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Stats, Damage, and Optimization

Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Posted On: 08/31/2012 at 01:25 AM
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Crit is 1.5x damage base. 21 precision = 0.01 critical chance (1%), this is linear. It may be nonlinear at the low end, and it's rounded so there's some noise in the data. For my Ele, 830 precision seems like it would be equal to 0% crit (914 precision = 0.04 crit, 914-(21*4)=830=0.00 crit.) Each ability has a scaling factor, eg 1/4 of the power gets converted to (tooltip) damage. This does not take enemy toughness into account. Also, don't forget to have some toughness/vitality of your own, so as not to explode when a mob glances in your direction. For crit damage, 1% = 0.01, Attack = Weapon Damage + Power

It's also much easier to work with crit chance than with precision in some cases, especially since some abilities give crit chance (eg elementalist signet of fire gives 5% crit chance.)

Average damage =  (Scaling Factor) * (Weapon Damage * Power) * (1 - Crit Chance) + (Scaling Factor) * (Weapon Damage * Power) * (1.5 + Crit Damage %) * (Crit Chance)

Average damage = (Scaling Factor) * (Weapon Damage * Power) * (1 - (Precision - 830) / 2100) + (Scaling Factor) * (Weapon Damage * Power) * (1.5 + Crit Damage %) * (Precision - 830) / 2100

Taking the partial derivatives with respect to weapon damage, power, precision and crit damage to find the gradient vector:


∂Damage/∂Power = (Crit Chance * (2 * Crit Damage + 1) + 2) * Weapon Damage / 2
∂Damage/∂Weapon Damage = (Crit Chance * (2 * Crit Damage + 1) + 2) * Power / 2
∂Damage/∂Crit Chance = (2 * Crit Damage + 1) * Power * Weapon Damage / 2
∂Damage/∂Crit Damage = Crit Chance * Power * Weapon Damage

And for dealing directly with precision:
∂Damage/∂Power = (2 * Crit Damage * (Precision - 830) + Precision + 3370) * Weapon Damage / 4200
∂Damage/∂Weapon Damage = (2 * Crit Damage * (Precision - 830) + Precision + 3370) * Power / 4200
∂Damage/∂Precision = (2 * Crit Damage + 1) * Power * Weapon Damage / 4200
∂Damage/∂Crit Damage = (Precision - 830) * Power * Weapon Damage / 2100

And, using precision and treating weapon damage * power as one variable, WDP, for ease of graphing (later):
∂Damage/∂WDP = (2 * Crit Damage * (Precision - 830) + Precision + 3370) / 4200
∂Damage/∂Precision = (2 * Crit Damage + 1) * WDP / 4200
∂Damage/∂Crit Damage = (Precision - 830) * WDP / 2100

Gradient = < (2 * Crit Damage * (Precision - 830) + Precision + 3370) / 4200, (2 * Crit Damage + 1) * WDP / 4200, (Precision - 830) * WDP / 2100 >


Plug in your Weapon Damage * Power, Precision, and Crit damage to the vector, and the numbers output give the ratios to attempt to increase each of the three. eg: If I have 1111 weapon damage, 2133 power, 1727 Precision, and 0.57 (57 in game) crit damage, WDP = 2,369,736 Gradient = <1.46, 1208, 10122> Normalizing with respect to WDP: <1, 830, 6950> So I want Power:Precision:Crit Damage in about 1:830:7000 ratio. Since gear doesn't come in those ratios I should get as much crit damage as possible, checking how the values change as I change gear, and without forgetting defensive stats.

For most values, crit damage is vastly more valuable than the other damage stats. This means that Berserker's and Valkyrie gear will probably tend to be the best overall. Valkyrie because the longer you live the more attacks you can apply, Berserker's for glass cannon.

Conditions don't crit, and don't benefit from power. They're essentially totally separate. Since they currently only stack to 25 (total, not per person) they seem like a trap to me, at least when it comes to events.

TL;DR: Berserker's or Valkyrie is the way to go for non-pvp DPS.



» Edited on: 2012-09-29 18:17:57

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Seaimpin de na Capall
Denji
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  • GW2: thundermittens.2831
Replied On: 09/11/2012 at 10:15 AM PDT
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thanks for the tldr. Im only level 1 at math, and this is level 80 stuff. I've been wanting to maximize the damage with my dagger/dagger ele. So even though my crit chance is only %20, is it still best to stack my crit damage first? since Im a squishy melee class, my priorities have been power>vitality/toughness>crit chance>condition damage>crit damage should I change it to crit dmg>crit chance>vitality/toughness>power>condition damage? Thanks for the help Sai, -denji

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Ridire de na Iomproidh Buí
Flarewind
Ridire de na Iomproidh Buí
  • GW2: vesper.2015
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Replied On: 09/11/2012 at 07:02 PM PDT
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is that 25 stacks limit for each type of condition(25 bleed, 25 daze, 25 freeze, 25 burning, all at once), or 25 condition stacks period (like you couldhave 10 bleed, 10 freeze, 5 daze, and nothing else applies becuase there are 25 stacks now.

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/11/2012 at 10:48 PM PDT
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"is that 25 stacks limit for each type of condition(25 bleed, 25 daze, 25 freeze, 25 burning, all at once), or 25 condition stacks period (like you couldhave 10 bleed, 10 freeze, 5 daze, and nothing else applies becuase there are 25 stacks now." For conditions that stack intensity (IE NOT burning) it's 25 each. Burning does damage as from the highest condition damage source, others just extend the duration. So if I have eg 1000 condition damage and everyone else has 100 CD, and I burn the mob once, and you (and several others) keep applying burns so the burn doesn't wear off, then only I get credit for having done damage. Bleed stacks to 25, and higher damage bleeds override the lower ones. Denji, the exact stat priority order will depend on your stats. EG if you had (somehow) 0% crit chance then crit damage would be worthless, and you'd want to stack Power. Tell me your stats and I'll show how to work out the ratios. Armour + Trinket sets: With base stats of 916 (no traits, lvl 80 elementalist): 1:5.3:3 Power:Precision:Crit Damage Berserker's armour with Ruby trinkets of the Berserker: 1071 Power, 539 Precision, 48% Crit Damage 1:1.6:5 power:precision:crit damage Knight's armour Emerald trinkets of the Knight: 537 Power, 589 Precision, 726 Toughness 1:1:4.8 ratio Valkyrie's armour with Beryl trinkets of the Valkyrie: 776 Power, 48% Crit Damage, 539 Vitality 1:9.8:4.3 ratio So if you go with all Valkyrie gear, you'll want to rune for Precision more than crit damage! Stat bonus values for some rune sets (multiply total stats by the appropriate number from the ratio above, then add together for total. Ignores non-stat effects.) Berserker: Divinity: 216 + survivability Eagle: 304 Air: 50 Pack: 325 Knight: Divinity: 178 Eagle: 203 Air: 48 Pack: 265 Valkyrie: Divinity: 700 Eagle: 1651 Air: 43 Pack: 1145 So purely on DPS grounds (ignoring survivability) someone in Berserker's gear should rune "of the Pack", in Knight gear "of the pack" and in Valkyrie gear "Of the Eagle". Note that the above are a bit inaccurate, as each change to any of the stats used changes the optimal ratios. Adding runes one at a time would allow more accurate optimization, but it's a ton of work. I'd go with Berserker's & Runes of the Pack, or Valkyrie's with runes of the Eagle.

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Seaimpin de na Capall
Denji
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  • GW2: thundermittens.2831
Replied On: 09/12/2012 at 06:49 PM PDT
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Thanks so much SAI, i generally look things up myself, but math is just one of those things that I can't ;_; I'm not what you'd call..."smart". If you could show us how to figure out the ratios, that would be great. For my sake, could you speak in stupid? Or maybe put it in a way that yo-gabba-gabba or sesame street would put it? I.E. "if cookie monster were wearing a valkyrie helm....." One other stupid question, I don't really know what the "1:5.3:3 Power:Precision:Crit Damage" means :/ Does that mean for every 1 point of power I want 5.3 points of precision and 3 points of crit damage? O_o here's my stats... since i use a d/d mage, there's waaaaaayyyy less room for error than if i were to play my warrior/guardian/necro/thief. Where the other classes are really forgiving, this one is especially painful if i don't stat myself as well as possible, as well as balance out vitality since as you probably already know, everything does condition damage in the end zones >:( greatful for any help you can give :3 power 1637 precision 1091 toughness 1495 vitality 1699 attack 2618 critical chance 12% armor 2415 health 18,635 helm: valkyrie exalted mask of the dolyak shoulders: knights exalted mantle of the dolyak chest: acolyte's coat of the dolyak gloves: knight's exalted gloves of the dolyak pants: acolyte's pants of the dolyak boots: rampager's cabalist boots of the dolyak accessory: ancient orian spoon power/toughness/vitality accessory: ancient orian spoon power/toughness/vitality amulet: emerald mythril amulet of the knight power/precision toughness ring: emerald chrysocola orichalcum ring of carrion power/vitality/condition dmg ring:emerald mythril ring of the knight power/precision/toughness

» Edited on: 2012-09-12 18:54:23

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/12/2012 at 09:38 PM PDT
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"One other stupid question, I don't really know what the "1:5.3:3 Power:Precision:Crit Damage" means :/ Does that mean for every 1 point of power I want 5.3 points of precision and 3 points of crit damage? O_o" Yes. Exactly that. The stats we care about are Attack, Precision, and Critical Damage. I assume from the gear names that you have 7% critical damage. (Mouse over the crit chance on the hero sheet to check this.) So we set the variables: Scaling Factor = 1 (Basically ignoring this, since it doesn't change the ratios.*) Attack = 2618 Precision = 1091 Critical Damage = 0.07 Attack Value Score = ((2618 * (2 * 0.07 + 3) * (1091 - 830) - 1091 + 2930)) / 2100 = 977 Precision Score = ((2618 * (2618 * (2 * 0.07 + 3) - 2)) / 4200 = 4894 Crit Damage Score = (2618^2 * (1091 - 830) ) / 2100 = 851845 Now, crit damage score needs to be divided by 100 due to it being percentage based... So True Crit Damage Score = 8518 We divide all of those by the smallest value (Attack in this case) to get a nice set of ratios: 977/977 = 1 4894/977 = 5 8518/977 = 8.7 ~= 9 So 1:5:9 power:precision:crit damage So you want more crit damage, then more precision (crit chance), then lastly power. As you change gear the ratios will change, so recalculate after you swap out each piece. One other note: You are currently mixing Power based stats (Power, Precision, Crit Damage) and Condition based stats (Condition damage, Condition Duration). This tends to be bad, since they are additive, independent stats. I'll try to make some diagrams to explain this in an easy-to-understand manner. *Technical: Scaling factor changes the magnitude of the gradient, but not the direction. For this particular application of the gradient vector we care only about the direction, so we ignore it. It's potentially useful for other things, so I left it in the equations.

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Denji
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  • GW2: thundermittens.2831
Replied On: 09/13/2012 at 12:55 PM PDT
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Thank you SAI! copy/pasted/emailed your post to a few non-guildie folks that wanted to read it. On a side note, I think it's really cool that we're in a guild with so many folks that have different talents that they can pitch in and share with the rest of us =)

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/14/2012 at 03:40 AM PDT
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So, I started a gear comparison spreadsheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Auc_PUlJR9sQdGxoMmFKakdQNThTUGI2VUhsSV9kOEE#gid=0 To use it, go to file -> make a copy. That makes a copy on your Google docs, so you can edit. Use dropdown boxes to select the prefixes for the gear you want, select the runes, type in weapon damage, see output ratios. This only compares lvl 80 exotic gear ATM. ArenaNet seems to use approximately 1.5:1:14 ratios for power:precision:Crit Damage in making items, though this varies due to the major/minor stat system they use. The "Score" near the bottom compares your gear's total stats to that set of ratios, and might be useful for comparing item sets. That said, it ignores everything other than power, precision, and crit damage, so EG Berserker's will have a higher score than Valkyrie, even though in practice Valkyrie will almost certainly be better (DPS when dead = 0). It also makes condition damage and healing gear look worse than it is, etc, etc. I've not looked at those aspects yet.

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Seaimpin de na Capall
Denji
Seaimpin de na Capall
  • GW2: thundermittens.2831
Replied On: 09/14/2012 at 09:37 AM PDT
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requesting access, denji.gw2@gmail.com :)

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/14/2012 at 02:05 PM PDT
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You should be able to copy it without having access. If you can't I'll branch it and give access to the branch.

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Seaimpin de na Capall
Denji
Seaimpin de na Capall
  • GW2: thundermittens.2831
Replied On: 09/14/2012 at 06:48 PM PDT
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hmm.... still wont let me acces it. This is a copy/paste from the page I get: You need permission to access this item. You are signed in as denji.gw2@gmail.com, but you don't have permission to access this item. You can request access from the owner or choose a different account

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/14/2012 at 11:36 PM PDT
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It should work now.

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/20/2012 at 06:38 PM PDT
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Condition damage, and why it's (currently) not worth the hassle in PVE: @ lvl 80: Bleeding: 42.5 + 0.05 * Condition Damage per stack per second. Max 25 stacks per target. Burning: 328 + 0.25 * Condition Damage per second. Stacks duration. Poison: 80 + 0.10 * Condition Damage per second. Stacks duration. Confusion: 65 + 0.075 * Condition Damage per stack per attack. Stacks intensity. Depends on enemy using attacks/skills. Max 25 stacks per target. Condition Damage scales thus linearly. Condition Duration increases total Damage done, but does not increase DPS. Condition stacks are capped against each monster in the following manner (from what I can tell): Burning and poison use the condition damage of the player with the highest condition damage. All other players attacking the target with burns/poison get no credit, though they do add to the duration. Confusion stacks intensity, capping at 25 stacks per target. Multiple players stacks add, on a first-come-first-served basis. Players attempting to add stacks after 25 do no damage and get no credit. Bleeding stacks intensity, capping at 25 stacks per target. Multiple players stacks add, on a first-come-first-served basis. Players attempting to add stacks after 25 do no damage and get no credit. In general, 1-2 players will be able to keep the bleed count at 25 stacks. Further condition damage users are useless. Confusion is good in PVP, since players reliably use abilities. It's poor in most PVE, especially with slow-high-damage champion/boss attack patterns. Bleeding is generally the best DPS condition, followed by burning, or confusion if the target can be relied on to keep using abilities. Gear stats in GW2 have major or minor levels (% based stats also do, but of course with different numbers not relevant here). Major: Head: 45 Shoulders: 34 Chest: 101 Gloves: 34 Legs: 67 Boots: 34 Minor: Head: 32 Shoulders: 24 Chest: 72 Gloves: 24 Legs: 48 Boots: 24 Similar for accessories & weapons. Each gear piece has one major stat and the remaining stats are minor. Condition DPS scales with one stat: Condition damage. Normal DPS scales with three stats: Power, Precision, and Critical Damage. Due to the major/minor scaling, the amount of Power you can get is identical to the amount of Condition Damage you can get. Thus, with a Normal damage build you can get more stats than you can with a Condition damage build. Also, the stats for Normal damage are multiplicative with each other: The more Power you have the more valuable each point of Precision and Critical Damage becomes. Likewise for the other two. Effectively, Normal damage scales proportionally with the cube of your stats. Therefore Normal damage can do more DPS. That said, Condition damage is not offset by armor, so in solo situations vs high armor targets it can provide better DPS. TL;DR: At most 3 condition users per group: 1 Burn/bleed, 1 poison/bleed, 1 Confusion/burn/poison. Further condition users are useless. The higher the target's armor the better Condition damage gets, and the more you want to have 1-3 Condition users in the group. For 5-man dungeon groups Condition Damage is viable. For sPVP/tPVP condition removal is prevalent, but it's still viable. For WvWvW and world PVE events, Condition Damage is a poor choice. Always try to stack for one damage type. Mixing Condition Damage and Normal Damage is suboptimal stat budgeting, but there's no Condition Damage/Toughness/Vitality set in the game, so go with Condition Damage/Power/Vitality (Carrion) if building Condition Damage. Condition Damage/Precision is a poor combo, because Precision adds less to damage than Power if not already stacking Power and Critical Damage.

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Saighdiuir de na Sailetheach Donn
MrB
Saighdiuir de na Sailetheach Donn
Replied On: 09/20/2012 at 08:30 PM PDT
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Thank you for this very useful post and to all the others who provided additional information. How or where did you get the information?

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Caomhnoir de na Fhiaigh Gorm
Radgasken
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Replied On: 09/20/2012 at 11:35 PM PDT
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One observation to note having played with the spreadsheet... Ideally you want to have a balance of gear that reduces your "ratio" as close to 1:1:1 as possible, which isn't all that hard to understand. Since almost everything has +power on it though, something around 1:2:1, or 1:1:2 is probably the best you can get. In all knight's and emerald gear (power/prec/tough), my warrior has a ratio of about 1:1:5.5 saying I need more crit damage. Just swapping in a single Ruby amulet (power/prec/crit dmg) my ratio lowers to 1:2:2 which means I'm operating much more efficiently. Conclusions: 1) No matter what your build, you want crit damage at least +10 to +20 either through a couple pieces of berserker/valkyrie/ruby/beryl gear, or if your character has trait points in the trait line which already gives you +crit damage. That 10 to 20% seems to be the sweet spot. After that, precision gets more valuable than crit damage. 2) Berserker's gear is the best for dps. 3) For berserker dps builds, because of the diminishing returns on +crit damage after awhile, consider exchanging some ruby jewelry for emerald to help with survivability.

» Edited on: 2012-09-20 23:48:50

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/21/2012 at 01:27 AM PDT
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"How or where did you get the information?" A few places. Mostly it's a mix of the Wiki and in-game testing.

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Saighdiuir de na Capall
Calandryl
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Replied On: 09/23/2012 at 04:22 PM PDT
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I go with condition damage so I don't have to worry about all this.

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/23/2012 at 11:30 PM PDT
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Condition damage is (currently) a worse choice. A bit like saying "I go to McDonalds because I don't want to cook." My post from 9/20 is actually all about what you have to worry about with condition damage, really it's a lot more in the end than you do with normal damage. That said, you don't /have/ to worry about any of this. Not everyone wants to optimize, and there's no need to do the best you can at dps in this game, it's a game. Have fun. Some people do that by optimizing and trying to be the best players around, others RP, others just enjoy the scenery. Most people do a mix. This is just for people who want to know how they can best go about doing more damage.

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Calandryl
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Replied On: 09/25/2012 at 11:26 AM PDT
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Those numbers for condition damage are not accurate for all builds. I'm not sure where you got them. As a Mesmer I don't believe you can build any " normal damage" build that does more than a condition damage build. The only drawback I see with condition builds is during large events when the mob has 25 stacks of everything. Wish we had a parser.

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Laoch de na Iolair Dearg
Lakshmi
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Replied On: 09/25/2012 at 12:36 PM PDT
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Second draw back with condition builds in large groups: First stack sets the damage for all subsequent stacks. So if my 20 damage/tick Bleed makes the first stack on the target, your normally 2000/tick Bleed adds another stack at 20/tick. It's an unfortunate design, and I think ArenaNet has seen some feedback on it. Soloing in PVE and 1v1 your condition damage will rock. In a large raid, it's often much less.

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
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  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/25/2012 at 10:32 PM PDT
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Arcadis, in what way are they not accurate? I took the formulae from the wiki, and confirmed them via in-game regression testing in spvp with a steady weapon. (Set traits to 0, add to the relevant trait line that increases condition damage 1 point at a time, check tooltip damage on the skill, repeat 10 times. The graph of Y=tooltip damage, X=Condition Damage is a nice line for all 4 listed types, and is accurate to the formulae within the margins of error caused by rounding.) A mesmer's only reliable condition is Confusion, and that depends on the attack rate of the target. A smart player will stop attacking while confused, while most champion/boss mobs seem to have slow attack rates.

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Radgasken
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Replied On: 09/25/2012 at 11:53 PM PDT
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Since we're talking about condition damage versus crit/power, I'd love to have you weigh in on my warrior ranged build SAI: http://guildwars.gaiscioch.com/tavern/guildwars_classes/post_41439.html Effectively, with Superior Sigil of the Earth, you can leverage your high precision/crit chance into increasing your condition DPS by placing more bleeds. I don't think you thought of the proc aspect with respect to condition builds. Oftentimes high precision allows more conditions to be placed since they proc on crit.

» Edited on: 2012-09-25 23:59:50

» Edited on: 2012-09-26 00:00:38

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Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
SAI
Curadh de na Faolchu Donn
  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 09/26/2012 at 06:07 PM PDT
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Proc effects are just another way to apply conditions. They're still capped, and the condition dps still scales with one stat only, not 3. (Total condition damage scales with 2 stats, since then duration matters, but increasing condition duration does not change DPS.) Precision proccing more bleeds just means you hit the cap faster. It's great when solo, since you'll probably hover just at/below the cap (and thus do maximal damage) but stacking more conditions actually makes you worse in groups!

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Calandryl
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Replied On: 09/26/2012 at 07:28 PM PDT
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The first stack of a condition does not set the damage for the whole stack. A higher damage condition will overwrite any lower. SAI, the issue is probably that I don't completely understand your formulas . The 42.5 + .05 * condition damage seems lower than what I see in game. My point is that for a Mesmer condition damage outdoes direct damage. We just don't have good direct damage options. Just did a PvE mob and the confusion hits were 609, 1200 something, 900 something, another 900 and 1100. I can't even get a reliable test because in the Mist my condition damage is 250 while normally its 1227.

» Edited on: 2012-09-26 19:50:10

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Replied On: 09/27/2012 at 11:49 AM PDT
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This is great work SAI! I just drew up a graph to try to figure out where increasing a stat starts to become less valuable. I'll try to share once I'm satisfied. Right now I'm fixing 2 of the 3 stats to make a 2 dimensional graph. I wonder if just graphing that gradient vector on 3 axis would be easy to use.

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Method: Go to heart of the mists, get a steady weapon with a sigil that won't affect condition damage (I used Air), Undead gear with Carrion amulet & gem. Set traits to 0. Test damage on Heavy target golem, checking the value of a "tick" of damage for a given condition damage value. Add 1 point to the trait line that gives condition damage (thus adding 10 condition damage.) Retest. Repeat. Account for additional damage sources (eg, for Elementalist one gets +10% damage when endurance is full with 25+ points in Earth, so I dodged twice before each test.) Put on gear, and test again. Find intercept (damage when condition damage = 0) and slope of the resulting output. Hypothesis: Bleeding does 42.5 + 0.05 * condition damage per tick, per stack. Damage is rounded to the nearest whole number. Bleeding: Condition damage: 00 Damage/tick: 43 Condition damage: 10 Damage/tick: 43 Condition damage: 20 Damage/tick: 44 Condition damage: 30 Damage/tick: 44 Condition damage: 40 Damage/tick: 45 Condition damage: 50 Damage/tick: 45 Condition damage: 60 Damage/tick: 46 Condition damage: 70 Damage/tick: 46 Condition damage: 80 Damage/tick: 47 Condition damage: 90 Damage/tick: 47 Condition damage: 100 Damage/tick: 48 Condition damage: 1469 Damage/tick: 116 Intercept: 43 Slope: 0->10 : 0 10->20 : 0.1 20->30 : 0 30->40 : 0.1 40->50 : 0 50->60 : 0.1 60->70 : 0 70->80 : 0.1 80->90 : 0 90->100 : 0.1 100->1469 : 0.05 (0.04967) This is consistent with the hypothesis. Bleed damage is 42.5 + 0.05 * Condition Damage per stack per tick. Hypothesis: Burning damage is 328 + 0.25 * Condition Damage per tick. Burning: Condition damage: 00 Damage/tick: 328 Condition damage: 10 Damage/tick: 330 Condition damage: 20 Damage/tick: 333 Condition damage: 30 Damage/tick: 336 Condition damage: 40 Damage/tick: 338 Condition damage: 50 Damage/tick: 340 Condition damage: 60 Damage/tick: 343 Condition damage: 70 Damage/tick: 346 Condition damage: 80 Damage/tick: 348 Condition damage: 90 Damage/tick: 350 Condition damage: 100 Damage/tick: 353 Condition damage: 1469 Damage/tick: 695 Intercept: 328 Slope: 0->10 : 0.2 10->20 : 0.3 20->30 : 0.3 30->40 : 0.2 40->50 : 0.2 50->60 : 0.3 60->70 : 0.3 70->80 : 0.2 80->90 : 0.2 90->100 : 0.3 100->1469 : 0.25 (0.24981) This is consistent with the hypothesis that burning does 328 + 0.25 * condition damage per tick. Is that clearer? I'll leave discussion of mesmer builds to another thread, since this is a genrealization on how damage scales. If/when Anet changes the scaling or removes the caps condition damage will be more viable, and it is already viable in a number of situations. Edit: Minor note, I actually put my gear on 1 piece at a time, but including all that would make this post excessively long. The scaling is linear, not power law or some such.

» Edited on: 2012-09-27 17:02:12

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Replied On: 09/27/2012 at 08:03 PM PDT
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When I experiment with a steady weapon and no traits/armor, I see power coming out far stronger than your spreadsheet. For example, at base stats Hip Shot does 36 damage non crit and 54 crit. At a base 4% crit that means we do 4 attacks at 54 for every 96 at 36. The average attack is 36.72 giving us a scaling factor of a meager 3.45% Looking at this: (Attack) * (Scaling Factor) * (1 - (Precision - 830 )/2100 + (1.5 + Crit Damage) * (Attack) * (Scaling Factor) * (Precision - 830)/2100) Why is (Attack) * (Scaling Factor) in there twice? With this formula the crit dmg gets Attack squared. Isn't the basic generalized formula this? (Attack) * k * (Normal hit %) + (crit dmg) * (Attack) * k * (crit %) and therefore (Attack) * k * ( 1 - crit % + crit dmg * (crit %)) Plugging real numbers into the first formula yields 812 instead of 36.72 which is what I get in game. When I plug in base values and a Steady weapon in your spreadsheet, I get 1:3.61:2.07 However, incrementing Precision by 21 yields 36.9 Damage and incrementing Power by 21 yields 37.32 damage. Power was more helpful. When I use a PvP Rifle and average 320 per hit, I get the same result: increasing Power the same amount as Precision yields more damage overall despite your ratios saying otherwise. Am I missing something? I feel like the second Attack * Scaling Power shouldn't be there or there's a missing parenthesis. I thought that maybe there was a typo but I checked your first derivative and it was inline with this formula.

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Replied On: 09/27/2012 at 08:10 PM PDT

I just came across this and had a few concerns. First off I don't really get how you came to your damage calculation shouldn't it end up like: Attack=Weapon Damage+Power Damage per hit=(attack)*(scaling factor)*(1+[(Crit chance)*(Critical damage+0.5) ] Damage per hit=(Attack)*(Scaling factor)*(1+[((Precision-830)/2100)*(Critical damage+0.5) ] ∂Damage/∂Attack=(Scaling factor)*(1+[((Precision-830)/2100)*(Critical damage+0.5) ] ∂Damage/∂Precision=((Attack)*(Scaling factor)*(Critical damage+0.5))/2100 ∂Damage/(∂Crit damage)=(Attack)(Scaling factor)((Precision-830)/2100) Which changes your example of: Weapon damage=1000, Power=2000, Precision=2000, Crit damage=0.25, Scaling factor = 1/3 To produce: Resulting gradient vector <0.47,0.36,557> normalized to attack <1,0.77,1185> Although the result of such is rather similar to your own outcomes. That said while the initial Critical damage is given substantially increased value than the other two values it is important to note the ratios of stats you could otherwise have if you did not have the bonus crit damage on your Amulets and jewels which come in ~ 1900:1 for Amulets and 600:1 for Jewels. Looking at maximizing damage output Berserker will be the strongest, considering that it covers all the bases Secondary considerations are Knight, Rampager, Celestrial, Soldier, and Valkyrie. The resulting Change in damage for these, normalized to the output of the Berserker are: Ratios above Amulet: <1(Berserker),0.71(Knight),0.63(Ramp),0.49(Celestrial), 0.56(Soldier), 0.69(Valkyrie)> Ratios initially provided Amulet: <1(Berserker),0.79(Knight), 0.79+(Rampager), 0.48+(Celestrial), 0.48(Soldier), 0.56(Valkyrie> Ratios above Jewel: <1(Berserker),0.55(Knight),0.58(Ramp),0.57(Celestrial), 0.52(Soldier), 0.76(Valkyrie)> Ratios initially provided Jewel: <1(Berserker),0.65(Knight),0.78(Ramp),0.55(Celestrial), 0.47(Soldier), 0.63(Valkyrie)> This rather changes the results of the best secondary equipment choice and results in a far less obvious choice between them. That said these number are not explicitly meaningful on their own as the numbers used are comparable to what you will actually have. I hope that makes sense.

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Replied On: 09/27/2012 at 08:10 PM PDT
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There is a missing paren. Thanks for spotting that! Average damage should be = (Attack) * (Scaling Factor) * (1 - (Precision - 830 )/2100) + (1.5 + Crit Damage) * (Attack) * (Scaling Factor) * (Precision - 830)/2100 It's also much easier to work with crit chance than with precision in some cases, especially since some abilities give crit chance (eg elementalist signet of fire gives 5% crit chance.) So Average Damage = (Attack) * (Scaling Factor) * (1 - Crit chance) + (1.5 + Crit Damage) * (Attack) * (Scaling Factor) * (Crit Chance) ∂Damage/∂Attack = (Scaling Factor) * (Crit Chance * (2 * Crit Damage + 1) + 2) / 2 ∂Damage/∂Crit Chance = (Scaling Factor) * (Attack) * (2 * Crit Damage + 1) / 2 ∂Damage/∂Crit Damage = (Attack) * (Crit Chance) * (Scaling Factor) And for dealing directly with precision: ∂Damage/∂Attack = (Scaling Factor) * (2 * (Crit Damage) * (Precision - 830) + Precision +3370) / 4200 ∂Damage/∂Precision = Attack * (Scaling Factor) * (2 * (Crit Damage) + 1) / 4200 ∂Damage/∂Crit Damage = Attack * (Scaling Factor) * (Precision - 830) / 2100 This all goes to show the danger of copy & pasting equations! Errors propagate. Spreadsheet has been updated. OP fixed.

» Edited on: 2012-09-27 20:55:20

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Replied On: 09/27/2012 at 09:02 PM PDT
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"First off I don't really get how you came to your damage calculation" Easy to explain. Damage per hit = Non-crit damage * chance to NOT get a crit + Crit damage * chance to get a crit. Non-crit damage = (Weapon Damage + Power) * (Scaling Factor) Crit Damage = (Non-Crit Damage) * (1.5 + Crit Damage %). eg if you have +50% crit damage, then you do (Non-Crit Damage) * (1.5 + 0.5) = (Non-Crit Damage) * 2 Chance to NOT crit is (1 - Chance to Crit). Attack = Weapon Damage + Power So we get (Attack) * (Scaling Factor) * (1 - Crit Chance) + (Attack) * (1.5 + Crit Damage %) * (Crit Chance) Since Crit Chance = (Precision - 830) / 2100: (Attack) * (Scaling Factor) * (1 - (Precision - 830) / 2100) + (Attack) * (1.5 + Crit Damage %) * (Precision - 830) / 2100

» Edited on: 2012-09-28 00:42:18

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Replied On: 09/28/2012 at 05:24 AM PDT
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Thanks SAI. I was thinking something was off when I saw Precision tended to be 5-7 times stronger in the ratio. I sort of wish that was right because I love big crits. Thanks for updating the spreadsheet so fast.

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Replied On: 09/28/2012 at 10:35 AM PDT

My inability to reason out your approach was due to the missing parenthesis. When I did realize what you were intending I could follow through the form of your equation. Although I am still inclined to call it a slightly more difficult form to work with than. Damage per hit = (Attack) * (Scaling factor) * (1 + [{(Precision - 830) / 2100} * (Critical damage + 0.5)] Due to the additional term but that's just personal preference and has no impact on the results. Also the more I think about it the more it seems like this interpretation of the damage gradient vector seems to over emphasize critical damage. I say this as the game itself places an additional premium on it compared to other stats depending on item type, all other stats being given equal value expect in runes where condition damage appears to receive a +10% increase compared to other basic stats. To this end I looked up craft able lv 80 items and compared the base stat cost per % of critical damage. ( all values taken from http://www.gw2db.com) Armour Shoulders 12:1, Helm 16:1, Gloves 12:1, Pants 16:1, Coat 14.4:1, Boots 12:1 Weapons 1 handed 12.8:1, 2 handed 14.2:1 Note that harpoons and spear guns appear to be treated as 1 handed Accessories Amulets 12.2:1, Rings 16:1, Earrings 13.3:1, Jewels 5:1 Where all items had 1 main stat and 2 secondary stats available as listed below: Power, Precision, Critical damage Condition damage, Power, vitality Healing, Power, Toughness Magic find, Power, Precision Toughness, Power, Precision Jewel variant Precision, Toughness, Power Precision, Power, Condition damage Power, Vitality, Critical damage (There appears to be some acquirable items with different stat selections than this but none that I readily found provided critical damage) Effective stat costs for runes vary by the location of the set benefit (note I only looked at pvp runes for this) 1 piece: 12.5:1, 2 piece: 5:1, 3 piece: 16.6:1, 4 piece: 9:1, 5 piece: 16:1 Runes of divinity are harder to account for due to no definitive comparison criteria. pvp amulets have a 19:1 conversion ratio while pvp jewels have a 6:1 conversion. This leaves me to believe that if you are going to mix some survivability with your damage that it may be more efficient to have a comparably high value for your Critical damage in your damage gradient vector. The situation effectively seems to come down to where 1 point of critical damage might be worth 5 points of power but the game is offering you 10 point of power or 1 point of Critical damage. Also If you want to do direct damage it seems like you should pretty much always use jewels with Critical damage and make your survivability judgement choices to other items.

» Edited on: 2012-09-28 13:51:02

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Replied On: 09/28/2012 at 02:30 PM PDT
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Doh! >_< I should have read the condition damage part before i did all my condition armor, your post would have saved me alot of gold.

» Edited on: 2012-09-28 18:30:44

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Replied On: 09/29/2012 at 01:36 AM PDT
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Denji, it's likely not a waste. It will almost certainly be buffed, and that means you already have a second set of gear to have a condition build ready.

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Replied On: 09/29/2012 at 05:16 AM PDT
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This is why I don't like blanket statements like "condition damage is less than direct damage". What class is Denji? If he's an elementalist then this statement is true. If he's a Necro then it's not true.

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Replied On: 09/29/2012 at 11:10 AM PDT
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@arcadia this specific character is my engineer alt. Yes, I guess i'll have condition set, and a all around roamer set :)

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Replied On: 09/29/2012 at 06:04 PM PDT
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Sooooo.... Big changes. My initial tests were low level, and I assumed attack was used in the formulae. I then mis-accounted for how armor works. *feels silly* Turns out it's not, Attack is ignored. Weapon Damage * Power is used, not Weapon Damage + Power. Damage done, non-crit: Scaling Factor * Weapon Damage * Power / Armor Time to redo ALL THE MATH! That's what I get for trusting someone else's formula for armor. Now, we can ignore armor and the scaling factor (more specifically, we can factor them out of the equation and set them to 1, they're constants for a given skill/target anyway.) Average damage = (Scaling Factor) * (Weapon Damage * Power) * (1 - Crit Chance) + (Scaling Factor) * (Weapon Damage * Power) * (1.5 + Crit Damage %) * (Crit Chance) (Scaling Factor) * (Weapon Damage * Power) * (1 - (Precision - 830) / 2100) + (Scaling Factor) * (Weapon Damage * Power) * (1.5 + Crit Damage %) * (Precision - 830) / 2100 ∂Damage/∂Power = (Crit Chance * (2 * Crit Damage + 1) + 2) * Weapon Damage / 2 ∂Damage/∂Weapon Damage = (Crit Chance * (2 * Crit Damage + 1) + 2) * Power / 2 ∂Damage/∂Crit Chance = (2 * Crit Damage + 1) * Power * Weapon Damage / 2 ∂Damage/∂Crit Damage = Crit Chance * Power * Weapon Damage And for dealing directly with precision: ∂Damage/∂Power = (2 * Crit Damage * (Precision - 830) + Precision + 3370) * Weapon Damage / 4200 ∂Damage/∂Weapon Damage = (2 * Crit Damage * (Precision - 830) + Precision + 3370) * Power / 4200 ∂Damage/∂Precision = (2 * Crit Damage + 1) * Power * Weapon Damage / 4200 ∂Damage/∂Crit Damage = (Precision - 830) * Power * Weapon Damage / 2100 And, using precision and treating weapon damage * power as one variable, WDP, for ease of graphing (later): ∂Damage/∂WDP = (2 * Crit Damage * (Precision - 830) + Precision + 3370) / 4200 ∂Damage/∂Precision = (2 * Crit Damage + 1) * WDP / 4200 ∂Damage/∂Crit Damage = (Precision - 830) * WDP / 2100 OP updated. Edit: Spreadsheet updated. Elementalist damage coefficients updated.

» Edited on: 2012-09-30 00:22:06

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Replied On: 09/30/2012 at 10:47 AM PDT
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"I then mis-accounted for how armor works" Yeah i thought so, when I looked at your initial calculations, i couldn't help but think to myself "tsk-tsk, sai totally has his polyhedrals incorrectly quadrilated to the "n"th power of his inverted dodecahedrons" I was gonna tell you, but I figued it would be better if you figured it out yourself. we all make mistakes. in fact, even i have trouble with math sometimes, but mostly when im dealing with dividing by quadrangulated marsupials :/ Thanks for the updates sai, im about to buy new armor so this came just in time. checking it out now =)

» Edited on: 2012-09-30 14:41:23

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Replied On: 09/30/2012 at 03:51 PM PDT
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lol. It was one of those fun errors where the problem fits the data at low level, but then diverges wildly at high level. Which is why I went back to verify things, found I was wrong, and corrected it. Also why I post threads like this, so other people can check the math and point out errors.

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Replied On: 10/03/2012 at 08:34 PM PDT

Although I am sure it doesn't really matter but I redid all the math independently from the new set of axioms and came to the same results.

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Replied On: 10/03/2012 at 09:51 PM PDT
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Thanks. Always good to have the math double-checked.

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Replied On: 10/04/2012 at 12:03 PM PDT

Re condition damage -- you should also think of the situations where it matters. Yes it's true that if you're fighting a raid boss, your condition damage doesn't add much. And of course there's the issue with objects (you can't poison/bleed or apparently even burn a wooden door). But... raid bosses always die, no matter what you the individual contribute. So don't fret much about it. Think about where you sometimes fail a fight. Does the cap on condition come into play there? Myself, I just started adding back in some condition damage because of PvE, the speed that undead run compared to other mob types. Even with full up-time on swiftness, I often can only just keep ahead of a vet if I stick to my bleed, poison, and cripple attacks only. It lets me stll kill things effectively when I have to run forward instead of strafe.

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Replied On: 10/04/2012 at 12:46 PM PDT

It's useful, for those who aren't fluent in reading equations, to unpack what they're saying. It's a LOT easier to do with a white board than a forum post, but I'm gonna give a try. First: Armor is inversely related to damage received. As players, duh, we want the highest armor we can get. With ANet's system, there's no difference in gear except by quality-level. But... given that light= 4/5 of heavy, medium is 9/10 of heavy, you can expect a light to take 25% more damage and a medium to take 11% more damage than a heavy wearer, all other things being equal. What's this mean for how to play? If you're light, commit to defense whether it's skills, traits, or stats, to make up for the armor. On the other hand, the armor difference from heavy to light is tiny compared to a lot of other games. The damage-done equation -- You have basically a power * weapon attack value that determines your direct damage. For a given weapon type, its damage is determined by the quality. You want exotic if you can afford it. (duh) On an attack, it's either a regular or a critical hit. That's the first and 2nd part of SAI's equation. Regular hits, power and your weapon are all that matter. If it's a crit, you'll do 150% plus your +crit damage. This results in a part of the equation where you have crit-chance times crit damage terms. General principle - if you remember your basic maths, you had all those geometry problems like "Farmer Brown has 50 feet of fencing and wants to make a rectangular pen for his moas. What configuration will give his moas the most room?" That's a length * width = Area. The Area is biggest when length and width are equal to each other, a square has more area than a similar-statted rectangle. With damage we have crit_chance * crit_damage, albeit with different numbers around them. What's the implication: You'll benefit from a balanced approach to (precision and crit chance) and + crit damage. I think the game's restricted gear will keep us from getting too close to 100% crit where you'd be "wasting" it. So... go Berserkers OR if you want some survivability DON'T go all valkyrie, but rather mix valkyrie and knights, for example, so you balance precision and +crit. The scary stuff SAI has with the little greek ds, that's just pulling out the slope of the line, sorta the miles-per-gallon that you get. It shows, in the same way the original equation does, that power and weapon damage figure in right on everything, and that the benefit of adding precision or +crit depends on +crit and precision. (aside: There's a 2* in front of crit damage that I can't see where it came from, but again in a simple linear model I don't think we need the gradient to make sense of it.) Left out of all of the omnibus equation is condition damage, cuz it's seperate. It won't crit. It's modified by what other people are doing. So it's situational. The only way I do damage when I'm ducking out of LOS is by condition ticks. But in a big group, my bleeds get lost like tears in a river. Hopefully this helps. I wish I had a white board and colored markers.

» Edited on: 2012-10-04 14:44:40

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Replied On: 10/05/2012 at 12:15 AM PDT
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Average damage with scholar's runes (not counting the 10% bonus damage), 2 handed weapon, no traits, guild assassin back w/ruby jewel, for 1.0 scaling ability vs heavy armor target: All Berserker's & Ruby: 843 All Valkyrie & Beryl: 840 Knight armor, Beryl gems: 804 Valkyrie armor, Emerald gems: 782 All Knight's & Emerald: 745 EHP, Elementalist/Guardian/Thief base health: Knight armor, Beryl gems: 30,017,215 All Valkyrie & Beryl: 29,734,020 Valkyrie armor, Emerald gems: 29,312,115 All Knight's & Emerald: 27,682,410 All Berserker's & Ruby: 19,837,980 So for damage, go Berserker's, if you need a bit of health go Valkyrie & Beryl, for max tank Knight & beryl. "if you want some survivability DON'T go all valkyrie, but rather mix valkyrie and knights, for example, so you balance precision and +crit." +crit scales better than precision with the stat balance on the gear in game. So for damage with ok survivability, pure valkyrie is actually really good. For max health, valkyrie is second best.

» Edited on: 2012-10-05 00:34:28

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  • GW2: Shadow of life.6340
Replied On: 10/07/2012 at 01:54 PM PDT

I've setup a personal spreadsheet to work with a peice by peice comparison of gear, with jewel independance, and I am not coming to the same All Valk is better than valk with knight parts. I have all values normalized to base stats of the class, equal in all cases for damage but varies for health consideration. Health consideration is based on EHP = Hp * Armour from the general form of D(Power,Precision,Crit damage,Weapon damage)/Armour = Damage dealt scaled to be D(Power,Precision,Crit damage,Weapon damage) to kill = Max Hp * Armour Where Max hp = class base HP + 10 * Vitality And armour = total base armour + Tougness It is worthwhile to mention that this form undervalues vitality as it provides some value vs condition damage. It also undervalues toughness as it ignores any amount of healing you might receive which benefits toughness and does not benefit vitality. For an elementalist a full Valk/Beryl set, 2 handed weapon, scholar runes, no traits, and guild assassin back pack. Damage = 2.323 Ehp = 1.617 swap for knight pants Damage = 2.354 Ehp = 1.630 Also swap helm Damage = 2.372 Ehp = 1.637 Swaping a ring, not the jewel inside Damage = 2.417 Ehp = 1.628 (also swapping jewel Damage = 2.418 Ehp = 1.628) Also swaping both rings, not the jewels inside Damage = 2.458 Ehp = 1.618 (both jewels Damage = 2.462 Ehp = 1.614) Also swaping coat Damage = 2.478 Ehp = 1.619 (both jewels Damage = 2.477 Ehp = 1.614) Also swaping the 2 handed weapon Damage = 2.491 Ehp = 1.604 (both jewels Damage = 2.484 Ehp = 1.596) Continuing to exchange parts continues to increase damage but decreases Ehp, actual results may vary based upon healing and condition damage as mentioned before. Also note that the order of item replacement was based on decreasing stat cost of critical damage. This result comes from how the combat based stats increase in value as the other values increase. Additionally crit damage scales well but has increased costs compared to other stats, which varies based upon the piece of equipment.

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SAI
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  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 10/08/2012 at 02:14 PM PDT
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Found (and corrected) a typo (Libre Office import mucked it up) which caused crit chance to be undervalued in my spreadsheet. Thanks, might not have noticed it otherwise. With my calculation method, 2600 armor target: EHP = (Defense + Toughness) * (Base HP + Vitality * 10) Damage = ((Weapon Damage * Power) * (1 - (Precision - 830) / 2100) + (Weapon Damage * Power) * (1.5 + Crit Damage %) * (Precision - 830) / 2100) / 2600 For an elementalist a full Valk/Beryl set, 2 handed berserker weapon, scholar runes, no traits, and guild assassin back pack w/ruby jewel. Power: 2081, Precision: 1073, Crit Damage: 0.69, Toughness: 916, Vitality: 1455, Weapon Damage: 1048, Defense: 920, Base HP: 1645 Damage = 954 Ehp = 29,734,020 swap for knight pants Damage = 965 Ehp = 29,905,645 Also swap helm Damage = 971 Ehp = 29,989,460 Swaping a ring, also swapping jewel Damage = 980 Ehp = 29,972,950 Also swaping both rings, both jewels Damage = 985 Ehp = 29,853,120 Also swaping coat Damage = 988 Ehp = 29,687,395 Redoing the test from the previous post: All Berserker's & Ruby: 1211 Knight armor, Beryl gems: 986 Valkyrie armor, Emerald gems: 976 All Valkyrie & Beryl: 954 All Knight's & Emerald: 952 EHP, Elementalist/Guardian/Thief base health: Knight armor, Beryl gems: 30,017,215 All Valkyrie & Beryl: 29,734,020 Valkyrie armor, Emerald gems: 29,312,115 All Knight's & Emerald: 27,682,410 All Berserker's & Ruby: 19,837,980 So for max normal DPS, Berserker. With some survivability: Knight armor & Beryl gems. Max EHP: Knight Armor & Beryl gems. The optimum point is likely a mix somewhere in between, will take more work. I think it is: Knight Armor, Beryl accessories w/1 emerald ring having a beryl jewel: Damage: 989 EHP: 29,887,550 Of course with a proc-on-crit build you'd want more knight gear, etc, etc. Does anyone know if there's a way in google docs to cause a spreadsheet to display all formulae for easy auditing? I keep missing what would otherwise be obvious errors since I can't see the equations without clicking on each cell.

» Edited on: 2012-10-08 14:25:43

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Shadowoflife
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  • GW2: Shadow of life.6340
Replied On: 10/08/2012 at 05:58 PM PDT

I haven't gone on to work with google docs much I am sorry to say. Also I am unsure if this was a recent change but base armour now seems to be 916 rather than 920, I checked on my mesmer and my thief but I have no confirmation for other professions. I'll let you know if I manage to come up with anything better, although it feels like at this point the foundation is sound enough that these blank slate test cases might be becoming non productive. As a personal consideration I was thinking about trying to account for healing on defensive optimization. The most reasonable choice seemed to be adding a misc bonus to vit equal to Healing skill amount / 10 (for non signet healing) to allow for a more accurate comparison of the vitality and toughness gradients for Ehp, I was wondering if you had an opinion on this approach as a rough estimate r if you could suggest something better.

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  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 10/08/2012 at 10:09 PM PDT
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I'm planning to add a "healing calculation" page in, to allow for Heal Per Cast, Heal Per Second and Heal Per Second Cast to be calculated, similar to how I already have a damage calculation page. Then one could find total healing done in a typical rotation/fight and add that to health. Adding Healing Skill / 10 may be a reasonable approximation. I've not really done much in the way of testing healing yet. I need to find the healing power coefficients for each heal skill to get this right.

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Charlatan
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Replied On: 10/09/2012 at 08:44 AM PDT
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This is great stuff guys, and I'm reading it with rapt attention. I've just started gearing out my Mesmer in mostly Knight gear with Beryl Orbs, so it's good to see I was on the right track! I have 2 armor pieces left to upgrade and I was toying with the idea of getting more survivability out of them. I was originally thinking Valkyrie gear but then I considered some of the karma gear and it intrigues me. Taking the chest piece (which is one of my remaining upgrades) the choices are (for light armor): Knight: 72 power, 101 toughness, 72 precision Valkyrie: 101 power, 72 vitality, 5% critical damage Armageddon chest: 101 power, 72 toughness, 72 vitality So the Karma chest seems like it takes the best of Knight and Valkyrie and adds power, which is always good. I haven't had a chance to run this through the spreadsheet but I will fiddle around when I get home (can't download it at work). A couple of the dungeons have this same stat allocation for their chestpieces (AC for one, HotW for another I think). Comparing the Karma chest vs. Valkyrie, I would trade 72 toughness over 5% crit damage. Comparing the Karma chest vs. Knight, you're getting 29 toughness for 29 power, and getting vitality instead of precision. The tradeoff is less clear but qualitatively - if you're focusing on survival - it seems like a win (since vitality is going to be lower than toughness if you've got so much toughness from the other Knight gear). Have to run the numbers though. Thoughts?

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Susulemon
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  • GW2: susulemon.3204
Replied On: 10/09/2012 at 02:23 PM PDT

@Charlatan I think they all have equal value, but I would say toughness and vit go hand in hand, especially since vitality scales well with toughness and directly helps dealing with conditional damage; I think its pretty weird that crafting doesn't give you all the options for what stat you can have, no freedom :(

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Shadowoflife
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  • GW2: Shadow of life.6340
Replied On: 10/09/2012 at 05:00 PM PDT

@ Charlatan It is really hard to say off the cuff what is going to be better for you without knowing everything there is to know. Generally speaking vitality starts off slightly more valuable than toughness for mesmers, an amount that will only increase as your toughness increases. That said there hasn't been a proper integration of healing yet which will interact with the formulas with the same role as vit so you might not be as far off as current number suggest. All together you most likely have too much toughness and too little critical damage to have optimal direct damage or EHP, if you give me a specific build to work with I could give you some case specific suggestions. Valk would be my guess though. Talking specifically about stat trade off's the game seems to consider all stats except critical damage as equivalent while crit damage has a cost ratio related to the item type it is on. (I've been really attentive to this in my personal work and is not currently considered in the google doc and shouldn't have too too much affect on the end result.) In case you're wondering jewels have the best ratio at 5 stats to 1 crit damage and the worst ratios are on helmets, pants, and rings at 16:1 @ SAI I'm not really sure how exact you can really hope to get with integrating healing into survivability calculation. Even with all the tools you end up with a best case heal per second and use that to affect how vit and toughness is evaluated. They are still good tools to have it just seems like it's getting to the point where we need to set a duration for when the builds are made for and add some sort of probability of healing lost to poison. I'm probably just starting to get concerned at how many things are creeping towards being necessary to advance gear optimization. We're not quite there yet but fairly soon approximations are going to become more difficult to make and I fear missing the point where extra effort starts making the result less useful.

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  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 10/09/2012 at 11:01 PM PDT
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Things I want to do before I consider that the extra effort is making the results less useful: Find data for utility/elite skills. Integrate traits. Integrate (more) non-stat damage and such (eg Sigils of Force are in, but Runes of the Scholar don't get their 10% bonus damage when above 90% health calculated.) Once that is done rotations can be created based on the values in the Damage Calc page. Then, with a possible rotation the total healing done in each period can be calculated. Which can be used to adjust EHP. So then it's just a matter of determining poisoned status and expected condition damage. Maybe someday: Other classes than Ele for the skills & such.

» Edited on: 2012-10-09 23:03:20

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JibbitsJr
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Replied On: 10/10/2012 at 12:01 AM PDT
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Math from Wiki: Stats from my gear: Burning damage is determined by the following formula: 8 + (4 * Level) + (0.25 * Condition Damage) per second Bleeding can stack in intensity up to 25 times and each stack does one pulse of damage per second. The damage dealt by bleeding is determined by the following formula: 2.5 + 0.5 * Level + 0.05 * Condition Damage= per stack per second Current Gear: 888 cd= 550 bu 888 cd= 86.9 bl 86.9*12stacks = 1042.8 a second Bleed=1042.8 a second Burn=550 a second 1592.8 dps just off dots Final Gear: 1200 cd = 628 bu 1200 cd = 102.5 bl 102.5*12stacks = 1230 a second Bleed=1230 a second Burn=628 a second 1858 dps just off dots This does not take into account the application attack damage ;} 12 stacks build just off of 4 applications of stone shard. So 8-10 seconds into a fight you have this melting them away + whatever fruity rotation you chose to use through your other elements. Remember to come back to earth and re-apply 12 stacks ;} More info if you care. http://www.gw2bnc.com/2012/07/guide-to-bleeding/

» Edited on: 2012-10-10 02:45:41

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Shadowoflife
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  • GW2: Shadow of life.6340
Replied On: 10/10/2012 at 04:39 PM PDT

@ SAI That seems fairly reasonable. What duration do you intend to use? @ Jibbs You're overstating the potential damage somewhat. The 12 stacks of bleeding is based on no condition duration and puts you in the state where you cannot do anything, save moving, but use stone shards or lose your 12 stack of bleed. If you have 30 condition duration you are either afforded 1 second to perform some other kind of action or you can have additional stacks of bleed for 1 second. If sneak out 5% more duration then you can acquire through trait you can extend that grace period to 2 seconds. Also the direct damage of application would likely be rather small considering that it is a 1 slot ability intended to apply bleed and you item build is heavily focused on condition damage. Beyond that you could maintain a fairly good balance for both damage and health, on Condition damage primary equipment, if you're willing to use both craftable and karma items. Although looking at your link if you intended to do this in spvp you will likely end up very fragile. ele's start with the least health and the least armour of any profession and to maximize your condition damage you would not be able to afford yourself too much raw HP. That said maintaining 1230 condition damage isn't bad in 1v1 situations as it should provide a fairly reliable kill if you can maintain it for ~ 25 second. It is substantially less valuable vs zone bosses as mentioned by SAI in his condition damage post. It is also a rather 1 dimensional strategy, as described, which can be almost completely shut down with any condition removal, which will remove all of your stacks of bleed, reliably due to the absence of time to apply any other conditions. It could work as a strategy but I would not suggest counting on reliably having 12 stacks of bleed with burning all the time and it would likely be to your disadvantage to try to maintain that.

» Edited on: 2012-10-10 16:50:33

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  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 10/10/2012 at 11:48 PM PDT
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I plan to use 15 and 60 second rotation sets. Fights longer than that are generally boss fights, and a rotation system won't work due to being interrupted by mechanics.

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Shadowoflife
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  • GW2: Shadow of life.6340
Replied On: 10/11/2012 at 10:43 AM PDT

@ SAI Seems reasonable. Which of those rotations, or what combination of rotations, do you intend to use for gear optimization, based on the effective time dependence of vitality vs healing power, effective max hp vs toughness, and EHP vs Direct Damage?

» Edited on: 2012-10-11 14:00:58

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  • GW2: SAI Peregrinus.8410
Replied On: 10/11/2012 at 06:56 PM PDT
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I'll probably just show both. Also, utility skills use a different formula for damage than weapon skills. I need data! If possible, can anyone provide: power without traits, weapon damage, crit chance, crit damage, tooltip damage, and actual damage numbers vs a heavy target golem. Then repeat with +100 power via traits. Please note any non-stat bonuses to damage (eg sigil of force). Some skills appear to use weapon damage, others don't.

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JibbitsJr
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Replied On: 10/12/2012 at 03:21 AM PDT
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@Shadow Sorry mate, but you are wrong. I am not overstating. I welcome the chance to show you what my Ele can do in a dungeon. Great thread, and tons of awesome information. I got nothing but love for ya.

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Shadowoflife
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  • GW2: Shadow of life.6340
Replied On: 10/12/2012 at 01:34 PM PDT

@ Jibbs My fault in this appears to be how I assumed your actual build and gear setup was unimportant, possibly because you gave no indication of it. For what it is worth you should likely have not used a number of bleed stacks equal to what a non traited ele could manage spamming stone shard, it really sells short what a specialist could manage. I am now assuming that you never actually swap attunements and are applying you burning utility skills, the 8-15 seconds of being unable to apply bleeding seems really problematic towards your goal of maximum bleed stacks. Looking at a fully speced bleed duration ele you can reach +115% bleed duration with: full fire trait line, the earth trait, 2 superior sigils of agony, 2 superior runes of the centar, 2 superior runes of the krait, and 2 superior runes of the afflicted. This means that stone shard can now apply 3 stacks of 12.9 second (unfortunately equivalent to 12 second) bleed every 1.5 seconds. 12/1.5 gives you 8 stacks before the first one start to fall off giving you a maintainable 24 stacks of bleed via spamming stone shard with the right gear and trait setup. This could theoretically be increased to a reliable 25 stacks if you added in an offhand dagger and always managed to hit your turning earth as it has a somewhat better bleed applied/casting time but this is not reliable and would require you to be close. In any case the time rounding that resulted from before means we have 15% more bleed duration than necessary which will be used to help with the second condition of burn upkeep. The changes from max bleed duration to max useful burn duration are swapping any set of 2 runes for 2 superior runes of Lyssa (-15% bleed duration +10% condition duration), and swapping a superior sigil of agony for a superior sigil of smoldering (-10% bleed duration +10% burning duration) As far as reliably applying burning through utilities is concerned signet of fire is by far the best option, considering it provides a 1200 cast range and good duration with a low cooldown. With every relevant trait and the 50% burning duration we acquired the burn applied is 18 seconds long and can be used every 16.75 second, including cast time. This actually give us 10% bonus burning duration so after all this you can still afford to convert that superior sigil of smoldering to a stat jem or a superior sigil of earth and just manage to maintain a 24 bleed stack + burning stack. (25 stack with the superior sigil of earth and a ~10% chance to crit) Note to achieve this you do need to sit there doing nothing but casting stone shard the setup is so precise that you will actually be slowly offsetting one of your stacks, due to the signet cast time, that you could easily be 3 stacks short of this value 50% of the time. So there is no room for additional damage through rotations out of earth spec. For those of you keeping track the end gear requirments for this build are: 1 superior sigil of agony, 2 out of 3 of 2 superior runes of; krait, centar, afflicted. Recommended additional gear: 1 superior sigil of earth, to allow for some inefficiencies in your bleed stacking. Trait requirements: Fire magic: 30 points, adept trait Burning Fire Earth magic: 20 points, adept trait Signet Mastery, Master trait Serrated Stones Required utility skill signet of fire. But once more I would like to apologize to Jibbs. Everything you said would have been consistent with what someone who got used to just spamming stone shards and watching the bleed stacks would have concluded without providing any other information. Since I had been focusing my previous efforts into direct damage and EHP calculation I did not know that bleed duration could be stacked to the point where it could be possibly to switch out of earth attunements and switch back before most/all of you bleed bled out. I am truly sorry to have spoken out of my local expertise without doing the necessary research. That said if it is not too much to asked next time you bring a new subject into a discussion, Condition damage into a primarily direct damage EHP discussion, please provide a little bit more background into what you specifically are doing, Your link talked about bleeding not how you managed to get enough time to accomplish everything you implied. The other points about removal, SAI statements on condition damage on world group events are still valid, but you can indeed maintain 12 stacks of bleed and burning and just leave yourself enough time to allow for other attunements.

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Drae
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Replied On: 11/01/2012 at 06:29 PM PDT
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I would use 835 as a base for Precision. My analysis shows it to be more accurate with any value between 830 and 835 meeting the criterion.

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Solvarn
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Replied On: 11/02/2012 at 07:18 AM PDT

I built for condition with my elementalist and I agree with what you're saying here. It's pretty tough in a large engagement to get decent bleeds going. Even if you do a water elementalist attuning to water clears conditions. I think it'd be a very viable build for D/D though and in sPvP would do well because you could start bleeds and be evasive. I can't do D/D in WvWvW though unless I'm running in a smaller group taking objectives because it's heavily dependent on dodging and you can't dodge enemies that don't load for you.

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