My final justification for crafting full assassins was more simple than that. Mesmer’s main job is reflects and control, not direct damage. To maximize that job assassins is a clear winner and the difference between it and zerk is actually quite noticeable.
But I do have 4 zerk armor/weapon sets in my inv just in case I ever feel like falling back to berserkers (2x scholar, 1x ranger, 1x strength) XD
I post an lfg and right as I try to enforce the description party member flame me to hell. Need a tough skin to be the initiator and most of the time I’m just not in the mood for that.
For Assassin, you should compare with Scholar runes, because you waste both Precision and Damage using Ranger Rune (without buff food but with Fury / Banner of Disc, you’ll have over 98% crit chance and I think crit chance is capped at 98%) as soon as you have a Ranger in your group. With Scholar, Asc Assassin Armor + Weapon / Asc Zerk Trinket is better than full Zerk with Scholar and Ranger runes.
Using the same vars as in OP + spotter/frost, assuming you have scholars bonus active 100% of the time (quite unrealistic unless you’re a gw2 god, which I’m not). The max difference in direct damage between all 4 combinations of Zerk/Assassins/Scholar/Ranger is less than 2.73% (assassins+scholars being the best). Without a ranger, the max difference between all 4 combinations was less than 1.78% (assassins+rangers being the best). Once you start assuming that scholars will not be always active, then assassins + rangers becomes the top dps for all situations.
Now comparing the reflect dmg. Assassins/Rangers is the best in all cases both with and without ranger. Best zerk combo was Zerk+Ranger but even that was worse than Assassins/Rangers combo by 4.8% with a ranger and by 8% without a ranger.
From all this my conclusion is that for a 6/4/0/0/4 everyday build Assassins + Ranger runes is the best combo for all situations, both with and without rangers. The only time I might consider Assassins/Scholars is when I don’t need reflects and can to stay at 90%+ hp throughout the whole fight in which case then I will be gaining a maximum of 2.7% more dps.
Next, I’ll need to do this all over for the 6/6/0/0/2 all-out build but that will have to come later since my brain is melted cheese from all the math above XD
I’m curious — how many total points were you counting for each attribute? The numerical analysis I’ve done left me convinced power is almost always better … though there are some exceptions.
I did some dps comparisons with my spreadsheet and found something very interesting.
Environment
6/4/0/0/4 build
2 swordsmans + 1 warden
25% uptime on wastrel’s punishment
2 charged mantras
ranger runes (perma +7% dps through a mini)
5% and 10% sigils
10% potion
25 might
25 vuln
banner of disc/strength
asc zerk trinkets for both sets
DPS with asc Zerk armor/weapons:
11,240 direct+bleed
415% multiplier for feedback
293% multiplier for warden
DPS with asc Assassins armor/weapons:
11,203 direct+bleed
448% multiplier for feedback
317% multiplier for warden
The difference in direct dps between the two sets is less than 0.5%, and as far as reflects go – assassins is better than zerk by about 7.5%… Somebody please tell me I’m wrong and why because this is definitely not what everyone on here been telling me.
Yeah, with mesmers the direct damage dealers are very few – sword mainhand AA and whatever phantasm you have out. Everything else is too dynamic to properly predict. The skill/utility rotation most of the time are reactive to whatever enemy is doing. It gets even more complicated once you start considering reflects. Also, it’s quite hard to predict how many phantasms you will have alive and how often you will have to re-summon them because that depends not only on you but also your party members and the enemy AI. Builds also change depending on the dungeon, path, or even boss. Most of things above also heavily depend on the player skill, which is quite hard to quantify/measure. To top if off, there is quite a lot of RNG involved with things just bugging out and flat out just not working. This is why I figured it would make more sense to keep it simple as is and let you decide which build will work the best for him.
Btw, where can I get the calc you mentioned? I’ll have to check it out.
focus on tanking hits until the point when the enemy is vulnerable(or at least finished with his special attacks), then striking at all hell with high precision damage. That is the goal.
There is no such thing in GW2.
I don’t want to play one build over and over, I want to enjoy the game over and over, each with a new strategy and technique
I run zerk gear but different traits, utilities, and even weapons on almost every fight throughout a dungeon run. This Apr 15 patch opened up more build diversity that you think. You are just not looking in the right place.
I’ll take a note of that. For now I’ll be limiting myself to just the mesmer since it’s the class I know about the most and who’s dps output has probably the most variables compared to other classes also set up for full dps.
I do have an ele question though. I want to add a Lightning Hammer for cases where mesmer would be using that instead of the sword AA but I can’t find any skill coefficients for the lh aa chain. Do you have any that are valid post patch? And also, if mesmer equips the weapon, what weapon strength would I use. Sword MH? Sword OH/Focus? Or some other predefined weapon strength?
It would look the same, if you swapped eq & skills / traits out. Going for the rabid gear with sword/sword sword/pistol. sword & Pistol have the highest damage output in the shortest amount of time. The gear adds alot of course, but you can hardly compare the double-bounce condi build, with the weapons that do not allow any high dps whatsoever, with a dps build.
In your specific example, the gear made a little difference, but the real difference came from everything else..
Ok, another example. I used the spreadsheet I crafted to compute the expected mesmer DPS (you can find it here)
Environment:
Mesmer with 2/4/0/4/4 build
2 Duelists + 1 Swordsman
Scholar Runes
Force/Night Sigils
10% Slaying Potion
25 stacks of might
25 stacks of vuln
Disc/Strength Banners
With full ascended Zerk gear:
9,968 DPS
With full ascended Rabid gear:
6,610 DPS
In the situation above, Zerk gear will let you do 51% more DPS than Rabid gear. This would mean that my zerk 3 min 24s kill would have been 5 min 8 seconds if I wore full rabid gear, which isn’t that far off the 6 min kill I’ve gotten using rabid gear and condi traits/weapons.
So no, it would NOT look the same if I just swapped the traits.
Whatever you have spreadsheet use in the calculations produces the results in green box, which then in turn is compared with whatever results you entered in the “current vs this” section.
No assumptions are made, there is no real need to make any. Stats with 0/0/0/0/0 should cover that. You can use gw2skills editor to equip whatever gear you want (weapons, armor, trinkets, and runes) and copy/paste the base stats you get with that combo into spreadsheet.
The reason on spreadsheet you can choose different weapon quality is because different weapon tiers have different strengths (and stats too so adjust 0/0/0/0/0 accordingly) and that in turn also affects your damage output.
Here is a spreadsheet I was working on that I use to calculate mesmer DPS in various environments. At this moment I wouldn’t consider it final because I still need someone to check it over to make sure everything is actually calculated properly.
Spreadsheet (please download to edit, atm its read-only)
Spreadsheet has multiple tabs but all user input is limited to the “Variables” tab only. Enter your data/options in yellow cells only. Calculated results will show up in the green cells. There is no need to edit anything in the other tabs unless you want to force override something.
It’ll all depend on how comfortable you’re with handling your mesmer. The general consensus for sigils is Force/Accuracy for general use, Force/Night for night dungeons, and Force/MobType for a daytime encounters that have set type of mobs (such as Arah – Undead, CM – Outlaw). The key is to maximize your damage output.
there is no such thing as one that is ‘better’. A build that focuses on precision, toughness, and condition damage, is not any less quality because of a single variable.
Consider the following two examples. Same encounter, same player (me), one with Rabid gear (condi dmg, precision, toughness) and another with the Berserker gear (power, precision, ferocity). The builds match the gear choices.
Now tell me which one is better. One finished in 6 minutes or the one finished is 3 and a half minutes? You would be a fool to claim that both are equal or claim that both took equal amount of skill. It is obvious that whatever lets me finish the encounter faster is the way to go.
We actually do have a shield, it’s called… [Phantasmal Defender]!
Alright, I’ll be serious this time, we do have it and its called… [Conjure Earth Shield]!
Do I have to bang my head on the wall AGAIN? You are not aiding your case, your defining skill and quality purely by speed and damage. That isn’t how that works. If you persoanlly think that, fine, but it doesnt make you any better or me any worse. Mastery and speed are not the same while playing a videogame.
Feel free to bang your head as much as you want until you understand. Speed and skill are not same thing yet speed is a product of skill. You are highly mistaken by assuming that DPS is the only thing that matters. An unskilled zerk will most likely be laying dead on the floor contributing exactly 0 dps. Given enough time he will become what we call a skilled player because he will learn how to stay alive, especially from the time he spent dead observing his zerk teammates finishing the boss. Player wearing PVT/Clerics will facetank everything and call it good enough because he doesn’t even have to try to finish the dragged out slow encounter.
If you finish the encounter without taking any damage while being a glass cannon then you have mastered the encounter. Be proud.
Strategy comes after you learn the encounter, not before. Strategy revolving around terribad playstyle and lack of knowledge is just that, terribad. This how those record speedruns are born, people have mastered every encounter in the dungeon and came up with a strategy/builds/partycomp that allows them to complete the path in shortest amount of time.
Consider this. Zerk sword mes in melee range, he dies. Next run the same mes swaps to gs and ranges the whole fight – survives. Does that mean ranging is better than meleeing because dead dps is zero dps? Nope.
The reason I shove “zerk up and melee” everyone’s throats because that’s how you get better. You will die once, twice, and maybe more but eventually you will learn what’s causing you to die and adapt. You will start noticing that maybe dodging, evading, or even using a block or two during certain boss animation will allow you to completely avoid that hit and retain 100% of your health. You will also learn that all bosses have a set pattern to their attacks and eventually you will be able to predict when the next one-shot K.O. will come and avoid it without even thinking about it. Next, you’ll realize that using aegis or reflect at a certain time not only will save you but will also save your whole party from that one-shot hit.
Finally, you’ll learn that after you gained such skill you are now able to finish encounters much, MUCH faster and take little to no damage during the whole encounter.
What I’m forcing onto others is a practice that teaches you to become a better player through experience. If you don’t like that then please don’t join “zerks only” parties, make your own.
The difference is you’re giving up Blade Training cd reduction, 4.8% crit chance, and 3.3% crit dmg for ~15% dmg increase just for your phantasms. In typical encounter phantasms are responsible for only 30% to 50% of the combined dps. If you see that as a fair trade then yes 2/3/0/5/4 would be a better choice for you (but not the traits and weapons you picked, no point going 5 into inspiration if you have no focus).
20% less CD on attacks means +25% damage for phants without attack animation. So about 22-23% for iWarlock, iSwordsman, about 20% for iZerker, about 15% for iDuellist and about 5-10% for iWarden. iMage, iDisenchanter and iDefender also benefit greatly from this … if they would deal any damage at all
How did you come up with those numbers? They are different then what I have,
Solution is to make projectiles home in on target and always connect as long as enemy was within range at the time projectile was cast, unless enemy used a teleport skill to get away.
I believe that Lupi being a lvl 82 mob a crit chance a bit higher than 100% wouldn’t hurt. Atm I’m a happy camper with my 104% critical chance from full assassins and easily kick him straight to p3 even without seaweed.
Me and many other people on this forum have tested pretty much every possible build / setup out there. After countless hours of testing we narrowed builds down to a select few that we found to perform the best in most situations. This is where “meta builds” comes from. It’s not that we don’t like seeing other builds, but rather a simple fact that we found those builds to be much less efficient than the ones we are suggesting.
Because people aren’t dogs that follow orders without question
This is exactly why I end up kicking those people – they are NOT following the orders, aka my LFG description. If you want to play differently, don’t join.
