Guild Wars 2

Hi guys.

I’d like some advices for my uncommon (?) build. I just love short bow.
Made few levels with S/P packing mobs spamming black powder but switched back to SB.

I’m level 32.
Using power/precision/mvmnt speed Signets to add some passive power (almost never use the actives).
Building toward Deadly Arts (III)/ Critical Strikes (I)/ Acrobatic (II) atm.

I pack 4/5+ melee mobs, run around em spamming Cluster Bomb while detonating it.
This way I can stack as high as 12 bleeds to all of them.
Signet of Malice provides a nice healing amount (3procs*20hp for each cluster*5mobs*5cluster=1500hp gained in 6-7seconds (hp pool being 2700))

As equipment I go for Power/Precision.

Here are the questions:
1) will it still be valuable as I level up?
2) what do you think of the overall damage output? (i don’t have much to compare with) besides mobs of my level fall quite fast.
3) precision/condition damage can be worth it?
4) what traits would you recommend to go with knowing how I fight?
I’m thinking of switching CS I for III (critchance on sides)

If you have any other suggestions, I’m listening.
Thanks ^^

Well I’m not a pro or anything, just in fractal 10-20s, but I use 15/30/0/25/0 and shortbow is kinda my main weapon so I consider myself “support damage”. I use D/P as secondary for it’s utility and it does noticably more single target damage (dagger autoattack is miles ahead of bow’s, and cluster’s flytime/initiative cost), but in many fights – especially on bosses – it’s painful to melee, so you’ll find yourself switching range a lot (that’s not a bad thing though). At the beginning I tried to stack bleeds because I kept reading that the bow is good for conditions, but it takes ages to stack some decent bleeds on the mobs, also in instances you don’t alway want to detonete cluster bomb rather do some combos – so I went valkyrie armor and berserker everything else (ruby orbs in armor) mainly because of the bow… Cluster bombs do 4K+ (usually you always have some might stacks which rounds it up to 5K+) in aoe while comboing and 1,5K autoattack crits. Plus you have good mobility, can evade even if you’re out of dodges and/or immobilized, and aoe weekness with lotus poison. I love the bow.

Question about your build:
If you’re focusing on bleed damage by detonating your clusters, then why are you going down the DA and CS trees?

The formula for bleed damage is:
(0.05 * Condition Damage + 0.5 * Level + 2.5) per stack per second

It doesn’t use power and bleeds can’t crit, so those two trees are only helping your auto attack damage. Trickery is where you want to be for condition damage.

I was thinking the same as the poster above me. I would do a condition build with the shortbow or possibly some hybrid build as you get both conditions and direct damage.

The shortbow is mainly our AoE weapon and in my opinion not so viable on single targets.

phor.7952:

Question about your build:
If you’re focusing on bleed damage by detonating your clusters, then why are you going down the DA and CS trees?

The formula for bleed damage is:
(0.05 * Condition Damage + 0.5 * Level + 2.5) per stack per second

It doesn’t use power and bleeds can’t crit, so those two trees are only helping your auto attack damage. Trickery is where you want to be for condition damage.

If you wasnt aware cluster bombs does direct damage and bleeds. Blowing it up will not only add 3 bleeds instead of 1, but allso spread the damage and will help signet of malice do its job better. Physical damage build > condition damage build for clusterbombing. Trickery is not where you want to be for condition damage, condition gear is where you want to be for that, couse bigest part of it comes from gear, not from traits.

Karolis.4261:

Trickery is not where you want to be for condition damage, condition gear is where you want to be for that, couse bigest part of it comes from gear, not from traits.

He’s talking about pre-40 so sorry, but you’re wrong.
At that point you get just as much out of the stats from traits as you do from gear.
Sure at 80 in exotics the stats from traits don’t matter nearly as much, but in low levels they’re arguably more important than the traits themselves.

And again, at 80 you are correct that power/precision scale slightly better than conditon damage for cluster bomb, but that’s only because the (weapon damage/armor) modifier is more favorable at 80 while you’re using an exotic weapon. While you’re leveling with a blue or green weapon, that modifier hurts the direct damage portion of cluster bomb enough such that both the base damage and scaling are better with condition damage.

Not to mention condition damage also increases your damage from choking gas whereas power/crit do nothing.

if you have any extra power above base stats cluster bomb does more direct damage than bleed damage, add into the fact that while your out of initiative or if your firing off long range clusters your also getting trickshots off that gain nothing from condition a direct damage build is the best choice for SB damage because otherwise your just relying on the small amounts of short bleeds you can stack with cluster bomb (if your shotgunning it for those conditions you’d be better off with a different build to apply more conditions in the same situation) and poison (less damage than 2 stacks of bleeds…)

As for the OP questions:

1) Depends what you see as valuable, it won’t be the best damage absolutely ever possible which is what a large number of people think is the only thing that matters but for PvE it will be ample damage to kill things with and such.

2) The damage won’t be bad depending on what you build for, as stated above a good direct damage build with the shortbow can kick out a fair bit of damage, I would be wary of making it a condition build however, the clusterbomb bleeds are quite possibly the least efficient way a thief has of applying bleeds so you could find your not doing great damage if you go that route.

3) Totally depends what build your going, if your going a condition build you’ll need the condition damage to do any reasonable damage but in that build with the shortbow the precision becomes debatable (still useful, just others will get a bit confused) with a direct damage build precision is basically a requirement.

4) Personally with your playstyle I’d try for a direct damage build, however 3 signet utilities are not that good an idea really. You might find utilizing something like caltrops would give you a better time kiting than say the signet of shadows.

Personally out of the three you have the only one I tend to keep on my bar is the signet of agility for the extra precision and the condition removal and endurance refill, the assassins signet is small and nice power boost and its on use can give you an occasional boost of damage but it tends to be more a burst damage thing so while that extra power may be helping your damage slightly running something like:

Smoke screen, Signet of Agility, Caltrops would probably end up giving you more kiting power and damage (from the caltrop bleeds) and healing while giving you a defense against your main weakness as a shortbow kiter, which is ranged mobs.

phor.7952:

Karolis.4261:

Trickery is not where you want to be for condition damage, condition gear is where you want to be for that, couse bigest part of it comes from gear, not from traits.

He’s talking about pre-40 so sorry, but you’re wrong.
At that point you get just as much out of the stats from traits as you do from gear.
Sure at 80 in exotics the stats from traits don’t matter nearly as much, but in low levels they’re arguably more important than the traits themselves.

And again, at 80 you are correct that power/precision scale slightly better than conditon damage for cluster bomb, but that’s only because the (weapon damage/armor) modifier is more favorable at 80 while you’re using an exotic weapon. While you’re leveling with a blue or green weapon, that modifier hurts the direct damage portion of cluster bomb enough such that both the base damage and scaling are better with condition damage.

Not to mention condition damage also increases your damage from choking gas whereas power/crit do nothing.

Hmm lets run the maths with level 40 blues:

In full ravaging gear you would have 137 condition damage, against a level 40 mob you would deal 29.35 damage a second with 1 bleed or with the 12 stated by the OP, 352.2 damage per second with 221 damage from 3 mini cluster explosions (against a target with 725 armour, which would be green heavy armour plus base level 40 toughness), of course with 20 traits in the condition damage trait line the condition damage goes upto 472.2 dps with the 12 stacks. So with 4 cluster bombs and the bleed damage you will do a total of 2773 damage to them

Now in a power base build (all these are discounting crits just for base comparisons) the bleeds will be down to 270 dps however with power build you then have the cluster bombs hitting for 457 damage if all 3 hit the same target. So again with 4 cluster bombs and the entire bleed duration you will deal 2908 damage.

Power wins even at 40 unless the target armour is really high and this is without any crits, throw in a high precision with your high power and it gets even further ahead.

Of course if you want to throw choking gas in as well over the 4 second bleeding duration the power damage build goes upto 2952 damage with poison, the condition damage goes to 2851

phor.7952:

Karolis.4261:

Trickery is not where you want to be for condition damage, condition gear is where you want to be for that, couse bigest part of it comes from gear, not from traits.

He’s talking about pre-40 so sorry, but you’re wrong.
At that point you get just as much out of the stats from traits as you do from gear.
Sure at 80 in exotics the stats from traits don’t matter nearly as much, but in low levels they’re arguably more important than the traits themselves.

And again, at 80 you are correct that power/precision scale slightly better than conditon damage for cluster bomb, but that’s only because the (weapon damage/armor) modifier is more favorable at 80 while you’re using an exotic weapon. While you’re leveling with a blue or green weapon, that modifier hurts the direct damage portion of cluster bomb enough such that both the base damage and scaling are better with condition damage.

Not to mention condition damage also increases your damage from choking gas whereas power/crit do nothing.

At lower levels condition damage is almost useless. 10 extra damage per tick doesn’t beat doing 50 extra damage per cluster. Instant damage is worth much more in pve. Conditions work well when you’re avoiding direct combat, but if you’re standing in the middle of it then there’s no reason to want DoT.

That and trickery traits are bad for pve. Traiting a 45s cooldown skill isn’t going to speed up much and caltrops on dodge mean you have to dodge which means you’re not doing damage.

Player armor values aren’t the same as PvE mob armor values.
(if you’re looking to use math to support a point, you should probably show your work so that other people can check it without having to make assumptions as to what you did)

Let’s discuss:
Bleeds get 5% condition damage per tick and tick 4 times per application.
0.05 * 4 * 3 = 0.6
So each time you detonate you get 60% of your condition damage.

The direct damage portion gets 50% of power per small explosion for a total of 150%, but then you have to multiply that by (weapon strength/enemy armor).

Since we aren’t given enemy armor values, all we can do is estimate.
At 80 a blue shortbow does 726 average weapon damage.
So in order for power scaling to be better, mobs would have to have less than 1815 armor.
726/1815=0.4
0.4*1.5=0.6
At 80 the tooltip uses 2600 armor to calculate direct damage.
So that means power scaling would be ~42% compared to condition damage’s 60%.

As far as we know, weapon damage and armor values are both slightly logarithmic for PvE mobs (that’s what makes the scaling possible when you are downleveled).
Here’s a graph of Blue Shortbows at various levels:
!http://i33.tinypic.com/2it4n7s.png!
Since they both follow a slightly logarithmic path to make scaling possible, what’s true at 80 with a blue shortbow should also be true at earlier levels.

Of course we can’t leave it there because power also scales directly with crit chance and crit damage whereas condition damage doesn’t. When you gear for precision and crit damage, power takes the lead even with a blue weapon at 80.

HOWEVER, when you’re low level, you can’t stack multiple stats. Pre-20 you only get 1 stat on gear, and then 2 per piece all the way to 60.
Pre-20, condition damage dominates power for sustained damage. 20-60 they’re a bit closer if you gear power/precision. 60+ the direct damage can take the lead if you gear berserker.

Your calculations totally ignore the higher amount of direct damage stats you get.

60% of your condition damage to actual damage may sound better than that 42% but that 42% is 42% of a number thats going to be around twice that of the condition damage.

And yeah we aren’t given the PvE mob armour however they do tend to follow players armour roughly, at 80 2600 is a rough estimate of the high armour mobs which is also a rough estimate of what a balanced heavy armour build would be running at.

Actual damage wise unless the target your fighting has ridiculously high armour compared to an average norm the power build will always do more damage with the shortbow than the condition will with equivilent gear and thats before you factor in other things such as how terrible shortbow is for keeping conditions up compared to the other 2 condition build weapons.

Shortbow just simply isn’t a condition damage weapon.

Dasorine.1964:

Your calculations totally ignore the higher amount of direct damage stats you get.

60% of your condition damage to actual damage may sound better than that 42% but that 42% is 42% of a number thats going to be around twice that of the condition damage.

Huh?
You get the exact same amount.

At level 20 you can put 10 points into trickery and get 100 condition damage or put 10 into deadly arts and get 100 power.

A level 10 Malign chestpiece gives 8 condition damage. A level 10 Mighty chest piece gives 8 power.

Might gives the same amount of condition damage that it gives power.

You gain base power as you level, you do not gain base condition damage.

Base power affects you either way. That changes nothing.

changes base power levels of a power build which is why my calculations for a level 40 character showed that power gave them better damage even in “blues” which means your assessment that it only works at level 80 with full exotics wrong.

What? That makes no sense at all.
Base power level isn’t a multiplier, it’s additive. It’s the same no matter how you gear.
You don’t get either direct damage OR condition damage, you get both.
So the only thing that matters is scaling from gear and traits.

But with the condition build your not capitalizing on it, your focusing on the conditions which scale terribly in comparison. I mean those numbers didn’t even factor in the crit chance (which the condition build would get less return from) and such.

You also have the fact that power is a multiplier and condition damage isn’t

Granted for a thief outside of perhaps pistol/X conditions always going to be the weaker choice for the weapon but stating that shortbows better as condition outside of level 80 exotics is false. And if you really want to go condition thief the 2 other options are superior.

Dasorine.1964:

But with the condition build your not capitalizing on it, your focusing on the conditions which scale terribly in comparison. I mean those numbers didn’t even factor in the crit chance (which the condition build would get less return from) and such.

You also have the fact that power is a multiplier and condition damage isn’t

Granted for a thief outside of perhaps pistol/X conditions always going to be the weaker choice for the weapon but stating that shortbows better as condition outside of level 80 exotics is false. And if you really want to go condition thief the 2 other options are superior.

Of course my numbers ignore crit because we’re talking about low level.
Base crit only adds about 2.5% to direct damage and that’s not going to change the difference in scaling.

You can get condition damage + precision gear instead of power + precision, so gearing for condition damage does NOT mean you’re not capitalizing on base power.
It’s exactly the same in either circumstance.

The scaling is what matters, and as I have shown, the scaling for condition damage is simply better at low level.

Want to prove me wrong?
Show me some math instead of just spewing “conditions scale terribly” over and over.

Well I did but you ignored it and spewed some of your own confusing maths.

Bleed always scales at 20 condition damage = 1 more damage on your bleed but power is multiplicative.

So lets redo the maths based on level 40, its a nice midway level.

First of all the stats you have at level 40 (damage stats only as thats what we are interested in) lets simplify it and focus on just the armour and the weapon due to varying eligibility of the trinkets and such, also no upgrade items due to variance of runes, lets just do raw base stats for a level 40 in just blue armour and weapon.

For a condition damage build:

314 base power
314 base precision + 99 from ravaging armour and bow for a total of 413 precision which comes out as at level 40 as 18% crit chance
137 condition damage from armour and bow + 200 from 20 points in trickery for a total of 337 condition damage
339 average damage for bow.

For a power damage build:

314 base power + 137 power from armour and bow + 200 from 20 points in deadly arts for a total of 651 power
314 base precision + 99 from armour and bow for a total of 413 precision which comes out as 18% crit chance
339 average damage for bow.

Now for the damage calculations, lets say you put all 12 initiative into shotgunned cluster bombs for both builds so this is just on the damage from 1 skills, ignoring the damage given from autoattacks and other attacks etc while waiting on initiative for these calculations the enemy armour is taken as 800 as thats a good rough number of what a heavy armoured mob at that level might have:

Condition damage build:

12 stacks of bleed for 4 seconds calculation:

Base bleed damage = 0.05*337 + 0.5*40 + 2.5 for 39.35 damage a tick

39.35 × 12 = 472.2 damage a second

472.2 × 4 = 1888.8 damage total from bleeds

Direct damage calculation:

339 × 0.5 × 314 / 800 = 66.53 damage per mini bomb

66.53 × 3 = 199.59 base per detonation

199.59 * ((0.5 * (18/100)) + 1) = 217.55 expected damage per burst with crits

217.55 * 4 = 870.2 total direct damage

Total damage output = 1888.8 + 870.2 = 2759 damage

Direct damage build:

12 stacks of bleed for 4 seconds calculation:

Base bleed damage = 0.5*40 + 2.5 for 22.25 damage a tick

22.25 × 12 = 267 damage a second

267 × 4 = 1068 damage total from bleeds

Direct damage calculation:

339 × 0.5 × 651 / 800 = 137.93 damage per mini bomb

137.93 × 3 = 413.79 base per detonation

413.79 * ((0.5 * (18/100)) + 1) = 451.03 expected damage per burst with crits

451.03 * 4 = 1804.12 total direct damage

Total damage output = 1068 + 1804.12 = 2872.12 damage

SO Condition build: 2759 Power build 2872 damage which is higher?

For the very basic level:

20 condition damage = 1 damage per bleed per second
So with 3 bleeds for 4 seconds that 20 condition damage gives you a total of 12 damage per detonation

20 power with the blue level 40 bow average damage and 18% crit chance would give: (339 * 0.5 * 20 / 800) * ((0.5*(18/100))+1) * 3 = 13.85 damage per detonation

Just for example at level 1 with a level 0 white shortbow with base crit chance (4%) with the tooltip armour (around 150 armour at level 1 is used for calculations) power scales at: 124.5 (average white bow damage) * 0.5 (mini bomb coefficient) * 20 (20 power for comparison against 20 condition damage) / 150 = 8.3 damage

8.3 * ((0.5*(4/100)+1) (this is the crit calculation as per wiki with base crit chance and crit damage) = 8.466 damage

8.466 * 3 = 25.398 damage

So at level 1 with a level 0 white bow:

20 condition damage = +12 damage per cluster bomb detonation

20 power = +25 damage per cluster bomb detonation

So really conditions best chance of scaling better than power would be at level 80 due to the way they have the primary attributes and weapon damage scale but it still falls behind due to other mechanics that get introduced to power builds.

Dasorine.1964:

the enemy armour is taken as 800 as thats a good rough number of what a heavy armoured mob at that level might have:

Your entire conclusion is hinged around this armor number, yet you’re just taking a wild guess and selecting a number that will support the conclusion that you want to come to.

As far as I know, mobs don’t have armor types. I hit a bat for the same amount I hit an earth elemental.

If you look at the equation for weapon damage and place monster armor value on the same slightly logarithmic path (which would make sense for scaling) instead of just wildly guessing, you will get closer to 1000 armor for a level 40 mob.

And at that value, the direct damage for the condition build falls to 696 and for the power build falls to 1443. Add the condition damage numbers and you get 1888+696=2584 vs 1068+1443=2511.

Well take for example the test golems in the mists each has a different armour type to test, this granted could just be for PvP testing and all mobs could have the exact armour the tooltip uses to calculate (so all mobs at 80 have 2600) but this is unlikely.

I used 800 because it is a fair amount higher than the heavy player will have at base, it could be more at which point yes condition damage wins over power if your only ever hitting with cluster bomb, but it could equally be lower in which case cluster bombing it only would result in even more damage for the power build.

And of course in this scenario its giving the condition build one of its best comparisons as its not calculating in anything like thief signets, traits that increase direct damage by %’s or crit rate or crit damage etc, any other attacks utilized during the last 4 seconds of bleeding etc etc etc.

Another way to look at what scales better is to see how much each stat takes to double the base damage of their component of the attack.

For condition damage doubling the base bleed damage works on the formula of 10xlevel+50 so at level 40 where base bleed is 22.5 damage a tick to double that takes 450 condition damage taking it to the 45 damage a tick level.

For power to double the direct damage all it requires is twice the base amount of power, at level 40 that is at the 314 power level.

Now ok this only shows that powers scaling better it doesn’t show the exact numbers but if the two base damage amounts are close to even as they are on cluster bomb (base condition damage of a detonated cluster bomb is only slightly ahead of the base average non-critical direct damage) then the one with the better scaling will end up doing more damage.

What this ends up meaning that at low levels condition scales the worst compared to power so unless the base condition damage is so much higher than the base direct damage your going to be behind however at later levels condition starts scaling better (at level 80 it takes 916 power to double base damage compared to only 850 condition damage) however at those levels you also have other factors coming in that help boost powers damage up above the condition damage even with the lower base scaling.

Again this is all only on paper, in actual practice power still comes way out ahead due to the limitations presented in game, such as initiative preventing constant cluster bombing and permanent 12 stacks of bleeds compared to the damage gained by power simply by autoattacking while waiting as well as gains from aforementions sigils, signets, direct damage gain effects, combination of crit and crit damage etc etc etc.

Dasorine.1964:

Well take for example the test golems in the mists each has a different armour type to test, this granted could just be for PvP testing and all mobs could have the exact armour the tooltip uses to calculate (so all mobs at 80 have 2600) but this is unlikely.

How is that unlikely? If mobs had different armor values, it would be incredibly easy to test. Golems in the mists are there to test PvP damage. PvE is different.

Dasorine.1964:

And of course in this scenario its giving the condition build one of its best comparisons as its not calculating in anything like thief signets, traits that increase direct damage by %’s or crit rate or crit damage etc, any other attacks utilized during the last 4 seconds of bleeding etc etc etc.

However we’re also not talking about condition duration which affects condition damage in a HUGE way when you hit breakpoints.

Point is, at low level, condition damage is just fine (even though I agree that using deathblossom or pistol mainhand are simply better than cluster bomb for condition damage).

It isn’t until you can start stacking power+precision+crit damage or until you use a masterwork or higher quality shortbow that direct damage takes any kind of significant lead.

Dasorine.1964:

Another way to look at what scales better is to see how much each stat takes to double the base damage of their component of the attack.

No. You can’t factor in the base damage when you’re talking about scaling. If I have to explain why that is wrong, then there’s no sense arguing with you.

Well for example I just tested against a level 10 ettin, a level 10 wasp and a level 10 moa and a level 10 bear, on average I hit the etting for 170 damage, the wasp and moa my average was around 180 damage and on the bear I was only hitting around 150 on average.

And its actually the opposite power takes the lead straight away its not until later that condition can really match it.

Take my level 1 example, with a white bow that has an average damage of 124.5 20 power increases the damage by 25 damage while 20 condition damage only raises the damage by 12 per detonation for a difference of 13 damage gain with only a 7 point difference to begin with in the favour of condition.

Condition has better base scaling as you go up through the levels due to the way all the primary stats are scaled however even at the higher levels the sheer number of different aspects you can get that effect power still puts it in the lead because while conditions have condition duration as well power has critical chance, critical damage, % damage increases, vulnerability and sheer number of hits to name a few.

Dasorine.1964:

Well for example I just tested against a level 10 ettin, a level 10 wasp and a level 10 moa and a level 10 bear.

And where exactly did you find a level 10 ettin?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ettin_
Beastiary also shows the only lvl 10 wasp is a veteran in Queensdale.

I’m beginning to think you’re completely full of kitten at this point and just don’t want to admit to being wrong.

Dasorine.1964:

And its actually the opposite power takes the lead straight away its not until later that condition can really match it.

Take my level 1 example, with a white bow that has an average damage of 124.5 20 power increases the damage by 25 damage while 20 condition damage only raises the damage by 12 per detonation for a difference of 13 damage gain with only a 7 point difference to begin with in the favour of condition.

You are ignoring armor again.
Jesus dude. Give it up.

phor.7952:

Dasorine.1964:

Well for example I just tested against a level 10 ettin, a level 10 wasp and a level 10 moa and a level 10 bear.

And where exactly did you find a level 10 wasp? Beastiary shows the only lvl 10 wasp is a veteran in Queensdale.
I’m beginning to think you’re completely full of kitten at this point and just don’t want to admit to being wrong.

Phinney waypoint in queensdale

phor.7952:

Dasorine.1964:

And its actually the opposite power takes the lead straight away its not until later that condition can really match it.

Take my level 1 example, with a white bow that has an average damage of 124.5 20 power increases the damage by 25 damage while 20 condition damage only raises the damage by 12 per detonation for a difference of 13 damage gain with only a 7 point difference to begin with in the favour of condition.

You are ignoring armor again.
Jesus dude. Give it up.

That was with armour calculated in from tooltip (I made a level 1 thief specifically to get those numbers) as shown in the calculation!

As you level up yes the mobs armour goes up as does your base damage and such in the same fashion, every 10 levels the scaling of power gets a tiny bit weaker due to the way things scale so there will be a certain point where at base condition damage starts scaling better but thats not until much higher where power gets helped by everything else.

So unless you have some actual proper maths and/or in game evidence to back up YOUR claims like I do mine your the one thats just calling me full of kitten because you don’t want to be wrong.

Dasorine.1964:

every 10 levels the scaling of power gets a tiny bit weaker due to the way things scale

In order to make this statement, you have to know the armor value of PvE mobs…

Actually you’d only need to know how stat scaling goes which we do but meh, I’ve put the maths up, I’ve argued my case and all you’ve done is gones “no your wrong! ARMOUR! your full of kitten because an incomplete wiki page is incomplete!”

So yeah, do what ever you want, others can look through and make their own decisions based on what I’ve ran the numbers for and what you’ve just yelled about.

phor.7952:

Dasorine.1964:

every 10 levels the scaling of power gets a tiny bit weaker due to the way things scale

In order to make this statement, you have to know the armor value of PvE mobs…

Implying that we can’t know armour value of PvE mobs?

Which is simple to figure out…

Level 80 tooltips use an armour value of 2600 (Actual NPC armour varies, but you can use this slightly higher base to still figure out how scaling would work)
So you can work out the coefficients for skills using Tooltip number * 2600 / (Average weapon damage * Power)

Then using this coefficient you can rearrange the equation to get armour using any level tooltips:

Coefficient * (Average weapon damage * Power) / Tooltip number = Average NPC Armour

I never said we CAN’T know.
I was simply implying that Dasorine hadn’t done the necessary work to make that statement with any sort of confidence.

:X

phor.7952:

I never said we CAN’T know.
I was simply implying that Dasorine hadn’t done the necessary work to make that statement with any sort of confidence.

:X

Well… He can…

Especially when comparing it to Condition scaling.

Conditions scale linearly – A percentage of your condition damage is added on to the base damage of the condition (The base scales with level). This means that the effect of Condition Damage on the damage of conditions doesn’t utilise level into the equation, thus it scales the same rate at all levels (Thus meaning it’s better at higher level when gear has more stats on)

Direct Damage scales at a decreasing rate. Since it’s a multiplier that gets divided by armour, due to the way that armour increases as level increases this means that the damage gain from Power decreases throughout levels.

Of course he can’t be certain about it being every 10 levels (Theoretically it’d be every level it gets weaker, but just on a very small scale that’d be hard to notice without a weapon with no attack range (Similar to the “Steady” weapons in Heart of the Mists) due to an increase in toughness upon leveling (Toughness directly correlates to additional armour) as well as a natural increase in armour)

For example:

Low level:-
Weapon dealing 142 – 150 (Average 146)
Base of 24 Power
Attack with a coefficient of 1 (Makes it simple)
Armour of target is 150

146 * 24 * 1 / 150 = 23.36 Damage

Increase of 20 Power = 146 * 44 * 1 / 150 = 42.82

An increase of 19.46 or 83%

High level:-
Weapon dealing 905 – 1000 damage (953 Average)
Base power of 916
Attack with coefficient of 1
Armour of target is 2600

953 * 916 * 1 / 2600 = 335.7

Increase of 20 power = 953 * 936 * 1 / 2600 = 343.08

An increase of 7.38 or ~2.2%

This shows that at higher levels of armour the damage gain per point of power decreases, even when factoring in Average Weapon damage increase as well as base Power.

Just using the values for the 2 extremes (Level 1 base stats and level 80 base stats) it’s possible to see the change that has to occur to get from the level 1 stats to the level 80 stats.

Meanwhile, Conditions will always use exactly the same scaling regardless of level (5% of your Condition damage for Bleed, 25% for Burning, 10% for Poison, 15% for Confusion) with the only change level induces being the base damage (Half your level + 2.5 For Bleed, 4 times your level + 8 for Burning, your level + 4 for Poison and 1 and a half times your level + 10 for Confusion)

So you can see how they scale both with level and with gear.

If you want to know:

Armour = Defence + Toughness
Defence = Armour rating on gear
Stats = Base of 24. Levels 1-9 give 4 stats, 10-19 give 6, 20-29 give 8, 30-39 give 10, 40-49 give 12, 50-59 give 14, 60-69 give 16, 70-79 give 18 and level 80 gives 20

Precision and Critical Damage affect power scaling in a non-linear manner, so the comparison you make between power and condition damage directly (while true) doesn’t come to a conclusion that is useful for players trying to decide how to gear (outside of levels 1-20).
20-60 you need to include at least one other stat(precision/critdmg), then at 60 the comparison should involve power/precision/critdmg vs conditiondmg/duration.

Taking just two data points at level 1 and 80 and comparing only power and condition damage just won’t do it.

Extrapolating armor values based on a scaling assumption (as I did) probably isn’t 100% accurate, but it’s simply a better approximation than guessing (as he did).

If he (or you) want to prove me wrong by leveling up a character and recording tooltip values at 5 or 10 level intervals to get actual armor values then more power to you. I’d love to be proven wrong with some actual data.

But to say that you can compare the scaling without the actual armor values (when armor is a divisor in the entire direct damage formula) is just crazy.

phor.7952:

Precision and Critical Damage affect power scaling in a non-linear manner, so the comparison you make between power and condition damage directly (while true) doesn’t come to a conclusion that is useful for players trying to decide how to gear (outside of levels 1-20).
20-60 you need to include at least one other stat(precision/critdmg), then at 60 the comparison should involve power/precision/critdmg vs conditiondmg/duration.

When comparing the damage per point granted by Power at various levels to the damage per point granted by Condition Damage, including other stats is irrelevant.

Then considering comparing Condition Duration would really need to be about a level 60 or higher character (Though with most people leveling, it’d be a level 80 character since people tend to not buy Runes whilst still going through gear at such a high rate)

Involving other stats, would in-fact just go to counter your original point that “Condition Damage > Power/Precision” in low levels due to scaling with “Power/Precision scaling better at higher levels”. When it’s been shown that Power on it’s own scales better than Condition Damage at all levels, but more so at lower levels than at higher.

Involving other stats such as Precision and Critical Damage would further increase the scaling that Power provides at all levels.

Taking just two data points at level 1 and 80 and comparing only power and condition damage just won’t do it.

It does. It shows what the scaling is like at the very beginning, and also what it ends up like. Therefore you can know that during the leveling process the scaling will drop from the starting scaling (0.973 damage per point of Power) to the end scaling (0.369 damage per point of Power) whilst for conditions they will always have the same damage per point (Bleeding is 0.05 damage per point of Condition damage)

But to say that you can compare the scaling without the actual armor values (when armor is a divisor in the entire direct damage formula) is just crazy.

You don’t need the actual armour values when comparing them. You can use the tooltip armour values aswell, which while slightly higher than most NPC’s actual armour still gives valid results (If it scales better even when it’s being divided by a larger number than you’ll encounter in most PvE, then it’s even more kitten to the idea that Condition Damage scales better)

Then why did my example show the scaling for condition damage + precision was better than power + precision at 40 with a blue shortbow?

Hint: it’s because the armor value MATTERS and you NEED it to make a valid comparison…

Really though, while leveling we’re arguing about a few points of damage here and there and the game’s PvE difficulty isn’t tight enough for it to matter.