Unartied Knight PvE analysis (contributions appreciated)

Uristt

Based on how useful the PvE analysis thread was on these forums in comparing hunting speeds for different classes, I thought it could be useful to do a little number crunching for the opposite end of the arti spectrum.

I kept seeing the comment that 2h > dwc > dwb > snb for knight bashing, and I wanted to try and put some numbers to it. There are many factors at play here, so I expect that the data might have some larger error bars than on the fully artied thread. 

I've been mostly focused on damage to Gnoll Sentinels in Manara Burrow level 1, since their smaller HP bars leads to a more reliable %HP damage calculation. I added other mobs to see if the trends are consistent, though.

Some preliminary findings:

• COMBINATION REND SMASH is barely above unspecialised shortsword jab for SNB. Once COMBINATION SLICE SMASH is unlocked later on, it gets a bit faster. 
• The amount of lessons into weaponmastery does not seem to have any effect on hunting speed/damage/to-hit (the latter is always 100% for knights).
• Higher strength leads to higher damage for every spec I've tested so far. 
• While the damage and speed vary a lot, there does not seem to be too significant a difference in DPS between broadsword/longsword and buckler/tower.
• So far, Longsword + Buckler Combo Slice Smash seems to be the most effective SNB bashing setup (though not by much). Needs more testing at higher strength levels--I've been putting off race specialisation to gather more data.
• My balance numbers fluctuate significantly, and some small advantages from one weapon setup to another might not be fully accurate. Once I figure out the proper balance number the data will be more reliable.

If any lowbie/unartied knights want to put in their own data and contribute, that'd be very helpful and much appreciated. Especially for DWB and DWC as I don't have characters of those specs and am quite short on lessons as it is.

Here is the link to the spreadsheet that I've been using. Uristt's data has my findings, you can use the Guest data tab at the bottom to put in your stats.

Saonji

Why not post them in Mindshell's thread, to keep everything together?

Also the girls were chosen (I beliieve) because they have one of the lowest health in the game, so you can get more reliable percentages from them. They're also the only NPC that reports their health (at least to ACC members) when hit. Testing on Gnolls is just going to make the numbers go out of whack, you should test on the same targets he did if you want comparable numbers to high-end.

Uristt

A fair point. I thought that with the length of the thread (and the fact that it's had so many changes through the years) it might be easy for this to get lost among all the other high-end data that is being reported, and it might make it difficult to find for newbies.

Considering that newbies are 100% the intended audience here, I figured a thread whose opening post is more directly relevant to them might stand out a little bit more, especially since "what spec should I choose" questions are so common. 

I didn't go after the little girls in Tasur'ke because I'm a newbie and I had just read public news 20828 (Sept 08 2020) which talked about Tasur'ke being under the defense of Hashan now. I assumed that meant the little girl was now off-limits, but I'd be happy to do some tests there as well. Do they allow hitting the little girl since it's such a useful tool on a completely OOC level?

Saonji

No idea. Eryl made a post about that recently which was either deleted, or moved to the hidden ACC section given the impact of Hashan's recent stance.

Kshavatra

I also did some testing for this, and I found that longsword/smash was about 4-5% behind two handed in damage.

From memory I think the numbers were 48%/4 seconds for 2h (bastard sword), and 23%/2 seconds for snb (buckler/longsword). Both of these were tested on the Tasur'ke little girl at 13 strength since that's what I'd consider unartied bashing spec minimum for Runewarden. I also tested dual blunt and it had comparable damage to 2h, but I didn't do extensive testing over multiple hits on this one, just saw it came out about 12%/second and called it at that. There's a margin of error on all of this of course, so it could go a bit either way.

My conclusion is that the ability to use SoA and faster hits > the extra bit of damage for me, but YMMV