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Comments
As someone with most classes and most artifacts I'm always looking to maximize my bashing. The endless l3lash laytronite garotte min/max. As things have gotten a bit better I made a database to track my crits/crit chance/attack speed vs damage/stats etc to see what classes shined WHERE (denizen resists etc)
I've just put it up for share if anyone would like to find and compare their own results after all things are factored in:
https://forums.achaea.com/discussion/7657/zdata-hunting-database/
zGUI 4.0 - A Free GUI for Mudlet 4.10+
Are the depthswalker numbers really this high? That makes them....very tempting.
Without any other context, DW's numbers would require you to put half of your Terminus research points into Hunting for Laiad, which means you get no non-bashing utility beyond access to a prismatic barrier, and at least three points into Augmentation for damage and speed.
You're also somewhat on the squishier side as a DW unless you finish Augmentation, which means you get no utility from Terminus beyond "hunt better". One of the best things about DW is their ability to take bits of Terminus for a swiss army knife of tricks, and you'd give that up for a marginal bashing DPS bonus.
You could always spec for pure hunting until you hit Logosian and then respec later, but I contend that the point where you'd want the hunting bonuses the most is post-Logosian and pre-Dragon, which is also around the same time that you'd really be getting into combat and you'd be doing yourself a disservice if you didn't have the buckets of utility available in Terminus.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't go for it if you want, but temper your expectations accordingly.
Now that I think about it, there's probably an argument to be made that DW is the class best suited for winning the sub-80 Great Hunt bracket nowadays, between the damage buffs, immediate access to weapons, the strong battlerage attack available early, and not having to track down a tutor for class skills.
Hard disagree on a lot of that. DW is great from level 1 to infinity. Its real DPS* is substantially higher than a completely maxed out L3 dragon, when spec'd correctly. * Actual dps dealt in bashing, not calculated.
I find it odd that everyone leaves out the fact that DW has a passive crit bonus chance - considering that this stacks with everything else (including human crit chance bonus, trait crit chance bonus, and all your artefacts / consumables). It also works quite well as Human race, which is not really true for many cases that need to tilt heavily towards an offensive stat. In PvE crit chance is God - and it's also rarely calculated into DPS which makes DW basically 5-10% better than what every chart you see indicates.
In other words, if a DW and a Runie both do 400dps, the DW is actually doing closer to 450 against actual NPCs due to the multiple crit bonuses.
Hunting DW spec as human with str, crit, and weapon arties is probably the 3rd highest DPS in the game behind 25str paladin with Thoth's and Arash BM.
It is nice to see in a thread about hard numbers a word like probably thrown in. It really makes you confident about the conclusion.
Yeah @Accipiter , you're 100% right. That's why I'm one of the folks who has been consistently requesting a way for those numbers to be actually tested. Currently, such a thing doesn't exist, so I don't know why you're asking for it.
If we go purely from what we know in this thread (the chart from game admin and comments afterwards providing clarification that temporary bonuses like Inspiration were not included), coupled with in-game testing of DPS on mounts, then it's completely fair for me to conclude that Paladin with Thoths blows away everything on the list. Dragon with Thoths is awesome too as it's far tankier and has the same strength, but it lacks Nimble so by default does 15-20% less real DPS, crits factored in). Paladin also has better BR abilities.
The other thing that's abundantly clear is that the DPS figures listed don't at all consider crit rate. It's assumed to be even across the board - so any class that has crit chance bonuses or classes that can efficiently spec Human (DW is both) has a massive hidden advantage that is not shown. Not sure if Laiad is included on this or not, but it probably shouldn't be as most DWs dont' spec for Laiad. Either way though, with high str, L3 arties, and full crit setup (DW spec + human) the real DPS will be higher than anything on the chart (because Paladin with 24+ str isn't shown, nor is any non-dragon class with Thoths shown (which is different than dragon thanks to different dim returns baseline in lesserform).
It's impossible to measure exactly but as far as I can tell the best PvE dps in the game by a wide margin is (specifically)
Paladin, 2H, L3 bastard sword + L3 dirk (Thoths), 23 str Human (instead of 24 str xoran etc as the crit is better than 1str) with Jera and Inspiration, using Fury (with artie) efficiently , bashing with Thoths fang jab and class abilities for razing as needed, with an efficient BR scheme of course. It's also, of course, one of the tankiest pve classes in the game.
Naturally this requires a ridiculous amount of arties. Without good crit chance the raw DPS from this is higher than anything else, but it will scale even better with high crit chance compared to other things due to the speed of Thoths. Can run this solo against pretty much anything in the game other than honors mobs and UW.
With the change in changes#91, is dragon/elord going to be updated here?
Side note, I hate my new dragon bashing because of this:
https://ada-young.com/pastebin/lQS1sQ2v
Yeah I'm really interested in seeing just how impacted dragon was by this. It was already not very great on the DPS scale (real world wise, not on paper), so I hope it wasn't a massive hit.
Also, e-lord bashing I have not specifically measured because initial testing was so bad that it seemed pointless to dig into actual data. I'm surprised to see it needed a nerf. I understand it's a free class and all, but this feels a little harsh for people that just enjoy playing as an elemental lord. I have limited PvE experience on firelord, but have got similar feedback from the other three that sounded to be about the same.
New numbers for Dragon/Elemental Lords.
@Taryius
Thanks. Worst fears confirmed - dragon bashing seems to be just deaded, then. I assume that was the intent? 425 dps on thoths down to 382 isn't a tweak, that's a sledge hammer....
Wonder if the huge group of people who both Thoths for dragon bashing are going to get a refund considering it's pretty much a thing of the past now, barring some kind of adjustment here.
@Shecks, regarding Elemental Lord bashing: I've started getting into the habit of bashing as Air instead of Druid, since it had definitively higher DPS from both my own and other people's measurements. I was originally partial to Druid since it has several great options for buffing regen, but it's significantly more slow.
Regardless, the main advantage I see for Elemental Lord bashing is just utilising base resists to tank easier in certain spots. Air lord has a level three resistance to asphyxiation damage, which is given by quite a lot of stuff in Morindar, and makes it considerably easier. In general I may be a bit more squishy in Air due to the lack of regen or vitality, but it's still faster, and with a full cape it ends up being fairly safe. Now that Air lord is a bit closer to Druid in terms of DPS (a change of 296 to 259 isn't too horrible, in my opinion—druid's is at 265 for 16B.), I might find myself hunting in both forms now, especially with the absurdly high willpower drain Air lord has.
This is also a bit of a tangent for this thread, but I'm taking it anyway: I've started to find that some areas give incredibly disproportionate amounts of gold and experience to their difficulty level, and it starting to really make me confused about if it's the area that's unbalanced or if I am just hunting in poor places. As an example, I feel like I get significantly more experience in the Vents of Hthrak—as well as gold—compared to Morindar, by at least a factor of two. Furthermore, the Vents are far easier in terms of the damage you have to deal with, and they're even quicker to hunt out.
I'm sure it's a little bit crappy to say, "hey, this hunting area might be weighted a bit higher than it should", but the difference is so staggering that I feel like I have to ask if this is normal. Also a full disclosure: I'm not an experienced basher on account of not enjoying it, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
No, @Moroa , it's just a fact of life that difficulty and payoffs are pretty random. It's part of the learning curve and sadly ends up with you not visiting 80% of areas after you learn it.
So the reward for bashing to dragon now is ...the worst bashing class in the game?
The only thing that irks me about asphyxiation resistance is it is the only damage type in the game that can be completely negated with a common defence (breathing), which makes it far less valuable in comparison to the other resists the airlords have. If you take level 3 to mean something like a 15% reduction, using breathing to eat 1 attack is close to having your resistance applied to 7 attacks worth of damage. Anyone that pauses semi-briefly when fighting asphyxiation heavy mobs with breathing on keepup gets a categorically better reduction at no real cost to them.
Only vaguely related but I did want to mention it.
It's a bit of a bummer to see Airlord damage so low given how generally squishy they are in comparison to the other lords with no regeneration or healing mechanics to speak of, plus the huge willpower drain involved.
@Eurice That's... a really good point. I didn't think about that at all, as I usually (lazily) don't bother putting up heldbreath. I do have to agree that it seems incredibly squishy for not too much benefit for bashing in comparison to other Elemental Lords. Supposedly one benefit of Air is it's ridiculously high dexterity, but even with a 17 dex and the light stepper trait (not a major trait I really should have taken, but regardless), I have yet to see it effect either bashing or combat. (Mildly sardonic p.s.: Please make Air Lord immune to the Fissure of Echoes winds, we're supposed to be "never be blown about by the wind.") It's definitely in a weird place in comparison to the other elemental factions, in more ways than one (in combat too, but that's a whole other discussion).
I've seen two sources of data on the latest dps numbers: Taryius's table here, and the table given in the dps-test channel on the official Discord server. For Elemental Lords, they line up just fine. But the numbers quoted for Dragon are significantly different:
Discord server numbers:
Taryius numbers:
So about a 10% difference across the board. Is there an obvious explanation for this?
I recreated the most recent data provided to us by Phaestus today and threw it into a spreadsheet that I've published here. I likely won't be taking the time to maintain this long-term, but I thought I'd share. Just sorted it alphabetically to be a bit easier to navigate. If you notice any errors let me know and I'll try to fix them as I'm able.
Edit: Also @Zenui it seems off to you because there is no 12B on the discord for those. If you look they are left blank. It's not really possible to be a 12 str or int dragon anyways. That said there are still a few differences, but that explains the large gap.
@Thaisen dragon definitely didn't become "the worst bashing class in the game". It remains by far the tankiest class, offers a massive amount of free stats, and offers a ton of utility for bashing on top of that (fly, glide, gare, dragonheal, dragonflex, Incant with broken arms, etc).
People who are not FULLY artied are going to find they can bash significantly more difficult areas in dragon than in lesserform, meaning even though DPS is lower, they will earn far higher gold, exp, essence, and talismans.
At the very high end, it does kinda feel pointless except for going for honors mobs or trying to solo UW basically, but there aren't that many people at that point.
I would take Phaestus', numbers as correct, I pulled them from the same real-time database he did thats available to ACC members, but I assume something changed in-between me and him posting as the numbers there are updated to his new ones.
@Kogan The 12B / 16B titles of my table was a typo: It should have been 16B/19B. (Neither data set had 12B numbers for Dragon.) But if the lower numbers aren't relevant then there's no reason to worry about it.
Man, dizzying. If I'm reading this right, this is actually resulting in a dragon PvE buff for gut and incant, based on the original tables shared by Phaestus?
I'm seeing
tfang 425->420
gut 345 -> 374
incant 449 -> 457
If reading right, it's basically an 8.5% buff to Gut, with the other two more or less unaffected.
Looks like the bugfix resulted in lower base damage for unartied Dirk, Gut, and Incantation. Lower damage for artied base damage on Incantation and Dirk, and a negligable buff for artied base Gut. (333 -> 334).
The max stat scaling looks like it pulls slightly higher numbers for Incantation and Gut, but not Dirk. So if you're using rare minerals and SoW elixirs you might see marginally better DPS now on those two. As opposed to before where it there was only an 8 point increase between artied incantation and rare mineral + SoW + artied incantation.
@Thaisen it occurred to me that nobody has mentioned this, but dragons also have Lair bonuses, which when used probably puts you well above anything else out there in terms of actual exp and gold per time - and also gives you more actual exp per area which is pretty important when areas are limited / competitive.
The bugfix actually came as a result of some discrepancies between the dpstest numbers and actual live output. Turns out the only part of damage that wasn't accounted for (because it should have affected all classes equally) was also the only part that had a massive, years-old bug that slanted numbers heavily in favour of dragons (and slightly in favour of elords). Comparing the two sets of numbers makes it look like a buff, but actual output of dragons (all strategies, especially thoth's) around the time of the first set of numbers was between 33% and 48% higher, depending on circumstances. Elemental lords would have been between 15-20% higher.
Going forward (and with most recent numbers), dpstest numbers now reflect full, actual output of damage against mobs.
ETATLDR: The "nerf" was bringing dragons in line with their expected values, because actual output was far, far higher than expected.
ETA2:
any class that has crit chance bonuses or classes that can efficiently spec Human (DW is both) has a massive hidden advantage that is not shown.
To respond to this (and the context around it), human trait passive is a 1% dps increase in the best case scenario, so you're almost (almost almost) always better speccing into your primary stat. It's not negligible, and there's cases where it's not a bad choice, but it's not as impactful as you seem to think.
Phaestus - with the human crit chance boost are you accounting for all sources of "normal" crit enhancement?
"Normal" Crit Enhancers:
Stygian Pendant
Lucky elixir
Lucky trait
Lily
Environment sceptre
Dragon hoard
Maya Figurine
Both armour paragons
Human
"Special" Crit Enhancers (some of these don't stack because they give the same bonus as another enhancer, I can't remember which ones):
Clover
Humgii racetrack failure
Tear-stained cauldron (Annwyn)
Lantern
Happybirthdayachaea
Alchemist or Depthswalker
Chocolates
Wheel Spins
Penwize and I always went back and forth on which one of us was right about our situation. Penwize felt that Atavian w/ 19 dex was better than Human w/ 18 dex and I was pretty certain that human was better dps. My reasoning was based on how the big critical hits are calculated - more crit = much higher chance of a big crit.
Absolute best case scenario (not including plane-razing crits) is lower than 1.4% dps increase. Depends on the class you're talking about, the scaling, and how far along diminishing returns you are, but in most cases the stat is going to benefit you more (of course, this isn't taking into account other potential benefits of human versus whichever class you're talking about, like extra con for health or dex for dodging or the sip bonus)
The plane-razing part (and Maya Figurine) are a key part of why I feel human is better - from what I understand higher crits are kind of a "what's left over" calculation that really cranks up the damage increase with higher crit levels. It was pretty surprising to hear that human crit bonus is only a 1% dps increase under ideal conditions even though that falls in line with with the health sip bonus.
Yen, Veldrin, and I have all reached significantly higher real DPS per crit chance % than you're listing using both math as well as actual measurements. We reached something around 5-10% real DPS per 2% towards the high end of crit chance (8% and higher, where the jump from 8% to 9% is significantly more valuable than a jump from 2% to 3%. As Cooper mentioned, PRZ crits and Maya also significantly increase the value there too. Will leave the +crit damage stat (e.g. Destroyer bonus) out of this since it seems to be worse than crit chance or a stat in every scenario.
Anyone who's ever bashed at 15% crit chance or higher will immediately and strongly agree that going from 5% to 15% crit chance is MUCH more valuable than just getting a bunch of main stat - especially considering that most PvE abilities have diminishing returns and/or stat caps.
To put that another way - by your logic going from 0% crit chance to 10% crit chance should be roughly 10-12% improvement in clear speed, and we KNOW it's wayyy more than that. I'd guess going from 0 to 10% crit chance would almost HALVE your clear speed (as it rightly should considering the cost to get this high).
I know the DPS rework wasn't aimed at leveling the high end but that's pretty much what we're really talking about in this thread since page 1.
I think that @Phaestus and the team should really have another look at crit. As a level 120ish serpent, without Mayan but with PRC and max crit pendant/gambling, 2% crit from lucky speeds up bashing by a noticable amount. Significant enough to take 10 minutes off a clear of Azdun Catacombs. I feel the lack of lucky more than I feel the lack of 2 dex when I forget to respecialize after a reincarnation. Player supplied data and anecdotes have supported this for years as well.