Wednesday, September 19, 2007

False enchantment can last a lifetime.

Somebody finally took the time to create an alt to send me hate mail in-game!



While it's largely blather in the vein of a frightened goose honking at something it doesn't understand, I concede that there's a valid challenge to my logic in there. Was Mongoose the wrong way to go for an enchant on my Felsteel Reaper?

First, consider that I'm using a 2H axe for dps. My rationale for that is as follows:

The majority of my damage comes from Raptor Strikes, which can only be done every six seconds, so I want to get as much as possible out of each Strike when the cooldown is up. With 2/2 points in the Savage Strikes talent, I have an extra 20% chance to crit on a Raptor Strike, in addition to the +170 damage it deals. The slower and heavier my weapon, the bigger those crits will be. That's very important when you consider that we're talking about my strongest attack.

So if I'm sticking with a 2H weapon for now, there's really only three solid enchants to choose from: Savagery (+70 AP), Major Agility (+35 agi), and Mongoose (+120 agi and attack speed...sometimes).

Disregarding Mongoose for the moment, I'm left to choose between 70 AP and 35 agi. rmlinden on Thottbot says it plainly: "Simply put Agility scales AP. Static AP doesnt." Consider what 35 agility (40.25, thanks to Lightning Reflexes) means to me as a hunter. More AP (40.25), more crit (0.96%), more armor (82), more dodge (1.64%). Dodges unlock Mongoose Bites, which are also subject to the 20% increased chance to crit from Savage Strikes. In turn, crits unlock Kill Command. The added chance to crit, Bite, and Kill represents a lot more damage than the additional flat 29.75 AP Savagery would provide over Major Agility. Major Agility wins.

So now it's between Major Agility and Mongoose.

Mongoose seems to be normalized at 1 PPM. Roughly once a minute I'm going to get +120 agi for 15 seconds. Averaged out over that one minute, that's four 15-second blocks of +30 agility. Looking at it that way, yes, that's inferior to +35 agi. I'm coming up 5 agi short.

Now comes the tricky part. The slower the weapon, the more often the Mongoose enchant will proc from instant attacks like Wing Clip and Counterattack.

My base chance to proc Mongoose is ((1 PPM * 3.4 weapon speed) / 60) = 5.67% chance per hit. That same 5.67% chance to proc also applies to my instant attacks, like Wing Clip. I've talked before about using Wing Clip to proc effects, and this is why. At least every two seconds, I'm hitting a special attack. If I haven't gotten off a Counterattack or a Mongoose Bite recently, I'll hit a Wing Clip. So at a minimum I'm doing 30 "bonus rolls" per minute for this proc, and I should be seeing a proc every 18 attacks or so. When you combine the base 1 PPM from my white damage with the additional chance from my special attacks, I'm actually averaging two (or more) Mongoose procs per minute, not one. That takes my minute's worth of four averaged-out 15-second blocks from 30 agility to 60, greatly exceeding Major Agility's 35.

Tl;dr -- Mongoose wins.

Saturday, September 1, 2007

Truth is subject to too much analysis.

At last, some more hard numbers. I've been working on an Engineering grind to 375, and part of that included farming attempts for the Felsteel Boomstick schematic and the Khorium Scope schematic. While I was busy slaughtering, I left KombatStats to do its thing.
Gweryc
Offense
Count: 790; To Hit: 87%
Damage Dealt: 288,044 (65% hit, 22% crit)
Raptor Strike: 36% (37% crit)
Melee: 26% (23% crit)
Immolation Trap Effect: 12%
Mongoose Bite: 10% (30% crit)
Lightning Strike: 4% (4% crit)
Explosive Trap Effect: 3%
Wing Clip: 2% (15% crit)
Counterattack: 1% (21% crit)
Vengeance: 0% (4% crit)
DPS: 293.2

Defense
Count: 473; To Hit: 53%
Damage Taken: 56,490 (51% hit, 2% crit)
145 dodges (30%)
49 parries (10%)
24 misses (5%)
DTPS: 56.3

977 sec. data collected
Cafall
Offense
Count: 720; To Hit: 88%
Damage Dealt: 110,404 (76% hit, 11% crit)
Melee: 53% (7% crit)
Kill Command: 33% (29% crit)
Bite: 13% (11% crit)
DPS: 113.7

Defense
Count: 125; To Hit: 87%
Damage Taken: 27,157 (87% hit, 0% crit)
6 dodges (4%)
4 parries (3%)
4 blocks (3%)
2 misses (1%)
DTPS: 27.2

966 sec. data collected

Not too terrible, I suppose. Combined with Cafall, my total dps averaged around +400. I think my tank build is paying off. I could only be hit about half the time, and the rate at which I was crit was extremely low as I'm still climbing toward being uncrittable (372 def and 76 resil right now, for 2.81% decreased chance to be crit). Additionally, I was getting a lot of mileage from those dodges being converted into Mongoose Bites.

The percentage of damage I'm getting from white melee is somewhat depressing, but still useful to know. What that's screaming to me is, "hey, if you ever see a Blinkstrike drop while you're farming motes of air, equip it, nub."

Naturally, just as soon as I collected this data, I finished my engineering grind and replaced my Coif of the Wicked with a Foreman's Reinforced Helmet. And not a moment before that I had upgraded some green "of the Bandit" chest piece with a blue BoE item I found in the auction house. So what I've got on in the armory right now is not only not what I was wearing at the time I got this data, but I've completely forgotten what the shoulders I had were; they've been lost to time. Regardless, what's here is fairly representative of how I'm performing today.

I would love some constructive feedback on this post. Given what you see here, how am I stacking up? Anything I'm doing especially well? And more importantly, where do I have room for improvement?