Smiling_Joe

Oh that's right. It can be taken into the negatives, can't it? Nonetheless, if I just apply a 20% damage buff to both the smashing and negative portions of the damage and then apply that damage to the tank's resistances I come out with roughly 99 dps of actual damage done, vise the 87.6 dps if I follow the equations.

You know what? I hate math. My original point was that including Shadow Punch in the attack chain would be a good idea for tankers, possibly even surpassing what is clearly the ideal attack chain for the other DM/ archetypes (not surpassing those other archetypes, mind you - just surpassing that attack chain on a tanker), and bending my brain over what amounts to 2-3 points difference in dps is doing nothing but muddying the waters.

Bah. This is why I should just stay out of the formulas and math. Stupid Joe.

You're missing my point. Midnight Grasp (max slotted for damage), for example, will do something in the neighborhood of 243 points of negative energy damage. If the enemy you're fighting doesn't have any resistance to negative energy damage, you're never going to do more than 243 points of damage to that enemy with Midnight Grasp, regardless of how many resistance debuffs are on him. The reason is this formula, taken from the same page:

So 243 x (100% - 0)=243

A resistance debuff like bruising does not amount to a straight up damage buff. Looking at it that way will leave you disappointed in the end. You're never going to do more than 109.5 dps with an attack chain of SP-MG-Sm-SL-SM without further damage buffs. (btw substituting Shadow Punch for Smite in the MG-Sm-SL-Sm attack chain only yields @90 dps and only a single 20% debuff, since bruising doesn't stack)

And to that extent I think talking about dps in general can be misleading, because it's merely a measure of an attack chain's maximum self-contained damage. It doesn't take into account an enemy's resistance and can't be relied upon to predict actual damage done to that enemy unless you know that resistance ahead of time and factor it in.

However, let's take that tank from the example given in the link and follow through with some math:

The first attack chain (MG-Sm-SL-Sm) will do a total of 56.68 smashing and 593.82 Negative Energy.

The tanker resists smashing by 45%, so 56.8 x (100%-45%)=31.24

He also resists negative energy by 20%, so 593.82 x (100%-20%)=475

For a grand total of 85.2 dps of actual damage done to the tanker.

The second attack chain (Sm-SP-SL-Sm-MG) will max out at a total of 86.79 smashing and 638.1 negative.

Taking the tanker's resistances into account, it comes out to around 82.4 dps of actual damage done.

But that doesn't take bruising into account. Going by the formula you specified with regard to resistance debuffs, the new smashing resistance for this tanker comes out to 34%. The new negative resistance is 16%. This means that he would be taking 57 points of smashing damage and 536 points of negative energy damage.

Coming out to 87.6 dps of actual damage done.

So - against this tanker, it pays to put shadow punch in the attack chain, but only by about 2 dps.

To me, the salient point to be taken away from all this is that the attack chain that includes shadow punch requires a bit less recharge, and so is a little easier to attain in a build. With hasten and 32% more recharge from set bonuses (and assuming at least 88% recharge slotting from sets like crushing impact in smite and midnight grasp) you've got a workable attack chain.

The other salient point I take away is that I had to do the math, after all. Stupid Joe.

This attack chain is the top attack chain for brutes and scrappers. I wonder, however, if it is for tankers?

Using Mid's as a quick and dirty reference, I come up with a total of 945.2 total points of damage (three-slotted attacks with Generic lv 50 IO's) with an attack chain of MG-Sm-SL-Sm for a total of 159.12 dps.

Now, inserting Shadow Punch at the beginning of that attack chain yields 1,053 points of damage for a total of 155.5 dps.

All things being equal, then the former would indeed be the superior attack chain. However, this does not take bruising into account.

Since bruising provides a 20% resistable and non-stackable damage resistance debuff, then you're effectively doing more damage to the enemy. It's unlikely that you'll do 20% more damage, because not only is the debuff resistable, but it's also dependent upon how much your enemy resists your damage in the first place.

In other words, applying a straight 20% damage buff to the second attack chain to account for bruising would be misleading, because that 155.5 dps already takes into account the maximum damage inflicted. It would be more correct to reduce both totals to appropriately reflect your enemy's damage resistance, and then increase the second attack chain by whatever percentage is left after the debuff resistance of your enemy were taken into account and the difference applied to his/her damage resistance.

Bleh. More math than I care to do, so my short answer would be: depending on the enemy, the second attack chain might prove more effective given bruising. Basically, if you're up against an AV with high debuff resists, you might be better off going with the old standby of MG-Sm-SL-Sm. If, however, you're up against an EB or a Boss, you might actually get better mileage out of Sp-MG-Sm-SL-SM.

Anyone more math-capable than I feel like satisfying my curiosity? (or pointing out the error of my ways?)

Dang. Pwn'd again. Knew I forgot something.

In retrospect, I think Zem is right - With only three slots, I think the Ragnarok proc will be too costly for too little in return. If you do decide to proc the power out more, you'd probably be better off to slot that third slot with a slow IO instead.

I think it's a mistake to think of procs in caltrops from a strictly dps point of view. Caltrops is in no way going to be a good dps power. The procs are better thought of as burst damage potential. At cast and every ten seconds, you have a percentage chance for a burst of extra damage. More procs increase that chance quite a bit.

That said, I can totally understand your thinking. The procs are nice to have, but not necessary in the least. The power is awesome out of the box.

Oh, I wasn't suggesting two more slots - just speaking in general. If you have two extra slots in a build - any build - for the two damage procs in caltrops, they're nice to have.

In you're case, you've got room for one extra slot for a damage proc, with two for enhancing the power. I wouldn't change anything with your build at this point beyond what you just mentioned.

I was thinking that with an 18 second recharge (with global recharge and hasten) he can keep his caltrops permanently double-stacked, which will place him at the cap anyway. Now that I think about it, though, the slow doesn't stack from the same caster, so a slow enhancement definitely wouldn't hurt. Replace that knockdown proc with a slow/recharge IO from one of the sets and it should increase the debuff enough and reduce the recharge by a small amount, as well.


Your calculations are incorrect. Natsuki wrote a great mini faq for proc calculations that gives some good formulas for calculating odds for multiple procs. Using the search function, I also found this thread with a post by the same author that also provided a practical example.

Going by this info, two 20% procs in a power will fire with the following formula:

0.2*0.2=.04, or a 4% chance of both of the damage procs going off every ten seconds.


If a single proc has a 20% chance, then there's an 80% chance that it won't fire, so... 0.8*0.8=.64, or a 64% chance that neither of them will go off. Now, subtracting that 64% chance from the 100% total, you've got a 36% chance that one of them will go off every ten seconds.


As I said above, he can keep caltrops permanantly double stacked, and while the slows won't stack the damage and procs will. So when the first one is cast you've got a 36% chance immediately for one of them to fire for 70 points of damage. 10 seconds later, you've got a second chance.

Now, since the power has an 18 second recharge and a roughly (rounded up for Arcana Time) 2 second animation, on the third tic of the proc you actually have four procs firing. This gives you a .16% chance that all four procs fire, a 40% chance that none of them will fire, and a 60% chance that at least one of them will fire.

And as for the first eighteen seconds (before caltrops is stacked), there are four 20 percent separate chances for procs to fire, due to the fact that the procs fire once on cast and once ten seconds after that.

All told, that's a total of four chances for a proc every ten seconds right from cast, with a 60% chance that at least one of them will go off for a total of at least 70 points of damage per affected mob.

But that's just the procs. By itself, the caltrops in his build does (with damage set bonuses applied) around 2.78 points of damage every 2 seconds, so for the first eighteen seconds it does 14 additional points of damage per mob. By the time the third chance to proc comes up it will be doing 5.56 points of damage per tic for a total of 28 points of damage per proc chance after the first twenty seconds.

So that's a guaranteed 14-28 points with a 60% chance of at least doubling the damage every ten seconds.

There's yet another factor. What are the odds that a given mob will be in the patch long enough to for the procs to have at least two chances to fire?

Ordinary movement rate in this game is 21 ft/sec. Apply a 90% debuff (replacing the Ragnarok proc with a slow) to that and you've got 2 ft/sec. With a 15 foot radius, it would take a minion 7.5 seconds to run straight from you to the outside of the patch, provided they're not immune to slows (curse you, Warwolves).

Which they will never do. Depending on the spawn size, there will be other mobs in the way, meaning that every minion trying to get off the patch will likely have to change direction to move around one of his partners. In addition, every third tick or so the AI will tell the mob to turn and fire off a ranged attack, taking anywhere from one to three seconds to animate on average.

So you can reasonably expect a minion to be on the patch initially for at or around 10 seconds, giving you that 14 points with a 60% chance of 70 more.

Once a minion (or lt, for that matter) gets to the edge of the patch, however, they'll magically forget all about it and turn around and go right back in. They likely won't make it to you, but you can reasonably expect them to be on the patch for the third proc for damage (which, if Caltrops has been stacked, will carry a 60% chance of at least 70 more points of damage, plus somewhere between 14 and 28 points from the caltrops themselves, depending on how long they're on the patch this time)

And of course that cycle repeats itself until the minion is either killed by you or gets proc damaged to death.

All told, you can reasonably expect eight proc chances per minion, with an 84% chance that at least one of them will hit him, with a pretty darned near infinitesimal chance (.00025%) that all eight chances will roll in your favor for a total of around 560 points of damage (plus whatever caltrops ordinarily does, most likely somewhere between 20 and 40 points of damage).

So you're right. Caltrops won't - in and of itself - be guaranteed to kill a single minion. In a protracted battle, however, the odds are that at least one or two of the minions will have the majority of their damage done to them with caltrops. And yes, some of them might have an itty bitty chance to actually die from caltrops alone.

Take splash damage from your flashing steel and golden dragon into account and add that to any confusion damage from blinding powder and you'd see more than one minion suddenly keel over and die while fleeing the caltrops.

EDIT - I have a headache now from all that math. I forgot to mention this: Most fights will not last twenty to thirty seconds unless you play at the higher difficulties. You can expect higher than 2.8 dps, however. Calculating on a 60% chance of a single proc firing, you've got 4.2 additional dps to add to the 1.39 dps already provided by caltrops for a total of 5.59-6.98 extra dps, depending on whether or not caltrops is stacked. Not a great deal, given Flashing Steel's 48-ish DPS (for example), but considering caltrops' dismal dps without them and those two extra slots - if they can be afforded (and on that build I'd argue that they can) make the difference between an excellent mitigation power and an excellent mitigation power with offensive potential.

Did I miss something? Have they changed Quantum Flight? To my knowledge you can still do all of those things with it.

Ah. I had logged out there last time I played him, but I didn't think it had been long enough to get the credit.

Mystery solved - thanks!

Let me ask you this: Are you killing his bifurcate copies as they spawn? He has the ability to teleport parts of himself to multiple places at the same time to recouperate, so finding and killing those copies makes him MUCH easier to defeat. That, and knocking him back into the lava (if you can manage it).

Or, you could try to last him out. That's what my Ice/Axe tanker did. Took me FOREVER, and I had to let him wail on me while I went around killing off his copies, but for whatever reason he eventually stopped regenerating through bifurcates altogether (I'm going with: energy absorption ran him out of endurance) and I could take him down.

FWIW, my tanker is mostly SO'd (two five-slotted sets of crushing impact and two five-slotted sets of red fortune are the only bonuses he has going) and ran the mission at +1x8, so - given the right tactics and some luck - I have no doubt that you'll be able to take him down at some point.

You're not counting the time it takes to assemble the required players to complete the task forces and raids, which - depending on schedules and servers - can increase said time considerably.

With everyone wanting to run more task forces to get the shards that will be much less of a problem in the immediate future, but I sure would like to have - since I can already run at +6 to +8 on most of my 50's - the ability to start and run things like the Imperious TF with just me or with the two or three people I team with regularly.

That's one of the main reasons I've run the Oroborous TF's so many times...

I highly recommend you do exactly this. But don't make any decisions on whom to IO until you've gotten the Warshade to 50.