Now I'm starting to wonder if you stacked the deck when you did your DPS parsing just to fabricate an argument. In fact I'm sure of it. That's the only way numbers like this would make sense.
Let us make things crystal clear: Weapon sets aren't what defines "what is and what isn't for tanking", class does. Battleblade, WARRIORS are for tanking, no matter WHAT the heck they have in their hands, WARRIORS are for tanking. If warriors have a lightbulb in one hand, and a piece of dog feces in the other, the WARRIOR should be the king of tanking, AT ALL TIMES, because that is what warriors ARE. The warrior should also do considerable melee damage as well, however the current set of designers have lost sight of it, and blown it at every single turn. THAT is how this game was and should be designed, and you have lost sight in your paranoia over knights having knight ratio weapons and lower skillsets making a difference in tanking DPS... and for the love of god why anyone would listen to you, I'll never know. You should be motivated to use Sword and Shield to tank ONLY the VERY MOST challenging content, and it should COST you damage, not gain it. You shouldn't magically get superhero powers in your main hand by strapping on a shield, the absurdity of it, and the sycophants such as yourself, and any of your other personalities who claim that the class who is designed from the ground up to be the premier tank should ever NOT be a tank just because of what he's holding in his hands is sheer insanity. Just for STARTERS, while dual wielding and while using a 2 hand weapon, warriors should have the O-Strike line unnerfed and available for 100% of NPC health, at the same END cost as shield topple for those who prefer to use a shield. We should ALSO get "Instant kill" lines such as Rogues and Rangers get while weilding a 2h weapon. Warriors are in a desperate need of a re-construction, they've been ruined since I left this game, and while I'm still collecting lots of data, just those two additions would make a HUGE world of difference to warriors across the board.
I'm currently in the process of running longer DPS Baseline parses for our wepon sets, and so far they really suck. I'm shooting for 1 hour in each for DW, 2Hander, S&B agro and S&B DPS. finished the 2Hander and half way thru the DW at the moment. This is 2hander a Frosthewn Greathammer, with Vile Tormentor skin aug, 281 Damage 33 Delay 8.51 Ratio. Damoncord -vs- Combat Dummy Fana: -- DMG: 17664562 -- DPS: 4888 -- Scaled: 4888 -- Crush: 17288908 -- DirDmg: 375654 -- Non-crit rate: 67.2% -- crit rate: 32.8% -- Attempts: 6950 -- Hits: 5365 -- Missed: 1585 -- Accuracy: 77.2% -- Avg Hit: 3292 -- Max hit: 9512 -- DMG to PC: 0 DW is still running but so far has been even less than the 2Hander.
OK DW parse finished, Mainhand - Poker of Calming 119 / 20 Off hand - Katana of Pain 131 +1Fire, +1 Poison / 24 Damoncord -vs- Combat Dummy Fana: -- DMG: 14985074 -- DPS: 4159 -- Scaled: 4159 -- Pierce: 9000944 -- Slash: 5868492 -- DirDmg: 115638 -- Non-crit rate: 66.1% -- crit rate: 33.9% -- Attempts: 15108 -- Hits: 11477 -- Missed: 3631 -- Accuracy: 76% -- Avg Hit: 1305 -- Max hit: 3964 -- DMG to PC: 0
Welcome back to the madhouse. These are tricky. We've been needing to have skill attacks addressed for some time, but this isn't easy when Shield Specialist adds 65% damage to activated abilities since it will generally be preferred to use these with a Shield equipped. This was my basis for my proposal on the wishlist of a 65% damage mod applied to all special attacks. As far as stance-specific abilities I'd have to say I'm not a fan. I would wager to say most Warriors already have separate hotbars for DPS and tanking - complicating that with DW and 2h loadouts would multiply our hotkey count very quickly. Frankly my UI looks enough like JPL mission control already, we should really look into consolidating abilities imo. One of our best activated abilities in terms of DPS is Battle Leap. Unfortunately the 1-2 seconds of 'hangtime' followed by re-positioning makes it ill-advised to leap when tanking due to loss of combat rounds and the chance of landing with your back to the target, on top of just being generally annoying to use for DPS. A great help to DPS (tanking and otherwise) would be a mechanic change for 'Stomping Leap' to do kick animation, or some new ability that provides leap effect without flinging us into the air. Berserkers get this also via the Decapitate AA.
S&B "Tanking" Midasa's Dragon Slayer 131 + 14 Disease / 25 Damoncord -vs- Combat Dummy Fana: -- DMG: 17361817 -- DPS: 4677 -- Scaled: 4677 -- Pierce: 17010091 -- DirDmg: 351726 -- Non-crit rate: 68% -- crit rate: 32% -- Attempts: 8545 -- Hits: 6659 -- Missed: 1886 -- Accuracy: 77.9% -- Avg Hit: 2607 -- Max hit: 8121 -- DMG to PC: 0
If you press backwards once or even start moving back before you jump you lose no combat rounds and you land in front of the mob every single time (you basically just shoot straight up and keep swinging mid-air), if you're paying enough attention you pretty much never land on top of or behind the mob. By now it should be second nature essentially, I know I don't even think about it - I just leap and land in front of the mob when it's available. As far as even having a chance to "lose combat rounds" the bonus provided from 15-18 seconds of battle leap far outweighs missing a single round of combat or more, I'm not sure who decided otherwise but it is simply wrong on top of the fact that if you backpedal you don't miss -anything-. That being said, an AA with the same effect and no leap or a lesser leap would be greatly welcomed (and long overdue). On to something Frodlin mentioned - warriors with an instant kill ability. I cannot agree with this. I'd like it but I understand that it will never, ever, happen. Why? Swarming -- I know rogues can already do this to an extent but it'd be even greater in the hands of a warrior. That on top of the fact they have moved away from these abilities via stagnation. The XP potential would be so enormous that we'd see nothing but cry threads and "omg warriors are so OP". All of the above resulting in massive nerfs to not just the ability but swarming itself, it'd be a trainwreck to simply put it.
S&B DPS Poker of Calming 119/20 /tell Damoncord Damoncord -vs- Combat Dummy Fana: -- DMG: 22767762 -- DPS: 5816 -- Scaled: 5816 -- Pierce: 22767762 -- Non-crit rate: 66.2% -- crit rate: 33.8% -- Attempts: 10324 -- Hits: 7842 -- Missed: 2482 -- Accuracy: 76% -- Avg Hit: 2917 -- Max hit: 43184 -- DMG to PC: 0
Yeah after doing these baseline parses it sure looks like BB was using offensive discs on the S&B DPS parse but not the others.
Basically this. I agree backstepping does help most of the time but no leap would be greatly preferred. Hope you dont mind that I consolidated a few posts. Any chance someone snuck buffs on you between the 1h parses? Also could you provide attempts of slash/pierce individually on the dw parse?
It's posible I was afk during most of the parsing, basicly coming in and disengaging the mob and changing my weapon sets, I had told people I was gonna be DPS parsing earlier but some may have came in and buffed me. From the DW parse Slash Attempt 5498, missed 1343, 75.6% accuracy 39.2% Damage as normal, 62.6% Damage as Critical Pierce Attempt 9424, missed 2288, 75.7% accuracy 37.3% Damage as normal, 62.7% Damage as Critical
Zerkers recently got Battle Stomp, which is a lesser version of Battle Leap minus the leap. In the AA chats, Elidroth mentioned wanting to do it for zerkers & warriors but for some unknown reason it only went in for zerkers. If knights can swarm why is it horribly OP if warriors can swarm? It doesn't have to be a carbon copy; they can tweak the values to whatever is appropriate. Our soloability is so awful that anything in that department would be a welcome improvement.
Warriors already can swarm and almost as effectively as SK (I won't go into the details at all here but it isn't a true "solo" swarm and yes I have gobs and gobs of proof that it's very possible -- on the other hand you can apply the same tactics to an SK and get better results) I was implying that if warriors had an instakill ability that their swarming capability would surpass SK by miles and miles, making warriors a pretty high XP class. It'd be akin to rogues swarming with assassinate on steroids, that's the jist of it. Personally I wouldn't mind but like I said earlier, I can understand why it will never happen AND the resulting community backlash if it did happen (look at all the usual whining that goes on about headshot, decap, etc).
Hmmm like a Instakill upon a reposte. Something along the lines of "you have disemboweled your opponent" or " you have seperated your opponents torso from thier legs"
My results. I wanted to use same delay/similar ratio weapons but the AC tap cultural aug was all I had available. Might be responsible for some skewed data. Slash/Pierce damage only - I removed spell damage. Level 96, Veteran's Wrath 19, Cleave 7-26, ~2585atk Pierce: Velium Spike of Madness (87+13cold, 23dly) Slash: Regal 1h w/ Brell's symbol (95+3chro, 23dly) Dmg aug: Blessing of Might (+8) Buffs: Symphony of Battle (haste=200%) Parse durations: ~10mil+ dmg / ~50+ min Target: Combat dummies in GH By DPS: 3386 regal+aug / shield 3298 spike+aug / shield 3154 spike / shield 3102 regal / shield 2911 dw regal / spike+aug - 1656pri, 1255sec 2810 dw regal+aug / spike - 1694pri, 1116sec 2798 dw spike / regal+aug - 1679pri, 1119sec 2777 dw spike+aug / regal - 1671pri, 1106sec By weapon: % = dps advantage of shield spec over DW spike 1116sec 1679pri 3154shield (12.8%) +aug 1255sec 1671pri 3298shield (12.4%) regal 1106sec 1656pri 3102shield (12.3%) +aug 1119sec 1694pri 3386shield (20.4%) Underlined: This fight was interrupted early (~88%) I'll be running an extended overnight on this one. Did kind of fall in line on the % advantage to SS despite this though. Bold: The secondary dmg seems high, but could be expected due to interrupted parse. Not sure why the SS advantage on regal+aug is so high. DW swing rate: 58%pri / 42%sec.
I would wager to say Warriors use defensive discs when tanking challenging content (content where the other 2 tank classes also use shields) and offensive discs when DPSing. So much for the "we're always a tank" argument. Everybody knows the MT is the one getting hit and the not currently MTing tanks are the ones using small DPS boosts unless they're burning in which case they use big one's. So much for the tanking without using tanking abiities and DPSing without using DPS abilites /baseline testing. Mine says 127 + 13 Disease/24. The best fix is to make our Warrior Only weapons more normal (since they are Warrior Only bumping them up in the future only affects us) and close the aggro/DMG aug gap. Then SS can be reclaibrated after DW and 2H DPS is set. And btw, there's some confusion - a few have been away from the game for a long time. S&B is for when the amount of damage you are taking is a drain on your healer's mana or your survival is a little shaky - just as it is for the other two tank classes. The OMG I'm going to die stuff is our defensive abilities that should not have been shared but were. The "downside" is intended to be less than the 30% loss of AFK tanking sustained damage we formerly had befire SS went into the game to give us shield appropriate 1Handers. A 10% damage loss is about right since the survival gain is on the order of 10%. Remember, when we use Final Stand we don't take any DPS hit - we just can't use offensive discs while it is running (a serious damage output downside). I think Elidroth is bright and fair minded. He was astute enough to note DW is not for tanking. He'll work his way through this stuff, eliminate the S&B "DPS set up", and insure people are motivated to use S&B vs. non-trivial content (compared to when S&B didn't do enough damage and DW was the preferred setup 24/7). He can if he chooses put a non-damage not a shield item in his offhand, bag his EoA item and get a taste of what S&B was like before the long overdue and badly needed adjustments. Then there'd be no mystery why we were stuck DWing 24/7 and didn't get shield AC not subject to the softcap and Shield Block.
