I didn’t play in the stress test, but I did use firebrand during the preview weekend. I think the VoJ passive is just a tooltip error. My tests on the golem and observed results in wvw had VoJ passive working like it does for core guardian.
The fact that LF costs for scourge don’t scale based on your total LF pool is hopefully a bug/not a feature that will remain at launch. As has been pointed out, it just pigeonholes use into taking high vit stats.
What you saw during the preview would be the worst case scenario for usage unless you were in carrion gear or something. If you stack vitality, you’re doing so to increase your support output at the cost of your personal DPS. This is working as intended.
Phantasms will generally still do better dmg compaired to clones tho at least power wise.
In all of my testing this weekend, traited Pistol Phantasms were out DPSing axe clones. This was WAY closer than it is for scepter clones, but it was still better to use the phantasms.
That speaks to the severe lack of synergy between Mirage and the rest of the class. Mirage is all about ambushes, but you get better dps from not using them…
Phantasms are the actual damaging illusion tool. I don’t think that mirage should totally invalidate those.
What axe clones are really good for is rapidly ramping up damage which is one of the Achilles heels of core mesmer.
Before you both jump the ship. Dont forget pve wise at least torment and confusion where changed to deal bleed base dmg.
I think this thing is going to be nasty in a PvE DPS role. I’d be shocked if it doesn’t parse 15-20% higher than the current condi mesmer builds.
I also think this will drastically improve the ramp time that causes issues for PvE mesmer outside of a few fights today.
(edited by Knox.8962)
Phantasms will generally still do better dmg compaired to clones tho at least power wise.
In all of my testing this weekend, traited Pistol Phantasms were out DPSing axe clones. This was WAY closer than it is for scepter clones, but it was still better to use the phantasms.
That speaks to the severe lack of synergy between Mirage and the rest of the class. Mirage is all about ambushes, but you get better dps from not using them…
Phantasms are the actual damaging illusion tool. I don’t think that mirage should totally invalidate those.
What axe clones are really good for is rapidly ramping up damage which is one of the Achilles heels of core mesmer.
Phantasms will generally still do better dmg compaired to clones tho at least power wise.
In all of my testing this weekend, traited Pistol Phantasms were out DPSing axe clones. This was WAY closer than it is for scepter clones, but it was still better to use the phantasms.
I did a pretty significant level of testing on golems in as controlled an environment as I could produce over the weekend.
I tested 5 basic setups:
Core Condi Mesmer setup with Duel/Chaos/Illu using 3 pistol phantasms
Mirage setup with Duel/Illu/Mirage using scepter w/ 3 pistol phantasms and Dune Cloak
Mirage setup with Duel/Illu/Mirage using 3 axe clones and Infinite Horizon
Mirage setup with 3 axe clones using Dune Cloak
Mirage setup with 3 pistol phantasms using Dune Cloak
I reset the DPS meter after I had ramped up all 3 phantasms/clones to measure the steady state DPS of each setup
I smacked the golem for about 10 minutes on each setup, to try to normalize the RNG from other people around.
My results from testing were as follows:
Core Condi Mes 8.7k DPS
Mirage scepter w/ 3 pistols 9.2k
Mirage 3 axe clones and Infinite Horizon – 10.8k
Mirage 3 axe clones using Dune Cloak – 11.4k
Mirage a/p w/ 3 pistols and Dune Cloak – 11.9k
Obviously these results are subject to some level of variance due to the fairly chatoic environment around testing, but I ran multiple trials for each setup and the results were pretty directionally consistent across all of them. Fully buffed PvE performance will obviously differ due to gear availability and buffs, but I don’t expect the pecking order to vary wildly given the consistency I was able to produce these results.
Now let’s get back to the real world, shall we.
As for passive heals, Traited Virtues will give us a shareable Virtue of Resolve. Each second it heals 328 hp
It’s 328 every 3 seconds, or something less than 110 per second. Soothing Mist is 4 times stronger.
I’m not weighing in on the rest of this argument, but his number was correct. With magi gear and healing modifiers, 328 per second is accurate.
If you want to go all-in on healing, you can actually get it quite a bit higher than that. If you take the Force of Will trait and assume you get 3 stacks of the mace trait, you can get it to tick at 1350 every 3s on others (450/s). At 5 stacks of the mace trait, that gets up to 476/s.
The base healing for traited Virtue of Resolve is 315 (0.225) every 3s. With 1600 healing, it’s 675, or 225/s.
So with +50% healing, you can get 328/s.
You would need more than +100% healing to get the numbers you claim, though.
But the whole point was to compare it to the elementalist’s Soothing Mist, so you have to apply the same healing power and heal modifiers.
Untraited, it’s 800 (1.0) every 10s, or 2500 with 1600 healing. So, 240/s.
With the trait, it’s doubled at 480/s.With a 50% modifier, it’s 730/s, more than twice as strong.
Using this build you would have a total of 1976 healing power with the Firebrand GM Minor trait, and an 77.97% outgoing healing modifier @ 3 stacks of the mace trait. (87.97% if you assumed 5 mace stacks).
That puts the base healing of VoJ passive at 760/3s = 253.3/s
After healing mods, you’d be ticking for 451 @ 3 stacks and 476 @ 5 stacks.
I’m not sure why anyone would use this particular setup, but those numbers are certainly achievable.
The rest of this argument is absurd because you’re comparing 2 totally different toolsets by picking out a piece of them in a vacuum and trying to draw comparisons based on those.
For what it is worth, I think the F2 tome is underpowered given the lengthy cooldown gating the use of it, but if you’re going to argue the point, at least don’t call BS on stuff that isn’t.
Now let’s get back to the real world, shall we.
As for passive heals, Traited Virtues will give us a shareable Virtue of Resolve. Each second it heals 328 hp
It’s 328 every 3 seconds, or something less than 110 per second. Soothing Mist is 4 times stronger.
I’m not weighing in on the rest of this argument, but his number was correct. With magi gear and healing modifiers, 328 per second is accurate.
If you want to go all-in on healing, you can actually get it quite a bit higher than that. If you take the Force of Will trait and assume you get 3 stacks of the mace trait, you can get it to tick at 1350 every 3s on others (450/s). At 5 stacks of the mace trait, that gets up to 476/s.
It could be that they wanted to nerf condi druid (who doesn’t typically have a free utility spot on the bar to take sharpening stone) while keeping condi ranger DPS roughly in the same spot.
Just a thought.
The thing that really bugs me though is when a group wants necros but the necros don’t organize Epidemic bouncing. Kills the entire reason necros get the nod, but who cares because the template is being followed.
Necro is used over Engy for 2 main reasons.
1 – Condition management. They can pull condis off the group and then send them back to the boss which significantly reduces the damage the group is taking with a minimal level of effort.
2 – Ease of use – A poorly played necro does almost as much damage as a good necro. A poorly played engy does a fraction of the DPS of a good engy. Without any real feedback tools, it is hard to tell the difference between the good players and the poor ones.
Trailblazer’s set would be ideal for Reaper on “tanking” duty I guess. Still nearly the same Condition damage and same condition duration. Loss on Power and Precision isn’t that impactful. Swap CPC/Suffer for Rise! if needed, you’re done.
You lose a massive 6% of your damage by going through and replacing all of your Vipers gear with Trailblazer and Sinister with Rabid. As it turns out, that is almost the exact same damage loss you get from dropping Corrosive Poison Cloud for Rise in a full Viper/Sinister setup.
I tank on chrono, engy, and necro and all of them do different things. Engy has the highest damage potential of the 3 (if you already have chrono buffs covered in your group), but keeping up with engy DPS is difficult enough for most people even when you are not tanking. Adding tank responsibilities on top of that makes it even more fun.
Condi reaper is great because you get to bring epidemic to help out with adds or for passing condi stacks. Additionally, the condi reaper rotation is pretty straightforward and easy to perform at near optimal levels.
Chrono, in addition to the quickness/alacrity, has the advantage of being able to block/distort etc. through a lot of mechanics in fights that make things easier for the people around you instead of dodging and re-positioning.
All 3 classes bring different things to the table, but it really depends on what you want out of that raid spot. I will say that unless you are a really good engineer, the tank engy would be your last choice.
Why ? rampager has more power … nades and bombs make condi damage but also direct damage. I think you should consider the sum of the 2 … no ? I agree with you for pistols skills which are quite only condi based … but nades, bombs , and elixir gun benefit quite a lot from power i think
If you run around with condi duration from food or runes, the extra condition damage scales much better than the extra precision and power does. If you regularly have 0 might and 0 condi duration, then they do about the same damage.
Feel free to plug both setups into my sheet and compare the numbers for yourself.
Rabid will out damage anything other than sinister/viper for condition builds.
Rampager is better than rabid for pve IMO …. it you use bombs , nades o EG or FT rampager gives you also power …. try it …
If you’re using condition damage skills like fire bomb, shrapnel grenade, napalm, incendiary ammo etc. Rabid will do more damage than rampager.
I wish people would stop throwing around numbers without showing any background.
What buffs do you assume?
I can’t picture Engi, with all buffs and a good rotation, doing less than 25k DPS while I don’t see condi Berserker with “average” buffs dishing out 32k DPS.
What rotation do you assume?
Sure, without Alacrity and without having to dodge once I can get out 4x Scorched Earth per Berserker. But when you have to dodge once at the wrong time you will either miss out on the 4th use entirely or it will be mispositioned, etc.Not sure how you get your Numbers of condi Warrior still having competitive DPS when it’s a single Firefield. With 25 Might, 25 Furious, Fury, 25 Vuln, Banners, Empower Allies, Assassin’s Presence and this rotation I get 20.3k DPS. That’s not exactly competitive, especially when you lose the 4th Scorched Earth.
In my sheet, condi engy with quickness and alacrity + 25 might/vuln and banners does just over 30k DPS if you can keep up with the rotation. Just over 20k DPS with 0 quickness and alacrity.
Rabid will out damage anything other than sinister/viper for condition builds.
Is the sigil bugged and giving more than 7/9s uptime under ideal circumstances?
When I’m running around being lazy, I’ll often pull out something like this. It is really really tanky, and even though FT does pretty poor damage in a vacuum, the fact that you’re basically pegged at 25 might in combat makes the solo damage of the build pretty reasonable considering the minimal effort required to run it. The 2nd and 3rd utility slots are entirely user preference.
It certainly isn’t the strongest build you can play, but it does reasonably well with basically 0 effort.
If you’re willing to put more work into playing, you can go with the meta condi engineer build and swap in traveler runes and Trailblazer/Rabid gear until you’re happy with your level of tanky-ness. It would look something like this.
(edited by Knox.8962)
The other thing to remember when comparing Burnzerker DPS to Engy DPS to Necro DPS is that warrior and engineer can front load a lot of burns and big bleed stacks to quickly ramp up DPS (for a condi build) while a necromancer relies on much slower stacking longer duration attacks to get comparable DPS. This isn’t a big issue on the boss in normal circumstances, but when you try to burn down the red guardian for example, that ramp time is definitely a factor.
For most strong groups, DPS isn’t really an issue at this point, but for less optimized groups, it is certainly something to consider when you’re trying to look at the big picture.
If they ever fix Trailblazer Ascended transmutation, this build is super super tanky and still does a TON of damage.
Poison mortar is 5×2.5 base poison w/ approximately 0.8s cast, or 15.625s of poison per cast second.
Poison dart volley is 5×6 base poison w/ a 2.15s cast time, or 13.95s of poison per cast second. Both of those skills are much better than the grenade auto attack.
PDV hits for more physical damage, and is the better option overall, but the fact remains that they’re fairly close and both way better than grenade AA.
(edited by Knox.8962)
Poison mortar is absolutely worth using if the target isn’t going to move out of the area. It is also useful when the 900 range on grenades isn’t quite enough.
Yea, in a lot of fights like Vale Guardian (if you’re on lightning circle duty), your actual DPS can easily be far off your theoretical, potential DPS. This kinda stuff hits engineers the hardest since you often don’t have an auto-attack to fill any gaps between casting abilities
This is completely backwards. The more long cooldown hard hitting skills you have, the less you are hurt by missing out on a few seconds of DPS. You drop auto attacks out of your rotation and then your big nukes are available again when you’re back in range. As a condi engy, you can throw grenades and mortars from nearly anywhere as filler while you are running to green circles.
You’ll obviously lose some DPS because you end up delaying Blowtorch and Fire Bomb etkittenil you are back in range, but compared to somebody who relies on the AA to do damage (like a dhuumfire necro or a Sword Rev) you fare far better in terms of DPS lost.
I haven’t seen anything that resembles reasonable math that shows power necro beating condi necro in a buffed DPS setting. The condi build ramps up slowly, but eventually passes the zerker builds when you have external might and vulnerability.
Solo or non-optimal group situations, the zerker is incredibly strong because it self buffs so well, but with an organized group, the condi build pulls ahead.
I assume 1 attack every 2 seconds for PvE mobs.
Fully buffed (25 might, 25 vuln and warrior banners) skill priority for a condi engy should look like this:
Incendiary Ammo – infinite
Blowtorch – 37900
Napalm – 27500
Fire Bomb – 24900
Shrapnel Grenade – 21300
Grenade Barrage – 15900
Poison Grenade – 14200
Concussion Bomb – 11900
Poison Gas Mortar – 10200
Static Shot – 9100
Poison Dart Volley – 8200
Big Ol’ Bomb – 8000
Freeze Grenade – 6800
Detonate Flame Blast – 6500
Grenade – 5300
The numbers are the approximate damage per cast time not counting sigils or procs other than shrapnel.
You can see that there is a pretty big dropoff after shrapnel grenade and then a steady decline after that.
something like 80% of a condi engis damage comes from having that main stat condi on every piece
rabid/sinister/viper is better than carrion/dire until you have enough crit to consistently proc napalm specialist, then it doesnt really matter
that was his question guys, not “what is optimal”
just dont go rampager
mind if I ask why? at least with ramapager your still getting power as opposed to rabid where you get increased condi dmg but lose out on a bunk of power. I only ask because i just finished my viper gear and am working on the sinister trinkets now but i’ve been using rampager for the time being.
Most of your really hard hitting skills have really low coefficients and you have very few damage modifiers, so power isn’t doing much for your damage. Condition damage and condition duration are the two stats that add significant damage.
Precision is somewhat useful for condi builds, but the fact that almost all of the procs you can trigger on crit have very high proc chances and long cooldowns, so having high crit rates isn’t as important for triggering them.
The equation for determining damage for sigil of earth and other chance on crit proc effects is:
Damage = (Time/(((Critchance * Successrate) * InternalCooldown)+((1-(Critchance*successrate)) * SecPerHit)) * Crichance * Sucessrate *Damageperproc
Divide that by time for DPS
So lets assume you have a 100% crit chance and your seconds per hit is .65 with a 30 second rotation
33719 = (30/(((1*.6)2)+((1-(1.6)).65))1*.6*2735
=
~1123 DPS
It’s using a weighted average to determine the average number of times in between ATTEMPTS to proc the sigil, then you multiply it by the chance at a successful attempt, then by the damage
That damage number seems extremely high. You would have to have 3354 Condition damage to get 2735 damage per proc from an earth sigil. Even if you were able to get that much damage out of each proc, the 1123 DPS number equates to averaging 4.11 stacks of bleeding at from the proc.
This seems highly unlikely given the 0.65 seconds per attack. Your average attack will come 0.325 seconds after the cooldown expires. That means even at a 100% proc rate, your maximum number of stacks would be (10 / 2.325) = 4.3 stacks of bleeding. Your math is showing that dropping to a 60% proc chance is only going to reduce the proc chance down to 95% of the rate you get at 100% chance. That doesn’t even seem reasonable.
That proc at that attack rate should come out closer to 3.25 stacks of bleeding. You may want to revisit that formula.
For reference, my personal sheet values that proc with that attack rate, and your really high damage number at 3.243 stacks of bleeding and 905 DPS.
(edited by Knox.8962)
Glass Cannon is going to add about 150 DPS to your overall build. Just landing 1 or 2 grenades that would have just barely missed would make up that gap. A full Sinister/Viper engy is doing less than 4500 Direct damage DPS, so 5% more than that is pretty small. When you look at it on a tankier engy, you’re going to gain even less damage.
There is really a TINY difference in damage between the Trailblazer + Sinister vs. Trailblazer + Rabid. If the small difference in damage is worth the extra risk you’re welcome to do that. Just know that you’re adding a few hundred DPS in exchange for the pretty significant Damage Reduction loss.
Trailblazer Ascended vs. Rabid Ascended will give more damage up until you get to 100% burning and bleeding duration. The damage difference between that and a full Viper/Sinister setup is pretty small (less than 10%). Engineer is by far the highest DPS tank you can run.
You’d probably want to run this setup in reality. Shaped charge is going to do virtually nothing for your damage, so you’ll want Short Fuse. Glass Cannon also adds very little direct damage, so the quality of life benefits from the larger AoE on the grenadier trait is probably worth it as well.
If you feel like you have enough survivability, you can swap Rapid Regen for Mass Momentum for a ‘free’ 200+ power in this setup. It won’t buy you a ton of damage since you have such poor power ratios on the skills you’ll be using, but it is something.
If you need to be even tankier (I’ve been in some pugs with really bad healing… it happens), you can drop explosives for alchemy and pick up the Iron Blooded trait for absurd levels of damage reduction.
Fully buffed (25 might, 25 vuln and warrior banners) skill priority for a condi engy should look like this:
Incendiary Ammo – infinite
Blowtorch – 37900
Napalm – 27500
Fire Bomb – 24900
Shrapnel Grenade – 21300
Grenade Barrage – 15900
Poison Grenade – 14200
Concussion Bomb – 11900
Poison Gas Mortar – 10200
Static Shot – 9100
Poison Dart Volley – 8200
Big Ol’ Bomb – 8000
Freeze Grenade – 6800
Detonate Flame Blast – 6500
Grenade – 5300
The numbers are the approximate damage per cast time not counting sigils or procs other than shrapnel.
You can see that there is a pretty big dropoff after shrapnel grenade and then a steady decline after that.
The procs add somewhere in the neighborhood of 5k additonal DPS on top of those numbers.
On average, shrapnel adds a base 5.4s bleed to every single grenade toss. In a group situation where you have might and vulnerability, that is 1200 extra damage per toss. if you have 100% condi duration, that number doubles. That is a really really strong damage trait. Plus it cripples people.
This trait is absurdly strong with grenades and not very good without them.
I tried to change the stats on my ascended armor only to find out that the insignia cannot be used in the forge.
I see an error in your zerker rotation: it is using skills from four utility kits (bomb, grenade, flamethrower and elixir gun)
So it is… I’ll have to crank out a new rotation and re-upload.
New version uploaded.
(edited by Knox.8962)
I posted my Engineer DPS sheet in the engineer forum.
There has been a significant bit of chatter the last few days about people not “showing their work” on DPS calculations. I’ve cleaned up my Engineer DPS spreadsheet to the point where it is at least fit for people to look at. I’m not going to do basic math tutoring, but I’ll try to answer questions about the sheet for people.
Quick summary for people who don’t want to play with it:
Condi engy – 20,040 DPS
Zerker engy – 16,638 DPS (Bombs)
Zerker engy – 16,597 DPS (Elixir Gun)
Both of those are sustained damage over a 10 minute+ fight length with 25 might/vuln, Banners and Empower Allies.
Those numbers are using the best possible rotation I’ve been able to find. I fully realize that those aren’t realistic to perform, but simplifying them quite a bit is not a massive DPS dropoff and it is easier for me to generate max DPS rotations for 10 minutes than to type out a simpler one by hand.
Somebody pointed out that I was using 5 kits in my zerker rotation, so I uploaded a new version with only 3 utility skills in the rotation. I also put a rabid backpack on since sinister isn’t available. I’ve adjusted the damage numbers accordingly.
edit 2 – I added Berserker rune functionality as a 5% multiplier and changed Poison Gas Mortar to only proc shrapnel once.
(edited by Knox.8962)
A Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport World Record Edition has a top speed of 431 km/h (268 mph). Nobody ever says, “sure but show me a video of it doing 260+ in rush hour traffic and then I’ll believe you’re on to something.”
A Tata Nano has a blistering 0-60 time of 29.4 seconds and a top speed of 65 mph.
In rush hour traffic, crawling along at 15 mph, both of them will be the same speed, but I don’t think anyone is going to argue that the Bugatti isn’t the faster car.
Spreadsheet DPS is a measure of DPS potential, much like what a car can do on a closed race track. If build A does 20k max and build B does 10k max, equally skilled players will most likely do more damage with build A. Some builds are more forgiving than others, but these theoretical numbers are a good anchor for comparing builds.
That is sustained. Using Viper Armor/Weapons + Sinister accessories I’m getting the following numbers over a 5+ minute fight.
Direct DPS - 4,145.37 - 20.6%
Condition DPS - 16,011.43 - 79.4%
Total DPS - 20,157
I’ll clean up my sheet a bit and post it tomorrow so you can look over where the numbers are coming from.
That was 18k with 25 might/vuln all banners and EA. Engy DPS goes completely bonkers when you start getting alacrity due to the fact that you have so many strong skills with cooldowns. If you have 100% alacrity uptime, you virtually never need to use grenade auto attack. You get to use shrapnel grenade and fire bomb almost like auto attacks, which are 2 of the hardest hitting skills in the game.
… Something like warcraftlogs. Probably never going to see that in GW2 but doing spreadsheet DPS for specific encounters is never going to be anywhere near accurate outside of Patchwerk fights. And even then you have the problem that spreadsheet DPS isn’t very accurate in the first place.
I’m not sure about any other DPS sheet, but the last time I checked my engineer DPS sheet against the DnT one, we ended up within 17 DPS (out of 18k or so) of each other when using the same assumptions. I’d be willing to bet that they’re pretty accurate for Patchwerk style fights.
As for validation of these numbers, I’d look at the world first boss kill comps as something of an indication. The Vale Guardian was killed by a Druid and a ton of Engineers and Revs. I’m sure that other comps can kill the boss, but that was the setup that did it first, and I’m sure it was more than a handful of groups trying to kill the boss. Competition for things like world first kills drives people to try to find the best things available, not to rigidly adhere to some pre-determined notion of what is meta.
Note: I think that if we run into a raid boss that is truly a DPS check that a LOT of people will struggle without a DPS meter available to help determine where they can improve and what is/isn’t working. I think having access to a meter in game would be great for the game in general, and almost mandatory for raids if they make them hard enough.
For example, there is a dodging impact on melee more significant than on ranged play. Of course, we haven’t seen anyone analyze this because … not meta. Theorycrafters only going to show people the builds they want people to use.
The reason people don’t answer questions like that is because the answer to these sorts of things is almost always “it depends”. Does dodging impact melee more than ranged? It depends. Engineers are most effective in close range (bomb radius) of a target, but when they aren’t using blowtorch, fire bomb or concussion bomb, they don’t lose any damage by fighting at range. If you have to dodge out of melee range while your short range skills are available, you’re going to sacrifice some DPS while getting back into melee range, but if you can dodge through the boss, you won’t lose any. If you can predict exactly when dodges will occur and how long it will take to get back to the target afterwards, I can certainly model the exact impact of that on damage. But if you just want to assume dodging once every 10s, the DPS impact of that is going to depend on where you are in a rotation when you do the first dodge. Modeling the results of that are still trivial if you pick a specific time to begin dodging, but the resulting number still wouldn’t be accurate for a fight where you first dodged 2 seconds earlier, so you’d have to run another scenario.
The end result is, your best method to come up with an approximation of what dodging every 10 seconds would do is to take the maximum total DPS attainable and reduce the time on target by some% to accommodate.
I theorycraft as much as anybody, and I don’t run meta zerk builds at all because my primary play area has historically been WvW where things like toughness and vitality matter. However, when I do go into PvE content I want to be optimal with what I have available, so I crunch numbers for whatever gear I have access to or feel like I’m willing to spend money to get. Mostly I crunch numbers for GW2 because I enjoy looking at systems. The ideas behind the numbers in the game and how they impact game balance are interesting to me. I don’t do math to push an agenda or force other people to play something that they don’t want.
My personal engy calculator can handle well over a million possible combinations of scenarios, including time on target, external buffs, external vulnerability etc. I can’t speak for anyone else.
That said, I’m not going to whip up a quick simulation for every party I ever get into. I usually calculate DPS for solo play and DPS for fully optimized group play and realize that my actual damage falls somewhere in the area in between depending on the factors of that particular scenario. Generally speaking, the times where I really care about my DPS though, it is fully optimized group play, so having a Patchwerk style DPS calculation to know where the maximum achievable values fall is what I find most useful.
You could certainly make a reasonable argument for a need for the popular build advertisers to provide unbuffed, poorly buffed, and totally buffed numbers because some builds scale way way better in optimized groups than others, which may provide a better benchmark for people depending on the type of groups they usually play with, but I suspect that the community at large would still latch on to the biggest of the 3 numbers and use that for the rule of thumb reference.
TLDR: Any decent DPS calculator will be able to handle multiple scenarios, but since there are zillions of possible scenarios and you can’t make a video showing off all of them, it is usually most practical to present results for patchwerk style benchmark numbers.
It demonstrates that in one specific instance a video of a revenant playing poorly was taken. That is not data, that is 100% anecdotal evidence.
His example was that theoretical max damage for 2 classes were available, but he “proved” that the math was wrong by telling about this one time that Rev did less damage than necro.
That’s like refuting that men are taller than women by comparing a WNBA player to a male gymnast.
But that was actually wrong. In one example Revenant had 25k theoretical DPS and Necro had 14k. But when you actually tested it in-game it showed that Revenant’s real DPS was 10k while the Necro’s was 12k.
This is an anecdote. That’s like saying, “My 6 year old is left handed, and he’s 4 feet tall. I’m right handed and I’m just under 6 feet tall. Therefore left handed people must be short”
The difference between full sinister and full rabid gear is less than 10%. You give up the ability to do decent damage to structures, but your DPS on mobs doesn’t suffer much at all.
Be advised though: many mobs prioritize targets with high armor, so in many cases, you’ll end up getting pounded on more if you try to add rabid gear.
My issue isn’t with “math in a void”. It’s more the fact that there’s just no math presented at all. Supposedly things are calculated and then they show a fancy graph and expect it to have some value when anyone can easily go do some ingame testing that shows the graph makes zero sense. If you say you’re doing math please present the math because it’s pretty obvious that it’s being done wrong.
The problem with that is that making a sheet like that easily understood by someone who isn’t familiar with it requires a ton of extra work, and releasing it without doing that means you will spend a ton of time answering questions about how it works for people.
Back in my WoW days, I put all of my sheets up on EJ because there was a vast community of people savvy enough to digest a tool and discuss it intelligently. My very first publicly published gw2 sheet got downloaded less than 200 times (compared to over 6 thousand downloads for my first WoW spreadsheet) so the interest in the tools is much lower to begin with, and the ratio of people equipped to discuss intelligently on the official GW2 forums is way way lower than what existed on EJ back in the day.
My personal sheets get peer reviewed by a handful of people that I know to be competent, and I have done peer review for other theorycrafters as well.
I have sheets on my PC at home from numerous sources, and they are not producing exactly the same numbers, but they are directionally similar in most cases.
So someone just said that spreadsheet DPS always uses the max value of an attack, that is to say if your weapon deals 1-10 damage they use 10 in their calculations, always. Is this true? Can someone confirm this.
EDIT: I’m referring to this post:
I think problems ensue because people are almost absolutly uninformed about how DPS is calculated by dnt.Dmg is normaly calculated like this:
DMG=weapon dmg*power*skill coefficient/2600(heavy armor).
If you go in game and start autoattacking you will see you are not getting same number every time,even crits have difrent values.This is because weapon dmg in GW2 has min and max value.
Dnt calculates dmg assuming weapon dmg will always be max for any and all skills used in dmg rotation from which they later calculate DPS.
If you go in game again and start autoattacking sequences of 30 attacks.You will see that no matter how many sequences you make neither of them will have attacks doing max weapon dmg all the time.What you will see tho is most of the time you will be getting 50/50 ,you will be doing AVRAGE WEAPON DMG.Sometimes you can get lucky or very lucky but you cant get absolutly lucky or absolutly unlucky.
When you see DPS on spreadsheet all the values there are calculated using max weapon dmg,all buffs and 100% DPS uptime.Simple truth is that spreadsheet DPS values can NEVER be achieved under any and all circumstances IN GAME,for simple reason of how game engine works.Game engine “forces” avrage weapon dmg.I have nothing against Dnt calculating max theoretical DPS,but I just cant accept that they misslead people by not explicitly saying:“These DPS values cant happen in game”
Nike and other “like minded” people say things like:“we use these values to compare the professions DPS” Again by assuming that max weapon dmg will happen all the time they made it imposible to compare professions based on their DPS spreadsheets.
All main hand weapons in the game have avrage weapon dmg of 1000 but they have difrent max and min weapon dmg. So when you calculate dmg they all should have 1000 weapon dmg simply because game engine “forces” avrage weapon dmg.In dnt calculation they use max weapon dmg and axe has 1100,dagger 1030,pistol 1080,sword 1050… We can clearly see that dnt calculations favors certain weapons and builds just because they want to calculate DPS they will never be able to replicate in game… If they would use avrage weapon dmg for their calculations two important things would happen.
First DPS values for the professions would go down but these numbers would be very similar to the numbers you would be getting in game.You would be able to compare professions without favoring any of them… Weapons like axe and rifle have high max weapon dmg and high variance.If you get lucky with axe you can get 10% more weapon dmg,but at a same time you can lose 10% weapon dmg,same goes for rifle.
Dagger on the other hand is the most consistent main hand weapon with variance of only 3%.Sword and greatsword are in the mid with 5% variance.
DnT and every other competent theory crafter uses average damage for those calculations.