Guild Wars 2

Alright, from the thread with that amusing condi video, the question arose: can condi mes damage compete with other condi classes in pve?

Based on my experiences with my burn Engi and burn Guardian, I’d say that for the most part it’s very hard to keep up in sustained damage, and you’ll never beat them for burst…at the moment.

HOWEVER, Duelist’s Discipline is still bugged!

So, I’ve done the math for a sustained bleed build based around iDuelists, assuming Duelist’s Discipline gets fixed.

First off, I’ve done the math assuming Sinister gear. You can see the final numbers for Rampager’s gear in the next post. The Rampager’s numbers are out of date, but the cardinality is the same: Rampagers has less dps given the same build. Changing the build slightly could have some different results.
First build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhEQNAraWnsICVohNoBuqBUrhlcDyMBvOko/YJzoMAruXA-TxxCABAcCAYW9HnV+d8hAgq9HQ+JA6DGTJYAgDgdrbd3Nw4jP+4jPe7u7u7u7ulCYRlVA-e

Assumptions:
1. For condition damage, take the number listed and add 150 for compounding power, then another 9 for the extra that adds through bursting.
2. Stack the Sigil of Corruption on the scepter+pistol, but use bursting on the staff to get both bonuses.
3. The numbers are computed as averages over a long period of time of doing nothing but sitting with iDuelists out and auto-attacking with Winds of Chaos.
4. We don’t use any weapon abilities besides AA.
5. Our opponent lives long enough to get 3 iduelists out and hitting full stacks, and doesn’t try to kill us or our phantasms in any way that impedes steady dps.
6. 25 might, 25 vulnerability on target, Banner of Discipline, Banner of Strength.
7. We can get the double bounce from Winds of Chaos on the target every time (off-bounce doesn’t need to be to us, as we are ignoring might for now).
8. Neither we nor our iDuelists ever miss (I really just don’t know the numbers on that).
9. We have at least 2 boons on us at any given moment, putting condi duration at 100% via Chaotic Persistance.
10. None of our phantasms receive Fury from any source.

iDuelist bleeds
Expected average bleed stacks per second: 45.
Damage per second per bleed stack: 238
iDuelist Bleed dps: 10,731

iDuelist attacks
Damage per volley: 2152
Crit chance: .5786
Expected crit modifier: 1.3549
Expected dmg per volley: 2916
Volley timing: 6.6s
Expected dps per iDuelist: 292
Expected dps for 3 iDuelists: 1,325

Personal bleeds
Winds of Chaos attack speed: 1.32s/attack
2 hits per attack
Chance of bleed per hit: .33
Expected bleed stacks per attack: .66
Bleed Duration: 14s
.66*14=9.24
9.24/1.32=7 expected average bleed stacks per second
=1,668 dps

Personal Burns
Winds of Chaos, as above
Chance of burn per hit: .33
Expected burn stacks per attack: .66
Burn duration: 2s
.66*2=1.32
1.32/1.32 = 1 expected average burn stacks per second
1*690.151=690 dps

Personal attack damage
Winds of Chaos, as above
Dmg per hit: 349.4
2*349.4=698.8
698.8/1.32= 529.3939 base damage per second
Crit chance: .5786+.2=.7786
Crit damage: 1.6133
Expected crit damage modifier: 1.4775
1.4775*529.3939=782
Compounding Power bonus: .09
1.09*782.1795 = 853

Total dps:
10,730.8463+1,667.764+690.151+1,325.3385+782.1795=15,267
15,267*1.25 = 19,083 dps

So 19.1k dps, about.

Probable modifiers:

• Adding in non-AA skills increases dps
• Phantasms quickness from allies increases dps
• Bosses killing iDuelists decreases dps
• Ramp up time for iDuelists and bleed stacks decreases total dps vs sustained dps
• CC or pressure taking you off your target decreases dps
• Winds of Chaos bouncing to different targets decreases dps
• DPS does not scale with multiple targets
• Miss chances decrease dps
• Duelist’s Discipline never getting fixed dramatically decreases dps.

So it could be higher, or it could be lower on sustained damage, and the ramp-up time makes the build suffer up-front.
As far as ramp-up time goes, Signet of Ether gets you to 2 iDuelists in the first few seconds, and a staff clone is a passable substitute until you can get the next iDuelist up.
That leaves bleed ramp-up from Winds of Chaos on you and your clone.
I’ll do an analysis on how that dps ramps up, sometime. See the conversation below for some analysis on timing.

From below, I ran numbers for a clone-only build that shatters every time CoF is off cooldown, and shatters Mind Wrack nearly every time it’s on cooldown (actual cycle timing is 1/2 the CoF cooldown, which is 10.875, versus the 10.5s cooldown of MW).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhEQNAraWnsICVohNoBuqBUrhlcDyMBvOko/ok5oMApuXA-TxxCABAcCAYW9HnV+d8hAgq9HQ+JA6DGTJYAgDgdrbd3Nw4jP+4jPe7u7u7u7ulCYRlVA-e

DPS came down to:
14,964 dps to a stationary target that takes no actions,
15,947 dps to a moving target that takes no actions,
and +247.4 dps to the target for every action the target takes per 6 seconds on average.
So for 2 actions per 6 seconds, that’s 15,336 dps stationary, 16,318 dps moving.

To catch up to the iDuelist build above, the target would need to attack 13 times every 6 seconds, which is about 2.2 actions every second.

This approach is much less vulnerable to illusion death, however, as clone uptime is immensely easier to manage than phantasm uptime.

Rampager build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhEQNAraWnsICVohNoBuqBUrhlcDyMBvOko/YJzoMAruXA-TxxXwAh0HkTJ48TBQP1fAs/QAlf0fCABAOA2tu1d3AjP+4jP+4t7u7u7u7WKgFVWB-e

Changes:

• Higher crit chance -> more attack damage from self and iDuelists
• Higher crit chance -> more bleed stacks from iDuelists
• Lower condi damage -> less damage per stack per second
• Slightly higher power from rampager’s backpiece versus rabid

iDuelist bleed dps: 6,754.935
personal bleed dps: 1,685.1296
personal burn dps: 753.3064
iDuelist attack dps: 946.8228
personal attack dps: 1,015.1042

Total dps: 11,155.298

That’s a loss of 437.8 dps versus the Sinister build. The calculations are out of date. Still, the changes shouldn’t benefit the Rampager’s build so much more that they don’t remain close. It’s possible the Rampager will catch up, though.

However, there are a couple advantages of Rampagers beyond the calculation:

• Higher burst damage. Critting more means skills that actually deal damage will deal more damage up-front, which is good.
• A little higher up-front bleed damage. With iDuelists proccing more bleeds, the first 2 iduelists will get bleeds out faster, adding more damage upfront that you are losing through the condi loss. Not sure how big an effect this even is, though.
• iDuelists deal more damage to condition-immune targets. Structures fall faster.

As a final note, I’d like to stress what I already mentioned above: these are theoretical numbers. The fact is that phantasms just kind of die a lot. Where other condi classes can get all their stacks out any time they can cast a skill at the right range, this build (and indeed, most mesmer sustained dps builds) relies so much on phantasms that any fight with lots of cleaves nerfs the mes very very heavily.

So much so that I think it’s fair to say the number one problem with mesmer pve performance is the reliance on phantasms for dps, when you often just can’t rely on phantasms.

Something to note is that I believe all of those numbers are significantly less than the similarly estimated numbers in a power build. Iirc, assuming 3 phantasm permanent uptime and constant autoattacks nets you around 16k dps.

Unfortunately, neither of these estimations are even remotely feasible in most situations. Phantasms get squishes constantly, and the ramp up time is a very significant detriment.

All things considered, I feel that a staff clone-based build is probably more reliable even given the problem of staff autos bouncing to allies instead of enemies. Since you can put up 3 clones immediately, as well as easily sustain them through boss cleaves, that aspect beats out pistol builds in a realistic situation.

Fay.2357:

Something to note is that I believe all of those numbers are significantly less than the similarly estimated numbers in a power build. Iirc, assuming 3 phantasm permanent uptime and constant autoattacks nets you around 16k dps.

Unfortunately, neither of these estimations are even remotely feasible in most situations. Phantasms get squishes constantly, and the ramp up time is a very significant detriment.

All things considered, I feel that a staff clone-based build is probably more reliable even given the problem of staff autos bouncing to allies instead of enemies. Since you can put up 3 clones immediately, as well as easily sustain them through boss cleaves, that aspect beats out pistol builds in a realistic situation.

Frankly, I’m inclined to agree. The stacks from the iDuelist outpace the clones dramatically (in practice, I hover a little below 30 stacks on my clone build), but the uptime is superior.
More important, though, is the ability of a clone-focused rotation to shatter.
Shattering at all with the rotation described above loses dps because you don’t want to lose iDuelists. Once you let go of that, however, you can start popping 9 stacks of confusion and 4 stacks of torment from CoF every time it’s off cooldown, and occasional Mind Wracks in the mix.
Popping up iDuelists is still worthwhile, but we’re no longer constrained to rely on their sustained volleys, and we can shatter them right after they get a volley off.
With fixed Duelist’s Discipline and the build described above, summoning an iDuelist is equivalent to a 9-stack bleed weapon ability on a 16s cooldown. Shattering right after, then replacing with a clone gives more total stacks over time.

I’ve no idea how to begin to calculate the dps of such a thing. I’ve calculated clone bleed dps and shatter condi dps, but trying to optimize the rotations to maximize both sides…I really don’t know how to do that.

I could probably make a matlab code to model it sometime if I get bored.

General structure would be something along the line of making a separate function for each state (staff clone, pistol phant, autoattacks in staff, etc) that would take inputs of stats and duration of the effect. Then you could basically either sit down and come up with different rotations to execute them in or figure out a way to randomize different rotations and then brute force through it.

Are you speaking solo or team here? For solo condition (or hybrid), rampager with sword-pistol is best. For solo, staff clones and shatter make more sense.

Why is your expected crit damage modifiers lower than the base 1.5 crit damage we get?

apharma.3741:

Why is your expected crit damage modifiers lower than the base 1.5 crit damage we get?

Effective modifier = crit chance * crit damage = Average damage bonus (as a %)

Ah ok thanks.

/15chars

Silverkey.2078:

Are you speaking solo or team here? For solo condition (or hybrid), rampager with sword-pistol is best. For solo, staff clones and shatter make more sense.

I’m not sure what distinction you’re drawing here, sword is better for solo, but staff is better for solo?

And it’s solo/team agnostic. Whether you have a sword or a scepter changes nothing about the rotation described above. The entire point is to calculate potential damage under mostly-ideal conditions of letting 3 iDuelists chug away, without the extra complication of using abilities beyond auto-attacks yourself.

As far as Fay’s point about Assassins/Berserkers builds hitting 16k numbers, were they counting might?

@apharma: using the expected crit modifier as Esplen explained it is a shortcut that lets me skip having to calculate crit and non-crit damage separately. For dps purposes it comes out the same, but it obscures the burstiness inherent in crit-reliant builds.
For sustained dps I just reckon it’s not relevant.

Wow I wrote too fast :p
For team, hybrid sword-pistol, for solo staff :p
It’s not agnostic because you use the staff for your personal damage while I use the sword (or scepter). Actually you’re right that the staff can get somewhat higher damage than the sword in condition build. I used the sword since I you want 2 different off-hand phantasms in your rotation (staff phantasm is underwhelming in a condi build).

Yes, the 16k DPS are with 25 might, 25 vulnerability and probably 2 banners.

Btw, the staff AA is 1.32s not 0.75.

Silverkey.2078:

Btw, the staff AA is 1.32s not 0.75.

I was going off the tooltip, and the fact that when I have a staff clone, it attacks exactly once for every two attacks I make, and I believe frifox’s spreadsheet has staff clones attacking every 1.5s. You are correct, the changes have been made below and to the OP.

Alright, and then I added in the bonuses from Banner of Discipline and Banner of Strength, which alongside the 25 Might, 25 vuln and 25 stacked Corruption, comes to a total expected dps of:
22,133.3105
In the interests of a more even comparison with the numbers generally posted for other builds, from here on my numbers will assume 25 might, 25 vuln, Banner of Dicipline and Banner of Strength, and max stacks on any stacking Sigil (Sigil of Corruption, in this case).

Sinister looks pretty good for PvE, then, if your calculations are accurate.

Any idea how long it takes to ramp up to the full DPS?

You get 2/3 iDuelists up in the first 3 seconds, and you can then swap to staff and spawn a staff clone for the next 16 seconds until you can pop the last iDuelist.
I’m still working on the relative damage for the clones, so I’m not sure yet what the dps loss is for using a clone while you wait, but I’d wager a clone gives less than half an iDuelist’s dps…maybe 25%? Hard to say.

Fortunately, iDuelists fire immediately, so they’re hitting their dps stride within the first 7 seconds.
So that puts you at about 5000 less potential dps based on rotation alone for the first 19 seconds.
You do have to ramp up on bleeds for your staff attacks and your clone’s staff attacks.
With 14second bleed durations on a .88 stacks-per-second application rate, it should take around 14 seconds to hit full stacks on your own attacks. The clone will take twice that long, so it’s actually at only a little more than half stacks when you summon the next iDuelist, so that’s another 400 dps loss, so you’ll be at about 16.7k dps 16 seconds in when you summon your last iDuelist….

So you’ll start at a little over 9.5k dps 3 seconds in (2 iDuelists + staff AA) , ramp up to 16.7k dps over the next 16 seconds 11.5s (2 iDuelists + clone condis + staff AA + staff AA condis), and then jump to 22.1k dps at 20 seconds from initiate.
All of this is subject to the caveats that Fay mentioned, so any fight that shreds phantasms cuts your dps enormously.
**see posts below for revised numbers at those times

I’m calculating clone-only dps now to figure out what the real numbers for the clone are, and to see what second-best is (since you can keep clones up 100% a lot more easily than iDuelists). Then I face the daunting task of trying to mix shatter damage into that mix.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Personal bleeds
Winds of Chaos attack speed: .75s/attack
2 hits per attack

Personal attack damage
Winds of Chaos, as above
Dmg per hit: 236
2*236=472
472/.75= 629.3333 base damage per second

Mes Staff AA is 1.320 sec / attack, which is 0.66 sec / hit from 2 hits per 1 attack. With 236 dmg per hit thats 715 dps, not 629. Clone AA is 2.442 sec / attack, which is 1.221 sec / hit with the bounce.

frifox.5283:

AlphatheWhite.9351:

Personal bleeds
Winds of Chaos attack speed: .75s/attack
2 hits per attack

Personal attack damage
Winds of Chaos, as above
Dmg per hit: 236
2*236=472
472/.75= 629.3333 base damage per second

Mes Staff AA is 1.320 sec / attack, which is 0.66 sec / hit from 2 hits per 1 attack. With 236 dmg per hit thats 715 dps, not 629. Clone AA is 2.442 sec / attack, which is 1.221 sec / hit with the bounce.

Yeah, I was revising the damage calculations right as you were posting that, actually (had to hunt down something you’d posted to find your google doc, I guess I could have just waited for you to chime in).

That cuts top dps down to 19,083.3444.

Replacing iDuelists completely with staff clones, but still using the same rotation, puts max dps at 13,026.3482

Comparing clone dps to iDuelists, a single clone is putting out 2403 dps total, all via conditions.
A single iDuelist is putting out 4018 dps, of which 3576 is from conditions, and 441 is from attack damage.
That’s a lot better than my guess of 25%, closer to 60%. Still, it does come up with a more serious ramp time (less than I expected, though).
At 8.5225 average stacks per second and an effective application rate of .7442 bleeds per second, the clones should hit their stride in 11.5 seconds.
So the clone-only version will start at a little more than 1k dps in the first second, and ramp up to 13k dps at around 11-12 seconds.

Meanwhile, the revised timeline on the iDuelist approach:
Hit 11.1k dps in the first 3s (forgot vuln in my last post),
ramping up to 14.1k dps by 14-15s,
jumping to 19k dps at 20s.

AlphatheWhite.9351:

All of this is subject to the caveats that Fay mentioned, so any fight that shreds phantasms cuts your dps enormously.

One nice thing about a condition Phantasm build over power Phantasm is that any damage stacks from Sharper Images/Duelist’s Discipline will continue doing damage even after your Phantasms get killed. (Really missing the revamped Confusing Combatants we were originally going to get instead of Master Fencer.)

I’m very confused by your maths here… I may be wrong but I just don’t get it. Also I’m not sure where you are in your updates…

Winds of Chaos attack speed: .75s/attack
2 hits per attack
Chance of bleed per hit: .33
Expected bleed stacks per attack: .66

Here you used 0.75s/attack because you counted 2 hits every 1.5s attack (you then fixed to 1.32 but does not matter). But if you do so, you have to count 0.33 bleed every 0.75s and not 0.66. It is 0.66 every 1.5s

If I do the calculation with this, I get an average 7 stack bleeds and 1 stack burn for a total staff DPS of 2002.37 (using your numbers).

I haven’t looked at the rest but this already is a big difference

@tobascodagama
I don’t like to think like this. People often stay “the advantage of condi damage is that even when you don’t attack, the enemy still gets damage”. This is a weird way of looking at it. The damage was applied when you attack. Sure it takes time to actually happen, but while you don’t attack, you do no damage, there is no way around. All the calculations we are doing are average DPS, so it’s as if the damage was applied immediately on hit. The loss for not attacking is exactly the same whether you’re in condi or in direct damage.

The only difference, is the damage from conditions is lost after the enemy dies (i.e. the remaining stacks on him are lost).

Just for comparison, the DPS I estimate with the rampager hybrid with might, vuln and banner is about 17k.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Dungeon_Hybrid

Note that this is not the optimal average DPS because I favor short intense damage (for example using sigil of bursting) over long condis (sigil of malice).

Yes, frifox pointed out the attack speed discrepancy and I adjusted the numbers in later posts. Once I’m done revising and making subsequent calculations, I’ll go back and revise the OP to reflect the final numbers.

Silverkey.2078:

Just for comparison, the DPS I estimate with the rampager hybrid with might, vuln and banner is about 17k.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Dungeon_Hybrid

Note that this is not the optimal average DPS because I favor short intense damage (for example using sigil of bursting) over long condis (sigil of malice).

My build has both Sigil of Bursting and Sigil of Malice, I don’t understand why you have to pick between them?

In fact, regarding condition durations in general, the build you linked has 45% + 20% + 20% = 85% bleed duration, but choosing Rare Veggie Pizza puts it at 125% bleed duration, well over cap, so if you use Rare Veggie Pizza, you can afford to swap those agony sigils for malice, or even for a more precision/power-based sigil.
You’d have to decide if the 100 precision from a different food item is better than the value you might get out of a different sigil. (for the record, 100 precision on this build is about 4.8% crit chance).

The build as I’ve presented it has 95% condition duration for all conditions, and picks up the last 5% easily via Chaotic Persistence. That means it consistently hits cap for all conditions it applies. Swapping out the Sigils of Malice would make it harder to hit cap, but still doable with enough boons. You’d need 5 boons. 25 might, permanent fury, permanent vigor are already assumptions of the build, getting you to 9%. You just need two more boons to cap, and in a group setting that should be doable.

Since my build only has bleeds as a condition, agony > malice. I didn’t include food in my calculations, and extra condi duration from food is probably not needed indeed.

Okay, I did the math on adding shatters to the clone build.

Build changes: PH->MtD, MS->Ineptitude, EM->Blinding Dissipation
Duelist’s Discipline becomes mildly superfluous, but it’s still the best trait for iDuelists, and iDuelists themselves could be a handy boost to our burst as long as we don’t let ourselves get too attached to shatter them when we need to.
None of those changes affect the earlier calculations of the clone build dps, since we weren’t using any of the traits we lost, and we don’t gain on clone/self dps from the new ones outside of shatters.

New assumptions:
1. The time between shattering and being back at 3 clones is negligible. With permanent vigor (easily doable in this build), we should be able to easily get 2 dodges+Phase Shift every shatter, which we’ve put at every 10.875 seconds.

The new rotation is:
Pop out your clones. Once phase shift/dodge are off cd, shatter CoF and Mind Wrack. Dodge, dodge, Phase shift.
10.875 seconds later, shatter Mind Wrack again. Dodge, dodge, PS.
10.875 seconds later, shatter CoF and Mind Wrack. Dodge, Dodge, PS.
Repeat.

For base dps, we reuse the clone-staff dps, and add the shatter dps.
Base Confusion duration from shatters is 3s, so it caps at 6s (build editor reads it as being 7.75, which shouldn’t be possible).
Torment is base 6s, so it caps at 12s.
Confusion from Ineptitude is kitten it caps at 8s. Ineptitude only procs once every 10s on a target, so we only add it to the CoF and solo Mind Wrack, not to the Mind Wrack that accompanies CoF.

Both shatters give 4 stacks of torment on a 12s duration, so we can calculate it using average stacks per second, and it works out to 4.4138 stacks per second,
giving us 786.0492 stationary dps and 1,572.0985 moving dps.
The smaller mind wrack (after CoF) adds a solo stack of Torment, which deals 2137.068(4274.136) damage over 12 seconds on essentially a 21.75s cooldown, which works out to 98.256(196.512) dps.

Now, since none of the confusion from CoF is long enough to cover the duration, I’m just gonna calculate the total damage from each shatter+confusion, and divide that by the 10.875 period, giving me the dps for that period.
Then add half of each period together to get the total dps for one full 21.75s cycle.

CoF: (8stacks*6s*136.147dmg) + (1stack*8s*136.147dmg) + 349=7973.632 =>733.2075 dps
MW(minor): (1stack*5s*136.147dmg) + 1340.461=2157.343 =>198.3764 dps
MW(major): (4stack*6s136.147dmg) + (1stack*8s*136.147dmg) + 2145.2= 6501.904 => 597.8762 dps

(.5*(733.2075 + 198.3764) + .5*(597.8762) =764.73 average dps

That brings us to:
14,964.8222 stationary dps
15,947.3839 moving dps

Finally, we have to account for the effect of triggering confusion via actions.
Since I’ve seen it used elsewhere(and used it myself), I’ll use 1 action per 6 seconds as our increment.
It works out to 247.3915 dps gain for every extra action the target takes per 6 second period.
This result can be wildly uneven though, as many enemies don’t have a consistent attack speed, so the average action speed may be wildly different from what you’re getting at any given moment. The longer the fight, the closer to average you’ll be.

So, at 2 actions every 6 seconds, which is a common standard I’ve seen used before,
our dps is at 15,335.62 on a stationary target, 16,318.18 on a moving target.

Ways to increase that dps:
1. Mix in an iDuelist. iDuelist still has stronger bleed application, and a shorter ramp-up time, and you’ll get at least 2 volleys out of it even without Phantasmal Haste before you shatter.
2. Use other abilities. All of these numbers are assuming you yourself just sit there and attack when you’re not shattering and spawning illusions. You can do better if you work at it.

Just a quick note: If you want to use ‘+’ in an equation, make sure you put a space before and after it.

Updated the OP with all the updates from the conversation.

Also formatting vis-à-vis Pyro’s suggestion.

Can you round those numbers, .xxxx is highly irrelevant.