviously 1.2s cannot come from the meteor aftercast only.

Can you try with an other rotation? (I am at work now muhaha)

Edit: since there are 17 fireballs in the rotation (prime number), I have the feeling that the delay comes from lava font and meteor :/
For example the meteor aftercast could be 0.6 and lava font’s aftercast kept its 0.36 value.

Zelyhn.8069:

I was looking at the warrior’s forum when I came across this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/Build-The-REAL-maximum-DPS-warrior/first#post1911421
At the end of the first message you will find an impressive spreadsheet. A lot of new data is available there. While I think the dps calculation of the spreadsheet is not that useful, there are many cast times disclosed in it. I don’t know how accurate they are though, and while it seems quite up to date, I believe many aftercast times are missing.
Can anyone take a look?

Spreadsheet is mine, it is pretty accurate and i recently updated it again.

Great! Thanks Puandro
I have a few questions then:
-what was your method to find the cast time of spells?
-did you include all aftercasts in your cast time listed in the sheet?
Thanks!

Updated.
-Added weapon damage comparison. Notice the conclusions in staff’s fire rotation.
-Added traits spells

Unless I get a response on cast times I will start counting their values using frame counting. Any help on this topic is highly appreciated!

I have only just noticed that the skills only start their cooldowns at the end of the animation (cast + aftercast) instead of at the end of casting.
I have been trying to check cast times for myself using frame counting, but I am really new to this and I have a hard time. I am using fraps and then Windows movie maker to process the video by steps of 0.03s. Can anyone give me some advice on this please?

Zelyhn.8069:

I would like to gather in this thread all the data available about our skills that is not available in the tooltips ingame. My intent is to make the efficiency of each skill known to the community, so that elementalists can make better decisions based on this data.

JonathanSharp:

Trait tooltips
Traits will now have tooltips in the same way that skills do. This means that you’ll be able to see EXACTLY how long an effect lasts, what its cooldown is, etc. We want this system to be as transparent as possible for our players, so that they can make the best decisions when creating their profession builds.

Well good sir, It’s about time! If this endeavour finally enables us to have access to complete and accurate data about our skills then on behalf of the elementalist community I thank you sincerely.

I would like to point out that I have not updated this thread in a long time. My will to provide comprehensive skill data for the elementalist community has not diminished, but I have a hard time mining for information.

Update:

The patch did not change much to the accuracy of tooltips.
Luckily DEKeyzToChaos.7381 has been doing some very good frame counting.
I have updated staff’s skills according to his findings.
More will come soon!

Update:

Scepter, dagger (MH and OH) and focus are now fully listed. This completes the main weapon sets. Only conjures, trident, trait spells, downed state and tornado are left. For this reason I have removed “work in progress” from the thread title. Obviously the information is not complete yet, but it is getting really close to this point.

If you notice mistakes or of you have remarks on anything please don’t hesitate to post here!

Renewed thanks to DEKeys

From a game engine efficiency view, the number of calculations per hit is enormous using any of the equation presented in this thread. It would seem more likely that a large data file has arranged arrays of hard numbers to facilitate the construction of an equation that has, at most, two multiply/divide operations. What are people basing these equations on? Did the devs disclose the actual equation used? Additionally, was that equation confirmed to be implemented, as opposed to a simple data set that works like a decipher array to generate the equation values?

I noticed two questions in your post but I understood none of them !
Could you rephrase this please?

ImProVocateur.5189:

From a game engine efficiency view, the number of calculations per hit is enormous using any of the equation presented in this thread. It would seem more likely that a large data file has arranged arrays of hard numbers to facilitate the construction of an equation that has, at most, two multiply/divide operations. What are people basing these equations on? Did the devs disclose the actual equation used? Additionally, was that equation confirmed to be implemented, as opposed to a simple data set that works like a decipher array to generate the equation values?

From a game engine efficiency view sure. Not that I know of such (but not that I’m not interested )

But the equations reproduce the correct numbers in every situation and surely they were thinking with equations when balancing the combat damage system. So I don’t quite see your point? What difference it makes how it is done in the engine, we just need the abstraction, the input and result.

Thank for you this. It explains a lot, especially about Ride the Lightning (1.75 second aftercast on top of the massive Oceanic rubberbanding = useless).

Oh and you can cast Healing Rain while moving now. Might want to update it.

Thanks!
For rtl, that “aftercast” listed here actually includes the time needed to travel the complete distance. Keys and I will take a look at this in order to make it more accurate.
Yes there can be mistakes, please do not hesitate to point them out. Also any feedback on this thread is highly appreciated

Could you clarify the exact meaning of both cast and aftercast?

It doesn’t make much sense to me in the case of a skill like Scepter 1, where you have what looks like a lengthy aftercast time, but I can immediately go into another skill afterwards, or even clip it early if I want.

Cast: time during which the casting bar of the skill is filling up. At the end of the casting time the spell is in effect.

Aftercast: taking place at the end of a cast, it is the time during which your character cannot cast anything.

Can you tell me which scepter skill you are talking about?

Oops, Air Scepter 1, Arc Lightning

For other spells, I suppose it’s possible that the ability queing system is masking the aftercast delay, but if it is a hard restriction on when I can use abilities, that definitely means I can tank my dps by using an ability with a lengthy aftercast if its damage is lower compared to another similar ability with a shorter overall cast cycle.

Still not sure if this helps me with the reason I was looking for this data in the first place – evaluating condition damage in comparison to power/crit

edit: Also with the proper cast/aftercast numbers here, it should be trivial to spreadsheet out dps numbers for most abilities. Some have unique considerations, but this is still very helpful – I was stymied before because the in-game tooltips don’t provide enough information to calculate this accurately, even with coefficients for skills I found elsewhere.

Yes I have already made a calculator for direct damage, and I am working on a rotation calculator. You will hear from this soon enough

As for arc lightning, there is a cast time, a channeling time and an aftercast time. I will refine this information in the thread as soon as possible.
Ability queuing has no effect here: we recorded all times with auto attacks as a reference. Auto attacks are not client-side generated.
The maximum error you may encounter here is by 0.05 seconds (due to our frame counting method).

I’m also revisiting my data to better separate cast times from channel times. For Meteor Shower, for example, I would consider the cast time the time window in which one could interrupt the cast and have the skill only go on partial cooldown; the channel time when the skill would go on full cooldown if interrupted. I know scepter air auto has a little bit of a cast time as well before the channel begins.

An aftercast is an animation that occurs after the spell effect has started. A lot of aftercast times are not listed in the in-game skill tooltips, which can really mess with your DPS calculations. Scepter earth 4 is one of the worst offenders.

For those who are looking for an easier-to-manipulate format while Zel is working on his rotation calculator, my data is stored in a spreadsheet at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApxtWkBqYzjwdFowa1dVVkFUV3hkRms3X3hzOXBuZWc&usp=sharing

I still have a few conjures to do and a few calculations to check, but I likely won’t bother with trident skills until I stop swapping from my ele to my guard or warr for the underwater fractal.