Guild Wars 2

Without PH

• 7.580 sec – Duelist
• 4.540 sec – Swordsman
• 13.716 sec – Warden
• 7.790 sec – Mage
• 7.044 sec – Berserker
• 6.904 sec – Warlock
• 4.461 sec – Disenchanter
• 4.621 sec – Defender

With PH

• 6.602 sec – Duelist
• 3.956 sec – Swordsman
• 12.311 sec – Warden
• 6.597 sec – Mage
• 6.021 sec – Berserker
• 5.797 sec – Warlock
• 3.844 sec – Disenchanter
• 4.034 sec – Defender

Increase

• 13% – Duelist
• 13% – Swordsman
• 10% – Warden
• 15% – Mage
• 15% – Berserker
• 16% – Warlock
• 14% – Disenchanter
• 13% – Defender

Taking swordsman as an example, 13% attack rate increase is a 13% increase in DPS. From this I can assume that it’s still better to use Phantasmal Strength, which is a 15% increase, instead of using PH if you’re looking to increase your DPS.

Now comparing Phantasm Heavy builds – 2/4/0/5/3 vs. 2/3/0/5/4.

Is it worth sacrificing 4.8% crit chance & 3.3% crit damage for both you and your phantasms (and lower sword cd’s for you) and instead gain 13% dps increase for your swordsmans? In a typical zerk build the DPS split between you and 3 swordsmans is roughly 40%/60% to 50%/50%.

Atm it’s hard to actually test this since there are too many people in HotM constantly interrupting my tests

Be sure to test 6/6/0/0/2, since they moved mantra’s over that way. Probably better to have hard hitting phantasms > faster hitting phantasms. Await calmly for test results!

Dude, your math is completely wrong. You do not measure attack speed in seconds. You measure it in attacks / second.

Without:
7.580 sec – Duelist
0.13192 attacks per second

With:
6.602 sec – Duelist
0.15147 attacks per second

0.15147 / 0.13192 = 114.82% attack speed

Aaand it comes out to a 15% increase just like it’s supposed to.

Strill.2591:

Dude, your math is completely wrong. You do not measure speed in seconds. You measure it in 1/s.

Without:
7.580 sec – Duelist
0.13192 attacks per second

With:
6.602 sec – Duelist
0.15147 attacks per second

0.15147 / 0.13192 = 114.82% attack speed

Aaand it comes out to a 15% increase just like it’s supposed to.

can you explain more in depth?

I get 13% just like OP using 6.602×100/7.580 which comes out to 87.098 in other words, 6.602 is 87% of 7.580 (6.602 being a 13% increase in the speed at which the swordsman attacks?)

what exactly is wrong with that?

No, the OPs math is fine.

Basically, the trait is supposed to reduce the cooldown by 20%. The cooldown doesn’t start until the attack finishes, so you can’t measure how accurate the trait works with this analysis.

However, this analysis is accurate for watching total dps increase.

Correct.

Furthermore, if we assume phantasm CD really did go down by 20%, then we can calculate the duration of the animation and idle.

Animation
2.690 sec – Duelist
1.620 sec – Swordsman
6.691 sec – Warden
1.825 sec – Mage
1.929 sec – Berserker
1.369 sec – Warlock
1.376 sec – Disenchanter
1.686 sec – Defender

Idle (without PH)
4.890 sec – Duelist
2.920 sec – Swordsman
7.025 sec – Warden
5.965 sec – Mage
5.115 sec – Berserker
5.535 sec – Warlock
3.085 sec – Disenchanter
2.935 sec – Defender

frifox.5283:

Now comparing Phantasm Heavy builds – 2/4/0/5/3 vs. 2/3/0/5/4.

Is it worth sacrificing 4.8% crit chance & 3.3% crit damage for both you and your phantasms (and lower sword cd’s for you) and instead gain 13% dps increase for your swordsmans? In a typical zerk build the DPS split between you and 3 swordsmans is roughly 40%/60% to 50%/50%.

Atm it’s hard to actually test this since there are too many people in HotM constantly interrupting my tests

If you get a chance, frifox, can you also compare 2/4/0/4/4 to these? I’m curious if PH is able to make up for the Phantasmal Strength (though I am betting it probably doesn’t).

Seems to me that neither phantasmal strength or empowered illusions is worth losing over phantasmal haste.
From a PvE perspective 24053 should get to the highest dps. The average attack speed, and thus damage improvemenet is at ~13.5%, while the 2 trait boosting phantasm dmg both give 15%.
Now it would be interesting to see if 66002 mantra builds do higher total dmg than this phantasm build.

SSalp.6423:

Seems to me that neither phantasmal strength or empowered illusions is worth losing over phantasmal haste.
From a PvE perspective 24053 should get to the highest dps. The average attack speed, and thus damage improvemenet is at ~13.5%, while the 2 trait boosting phantasm dmg both give 15%.
Now it would be interesting to see if 66002 mantra builds do higher total dmg than this phantasm build.

I’m also curious about 6/4/0/4/0 for builds which use focus.

Before the patch, the 6/6/0/0/2 was best when you needed straight DPS and could ignore focus. I’m betting that’ll still be the case, but there are many situations where you want focus and it’s important to find the best focus build as well.

I do not think one should leave 6/4/0/0/4 mantra out of the equation. It is just so that phantasms tend to die. A dead phantasm with a long cooldown will do less damage than a faster attacking one that can be recasted faster too…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I do not think one should leave 6/4/0/0/4 mantra out of the equation. It is just so that phantasms tend to die. A dead phantasm with a long cooldown will do less damage than a faster attacking one that can be recasted faster too…

6/4/0/4/0 will have traited swords and traited wardens, so cooldowns aren’t too bad. Though certainly 3 in Illusions helps, it’s not absolutely critical— depending on what your party is, fights might be over before you have a chance to respawn phants anyway. People used to run 10/30/0/20/10 for more DPS instead of getting the 15 in Illusions, after all.

Zepidel.5349:

can you explain more in depth?

I get 13% just like OP using 6.602×100/7.580 which comes out to 87.098 in other words, 6.602 is 87% of 7.580 (6.602 being a 13% increase in the speed at which the swordsman attacks?)

what exactly is wrong with that?

Ok, I’ll use this hypothetical scenario to show you the problem. Imagine that without a trait, a phantasm attacks once per 10 seconds. With a trait, it attacks once per 1 seconds.

Under frifox’s calculations, this would be:

( 1 second per attack ) / ( 10 seconds per attack ) * 100% = 90%

A 90% increase is clearly wrong. The traited phantasm attacks once per second, meaning that for every time the untraited phantasm attacks, the traited one will have attacked 10 times. Therefore we should expect our result to be 1000%, indicating that the traited phantasm is ten times faster.

So in order to calculate correctly, we do

( 10 seconds per attack ) / (1 second per attack ) * 100% = 1000%.

If this seems backwards, it’s because we’re calculating in units of “seconds per attack” rather than “attacks per second”. If you convert each of the numbers into attacks per second instead, the calculation becomes what you expected.

( 10 seconds / attack ) is equivalent to ( 1 attack / 10 seconds) = 0.1 (attacks / second)
( 1 second / attack ) is equivalent to ( 1 attack / 1 second ) = 1 ( attacks/second )

( 1 attack / second ) / ( 0.1 attacks / second ) * 100% = 1000%

And we get the same result.

Correct.

Furthermore, if we assume phantasm CD really did go down by 20%, then we can calculate the duration of the animation and idle.

Don’t confuse delay reduction with attack speed increase.

If you have x attacks per y seconds, and you reduce y by 20%, you should expect:

x / ( (1 – 0.2) * y ) = 1.25 x / y

A 25% attack speed increase.

Let’s assume swordsman always hits for 7k. So, over 60 seconds:

• untraited = 60/4.540*7k
• traited = 60/3.956*7k
• increase = (traited – untraited) / untraited * 100
• increase = 14.8%

Next, iDuelist unloading for 7k every time. Over 60s:

• untraited = 60/7.580*7k
• traited = 60/6.602*7k
• increase = (traited – untraited) / untraited * 100
• increase = 14.8%

If you’re a math major, feel free to correct me. From the above I can say PH is equal to PS in terms of DPS. I’d still choose PH since phantasms are utility, such as warden and disenchanter which would greatly benefit from faster attack rates.

Do PS and PH not stack? Is there not a way to make a viable build using both?

2/3/0/5/4 is the only way to get all phantasms boosting traits.

That’s not the calculation though (I do it a bit different, but you switched were 100 should be in yours.. i think)

you set up a proportion where 1 (the untraited phantasm) is 100%, and weigh it against 10 over “x” and you solve for “x”.

1/100 = 10/x

10×100=1000
/1 = 1000

so you see that 10 is 1000% more than 1 (big suprise), but now you have to subtract them, and you get 900%, it does 900% more dmg.