Slay Undead Poll: Dev requested feedback

[karkariace]

[knytul]

just loving to bring up old discussions

Wizards can do 5 digit parses
Rangers can kill 50 mobs in seconds flat (Headshot + Hail of Arrows)
Rogues can backstab almost at will what we can pray to slay

Someone tell me why Slay Undead is an issue to devs again? Why is it when we get an ability similar to what these kinda classes can do (Tunare, Slay), its major drama but its ok for everybody else? We cant get paci but rangers can single pull mobs out of a crowd of 50 without a care in the world (harmonious arrow). Now im not tryin to get ANY of them classes nerfed cuz i love the fact that rangers, wizards, and rogues can do these kind of abilities. But would be nice if theyd scratch our back once in awhile too...They get mass murder and mayhem and we get a focus that affects .01 seconds of 2 spells....

[Hulkling]

Wait, you were in last years Beta Knytul. Thats where all that stuff was generated from that you mentioned. We did pretty good last year imo, but its always difficult to foresee how things are going to turn out 3-6 months into an expansion.

[knytul]

i was in SoD beta, and its always difficult to foresee how things are going to turn out 3-6 months into an expansion. i agree. But the discussion of boosting our dps came up only recently again, and the Dev's wanted to go after our Slay Undead again. So my question is Why, with the current abilities for other classes out there being WAY more powerful than ours. Im not saying they overpowered, but they are extremely better than our own.

[Maglor]

Ok. We needed hard numbers, so I got us some hard numbers. These are based on actual fights I did. And the information I got was, to put it kindly, exceedingly surprising. In fact, it may indicate why our pally dps is so low, inspite of the advantages we were given.

Note: The information is necessarily incomplete. The reason for this is I am unable to ascertain the AC of the type of mobs I selected for my purposes. It may be that the AC of the non-living mobs I selected were higher than the AC of the living mobs. Or, it could be visa-versa. For this reason, the numbers must necessarily be an approximation of true effectiveness.

To get the data, I used the Tango parser program.

First, these were controlled fights, to a certain degree. The fights involved just me and a mercenary. Buffs were personal buffs. The weapon used was the Fabled Gem Encrusted Axe, with shield to bash. So I could focus on dps, I used a cleric mercenary that did no damage. This was done to measure the difference between living mobs and non-living mobs. Also, to minimize the variable between different fights, I did a minimum of three of each type of fight on specific mobs, then achieved an average. The average I calculated by adding up the dps of each fight then dividing the total by the number of fights, giving me the mean average.

For the record, all passive offensive melee aa’s are maxed out. That includes Slay Undead, which is useful only against non-living mobs.

All passive offensive spell aa’s are in production. Spell Casting Fury is maxed out, but Fury of Magic is only 2/9 and Destructive Fury is not started. This may scew the spell damage information somewhat. However, as these only increases the likelihood of critical spells, which have no effect on Slay Undead, I consider it to be minor.

Living mobs were “a vicious worg” in Loping Planes.

The first fight was done without any combat spells. Full self-buffs were used, but other than a stun to pull the mob, and a root to lock it down once it was below 20%, no offensive spells were used. The dps is pure paladin melee.

#1 DPS: 480.30
#2 DPS: 634.48
#3 DPS: 532.40

Average DPS: 549.06

This is my base average dps.

It is possible #1 was lower due to pull, which was some distance.

The second group I utilized two offensive spells. Crush of Compunction and Mark of the Crusader.

#1 DPS: 536.24
#2 DPS: 576.66
#3 DPS: 558.11

Average DPS: 557.00

Net dps increase from the base using spells was approximately 7 dps. The spells do not seem to increase any damage. Rather, they seem to replace melee damage.

Because of the minor increase, I gave a third sampling with worgs. Here I used only one spell, Crush of Compunction.

#1 DPS: 531.95
#2 DPS: 615.24
#3 DPS: 650.13

Average DPS: 583.30. Average increase using just Crush over both spells, 26.3 DPS

The cause for this proved to be the number of resists the mob did. About half of the spell casts seemed to be resisted, which resulted in no damage.

Note: The dps increase using spells proved to be exceedingly minor. Because of the time required to cast the spells, I would hazard the opinion that if I used the spells while using any of my two handed weapons, I would have had a net dps decrease.

Note: It is my considered opinion that Crush of Compunction and Mark of the Crusader are exceeding minor spells in overall effect. Use of them does not do much in the way of improving a paladin’s overall dps.

Non-living mobs were A Skeleton Warrior, in Loping Planes. It is true there were other undead mobs fought and killed, however I wanted consistency so I ignored those other mobs.

First group used only melee for dps. No spells were used.

#1 DPS: 1294.50
#2 DPS: 1046.85
#3 DPS: 991.80
#4 DPS: 1372.49 (came to me right as the third died, so I used it)

Average DPS: 1176.41

Second group used three spells. Crush of Cumpunction, Mark of the Crusader, and Eulogy.

#1 DPS: 1336.53
#2 DPS: 1610.00
#3 DPS: 1039.92

Average DPS: 1328.82

Average DPS increase using spells: 152.41

Note: Assuming that Crush and Mark did the same approximate increase of 7, that would mean that Eulogy accounted for 145.41 DPS.

Based on this, I can honestly say that the Slay Undead effect gave me a pure melee increase of 114.25%, which is a much higher number than what the developers gave us. Of course, when spells are included, the increase is smaller IF I use damage spells. If I only use non-damage stun spells, this increase will remain at the approx 114% increase.

Please note: These were done using my own weapons. Other weapons may produce different results. However, what is of note is the time involved in the spells. A faster speed weapon would likely decrease the dps gain from spells, or even cause a loss in dps, mainly from the loss of melee attempts. For the same reason, a slower speed weapon, like many 2 handed weapons, would see a likely increase in dps from spells.

From this, I would have to point out that the main culprit of the low dps of paladins in non-undead fights is not from our pure melee ability. It is from the new line of spells, including the much vaunted Crush of Compunction. Mark of the Crusader has also proved to be a non-issue. However, this is half way expected. The nature of the damage from Crusader indicates that its dps would not be recorded. Due to the nature of the spell, the mob receives damage to itself when it hits a PC, not when a PC hits it. Therefore, its dps is not recordable.

Currently, efforts should be done to correct the weakness of Crush of Compunction. This can be done without any melee adjustment whatsoever. After this is done, I can redo my tests and see what the advantages are. It may improve our pally dps without needing to do any other adjustment.

[Brohg]

Mark of the Crusader will be much higher dps against real mobs. The accuracy of Loping Plains basepop against your level 85 self is expected to be pretty sad. From long parses across weeks on my warrior, damage shields are nearly 80% efficient in adding dps against current content. Like, 8:10 dps to DS ratio. I'm not familiar with Tango, but it should have a more detailed breakdown of your dps like other parsers do, somewhere in it. That breakdown would show what proportion of your damage came from Bashes, Slashes, and "Hits" - the Hit dps is damage shield.

Additionally, using spells that cast in under a second shouldn't ever reduce your melee dps. Swing-cast-swing, no loss. This "threading" of spells is easier to do with big slow 2h weapons, but shouldn't be an issue even with 1h when the spells are as fast as Crush of Compunction.

Lastly, wow is that not enough information collected to form a meaningful average.

[boukk]

[Hulkling]

Mark of the Crusader rk.II comes out to about ~75 DPS. However its subject to certain conditions:

- The mob has hit you 10 times in a 12 second period (not uncommon since most mobs quad + kick/bash now a days), and you immediately recast once the gem refreshes.
- The mob is not being stunned, which was intended because MotC was part of the Crush additions to help vs non-stunnable mobs.
- Mob /con: only time I ever see MotC 10 hit limit not be expended in 12 seconds (while not being stunned) is on lower level mobs since they have lower accuracy due to level spread and what not.....in which case the DPS will be lower (obviously).

[shiftie]

[Maglor]

The group mobs were solo'd, meaning that this pally was the only one fighting the mob. Mercenary healer was involved so I could focus on the fighting.

Against the worgs, each fight lasted about two to three minutes. Meaning that I pressed that Crush button multiple times.

Against the Skeletal warriors, fights tended to last about minute to a minute and a half. Not surprising when one considers the high dps.

But let us remember something. Part of Shadowknight DPS are the spells they have. They have an awsome spell based dps that it included in their dps totals. If I read the past posts correctly, some people said that we had effective spells -- crush was mentioned. My test has indicated that Crush is a less than satisfactory spell dps.

I wanted to get an SK to measure his dps, using the same weapon, in various ways, as well for comparison. I was, unfortunately, unable to, but am still trying.

This said, some of what you said does make sense. But do not expect me to get all of it for you. We needed hard information. At least I can say that I went out and got it. If you have any considerations, do as I did. Get a parser (there are free ones, of course). But get your own hard data and share it. The more hard data we get, from the more paladins (and even a few sk's who want to gloat), the better.

HARD DATA Is what we need. I have at least tried to fill that need. I ask and challenge you to do the same.

[knytul]

the Hard Data of it all is our dps is so damn low that we are fighting about table scraps when we should at least be enjoying hamburgers and fries..

[Normy]

Hard data is readily available on a number of matters right on these boards. So far, after reading your results, I question how you end up with a 115% increase to undead. Slay will add about 75%, actually a little less after you max Veterans Wrath, this has been well parsed out over the course of several hours. Using only Eulogy, that was a heck of an increase from that one spell.

While I do appreciate the effort, they are correct in saying that the parse data is far too short at this point. Averages become more accurate with more data. Also, they are also correct in pointing out that while discussing DPS, we need to show what our actual max potential is. This requires the use of a 2h weapon since our biggest DPS AA's only effect while using a 2h weapon.

Given the nature of our characters, its basically unfair to call foul based on numbers that don't use a large majority of what is available to us. But keep parsing regardless. Does Tango have the ability to combine a bunch of fights together like GamParse does?

[Cellan]

No offense, but I am not going to give heed to a 3x group mob parse. You got lucky or you got unlucky, but nothing holds ground yet. I would rather see a few thousand swings/hits to really give attention to the info.

[Maglor]

You are correct about one thing. To get a fairly accurate average, I would need to kill about a hundred mobs of each type. Now, ask me one question. Am I going to do that? Of course not. I do not have the weeks needed to go out and keep killing wargs and skeleton warriors in LP. I have limited time in EQ, and I have things to do.

Now, I would respect it if other people went out, limited themselves to a single weapon, went to a zone with living and undead mobs, and did a few kills, posting the results. That would also be hard data, of the same type I got. However, I do not see anyone doing it. I do see a lot of objections, some valid, but no efforts to get raw, hard data. So, I say, get the data. Or do not complain.

What matters is not what we calculate. We can calculate till we are blue in the face. But it does not change reality. And reality is not what we calculate, but what the actual results are. I have got some actual results. Yes, they seem to go against what we calculate. Well, maybe the calculations are wrong! I will stand by my results, because I did go out there and I got them. I do not see anyone else doing it.

As for the well above 75% slay increase, I must admit, it astonished me too. The 114% increase, without using any spells is astonishing. Based on this, I do wonder if the Sony dev's are correct in saying it is only a 75% increase. Of course, I must point out, as I did in my earlier post, that I do NOT know the AC of either the skeletons or the worgs. We all know that AC mitigates the damage received. If you do not know this, you should not be in the Pally business. It could be, in fact it is probable, that the Worgs have a HIGH ac and the skeletons have a LOW AC. That would account for the great differential right there. All I could do, is what I did, posted the actual results, with the disclaimer I did post (read it for yourself on the earlier post) and let the chips fall where they may. (and the dev's, able to look up the actual ac's involved, may be able to figure it out based on what I posted).

Now, with this in mind, I am going to turn my attention to Nodyin.

I have a proposal for you, one that I think paladins would overall support me with, even if they think I am completely arrogant (which I may be).

As you know, my own tests showed an average dps of 549.06 against worgs, with an average dps of 1176.41 against skeleton warriors in Loping Planes. You say you want to improve pally dps while lowering slay dps. With the way you have explained it, no pally worth their salt will accept it From what you have been explaing to us, it sounds like the following would result:

Warg dps -- approx 700

Skeleton dps -- approx 750-800.

This is NOT acceptable. Slay is probably the only thing we paladins have. Naturally, we want to protect it. With Shadowknights able to tear apart anything, rangers able to pull amost anything at will, necros able to kite anything, druids able to root rot anything, (you get the picture) we do want our UNIQUE ABILITY KEPT! Tis a matter or pride. Distinction. It is what sets us appart.

Now, to return to my dps results: Wargs 549.06, Skeletons 1176.41. What I am going to do is look solely at the NET DPS. I am not going to look at percentages or anything like that. Net dps is what matters to me. This, I think is the key to any understanding.

If you want to raise pally dps against living mobs, fine. I can agree to it. But I want to see that the NET DPS against the non-living mobs STAYS APPROXIMATELY THE SAME! Yes, you will raise the regular dps and lower the slay, but I want to see the NET OVERALL NON-LIVING MELEE DPS TO REMAIN CONSTANT! (or improved slightly). Yes, the net slay would be decreased, but it would have to be matched by a net regular increase, keeping the net non-liiving dps the same. 1176.41 against the Skeleton warriors, exactly as it currently is. Otherwise, tis NO DEAL!

How would this work? Well, currently, as I see it, dps against skeletons is as follows: 549.06 regular, 627.36 slay, total 1176.41. IF you raise the regular by, say 200 dps net, you could lower the slay by ONLY 200 dps net. (regular 749.06, slay 427.36, total 1176.41). If you do this, I can accept it.

Now, there are two ways you can do this. My preferred method would be for you to give us some special spells. High damage, low agro spells. Tie them into our stun lines of spells if you want, so that we have to choose between agro stun spells or low agro dps spells. And, make them BLAST spells. Paladins of old used cleric spells. Nowadays the pally line of spells is separate, but still, the ties to cleric spells should still be there. Clerics get a line of blast spells that they use to "smite" their opponents, even living mobs. Maybe it is time for paladins to have a similar lines. This would probably be the easiest way to do it. Since Slay is tied to melee damage and not to spell casting, no adjustment would be necessary. The actual spells can be adjusted as necessary till the appropriate pally dps desired is achieved. With this, you would not have to tamper with our melee or our slay whatsoever. In fact, you could make it so these spells only work against living mobs, not non-living. There, problem solved.

As for the purely melee, well, you did give SK's a melee advantage. True, not much of one. But they have Burst of Power 12 as opposed to our Burst of Power 7. We should get a corresponding DEFENSIVE advantage over Shadowknights. Maybe Shield Block 11 or Armor of Wisdom 10, something that gives us a passive defensive advantage, restoring to some degree the distinction between Shadowknights and Paladins.

However, I suspect that you are unwilling to do this. Fine. My alternate proposal. You can give us a few special pally melee aa's that improve our regular dps (and cut our slay dps WITHOUT affecting the net overal dps against non-living mobs -- that MUST NOT GO DOWN). If you are adamant about going this way, I will live with it.

Still, I would like to see an improvement in paladin defensives. Defensives were always the paladin strong suit. I would like to see the paladin given a better defensive aa, as I mentioned earlier. True, I doubt you give it. Still, hope springs eternal.

Anyway, there it is. My proposals. I believe that most paladins will stand behind me on this one.

[frocus]

Maglor noone wants you to parse 100 of each mob. Short fights leave to much variance in hte RNG. Instead of numerous short fights instead type /testcopy. Go to test and run a multihour parse vs the test dummy. There is info below in the parsed data section to help you get started. The test dummy is undead so make sure you /resetaa and repurchase without slay then again with slay. Test dummy has infinite hp and you can just /autoattack on it and go to bed to get long duration parses which will lessen the effect of the RNG.

Edit: Noone is pushing for a live boost to 700 with slay dropping to 750 from your baselines. If you will read up thread where a number of us detailed how a decrease in slay to boost live dps could leave slay dps the same or even recieve a small increase. It is a decrease in percentage of boost to our dps granted by slay but the damage remains close to old numbers. Mobs in loping plains with small hp pools are prone to streaks in the RNG. I have a friend who insists Slay undead is over powered because 1 mob in about 1000 I will manage a triple slay and end up with 10kish dps vs that mob while all other fights sit in 1.5kish range utilizing fabled spear of fire. I will also have the occasional mob that dies with 0 slays leaving me only around 700 dps because randomness has a greater effect on short fights than long ones.

Editx2: I will see about test copying over again since i haven't since before fabled and run some parses while I sleep today.

[shiftie]

Maglor no one is discounting your effort it is appreciated... just not well thought out.

You can call it complaining or you can consider that you are way off base. Slay undead is tied 100% to the range. You need hours of parse data to reach an average dps level. Parsing 3 mobs can either show...

1. Very high undead dps due to lucky rolls, triple slays, double ripose slays, flurries, etc.
2. Very low undead dps due to misses, lack of slays, mob riposte, mob parry.

If you fail to see the problem with your parses then you just don't understand what is going on and for that there is no help or criticism that will sway you. Your numbers give an extremely exaggerated result. Your 114% increase shows this glaring problem because it has been parsed for hours on end, one of which was linked here showing a pure melee dps increase of 75%.

Also, as was stated by myself and others... it is absolutely worthless to join a dps conversation speaking about 1hs/shield.

And one more thing... You ended your proposal by requesting for defensive abilities in a dps thread. We do not need help tanking, if anything sk's need to lose some of their edge, although I am not requesting a nerf because I don't care about the sk class. So don't bring tanking requests to a dps thread.

[Saintsaens]

Maglor is correct in one thing though about using real world mobs... I would like to see parses of a reasonable length of our DPS against real world mobs, because the real world mobs are where we as a class are having issues.

IMO, I think Sony relies far too much on the test dummies for their information, which is not translating very well to the real world situations (both group and raid), because there are so many variables that the test dummies do not have available to them (high/low mob AC, high/low mob DB/DI, self buffs on mobs (since some of these could affect how much DPS we do, etc.). And since the test dummies don't fight back, mob ripostes aren't factoring in either.

[Brohg]

Saintsaens, the mitigation of test dummies can be varied by talking with them. You just tell them "defense up" or "defense down". They can be set to fight back to get ripostes. They'll fight at whatever attack speed you want them to. They have a full spread of defensive skills, you can fight their fronts or backs depending on whether you want to simulate raid dps (where presumably someone else would be tanking) or group dps.

Developers don't use game world tests at all, on live servers or on Test dummies. There's no need. They can simulate the results of millions of hours of melee in seconds with the push of a button.

Shiftie, when people use the letters "rng", they're not abbreviating "range". It's an acronym for Random Number Generator.

[knytul]

can you reset AA's in Testcopy?

[shiftie]

I will admit that I have misinterpreted the acronym however my understanding was still the same.

the extent to which or the limits between which variation is possible:
Range - emphasizes extent and diversity
to vary within certain limits: prices ranging from $5 to $10.
to have a certain variety of things somehow related:

the random number generator creates a range based on the total numbers that could be generated.

Aprreciate the correction though.

[shiftie]

[knytul]

well heres what we need to do then.

Testcopy a toon over that has enough aa to max all offensives, and a weapon with NO proc on it (infusible weapons such as Blade of Pure Light) are awesome for this.

Reset AA's and buy EVERY Offensive aa possible MINUS Slay Undead.

Parse on a testdummy that doesnt fight back for 4 hours+ (note this in parsed data)
Parse on a test dummy that doesnt fight back for 4 hours+ with Slay undead 1 (note this in parsed data)
repeat until ALL Slay's are parsed
the ONLY buff to be used, is haste.

[Ughbash]

[knytul]

Sure, why not. would be probably a good idea to have some other classes to compare with

[knytul]

for the pally parse we are gonna need someone with matching Fero 7, Cleave 8, and 150 Accuracy.

[shiftie]

I have cleave 8 fero 8 and tower 2h pierce and max offensive aa plust 150 accuracy

I'll leave parser on over night or something

[knytul]

we talking 10 parses on 1 toon, Slay 0, SLay 1, slay 2, etc.

[Cellan]

[Hulkling]

Slays haven't been tied to crits since GoD man. Its not a 1 for 1 exchange, they are on thier own slot, if you will. Slay Undead does appear to reduce Crits, bit its a minor decrease, to the tune of ~1%.

http://giline.versus.jp/shiden/su2_e.htm

If slays were still tied to crits, in the VU and AU parses the Slays + Speacials would equal the top parse's Specials. And, specials (crits and crips) would continue to drop for every rank of Slay Undead you purchase. Also, Cleave would still be increasing the amount of slays, and it does not.

[knytul]

are there any volunteers to do the 10 parses on Test?

[shiftie]

knytul I don't know how this turned into parse all levels of SU ????

why are we doing that again, we aren't trying to figure out the slay formula again... we are only interested in the difference between max slay dps and max live dps no?

doing 10 parses seems like a waste of time or at least saved for another time and place.

[knytul]

not just for that reason would we do it, but doing it would give us EVERY piece of information we need for Slay Undead. It would answer every question we have about it, and would give us more of a leg to stand on with the developers in getting the offensive upgrades we rightfully deserve.

[Cellan]

[frocus]

If your losing some crits due to slays it's because of the order in which specials are calculated. Hulk was just saying slays aren't converted crits. If the Slay check is made before crit checks then you will lose a small amount of crits due to slays since if a hit is a slay it can't crit. If you say swing 100x per minute and 6 of those hits are slays and slays occur before crits are check then instead of x% of the 100 hits being crits then only x% of 94 hits will be slays on undead losing you a small number of crits over all or if the check is made after crit check but then slay check passes you may lose a crit due to slay overwrinting it. All Hulk was trying to do was Inform others incase your statement was misread as meaning each slay takes away a crit. (Numbers above are not real world they are only easy to break down numbers for an example.)

[Cellan]

which is exactly what I said, so what's the correction about?

And it doesn't change the fact that pre-Veteran's Wrath SU3's dmg was 10x crit dmg (which I was referring to). So assume that slay would normally have been a crit for dmg purposes. That means whatever you gain from SU alone divided by 10 would be the amount of damage it normally would have been AT THAT TIME. In the current game it's not so because of the increasing levels of Veteran's Wrath. I believe Abazz or someone here has the exact dmg chart to figure out what it would be now.

[frocus]

In your original post you stated a slay takes away a crit or cripple however which it doesn't. It has the chance too depending on which order they are applied in but a slay doesn't neccessarily take the place of a crit/cripple it can also replace a normal hit. Like hulkling said above if it only converted a crit your percentage of specials wouldn't change which it did.

[frocus]

Some important commands for those who are aboiut to do some parses. with dummy targeted /say "defense up" or defense down to adjust the mobs defensive capabilities /say "offense up" or down to adjust mobs hit. /say freeze will stop timers on buffs but not discs from what I've seen. Talking to the Arena master will give you other commands if needed. to spawn the test dummy you basically tell the master a 5 level interval and dummy spawns can repeat the command multiple times if you wanted to test incoming dps vs multiple mobs ect. Might be abit off on the commands now that i think about it since It's been a bit since I ran parses on test.

[Cellan]

When I parsed it out my crits went down in proportion to my slays going up. That gives me 1 conclusion.

[Normy]

I'll do lots of parses, I have no problem with that. How long do we want the parses? Is 2 hours enough? Should we go a full 8? Its easy enough for me to set it up and run unattended, so I have no problems with doing it, although my parses will not all clock in at exactly the same length, just a rough estimate really. Longer the parse though, the more days it will take me to get it all and compile the data, since I like actually playing the game as well.

[knytul]

well normy, what fero, cleave, Weapon, accuracy, and do u have enough AA's to cover the max offensive?