Curse

LouAl · May 09, 2007, 07:40 PM // 19:40

(This is to spilt this discussion out of the State of the Mesmer thread)

This was originally shown the "State of the Mesmer" thread as a way to prove that a Mesmer can use Spiteful Spirit to do more damage than a Necro can do. I believe this to be incorrect. It was also shown to make the point that a mesmer should not be limited to using profession only skills even if the non-mesmer skills are the "center" of the build. I believe this to be correct.

The first post about this is here. Post 109, page 6.
Then followed up here with some calculations. Post 112, page 6.

My first response was here in post 128, page 7 (also quoted below).

Quote:

Originally Posted by LouAl

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nalia

...The damage increase was already proven and shown. Please review the data and see for yourself, the power comes from multiple target proccing and is reflected as such. I would be more than happy for someone to post some proofs showing otherwise....

well, here you go then.

I made some assumptions to simplify the calcluations (because I am lazy). Here is the scenario

Necro with 16 in Curses vs. Mesmer with 12 in Curses

Assumptions
Necro casts in 2 seconds, Mesmer casts in 1 second
SS Recharge is always 10 seconds (as opposed to using a faster recharge mod)
Both have only SS on their bar (this is to simplify the process, but the result is the same if you add other spells as well).
Both have enough energy to cast SS everytime it is available.
Both have a supply of enemies that trigger SS once per second for the full duration of the hex (again to simplify the process but the effect is the same).
SS only hits one enemy at a time and all SS hexes are applied to different foes at a great enough distance to allow for only hitting themselves with the hex damage (for simplification, but it is obvious that more foes being hit will exaggerate the difference).

So, here is the "math:"

Necro and Mes both start casting at 0

@ 11 seconds SS N has done 333 dmg and SS Me has done 290 dmg
@ 20 seconds SS N has done 888 dmg and SS Me has done 754 dmg
@ 30 seconds SS N has done 1,517 dmg and SS Me has done 1,247 dmg
@ 1 minute SS N has done 3,478 dmg and SS Me has done 2,639 dmg...a difference of 839 in favor of the Nec
@ 2 minutes SS N has done 7,363 dmg and SS Me has done 5,423 (+1,940 toward Nec)
@ 3 minutes SS N = 11,248, SS Me = 8,207 (+3,041 toward Nec)
@ 4 minutes SS N = 14,133, SS Me = 11,049 (less than the SS N at 3 min and + 4,084 in favor of the Necro)
...
@ 12 minutes SS N = 46,213, SS Me = 33,466 (+12,747 in favor of the Nec. Also, the Nec hit 34,588 in 9 minutes and it took the Mes, with FC, another 3 minutes to get there).

But what about Arcane Echo? well I did that too:

Same set of assumptions (except that now both also have AE on their bar)

and what we find is that the Mes has a slight advantage near the beginning-

@ 11 seconds N=444, Me=493 (-49)
@ 13 seconds N=592, Me=609 (-17) Mes begins casting another round of SS
@ 15 seconds N=740, Me=812 (-72) Nec begins casting another round of SS
@ 20 seconds N=1332, Me=1392 (-60)
@ 21 seconds N=1480, Me=1479 (+1)
@ 25 seconds N=2072, Me=1740 (+332)
@ 30 seconds N=2590, Me=2175 (+415)
@ 45 seconds N=3922, Me=2900 (+1022)
@ 53 seconds Nec begins again with AE
@ 56 seconds Mes begins again with AE (because of fast casting, Mes was able to get one more full cycle of SS before AE recharged)
@ 60 seconds N=4847, Me=3683 (+1164)
...
@ 100 seconds N=8806, Me=6554 (+2252)

Take from that what you will, but I would say (and I think most ppl already knew this more or less) that going Me/N for SS does not really help you unless your fights are all under 21 seconds long and then you have significant down time before the next fight.

To get these numbers I used the above assumptions and then put everything in a spreadsheet with the casting times and durations and then just summed the data at different time intervals. Pretty simple, but like I said, I am a bit lazy. Also, I wuld have put this stuff up earlier (right after Nalia's post), but I had a busy few days at work and didn't have time...

To clarify how I got that information and to answer Nalia's question about formulas used: No, I did not use yours. I saw no reason to use anything other than Spiteful when comparing the damge output of Spiteful (reckless, auspicous, etc are not really needed). I did also include numbers of the difference in damage when using Spiteful and Arcane Echo as it seemed a relevant comparison (as in to see how the numbers are changed given that AE allows you to cast two copies of Spiteful).

To get the information I used a simple spreadsheet that had the cast times, durations, and damage done for each (it is simple but large (720 rows and 30 columns). Also, I did it at work and it wouldn't do for them to see that I spent some of my workday in this way, so I won't be posting it here). Here are the assumptions used, hopefully in a more readable format:

1. Necro @ 16 curses, Mes @ 12 curses
2. Cast times are as follows: Necro = 2 seconds (for both SS and AE), Mes = 1 second (for both SS and AE)
3. Spiteful is always cast as soon as it is ready (the only exception to this is during the AE+SS test, at time 51 seconds, when the Necro would have to wait for three seconds so that AE was recharged)
4. Damage from SS only hits the monster which has SS applied to it, all subsequent castings are on a different monster with sufficient distance between it and others to allow it to the the only moster affected by SS.
5. Each monster triggers SS every second the hex is applied (as in, SS si applied, one second later, and for the duration of the hex, the monster triggers SS.
6. Recharge times for SS are always 10 seconds
7. Recharge times for AE are always 50 seconds total (20 seconds of echo-ing SS followed by 30 seconds of recharge)
8. The first set of data uses only Spiteful Spirit, the second set uses Spiteful and Arcane Echo.

All I did was sum up the data for different time-points.

I hope that clarifies things a bit.

zwei2stein · May 09, 2007, 08:04 PM // 20:04

Well, yes, mesmer gets first draw advantage with pretty much any spell (see FC nukers).

But that advantage is always short lived and primary class always wins in long run.

(and those ss calculation are kinda wrong as you do not take into effect orhet stuff SS necro does in meantime: Desecrate/its clone spam, Mesmer has notably shorter duration on reckless, curses like Mark of Pain go long way too, mesmer will run out of energy pretty fast unless he spells less in fc and brings some inspiration).

Its like Crit barrage - it works and might get you to party, but original works better.

ShadowsRequiem · May 09, 2007, 08:08 PM // 20:08

ahhh the beauty of using a 20/20 wand and 20/20 focus..........

NinjaKai · May 09, 2007, 08:29 PM // 20:29

I think if your going to use a secondary class skills as the main focus of a build. It should be more utility than trying to out do the original class.
Example, I enjoy using my Mesmer in AB with water magic because in this case a mesmers fast casting makes them more useful at snaring than a regular ele using water magic. Primarily because you can snare a target at that moment, not 3 seconds later.
When it comes to utility builds with magic, mesmer is definitely at the top. And naturally you don't have the same fear of being interrupted by those long castings spells with enough points in fast casting.

LouAl · May 09, 2007, 09:11 PM // 21:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Well, yes, mesmer gets first draw advantage with pretty much any spell (see FC nukers).

But that advantage is always short lived and primary class always wins in long run.

Exactly my point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

(and those ss calculation are kinda wrong as you do not take into effect orhet stuff SS necro does in meantime: Desecrate/its clone spam, Mesmer has notably shorter duration on reckless, curses like Mark of Pain go long way too, mesmer will run out of energy pretty fast unless he spells less in fc and brings some inspiration).

Its like Crit barrage - it works and might get you to party, but original works better.

The calculations aren't wrong at all (at least not for the reasons you listed...the possibility does exist that they are wrong for another reason however).

The point wasn't to show that a Mesmer can cast more spells than a Necro, that is a given. The point of my post was to show that the gains from FC do not outweigh the loss of 12 vs 16 in curses. The original post made about this claimed more damage from a SS Mesmer, which is not true. Of course you will be doing other things in between, but it depends on what skills you use and what their recharges are...it makes the comparison between SS N and SS Me muddied.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShadowsRequiem

ahhh the beauty of using a 20/20 wand and 20/20 focus..........

very true, but it still doesn't get you much more (since both would average the same amount of hsr and hct).

Quote:

Originally Posted by NinjaKai

I think if your going to use a secondary class skills as the main focus of a build. It should be more utility than trying to out do the original class.
Example, I enjoy using my Mesmer in AB with water magic because in this case a mesmers fast casting makes them more useful at snaring than a regular ele using water magic. Primarily because you can snare a target at that moment, not 3 seconds later.
When it comes to utility builds with magic, mesmer is definitely at the top. And naturally you don't have the same fear of being interrupted by those long castings spells with enough points in fast casting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LouAl

to prove that a Mesmer can use Spiteful Spirit to do more damage than a Necro can do. I believe this to be incorrect. It was also shown to make the point that a mesmer should not be limited to using profession only skills even if the non-mesmer skills are the "center" of the build. I believe this to be correct.

The point is that a mesmer does not gain enough through fast casting to make it superior to a necro using SS. I would be interested to see other examples where the mesmer would be superior, but I think it is plain that, in the case of SS, necro is better. I would also love to see a full dataset of all skills on a SS bar compared N vs Me, but I would wager that the results would be similar to what has already been done. I would even be willing to do it, but I have a big mailing going out in a few days and don't have time right now. I would also like to see a comparo of the FC nuker to a Ele nuker to see which is truely better (or a proposed set of skills that I would work with).

Also, if it seems like I left something out, review the posts in the State of the Mesmer thread. I may have omitted it without thinking because I had been reading that thread when I wrote this one.

cellardweller · May 09, 2007, 11:19 PM // 23:19

<nitpick>
With a 20/20 set, the average cast time for SS is 0.81 for the mes and 1.62 secs for the nec - this is a significantly better advantage for the nec than it is for the mes.

For Arcane Echo, the cast time for the mes is 1.75 Seconds for a Mes and 2.75 seconds for a Nec because you need to include the aftercast time. This hurts the mes's numbers much more than the nec's. Also, given AE is cast before the battle starts, the cast time for the first one should be dicounted altogether.
</nitpick>

LouAl · May 10, 2007, 12:09 AM // 00:09

your nitpick is a good one. I really wanted to cut down on variables because, as I stated, I am a bit lazy. Thanks for the info though because it is important. I did think about leaving out the first AE because it happens (generally) before the fight, but in the end I figured that it would really only hurt the necro and that the necro was already winning anyway so...no big deal. The other thing is I figured that there are those times when you get hit by a po-up spawn and in that case you would need to cast AE right as the fight started. In the end I figured that counting that AE would be more "fair" and I also wouldn't get anyone saying "you didn't even count the first AE...your numbers are obviously crap if you can't even remember to add something like that in..." I guess I can't win