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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

@Impact
I would like to see all that into an excel sheet. Could you make one for me please?
Also, since the wiki does not give the coefficients for the LH chain, how did you calculate its weapon power?
You are right about one thing: I was not exactly using the proper SFLH rotation, therefore I changed that. I also changed the DF rotation to better reflect attunements at the time the spells hit.
So the end result is +6% DPS for DF. And that is excluding burn.

@Anierna
Please do! Challenge is definitely something I like when it is friendly and respectful

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
Retired elementalist theorycrafter

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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

@Impact
I would like to see all that into an excel sheet. Could you make one for me please?
Also, since the wiki does not give the coefficients for the LH chain, how did you calculate its weapon power?
You are right about one thing: I was not exactly using the proper SFLH rotation, therefore I changed that. I also changed the DF rotation to better reflect attunements at the time the spells hit.
So the end result is +6% DPS for DF. And that is excluding burn.

I reverse engineered it from the wiki. The first two in chain are 358, and the last is 586. When you equip lightning hammer you gain +969 to your attack stat indicating something about its weapon strength. The damage shown on tool tip are versus a target with 2600 armour.
(358*2600)/916/969 = 1.0486658464810884133014272130364 = 1.0487
(586*2600)/916/969 = 1.7165312459159715368565261084898 = 1.7165
Then using the 1.0487 as the coefficient, reverse engineered some hits against a target golem to get a range of 918-1016, which has a 967 average - very close to the 969. I was happy enough with that to use it in my own odd spreadsheet.

I included the formulas in the post for you because I didn’t make a spreadsheet. I downloaded your spreadsheet to take a look, and simply added 3 columns to the end of your ’rotation calculator’ table so that I’d be using the same coefficients and cast times for consistency, then put my DPS result a couple of cells below yours for comparison. I didn’t think it would be right to upload your work with my own less-than-tidy modifications for a simple, curious comparison, given the nature of those modifications.

EU | Ímpáct / Impact Warlock / Impact Illusions
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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Don’t use wiki. Ever.

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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

Why not? It saved me having to log in game and un-equip everything to see the tool tip damage, which is the same value that wiki lists.

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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

@Impact
Right, so you were not using coefficient but damage, that’s quite different.
969 is the higher boundary for LH weapon strength, but we do not know its lower boundary. In my calculator I simply normalised it to one-handed weapon strength and the result is mathematically correct.
The result of my modifiers is also mathematically correct. Same goes for the way I include LH attributes. As a matter of fact I just checked again doing it manually and I am right. I guess you have done a mistake while adding columns, that is why I am asking for a spreadsheet.

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
Retired elementalist theorycrafter

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Tooltips are often wrong.

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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

@Impact
Right, so you were not using coefficient but damage, that’s quite different.
969 is the higher boundary for LH weapon strength, but we do not know its lower boundary. In my calculator I simply normalised it to one-handed weapon strength and the result is mathematically correct.
The result of my modifiers is also mathematically correct. Same goes for the way I include LH attributes. As a matter of fact I just checked again doing it manually and I am right. I guess you have done a mistake while adding columns, that is why I am asking for a spreadsheet.

No, I was still using the coefficient, just one I had come to and found worked for my purposes, since I couldn’t find any documentation on it. If there’s an error with the figures I get as a result of the way I’ve been calculating lightning hammer damage, I haven’t seen it. It does make sense that 969 would be the upper bound, since equipping a weapon adds the upper bound to the attack stat, but as I said, I couldn’t find any documentation and this way seemed to be working fine.

Sorry, I didn’t notice you had included lightning hammer attributes. I didn’t mean to imply you did it wrong, I just didn’t see it anywhere. I’ve sent you the link via forum PM.

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Posted by: spoj.9672

spoj.9672

The wiki is quite good for coefficients on many skills. Its not quite as accurate as it could be but its a good reference to check if you got the same value when testing.

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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

That was a brave attempt Impact, but unfortunately you did some mistakes.

  • You used 969 for LH weapon damage. This would be correct if you had adjusted the LH chain coefficient accordingly. As a result your DPS figure is lower than it should be.
  • For the average damage formula, you use:
    raw damage * ( 1 – crit chance ) + raw damage * ( crit chance * ( crit damage +1.5 ))
    This is incorrect because I am already including the 0.5 base crit damage in my calculations. You should be using +1 instead of +1.5. This is inflating your DPS calculation enormously. Note also that you could reduce your formula to a simpler form.

Here is the corrected spreadsheet:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B88y8fHnpBfZRFQ3RFprYzJFaHc/edit?usp=sharing

Notice that the corrected result is about 300 DPS lower than my initial calculations because of your abusive use of rounding down and because you did not account for “wasted” precision points.

Therefore my DPS comparison is valid.

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
Retired elementalist theorycrafter

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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

Gah I should have seen the 50% included. I see it now. Although, I did the same for D/F as well so the relative difference will be very small (due to difference in precision).

I still can’t see where you include the lightning hammer bonuses for Swing though. As I said, I included those myself as a result, and my thinking was ignore the precision you marked as wasted, and work with the additional 0.0057% chance from (180/21). It was faster to type, and a very small inaccuracy which is irrelevant in terms of "which has higher DPS" given the difference between the two DPS values. Yes, the figures may have lost accuracy, but it was a quick test merely to reveal which was higher. Were they closer, I would have been forced to adjust it to consider the wasted value. As I already said, I had no intention of re-uploading it since it’s not my work, I just added a little to it to get the DPS following a different method, so I’m allowed to be lazy so long as the answer to the question isn’t changed =P.

The rounding down I wouldn’t call abusive. I’ve never seen damage with a floating point, so I round down on the calculated damage. I’ve already mentioned how I calculate for lightning hammer. Using 969 for its weapon strength has always produced reliable results for me in the past, but how you take it in your calculator is your choice. It doesn’t undermine the D/F side though, which will plummet when changing that +1.5 to +1.

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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

Ah I forgot to check DF indeed!

For LH attributes, you should notice that there is a little text appearing next to EP saying “inclusive of LH”. Check the formulas, you will see, it is there. Edit: also check the calculations at the right of the rotation calculator and the “LH mod” column. Re-Edit: sorry there is no text saying “inclusive of LH” for EP in this version of the calculator and the EP displayed is exlusive of LH attributes, but the EP used includes them. If you use the latest version then everything is there. You can find the latest version in my DF thread or using the link I first posted here for DPS comparison. In the latest version you can turn “devmod” on by changing the 0 to 1 at the top of the sheet to display additional calculations at the bottom for more details.

You can not use rounding down as much as you did when using average damage. This has nothing to do with the number appearing on your screen in-game.

Now to DF:

  • Same as for SFLH: the crit damage is incorrect. This inflates DPS as explained before.
  • You used the coefficients listed in the “coeff” column. Those are the coefficients for one hit of each skill. In my calculation I multiply this coefficient by the number of hits for each skill. You should have used the “total coeff” column instead, like you did for SFLH.
    This obviously destroys the resulting DPS.

I have corrected these mistakes and updated my spreadsheet linked in my previous message.

As for the rotation, well I don’t think this is doable Have you tried realising it in-game?
If it works then, thanks! Good job! You have just made a calculation showing that DF beats SFLH by 11% + burn damage But I don’t think that serves the purpose of what you were trying to show here.

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
Retired elementalist theorycrafter

(edited by Zelyhn.8069)

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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

* You used the coefficients listed in the "coeff" column. Those are the coefficients for *one hit* of each skill. In my calculation I multiply this coefficient by the number of hits for each skill. You should have used the "total coeff" column instead, like you did for SFLH.
This obviously destroys the resulting DPS.

Yes and no! I used the same column for SFLH too, it just wasn’t as noticeable. Fixing it there too increased the DPS by 300. But yeah that was a bad mistake. The DF result looks much more plausible now, I have to admit I was surprised to see it that low.

My purpose wasn’t to show anything specific lol. The results I came to as the result of using the incorrect coefficient column just happened to put SFLH ahead. I didn’t know which one would come out ahead, since I’ve never calculated for the use of focus, but remember I agreed a while back that I don’t believe lightning hammer builds have the highest possible DPS =P.

That rotation should work, yes. It’s what I used with D/D with an extra Lightning Whip to replace Fire Grab and minus RTL.

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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

Let’s not generalize about LH: it is really this utility that can achieve the highest DPS possible. I was really just comparing DF (30/30/10) and SFLH (30/10/10/20) to show that DF comes on top, but this does not mean the LH is not good.

About the rotation: technically it is not possible to realise it as you inputted it in my calculator because of fresh air cooldown. I am interested in what you have to say about it, but this is off topic here. Could we discuss this in the DF thread?

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
Retired elementalist theorycrafter

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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

Let’s not generalize about LH: it is really this utility that can achieve the highest DPS possible. I was really just comparing DF (30/30/10) and SFLH (30/10/10/20) to show that DF comes on top, but this does not mean the LH is not good.

About the rotation: technically it is not possible to realise it as you inputted it in my calculator because of fresh air cooldown. I am interested in what you have to say about it, but this is off topic here. Could we discuss this in the DF thread?

It doesn’t require a discussion, I think you’re just missing the link with what I said earlier about arranging the modifiers to account for when you would swap attunements during a lightning whip allowing you to swap back to Air after casting the skill in the other attunement so that the lower coefficient loses the Air Training modifier, and the higher coefficient gains it. Or in the case of water where the coefficients (or DPS of a skill) is lower, you’d not want to cast any water skills, only use the attunement swap to trigger electric discharge.

In the rotations on the spreadsheet, where it shows lightning whip, water, air, if you check the modifiers for each you’d see it isn’t set out to hit with lightning whip, swap to water, then back to air. Examining the modifiers shows it’s meant to be start lightning whip, swap to water, hit with lightning whip (hence the lower modifier), then back into Air. In practice, with a high enough crit chance you can improve on it a little by swapping after the first lightning whip hit, so only the 0.7 loses 10% as opposed to the whole 1.4.

I remember testing timings in heart of the mists to find the number of lightning whips required to pull off a quick swap as mentioned above, and to get back to burning speed when it’s off CD.

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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

Don’t worry I got that the first time. Although I found some mistakes such as Magnetic Wave being cast in air and a time constraint breach (There is a minimum time limit of 26s) though.

It seems to me that you would be too short on time for FA between the second Burning Speed and Comet, so you are missing a LW somewhere.

Have you tried doing this entire rotation in the mists? can you do it consistently? I find it very difficult to pull out in practice.

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

I had it working for D/D, which used Ring of Fire each rotation, RTL every 2, Fire Grab every 3, Earthquake every 4, and no Comet. I wouldn’t have tried a full offensive rotation with focus, but I assume it would still work effectively with an extra lightning whip here and there to make up for the skills the focus can’t use as often as dagger can.

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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

I just tried it in HoTM. It needs an extra lightning whip after the swap from fire to account for the lack of Ring of Fire, the extra second will have Earth and Fresh Air ready on time. It worked fine.
....Then I looked back at it in Excel. When editing yours, I clearly missed the absence of Earth the second time around. While I inserted Water after Earth->Air, I forgot to insert an Earth after Fire->Air on the second go around. There’s also one lightning whip missing in Air before the second swap to Water. 3 whips is the minimum. Sorry about that. But you said you found it difficult to do? I’m impressed if you managed to swap to Water twice in 6 seconds LOL.

EDIT: You probably thought of it already, but when testing in HoTM, take as low power as possible and use a steady weapon so the golem lives longer, and take as low precision as possible and use sigil of intelligence for a more accurate comparison against a theoretical rotation regarding when fresh air triggers. Plus, it’s easier to grab one sigil than get high precision amulet, runes, accuracy, fury etc. Although that only works for testing segments I guess. Anyway, it’s good to verify in pieces before trying over and over to get it down as a whole =P.

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(edited by Impact.2780)

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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

I use the undestructible golem.

As I said, your rotation is not technically doable and it is also practically difficult.
This is why we always realise rotations in-game before computing anything.

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

And as I said, it is technically doable. It’s no more difficult than might stacking. I assumed - since you are talking in terms of maximizing DPS - that you would have used every attunement for each rotation to capitalize on electric discharge. So when I edited the column, I missed adding earth to the second rotation. That doesn’t mean the rotation is impossible, merely that it was written down incorrectly. You don’t honestly believe someone could think water’s attunement cool down is 6 seconds now, do you? That would be like you not noticing it was still on a 7 second cool down when you were trying to complete the second rotation.

Plus, as I’ve said, I don’t use D/F. I quickly altered it to drop */D skills and add */F skills, which I wouldn’t have had to do if the rotation was well timed around the skill with the highest DPS (burning speed).

I stand by the implication that the initial rotations I saw in your spreadsheet can be improved upon, and that calculating DPS by summing the damage calculated for each individual skill and modifier yields a more accurate result.

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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

No it does not. Check my maths, it is correct. I think the experiment we’ve been through shows this well enough.

So you wrote down an incorrect rotation, that was my point from the start.

As for your thoughts on the optimal rotation, if you were to use all attunements in each phase then you would not be able to blast the fire field. Besides I never talked about maximising DPS. Instead I focus on in-game viability. This is why the practical aspect of a rotation is important to me: if a rotation requires too much attention or it is too sensitive to unexpected changes (such as dodges) then I don’t publish it. Now, if you know a way to achieve more with this kind of rotation then I’d be glad to hear about it! Obviously we ended up discussing it, so maybe we should switch to a more appropriate thread as I suggested before?

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
Retired elementalist theorycrafter

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Posted by: Impact.2780

Impact.2780

Mathematically correct yes, as was my method. The word I used was accuracy. Rather than calculate or estimate the up time of attunements, using the actual up time by considering each skill and the current status individually is more accurate. It’s also more accurate regarding coefficients and modifiers since they are the actual values rather than an average, i.e they’ve been through less manipulation and thereby less chance of lost information.

You can’t argue that the damage of all hits divided by the total time doesn’t equal damage over time - that calculation is the very meaning of the term. Yet, it produces different results to yours, the difference of which increase in significance over time. You could put it down to rounding, but remove those rounding functions and the results will still be different.

I gathered you were more concerned with viability and builds which are suited to more than just running around dungeons with a glassy group simply by the fact that you’re talking about the use of focus. And I agree, I’m not one for running specifically running in a manner so organised and dictated that it no longer feels like a game. However, given the nature of this thread I had to assume you were comparing its strength against the builds here in the same light, i.e maximum DPS for the given build, which would mean there’d be at least one other source of fire fields every 25 seconds (is that the cool down for Comet?). I know you suggested moving to another thread, but the discussion started here so from the start, I was under that impression.

This would make sense why you picked to compare against 30/10/10/20/0 instead of the higher damaging build like I did... You were comparing your more durable, defensive and potentially versatile build against one that is designed to have the highest possible DPS while providing various benefits that yours can provide in order to prove that lightning hammer isn’t the best at everything. That if you need to be able to provide buffs for your group, other builds have higher DPS despite not being specifically designed for it. I.E lightning hammer builds are only better in a very, very specific group composition and style. I think everyone knew that already =P!

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Posted by: haviz.1340

haviz.1340

Honestly, there should a big disclaimer in this thread saying that you shouldn’t use these exact builds for anything harder if you don’t have a team that can carry you (guardians mostly).

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Posted by: Zelyhn.8069

Zelyhn.8069

Then we understand each other Impact
On the subject of calculations, we get different results only because we are using different inputs. Check the calculator linked once more: I have modified some attunement modifiers that you inputted for DF to reflect how my calculator would use them. Basically attunement modifiers are not considered active until you input the attunement change. Then I have compared the results between your modified calculations and mine. There is a 0.317 DPS difference. This is a 0.0022% change. I think we can call this equal.
Just so you know, I use values that I entitle as “uptimes” for attunements but this is only to look simpler. In fact I work with weighted averages. As you can see it is accurate.
My method also provides additional information since users get to know how important is each attunement.

Haviz I couldn’t agree more. This is also why I hate this idea of a “meta”. I believe people should learn to adapt and use the best build for the content they choose to tackle with the group they have. And the only way to do this is by experimenting. It is all about the mindset.
Also, playing with guardians is boring!

Zelyhn.8069 [rT]
Retired elementalist theorycrafter

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Posted by: Iris Ng.9845

Iris Ng.9845

I found D/F is the best in Fractals and Arah, while Sc/LH is much better elsewhere. The small difference in DPS cannot make up for the extra viability they bring to each situation, especially when our supposed carriers (e.g. guards) are found dead.

“Raids are like fortune cookies. You eat the cookie and then read the paper scraps.”

- doranduck, 2016 on Lore in Raids

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Posted by: MADPIEMAN.8023

MADPIEMAN.8023

Is dagger focus viable or is s/f superior?

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Posted by: DEKeyzToChaos.7381

DEKeyzToChaos.7381

It really depends on what you mean by “viable” and “superior.”

D/F allows much more open access to survivability skills such as Swirling Winds, Magnetic Wave, and Obsidian Flesh, so one could argue that it’s more viable than Scepter/Hammer in more situations. It has pretty much one build, 30/30/10/0/0 that does it all – stack fury, stack vuln, and hit a few damage modifiers, and it’s easy to pick back up if your rotation is interrupted by dodges or downs.

S/F + Hammer pretty much locks you into a full offensive rotation with only small periods of time in which you can use your support skills – and even then you’re wasting fire field time to cast those skills. But instead of maintaining around 6-8 stacks of might, you maintain more like 15. Depending on how you trait, you can provide fury at the expense of effective power and DPS – even making it lower DPS than D/F if all other conditions were the same and other party members were able to take care of might and fury.

Scepter/Dagger + Hammer can give some monstrous DPS if you don’t have to trait for party support, but as soon as you reach for PF you lose a lot of its potential power and it becomes worse than S/F + Ham in multi-target situations if you’re using a standard water-camping build. It’s slightly better than D/F at stacking might but worse than S/F + Ham.

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Posted by: Anierna.6918

Anierna.6918

I’ve just done the math for how the Ferocity change will impact the Ele fire staff meta build and each of the s/x LH meta builds. My calculations are here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-zwZEZiI96obGRzVXFvS3owX0k/edit?usp=sharing

This takes into account: ferocity changes to gear and Air trait line, no more stacking perception/bloodlust, equalization in food/banners/LH bonus, 2nd sigil for the fire staff build. This assumes that Arcane Lightning will remain as-is (Anet hasn’t said anything about this, so I’m hoping it won’t be nerfed).

tl;dr: The nerf is between 17% and 21% for each build.

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Posted by: IrisTheCasual.3742

IrisTheCasual.3742

I wonder how much inferior the combination of Assassin Head/Coat/Pants and Zerk Shoulder/Glove/Boots compared to the full Zerk?

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Posted by: MHo.1056

MHo.1056

With Anierna´s assumptions:

Attachments:

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Posted by: MHo.1056

MHo.1056

Well, are you still able to aim the comet on top of yourself?

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Posted by: Chrono.6928

Chrono.6928

I’ve just done the math for how the Ferocity change will impact the Ele fire staff meta build and each of the s/x LH meta builds. My calculations are here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-zwZEZiI96obGRzVXFvS3owX0k/edit?usp=sharing

This takes into account: ferocity changes to gear and Air trait line, no more stacking perception/bloodlust, equalization in food/banners/LH bonus, 2nd sigil for the fire staff build. This assumes that Arcane Lightning will remain as-is (Anet hasn’t said anything about this, so I’m hoping it won’t be nerfed).

tl;dr: The nerf is between 17% and 21% for each build.

what’s a good build to be running post patch?

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Posted by: MHo.1056

MHo.1056

Ok, comet works with going to the end of the flame wall, looking up and one step back or forward, then cast it.

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Posted by: Anierna.6918

Anierna.6918

@ Zelyhn: The last update messed up theorycrafting. Here are some of the problems I’ve run into:

Testing cast times: Can’t just use the ones on the Wiki. Some are wrong (eg. Wiki says a full War GS AA chain takes 2.4 secs. It actually takes 2.5 secs – the wiki didn’t account for the full aftercast. Recording yourself spamming GS AA chain as fast as possible 10x and dividing the total time by 10 yields exactly 2.5 secs). This means I need to test each individually. That’s fine, I’ve done most of them already. Not a big problem.

Testing coefficients: Once again, can’t just use the ones on the Wiki. I have to test them myself. No more dummies in LA, or anywhere else in PvE/WvW. This means I need to do them in HotM. Fine. But there aren’t any more steady weapons, so I have to do them all many times to get useable averages. Also fine, if annoying. But wtf are the wep strengths of weapons in PvP now? PvP uses normalized equipment attributes. Well, what are those attributes? The same wep strength range as rare weps? Exotic? Ascended? It doesn’t say. And it’s not like I can derive it from the coefficients, because I can’t trust the wiki coefficients either.

Testing LH dmg: In PvP, there is only a single wep strength (whatever that “normalized” attribute is). I can’t test how wep rarity/strength effects LH dmg post-patch, now that Player bundles (kits, conjured weapons, banners, etc.) will now scale damage based on the rarity of the player’s equipped weapon. Pre-patch, it was set at 969, according to the wiki (assuming that’s right – but why would it be?). Do I just assume that since normal ascended wep strength is approximately 5% higher than exotic, the post-patch wep strength of LH is approximately 1017.5? Perhaps LH dmg scales with rarity in a different way, but I can’t test it without PvE dummies.

If someone can tell me what the “normalized” wep strength range is for weps in PvP, I can do d/f. But I can’t do LH w/o dummies in PvE to test how LH dmg scales w/ rarity. Just assuming it scales up by approximately 5% w/o actually testing it doesn’t seem wise.

Anyone have an ETA on the re-introduction of test dummies in LA or steady weps?

Hey Anierna can you post this in the ele forum? I’m already in the process of finding some answers

(edited by Anierna.6918)

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Posted by: Darox.8069

Darox.8069

  • Cast times: yeah of course the wiki is wrong. This is why Keyz and I (but mostly Keyz) have spent time on recording them and frame counting for every one of our skills
  • The PvP weapon strength is exotic. This is based on a few calculation. Also it is made plausible by the fact that changing this base would require Anet to rethink all balancing after patch and Anet has very little resources to spend on that.
  • As for LH weapon strength, let’s assume that the devs have done a good job and that it behaves as they said it does: it uses the equipped weapon’s strength. I have done some lengthy naked tests in Malchor’s Leap next to the Lights Waypoint (southwest) on nearby level 79 Risen Brutes. This zone is decent because the character is level 80 and the mobs are not too deadly. The results are: 1.029 coeff for a swing (AA1&2) with ascended weapon,1.027 with exotic weapon, and 1.027 with basic (white) weapon. I am guessing that my sample just wasn’t large enough for the ascended test. Maybe you or Keyz can recheck this? I have calculated the mob’s armor to be 2400.

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Posted by: Darox.8069

Darox.8069

Actually there must be something wrong with my calculations because in the mists I find a coeff of 1.052, so maybe I got the armor wrong. This requires further testing.

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Posted by: Anierna.6918

Anierna.6918

“The PvP wep strength is exotic” – that sounds logical, but really, how do we know? Can you prove it? It seems like the way to prove it would be to use an exotic wep naked on the dummies in LA, then do the same w/ dummies in HotM of the same armor rating, If the average dmg is the same, then sure, PvP weps are exotic. But we can’t do that anymore because there are no longer dummies in LA. For all we know, we could be using basic wep-strength weps in PvP, and the coefficients in PvP could be different for some/all skills (we already know that some skills in PvP are different from their PvE variants).

“For LH weps strength, let’s assume that the devs have done a good job” – … uh, really? lol. I’d never take a dev at his word. (Insert “that’s perfectly doable” quote here.) Using mobs in Malchor’s does not seem like a great method, just because they’ll hit a naked, no-trait ele pretty hard, and they themselves have low health. Maybe it’s the best method we have available now, but testing w/ them is still a pain. What we need are the LA dummies back. Then all those different coefficients… maybe the armor’s wrong, maybe the sample size is too small, maybe the spread in wep strength is so large as to require a big sample size, maybe the stars just aren’t aligned right. If Anet gave us back steady weps and PvE target dummies, we could get everything sorted out. Until then, though, I don’t see how we can reliably theory-craft.

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Posted by: Darox.8069

Darox.8069

I just remembered the skill damage from memory. Then I hit the indestructible golem enough times to be sure it has not changed. So the end damage is the same. Now yes, they could have changed the weapon strength and the coefficients just for pvp so that it would still look the same! Not only is this unlikely, but also it does not matter: if it looks the same and behaves the same then for all practical purposes it is the same. You see what I mean? Only the perceived coefficients matter. This does not require proof. It is like how do we know the tooltip’s armor used is 2600? We don’t. But we were told so. And in fact the number does not matter, only the relative changes do. So we could say it is not 2600 but 3000 instead and all theory crafting would just have to adapt, but then end result would be the same

Yeah it’s risky to believe a dev! Let alone a mo… Let’s not get into that :p
The Risen Brutes are permanently crippled, LW has 300 range and LH blinds as often as they attack. Really It’s a stroll. A very slow stroll. It took hours to kill a mob. But then that gave me at least some decently large samples
I’ll just carry on with my method until I find a level 80 mob with 2600 armor, that should be possible! A structure would even be better.

(edited by Darox.8069)

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Posted by: Darox.8069

Darox.8069

Interesting fact: the tooltip damage for LH does not take your equipped weapon strength into account! It assumes an exotic base weapon strength and scales only with power. Therefore, according to the tooltip, the coefficient for LH swing is 1.067

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Posted by: Darox.8069

Darox.8069

Recalculated the mob’s armor to be 2474
This gives me estimates for the coefficient that are much closer to that derived from the tooltip.
I’ll retest this again in the evening but this is starting to look coherent

Edit: the mob’s armor is actually 2494. Round downs and large spreads make my life difficult!

(edited by Darox.8069)

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Posted by: Darox.8069

Darox.8069

I have been doing some tests.

The devs said that the LH damage will scale with the equipped weapon rarity, not weapon damage. Therefore equipping a staff will not increase the LH damage compared to that with daggers equipped for example. I tested this to be true.

Based on this I am highly confident that the coefficient for a swing (AA1&2) of LH with an exotic weapon equipped is 1.067.

Now the tricky part is testing with an ascended weapon. I am rather confident that a weapon of such rarity increases the damage by 5%, which is coherent with the increase in weapon damage from exotic to ascended.

This bring the total AA chain coefficient from 3.88 with exotics to 4.07 with ascended. If my calculations are correct then conjures have effectively received a damage boost.

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Posted by: Anierna.6918

Anierna.6918

This new release in China + the return of the Bazaar of the 4 Winds, I assume that LS installment will mean they fix up LA and return the target dummies to their appropriate spots. I’m putting off theorycrafting until then. Once they are fixed, I think I’ll go on a “fix all the cast times and coefficients on the Wiki” crusade. lol

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Posted by: Darox.8069

Darox.8069

Sure why not.

Keyz and I have already recorded coefficients and cast time though. This data is publicly available.

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Posted by: Gyler.8150

Gyler.8150

There are indestructible dummies in Queensdale (the town with the crafting stuff), though its not a level 80 area, so not sure if that would be an approrpriate testing ground. I think it would be, seeing as all you are looking for is weapon coefficients. Let me know if that helps.

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Posted by: Darox.8069

Darox.8069

There are indestructible dummies in Queensdale (the town with the crafting stuff), though its not a level 80 area, so not sure if that would be an approrpriate testing ground. I think it would be, seeing as all you are looking for is weapon coefficients. Let me know if that helps.

Thanks but we do need level 80