Curse

Celab · Aug 18, 2006, 10:00 PM // 22:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by easyg

Actually, what Amy's numbers show is the that a A/R crit barrager will do less damage than a R/*. It's kinda burried in her discussion but after showing that the "base arrow damage" for both professions is roughly the same, Amy adds:

Can the extra damage from the skill barrage be added to the base arrow damage? If so:

Critical Barrage: 39.5 + 12 = 51.5
Barrage Ranger: 40.6 + 17 = 57.6

That's signifcant right? Especially considering Barrage's AOE, which compounds any advantage in damage by the number of enemies struck.

I guess the point of this all is to say that a Crit Barrager isn't totally useless, but it hardly answers the question why someone would want one over a solid Ranger primary build.

If you add the 6 DPS aswell from bleeding... they are almost exactly the same, and in the long run the assassin will do more because it has 6 extra damage ignoring damage, not al modified damage.

Whirling Wanda · Aug 19, 2006, 12:13 AM // 00:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Celab

If you add the 6 DPS aswell from bleeding... they are almost exactly the same, and in the long run the assassin will do more because it has 6 extra damage ignoring damage, not al modified damage.

No...no...no...no....

Actually, Amy said that the bleeding and the conjure damage basically cancel each other out, which would leave the Ranger still ahead.

Personally, I don't see how there's much of a much of an argument that the Crit Barrage Assasin is a better barrager than a good Ranger barrage build.

I don't even think the Ranger with Conjure X is the best Ranger barrage build. My R/W with Barrage + Frenzy outdamages A/R and R/E by a ridiculous amt and has great energy management with so much points left to go in Expertise.

Assasin is a great profession with unique skills that no other profession has. Why would NE1 want the assasin to be a second-rate Ranger instead of a first-rate assasin? Please tell me.

I look at the Crit Barrage assasin as a good profession only for assasins who hasn't learned how ot unleash the real power of daggers. In other words, good for noob assasin but a true master uses daggers.

Silk Weaver · Aug 19, 2006, 07:10 AM // 07:10

First rate assassins are about as rare as monks. Times two. Crit barrager, as it turns out, isn't bad. In PvE, anything that isn't bad is good enough. If you want a really good team, ask guildies and friends. From the calculations, the difference doesn't seem large enough to be a big issues, even if you're trying a difficult mission or masters.

Yanman.be · Aug 19, 2006, 02:45 PM // 14:45

It's the same issue.. Why customize weapons in pve? Why ignore the crit barrager if you have trouble finding another player?

Lambentviper · Aug 19, 2006, 03:03 PM // 15:03

I would take a Crit Barrager over other rangers and nuker due to the fact that they high have armor ignoring AoE that DOESNT SPREAD THE AGGRO. which leads to tanks over extending, and getting blindly ganked while monks have to chase down their targets of healing.

And even as the party caller calls a target, and even with the CritBarrager attacking that target, he spread damage and constant DPS to other targets as well, allowing the group to move on to the next target and have it already be losing health.

THis works much in the same way as EoE did before the nerf. The idea is to get past the aggro faster, by dealing with weakened enemies, which clears an easy path for a Masters Reward.

Your only trouble comes when the guys your fighting cannot bleed XD

QUOTE FROM WHIRLING WANDA:: "I don't even think the Ranger with Conjure X is the best Ranger barrage build. My R/W with Barrage + Frenzy outdamages A/R and R/E by a ridiculous amt and has great energy management with so much points left to go in Expertise."

Correct me if im wrong, but using frenzy doesnt let you activate barrage any faster? but i may be wrong now that i see my thoughts in words 0.o

easyg · Aug 19, 2006, 04:02 PM // 16:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lambentviper

Correct me if im wrong, but using frenzy doesnt let you activate barrage any faster? but i may be wrong now that i see my thoughts in words 0.o

Eh, I was curious to see if this really worked so I tried it out with a PvP only char against the practice dummies. After checking out the results (and reading around the forums) apparently the idea is this: if you take a fast bow (flatbow) and activate frenzy, while the barrage doesnt reset any faster, you can just get off an extra auto-attack in between barrage attacks. In other words:

Barrage - attack - barrage - attack - barrage

vs

Barrage - barrage - barrage

Someone...Superbinnie actually...posted a build in the Ranger forum.

P.S. Not a build for lazy button mashers, so right there it's unsuitable for 99 percent of barragers, whether Assassin or Ranger primary. And yes, I include myself among the lazy majority.

Amy Awien · Aug 19, 2006, 04:40 PM // 16:40

What I've read is that bow refire rate may still 'hold back' Barrage, ie, a flatbow will barrage at a faster rate then a longbow. A longbow with Frenzy would have a faster barrage refire then a longbow without frenzy.

Frankly, I wonder if a Critical Barrager would be an interesting character to play at all. Hit and run tactics sound like a lot more fun then playing the GW version of Painless.

Whirling Wanda · Aug 19, 2006, 06:17 PM // 18:17

Amy is right again, just like she was in her first post.

Bow rate of fire is slow (2 sec+) compared with other weapons. But the skill recharge for Barrage is set at only 1 sec. The bow's rate of attack "holds back" barrage just like Amy said. Frenzy doesn't make Barrage reset faster...instead it speeds up the bow's base rate of attack bringing it more in line with barrage's reset time for a massive increase in DPS. If anyone thinks -3 bleeding makes up for this, you're sadly mistaken.

Frenzy is also very energy efficient, since it is effected by Expertise energy attribute. This brings up another reason Crit Barrage sux. You're energy management compared with the Ranger primary is awful. If you fight a big mob (3 +) you are okay, but against small mob your energy will run out fast. Ranger skills have high cost, esp. some interrupts are ridiculously high. But even barrage will drain your A/R if you don't fight big mobs all the time.

R/W doesn't have to worry because of Expertise attribute. At 13 expertise: barrage costs 2 energy to use; frenzy costs 2 energy to use, and mob size doesn't matter. You can't make the R/W run out of energy even if you try. 1 boss standing in front of you. No problem. Frenzy + Barrage still does the job.

I saw some guys saying they use zealous bowstring to counteract A/R energy problem, but since the only bow mod that makes sense is -5/1 vampiric then your A/R build suxs already. This is why I don't like the conjure build -- has to use fire/lightning/cold bowstring. 5/1 vampiric is the best mob in the game - not just the best bow mod, but the best mod period. If your barrager isn't using one, he's already gimped.

A/R Crit Barrager, your build sux. Get rid of it please. Try Yanman's shock build, this is great for PvE. Stop being a crappy secondclass Ranger. Don't listen to the propaganda. Daggers and combos are excellent. Learn how to use them and stop trying to be the Ranger's weak little sister.

Tyggen · Aug 20, 2006, 03:44 PM // 15:44

I did some checking using numbers from guildwiki and came to the conclution that a A/R cb will do pretty much the same damage as a R/x barrager over 100 arrows. This calculation was made assuming the ranger has 16 marksmanship and the assassin has 16 critical and 12 marksmanship.

The assassin gets a total of 40% critical strike (7% from critical eye, 16% from critical strike and 17% from marksmanship), the ranger gets 23% critical from marksmanship. This is also assuming a critical strike does double base damage (the damage from barrage isn't doubled).

A Critical Barrager would do: 2100 - 3920
+13 per arrow = 3400 - 5220

A Barrager would do: 1845 - 3444
+17 per arrow = 3545 - 5144

The damage difference is minimal at best, though slightly in favour of the ranger. Advantage goes to the ranger though, it can boost damage to its attacks by using skills like Brutal Weapon.

Personally I prefer the CB over the barrager though, it can keep itself healed by using Way of Perfection and evade most attacks using Critical Defenses.

Whirling Wanda · Aug 20, 2006, 06:36 PM // 18:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyggen

The assassin gets a total of 40% critical strike (7% from critical eye, 16% from critical strike and 17% from marksmanship), the ranger gets 23% critical from marksmanship. This is also assuming a critical strike does double base damage (the damage from barrage isn't doubled).

A critical hit actually doesn't do double base damage. Or more accurately, it only does double the base damage when the attacker has a weapon attribute skill of 16. Then the combined effect of the critical hit (+20 Bonus DL) and Weapon Skill 16 (skill*5=80 Base Damage Level) does indeed boost the attacker's overall Effective Damage Level to 100: the point at which the "rolled" damage from a weapon is doubled against 60AL armor.

The thing to keep in mind is that the effect of 16 marksmanship vs 12 marksmanship is a +20 point jump in Effective Damage Level. That's exactly the same as the default bonus of +20 for a critical hit. In other words, a 16 Mark Ranger is EffDL 80 on a non-critical and EffDL 100 on a critical hit; vs. the 12 Mark Assassin who is EffDL 60 on a non-critical and EffDL 80 on a critical. If that was all there is to it, then the Crit Barrage would obviously suck in comparion to the Barrage Ranger.

However, EffDL isn't the final determining factor in the GW's damage calc. To see how EffDL impacts damage output for both professions, we need some "rolled" damage.

The game rolls a random number for the bow anywhere from 15-28. For the sake of this damage comparison, we are going to say the roll is 21.5 (which is the average roll for a bow). Now factoring everything together, on a hit which isn't a critical hit the damage breakdown is:

16 marksmanship vs. 60 AL --> effective damage = 30.41
12 marksmanship vs. 60 AL --> effective damage = 21.50

Note: with 12 Marks vs. 60 AL, the average Effective Damage (non-critical) is exactly equal to the average "rolled damage" (or "raw damage" in the parlance of damage calc). This is absolutely as it should be since the attacker's Effective Damage Level of 60 (12 points in Mark*5) is the same as the defender's Effective Armor Level of 60.

On a critical hit, the damage roll defaults to 28 (max damage for bow). Again, keep in mind what a critical hit does to the EffDL. It add +20. So, taking everything all together, this works out to:

16 marksmanship vs 60 AL --> effective damage = 56.00
12 marksmanship vs 60 AL --> effective damage = 39.60

See how the damage roll of 28 is only doubled (28*2) with 16 Marks? Again, we know that this is accurate because 16*5+20=100 EffDL, that being the magic number where Raw Damage vs. 60AL armor is doubled. As for the Assassin's critical damage of 39.60, my spreadsheet calculates in minute fractions, but the figure does approximately corresponds to 28*1.41 (the shorthand calc for a critical hit). I'm fairly confident there are no glaring errors here.

Since we've come so far, we might as well recalc the average damage over 100 chances for both professions factoring in the critical hit %. Unlike Amy, I will leave off the weapon mods since these impact both professions proportionally.

To simpify: for assassin, normal hit 60% and critical hit 40%. For ranger 77% and 23% respectively.

So the total damage over 100 arrows for each would be:

16 marksmanship --> (30.41*77)+(56.00*23)=2341.57+1288.00 = 3629.57
12 marksmanship --> (21.50*60)+(39.60*40)=1290.00+1584.00 = 2874.00

Doesn't work out to the assassin's advantage at all, and this still doesn't even include the "extra" damage from barrage. Nor does it include any other damage boosts the Ranger primary can bring in from his secondary profession (conjure, frenzy, nightmare weap, etc).

At a future date, I may post the complete damage comparison as an excel doc., including the barrage damage, but this in getting huge already so.....

To sum up: the average effective damage for the maxed out Crit Barrager is about 80% what the maxed out Ranger Primary does. A pretty f-n huge difference.

Amy Awien · Aug 20, 2006, 07:35 PM // 19:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whirling Wanda

... it only does double the base damage when the attacker has a weapon attribute skill of 16. Then the combined effect of the critical hit (+20 Bonus DL) and Weapon Skill 16 (skill*5=80 Base Damage Level) does indeed boost the attacker's overall Effective Damage Level to 100

I don't want to sound to critical, but DL increases by 5 per attribute level only until attribute level 12, after that it increments with two. A level 16 your AL would be 5*12+4*2 = 68, see the article on GW-Wiki.

So, the result would be closer to each other.

Whirling Wanda · Aug 20, 2006, 08:43 PM // 20:43

Haha, I forgot all about that. Thanks Amy. That's the beauty of spreadsheets, all I need to do is correct one little thing and everything recalculates automatically.

DLBonus = -3*[16-(20/2+2)] = 3*[16-(12)] = 3*[4] = -12

EffDL=80-12=68

(24.70*77) + (45.49*23) = 1901.10+1046.27=2948.17

Oh yeah, that's exactly what you had the first time!

But it DOESN'T MATTER! Critical Barrage still sux when you add the barrage damage and other stuff.

Besides, there's no point to making one! The barrage Ranger can already be a barrager. If you want to be an assassin, be an assassin! Not some wimpy ranger.

End of rant.

easyg · Aug 21, 2006, 12:12 AM // 00:12

Whatever, we've had the damage calculation for the arrow damage 3 times now, and each time it shows the same thing. With barrage damage factored in, the Ranger is +6 per hit approximately in average arrow damage.

Against this, a A/R can bring in Sharpen Daggers for bleeding.

If bleeding is all that he's got in his favor, then the A/R will undoubtedly be crap in some scenarios since not every creature can be made to bleed.

A case in point: yesterday, my Rt/N was doing Nephui. On our PUG we had 2 assassins: one was a regular dagger assassin; the other was a Critical Barrage. Guess what: all of those Celestial Essences were immune to bleeding because they're spirits. Maybe we should've left the Crit Barrager behind right? But anyway, the Crit Barrager did better than the dagger assassin, who died, literally, about 20 times, even with 2 monks (albiet henchies) healing him.

But back to the subject. My point is simply this: Crit Barrager is about the same as a random Ranger with 16 markmanship who happens to have Barrage on his skillbar. I'll grant the -3 degen from bleeding @ 40% chance is about the same as +6 arrow damage ATB. Sometimes the degen will be better, sometimes the extra damage will be better. Let's call it a wash.

But as soon as the Ranger becomes a Ranger/* Barrage build and not just a random Ranger with Barrage in a skill slot, the Crit Barrager starts to suck comparatively. A/R will suck a little or suck a lot in comparions based exactly on how the Ranger primary is set up.

Which leaves the question still unanswered: why bother making one unless you're just plain set on having an Assassin and this is the only way you think you'll be able to get into a group?

Scourgey · Aug 21, 2006, 08:28 AM // 08:28

Some "survivor" assassins can't be bothered to run into front lines, unleash combo, then shadow step back before they get spiked.

When I am that survivior assassin, I use it, and keeps me nice and safe