Bashing DPS Overhaul

Phaestus

Mayapple -> Unartied xoran fire breath was accidentally left off this list

Not part of this rework, nor is it meant to scale like class bashing does. There's a very few niche cases where Xorani breath might be useful, but damage-wise it should really never compare to even unartied bashing. If it were on the list, it would be below stonefist at 12 base stats. That might be brought up a bit if a case is made for it, but it won't ever be competitive.

Mindshell -> Would appreciate being able to go through class specific parameters with things like shikudo forms having differing attack values so the ability to instruct people how to hunt optimally and not just what their class should be reaching will allow everyone to make the best of their class.

Shikudo numbers are from Tykonos form, as a baseline. Shikudo can pull higher numbers with the drawbacks of other forms. Same with BM, numbers provided are unstanced. Damage will go up or down based on the various bonuses or drawbacks of twoarts stances.

Saonji -> Regarding Shikudo, what path are you using to get those numbers?

See note above.

Atalkez -> Wasn’t there some discussion of giving Earth some bonus for being max shaping in PvE? Functionally gaining shaping doesn’t seem to matter, so would a small bonus to damage be something to discuss there?

This was discussed, but never went in. Gaining and keeping shaping against mobs is pretty much 100% passive uptime. Tying a damage boost to this would complicate things unnecessarily, and would mean either making the boost pretty much negligible, or nerfing baseline damage to compensate, neither of which would be very healthy for the class imo.

Gallida -> For Pariah, are you baking the epitaph bonus into that number? Trace should easily outpace Wrack once the bonus stacks high enough, unless the damage on Trace has been adjusted down slightly.

Trace has been adjusted down somewhat, yes. It is still better than Wrack in the sense that it's going to be hitting faster. Stacking logograph chain speed will increase your DPS ever so slightly, but not by a significant amount.

Shecks -> At 23str (insp + fury) L3 Broadsword + Tower shield Rend/Smash combo did 23% more base DPS than Slice/Smash with Longsword. Speed is 2.95s vs 2.3s.

At 23str, for SNB, Rend/Smash with l3 broadsword and tower runs about 7% higher dps than longsword slice/smash, most of which has to do with the longer balance times (plus a small 1-2% discrepancy for some weirdness in the balance times, which is present across pretty much all classes and skills). Definitely isn't 23%, nor are those balance times correct for rend/smash.

Dochitha -> My expectation was an overhaul will pull every class closer to the top, as in, the difference between the best and the worst reduced significantly, but this didn't happen to a noticeable extent, the distance remain pretty much similar.

Before this overhaul, the difference between top class DPS and lowest class DPS at the artied end was significantly more than double (somewhere between 115% and 135% improvement, if I recall). Right now we're sitting at about a 40% advantage across classes. That advantage drops to 30% when we take out class modifiers, because a portion of that difference is intended. There was also a very very noticeable gap in the centre prior, where most classes would fall very far outside of the median. It wasn't a smooth succession of x is better than y is better than z, most classes were either in the top 20% or bottom 20% of that difference window. 30% difference isn't amazing (almost entirely because diadem exists), it isn't where we'd like to be, but it's a massive step in the right direction, and it's a discrepancy we could probably live with if we had to.

Shecks -> It's impossible to balance things at the top the way the game works without fundamentally redesigning all of the attacks. The big issue is stat scaling and things like collar, aldar, class abilities that give stats, class abilities that give crit chance

The only real issue here is diadem, which is why (if you look back at the list) most eq classes have ended up a good bit higher than the balance ones at the high end. We're talking about ways to mitigate this difference, such as increasing the scaling on artefact weapons and the like. The rest is pretty well accounted for, or is intentionally not accounted for in the scaling.

Austere -> Sylvan is the only one left that gives me concern, particularly in the unartied category. Having every wp boost imaginable, sans artie armor, I still run out fairly quickly on the top end. I can't imagine how these kids with nothing are fairing. Bottom tier dps and likely the shortest hunting periods, isn't going to make this class very well loved. This might be more a willpower drain adjustment situation than an actual dps adjustment though. Sylvan is a tank.

At a glance, Sylvan hunting (thornrend, at least) doesn't seem particularly willpower intensive? It's lower than things like occultist warp and alchemy iron, and I don't see any particularly potent drains that are relevant to hunting. I definitely could be missing something, but it doesn't seem like will should really be an issue at all.

Shecks

@Phaestus I mean the only way I have to get numbers is to smack my mount, and all I get is a very inaccurate percentage. If only there was a way to get more accurate data!

Melodie

@Phaestus So I did some investigation in game and through some of my old notes, but I didn't find anything that could be considered a boost to deadeyes bleed, though your graph references an artefacted version. Since there are no actual artefacts to help it, I'm assuming it's a stat? Does int actually boost bleed on denizens like it boosts decay? Just trying to understand what maxing out looks like here, since diadem doesn't affect it. I do assume nimble is taken into account though.

Saonji

int and collar both boost deadeyes bleed on denizens.

Venari

@Phaestus Can we get Sentinel's "returning" hunting looked at? The endurance drain is crazy high, and just would like to see where it's at DPS wise if its too high or low.

Dochitha

So it looks like Dragon hunting with Thoth is leading with DPS higher than an artied serpent. I am happy with this, cos I can hunt at highest DPS no matter which lesser class I am in. This is a much better experience than before.

Shecks

@Dochitha L3 Gauntlet + Thoths Fang Dragon DPS is not the highest by a good margin. I count at least 6 classes that do more. 9-10 if you count class and Human crit bonus into the mix. Also, don't forget, Serp can go > 19 str. It remains to be seen what "soft cap at 19" means.

Dochitha

23 STR Dragon, DPS 3.98.

19 DEX Serpent, DPS 3.43

Accipiter

@Dochitha Mounts are non-crittable and stuff so people will probably hold that against you but I don't see much else in the script but people going off the provided number so interesting.

Saonji

Worth noting is how Rapture also rounds things.

Also Thoth Jab is 1.9-2s flat, which (using the exact, non-rounded numbers) makes it actually ~3.5-3.6 dps... Your timestamps are really weird.

Similarly, 19 dex garrote is ~1.4s which puts it at exactly the same dps.

eta: If Phaestus' numbers are to be trusted, as well, Serpent is indeed higher DPS by roughly ~7-10%.

Shecks

There are other less obvious benefits of garrote over jab, as well. It scales better with consumables, it is better without stat arties, and it misses less.

Tfang is good but as mentioned above it's pretty much middle of the pack when you look at the full picture instead of just looking at these base dps figures (which REALLY) are not good measurements or predictors of overall pve dps, on their own. It's just one of several factors. There's also the fact that if you're not a serpent, then you have to buy a 1600cr item which serves no real other purpose (which requires +2 or +3 str to even make sense).

Atalkez

Thoth can also miss with clumsiness, garrote never misses, neither does Arash slash etc. Has to be considered, too.

Morthif

@Phaestus  Since the changes to bashing Is there any chance sentinel battlerage abilities Bore and Skewer can be updated to accept handaxe as an appropriate weapon?

Atalkez

How are u skewering anything with a handaxe? Love it

Morthif

Come here baby let me show you.

Venari

@Morthif wield axe;Throw handaxe at target. if battlerage wieldspear;pester/bore/skewer target. :shrug:

Caelan

Pester is fine and works with handaxe.

Bore is straight up dumb since it doesnt make mention of being weapon dependent.

Skewer states it requires a spear/trident so it at least makes sense.

Frankly I just wield both. But it is obnoxious because then I cant wield SoA.

Eurice

Would it be possible to look into willpower costs for airlord? Even when borrowing a citymates l2 willpower regen artie, I can complete only Riagath and Morindar in succession before hitting the red zone and being forced to stop and meditate for longer than it actually took me to clear the zones in the first place.

Unless this is intentional, but it doesn't seem like it.

Gallida

That might also be a function of clotting/focusing. I don't know Riagath well, but there's a lot of mentals and Loki in Morindar.

Eurice

Good point. Is there a recommended benchmark area for testing willpower drain?

Shecks

@Eurice it's worth mentioning too that elemental lords are a completely free class with super high base stats and resistances (relative to normal), and very good dps as well, so putting some limit on them kinda makes sense if you consider you're getting like 10,000cr in arties, lessons, class slot for the price of doing a couple of quests. Similarly, Phaestus mentioned that dps was balanced around things like tankiness and WP/endurance consumption too, so bear in mind that by asking for WP to drop, you're also defacto asking for a reduction in DPS, as they go hand in hand.

Gallida's point is also 100% valid, both of these areas use a ton of WP. Try out areas that don't use a ton of mentals or bleeding (or dabble with simply turning these things off or tuning your clotting setting).

Also before you buying regen arties, it's highly recommended to get yourself artie ox/megalith tattoos (that never fade) as these are many times bang for your buck. You really don't even need artie tats, as you have to ink thousands of them for the cost of the artie to pay off (it's more of a convenience thing).

Atalkez

@Phaestus would you mind creating a new post with the updated tables as a Sticky so it's clean/no comments and readily available to reference as needed?

Eryl

Please! I pull this post up for people almost weekly :(

Thaisen

I added a sortable table to the Wiki we can keep updated if things change too. https://wiki.achaea.com/Hunting

Aegoth

What does 16art mean D:

Thaisen

I dunno...whatever Phaestus said:

"The second table is the primary strategy for each class/spec, same as above, except with all artefacts applicable to the strategy in question. The same stat bases apply, and are boosted accordingly to account for all lvl 3 stat arties."

Argwin

16 Base Stat with Arties

Eryl

@Aegoth, the tables are sorted by 12 stat, 16 stat, and 19 stat. The stat is what affects their bashing attack, so for mag it’s int.

(art) means it’s taking into account all available artifacts that affect the damage of your bashing attack (collar, diadem for instance for magi)

Atalkez

Base stat will be race statpack+trait - so 16 base will mean something like Xoran str (15) + Strength trait (1) before artefact modifiers are in play. So if you see 16 but your race (say, human), is 14+1 then you're specifically going to be below the dps number displayed.

Also I just realized how terrible dwc is now, my goodness. Serpent camus outpaces dwc scimitars.

Taryius

What Atalkez said, they are base stats before artie bonuses. So 19b is only achievable with rare minerals and elixirs.

The artie number includes all of diadem, bonus stat, collar, damage modifying artie, and artefact weapon *if relevant to said skill.