Vorpal Potentially overrated? Proportional Diminishing return vs increasing base crit severity.

massey08 · November 2015

Vorpal Crit severity: Addition of 50%

My projected critical severity (without Cambion Magus, vorpal, and Half-Orc Racial bonus: 143%)

Proportional diminishing returns with addtion of that 50% vs the old damage guides which only considered a base @ 75%:

50%/(75+50%) = 40% contribution to total critical severity, OR, (50%/(75%+50% + X)) Where X is your base damage, or 100%
This means Vorpal is only 22.222...% of your total damage output at 100% crit rate

VS 50%/(143%+50%) = 25.9% of your critical damage contribution OR...

17.1% of your total damage contribution @ 100% crit rate; The proportional diminishing return of total damage output has made me consider some other type of enchantment for PvE.

In comparison; There are several other Weapon Enchantments out there that could be more valuable than vorpal due to them being more party friendly (More damage for everyone instead of only yourself, or potentially, buffs from holy avenger (I really did consider it, that 37.5% extra weapon damage looks very attractive if you can run unstoppable for most of the durration of that 7.5% proc, alongside all those other benefits))

Let me know what you all think, and weather or not I should go back to what everyone else does, instead of trying to explore this route.
(My crit severity is boosted partially by wildstorm elixir (10%) Potency flasks (7.5%, but the normal one only yields 5%), Squash Soup (5%), and the rest is all my own. (102.5% currently).

Also if anyone has a good method of controlling variables while using Action Combat Tracker, please do inform me. I tested both on the test dummy in PE on the test server. The vorpal was Transcendent and the Plague Fire I used was rank 10, and I still netted larger DPS than I did with Vorpal (ACTUAL dps, at it's peak in the 5 minute rotation of encounters, plaguefire out-dps'd Vorpal by ~20k damage IIRC). I would have judged this more off of total damage output if GwF didn't have so many other variables going on (destroyer stacks/rampaging madness/etc. etc.)

EDIT: Sorry if I seem redundant etc. from the post I made in "Vorpal vs Plague Fire" thread, I just thought it would be better to bring this to the focus of the conversation since it's what I'm really concerned about.

flyingleon · November 2015

It is hard for me to follow your formula. But i get it now. With 100% crit chance, your damage increase should be (1+X+ 50%)/ (1+X)-1, where X is the critical severity you have. I assume you take 143% which is quite high compared to many. It is 20% more damage. What you computed is the damage output percentage. And vorpal has a 2% debuff of damage resistence. I am not sure it is for all or just yourself. So still 22%+ more damage for you.

massey08 · November 2015

flyingleon said:
It is hard for me to follow your formula. But i get it now. Without lostmauth set, with 100% crit chance, your damage increase should be (1+X+ 50%)/ (1+X)-1, where X is the critical severity you have. I assume you take 143% which is quite high compared to many. It is 20% more damage. What you computed is the damage output percentage. And vorpal has a 2% debuff of damage resistence. I am not sure it is for all or just yourself. So still 22%+ more damage for you. With lostmauth set, it is a bit more.

The Idea is to compare isolate it's damage output relative to your damage output with nothing slotted so that it can be compared Vs another weapon enchantment, so yeah, you're right.

The 143% was inaccurate, off by 2.5% on that calculation by accident, but it is actually possible to reach 160.5% critical severity if you have cambion magus, Half-orc racial, and IF and ONLY IF adorable pocket protector proc's the 5% critical severity bonus.

Although, this assumes you're running with an epic boar, (a waste of a slot where something far more useful could be used, i.e. Air Archon, Young yeti, etc.

It is also important to note that the suggestion of logging the damage through a dungeon with the same group will not be an over-all effective way to test these damage outputs; This is because your damage that can be dealt is limited by the damage output others do. If you debuff something with plage fire or Feytouched enchantment, you're going to also reduce the amount of total damage you can deal because everyone else will also have higher damage contributions as well.

In regaurds to Lostmauth set, you're correct. My logged damage contribution via Lostmauth procs was lesser via Plague Fire Rank 10 vs Transcendent Vorpal However, Sure strike covered this damage gap when using Plague Fire.With Plague Fire Rank 10 slotted, Lostmauth's damage contribution dropped by 3% while sure strike climbed by 5% and indomitable battle strike dropped to only 8% of total damage contribution (big hit, but has a cool down, unlike sure strike which is further enhanced via atk spd in unstoppable state; Oddly, per strike, Sure Strike dealt, on average, 14% more damage per hit while the rank 10 Plaguefire was slotted. Transcendent vorpal couldn't compete. OTOH Indombitable battle strike did over 450k damage per strike on average with Transcendent slotted, while Plage-fire only did 325K on average.

At Peak Damage-Per-Second (Not the "DPS" people refer to in dungeons), Plaguefire won by a negligable amount. My crit rate was 84% though, so it's possible that Vorpal could still be more effective, but the overal gain from any other weapon enchantment can't be denied. All-around, you're going to get more benefit from something else probably. (team friendly)

Thanks for seeing my point though. Most other people have given me a hard time with it because they don't take into account the opportunity costs of using it over something else.

flyingleon · November 2015

May I ask how you get such a high critical severity?
Edit: I see in a different post. you used some potions and 2 suboptimal companions. Well, I would like to see some data on how weapon damage performing. It would be very helpful for comparison.

massey08 · November 2015

flyingleon said:
May I ask how you get such a high critical severity?

Quoting myself from the other thread where someone asked about Plaguefire vs vorpal:

Wildstorm Elixir = +10% Active Companion bonus (Erinyes of Belial) +5% Squash soup +5% Major/Superior flask of potency + 7.5% ; All stack, + 15% crit severity from GwF heroic Feat, + Tyrany of Dragon's Last boon 1/3 (5%) + base 75% +2% (IWD boon)

Massey08 said:
With Dancing Sword, added and maxed, +5% more Severity; +Upgraded Erinyes of Belial +another 5% crit severity; +Finished Tyrany of dragon boon (3% more) + Boar: Active companion bonus @ Epic = 3%; Potential to get 15% more via Half orc race change + Cambion magus if it becomes obtainable again. (25M AD is outta my budget lol). Potential random buff from adorable pocket pet could occasionally add another 5% yielding a total of 160.5% critical severity.

massey08 · November 2015

massey08 said:

flyingleon said:
May I ask how you get such a high critical severity?
Quoting myself from the other thread where someone asked about Plaguefire vs vorpal:

Wildstorm Elixir = +10% Active Companion bonus (Erinyes of Belial) +5% Squash soup +5% Major/Superior flask of potency + 7.5% ; All stack, + 15% crit severity from GwF heroic Feat, + Tyrany of Dragon's Last boon 1/3 (5%) + base 75% +2% (IWD boon)
Massey08 said:
With Dancing Sword, added and maxed, +5% more Severity; +Upgraded Erinyes of Belial +another 5% crit severity; +Finished Tyrany of dragon boon (3% more) + Boar: Active companion bonus @ Epic = 3%; Potential to get 15% more via Half orc race change + Cambion magus if it becomes obtainable again. (25M AD is outta my budget lol). Potential random buff from adorable pocket pet could occasionally add another 5% yielding a total of 160.5% critical severity.

My current is only 124% though. (regularly), Sometimes Adorable pocket pet will add 5% to that.

EDIT: sorry for the double post, I meant to edit the prior post.

flyingleon · November 2015

The good thing from plague fire is that you can reach 10 stacks of destroyer purpose very fast. Do you have deep gash feated ?

massey08 · November 2015

I considered using deep gash but the damage output from it is very low. Currently I'm 2600 item level, Halfling race, spec'd on all of the top feats in Destroyer branch + Staying Power (likely worthless since it only enhances encounter damage, negligibly (encounters make up only maybe 10% of my damage output). The last 10 points are spec'd in Sentinel for the deflect feat 5/5 and A powerful challenge (that 15% damage increase on marked targets was attractive since i'm always using Daring shout). If I could afford that panther that Lazalia had... (yeah right) Then i would have MAYBE gone for flanking manuevers (doubtful though).

flyingleon · November 2015

I mean the good performance of plague fire maybe partially due to the quick stacking of destroyer purpose. I mentioned deep gash, because it helped to stack destroyer purpose too. Anyway, thank you for your tests. It showed plague fire is a good enchants for gwf. It may also help when wearing the new rings to get stacks. I will still bet higher personal damage on vorpal though.

massey08 · November 2015

flyingleon said:
I mean the good performance of plague fire maybe partially due to the quick stacking of destroyer purpose. I mentioned deep gash, because it helped to stack destroyer purpose too. Anyway, thank you for your tests. It showed plague fire is a good enchants for gwf. It may also help when wearing the new rings to get stacks. I will still bet higher personal damage on vorpal though.

Warning: The main goal was to show that alternatives may be better. My tests aren't absolutely perfect, but I tried to keep the variables as static as possible while only changing the variable of the enchantment. Plague Fire is absolutely a cheap alternative, but I'm not certain that it is the "best" alternative when crit severity & rate are both high. I'm Just trying to point out that your crit severity prior to vorpal's use is an overlooked factor in determining what you want out of a weapon enchantment. Thanks for letting me know that DoTs can affect stacks though. My main goal is always to hit unstoppable ASAP, and this will probably really help me spike my damage a lot sooner than with vorp.

rinat114 · November 2015

I won't elaborate much on that because it requires a lot of theorycrafting and a bunch of formulas my language barrier prevents me from presenting properly without flaws (they're still valid though), but - bonus damage interacts differently with "Yellow" hits vs. "Orange" hits. Based on that knowledge alone and without getting elbow deep inside the math, with 100% crit chance, crit severity wins over bonus damage or any buffs/debuffs related to said bonus damage vs mob DR - which is not something that really exists (plague fire, terror, feytouched - all of those are included). If persae I would have gone with a higher power build and lower crit, a Plague or rather a Feytouched would be bis, no argument about it. To simplify - bonus damage goes well with bonus damage, crit severity goes well with supremely high crit chance.

About the diminishing return, that's arguable, since the game lost the curves mechanic after mod 6, the term is problematic. I wouldn't be so sure about it. However, I have yet to test it properly so I'll leave it at that.

In addition, a well balanced party will include at least 1 support toon if not two. The majority are using Plagues, said Plagues will not stack with their own rank which will either force the GWF to go with a much lower rank or adjust according to the party. Plagues are problematic in group play, especially if you're a primary striker and you're dependent on your weapon enchantment, hence why a selfish, non-group oriented enchantment would be logically preferable. If the class will ever get the well deserved rework (and seperation from the GF paragon, a result of devs being absolutely lazy), we might recieve more group oriented buffs/debuffs built into the feats, I would reconsider things accordingly. For now, min/max wise, Vorpal is still the best choice with a high crit build.

Vorpal Potentially overrated? Proportional Diminishing return vs increasing base crit severity.

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