I really want to make a dagger class and thus it comes down to either making a Dual Blade or a Shadower.
I've read a lot of information on multiple different sites and sources and I haven't really really gotten a solid answer yet.
I've also checked JoeTang's damage chart and that is incredibly helpful but I've heard that its very theoretical and does not actually represent actual damage output. As of such, I want to know what you all think about the DPM of Dual Blades vs Shadowers.
Furthermore, it would be excellent if someone could post a quick tutorial on how to calculate DPM. I checked out the max/min damage tutorial in this thread but to calculate actual DPM is new to me.
2013-06-17, 03:11 PM (This post was last modified: 2013-06-18, 05:53 AM by hadriel.)
Very brief overview. "-->" means "into" i.e. plug the thing (usually multiply) before the arrow into the next thing on the right. Watch the [ ] brackets.
Your range --> [critical rate --> average critical damage] --> Skill damage and hits --> [Damage modifiers (e.g. boss damage, %DMG) + Hypers] --> [Monster PDR --> All IgnorePDR sources] --> [Skill Delays --> Skill chaining] --> No. of mobs.
Explanations are below.
Wall of Text
Your range: obvious, but loads of stuff in it. Won't go into it. Use the average of your min and max.
Critical rate into critical damage: your average critical damage depends on skills that affect mincritdmg and maxcritdmg. Examples of the former usually include most passives and Hayato card; the latter would include SE. The default min and max crit damage are 1.20 and 1.50 respectively. Note that mincritdmg will never exceed maxcritdmg, and that some skills have a guaranteed critical or increased critical rate which you may have to factor in separately. The formula for this part is:
[1 + critrate*avgcritdmgbonus]
where critrate is your critical rate as shown on your stats UI but in decimals, and avgcritdmgbonus is the average bonus damage your criticals deal i.e. it would be (0.2 + 0.5)/2 = 0.35 without any min/maxcritdmg modifiers. See the spoiler to see where this came from.
Spoiler
let your crit rate be x, and your avgcritdmgbonus be y (default value for y is 0.35)
On average, for x amount of time you will be doing criticals, which will have a damage of 1+y. Therefore this component is simply x*(1+y).
On average, for 1-x amount of time, you will be doing normal hits (100%) and have a damage of 1. This component is thus 1*(1-x) = 1-x
Therefore your total sum of average damage is
1-x + x*(1+y) == 1-x + x + xy
= 1 + xy
Skill damage and hits: see your skill damage % and multiply by no. of hits. Watch out for Shadow partner and stuff.
Damage modifiers: apparently Hypers' skill bonuses to damage stack additively with boss damage and all other %DMG modifiers. So just sum them up, and you then have:
[1 + %DMG + %Boss + %Hyper]
Monster PDR into IgnorePDR: All monsters have a defense rate that takes away a percentage/fraction of your damage. A PDR of 40% means that it ignores 40% of your damage. So your damage will thus be: (1 - PDR).
But, you may have skills and potential lines and stuff that allows you to ignore this PDR (yes, ignoring ignores). These sources of IgnorePDR stack additively. So if you have 40% + 40% + 30% = 100% IgnorePDR, that means that the monster's PDR is effectively 0% and you do full damage. A 20% IgnorePDR will mean that the monster's PDR is reduced by 20%. The monster's effective PDR becomes: [PDR*(1 - IgnorePDR)]
Therefore, the formula for this entire part is
[1 - PDR(1 - IgnorePDR)]
Note this is for GMS only; it does not apply to KMS, where IgnorePDR is multiplicative. Also note that any excess of IgnorePDR does not grant you bonus damage (no point going over 100%).
Skill delays into skill chaining: All skills have a delay - see extractions for the delays for individual skills. Those numbers are effectively the period of an attack [units of milliseconds]- you want the frequency of attack i.e. damage per second [no more milliseconds!], so you divide all the stuff you have by these numbers, or multiply by their reciprocal: blahblah*[1/delay].
But your attack rate is dependent on delays and your weapon speed. You will recall that you have booster, and there is (decent) speed infusion etc. Those lower the delay according to this formula:
[delay * (10 + effwepspd)/16]
Where effwepspd is your effective weapon speed. First check the attack speed of your weapon (see the Southperry database). Then see all sources of attack speed boosters, namely: booster: -2 (usually), SI: -2 (Decent: -1), Azwan inner ability: -1, BaM's Yellow Aura: -1, some skills with passive effect: check extractions.
effwepspd will not go below speed stage 2, and the outcome of this multiplication must be rounded up to the nearest 30 millisecond (i.e if you somehow obtain 820ms, it will be rounded up to 840ms).
Hurricane-type skills (i.e. skills with a rapidattack tag on them) have delays different from those shown, and may differ from skill to skill. They are not affected by boosters etc. (although their charge-up/release speed might be slightly boosted). Also note that you may have to consider summons (Ifrit, Elquines, Baha, Octopus, Kaiser's Wingbeats etc.) that have their own sets of delays/no. of hits and damage.
Some skills can be chained into one another. I'm not a shadower but I recall that you can chain skills from one to another e.g. Boomerang Step into Assaulter, etc. See JoeTang's wonderful thread for more information as to how they reduce a skill's delay: http://www.southperry.net/showthread.php...20Chaining
No. of mobs: No. of mobs hit. 'nuff said.
That's generally about it, as briefly as possible while providing explanation and clarity. There might be some slight bits here and there that are less important which I didn't mention, but this is the general overview. Note these are theoretical, and are affected by damage cap and stuff so sometimes it's better to consider hits/s if you always cap. Nothing here considers practicality of using skills, how nice it is to play a class blah blah blah. We will always tell people this: don't run to play a class just because of the numbers.
If you're playing a class for damage, play a Kaiser or something top tier.
If you're playing a *dagger* class for damage, you will find that both are pretty equal.
Shadowers have higher theoretical damage output than DBs with and without unlimited FC.
However, if you are funding well, DB passes shad with merely 100% boss and goes much above with 200%+. Even less needed to be said is that shads will cap with nate before DBs with Phantom Blow if you're super funding.
Shadowers have better survivability by far after unlimited.
The thing that I want to stress most is not to play a class for damage, though. Pick both up and get both to a decent level or just watch videos to see which you like best and choose that one.
Playing a class just for damage will not make it fun. And that's what a game is for. Fun.
Good luck choosing; I hope you make the right selection.
See Wrote:If you're playing a class for damage, play a Kaiser or something top tier.
If you're playing a *dagger* class for damage, you will find that both are pretty equal.
Shadowers have higher theoretical damage output than DBs with and without unlimited FC.
However, if you are funding well, DB passes shad with merely 100% boss and goes much above with 200%+. Even less needed to be said is that shads will cap with nate before DBs with Phantom Blow if you're super funding.
Shadowers have better survivability by far after unlimited.
The thing that I want to stress most is not to play a class for damage, though. Pick both up and get both to a decent level or just watch videos to see which you like best and choose that one.
Playing a class just for damage will not make it fun. And that's what a game is for. Fun.
Good luck choosing; I hope you make the right selection.
Great response!! Thanks so much for your very helpful thoughts!
The thing is, after some time, dont most classes reach damage cap? And at that point wouldn't it just come down to who has faster attack?
See Wrote:you will find that both are pretty equal.
However, if you are funding well, DB passes shad with merely 100% boss and goes much above with 200%+. Even less needed to be said is that shads will cap with nate before DBs with Phantom Blow if you're super funding.
Shadowers have better survivability by far after unlimited.
Cryptography Wrote:To clarify, in that sentence, is the shad super funding or is the DB super funding?
Both. If you super fund a shad, it will be limited by cap while a DB will continue to be able to raise damage.
Cryptography Wrote:Great response!! Thanks so much for your very helpful thoughts!
The thing is, after some time, dont most classes reach damage cap? And at that point wouldn't it just come down to who has faster attack?
Well with the 50m cap, only classes with very high % skills can hit cap.
Shadowers have one of the highest % 1v1 skills in the game. The downside is that it's marginally slower than most other 1v1 skills and has 8(?) hits, 4 being 70% damage.
The pure % makes up for this until cap is reached. At varying times after that (depending on how hard the other 1v1 skill hits), other classes that are below in theoretical damage pass up shadowers.
DBs are probably impossible to hit cap with PB (asura can cap) in KMS even with max possible funding. And KMS has flames, better EEs, etc. So cap isn't the deciding factor on everything, but you get the point.
2013-06-17, 09:09 PM (This post was last modified: 2013-06-17, 09:10 PM by MountLag.)
Cryptography Wrote:More content to your response please!
Phantom Blow + Asura > everything Shad has except Assassinate.
Assassinate has a damage cap problem if you want to fund Shad a lot (although this issue will be gone soon).
DB can scout for when damage reflect ends using Chains of Hell. Chains of Hell doesn't trigger damage reflect. I believe Final Cut doesn't trigger damage reflect either, but I don't have a DB so not sure.
Asura has a chance of lasting more than 10 seconds due to lag. I have no idea how often this happens since I don't have a DB. Lots of free damage whenever it happens.
DB use 2 weapons. So they achieve higher ranges more easily.
Asura provides a lot of burst damage. Lots of damage concentrated into its 10s duration. Shadowers have burst damage too but not as much.
In JoeTang's tables Assassinate only barely beats Phantom Blow + Asura at 0% boss. It loses at 100% and 200% boss. I'm assuming it's easy to get enough buff duration to have Final Cut active all the time though.
Shad has some advantages of course (they get 9999 def + 9999 avoid easily), but for damage I think DB is a lot better both in theory and in practice. Most of this is due to Asura. I think the only bad thing about Asura is getting statused while it's active.
To be honest I don't know that much about Shadowers beyond that, other than coins filling up the screen at LHC and lagging everyone when they have pickpocket active.
See Wrote:Both. If you super fund a shad, it will be limited by cap while a DB will continue to be able to raise damage.
Well with the 50m cap, only classes with very high % skills can hit cap.
Shadowers have one of the highest % 1v1 skills in the game. The downside is that it's marginally slower than most other 1v1 skills and has 8(?) hits, 4 being 70% damage.
The pure % makes up for this until cap is reached. At varying times after that (depending on how hard the other 1v1 skill hits), other classes that are below in theoretical damage pass up shadowers.
DBs are probably impossible to hit cap with PB (asura can cap) in KMS even with max possible funding. And KMS has flames, better EEs, etc. So cap isn't the deciding factor on everything, but you get the point.
Again, thanks for the great responses. I'm kind of a damage whore and damage is kind of a big deal to me. I mean this in that I want the highest damaging class for the specific role I want to play (in this case daggers).
So the real calculation would be PB vs Assassinate/Shad combos? Or do DBs use something other than PB as their main attack?
And one last thing, what did you mean by "DB will continue to be able to raise damage"?
Cryptography Wrote:Again, thanks for the great responses. I'm kind of a damage whore and damage is kind of a big deal to me. I mean this in that I want the highest damaging class for the specific role I want to play (in this case daggers).
So the real calculation would be PB vs Assassinate/Shad combos? Or do DBs use something other than PB as their main attack?
And one last thing, what did you mean by "DB will continue to be able to raise damage"?
Okay.
Same amount of funding goes into both characters.
Shad hits 50m with nate.
DB hits 20m with PB.
DB can continue to raise its damage above 20m. Shad is stuck at 50m.
Say 20m with PB is the same output as 50m with nate. That means DB can beat shadower with any new funds after that and shad is completely stuck.
Simple Answer:
DB is better unless you do not fund the character at all.
All that matters is after 100% boss, a DB outdamages a shad whether either are hitting cap or not.
Thanks for the great feedback. I really mean it. Sorry if I started to annoy you with the constant questions. I came back recently after a looooong break and I hardly know anything.
YennoX Wrote:You want to see practical comparisons?
Strip down both characters and go to monster park or dojo and see what the clearing times are for each.
And this is different from equalizing stats on the upper funding range how?
See Wrote:Okay.
Same amount of funding goes into both characters.
Shad hits 50m with nate.
DB hits 20m with PB.
DB can continue to raise its damage above 20m. Shad is stuck at 50m.
Say 20m with PB is the same output as 50m with nate. That means DB can beat shadower with any new funds after that and shad is completely stuck.
Simple Answer:
DB is better unless you do not fund the character at all.
All that matters is after 100% boss, a DB outdamages a shad whether either are hitting cap or not.
Shads cap at 70m by the way. Epic adv (+5m), nate hyper (bring to 60m), flip of coin (+5m).
