Ascended Armor: Zerker vs Assassins
you should run assassin’s helm/chest/legs and berserker everything else for max DPS. bloodlust and precision food as well.
Huge thanks for the response! I was thinking switching to a couple assassins pieces would be ideal to get close to 100% without needing precision stacks so it’s great knowing which pieces I should make assassins. Thanks again!
Swapping helm/chest/legs should give you 3% crit chance, and swapping weapons for assassins weapons should give you an additional 3%
I’m using full berserker armor, Berserker GS, Berserker Axe, Assassin’s Sword, 6 Mighty Infusions and 8 Precise Infusions (+5 Power/Prec). Bloodlust stacks, precision food, precision signet. This is the optimum for solo situations. For group situations something like a 75% 25% mix was best, iirc.
I’ve yet to see any real math that shows that precision is better than power. People overvalue these last few % of crit they need to reach the cap, when it isn’t worth sacrificing the power.
In the end it depends on how good the uptime on the might stacks is. You know what groups you run with, so you should know how often you have 25 stacks of might.
I’ve yet to see any real math that shows that precision is better than power. People overvalue these last few % of crit they need to reach the cap, when it isn’t worth sacrificing the power.
I haven’t either. Although, this is the best math I’ve seen that details the optimum Power to Prec ratio at various Crit Damage levels …
Zend(ario/imas/iana/ango) – Engi/Ele/Necro/Guardian
[KnT] – Blackgate
[KnT] – Blackgate
(edited by Liquid.9672)
What sort of math would you accept? I can show effective power comparisons if you like. What I find, though, is a lot of people have confirmations biases and will ignore anything I say anyway so it is rarely worth my time to provide it.
I can assure you nikes math is fine. And you should trust his advice on building warrior. Not that my word means anything. :P
aren’t Armor only accepts defensive infusions ?
You can make versatile infusions. But they are very expensive.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Precise_Infusion
That was a really good build 3 months ago. Except you use full assassins. Ouch.
I can assure you nikes math is fine. And you should trust his advice on building warrior. Not that my word means anything. :P
I’m not saying it is bad, I’m just saying I want to see it. The whole thing (traits, vulnerability stacks…), not just the interaction between power/precision/crit damage (which I’m already familiar with).
Effective power can take into account boons, banners and traits. Vuln is pointless to include. Im not sure how nike does it. But if I want to check the best combo of stats i go on buildcraft, setup the build, input all group buffs and boons I should have and play around with the armour sets to see which gives the highest EP. I assume this is how nike has done it. Either that or he calculated EP himself. Id do that if I wasnt so lazy.
If he is using buildcraft then theres not much he can do but list the effective power of each combo. So you may aswell just check it yourself if you dont believe him. :P
Per your request…
Assumptions: 25 Might, 25 Vuln, Scholar runes, Dungeon Pots, Slaying Sigil, Banner of D, Banner of Strength, Full Ascended. 30/25/0/0/15 (Greatsword traits)
—————————————
Full Zerker:
Power: 3513
Crit C: 88%
Crit Dmg: 1.59
Base Damage Mods: 2.38
Effective Power No Stacks: 20,060
Effective Power Perception: 21,615
Effective Power Perception + Sweet and Spicy Food: 23,117
Effective Power Curry Butternut + No Stacks: 22,491
————————————————————
Mixed (Helm, Chest, Legs Assassins):
Power: 3,449
Crit C: 91%
Crit Dmg: 1.59
Base Damage mods: 2.38
Effective Power No Stacks: 20,186
Effective Power Bloodlust: 21,650
Effective Power Bloodlust + Curry Butternut Food: 23,202
Effective Power Food No Stacks: 21,606
——————————————————————-
Some interesting data points here. With no stacks, the mixed Assassins is superior. With stacks but no food (when does this happen? Never?) the Zerker build is the slight favorite. With Stacks and Food, the Mixed gear is back ahead. With just food and no stacks, Mixed is more significantly ahead.
Since it never happens that someone has full stacks but doesnt want to use food, we can throw that out as a fairly useless data point. So the Mixed armor is ahead at most places. There, however, some non-data items that actually make Mixed better than full Zerker beyond just the numbers.
1. Perception stacks are awkward. The full zerker with perception his 99% crit chance, which is nice, and why its numbers with stacks and no food were so strong. However, in practice using them is awkward. Some dungeons you can’t stack, some dungeons you can stack, but not until half way or until you’re almost done. In times and places you cannot use your stacks, being at 88% chance to crit is noticeably painful. Should you go down, and lose your stacks, you are back on “low power mode” and the loss is much more noticeable than losing your Bloodlust stacks is.
2. Food. Perception stacks putting you at 99% chance to crit with the full zerker build paints you into an ugly corner. Essentially, you benefit nothing from food that grants Precision. This means when you want to use something like Candied Dragon Rolls or Omnomberry Ghosts for a casual dungeon run, your dps takes a huge hit relative to the Mixed set using those same foods. The only foods that the Zerker+Perception benefits from are the foods that increase Power. Sweet and Spicy Butternut is ridiculously expensive for a casual dungeon run and far from practical. Dragons Breath Buns are nice and cheap, but aren’t good in every dungeon or Fractal. The Mixed gearset gets its best numbers in ideal situations from Curry Butternut which is also 1/3rd the price of SnS, and this is not a trivial consideration. Also, when casualling it with Candied Dragon Rolls it gets a good DPS boost, unlike the Zerker gear set.
3. The one advantage of the Berserker set, its that its theoretical potential is the highest. If your goal isn’t top dps over the course of a whole dungeon, but rather your goal is to get lucky with crit RNG and showoff the highest 100 blades possible full Zerker with Bloodlust will get you the biggest number since the Power is higher. It may take several tries to get a 100b where all 8 hits crit, but it will give you the highest number. However, don’t confuse that with highest average DPS.
(edited by Nike Porphyrogenita.8137)
I’ll try to post you a theory crafted assassin/zerker PvE template for you when I get home from work