Guild Wars 2

Currently 4. However, I do have two builds on each of them, so for some that is, like, 8.

I have been getting target drops from regular mobs for awhile now. Back when I was meleeing or using AoE attacks it wasn’t that big of a deal, because a hammer is still bashing an enemy. But with my new mesmer… it is a pain in the butt to play. It’s like every 5 seconds or so the game decides to pretend the enemy doesn’t exist anymore.

I know the feeling. I’ve come from games that had several hour long “dungeons” in them, so when people complain about a 15 minute run, it makes me hate them. But, that is what you get when the community favors grinding over playing the game.

So far, I’ve found grenadier engineers to be really good with pugs. You get a lot of the support abilities that guardians have, and you can dish out a lot of AoE damage at a distance.

Of course, I haven’t leveled up my guardian yet, so I can’t compare the two.

I’m still in the 60% area…

It’s gonna be awhile.

I don’t see what the problem is. You’re complaining that berserkrs aren’t the best at everything and anything. So there are places in the game where different stat loadouts work better. Whoop. Dee. Doo.

Um, no, that’s not how it works. Power is a a multiplier to damage, not an addition. Because of this, all of the attacks scale linearly with themselves. They will always have the same ratio of damage, not the same difference in damage.

A bit of backstory on this:

According to the wiki, Halting Strike should have around 750 base power (150 × 5). For comparison, Mind Slash + Gash have a base of 202, and Mind Spike has 303 + 101 if the target has no boon.

This means that roughly,, halting strike should do about 3.5 times as much damage as Mind Slash or Mind Gash. Now, I took a screenshot, and as you can see below, halting strike only does roughly twice the damage of mind gash (both were crits).

I’m not sure if I’m missing something, but shouldn’t Halting strike do a whole lot more damage than it does currently? I’ve checked the release notes and haven’t seen any nerfs.

I love how obtuse the class feels. Also, I like having all of the abilities at once.

Syn Sity.5826:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

With the way you guys are all describing, I wouldn’t blame others for zerk hate on those grounds as well. If their experience with berserkers is someone who rushes ahead, face plants over and over, then QQs at the group for not doing it right, then what are they supposed to think?

Maybe its just because I PUG a lot, but the most important thing I’ve learned running berserker is how to survive regardless of circumstance. Sure, it is annoying when I charge ahead on my zerker thief only to find everyone is pole positioning and max range, but my death is my fault for not gauging the group properly and not withdrawing fast enough to realize that fact. It is a lesson I learned a long time ago: never build under the assumption that someone else is going to carry you.

I think you are mistaking being carried for a player carrying their weight.

I wouldn’t call it a mistake. A disagreement is more like it. I don’t have nearly the demands that other people on this forum do.

Any suggestions with what to replace it with? Dueling adept isn’t exactly teeming with good options for hybrid builds.

My Mesmer finally hit 80. But, unlike my other 3 classes, I’m not exactly sure what to do with this one. Right now, my currently used build for PVE and WVW is the following:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgMQNAW7fl0zyo3UzmGa9ICqHXX29dkK0aleMbXItB-jACBIMCyUFBiyAO/pIasl1FRjVzATjiIq2hoIa1SBAzYA-e

NOTE: this is only one of the two builds I plan to make, with the other being full berserker.

It is a staff hybrid. The way the build works is a bit simple: use diversion + IP along with the mantra to have 3 interrupts at any one time. These 3 interrupts can net 9 stacks of confusion, and this can be combined with the 3 from the proc, plus the 8 from frustration to peak at a burst of around 20 stacks of confusion on a single target. With all the might flying around I can sustain about 1500 malice easily, so this comes to about 7k per action in PVE, and 3.5K per action in WvW.

Being a hybrid, it is also a shatter build. It only has about 2500 effective power, (2800+ with might). I haven’t gotten any “peak” damages yet, and the math is wonky so I’m not sure where to go from there, but I’ve hit around 1500 max with each illusion (coming to 6k damage total) with Mind Wrack.

Arcane thievery is there to throw conditions back in my opponents face, and steal their own boons. By being a hybrid build, returned conditions can do quite a bit of damage on their own, and also I can make the most out of stolen might.

That part works fine. I do have some issues that I"m not sure how to resolve yet:

#1: I am still tossed up between a 10/30/0/0/30 build and a 20/20/0/0/30 build. Both builds have roughly the same effective power (2520 vs. 2499 or about 1% difference), the former getting haste on interrupt and additional confusion on clone death, the latter getting more condi duration and halting strikes for a massive hit on interrupt (base power is 750 now, whereas backstab is 806).

#2: Weapon swap. The staff is set in stone, but the scepter/torch just kind of exists at the moment. I’m sure it is more useful in WvW where the blind + stealth will be a great asset, so in PVE I’d like a suggestion on what to role with instead. I’ve been considering sword/pistol, since it’ll give me additional bleeds + stuns, but I haven’t settled on anything yet.

Thanks in advance.

For low levels, power definitely. I wouldn’t recommend going with conditions until, like, 60 or so.

I’ve found that engineers follow the “linear warriors, cubed mages” thing, where their potential really shows up in later levels. Engineers are about being the jack of trades, master of none, and the way this was accomplished was by giving engineers a lot of abilities, but later in their trait lines.

Take explosives, for example. For the first 10 points you get a barely noticeable bomb dodge, then nothing too spectacular: a size change, a bit of boon removal, and a few procs which are only useful in certain builds and circumstances. But hit the master tier, and suddenly you’re stuck with too many good choices to choose from:

Explosive Powder: damage increase to the two most damaging abilities the engi has.
Short Fuse: recharge reduction to the two most damaging abilities the engi has.
Accelerant-Packed Turrets: ridiculous interrupt + stun potential for PVP/WvW
Enhance Peformance: Epic might stacking that is arguably better than HGH

Then in grandmaster you get grenadier, which in combination allows you to stack massive amounts of vulnerability, bleeds, and do so in an AoE at great range while hitting up to 5 targets. The hardest part about making a grenadier build is that you only get one master trait slot, and there’s 3 really awesome traits that are just perfect for you there.

Biggest problem with the condi necro is that you aren’t in control of your own success. If you encounter someone when you don’t have a full LF bar, or if they have a lot of cleanses, or if they have escapes, then you can’t win. If you round the corner to find yourself outnumbered, then you have no escape yourself so you’ll be trained down quickly. If you get pulled from the pack, you have no method to really withdraw, and against larger zergs you’ll find your conditions cleansed a lot more often than you’d like.

Still, while wandering around on my necro with a full LF bar, it is satisfying to know that I can 1 vs 1 nearly anyone.

With the way you guys are all describing, I wouldn’t blame others for zerk hate on those grounds as well. If their experience with berserkers is someone who rushes ahead, face plants over and over, then QQs at the group for not doing it right, then what are they supposed to think?

Maybe its just because I PUG a lot, but the most important thing I’ve learned running berserker is how to survive regardless of circumstance. Sure, it is annoying when I charge ahead on my zerker thief only to find everyone is pole positioning and max range, but my death is my fault for not gauging the group properly and not withdrawing fast enough to realize that fact. It is a lesson I learned a long time ago: never build under the assumption that someone else is going to carry you.

The thing I find interesting is that the “requirement” removes one of the 3 DPS kings for Tequatl. The best 3 builds to fight teqqy with would be

Soldier’s
Valkyrie
Berserker

Because they all have high innate power. Sure, Soldier’s does equal damage against the environmental objects, but Valkyrie and Berserker can slaughter the adds.

I don’t mind the zerging too much in the game. Mostly because, compared to alternatives I’ve had to deal with, it is better.

One of the reasons players can zerg stuff in the overworld is because the reward system in place gives individual loot and credit to the players. Imagine what the game would be like without that: when drops become limited and get determined by stuff like who attacked first, which group did more damage, or are randomly distributed to people in the area. Then, other players become your enemies, because they take rewards directly away from you. Group play is no longer encouraged, and the more people that are present, the less likely you are going to get anything. Other players will automatically troll you just by playing the game the way the devs intended.

Or take the other side, and put an arbitrary player limit on stuff or events. That’s fine, but it removes the dynamic nature and removes cooperation on events. Even in my WvW based guild, they’ll sound off events going on in PVE, so a bunch of guys will gather together to fight it. But with forced instancing, you can’t join your friends, or you’ll miss the event altogether due to overflow like mechanics. Then, it becomes a “first come first serve” kind of thing, and if you get there in time you’re stuck with whatever people happen to arrive at the same time you do. Slow loaders and connection problems now make players lose rewards more than ever. Of course, people wanting to do events will arrive early, stand around and wait for the event, and screw everyone who would otherwise arrive “just in time”.

When I see a bunch of players running around, all auto-attacking a champion and then running to the next, it doesn’t make me that mad. Sure, I hate it when it lags the zone or when they farm by purposefully failing events so we can’t progress, and I generally don’t like endless grinding they do, but at least I can solo wander in the overworld without having to worry about killstealing, or being locked out of something due to a player limit.

Well, the tormenting runes have their use in PVE as well. In a lot of events, bosses and their adds get capped conditions almost immediately, making it so the necro can’t do very much damage.

Except with torment. Torment never hits the caps on champions, so when you can put 10 stacks on everything (heal + shackles + epidemic), this results in the condi necro doing much higher damage than they normally would have in a zerg like scenario.

I love the difficulty in CM. I’ve run it so many times I’ve lost count. I do wish they’d fix all the exploits where people can just melee enemies through the wall, though.

Oh right, I keep forgetting about the tool kit. Mostly because I never use the thing for damage.

Technically, Engineers can only range. They’re pretty good at it, too. They have a lot of support and healing skills, so Engineers are like mini guardians in that sense.

I agree with this. I was saddened with my bomb kit when I found that I can’t light the fingers on fire.

I’d tell you how low my server got it, but so far I haven’t been able to get on anything but overflow servers.

The 600 range is enough for most things. You have to be closer to the combat than most ranged options, but it is still enough distance to kite and avoid attacks.

I’d like axe #1 and #2 to cleave and hit up to two additional targets myself.

Every once in awhile a tormenting thread comes along.

Anyway, yeah the proc on the heal is the best part. Think of it this way: with 100% torment duration instead of 70% torment duration, you’re getting 3 extra ticks for each stack of torment, 3 stacks of torment on up to 5 people, this comes to 3 × 3 × 5 = 45 additional ticks of damage. The proc gives 2 stacks of torment for up to 20 seconds against 5 targets, so that is 2 × 5 × 20 = 200 additional ticks.

So far, the only way to use the runes is with the heal skill.

The biggest problem with the runes, IMO, is that while the torment duration they provide is nice, ultimately condi necro damage comes mostly from bleeding. A lot of people would take something like x3 krait + x3 afflicted to get more bleeding, so they could have more flexible builds.

It is more than possible to get 100% bleeding, though. 30 in spite +hemophilia + koi cakes or Rare Veggie Pizza is 90% bleeding duration. A single agony rune can bump it back up to 100%.

I’ve never encountered zerk hate in the game. Only on the forums.

I can see why, though. Ultimately, what people want in a game is for varying builds and strategies to contribute equally to the outcome of the fight, while also contributing in a different manner in the fight. For example, people want it so a healer + DPS = 2DPS because the healer keeps the DPS alive for twice as long. It is a generic example, but nonetheless represents what they want.

I’m all for this myself. Having balanced but diverse gameplay appeals to a larger playerbase and can make combat in the game much more interesting. A big complaint about the game is that combat feels homogeneous, and they have a point here. I’ve found the prevalence of zerkers in dungeons is due largely to lazy enemy design more than anything else. So when I player comes to the forums and makes a topic wanting their builds to be more useful and things other than direct damage class cannons to be viable, I can’t help but agree with them.

I miss the early days when a group of 50s would gather together to do AC exploreable and CM explorable. It is still more than possible to do.

Of course, I’m a “come what may” kind of guy. As long as the player has the minimum level required for the dungeon and level appropriate gear, I’ll take them.

Dynamic Events still give plenty of Karma.

Boon duration works exactly like condition duration in that it just adds the duration.

I.E. on my engi, with 30% from traits + 40% from runes, I get 51 seconds of might with Elixir B, which is 70% total.

The big thing people seem to miss is that meleeing champions and dungeons in full glass cannon gear is easy… if everyone else is doing it.

But if you go to melee a boss while everyone else hangs back at max range and just snipes the enemy, you’ll quickly find that it is actually very dangerous, and very difficult to do. For one, unless the AI gets wonky the boss will target you immediately. Second, no one else is nearby to heal or buff, so you are on your own as far as support goes. Third, the boss lives longer, and gets to do a whole lot more damage as a whole. Particularly to you. Fourth, no one else is brave enough to run in and res you if they’re all hanging back and shooting, so you’ll often find yourself defeated because the players were too afraid to run up and help you.

It is a pretty big risk. It pays off well, though, because every class sans engineer can do some wickedly high damage in melee range. Best part is, everyone is close by, so you can use blast finishers and combo fields to your hearts content.

NOTE: engineers do not have a true melee weapon.

Hopefully this change is setting the groundwork for higher stacks of bleed, confusion, and torment.

Still, this will hit bomb engineers and grenadiers. Grenadiers used the multiple combo fields to stack long duration poison, which will no longer work. Bomb-adiers used Fire Bomb to put layers of burning on all of their targets. Because of this, if you go for max burning duration, fire bomb is no longer a viable option, since it will cancel out longer duration burns if used at the wrong time.

Advantages:
*Turrets will no longer attack random corners due to invisible objects.
*Turrets will now be capable of focusing on environmental objects like dragons (hopefully)
*Turrets will be more powerful when fighting against MMs, mesmers, and spirit rangers

Disadvantages:
*Turrets can no longer help your teammates when you are on the other side of the map
*Turrets will now have to deal with targeting issues that players do.
*Turrets no longer work as a proximity alarm.

Overall, I’d guess it was a buff.

The good news is, you can make serious bank by gathering crafting materials. With 3 level appropriate alts, I can get ori and ancient nodes 3 times a day. It is a bit boring but by doing that I can make boatloads of money.

Dingle.2743:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The problem is, all the adds will be scaled up so high that maximum conditions won’t make a dent in their health.

Maximum conditions can reach comparable DPS to full zerker for certain professions. Condi Engineer and Warrior can almost reach 7k DPS when played properly, which is definitely more than I’ve seen from certain professions in a power build.

The issue with conditions isn’t the solo DPS. It’s just the lack of benefits from having more than one condition player around. Spreading them out will make them more useful.

I"m not sure the class/build you are using, but I’ve found zerker to out DPS condi builds almost every time. Heck, even in full carrion gear the Life Blast from my necromancer matches the damage done by the scepter’s auto attack.

The biggest problem is, condition damage has a pretty solid cap on DPS. 25 bleeds, burning, and poison at 2000 condition damage comes to about 4.7K damage per second. All other sources of damage are unpredictable or not widely available. Hitting more than this with nearly any class is quite easy in full berserker gear: Berserker Engineer can hit over 8K with each of their bombs, and when combined with the damage from static discharge or other toolbelt utilities, it goes over the condition damage done very quickly. The necromancer can hit for 11k with its dagger auto attack chain, and since this takes 2 seconds to do, it is hitting for 5.5k DPS without any additional help from off-hand weapon or utilities.

The second biggest problem is that it needs to build up. Before you can reach peak DPS with a condition build, you have to stack those 25 bleeds, burning, and poison. This takes awhile, as even a full necro condi burst only nets you around 15 stacks of bleeding. Power builds do all of their damage immediately, so there is no need to build up and no diminishing return with enemies dying too quickly.

I think his definition of exploit is too wide as well. Given the wide of array of class capabilities and possible group composition, with any fight that directly engages the boss, I can’t point my finger at one playstyle and say “exploit!”.

But if you want a topical example of the burden of proof, it isn’t hard to provide one without offending people. I’ll do it now:

Regarding the recent chemical attacks on Syria, Vladimir Putin once said early on that the chemical attack was not caused by Assad, but by the rebels. According to Putin, it was done by the rebels as an attempt to encourage the UN and other more powerful nations to become involved in the conflict, and to drop public opinion of Assad. While this is an interesting perspective, the problem is that there is no real evidence of this claim. Rather the statement was made on the foundation of a lack of evidence to point either way. Because of this, it is very difficult to accept this theory of “rebel conspiracy”. I haven’t followed the situation too closely, though, so I don’t know what forensics has turned up now, or if Putin has said anything else on the matter.

And there you have it: No negative thing said about anyone. I suppose this also reflects the other side of the burden of proof: the lack of proof isn’t disproof. Right now, I have absolutely no evidence to provide that Giraffes exist. This doesn’t mean that they do not exist. Case in point, Zelyhn’s argument about what is considered an exploit and what isn’t, although not necessarily in line with what the rest of us think, is difficult to disprove as well. I’m pretty sure he’s wrong, but I can’ prove it.

I’ve never found the proc on the tormenting runes to be particularly complex. I run a standard conditionmancer, but it can also work for any condition based build, so long as you run consume conditions.

The build I use myself is 30/30/10, with the only requirements really being 30 in spite and hemophilia in curses to maximize bleed and condition duration. Food includes koi cakes and rare veggie pizzas. Weapons include scepter/dagger and staff. The stat setup I went with is carrion with some rampager, but in theory you can go with full rabid or full dire or even full rampager.

The biggest “tax” with using the tormenting runes is bleed duration, since normally you’d pick runes that would give bleeding duration. So, whenever you make a tormenting build, you’ll want to have that “covered” somehow. Hemophilia + 30 in spite + pizza gives 90% bleed duration, and this is satisfactory enough, but in comparison you will be shaving off a tick or two from every attack to take advantage of the proc, so to overall increase your damage you’ll want to take advantage of the proc. You can get an agony sigil to increase this to 100% duration, but proper proc usage will make this unecessary.

In PVE, the best time to use this ability is… pretty much anywhere. In condition builds, I use DS defensively, so I have quite a large amount of leeway with heals, so I spam my heal as much as possible to get the proc up. The best time to use it is when the enemies are grouped together, since it works in an AoE. The whole “enemy grouping” thing should come naturally by now, since that is how you maximize damage for AoE conditions anyway. You tag them with mark of blood or enfeebling blood or whatever, then when they run close to attack, you use Consume Conditions to simultaneously heal away their attack and inflict torment, then follow up by using weakening shroud + tainted shackles + life transfer while kiting away to maximize torment damage.

Another big advantage is in zergs. Torment is kind of a rare condition, and against champions that have maxed out conditions, the proc and duration contribute quite a lot since it doesn’t get overwritten.

In PVP is a bit harder to use. Personally, I like to use a particular combo in WVW:

Pop into DS (Weakening Shroud)
Use Dark Path
Use Doom (terrormancer)
Pop out of Deathshroud, an use Consume conditions while chasing them.

You don’t want to spam your heal in PVP though. It is best used tactically, and mostly for healing. The safest time to use the proc is definitely when the opponent is stunned by something, either fear or the Flesh Golem. Although sometimes you’ll have to use it in an emergency while being burst down.

I think that is because the turret is considered a separate entity causing the interrupt, and because of this doesn’t get the rune bonuses. It’s the same way with necromancer’s and flesh golem.

Those extra buttons usually comes with more benefits. If you’re talking about something like an engineer or an elementalist, it is because they have so many additional things they can do.

The thing that irks me the most about the charr are their attitude.

The big thing people can’t quite grasp is that support and control work independent of gear in the game.

It’s a hard habit to lose, since most other MMOs require you to gear up to perform a specific role.

If you can’t reference the burden of proof without insulting people, then you have issues.

The problem is, all the adds will be scaled up so high that maximum conditions won’t make a dent in their health.

Forestnator.6298:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You’re changing armor values for each measurement to fit your assumption. That is a big no-no in science. Armor values are constant across all measurements: the only thing that I changed was weapon attack strength.

Here’s an example where your formula doesn’t work as well: assume doubled power:

(1205 + 1832) / 2121 × 251 × 1832/916=

3037 / 2121 × 251 × 2 = 718

And everyone knows 718 is not double 251. So it is your formula that doesn’t give a realistic result.

You did not understand anything. I did not choose numbers for values, I solved for armor in every case since this is the a faktor which have to be the same for all cases.

Also I did not say damage is doubled with additional 916 power. I said all tool tip values are double with additional 916 power. Go ingame and check it. There is no logic behind a skill coefficient if ingame tool tips are rational reproduceable with the same rules for every skill.

That would require that the test target have adjusted their armor as I changed skills. This doesn’t happen: any target has the same armor, regardless of the weapon you are using. The armor was the same for all of the cases: 2600.

The formula you are proposing is quite convoluted. If the armor values used change arbitrarily with each skill, weapon strength, and power, then you’d have to come up with an equation that would change armor rating for tooltips. Then you’d have to explain why this isn’t an additional modifier that just attempts to fix the formula. Then you’d have to explain what the point of Anet doing this on tooltips would be

Anyway, I think you aren’t quite understanding where the tooltip comes from. The in-game tool-tip factors in everything (weapon strength, coefficient, power, enemy armor) when coming up with it’s tooltip. The reason why doubling power doubles tooltip damage is because power has a linear relationship. The same is true for weapon strength: double weapon strength and you’ll get double the damage.

I checked this a long time ago. I tested doubling power on golems in the mists as well, and doubling power doubles damage. Another source of confusion comes from the fact that the armor used in the tool tip isn’t the armor nearly any enemy in PVE: there isn’t any enemy that has 2600 armor, except maybe one or two (karka). The golems in the mists, in fact, have armor values of 1836, 1980, and 2127 respectively.

You’re changing armor values for each measurement to fit your assumption. That is a big no-no in science. Armor values are constant across all measurements: the only thing that I changed was weapon attack strength.

Here’s an example where your formula doesn’t work as well: assume doubled power:

(1205 + 1832) / 2121 × 251 × 1832/916=

3037 / 2121 × 251 × 2 = 718

And everyone knows 718 is not double 251. So it is your formula that doesn’t give a realistic result.

Forestnator.6298:

TyHW.2783:

Forestnator.6298:

Conan.8046:

Tool tips numbers assume (1) you’re literally not critting at all and (2) that you’re attacking an enemy with 2600 Armor

Source?

All damage in the game is calculated with this formula.

Damage = Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient / Armor

or
Damage = Utility strength * Power * Skill coefficient / Armor

I am studying engineering maths in germany which is known by it’s qualtitiy in engineering. I always wonder where this formula is from.

I have another formula, which is independent from irational skill coefficients:

((Weaopnstrength + Power)/Armor) * Basic_Skill_damage * Power/916

While basic Skill damage is the basic damage of any skill at 916 power. And Basic_skill_damage * power/916 is indeed the visual value shown in the tool tips. Weaopnstrength + Power is your Attack value shown in the hero panel.

This formula works. The usual formula on wiki… I don’t know who created this one but he had not that much knowledge about systems and measurements. That’s why he needed this “skill coefficient” which have to correct his wrong formula.

Greetings, prove me wrong.

Well, previous testing has shown damage to scale linearly with power. Your formula is not linear with respect to power, so either you’re wrong or all previous tests are.

I know which way I suspect it is

Previous testing needs a “skill coefficient”. You can correct any wrong formula with a coefficient. No mather if it is linear or not – everything can be linear for close intervalls.

Just put some realistic numbers in the wiki formula – I never got a realistic result.

The odd thing is, when I put realistic numbers into the wiki, I got realistic results.

I made my first mix ’n match set myself.

Head: Exalted (not displayed)
Shoulders: Sorrow’s Embrace
Chest: Honor of the Waves
Gloves; Honor of the Waves
Legs: Sorrow’s Embrace
Boots: Sorrow’s Embrace

Apparently Kodon and Dredge go together.

I’m back! I did some naked runs (no sigils, weapons, traits, armor, trinkets) and used the following weapons:

Dire Krytan Rifle (751-918) 834.5
Dire Krytan Rifle of Earth (812 – 992) 902
Apothecary Krait Shooter (873-1067) 970
Apothecary’s Pearl Blunderbuss( 986-1205) 1095.5

Going from Fine, to Masterwork, to Rare, to Exotic Rifle. And when equipped, I received the following damages for Hip Shot:

191
207
222
251

Now, if the way power is determined is as forestnator described, then the increases in damage from different attack ratings would scale based off of an addition 916 power, much like how toughness and armor scale. To that point, we should get a combined “attack” value of

1750.5
1818
1887
2011.5

And thus, each damage should be the following percentage increase based on the lowest value:

0%
3.86%
7.80%
14.9%

However, looking at the damage scores of the weapon, we instead get the following increases:

0%
8.38%
16.2%
31.4%

So the “weapon strength + power” model is obviously flawed. However, compare this to the increases in average weapon attack power listed previously:

0%
8.09%
16.2%
31.3%

With only the first value with any meaningful deviation. Thus, with the way that weapon damage scales with weapon attack, we can conclude a rather direct relationship: damage scales linearly with weapon attack, and has no coefficients to speak of.

We also know that power scales linearly with no coefficients to speak of. So, we have this:

Damage = Weapon Attack (random number between attack ranges) x Power x (Unknown value) / Armor

Not including additional modifiers. With the concluded linear relationships of weapon attack, power, and armor, this leaves only one thing: the unknown value.

What would we call this unknown value? All we know is that it depends on the weapon skill used. Therefore, we would call this a skill coefficient.

This makes sense when you think about it: if you bake the skill coefficients into the weapon skills, then this removes an otherwise very powerful variable when leveling up. Ultimately, all skills need to have their damage calculated at any level with any loadout of equipment, and the easiest way to do this is to establish a base modifier for every skill that determines how much of the power that character uses in any attack. It is quite similar to the game Monster Hunter in that regard.

BTW I’ve taken engineering classes, too. They’re quite useful, and I’d recommend a few engineering courses to anyone in college, since they teach some basic problem solving skills.

In my experience:

SE path 1
CoF Path 1
HotW path 1
TA Up
CM Path 3

All those are pretty easy, but CM can be a bit difficult at points. I’d rank most dungeon paths as “average” though.

The thing with necros is that the only build that would need precision is the 30/10/0/0/30 build, and that build is running deathly perception anyway, so assassins doesn’t have much of a place on necromancers.