Effects of SP and Modding on DPS: The Data

So, I've had my feelings about this subject for quite some time now, but I'd never formally tested it. Decided to try that today. A bit about the data you're about to see. This is all single target data obtained on the sparring target in my base on the test server. I chose that, because it simplified the testing, as well as the respeccing. I set my CR at 126, in order to eliminate any CR scaling influence. I ran numerous parses using several different specs.

Bare CR 126:
Full IL 110 gear unmodded with no SP allocated.

CR 126 plus Beta Mods:
This was simulated, actually. Rather than farm bits, I unlocked the affinities with Health and Power VII mods, then specced SP to bring my precision up 222 points without getting any crit bonuses. Closest I could get was 226. In doing that, I also increased my might, but only by 60.

CR 126 plus Full Mods:
Modded with Precision VII in reds, Precision & Power VII in yellows, and Precision & Health VII in blues.

CR 126 plus HT Mods:
Core Strength, Max Damage, Escalating Might, and Blast Adapter were equipped.

CR 126 plus HT Mods and Gear Mod Crits:
In addition to the HT mods, Health and Power mods were used to unlock the crit affinities from the blue and yellow gear slots.

CR 126 plus SP Crits:
With the bare IL 110 gear on, 77 SP were allocated to unlock all the DPS crits.

CR 126 plus 160 SP:
As above, but an additional 83 SP were allocated in a full precision spec.

CR 126 plus HT Mods and SP Crits:
A combination of the HT Mods and SP Crits specs.

CR 126 plus HT and All Crits:
A combination of HT Mods, Gear Mod Crits, and SP Crits specs.

CR 126 plus HT, Crits, and SP:
Same as above, except a full 160 SP were allocated for max precision.

CR 126 plus HT, Crits, and Mods:
Same as CR 126 plus HT and crits, but used VII mods for full precision spec.

Full CR 126:
Used full precision spec for mods and SP, along with HT.

Here's a graph of how the stats change with the specs (note, effective precision includes 5806 from weapon DPS):



So, how did the changes affect DPS? Here's a graph of the average DPS for each spec:



Here's the data represented relative to the Bare CR 126 spec:



I ran some more parses, since the original post, and it helps discriminate the effects better. The greatest individual impact is from the 77 SP invested in DPS crits. That boosts the damage output of the bare gear by 41%! The next greatest impact was pretty much a tie between HT mods and Full Mods in the gear. Both increased damage output by ~20%. Most disappointing was the fact that adding 83 more SP, so effectively doubling your SP (I actually had 161, but 1 SP was in fast movement mode. Assume most folks would put 6 more in the movement mode passives bringing that 77 up to 84), does so little for your damage output. All those SP resulted in a little over 5% increase in damage output. That's on par with the effect of placing Beta Mods in the gear.

After analyzing this data, I would list the relative importance of these factors as follows:

1. The first 77 SP for unlocking crits
2. HT mods/Fully modding
3. SP above the first 77/Modding for affinities

To be fair, there should be a point at which SP will overtake affinity modding, but I'm not sure how many more SP that would take. Of course, you can only get a maximum of 1157 precision and 1200 might out of the weapon trees. After that, there's no benefit, at least for damage stats.

It's also worth noting that some of these factors are synergistic. Having percentage bonuses will help flat stat bonuses be more productive. When you add everything up, you are able to more than double your damage output over the gear alone. That's a big deal!

Feel free to comment or ask questions. Hope you find this helpful!

Thanks for this.

Should include in the test betas in just the off-colors and betas in all slots. I think you'll see a jump for betas in the off colors, and not much of a difference for a full set of betas. Also curious how much of the full mod versus partial/full beta mod would look.

Well done

One comment. Could you show the % difference between using Type VII mods and just alpha/beta mods (modding only for affinity)?

This is gold! Bookmarked! Thanks for the detailed work.

I think you and loupblanc are getting at the same thing. I modded for affinities only to get the crit boosts from the gear. I used health and power mods in the blues and yellows. I left the rest unmodded. Problem with the test server is you can't get alpha or beta mods from the vendors. I wasn't interested in farming bits to craft enough mods to test that.

We can do a thought experiment, though. The amount of precision in a beta mod is only 6. You're talking 36 precision there, plus the 186 (62 x 3) for the ring and waist affinities. That's a total of 222 precision. That's about 40% of what the 83 allocated SP gives you, so you could imagine the damage increase would be about 40% of what that spec gives you or about 2.4% above the crits spec.

Certainly there is more testing that can be done to illuminate the effect of SP and mods (none to alpha/beta to synthetic to full mods) along the gear progression cycle.

Meaning a full run through of the same parses at CR111 and CR137.

Then one can graph the effect as a characters progress from one CR level to another eg CR111 to CR126 to CR137 to etc; and whether the returns are the same, or increased or diminishing returns.


Wondering if I am making sense here .

Again, great work.

TL;DR

Skill Points matter and so do Home Turf Mods but not as much as Skill Points. Here is proof

If that was too long to not read, then that person does not deserve to know


Nice read Remander

Huh? Help me understand you, I'm simple.

Oh, there is much more that can be done. Not sure I'm interested in more testing, though. My game time is already at a premium, and as much as I like messing with stuff like this, I prefer actually playing.

As to CR scaling, shiny mackerel has already mostly worked that out. I suspect the relative percentages would be similar, as relative CR is simply a percentage scalar of all damage output.

Yes and no. I'd say that, in order of importance, it goes like this:

1. The first 77 SP for unlocking crits
2. HT mods
3. Fully modding
4. Modding for affinites
5. SP above the first 77

With the last 2 being actually being pretty close in importance. If I had it in me to farm bits for beta mods, I could more specifically discriminate them.

EDIT: Revised this in the OP, after further testing.

The data was great if ppl really want to go with weaker mods or less skill points and no ht mods then that's on them it shows they do not have a very good understanding of what this game currently is doing. Again thanks for the data it just supported what I already believed

Updated with separate parses looking at the effect of gear crits alone and SP crits alone.

I also changed the stat chart to reflect effective precision, which includes weapon DPS.

Do you expect different %-values at a lets say 140 CR baseline (vs same CR target ofc)? For clarification: do you think % even out/decrease the higher the CR-value goes or will they likely stay about the same or even increase? (stat-gains from gear aside)

I would hypothesize that most of this would scale with CR. The percentages boosts clearly would. Gear stat affinities grow with gear. The one that would likely have diminishing returns with CR would be SP above 77. These are static stat bonuses. They are scaled percentage-wise through relative CR scaling (i.e., how they contribute depending on what CR the NPCs you face are), but the actual values do not grow, like those of gear.

I could be wrong here, but from the looks of those graphs skill points put into percentage increases has a lot more effect than putting them into flat stat increases.

You're not wrong at all.

Updated with more parses, including a simulated Beta Mod test.