Curse

Narcism · Feb 10, 2005, 02:14 AM // 02:14

Quote:

Could you at least tell us if you ARE talking about our ideas on the alpha boards?

No, no we can't.

Weezer_Blue · Feb 10, 2005, 02:20 AM // 02:20

haha. narcism you're evil.

anyway... i guess from all this that I should sub in Read the Wind instead of Favourable Winds. Or is the speed increase on Favourable Winds much more dramatic that RTW so that I should hold on to it? It doesn't matter how many buffs you've got if your arrows won't land where you want them (in a warrior's forehead)

Narcism · Feb 10, 2005, 02:22 AM // 02:22

Ditch Favourable Winds?

Sausaletus Rex · Feb 10, 2005, 02:35 AM // 02:35

I shall not concede!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Weezer_Blue

haha. narcism you're evil.

Narc's bush league. Not evil. Of course, he's in Agony so that tells you all you need to know right there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Weezer_Blue

anyway... i guess from all this that I should sub in Read the Wind instead of Favourable Winds. Or is the speed increase on Favourable Winds much more dramatic that RTW so that I should hold on to it? It doesn't matter how many buffs you've got if your arrows won't land where you want them (in a warrior's forehead)

RTW isn't all that good. Over time you end up spending so much time and energy to keep it up that it's just as easy to use another attack and up your DPS - or DPM, DOT, XFL, KMFDM, or whatever one of Chuck's acronyms you prefer - that way. You'll get just as much from an extra Power Shot every 15 or whatever it is these days seconds than you will from having RTW on everything over that time. Unless you really want to pack as much damage into those 15 seconds as possible, it's forgettable and so are most preps for damage.

Favorable Wind has its own problems, of course. The real switch you want here is to go Ran/Ele, go Exp 12 (11+1), Marks 12 (10+2), Elemental of your choice 10 and pick up a Conjure. That's 60 seconds of +damage on all your bow attacks for just, what, 5 energy? Sold. Combine that with FW or better yet with FW and RTW and there you go.

Weezer_Blue · Feb 10, 2005, 02:43 AM // 02:43

Thanks. I guess I'll stick with Favourable Winds. I can get more attacks off over a longer period of time as well as get in a bunch of power shots + conjure lightning. My current build looks like this:

Hunters Shot
Power Shot
Pin Down
Distracting Shot
Favourable Winds
Marksman's Wager {E} (going to see if I need this - probably not)
Enervating Charge
Conjure Lightning

Hunters Shot adds bleeding to running foes, and from having my artery severed countless times I can tell you that's quite annoying. Power Shot is obviously just for the pure damage. I was considering Precision Shot too but it has a higher recharge time in place of high energy and it doesn't miss as easily. Distracting Shot is there rather than concussion shot because Concussion only works on spells. And I like taking down warriors the most (they're fun to kill). Favourable Winds keeps everything as accurate as possible for long periods of time (while the match lasts a long time, the major battles usually don't take very long and one team ends up retreating by the time it runs out). Pin Down is obvious. Enervating Charge causes a little damage but more importantly it causes weakness. And Conjure Lightning is obvious as well. If I don't need Wager, I could put Glimmering Mark in its place. Some people have pointed out blindness but I'm trusting to a good monk for this build so i don't need Antidote Signet.

...But this isn't a strategy discussion board anyway so er... yeah...

Ensign · Feb 10, 2005, 02:54 AM // 02:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpukilla

In fact, if we found out someone would be getting in trouble!

Not really - you can figure out which forum threads are being talked about by following the external links on the alpha forums. If a given thread here is getting a lot of hits from forums.guildwars.com, you can guess that alphas are talking about it.

Just saying.

Peace,
-CxE

cpukilla · Feb 10, 2005, 04:00 AM // 04:00

*sniff alphas hoarding knowledge!

Charles, is there an easy way to do that? I'm not quite tech savy enough

Ensign · Feb 10, 2005, 04:18 AM // 04:18

Not unless you have access to server logs.

Does it really matter? If an issue is hot in the community, you can be certain that testers and the developers are aware of it. The test is a community tool, filled with people from the community. Alpha testers who post on said hot button threads. Connect the dots.

Peace,
-CxE

cpukilla · Feb 10, 2005, 04:51 AM // 04:51

No, it doesn't, and I know already that anet listens to fan feedback simply by the choices they make. But it would be cool to know if they changed something based on a comment you or someone else made, even if its a selfish kind of curiosity

.

Ensign · Feb 10, 2005, 10:46 AM // 10:46

I've been thinking about area of effect damage, and just how valuable that is compared to focused fire damage. On the surface, it seems simple - if a skill hits two targets instead of one, you've dealt twice as much damage, which is twice as good.

Not so fast.

This question really gets to the heart of what health and damage is. Your goal when you attack someone isn't to deal damage to them - it is to kill them. The difference is subtle. If I have 480 health, I really don't care if I lose the first 479 health, it's that last point that I care about. The rest of the points are just buffer, health that defends against your attacks until you land a killing blow. If I can kill, shut down, or otherwise defeat you before you take that last point, it really doesn't matter how much damage you dealt me, because I won. In the same way, dealing damage to your opponent isn't a goal unto itself - it's merely a mechanism for setting your opponent up for a killing blow.

What does this have to do with area of effect damage? Area of effect damage is bad for the same reasons that focus fire is good - it kills people faster, and even if it doesn't kill it puts the fear of death in people that makes them change their behavior and worry about survival instead of doing whatever it is they normally do. If you spread your damage around, your enemies can keep doing whatever it is they do longer, putting off their fear of death and instead executing their gameplan, their plan to beat you. Clearly, damage to two targets isn't as valuable as double damage to one target. But how much worse?

The answer to this lies in how much effective time you grant your enemy by dividing damage instead of concentrating.

Let's take a simple example - you're a Warrior attacking two identical targets, and the entirity of your plan is to hit them with your sword until they die. Pretty good plan, for a Warrior. Ahem. Anyway, let's say they don't have any sort of self healing, and you can drop both of them in ten seconds - five seconds if you focus on them one at a time. While you're beating on them they're doing something back to you, be it damage or energy denial or whatever else enemies do. What do you know, you just hit things with swords, maybe an axe if you're feeling particularly adventurous.

Ahem.

Ok, so every five seconds, the enemy does X stuff to you. Now you have a choice. First, you can choose to focus fire them - killing one, then the other. If you do that, the two enemies will do 2X worth of stuff to you, then one drops. Then the remaining enemy will do another X while you finish him off. So overall, focusing fire on one of two enemies allows them to do 3X worth of stuff to you.

Or, you could choose to divide your damage, one hit to one, then one hit to the other. If you do things this way, both enemies will deal X every five seconds until they both die simultaneously at the ten second mark. If you do things this way, they'll get to do 4X back to you.

So dividing your damage up between targets is only 3/4 as effective as focus fire, since the time to kill is identical and the amount of stuff they can do back to you is all that changes, really.

Now, what if you were hitting both of them simultaneously? If that were the case, you'd be able to drop both in five seconds, and they'd only be able to deal 2X damage back to you. Area effect damage is 3/2 times as effective as focused fire on a single target.

You can repeat this process for more targets, and in doing so you get a simple rule - every additional target beyond the first is worth 1/2 as much as hitting a single target.

So as far as simplistic models go, when calculating damage to multiple targets from an AoE attack, add 50% to your DPS figure for each additional target. If an AoE attack would deal 20 DPS against a single target, it would deal 30 DPS to two targets, 40 DPS to 3, 50 DPS to 4, and so forth.

This is just a model for effectiveness. Clearly, the actual damage you're dealing has gone up as you'd expect, +100% damage per target. But from the perspective of killing opponents and denying them the chance to counterattack, your effectiveness only goes up 50% per target. There's more to area effect damage than that - it's worse when you take healing into account since it gives more targets the ability to take care of themselves, but it also has side benefits in causing the fear in enemy monks, from dropping multiple targets at once and forcing them into triage. Plus many more effects - clearly this isn't comprehensive.

Still, for the purposes of working area of effect skills into the equation and comparing how effective they are, it's a good approximation.

Peace,
-CxE

Feb 10, 2005, 12:04 PM // 12:04

I can see this is going to end up getting into what Damage,Health and Time really do for you in Guild Wars.

Ensign · Feb 10, 2005, 12:32 PM // 12:32

Yeah, that's the idea. All the different resources in the game interact, they trade with each other, and ultimately some trades are good and some are bad. It isn't so simple that you can just assign a raw effectiveness number to every skill or anything, and ultimately you still have to execute. But what we're doing here is figuring out ways to look at the game, to lay a foundation of concepts and valuations from which more advanced strategies come.

Figuring out relationships between, say, energy and health are pretty straightforward. The hard resource is time. Just how valuable a second is depends so much on advanced strategy, on just what you can do in a second and how much more valuable time is now than later. It's an incredibly difficult subject that will never have a straight equivilency like some of the other resources, like 1 energy = 1.5 armor = 12 health.

So, naturally, time is the resource that interests me the most, and the one that's going to devour me as the game evolves.

Peace,
-CxE

cpukilla · Feb 10, 2005, 01:25 PM // 13:25

I disagree somewhat with what your saying... I think it depends on what you concentrate on, the enemy's damage output, or healing ability. If I focus fire one enemy, then the healer can either get outpaced trying to heal him, or use protecting enchantments and/or stances to keep him alive. Healing generally won't cut it, but enchantments can if they are recast after being removed. This is energy efficient, and can (sometimes) save the ff'd player. But if I aoe 4 enemies at once, or try to keep hitting them with aoe, its no longer viable to use protection, you need to use healing to bring them back up to health. So focus fire vs aoe change the kind of monk you need, protection or healing. Healing is generally done with single target spells, and to do aoe you either need to be close (heal area, divine healing) or pay 25 en for heal party (inefficient). Aoe attacks are a very good way to drain the healer's energy supply, while single target attacks are better to deplete the protector's energy and/or force long recharges on some skills.

Heres what I am going for : while aoe can take off much more health than focus fire, it lacks the killing power. So why not open up with some good aoe's, then focus in on a weakened player you want to focus fire into oblivion. With any luck the enemy team will have too many hurt players to heal them all at once, and you can pick the target you want dead, and focus him before they can react. This causes confusion in the other team, it weakens the entire group, and it makes focus firing even more effective.

Nefser · Feb 10, 2005, 02:09 PM // 14:09

If you were lucky (skilled?) enough to aoe 4 enemies more than once...very nice. But at that point, a) you're probably rather low on energy and b) have 4 rather pissed-off and partially damaged players looking to put some big hurt on someone. You've also certainly got the attention of a healer who may be getting ready to heal one or more of those players, especially if any one of them starts to get hit a bit more...which is what you're just about to do.

If they're all willing and able to turn and attack you...you're toast. You will not be able to surive multiple attacks on you from 4 targets while you busy yourself trying to finish off target #1 (partially damaged).

If they don't all turn and attack...well, lucky for you. But in that case you're still only going to be able to focus on 1 of those targets and I wouldn't be surprised if at least two of them turned on you.

But lets look at this another way: Let's say you had a different build with good, single-target attacks. You unload the same amount of time and energy (or less?) with those attacks on one of those '4 targets sitting temptingly close in AoE range'. Unload and keep unloading until one is dead. While this is occurring, it may be that only one target (the one being damaged most likely) will have turned to attack you. Perhaps two. This now gets you in the same situation as Charles mentioned previously, but you've probably got the first target rather well 'in hand' by now and will be looking to finish that one off and start on #2.

All in all AoE's are more of a tactical or defensive action, not a high-damage set-up for the killing blow.

AoE's are a tough call - you want to hit at least 2 and really 3+ targets to get the most BfyB. But does any player (esp. and El/*) really want to get the undivided attention of 3+ enemies? Probably not.

FrogDevourer · Feb 10, 2005, 02:12 PM // 14:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

This is just a model for effectiveness. Clearly, the actual damage you're dealing has gone up as you'd expect, +100% damage per target. But from the perspective of killing opponents and denying them the chance to counterattack, your effectiveness only goes up 50% per target.

I think this AoE model is a good start.

Then how do you adress the loss of efficiency which is due to range effects. More precisely how much melee damage do you lose by running after your target ? Do you make one swing every 2/3s instead of 1.75 ? Is this ratio weapon dependant ?

Then optionally, I'd ask how much "running penetration" damage you get by using slow/stop effects. Do they translate into +xx% damage versus running targets ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

Figuring out relationships between, say, energy and health are pretty straightforward. The hard resource is time. Just how valuable a second is depends so much on advanced strategy, on just what you can do in a second and how much more valuable time is now than later. It's an incredibly difficult subject that will never have a straight equivilency like some of the other resources, like 1 energy = 1.5 armor = 12 health.

So, naturally, time is the resource that interests me the most, and the one that's going to devour me as the game evolves.

I wonder if the value of one second is as universal as one armor/health. Two seconds could be worth 10 burst energy and 3 long term energy. Continuous effects (e.g: DoT) can have a very good time/dmg ratio but they are not as threatening as a big 2s punch.

Freyas · Feb 10, 2005, 10:36 PM // 22:36

Well, when you start looking at the effect on players and teams, AoE can be very helpful when hitting multiple targets, better than the same amount of damage on one target in many situations. From my experience playing a healer, I can keep any one target alive through an entire team of warriors, so long as that target is not myself, and the team does not use rend enchantments more than once or twice(though with another healer/protector, even rend can be handled). However, once you make the healers spread their attention to other players, it makes it more difficult for them to keep your priority targets alive.

The best tactic for damage unless you are able to kill a character before the healer can react/cast their spells, is to deal massive damage to two or more targets. Enchantments can protect one target so that they are basically invincible, but if you're forcing the other team to spread their enchantments out among several targets, those enchantments lose much of their efficiency, and you're much more likely to be able to break through the opponents healing.

One strategy that I've seen to be very effective is to focus one target, and after they get a couple enchantments switch to another target. This is much easier and more effective using Rangers and Elementalists, as target changing with warriors takes time to move into melee range and get around any other players in between you and the new target. On the other hand, Rangers and Elementalists can immediately change to a second target while losing little or no DPS.

As Charles said, the point of damage is not to remove the first 479 health, but rather the last 1. However, you have to factor in the strengths of the healers versus different types of damage. With something like Healing Seed or Healing Hands on a target, the more people you have attacking the target, and the faster they are attacking, the more effective those enchantments become. However, this can be completely bypassed by changing targets as soon as they recieve that enchantment- the healer now has less energy and 25 seconds before they can recast the enchantment. The same goes for most other enchantments that are strong against focus-fire: Shield of Deflection is excellent to protect someone getting hit by lots of warriors and/or rangers, but if the other team immediately switches targets, the SoD does nothing, and even though it's a spammable enchantment, after 2-3 rapid casts to the different targets the opponents are attacking, the enchanter will be out of energy, letting you to deal your damage without having to deal with the enchantments.

Overall, more than just the amount of damage you can output, you also have to consider the utility of that damage- how fast you can change targets, how much you can lessen the ability of the enemy healers to keep their team alive, as well as being able to deal enough damage to break through the healing in the first place. AoE can be helpful in this respect as utility damage, more than just damage over time- if you nail 3 targets with a high-damage AoE spell, and follow up by focusing those targets, switching targets when big enchantments are cast on them, you've done a good job of increasing the burden placed on the enemy healers. If you're using AoE to deal 100 damage to enemy warriors, and your team is focusing all their attacks on the enemy healers or spellcasters, the AoE isn't too worthwhile, as the healer can ignore it in favor of healing the people taking sustained damage. Similarly, Elementalists have the advantage of taking off the last amount of health through enchantments. Healing Seed will do little if you hit the target with a Lightning Orb, and Shield of Deflection is useless against high-damage spells. In this respect, an elementalist can be more effective taking off that last little bit of health than a warrior or ranger, as they can bypass most healing enchantments which can stop the warriors and rangers from killing their target.

Keramon · Feb 11, 2005, 01:29 AM // 01:29

One of the most effective benefits of AOE is the effect of confusion. Casting it into the center of a group often results in the said group being split up and running in different directions and concentrating on getting away from the AOE rather than attacking for a few seconds. That is not something that is measurable however, it should still be mentioned.

Xapti · Feb 12, 2005, 05:40 PM // 17:40

Ensign's post, #50, points out some good information regarding AOE.
A very pertinent addition explaning more the advantages of AOE is in Freyas' post, #56.
I tend to agree more that AoE is more beneficial than it might seem DPS wise due to those arguments (in post #56), even though they still are considerably less powerful than focus fire in some circumstances.

perhaps summary of those two posts?:
Focus fire can be very useful if it can kill the target before it gets many buffs on it, but once certain enchants are enabled, ethier begin focus fire on another target, and/or start use AoE damage.

edit: and about using an energy gain weapon...
For Standard primary warrior, regen would be 2 pips, 2/3 of a point every second, 40 points per minute. Assuming the same warrior is using an energy gain sword, and attacking 100% of the time, he would loose 1 pip, and gain .75 per second. This results in a total gain of +.25 EP per second maximum, resulting in maximum sustainable energy consumption being 65 EP/minute

Ellestar · Mar 16, 2005, 04:44 PM // 16:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...0&postcount=50
Ok, so every five seconds, the enemy does X stuff to you. Now you have a choice. First, you can choose to focus fire them - killing one, then the other. If you do that, the two enemies will do 2X worth of stuff to you, then one drops. Then the remaining enemy will do another X while you finish him off. So overall, focusing fire on one of two enemies allows them to do 3X worth of stuff to you.

Or, you could choose to divide your damage, one hit to one, then one hit to the other. If you do things this way, both enemies will deal X every five seconds until they both die simultaneously at the ten second mark. If you do things this way, they'll get to do 4X back to you.

So dividing your damage up between targets is only 3/4 as effective as focus fire, since the time to kill is identical and the amount of stuff they can do back to you is all that changes, really.

Now, what if you were hitting both of them simultaneously? If that were the case, you'd be able to drop both in five seconds, and they'd only be able to deal 2X damage back to you. Area effect damage is 3/2 times as effective as focused fire on a single target.

You can repeat this process for more targets, and in doing so you get a simple rule - every additional target beyond the first is worth 1/2 as much as hitting a single target.

Can't agree with it.

There is a so-called "Basic Effectiveness Equation" and derivations
Power = HP * DPS
He who has a bigger power wins.

Say, a power of two units is equal. Then Power_1 = HP_1 * DPS_1 = HP_2 * DPS_2 = Power_2 or HP_1 / DPS_2 = HP_2 / DPS_1
Defender HP / Attacker DPS = time to kill defender, so if power is equal then units kill each other simultaneously. It's not exactly true if you'll calculate Power of several units, but it's close enough.
Also from that formula, if 1st unit is Power_Ratio = Power_1 / Power_2 more powerful than a 2nd unit, then it will lose (1 / Power_Ratio) percent of his life when 2nd unit will die.

If you have N enemies and you kill them one after another (100% focus fire), then they have N * HP_1 hit points and have DPS = DPS_1 * (N,(N-1),(N-2),..,2,1) = DPS_1 * N * (N + 1) / 2 or average DPS = DPS_1 * N * (N + 1) / 2 / N = DPS_1 * (N + 1) / 2
Power = N * HP_1 * DPS_1 * (N + 1) / 2 = HP_1 * DPS_1 * N * (N + 1) /2

If you have N enemies and you don't focus fire at all (enemies die simultaneously) then HP = HP_1 * N and DPS = DPS_1 * N
Power = HP_1 * DPS_1 * N^2
(N^2 = N * N, just in case)

So, dividing your damage between your targets is (N * (N + 1) / 2) / (N^2) = (N+1) / (2 * N) less efficient. It's equal to 3/4 only when N = 2

If you're hitting all targets simultaneously, then your enemies effectively have HP equal to HP_1 and DPS = N * DPS_1 or N times as powerful as one enemy. So, it's (N * (N + 1) / 2) / N = ((N + 1) / 2) times more efficient than killing enemies one at a time by a focus fire.
If you divide your damage between all targets, then obviously you just kill all targets simultaneously. So i don't understand how you come to a conclusion that every additional target beyond the first is worth 1/2 as much as hitting a single target.

Now, if we'll suppose that we have 8 targets total and we're attacking M targets simultaneously, then we can think about it like enemies have (8 / M)units with HP = HP_1 * M and average DPS = DPS_1 * M. So, Power = (M^2) *((8 / M) * ((8 / M) + 1)) / 2
Power of 8 units if we focus fire is 8*9/2=36
Of course, it makes sense only when 8 / N is a whole number.
So, Power_Ratio is
1: 1 * 36 / 36 = 1
2: 36 / (4 * (4 * 5 / 2)) = 0.9
4: 36 / (16 * (2 * 3 / 2)) = 0.75
So, that's what we lose in effectiveness when we hit several targets with AoE spell instead of focusing same damage on one target out of 8 avaliable. If we have some non-AoE damage, then numbers will be close only when our AoE damages secondary targets that will be attacked by focus fire next.

****************

Quote:

Originally Posted by FrogDevourer

If I recall correctly using an adrenaline skills drains one adrenaline point from all other skills so you just can't spam 8 x Galrath, and 6 x Final in 59 seconds (60s minus conjure).

Maybe someone will confirm or deny this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...1&postcount=27
There's another concern that melee damage has - packing density. Unlike Rangers or Elementalists with ranged attacks, Warriors and PBAoE Elementalists have to be next to a target to deal damage to them, and you aren't going to get more than 3 guys around a single target with any consistency. Even if you found an absurd Warrior DPS combo, you can't put more than 3 or so of them in a group without them stepping on each other. In that way Warrior damage is a bit more 'fair', in that a broken Warrior combo won't spawn 6 Warrior teams - but it is an additional constraint.

What if they surround target first? It works fine in a lot of other games so probably it should be good in GW too. Of course, it means that at least some warriors should move on a manual control instead of a simple T-Space and with a speed buff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...6&postcount=28
That's the real lesson here. Stack buffs and other damage adds and maximize your DPS. That's the real way to kill things. Not lobbing Fireballs and Fire Storms at them.

Probably warrior train has a good DPS, but it's easy to debuff it too. Rangers are better in this regard, but they recieve less benefit to their peak DPS from stacking buffs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...0&postcount=50
This question really gets to the heart of what health and damage is. Your goal when you attack someone isn't to deal damage to them - it is to kill them. The difference is subtle. If I have 480 health, I really don't care if I lose the first 479 health, it's that last point that I care about. The rest of the points are just buffer, health that defends against your attacks until you land a killing blow. If I can kill, shut down, or otherwise defeat you before you take that last point, it really doesn't matter how much damage you dealt me, because I won. In the same way, dealing damage to your opponent isn't a goal unto itself - it's merely a mechanism for setting your opponent up for a killing blow.

I like my term for this "HP shield" - IMHO it has very strong meaning that your HP is effectively your shield and it's different from a common terms such as "damage shield" etc. that can be already used in a game mechanics.
Also, sometimes it's useful to think that a target you plan to kill don't have that HP Shield (equal to (HP - 1)) while all other targets have this shield. Probably 2nd character in a queue also don't have that HP shield. Same idea, but more widely used.

****************

There are 3 stages of killing a target with a focus fire

1) Preparation damage
2) Burst damage
3) Breakthrough

(1) Preparation damage is the starting damage what you already have on a target when you start to synchronize damage.
(2) Burst damage is obvious - any damage you deal on a target before enemy defence starts to defend this target (that may include reaction to focus fire damage or to damage at all).
(3) Breakthrough is when you're trying to deal more damage than enemy defence can soak in and remove what's left off target health.

(1) Preparation damage is tricky. If enemy decides to heal, then you don't have an advantage of Preparation damage and/or an advantage of Burst damage (Burst damage actually becomes Breakthrough in that case). Generally noone heals damage that is somewhat less than lowest possible instant heal. Also, it's hard to choose a right target to heal when a lot of targets are damaged, but on the other side generally priority targets are a priority for later damage and for that reason they are a priority for healing too. AoEs are probably the most efficient here. Health loss because of the Death penalty can also be counted as a Preparation damage.

(2) Burst damage is more efficient when you can do it unexpected (so generally warriors or PBAoE spells aren't that useful). In other case enemy at the very least will be able to heal preparation damage. The most important thing is to deal a lots of raw damage in this phase. High-damage long casting time attacks may work better because it's impossible to heal a target before it actually recieves damage.

(3) In a Breakthrough phase, the most important things are DPS and disables. Even if enemy has 1 health, attack will be unsuccessful if you can't outpace enemy healing and defence.
Generally it's better to save limited power you have for this final assault. If you use a limited power in a burst damage phase and then lose the arms race in a Breakthrough phase, then you lose everything you have - energy, skills with long recharge times etc. Also, the more damage target has after a Burst damage phase, the bigger immediate responce you'll get from enemy defence that further reduces your chances for success. If you didn't used your most precious skills or a significant amount of energy, then you can still win a resource race - either you cancel a Breakthrough early enough after enemy spends his resources to defend. Or you drain some resources first that enemy will use after a Burst damage phase and some more resources it will use to defend against an increased pressure during a Breakthrough. So, effectively, if you can consecutively and significantly increase your pressure on enemy, and enemy tries to save his most efficient defence resources, then it works just like several additional Burst damage phases.
Obviously, Interrupting/removing/disabling enemy defence in this phase is almost as good as dealing respective damge while it don't have the same effect in other phases.

Mar 16, 2005, 06:24 PM // 18:24

Interesting part about the damage phases here. I've thought about it(mostly with necro hexes and when to apply them) but thats something that we havent really covered at Gurus yet. I never actually thought of names for the phases, but one day I'll have to make a topic about it.