test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Power/Crit/ArmorPen Simplified (Sorta)
knoteskad
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
I'm making this thread to attempt to help some people understand these offensive stats a little better and see them in a (hopefully) simpler/different way (as opposed to just telling people to stack this to this and this to that) to help make better judgement as to what to focus on and what's effective. It's a bit of a long read, so warning, I guess.
I'm leaving Recovery out of this because it's an indirect dmg stat and not very consistent (boosts dps by allowing encounters/dailies to be used more often).
I'm just going to focus on the three main, obvious dmg stats Power, Crit, and Armor Pen.
Essentially these are all % modifying stats (although Power isn't one directly we can look at it as one to make it simpler) and when you have different layers of dmg modifiers it's in your best interest to balance them as they all strengthen one another, that's basically the goal here, identify the % dmg boost each stat will give, and let you balance them on the fly a little easier.
Critical Chance
I'll start with Crit since it's by far the simplest. Keep in mind I'm talking about your total Crit Chance and not the stat Critical Strike which is just the rating that adds to it (and it diminishes at a later point 2000+).
We turn this into a consistent % dmg mod simply by looking at the severity. A severity of 75% means that on average 1% crit chance = 0.75% dmg bonus, very easy. A severity of 100% means on average 1% crit = 1% dmg bonus. It's value get's a little trickier depending on feats/passives that rely on it such as Repurpose Soul for clerics as it sort of mimics severity but in an unreliable way and only heals.
Armor Penetration
Armor Pen is a little trickier at first to judge in terms of it's usefulness. I'll try to make it simple to judge as a damage modifier.
As most know already, ArPen subtracts directly from the target's damage reduction stat (the sum of AC + Defense), so 20% ArPen can completely cancel out 20% Damage Reduction, now as to how much dmg you're actually gaining from that comes a small bit of quick math and an example.
Let's say you deal 100 dmg in this scenario (aka 100% base dmg).
100 dmg vs 20% reduction = 80 dmg dealt.
100 dmg vs (20% reduction - 20% ArPen = 0% reduction) = 100 dmg dealt
What we gained was 20 extra dmg FROM 80, which is a gain of 25% (as 20 = 1/4 of 80).
Upfront you may think it's a 20% gain as you're going from 80% normal dmg dealt to 100% dmg dealt, but that's not how you will calculate your effective dmg gain from ArPen as a damage modifier.
Another example : 10% Pen vs 20% Reduction
100 dmg vs 20% reduction = 80 dmg dealt
100 dmg vs (20%-10%) 10% reduction = 90 dmg dealt.
A gain of 10 from 80 or 12.5% dmg bonus from 10% ArPen.
Now for a more extreme example : 10% Pen vs 50% Reduction
100 dmg vs 50% reduction = 50 dmg dealt
100 dmg vs (50%-10%) 40% reduction = 60 dmg dealt
A gain of 10 from 50 or 20% dmg bonus from 10% ArPen.
One last example : 20% Pen vs 40% Reduction
100 dmg vs 40% reduction = 60 dmg dealt
100 dmg vs (40%-20%) 20% reduction = 80 dmg dealt
A gain of 20 from 60 or 33.33% dmg bonus from 20% ArPen.
As you can see not only does ArPen scale in terms of bonus dmg by increasing the stat, but also on how much damage reduction your target has. If you look at the 50% reduction example, the 10% ArPen became a 20% dmg boost (double the pen value) and in the 20% reduction example, the 10% ArPen became a 12.5% dmg boost (25% more than that pen value).
This pattern between the 2 values can be memorized if you think of effective health values from Damage Reduction. Effective health is the bonus longevity damage reduction gives you, for example 50% DR makes you take HALF dmg, which means you doubled the amount of effective hit points you had before, it would take twice the dmg to kill you than it would before. (You can find this effective health with this : (100 / (100 - reduction) -1) for example 100 - 25% Reduction = 75, then 100 / 75 = 1.333 then - 1 = 0.333 aka 33.3% BONUS effective health (1.333 would be 133.3% TOTAL effective health)
Rounded for easier reading/Actual number in red
50% Reduction = 100% bonus effective health
45% Reduction = 82% bonus effective health (81.8%)
40% Reduction = 67% bonus effective health (66.6%)
33% Reduction = 49% bonus effective health (49.25)
25% Reduction = 33% bonus effective health (33.3%)
20% Reduction = 25% bonus effective health
10% Reduction = 11% bonus effective health (11.11%)
Now that we have all of that out of the way, you can use the bonus effective health from a target's damage reduction and modify your current penetration to get your bonus dmg.
At 50% reduction = 100% bonus:
5% Penetration = 10% bonus dmg
10% Penetration = 20% bonus dmg
15% Penetration = 30% bonus dmg
20% Penetration = 40% bonus dmg
At 25% reduction = 33.3% bonus:
5% Penetration = 6.66% bonus dmg
10% Penetration = 13.33% bonus dmg
15% Penetration = 19.99% bonus dmg
20% Penetration = 26.66% bonus dmg
And there we have it, simple way to calculate the bonus dmg gain from your Armor Pen, of course keep in mind any Pen over your target's reduction is useless, so 15% Pen vs 10% reduction is just 10% Pen.
Power
Finally we come to the controversial stat : Power. This stat was originally over valued and now a bit underrated. Simply put, it's a linear non diminishing stat that will grow in usefulness as your other dmg modifiers get higher (thus we want balance) not only because those modifiers will directly increase each point of power, but because they start hitting their DR softcaps.
I'm going to try and simplify this stat and turn it into a simple % dmg modifier to make it easy to balance with the other 2 dmg modifiers. I'm going to combine the power on the weapon with the weapon's dmg and then calculate the dmg bonus from any bonus power outside of that. There may be some skills that have funky or buggy scaling, like supposedly some dailies and what have you.
First, why is power looked at as weak? Well, essentially power is just bonus weapon dmg added on top of the weapon dmg your weapon has, which then determines your abilities' dmg based on their own unique coefficients, simple stuff. The reason Power is initially weak is because you already have a large amount of weapon dmg AND power to begin with from your weapon.
If we're thinking of power as another dmg modifier, and we have 2 other dmg modifiers that all work off of each other, we want balance, and we have a large amount of weapon dmg to start with, so Crit and Armor Pen automatically become your most effective dmg modifiers to stack, with power being the weakest.
To get the effective dmg bonus from additional Power, we first need to subtract the base value every skill has (if you take off your weapon and all your power you're left with this base value), then we take the full amount of weapon dmg you have on your weapon (average of your weapon dmg + 1/25 of your WEAPON'S power), then any EXTRA power you have besides that will become your "bonus power" as we'll put it as a way to see your dmg modifier from excess power. We'll find that %, apply it to the skill's dmg (w/o it's base) and take that extra dmg and compare it to the full skill dmg (WITH it's base) to find the true % bonus dmg you're getting from bonus power.
That's a bit confusing so it's time for an example. These are going to be made up values just for the purpose of demonstrating this. We need to find 2 values, first the ratio of BONUS power relative to your total weapon dmg/power, then use that to plug into the numbers from a skill in order to get our actual increase in dmg for that specific skill.
Weapon Average Dmg - 750
Weapon Power/Dmg - 1500 / 25 = +60
Weapon Sum Dmg - 810
Bonus Power - 2000 / 25 = +80
Ratio to Weapon Dmg - 80 / 810 = 9.87%
Skill Average Tooltip Total - 2500
Skill Base Value - 275
Skill Dmg From Weapon - 2225
Ratio Applied To Remaining Skill Dmg - 2225 * 0.0987 = 219.75
Ratio of New Value To Full Tooltip - 219.75 / 2500 = 8.79% Bonus Dmg
So what we got from this example, is that with a weapon with a total of 810 dmg (750 weapon dmg + 1500 power on said weapon), 2000 bonus power (from gear etc) will give us +80 weapon dmg, which is 9.87% of our weapon dmg. We then use that ratio/percentage to find how much flat dmg that +80 weapon dmg will add by comparing it to our skill tooltip w/o it's base (810 weapon dmg = 2225 skill dmg), so 9.87% of that is 219.75 extra dmg now we take our full tooltip (with it's base : 2500) and compare this extra dmg to it to see how much bonus % dmg this +80 dmg adds, which is 8.79%.
That means 2000 power is adding 8.79% extra dmg to this skill, which is low because we have 810 weapon dmg already. If I do the same formula with the same skill but with the value of the weapon being cut in half, you'll see power will add more overall.
375 Weapon Dmg + 750 Power (+30 dmg) = 405 total weapon dmg
Our bonus power of 2000, is still giving +80 dmg, but is now 19.75% of our weapon dmg.
The skill still has the same base value of 275, but it's dmg from weapon dmg is also being cut in half.
2225 / 2 = 1112.5 + (275 base).
Take 19.75% of 1112.5 = +219.75 again.
Now find the full tooltip again 1112.5 + (275 base)= 1387.5.
Now find the new bonus dmg : 219.75 / 1387.5 = 15.83% bonus dmg.
Notice how much higher the bonus dmg from 2000 power is because our weapon dmg was cut in half, the new bonus dmg isn't exactly double the old one though because the base value of the skill was the same.
Now I know this may seem convoluted compared to just finding the weapon dmg coefficient for every skill and plugging in all of your power to see how much dmg they do. The point to this however is to find the % bonus dmg you're gaining for skills from bonus Power so we can measure it exactly the same way we will measure ArPen and Crit so we can accurately balance our dmg modifiers for optimal dmg.
Formula for bonus power dmg % mod (keep in mind base value for skills is with NO weapon and NO power equipped):
(Bonus power/25) * (Weapon Dmg + (Weapon's Power/25)) = PwrWpnRatio
(FullSkillToolTip - base value) * PwrWpnRatio = FlatBonusDmg
(FlatBonusDmg / FullSkillToolTip) = % bonus dmg from bonus power
Let us compare what 2000 of each of these 3 stats will give us, using this fictional skill and it's values.
Power - 2000 BONUS power (with 810 weapon dmg) would give us 8.79% bonus dmg to our 2500 dmg skill, adding +219.75
Crit - 2000 Crit Strike (about 15% crit chance) at 75% Severity would give us 11.25% bonus dmg to our 2500 dmg skill, adding +281.25.
The average mob has around 12-16% mitigation I believe
ArPen - 2000 ArPen (about 20% penetration) versus 10%/15%/20% dmg reductions would give 11.11%/17.64%/25% dmg bonuses respectively to our 2500 dmg skill adding +277.77/+441/+625.
As you can see, Armor Pen comes out ahead here somewhat, Crit second (only at 75% severity), and finally Power.
Although at about 2000 ArPen and Crit start diminishing quite a bit and is usually where people stop (something like 2200 for ArPen). Power however will keep on going up linearly, nice n' steady, another thing to keep in mind is that you'll also get some base crit from your stats/racials etc, so crit technically weighs even lighter than in this example, at 75% severity that is, higher severities change this of course.
With proper stat's you'll probably have something like ~30% Crit (range from 22.5 - 27% dmg increase depending on severity) , and ~20% Armor Pen (which could range from 11-25% dmg increase), suddenly an ~8% increase (depending on the weapon/skill) from bonus power isn't so bad, as they all strengthen each other.
Another thing to keep in mind is ArPen (again) can't go into negatives, but it also applies first before any mitigation/defense debuffs, so it's always useful. I've also did some very brief testing on defense reduction debuffs and found that it was reducing mitigation by a flat amount like armorpen (even into negatives) for about 1/3 of the stated amount.
For example 3 stacks of lesser plaguefire (15% defense reduction) would give me a pretty consistent -5% dmg taken debuff, no matter how much armor pen I had.
Student of the Sword for GWF was doing the same thing, 45% reduction was giving me a consistent -15% dmg taken debuff regardless of my armor pen and where the target's mitigation was at.
Hopefully this helps some of you get an idea how to weigh your stats a little better and calculate the differences.
I'm leaving Recovery out of this because it's an indirect dmg stat and not very consistent (boosts dps by allowing encounters/dailies to be used more often).
I'm just going to focus on the three main, obvious dmg stats Power, Crit, and Armor Pen.
Essentially these are all % modifying stats (although Power isn't one directly we can look at it as one to make it simpler) and when you have different layers of dmg modifiers it's in your best interest to balance them as they all strengthen one another, that's basically the goal here, identify the % dmg boost each stat will give, and let you balance them on the fly a little easier.
Critical Chance
I'll start with Crit since it's by far the simplest. Keep in mind I'm talking about your total Crit Chance and not the stat Critical Strike which is just the rating that adds to it (and it diminishes at a later point 2000+).
We turn this into a consistent % dmg mod simply by looking at the severity. A severity of 75% means that on average 1% crit chance = 0.75% dmg bonus, very easy. A severity of 100% means on average 1% crit = 1% dmg bonus. It's value get's a little trickier depending on feats/passives that rely on it such as Repurpose Soul for clerics as it sort of mimics severity but in an unreliable way and only heals.
Armor Penetration
Armor Pen is a little trickier at first to judge in terms of it's usefulness. I'll try to make it simple to judge as a damage modifier.
As most know already, ArPen subtracts directly from the target's damage reduction stat (the sum of AC + Defense), so 20% ArPen can completely cancel out 20% Damage Reduction, now as to how much dmg you're actually gaining from that comes a small bit of quick math and an example.
Let's say you deal 100 dmg in this scenario (aka 100% base dmg).
100 dmg vs 20% reduction = 80 dmg dealt.
100 dmg vs (20% reduction - 20% ArPen = 0% reduction) = 100 dmg dealt
What we gained was 20 extra dmg FROM 80, which is a gain of 25% (as 20 = 1/4 of 80).
Upfront you may think it's a 20% gain as you're going from 80% normal dmg dealt to 100% dmg dealt, but that's not how you will calculate your effective dmg gain from ArPen as a damage modifier.
Another example : 10% Pen vs 20% Reduction
100 dmg vs 20% reduction = 80 dmg dealt
100 dmg vs (20%-10%) 10% reduction = 90 dmg dealt.
A gain of 10 from 80 or 12.5% dmg bonus from 10% ArPen.
Now for a more extreme example : 10% Pen vs 50% Reduction
100 dmg vs 50% reduction = 50 dmg dealt
100 dmg vs (50%-10%) 40% reduction = 60 dmg dealt
A gain of 10 from 50 or 20% dmg bonus from 10% ArPen.
One last example : 20% Pen vs 40% Reduction
100 dmg vs 40% reduction = 60 dmg dealt
100 dmg vs (40%-20%) 20% reduction = 80 dmg dealt
A gain of 20 from 60 or 33.33% dmg bonus from 20% ArPen.
As you can see not only does ArPen scale in terms of bonus dmg by increasing the stat, but also on how much damage reduction your target has. If you look at the 50% reduction example, the 10% ArPen became a 20% dmg boost (double the pen value) and in the 20% reduction example, the 10% ArPen became a 12.5% dmg boost (25% more than that pen value).
This pattern between the 2 values can be memorized if you think of effective health values from Damage Reduction. Effective health is the bonus longevity damage reduction gives you, for example 50% DR makes you take HALF dmg, which means you doubled the amount of effective hit points you had before, it would take twice the dmg to kill you than it would before. (You can find this effective health with this : (100 / (100 - reduction) -1) for example 100 - 25% Reduction = 75, then 100 / 75 = 1.333 then - 1 = 0.333 aka 33.3% BONUS effective health (1.333 would be 133.3% TOTAL effective health)
Rounded for easier reading/Actual number in red
50% Reduction = 100% bonus effective health
45% Reduction = 82% bonus effective health (81.8%)
40% Reduction = 67% bonus effective health (66.6%)
33% Reduction = 49% bonus effective health (49.25)
25% Reduction = 33% bonus effective health (33.3%)
20% Reduction = 25% bonus effective health
10% Reduction = 11% bonus effective health (11.11%)
Now that we have all of that out of the way, you can use the bonus effective health from a target's damage reduction and modify your current penetration to get your bonus dmg.
At 50% reduction = 100% bonus:
5% Penetration = 10% bonus dmg
10% Penetration = 20% bonus dmg
15% Penetration = 30% bonus dmg
20% Penetration = 40% bonus dmg
At 25% reduction = 33.3% bonus:
5% Penetration = 6.66% bonus dmg
10% Penetration = 13.33% bonus dmg
15% Penetration = 19.99% bonus dmg
20% Penetration = 26.66% bonus dmg
And there we have it, simple way to calculate the bonus dmg gain from your Armor Pen, of course keep in mind any Pen over your target's reduction is useless, so 15% Pen vs 10% reduction is just 10% Pen.
Power
Finally we come to the controversial stat : Power. This stat was originally over valued and now a bit underrated. Simply put, it's a linear non diminishing stat that will grow in usefulness as your other dmg modifiers get higher (thus we want balance) not only because those modifiers will directly increase each point of power, but because they start hitting their DR softcaps.
I'm going to try and simplify this stat and turn it into a simple % dmg modifier to make it easy to balance with the other 2 dmg modifiers. I'm going to combine the power on the weapon with the weapon's dmg and then calculate the dmg bonus from any bonus power outside of that. There may be some skills that have funky or buggy scaling, like supposedly some dailies and what have you.
First, why is power looked at as weak? Well, essentially power is just bonus weapon dmg added on top of the weapon dmg your weapon has, which then determines your abilities' dmg based on their own unique coefficients, simple stuff. The reason Power is initially weak is because you already have a large amount of weapon dmg AND power to begin with from your weapon.
If we're thinking of power as another dmg modifier, and we have 2 other dmg modifiers that all work off of each other, we want balance, and we have a large amount of weapon dmg to start with, so Crit and Armor Pen automatically become your most effective dmg modifiers to stack, with power being the weakest.
To get the effective dmg bonus from additional Power, we first need to subtract the base value every skill has (if you take off your weapon and all your power you're left with this base value), then we take the full amount of weapon dmg you have on your weapon (average of your weapon dmg + 1/25 of your WEAPON'S power), then any EXTRA power you have besides that will become your "bonus power" as we'll put it as a way to see your dmg modifier from excess power. We'll find that %, apply it to the skill's dmg (w/o it's base) and take that extra dmg and compare it to the full skill dmg (WITH it's base) to find the true % bonus dmg you're getting from bonus power.
That's a bit confusing so it's time for an example. These are going to be made up values just for the purpose of demonstrating this. We need to find 2 values, first the ratio of BONUS power relative to your total weapon dmg/power, then use that to plug into the numbers from a skill in order to get our actual increase in dmg for that specific skill.
Weapon Average Dmg - 750
Weapon Power/Dmg - 1500 / 25 = +60
Weapon Sum Dmg - 810
Bonus Power - 2000 / 25 = +80
Ratio to Weapon Dmg - 80 / 810 = 9.87%
Skill Average Tooltip Total - 2500
Skill Base Value - 275
Skill Dmg From Weapon - 2225
Ratio Applied To Remaining Skill Dmg - 2225 * 0.0987 = 219.75
Ratio of New Value To Full Tooltip - 219.75 / 2500 = 8.79% Bonus Dmg
So what we got from this example, is that with a weapon with a total of 810 dmg (750 weapon dmg + 1500 power on said weapon), 2000 bonus power (from gear etc) will give us +80 weapon dmg, which is 9.87% of our weapon dmg. We then use that ratio/percentage to find how much flat dmg that +80 weapon dmg will add by comparing it to our skill tooltip w/o it's base (810 weapon dmg = 2225 skill dmg), so 9.87% of that is 219.75 extra dmg now we take our full tooltip (with it's base : 2500) and compare this extra dmg to it to see how much bonus % dmg this +80 dmg adds, which is 8.79%.
That means 2000 power is adding 8.79% extra dmg to this skill, which is low because we have 810 weapon dmg already. If I do the same formula with the same skill but with the value of the weapon being cut in half, you'll see power will add more overall.
375 Weapon Dmg + 750 Power (+30 dmg) = 405 total weapon dmg
Our bonus power of 2000, is still giving +80 dmg, but is now 19.75% of our weapon dmg.
The skill still has the same base value of 275, but it's dmg from weapon dmg is also being cut in half.
2225 / 2 = 1112.5 + (275 base).
Take 19.75% of 1112.5 = +219.75 again.
Now find the full tooltip again 1112.5 + (275 base)= 1387.5.
Now find the new bonus dmg : 219.75 / 1387.5 = 15.83% bonus dmg.
Notice how much higher the bonus dmg from 2000 power is because our weapon dmg was cut in half, the new bonus dmg isn't exactly double the old one though because the base value of the skill was the same.
Now I know this may seem convoluted compared to just finding the weapon dmg coefficient for every skill and plugging in all of your power to see how much dmg they do. The point to this however is to find the % bonus dmg you're gaining for skills from bonus Power so we can measure it exactly the same way we will measure ArPen and Crit so we can accurately balance our dmg modifiers for optimal dmg.
Formula for bonus power dmg % mod (keep in mind base value for skills is with NO weapon and NO power equipped):
(Bonus power/25) * (Weapon Dmg + (Weapon's Power/25)) = PwrWpnRatio
(FullSkillToolTip - base value) * PwrWpnRatio = FlatBonusDmg
(FlatBonusDmg / FullSkillToolTip) = % bonus dmg from bonus power
Let us compare what 2000 of each of these 3 stats will give us, using this fictional skill and it's values.
Power - 2000 BONUS power (with 810 weapon dmg) would give us 8.79% bonus dmg to our 2500 dmg skill, adding +219.75
Crit - 2000 Crit Strike (about 15% crit chance) at 75% Severity would give us 11.25% bonus dmg to our 2500 dmg skill, adding +281.25.
The average mob has around 12-16% mitigation I believe
ArPen - 2000 ArPen (about 20% penetration) versus 10%/15%/20% dmg reductions would give 11.11%/17.64%/25% dmg bonuses respectively to our 2500 dmg skill adding +277.77/+441/+625.
As you can see, Armor Pen comes out ahead here somewhat, Crit second (only at 75% severity), and finally Power.
Although at about 2000 ArPen and Crit start diminishing quite a bit and is usually where people stop (something like 2200 for ArPen). Power however will keep on going up linearly, nice n' steady, another thing to keep in mind is that you'll also get some base crit from your stats/racials etc, so crit technically weighs even lighter than in this example, at 75% severity that is, higher severities change this of course.
With proper stat's you'll probably have something like ~30% Crit (range from 22.5 - 27% dmg increase depending on severity) , and ~20% Armor Pen (which could range from 11-25% dmg increase), suddenly an ~8% increase (depending on the weapon/skill) from bonus power isn't so bad, as they all strengthen each other.
Another thing to keep in mind is ArPen (again) can't go into negatives, but it also applies first before any mitigation/defense debuffs, so it's always useful. I've also did some very brief testing on defense reduction debuffs and found that it was reducing mitigation by a flat amount like armorpen (even into negatives) for about 1/3 of the stated amount.
For example 3 stacks of lesser plaguefire (15% defense reduction) would give me a pretty consistent -5% dmg taken debuff, no matter how much armor pen I had.
Student of the Sword for GWF was doing the same thing, 45% reduction was giving me a consistent -15% dmg taken debuff regardless of my armor pen and where the target's mitigation was at.
Hopefully this helps some of you get an idea how to weigh your stats a little better and calculate the differences.
Post edited by knoteskad on
0
Comments
Wrath - 60 Great Weapon Fighter - Mindflayer
Envy's Guardian Fighter DPS Conqueror Guide
Youtube Channel
http://www.twitch.tv/supjeremiah
On Plaguefire: 45% gives an 11% dmg increase on 22% DR mobs. The flat amount is the mob's base defense value.
You say recovery is not consistent, but for most encounters you want to be using the abilities on cooldown.
ArP to 22% > Recovery to 2.8k-3k > Crit to 2k, except if you're a dps GF where power gets doubled, not to mention, his power calculation is very "vague".
Well yeah, I used a made up skill with made up (but somewhat realistic) values just to show a little formula. Of course it's vague lol.
I've been getting weirder results with my testing, so I don't know TBH.
Of course, your general idea is correct.
How so? Base Cooldown*(1-(Feats%+CDR%)*.01) = new cooldown
I was talking about defense reductions not recovery/cooldowns.
And I left recovery out because you can't get a completely accurate consistent dmg bonus like the other stats, and it's a self explanatory stat.
I also learned that it's not Recharge Reduction, but Recharge "Speed".
100% Recharge doesn't shave 100% off your cooldowns.
It increases the speed of which you recharge, or rather you cast 100% more than normal, thus 100% recharge is 50% reduction, 50% recharge is 33% reduction etc.
So recharge suddenly isn't as godlike as it looks. =/
Edit : just checked again to make sure, my 33% recharge speed is giving me exactly 25% cooldown reduction.
And as for the defense reductions, I was testing it with Student of the Sword. I had 12% armor pen, fighting against a single mob that had about 12.6% mitigation.
The debuff would shave 15% off directly, bringing it to about -15% mitigation.
Took off all by 0.5% of my armor pen (weapon), tested again, she had her 12% mitigation this time, and my debuff brought her down into -3%.
On recharge, wow, that changes a lot.
You didn't?
I'll have to do some more testing then. =/
I can recall my CW with lesser plague fire and nothing else getting a flat -5% mitigation with 3 stacks (15%).
They could work completely differently though, there's a lot of "reduces defense" that's actually just "reduces mitigation" feats.
Like Nimbus of Light and the arcane encounter feat for thaumaturge CW's.
Yeah, it's really dissapointing too, I was really looking forward to doing exponential recharge builds with stats toward it and everything but that's a fleeting dream now.
Unspecified already tried and found out about it the hard way. =/
That's exactly what I would have done actually. 0 crit eye of the storm build with just recovery spam.
Of course it's still easy to weigh these things in, that was the point of this thread.
Just plug in the additional Severity .
With the cooldown on the AP proc feat and normal crit would be more than enough for that and Nightmare Wizardry though.
What's it worth stacking to now?
2500? or 3000 still?
Well, I have enough recovery from gear that I don't have to get any recovery enchants, but power is doubled for me. Different for other classes.
Yeah I think I'm going to replace my recovery enchants now.
The DR on Recovery is harsh now that recharge isn't exponential. It's like it has a double DR.
Yeah, crit is ****ing terrible for most classes though. In my case, keeping crit/recovery/power rings and power/recovery/arp belt is BiS.
I was thinkin' Tenebrous actually, since I learned their CD was 5 seconds.
Still not sure though.
Nah, tenebrous could MAYBE be better on single target, but deff not AoE. ArP is too good honestly.
Should I keep a balance in all these numbers, like example 150 power, 150 crit, 150 etc etc, or should I put more into one over the other such as 100 power, 75 crit, 150 armor penetration?
Would the second example be different for different classes?
Well it'll change a lot depending on the class and feats/build.
But in general, say if you're naked in their stats and need to fill them up in terms of effectiveness it would go :
Armor Pen then Crit then Power.
ArPen and Crit are both worth getting up to 2k, from there power starts to become a lot better, at lower stat levels power isn't nearly as good.
This is completely disregarding recovery however, which is still good til mid 2k's also, could also change depending on the class.
This changes with things like : GF getting double power, GWF getting 50% power with instigator build, GWF getting 25% recovery as ArPen. Rogues/GWF having better severity making crit a little better for them, etc.
I "tried" to simplify it, but turning bonus power stat into a measurable % dmg modifier isn't really "that" simple (it is, but explaining what it's doing isn't :x). I put the formula I made/used for it so you could plug your stats/weapon/skill numbers to calculate it for yourself.
Take for example, you're a GWF with 95% crit severity (orc), you have 3000 power, 1000 crit rating, and 500 armor pen (we're going to ignore recovery again).
Now, that would be something like 3.5% armor pen, and say 16% crit (from race stat/feats) + ~8% from crit rating for 24% crit.
Taking a weak example for armor pen : 10% damage reduction target.
Armor Pen 3.5% : 100 - 10% (dmgredux) gives you 90, divide 10 by that giving you 0.111 which is 11.1%, now INCREASE your armor pen value by that 11.1% (3.5 * 1.111 aka 111.1%) giving you 3.88% dmg bonus from 3.5% armor pen against a 10% dmg reduction target.
Crit : 24% crit at 90% severity (24 * 0.9) gives you = 21.6% dmg bonus from crit (on average)
That would leave us with power which is where you'd need to use that formula with your weapon and skill you're measuring. First strip off EVERYTHING on you and look at the base value for your skill (say 250), then put your weapon back on take the average weapon dmg of say 700-900 (700 + 900 /2 = 800 average), then divide the power you're getting from that weapon by 25 (say 1500 power / 25 giving you 60), add that to your weapon dmg (800 + 60 = 860), that's your full weapon dmg. Then find your skill tooltip values, and the excess power you'll be measuring (in this example we had 3000 power total and was getting 1500 from weapon, so 1500 bonus power we're looking at) so we have.
Total dmg from weapon (w/ it's power) : 860
Total skill dmg (w/ weapon equipped) : 3000 (for example)
Base skill dmg (w/ nothing on) : 250 (for example)
Total skill dmg FROM weapon (subtract the previous 2) : 3000 total skill dmg - 250 base skill dmg = 2750 dmg coming from weapon.
Bonus Power we're measuring : 1500 (divide by 25 for another +60 dmg)
Now you can just plug these numbers into the little formula. You find the ratio between the +60 from bonus power and 860 from total weapon dmg. Take that "ratio" and apply it to the skill dmg (2750) from weapon, take the new number and compare it to the full tooltip dmg (3000) to find how much bonus dmg that 1500 extra power will be adding overall.
Let's say that was a guardian fighter getting x2 power, you'd simply double the BONUS power (1500 = 3000) as well as the power on the weapon (1500 = 3000) and do the same calculations.
Basically you'll get a % dmg modifier from each stat for example : 3.88% / 21.6% / 8% they all work off each other so you're goal is to balance those percents, the 3.88% was armor pen and was cheap and is lower than the other 2, so that would be priority, the 2nd was crit from the example which wasn't as good because the modifier is so high from all the base crit you were getting, 2nd was power which scaled a bit lower but is steady and will be consistent and eventually become the best to stack as the other 2 hit their sweet spots.
I feel like I just repeated my original post w/o simplifying it any further, sorry if that's the case. =/
I would say just look at your total crit and measure the bonus dmg, then look at your armor pen and measure the bonus dmg you'd get from it and see which would be better to focus on, power doesn't shine til later (unless you have giant power modifiers like GF or maybe GWF) so it's safe to avoid til then.
And keep in mind this is per skill, as different skills might have better scaling in terms of DPS (like a low cooldown with higher scaling than something with a higher cooldown, which I think is rare)
Yay
/char