Warriors - How to fix our damage mitigation

[Hachiko]

I'm operating on the assumption that the 50 potency is applied to the weapon damage before it's normalized for delay. You're operating under the assumption that the 50 potency is applied to the weapon damage after it's normalized for delay, which is where we're coming to an impasse. I'd be curious to see if anyone has done any log analysis to actually suss out which actually occurs.

Auto-attacks deal their listed physical damage every 3 seconds. Auto-attack damage is simply the listed weapon damage divided by delay. A 50% increase to that damage would apply the same benefits to slow weapons as well as fast ones. I opt into thinking this is the way they do it because that's the way that makes sense to me, else fast weapons are explicitly better than slow ones, which doesn't sit right with me considering it's not like you have much choice (plus, most MMOs have done away with the weapon speed effect construct in favor of normalization of weapon speed across bonuses).

If you apply the 50 potency to the attacks after they are normalized for delay, then, yet, you're going to get differentiated contributions. A weapon with twice the attack speed is going to end up dealing 33% more damage ((.5 + .5) x (1 / .5) = 2; (1 + .5) x (1 / 1) = 1.5; 2/1.5 = .33).

Of course, until you get to massively disparate attack speeds, the differences are remarkably small: The difference between a 2.1 and 2.2 weapon would be 4.7% (((2.1/2.2) + .5) x (1 / (2.1/2.2)) = 1.047). Auto-attack damage makes up roughly 33% of total DPS, so the difference will be all of 1.6%.

There is so much confused stuff in this. Auto attack damage is "Raw" damage Times Delay Divided by 3.

The way Sword Oath works is it adds a 50 potency attack every time you hit an enemy. It doesn't deal 50% of your auto attack damage every time you hit an enemy. It effectively increases auto attack potency by 50.

With Curtana (+1), for exampl, Auto Attack potency is (2.32 / 3) * 100 = 77.333 potency. For Allagan Blade it's (2.16 / 3) *100 = 72 potency.

You can confirm this is how you get auto attack potency by going in game. Track your auto attack damage and your Fast Blade (or Heavy Swing) damage. Divide the Fast Blade dmg by 1.5 (it's 150 potency). This will be your "raw" damage. Now, multiply this number by whatever your auto attack potency is (i.e. Delay / 3). This will return the damage you are dealing on auto attacks.

As noted above, Allagan blade is 72 Potency attack at 2.16 intervals. Adding 50 to that means 122 Potency every 2.16 seconds.
For Curtana +1, it's 77 potency every 2.32. Adding 50 to that makes effective auto attack potency 127.33 every 2.32 seconds.

Now normalizing these to 2.5 seconds puts Allagan blade at 141 potency every 2.5 seconds, and Curtana +1 at 137.

It's a small difference, (around 3%) but it's enough to be significant. With Curtana, Sword Oath is 10% more effective than if you estimate it at 50 potency per 2.5 seconds, and with Alagan Blade (or Garuda's) it's going to be bigger than that.

So what's the conversion? I find it kind of annoying that everything that increases WAR attributes (Berserk, Foresight) increases a baseline attribute rather than an end value whereas everything a PAL gets apparently increases end values. It's not only annoying as a WAR but it's annoying to theorycraft since there isn't a standard mechanism.

It has to do with the damage formula. I'm not 100% convinced by Valks formulas. But you can try it out with different weapons. As the Ratio of Weapon Damage : Attack Power increases, the damage bonus from Berserk decreases. With a weathered axe it will be 50% or more bonus damage. With a Relic weapon it will probably be less than 40 (it was 41ish when I tested it with an ilvl 49 weapon).

[Kitru]

There is so much confused stuff in this.

PAL is my alt tank job and I don't spend much time in Sword Oath when I was playing it so I've got no problem admitting that I got it wrong.

Even so, the value of Sword Oath is diluted by the percentage of total damage made up by auto-attacks. A 3% disparity in auto-attack damage is going to generate a 1% disparity in total end DPS. Considering comparative DPS at the moment, where 200 is "good", you're talking about a loss of 2 DPS total, which is going to be less than the difference between realistic play and optimal play. Until you get to *massive* disparities in auto-attack speed, the difference is so minute that it doesn't matter.