Bashing Question: Best spec for Runie/Infernal

Aodfionn

Question: Out of all the specs for Infernal and Runewarden, which are the best for bashing?

I rolled SnB Paladin for a long time, but it was just so slow, even with SoA (which I still have, and am tempted to trade). Am currently DWC Runie, which feels a billion times better than SnB or Priest did, but am still curious as to what the best spec might be.

Vadik

A lot of people will argue 2h of any flavor of knight is the strongest for hunting. I don't really have a lot of comparison, only having been sword and shield and 2h, but 2h hunting is faster, and I can hunt basically anything I did before with sword and shield (I didn't have a SoA, though).

Shirszae

2h is love, 2h is life. Specially with an artefact sword.

Minifie

DWC >= 2h > S+B. I assume DWB falls into the same category of DWC but could be slightly worse. 2h does beastly damage, but you are better off making sure you are clearing lower places much faster than taking risks. DW can bash slightly higher places due to crits and having to run in an emergency is much better on 2s balance than 3.X speed. 

Basically between both it's a toss up, have fun with either!

Aodfionn

Is there a marked difference between the two classes?

Minifie

Aodfionn said:

Is there a marked difference between the two classes?

Not really, if you can get someone to rune you up I think infernal can be slightly ahead thanks to putrefaction, soulcage and vigour for quick catchups if need be. Runewarden is still better solely for just being able to reslap runes back on and keep going, so for long hunts I recommend Runie.

Vallie

DWC got me to dragon with very minimal arties (l1 crit pendant, eventually l1 bracers). In the end it's still just getting into a grind pattern - no matter what you'll do, you're going to do a lot of runs of it, so as long as you're not SnB you should get there fairly quickly if you can stick to your routine. Might want to consider what you want to fight as (if anything) to save yourself costs later.

Liyane

I'll just reiterate the points above. I started as SNB and was immediately horrified that I did less damage with a longsword than I did with a shortsword unspecialized. I dropped the lessons to switch to 2H and have never regretted it. Also having an artie 2H weapon is awesome, again as mentioned above.

The one rough thing is not being able to have a SoA, I sprung for the Paragon and it's amazing to have but it sucks that it's so much more expensive (and not just for the artefact itself, but also putting an embrasure into armour for it to work)

Brean

Anyone able to estimate how much slower snb is, as opposed to the other specs? I run 2h now, and while I do find the hunting appealing I really want to snb for combat.

Nazihk

Try bashing with a shortsword.

SNB is slower than that, IIRC.

Liyane

Nazihk said:

Try bashing with a shortsword.

SNB is slower than that, IIRC.

It was when I started (Octoberish 2016)

Brean

Wow that sounds...awful. maybe I'll dwc instead

Aesgar

Brean said:

Anyone able to estimate how much slower snb is, as opposed to the other specs? I run 2h now, and while I do find the hunting appealing I really want to snb for combat.

Nazihk said:

Try bashing with a shortsword.

SNB is slower than that, IIRC.

Both of these are true.

I did 82 - 99 post SnB nerf. It wasn't fun, let me tell you. However, I got it done in a few weeks. It really just comes down to how gud you grind.

Kogan

I did most of my bashing to dragon as dwb. I didn't hate it. @Camroth was 2h and outbashed me slightly in terms of speed. DWC destroys things as crits become more likely. I've heard bad things about SnB but can't speak on it myself. 

Camroth

I'd vote 2h for leveling because I feel like harder hits chip at denizen health better when your crit rate sucks. I started as unartied bard and going unartied 2h was a breath or fresh air.

I switched to dwc shortly after dragon and I feel like I probably kill things faster now (especially smaller things). That could just be flawed perception based from looking at twice as many criticals fly by on screen than before. I haven't tested anything.

Nazihk

Crit rate is just a percentile modifier on your DPS. That's it, that's all.

Combo attacks are not better just because "more hits mean more crits!". That logic ignores the fact that their individual hits do less damage so their crits do correspondingly less damage. 

The attack with the best DPS is generally going to be the best bashing attack. It doesn't matter if it's one hit or two hits or four hits. The only real advantage combo attacks have is if they're of the type that allows carrythrough to the next target if the first target dies, and that's a marginal advantage unless you're hunting tiny things. 

Anedhel

I will say that at sub-85, 2h is lackluster. It's slow, and without crit boosters, that means that you'll be taking a long time to murder some mid-tier stuff. After 93, or so, though, 2h is the king of the hill for knight bashing, in my experience. 

DWC is pretty decent the whole way through. It's fast (makes for good escapes) and both scimitars hit for the same damage, so you don't miss out on damage if your crits come from your left or right hand. Razeslash being put on par with raze for speed gives a pretty good shield-breaker, too. 

Antonius

Nazihk said:

Crit rate is just a percentile modifier on your DPS. That's it, that's all.

Combo attacks are not better just because "more hits mean more crits!". That logic ignores the fact that their individual hits do less damage so their crits do correspondingly less damage. 

The attack with the best DPS is generally going to be the best bashing attack. It doesn't matter if it's one hit or two hits or four hits. The only real advantage combo attacks have is if they're of the type that allows carrythrough to the next target if the first target dies, and that's a marginal advantage unless you're hunting tiny things. 

Except high level crits are often sufficient to kill - or at least remove significantly large chunks of the target's health - even on relatively low damage attacks, so the fact that they do less damage isn't necessarily an issue if it's still sufficient to be a one shot kill. More attacks means more opportunities to get a high level crit that will kill in a given period of time. Crit rate may just be a straight modifier on DPS, but DPS is also a totally meaningless metric for bashing efficiency, because it ignores how bashing actually works in practice.

Nazihk

Antonius said:

Nazihk said:

Crit rate is just a percentile modifier on your DPS. That's it, that's all.

Combo attacks are not better just because "more hits mean more crits!". That logic ignores the fact that their individual hits do less damage so their crits do correspondingly less damage. 

The attack with the best DPS is generally going to be the best bashing attack. It doesn't matter if it's one hit or two hits or four hits. The only real advantage combo attacks have is if they're of the type that allows carrythrough to the next target if the first target dies, and that's a marginal advantage unless you're hunting tiny things. 

Except high level crits are often sufficient to kill - or at least remove significantly large chunks of the target's health - even on relatively low damage attacks, so the fact that they do less damage isn't necessarily an issue if it's still sufficient to be a one shot kill. More attacks means more opportunities to get a high level crit that will kill in a given period of time. Crit rate may just be a straight modifier on DPS, but DPS is also a totally meaningless metric for bashing efficiency, because it ignores how bashing actually works in practice.

Except that the non-combo attacks remove similarly large chunks of health on smaller crits, which are more common. Where a combo attack might only oneshot on an x32, the single attack with equal dps will one-shot on a x16, which more than doubles the amount of one-shots it gets. There's fewer chances to get crits, but a larger percentage of your crits will be oneshots.

And DPS is, for the most part, the main metric that does matter in terms of killing speed, assuming that you are tanky enough to avoid the need to hit-and-run. There are probably some occasional edge cases where a lower DPS spec has a better time-to-kill because of how enemy health lines up against their attacks but, generally speaking, as enemy health increases your raw DPS becomes more and more important. Most of the areas I bash as dragon are well into that territory.

Sena

Of any single aspect of offensive bashing effectiveness, DPS is the most useful and meaningful. But it's far from the only thing that matters, so an attack with higher DPS isn't necessarily better than an attack with lower DPS, even if the difference in DPS is huge.

Even now with battlerage and increased denizen health, attack speed (multi-hit combos being effectively the same as faster balance) still has a large effect. Say you have two attacks, A and B. Attack A does 1000 damage and has a 4s balance, for a DPS of 250. Attack B does 200 damage with 1s balance (or, equivalently, is a 4-hit combo with 4s balance), for 200 DPS. With a 50% crit chance (ignoring the crit paragons and Maya figurine), the two attacks will generally take about the same amount of time to kill something, with attack B being slightly faster on average, despite having 20% lower DPS. I've run simulations to confirm this, because I didn't expect the speed to offer such a large advantage either.

Dochitha

I can confirm my experience. Fully artied Dex serpent hunting is close to 1.5x quicker than my fully artied Bard, which the DPS difference for serpent is only about 1.25x higher than Bard. By the time used to fully hunt an area. Not to mention, speed makes serpent feel tankier too.