Werner

In the game, as it exists today, a top end Dark/Shield build has the same capped DDR that Super Reflexes has. It may change some day, but I don't plan around what maybe, someday, might happen, if the devs are in a bad mood and feel like swinging the nerf bat. We could just as easily suggest that they may someday nerf something that benefits Super Reflexes as they could someday nerf something that benefits Shield Defense. Advantage: Tie.

I don't count the recharge of Super Reflexes as an advantage. Why? Well, recharge is merely a tool. What does it improve on a Dark Melee/Super Reflexes? Damage, and very little else. It makes it easier to get the top DPS chain (heal included) and lets you keep Soul Drain up for a slightly higher percentage of the time. But Dark/Shield can run the top DPS chain too, and destroys DM/SR on DPS, AoE, and pretty much any other measure of damage output. Advantage: Shield Defense.

Then we have scaling resistance. That's great and all, and it adds up, and it's saved my bacon. But Shield Defense has full time resistance. You don't have to wait to get badly hurt, so it's better for the sharp spikes of damage you tend to see in high end play, like AV soloing. You also get the hit point bonus from True Grit, which is functionally equivalent to resistance. Against All Odds also has a damage debuff. Advantage: Shield Defense.

I'm not saying I WANT it to be this way. I WANT DM/SR to have SOMETHING that it can claim to be better at when IO'd to the gills. I do, after all, have a DM/SR IO'd to the gills that I would like to be competitive in SOME way. But I'm just not seeing any advantage to DM/SR over DM/SD when both are IO'd to the gills.

Ditto. I don't bid on L53 stuff that doesn't exist. I bid on recipes I would love to have for the price I'm offering. Well, technically, I'm only bidding on a single Gladiator 3%, because I'm "influence poor" at the moment, at least compared to before purpling out my last build.

Yeah, it's mostly been buffs for a long time. Apparently, the devs think it's time to reign it in a little. Thing is, it kinda doesn't matter how minor it is. Alexei is affected by the Miracle and Zephyr changes, and his build is very finely balanced. It's going to be ugly trying to get that balance back at an admittedly only slightly-lower peak of power. I'm not going to bother working on a build till this is all out, Mids' is updated, and so on. But it's going to take time and effort to figure out what I want, and then I'm expecting one of those annoying multiple-respec respecs. It's just annoying. I won't be gimp. I'm just frickin' annoyed at needing to deal with it. And frankly, that goes for buffs almost as much as nerfs. Who moved my cheese?

EXACTLY.

LOL! Get some sleep, Umbral. I hate to see you out of form.

TopXFX, Umbral's an expert at this stuff. Looks like a good build to me, but duh.

Continue running the chain exactly as you have it. You have the correct order for burst damage. I was merely repeating the order I was given rather than initiating a burst damage discussion. The order makes no difference for required recharge or for DPS.

It seems like we've so far identified three possible cases for using Build Up, which are largely based on how long an enemy is expected to be standing.

1) Pure burst damage to take down lesser enemies that won't be alive in ten seconds.
2) Maximum damage output on an enemy expected to be standing for more than ten seconds, but less than a Build Up recharge.
3) Pure DPS to take down hard targets that will survive for more than a full Build Up cycle, like AVs and pylons.

The first case seems by far the most common to me. I spend the vast majority of the game destroying crowds, and even on +4x8, minions aren't likely to last ten seconds. Some harder targets in the crowd will likely survive past the Build Up duration, but I still want to front load the damage, leading with my AoEs to eliminate minions, then my heavy hitters to eliminate a few more targets. In that case, the 5.25 second duration of the proc, used in Build Up itself, is buffing my AoE and a heavy hitter or two. I'm taking maximum advantage of the proc.

The second case seems rare to me. I'm trying to think of good examples. Maybe an uplevel boss farm? An Elite Boss where you want to leave the minions alive as fuel for some power? In those cases, yes, you'll be best off with an attack sequence where your biggest, longest attack happens at the end of the Build Up duration so as to get maximum overall damage out of a single Build Up. In this case, delaying big attacks is taking sub-optimal advantage of the Build Up PROC, but optimal advantage of the Build Up. This seems to be the situation you're focusing in on when suggesting that you won't get maximum benefit out of the Build Up proc, even in Build Up.

The third case is also rare. But unless you have a very carefully tuned recharge so that you can repeat your optimal damage sequence of attacks right after Build Up recharges, you'll likely be best off just hitting Build Up as soon as it recharges. In this case, you're taking merely average advantage of the Build Up proc. It is buffing a random selection of your attacks.

So from my perspective, you're focusing on rare cases to support your point, where most of the cases will actually support the opposite point, and some support neither point.

Except when AV killing or pylon soloing, where Build Up is being used ONLY to improve DPS. In that case, some very careful timing might be of minor use. When I'm doing DPS calculations, I may well carefully tune which attacks go when to maximize use of the Build Up for DPS purposes. Ending up with a long activating big-hitter at the end up the Build Up is good in that case. But generally, it's the second or third activation of the big hitter in the build up period. And I don't play the game that carefully by any means. I'm a lazy gamer.

So I understand what Windenergy21 is talking about with wanting to put the big attack at the end. But using Build Up purely for DPS is a bit of an aberration in the game as a whole. The basic use of Build Up is for burst damage, where you want as much up front as possible, so most people in most situations will lead with their big attacks.

Dangnabbit. I've been trying to be careful about what's a raw damage buff and what's a final damage buff, but I still managed to confuse myself. Ah, well. Sorry. My dumb. *chuckle*

Ah, yeah. Not sure why I wasn't considering that. A bit more troublesome to quantify, but it shouldn't be ignored either.

You're right. I'm probably discounting the "damage later" by too much in my subjective evaluation.

Uh... you mean with the current % and uptime? Didn't I already do this math? I came up with 18.375 average "damage" for the proc in the example. We could argue that I should extend the 5.25 seconds a bit, I suppose. Still, it's not going to hit the average damage of 35.3 from the purple damage proc, assuming that's what you mean by "a rare damage proc". Did I misunderstand what you meant by a rare damage proc? Did I mess up the math?

Wait! Sorry, I think I know what you're talking about. You're talking about where I was saying I'd rather have the purple proc than the Gaussian with twice the duration, right? Because my own math would then put the build up proc at slightly more damage than the purple proc, but I was still saying I'd prefer the purple proc? I think I was discounting the "damage later" by too much, though that might be balanced by the possibility that we're at the tail end of a fight (assuming the proc is in an attack) so don't get the full five seconds. Still, it seems like average damage of it would be comparable to the purple proc, plus it comes with extra to hit. So yeah, on second thought, with the things you've pointed out, I'd probably go with the double duration build up proc instead of the purple proc. Chances are I'd have both, but if I had to choose, the double duration build up proc might be the better choice.

And if that's true, then it seems like the current build up proc with its current duration might be better than I've been giving it credit for. Maybe I need to reexamine some slotting and actually do some calculations in real builds rather than just thinking, "Oh, that's the build up proc. It's lame." Mind you, pretty much the only time I end up with damage procs is when they're parts of sets, so it may not affect any of my current builds. Something I should keep in mind in the future, though. Might affect my Fire/Shield, since I'm considering going for max damage output instead of max survivability.

Gobbledygook's build is almost fast enough for Smite -> Midnight Grasp -> Smite -> Siphon Life. Close enough that I'd just run that chain with tiny gaps. Yours and MunkiLord's are both fast enough, at least while Hasten is up.

Well, it would only be better than a purple proc for high DPS builds, let's say over 200 DPS. And even then, since a purple proc is damage now, and the build up proc is damage in the future, I'd be prone to taking the purple proc on anything but an AV and pylon soloer. But given the difference in rarity, I don't think I should be trying to choose between a purple proc and a build up proc. I think I should be trying to choose between a regular damage proc and a build up proc. And that's about where we sit today, with the Build Up proc almost always losing. Maybe not by much, but losing.

Nope, that's just ONE Parry.