Weapons, Damage ratings, min/max dmg, proc rate

[Light_Journey]

Hello assassin's. I am relatively new to the community (my assassin has been around for a while but I've only just recently leveled to 50 and intend to push him to 70 in the future) and I had some questions about weapons and what to look for, etc. Right now, I tend to purchase weapons for two reasons.  The stats (STR, AGI, STA primarily and INT as a secondary consideration), the damage rating (higher is better... right? <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />) and whether it proc's and what type of proc it is.  I used to look at the delay (I used to think lower was better), but then as I factored in haste I realized it wasn't alway best to get a weapon with a low delay because no weapon hits more than once per second (so any haste loses it's effectiveness). So as I approach the levels where I may want to spend some serious coin (or DKP as the case may be) on weapons, I'd like to make sure I have my facts straight. So, generally speaking, we want to try to obtain higher delay weapons with the highest damage rating possible, with the greatest difference between min and max damage (Someone told me this was important, though I don't quite understand why) and has the highest proc rate possible.  Does haste effect proc rate?  Is it better then to look for a lower proc rate?  Is a weapon that proc's necessarily that important (in the long run). Currently, I am a blademaster (with 8 points in melee crits) and am moving down the INT line for poison crits.  The only AA I have in the assassin tree is 5 in the cheap shot duration enhancement (I know, may be a waste but it makes soloing easier for now). Any insights I can get from the master assassin's would be greatly appreciated.

[Mithrandi]

Hello Maybe i can help you in some points. Here are some of the top Weapons for Assassins. Grinning Dirk of Horror Bisected Saber Rapier of Darkness Thirneg's Thorn Dirk of Negativity The Maestro's Flame The all have a big damage spread and a high delay. I dont know what you or your guild is able to do, but Grinning Dirk of Horror (Lycenum) and Dirk of Negativity (Halls of Seeing) should be the easiest to get. Especially GdoH with the 1:9 dam-spread, his high delay and the +3 piercing on it is one of the best weapons you can get so far. The only execption in the list above is The Maestro's Flame. The delay and damage spread isnt very good, but its listed here for the Firesong effect. I dont have Maestros for myself - but some people who have one say that the effect deals decent damage.

[grish]

First off, I may be alone on this one but as a raider my stat priority is str, int, sta, agi in that order. Your poisons will deal 9-12% of your zonewide damage, so you want to buff your int up as well as str. You might be a bit confused with delay and damage rating, im no expert but ill try to explain it. The slower a weapon is, the wider of a spread it gets (the difference between its min and max damage). The result is a MUCH higher max damage on the weapon. You can have a 60 damage rating weapon with maxhit of 90, but the grinning dirk is 57 or 59 damage rating and the max hit is 230ish. So as you can see, damage rating isnt everything. The other reason you want the wide spread is because of our criticals, a crit at the least is going to be max damage +1, so of course you want a weapon with a high max that is going to hit more often and for more damage. Additionally our poisons proc more on slower delay weapons. Maestro's flame is nice, not only does it have 25 str/int, the proc goes off on EVERY combat art dealing heat damage. My zonewide estimates this to be about 3% of my damage, which isnt shabby for a proc.

[Light_Journey]

<cite>Mithrandier wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hello Maybe i can help you in some points. Here are some of the top Weapons for Assassins. Grinning Dirk of Horror Bisected Saber Rapier of Darkness Thirneg's Thorn Dirk of Negativity The Maestro's Flame The all have a big damage spread and a high delay. I dont know what you or your guild is able to do, but Grinning Dirk of Horror (Lycenum) and Dirk of Negativity (Halls of Seeing) should be the easiest to get. Especially GdoH with the 1:9 dam-spread, his high delay and the +3 piercing on it is one of the best weapons you can get so far. The only execption in the list above is The Maestro's Flame. The delay and damage spread isnt very good, but its listed here for the Firesong effect. I dont have Maestros for myself - but some people who have one say that the effect deals decent damage. </blockquote>Thanks for the information.  I'll keep this list handy.  I hope to begin raiding some T6 content in the next month and if fortune smiles, T7 within 60 days or less. I still have a couple of specific questions (I guess it boils down to game mechanics) if you or anyone reading knows. <ul><li>Haste.  What exactly does it do?  Does it reduce the delay on weapons?  Does it also affect the proc component?</li><li>Damage spread.  Why is a large min-max important? (Does it result in higher crits?)</li><li>Damage rating.  Is this value a good way to judge (taking delay into consideration) a high DPS weapon?</li><li>Poison damage.  I heard through the grapevine that the posoin damage is calculated through INT?</li></ul>Sorry for all the noob questions, but I essentially am a noob  <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (at least when it comes to assassins.  I have a level 70 warden but these sorts of things never come up when you're a healer <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ).  Ultimately I'm trying to understand where the raid quality DPS comes from so I can coem up to speed faster when I finally do raid. I have looked through a lot of the other posts here and gotten some good info (especially where attack/debuff sequences are concerned). EDIT: The above poster posted at the same time, so some of these questions have been answered <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Light_Journey]

<cite>grish wrote:</cite><blockquote>First off, I may be alone on this one but as a raider my stat priority is str, int, sta, agi in that order. Your poisons will deal 9-12% of your zonewide damage, so you want to buff your int up as well as str. You might be a bit confused with delay and damage rating, im no expert but ill try to explain it. The slower a weapon is, the wider of a spread it gets (the difference between its min and max damage). The result is a MUCH higher max damage on the weapon. You can have a 60 damage rating weapon with maxhit of 90, but the grinning dirk is 57 or 59 damage rating and the max hit is 230ish. So as you can see, damage rating isnt everything. The other reason you want the wide spread is because of our criticals, a crit at the least is going to be max damage +1, so of course you want a weapon with a high max that is going to hit more often and for more damage. Additionally our poisons proc more on slower delay weapons. Maestro's flame is nice, not only does it have 25 str/int, the proc goes off on EVERY combat art dealing heat damage. My zonewide estimates this to be about 3% of my damage, which isnt shabby for a proc.</blockquote> Thanks Grish.  This is exactly the kind of info I was looking for. <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[grish]

Haste pretty much is +attack speed, so if you have a slow weapon and can crank the speed up a bit you will hit that much more. Not only dealing additional melee hits, but you will proc more poisons as well. Also, in case you didnt know aside from poison our 2 biggest skills are maligant mark and cloaked assault. Their zonewide damage will blow your other skills out of the water by a considerable amount.

[Kaediin]

Vaus@Lucan DLere wrote: <blockquote> <ul><li>Haste.  What exactly does it do?  Does it reduce the delay on weapons?  Does it also affect the proc component?</li><li>Damage spread.  Why is a large min-max important? (Does it result in higher crits?)</li><li>Damage rating.  Is this value a good way to judge (taking delay into consideration) a high DPS weapon?</li><li>Poison damage.  I heard through the grapevine that the posoin damage is calculated through INT? </li></ul></blockquote><p>Haste - haste effectivly reduces the delay on a weaponm making you attack more often. On the proc side to the best of my knowledge it doesnt make items proc more often. This is beacuse although its shows a % chance to proc on each attack, the procs are actually normalised on a per minute basis, as such haste doesnt effect the procs per min.</p><p> Damage Spread and Damage Rating - I think Grish explained this better than I would so I will just repost what he posted above - if yuo re read it it makes perfect sence <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </p><p>"The slower a weapon is, the wider of a spread it gets (the difference between its min and max damage). The result is a MUCH higher max damage on the weapon. You can have a 60 damage rating weapon with maxhit of 90, but the grinning dirk is 57 or 59 damage rating and the max hit is 230ish. So as you can see, damage rating isnt everything. The other reason you want the wide spread is because of our criticals, a crit at the least is going to be max damage +1, so of course you want a weapon with a high max that is going to hit more often and for more damage. Additionally our poisons proc more on slower delay weapons."</p><p> Poison Damage - poisons damage is effectively treated like spell damage. The higher you int the higher the maximum damage and the more likely you are to crit. I would highly recommend spending 8 AA points in the poison crit option on the int line. Some poeple may recommend getting your int up to the detriment of your str and agi, there are good reasons to do so, there are good reasons not to. Increasing int will make your poisons do more damage - however if you reduce your str your combat art and auto attack damage will be reduced, if you reduce agi your avoidance and power pool will suffer. So its a bit of a trade off, increase in 1 area and reduce in another and you may notice a drop somewhere.</p>

[grish]

<cite>Kaediin wrote:</cite><blockquote>Vaus@Lucan DLere wrote: <p>Haste - haste effectivly reduces the delay on a weaponm making you attack more often. On the proc side to the best of my knowledge it doesnt make items proc more often. This is beacuse although its shows a % chance to proc on each attack, the procs are actually normalised on a per minute basis, as such haste doesnt effect the procs per min.</p></blockquote>Actually, our proc is calculated on the forumula of weapon delay*3.  This is calculated prior to any adjustments to haste, or other modifiers such as dirge proc bonus ect ect. So lets use the grinning dirk as an example with the 4 second delay. 4sec delay * 3 = 12% proc.  Im just going to hash out some numbers, and these are not going to be accurate. So lets say you proc 10 times per minute with grinning dirk with no outside modifiers. Now lets say you have 25% haste, from items and an illusionist. While this isnt going to actually increase your physical proc %, it does increase the number of times you will hit per minute. So just with 25% haste we could say on the number I used you should proc 12-14 times vs 10 times with no modifiers. So you are right, haste wont actually increase your modifier as would a dirge for example,. but the end result will end with more procs per minute through auto attacks.

[Light_Journey]

<cite>grish wrote:</cite><blockquote>Also, in case you didnt know aside from poison our 2 biggest skills are maligant mark and cloaked assault. Their zonewide damage will blow your other skills out of the water by a considerable amount.</blockquote> I did not know that <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I have Exposing Mark at level 51 but I take your meaning.  I always cast it when it's up (in groups) but I didn't realize that so much of my overall DPS would come from it.  I use Shadow Assault (I'm assuming it's on the same line as cloaked assault, the stealth AOE DD/DoT) somewhat sparingly as it can be a death sentence for me in a pick up group.  Every so often it seems I crit on that AOE <b>and</b> the poison goes off and all the mobs that the tank isn't on are on me <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  But I can see where that could add a substantial amount to overall DPS (especially since it's on a relatively short timer.

[Light_Journey]

<cite>Kaediin wrote:</cite><blockquote>Vaus@Lucan DLere wrote: <blockquote> <ul><li>Haste.  What exactly does it do?  Does it reduce the delay on weapons?  Does it also affect the proc component?</li><li>Damage spread.  Why is a large min-max important? (Does it result in higher crits?)</li><li>Damage rating.  Is this value a good way to judge (taking delay into consideration) a high DPS weapon?</li><li>Poison damage.  I heard through the grapevine that the posoin damage is calculated through INT? </li></ul></blockquote><p> Damage Spread and Damage Rating - I think Grish explained this better than I would so I will just repost what he posted above - if yuo re read it it makes perfect sence <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </p></blockquote> Heh, yeah I read it <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I posted my follow up at the same time Grish posted his follow up but thanks for pointing it out to me.  I hear you regarding the poisons.  I am 2 points into poison crits now and plan on maxing it out.  I'll begin looking at INT on weapons as well.  I dont think I'll trade off INT for STR or AGI, but I will make a point to look for items that have both (I guess some of it would be considered Bard quipment) and maybe accept a little less of STR and AGI to get a little more INT. For the moment, I am a STR hog.  I am not overlly concerned with AGI at the moment, but doo keep it in mind (as you said, it's where our power pool comes from).  I think I'll definetly end up doing some tweaking once I get to level but this info helps a lot.  Thanks.

[Light_Journey]

<cite>grish wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kaediin wrote:</cite><blockquote>Vaus@Lucan DLere wrote: <p>Haste - haste effectivly reduces the delay on a weaponm making you attack more often. On the proc side to the best of my knowledge it doesnt make items proc more often. This is beacuse although its shows a % chance to proc on each attack, the procs are actually normalised on a per minute basis, as such haste doesnt effect the procs per min.</p></blockquote>Actually, our proc is calculated on the forumula of weapon delay*3.  This is calculated prior to any adjustments to haste, or other modifiers such as dirge proc bonus ect ect. So lets use the grinning dirk as an example with the 4 second delay. 4sec delay * 3 = 12% proc.  Im just going to hash out some numbers, and these are not going to be accurate. So lets say you proc 10 times per minute with grinning dirk with no outside modifiers. Now lets say you have 25% haste, from items and an illusionist. While this isnt going to actually increase your physical proc %, it does increase the number of times you will hit per minute. So just with 25% haste we could say on the number I used you should proc 12-14 times vs 10 times with no modifiers. So you are right, haste wont actually increase your modifier as would a dirge for example,. but the end result will end with more procs per minute through auto attacks. </blockquote>I understand.  The initial proc % is calculated based on weapon delay and then haste reduces that delay, allowing us to hit more often which in turn may result in more proc's going off per minute.  I understand the numbers may not be accurate, but I got the gist of it. Thanks guys, you've answered a lot of questions for me and I appreciate it.