I have been a playing for a very long time but iam kinda stubborn and still stuck with the old ways of norrath (eq1)... This is the problem... Last night my guild leader said that the higher delay the more dps... I found this to be true and even though i aruged and the parse was different each time but i think he was right.. Oh btw yes iam a dirge.. I still have trouble believing this because another member told me thats not true for classes that proc. so now iam really confused. I was reading online as well they do confirm the higher the delay the better... Like i said iam from eq1 so iam use to haste is good and high delay is not so well on a non tank class.. Then I think about this and i say jeeze there is not many haste items in eq2 is this why.... Now it gets confusing even more on this i was on wikia checking out the dirge epic mythical and it has the chime of blades proc on it as well... Which increases your attack speed which throws me for more of a loop iam like well lets see epic is 3.5 delay and haste would cut this what bout the higher delay being better, if so why does a dirge have haste. I hope this all makes sense trying to type this fast (at work). Can someone who is a ACTIVE DIRGE with knowledge on DPS using dual wield.. I would really like an answer from another dirge (no not an assassin or a swash or something but a dirge)....(and please i dont need a lecture on not using the sword and board) (sorry to be rude bout that but i get that feedback sometimes).. I am really into melee solo style on my dirge for pve and pvp... help someone please shed some light.. thank you so much ~ an SOE Dedicated customer going on 8 years.
First off, why fast weapons are not better for procs. Please note, I'm talking about BASE speed, not speed adjusted for haste.: The answer to this one is easy: proc normalization. "Normalization" means that no matter the weapon delay, you'll still get the same average number of procs per minute. All procs are normalized for a 3 second delay weapon, so a proc that says "30%" translates to (3.0s delay=20 swings per minute, 20*30%=6) 6 procs per minute. If you use a 4.0 second delay weapon, you'll average 6 procs per minute. If you use a 1.6 second delay weapon, you'll average 6 procs per minute, since the proc rate is adjusted for weapon speed. (The only exception is a 100% chance proc like Blade Chime, but the benifit to a fast delay with blade chime is outweighed by the disadvantages.) Next, why the long delay is better: Again, easy. At the end game, especially, your auto attack damage is a large portion of your damage (usually around 60%). If your base weapon delay is, say, 1.6 seconds, any appreciable amount of haste is going to make your spell and CA casting times longer than the delay between your auto attack swings, pushing back your auto attacks and lowering your DPS. To give you an idea, I'm usually at 125% haste in raids, using a 1.6 second delay weapon would lower the delay to, what, .8 seconds? Something like that? None of our spells have a casting time shorter than that (except our blue AoE that I never use maybe). Now about haste. Haste is godly, get all the haste you can reasonably get. The "long delay is better" philosophy is only referring to base delay, not delay adjusted for haste. Proc rates are based on weapon delay before haste, so 125% haste means 125% more procs as well! And I won't lecture you about using sword and board. Dual wield, is in fact, the way to go IF (imo) you have weapon delays that match. (This will be easier next week when our epic is changed to a 4.0s delay.) But having said that, the STA AA line is amazing for the 4th ability, Fortissimo. Max that out. 10% group wide double attack is godly, and soon it'll be 15% group wide double attack.
Iam not at end game yet but i ran a parse on 4.0 weapons and 1.6 weapons both same dmg and stats. It turned out the overall dmg was greater using 4.0 delay, less misses, lower dps (not by much) i tested chime of blades and without chime. and then i did the same with the 1.6 the overall dmg was lower, dps was higher (not by much like 5-8 points), more misses... like a different of 3 or 4 compared to the higher speed. So are you saying to me at 80 its going to be a lot different (without epic) ? I also tested out a 1.6 and 4.0 in the offhand not the same stats and the dps was greater than two same speed weapons. I spent about 2 hours parsing this... I also have been pulling off crits i never seen with the matching 1.6. I will be going to coa tonight and see how i do with guild with the 4.0 weapons. I am still not a believer in the high speed tho i understand what yer saying but these parsers didnt prove this theory to me. It came bout because the GL gave me a sword from somewhere with a 6.0 delay i said wow that a high delay and i said not good and then told me cuz of the delay and said it was better for me.
There are 2 key points, first a longer delay allows you to slip spells and CAs in between auto-attacks. A weapon with a 1.0 delay will miss auto-attack chances when you cast your AEs for example. With a 4.0 delay you can wait for auto-attack to happen and then cast the AE and not miss the next swing. Second, at end game critical hits are standard buffs on gear. Longer delay weapons often have wider damage ranges on them as well. Since a crit is at minimum max damage + 1, the wider range means crits do significantly more damage as compared to faster weapons with narrower damage ranges.
Punox, what Zeb was saying, and the definite consensus of the community, is that the slower weapons do better. I think that's consistent with your description of your parses, though it's a bit hard to tell in spots. Whysp
The overall dps you do will be significantly higher on 4.0 weapons compared to 1.6 weapons, as Zebedee described. I would not use the 6.0 delay because I think that's a bit long- you really want to find 4.0 and after expansion goes live, most of the scout weapons will be 4.0. You can check the actual damage, delay, and proc chance for your weapons in game by using /we. You can compare your weapons there. The proc chance of a weapon is based on it's inherent delay, and therefore adding haste to a long delay weapon will increase your procs. The 1.6 weapon gets minimal benefits from haste. If you feel you aren't procing Chimes enough, spam your combat arts after you use chimes. *The 4.0 weapons will be around 2.5-3 with haste so you don't delay your autoattack much if any while you use spell/CA. The 1.6 weapon will be around .8-1.0 with haste and you will delay autoattack if you cast any spells. The 6.0 weapon will be around 4.5 (I think) and IMO that's a bit long, however I haven't actually tested it. Punox- One thing about dirge dps, is it's a lot easier to do more dps in a raid setting than any other setting. Solo dirges don't do much at all. In groups, it's ok, but stuff tends to die too fast. It's only in raids that stuff actually lives long enough for us to maximize our dps. If you aren't in end game, you may not see an appreciable increase in overall dps regardless of your weapon choice. My dps doubled after getting decent delay weapons in t8 (from 1.8/2.0 delay to 4.0/4.5 delay weapons... but that was in raid setting. For solo I quested up to 80 with s/b and kited everything- remains a viable method of soloing imo, but for straightup dps, you want to go dual wield. *Estimates only. Not in game and Not invested enough to actually calculate.
The simple explanation is that weapons with longer delay times have higher auto-attack base damage amounts. With haste and attack speed buffs, their delay is reduced making them faster but the auto-attack base damage remains high. Note that the benefits gained from longer delay weapons are only realized with haste and attack speed buffs.
In essence, if you have two weapons where all things being equal except their delays, the longer delay is better. If dual wielding, select two weapons with the exact same delay. The reason is simple. Lets assume after all haste is applied, you have a weapon that has a 1 second delay. Lets also assume for arguments sake that all Combat Arts/Spells take 2 seconds to cast (just made up numbers for explaination). When you begin attacking the mob and close to melee range, your weapons are attacking at 1 attack per second. If you do nothing but auto attack, you will get 60 attacks per minute. If you cast a CA/spell, you are losing 1 auto attack per cast. If you had cast 15 CA/Spells in that time, you missed out on 15 auto attacks. Generally, auto attacks hit for more than your CAs do, so by casting your CAs and delaying auto attacks, you have actually lowered your dps. Now lets assume you are using weapons that are attacking at 3 seconds per attack. You will have 20 attacks in the same minute. You realize you need to allow time between CA/Spells to allow your auto attack to hit, so you cast, pause, cast, pause. Not only do you get the maximum number of auto attacks in, you also managed to get in your 15 CA/Spells in two. Your DPS goes up. The reason you want to weapons with the same delay is that the auto attack timer is different for each hand. If you have a 2.5 second delay and a 3 second delay, the timers don't sync up very often and you are losing auto attacks again when using CAs. Basically, do everything you can to make sure your auto attacks land. Slower weapons make this easier to accomplish and the damage (again, all things being equal vs the two weapons) will be the same. To help accomplish this, you can turn off all damage but your own so you can see the auto attack damage scroll up. You can also download ACT (Advanced Combat Tracker) and install the double attack plugin. This program can be configured to "beep" every time you auto attack so you can have audible queues as to when this occurs. This isn't just for dirges. This is for every melee scout class. Rangers have been doing it for years.
Full_Metal_Mage wrote: You have been misinformed. Haste and attack speed are proportionate increases so weapon speed alone is not a factor for example: 2 second weapon doing 1000 damage and a 4 second weapon doing 2000 damage would be equivalent weapons. Dual wielded and fully hasted you would have a 1.2 second weapon doing 1000 damage and a 2.4 second weapon doing 2000 damage still equivalent. The two most important factors between equivalent damage weapons to consider are weapon speed and damage spread, in general the higher the better. Weapon Speed and delay: Besides the aforementioned delay in autoattack swings from casting spells and combat arts are the stuns, interrupts etc. encountered in combat. From examining my ACT parses my autoattacks are delayed an average of ~.3 seconds from all causes. If I apply this .3 factor to the two weapons mentioned above I now have a 1.5 second weapon doing 1000 and a 2.7 second weapon doing 2000. Converting that to dps the faster weapon would be doing 667 dps and the slower weapon would be doing 741. Damage Spread: The larger the damage spread the better the average melee critical here is a table from one of my prevous posts Damage Spread - Max damg/Min damg Avg Crit Damage % 3 59% 4 69% 5 75% 6 79% Duubard Najena
I'm only level 57 and it's my highest level but I've never seen a weapon that can do more dmg on 1 swing than my CAs/Spells for my level. So why would I want to delay spells/CAs for a weapon swing? I'm also a 7 year EQ1 vet so I have their system ingrained into my brain.
Azzad wrote: You'll find in T8, any decent weapon will hit harder on average than our CA's and spells. It seems to me that CA / Spell damage scaling into T8 was very linear, but auto attack damage went up exponentially, primarily due to easily obtained +DPS, +DA, +Crit, etc.
Full_Metal_Mage wrote: Not to belabor the point but your post is clearly confusing at best as in your first sentence you discuss delay as only relates to weapon speed and not the delay associated with casting ca spells and other factors which is the primary reason slower weapons are generally superior to faster. The last sentence of your post "Note that the benefits gained from longer delay weapons are only realized with haste and attack speed buffs." is clearly in error as slower weapons are generally superior regardless of haste and attack speed. Duubard - Najena
