Cursed Jail - Is it worth it?

Cinderball - Raging Tide

Olbaze - Sanctuary wrote: »

There is a mistake in your spreadsheet.

In the total damage calculation process, you are using the Base Damage multiplier to multiply the constant damage addition. That is not how damage is calculated.

Here's a quick list of things I found mistaken:
1. You multiplied the static skill addon damage by a multiplier. This is wrong, as the static addon gets added last. If the static addon was multiplied by anything, Archers would have much better skill damage, as most of their skills only have a tiny amount of static addons.
2. You multiplied everything with the base damage multiplier.

Basically, your formula was:

(((WeaponDamageMultiplier*WeaponDamage)+StaticDamageAddon)+BaseDamage)*BaseDamageMultiplier

It should be:

(WeaponDamageMultiplier*WeaponDamage)+(BaseDamage*BaseDamageMultiplier)+StaticDamageAddon

This is a very, very unique case. The multipliers for these specific skills are such that your mistaken math does in fact result in the correct numbers. It's all because one skill does not multiple your base damage, whereas the other has no weapon damage multiplier or static addons.

And I would like to point out that the situation is not as one-dimensional as it looks. For a huge majority of people, Cursed Jail will deal superior damage. The only exceptions will be people with r9rr +12, two reawakenings and some really good war avatars. Of course, due to higher natural dph, the bar will be lower for Sages. And of course, Elimination is superior when sparked.

Here's a little thing I wrote on damage calculation. Might wanna give it a read.

Good catch on the static damage! I did that as a cheat to only have to input the wep damage and static damage for lifehunter and only have to input 50% base damage to get the damage of one hit. I'll change it so it doesn't confuse people! Your paper was rather informative! Mistake 2 doesn't seem to be a mistake as far as what I've witnessed: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1666491 . If we use the normal formula, wouldn't each hit of the skill only get a portion of the 500% weapon damage from spark? I know it flies against the normal damage logic but elimination seems to do damage based solely on the number that shows up in the damage window. As far as I can tell, hits 1 and 4 take 60% of the value each, hits 2 and 3 take 40% of the value each, and the last hit takes 120% of the value. I will edit the formula to fix the first mistake though and move static damage to where it should be. b:shutup I'll leave the second one be until you can confirm.

The numbers are from a small sample but the spread is very small so it should be okay enough. I averaged the hits by dividing them by the %base damage each hit does, then averaged hits 1&4 and then 2&3 together, combined them with the 5th hit and got 6300, 6315, and 6264 with a total average of 6293 for unsparked and 13410, 13468, 13493 with a total average of 13457 for triple spark. Sparking multiplied the average damage by 2.138. You can just do it the easy way and divide the sum of the sparked damage by unsparked skill damage. Just dividing the averages between sparked/unsparked base damages gives a number of 2.134. If I assume each of the averages I came up with only do 1/5th of the 500% wep damage, I fall way short of what I actually got in game (only 1.354x instead of the observed 2.13x - 2.14x) It only makes sense with what I observed when I also multiply the spark percentage by 3.2 so it can just be added straight to the base damage. I do agree with you though that for the non-god tier sins, cursed jail isn't a bad deal at all. I'm getting it myself because I'll never be powerful enough to where it becomes more of a hindrance than a plus. It just doesn't make much sense for the uber sins to bother with it if they can obtain elimination.

Olbaze - Sanctuary

Cinderball - Raging Tide wrote: »

Good catch on the static damage! Your paper was rather informative! Mistake 2 doesn't seem to be a mistake as far as what I've witnessed: http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1666491 . If we use the normal formula, wouldn't each hit of the skill only get a portion of the 500% weapon damage from spark? I know it flies against the normal damage logic but elimination seems to do damage based solely on the number that shows up in the damage window. As far as I can tell, hits 1 and 4 take 60% of the value each, hits 2 and 3 take 40% of the value each, and the last hit takes 120% of the value. I will edit the formula to fix the first mistake though and move static damage to where it should be. :shutup I'll leave the second one be until you can confirm.

The thing is, there are very, very few skills in the game use +base damage%. In fact, I cannot recall any instance other than Elimination that uses it. And due to the way the skill functions, there is actually no way to test to prove it one way or the other. It looks like the only skill that could be used to test it is Wind Blade, a Primal World Seeker skill that deals 110% base damage, 100% weapon damage and a static amount.

Though personally, I would put my money on BaseDamageMultiplier not multiplying everything simply because that just seems crazy. I mean, Elimination is the only skill we have that does that and it's already plenty powerful as it is, so it just seems fairly unlikely.

As for the reason why the individual hits deal varying amounts of damage, I would think that is for balance reasons. Right now, you can evade most of the damage by interrupting the cast animation, which is good for such a powerful skill. In fact, I have seen other games do a similar thing for balance reasons.

The numbers are from a small sample but the spread is very small so it should be okay enough. I averaged the hits by dividing them by the %base damage each hit does, then averaged hits 1&4 and then 2&3 together, combined them with the 5th hit and got 6300, 6315, and 6264 with a total average of 6293 for unsparked and 13410, 13468, 13493 with a total average of 13457 for triple spark. Sparking multiplied the average damage by 2.138. Just dividing the averages between both sparked/unsparked base damages gives a number of 2.134. If I calculate it as each of the averages only doing equal portions of the 500% wep damage, I fall way short of what I actually got in game (only 1.354x instead of the observed 2.13x - 2.14x) It only makes sense with what I observed when I also multiply the spark percentage by 3.2 so it can just be added straight to the base damage.

So we have a multihit skill that does varying damage on each hit. Basically, what I think is going on is that each hit goes through the same damage calculation process, but they all have a multiplier at the end depending on which hit is in question, thus enabling each hit to deal a varying amount of damage while the total still adds up properly.

After all, while we have had AoEs before, this is the first time we have actual single-target multihit skills.

I do agree with you though that for the non-god tier sins, cursed jail isn't a bad deal at all. b:pleased It just doesn't make much sense for the uber sins to bother with it if they can obtain elimination.

Then again, the skills are really, really powerful for the non-god tier sins. And that is exactly what should happen. Enabling lower-tier sins to deal competitive damage while the same skill is not pushing the god-tier sins up. It makes the power curve a bit smoother.

Cinderball - Raging Tide

Olbaze - Sanctuary wrote: »

So we have a multihit skill that does varying damage on each hit. Basically, what I think is going on is that each hit goes through the same damage calculation process, but they all have a multiplier at the end depending on which hit is in question, thus enabling each hit to deal a varying amount of damage while the total still adds up properly.

I think I get what you are saying. The skill adds up the total damage in one big pool and then takes portions of it that vary a bit to arrive at the amounts. Maybe I could test it by using triple spark and timing elimination so that it wears off on the 2nd or 3rd hit? I could also swap from npc to G15 nirvy with no attack levels partway through to alter my damage that way. If it uses a single total of 3.2x base damage when you channel the skill to make calculations from, then it should act as if I were sparked or had that weapon on the whole time right?

I personally think it acts like five separate attacks in that the first and fourth hits roll their own base damages and multiply it by 0.6, second and third hits roll two more base damages and multiply by 0.4, and fifth hits rolls the base damage again and multiplies by 1.2. Sort of like five autoattacks but with only 320% base damage instead of 500% base damage due to the multipliers. I think they'd be too lazy to add a variance into the skill multipliers themselves when it could just draw from base damage each time which already varies. I tested the amounts dozens of times but only screenied a few because I often critted several times per skill use making the numbers harder to sort through. I'm pretty confident they are constant at 60%, 40%, 40%, 60%, and 120% base respectively because the damages never varied by much more than 1% which is also the variance range of my base damage, but I'd have to get some recording software to be totally sure.

I only wager on it multiplying all spark damage by 3.2x because it fits really well with what I observed while using it. Ex. with triple spark: first and fourth hits get 300% wep dmg, second and third hits get 200% wep damage, fifth hit gets 600% wep damage. Anything else seems like it would throw off the ratio between sparked/unsparked total damage which remained almost constant between each hit and almost perfectly matched the ratio between my sparked and unsparked damage. They likely use a different formula than what I rigged up but the end result appears to be the same.

Olbaze - Sanctuary

Cinderball - Raging Tide wrote: »

I think I get what you are saying. The skill adds up the total damage in one big pool and then takes portions of it that vary a bit to arrive at the amounts. Maybe I could test it by using triple spark and timing elimination so that it wears off on the 2nd or 3rd hit? I could also swap from npc to G15 nirvy with no attack levels partway through to alter my damage that way. If it uses a single total of 3.2x base damage when you channel the skill to make calculations from, then it should act as if I were sparked or had that weapon on the whole time right?

I personally think it acts like five separate attacks in that the first and fourth hits roll their own base damages and multiply it by 0.6, second and third hits roll two more base damages and multiply by 0.4, and fifth hits rolls the base damage again and multiplies by 1.2. Sort of like five autoattacks but with only 320% base damage instead of 500% base damage due to the multipliers. I think they'd be too lazy to add a variance into the skill multipliers themselves when it could just draw from base damage each time which already varies. I tested the amounts dozens of times but only screenied a few because I often critted several times per skill use making the numbers harder to sort through. I'm pretty confident they are constant at 60%, 40%, 40%, 60%, and 120% base respectively because the damages never varied by much more than 1% which is also the variance range of my base damage, but I'd have to get some recording software to be totally sure.

I only wager on it multiplying all spark damage by 3.2x because it fits really well with what I observed while using it. Ex. with triple spark: first and fourth hits get 300% wep dmg, second and third hits get 200% wep damage, fifth hit gets 600% wep damage. Anything else seems like it would throw off the ratio between sparked/unsparked total damage which remained almost constant between each hit and almost perfectly matched the ratio between my sparked and unsparked damage. They likely use a different formula than what I rigged up but the end result appears to be the same.

I contacted Asterelle to see if he could shed some light on this, and this is what he had to say. I added emphasis to the relevant bits:

Asterelle wrote:

There are probably a couple more skills that multiply base damage. I know Bloodvow has a component that 150% base damage as well. Base damage is exactly the stat you see in your character sheet and the added skill damage gets added after.

Also the new multihit skills are pretty similar to zhen skills like barrage. You can hit escape to cancel them early and they stop if the target dies. It's annoying though how the skill descriptions aren't going into details about the individual attacks involved.

Considering how constant channel ("zhen") skills work, it would seem that if you change your weapon or lose spark in the middle, it will affect the damage of the hits that come afterwards.

Also, the above quote clarifies that the formula that I posted for damage is indeed correct.

foxxel1980

Hi i dont know how may here have cursed jail, i do and i'm not overly attached tbh.
on a test (prior to combining) i averaged about 4.9K hits to a friend with headhunt.
It was a few days back so my numbers might not be 100% accurate, but directly after this upgrade. (like 5 minutes after the headhunt test, no gear change)
first hit. 2.3K
second hit ~2K
third hit 1.3K
4th hit 4.7K
Which on total is a little over double.

im afraid i cant remember which was and wasnt crit.
But in order of damage its 4, 1, 2, 3

The 4 attacks are in very quick succession, id estimate it at about 1 second, with this first hit being the stun i believe.

But you are right, the person mentioning aps is wrong
this skill hits 4 times, 2 of which atleast are relatively weak, which on a r9rr caster is bad.
You might be better off going for headhunt (which is still a long enough stun to get 2 more skills off) rift. other skill. Doing more total damage and still only hitting 3 times.

now if you have r9rr daggers and such, this skill may be great, but for me at t3+10 its not as gamechanging as it was described.

However this is overall an upgrade on headhunt, it does more total damage, and the stun is better, remember we aren't ONLY killing r9rr casters, those pesky barbs run ~4m/s once hit, and non r9rr casters might not die, but they wont be thanking you in a hurry never the less

Personally in hindsight i would have preferred to get absolute virtue level 4 (currently level 1) and bought this at a later date. But eventually even with the skill as it is, id have got it soon

Slightly roundabout answer. sorry b:laugh Hope this helps

peckked

Some data: Can't remember what armor/gear I was using but I was using Bonerazor daggers (3-5 phys atk) to test and got 5260 2105 3156 10520 for the 4 hits discounting crits. The damage didn't always list in the same order which I suspect was a result of lag. So definitely looks like 25% 10% 15% 50% as the breakdown of damage for the 4 hits.

Anyways...

I was thinking... at end game levels, Sage Earthen Rift and Headhunt hit for similar amounts with Earthen Rift potentially doing a bit more. So with this in mind I decided to try to get peak damage for both earthen rift and cursed jail on the damage tester. After a couple hours of testing I was able to get ~1.15m with a zerk crit on earthen rift and it happened fairly regularly as I had expected since with 66% crit and 20% GoF proc, I can expect 1 in 7.5 to do so. After spending the majority of those 2 hours making attempts with Cursed Jail, the total damage of the 4 hits never even hit 1m damage. Highest totaled just shy at about 980k. The highest damage I did in the last hit of Cursed Jail hit ~620k so the skill should have the potential to hit ~1.24m.

In order to see peak damage with cursed jail you would need to get 4 zerk-crits in a row which is roughly the same odds as getting a DoD from a newer pack or ~0.03%. Even getting a zerk-crit for each of the first three then just a zerk or a crit but not both or neither on the last loses out on at least 1/4 of the damage. Note that ~87% of the time with my crit rate, the last hit will fall into this category, not to mention the 1:300 odds of getting those 3 zerk-crits. Getting that final zerk crit would still need 4x damage on either the 1st hit or both the 2nd and 3rd hit just to near the 1m damage mark and still faces abysmal odds.

Since it seems each of the 4 hits pulls a new value from the weapon damage range for its portion consequently tending to average out damage towards the middle of the weapon's damage range further lowering overall damage output. So even if there's a remote chance to get 4 zerk-crits in a row you're likely never to see anything even approaching true peak damage. In my case that's roughly ~225 less average weapon damage which translates to 6~7% less than optimal damage most of the time.

The skittish kitties is a well made point. Another detail in favor of the skill vs headhunt, is how it deals with defense charms. Someone auto-potting def charms will block the first one or two hits when used as an opener, but it's very unlikely that a charm will affect the last and hardest hit. To this end, it should do more damage than headhunt under similar circumstances. I very rarely opened with Headhunt before for this very reason. The new skill works rather well in this regard. I'm also really starting to like the 1-spark only cost to it. Can someone tell me if this is just for sage or do demons get this as well? Just curious. Can't trust any of the descriptions anymore.

I'm still not happy about the damage.. but it isn't everything. As time goes by I'm actually finding more interesting ways to make use of its mechanics and so far it's worked a little better than I had originally thought.

Cinderball - Raging Tide

PaTMaN - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I had a barb run past me and my stun landed when he was 9m away, and the following 3 hits still landed at that range.

I missed this on my first read through but that is pretty interesting. I wonder what the max range is on this effect? If the range ends up being large enough, it could offset some of the issue of it proccing purify since the caster has to run for longer to avoid the hits. That and the ability to go through most damage reductions could make it a rather nasty skill. Most servers are getting close to unlocking the blood farming instance so we should see quite a few sins with this skill soon.

DionDagger - Dreamweaver

Cinderball - Raging Tide wrote: »

I missed this on my first read through but that is pretty interesting. I wonder what the max range is on this effect? If the range ends up being large enough, it could offset some of the issue of it proccing purify since the caster has to run for longer to avoid the hits. That and the ability to go through most damage reductions could make it a rather nasty skill. Most servers are getting close to unlocking the blood farming instance so we should see quite a few sins with this skill soon.

It was unlocked on my sever yesterday, I should have this skill in a day or so.