Ok, the forum is clogged with alot of whines about BS overpowered, “he killed me pressing 2 buttons”, etc.
But, at least 99% of the times, these whines relies on the actual skill that made the damage, and never in understanding what could be the problem that particular skill… if ever there was a problem with a particular skill.
Imo, the problem is NOT in the burst dmg of BS (or any other single skill), but is in how are handled the “+X% on damage” boosts given by skills/traits.
Let’s take this simple build for example: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAoYlUmKOHfS6E/5Ex2jdKUe6VgsaPoZLhJA;ToAg0CnowxgjAHLOOck4MKYSA
DO NOT COMMENT ABOUT THE BUILD, I took it just to make the example.
Regarding the “+X% damage”, we have:
- Signet of Sup Force: +5% damage;
- Dagger Training: +5% damage;
- Exposed Weakness: +10% dmg if target is under a condition;
- First Strikes: +10% dmg if ini is 6 or higher;
- Executioner: +20% dmg if target has <50% of total HPs;
- Assassin Signet: +50% if activated.
Now, one would think that all these damage modifiers would add up, and then they’d be applied to the actual “base dmg” (i.e. Power*Weapon Damage*Skill Coefficient/Armor) so, always following the example, we’d get a total of +110% dmg if all are active at the same time. That one, however, would be completely wrong!
The way that game uses these dmg modifiers is this: all “fixed” modifiers are summed up (in our case, only Dagger Training and Sigil of Sup Force, +10%), then all the other conditional modifiers are applied multiplicating every modifier with the others. In our example, we would get: 1.1*1.1*1.1*1.2*1.5=2.3958 -> +139.58%, almost 30% more than the “summed up” modifiers.
Of course, this effect is amplified in case we inflict a crit. The Crit Dmg of this build is 38, so a critical multiplies the actual damage by 1.88:
- In the first case, with +110% damage, we’d get 2.1*1.88=3.948 -> +294.8% total modifier to the base dmg;
- In the second case, with +139.58% dmg, we’d get 2.3958*1.88=4.504104 -> +350.5% total modifier to base dmg.
If a player uses BS, with Power at 2140 and Wpn Dmg 981 (the max for dagger), against a target with 2200 Armor, his base damage would be 2140*981*2.405/2200 = 2295.
In the 1st case, he’d get a total dmg of 2295 * 2.1 = 4820, with crit 9062.
In the 2nd case, he’d get 2295 * 2.3958 = 5498, with crit 10336 (14% more than the 1st case).
If we put in the tray even C&D, we have 2140*981*1.624/2200 = 1550 for base dmg. Then:
1) 1550 * 2.1 = 3255, with crit 6119;
2) 1550 * 2.3958 = 3713, with crit 6980.
And don’t forget that C&D applies 3 stack of Vuln., which are included (summed) to the base +10% for Dagger Training and Sup Sigil of Force, so we get a dmg modifier of 1.13*1.1*1.1*1.2*1.5 = 2.46114 (so, you see, that +3% from Vulnerability has become a +6.534% coupled to the other modifiers!), so BS now inflicts:
1) 2295 * 2.13 = 4888, with crit 9190;
2) 2295 * 2.46114 = 5648, with crit 10618.
The grand total from these 2 skills is:
1) 15309
2) 17598 (and this is how now the dmg mods work)
Someone could say that these figures are too high the same, and I can, to a certain degree, agree with him, but the problem about this combo is NOT in Backstab, but in the too high SC of C&D (seriously, a skill that stealths and inflicts 3 stacks of Vuln has a SC of 1.624?).
So, imo, these are the solutions atm:
1) All dmg modifiers should add up no matter what, and then they’d be applied to the base damage. This would give us two things: a) less damage overall from stacking modifiers and b) less headache when studying builds.
2) Tone down the SC of C&D, and bring up again the SCs of the other weapons which, atm, are laughable, damage inflicted wise, to the Daggers (both main and off hand).