Guild Wars 2

Just curious, if Berserker’s Power (the worst thing to ever come to PvE for the warrior class) didn’t exist, how much DPS would an Eviscerate every 10 seconds add to the old 6/5/0/0/3 metabuild?

Reason I’m asking is I’m playing around with the idea of a 0/6/0/4/4 a/m-GS, because it’s kitten and awesome to play with, and wanted to know how viable this is as a competitive build.

Just from rough preliminary calculations done by scaling the DPS from both halves of the old metabuild (should be more or less the same rotation, except you add in Eviscerate), if I assume Eviscerate would be a 10% DPS increase, the build ends up about the same DPS as the current EA axe/mace/sword build.

So, before investigating into this any further I was wondering if anyone can tell me if 10% is wildly off.

Sitting on adrenaline is bad game design period. It rewards players for not using burst skills their class mechanic then penalizes them for doing so. Its just bad game design.

And if you PVE than thats how you play also without faster weapon swaps most of the time.

Making threads like this is pointless. I agree with most of what u are saying but then insert name here ______ PVE elitists come in here and try to tell you are bad and that you don’t know how to play when they play the most lazyest passive builds and all they do is kill AI and they think they are good.

Conclusions:

If you use burst skills like how warrior is supposed to be played berserks power and heightened focus are terrible traits. Regardless of a DPS nerf that DPS is only helpful to you if you don’t use burst skills. So no reason to get it if you plan on using them. In which case they only help you for the use of the burst skill most of the time.

Thats why no serious PVP builds use them.

so……..
If you want to use burst skills you are right in your assumption. And if you want to have a proper rotation and use eviscerate when ever its up your build is correct. If it is AM.. Put sigil of intelligence on the Axe set so you have 100% chance to crit on your bust and all is well.

Someone will come in here and say you dont know how to play you can safely ignore them. There is no point in going 4 in tactics unless u are in a group.

Warlord.9074:

Sitting on adrenaline is bad game design period. It rewards players for not using burst skills their class mechanic then penalizes them for doing so. Its just bad game design.

And if you PVE than thats how you play also without faster weapon swaps most of the time.

Making threads like this is pointless. I agree with most of what u are saying but then insert name here ______ PVE elitists come in here and try to tell you are bad and that you don’t know how to play when they play the most lazyest passive builds and all they do is kill AI and they think they are good.

Conclusions:

If you use burst skills like how warrior is supposed to be played berserks power and heightened focus are terrible traits. Regardless of a DPS nerf that DPS is only helpful to you if you don’t use burst skills. So no reason to get it if you plan on using them. In which case they only help you for the use of the burst skill most of the time.

Thats why no serious PVP builds use them.

BP works fine in PvP. Its actually a very well-designed trait: for Eviscerate it’s a choice between holding unto a large DPS increase or spiking an enemy to kingdom come with one of the strongest burst skills in the game but giving up that damage for a while.

For whatever reason that’s beyond me, Anet seems to think everything will translate between PvP and PvE very well, and so lo and behold, we got this mess of a trait which makes next to no bloody sense in the current PvE situation.

It would work if enemies had the AI of GW1 or ESO (sometimes) so PvE would be a replicated version of PvP to an extent, but that’s clearly not the case here.

But on the topic:

The point of this is that it actually might not be a DPS loss using this, but so far all I did was scale the old metabuild DPS by the change in stats and traits, assuming rotation doesn’t differ enough to warrant any significant changes, so I would love it if someone more experienced than me at theorycrafting can give me some advice.

Until you have traited the 15% damage boost, you shouldn’t make use of your burst abilities.
You will gain lower damage output than keeping your adrenalin.
It doesn’t really matter if it’s a lazy gameplay or not. You’ll withdraw much more potential.
Furthermore, those kind of builds are very venturous and harder to play than many other builds.
And let’s be serious, spamming eviscerate with a 20/30/0/20 axe build isn’t that more exciting.

ya but his build isn’t pure axe…He want’s to do 100 blades swap then eviscerate whenever its up.

Xae Isareth.1364:

BP works fine in PvP. Its actually a very well-designed trait:

I can find tons of people without really trying that will disagree and state that sitting on adrenaline play style is not well designed. BP doesn’t really work good in PVP it has less to do with the trait and more do do with 30 points in strength is too deep of an investment for PVP meta builds. And if they were to trait 30 into str they wouldn’t pick berserk power and would more likely pick burst precision. But no one is doing that because sigil of intelligence is too god.

dominik.9721:

Until you have traited the 15% damage boost, you shouldn’t make use of your burst abilities.
You will gain lower damage output than keeping your adrenalin.
It doesn’t really matter if it’s a lazy gameplay or not. You’ll withdraw much more potential.
Furthermore, those kind of builds are very venturous and harder to play than many other builds.
And let’s be serious, spamming eviscerate with a 20/30/0/20 axe build isn’t that more exciting.

The pure Axe EA can actually be higher DPS for your party overall than pure GS, because it stacks more vulnerability.

The idea is that if this thing works, I get a build which has a similar DPS and vul stacking as the Axe build, but

- Twice as many weapon swaps than the axe build
- Less reliance on one skill (100B) going off compared to the GS build

This is without accounting for Destruction of the Empowered.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Just curious, if Berserker’s Power (the worst thing to ever come to PvE for the warrior class) didn’t exist, how much DPS would an Eviscerate every 10 seconds add to the old 6/5/0/0/3 metabuild?

If you were to spam Eviscerate on cooldown, it’d probably be better to go 6/4/0/0/4 to get Sharpened Axes for adrenaline generating.

Olba.5376:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Just curious, if Berserker’s Power (the worst thing to ever come to PvE for the warrior class) didn’t exist, how much DPS would an Eviscerate every 10 seconds add to the old 6/5/0/0/3 metabuild?

If you were to spam Eviscerate on cooldown, it’d probably be better to go 6/4/0/0/4 to get Sharpened Axes for adrenaline generating.

Then you miss out on EA. Also, whenever you put that magical number 6 in Strength, you basically lose your class mechanics.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Olba.5376:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Just curious, if Berserker’s Power (the worst thing to ever come to PvE for the warrior class) didn’t exist, how much DPS would an Eviscerate every 10 seconds add to the old 6/5/0/0/3 metabuild?

If you were to spam Eviscerate on cooldown, it’d probably be better to go 6/4/0/0/4 to get Sharpened Axes for adrenaline generating.

Then you miss out on EA. Also, whenever you put that magical number 6 in Strength, you basically lose your class mechanics.

Well 6/5/0/0/3 is even farther from getting EA than 6/4/0/0/4. And EA on multiple players is a waste. And if you’re going to use Eviscerate on cooldown anyway, wouldn’t you go for Burst Precision? That is, unless you prefer Sigil of Intelligence.

I suppose you could always go something like 4/0/0/4/6?

Olba.5376:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Olba.5376:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Just curious, if Berserker’s Power (the worst thing to ever come to PvE for the warrior class) didn’t exist, how much DPS would an Eviscerate every 10 seconds add to the old 6/5/0/0/3 metabuild?

If you were to spam Eviscerate on cooldown, it’d probably be better to go 6/4/0/0/4 to get Sharpened Axes for adrenaline generating.

Then you miss out on EA. Also, whenever you put that magical number 6 in Strength, you basically lose your class mechanics.

Well 6/5/0/0/3 is even farther from getting EA than 6/4/0/0/4. And EA on multiple players is a waste. And if you’re going to use Eviscerate on cooldown anyway, wouldn’t you go for Burst Precision? That is, unless you prefer Sigil of Intelligence.

I suppose you could always go something like 4/0/0/4/6?

Can you all please read the OP?

I was playing around with a 0/6/0/4/4 build :/

There’s no point in using Burst Precision at all in PvE, because you’re on 90+ crit chance with any sort of a competitive build. It’s clearly a PvP trait.

Just to wonder on that point though. If you had sharpened axes, you would still use BP even if you are going to evicerate. You’ll be on 29 adrenaline after AA/Cyclone + weapon swap anyways (because 100% crit chance or very close to it, or 110 in stuff like AC).

To just illustrate what I mean. This is by no means a comprehensive evaluation, just a ‘scan’ to see if it’s worthwhile to investigate further.

0/6/0/4/4-

Rending Strikes, FGS, Deep Strike.
Empower, Empower Allies.
Warrior’s Sprint, Destruction of the Empowered/Sharpened Axes.

To roughly calculate the DPS of such a build, I just took the numbers for a 6/5/0/0/3 metabuild and scaled them using the following:

A-A blanket assumption of 10% uplift due to Eviscerate (which may or may not be correct)
B-Power scaling: (2137+1195)/(2469+1195)
C-/1.03 for losing Stick and Move
D-/1.15 for losing Berserker’s Power
E-Ferocity+Precision adjustment: (1+0.99*1.30)/(1+0.91*1.27)
F-We assume 3 boons on you: so an adjustment of *1.03 for Empowered
G-/1.05 on the axe half of the evaluation due to loss of Dual-Wielding
H-/1.1 on the GS part due to loss of Slashing Power

Now we can plug in some numbers. I don’t have any data myself on hand, so I stole someone else’s work.

http://www.dtguilds.com/forum/page/4/m/6563292/viewthread/12497977-dnt-warrior-build-41514

Page 4, Jatt did some rotations and came up with DPS numbers for both halves of the old metabuild. However, the post is slightly out of date, so what I did was just scale the numbers to what DEKeyz posted on page 7 by using (12024/13123), ie, we assume there’s no rotation differences and everything that has changed is purely statistical.

So, finally, we plug the numbers in:

(8982/H+4141/G)(12024/13123)A*B*C*D*E*F

Which arrives at 10273 DPS. This is assuming Des. of Empowered does nothing.

Looking at page 7’s chart, an EA A/M/S build has 10645 DPS. So we’re less than 4% short, well into the grey area of theorycrafting, and this build does give you twice as many weapon swaps (use that how you will).

Comparisons to a pure GS build is a different question, because you stack more vulnerability than a pure GS, so its up to your party composition to decide what you use.

However, as I said, this is just a rough calculation without me looking too much into it and making a blanket assumption of 10% on Eviscerate.

Any comments?

(I kind of also assumed that the game uses integer figures when it calculates your damage, so if your crit chance is say, 99.7%, it would just be 100% to the game. Some tests were held a while back to try and confirm this but I can’t seem to find any conclusive evidence of what came out.)

My comment is basically play how you want as long as its effective.
You know enough about the game and how to play well enough without someone giving you a build and telling you how. So do what you want to do as long as you are having fun.

Its a pretty easy thing to test. Do and Eviscerate record how much damage it does. Then run the meta build record how much damage it does in rotation. Then calculate what % of that damage equals the damage that eviscerate does assuming you have the adrenaline to pull it off when ever its up and you have your answer.

Then take your build that does less DPS without eviscerate and add eviscerate to it. Then compare DPS to DPS.

Or… You can just go to heart of the mist kill the indestructible golem with the meta build then kill it with your build and see which one dies faster compare how fast they die. This is the simplest way.

Please note that your idea is based on the assumption that your adrenaline gain is high enough that you can eviscerate every 8-10 seconds or what ever it is. If that is not true your calculations are off. You can probably fix that by taking axe mastery instead of DOE or a trait like burst mastery or furious.

Warlord.9074:

My comment is basically play how you want as long as its effective.
You know enough about the game and how to play well enough without someone giving you a build and telling you how. So do what you want to do as long as you are having fun.

Its a pretty easy thing to test. Do and Eviscerate record how much damage it does. Then run the meta build record how much damage it does in rotation. Then calculate what % of that damage equals the damage that eviscerate does assuming you have the adrenaline to pull it off when ever its up and you have your answer.

Then take your build that does less DPS without eviscerate and add eviscerate to it. Then compare DPS to DPS.

Or… You can just go to heart of the mist kill the indestructible golem with the meta build then kill it with your build and see which one dies faster compare how fast they die. This is the simplest way.

Please note that your idea is based on the assumption that your adrenaline gain is high enough that you can eviscerate every 8-10 seconds or what ever it is. If that is not true your calculations are off.

Well, if you Evicerate, then AA chain (6), cyclone axe (2), switch (5), HB (9), WWA (assuming it hits 3 times), then switch back (5), you’ll be on 30 already, so I don’t think you need anything else because it reality, you’ll do more than that with any sensible rotation.

In all honesty I’m just trying to find a justifiable build involving a GS other than PS builds that doesn’t use Berserker’s Power, because that’s honestly the most stupid trait in the game and I’ve no idea why Anet hasn’t put another GM trait thats equally as strong as it. I mean, they know what PvE is like at the moment, so they know how that trait won;t work like how they intended it to work.

EDIT: wait a second. The wiki says Eviscerate has a coefficient of 3…is that right?

Try this. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAncRjMdU5ZfH2ewJighAxUgrjmo7cyiDB-TFBBgAAHCAsHAQ9+DBnBAA-w

Warlord.9074:

Try this. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAncRjMdU5ZfH2ewJighAxUgrjmo7cyiDB-TFBBgAAHCAsHAQ9+DBnBAA-w

That build ends up having less DPS than a 0/6/0/4/4 though.

Are you counting destruction of the empowered there are almost no mobs that use boons.

Warlord.9074:

Are you counting destruction of the empowered there are almost no mobs that use boons.

I’m not. Assuming 0 boons on target.

The only thing I’m massively doubting about my methods is whether Eviserate is a 10% DPS increase or not.

It’s kind of sad that theorycrafting in this game is so horribly boring for PvE though, because all you do is consider DPS (which ironically was something Anet was trying to avoid), otherwise there would be a lot more interesting combinations out there.

Theres not much point to take 20 in discipline. With the crit damage nerf 1 point barely gives you much boost. There are no 20 point skills that will boost DPS of GS or Axe except axe mastery but in a rotation its not needed.

You may as well put 1 point in strength for reckless dodge then thats going to boost your DPS more. BTW are you factoring the damage of reckless dodge?

You know that reckless dodge can crit for like 5k and its aoe 5 enemy. ?

Edit: If you really wanted to take advantage of eviscerate burst mastery 7% + 3%= 10% to the burst skill…

Warlord.9074:

Theres not much point to take 20 in discipline. With the crit damage nerf 1 point barely gives you much boost. There are no 20 point skills that will boost DPS of GS or Axe except axe mastery but in a rotation its not needed.

You may as well put 1 point in strength for reckless dodge then thats going to boost your DPS more. BTW are you factoring the damage of reckless dodge?

You know that reckless dodge can crit for like 5k?

No, I’m not factoring in the damage of reckless dodge because it does about the same damage as a first-hit axe autoattack (0.6-0.9 vs 0.7), but rolling takes a bit longer to do and well, you waste a dodge, which unless you got 5 in Strength is a huge no no for something so trivial.

Going 5 instead of 6 in #2 line is a 8% loss in crit chance if you use Quality Maintenance Oil (you can use something better but the next one up costs ten times as much), which outweighs any other option you could take.

So, the only thing left is going 1 in Strength, and all you’re getting is just 50 power, which is actually about the same kitten ferocity, but Sharpened Axes/DoE does do something as opposed to RD which does nothing.

Edit: burst mastery is a 0.1*0.07=0.7% damage increase, and in exchange for that and 100 ferocity, you lose the 10% from bleed, which is just not worth it.

Well you could always not take the vulnerability. And take signets instead. You lose out on the vuln but I think having a higher crit chance would be more dps than the 2-3 stacks of vuln you may proc. Who is to say that your party isnt already generating plenty of vuln.

Really. Its not too difficult to change a single trait. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAncRjMdU5ZfH2ewJighAxUgrbmo7cyiDB-TFBBgAAHCAsHAQ9+DBnBAA-w

Actual DPS gained from using Eviscerate with Berserker’s Power traited can be calculated by:

([Damage dealt by Eviscerate] – [Damage dealt while adrenaline not full] * .5) / [cooldown of Eviscerate or time it takes to build max adrenaline, whichever is more]

With BP active you’re basically losing 5% average damage per hit across the entire time spent rebuilding adrenaline, so if you have Eviscerate dealing 1000 damage, you need to build back to full adrenaline in less than 50,000 damage worth of attacks. If you’ve got Sharpened Axes traited you can build adrenaline back very quickly and not lose that much; without it, you’re looking a pretty big DPS loss.

Ya hes already looking at a big DPS loss since he wants to run empowered allies with weapon swapping. The points are just not there to do this man. However you can run 2 banners instead of 1 and maybe that will make up for it overall. I’ve looked at a lot of different builds and Its safe to say there is no such thing as huge differences between builds anymore and thats the truth.

Warlord.9074:

Ya hes already looking at a big DPS loss since he wants to run empowered allies with weapon swapping. The points are just not there to do this man. However you can run 2 banners instead of 1 and maybe that will make up for it overall. I’ve looked at a lot of different builds and Its safe to say there is no such thing as huge differences between builds anymore and thats the truth.

If you run EA anything, you’re looking at a pretty big DPS loss because it’s either losing Attack of Opportunity+Deep Strike/DWA or Berserker’s Power.

But as shown above, it doesn’t actually seem like a DPS loss. As mentioned, the pure GS EA build (aka, bored out of your mind build) is better personal DPS than both this and the pure axe build, but it stacks less vulnerability. I suppose the advantage this build would have over a pure axe build would be that you get 2x the opportunities to switch weapons, which in a real fight is a pretty big help, and you got Sharpened Axes/DoE helps keeps Eviscerate going even if you screw everything up/big damage increase on stuff like dredge/CoE golem boss/etc.

@Guang I’m not really trying to run Eviscerate and BP at the same time though. I guess the formula for the DPS increase from Eviscerate without BP would be just be the % total coefficient added on in a build with Eviscerate over a build without. If we assume you use Eviscerate every 10 seconds, which you can w/o sharpened axes (SA just makes sure you definitely can), over 30 seconds it adds 9 to your total coefficient count. the clearest opportunity cost is an axe/GS auto, which is 0.7, so the real amount added is 6.9.

Just looking at the DnT forums, it seems (depending on what you rotate), an a/m-gs build has around 40-45 total coefficient over 30 seconds, meaning Eviscerate is a… 15% DPS gain if you don’t have BP. Rotations probably will reduce that by a good amount but it does kind of says that keeping adrenaline for BP and using Eviscerate is more or less the same thing, or even better because your adrenaline goes up and down, it does’t just stay at 0. That doesn’t sound right but I don’t know what’s wrong with that logic.

Edit: whoops.

Losing dwa in your build isn’t probably a measurable loss, Because you are using GS and swapping. Your not really using axe long enough in your rotation to take advantage of it. you are probably doing #2 burst skill 1 chain then swapping. Your looking at maybe .1 second difference if even that since you are pressing so many skills and rotating. I wouldn’t even take DWA in a GS/AXE rotation its a waste. DWA makes since if you are camping axe or swords thats about it and it helps but it isnt huge and definatly helps less if you are swapping a lot to other weapons that DWA doesn’t effect.

You biggest nerf is the loss of slashing power in that build. Which again is probably really only big if you can land the entire 100 blades and hit WWA on all hits etc. Which really isn’t guaranteed to happen.

Warlord.9074:

Losing dwa in your build isn’t probably a measurable loss, Because you are using GS and swapping. Your not really using axe long enough in your rotation to take advantage of it. you are probably doing #2 burst skill 1 chain then swapping. Your looking at maybe .1 second difference if even that since you are pressing so many skills and rotating. I wouldn’t even take DWA in a GS/AXE rotation its a waste. DWA makes since if you are camping axe or swords thats about it and it helps but it isnt huge and definatly helps less if you are swapping a lot to other weapons that DWA doesn’t effect.

You biggest nerf is the loss of slashing power in that build. Which again is probably really only big if you can land the entire 100 blades and hit WWA on all hits etc. Which really isn’t guaranteed to happen.

I’m not taking DWA, I took Deep Strike, because DWA turns out to be not as useful as Deep Strike. There however is one problem: it might allow you to add extra attacks into your axe half of the build, but then you’re really looking at very fine tuned rotations which I really question if human fingers can actually allow.

You have to assume they do in a initial calc-up, because otherwise it gets a bit too complicated for surface inspection. Would you mind just looking over my method and advice if it makes sense, because basically, the final number I arrived at kind of says theres barely any difference between this and the pure axe EA build in terms of DPS.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Warlord.9074:

Losing dwa in your build isn’t probably a measurable loss, Because you are using GS and swapping. Your not really using axe long enough in your rotation to take advantage of it. you are probably doing #2 burst skill 1 chain then swapping. Your looking at maybe .1 second difference if even that since you are pressing so many skills and rotating. I wouldn’t even take DWA in a GS/AXE rotation its a waste. DWA makes since if you are camping axe or swords thats about it and it helps but it isnt huge and definatly helps less if you are swapping a lot to other weapons that DWA doesn’t effect.

You biggest nerf is the loss of slashing power in that build. Which again is probably really only big if you can land the entire 100 blades and hit WWA on all hits etc. Which really isn’t guaranteed to happen.

I’m not taking DWA, I took Deep Strike, because DWA turns out to be not as useful as Deep Strike. There however is one problem: it might allow you to add extra attacks into your axe half of the build, but then you’re really looking at very fine tuned rotations which I really question if human fingers can actually allow.

You have to assume they do in a initial calc-up, because otherwise it gets a bit too complicated for surface inspection. Would you mind just looking over my method and advice if it makes sense, because basically, the final number I arrived at kind of says theres barely any difference between this and the pure axe EA build in terms of DPS.

It probably would only allow for extra attacks in your axe rotation if your axe rotation were greater than 1. It’s been pretty much tested that the difference between a single axe chain with and without DWA < Than human error. It would help you if you plan on camping axe which you are not doing. Ya Deep strike way better for your build.

Lots of people disagree with me but I never assume that an average human being which isn’t necessarily as good as you. Can play as well as a machine or a computer that was programed to do the math that people come up with.

Warlord.9074:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Warlord.9074:

Losing dwa in your build isn’t probably a measurable loss, Because you are using GS and swapping. Your not really using axe long enough in your rotation to take advantage of it. you are probably doing #2 burst skill 1 chain then swapping. Your looking at maybe .1 second difference if even that since you are pressing so many skills and rotating. I wouldn’t even take DWA in a GS/AXE rotation its a waste. DWA makes since if you are camping axe or swords thats about it and it helps but it isnt huge and definatly helps less if you are swapping a lot to other weapons that DWA doesn’t effect.

You biggest nerf is the loss of slashing power in that build. Which again is probably really only big if you can land the entire 100 blades and hit WWA on all hits etc. Which really isn’t guaranteed to happen.

I’m not taking DWA, I took Deep Strike, because DWA turns out to be not as useful as Deep Strike. There however is one problem: it might allow you to add extra attacks into your axe half of the build, but then you’re really looking at very fine tuned rotations which I really question if human fingers can actually allow.

You have to assume they do in a initial calc-up, because otherwise it gets a bit too complicated for surface inspection. Would you mind just looking over my method and advice if it makes sense, because basically, the final number I arrived at kind of says theres barely any difference between this and the pure axe EA build in terms of DPS.

It probably would only allow for extra attacks in your axe rotation if your axe rotation were greater than 1. It’s been pretty much tested that the difference between a single axe chain with and without DWA < Than human error. It would help you if you plan on camping axe which you are not doing. Ya Deep strike way better for your build.

Well, I reckon just on paper it might actually see greater benefit than what it suggests but in practice, especially in a difficult fight, its a different story.

And to be honest, when you’re talking about AC and the such, stuff like that, then you pretty much can just wear full zerker and slap on whatever traits you want, because in those dungeons boss fights basically consists of: stack in corner, ele conjures FGS, everyone facerolls, you win in 10 seconds.

So I tried doing rotations and stuff, but it seems outside of the excel spreadsheet I just can’t do it in this game in practice and keep screwing everything up. kitten you kids and your fast fingers.

So… what I was this.

We know that the 30 second rotation coefficient for 6/5/0/0/3 is somewhere between 40 and 45. Let’s take the worst case scenario and just assume you can’t find a slot at all in that rotation to slap Eviscerate into, and you’re forced to take an extra second every 10 seconds to use it. Then your average CPS increase for having Eviscerate becomes somewhere between..

((45+9)/33)/(45/30) to ((40+9)/33)/(40/30)

which is

11.3% to 9.1%, making 10% seem like something in the ballpark of being correct.

Edit: I managed to get 53.4 in 33 seconds vs 45.8 in 31 seconds in the end, can’t do any better. 9.5% CPS increase.

Which means assuming Truffle Steak and a dungeon potion to be on par to Nike’s calculations for an EA Axe build, is 9416 DPS. The EA Axe is 9748, meaning we’re less than 4% lower, without accounting for any benefits from Sharpened Axes or DoE and this was not a perfect rotation.

So, can anyone else advice?

DWA does affect the GS+A/M rotation, since your time spent in axe is basically determined by the amount of time it takes to complete the ongoing axe chain once your swap recharges. Without DWA, it takes 3.6 seconds for a full axe chain meaning that you swap to Axe for 7.2 seconds then swap back to GS. With DWA, you swap for about 6.6 seconds and then swap back, so you are gaining a bit of DPS since you’re getting more HBs on average. That said, it’s still a DPS loss since there’s no way to take BP, Fast Hands, and DWA in the same build so you’ll have to give up one.

If you are not taking BP, 4/6/0/0/4 will be your best bet for raw DPS as Sharpened Axes will allow you to hit Eviscerate on cooldown. In general, the old swap rotations simply aren’t as good as just camping one weapon or another simply for math reasons. Don’t listen to Warlord, he doesn’t understand math or much of anything at all. He thinks DWA doesn’t affect axes because your hits don’t deal any more damage, but it does affect swords because you get more bleeds. Or something.

^ I was looking more at an EA build. If you’re going full DPS, you basically have to take BP. BP is perfect example of intended mechanics not working as intended in reality and then developers doing nothing about it, but thats for another topic.

Hmmm, do you do two axe chains though? From all the rotations I saw you only do 1, and I couldn’t come up with any better rotations using it. I’ll have to look into that.

The in game tooltips either don’t account for after cast or ate just plain weird (Rush =2 seconds, Wat?). That really doesn’t make my life easier.

The maths is the surprising part though. The build theoretically seem to basically equate to the EA axe build DPS wise but with a few extras like having FGS and 2x the weapon swaps. The problem is that I can’t be sure of it’s actual DPS because I can’t pull off perfect rotations myself (I’m more used to MMOs with a 1 second GCD ._.), so I had to just do the best I can and take alternative measures like figuring out individual parameters and alter the models of people with faster fingers, so maybe there’s some parameter error.

However, things do seen consistent from multiple angles, so I guess there is a bit of a reconciliation there.

2 seconds is the max duration for Rush if you just let the warrior run to max range and swing but yeah, tooltip cast times aren’t indicative of actual DPS, only the interrupt window for the skill.

The most important thing is that they don’t list the aftercast. It isn’t a problem in a GCD game because you know that anything below 1 second is subject to the GCD, here, you need that info.