Dark Arts Bloodspiller

[RLofOBFL]

So Dark Arts is additive? Well crap.

[Rathael]

So Dark Arts is additive? Well crap.

Well the tooltips imply that it is directly additive. They directly increase the potency of your abilities by a set amount.

[Aana]

So Dark Arts is additive? Well crap.

Yup. Whatever the skill says "DA +XXX potency" is just that. Adding flat potency. No % bonus or anything like that. So the one that adds the most potency (Grit Bloodspiller, Carve and spit) you should prioritize over the 'standard' +140 potency stuff. If choosing between the 140s, take your pick, they are all the same.

[Xan_Kriegor]

You guys are correct, my bad.

Personally, the fact that this is such a wash and the difference or reasons to choose one ability over another to DA is virtually non-existent is a huge problem with the design of DRK and makes DA more monotonous and "spammy" feeling as an ability, as well as just making the job feel overall less fun due to a lack of choice and potential strategy.

I completely agree with you. It is for sure a design flaw. I liked the idea of choosing carefully which skill I would spend my mana. But it doesn't matter. It is just a dumb design.

[Mycow8me]

Crits/DH don't have ANY bearing on when you should use DA.

I guess our overall thought process towards this is where we disagree. There is no bearing on when it should be used till you didn't use it missing the critical or direct with it and lost potential DPS assuming you had the MP for one, it should have been used there. Having no control over it does not justify it, otherwise we wouldn't have had warriors whining about not criting during their berserk windows. It is what it is.

Don't know, I agree that there's no way of knowing when to best use it but to say it has no bearing is probably more than I can agree with. That's like saying using it during littany, battle voice, or chain strategem is irrelevant since crits don't matter but they do.

[Mahrze]

Do you treat it the same as Siphon Strike where you only use DA on it if you're going to cap on MP or are you supposed to DA every Bloodspiller as much as possible like Souleater?

If you have the MP to press the shiny DA to buff Bloodspiller: do it. Basically like Souleater.

[Aana]

I guess our overall thought process towards this is where we disagree. There is no bearing on when it should be used till you didn't use it missing the critical or direct with it and lost potential DPS assuming you had the MP for one, it should have been used there. Having no control over it does not justify it, otherwise we wouldn't have had warriors whining about not criting during their berserk windows. It is what it is.

Don't know, I agree that there's no way of knowing when to best use it but to say it has no bearing is probably more than I can agree with. That's like saying using it during littany, battle voice, or chain strategem is irrelevant since crits don't matter but they do.

Hindsighting what crit and didn't crit is an utter waste of brain power. You cant predict it so it shouldn't inform your decision when to use the skill. All you can do is play the statistical average game. The misconception im talking about is purely the idea that base potency of the skill you DA somehow makes DA better or worse. It doesn't. +140 potency on a 400 pot skill is not somehow better than +140 pot on a 250 pot skill. 140 is 140 is 140. There is no difference whatsoever. Of course you should use more stuff under litany. When I say crit doesn't matter I mean this weird idea that the chance to a DABS somehow makes DA better to use on BS than syphon.

The only time that decision would be tilted was if you have a buff on for 1 more GCD and it will fall off. Well lets say litany is up on for your next syphon strike, but will fall off before youre soul eater. Your darn right you should DA the syphon. 140pot under litany is better than 140 potency not under litany. Or trick. Or balance. Or whatever. I figured that was obvious. The only time it would get more complicated is choosing between a higher DA potency with no buff vs a 140 potency with buff, but that's still just a math problem with an answer. EG: Brotherhood is up for SE, but will wear off before you SE>50 blood>Bloodpiller under grit (175 DA potency). Well brotherhood buffs 140 by 5% so that's 147 potency. Still less than 175 so save it for Grit BS. You can do similar things for any buff or combination of buffs in the game.

But outside of buffs falling off, theres no reason to choose this +140 pot vs that +140 pot.

[Lyth]

The reason why the baseline probabilities of DH/Crit don't influence your decision to DA is due to the distributive principle of algebra. Let's say that a particular combo action does 'x' potency. The DA version of the ability does 'x+140' potency. If you DH, these become 1.25(x) and 1.25(x+140), respectively. The net gain from landing a DH on a DA combo action is then

1.25(x+140) - 1.25(x)
= 1.25x + 175 -1.25x
= 175

As you can see, this expression is independent of x. So it doesn't really matter which combo action you use DA on. You can think of it as equivalent to a 140 potency oGCD which can crit/DH independently of each combo action.

Now, if you're in a raid buff window, you want your biggest potency attacks to line up with it. So you want to maximise DA and BS usage when TA/embolden/litany/etc. are up, so that you make the most of the multipliers. These are two different scenarios.

[Claire_Pendragon]

While DA functions as "Additive" its not actually adding any damage to a base amount of damage.
Instead, the BASE damage is 140 higher.

So there shouldn't be an argument of additive vs multiplicative, since theres no numbers being combined.

[Mycow8me]

I don't think there ever was an argument over the math and logic. I was just clearing up the idea that you want your dark arts hits to critical, direct, or direct crit as much as possible for the extra critical etc damage and if you have a scenario where you don't use dark arts on syphon strike and it crits but you used it on souleater and it doesn't, you've lowered your net gain from dark arts if you were able to use it on that syphon instead. My first post was just clearing that up. Then we went on a tangent about whether or not criticals have a bearing on choice since we have no control over them.