4.05 - Tank DPS comparison

[Quor]

snippety

Disregarding the facts that I've seen a lot of DRK's who do not have WAR at 70 try and tell me how to play WAR.....
Theory is still just theory. To paraphrase the saying, if you want to know how something "should" work, ask an engineer. If you want to know how something actually works, ask a mechanic.

I'd like to see some real world results. If I had DRK at 70 I'd do it myself, but I've been hitting the WAR tank cheevos pretty hard.

Well, pretty hard for someone who doesn't powergame anyway. Just another 124 to go! Kill me now

Take a fight, like O1 for example. It's a pretty good setup for this, because there's high uptime on the target, not a lot of mechanics that will stop GCD rolling for very long, it's solo tankable so the OT can stay DPS the entire time, and there's lots of errant aoe capable of popping TBN bubbles. Do a few, 3-4 tops, of those fights just focusing on DA+SE, with no TBN's used at all. The only BS usage would be from naturally generated blood. Then do the same for 3-4 fights, only this time, use TBN as much as possible during times when it would pop. O1 has a lot of errant aoe, so there are plenty of opportunities where tossing it on a squishy will ensure something eats the 10%. Hell, you can even go in with friends and tell them to strategically stand in certain aoe's to ensure maximum TBN popness. The point is to try and get as many BS via TBN as possible, in addition to natural BS.

Then compare the two. 3-4 fights should be enough to get an idea of where it all stands, and if there's no significant difference then we have our answer, using real world data instead of theorycrafted on-paper numbers. If there's a difference, one way or the other, that's significant as well. But I haven't seen any direct comparisons in a controlled environment like that (which makes sense, since Omega has only been out for 2 weeks and I doubt anyone thought to try a test like this yet). Obviously any fights that have "derp" moments would be tossed out of the pool and redone, but you get the general idea.

Hard data in a real situation is what would convince me. I enjoy the fun of theorycrafting as much as the next guy, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Oh, almost forgot:

You can't increase the data set for one set of statistics and leave it the same for the other. If the given number is 3, 4, 5, or 100 GCDs, it doesn't matter, it still at best only breaks even.

I accounted for that earlier in the thread.

SE combo = 700 potency over 3 GCD's.
Bloodspiller = 400 potency for 1 GCD.
TBN, if broken, allows for another BS due to the 50 blood gained. Thus, for this example, I'll assume TBN was used (but not DA, on BS or SE, that'll come later) to allow for a third BS, and that the DRK is at 100 blood gauge going in. Now the SE combo takes place over three GCD's, while BS is a single GCD, so we'll be comparing a point at which the two intersect, which will consist of 12 GCD's. This is 4 SE combos or three SE combos + 3 BS.

4 SE combos over 12 GCD's results in a net gain of 2800 potency.
3 SE combos + 3 BS over 12 GCD's results in a net gain of 3300 potency. Again, this assumes no DA's in either combo, and single use of TBN in the second combo to enable a third BS. But even without that third BS, if we just factor in a Hard Slash as the 12th GCD (instead of a BS) then that's still 3050 potency total over 12 GCD's, which is more than just running the SE combo.

Now let's look at what DA does, compared to TBN (since the argument is that TBN is always a potency loss over DA). For this example, we will use four DA's in the SE combo (all on SE) and 3 DA's + one TBN in the BS combo. That means an equal amount of mana was spent, and again we are starting at 100 blood gauge in the tank for the BS combo.

4 SE + DA combos over 12 GCD's results in a net gain of 3360 potency.
2 non-DA SE combos plus one DA+SE, and 3 DA+BS (including TBN) over 12 GCD's results a net gain of 3860 potency.

Or, for those who would prefer to see an average, you have 280 PPGCD for the pure DA+SE combo vs 321.7 PPGCD for the combo that uses 3 DA+BS and TBN.

Now that of course is an extra TBN in the BS combo's, but you can easily subtract 140 potency to account for one less DA in the BS combo's. That still leaves the BS combo ahead of the pure DA+SE combo 3720 vs 3360.

[SyzzleSpark]

snip

The problem here is that you're asking us to do field testing for something that can easily be verified just by looking at tooltips.

Why would we run any number of O1S's to test this and subject the results to composition, crit RNG, player performance, etc.?

The point is that the difference is extremely small, almost unnoticeable, to the point where even something like the aforementioned crit RNG would mask it completely, which is part of the problem; this is why people are complaining. Naturally gained Bloodspillers cause your PPGCD to actually go up by an appreciable amount, whereas TBN-proc'd Bloodspillers barely change it at all, and are either an extremely small loss, or (more rarely) an extremely small gain, to the point where TBN may as well not even do anything other than provide the shield. Every single time you use TBN to proc Bloodspiller you could have easily used that mana to DA a natural Bloodspiller, a Souleater, or even a Syphon Strike, and your PPGCD would be the same, if not slightly higher... for all intents and purposes it wouldn't change at all. Its a goddamn zero-sum game and that's why people are complaining.

If TBN was simply a 10-20% shield that cost no mana and had no blood gauge generation attached to it, DRK's DPS floor/ceiling would statistically not move at all.

[Quor]

If TBN was simply a 10-20% shield that cost no mana and had no blood gauge generation attached to it, DRK's DPS floor/ceiling would statistically not move at all.

Over the long run sure, but the long run isn't the only thing that matters.

However, with what I just mathed out in my previous post, I can see some justification for, at the least, lowering the MP cost of TBN. Make it half of what it is now and you double it's value compared to DA+SE. Alternatively, you could "bake in" the DA effect on BS when TBN is broken. Hell, remove the blood gauge gain and change TBN to something like "if the shield is broken, the cost of the next Bloodspiller or Quietus is removed and it's potency is increased by 140/60."

[SyzzleSpark]

Over the long run sure, but the long run isn't the only thing that matters.

However, with what I just mathed out in my previous post, I can see some justification for, at the least, lowering the MP cost of TBN. Make it half of what it is now and you double it's value compared to DA+SE. Alternatively, you could "bake in" the DA effect on BS when TBN is broken. Hell, remove the blood gauge gain and change TBN to something like "if the shield is broken, the cost of the next Bloodspiller or Quietus is removed and it's potency is increased by 140/60."

Now we're making suggestions.