What is the best colour for Dragonform bashing in any given scenario?

I'm sure @Penwize could answer this if he came around anymore, but I'm curious as to opinions on the best Dragon bashing colour for any given situation. In coordinated groups, alone with weak NPC's, alone with strong NPC's, etc etc and preferably with hard numbers. I'm being told that it is loosely considered red or gold, but am unsure of the specifics. Any help would be appreciated!

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  • AhmetAhmet Wherever I wanna be
    Can someone explain why DoT = more damage because of criticals? I feel like this is another monk crits fallacy, though I don't have any experience with them, so I can't say for sure.
    Huh. Neat.
  • Ahmet said:
    Can someone explain why DoT = more damage because of criticals? I feel like this is another monk crits fallacy, though I don't have any experience with them, so I can't say for sure.
    It's not more damage. Not even in the "less wasted damage" sense, because whether the damage is all at once or spread over multiple ticks, it's still only hitting one enemy so there's no difference in overkill. The only advantage (over a single-hit attack for the same total damage) is that the damage is a bit more consistent/predictable (tending closer to the average).

    It may be the case that the DoT battlerages have increased damage in exchange for the delay. I've only tested red dragon damage though, so I don't know how it compares to others.
  • Red is the fastest against anything crittable (and dragonblaze hits like a truck, though I think psiblast is a bit stronger - I need to do a bit more crit-fishing against some things to see how they pan out), but Gold is my colour of choice based on places I bash, because it has a good balance of damage (Overwhelm + Psiblast) and a solid hinder (Amnesia) if I end up needing it.
    Aerek said:
    • It sounds good on paper, but I've admittedly never bothered with it because I don't really bash enough to put that kind of time and effort into it, and I haven't actually tested to see if a sensitivity/Dragonspark/Gut combo actually does more damage than just using Dragonspark/Overwhelm/Gut for the same amount of rage.
    The amount of time it takes for rage to build up to the point where you can do that combo honestly makes it not really worth it in rage management unless your Gut is significantly more powerful than the baseline (i.e. you're packing +3 STR gauntlets, Jera, and another +2-3 on top of that).
    - (Eleusis): Ellodin says, "The Fissure of Echoes is Sarathai's happy place."
    - With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
    - (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
    - Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
    - Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."



  • AhmetAhmet Wherever I wanna be
    Sarathai said:
    Red is the fastest against anything crittable
    WHY DOES THIS MAKE A DIFFERENCE I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW TO MATH
    Huh. Neat.
  • Maybe it's just me, but I find no benefit to the afflictions. I stick to using the damagers only.




    Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
  • KlendathuKlendathu Eye of the Storm
    I use blue most of the time in dragonform, even against uncritables like Seroth, etc. The stun attack doesn't work against those type, but giving them clumisiness is a definite help

    Tharos, the Announcer of Delos shouts, "It's near the end of the egghunt and I still haven't figured out how to pronounce Clean-dat-hoo."
  • AerekAerek East Tennessee, USA
    Ahmet said:
    Sarathai said:
    Red is the fastest against anything crittable
    WHY DOES THIS MAKE A DIFFERENCE I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW TO MATH
    Because NPCs have finite amounts of health, not infinite wells that measure long-term DPS. When you're talking about an individual NPC's lifespan where you get to use your "big" rage attack once, 4 chances to crit is more desirable and will kill individual NPCs faster kills than 1 chance to crit, because any one of those weaker 4 hits could go world-shattering and kill the NPC on the spot. Psiblast of course has the potential to do much more damage when it does crit, which means it would balance out with Dragonblaze's higher crit rate in a statistical sense, but since big World-Shattering crits on Psiblast are most often going to result in a lot of "wasted" damage on NPC's finite health, Dragonblaze's smaller, more consistent crits that still kill individual NPCs means faster hunting in a practical sense.
    -- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.
  • AerekAerek East Tennessee, USA
    Sena said:
    It may be the case that the DoT battlerages have increased damage in exchange for the delay. I've only tested red dragon damage though, so I don't know how it compares to others.
    It's actually lower base damage. Against a denizen I often hunt, gold's Psiblast deals 10% damage if it doesn't crit, and red's Dragonblaze deals 8% total if all 4 hits don't crit. Feel free to correct my entry-level statistics, but as a red dragon with a 45% crit rate, (Borrowing Tahquil's numbers from her recent crit thread) that should mean I have a ~91% chance to equal Psiblast's base damage as long as just one of my 4 hits crits, (.55^4 = 9.15% chance that I get no criticals, 90.85% that I get at least 1) and still have the possibility to exceed lower-tier Psiblast crits if I get multiple high-tier crits. (I have no idea how to do that math)
    -- Grounded in but one perspective, what we perceive is an exaggeration of the truth.
  • who the hell uses gut to bash? Fucking unartied plebs
  • Aegoth said:
    who the hell uses gut to bash? Fucking unartied plebs
    You're referring to Incantation? It depends on whether it's been fixed up yet from a few months back. It's supposed to benefit from the bashing multiplier like Gut does, but I don't recall Makarios ever mentioning it in an announcement, and there were a couple of forum posts/issues sent in about that. If it's been boosted since (though I don't remember announce posts saying as much), then it's roughly equal, maybe superior, depending on situation and how artied somebody is. If it hasn't, then Gut outstrips it.
    - (Eleusis): Ellodin says, "The Fissure of Echoes is Sarathai's happy place."
    - With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
    - (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
    - Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
    - Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."



  • Sarathai said:
    Aegoth said:
    who the hell uses gut to bash? Fucking unartied plebs
    You're referring to Incantation? It depends on whether it's been fixed up yet from a few months back. It's supposed to benefit from the bashing multiplier like Gut does, but I don't recall Makarios ever mentioning it in an announcement, and there were a couple of forum posts/issues sent in about that. If it's been boosted since (though I don't remember announce posts saying as much), then it's roughly equal, maybe superior, depending on situation and how artied somebody is. If it hasn't, then Gut outstrips it.
    @makarios, dost thou havest confirmation of this?
  • Lol. You guys arguing about incantation vs gut when tfang outpaces both.

  • fucking tfang... 
  • Does thoth's outpace level 3 scimitar or rapier, though? Rapier is 63 damage, 246 speed. Scimitar is 62 damage, 245 speed, if I recall correctly. Thoth's is 20 damage (lol), 255 speed. Is 9 speed worth more than 43 damage?
  • edited August 2016
    Actually, speaking of Tfang, it would be useful to know if it and other Weaponry attacks (which would include relics, though Rageblade obviously has other things going for it) also benefit from the bashing modifiers.

    I'm referring to the modifiers noted in Announce #4538, for anybody not aware.
    - (Eleusis): Ellodin says, "The Fissure of Echoes is Sarathai's happy place."
    - With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
    - (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
    - Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
    - Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."



  • I'll test tonight Antonius, but last time I did it wasn't even close. That was a long while ago though. 

  • So test will have to wait, I don't have a rapier or scimitar proficiency. Probably threw my tests off from last time.

  • Triple posting, sorry, but I got curious.

    Learned rapier/scimitar, mastered both. These are rough numbers as the test server is down, but it was pretty clear Tfang was superior by far.

    L3 Scim (Jab) - 7.5% - 2.0s

    L3 Rapier (Jab) - 7.2% - 1.9s

    L3 Dirk    (Jab) - 12% - 1.85s


  • AustereAustere Tennessee
    Cooper said:
    Triple posting, sorry, but I got curious.

    Learned rapier/scimitar, mastered both. These are rough numbers as the test server is down, but it was pretty clear Tfang was superior by far.

    L3 Scim (Jab) - 7.5% - 2.0s

    L3 Rapier (Jab) - 7.2% - 1.9s

    L3 Dirk    (Jab) - 12% - 1.85s

    Well don't stop there!  Test everything! 
  • Cooper said:
    Triple posting, sorry, but I got curious.

    Learned rapier/scimitar, mastered both. These are rough numbers as the test server is down, but it was pretty clear Tfang was superior by far.

    L3 Scim (Jab) - 7.5% - 2.0s

    L3 Rapier (Jab) - 7.2% - 1.9s

    L3 Dirk    (Jab) - 12% - 1.85s

    Odd. Dirk must be using a totally different formula for damage to be doing that much more despite having less than a third of the damage stat of the other two.

    Out of curiosity, what were you testing on?
  • Some sort of buckawn.

  • How does Gut compare if you have 20str as a mortal?
  • Aerek said:
    Sena said:
    It may be the case that the DoT battlerages have increased damage in exchange for the delay. I've only tested red dragon damage though, so I don't know how it compares to others.
    It's actually lower base damage. Against a denizen I often hunt, gold's Psiblast deals 10% damage if it doesn't crit, and red's Dragonblaze deals 8% total if all 4 hits don't crit. Feel free to correct my entry-level statistics, but as a red dragon with a 45% crit rate, (Borrowing Tahquil's numbers from her recent crit thread) that should mean I have a ~91% chance to equal Psiblast's base damage as long as just one of my 4 hits crits, (.55^4 = 9.15% chance that I get no criticals, 90.85% that I get at least 1) and still have the possibility to exceed lower-tier Psiblast crits if I get multiple high-tier crits. (I have no idea how to do that math)
    So, assuming psiblast does 10% damage and dragonblaze does 4 hits of 2% each and rage/cooldowns are equal (it's not that important for these numbers to be accurate, this is just an example).

    Without crits, psiblast takes 10 uses to kill and dragonblaze takes 13.
    Doing a simulation of 10,000 kills, here's how many times the denizen died in N uses of psiblast (which roughly matches what I calculated for 1-4 hits):
    [spoiler]
    1:  597 ( 5.970%)
    2: 1042 (10.420%)
    3: 1749 (17.490%)
    4: 1405 (14.050%)
    5: 1590 (15.900%)
    6: 1768 (17.680%)
    7: 1066 (10.660%)
    8:  578 ( 5.780%)
    9:  178 ( 1.780%)
    10:  27 ( 0.270%)
    [/spoiler]
    Average psiblasts needed to kill: 4.606

    And for dragonblaze:
    [spoiler]
    1:  169 ( 1.690%)
    2:  955 ( 9.550%)
    3: 2130 (21.300%)
    4: 2118 (21.180%)
    5: 2126 (21.260%)
    6: 1501 (15.010%)
    7:  763 ( 7.630%)
    8:  196 ( 1.960%)
    9:   39 ( 0.390%)
    10:   3 ( 0.030%)
    11:   0
    12:   0
    13:   0
    [/spoiler]
    Average dragonblazes needed to kill: 4.387

    The consistency made a bigger difference than I thought. So dragonblaze is about the same as psiblast even if it has 80% of the damage. Since this is just a simulated run rather than actual calculations, and the numbers used are very approximate, the only thing I can say for sure is that dragonblaze and psiblast are pretty close in effectiveness.


  • I forgot to add (and I just missed the edit window) that I also assumed a 50% crit chance, to make the calculations a lot simpler and faster.
  • Those battlerage damage numbers aren't accurate enough to do a test like that, unfortunately. You need to get some battlerage going, and then use it on a small mob to get a more accurate difference in damage.

  • edited August 2016
    It was more to confirm whether or not the principle was sound (or rather how significant the effect was) than to properly compare the dragon colours, so the actual numbers aren't too important to the test.
  • Cooper said:
    Triple posting, sorry, but I got curious.

    Learned rapier/scimitar, mastered both. These are rough numbers as the test server is down, but it was pretty clear Tfang was superior by far.

    L3 Scim (Jab) - 7.5% - 2.0s

    L3 Rapier (Jab) - 7.2% - 1.9s

    L3 Dirk    (Jab) - 12% - 1.85s

    And how much does Gut do in comparison? (Not sure how much STR you have or exactly what buckawns you're testing on, else I'd check myself.)
    - (Eleusis): Ellodin says, "The Fissure of Echoes is Sarathai's happy place."
    - With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
    - (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
    - Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
    - Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."



  • I'll do a more accurate and official test when I get home today, but gut was about 5% less dps than thoth's. Yesterday was just a quick test for scimitar and rapier and I didn't get accurate because the difference was so huge. 

  • Gut is the dragon attack I use, because I am more stacked for strength. It doesn't make a lot of sense for me to use the other attacks when they're int based and I have L2 str arte, + jera + improved physique. So in that case, gut is actually better right?
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