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GWF - Why "power" is the wrong way to go, imho
krayz33
Member Posts: 16 Arc User
Hello everyone, I noticed that nearly everyone is going for Power first... and I wonder why they do that, unless they really calculated it well and took their avg. dmg into account, but from what I've read so far I really doubt they did that...
lets get some facts first, at least I believe them to be "facts" because the character sheet says so, yet who knows if that really applies. right?
25 Power = 1 Dmg
~145 Crit = 1% crit
~135 Arp = 1% resistance ignored (might be 145 too but that doesn't add up with my stats.. so I don't know for sure)
GWFs get 90% critdmg (75% + 15% from Talents)
We have certain talents that improve the viability of Power, 25% OR 50%, it depends on what tree you choose.
there is another one that applies on crit too, yet it doesn't stack, so we get a flat 15% power dmg every 5 seconds so to say.
so if we assume that we always have the +50% talent available, we'd get:
25 Power = 1,5dmg
the "bleed"-talent is kinda difficult to add, because it does 3% of your power as DPS but I don't know how to calculate a GWFs dps in general because you have to take swingtimers into account, which is kinda hard to time and varies because of Unstoppable, doesn't matter though, because you'll soon see my point:
so lets assume a low lvl scenario
1% crit, vs equal Power stats 145 vs 150 stats
150/25 = 6*1.5 = 9 <-- Flat dmg increase
100 swings (also note that this flat amount will also add to your encounters, which do MORE damage than your normal strikes)
109*100 =10900
99*100+1*190 (1% crit+90% critdmg) = 10090
Yay, Power wins! by quite alot I'm lvl 10 and I'll commit to power then!
however....
LvL 60 + better gearscore
1009*100 = 100900
99*1000 + 1900 = 100900
now lets talk about IBS for example
lets assume a 5k dmg non crit (might as well go for 4k or 3k we saw that 1k is the "breaking point")
out of 100 IBSs
100*5009 = 500900
99*5000+9500 = 504500
So what I'm getting out of this, is that Crit and especially ARP will outpreform power... what am I missing, what am I doing wrong, please consider that the numbers were in favor of Power and worse if you commit into the destroyer tree and whenever you do not have the 50% buff "available"
excuse my grammar and spelling, I thought I'd use the english forum because the german one is kinda "empty"
on a sidenote I believe the instigator tree to be better than the destroyer one now.. you get 15-25% more dmg on wicked strike
5% crit and dmg from combat advantage, at least around 20% or more power when playing with groups
vs additional Determination (which isn't building up fast enough on its own)
10% encounter dmg
3% power as DPS
Naturally - thats only if Power works the way I believe it to, I don't know exactly how power works, because the game doesn't give it away like others do
for example if its something like (Weapon damage + Power damage bonus) * Skill modifier, then thats a totally different story
but where can I look that up? (same goes for target limitations of skills etc. etc.)
edit: I just noticed that when I unequip an item with +120 power I lose 17 dmg on IBS
so it does seem to be working with a skill modifier, I already regret opening this thread.
lets get some facts first, at least I believe them to be "facts" because the character sheet says so, yet who knows if that really applies. right?
25 Power = 1 Dmg
~145 Crit = 1% crit
~135 Arp = 1% resistance ignored (might be 145 too but that doesn't add up with my stats.. so I don't know for sure)
GWFs get 90% critdmg (75% + 15% from Talents)
We have certain talents that improve the viability of Power, 25% OR 50%, it depends on what tree you choose.
there is another one that applies on crit too, yet it doesn't stack, so we get a flat 15% power dmg every 5 seconds so to say.
so if we assume that we always have the +50% talent available, we'd get:
25 Power = 1,5dmg
the "bleed"-talent is kinda difficult to add, because it does 3% of your power as DPS but I don't know how to calculate a GWFs dps in general because you have to take swingtimers into account, which is kinda hard to time and varies because of Unstoppable, doesn't matter though, because you'll soon see my point:
so lets assume a low lvl scenario
1% crit, vs equal Power stats 145 vs 150 stats
150/25 = 6*1.5 = 9 <-- Flat dmg increase
100 swings (also note that this flat amount will also add to your encounters, which do MORE damage than your normal strikes)
109*100 =10900
99*100+1*190 (1% crit+90% critdmg) = 10090
Yay, Power wins! by quite alot I'm lvl 10 and I'll commit to power then!
however....
LvL 60 + better gearscore
1009*100 = 100900
99*1000 + 1900 = 100900
now lets talk about IBS for example
lets assume a 5k dmg non crit (might as well go for 4k or 3k we saw that 1k is the "breaking point")
out of 100 IBSs
100*5009 = 500900
99*5000+9500 = 504500
So what I'm getting out of this, is that Crit and especially ARP will outpreform power... what am I missing, what am I doing wrong, please consider that the numbers were in favor of Power and worse if you commit into the destroyer tree and whenever you do not have the 50% buff "available"
excuse my grammar and spelling, I thought I'd use the english forum because the german one is kinda "empty"
on a sidenote I believe the instigator tree to be better than the destroyer one now.. you get 15-25% more dmg on wicked strike
5% crit and dmg from combat advantage, at least around 20% or more power when playing with groups
vs additional Determination (which isn't building up fast enough on its own)
10% encounter dmg
3% power as DPS
Naturally - thats only if Power works the way I believe it to, I don't know exactly how power works, because the game doesn't give it away like others do
for example if its something like (Weapon damage + Power damage bonus) * Skill modifier, then thats a totally different story
but where can I look that up? (same goes for target limitations of skills etc. etc.)
edit: I just noticed that when I unequip an item with +120 power I lose 17 dmg on IBS
so it does seem to be working with a skill modifier, I already regret opening this thread.
Post edited by krayz33 on
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Comments
I think the OP got nice point here, power would be much better if it gave % increase rather than flat. Critical rate is much better. I dont know how to rate armor penetration, since we got 45% from one feat, other things reduce it further, in party other clases probably reduce it even further, I think even Marking enemy reduce their mitigation.
For me I go this way:
Critical rate > Defense > Armor pen > Power
I main defense since it reduce incoming damage by %, and since I spec into sentinel I get effectivess boost to it and its changed to power at 20% rate. Need to check Recovery effectivness, since it reduce cooldown of abilities by not bad %, with is somewhat increase of DPS. Regeneration sems to be the worst stat from what I seen.
30% crit chance and 90% severity is 27% dps increase.
31% crit chance and 85% severity is 26.35% dps increase.
Gap gets bigger the more crit chance you have, take 3/3 severity, always.
That's assuming arp reduces resistance rather then substracting from it. The wording of the effect is "Resistance ignored N%", the armor penetration from CON even states "Resistance ignored -X%" even. If arp reduces resistance by a flat number, and if it can go into negatives, then it can be better than Power.
my 3 most used skilss are Roar/Charge/IBS so I tested it with 2 of them.
I bought an item with 150 power from the vendor (6 dmg)
Roar damage went up 6 points, Charge went up 3 points (50%) and IBS around 22 if I remember correctly
I tried to figure out how weapon damage is scaling with the skills but once I unequip my 150power item
(with the weapon equipped of course) the damage lost is different from before
this also applies if I equip more power items
for example if I run with 1175 power (the only number without a 0.x increase i could manage) and I unequip the 150power swordknot, I get a -4 damage from charge (roar is still -6 however)
IBS loses 21 damage instead of 22
this is either because of uneven %-scaling and/or the game rounding up numbers i believe
for example Charges Power scaling could be between 55% or 60% and not 50%
my first guess was that roar and charge damage is calculated like this
Roar = 113 + ~120% weapon dmg + (Powerdmg increase *1)
(did it once with weapon and 1588 power and once with 4111 both were very accurate and only 1 damage off, most likely due to rounding up numbers in the game)
Charge = 67 + ~80% weapon dmg + (Powerdmg increase *~0,5)
charge is somehow off, roar is at least in my case pretty accurate
I see, but what if we take our crit procing paragon feats into account ?
There is nearly no advantage of 1% more crit, you can only stack student of the sword 3 times, and whether you have 1% crit more or less at certain threshold you will just keep it up all the time on all the mobs. Deep Gash doesn't stack at all, just refreshes.
I'm not in the game now (nor do I have the gear on my low lvl GWF to do tests anyway), but this should be easily verified on the training dummies near the pvp npcs.
Well, there is the difficulty that damage done apparently doesn't show damage pre-mitigation like damage taken does, so you need to do some gear swapping and more elaborate testing. Might do it myself though I'm into a project of testing lifesteal myself now. I'd be very happy to know which one of those mechanics it is.
-Armor Pen reduces Res by a flat number (noticed a big difference of mitigation on the same mobs by going from 3.7% ap to 1.5%.
-The feat that gives Weapon Master Strike is bugged, and currently debuffs resistance to WPS itself and not to encounters.
Btw Terhix my combat log shows both damage output and damage taken, you should see something like this:
Your Takedown deals 733 (845) Physical to Summoner.
The number between brackets being your damage roll, before any mitigation or buff.
With WMS, I had something like "your WMS does 180 (150) dmg to x", clearly showing the target had quite a big debuff against it.
By the way, I'm terrible at maths so if someone could give me the formula to get the % mitigation in "Your Takedown deals 733 (845) Physical to Summoner.", I would be extremely thankful.
Great info! I went to target dummies to see if I get the difference in brackets and test it this way, only attacked it few times with no combat advantage and got nothing for some reason, so I assumed it's not there
Going to swap all my power gems into arp it seems.
Also, TBH, anything past about 20% crit is wasted in my book. Especially since you can get weapon master stacks and destroyer stacks to buff both your chance to crit and your damage delt. Add's up to big crits either way. Probably depends on your class which combination works out better for you.
Lemonade Stand
the thing is, when I first wrote this - I thought power would add a flat damage bonus, without any coefficents, while this isn't true its still up to question whether the coefficents are actually high enough to outshine +crit or arp.
the GWF is kinda unlucky with its stat priorities if you ask me, while other classes "scale" with %crit with talents, utility and even damage, our talents are laid out for power (AND crit)
and if you think that we end up with "big crits" due to our passives anyway then you are wrong, because we arn't, the only spell that was able to do more than 10k dmg for me was IBS so far (~8k+ gearscore)
there is a time when Power will outpreform Crit for sure, the question is @ what %crit chance?
if we take Roar for example, crit seems to be better pretty much...always
150 power will increase its damage by 6 (with the 50% power buff its 9 of course)
my current damage with this skill is 1362.. lets assume we have 30% crit (with 20% crit + wpmaster its 27,5%)
100 Roars used
1362*70= 95340 + (1362*1,9*30) = 172974 dmg
now 31% crit and 150 power less
1356*69 = 93564 + (1356*1,9*31) = 173432 dmg
you see? crit is still better even with 30% crit - at least for roar which seems to scale with a "power"factor of "1"... this is different for every single spell however.
I would bet that attacking dummies will reveal power to be better, but attacking an actual armored target could show the opposite. If I need to choose between something that will definitely help, versus something that might help, I will choose the option that definitely helps. That being said, you are not forced to choose one over the other so it's probably moot.
Indeed, you can choose both power and armor penetration and rely almost entirely upon destroyer and weapon master stacks and probably do fairly well as long as your crit chance is somewhere above 15%-20%. GWF is lucky that they can rely on some of their tree skills to provide pretty big bonuses to crit and damage. Certainly you can stack those bonuses, or you can diversify.
Also, just to point out, I think you ignored the added critical damage from the 150 power. So yeah, it add's 6 damage but on a crit with 95% crit damage (I'm a half orc) it actually add's another 5.7 damage on top of the 6 damage. It's almost double the bonus from power on a critical strike.
like its not working ?
cause i notice some damage difference when i used it
the amount of enemies present have nothing to do with it, even if you use roar solely on single targets, it will be better to have 1% crit instead of 150 power if you have enough weapon damage etc.
if the timeframe is long enough of course to root out RNG
no they are accounted for
the first one has 30% crit and X+150 power and Y weapon dmg
the second one has 31% crit and X power and Y weapon dmg
I have gotten 17k hits from my main skills consistently (IBS, flourish, replenishing strike, and crescendo though that's a daily ofc) with only 7k gearscore and I mainly stack power with 30% crit chance. Not sure how you are setup (nor trying to say that you are bad in any form)...but its food for thought
im currently going for power I'm doing ~11k on dummy with IBS WITH combat advantage
I use PvP stuff + blue belt+neck with green rings the epics are mostly unenchanted though
I even use "smiting" blues on head and feet
both blues have +500 power each
sry to say that but I don't believe you at all
its not difficult to find out, if you have more Power than me its possible, if not - its not unless you have more Arp
4111 power + PvP sword (max dmg 919) for me and I'm well aware that it is not "much", but with 7k gearscore you can't have *that* much more
If you don't have power backing your attacks they can certainly still crit and do damage and penetrate more armor but from what I've seen armor penetration requires a stupid high investment in points to equal even a few percentage points in increased 'penetration', which just means you do more of your base damage through their armor which will be low without power.
Certainly there's a logical limit on how effective AP can be given the armor of the target and diminishing returns, whereas power has no logical limit beyond diminishing returns.
Don't get me wrong, I'm curious to see what your actual testing reveals but even on paper it looks like AP isn't worthwhile as a primary stat dump unless you're assuming 100% armor resistance at the get go with negative armor numbers being possible. (At least one of those things is patently false and obvious through casual game play.) Don't interpret this to mean that I think you should have zero armor penetration, at a certain point more into power or critical chance isn't going to mean much.
Not to mention you could stack power and then armor penetration and rely on simply weapon master stacks to have a flat 12.5% chance to crit at five stacks (or 15.5% with feats). This assumes you didn't invest in critical chance at all, which means with even one gear slot you could easily achieve a 17-20% chance to critical for an insane amount. In a fight that lasts a finite amount of time, there's a balance to achieve the 'best' ratio.
(I see where you added in power, it was in your base damage number. Either way your end result is only a difference of 458 damage when both are nearing the 200k mark. That sounds like margin of error to me in a calculation that's taking into account a RNG mechanic.)
I'd put the ordering as Power, Crit Damage, Crit Chance, Armor Penetration for importance. I might switch Crit Damage and Crit Chance around depending on the attack rate and what skill tree buffs can compliment the setup.
EDIT:
So you're saying that power doesn't do anything at all Aelvez? Hmm, interesting stance. I'll have to test that out.
we are already like 1 page ahead of you.
skills scale differently, while IBS gets a huge dmg increase from power, others do not (i.e. charge)
power (especially with +%power increase feets) will outpreform crit rather quickly if you use IBS
if I didn't make a mistake, you can see that Roar scales with a coefficent of 1. (1000 power = 40 dmg =40 dmg increase) and IBS with ~3,6666 ( 1000 power = 40dmg = 146,666dmg)
and its already pretty close with Roar
I don't think I understand what you mean, if I don't take out RNG out of this, it can be both in favor of either power or crit, you can crit 100 times in a row, you can also not crit 100 times at all.
thats why "testing" even in numbers only should always be done either in a certain timeframe (like 180 seconds) or done with a certain amount of swings/encounters etc.
Divide actual damage by potential damage. In this case 733 is 87.8% of 835 or 12.2% damage mitigated (733/835=0.8778).