Delay Weapons

[Hodgeka]

I would like to ask a couple questions about your parses with different weapons.

 

What delay type of weapons have you found best? I hear most people like the long delay weapons for the high damage spreads and crit? I've never had the weapons to test this out.. so I would like a confirmation on which is best. (parse pastes would be good help too)

 

Also, which weapon would you put in the main hand? The slower weapon, or the faster weapon?

 

Thanks, Hodgeka

Message Edited by Hodgeka on 12-30-2006 11:13 PM

[t0gar]

Feeling lazy so I'll let someone else explain the delay thing, but using a 1.3 delay weapon... I can say that it really sucks. True I hit immediately after a CA, but the dmg is pitiful and quite dissapointing. I haven't had a longer delay weapon to test in my off-hand so I can't make a direct comparison, but I kick myself everytime I open up my inventory. But to answer one question since it takes only 2 seconds, longer delay/wider dmg spread in main hand.

[Kimira]

It's not as much delay as its about high-end and high crits. With a bard i have 32% crits and with a nice high end weapon like DoN, Vamp axe, and rapier of darkness it pays off. GDoH is still undisputable the king of all d/w to this day unless theres something amazing undiscovered yet

[Nathdorl]

what all of you gdoh fanaticians are ignoring is the fact that more hits means more procs so a weapon as fast as possible does proc more often with caustic and planar orb of the wanderer and the off-stance proc and so on

[t0gar]

except they proc per minute not % per swing.

[Nathdorl]

if you equip raincaller youll see... its says like 4.8 procs/min or whatever/weaponstats tells you the real %age which is 21%so imo this procs/min is just some weird calculation to hide the real %age on evry hit (!= swing)

[t0gar]

don't the longer delay weapons show a greater proc % under weaponstats though?

[Salat]

There is alot of bad beliefs on weapons.  Grafton corrected me alot on them.  And I wish he was here to explain it better.  But I will simply copy some of his knowledge from other posts.

Now as to why the GDoH is so good and whether dmg rating matters...

The GDoH is a great weapon only if you have a high critical rate. As it turns out, if you spec your aa's properly , are grouped with a bard and acquire crit rate bonus gear along with potions, as an assassin you can reach very high crit rates in the 30 to 35% range. Before crits were in the game dmg rating was a fairly accurate way to compare weapons. However once crits came about this all changed quite drastically.

The reason for this is the mechanic used to determine crit dmg. Critical dmg is sort of a 30 % increase to each hit but it has one added factor. That is that a critical hit must be at least the max dmg of the weapon + 1. Because of this, weapons which have a large ratio of max hit to minimum hit are more likely to strike criticals that would be below the max dmg if they were only scaled up 30%. Therefore they are scaled up more than 30% being the higher the ratio of max to min the more bonus dmg you get from criticals.

In addition the higher the actual crit rate, the bigger this advantage is. There is a thread in the combat section authored by rokjin which explains all the math behind this. i've probably not explained it 1/10 as well as he did if you are really interested. i believe the post is stickied.

The second really nice feature of GDoH is the long delay. While there is no maximum haste and equal haste helps all weapons equally, this does not take into account combat arts. As assassins we spam combat arts quite alot, swinging our auto attack weapons during refresh time.  Longer delay weapons over time, lose fewer opportunities to swing because of this. This might not make much difference in a 30 second fight. However during a multi minute fight and across an entire raid this can add up to a lot for example. If you have a weapon swinging every 1/2 second vs every 2 seconds, what happens when you cast cloaked assautl which takes 1.5 secs to cast? the .5 delay weapon will have lost possibly as many as 3 opportunities to swing where the one swinging every 2 secs might not have lost a single one.

longer delay weapons used to afford a significant boost in poison proc %age but with the recent changes with EoF i haven't really seen enough data to say whether this still holds up or not but it used to help a great deal.

there are now adornments in the game which add a fixed amount of dmg per swing to weapons. these would tend to favor fast swiging weapons and it may turn out that there is now a new sweet spot where longer delay is not always good but i suspect that it's advntages in long swings are going to outweigh the potential loss of dmg from not being able to use one of these adornments.

Grafton

 

Now trust me, I did a search to try and prove my points to him.  And I found out he was right on everything.  And as such, Im not afraid to admit he really proved me wrong.  Now, your really not going to notice the difference unless your raiding.  If you are, just have your parser break down the zone, and look to se how much actual damage your auto attack accounts for.  Once you have that understanding, and add it to the combat arts part I bolded of Grafton's explanation, it should paint a better picture why long delay is preferred. 

 

Message Edited by Salat on 12-31-2006 02:22 PM

[grish]

Alright, I understand the concept of using the longer delay weapon, but at this point I dont have long delay available. I currently use Vyemn's Dagger in primary (+5 pierce) and Grizzle Dagger in offhand (+5 pierce), and I have Dark linger as backup gear. Both daggers I currently use have a 1.6 delay on them. The question is would spending points in the AA line to reduce recovery time help at all to recover some of the missed chances at melee? What I mean is do you miss your chance to swing if you are recovering from a CA and your delay on your weapon expires would you miss that swing? I am a raiding assassin, rarely in the MT group. I always have a dirge and inquis in my group with other melee dps in our group if that makes any difference.

[Graton]

grish wrote:

Alright, I understand the concept of using the longer delay weapon, but at this point I dont have long delay available. I currently use Vyemn's Dagger in primary (+5 pierce) and Grizzle Dagger in offhand (+5 pierce), and I have Dark linger as backup gear. Both daggers I currently use have a 1.6 delay on them. The question is would spending points in the AA line to reduce recovery time help at all to recover some of the missed chances at melee? What I mean is do you miss your chance to swing if you are recovering from a CA and your delay on your weapon expires would you miss that swing? I am a raiding assassin, rarely in the MT group. I always have a dirge and inquis in my group with other melee dps in our group if that makes any difference.

you should be shooting for two of these weapons: Grinning Dirk of Horror - Lyceum of Abhorrence - dropped by Essence of Fear Dirk on Negativity - Halls of Seeing - The first bug-thing to the right as you zone in - someone help me out with a name here Rapier of Darkness - Inner Sanctum - shared loot table in there so really any mob Vampiric Axe of Balance - Inner Sanctum There's also a good ratio piercer from the Clockwork Menace. Recovery time aa is a waste because our weapons swing between ca's. lowering recovery time only allows you to chain ca's faster. Since you are always with a dirge, you definately want high ratio weapons due to the nice crit bonus you are getting.

[Jayad]

I use the GDoH and the Rapier of Darkness (from MMIS) and they are MUCH better than so-called equal DR weapons. You want high delay and a huge damage spread. Ignore those who say otherwise, they are clueless. As the poster said, maximizing crits is a large benefit if you have these kinds of weapons. The "%" way of viewing procs and the "per minute" views are the same thing. The reason is is the % is adjusted by weapon delay, so they are equivalent. more delay = less missed swings while you are "occupied" with casting/recovery.

[Mr. Dawki]

Nathdorl wrote:

what all of you gdoh fanaticians are ignoring is the fact that more hits means more procs so a weapon as fast as possible does proc more often with caustic and planar orb of the wanderer and the off-stance proc and so on

WRONG SO WRONG!

the faster the wep swing is the lower your % to proc with each swing. with the dirk of negativity in my mainhand weaponstats shows a 8% chance to proc on a 1.8 per min. with GDoH its 12%, that 12% stays no matter how much haste you have on you. Thus you put GDoH in your mainhand so it is technicly swinging as fast as you are firing CA's. you will see your poisons ticking away  supper fast and there is a noticible jump in your overall dps

Advanced combat tracker showed caustic poison as 3-4% of my overall dps using DoN. with GDoH it jumper to 7-8% of my overall dps. almost double the proc %. Not to mention the thing crits more with the slower swing as well. im not talking a measly 30 more dmg im talking 2k crits here on auto attack.

As the previous poster stated GDoH is the undisputable KING of DW weps

[HellRaiserXX]

I would also add Ancient Scimitar of Wounding, which drops of Sariah the Bloomseeker in Emerald Halls, to the list Graton posted. It has the same ratio as Rapier of Darkness and a longer delay, but the stats are not too great. The spread is also higher 23-129 vs 18-101 on the Rapier so when it does crit it will crit for more dmg. Generally speaking piercing weapons are better because there is a lot more gear with +piercing than +slashing and the higher you can get either the easier it is to hit high level mobs.

aITEM -1252547710 -595319444:Ancient Scimitar of Wounding/a

[grish]

Woo! Just scored GDOH!!!!! Only like my 5th time in Lyceum! Im so stoked!

Now that I have a slower weapon, do you guys who have the slow delay kind of count off between CA's to make sure your auto attacks hits, or use any special tactics?

[Chog]

A question. Would it be smart to have a fast delay weapon easily swappable (on the hotbar) if you group / raid with a Dirge a lot? Cacophany of blades is a 100% melee proc for a short duration.

[Kokus]

I believe the Rumbler in EH is dropping a 4 second delay dual wielder now