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New bestial powers: The numbers are worrying
crappynamerules
Posts: 81 Arc User
So, immediately after the new bestial pass happened, I decided to hop onto my bestial DPS character, and give him an overhaul with the new powers. Testing him out on a dummy, I was seeing damage numbers that blew my mind. I thought, "WOW, this is overpowered, and that's not even taking the large self healing potential these abilities also have!" But I also thought, "hey, maybe I am knee-jerking here, could be I am just reacting in a naturally negative way to a change." Only one way to come up with a real solid verdict, and that means time to bust out the combat tracker!
Basic build info: Melee DPS type, str with dex/con build, all except one test used Way of the Warrior. Gear, specs, and stats were consistent throughout. Specs were not chosen to capitalize on bleeds. Targets were all ultra-regen test dummies in the powerhouse. I used might and heavy weapons to compare with bestial because all three sets work off enrage, and so I could keep the same superstats, specs, and gear to test all three. Throwing MA or others into the equation would make the comparison more difficult due to different stat needs that would bring inherently different spec options and combat stats to the table.
First up, regular might. Fiddled with some things. Haymaker R3 was the main damage deliverer, used roomsweeper to build up enrage stacks initially, and one test also used demolish r2 with below the belt.
Haymaker/Demolish: 2,841.77 dps
Haymaker only: 2980.56 dps
Haymaker (tapped) only: 2153.90 dps
Pretty consistent and an expected output. A little surprised haymaker did better without the demolish debuff, but the variance is tiny there, and could have just been a standard error. Haymaker taps did noticeably less, and well, they should, because haymaker gets more benefit from charging and getting the bonus damage to knock immunes. So nothing really shocking here.
Next, heavy weapons. Used cleave and eruption to build stacks of reckless and enrage, and used eruption with magma burst as a means of maintaining clinging flames for the scorching blade test. The final was just annihilate R3, which I kept spamming over and over again and could maintain enrage that way without using any other abilities.
annihilate(r2/scorching blade)/eruption: 2,994.80 dps
Annihilate(r2/scorching blade, tapped only)/eruption: 2676.87 dps
Annihilate R3: 2932 dps
Nothing really shocked me here.
Finally, we start the bestial tests. Shred was rank 2 with the advantage that gives the shredded debuff. Massacre was rank 2 with bloody mess, eviscerate was rank 3, bite was rank 3. Bleed was stacked up using shred in the shred tests, and bite taps were used instead for one as an experiment. Once max bleed stacks were acheived, eviscerate fully charged was used to turn them into deep wounds, and then massacre was used continually until the deep wounds expired. The cycle was then repeated.
shred/eviscerate/massacre (r2/bloodymess, charged): 4,024
shred/eviscerate/massacre (r2/bloodymess, tapped): 3.356
bite/eviscerate/massacre (r2/bloodymess, charged): 3,217
Now this is quite clearly outside of the realm of standard deviation. 4,024 is definitely markedly higher than anything the other tests put out. I expected the bit test to not go as well. Even though R3 bite does more damage than r2 shred, the shred provides that debuff and builds bleeds up way faster than the bite could. The real damage always came during the deep wounds, when I had that thing ticking for about 2,000 damage a second and was hitting massacre after massacre (thanks to the energy unlock that kept refilling my energy periodically when massacre would tap me out), for 6,000 or so on non-crits.
Now for giggles, I also ran a test with pestilence, since that was the passive packaged with this revamp.
shred/eviscerate/massacre (r2/bloodymess, charged): 3,855
Still pretty damned good. 1000 dps more than the best I could manage with any of the others, and there were factors that would have easily made this DPS lower than it should have been.
It should be noted that all tests that included DoT abilities (namely the bestial and heavy weapons tests) were in fact susceptible to the damage being skewed lower by lingering DoT effects. I tried my best to avoid this happening and conclude encounters without any lingering, but I was not perfect at it. This would have potentially skewed the DPS down (which means potentially any of the bestial tests might have actually had BETTER real dps than the numbers I got in the tracker).
Addendum: Since I had a partial bestial build thrown together at this point, I slapped on rank 3 thrash and decided to head into the battle station. Threw together some max diff, max team size purple gang spawns. I was curious to see how the healing aspect of these new powers worked. I thought they'd be nice, but holy crap and a half they are well beyond that. I was having trouble even building up bleed stacks to try a bite HoT, so I got stuck with having to use it on a 4-stack tommygun guy. The HoT was enormous. It CRITTED. Yes, it's a HoT that crits, and you know what that means: one tick crits, every tick crits. I was getting hits of 1,784 hp every 2 seconds. On a character that, mind you, was in the melee dps role. I was getting 0% bonus healing from any source! I also tried thrash on another 4 stack tommygun, before it killed him it ticked for 295 healing, which if he had been a more substantial foe, would've been about that amount every .5 seconds, I wager, coupled with the damage. Still pretty good. Not WTF good like the bite crit heal, but still good. Even if the bite heal didn't crit, that would've been roughly 800 hp every 2 seconds. How much does BCR, a dedicated healing power that lowers your damage output for the duration heal every 2 seconds again? Without the addition of a high damage attack at the same time? And no critting? And a cooldown? Oh, not even 25% of that? Hmm...
FINAL VERDICT: These powers are INSANELY GOOD. If you are playing bestial, congratulations, here you are, born to be kings. You're the princes of the universe. If you're freeform melee, and don't mind growing out your fingernails and biting into food you don't know where it's been, you too can be immortals. I haven't looked at how the predator AT's powers line up, but if it can get the right selections from these new powers together, it will most likely be the best AT in the game. Not sure if the savage gets any of the new stuff, but if it does, it might be the only competitor. For the rest of us though? I guess we just have to hope some kind of solid balance pass is coming, or get used to eternally being second fiddle to clawsy-bitey monster people.
Mostly irrelevant side note: Why does the predator innate talent essentially have better stats than the others? The standard format is +10 to three stats, +8 to 1, and +5 to the others. Predator has +10 to 4 stats and +5 to the others. It's not really a notable impact of any kind (2 more points) but it's like...why?
Basic build info: Melee DPS type, str with dex/con build, all except one test used Way of the Warrior. Gear, specs, and stats were consistent throughout. Specs were not chosen to capitalize on bleeds. Targets were all ultra-regen test dummies in the powerhouse. I used might and heavy weapons to compare with bestial because all three sets work off enrage, and so I could keep the same superstats, specs, and gear to test all three. Throwing MA or others into the equation would make the comparison more difficult due to different stat needs that would bring inherently different spec options and combat stats to the table.
First up, regular might. Fiddled with some things. Haymaker R3 was the main damage deliverer, used roomsweeper to build up enrage stacks initially, and one test also used demolish r2 with below the belt.
Haymaker/Demolish: 2,841.77 dps
Haymaker only: 2980.56 dps
Haymaker (tapped) only: 2153.90 dps
Pretty consistent and an expected output. A little surprised haymaker did better without the demolish debuff, but the variance is tiny there, and could have just been a standard error. Haymaker taps did noticeably less, and well, they should, because haymaker gets more benefit from charging and getting the bonus damage to knock immunes. So nothing really shocking here.
Next, heavy weapons. Used cleave and eruption to build stacks of reckless and enrage, and used eruption with magma burst as a means of maintaining clinging flames for the scorching blade test. The final was just annihilate R3, which I kept spamming over and over again and could maintain enrage that way without using any other abilities.
annihilate(r2/scorching blade)/eruption: 2,994.80 dps
Annihilate(r2/scorching blade, tapped only)/eruption: 2676.87 dps
Annihilate R3: 2932 dps
Nothing really shocked me here.
Finally, we start the bestial tests. Shred was rank 2 with the advantage that gives the shredded debuff. Massacre was rank 2 with bloody mess, eviscerate was rank 3, bite was rank 3. Bleed was stacked up using shred in the shred tests, and bite taps were used instead for one as an experiment. Once max bleed stacks were acheived, eviscerate fully charged was used to turn them into deep wounds, and then massacre was used continually until the deep wounds expired. The cycle was then repeated.
shred/eviscerate/massacre (r2/bloodymess, charged): 4,024
shred/eviscerate/massacre (r2/bloodymess, tapped): 3.356
bite/eviscerate/massacre (r2/bloodymess, charged): 3,217
Now this is quite clearly outside of the realm of standard deviation. 4,024 is definitely markedly higher than anything the other tests put out. I expected the bit test to not go as well. Even though R3 bite does more damage than r2 shred, the shred provides that debuff and builds bleeds up way faster than the bite could. The real damage always came during the deep wounds, when I had that thing ticking for about 2,000 damage a second and was hitting massacre after massacre (thanks to the energy unlock that kept refilling my energy periodically when massacre would tap me out), for 6,000 or so on non-crits.
Now for giggles, I also ran a test with pestilence, since that was the passive packaged with this revamp.
shred/eviscerate/massacre (r2/bloodymess, charged): 3,855
Still pretty damned good. 1000 dps more than the best I could manage with any of the others, and there were factors that would have easily made this DPS lower than it should have been.
It should be noted that all tests that included DoT abilities (namely the bestial and heavy weapons tests) were in fact susceptible to the damage being skewed lower by lingering DoT effects. I tried my best to avoid this happening and conclude encounters without any lingering, but I was not perfect at it. This would have potentially skewed the DPS down (which means potentially any of the bestial tests might have actually had BETTER real dps than the numbers I got in the tracker).
Addendum: Since I had a partial bestial build thrown together at this point, I slapped on rank 3 thrash and decided to head into the battle station. Threw together some max diff, max team size purple gang spawns. I was curious to see how the healing aspect of these new powers worked. I thought they'd be nice, but holy crap and a half they are well beyond that. I was having trouble even building up bleed stacks to try a bite HoT, so I got stuck with having to use it on a 4-stack tommygun guy. The HoT was enormous. It CRITTED. Yes, it's a HoT that crits, and you know what that means: one tick crits, every tick crits. I was getting hits of 1,784 hp every 2 seconds. On a character that, mind you, was in the melee dps role. I was getting 0% bonus healing from any source! I also tried thrash on another 4 stack tommygun, before it killed him it ticked for 295 healing, which if he had been a more substantial foe, would've been about that amount every .5 seconds, I wager, coupled with the damage. Still pretty good. Not WTF good like the bite crit heal, but still good. Even if the bite heal didn't crit, that would've been roughly 800 hp every 2 seconds. How much does BCR, a dedicated healing power that lowers your damage output for the duration heal every 2 seconds again? Without the addition of a high damage attack at the same time? And no critting? And a cooldown? Oh, not even 25% of that? Hmm...
FINAL VERDICT: These powers are INSANELY GOOD. If you are playing bestial, congratulations, here you are, born to be kings. You're the princes of the universe. If you're freeform melee, and don't mind growing out your fingernails and biting into food you don't know where it's been, you too can be immortals. I haven't looked at how the predator AT's powers line up, but if it can get the right selections from these new powers together, it will most likely be the best AT in the game. Not sure if the savage gets any of the new stuff, but if it does, it might be the only competitor. For the rest of us though? I guess we just have to hope some kind of solid balance pass is coming, or get used to eternally being second fiddle to clawsy-bitey monster people.
Mostly irrelevant side note: Why does the predator innate talent essentially have better stats than the others? The standard format is +10 to three stats, +8 to 1, and +5 to the others. Predator has +10 to 4 stats and +5 to the others. It's not really a notable impact of any kind (2 more points) but it's like...why?
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Thanks for running the actual numbers out like this. Note to self: level my two bestial supernatural characters now, before the inevitable nerf-bat pushes these powers down to the bottom of the barrel.
Edit: Hm. Though there is one interesting thing: you needed three powers to get the most out of BSN, versus one to two with might or HW. I wonder how much it would change the dps if you threw in some form of high damage click power? (For example, my current HW character uses Flashfire as well as Annihilate/Eruption.)
The main issue w/ Bestial SN as far as dps is that you have to account for 2 large variables that aren't inherent to most other sets: bleed_wound dps, and easy access to a large dmg debuff (Might has Demolish, but you have to break ur normal rotation to put it up). If Bestial's base dps w/o these factors is even w/ other powersets, then the latter two will def throw it out of whack.
It would also be worth checking out Betsial SN builds vs. Single Blade- its closest counterpart. Since SB's bleeds do proc AotB as well, ya dun necc have to switch to FotS and Dex if ya can't change gear atm. It won't be a 'true' representation of SB w/o the Dex focus, but could be worth analyzing.
I am a bit skeptical of the Haymaker parse, but then again you are comparing only 1-2 powers vs. a motley of them for Bestial. Also worth noting that this may not be the only powerset rework coming, although I don't necc want all powersets to just gain dps all around; no real reason that have that sort of power-creep atm. I can't get my parser to work to verify anything atm
And yeah, Thrash's potential healing is pretty insane atm. Trying to get that addressed on the PTS. Its not odd for it's heals to crit, though, since DE and Lifedrain also share that property (the heal tick crits when the dmg tick crits).
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
I think just assuming everything else is getting bumped to match this is not a good way to look at it. If something is introduced that is obviously overperforming in a big way, we should shine a light on it. And frankly, there are a lot of powers in this game. Getting them all to reach this level of performance could take quite a long time, and lead to more than a few errors along the way.
If anything, the haymaker routine requiring so few different powers for maintenance should be working in its favor for DPS. Clearly it is not. This comparison worked around the penultimate damage power for each of the "enrage" based sets. I'll try a single blade MA build, but I suspect it will underperform with the Str Dex/Con build.
When you say screenshots, what do you want exactly? I am not about to take all these different encounters and thoroughly screenshot every possible screen in the ACT interface, there are just too many.
You were also testing a version of Thrash that hasn't been nerfed yet. The version on live (and that is now on PTS) heals far less.
As for the damage potential... All I can say is "I'm not surprised"... Considering the simple fact that I've been running a Pestilence Bestial build for years and even without the synergy from before this setup put out a pretty hefty amount of damage. Quite frankly, I'm fearful for Predator ATs grouped with AT tanks in any content... Unless the player behind the AT is aware of the importance of their self heals they WILL spend an extraordinary amount of time dead... and even if they do keep on top of their healing there is not a single AT tank that will be able to take aggro off of them.
Not saying that they can't or won't adapt (I certainly did) just voicing my concern and speaking from experiance. The Predator is going to be an aggro beast, and I'm certain it's going to catch many unsuspecting AT players by surprise... And considering how much aggro I pulled as a FF without pestilence synergizing with Bestial Claws, just imagine how much aggro an AT that can deal significantly more damage due to their lack of Deministing Returns and a synergetic damage bonus that I didnt have for all these years. They are going to be in for quite a ride.
Correction, Absorb Heat can ONLY heal on the Initial hit, the HoT WASN'T meant to be able to Crit
They fixed the HoT 1 month ago so it cannot critical hit anymore!
All HoT can be dodged for some stupid un-updatedble reason
Things like this is why I was asking for screenshots, it's far easier to just look at them and see how things compare than go back and forth over how the tests were done and the conclusions reached.
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
Anyways, like Aqia, I'd like to see the attack/parse details for the individual breakdowns. In hindsight, it kinda makes sense to me that Bestial's new Bleed -> Rupture playstyle is of the highest ST dps, but then it needs to be better balanced vs. SB's version, and we should prob see what the more classic (non-Rupture) dps of Shred + Massacre is like now.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
Against a training dummy movement is removed from the equation. Due to this melee SHOULD have higher DPS than ranged against a training dummy, but it's quite possible for both to have equal values.
Actually the intent for charging a power in most cases is for burst damage, not for DPS. The only time that a charged power would likely over take tapping is in long, protracted fights. However, that got thrown out the window with the ridiculous crit and severity numbers we have now, thus in scenarios with long charge powers it is better to charge for DPS than to tap.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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As for screenshots, I have taken several, thinking I could just use the "attach image/file" thing to put them in a post. Unfortunately, it asks me for a URL instead of letting me upload from my hard drive. I do not have anywhere to host images currently.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
Now, here are some screenshots. I didn't do every single one, but the tests I think were actually relevant I took shots of and cropped and uploaded and whatnot.
Demolish/Haymaker test:
Haymaker Only test:
Annihilate/Eruption test:
Bestial w/WotW:
Bestial w/Pestilence:
I'm still rather interested in the SB parse, and the classic Bestial rotation that doesn't rupture or use Deep Wound, but rolls 5x bleed + shredded and spams Massacre. It'd at least be a good comparison point for the deep wounds parses.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
I take this quote from a review that I agree with.
"customisation is so linear; everyone is after the optimal dps:survivability ratio with 0 reliance on other players = autonomous gameplay... Players don't need each other anymore... which in my opinion is a bad thing."
You generally do not want to use your EB so often when testing, you don't need to do that when playing the game and it throws everything off.
The average damage per hit on haymaker was about the same with or without demolish, that is just weird and can't be explained by a few percent higher crit chance.
Also like flowcyto already noticed, there is a very distinct difference in crit chance between the bestial and the HW/might tests.
Sorry but these are way to messy and with to weird results for my tastes.
Thanks for the effort but to reach any conclusions these tests would need to be done much more clinical.
They've been refreshing since the update went live. I know I've been using eviscerate to refresh my bleeds.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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I have to assume you may have been doing half way charged Haymakers or had energy issues on one parse since the average was similar on your demolish haymaker vs no demolish (maybe demolish was giving energy issues?). Yet the dps for your haymaker without demolish was higher
However, maybe posting your stats used during these parse would help shed some light?
As to other critiques and suggestions, I did a series of longer tests, and tried to incorporate suggestions people made here. I couldn't eliminate energy builder usage because well, sometimes ya just gotta build energy, man. I did alter the stat setup to Str Rec/Con, to lower the presence of crits as an x-factor a bit and to give it less energy needs. Way of the Warrior was the passive for all four tests. Amusingly, I botched a bestial test that I was 2 minutes into before realizing I'd forgotten to take the passive on the character after rebuilding from the third test, and it did almost as well as the haymaker one.
Test 1: Haymaker/Demolish
Same as the first time around pretty much. Just a longer test. The attack strategy and the damage resulting from it were pretty consistent with the original.
Test 2: Cleave/Arc of ruin/Annihilate(r2, scorching blade)
This setup was someone else's suggestion to make better use of scorching blade, and it did do well I think. I honestly hadn't used the heavy weapons powers on a build since before the last pass the abilities got, so the first strategy was derived from a very cursory look. Test was longer than planned mostly due to me compensating for one or two spots where I hit weird framerate drops that threw off attack delivery.
Test 3: Single blade rupture-centered build, using aspect of the bestial form
This was done at suggestion as well, though I really don't think it is a good test for this format. There are things present here that skew the results in either direction potentially from where they should be. The very spikey nature of its dps leads to a lot of crit anomalies. Also, caress becomes much more efficient for stacking bleeds when the focus buff is present. So even though it could still build enrage, it couldn't get the bleeds stacked up and ruptured as quickly as a focus type build. I could run a dex version of the test to match it against bestial, but then bestial runs into this similar problem on its own end, with shred not building up bleed as well without the enraged buff. Might still do it at some point though.
Test 4: Shred/Eviscerate/Massacre (r2/bloody mess)
Made this extra long to make sure there were no crit anomalies. I actually had a bit of an issue with the bleed stacks falling off due to how some timers lined up. I'm uncertain of how much of a dps drop this difficulty would have caused, as bestial was actually hard to get enrage to 8 with. I'm not certain if when I firsted tested it the internal cooldown on building stacks hadn't been introduced yet or what, but I do not remember it being this tricky. All in all, I could probably have squeezed a bit more outta this, especially since I removed the energy builder advantage to prevent the "rogue bleed" problem. Having it would have helped keep the enrage going during the deep wounds/massacre bursts. But it also led to hanging bleeds as I was ending the test, forcing me to leave it and downskew the damage, or try and keep going again, with a brief pause as I thought I was finishing. Overall, could have maybe made a difference for 200 DPS, tops. But still, as you can see, this number is still quite a bit better than even the highly crit-skewed single blade test, and definitely superior to heavy weapons and might. I am also pondering trying that suggested bestial alternative even though this one still beats the others. Might result in better overall dps, might not.
I will say that I also looked at the healing aspects of bestial while I was on, and I think they have improved tremendously. I was unable to get bite's consumption to crit anymore, which means no more 1000+ hp ticks every 2 seconds.
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
EDIT: Here are the numbers, in case someone accuses me of making this up too. First test was pure demolish. Second is demolish with below the belt. Note the resist column on both readouts (crappily circles in red for your convenience). Demolish's entry would be the reference for the demolish debuff's function, roomsweeper was used only outside of the demolish debuff(s) as a control reference (meaning the dummies were resisting 16% before any debuff was applied, as indicated there).
Plain demolish:
Demolish w/below the belt:
So, without below the belt? 6% real reduction. With below the belt? Also 6% real reduction in resist. The advantage is functionally doing nothing but eating advantage points. For reference as to what some other debuffs might do, see the other tests. Those aren't made up specifically to test the resist reduction, but you can get a pretty good idea of the difference.
Thanks for the more extensive testing, though. Perhaps its worthwhile looking at a Dex/FotS version of the SB build. It may have parity w/ the bestial/AotB version after all, even if this version of the SB build was still behind.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!