Warriors - How to fix our damage mitigation

[Kitru]

Sword oath absolutely provides more for a fast weapon than a slow weapon.

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%.

[Kiteless]

Berserk provides 50% increased damage for 20 seconds followed by 5 seconds of only auto-attack damage every 90 seconds. Split this up into auto-attack contribution and ability contribution.

Auto attack contribution gets 11.11% (50% for 20 seconds every 90 seconds). The ability contribution is substantially lower because you have 5 seconds of Pacification. As such, you get 20 seconds of 1.5x performance, 5 seconds of 0 performance, and 65 seconds of 1.0x performance, which totals out to 5.56% better than average. I was only doing the ability damage contribution (which means I need to go back and fix that math to account for auto-attacks).

This is not true. Berserk increases your attack power by 50%, not your damage. The end result is that the damage increases is actually lower than 50%.

[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]

This is not true. Berserk increases your attack power by 50%, not your damage. The end result is that the damage increases is actually lower than 50%.

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.

[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.

[Ahlen]

Honestly since they share gear (mostly) I've just broken down and am working towards finishing getting my Paladin to 50. Until warriors get some fixes, I'd much rather play the more reliable and better able to clear content tank.

[HiirNoivl]

FULL VIT STACK WITH VIT GEAR


So, I started out with 30 VIT stat Allocation and used your typical VIT and Parry tanking gear. I didn't want to prejudice the Parse at all by playing in a different play style than my STR set up so I tried to maximize my Self heals and Damage the best I could. I had an HP pool of 6861 with Defiance.

This is what I came up with for a 31 minute predictably-smelly DF run. No we didn't win.

I did my best with it. My self heals were pretty low: 876 for a low inner beast heal and 1878 for a high. My DPS? 71.88 with one parser and 76.29 with another... and that was with me actually trying to you know... DPS. That's really low. And it shows. I mean 876 for an Inner Beast is basically 0.1 of my total HP pool. Most of the time it was healing around 1100 or 1200 though but it did well with Crits that run. Inner Beast hit for an AVG of 415.30 or 1245.9 healed.

Another issue was hate. The Offtank PLD made a FLASH at the add to catch Chirada. Unfortunately, Garuda caught that too and off she went to wipe the party. She was literally gone in a flash. So my hate was pretty tenuous too. But I guess that's to be expected when my Enmity is through damage and I'm doing so little damage.

The healer was handling pretty much 100% of the weight. I healed about 4 percent of me and the healer did about 96 percent of everything... so let's try to change that.

STR 20 VIT 10

I switch back to STR 20 / VIT 10. Now I'm working with an HP pool of 6498 with Defiance... not that big of a difference. Let's make it bigger with a Peltast Ring instead of an HQ Amber ring and my HQ Darksteel melded Heavy Flanchard instead of a Darklight Heavy Flanchard. HP is now 6360. Now let's reset my Parsers and Try again. It was another DF 30 minute Lose Fest with some good results on the parser.

98.44 DPS for one and 96.31 with another this time. My highest Inner Beast healed for 2910 and my lowest Beast for 1035 On average it healed 1385.34. My healing climbed to 9.84 of healing done to myself, though the main healer was a bit spammy.

25 to 27 more DPS is nothing to Sniff at. 5 percent more healing isn't either.

[Kommunist]

So I tanked Hydra last night and made the healers QQ so hard, I'm in AK+DL gear, 2 healer spams can't keep me up. So....I had to spin the boss round and round to force tail swipes so I dont take damage. Cool story....time to level paladin.

[Amayasu]

So I tanked Hydra last night and made the healers QQ so hard, I'm in AK+DL gear, 2 healer spams can't keep me up. So....I had to spin the boss round and round to force tail swipes so I dont take damage. Cool story....time to level paladin.

Honest question; were you the only tank, and did you catch the debuffs (which are a pain in the ass to avoid with the inherent lag this game has).

Hydra doesn't hurt if you mitigate those two mechanics. I appreciate i'm a Paladin at the moment, and i'm all in favour of seeing Warriors buffed, but you really shouldn't be having trouble with Hydra... ?

As for Warrior fixes, I'd be happy to see a trait double their parry chance. That's mitigation, right there; pretty much 20% reduction every time you parry, and you'd parry more than a PLD. Paladins still get flexibility to choose their blocking strategy, and the passive 20% damage reduction. Also, GLD's Rampart should be crossed to Mara/Warr. You need a damage smoothing ability. I don't get the source point of this thread though; Wars don't need more pew pew. Threat is fine, damage is fine. Wars need a little love to stay alive.

[Aleisterz]

So I tanked Hydra last night and made the healers QQ so hard, I'm in AK+DL gear, 2 healer spams can't keep me up. So....I had to spin the boss round and round to force tail swipes so I dont take damage. Cool story....time to level paladin.

I think you're suppose to have two tanks to split that whatever attack the Hydra does... One tank isn't really the way to go in my opinion cause.. even if you SPIN that thing there is still a good chance you'll get hit with that 3 head smacker move and dye.