Grief vs BoTD Melee

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Necrarch wrote: 2 years ago

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

See..had you said "damn it and I just built a BotD instead!" I would've just given you a

Lo to turn it into a Grief..

I still need a

Zod for the BotD of the Pally friend's A1 merc, but that should be makeable thanks to my lucky

Belt (see lucky stuff post if you did not see that yet). Or a CoH for him as well.
Let's equip him, after all I owe him my lucky torch (I seem to be VERY lucky these days).

Alright, did another round of testing because I figured wording might be everything...spoiler alert: it is!

Eth. BOTD zerker

Axe vs. Grief. So moving from "does Grief's +dmg do anything?" to "what option actually does more dmg in the end?".

After enough kills to get a solid average (with neither demons nor undead to avoid those modifiers affecting it):
-

Eth BOTD base weapon dmg is on average ~22% lower than Grief. So you'd expect it to perform equally worse. However, it actually performs better. A massive ~50% better in fact.

So my new theory is this:
As per the wording,

Vengeance doesn't turn your damage into elemental damage but it "adds" elemental damage. Meaning you do both, physical base damage and then elemental dmg on top.
Now, because of that...
- The physical part of your attack includes Grief's +dmg which is modified by your gear (fort and such) as always. This is why Grief vs. no Grief is such a massive difference.
- The elemental part is then added on top of that same damage. This damage is based directly off of your weapon damage, NOT counting other ED effects like fort and such. This isn't actually news but was long known and confirmed multiple times over by various people.
- The elemental part does not consider Grief's +dmg for that calculation. This would be why BOTD still performs better in the end. The phys part of the attack does less but the elemental part does (significantly) more, resulting in an overall win for BOTD. The more you shift to the elemental side (e.g. high

Conviction), the more BOTD would pull ahead.

So basically, Grief kinda works..but not fully..and BOTD remains the better choice in terms of raw dmg.


Edit:
Just noticed..AB actually says exactly that..figures..didn't need to do all that testing, just had to not be too lazy to check there..

Ah, thanks a lot again ! Well, Grief remains decent and the physical part is less resisted usually, so no hurry to do the change but we can consider it in the long run.

Conviction must be at around 30 so indeed he does hit super hard.
The four main things he needs are : CoH to improve from

Guardian Angel ; BotD to improve MPD Merc from Edge to better ; Exile to improve from Spirit (but current is in a 45

Sacred Targe so already good) ; eBotD to improve from Grief.
I'll probably suggest him to do it in the order above, seems to me that this will be the most efficient overall increase. And a better Pally torch even before these (Anni is good).

Thanks !

Necrarch wrote: 2 years ago

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Necrarch wrote: 2 years ago

I still need a

Zod for the BotD of the Pally friend's A1 merc, but that should be makeable thanks to my lucky

Belt (see lucky stuff post if you did not see that yet). Or a CoH for him as well.
Let's equip him, after all I owe him my lucky torch (I seem to be VERY lucky these days).

Alright, did another round of testing because I figured wording might be everything...spoiler alert: it is!

Eth. BOTD zerker

Axe vs. Grief. So moving from "does Grief's +dmg do anything?" to "what option actually does more dmg in the end?".

After enough kills to get a solid average (with neither demons nor undead to avoid those modifiers affecting it):
-

Eth BOTD base weapon dmg is on average ~22% lower than Grief. So you'd expect it to perform equally worse. However, it actually performs better. A massive ~50% better in fact.

So my new theory is this:
As per the wording,

Vengeance doesn't turn your damage into elemental damage but it "adds" elemental damage. Meaning you do both, physical base damage and then elemental dmg on top.
Now, because of that...
- The physical part of your attack includes Grief's +dmg which is modified by your gear (fort and such) as always. This is why Grief vs. no Grief is such a massive difference.
- The elemental part is then added on top of that same damage. This damage is based directly off of your weapon damage, NOT counting other ED effects like fort and such. This isn't actually news but was long known and confirmed multiple times over by various people.
- The elemental part does not consider Grief's +dmg for that calculation. This would be why BOTD still performs better in the end. The phys part of the attack does less but the elemental part does (significantly) more, resulting in an overall win for BOTD. The more you shift to the elemental side (e.g. high

Conviction), the more BOTD would pull ahead.

So basically, Grief kinda works..but not fully..and BOTD remains the better choice in terms of raw dmg.


Edit:
Just noticed..AB actually says exactly that..figures..didn't need to do all that testing, just had to not be too lazy to check there..

Ah, thanks a lot again ! Well, Grief remains decent and the physical part is less resisted usually, so no hurry to do the change but we can consider it in the long run.

Conviction must be at around 30 so indeed he does hit super hard.
The four main things he needs are : CoH to improve from

Guardian Angel ; BotD to improve MPD Merc from Edge to better ; Exile to improve from Spirit (but current is in a 45

Sacred Targe so already good) ; eBotD to improve from Grief.
I'll probably suggest him to do it in the order above, seems to me that this will be the most efficient overall increase. And a better Pally torch even before these (Anni is good).

Thanks !

Personally, I'd go with Exile before anything else but that might just be me.

And FYI:

Conviction res reduction caps at lvl 25 (-150). Beyond that, all you get is a tiny further progression on the -def so once you hit 25, more points tend to really not be worth it.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Just out of curiosity, where did those numbers come from?
Not saying it isn't true but it feels off to me.

Specifically:
A perfect superior BOTD

Eth

Thunder Maul would give you a weapon dmg range of 254 to 1390.
A perfect sup Grief phase on the other hand gives you 435 to 440.

Naturally, the BOTD is significantly higher in that case, both in max and in average dmg so I won't challenge it being far superior overall in terms of dmg output (if you really can get the same speed). But the minimum dmg per hit you have feels way off. If a min of 254 already gives you ~7000, how does 435 only give you ~7800? Scaling the 7000 for min dmg, it should be closer to 12k (with max equally scaling higher). Are your other gear choices in 1h vs 2h making THAT much of a difference? And if so, why? Can't really think of many ways to explain that other than either incorrect numbers (read off char screen that often doesn't include Grief bonus?) or using Fortitude for 2h but not for 1h for some reason.
Or do druids actually have a hidden base multiplier akin to A5 mercs? (Honestly don't know that actually..never spent enough time with melee druids)

I actually made a mistake in my last post and left Faith merc from the Decap build (just so many things to swap in and out, and Faith is pretty pointless on Grief) on Grief + Phoenix. However, even if you drop Grief into the above below, you end up with ~140K DPS, around 13,000 - 13,500 per hit before Deadly Strike. Honestly, any DPS over 50K is pretty wild, so Grief is a very solid choice and offers the benefits of a shield and whatever is on said shield... but if you want to go absolutely feral I definitely suggest looking into BotD and more specifically Death. My Fury druid is using eDeath Decap and he just rolls through P8 like it's P1.

Here's a quick summary of the build I used:

eBotD 15ED Sup

Thunder Maul with perfect 400 roll (415 ED total), giving weapon damage of 252 - 1390.
+300% ED from Fort
+80% ED from 2x 40/15s in a rare 2os

Helm with +2 Druid +3 Fury +3 HoW
+746% ED from level 39 Fury (8x skillers, torch, anni, Highlord, +5

Helm, CtA, 20 invested)
+244% ED from level 33 HoW (torch, anni, Highlord, +5

Helm, Spirit on swap, CtA, 20 invested)
+260% ED from level 23 Might from Merc
+345% ED from level 20 Conc from Pride
+572% ED from 520 total STR (hammers get 1.1% ED per point in STR)
Total off weapon ED: +2547% ED

Charms: 9x +3max
Ring: +4 Max +9 Min (honestly just going to ignore these, but they are there)

Fury speed: 20 frames (6.25 hits per second)
133% IAS required with

Thunder Maul + level 38 WW (shifting on swap)
+60% BotD
+20% LoH
+20% Highlord
+30% 2x 40/15s on

Helm
+10% Nosferatu
140% Total

Deadly Strike % Chance: 52% at level 99 (or 48% at level 90, a more reasonable level to reach)
(effectively multiplies total damage by 1+% chance)

The damage comes out to:
(252 to 1390) * (1 + 25.47) = 6,670 - 36,263 damage
(6,670 to 36,263) * (2 * (0.52) + 1 * (1-0.52)) = 10,138 - 55,119 damage on average with Deadly Strike
(55,119 + 10,138)/2 = 32,628 damage dealt on average per hit
32,628 * 6.25 attacks/second = 203,930 DPS possible
203,930 * 95% hit chance

Cap = 193,733 DPS usually if you have max hit chance, but I generally ignore this because it becomes too specific for comparing DPS since all melee builds are subject to a 5% miss penalty at best.


The same can be run for eDeath Decap, except that Death + HL + Gores gives 100% Deadly Strike chance at level 98 (and 65% crushing blow) and you would want to use Faith on merc instead to reach 18 frame Fury. You may also want to swap out the 2os +2/3/3 GG

Helm for Jalal's with 1x 40/15 since you don't need as much IAS with a

Decapitator, and since it has lower weapon damage the ED matters a little less than hitting the maximum attack speed.

I may have to play around with melee druids a bit more tomorrow...them numbers seem...unexpectedly high for something coming from a druid.