Curse

Swahnee · Mar 19, 2010, 09:20 AM // 09:20

First of all. For further discussion about Locust's Fury, please ress this thread

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/w...tml?t=10406368

my thread isn't meant to be a discussion on how and when LF is or isn't effective. I'm fine with LF builds as i am with MS or WotA ones. I don't want to be so harsh, but i'd like to keep the discussion on topic.

And now, for something more interesting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

2. Generally, yes on Orders-SoH to replace the Splinter-SoH. If you have either (a) GDW on your team, or (b) at least 3 physicals with decent packet-spam abilities, or both, then it's definitely a better choice than Splinter-SoH. I'd only consider Splinter-SoH for a H+H team. (Also, Rt/Mo is clearly superior due to the huge scaling on Splinter above 12 channeling.)

In areas where cleaning is more important than pure damage, Me/Mo is also a viable choice.

3. On the overall team build:

Looks fine. I'd round it out with a second ER so they can safely bond (4 is a lot easier to hold than 8), a third physical for more damage, and a MM. (In UW balanced clear, the MM is swapped for a SoS or a number of reasons. There's other conceivable situations you'd want to replace the MM with something else as well.)

Two thoughts on the MoP that go in opposite directions:
A. As buffed melee damage increases, the usefulness of MoP decreases. When the physicals are averaging over 100dmg per hit, things don't last long enough for MoP to do much. A team with good buffs on good packet spammer physicals who do their jobs well requires some pretty big mobs (Urgoz, DoA, some parts of UW...) to justify a position for a MoP. It's a case of an anti-synergy which had traditionally not been an issue getting driven to the surface by power creep.
B. A 100lols warrior is a MoP's best friend. That should probably be the third physical if the MoP is staying.

Yes, i was thinking about a second ER for harder areas too. Also 100 blades is good as third physical. I only have to try that necro bonder to see if he can go on with only 1 pip of energy regen. With cultis's, however, it seems perfectly doable.

I also want to apologize because i included BiP in one of my previous post. ER healers clearly don't need BiP

Quote:

5. Oh yeah, Scythes. Forgot about those. Two points:
A. Perfectly compatible with standard buffs if you just remove AoHM (and any other damage type conversion skills) and run EBSoHonor instead. The damage is comparable with a couple other melee along, and superior with minions along. The micro-AoE on an attack-spam build more or less matches sin attack chains for packet spamming in its way.
B. I've forgotten what I was going to write for point B. Maybe it will come back to me.

Yes, i know i can use scythes with that same physical buffs, but my question was different

. I wanted to know if buffing armor penetration could be a viable way to play through HM, elite areas etc. I know that it's very likely that the physical buffing system will be better that scythes with AP, but i was only wandering if this could be at least viable, just to play something different every now and then, whilst being able to do those same elite areas.

I would definitively bring EBSoH on one of the three frontliners in the physical build. On the 100B warrior maybe.

Quote:

The only real difference between the two is the substitution of AoHM and JI for Orders and the MoP nuker; the real cost here is the loss of Rigor Mortis, which is awesome antiblock. You still have SoH and GDW. If it's the second or third spell, Barbs often won't have time to cast before the target dies anyway, even with Mindbender.

Two phys isn't enough imho; I like three; four is nice if they're untrustworthy.

For the "scytheway":

1.Scythe #1 (W/D or A/D)
2.Scythe #2 (W/D or A/D)
3.Scythe #3 (W/D or A/D)
4.Scythe #4 (W/D or A/D)
5.ER #1
6.ER #2
7.Smiter bonder

Question: the smiter have to maintain 4 SoH (0 energy regen) + spam Judge's on the 4 frontliners. At 12 smiting Judge's last 18 seconds (recharge 10), with 20% ench it's 21.6 = 22 seconds. With 2 seconds of casting time it means that he can maintain Judge's permanently only on 2 frontliners. So, we need a second smiter.

With 2 smiter, it's also easier to maintain SoH. They can be two hybrid necros for examples, smiting+something else useful, such as minions.

Any thoughts?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fellfoot

Ehh, how 'bout Signet of Judgement? ...kd's target and (?) adjacent foes take holy damage?

holleratchalater,

Fellfoot

Oh yes, i forgot to answer. Yes, i also thought about Signet of Judgement, but, as the others elites, it doesn't seem so sexy, it's something like "i have to put some elite here, let's try this". IMHO this means that the build has something wrong at a very basic level. I'm sad but monks don't seem to have any good support elite, as far as our particular objective is concerned.

Malician · Mar 19, 2010, 10:59 AM // 10:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swahnee

First of all. For further discussion about Locust's Fury, please ress this thread

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/w...tml?t=10406368

my thread isn't meant to be a discussion on how and when LF is or isn't effective. I'm fine with LF builds as i am with MS or WotA ones. I don't want to be so harsh, but i'd like to keep the discussion on topic.

And now, for something more interesting.

Yes, i was thinking about a second ER for harder areas too. Also 100 blades is good as third physical. I only have to try that necro bonder to see if he can go on with only 1 pip of energy regen. With cultis's, however, it seems perfectly doable.

I also want to apologize because i included BiP in one of my previous post. ER healers clearly don't need BiP

Yes, i know i can use scythes with that same physical buffs, but my question was different

. I wanted to know if buffing armor penetration could be a viable way to play through HM, elite areas etc. I know that it's very likely that the physical buffing system will be better that scythes with AP, but i was only wandering if this could be at least viable, just to play something different every now and then, whilst being able to do those same elite areas.

I would definitively bring EBSoH on one of the three frontliners in the physical build. On the 100B warrior maybe.

For the "scytheway":

1.Scythe #1 (W/D or A/D)
2.Scythe #2 (W/D or A/D)
3.Scythe #3 (W/D or A/D)
4.Scythe #4 (W/D or A/D)
5.ER #1
6.ER #2
7.Smiter bonder

Question: the smiter have to maintain 4 SoH (0 energy regen) + spam Judge's on the 4 frontliners. At 12 smiting Judge's last 18 seconds (recharge 10), with 20% ench it's 21.6 = 22 seconds. With 2 seconds of casting time it means that he can maintain Judge's permanently only on 2 frontliners. So, we need a second smiter.

With 2 smiter, it's also easier to maintain SoH. They can be two hybrid necros for examples, smiting+something else useful, such as minions.

Any thoughts?

Of course. Four physicals doing 200-300 or more single-target dps with some AOE is "viable" damage for anything.

Actually, a decent caster nuke team is "viable" for most of this. PUG Wars, assassins, dervishes with sorta fixed but still bad builds and a paragon running daggers are great. Either of these?

Really, rampant overkill as far as damage goes.

I can't imagine JI would help very much, though I'm not sure; I think the vast majority of your damage boost would be coming from AoHM (up to 74.2% over pre-Asuran damage, depending on rank) and not Judge's Insight. Crits seem to hit hard on a scythesin, though (I did 450 damage in one second with my rank 4/4 sin according to Master of Damage, probably partly from Deep Wound). Cho's probably crunched the numbers at some point.

As he noted, a monk or mesmer cleaner is great for hard areas. JI + SoH, castigation + blessed signets for e-management (or mesmer 'rupts), then signet of removal and a couple other energy neutral cleaning spells. No reason why he can't maintain as many SoH as necessary without energy problems.

Swahnee · Mar 19, 2010, 01:14 PM // 13:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malician

I can't imagine JI would help very much, though I'm not sure; I think the vast majority of your damage boost would be coming from AoHM (up to 74.2% over pre-Asuran damage, depending on rank) and not Judge's Insight. Crits seem to hit hard on a scythesin, though (I did 450 damage in one second with my rank 4/4 sin according to Master of Damage, probably partly from Deep Wound). Cho's probably crunched the numbers at some point.

I've never done any calculation, but i was thinking about the fact that removing x armor from a foe with 100 armor (for example) is different than removing the same x armor from a foe with 60 armor. In particular, in the latter case the damage obtained is greater than in the former.

So my idea was: if we use Weaken Armor (that i forgot to insert in any of the build posted), and AoHM (that is bugged, so it reduces armor instead of boosting damage), in this situation the foe would have a lowered armor (against our frontliners), so Judge's would boost the damage more than it would do without Weaken Armor and AoHM.

It would be interesting to see in practice if these reasons would make Judge's become an interesting skill to use or not. Look at it in this way: i was looking for some sinergy with AoHM, knowing that the physical buffs are gone, and i thought that Judge's could be good.

Quote:

As he noted, a monk or mesmer cleaner is great for hard areas. JI + SoH, castigation + blessed signets for e-management (or mesmer 'rupts), then signet of removal and a couple other energy neutral cleaning spells. No reason why he can't maintain as many SoH as necessary without energy problems.

Like a standard bonder would do, yes, it could be another good option.

Chthon · Mar 21, 2010, 01:29 AM // 01:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malician

I can't imagine JI would help very much, though I'm not sure; I think the vast majority of your damage boost would be coming from AoHM (up to 74.2% over pre-Asuran damage, depending on rank) and not Judge's Insight. Crits seem to hit hard on a scythesin, though (I did 450 damage in one second with my rank 4/4 sin according to Master of Damage, probably partly from Deep Wound). Cho's probably crunched the numbers at some point.

Assuming the wiki's description of how AoHM works, Judge's Insight should increase damage by the same percentage regardless of whether AoHM is active. So you should get a nice multiplicative stacking effect.

JI's potency scales with the monsters' armor because, while what 20% of X is varies, the effect of X armor does not (ie -40AL is always 2x damage). To put some numbers on it, -20% of 60AL is a ~23% damage boost, and -20% of 100AL results in a ~42% damage boost. Given the fact that you're multiplying with AoHM, even a 23% increase is probably worth it.

I'm not a huge fan of scytheway in general, but I do consider it viable.

Malician · Mar 21, 2010, 05:10 AM // 05:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chthon

Assuming the wiki's description of how AoHM works, Judge's Insight should increase damage by the same percentage regardless of whether AoHM is active. So you should get a nice multiplicative stacking effect.

JI's potency scales with the monsters' armor because, while what 20% of X is varies, the effect of X armor does not (ie -40AL is always 2x damage). To put some numbers on it, -20% of 60AL is a ~23% damage boost, and -20% of 100AL results in a ~42% damage boost. Given the fact that you're multiplying with AoHM, even a 23% increase is probably worth it.

I'm not a huge fan of scytheway in general, but I do consider it viable.

Right, but most of your damage in HM is armor-ignoring anyway, isn't it? (Unless this is vastly different with scythes).

Chthon · Mar 21, 2010, 08:22 PM // 20:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malician

Right, but most of your damage in HM is armor-ignoring anyway, isn't it? (Unless this is vastly different with scythes).

Yes, it is vastly different with scythes (which is precisely why I'm not a fan of scytheway...). Most of your damage with scythes is the result of getting a high base damage roll (up to 41) then boosting that with AoHM, Strength, critical hits, sundering, maybe some armor reduction, and Scan. In a sense, it's 180 degrees different than normal "buffway" since you're focusing on buffs to base damage instead of buffs that add armor-ignoring damage. (Scan is the only commonly-used buff that boosts both.)

Swahnee · Mar 23, 2010, 03:29 PM // 15:29

According to wiki:

Quote:

Whenever a critical hit with a weapon occurs, the damage done is equal to the maximum damage of the weapon multiplied by approximately √2 (or 1.41 approx), the equivalent of striking for maximum damage with a weapon attribute 4 higher than actually possessed or striking a foe with a -20 armor penalty. Non-critical hits are a random value chosen between the minimum and maximum damage values of the weapon.

So, scoring critical hits allows us to bypass the variability of the scythe's damage, since on critical hits the damage is always calculated from the maximum damage of the weapon.

So, we need to maximize the chance of scoring critical hits with our scythe:

Option 1)
A/D
14 Critical Strikes -> 14%
12 Scythe Mastery -> +17%
Critical Eye -> +14%
Way of the Master -> +31%
TOT: 76%, 3 hits out of 4.

Option 2)
W/D
12 Scythe Mastery -> 17%
9 (8+1) Tactics w/ "Fear Me!" -> +20%
TOT: 37%

Do you think that the 12% more armor penetration provided by Strength covers the loss of 40% chance of scoring a critical? I think not.

Also, what do you think about this idea of maximizing the chance of scoring criticals? Could it be the right way of improve this teambuild?

Cuilan · Mar 23, 2010, 05:26 PM // 17:26

You forgot option 3, which is D/W with Fear Me.

maxxfury · Mar 23, 2010, 09:58 PM // 21:58

The scythe is heavily biased to its armour sensitive base damage for its effectiveness as apposed to daggers for example which are more heavily geared towards armour ignoring +damage from skills.

Making it easier to mitigate the damage of scythe's with your armour rating.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swahnee

Also, what do you think about this idea of maximizing the chance of scoring criticals? Could it be the right way of improve this teambuild?

With scythes been focused on the base damage for its output, a sin's critical strike abilities are what puts it above the derv, ranger or warrior in effectiveness with a scythe.
More crits = more consistent high base damage rolls = better dps = better scythe user.

Bobby2 · Mar 24, 2010, 12:45 AM // 00:45

Critical Agility being stupidly powerful compared to Derv IAS options also plays into it.

distilledwill · Mar 24, 2010, 10:50 AM // 10:50

I get SoH from this build:

Rt/Mo

SoS
Bloodsong
Splinter
Ancestors'
Smite Hex
Castigation Signet
SoH
Death Pact Signet

Although I only maintain one SoH, not 2. You'd probably want to replace either Smite Hex or Bloodsong with Siphon Spirit if you're maintaining 2. There is nothing to be gained (except those 2 extra point in smite) by going as a primary monk - and the damage you gain from 14 Channelling Splinter and AR will outweigh the advantages of 14 smite.

Arrogant Bastard · Mar 24, 2010, 02:41 PM // 14:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobby2

Critical Agility being stupidly powerful compared to Derv IAS options also plays into it.

How useful is IAS when spamming 1/4 activation attacks?

Either way, a derv can just use frenzy.

Bobby2 · Mar 24, 2010, 05:48 PM // 17:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arrogant Bastard

How useful is IAS when spamming 1/4 activation attacks?

Either way, a derv can just use frenzy.

Scythe attacks, which are being discussed, are 3/4s at least; and the difference in speed with or without IAS is very noticable.

Oh, and Jagged+Fox is nice and all, but the real beef's in Blossom(+Moebius). Betcha you want that speed.

Swahnee · Mar 25, 2010, 11:16 PM // 23:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cuilan

You forgot option 3, which is D/W with Fear Me.

You're right, I apologize.

However, the critical chance of a dervish seems to be 19.6 (scythe mastery @ 14) + 20 (fear me), which is still smaller than the assassin's one, so the damage output of the scythe is still very variable. Yes, the three attack skills will do more damage thanks to the higher rank, but i don't think this will cover the difference made by critical hits.

Another question i have is this: what's the usefulness of the 20/20 mod for a scythe, in comparison with the vampiric one, thinking about this teambuild (scythes + criticals + armor penetration buffs)? From my calculations, the average damage bonus of the 20/20 mod is always smaller than the vampiric, even when attacking AR 60 foes, so i'd forget 20/20 (because in PvE i want costant high DPS, and not one big spike randomly from time to time). These are the actual numbers:

Raw damage: 9-41
Damage scaler: 1.38 (customized+15>50)
Player level: 20
Rank (scythe mastery): 12
All the strikes are supposed to be critical.
No other bonuses

AR 60: AP 0 (4x80), AP 20 (1x99) => Average damage 84
AR 100: AP 0 (4x40), AP 20 (1x57) => Average damage 43
AR 140: AP 0 (4x20), AP 20 (1x32) => Average damage 22

In the first case 20/20 gives 4 more average damage, in the second 3 and in the third 2.

Chthon · Mar 26, 2010, 02:10 AM // 02:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swahnee

According to wiki:

So, scoring critical hits allows us to bypass the variability of the scythe's damage, since on critical hits the damage is always calculated from the maximum damage of the weapon.

So, we need to maximize the chance of scoring critical hits with our scythe:

Option 1)
A/D
14 Critical Strikes -> 14%
12 Scythe Mastery -> +17%
Critical Eye -> +14%
Way of the Master -> +31%
TOT: 76%, 3 hits out of 4.

Option 2)
W/D
12 Scythe Mastery -> 17%
9 (8+1) Tactics w/ "Fear Me!" -> +20%
TOT: 37%

Do you think that the 12% more armor penetration provided by Strength covers the loss of 40% chance of scoring a critical? I think not.

Also, what do you think about this idea of maximizing the chance of scoring criticals? Could it be the right way of improve this teambuild?

Critical chance is NOT additive.

The correct formula is:
TotalCritChance = 1/((1 - Source1CritChance)*(1 - Source2CritChance)*(1 - Source3CritChance)...)

One other formula you'll need is the base crit chance from weapon mastery, which is:
BaseCritChance = (0.01*Mastery) + ((1 - (0.01*Mastery)) * 0.5 * 2^(((8*AttackerLvl) + (4*Mastery) + (6 * Min{Mastery, ((AttackerLvl + 4)/2)}) - (15* DefenderLvl) - 100) / 40))

Also, there seems to be some sort of asymptotic decreasing returns applied to the final crit chance to prevent it from ever reaching 100%. It seems to kick in at 66.66...%, but we don't have any idea what the formula is. (Fortunately, crit chances above 66% are pretty rare.)

Yes, theoretically you could calculate whether strength or more crits adds more damage. I don't have time right now.

Ditto on sundering vs vamp. (The answer to this question used to always, always be vamp, but it hasn't been looked at rigorously since Scan came along.)