Guild Wars 2

Quite a paradoxical character

Kodiak.3281:

Zelyhn.8069:

Hey let me spreadsheet the way I want you bloody elitist

I fully support your right to Spreadsheet.

I don’t support you trying to impose your Spreadsheets on everyone else.

You are the only one imposing anything Kodiak

We only have three skills to factor in, and the rotation you are looking for is the following:
- MS
- LF, 3 FB (begin to cast 4th FB but interrupt it with next line’s LF cast)
- LF, 3 FB
- LF, 3 FB
- LF, 3 FB
- LF, 2 FB
- repeat
total rotation time: 28s (which is MS effective cd, I never talked about 32s …)
Which gives 523 base dps, like I told you. But like I told you this base dps may be lower due to “hidden” time lags.
So we are getting further and further from your “easily calculated” 544 dps.

Ok I can agree with your staff number:
With the build you are stating, perception, signet of fire, sweet and spicy butternut, full war buffs, slaying sigil, and mob-specific potion; you can get to 14650 dps (excluding arcane lightning)

But for LH:
With the build I talked about, bloodlust, sweet and spicy butternut, signet of fire, full war buffs, sigil of slaying, sigil of night, and mob-specific potion you get 16700 dps (excluding arcane lightning)

So LH is better for its duration.

See if you find the same numbers for LH under the same conditions, if not then we must compare our working stats to find where one of us is doing a mistake.

Hey let me spreadsheet the way I want you bloody elitist

Kodiak.3281:

It’s okay, the OP got what he needed and another soul was saved from the Spreadsheetamentalists’ destructive advice.

Yep, and that happened right before your credibility level reached the Mariana Trench.

In case you didn’t know, we also use spreadsheets to measure heals, damage reduction, and plenty of other “non-elitist non-radioactive” stuff. In fact the spreadsheets are just here to let us know with accuracy what our brain instinctively computes while playing in-game.

Wow Kodiak, I’m not sure I am the one lacking reading comprehension then!

The only person who said to go DPS is Guanglai.
Which is kind of strange actually because Gaunglai’s build is bad for dps in dungeons :o

The uninterpreted facts are that OP asked what staff excels at.

The majority of the replies told him that staff is either balanced or good for utility/support and other “non elitist” stuff.

And then you jumped in, fully armed with your bias-loaded weapons and ready to slaughter any poor spreadsheet wielder who would dare to show up.

haviz.1340:

2014 meta, carrion gear. Oh, wait. There’s no carrion ascended gear.

Occam disagrees

Ok let me restate it clearly:

Weakness was changed, now all hits (including crits) can be glancing.
At the same time, hitting a higher-level target is modified the same way: crits can be glancing on hitting a higher-level target, so we do less damage.
Ascended weapon are released, we think it is a buff to our damage, but in fact it is only filling the gap created by glancing modifications.

The buff is a lie!

Yes I agree but that is not the point.

The problem is that almost all targets in high-level PvE have higher levels, so we are like in perma weakness!
So we do less damage.
So we need ascended weapons, to deal maybe similar damage.
= inflation & grind

Anyone else has noticed an increase in the rate of glancing blows we make on high level targets since weakness was changed?
Maybe it is just me noticing them much more now but …

Change weakness to affect all hits, weakness is not a meaningful debuff
Introduce ascended weapons, buff buff buff !!
Glancing on higher-level targets is now unaffected by critical hits, the buff is a lie ?

Not true at all.

My group for fotm 70+ is 90% of the time melee.

What you necessarily need is the following:
- optimal dps (staff could be good, but it fails with the rest of the points, read on)
- very good dodging
- strong enemy control (snare melees, counter projectiles, lots of blinds, etc)
- team support (people will go down, some will even die often)

I find fotm 70+ to be the most interesting content of the game, despite having meaningless rewards.

Gaunglai, I have modeled the “spam all on cd” rotation for staff and I find a coefficient per second of 1.42, which is a base dps of 1.42 * 1047.5 / 2600 = 523 in your terms. Total rotation time: 28s

In comparison the “spam all but do not interrupt any cast” rotation has a coefficient per second of 1.36, so 502 base dps in your terms. Total rotation time: 29.8s

The problem is as follows:
The second rotation has been recorded by Sabull and he found a 1.2s gap between the theoretical and empirical results in total rotation time (31s empirical while 29.8s was the expected time). We concluded that either we had bad data about the animation time of some spells or there were issues with casting mechanics (server-client issues). Either way, it is quite possible that the first rotation (the one you are using) takes more time in total in practice.
We could try to record the second rotation, to see how much time it takes in total, but it is trickier.
Since the first rotation has 20 casts while the second has 23, we can expect a smaller time gap, but nothing is for certain.

Anyway, until then, you can not come up with such strong claims as you do about staff dps, especially when you have so many flaws in your calculations.

Why not all movement skills have their cooldown doubled when not hitting a target, just like ride the lightning ?

Try my guide then. I have to update it, but the best builds I have come up with so far are:
- 10/30/0/20/10 for strong solo play
- 0/30/0/30/10 for efficient team play (I run this in fotm 70+ )
- 30/30/10/0/0 for high risk-rewards

From June 25th patch:

Lava Font: Reduced the cast time from .36 seconds to .2 seconds. Reduced the aftercast from .34 seconds to .2 seconds.

Try it ingame, you can see that the cooldown does not start until a bit after that spell has finished casting. You can estimate this time because the sort of white haze on the skill ticks after the spell is cast.

This is why you do not cast MS every 24s: its cooldown only starts at the end of the cast, so you can only cast it every 28s !

Also you really need to change the way you compute your rotation. You simply can’t assume that you will cast stuff on cd. For instance, the cd of lava font may be up during a MS cast, so you would loose a few seconds (which is a lot for lava font). You need a proper rotation calculator where you iterate each skill.

And after this we need Sabull to check the total animation time of the rotation. This is because, like I told you, the in-game rotation may take a bit more time due to weird casting mechanics and mistakes on frame counting on our behalf.

_

can you recompute all your dps numbers without hunter buffs?

Maybe provide a link here with your updated spreadsheet

_

Did you include the extra sigil for LH ? (it’s like 10% more damage so you know ..)

Sure, I may lack reading comprehension Kodiak …
But the one thing you are definitely not saying is that people should care about their team mates in groups and try their best to achieve what they aim to do in order to have fun together and enjoy the game.

As for your vision of the community, you are wrong. There are many people who come on these forums and they simply don’t post anything, they just read.

I am pretty sure these people value the pieces of advice that tell them how to achieve more in-game, rather than those who tell them to faceroll their builds and gameplay.

The fact that some people could finish most content without thinking about what they do is irrelevant. People do not come on this forum asking for this, they come here in order to learn how to perform better. Maybe you should learn how to respect them.

Are you using your own frame counting to get these numbers for cooldowns (lava font: 5.05 cd + cast time) and total rotation time?

The total rotation time has been found to be slightly higher than theoretically calculated.

I may be mistaken but last time I checked the cooldown of a skill does not start until the animation of the skill is over. So for lava font: cast time 0.2s, extra animation time 0.2s, cooldown (traited) 4.8s, therefore total cd = 5.2s
This would bring your corrected base dps figure more in line with mine.

The practice dummy has a size which is larger than the human hitbox, but so do many of the mobs. Your 6 hit average seems in line with what Sabull and I have calculated so far.

You figures you get seem extraordinarily high to me, but again you are including more buffs than I would, so I would have to recheck with that.

Did you include the extra sigil for LH?

You can jump past the gates, but apparently the end boss doesn’t trigger anymore

I play with a variation of my build (link in signature):

0/30/0/30/10

Hint: you can also solo the boulders and the gate lock

I think they recently stated that a number if boons and a number of conditions would only stack 5 times. As for the specifics of this, I have no idea. Te be confirmed.

Kodiak what you are saying is that people should simply appear active enough not to be kicked in a group and get carried until they get the rewards.
This is a disgustingly selfish statement.
For one, if everybody followed your advice no group would ever accomplish anything.
You are telling people “guys, be bad, others will be good for you and in the end we all get the same rewards”. Well what if people didn’t want to be bad, Kodiak? What if people actually wanted to have fun by achieving something and feeling potent, no just being animation jukeboxes? I think you are terribly misconceiving the community.

You think of me as an ultra elitist. I find this very amusing. The truth is that I am indeed a fervent supporter of efficiency. But I look for efficiency in all things, like fun, not just speed of execution. So I am perfectly fine with people playing the way they want. Actually I encourage everyone to do so! But I will always promote efficiency, what ever the way people choose to play. In fact if you look at my guide, two of the three builds I mainly talk about have supportive traits. I believe most peole want to improve. I respect those who don’t for as long as they are conscious of their choice. So all the advice I give is “do the things you want to do as well as you could do them”. I am quite sure this approach is more desirable than your “wave you arms around until the final chest” point of view.

Your comments are simply destructive for this community.

Kodiak.3281:

Big Tower.5423:

Thank you guys for the input, i think il go full healer/utlity for both pve and wvwvw (yes i know dps is meta… but im not a speedrun guy :P i wanna save the pugs xD

Don’t even worry about it man.

You could go in and do dungeons in white gear level 80 with zero stats or even any traits spent and provided you’re skilled enough to not flop over dead you can pretty much pull anything off and no one will ever say a word.

No one is going to call you out on your DPS or how you play because the truth is no one in game has any way to prove factually that one person is doing more DPS than another. They can calculate it all theoretically about what you should be doing to theoretically get the maximum DPS but since no one can actually check if you’re doing maximum DPS or even no DPS it doesn’t matter.

Sounds like you want to do support, go that route and if any one gives you any guff (not that I’ve ever had anyone question anything I’m doing in dungeons over the course of 100’s of PUG dungeons) just tell them to mind their business.

Congratulations! You just won the 2013 award for worse advice of the year!

That sounds like the kind of things we could know if we had an elementalist bug thread

:/

Edit: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Profession-bugs/first

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Everything with a bar is channel.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Channeled_skill

Oh also there is the extra sigil!

Yes I included bloodstacks in my initial LH calculations using my spreadsheet. The difference shouldn’t be so big since you include hunter buffs in yours.
Remember to use the right build (0/25/25/20/0) and the right food (sweet and spicy butternut seem to be the best)
Also the hammer attributes give you 180 precision as opposed to the 150 you use.

It’s a pile of kitten in a frame

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

mshinga.6540:

It would be nice to not be forced into conjures to get “good” damage, broken mechanic or not.

Staff and LH are equally viable, despite what Zelyhn might try to tell you. I’ve run the numbers myself and they’re pretty much identical. In fact, LH is worse if you account for the fact that it’s not 100% uptime over a longer fight, or multiple shorter ones in rapid succession.

Guang I agree that staff is strong

But you still have to prove to me that your rotation calculation is correct.
Again, for a usual rotation with full traits (cd reduction, persisitng flames), we do:
- one lava font, hitting 5 times = 296 * 5 = 1480
- three fireballs = 314 * 3 = 942
- wait 0.6s for lava font cd to come back up (usually we start to cast a fireball but it is interrupted by the lava font cast. This is a dps gain compared to cast 4 fireballs in total)
Total damage: 2422
Total time: 5.2 seconds
Damage per second: 466

Note for everybody to understand: this is just tooltip damage at lvl 80, Guang then uses a formula to scale it up with stats and buffs.

But Guang does not use the same rotaton calculation, and he gets a number for tooltip damage that is mistakenly too high: 528

The difference is big. So either you explain to me how you get this rotation number and show me why mine is wrong, or you are over estimating staff’s damage.

Don’t trust what “people” say

Many thanks !

I find a lot of truth in what ThiBash is saying
And I like your sig good sir

Also some mobs are immune to burn, while others are immune to blind etc

Are you good at dodging? go daggers
If you are bad at dodging then go scepter or staff
You can fulfil any role with any weapon

My advice is to take daggers because you will have to learn how to dodge anyway

looks good to me!

Yes I also had the idea of having a “thermal shock” trait, something like you deal 10% more damage on targets that are affected by burn and chill at the same time.

Edit: they could even implement it as an aoe debuff: all targets within 360 radius of you suffer 10% more damage if they are affected by burn and chill.

Yes your spreadsheet is definitely a reliable tool

So we agree on using “bcd” as an abbreviation for bonus critical damage?

Also we agree on using realistic speekill situtation conditions to calculate max dps? that is without hunter buffs and with war buffs

How about rotation calculations?
Guang used an “unscaled base dps” approach – resulting in base dps a lvl 80, then scale for dps
Sabull and I tend to use a step by step coefficient calculation – resulting in coefficient per second figures, then apply full formula to get dps
These two methods are both valid (when used accurately), but people tend to prefer reading the results in one format rather than the other.

For example, would you rather learn about elem staff’s rotation (lava font, 3 fireballs) as: “465 base dps” or “1.38 coefficient per second modified for relative weapon damage” ?

Np

You do need to include scholars since they provide stat buffs (power and crit damage).

By the way can we agree on an abbreviation for critical damage? “cd” is already taken, how about “bcd” (bonus critical damage) ?

As for sigils, that’s the point: for optimal dps we are all going to use a night or slaying sigil, so on 2H sigils could be ignored and on 1H we could include only one sigil.

Yes we could include all of course
Actually we probably have to since some damage dealing entities do not scale with player’s attributes: mesmer phantasm (if I am not mistaken) which would skew calcualtions.

spoj.9672:

[(new – original)/original]*100

so [(27.05-15.5)/15.5]*100 = 74.51%

Why would you truncate them ?? :o

Try this:
( 1.2705 – 1.155 ) / ( 1.155)
and get the correct increase.

How do you calculate these percentage increases? All I can get is 10% increase for both cases!
Calculation: new / inital -1 = percentage increase

spoj.9672:

Zelyhn.8069:

We are talking about ignoring modifiers that are not build-dependent: potions, sigils etc

But you cant because of what Nike just said. Those extra modifiers provide a larger dps increase than they do on other builds so ignoring them creates an unrealistic difference in optimum conditions. Its simple maths :P

Well I insist:
If build A does 10k dmg without potion and build B does 12k damage also without potion, then the difference is 20%, with potion the difference would still be 20%
( 12k * 1.1 ) / ( 10k * 1.1 ) = 1.20
It does not matter whether build A has 70% total modifier while build B has only 50% and more power for example.
All common flat modifiers can be discarded regardless of builds.

However, banners and other absolute buffs must be taken into account.

Edit: just to be clear, the increase from potion is indeed larger in absolute terms for build B, but not in relative terms.

I don’t understand your last sentence.

Anyway I was stating max dps, that is dps in a speedkill situation, not dps in PvP.

I doubt anyone is interested about dps figures in PvP !

We are talking about ignoring modifiers that are not build-dependent: potions, sigils etc

talife.5927:

spreadsheet =/= real ingame situation

I couldn’t agree more!

So you have a way to add all these white numbers popping up on your screen and divide them by the time you see it took them to pop? I don’t.

That’s why we measure dps with spreadsheets.

Findo Gask.4103:

Toughness is overrated, This counts only towards melee attacks

No, it counts towards all attacks, ranged, melee or “magic”. The only things that bypass the damage reduction from toughness are conditions.

Elementalist is the way to go

Arah story is the best

mjharrison.3209:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Molch.2078:

Rainbow Sprint.3215:

The only viable build with the staff is support/healing.

Besides anyone who thought “dps all the way” left ele a long time ago.

Thats funny, because Ele is #1 dps in PvE.

Ele is #3 but it’s a pretty close call.

Theorycrafted DPS is close to worthless. Theorycrafted DPS versus a 100% immobile target is even more close to worthless.

Warriors also require an immobile target in order to deal their maximum damage.

Theorycraft only help us to measure what we do. These dps numbers are actually noticed in-game, but only the maths can confirm what we see since there is not dps meter in-game.

Sometimes we do mistakes in our calculations, but it does not happen that often

Facts:

(maximum dps)
- FA ele with support: 9k + burn
- FA ele without support: 11k + burn
- Staff ele in fire: 12k + burn
- LH ele: 14k (short duration)
- FGS ele: it’s over nine thousaaaaands

- warriors: 10k-11k

kthxbye

I agree, this is not an event thread at all.

I will email them to “appeal”

For great justice ?

haviz.1340:

spoj.9672:

@Dolan

Just because two builds have the same buffs doesnt mean they can be ignored because they cancel out. Due to the way the buffs interact with calculations they skale differently depending on the class/build.

Mathematically, you can ignore vulnerability, non-stacking sigils, potions and frost spirit because they will increase dps by 61.8375% assuming night+slaying sigils and disregarding all condition damage.

I support this approach.

how about when we come up with dps numbers we also provide how many stacks of vuln the build is able to produce on average?

As for bloodlust, scholars, banners, and other non-modifier stats we must include them all in speedkill calculations since they are not flat boosts.