PvE Analysis

Torinn

As a life long priest, it's slow but it's safe.  Not the slowest but pretty far down the list.  On the other hand I could take on groups with fair ease that others couldn't due to rites and healing.

Ogoun

Torinn said:

As a life long priest, it's slow but it's safe.  Not the slowest but pretty far down the list.  On the other hand I could take on groups with fair ease that others couldn't due to rites and healing.

Thank you.

Gror

I saw in the classleads depthswalker got buffed against denizens? Does it suck less now?

Cooper

Not really. I legit don't understand how they evaluate classes for bashing.

We can making almost all PK classes pretty much balanced, but somehow it's okay for some classes to bash 60-70% slower than the fastest ones. Blows my mind.

It would be like if monk class came out for pk right now, but their combos only did 5% max health damage. Everyone would scream "How could you possibly have released this?", but somehow bashing has been balanced completely randomly.

[Deleted User]

It hitting 'very fast' doesn't make it good. Shaman hits faster, and does more damage. Psion hits like a wet noodle, and takes more damage than literally every other class.

Guidedstrike doesn't last very long, so there's more time lost constantly putting that back up.

Transcendence isn't as good as it sounds. It's just an incredibly weaker version of jinx for the most part. Except Shaman doesn't have to waste it to raze shield since they can just roar.

DoT attacks also are not that fantastic, even if every hit crits an annihilating+ crit on a non DoT attack is likely going to do more damage.

Rally helped its squishiness before it got hard nerfed... Kiting is a bit irrelevant when talking about good bashing classes: if you're running, you're wasting time.

Penwize

Daeir said:

Doesn't this sort of make Psion objectively one of the best lesserform bashing classes on critical-enabled mobs?

It would, if all of the points you made were correct or better than other classes.  However, only one of them is. 

1. Psion has a self-synergizing high damage battlerage attack in Devastate, which consumes 36 rage and hits like an affliction-bonused battlerage attack with no pre-requisites

This is untrue!  You're pointing to Devastate, but every class has a 36-rage high damage battlerage attack.  That's throatrip for Serpent, override for black dragon, etc.  I think you actually mean to point to whirlwind.  Every class has a 25-rage low damage battlerage attack that turns into an extremely high damage battlerage attack by consuming an affliction.  Psion's battlerage attack in that slot is whirlwind.  Whirlwind is not documented as consuming any of the afflictions I've tested, so because it doesn't consume an affliction it is stuck as just a 25-rage low damage attack.  It costs 25 rage, and does about 16% damage vs little girls in Tasur'ke.

To compare, Devastate does 66% damage to little girls in Tasur'ke, for 36 rage.  Same as every other class with that style of attack, which is almost every class.

2. Psion has a DoT low damage/14 rage attack which scales better at higher critical percent chances

This is not an advantage, and doesn't scale better.  It does about 22% damage to little girls in Tasur'ke for 14 rage, over time.  Because that 22% is split over about 9 ticks plus the initial hit, any individual tick critting isn't going to be enough to make that big of a difference.  That becomes even more true when you start getting to higher levels of crit and crit arties.  High hit rate attacks are often good because an individual crit has the chance of shortcutting a mob entirely, killing it way earlier.  That's why classes with high-damage DoTs like red dragon make great use of it.  However, low-damage DoTs like Psion's doesn't deal enough damage on the individual ticks for it to shortcut a kill in almost any case.  Considering that a single tick of barbedblade does  about 1.33% damage to little girls in tasur'ke, a plane-razing crit (x64) wouldn't shortcut the weakest mob in the game, let alone something you'd be hunting at a higher level.

3. Guidedstrike provides access to plane razing crits, which normally are only available via a 1000cr paragon embedded into artefact armour

This is the only point that is somewhat correct, however it doesn't add as much as you would think it does.  I need to test the exact crit rates it produces, but what little testing I did yielded fairly lackluster results given the 3s eq time required to put it up all the time.  That's a pretty significant upkeep cost.

4. Transcendence makes every 5th attack essentially hit twice

This is ... not exactly true, and doesn't make enough of a difference. Psi shatter deals about 18.5% damage to little girls in Tasur'ke.  Weave deathblow deals about 28% damage to little girls in Tasur'ke.  Prior to psi shatter being added, that meant that with a balance time of 1.9s, weave deathblow had an overall dps of 14.7%, which was solidly below average.  With psi shatter added into that mix, that means that every 9.5s, you get an additional 18.5% damage, or an additional 1.9% dps, pushing Psion dps up to 16.6% dps, which is about average.

5. Transcendence can also be used to break shields on mobs balancelessly albeit unreliably due to timing overlap

Every class has a battlerage attack that can break shield balancelessly, and if you're hunting things that shield you should be storing enough battlerage to use it when they shield.  Spending the potential psi shatter on breaking shield is a pretty terrible tradeoff, and not one you should be doing if you intend to hunt optimally.  It's also not guaranteed to be available when you want it, since you should be using psi shatter whenever you can.

It's worth noting that Bard, a class that hunts significantly faster than Psion, also has access to shield breaks on voice balance.  I'm not an expert in Bard, though, so I can't comment to its precise effectiveness.

On top of things like Rally allowing you to stack 30% overheal on demand every 20 seconds, Roth giving you a 20% panic heal below 50% on a 1.5s balance every 3 minutes

Psion is a no-armour class that has a defense only slightly tougher than Serpents' scales (which is paired with shrugging and scalemail).  Serpent has the highest potential bashing damage output.  Bards have aria on voice balance and wear leather.  2h runewardens get fullplate, armour runes, and ground runes if they want to waste the time on them.  Wasting time on healing is a bad way to hunt, though.  Hunting things that require you to heal often is a sign you're hunting things too strong for you, although a heal here and there is alright.   Still, point remains that other classes have active heals as well, plus have access to other stronger passive or balanceless heals, yet still do significantly higher damage output than Psion.

Projection allowing you to bounce-kite chaser mobs across zones effortlessly and guaranteed through paralysis...

I ... can't really think of a use case for this in hunting?  Against certain honours mobs maybe, but if you're taking those on in lesserform and not in dragonform you're probably going to die anyway.  I'm not sure that's viable, or really all that relevant to comparing hunting effectiveness.

[Deleted User]

@Penwize no reason not to use cantata to break shields really. Slight correction, though: tune is their defence combined with leather. Aria isn't a heal, it just increases max hp by ~10% (stacks with cape).

Jovolo

Please stop testing on little girls

Noname

Penwize said:

Daeir said:

Doesn't this sort of make Psion objectively one of the best lesserform bashing classes on critical-enabled mobs?

It would, if all of the points you made were correct or better than other classes.  However, only one of them is. 

1. Psion has a self-synergizing high damage battlerage attack in Devastate, which consumes 36 rage and hits like an affliction-bonused battlerage attack with no pre-requisites

This is untrue!  You're pointing to Devastate, but every class has a 36-rage high damage battlerage attack.  That's throatrip for Serpent, override for black dragon, etc.  I think you actually mean to point to whirlwind.  Every class has a 25-rage low damage battlerage attack that turns into an extremely high damage battlerage attack by consuming an affliction.  Psion's battlerage attack in that slot is whirlwind.  Whirlwind is not documented as consuming any of the afflictions I've tested, so because it doesn't consume an affliction it is stuck as just a 25-rage low damage attack.  It costs 25 rage, and does about 16% damage vs little girls in Tasur'ke.

To compare, Devastate does 66% damage to little girls in Tasur'ke, for 36 rage.  Same as every other class with that style of attack, which is almost every class.

2. Psion has a DoT low damage/14 rage attack which scales better at higher critical percent chances

This is not an advantage, and doesn't scale better.  It does about 22% damage to little girls in Tasur'ke for 14 rage, over time.  Because that 22% is split over about 9 ticks plus the initial hit, any individual tick critting isn't going to be enough to make that big of a difference.  That becomes even more true when you start getting to higher levels of crit and crit arties.  High hit rate attacks are often good because an individual crit has the chance of shortcutting a mob entirely, killing it way earlier.  That's why classes with high-damage DoTs like red dragon make great use of it.  However, low-damage DoTs like Psion's doesn't deal enough damage on the individual ticks for it to shortcut a kill in almost any case.  Considering that a single tick of barbedblade does  about 1.33% damage to little girls in tasur'ke, a plane-razing crit (x64) wouldn't shortcut the weakest mob in the game, let alone something you'd be hunting at a higher level.

3. Guidedstrike provides access to plane razing crits, which normally are only available via a 1000cr paragon embedded into artefact armour

This is the only point that is somewhat correct, however it doesn't add as much as you would think it does.  I need to test the exact crit rates it produces, but what little testing I did yielded fairly lackluster results given the 3s eq time required to put it up all the time.  That's a pretty significant upkeep cost.

4. Transcendence makes every 5th attack essentially hit twice

This is ... not exactly true, and doesn't make enough of a difference. Psi shatter deals about 18.5% damage to little girls in Tasur'ke.  Weave deathblow deals about 28% damage to little girls in Tasur'ke.  Prior to psi shatter being added, that meant that with a balance time of 1.9s, weave deathblow had an overall dps of 14.7%, which was solidly below average.  With psi shatter added into that mix, that means that every 9.5s, you get an additional 18.5% damage, or an additional 1.9% dps, pushing Psion dps up to 16.6% dps, which is about average.

5. Transcendence can also be used to break shields on mobs balancelessly albeit unreliably due to timing overlap

Every class has a battlerage attack that can break shield balancelessly, and if you're hunting things that shield you should be storing enough battlerage to use it when they shield.  Spending the potential psi shatter on breaking shield is a pretty terrible tradeoff, and not one you should be doing if you intend to hunt optimally.  It's also not guaranteed to be available when you want it, since you should be using psi shatter whenever you can.

It's worth noting that Bard, a class that hunts significantly faster than Psion, also has access to shield breaks on voice balance.  I'm not an expert in Bard, though, so I can't comment to its precise effectiveness.

On top of things like Rally allowing you to stack 30% overheal on demand every 20 seconds, Roth giving you a 20% panic heal below 50% on a 1.5s balance every 3 minutes

Psion is a no-armour class that has a defense only slightly tougher than Serpents' scales (which is paired with shrugging and scalemail).  Serpent has the highest potential bashing damage output.  Bards have aria on voice balance and wear leather.  2h runewardens get fullplate, armour runes, and ground runes if they want to waste the time on them.  Wasting time on healing is a bad way to hunt, though.  Hunting things that require you to heal often is a sign you're hunting things too strong for you, although a heal here and there is alright.   Still, point remains that other classes have active heals as well, plus have access to other stronger passive or balanceless heals, yet still do significantly higher damage output than Psion.

Projection allowing you to bounce-kite chaser mobs across zones effortlessly and guaranteed through paralysis...

I ... can't really think of a use case for this in hunting?  Against certain honours mobs maybe, but if you're taking those on in lesserform and not in dragonform you're probably going to die anyway.  I'm not sure that's viable, or really all that relevant to comparing hunting effectiveness.

Try whirlwind after using regrowth. It increases the damage whirlwind does by around 6 times the amount it does on its own. 

Taryius

Firelord post changes.

With my L2's at 21 int, I managed 36% per hit against the little girls, at 2.2s balance. 16.36%/s

With full arties, so L3 collar and 22 int. That went up to 38% at 2.2s balance. 17.27%/s

Not bad, not great, but not bad.

[Deleted User]

Noname said:

Try whirlwind after using regrowth. It increases the damage whirlwind does by around 6 times the amount it does on its own. 

That's 49 rage (and also 2 balances, since battlerage has a 'cooldown' between battlerage attacks), for something that may or may not work. If you regrowth and then your normal attack kills the mob you just wasted 24 rage. Solo, you barely generate enough rage to use your 2 standard attacks on cooldown, why waste rage for something that has a decent chance of failing when you could just stick to your two standard attacks.

Noname

Pyori said:

Noname said:

Try whirlwind after using regrowth. It increases the damage whirlwind does by around 6 times the amount it does on its own. 

That's 49 rage (and also 2 balances, since battlerage has a 'cooldown' between battlerage attacks), for something that may or may not work. If you regrowth and then your normal attack kills the mob you just wasted 24 rage. Solo, you barely generate enough rage to use your 2 standard attacks on cooldown, why waste rage for something that has a decent chance of failing when you could just stick to your two standard attacks.

The cooldown is around 1-2 seconds, it's not long. And since your primary attacks do less than 2% (Shatter maybe does 3 or 4), it takes a long time to kill things at lower levels. If you're level 100+ and critting out the wazoo regardless, it's not going to matter much either which way. If you're lower level, it is absolutely worth it and has been a godsend for otherwise awful offensive bashing. 

Cooper

Pyori said:

Noname said:

Try whirlwind after using regrowth. It increases the damage whirlwind does by around 6 times the amount it does on its own. 

That's 49 rage (and also 2 balances, since battlerage has a 'cooldown' between battlerage attacks), for something that may or may not work. If you regrowth and then your normal attack kills the mob you just wasted 24 rage. Solo, you barely generate enough rage to use your 2 standard attacks on cooldown, why waste rage for something that has a decent chance of failing when you could just stick to your two standard attacks.

You don't use battlerage if a mob is close to dying. Or shouldn't, at least. Close to dying will vary from person to person. 

[Deleted User]

Cooper said:

Pyori said:

Noname said:

Try whirlwind after using regrowth. It increases the damage whirlwind does by around 6 times the amount it does on its own. 

That's 49 rage (and also 2 balances, since battlerage has a 'cooldown' between battlerage attacks), for something that may or may not work. If you regrowth and then your normal attack kills the mob you just wasted 24 rage. Solo, you barely generate enough rage to use your 2 standard attacks on cooldown, why waste rage for something that has a decent chance of failing when you could just stick to your two standard attacks.

You don't use battlerage if a mob is close to dying. Or shouldn't, at least. Close to dying will vary from person to person. 

I agree. There's a number of details to look at, surrounding those sorts of things. If you regrowth the mob at say ... 50% and then end up hitting an annihilating crit, bringing it down to sub 20% (maybe even sub 10), would you use another 24 rage to whirlwind? Probably not. Thus you just wasted like 5-6 hits worth of rage. Or if you regrowth at 80 then world shattering it to almost dead, etc. Let's not get into plane-razings that Psion can do.

I don't think it's worth wasting rage, when you barely generate enough to use the small/large battlerage attacks as is, while also keeping rage to battlerage raze (another separate issue entirely, which may or may not be a factor).

Mizik

Man y'all  just sreally don'tpam attack/little rage/big rage every combo?

Atalkez

Hell no I send whatever battlerage I use that’s not on CD every 1s (rage bal) unless Target is under 15% health. May change the health value a little lower, haven’t decided.

Cooper

Here is my testing vs. water lord. Assume I have all arties that affect damage for WL and Serp.

WL: 7.45%/s

Serpent: 9.65%/s

My serpent is about 30% faster damage than WL, ignoring battlerage/other class abilities/attack speed/etc.

Don't compare those %s to anything else, it won't be relevant.

Vinzent

Looks about right. I've bashed with and without the +3 int and level three collar, and it feels nice. I also hit those little girls a couple of times, baseline was around 24/25% per hit, and with modifiers it was 35/36%.

Synbios

With the recent announce regarding elemental lords' damage being tied to intelligence and collar, has anyone tested if their bashing capabilities are noticeably improved?

[Deleted User]

Synbios said:

With the recent announce regarding elemental lords' damage being tied to intelligence and collar, has anyone tested if their bashing capabilities are noticeably improved?

I think it's Air > Fire > Water > Earth, I think judging by Discord.

Air clocked around ~18% as per Penwize

Fire 17.3% as per Taryius

Water/Earth were both around 16.5% according to Melodie and Atalkez

(using the same test target as Mindshell did - Those are all per second, obviously, and with level 3s + int trait)

Synbios

So from what I'm seeing here, the damage changes greatly benefited Air and Fire Lords, who were previously on the losing end of bashing DPS. For Earth and Water, I imagine their lower damage potential is offset by their survivability tools such as self-heals, enabling them to tackle harder stuff.

[Deleted User]

Synbios said:

So from what I'm seeing here, the damage changes greatly benefited Air and Fire Lords, who were previously on the losing end of bashing DPS. For Earth and Water, I imagine their lower damage potential is offset by their survivability tools such as self-heals, enabling them to tackle harder stuff.

The changes greatly benefited all of them. They all sucked at bashing previously. Earth just sucked less than the other 3 because it's tanky. Now they're all fairly average with Fire and Air being a little above average. They're actually usable now as an alternative bashing class, rather than needing to bash in Dragon if your lesser class is shit at bashing.

Kaedan

Misc
----
* Most non weapon-based classes have had their PVE damage increased. In some cases this is fairly significant, in others it is relatively minor.

So, these are the definite non weapon-based classes:

• Shaman
• Psion
• Occultist
• Alchemist
• Apostate
• Tekura and Telepathy Monk
• Dragon
• Sylvan
• Druid and Sentinel Metamorphosis
• Elemental Lords
  

Then, there are some classes where it depends on what "weapon" means - a forged weapon, or just something used as a proxy for damage, like DW scythes:

• Depthswalker - Reap and Cull need a scythe wielded
• Magi - Staffcast needs a staff wielded
  
• Blademaster - Sheathed blade required
  
• Shikudo Monk - Needs a staff wielded
  

I want to be clear: technically, the second list uses 'weapons'. But damage and speed calculations are different, it doesn't actually depend on weapon stats, afaik. Artefact damage increases operate more like non-weapon damage increases, percentage-of-damage boosts rather than weapon stat increases. Even Priest weapons use stat increases rather than percentage damage bonuses. It feels like those four could be considered, depending on how the calculations are done.

So, anyone want to test these and see which ones were changed and by how much?

[Deleted User]

Monk and Magi apparently weren't changed at all. Whether or not the changes are finalised yet or not isn't known (so they may do 'weapon' classes separately).

Taryius

Dragon and Fire Lord didn't seem to get any change, so I'm going to guess none of the other Elemental Lords did as they are more forms rather than classes.

Dragon Incantation (20 int, L2 collar) 13.6%/s

Dragon Gut (18 Strength) 12%/s

Firelord Flamewhip (21 int, L2 collar) 16.36%/s

Shaman Jinx Bleed (18 int L2 collar) 17.5%/s - Seems untouched

Magi Staffcast (18 int L2 collar) 16.67%/s - I don't have old numbers but maybe buffed by a small amount? Not sure though

All of these against, you guessed it, little girls.

Hard to compare these to the numbers in the thread already since I'm not fully artied.

Mindshell

A little girl tells you, "My health is now 1011 out of a total of 2160."

Having learned to communicate with her monster, a little girl no longer needed to die for science.

Some new numbers with all of this. I'll do more later I guess.

ALCHEMIST
Educe Iron
1149 dmg, 3.06e (4.00), 375.49 p/s

DRAGON
Gut
1022 dmg, 3.00b (3.00), 340.67 p/s
Incantation
1111 dmg, 3.27e (3.85), 339.76 p/s
Blast
606 dmg, 3.40e (4.00), 178.24 p/s

MAGI
Dissolution
1149 dmg, 3.06e (4.00), 375.49 p/s
Lightning
1149 dmg, 3.06e (4.00), 375.49 p/s
Scintilla
1149 dmg, 3.06e (4.00), 375.49 p/s
Horripilation
1149 dmg, 3.06e (4.00), 375.49 p/s
Stormhammer (T1)
1048 dmg, 4.59e (6.00), 228.32 p/s
Stormhammer (T2)
999 dmg, 4.59e (6.00), 445.97 p/s
Stormhammer (T3)
999 dmg, 4.59e (6.00), 663.62 p/s

OCCULTIST
Warp
1149 dmg, 3.06e (4.00), 375.49 p/s

SHAMAN
Swiftcurse
323 dmg, 0.99b (1.10)
Adjusted for defence + aelkesh (33% proc)
Def 0.85e (1.00),  1.03b, 313.59 p/s
Arius
999 dmg, 2.72e (3.55), 367.28 p/s
Curse
492 dmg, 1.62b (1.80), 303.70 p/s
Jinx
984 dmg, 1.98b (2.00)
Curse + Jinx
1476 dmg, 3.60b (3.80), 410.00 p/s

WATER LORD
Blade
803 dmg, 2.35b, 341.70 p/s

Aegoth

Those stormhammer numbers make me cry. Who wants to be 5s offbal for ~230dps? It's very, very rare that one gets clumps of three for the higher dps, and even then 5s offbal is long enough to get wrecked if the mobs are strong enough. Not a fan. Stormhammer needs EQ/dmg scaling per target

Taryius

Wow, Magi, Occie and Alchemist all with the exact same DPS. Interesting. Looks like a pretty decent buff to the classes lagging behind, which should help a lot of people and force more decision making between dragon and lesser.

Still no real reason for any competitive bashers to go anything other than serpent/knight/shaman.

Austere

Aegoth said:

Those stormhammer numbers make me cry. Who wants to be 5s offbal for ~230dps? It's very, very rare that one gets clumps of three for the higher dps, and even then 5s offbal is long enough to get wrecked if the mobs are strong enough. Not a fan. Stormhammer needs EQ/dmg scaling per target

It's only 228 if you're trying to use it instead of a staffcast vs a single target. I think hammer scaling is fine, particularly if you're using it only in rooms with multiple targets(as you should be).  Beyond that, these numbers read as fairly standardized now.  The one complaint I have with hammer is the willpower and mana drains.  Trans philosophy, grand magi robes, and perma megalith and I still bleed WP

Minifie

Austere said:

Aegoth said:

Those stormhammer numbers make me cry. Who wants to be 5s offbal for ~230dps? It's very, very rare that one gets clumps of three for the higher dps, and even then 5s offbal is long enough to get wrecked if the mobs are strong enough. Not a fan. Stormhammer needs EQ/dmg scaling per target

It's only 228 if you're trying to use it instead of a staffcast vs a single target. I think hammer scaling is fine, particularly if you're using it only in rooms with multiple targets(as you should be).  Beyond that, these numbers read as fairly standardized now.  The one complaint I have with hammer is the willpower and mana drains.  Trans philosophy, grand magi robes, and perma megalith and I still bleed WP

SH should drain hefty wp at 2+ and garner decent rage per hit, but be unoqevuicably the highest dps of classes IMO. It’s high risk-high reward, and it’s fun to run around stormhammering. Definitely staffcast at 1 enemy and be average there. I’m unsure if serpent should be left and that becomes the new average, or pulled down to the average simply due to how fast hunting will end up after that. My preference is serpent comes down, scales+scalemail+deathcape is tankier than secondarmour+deathcape. Cap dex so garrote sits at a bit above current average, then classes like shammer magi, arash bm and 5/5 terminus DWalker take top, since those 3 pay to hunt at that speed. Bring decay up to be better than bleed/bleed, since you’d sacrifice nimble and be less-combat ready...

eh, tl;dr if your class sacrifices combat ability that you can’t replace on-demand you should be cock of the walk IMO.