(edited by PhilKingz.4809)
What is the point of Hundred Blades?
1.) If no stun available, forcing out a dodge and..
2.) Basically everyone’s reason to stun break every time a Warrior stuns them.
3.) Can easily make plays around forcing stun breaks because when you stun people, they can either take an HB or they over think and get whirlwind attacked instead.
Of course every time you stun, you can’t simply go berzerker rage all out. You gotta anticipate.
No duh, its as strong as auto-attack, but its faster than auto-attacking frenzy or non-frenzy.
Since people are negative about nerfs, how about we buff to balance then?
Bull Rush+ Quickness + Hundred Blades= Dead target in under 3 seconds 90% of the time
It does noticeably more than your auto attack……
Instead of math-crafting some garbage, actually go play some pvp and try killing stuff without using it, then try killing stuff while using it, and then you will see.
Playing warrior is all about baiting out the enemy’s rolls and stunbreaks before setting up a cc > frezny > 100b.
Call me when this game gets fixed…. if it ever does….
It the dance of course. Who doesn’t like defying gravity as a human or spinning a sword over his head as a Charr?
It does noticeably more than your auto attack……
Instead of math-crafting some garbage, actually go play some pvp and try killing stuff without using it, then try killing stuff while using it, and then you will see.
Playing warrior is all about baiting out the enemy’s rolls and stunbreaks before setting up a cc > frezny > 100b.
Thank you for responding, I feel you were the only one reading my text.
Since you’re a little afraid of theorycrafting and math, i made some real Tests to confirm what i realized while im playing.
I cant help but question what i saw and thought like everyone does. I cannot confirm that HB makes significantly more burstdamage than autoattacks. I actually realized this when i could use HB on a Player, but just used Quickness. He was dead as fast as with HB.
So why do people think that HB does so much damage? Rapid addition to a bug Number? Lack of gamefeeling? Maybe Cycloney is right, and it’s just a dance.
(edited by PhilKingz.4809)
Frame by frame analysis was one AA chain in 2.3 seconds (or as close as), with Hundred Blades at 4s (tooltips are a lie!). Grabbing numbers from your SS:
AA chain: 109 + 110 + 141 = 3kittenage over 2.3 seconds, or 156.52 dps
Can’t see your hundred blades damage numbers, but using the low end of of the range you posted:
100 blades: 822 damage over 4 seconds = 205.5 dps
50 dps doesn’t sound like much, but this is obviously with low damage steady weapons. With your figures, Hundred Blades does ~30% more dps than the AA swing, which is a very important increase. Combined with quickness and depending on gear you’re approaching (or exceeding) damage numbers that can kill somebody before they can stun break or heal.
edit: also, unless it was changed recently Axe #1 chain kicks out about as much damage as 100 blades. Just has a much shorter range and narrower attack angle. And critically, you give up all the other benefits of the Greatsword (mobility, dodge, fantastic boomerang snare, might on crit tactic).
(edited by Sami.1560)
Frame by frame analysis was one AA chain in 2.3 seconds (or as close as), with Hundred Blades at 4s (tooltips are a lie!). Grabbing numbers from your SS:
AA chain: 109 + 110 + 141 = 3kittenage over 2.3 seconds, or 156.52 dps
Can’t see your hundred blades damage numbers, but using the low end of of the range you posted:
100 blades: 822 damage over 4 seconds = 205.5 dps
50 dps doesn’t sound like much, but this is obviously with low damage steady weapons. With your figures, Hundred Blades does ~30% more dps than the AA swing, which is a very important increase. Combined with quickness and depending on gear you’re approaching (or exceeding) damage numbers that can kill somebody before they can stun break or heal.
edit: also, unless it was changed recently Axe #1 chain kicks out about as much damage as 100 blades. Just has a much shorter range and narrower attack angle. And critically, you give up all the other benefits of the Greatsword (mobility, dodge, fantastic boomerang snare, might on crit tactic).
Nono, i agree with you and im familiar with numbers. 30% more dps would be okay. The only thing i dont understand. The tooltip says 3,5 seconds, and i tested it out with a stopwatch. I know it’s not very accurate, but if im honest, The lenght of the castingbar is exactly 3,5 seconds. Maybe there are some animations in addition to that, so that it’s more than 3,5 seconds. The AA-dps i just tested by letting my char swing and stopped him exactly when i hit 3,5secs on my clock without locking at the screen. After figuring oiut that i always just get 6 attacks, i started to measure how long i got for 7 attacks. It was abourt 3,7-3,9 secs.
I have to admit: Testing the dps by analysing the framerate is much more accurate, but im sure the castingbars are shown correctly in the tooltips. So maybe the animationlenght is some kind of different. I will investigate further and record with fraps myself to testify what you said.
Thanks for your constructive post!
I just tested it with fraps, reducing the fps to 10 to ensure no instability between those frames. I cutted th lenght of HB out and measured the following AA at the same time. I ensured no crits happend.
Results:
HB : 778 Damage AA: 621 Damage.
So yes, HB does more damage than siimply autoattacking, about 25%.
The huge ratio of errors in theorycrafting the difference is derived from the tooltip inaccuracy with respect to the AA-Castime. It’s not 0,5 Seconds. Its about 0,65-0,7 seconds.
What are my conclusions?
The Nerfcries are as ridiculous as the thought that HB would be a lot more bursty. In situations where youre opponent is not rooted or you’re in low HP, i would not USE HB. Circling around a rooted opponent ensures to get off better in terms of trading damage, since a lot of people dont turn enough. Nevertheless. the real worth of HB lies in building up adrenaline, cause there is a really huge difference.
So. actually nothing really new, although the lack of accuracy in AA-tootips reveals a newproblem. Has 1haxe a better dps than 1h sword? How much is the real differend between mace (cc-weapons) and damage weapons?
*Edit: There are errors in the data i collected. I fear that i did a stupid kittening mistake, concerning the framerate. This post is not reliable anymore. All i can say is that it is really true: HB does more damage than AA (how hilarious oO). But since i put so much time in this stuff i want to know it exactly how much damage it does. *
(edited by Moderator)
Interesting findings. Thanks for doing the work, Philkingz!
Snit Dirtnap (Thief)
Ratbag Dogsticker (Guardian)
…Yak’s Bend
Ratbag Dogsticker (Guardian)
…Yak’s Bend
One special thing about Hundred Blades is that it has a lot of damage loaded into the last hit (consequently less damage on earlier hits).
However, rolling a crit on that one hit will raise your total HB damage significantly over the sum of 6-7 autoattacks (far more consistent because the attacks are more uniform). This variability of HB is why it will have a place (especially in PvP), even if the damage over time was less than autoattacking.
People undercount the times when that last HB hit doesn’t crit, and overrepresent the cases where it does.
However, DPS calculations alone would not show that HB is/isn’t overpowered. Consider a more extreme example.
- Suppose autoattack averaged 1000 damage per hit (7000 over 7 hits, the time used to complete HB)
- HB did 1000 damage 90% of the time, but 25000 damage 10% of the time (lolRNG).
On average, you’re looking at 7000 from autos and 3400 from HB over the same span of time, but is there any doubt that it’s incredibly unbalanced, and people would still use it because the reward (1 hit KO) far outweighs the risk (averaging subpar damage)?
This was an extreme example, but I think HB is in a similar boat with the last-strike-crit.
Content in this game will always seem
to be faceroll at the high levels, because it
needs to be accessible to the casuals and bads.
to be faceroll at the high levels, because it
needs to be accessible to the casuals and bads.
This is not true, Dave, and I think you didnt read the previous post.
The last Hit of Hundred Blades does roughly 2times the damage a regular small hit of HB does. So even if it crits the damage to a HB without crits would be ((8+2*1,5)/10) 110%. Means the total amount of a noncrit HB-sequence is buffed by 10%. So the last hit does not bring up a significantly amount of damage to HB, since the last hit covers only 1/5, 20% of the damage-potential of HB.
For anything else i refer to my last post.
Btw. 1 to everyone who argues that dps is no burstdamage. Burstdamage is actually not even defined. All you need is a timeline and an amount of damage you inflicting during that time. If you consider HB as bursty, then 6 AAs are also bursty. If you just consider the damage of ONE skill as burstdamage, then you have to remind the castingtime of this skill to inflict this damage. And it’s quite easy in gw2. Compare it to wow, when a vanilla firemage casts a pyroblast. It took him 6 kittening seconds. This can be considered as burstdamage, since all the damage is inflicted at one single moment though. This is not the case in HB.
Btw 2. “oneshotting” or nineshotting people with HB is the result of people who play gw2 like wow. NOway you can even kill a good spvp-player with one hundredblades and quickness. Even if he goes afk. The point is toughness. I inflict about 14k damage to some randomnoobs in spvp, while i do not more than 7,5k on my brother who also uses defensive stats. That’s always the kittening problem. Kidz focus on damage, Kidz getting oneshot and cry for nerfs. People with brains focus on balancing their stats according to the role they play. Since there are no real healer in gw2 you have to focus on def-stats. And i would punch every HB-Warrior to dust with 1h mace and shield.
So, im done. Sami managed to get me a good idea of how testing the damage potential of those skills.
I have not seen AA do 20k damage when I add 6-7 swings together
80 Guardian, 80 Warrior, 80 Thief
[AVTR] FA
[AVTR] FA
There is something terribly wrong. I dont know. The frames seem to make “jumps”.
My little Bro has better hardware, i will test it tomorrow with him again, so you will have a physician and a mathematician on the job, lol.
Yup the biggest problem with math-crafting is it bases a lot its assumptions off of tooltips. That’s why i said you’re better off just trying it out in actual combat (or if you want, on a dummy) Its pretty obvious that 100b will deal more damage over that time.
The fact that endure pain still says it lasts 5 seconds should tell you ALL you need to know about the accuracy of gw2 tooltips.
Call me when this game gets fixed…. if it ever does….
This is not true, Dave, and I think you didnt read the previous post.
I did. I’m not sure what I said to make you think otherwise. For the record, I don’t think HB is overpowered at all.
The last Hit of Hundred Blades does roughly 2times the damage a regular small hit of HB does. So even if it crits the damage to a HB without crits would be ((8+2*1,5)/10) 110%.
Why run your calculation above with 0% crit damage? You can get a considerable amount from traits, gear and food. With 50% crit damage your ratio is now 20% instead of 10. 75% crit damage and the ratio is 25%. (Admittedly though, these ratios will drop with a higher crit chance on the warrior than the ~0% in your simulation)
I confess that warrior is not my main (nor have I ever used a greatsword on one after level 10) and I did not recall how much more damage the last hit was compared to the others. I made that last post assuming it was more, so my main point about variance is a bit less relevant to HB.
Not every point of damage/health is equal in PvP (in particular, the last hit point is the most valuable). Suppose we are running 50% crit damage so that the HB damage range is 10-20k (10k if nothing crits, 20k if everything does). Target in front of us has, say, 12k health left. I would need to roll 2 crits on autoattack to finish the target down, or I could just crit on the last hit of HB and nothing else (note that any two “small attacks” critting would also kill the target). Because of the variance here, HB gives me a better chance to kill the target than autos because I don’t have to get as lucky with RNG.
Finally, to answer your initial question of why one would ever use HB aside from adrenaline, I would point to effect-on-hit/effect-on-crit items. More hits means more chances to proc, and can be incredibly useful for Forceful Greatsword (few more opportunities to get extra might), Omnomberry Pies (no internal cooldown on the pies), and Sigil of Strength (has a 2 sec cooldown, but the additional 30% chance condition keeps extra hits valuable).
Additionally, there is the PvP scenario above to highlight the potential plus side of higher variance skills. I do realize how easy HB is to evade/mitigate. I’m just moreso using it as an example of where higher variance chains have value.
Content in this game will always seem
to be faceroll at the high levels, because it
needs to be accessible to the casuals and bads.
to be faceroll at the high levels, because it
needs to be accessible to the casuals and bads.
If it helps, when I was watching the frames I set fraps to record as fast as possible to get the most accuracy. I then imported the raw footage into a video editing app and watched it back frame by frame.
I have my new results and i verified them 3 times, but im still a little unsure. MY brother will do similar tests but independently from me, so we can confirm our results. He has not much time, so I will have to wait a for it. Nevertheless I saved this thread in my browserhistory and I will post the stuff as soon as i know that my findings are correct.
I am an engineer and I play a ton of wpvp and bunch of spvp (not claiming to be a pro there in spvp).
No issues with 100b. There are times I get caught in it, and I deserve the damage from it. Happens once in awhile.
Beyond that, I have tons of tools to keep you warriors from landing it. It is a chess match. Don’t nerf it..
If the tools are there to handle incoming damage (no matter the class) and that player fails to use it, then they deserve it.
And guess what? You are not going to win all the fights. It is sad that players call for nerfs the second they lose, yet quickly forget about the other 10 fights they did win.
Lets say somehow you got 6 stacks of confusion. Your condition removal (if you have one) is on cooldown. Frenzy auto attack and you will hurt yourself really bad. HB will only give you one tick of that confusion. Endure pain won’t stop condition damage. You might get blinded, 6-7 auto attacks is roughly the same time spent as a hundred blades. If you miss once with an auto attack the dps lost is much higher than that if you were to miss a single strike of HB.
If you don’t want to use HB don’t use a greatsword. Axe auto attack is much higher dps wise, and a 1h sword’s final thrust while quickened is much better + the bleeds.
The only time I really auto attack full on is when I want to kill a downed foe like a thief/mesmer who’ll only blink away. Bulls rush/frenzy HB > bladetrail > rifle volley > quickness ends. Is enough to kill/overkill/make the target run way out of combat.
Good point Raudence.
Does anyone know how to insert gifs inhere? Even [img][/img] doenst work for me with normal picture.
Last Post ( If nothing happens)
My little Bro needs too long. We actually discussed my testing methods. If we find an error after he did his testings I will change my results, but i could repeat them with 3 frame-analysis and confirm my results. I list them up as single statements, so you can derive further conclusions by yourself.
Results:
- The casttime of HB is about 3,6s-3,7s! This results from animationparts after and before the castingbar.
- The casttime of AA is NOT 0,5s! It’s clearly more. The third attack in AA-sequence
has a different cast-animationlenght than the other two!
- You get out 5 AA, starting from a new sequence, in the same time as casting HB.
Synchronized by my framerate it was only 4 AAs, but I added some milliseconds
in order to check if the next hit of AA-sequence (5th hit) falls into a reasonable
space of time that converged to the casting time of HB. It did.
- To compare the dps or burst potential of HB with simply AA, you have to take the
damage of (2 Greatsword Swings, 2 Greatsword slices and one Brutal Strike) into
account.
- Assuming no criticalhits and steady damage HB does about 40% more damage
than straight AA in the time normalized on HB-Casting Animation. I dont know
why, but the damage can differ some percentages like 43% or even 45% or 38%
even with steady weapons.
Examples: AA ~ 364 dam, HB ~ 510 dam or AA~ 4055 dam, HB~5820 dam
- Since the “40% more damage” is based on the AA-“base value”, nerfing HB would
be stupid. The burstdamage everybody is arguing about is mainly the result of
quickness. Btw. h1- Axe AAs do about 20% less dps than HB, but is not restricted to
only 3,7s. So Using 1h Axe-AAs with Quickness is not a bad idea. Especially since
you can finish the “AA-Burst” with an Eviscerate.
This, my friends, refers to me pounding my forehead hard on the table in rapid succession for revealing something everybody has known intuitively before!
The curtain drops and the audience is barely impressed, but it is a typical trait of mathematicians.
(edited by PhilKingz.4809)
Was interesting to read even if it didn’t reveal anything. Most mathematical posts I can’t keep up with so I give up after the first few lines but you do a good job at putting it in a way I could understand thanks for your posts.
Rezz[Invi]