Inv/DM -- Touch of Fear or Midnight Grasp?

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?)

You make it sound way more complicated than it really is. Read this paragonwiki page if you really want to understand the math behind resistance debuffs. The summary is that a 20% resistance debuff will make you do 20% more damage than you were doing previously to an un-debuffed target.

If you are on a team, including Shadow Punch in your attack chain is a good idea because your team can benefit from the debuff as well. Perhaps use Shadow Punch every other attack chain in place of Smite.

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.

That makes very little sense, considering resistance can be put in the negatives. On my Ice/Dark tanker, when I use Shadow Punch before Midnight Grasp, MG always does more damage than if I hadn't used Shadow Punch. I read the formula, but if the target has no resistance to negative energy damage, then they have -20% resistance to negative energy damage, which allows for more damage to be applied.

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.

Yes, it can be taken into negatives. That's why the formula is this simple: Power's damage after damage modifiers * (1 - target's resistance) * (1 + total debuffs). There are caps on debuff amounts but a solo Tanker doesn't have any tools to come close to those caps.

I think you misunderstood my proposed attack chain. It would be SP >> MG >> Sm >> SL >> Sm >> MG >> Sm >> SL. That would ensure the debuff is on for the entire attack chain. It requires 244% total recharge bonus to get MG down to a 4.36s recharge.

I did the calculations on this with unenhanced powers. Sm >> MG >> Sm >> SL does 48.64 DPS. SP >> MG >> Sm >> SL >> Sm >> MG >> Sm >> SL does 54.62 DPS because of the 20% debuff. That's a conservative calculation. It could be higher if the game applies debuffs at the end of a power animation, calculates damage at the beginning of animations, and the debuff lasts longer than 10.03s due to arcanatime.

From a strictly min/max perspective, I do have some powers I could drop, but I honestly can't see the need for ToF. Besides, I plan on soloing most of the time, so I can't skip an important damage power like Smite, and I still don't know how useful Dark Consumption is going to be for my purposes. I don't have Unstoppable.

I can post my build, but I'm pretty well decided on everything in it now. Maybe if I could see the appeal of ToF, I'd be more inclined to working it in.

Oh, and thanks, everyone, for your tips.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.