A question regarding DPS

Invector

Active Member
Joined
18/04/2020
Messages
117
I've got another question I'm hoping one of you can answer. It's regarding base damage vs. DPS on weapons. I know there are a lot of variables when it comes to choosing the best weapon, but leaving out all the additional attributes a weapon may have, and just looking at the base damage and DPS, which is more desirable? I've been using Gurguth's Maul for a bit, but I noticed that some other weapons, despite having a lower base damage, provide a higher DPS. I'm just wondering which is more effective, all other variables being equal.
I appreciate all the help I get here. Thank you!
 

VDX_360

Staff member
Moderator
Joined
20/01/2017
Messages
6,126
Simple explanation: Like pretty much all other games, a high DPS is best against low or mid-range defensive enemies and a higher damage-per-hit (DPH) is better against well armored enemies. Think goblins and knights, for example.

The in-game DPS does NOT include calculations based on enemy defense, enemy resistance, weapon attributes (Holy, Orc Slayer etc). Thus, the in-game displayed DPS might not reflect actual DPS dealt. That's where the combat log can be helpful. You may have a weapon that has a high DPS due to elemental damage (e.g. Icicle) but when fighting ice monsters, it's ice damage is reduced, so a fire weapon that does less damage normally might due more actual damage because it gets a damage boost from fighting ice monsters. Same thing applies to weapons with attributes like Orc Slayer, Beast Slayer, Holy etc. Those add damage that isn't included in the in-game DPS.

In a finer point, weapons that have Slow, Stun, or Paralysis might be more effective even if they do less damage because the inherent benefit of stunning an enemy.

The weapon attribute Vicious is an odd case. It gets a damage boost when enemies are low on hit-points. So it might not have the highest DPS at the start of the fight, but it might (or might not) do higher DPS when you're going for the kill. This is helpful against enemies that buff out when they're weak.

Lastly, some weapons pair better with player skills. Given the number of classes, possibly builds and weapon types, it's a long conversation about how much a difference in DPS or DPH really matters for each situation.
 

p4ran0id

Staff member
Moderator
Joined
27/01/2017
Messages
2,063
To say it simple, bosses with high armor => high damage (not DPS)

But it's way more complicated, best way is to check the resistance of the enemy, if it's week to poison for example, than use poison weapons and ignore the DPS. That's the only way to kill unweakened undermother for example.

Also combination of skills is very important. Flurry, Duell, precision Hits, massive criticals is for example an amazing combination, not only for rogues with backstab, also warrior light build is really effective, therefore you need light weapon, it has less damage but high speed, so you get way faster to +10 damage with duell and thanks to flurry your speed goes up. Massive criticals works for hits, the more hits per second so higher the chances to get massive crit damage to your enemy. Really funny with cleave.

I did such a warrior build, it's really fun to play it once you get how to use it
 

Musagetes

New Member
Joined
24/05/2020
Messages
5
Quick question. How do you get flurry and the duel skill? They are separate guild skills and I assume you need to join the warrior guild to get the duel skill right? Is there a resource that can explain what skills are locked behind actually joining a guild vs just being their friend?
 

stonedwolf

Loreseeker
Joined
06/02/2019
Messages
1,163
You do not need to join The House to get Flurry.

Not every guild-taught skill requires membership. For example you have to be a member of the Warrior's Guild to learn Duel but ANYONE can visit them to learn Precision Strikes.
 

Musagetes

New Member
Joined
24/05/2020
Messages
5
The guy who teaches flurry is inside their base in Freetown but you need to know a special door knock in order to enter. Figured you learned it from joining the guild
 
Joined
26/05/2020
Messages
31
Eh, I'm going to write heresy. All of this applies to base material damage, not elemental damage, which is far more important - storming the frozen depths using nothing but ice storm? Yeah buddy, let us know how that goes. ;)

- the light v. two-handed difference is BS.

...folks, for the most part, just took the warrior 2-handed skill (and the mages' much better 2-handed skill, which basically doesn't pertain here) and applied it to, like, everything. The other class that can use 2-handed - clerics - just get the same 1.5x str bonus as anyone... and that's exactly the same as a light fighter; a flashy 1.5x straight up, or 1x agi + 0.5x str a bit later. Follows the rest of the game, frankly; a greataxe or greatsword or maul is moderately impressive when killing five goblins at the start, in its upper damage levels, even with 0s across the top. An iron dagger isn't so impressive with 0s across the top.

Base damage, however, means almost nothing in the late game. The light fighter has the same heavy hand as you. The light fighter gets their duel up faster. And (sans warrior skills), you get a flashy up-to-5-points-of-damage... quicker... than the light figher. Not more, just a bit earlier, and they're already picking up another +2 for having the prereqs towards heavy hand.

...meanwhile, a light figher with flurry maxed gets to +10 duel much, much, MUCH quicker. So, your late 2h cleric (or your nonspecialized figher wielding a 2h) is facing... basically the same. +15 from stats? +15 from stats. +5 from heavyhand? +5 from heavyhand. So, same +20 on each of theirs... is the possibility of an extra 5 damage or so really worth not getting to +10 duel in 2 seconds flat, and hitting every single time? And how does that extra 5 base weapon dps or so compare to that advantage?

Meanwhile, you gave up having 10 extra armor AND the shield benefits... for this?? Honestly, even with the warrior (the only class that's spec'd for 2h to be useful beyond early-game), you're basically looking better off starting 2h and respeccing to a dagger fighter from about the minute you get warriors' guild membership.

....and that's not even counting the fact that while a light fighter usually gets heavyhand (and its prereqs add to damage) fairly early, and then builds more agi beyond the 1-2pt starting help, your 2h warrior isn't getting flurry for a loong time.

So, duel, heavyhand, post-endgame str/agi maxing with severe tolassian tome abuse...
- at +30, does an extra 5-10 points of possible base damage really matter that much?
- even when we're landing that +30 bonus (plus a +6, if we want a cheap/free potion) twice as often, or more, than you hit??

Yeah. A little over +65 dps when you've got flurry on. (and hitting base weapon damage, and any of that disregarded elemental damage, 2.6 times per second). What's that extra base weapon damage worth, exactly? And you gave up +10 armor and, more importantly, a shield bonus for this???

...but oh, wait. Most 2h aren't the same speed as a longsword, so multiply that advantage even more. And if you do get flurry, probably around the time we're pulling a larger strength bonus than heavyhand's prereqs, we're talking a 4 in a second-best stat versus a 6 in a dump stat you can't even use because you don't have a shield - endurance is a 2her's agility replacement.

2h warriors (but not 2h clerics) get stun. Rogue archers get stun. Stun is really, really neat... but by around the ark or a little bit after it, I'm guessing that 2000 gold is pretty cheap. And that's the ultimate warrior strategy - 2h->1h retrain when the advantages kick over. To be fair (to the warrior), stun does shift the curve a bit - you can monte-carlo a self-bot in jscript/html if you like looking at text reports to find out exactly where that switchover is, and spirit resistance in an adversary pushes it downward a little bit.

...that said, for the majority of the game, and for a warrior (cleric is mostly 'it's a troll, and vulcan dagger sucks and I have at least 3-4 strength,' at least until you get a flaming warhammer - and that's without arbenos' help, or with a fear it'll run out), the pre-armor output is fairly decent. Not everyone finds out they were robbed in their sleep at level 75. :)

That brings us to another issue - the fact that mechanical damage itself is a U-shaped curve. No armor at all? Definitely need a giant freaking damage in one single smash. So much armor that all solutions are minimum? Sometimes it's better to scratch for 3 damage a lot, really really fast, than to scratch for 4 damage seldom.

...and then there's this sweet spot in the middle where one party is doing actual damage, and one party is merely scratching. Which is which can vary - that 4str req for heavy hand honestly just saves points in getting another +1 damage, and just under a 1 in 5 chance of getting 300% damage on a base 25-30 dph boost could be what tips it, precision strikes is almost a waste for a greataxe user - but sometimes, it's the 2h warrior. And only right in the sweet spot. And as described above, usually at the "I haven't beaten the game yet" level.

Two sloped lines, one going up, one going down, crashing against armor. At the end, you're only getting a few points DPH. A lot of the game, for a warrior, is not at the end (though an armor focus in a light fighter can boost that earlier slightly in total). Killing five goblins, a crit with a greatsword and 2str is downright amazing - a crazed berserker.

It's a mentality. Battle rage is great without paralysis for 2h, it seems insane for the "always on max preparedness" mindset of a light fighter. Armor, precision strikes, and mass crit are almost useless for a 2h - no shield, no agi, no crit chance. This and flurry, plus the things we share (duel, cleave for warriors, and heavyhand, which benefit light fighters just a liiiitle bit more) are the basis of a dagger warrior. Who, thanks to shadow blade, can finally put down primal icicle eventually, which totally bugged me. (Testing suggests that a bluesteel dagger can do more dps than primal icicle, at least under a pre-1.0 version that includes primal icicle and calls it primal, eventually)

"I'm just wondering which is more effective, all other variables being equal."

...at times, large elemental damage - it's especially awesome in a warrior with cleave. And especially awesome in something with 30-50 armor and the shield attribute, and a whopping -200 vuln to something. Those who would be masters of magic should remember the list of very large vulns in an element they can reach somehow.

Otherwise... it varies by all the junk above, and largely, but not entirely due to all the other factors (my large elemental damage hits that vuln 2.6 times a second while neither uf us are getting through the armor?? light/elemental, totally), on whether you're in that sweet spot in the u-shaped armor curve.

One other factor stated, but without the math being spelled out - a dagger (13/7) has (26/18) stats on flurry III/prec strikes III, and crits at 3x on mass crit III, iirc.

That's an 82% chance of not critting. At Speed 20, rather than 26, that's a 1 - (.82 x .82) = 32.76% chance of that +30 bonus (plus a little from potions, bloodlust, whatever where applicable) becoming a +90 bonus to DPH. (add g.str pot and bl III, and it's +126 DPH).

If, and this is a big if, one can account for the .6 by calling it (.6 x 18) chance of crit per second, and I'm not sure that we can, that would be 1 - (.82 x .82 x .91), it jumps to a .388116 chance of a +90-+126 DPH or so. In any given second.

To double check that, changing speed 26 to 25 is speed 50 over... 2 seconds instead of 1. 1-(.82 x. 82 x .82 x .82 x .82) = 0.6292601568‬ chance of one strike in 2 seconds getting that 300% increase to +90-+126 plus base damage x 3. And the 1-(0.61184 x ‬0.61184), eg 2 seconds instead of one, that came out of the (.82 x .82 x 0.91) calculation above is... 0.625597970544‬.

I'd say that 0.6292601568 and 0.625597970544‬ are similar numbers, from a calculation perspective. So, yes, 90-126 + (base damage x 3) has about a 40& chance of happening (.388116) in a given second with a light fighter is an accurate statement.

"all other variables being equal."

...all other variables being not equal - stun, armor/shield and other build differences being chucked - it's definitely 2h for beginner-intermediate warrior, dagger for very-advanced-level.

...of course, you're level 55 by the time you have 10str/10agi minimum, so very late level for the full end-stage numbers. You can knock that down to l36 (fairly attainable for an ek junkie, especially with gold to burn on scrolls and/or thelume) with the +2 belt from the guild and +1 agi from... somewhere, and l19 ('not quite ready to walk into the ark yet') with the belt from your guild and automated gloves... from the ark. If, that is, all other scores are 0. You'll need 1/1/2 extra across the bottom to keep prec.strike and duel, so... level 21. Barely ready to walk into the ark + one more pers (and not gear) if you threw bloodlust in there.

...without tolassian tomes. With them, you might be able to push this all the way down to l10 warrior or something.

-

This... is probably more information than you wanted. tl;dr - there's a sweet spot in the(ir) armor where 10-20 points over armor reduction makes a huge difference, wherever it comes from. Any more, and you're pitting a very fast 4-point scratch against a slower 5 or 6 point minimum scratch (or vice versa). Any much less, and you're comparing 100 DPH to 110 DPH, and one or the other is faster.

Right tool for the right job, and/or right tool for the build. A lot of times, that's elemental, especially with splash/area, just to bring mages back into it with elemental area.

I would seriously just make a computer monte carlo the thing if I wanted to check warriors' 2h stun against varying spirit resistance. I mean, really. Let alone all the other junk that goes into "different builds," such as 2h/bash vs daggerflurry/duel.

Dagger warriors have really awesome armor, though, and resillence and shield expert make semi-decent sense when you have no place left to put skill points, though. ;)
 
Last edited:

stonedwolf

Loreseeker
Joined
06/02/2019
Messages
1,163
The guy who teaches flurry is inside their base in Freetown but you need to know a special door knock in order to enter. Figured you learned it from joining the guild

You need to do quests Welcome to the House then Smugglers in the Night, each in New Garand. After that you can get the special knock from the guy standing outside of the house. Neither mission requires guild membership.
 

Top