Experimenting with the Predator WIS AA Line

[Siclone]

Kaediin wrote:

Siclone wrote:

I have not been around to watch this thread its a good one, but yea you gain dps from the bleed line, What I ment was it wont show on the parse,,,,you wont gain on the parse,,,,and that was what he and everyone is concerned with.

This isnt technically correct. Your right that you wont get a parse DPS increase from the end skill of the bleeding line but you will from the other ones (except the proc chance on mark). The other skills increase the damage that our main quick reuse dot attacks do, therefore if you do moe damage you will increase in DPS.

right, and I think someone posted when EoF first game out that the rest of them, other then the end ability was about 3 percent increase.  I think his math came out to like 3.6 percent.  anyway a real small increase and I don't think any would really notice. 

[Kaediin]

Siclone wrote:

Kaediin wrote:

Siclone wrote:

I have not been around to watch this thread its a good one, but yea you gain dps from the bleed line, What I ment was it wont show on the parse,,,,you wont gain on the parse,,,,and that was what he and everyone is concerned with.

This isnt technically correct. Your right that you wont get a parse DPS increase from the end skill of the bleeding line but you will from the other ones (except the proc chance on mark). The other skills increase the damage that our main quick reuse dot attacks do, therefore if you do moe damage you will increase in DPS.

right, and I think someone posted when EoF first game out that the rest of them, other then the end ability was about 3 percent increase.  I think his math came out to like 3.6 percent.  anyway a real small increase and I don't think any would really notice. 

Id need to log in to check my percentages, but when 1 skill has a 35% increase in over time damage (with 5 points) it does make a difference to dps. Collectively im sure i get around a 100% over time increase in damage, with all 3 at master its going to add up to an ok dps increase. And althought the end skill wont show on a parse it staill comes in handy.

[CyriexVTZ]

A few weeks on... and I've respeced my EoF AA's now too - I figured as I wasn't getting 52% spell crits any more, Poisons and Frontload wasn't worth the points commitment. So I'm STR/WIS and Bleeding/Tricks (including Excessive Bleeding and Repeated Stabbing) - I like to call this the 'Melee Overload AA Build' The result has been, remarkable. A noticeable jump in my DPS, solid #1 zonewide and on 90%+ of encounters - now this of course could be due to the awesomeness of repeated stabbing and nothing to do with the Wis line, but I am finding smashing out those 8% boosted stealth attack after stealth attack easier with those 0.25 delays I think i'll be keeping this for a little while longer yet..so much for a quick experiment That said, my Assassin-benchmark buddy hasn't had nearly as much success with this build as I, and I think he's planning on respeccing back to STR/INT and Bleeding/Poisons.. maybe its my decent connection, my fast computer, or just the way I play differently from him.. who knows..just thought I'd give ya'll an update - Prowler Cyriex signing off..

[Jayad]

Repeated stabbing great, especially if you have a dirge and COB is running. It does require a certain playstyle to maximize, though. I don't think the 8% stealth thing is worth much, though. Perhaps you can post some parses to tell me I'm wrong

[Lord Montague]

Jayad wrote:

Repeated stabbing great, especially if you have a dirge and COB is running. It does require a certain playstyle to maximize, though. I don't think the 8% stealth thing is worth much, though. Perhaps you can post some parses to tell me I'm wrong

Read the early parts of the thread.  He did.

[Jayad]

Those parses weren't really breaking even 2k, though. How about some people parsing 2500+ ZW and trying it out?

[Lord Montague]

I hope you do realize there are a lot of things to factor in aside from just a straight number.  This is why posting parses is so problematic - you're never going to be able to take into account all the variables.  I seemed to be under the impression that he was trying to show that based on HIS experiences, he is seeing results that are comparable if not better.  And that's been my own personal observations in the line as well.  But hey, you're right and I'm wrong.

[CyriexVTZ]

I agree with Serriah - your ZW DPS is going to be effected by far more than just your AA build. Group Makeup, Encounter tactics, the way your tank pulls, etc, are all going to have such signifigant effects on your DPS that a fair comparison of someone's strait number is never going to be possible. A fairer comparison is possible if you're comparing your results against others in the same raid - a vast majority of those variables will match, and the few that don't can be considered while comparisons are being made With that said, I'm in a generous mood, and just to make you happy Jayad, here's the top four from the FTH raid that I went on last night, after posting my last comment. Cyriex - 2402 DPS 2127 extDPS Lifeburn Addicted Necro - 2254 DPS 2046 extDPS Assassin - 2070 DPS 1773 extDPS Ranger - 1980 DPS 1628 extDPS Happy now oh disbelieving one?

[Jayad]

Well, I do appreciate the parses. My point is that if you're not doing a certain level of DPS then there's a lot of optimizations not related to your AA line that you can maybe do. Comparative parses are good, but you have to be consistently at the top (with the right setups) to really be able to compare the effect of JUST the AA change. Otherwise, it's too variable because people aren't always pushing the envelope necessarily. You could have a 5% or 20% change just from that day if you're not always doing a certain amount. That variability is higher when you're further away from the top end, in my opinion. I hope I'm making sense. I'm enjoying the data and the parses people are posting. Mainly I want to learn from those who are better than me

[khufure]

I want to see the graphing output from ACT if possible.  4 lines of summary of a zone doesn't really tell us anything...

[Aker]

Not sure what you guys want from Cyrex he tried  something new  work for him very good, few more people reported they tried and like it , as few sad  they don't. He explained what he did, why and what he got for him. It is obvious that str/wis setup require  adaptation  and change in play stile , CA's order we do as str/int setup .... It is interesting  and I will try it for week. We got  free respec card  which I'm sure most didn't use at all. I talked to my RL explained that I might do crappy  DPS next  week and why.  Cryex  arguments and  few more who happy with it make it worth trying it. You can ask any posts from him you want it not mean anything, like we know group setup, our personal knowledge of our toon and class and many more things have factor that his posts of ACT can't be reason for any final decision. Only valid way to say something is to try it. It looks for me that some of you want 100% insurance that str/wis work great, he all ready sad working for him, require play stile change he adapted, what more you want, few more people agree so there must be something. Any way what is worst thing that can happen, if I try it I might not be in top 3 DPS every  raid for week, so what? If you think his post is interesting just try it is only way to find out if that work or not.

[Jayad]

I plan to try it when I'm back from vacation and I've adjusted to some gear boosts in the last week. (Yay bisected)

[khufure]

Aker@Splitpaw wrote:

Not sure what you guys want from Cyrex he tried  something new  work for him very good, few more people reported they tried and like it , as few sad  they don't.

A mathmatical analysis of the boost in dps that is compelling enough to want to repeat on my own assassin.  I look at the AAs and my current damage output and I just don't see where any increase will come from. Here's how to do it: if you're already running ACT it takes about 30 seconds to copy the image from your output detailing % of each combat art to an mspaint file and saving it as a png.  From there, if you post raid numbers including raid dps, group makeup, and personal dps we can run the numbers and see what's brewing.

[Zemial]

Hmmm checked this wis thingie with concealement.... someonw wrote that with it still works this +8% to CA's. Hmm i checked it out and i dont see ... this skill "Shroud" have that +8% damage written on it. Anyone checked it out and can explain?

[Kaediin]

Zemial wrote:

Hmmm checked this wis thingie with concealement.... someonw wrote that with it still works this +8% to CA's. Hmm i checked it out and i dont see ... this skill "Shroud" have that +8% damage written on it. Anyone checked it out and can explain?

If you examine your concealment skill you will see it does say about the 8%, but the text is white and not green like the rest. Furthermore, if you use concealment and go stealth your CA damage amounts (when you hove the mouse over them) do not increase like they do with stealth and surveil. Either its not ment to give the 8% or its broken, either way its bugged so the more people who /bug it the better.

[Aker]

Timmey@Unrest wrote:

A mathmatical analysis of the boost in dps that is compelling enough to want to repeat on my own assassin.  I look at the AAs and my current damage output and I just don't see where any increase will come from.

I don't think Cyriex sad he got some big DPS boost from new setup, he mostly didn't lost any and got his new cool toy Smoke Bombs. Any way I'm going to try it today In Throne Room,think is good place to try Smoke Bomb effect (if AOE range of 15m don't become problem , not making macro for it, and not telling any one till I don't discover that )

[Jayad]

If concealment triggered the 8% boosts I'd probably switch to it

[CyriexVTZ]

Concealment, as it stands right now, has the 8% boost attached to the 0.1s 'Combat Stealth' effect, which triggers 'Shroud' which is Concealments true stealth effect. Given it takes us alot longer than 0.1s to cast any CA's, and the 8% effect is lost as soon as Shroud is triggered, I'm guessing that Concealment with the WIS line is not working as intended. Either SOE need to fix it so the 8% is attached to Concealments 'Shroud' effect, or they need to remove the text from the 'Combat Stealth' effect to stop confusing us..either way its bugged and I hope everyone reading this writes a nice little /bug to make sure SOE notice the issue soon -- As for my damage. I've never claimed STR/WIS produces more DPS than STR/INT. I have just found that, during my experiments, I'm doing as much DPS with STR/WIS as I was with STR/INT - once I got used to the differences in play style required by the new build. If they fix concealment to have that 8% boost too, a lot of those play style changes will vanish, and I think STR/WIS will *then* be higher DPS than STR/INT, in the hands of someone used to the spec. It really has grown on me.. I planned on just playing with STR/WIS for a week, tops - I expected to see a drop in DPS in return for the extra utility (and aggro control) I was getting, but I've just not seen it. Instead I never really saw a DPS drop - The odd little wobble, sure, but with time I seem to have found my groove, developed CA patterns that work so I'm not wasting time wondering what to hit next. Now I cant see myself speccing out of it in the near future. I've since respecced out of EoF poison AA's and gone for Tricks with Repeated stabbing - Given I wasn't critting those poisons 52% of the time any more it seemed like a waste. I would say my DPS has probably seen a boost from that respec, I definatly think the Repeated Stabbing effect has a sweet synergy with the WIS lines increased need for stealth As an example of what I mean, consider an STR/INT Poison/Bleeding specced Assassin doing Surveillance followed by Eviscerate. 1 second to cast Surveillance. 0.5 seconds recovery. 0.5 seconds to cast Eviscerate Total time taken - 2 seconds now consider a STR/WIS Tricks/Bleeding specced Assassin doing the same 2 combat arts 0.5 seconds to cast surveillance 0.25 seconds recovery 0.5 seconds to cast Eviscerate Total time taken - 1.25 seconds, and Eviscerate did 8% more damage. Using stealth instead of surveillance for the same combo and you're still finishing 0.25 seconds faster and doing 8% more damage (for that attack) than the STR/INT Poison/Bleeding guy. Over the duration of a raid..that's bound to add up - 8% on the CA, getting off more CA's in any given time scale, and more auto attack swings when you're not immediately following up a CA with another CA. ------ Anyway, I'm glad this thread has stirred up some interesting conversation (and i hope it continues), I'm glad to see folk have read this thread and are going to be experimenting with STR/WIS for themselves.. But to all you guys who want me to post endless parses and comfort you with numbers before you even consider my (and other peoples) opinions worthwhile, I ask that you use that lovely 5-charge respec item we've got and give STR/WIS a go You never know, you might like it, and if you don't, you've lost nothing as you can jump right back to your STR/INT goodness

[GerOcrana]

i tested STR/WIS and this Line is for increasing "Spike-Damage" + easier aggromanagment

I keep my old Line STR/INT, Overtimes and Malginant Mark is better with 52%+ Crit Chance including Poison Debuffs for other Classes. You can use Concealment to work the stealth line down into recast and think with a 8% more dealing Damage without the Spellcrit Bonuses mhm.

Tried out and not my favorite You can work the KoS-Int Line into the EoF Poison Line. It works fine together.

Greetz Ocrana

Ocrana - Level 70 Assassine -> Innovation <- Paratoxic

[Siclone]

I am not really a numbers guy you can tell allot on which is best by just observing game play, numbers only give you a picture, and not the whole picture there is no way, that 8 percent more damage on 2 CA's following two stealths, that take time to caste (let me remind you a 10 k decap turns into 10.8 a 20 k decap turns into a 21.6...hardly much) is equal to or greater then mark crits, poison crits, and intoxication.  it really is that simple.  If people convince them selfs that it is,,,cool.  have fun with your stun I raided with this one assassin with better gear, and better weapons but he was always a bit lower then he should be on the parse.  I was beating him much to often with less gear and experience in raiding.  The other assassin two was beating him regularly.  not on every fight but on to many fights.  I just thought he was missing something.  Then I found out what it was he speced, STR/STA...."int is over rated"....bingo, that explained months of wondering oh you an put up a good encounters with STR/STA or STR/Wis no doubt, when I tried STR/Wis I went over 2k on some fights, you can put up good numbers,,,,but over the long run,,consistently there is no doubt in my mind from observation and from common sense (mark crits, poison crits and intoxication is > 8 percent boost on 2 Ca's) that STR/INT is the best DPS set up. 

[CyriexVTZ]

Mark, when critting was 15% of my DPS It now is 11-12% Poison (Hemotoxin) was 8% of my DPS Causic is now 6-7% Intoxicate was 3% of my DPS all my other CA's were 49% of my DPS They are now ~56% Would I rather have regular 8% boosts to half of my DPS, or a 52% chance of "Max+Bonus" Crit chances to a quarter of it? I've not been pasting encounter parses Siclone, I've not been giving 'encounter' examples of my parse position and my opinion of my DPS. I have been telling you that, in my experience, I have found STR/WIS to be providing me as much *consistent*, reproducible, zonewide DPS as STR/INT was I really don't know what's so controversial about that...

[khufure]

Cyriex@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Anyway, I'm glad this thread has stirred up some interesting conversation (and i hope it continues), I'm glad to see folk have read this thread and are going to be experimenting with STR/WIS for themselves.. But to all you guys who want me to post endless parses and comfort you with numbers before you even consider my (and other peoples) opinions worthwhile, I ask that you use that lovely 5-charge respec item we've got and give STR/WIS a go You never know, you might like it, and if you don't, you've lost nothing as you can jump right back to your STR/INT goodness

Fair enough.  I will perhaps check it out sometime, but not until my guild beats Wuoshi.  Also, I just respec'd to repeated stabbing from bleeding/physicality so having a bit of fun with that, too.

[Siclone]

Cyriex@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Mark, when critting was 15% of my DPS It now is 11-12% Poison (Hemotoxin) was 8% of my DPS Causic is now 6-7% Intoxicate was 3% of my DPS all my other CA's were 49% of my DPS They are now ~56% Would I rather have regular 8% boosts to half of my DPS, or a 52% chance of "Max+Bonus" Crit chances to a quarter of it? I've not been pasting encounter parses Siclone, I've not been giving 'encounter' examples of my parse position and my opinion of my DPS. I have been telling you that, in my experience, I have found STR/WIS to be providing me as much *consistent*, reproducible, zonewide DPS as STR/INT was I really don't know what's so controversial about that...

7 percent increase on all your CA's when the Wis line only effects two, the ones after two specific stealths?(which take time to caste) with all due respect, that makes no sense and the math does not add up.  not trying to say your lying or anything, or tell others not to try it, just saying how I see it. 

[CyriexVTZ]

I think its your maths that aren't making sense Siclone Having an 8% boost to Surveil and Stealth doesn't just boost 'two' CA's Surveil now has a 15second recast (0.5s casting time), Stealth has a 5 second recast (1 sec casting time) Consider the recasts of our stealth attacks Eviscerate 1 minute Jugular 1 minute Cloaked assault 30 seconds Slaughtersault 1 minute Killing blade 2 minutes Decapitate 10 Minutes Puncture Blade 10 seconds With Surveil and Stealth recasting as fast as they are, I tell ya, that 8% is going on pretty much every single one of those attacks every time they're up, apart from maybe Puncture Blade (which works nicely chained of Masked attack still) I'm even getting the time to do the occasional Surviel and Stealth and using the 8% on non-stealth CA's, like Crippling and Mastery Strikes Do you see it now, oh grumpy one?

[Aker]

I tried  str/wis  last night in Throne  difference I noticed are: 1) For sure require new play stile. 2) My poison dmg droped for 2% max (still using hemo with 5 points in EoF aa on it). 3) Agonizing Pain dropped for like 3%. 4) Most of my CA's got 1-2% boost zone wide each. Don't want to make list to big so summary would be something like: First few times we where there I was #1 ZW, ranger sec behind me for some 100. Yesterday I was second behind ranger for like 20. ( we didn't finish raid server crashed) There might be some slight drop in my DPS but but no less than 100 ZW (can't be 100% sure it is from my memory would need to compare parse from last time, see how many time I died each time, in which group was last time... But what I feel from knowing my toon inside out not a big drop for sure) Considering that was my first try and really need time to adapt to new casting order and everything  else it was pleasant so prise and think worth more experimenting. Will keep this setup for about week I think and when I do all EoF instances with it I'll try to post my new impressions  and opinion. ( bw Smoke Bombs are really cool )

[DirtyJawa84]

I'm a total noob to the game.  I have been thinking about this line.  Would STR then WIS then Repeated Strikes then Bleeding be a good way to approach SOLO PvE with some SOLO PvP on a PvP server?  Or should I pursue another line?

[Siclone]

Cyriex@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I think its your maths that aren't making sense Siclone Having an 8% boost to Surveil and Stealth doesn't just boost 'two' CA's Surveil now has a 15second recast (0.5s casting time), Stealth has a 5 second recast (1 sec casting time) Consider the recasts of our stealth attacks Eviscerate 1 minute Jugular 1 minute Cloaked assault 30 seconds Slaughtersault 1 minute Killing blade 2 minutes Decapitate 10 Minutes Puncture Blade 10 seconds With Surveil and Stealth recasting as fast as they are, I tell ya, that 8% is going on pretty much every single one of those attacks every time they're up, apart from maybe Puncture Blade (which works nicely chained of Masked attack still) I'm even getting the time to do the occasional Surviel and Stealth and using the 8% on non-stealth CA's, like Crippling and Mastery Strikes Do you see it now, oh grumpy one?

nope so basically if you do it perfectly in a perfect world  every 15 1/2 seconds you get a 8 percent boost on one of your CA's and every 6 seconds you get a 8 percent boost on on of your CA's seems to me you are casting allot of CA's with no boost at all.  but hey, what do I know. 

[Aker]

Siclone wrote:

Cyriex@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I think its your maths that aren't making sense Siclone Having an 8% boost to Surveil and Stealth doesn't just boost 'two' CA's Surveil now has a 15second recast (0.5s casting time), Stealth has a 5 second recast (1 sec casting time) Consider the recasts of our stealth attacks Eviscerate 1 minute Jugular 1 minute Cloaked assault 30 seconds Slaughtersault 1 minute Killing blade 2 minutes Decapitate 10 Minutes Puncture Blade 10 seconds With Surveil and Stealth recasting as fast as they are, I tell ya, that 8% is going on pretty much every single one of those attacks every time they're up, apart from maybe Puncture Blade (which works nicely chained of Masked attack still) I'm even getting the time to do the occasional Surviel and Stealth and using the 8% on non-stealth CA's, like Crippling and Mastery Strikes Do you see it now, oh grumpy one?

nope so basically if you do it perfectly in a perfect world  every 15 1/2 seconds you get a 8 percent boost on one of your CA's and every 6 seconds you get a 8 percent boost on on of your CA's seems to me you are casting allot of CA's with no boost at all.  but hey, what do I know. 

You didn't try it if I understood or wasn't able to adapt to it so I would say you don't know. I tried just for 1 raid for now (and it's use in raids is only I'm interested) and result I posted. People who tried and didn't work for them posted but wasn't so persistent to diminish results other people got like you so really don't understand why you keep coming back on this thread if you so sure this is not good. It remind me on 1 more post I seen where so many people doing heavy math explained to all of us how GDOH is better than Bisected Saber, I use that 2 weapons as pair for 9-10 weeks now and not in 1 raid GDOH parsed higher ( in main or offhand, and not to mention 2% crit on BS), but I guess it is because I'm not so good in math so can't make it to use full potential and instead of replacing BS with SoD, GDOH will go to bank or transmuting.

[t0gar]

Cyriex@Antonia Bayle wrote:

Mark, when critting was 15% of my DPS It now is 11-12% Poison (Hemotoxin) was 8% of my DPS Causic is now 6-7% Intoxicate was 3% of my DPS all my other CA's were 49% of my DPS They are now ~56% Would I rather have regular 8% boosts to half of my DPS, or a 52% chance of "Max+Bonus" Crit chances to a quarter of it?

really can't judge much by this... i can do nothing but auto-attack and decap and say that with the wis line decap is now 20% of my dps. When 1 % goes down the others are bound to go up... you lost 7-9% of your dps and gained ~7% back is about all that can really be said. numbers work much better than %s.

[Aker]

EH run yesterday new impresions. Assassin is known for spike dmg can say for sure with wis line that is even more true. If my CA's up I could do more dmg then before with wis line, but since we trying to kill trash fast as possible when they are not up drop of dps is higher then before. With int there was not much scaling for me on dps list with exception of some fights I'm top 3 in every  but with wis  I go very  high up or  drop below first 5 what never happened before. With troub remembering me often for Jester in my opinion might be possible to do more dps with wis then int lines but without it on fast pulling and moving, over all it will be little drop of dps. It is not big drop to cry for it but as dps is only thing we bring in raids guess most of us will mind moving 1 or 2 spots down on list, who don't care about it Smoke Bombs are very cool toy and really useful in raid or solo. We finished very late and I was tiered to look parse but that was just sec raid with wis line and can say for sure dps loss is NOT so big as some people cried (ad lest for me). CA's are about half of our dmg so few % boost ZW on them is for sure interesting thing to look on and since all of us playing str/int for long time now it is not easy to adapt fast to new button order . Str/int give me little more constant dmg and easier  to play for me but over all after long time having just 1 option  it is very interesting to have 2 now and think depending on play stile some people for sure can do very good with wis line. Still have to see will I keep working on my wis line or switch back but can tell who ever is interested in this Cyriex's thread it is worth of try. Editing for 1 more thing like Jayad sad if SOE fix Concealment that we could use it for 8% boost on CA's, don't think I will even consider int any more .