Heavy veno melee vs. spells

Solandri - Heavens Tear

I calculated my DPS on a spreadsheet after my first City of Abominations run. It's a lot of fun (though the rewards suck), and since it's time-limited it's very important to be doing the maximum amount of damage you can in the least amount of time. So I decided to figure out what skills I should level up to gain the most DPS.

Disclaimer: These figures represent my build and equipment. Be careful about what conclusions you draw from it. The comparisons within a damage type (melee or magic) are most valid. The comparisons between the damage types are mostly a reflection of my build and equipment. My veno is a level 84 heavy/arcane build with an extensive collection of +str and +mag equipment (two weapons even, one for melee, one for casting).

First the melee config. 244 str, 222 mag, +3 Sakyamuni's Light with 2 flawless garnets. 2398-3026 phys atk. (2444-2872 mag atk.) 0.8 sec per attack, 0.75 sec per attack with -0.05 interval sleeves. DPS is damage/time. Normalized uses my regular melee attacks as a baseline. All skills at level 10.

Attack...... DPS ..... Normalized
Regular.... 3390 .... 1.00
-0.05 int.. 3568 .... 1.05
Wallop..... 3373 .... 0.995
Befudd..... 3424 .... 1.01 (AOE)
Stunning.. 4203 .... 1.24 (1 spark)
Leech...... 2633 .... 0.78
Consume.. 1262 .... 0.37
Malefic..... 2406 .... 0.71 (2 spark)
Spark 1.... 5160 .... 1.52 (1 spark)
Spark 2.... 6045 .... 1.78 (2 spark)

So for the most part, I'm better off just using plain melee attacks instead of skills. I'll use Befuddling if there's multiple mobs. Stunning seems like it would be good, except it uses a spark. I'm better off using that spark as a spark eruption to increase my regular melee damage.

Now for the caster config. 193 str, 280 mag, +3 Wheel of Life with 2 flawless sapphires. 3819-4955 mag attack. 12% channel. DPS is spell damage over channel+cast time. Normalized is compared to my regular melee damage in melee form.

Attack..... DPS ..... Normalized
Venom..... 3245.... 0.96
Ironwood.. 4800.... 1.42
Blazing..... 4336 .... 1.28
Frost....... 6114 .... 1.80 (1 spark)
Noxious.... 3693 .... 1.09 (AOE)
Lucky...... 4939 .... 1.46
Parasitic.. 3661 .... 1.08 (2 sparks, AOE)

So spamming venomous is the worst way to play a veno. The cooldown timers on most of these skills are long enough you'll probably be forced to use Venomous a few times.

Frost Scarab has the most damage over time for a single skill, but a single Ironwood after a 1 spark eruption (I have those numbers elsewhere on my spreadsheet) will equal its damage output. So you're better off saving the spark for an eruption.

Lucky is my highest DPS spell, Ironwood 2nd, and the much-maligned Blazing is 3rd (assuming the fire DoT runs its full duration). But Ironwood consumes chi while the others give it, and my magic damage is about 40% higher single-sparked. So if someone else is debuffing, I'm better off foregoing Ironwood to save chi for sparks (a single Venomous while single-sparked does nearly as much DPS as Ironwood). Again, all this is complicated by the cooldown timers, so I won't try a full analysis.

Overall, I'm still capable of doing more unsparked damage in caster form than in fox form. I attribute this mostly due to my melee weapon (Sak Light) being a level 70 weapon, while my casting weapon (Wheel of Life) is level 80. If I wield my level 70 magic weapon, my normalized magic DPS ratings drop to 0.87-1.36, meaning there's not much difference between the two. But it's gotten too expensive to socket, shard, and refine both weapons. So from 90+ I'll probably be using a single weapon and the above figures reflect that better (the Wheel only has about 60 less p.atk than the Sak Light).

Sparked is a different story. In fox form doing regular damage, I'm able to stay single-sparked half the time. That puts my average normalized melee damage at 1.26. That's pretty much in the same as a mix of Lucky, Blazing, Ironwood, and Venomous unsparked. I'm going to have to level up some of those casting skills and see how the chi management goes before I decide which is better.

Mayfly - Dreamweaver

There's 3 macros I use depending on circumstances:

Pet not tanking:
Noxious
Venomous
Ironwood
Venomous
Blazing
Venomous
Lucky
Venomous

Pet tanking, doesn't need much healing:
Lucky
Venomous
Noxious
Heal
Venomous
Blazing
Venomous
Heal

Pet tanking, more healing needed:
(Venomous, Heal) x4

Do you recommend changing any of these?

Reikara - Heavens Tear

Just before I quit I came to realise how much more damage fox form did over time compared to human skills. I only used one weapon though, the level 89 requiem blade +5.

I changed my whole debuffing combination to include fox damage and human skills on bosses, but this would also change depending if there were other venomancers in the squad and what their roles were. Most of the time I was squadded with other arcane venomancers, who preffered to tank/heal so the debuffing was left to me.

It'd look something like:
Noxious
Burning
Ironwood
Fox form
Amplify
Myriad
Meele dps
3 Spark as available

Rinse and repeat as debuffs wear off.
Too bad frost uses a spark, it's actually not such a bad skill with the DoT, but then again it dosen't always hit :c

Kittennice - Heavens Tear

Umm... isn't this heavy arcane?

Solandri - Heavens Tear

Mayfly - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Do you recommend changing any of these?

The numbers I gave ranked the spells according to damage over time. i.e. If you want to kill something as quickly as possible and don't care about aggro or mana consumed, which spells/melee attacks are best?

For general use, you may have other considerations. Maybe you want to conserve mana. Lucky Scarab has some of the best DPS a veno can do, but it's a mana hog, having nearly if not the lowest damage per mana consumed of all the veno spells.

Your choice of spells will vary depending on what criteria are important to you.

Reikara - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Too bad frost uses a spark, it's actually not such a bad skill with the DoT, but then again it dosen't always hit :c

Yes, the more I look at it, the more it looks like poor game design. They made a skill (Frost Scarab) consume a spark, then they made a regular Spark Eruption so good that a single spell cast during the 10 sec it's in effect will outdamage Frost Scarab. Even if you're fighting something vulnerable to water, the numbers seem to say Frost is a waste of a spark. The only use I can think of for it is if you're fighting something immune to wood damage.

Kittennice - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Umm... isn't this heavy arcane?

You call it what you like, I'll call it what I like. Considering my build is much more common than your build, I prefer to give the shorter name of Heavy Veno to my build as a matter of convenience. I refer to your build as a Pure Melee Heavy Veno.

Also, I think Heavy Arcane is a bad name. People often abbreviate it to H/A or HA, which can easily be confused with Heavy Armor, which results in confusion over whether it's heavy-only (your build) or a mix of heavy and arcane.

Reikara - Heavens Tear

I wouldnt've really thought the build in question mattered so much. Wasn't this more or less for those venomancers who have built themselves for fox form damage regardless of their armour/weap type build?