I see a lot of zerker's that took the sta AA line down which is great for being an MT. Any tank that doesn't put on a shield when he's MT is just trying to impress someone IMO so why not get the extra damage with the AA's? Just makes too much sense not to. My question is this...what if you're not tanking? If you're not being beat on, you have no chance to block, parry, riposite, etc so what good is buckler's reversal doing you? And sure you can get the double attack, but if your'e not tanking isn't it better to just dual wield and crank out as much damage as possible? I just seems silly to me to dump all these AA's into a shield ability and only be able to get full use of them when I'm the MT, or am I missing something?
Also if you dump all your AA into being able to dual wield and do dps, what are you gonna do when you get asked to tank a group? We hold most of our aggro through our damage so if you drop that off weapon and pickup a shield you might have a tough time holding aggro.
Zeuhl@Mistmoore wrote: Exactly. It's not that you might have trouble holding aggro, you will have trouble holding aggro. The only way you won't is if you're running with some truly horrid DPSers. Any DPSer that knows how to play their class will pull aggro off a tower shield specced berserker with no trouble at all. I know, I was tried a tower shield spec once upon a time... yeah, never again. So the question becomes, why would you completely **** your tanking ability for the ability to just do a very very tiny amount of extra DPS? The difference in DPS between dual wield and buckler is tiny, but the difference in survivability is massive. As for buckler reversal, most of the time it's maybe 1% of your overall DPS so it's not even really a consideration.
Allastor@Befallen wrote: Actually, it says if target blocks, parries, riposites, etc you get the extra damage. The target of the spell is "self" or you the caster, not whatever you target. I know when I read it I thought the same thing and figured oh wow, all those OJ mobs that block and parry the heck out of my CA's and attacks will just get destroyed now...not so much.
Karsgaar@Antonia Bayle wrote: I see your points here and I agree, pulling totally out of the STA line isn't the smartest thing to do since we do get asked to tank from time to time. And yeah, tower shield specced zerkers get no bonus to help them hold aggro so there's really no point to try a tower shield. The extra mit you may get from the tower shield is nothing compared to all the bonuses you get from using a buckler that'll help you hold aggro. I guess what I don't get are all the zerkers who dump the 4-4-8-8 into sta. That's a ton of AA's that just became a lot less useful if you're not holding a buckler in your hand...and not only that, you have to have aggro to get full use of them. Buckler's Reversal, Gladiator's Finesse, and Gladiator's Revenge all only work if you have a buckler equiped. And Buckler's Reversal and Gladiator's Revenge only really work for you if you're being beat on consistantly. To me, that says if you're not MT, you're not really using 12 AA points right off the bat. And if you're not tanking, why bother ith a 60% double attack rate when you can get a 100% chance to double atack as a dual wielder? And if your drop the buckler in order to get teh 100% chance to double attack, now you're wasting 20 AA points. I guess what I'm asking is why are so many zerker's specced to be MT's when were not always asked to be MT. We loose out on so much of our AA utility if we dump all that into the STA line when we're not the MT. Just seems to me there's better choices to spend AA points that get more utility no matter how you play (e.g. with a buckler or dual wielding).
this isnt a MT spec... it offers top end DPS for us if we are tanking or not. You NEVER take the buckler off. I think thats what you are missing. The way that you are looking at dual wiedling is wrong. Both of your weapons are slowed by 33% when you DW so here is an example of an 80 DR weapon Buckler 80 DR *1.6 =128 effective DR DW (80 *.66) + (80 *.66) = 105.6 effective DR Its not simply 2 weapons both swinging to give you esentially 100% double attack. There are penalties with it otherwise scouts would be doing like 50% more then what they were doing before the changes.
I dont see hwy so many people think we do sta line for reversal, screw reversal, its ok i guess but the 60% double attack is why we do it, and btw, tower shields dont add mit, they add shield block chance And towers Are useless i have like 2.4% moe avoid with my tower, tower being vilucidaes guard, and buckler being BoTH the other thing is unless ur total survivabilaty massive main tank specced, you shoulkd never use a tower, still its not really worth it, i see berserkers DPSING with towers and it makes me wanna stab babies
Sakrifyse@Lucan DLere wrote: What you're missing is, like Skel said, you NEVER take the buckler off. There's no reason to. You gain a minimal amount of DPS if any by going dual wield and a minimal amount of avoidance by going to a tower. The reason people- including me- go 4-4-8-8 stamina is because the 8% riposte you gain from the fourth ability makes up for a ton of the avoidance you lose by using a buckler over a tower. If I'm off tank and I have to pick up a mob, that extra survivability means a lot. It's not just a spec for MTs. Also, buckler reversal does work when a target blocks, parries or dodges one of your attacks, it even goes off on ranged attacks. If I'm not tanking a mob- say Mayong for example- and I'm hanging back doing ranged attacks while jousting AEs, I'll see reversal go off all the time. The problem is, reversal does about 1/4 of my average buffed auto-attack damage, and it only goes off once every 30 seconds at most.
Karsgaar@Antonia Bayle wrote: Yeah i can confirm this too, alot of the time when i shoot something with a bow on inc thats 20+ meters away my reversal hits since i cant seem to aim worth a damn with the bow =]
most people would parse higher with DW(unless you have one of the better 1 handers available and constantly running 200 haste), i did notice a slight improvement in the DPS even with my buckler spec so having the right spec to take advantage of it might be worth it for some. i don't switch because as stated when i am needed to tank then aggro control is going to go all to hell and as also was said about a million times just because the buckler appears aesthetically challenged for a tank does not mean it doesn't do the job.
Skel@Butcherblock wrote: sorry about this guys...I'm still a little new to the class so some of the lingo confuses me...DR? I don't quite understand what this is saying. I don't understand where the numbers are comming from either...the .66 is the 33% penalty you're talking about for DWing I'd assume, and if this math is right I'd say it's more like a 66% penalty since both weapons get the penalty. I'm drawing a blank with where the *1.6 came from though...anyone able to help me out here? This example looks like some sort of damage effectivity chart to me and sure I guess that makes sense, if you swing with 1 weapon you'd think it'd do decent damage...perhaps better then say if a dual wielder was swinging with their weapons and misses with one of their attacks, but I just don't see how a sword and board zerker can out damage a dual wielder. I get having a buckler means more survivability...sure, add a shield and viola instant avoidance boost, but I'm just not getting why damage output is better as a buckler specced zerker over a dual wielder...or maybe I'm just missing what ya'll are telling me.
DR=damage rating If i were to use 1 as the base for anything, it gives me the same as whatever im multiplying it by. So base attack for a 1 hander with 80 damage rating is 80 *1=80 When you double attack 60% of the time your base attack is modified by +.6 So double attack is represented by 1.6 80 *1.6 =128 When a weapon is slowed by 33% the base attack is 33% less so its represented by .66 and you have 2 weapons (80 *.66) weapon 1 + (80 *.66) weapon 2 = 105.6 Yes in a way its a 66% penalty which is why bosting your auto attack by 60% via sta yields more DPS.
DR = Damage Rating. Damage rating of a weapon is (MIN+MAX)/Delay. For instance, Vilucidae's Sword of Shielding. 45-179 damage, 3.0 sec dealy. DR= (45+179)/3 = 74.6 DR So if you have an 80 DR weapon, and you were using it with the STA line's 60% double attack, you'll be attacking 60% more, hence 80 x 1.6 = effective DR with buckler line (It's more due to the increase in ripostes, but we'll skip that) Since the latest patch, when dual-wielding, both your weapons have their delay increased by 1/3. So a 3 sec delay weapon becomes a 4 sec delay weapon. So if you had 2 80 DR weapons and you were dual-wielding them, your effective DR would come out to be (80x0.66)+(80x0.66) All of this is ignoring extra ripostes, the extra damage you get from buckler reversal (not much, but it's there) and crits.
Actually your math is a hair off. You would multiply the DR of a dual wielded weapon by 0.75, not 0.66 (or two identical weapons by 1.5). Proof: Let X equal base damage, Y equal base delay, Z equal DR. For any given weapon, the following equation is (generally) true: X / Y = Z When dual wielding, the delay is increased by a factor of 1.33 (approximately 4/3). So Y when dual wielding becomes 4/3Y, and Z becomes Z-DW. X / (4/3 * Y) = Z-DW When you divide by a fraction, you can also multiply by it's inverse to achieve the same result. X / Y * (3/4) = Z-DW Since X / Y = Z, we can substitute that into the equation to figure out what Z-DW is. Z * 3/4 = Z-DW So if you had two 80 DR weapons that you dual wielded: (80x0.75) + (80x0.75) = 120 Which is still less than going buckler spec, but not by as much as you calculated earlier: (80 x 1.6) = 128
you know... we had this discusion before and i did the math wrong that time... you think i would learn =] Regardless my point still remains
Ya know when ya see it layed out like that, I guess it just makes sense to be the buckler spec. There's more damage all around and there's no penalties to overcome. With the delay penalties, dual wielding weapons just doesn't seem to be a real viable option. My line of thinking was this... if I had 2 weapons swinging for ten rounds of combat, you swing twice with both weapns ten times so 20 swings in all, but if you do the same with a 1 handed weapon with a 60% double attack then you'd swing your weapon ten times and double attack on average about 6 times so that'd be 16 swings. With the penalties of dual wielding, somehow 16 swings with a 1 hander is better then 20 swings with 2 weapons which really doesn't seem to be right, but I guess that's just game mechanics right? Thanks for the help all, I feel a bit more informed now =).
I belive you people missed one thing here in the math. When you make the comparison between STA onehander and DW you also have to count in the extra 20% dps increase from another line. I dont know how dualwield works but as far as I have understood a twohander has 33% more dps than a one hander. I guess two DW weapons equals a twohanded weapon in dps The STA lines 60% double attack on onehanders is basically the same as a twohander multiplied with 20%. 80*1,6= 106,4*1,2 Thus if you go the STA line you will have 80DR * 1,60 (60%) doubleattack = 128DR regardless if you are offtank or maintank If you take ANOTHER line except for AGI you will with a Twohander have (80*1,33)*1,2 (20%dps increase) = 127,7 DR In tanking mode with Towershield you will use a onehander 80DR * 1,2 = 96 DR So what makes STA line the best of all is not the 60% doubleattack but the avoidance boost that almost make up for a Towershield. You really need to go 4488 in STA to make it useful. If you skip STA 4 you can skip the entire line. (thats my opinion. I migth be wrong just there) Make a choice: Maintank with Fabled Towershield and 96 DR or STA tank with Fabled Buckler + avoidance boost (sloppy towershield) and 128 DR.
well factors like dps and haste cant really be calculated into equasion because they run on a diminishing curve so 20 dps for me is not going to be the same as 20 dps for you.
