Chem's HV v. SW comparison (MOF/THAUM/MOD 4)

chemboy613

Method: I soloed Epic Pirate king, trying to run the dungeon _exactly_ the same twice.

Specific Errors: The surgeon reset (somehow) while i was fighting him in the SW run. I guess i kited too close to the bridge, so the SW run i did some more damage due to that encounter.

Systemic Errors: Solo combat is not how most people fight in teams. That said, team composition and style can vary so much that i concluded that there is less error in solo VS. in teams.

Also, I am not a normal CW. 18.6k GS, P.Terrror, and far more durable than most CWs. (in my guide i talk about the drawbacks of glass cannons, please read.) I have vorpals on this account, but I am using Terror because it is my normal enchantment and it will not overvalue the change in crit percentage, thus making the test relatively neutral for other enchants.

HV :

Table

Benefits of HV:

145% effectiveness is very high for soloing. This is really great!

Drawbacks:

Less well distributed stats. IMO HV is slightly squishier than SW, but it's not hugely significant. I noticed it more in CN than in PK, where soloing is very easy.

Low Crit means less effective application of smolder. This difference is NOT trivial, in fact it's quite substantial. That said it seems that the gain of the HV debuff outweighs the loss of the Swath debuff.



SW Table:



Benefits: High Crit makes applying smolder easier. The difference in real crit is almost 10%, which is hardly nothing. This means you will get a smolder a lot more often wearing SW.

SW Buffs are non-trivial: While it's not hugely noticeable in this setting, crit severity and life steal is significant and can really benefit a squishy party

Well Distributed Stats: The extra defense, especially if you are undergeared, matters a lot. The extra crit, especially if you are undergeared, also matters a lot.

Drawbacks: 126% effectiveness will result in a slower clear speed than HV set.


Similarities:

MY SW run was 2 minutes longer, which is roughly the time difference i got from fighting the surgeon twice. This means that my clear time was the same within my error. The encounter dps, 25.4 HV vs. 24.7 for SW is also within error. This means my personal DPS is roughly the same in either set.

Both runs were easy as well, i didn't notice the HV squishiness, but the loss of the defense might hurt when you are fighting somewhere hard. Personally i don't think the HV bonus is improving your defense as intended, but this doesn't show up in ACT and is hard to measure.



Opinions and conclusions:

When you are starting out your MOF journey, you might be squishy (low defense and lifesteal). You might have a hard time applying smolder. You might also not have an ideal stat roll (low charisma), making your crit unusually low. In that situation, wearing shadow weaver is probably best. That's because if you can't apply smolder well, you can't do your job as a MOF. Secondly, if you die too often, you can do anything. Your effectiveness on the floor is always 0%.

In these situations, Shadow Weaver might be the best option for you. You will apply smolder better and stay upright better. So my guess is that if you are a new character, go out and get your shadow weaver. It's certainly not a bad set at all.

Later in your MOF journey, you will, like an intelligent person, gain more HP and Lifesteal. (if you have 23k HP, under 1000 lifesteal, don't take endless consumption, you can enjoy watching me kill the boss from the floor. Sure feels good to take a little nap, huh? Let me get you a pillow made of corpses.) You also might naturally get crit through artifacts, artifact weapons, augments, and many other sources that are hard to avoid.

Hence when your survivability and crit is higher you will not be wondering "Can we clear it smoothly?" anymore, you will wonder "can we clear it faster?"

That is when HV is the better option. Your team will clear faster if you are applying HV stacks to the mobs. This increase is significant for sure.


Solo: About the same, honestly. Could barely tell the difference.

In multi CW parties:

If you often stack CWs, most CWs are stormspell and most stormspell CWs wear HV. In that situation, your HV stacks are no longer efficient. Then you might want to hold on to SW longer.

OK, well, i had to test myself. I will be doing some testing on preview in the upcoming days.

The two sets are different but they are not this night-and-day line people try to draw sometimes. Like many things in neverwinter, the bright lines people draw in the forums are our creation, rather than the reality of the game.

vnrenshi

from personal testing i have to say that i pretty much agree on all counts here, with the exception that i haven't noticed a significant problem with keeping both the HV and smolder debuff up fairly reliably even while wearing HV and only rolling with around 37% crit chance

that being said, SW will definitely give you more uptime on it, but it seems that we're talking 1-2 seconds here and there where you might not have a smolder on a target while wearing HV, which in the end shouldn't be that noticable.

on the other hand, in the event that you do at some points exit combat, as you generally will when starting out at lower gear levels due to the inability to pull 2-3 rooms of a dungeon at once without wiping, you get hit with that annoying ICD on the shadow weaver set, so i'd be curious to see how the effectiveness rating on that sort of run falls when using SW as opposed to HV.

any thoughts?

chemboy613

That's a good thought. Personally i like to keep moving and i rarely drop combat. (under 20 min clear is a lot of movement), so that's one of the reasons why this test is limited.

37% crit in HV is very high, actually. Many people have lower crit in HV.

Also it was mentioned to me that your encounters do slightly more damage in HV, whereas smolder does slightly less (but net is about the same as well)

My concern at lower levels is that you have to do a few things to be successful. A) control well, b) survive and c) apply smolder. It's my impression that SW is slightly better at B and C. I don't notice a difference in A.

I really do hope that they fix the ICD with SW. It's not as soon as you drop combat either, it's more complicated than that, though I'm not certain how.

That said, both sets are good and the difference isn't as good as the culture indicates. I think that's the main point of this post.

The real crit thread i put in general is also interesting on this point. I wonder how these things are interacting.