Change History: 30/07/06 - edit1: Removed sticky requests since Starry Eyed Elf has already sticked it (Thanks again!), Clarified Torporous strike to make it clear that while it debuffs crit chance by 4.2%, it only works out to less then 2% debuff in the target's dps/hps. 31/07/06 - edit2: Updated Stamina line information for Formation and Conditioning. Mistakenly had written up Formation as requiring a round shield to be equipped. Made it explicitly clear both of those abilities are active whether you have a round shield equipped or not. Thanks go to Gnef for pointing this out. Also updated damage boost comparisons to reflect Agility being good for soloing if you can get behind the opponent consistently. 03/08/06 - edit3: Updated Formation information to note that the taunt proc may only go off when in defensive stance (unconfirmed, going by aa description). Updated Boot Dagger info to reflect it's ~20 DPS increase IF you are spamming the out-of-stealth attack. 06/08/06 - edit4: Noted that Walk the Plank works on stun-immune mobs. Thanks go to Damari for pointing this out. 14/08/06 - edit5: Updated Evasiveness and Thief's Prowess to note they have no effect in PvP as of the time of writing. Thanks go to Wing for pointing this out. 09/10/06 - edit6: Updated information for Torporous Strike. Updated Blackguard's Luck to reflect CAs doing a straight 30% bonus damage on crits. 29/11/06 - edit7: I will be updating this post in the next month or two with how things have changed once I have explored the new combat system changes and mechanics thoroughly. At that point I will also likely add another post with my analysis on the EoF Swashbuckler specific achievements. Preface: Hello there. I play a level 70 Swashbuckler on Venekor, and played a Brigand up to level 60 on Antonia Bayle. I have done quite a bit of information gathering, parsing and calculations for Rogue AAs, and this post is intended to compile all of that into a single location. I am posting it in both the Brigand and Swashbuckler forums, as both classes will find it equally useful. A thank you goes to Starry Eyed Elf for making this sticky on both forums. This is intended to be based both of my own and my guild mate's experiences with AA's and the mathematical analysis and breakdown of each skill. I have tested the majority of the effects, but if you see wrong numbers anywhere, please let me know. I would like to thank Schism for respecing to let me know the numbers for Commandeer, Evasiveness and Thief's Prowess, as my own two respecs were used to test all the lines CAs. All effects listed are at level 70. One hand weapon damage is taken to be as 70% of equivalent quality dual wield (see 1H vs DW damage comparison later on for the related numbers). First, for those of you who do not wish to read much, have no interest in the mathematics or how I arrived at my conclusions here is a quick summary of each tree and its tiers. Each tier requires four points in the previous to unlock. The damage numbers listed are taken at Strength cap due to group buffs (544 STR to be exact, verified to be well past STR cap), and are thus the MAXIMUM numbers you will see. I have also assumed that the average person will be have their damage split into 30% damage from auto attack, and 70% from combat arts. AA Opener: Pickpocket: This is a 30 second recast CA that steals money from the mob. It does not impact dropped coin in any way. From my testing, Level 60-70 mobs drop about 5-25 silver. Doing averaging and assuming you are using it every fight, this will net approximately 5-10 gold per hour of fighting. An easy way to do keep using this every fight is to make a macro with Pickpocket and one of our rear attacks. Then just use the macro instead of using the rear attack directly. Note: when you queue up abilities, only the second ability in the macro will get used. So if you queue up both at the same time (by hitting the macro while casting something), the 2nd skill is the last one used and thus it will skip over the 1st skill in the macro. ------------------- Blackguard (Strength) Tree Summary: The STR tree is a good general utility tree, useful in pretty much every situation. It provides a balance of offense, defense and utility without making any sacrifices. Tier 1) Blackguard's Strength: Increases strength by 4 per point. Tier 2) Torporous Strike: This is a 30 second recast CA which requires a sword to be equipped in your main hand (whips count), and debuffs your opponents cast and recovery time. At rank 4 it does 239-398 damage and debuffs cast time by 26% and recovery time by 52%. At rank 8 it does 375-625 damage, and 75% recovery time and 38% cast time. It's effect at rank 4 essentially means that when used on an opponent, it will take them almost 30-40% longer to get off their CAs. Sorcerer spells would take 1-2 more seconds to cast. A noticeable effect, decent for soloing and for caster mobs. Helps a little bit in PvP as well. As far as can be determined, has no effect in Raids due to many Epic monsters having 0 cast time. Rank 8 would cause roughly 50-60% longer to get off a CAs/Spells. Could be worth taking to rank 8 if you are having problems timing interrupts/stuns to stop spells or CAs. Tier 3) Blackguard's Defense: Passive increase to your defense. Each point is roughly equivalent to 0.8-1% avoidance, and thus survivability. Good for soloing, PvPing and tanking, but of very little use in raiding or grouping where you are not getting hit. Tier 4) Blackguard's Luck: Increase to critical hit chance. Each point of this ability will essentially raise your overall damage by about 0.8-1%. Fully maxed out, it will raise your overall damage by about 5-7% and scale with your equipment, CAs and buffs. Good in any situation. Tier 5) Traumatic Swipe: A 30 second recast, 300-500 damage attack that puts a debuff on the target for 30 seconds. Any spell/CA cast while they are under the effect of this debuff will have a 50% longer cool down. Primarily used in Raiding situations to increase the time in-between AoEs, it does not have much use in most other situations. Possible PvP usage would be to use it on a healer, which would decrease their overall healing ability by 20% or so due to longer recast timers. ------------------- Pirate (Agility) Tree Summary: The agility tree provides a mix of offense and utility, aimed more towards soloing and PvP then other situations. Tier 1) Pirate's Agility: Increases agility by 5 per point. Tier 2) Walk the Plank: This is a 30 second recast CA requiring a rapier equipped in the main hand, which changes the direction your opponent is facing and roots them. Duration increases with ranks. At rank 4 it does 210-350 damage and its duration (2.1 seconds) is long enough to get off two positional CAs. At rank 8 it does 300-500 damage and lasts for 3 seconds. Great for soloing or PvP where it is hard to get behind the opponent consistently. Decreases melee damage you take as well by 10-20%, depending on the length of the fight, due to the mob not facing you. Decent in grouping for slight damage reduction for the tank. It also comes in useful when fighting stun immune mobs, as Walk the Plank still works on those, allowing for back attacks and damage decrease. No effect on epic mobs, thus useless in raiding. Taking it past rank 4 has a fairly small effect due to lag/delay considerations. IE: You need more then 3 seconds to get off 3 attacks. When combined with Sailwind though, rank 8 allows you to get off 3 attacks. Tier 3) Commandeer: Increases in-combat movement speed. Rank 4 gives 5%, rank 8 10%. Fairly limited in utility unless you are doing lots of chasing/running away in PvP battles. Can be used to aid in kiting mobs. Tier 4) Avast Ye: Chance to proc for 500-834 damage when behind or flanking an opponent. At rank 4 it is an 8% proc chance, at rank 8, 16%. Damage does not increase. This breaks down to pretty much a straight 40-50 DPS increase, assuming you are spending 90% of your time in behind/flanking. Not very good for soloing as you do not spend nearly as much time in behind or flanking the mob. Best for grouping or raiding, though it suffers from not scaling with your equipment, falling behind Blackguard's Luck and Unencumbrance for damage increase in raiding situations. Tier 5) Sailwind: Decreases cast and recovery times by 25%. NOTE, IT DOES NOT DECREASE RECAST TIMES. This means that a CA that had a 0.5 second cast and recovery time, now has a 0.4 second cast and recovery time. Good for decreasing the time it takes to whip out our 10-14 CAs by a second or two. Slight increase in damage since CAs will interfere with auto-attack less, at best about 5% increase in auto-attack damage. Good for soloing and PvP where you need to kill the mob as soon as possible, but has little effect in longer fights. ------------------- Mercenary (Stamina) Tree Summary: The stamina line focuses entirely on defense, but requires a round shield to be equipped for almost all of its effects. It also has an offensive buff design to make up for the damage lost due to using a shield. It is ideal for those of us who tank or solo heavily. Tier 1) Mercenary's Stamina: Increases stamina by 6 per point. Tier 2) Swear: This combat art requires a round shield to be equipped, and is essentially an AoE taunt equivalent to what most Fighter classes get. At rank 4 it gives 764-933 threat and at rank 8, 1091-1334. Higher ranks are also harder to resist, which is very important for taunts. It has no other effects. Higher ranks are more useful for Brigands then Swashbucklers due to the Swashbucklers higher AoE damage. Useless for soloing, but absolutely essential when tanking for a group. Tier 3) Conditioning: Straight health increase, does NOT require a roundshield to be equipped. 4% at rank 4, 8% at rank 8. Equally useful for soloing and grouping, particularly when taking high level instances where surviving burst damage is key. Slight use in raiding for surviving AoE hits. Tier 4) Opportunistic Cover: This passive ability requires a round shield to be equipped. At rank 4 it increases your DPS% mod by 28%, and at rank 8 by 56%. This allows you to recuperate the damage lost from using a shield and a one-handed weapon instead of two dual wields. The break even point is at 6 points. At rank 8, you will do ~9% more auto-attack damage then dual wielding. Total damage increase, assuming a 30/70 auto-attack to CA damage split, will be ~2-3%. Tier 5) Formation: Passive ability, does NOT require a roundshield to be equipped. It gives you an all-around boost, giving approximately 3% avoidance, 5% mitigation, 5% more health and a taunt for 392 threat that goes off 50% of the time when you are hit IF you are in defensive stance (going by skill description, unconfirmed). This is one of the best defensive boosts a Rogue can get period. Great for increasing your survivability for soloing and tanking. ------------------- Fencer (Wisdom) Tree Summary: The Wisdom line is a mixed bag of offense and defense with uses in all aspects, but has the strictest requirements. Every ability except the last requires your off-hand to be empty and a DW or 1H weapon to be in your main hand. It is both good for raiding and soloing. Tier 1) Fencer's Wisdom: Increases Wisdom by 8 per point. Tier 2) Lunge Reversal: This is a low-mid damage passive CA which requires your offhand to be empty. It is toggled on and off as a buff, and automatically refreshes itself every 20 seconds. Whenever your opponent parries/deflects/ripostes/blocks an attack, or whenever YOU parry/riposte/block an attack, it will do 315-525 damage at rank 4. At rank 8 it will do 409-682 damage. It will not trigger damage again until it is automatically refreshed. This is essentially time-free, power-free DPS, and will on average give you about 20-30 DPS at rank 4. Going up to rank 8 increases this to about 30-40 DPS, and is most likely not worth it unless you do a lot of soloing. Obviously this is best used when you or your opponent are parrying/etc. a lot, which will happen most often in Soloing and PvP. Not very useful for grouping or raiding where you are not getting hit and have good accuracy. Tier 3) Freehand Reversal: This is a passive buff that requires your offhand to be empty. The first point gives 20% Double attack, which I will be including in the analysis of Encumberance instead. Every point in this skill gives you a 1% chance to riposte in front of you, and 1% chance to parry on your flank/behind. This is essentially 0.8-1% avoidance increase per point, with a bit of damage added in due to the chance to riposte in the front. Tier 4) Unencumbrance: This is a passive buff that requires your offhand to be empty. Each point raises your chance to trigger a second auto-attack whenever you swing by 6.5%. You do not have to hit with the first swing to proc the second one. The second swing does not trigger any procs EXCEPT for those that are 'on melee hit'. IE: It will proc Inspired Daring, but not our offensive stance proc. This ability is designed to offset, and boost the auto-attack damage lost by using a 1H instead of two DW weapons. The break even point is at 3 points, and at rank 8, you will be doing about 20% more auto-attack damage. This is particularly powerful as it scales with haste, DPS% mod and equipment. The actual increase in overall damage will depend on how much time you spend auto-attacking. For soloing where the mob is dead by the time you finish using your CAs, it will make very little difference. For raiding situations, where long periods of time are spent auto-attacking and you are heavily buffed, you will do considerably more damage. Assuming a 30/70 auto-attack to CA damage split, you will get ~5-8% more overall damage from this ability. Tier 5) Coule: This is a passive buff that raises your combat skills. It is the only ability in the Wisdom tree (other then the stat increase) that does NOT require your offhand to be empty. The buff increases your Slashing, Piercing, Ranged, Parry and Defense skills by 16.8 at level 70. This will give you approximately 7-8% avoidance, and about the same amount of to-hit. If your accuracy is already at or very near 100%, you won't see any damage increase from this ability. If your accuracy is lower though, it will increase your damage 7-8% by increasing your hit rate the same amount. It is also useful in offsetting the penalties of our Offensive and Defensive stances. Great for Soloing, PvP or tanking, but of limited use in raiding situations where there are no accuracy problems. ------------------- Thief (Intelligence) Tree Summary: This line is unique from the others, in that it is pretty much entirely focused on decreasing your hate, and thus has the most use in raiding situations. It is much more focused towards Brigands then Swashbucklers, due to the Swashbuckler's hate transfer making the benefits of most of this line unneeded. Tier 1) Thief's Intelligence: Increases your intelligence by 7 per point. Tier 2) Boot Dagger: A 30 second recast CA requiring a dagger in the main hand. It places the user into stealth and does 157-262 damage at rank 4, 225-375 at rank 8. The only real use of this CA is to get into stealth faster (0.5 second cast time, compared to 2 seconds for Sneak), allowing for more use of our one out-of-stealth attack. If you are spamming the out-of-stealth attack, then this will add some 20 DPS or so due to time saved. Unfortunately in raiding situations this will not have much of an effect since your auto-attack DPS output is likely to be higher then what you can get from spamming the out-of-stealth attack. However can still be quite useful for soloing and grouping. Not worth taking past rank 4 due to only change being the tiny increase in damage. Tier 3) Thief's Prowess: Passive buff that at rank 4 gives you a 12% chance to drop 2 hate positions when getting hit. At rank 8 it is a 24% chance. This is great for shaking aggro, unfortunately in most raiding situations if you are getting hit, you have a good chance of being dead before this procs. On average it will proc once every 8 hits at rank 4, or one out of every four at rank 8. A good ability, but the whole point of the Int line is to avoid getting hit, meaning this ability will not get much use if you spec Int. This ability currently has no effect in PvP. Tier 4) Evasiveness: Passive buff that directly decreases the amount of threat you generate. At rank 4 it decreases hate gain by 5% and at rank 8 by 10%. There isn't really anything that needs to be explained here, so take as many points in this as you feel you need. This ability also currently has no effect in PvP. Tier 5) Feign: A three minute recast, 30 second duration feign death. Prevents AOE as well. While this would be ideally useful for soloing and grouping situations to prevent death and to aid in wipe recovery, the abilities leading up to this focus on raiding situations where you are likely to already have another class with Feign death. A nice bonus to reduce repair bills and help with wipes, but not ultimately not worth going down the entire Int line for this ability if you do not need the hate reduction from the previous abilities. Comparison of Strength/Agility/Wisdom Boosting Abilities: Since Rogues are primarily a DPS class, the DPS increasing abilities of our AAs are the most interesting. SoE has built the trees to be fairly equal in terms of tradeoff, though each tree shines in its own situations. Stamina's damage increasing ability only offsets and increases the damage done by about 3-4%, and thus is dead last in any of these situations. First, let's look again at the damage increases from each tree at rank 8: Strength: +13.9% crit chance, which works out to roughly 5-7% damage increase, based on your weapons and auto-attack to CA damage proportions. Agility: 16% chance to proc 500-834 damage when behind/flanking an opponent. Works out to about 40-50 DPS increase if you spend 90% of your time behind/flanking the opponent. If you parse about 1000 DPS, this is about a 4-5% increase. If you parse about 500 DPS, this is a 8-10% damage increase. Stamina: 56% DPS Mod, which gives you 56% more damage when auto-attacking. Works out to ~9-10% more damage when auto-attacking in comparison to dual wielding, given an equivalent quality 1H weapon, which gives ~2-3% more overall damage. Wisdom: 72% chance to double attack, which works out to ~20% more auto-attack damage in comparison to dual wielding, given an equivalent quality 1H weapon. Which gives ~5-8% more overall damage. Now, let's take a look at the main situations: Soloing/Solo PvP: In this case, Strength and Agility (if you can get consistently behind/to the side of the mob) are the clear winners. Wisdom line damage boost loses out due to the majority of damage in this situation coming from CAs. Agility will help more if your weapon/CAs are not fully upgraded, otherwise Strength will put out more average damage overall. Grouping/Group PvP: In this case, auto-attack plays much more of a role in damage. Agility is about on par with Strength and Wisdom. If you parse below 600-700 DPS, then Agility wins out. If you parse above that, Strength and Wisdom win out. Raiding: In this case, auto-attack will contribute to the majority of your damage output, and a good group setup will also heavily boost Haste and DPS%. Agility will be about third from the top, with Strength and Wisdom being clear winners. Strength will most likely win out as the average raider will tend to have heavily upgraded CAs, which will do even more damage thanks to the crit chance from Strength line. Note: This does not cover every situation and there will be situations where what I have written above is incorrect. Overall though, I feel this is a good comparison, with Strength and Wisdom winning out in raid situations, Agility in lower-end grouping, Strength or Wisdom for high-end grouping, and Strength and Agility helping out the most when soloing. Feel free to discuss this in replies to this post, as it is quite possible I may have overlooked some factors. Tree Compatibility: Rogue AAs allow for a variety of specializations, and due to having 50 AA points, people will be taking combinations of trees. Below I list good and bad combinations of the trees, and roughly what each combination would be good at. GOOD MATCHES: Strength + Agility: Well-rounded dual-wielding build. Decent offensive and defensive abilities, excels at soloing and grouping. Strength + Wisdom: End game one-handed sword build, scales better offensively and defensively then STR + AGI, but requires good equipment. Excels at grouping and raiding. Strength + Stamina: Defensive one-handed sword and round shield build, lots of defensive ability with a bit of offense. Excels at Soloing, PvPing and Tanking. Strength + Intelligence: Hate minimizing dual-wielding build. Trade off offensive/defensive abilities for reduced hate gain. Suited to raiding where you need to minimize your hate. Agility + Wisdom: PvP/Soloing one-handed rapier build, doesn't scale as well offensively or defensively as Strength + Wisdom but provides more utility and soloing ability. Agility + Intelligence: Similar to Strength + Intelligence, however deals more damage if your equipment isn't quite up to par. Agility + Stamina: Defensive and utility rapier + round shield build, trades off some defense for utility, good for PvPing and soloing. Wisdom + Intelligence: Hate minimizing one-handed build. Trade off offense/defense for reduced hate gain, similar to Strength + Intelligence. BAD MATCHES: Wisdom + Stamina: Using a round shield cancels out the bonuses from Wisdom line, while having an empty offhand, cancels out a few of the abilities of the Stamina line. It can sort of work, the main benefit being increased defense and hitpoints from Conditioning and Formation being active at all times. Stamina + Intelligence: The defensive bonuses of the Stamina line go to waste due to the Intelligence lines hate down abilities. You can't tank, but at least you'll be hard to kill in PvP, sort of. Summary: This is the end of the summary section of this analysis. If you are not interested in the math behind this and more details of each skill, feel free to skip the next post. I hope you have found this information useful, and will atleast take some peeks at the second post. Feel free to make suggestions or corrections below, and I will incorporate them into this post. I have continued the mathematical analysis in the next post. Message Edited by Rokjin on 10-10-2006 08:30 PM Message Edited by Rokjin on 11-29-2006 12:32 PM
Warning, large amounts of math below this line... 1H vs DW Damage Comparison: All right, now we can get into the meaty math and details. First of all, I will justify my assumption that an equivalent 1H weapon does 70% the damage of two DW weapons. Just looking at the damage ratings of weapons, 1H is about 75% lower then 2H weapons, and 66% lower then two DW weapons. 2H weapons are designed to be equivalent to DW weapons, so why do DW weapons have higher DR ratings? I have done parses of only auto-attack, 1000 hits of 1H and 2000 hits of equivalent DW on the same mobs. The results of that clearly verified the 66% relationship. However the developers have stated that the damage rating of dual wield weapons is inflated due to the increased impact of CA usage on their auto attack. Since dual wield weapons swing faster then 1H, you lose more auto-attack time due to waiting for cast and recovery timers. Results from my auto-attack test were: Results from 1H (31.9 DR, 1.6 delay, 1000 hits) Total damage: 70,394 Average Hit: 70.39 This gives almost exactly 44.0 DPS. Results from DW(23.9*2 DR (47.8), 1.6 delay, 2000 hits) Total damage: 105,204 Average Hit: 52.51 This gives 65.6 DPS. Comparing these DPS numbers, it verifies that purely auto-attacking, an equivalent 1H weapon does ~66% the damage of two DW weapons. Now recently, I did a similar parse, using the same weapons in two Nest runs. The party makeup was the same and the zone was cleared in the same way. Here are the results from that: Results from 1H: Total damage: 417,578 Auto-attack damage: 84,389 CA damage: 333,189 Results from DW: Total damage: 431,027 Auto-attack damage: 113,770 CA damage: 317,257 The overall damage done numbers are fairly similar, and comparing the total auto-attack damage for the run, I arrive at 1H doing ~74% of DW damage, even though both setups have exactly the same delay. So, we arrive at two numbers for the comparison, ~66% and ~74%. These come from two extremes, one in which I am purely auto-attacking, and the other where I am using CAs whenever they are up. So it seems the ratio of damage depends on how much auto attacking you are doing in relation to how many CAs you are using. So for purposes of this analysis, I took the middle point of this data, and am assuming 1H does about 70% the damage of DW in most situations. This will vary up/down by +-4% or so dependent on how long the fights last in relation to how many CAs you use, and other factors, but should give a pretty good idea of the damage gains/losses from going one way or the other. Critical Damage: I have completed a rather length and through analysis of the effects of Critical damage (with graphs!) here http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=combat&message.id=103589 , I will only summarize it. For Spells and auto-attacks, a critical hit multiplies the damage you did with an attack by 1.3. If after the multiplier, the resulting hit is below the max damage of the attack, it is boosted up to the max damage. So all crits hit for max damage to max damage * 1.3. Combat Arts just get a straight 1.3 damage multiplier. Attacks that have a big damage range, benefit more from critical hits, since the damage will be boosted up to the max damage more often. Most melee weapons are 1:3 ratio, which works out to ~58% damage increase at 100% crit. Other weapons exist with bigger ratios, such as the Bow of Bylze, which has a huge 1:9 ratio, and gets a huge ~87% damage increase from 100% crit chance. Thus the amount of damage you gain from crit chance varies depending on what weapons you are using. This will be used in the Blackguard's Luck analysis. Haste, DPS% and Weapon Upgrades Scaling: I mentioned earlier about the damage increasing abilities in each line scaling with Haste and DPS%. I will explain that in more detail here. Avast Ye is the weakest of the damage increasing abilities because it only scales with Haste and STR. Getting a new weapon with higher DR will not increase the damage you gain from that ability. It is also quite easy to reach the STR cap, meaning there is not much room for improvement there either. This leaves Haste. Haste lowers your swing timer, so at 100% Haste you are swinging your weapon twice as fast. This also means that you will proc things twice as often (proc chance is calculated before Haste), since you swing twice as much. So the damage bonus from Avast Ye, Opportunistic Cover, Blackguard's Luck and Unencumbrance all get doubled when you raise your Haste. Unfortunately that is the only way to raise Avast Ye damage. The other 3 damage raising abilities, Opportunistic Cover, Blackguard's Luck and Unencumbrance all also benefit from weapon upgrades. So if you upgrade to a weapon that has 10% more DR, the extra damage from those abilities will also be boosted by 10%. Then there is DPS%. DPS% raises the damage you do with each auto-attack, so at 100% DPS%, you do double the normal damage. The previous three all also benefit from that, except for Opportunistic Cover, which can only benefit from 44% DPS, due to the 100% DPS increase cap. Finally there are CAs. The only thing that boosts CA damage is Blackguard's Luck. So if you upgrade one of your CAs so it does more damage, that extra damage will be multiplied ONLY through Blackguard's Luck. Let's look at two examples then: 1) Unbuffed person, fighting at 0% Haste and 0% DPS, doing 600 base DPS. Avast Ye raises his damage by 40-50 DPS, giving a total ~650 DPS. Opportunistic Cover raises his damage by 3%, giving a total of ~618 DPS. Unencumbrance raises his damage by ~6%, giving a total of ~636 DPS Blackguard's Luck raises his damage by ~6%, giving a total of ~636 DPS. 2) Buffed person, fighting at 100% Haste and 100% DPS, doing the same 600 base DPS. Avast Ye raises his damage by 40-50 DPS, times 2 for 100% Haste, giving a total of ~700 DPS. Opportunistic Cover raises his damage by 3%, times 2 for 100% haste, times 1.44 for 44% DPS before he caps at 100%, giving a total of ~651 DPS. Unencumbrance raises his damage by ~6%, times 2 for 100% haste, times 2 for 100% DPS, giving a total of ~744 DPS Blackguard's Luck raises his damage by ~6%, times 2 for 100% haste, times 2 for 100% DPS, giving a total of ~744 DPS. As we can see, with 100% Haste and 100% DPS buffs, Blackguard's Luck and Unencumbrance suddenly add four times more DPS then they did previously, while Opportunistic Cover adds almost three times more DPS, and Avast Ye only two times more. Upgrading the person's weapon would further multiply Opportunistic Cover, Blackguard's Luck and Unencumbrance, while upgrading CAs would further multiply Blackguard's Luck. This makes Blackguard's Luck in particular and Unencumbrance also, particuarly strong, since they multiply through every single buff you can get. Opportunistic cover does this to a lesser extent, and Avast Ye only benefits from higher Haste and STR up to the cap. Detailed AA information: Here I will cover the nitty gritty details of each AA, and how I came up with the numbers I did in the previous sections. I will skip the first tier of each tree, since it only gives stats, and the math behind those is extremely simple and covered elsewhere. Note again, all effects are at level 70, taken at above STR cap. -------------------- Strength line: -- Torporous Strike: Combat Art Power cost: 71 Cast time: 0.5 seconds Recovery time: 0.5 seconds Recast: 30 seconds Duration: 30 seconds Requires a sword (or whip) to be equipped in main hand. Rank 4: 239-398 damage, 52% debuff to target recovery speed, 26% debuff to target cast speed Rank 8: 375-625 damage, 75% debuff to recovery, 38% debuff to cast speed Progression is non-linear, Rank 1 starts at 44% recovery debuff and 22% cast speed debuff, then increases by about 3% recovery, 1-1.5% cast per rank. Past rank 4 it increases to 5% recovery debuff and 3% cast speed per rank This is a mid damage ability, that has a decent effect. Most CAs are 0.5 second cast and 0.5 second recovery time. So at Rank 4, this would turn a 0.5 cast/recovery time CA into a 0.63 cast and 0.76 recovery time CA. The cumulative effect seems to be roughly 30-40% more time to get off a CA or spell. This adds a good 1-2 seconds to longer cast spells, allowing for time to interrupt/stun to prevent the spell going off. It helps a bit in PvP, though the exact amount will depend on your opponent, their weapons and how many CAs/Spells they are using. Could be useful in prevent Evacs since it extends the cast time of those by almost a second for the scout, and more then a second for the other classes evacs. Rank 8 will increase this roughly to 40-60% more time to get off a CA or Spell. This may be worth taking past rank 4 if you are having problems interrupting spells, especially since the returns per point increase past rank 4. As far as has been tested, has NO effect in Raids due to Epic mobs having 0 cast/recovery times. -- Blackguard's Defense: Permanent Passive Buff No equipment requirements. Increases defense by ~3.4 points per rank. Rank 4: +13.7 Defense Rank 8: +27.1 Defense Each point of defense raises base avoidance by approximately 0.26%. So each point of this AA gives ~0.9 base avoidance. Since your total avoidance takes Parry and also Block into effect, your actual avoidance increase from this will be closer to about 0.7 or 0.8% per AA point. Note that once you reach 420 Defense, increasing your defense no longer gives any more avoidance. This is quite easy to reach in Defensive Stance if you have Coule, or lots of +defense equipment from KoS. -- Blackguard's Luck: Permanent Passive Buff No equipment requirements. Increases Critical by ~1.75% per rank. Rank 4: +7% Crit chance Rank 8: +13.9% Crit chance As stated in my critical damage analysis, each point of crit chance will raise your damage based on the ratios of your attacks. Assuming a 40/60 split between 1:3 damage auto attack and 3:5 damage CAs, we arrive at ~0.41% damage increase per 1% of Crit. This works out to ~6% damage increase at rank 8. The nice thing about this is this is a boost to all damage, including CAs and auto attacks. So this scales perfectly with your equipment and buffs, and will always give you the same damage increase in ANY situation. If you have a bigger ratio weapon also, it will increase damage much more then 6%. See my critical damage analysis post(linked above in the critical damage section) for details on this. -- Traumatic Swipe: Combat Art Power cost: 95 Cast time: 0.5 seconds Recovery time: 0.5 seconds Recast: 30 seconds Duration: 30 seconds No equipment requirements. Rank 1 (costs 8 AA points): 300-500 damage, Decreases reuse speed of target by 50%. While dealing medium damage, this CA increases the recast timers of ANY abilities used WHILE THE DEBUFF IS ACTIVE. This means it has to be on the target when they use an ability for its recast timer to be increased. This means a raid boss that normally AoEs every 30 seconds, will now AoE every 45 seconds, assuming the debuff is active when he uses the AoE. This is extremely useful in raids, but care must be taken, as if the person using this dies, or has not refreshed the debuff when the ability is cast, then the AoE will go back to its normal timer. Obviously this is bad, as much of raiding involves timing the AoEs. Other then raiding this skill has fairly little use in PvP, soloing or grouping, as most opponents die in those situations before they cast their abilities a second time. Longer boss fights though this will have a good effect, and possibly in PvP situations when used on a healer, it will decrease their effectiveness by some 20-30% due to them not being able to recast their heals as often. -------------------- Agility line: -- Walk the Plank: Combat Art Power cost: 71 Cast time: 0.5 seconds Recovery time: 0.5 seconds Recast: 30 seconds Duration: 1.8 seconds at Rank 1, 2.1s at Rank 4, 3s at Rank 8. Requires a rapier to be equipped in main hand. Rank 4: 210-350 damage, for 2.1 seconds, Roots opponent, turns them so their back is facing you and prevents them from changing direction. Does not affect epic opponents. Rank 8: 300-500 damage, for 3 seconds, same effect as Rank 4. Other then the damage, this ability is perfect for soloing, PvPing or any situation where you cannot get off your rear attacks due to the facing of the mob. Rank 4 of the ability is enough time to get off 2 rear attacks if you are quick, while Rank 8 will still only allow 2 rear attacks. This is due to lag/delays in casting, since 3 rear attacks will take more time to cast then 3 seconds (unless you have Sailwind). In PvP, where the opponent does not automatically face you as soon as the skill breaks, it may be possible to get off 3 attacks within the 3 seconds. Other then allowing you to get off your rear attacks without having to use a stun, this ability also prevents the target from hitting you with melee attacks for the duration, thus reducing the damage you take. In a short fight, this may well provide up to a 20% damage taken reduction, while in longer fights it drops down to 10% or so. In grouping this ability is not as useful, though it can still provide damage reduction by spinning the opponent around. It also does work on stun-immune mobs, allowing you to get off back attacks and decrease damage taken by the tank where you would normally not be able to. -- Commandeer: Permanent Passive Buff No equipment requirements. Increases In-Combat Movement Speed by 1.25% per rank. Rank 4: +5% In-Combat Movement Speed Rank 8: +10% In-Combat Movement Speed Has no effect outside of combat, but in combat allows you to move faster. This can help with kiting opponents, or when chasing/running away in PvP combat, but does not really have enough effect to make a big difference. -- Avast Ye: Permanent Passive Buff No equipment requirements. When flanking or behind an opponent, has a 2% chance per rank to proc 500-834 damage. Rank 4: 8% chance Rank 8: 16% chance This ability can be quantified by figuring out the average number of procs per second. All procs are normalized to 3 second delay, so at 16% chance per 3 seconds, we get 1 proc per 18.75 seconds. With an average damage of 667 damage, this gives us an additional ~36 DPS when auto-attacking. In addition to that though we have to take consider CAs. Most CAs are 0.5 second cast time, meaning it has a 2.67% chance to proc per CA. This means on average it will add about 18 damage per CA used, which works out to another ~9 DPS while you are using CAs. In total then Avast Ye at rank 8 will generate ~40-50 DPS. This will not scale with equipment though, and is only increased by your own Haste. It will also vary, since it will only do that damage while you are flanking or behind an opponent. Thus you only get the max boost when raiding or grouping, not while soloing. -- Sailwind: Permanent Passive Buff No equipment requirements. Rank 1 (costs 8 AA points): Increases Casting Speed and Recovery Speed of Caster by 25% This ability does NOT decrease recast timers. All it does is turn a 0.5 cast time and recovery time, into 0.4 seconds respectively. So in a normal 15 or so second long string of CAs, you will be able to complete the string in 1-2 less time. This increases burst damage by a small amount, but does not have much effect on overall damage from CAs. At best one can consider that you will get 1 more auto attack every 10-20 or so CAs, since each one will free up 0.2 seconds of auto attack time. Thus this AA MAY increase auto attack damage by up to 5% or so, though results will depend on the timing of your CAs and the delay of your weapons. Thus this ability will have the greatest effect when Soloing or PvPing, where the fight is almost over by the time you finish your first burst of CAs. -------------------- Stamina line: -- Swear: Combat Art Power cost: 88 Cast time: 0.2 seconds Recovery time: 0.5 seconds Recast: 20 seconds Effect Radius: 15 meters Requires a round shield to be equipped in off hand. Increases threat to target encounter (AoE taunt) Rank 4: 764-933 threat, 29% harder resistibility Rank 8: 1091-1334 threat, 44% harder resistibility All fighters have a basic AoE taunt to help them hold AoE aggro. Swear is the equivalent, having the same recast time, cast time and approximately the same amounts of threat. For the tanking rogue this ability is a god send, as it helps us secure and hold AoE aggro. While not as important for Swashbucklers, tanking Brigands probably will want to take this all the way to rank 8 to help them hold and secure AoE aggro. I have not tested this ability in PvP but assume that it will behave the same way as other taunts in PvP, forcing a target change and hold for a few seconds. -- Conditioning: Permanent Passive Buff No equipment requirements. Increases Max Health of caster by 1.0% per rank. Rank 4: +4% Max Health Rank 8: +8% Max Health Just a straight health increase. Great for both PvP, soloing and tanking, it makes you flat out live longer. Tanking high end instances also requires being able to take large amounts of burst damage and this ability helps you do just that. -- Opportunistic Cover: Permanent Passive Buff Requires a round shield to be equipped in off hand. Increases DPS% of caster by 7.0% per rank Rank 4: +28% DPS Increase Rank 8: +56% DPS Increase The idea behind this buff is to offset the auto-attack damage lost due to using a 1H weapon with a round shield, as opposed to dual wielding. Taking our 70% 1H damage of DW, the break even point is at 42% DPS mod, which corresponds to 6 ranks. At rank 8, you will be doing ~9% damage more with auto attack then with equivalent dual wields. Unfortunately, total DPS% is capped at 100%, so just using one of our DPS% buffs will put you near the cap. Any other buffs then will have little or no effect on your auto attack damage. Thus this ability gives the most benefits when soloing, when not stacking our DPS% buffs, or when grouping with people that do not buff DPS%. So for total damage increase, assuming a standard 40/60 split, you will be doing up to 3.7% more damage then the equivalent DW weapons. Not really a damage increase, but at least it offsets the damage lost from using a shield. -- Formation: Permanent Passive Buff No equipment requirements. Rank 1 (costs 8 AA points): Increases block chance by 4.0%, Max Health by 5.0%, Mitigation vs all Physical Damage by 420, and gives a 50% chance when caster is damaged to proc a taunt for 392 threat. By far, this is the best defensive ability in the Rogue AA trees. Overall, it gives about 3% more total avoidance, 5% more mitigation and 5% more health. The 50% chance reactive taunt helps for tanking as well. If you are going down the Sta line to increase your survivability, this ability increases it by more per point then any other. This needs testing, but it is likely that the taunt proc will also force target holds in PvP, protecting the more squishy members of your group. In short, if you want all-out-survivability out of your AAs, make sure to get this ability, as it is active even without a roundshield equipped.. Further testing is also required on whether the taunt proc only goes off in defensive stance (as indicated by the aa description) or at all times. -------------------- Wisdom line: SPECIAL NOTE: This is the only line that requires you do not use a piece of equipment in your off-hand, thus you will be losing any bonuses from the shield/DW weapon you would be using in the offhand normally, including procs. Thus it is a bit more effective then the other trees at what it does, due to this built-in penalty. -- Lunge Reversal: Toggle able Buff Combat Art Power cost: 0 Cast time: 1.0 seconds Recovery time: 0.5 seconds Recast: 20 seconds Duration: Until Cancelled Requires your off-hand to be empty, and a 1H or DW weapon equipped in your mainhand. When your opponent parries/blocks/ripostes/deflects an attack, or you parry/riposte/block an attack, this CA will deal damage to your opponent, until it is refreshed. The buff automatically refreshes itself every 20 seconds. Rank 4: 315-525 damage Rank 8: 409-682 damage Essentially every time your opponent somehow avoids your attack (other then you missing), and every time you parry/block/riposte, this buff will deal damage to the opponent. Then it will wait until it refreshes itself, and deal damage again if the situation happens again. (Example Scenario: You attack a person, and they parry your attack, Lunge Reversal does 315-525 damage to them. Ten seconds later its self refresh kicks in, and shortly after you parry your opponents attack. Lunge Reversal hits them again.) So while over long fights, you only deal damage once every 20 seconds (if one of the conditions above occurs), over a short fight, the refresh timer may be almost ready to tick just before the ability goes off, giving you two procs of the ability in a time of much less then 20 seconds. Quantifying this, with an average 420 damage, you get about 20-30 DPS in longer fights at rank 4. At rank 8 that rises to about 30-40 DPS. Obviously this ability is best when you and your opponent are doing lots of blocking/parrying/etc, so it gets the most use when you are tanking, soloing or PvPing. In grouping and raiding situations where your accuracy is good and you are not getting hit, the ability will not proc much. I recommend then, unless you are tanking or soloing a lot, to only raise this to rank 4, as the other 4 points will only net a 10 or so DPS increase, and are better spent elsewhere. -- Freehand Reversal: Permanent Passive Buff Requires your off-hand to be empty, and a 1H or DW weapon equipped in your mainhand. Increases double attack by 20%, Riposte in the front quadrant by 1% per rank, and parry in flanking/behind quadrants by 1% per rank. Rank 4: +4% Riposte frontal, Parry sides/behind Rank 8: +8% Riposte frontal, Parry sides/behind The 20% increase in Double Attack from this ability will be analyzed in the Unencumbrance ability, since this ability is required for Unencumbrance, and there is no point in going down the Wisdom tree unless you plan to max out Unencumbrance. So looking only at the Riposte/Parry effects of this ability, it gives pretty much the same increase as Blackguard's Luck. Roughly a 0.8-1% increase in avoidance per point. This ability is worth a little bit more though, as Defense is much easier to cap then parry, and thanks to the Riposte, you atleast will be doing a bit of additional damage while being attacked. -- Unencumbrance: Permanent Passive Buff Requires your off-hand to be empty, and a 1H or DW weapon equipped in your mainhand. Increases Double Attack chance of caster by 6.5% per rank. Rank 4: +26% Double Attack Rank 8: +52% Double Attack This essentially once again, offsets the damage lost from using a 1H compared to a DW, but is much more effective then Opportunistic Cover. I am counting in the +20% Double attack from Freehand Reversal in this, to give a total of +72% double attack at rank 8. Essentially, every time you swing, you have a 72% chance to make another swing with its own damage roll right after the first one. The first one does not have to hit for this to occur. The break even point, assuming 70% 1H damage again, is halfway between rank 3 and rank 4. At rank 8, you will be doing ~20% more auto-attack damage then dual wields. Using again the 30/70 ratio, this gives ~6-8% damage increase overall. This is multiplied through by Haste and DPS% buffs. Double attacks however do not give additional procs, except for guaranteed ones. IE: A double attack cannot proc our Offensive Stance Interrupt, but it will proc things that are guaranteed to proc, like Inspired Daring. The damage bonus from Unencumbrance will be greatest in raid situations, where most of the time is spent auto-attacking, and you are heavily buffed with Haste and DPS%. -- Coule: Permanent Passive Buff No requirements. Rank 1 (costs 8 AA points): Increases Slashing, Piercing, Ranged, Parry and Defense by 16.8. This final ability will vary based on your situation. Raising your Defense and Parry by 16.8 will approximately raise your overall avoidance by some ~6-8%, but will also make it easy to cap your defense at 420 when in defensive stance, particularly when combined with Blackguard's Defense. The Slashing, Piercing and Ranged skill will directly increase damage by roughly the same amount, IF your accuracy is not already at or very close to 100%. Of note though, this is one of the few +Ranged skill abilities you can get, so if you regularly use ranged weapons, this will increase your damage with them. It is best suited for soloing or PvP, where you need good amounts of both offensive and defensive skills. It is also a pretty good ability for tanking, and going fully into the Wisdom line will make a pretty decent off tank, however full tanks will get more benefit from the Stamina line. -------------------- Intelligence line: -- Boot Dagger: Combat Art Power cost: 47 Cast time: 0.5 seconds Recovery time: 0.5 seconds Recast: 30 seconds Duration: 0.1 seconds Requires a dagger to be equipped in main hand. Deals damage to target, and applies Shroud on termination, putting caster into stealth for 36 seconds. Rank 4: 157-262 damage Rank 8: 225-375 damage A low damage attack, that puts you into stealth. The only reason use for this is to get into stealth in 1 second, instead of using Sneak, which has a 2.0 second cast time. This allows you to use our one out-of-stealth attack with less of a delay of getting into stealth. The difference though is only ~1 second, and thus the DPS gain IF you are spamming your out-of-stealth attack will only be about 20 DPS or so. See math here: (http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=33&message.id=13614#M13614) This may make a slight difference in soloing, but will be negligible for group and raid situations, which is where the Intelligence line focuses. Particularly in raiding situations it is possible to do more auto-attack DPS then you get from going into stealth and using the out-of-stealth attack. Taking this past rank 4 is fairly pointless, as the only return for your extra four points will be ~100 more average damage when using this ability. -- Thief's Prowess: Toggle able Buff Cast time: 2.0 seconds Recovery time: 0.5 seconds Recast: 5.0 seconds Duration: Until Cancelled No Requirements. When you are damaged, there is a 3% per rank chance that you will drop 2 threat positions. Rank 4: 12% chance Rank 8: 24% chance Every 8th hit on average at rank 4, or 4th hit at rank 8 will cause you to drop 2 positions in the hate list. This is a pretty quick way of getting aggro off, but unfortunately most raid mobs should be able to kill you in less then 4 hits. Most people going down Intelligence tree will also be taking the next tier ability, Evasiveness, which is designed to not make you steal aggro at all, meaning this ability will not get much use. Has no effect in PvP. -- Evasiveness: Toggle able Buff Cast time: 2.0 seconds Recovery time: 0.5 seconds Recast: 5.0 seconds Duration: Until Cancelled No Requirements. Decreases Hate Gain of caster by 1.25% per rank Rank 4: 5% decrease in hate gain Rank 8: 10% decrease in hate gain A straight up hate decrease. Threat is directly proportional to damage done, so at rank 8 you will be generating hate as though you were doing 10% less DPS. Has no effect in PvP. -- Feign Death: Combat Art Cast time: Instant Recovery time: 0.5 seconds Recast: 3 minutes Duration: 30 seconds No requirements. Rank 1 (costs 8 AA points): Feigns Death, prevents AOE (except when you are direct target) When soloing this will save your life if you get into trouble and also allow you to bypass monsters by training and then feigning. Unfortunately most people going into Int line will be doing so for raiding situations, where those uses don't have as much impact. It will save a few repair bills, but with 24 members in a raid, odds are there will be a Brawler that can feign death as well to help with wipe recovery. It is a situational ability, but could have been better placed within the AAs. Conclusions: SoE has created a very flexible set of AAs for Rogues, allowing us to pretty much pick and choose which aspects of our characters we wish to emphasize. Stamina line is indisputably best for Tanking, and the Intelligence line for reducing hate, while the other lines provide a nice mix of offense, defense and utility. The damage increases from Strength, Agility and Wisdom are fairly close, but each one has a niche where it excels. I will close here and thank you for taking the time to read this. Feel free to ask questions/make comments/suggest corrections/etc... This will be posted on both the Swashbuckler and Brigand forums, as there is no single Rogue forum anymore, and this covers both classes equally. 30/07/06 - edit1: Removed sticky requests since Starry Eyed Elf has already sticked it (Thanks again!) 31/07/06 - edit2: Updated Formation to reflect that it does not require a round shield to be equipped to be in effect. 03/08/06 - edit3: Updated Formation to state that taunt proc may only go off in defensive stance (unverified). Also updated Boot Dagger description, along with a link to some math I did indicating it will increase DPS by about 20 when spamming out-of-stealth attack. 06/08/06 - edit4: Noted that Walk the Plank works on stun-immune mobs. Thanks go to Damari for pointing this out. 14/08/06 - edit5: Updated Evasiveness and Thief's Prowess to note they have no effect in PvP as of the time of writing. Thanks go to Wing for potining this out. 09/10/06 - edit6: Updated information for Torporous Strike. Updated Blackguard's Luck to reflect CAs doing a straight 30% bonus damage on crits. 29/11/06 - edit7: I will be updating this post in the next month or two with how things have changed once I have explored the new combat system changes and mechanics thoroughly. At that point I will also likely add another post with my analysis on the EoF Swashbuckler specific achievements. Message Edited by Rokjin on 10-10-2006 08:36 PM Message Edited by Rokjin on 11-29-2006 12:33 PM
Great Job and Post!!! You have done some excellent research work here I do have one question, prior to respecing to str/wis, I was str/int for a long time, and I thought that the boot dagger skill did alot more to dps than even suggested in this post. How are the actual numbers effected by being able to hit boot dagger + brazening almost as quickly as brazening pops with minimal interferance with auto-attack? I think it warrants some coverage, as I think it would be suprisingly higher than it initally appears.
Doing quick math.. Brazening does 607-1012 for me at 395 STR. That's ~800 damage per use. Since it has 0.5 second cast, 0.5 second recovery, You can say it does a straight 800 DPS, if you start out from stealth. Sneak takes 2 seconds to cast, and has instant recovery. So it adds 2 seconds to Brazening use, briging the DPS from Sneak + Brazening to about 270 DPS. Boot dagger takes 0.5 seconds to cast, 0.5 second recovery, so it adds 1 second to Brazening use, and adds the small amount of damage. From my above post, it does 157-262 damage per use at STR cap.. so ~200 damage added from that, plus brazening, works out to about 500 DPS (~800+~200 damage in 2 seconds). Boot Dagger has a 30 second recast, so let's take a look at a minute of fighting with Boot Dagger and without. Both cases start out in sneak, so I will ignore the very 1st hit, and also not include use of Hideaway, since it's only 0.5 seconds faster then Sneak and again, both cases have it. I will also consider using Brazening every time it refreshes. No Boot Dagger case: ~11 seconds after 1st hit, Sneak is used, Brazening used. 800 damage done. ~22 seconds after 1st hit, Sneak, Brazening again, 1600 total damage done ~33 seconds after 1st hit, again, 2400 total damage done ~44 second, again, 3200 total damage ~55 second again, 4000 total damage. ~66 seconds, 4800 total damage. In a 55 second period, Sneak + Brazening contributed about 4800 damage, or about 87.3 DPS, minus about 12 seconds of auto-attack DPS. Boot Dagger case: ~11 second after first hit, Boot dagger, Brazening, 1000 damage ~22 seconds after first hit, Sneak + Brazening, 1800 damage total ~33 seconds after first hit, Sneak + Brazening, 2600 damage total ~44 seconds after first hit, Boot dagger used again, Brazening, 3600 damage total ~55 seconds, Sneak + Brazening, 4400 damage total ~66 seconds, Sneak + Brazening, 5200 Damage total In a 55 second period, 5200 damage, or about 94.5 DPS, minus about 10 seconds of auto-attack DPS. So 4 points in Boot dagger contributes about 7 DPS in ~55 seconds, and gives back about 2 seconds of auto-attack DPS. Under self buffed power, I do about 425 DPS per second auto-attack. (WIS line Unencumberance included, Blackguard's Luck not) So the 2 seconds of auto-attack DPS gained is 850 damage, spread over the 55 seconds, which is ~15.5 DPS. So over about minute, Boot Dagger contributed about 20-22 DPS, over the non-Boot dagger case, considering your spamming Brazening. With raid buffs (since you are likely to have them if your going Int line) my auto-attack DPS would jump up to almost ~1500 DPS. In that case, 2 seconds of auto-attack DPS saved over the 55 seconds would be 55 DPS, so using Boot Dagger in that case would boost DPS by almost 60. HOWEVER, in a situation like that, you are actually better off not using Brazening at all, since you are doing more DPS with auto attack then you would with Brazening.. So overall, I think we can assume that Boot Dagger adds about 20 DPS-30 DPS in most situations. It does not actually add utility since the DPS it adds is assuming you are already using your sneak attack as often as possible. This puts it about on par with the other line openers, which isn't particularly surprising since in theory, they should be equal. Is there anything I overlooked in this? I have not actually fought with Boot Dagger or considered it that much, so please let me know if I am missing something. If not, I will amend the Boot Dagger information in my post, summarizing what I determined here.
well i have to disagree on the claim that sta and wis is a bad combination i have pickpocket wis 4-4-5-8 sta 4-4-8-4-1 and i have sta for the life and mitigation on raid surwiving aoes is important, adn having miti and life helps alot also i do not mind that i can hotkey shield on and off so if i am taunting i use swear to get initial aggro and well the dps bonus i took just to get formation as a total of 13% life increase i have 3rd highest life in our full raid after the 2 fully buffed tanks as for an example, with my 4 pieces of fable armor and mark of awakened and rest crafted/legendary grouping with a 66 defiler him giving me the life single buff i had 9.5k life as the % increase affects skills too ofcourse =) i have found this combination with wis for dps and sta for survivability working well
The main reason I put STA and WIS as a bad combination, because it cancels out a good chunk of the points you spent at any given time. If you have a shield equipped, you are not getting the bonus of 17 of the points you put into Wis. And if you don't, then you are losing 8 of the points in stamina. Personally I have not experimented with weapon/shield switching overall in combat, so I can't comment on it, and I can see how the health boosts can be productive, even though you can't use 8 of your AA points at any given time. However as a general rule, outside of specialized situations like you stated, it's not going to be combination that fits well together.
As a raiding swash I have a question that maybe you might be able to answer. We have two swashs in our guild with similar STR and WIS set ups for max DPS, in facts, without our assassin there we are usually the top two parsers. I am the more poorly equiped of the two of use, but we definitely compete for the top spot, unless casters actually do their job right and land with dispatch on etc. My question is if you assume the average raiding swash goes Pickpocket 1 STR 4-4-4-4-8 and WIS 4-4-4-8-0 For Dps and tramautic swipe in raid situations. That is 45 AAs how do you use the last 5 to gain max dps. I choose to use 4 in Blackguards luck to gain my max crit chance of 1 percent standard, 13.9 with AA, and 2 percent with MoA to 16.9 percent, and then my last point in lunge reversal for a final stat of Pick-1 STR 4-4-4-8-8 and WIS 4-5-4-8-0 While our other swash went 4 more in Lunge Reversal and only 1 in Blackguards luck. Giving him Pick-1 STR 4-4-4-5-8 WIS 4-8-4-8-0. Which menas his 20 sec recast lung reversal does a bit more. Since, I am not quite as good with the math, which one in two similarily equiped swashies with the same buffs on would end up giving more dps in the average situation.
Well, I did the math for Lunge Reversal above. The last 4 points of it after rank 4, add another 10-20 DPS or so, assuming it is triggering all the time. Another 4 points of Blackguard's Luck will give ~3-4% straight total DPS increase. So, assuming Lunge Reversal is triggering everytime it can (and not bugging out so it triggers more then once every 20 seconds), an extra 4 points of Blackguard's Luck will increase damage as much as an extra 4 points in Lunge Reversal, when you are 700 DPS. (700*1.03 = 721, 700*1.04=728) If you are doing more then 700 DPS consistently (which you should on raids), Blackguard's Luck will help you more. If you are doing less, Lunge Reversal will help more. So in summary, above 700 DPS, STR 4-4-4-8-8 and WIS 4-5-4-8-0 wins over STR 4-4-4-5-8 WIS 4-8-4-8-0.
I appreciate your analysis, but I have one issue to raise. The point behind Torporous Strike is not to decrease overall dps, but to decrease spike damage. Yes, its decrease to overall dps of a mob is not that impressive but what is impressive is its ability to decreases (or mitigate against) spike damage. That is harder to parse. From my EQ1 experience sudden spike damage was what leveled more tanks then any other cause. What Torp strike gives a raid force is the ability to decrease the occurance of these spikes. Torporous strike makes damage more predictable, unpredictable spikes are hard to heal against. What do you think? It might be worth getting some thoughts from tanks and healers. Of course this is EQ2 and spike damage might be much less an issue then it was in EQ1.
it would probably do a good job at that too, but reducing the default crit rate by 6.2% isn't all that effective.
Spike damage still happens, however I did write that it is best used on bosses/raid instances. Now, also parsing the logs of the run I did yesterday on Halls of Fate, and the Raid on Courts of Al'Afazl or however you spell it, our tank did not take a SINGLE critical hit. I did use Torporous Strike on some of those fights occasionaly, more as an afterthought, but just from these samples it seems critical hits do not even really happen from mobs. Even if critical hits were a factor, it's a pretty safe bet to assume that IF monsters do have critical chance, it is at the default 1%. Thus still raising it past the 4 points required to go into the STR line is a waste.
i'd be interested to know how much of an effect it has on mobs that do crit, such as Vilucidae (lyceum boss). as i do believe one of his stances increases his crit rate to about 50%... been a while since its really made a difference though, so can't say its mentioned.
