Does delay really matter?

Effidian · 07-01-2007, 01:43 PM

I've always heard that you should go for a long delay bow so that you proc more. However, I'm not so sure it matters. Let's take 3 theoretical bows:

As you can see, you end up with the exact same number of procs. So what am I missing? Why is a long delay better for procs, if you end up with the exact same number in the same amount of time?

EQ2Magroo · 07-01-2007, 02:12 PM

I've always heard that you should go for a long delay bow so that you proc more.

I've never heard that it makes you proc more, but I guess it could do with various buffs and the way % work out when hasted. What is important and why you should use a slow bow for max DPS is the the effect of haste and how our CA attacks end up interrupting our AA attacks. With a decent haste buff, that nice fast 4.5 second bow with haste ends up with a crazy short delay of 2 seconds or so, whilst the 9 second bow will reduce down to 4 and a bit seconds. What then happens with the fast bow is that your AA attacks (which are now only 2 seconds apart) start to get delayed whilst you are queuing up a Combat Art attack. With the 9 second bow (now 4.5 seconds), you'll be able to get off 2 CA attacks, wait for the AA, then another 2 CAs etc. The effect would appear at first glane to only be slight, but experience has proven that it is actually very important. The key to mega DPS is to not delay any of your AA attacks, whilst balancing firing off as many CAs as possible. The other point to mention, is that a long delay bow has a higher max damage (ignore damage range, this is a bit of a red herring). A crit hit will always hit for 130% of max damage, and we (should) crit hit a lot. The conventional wisdom around here is that the slower bow will end up doing more damage due to the crits assuming both bots crit at the same %. Now in theory this shouldn't be true if both bows are truly equal as the overall crit damage for a bow that hits half as fast for twice as much will be the same as the other bow. e.g. 10 x 100 + ( 5 * 130 ) = 20 x 50 + ( 10 * 65). However, the slower bows are not just doubled up/halved copies of the fast bows, they actually are quite a bit better. Oh, and one other thing I mention to all the Rangers I group/raid with. Max out your STR value ! Why do people put all their effort into AGI ? CA damage is based on STR. 60% of our DPS comes from CAs. I've been in raids with Rangers who have 300 STR, and that's way less than half of what it "should" be.

Effidian · 07-01-2007, 03:09 PM

EQ2Magroo wrote:

I've never heard that it makes you proc more, but I guess it could do with various buffs and the way % work out when hasted. What is important and why you should use a slow bow for max DPS is the the effect of haste and how our CA attacks end up interrupting our AA attacks. With a decent haste buff, that nice fast 4.5 second bow with haste ends up with a crazy short delay of 2 seconds or so, whilst the 9 second bow will reduce down to 4 and a bit seconds.

Okay, so it is only important with regards to timing auto-attack. You can still time your combat arts between a 2 second delay bow, there are just more arts that will delay it (3 arts at 2 seconds, 2 at 3 seconds, 1 at 4 seconds). And chaining them together has to be done with care, since a lot more combinations of arts will be over 2 seconds in cast time than at 4 seconds.

That makes sense. I don't remember where I heard it would increase your proc rate, maybe I made that up. SMILEY

What then happens with the fast bow is that your AA attacks (which are now only 2 seconds apart) start to get delayed whilst you are queuing up a Combat Art attack. With the 9 second bow (now 4.5 seconds), you'll be able to get off 2 CA attacks, wait for the AA, then another 2 CAs etc. The effect would appear at first glane to only be slight, but experience has proven that it is actually very important. The key to mega DPS is to not delay any of your AA attacks, whilst balancing firing off as many CAs as possible.

I posted the following in another thread, feel free to point out any misconceptions I have:

Not delaying your auto attack is a way to refine your DPS. It isn't the end all and be all of Ranger DPS. Let's just consider a very simple example. Say you have a bow with a 4 second delay that does 2k each attack (for simplicity, let's just say the delay and 2k are constant). This means the auto-attack by itself does 500 DPS (2000 / 4). In a 60 second fight where all you did was auto-attack, your bow would do a maximum of 30000 points of damage (500 * 60 = 30000).

Now let's say you are casting combat arts and happen to delay your auto-attack every time by 0.5 seconds. This would make your bow act like it has a 4.5 second delay. In a 60 second fight your bow would then only do 26667 damage, which is 444.44 DPS. Your losing about 11% of your auto-attack DPS that way. If you auto-attack accounts for 40% of your DPS, that 11% is about 4.5% of your total DPS.

In reality, as long as your ranged auto-attack is turned on, I think it would be very difficult to delay your auto-attack for 0.5 seconds for every attack for 60 seconds, even if you just spammed CAs (it might be, but I'm thinking probably not). So you'd probably come in somewhere under that 4.5% reduction.

Obviously 4.5% is very nice. But if you are parsing 1k DPS, it isn't the thing that will get you parsing 2k.

The other point to mention, is that a long delay bow has a higher max damage (ignore damage range, this is a bit of a red herring). A crit hit will always hit for 130% of max damage, and we (should) crit hit a lot. The conventional wisdom around here is that the slower bow will end up doing more damage due to the crits assuming both bots crit at the same %. Now in theory this shouldn't be true if both bows are truly equal as the overall crit damage for a bow that hits half as fast for twice as much will be the same as the other bow. e.g. 10 x 100 + ( 5 * 130 ) = 20 x 50 + ( 10 * 65). However, the slower bows are not just doubled up/halved copies of the fast bows, they actually are quite a bit better.

Ratio is used to figured out average damage per shot. Not really for anything else.

Oh, and one other thing I mention to all the Rangers I group/raid with. Max out your STR value ! Why do people put all their effort into AGI ? CA damage is based on STR. 60% of our DPS comes from CAs. I've been in raids with Rangers who have 300 STR, and that's way less than half of what it "should" be.

Completey agree.

FuRiouSQ · 07-02-2007, 01:52 AM

Go get you ichorstrand shortbow from DT 4.5 delay and then get the start darkened long bow or rigid scale bow both 9sec delay and test them out. sure you can cycle your CAs between autos with the short bow with 1 ca 1 auto method but you wont produce the zw dps that you can with a 9sec bow and higher damage/crit. BTW i have all 3 and have tested it in like our 2 group lab runs and the short bow always loses by about 300 to 400 dps sometimes more. longer delay = easier CA cycles and higher damage/crits.

Lev · 07-02-2007, 08:49 AM

There is a small flaw in the math however Crit chance and proc chance is not a set number of times depending upon %.. every arrow has a set % chance to crit or proc. I don't think there is a way to calculate that accurate anyways, but it does matter. The point is really only that you cannot put 27% up on a board and think that it will proc 27% of the time. So the thing with procs and crits is that the lower the delay the higher your crit/proc chance is. Poison procs on a 9sec bow is above 50%. Now that doesn't mean you will proc more.. it just means you can proc more. if the RNG would let it, you could probably go a whole day without proccing once, and this is why long delays affect proc/crit. The higher % per hit you get, the less is it likely that you will avoid getting a proc off.

Effidian · 07-02-2007, 11:53 AM

Vanadia@Everfrost wrote:

Go get you ichorstrand shortbow from DT 4.5 delay and then get the start darkened long bow or rigid scale bow both 9sec delay and test them out. sure you can cycle your CAs between autos with the short bow with 1 ca 1 auto method but you wont produce the zw dps that you can with a 9sec bow and higher damage/crit. BTW i have all 3 and have tested it in like our 2 group lab runs and the short bow always loses by about 300 to 400 dps sometimes more. longer delay = easier CA cycles and higher damage/crits.

You'd have to test on comparable bows. Ichrostrand v.s. Sinew Wrapped Longbow for example. Sinew is slightly better, so you should get slightly more dps, but it shouldn't be night and day just because of the delay. Comparing Ichorstrand to the Rigid Scale would be like comparing Ichorstrand to an ironwood long bow...

LevLo wrote:

There is a small flaw in the math however Crit chance and proc chance is not a set number of times depending upon %.. every arrow has a set % chance to crit or proc. I don't think there is a way to calculate that accurate anyways, but it does matter. The point is really only that you cannot put 27% up on a board and think that it will proc 27% of the time. So the thing with procs and crits is that the lower the delay the higher your crit/proc chance is. Poison procs on a 9sec bow is above 50%. Now that doesn't mean you will proc more.. it just means you can proc more. if the RNG would let it, you could probably go a whole day without proccing once, and this is why long delays affect proc/crit. The higher % per hit you get, the less is it likely that you will avoid getting a proc off.

The point is that the randomness you are alluding to should be consistent with the numbers over the long term. Using the numbers provided is the best way figure that out. Long delay bows need a higher proc rate because they get less shots off than a short delay bow over the same time period. In the same time period, both should proc the same number of times.

And where are you getting that crit chance is affected by delay? You are the second person that has said that, but I have never seen that and it wouldn't make any sense for them to base crit chance on the delay. Proc chance makes sense, crit chance does not.

Lev · 07-02-2007, 12:31 PM

yea sorry not sure why I put crit in there I just did a lot of math with poisons to try and show my point, but I dropped it cause it really didn't help my point hehe. Then I did some math with dices and times per minute to try and prove my point. But yet again I came to the same conclusion as you. However I think it's very hard to do an accurate calculation whenever the RNG is involved.

FuRiouSQ · 07-03-2007, 04:04 AM

Ok back when i first strated out my first decent bow was the sinew bow, week later i got the ichorstrand and i always used the sinew but with the new ammo from ichor. i found it easier to time my CAs with longer delay bows and well they hit harder. i would also use the ironwood bow imbued over the ichorstrand as well SMILEY

Star · 07-03-2007, 09:40 AM

I think that the argument for a long delay has less to do with procs (because while the proc% goes up the higher the delay the Procs per Unit Time does not as you've shown). The main argument is that many rangers CAs are on longer cast timers. With the advent of Poise in KoS and the Multishot line is EoF this is less of an issue now, but there are still some CA combinations that will cause a short delay bow to miss/delay auto attacks.

Gareorn · 07-05-2007, 11:34 AM

EQ2Magroo wrote:

The other point to mention, is that a long delay bow has a higher max damage (ignore damage range, this is a bit of a red herring). A crit hit will always hit for 130% of max damage, and we (should) crit hit a lot.

I just noticed this. And, it's not exactly right. The 130% rule only applies to CA Damage. Crits are calulated differenlty for auto-attack damage. I don't have the formula handy, but the damage range is in the formula. The bigger the damage range on a non-CA attack, the more effective crits are at raising your damage.

The high end divided by the low end provides a ratio. 300/100 = 3 and therefor the ratio is 1:3. A 3:5 attack is raised by ~0.36% per point of crit, a 1:3 attack is ~0.58% per point of crit, and a 1:9 attack raises it by ~0.88% per point of crit. So you can see that damage range plays a significant part in your crit calculation on auto attacks. There is a really good article on this stickied in the combat section.

Effidian · 07-05-2007, 01:25 PM

Gareorn wrote:

I just noticed this. And, it's not exactly right. The 130% rule only applies to CA Damage. Crits are calulated differenlty for auto-attack damage. I don't have the formula handy, but the damage range is in the formula. The bigger the damage range on a non-CA attack, the more effective crits are at raising your damage.
The high end divided by the low end provides a ratio. 300/100 = 3 and therefor the ratio is 1:3. A 3:5 attack is raised by ~0.36% per point of crit, a 1:3 attack is ~0.58% per point of crit, and a 1:9 attack raises it by ~0.88% per point of crit. So you can see that damage range plays a significant part in your crit calculation on auto attacks. There is a really good article on this stickied in the combat section.

The crit thread that you are referring to is an attempt to find overal dps increase based on crit%. The reason crits affect a wide spread bow more than a low spread bow has to do with finding average damage per hit. I'll attempt to give a simple example to illustrate.

Bow A: dmg 50 - 450 (ratio 1:9)

Bow B: dmg 150 - 450 (ratio 1:3)

Without crits Bow A would average 250 dmg per shot ((50 + 450)/2) and bow B would average 300 dmg per shot ((150 + 450)/2). At 100% crits, Bow A would average 468 (250 * 1.87) and Bow B would average 474 per shot (300 * 1.58). Each point of crit increases the average more for Bow A than Bow B, but the top end damage for both bows is still the same at 585 (450 * 1.3).

I believe that is why EQ2Magroo said to ignore damage range. It is important for calculating average damage for a bow, but seems to be looked at as more important than it really is.

stryker268 · 07-05-2007, 04:13 PM

EQ2Magroo wrote:

Oh, and one other thing I mention to all the Rangers I group/raid with. Max out your STR value ! Why do people put all their effort into AGI ? CA damage is based on STR. 60% of our DPS comes from CAs. I've been in raids with Rangers who have 300 STR, and that's way less than half of what it "should" be.
Oh wow. I'm sorry but I really can't agree with this statement as a whole.   Yes, strength contributes alot to how how hard your attacks hit. But I don't agree with a ranger's CAs being 60% of our damage.
I've been playing with ACT and on our last couple raids I've found a couple interesting things.
   1) Auto-attack is anywhere from 40-48% of my total damage on raid.
2) Caustic poison does roughly 13-16% of my total damage
3) quick shot (proc off of our offensive stance) was about 6-8% of my damage
4) Power of Marr (proc off of Qeynos Kilij) was roughly 5-7% of my damage.
   In fact the ONLY CA that made it into the top 8 list of damage types was Triple Volley at about 3% of my total damage outpput.
Now granted, alot of the other procs came of of the CA's that I used. But in a strict snese the actual CAs only made up about 15% of the actual damage that I did.
While in raid i typically run around 700-750 str and about 400 int (Int being what increases your proc damage I believe.) My gear is pretty good except for my bow. Haven't been able to get my hands on top tier bow yet and I am using the Recurved Hearslinger. Once I get a good bow I can only see that as taking even more away from CA's as my auto-attack damage should be even higher.
While Str is very important, what people are really missing is the importance of Int in their damage. The Agi is only important to me because of the AGI AA line with the increased casting speed. I used to be speced STR-AGI until i re-geared and got some +Int equipment. Once i did this I changed my spec to AGI-INT. My parses went up by about 400-500 dps.
I guess what i am trying to say is that while Str is important, it is not the end all stat that we need. IMO Int is actually just as important and should not be ignored.
If I am missing something or my thinking is flawed please tell me. I am always trying to improve and would appreciate the help.

07-01-2007, 03:09 PM	#3
Effidian Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 304	EQ2Magroo wrote: I've never heard that it makes you proc more, but I guess it could do with various buffs and the way % work out when hasted. What is important and why you should use a slow bow for max DPS is the the effect of haste and how our CA attacks end up interrupting our AA attacks. With a decent haste buff, that nice fast 4.5 second bow with haste ends up with a crazy short delay of 2 seconds or so, whilst the 9 second bow will reduce down to 4 and a bit seconds. Okay, so it is only important with regards to timing auto-attack. You can still time your combat arts between a 2 second delay bow, there are just more arts that will delay it (3 arts at 2 seconds, 2 at 3 seconds, 1 at 4 seconds). And chaining them together has to be done with care, since a lot more combinations of arts will be over 2 seconds in cast time than at 4 seconds. That makes sense. I don't remember where I heard it would increase your proc rate, maybe I made that up. What then happens with the fast bow is that your AA attacks (which are now only 2 seconds apart) start to get delayed whilst you are queuing up a Combat Art attack. With the 9 second bow (now 4.5 seconds), you'll be able to get off 2 CA attacks, wait for the AA, then another 2 CAs etc. The effect would appear at first glane to only be slight, but experience has proven that it is actually very important. The key to mega DPS is to not delay any of your AA attacks, whilst balancing firing off as many CAs as possible. I posted the following in another thread, feel free to point out any misconceptions I have: Not delaying your auto attack is a way to refine your DPS. It isn't the end all and be all of Ranger DPS. Let's just consider a very simple example. Say you have a bow with a 4 second delay that does 2k each attack (for simplicity, let's just say the delay and 2k are constant). This means the auto-attack by itself does 500 DPS (2000 / 4). In a 60 second fight where all you did was auto-attack, your bow would do a maximum of 30000 points of damage (500 * 60 = 30000). Now let's say you are casting combat arts and happen to delay your auto-attack every time by 0.5 seconds. This would make your bow act like it has a 4.5 second delay. In a 60 second fight your bow would then only do 26667 damage, which is 444.44 DPS. Your losing about 11% of your auto-attack DPS that way. If you auto-attack accounts for 40% of your DPS, that 11% is about 4.5% of your total DPS. In reality, as long as your ranged auto-attack is turned on, I think it would be very difficult to delay your auto-attack for 0.5 seconds for every attack for 60 seconds, even if you just spammed CAs (it might be, but I'm thinking probably not). So you'd probably come in somewhere under that 4.5% reduction. Obviously 4.5% is very nice. But if you are parsing 1k DPS, it isn't the thing that will get you parsing 2k. The other point to mention, is that a long delay bow has a higher max damage (ignore damage range, this is a bit of a red herring). A crit hit will always hit for 130% of max damage, and we (should) crit hit a lot. The conventional wisdom around here is that the slower bow will end up doing more damage due to the crits assuming both bots crit at the same %. Now in theory this shouldn't be true if both bows are truly equal as the overall crit damage for a bow that hits half as fast for twice as much will be the same as the other bow. e.g. 10 x 100 + ( 5 * 130 ) = 20 x 50 + ( 10 * 65). However, the slower bows are not just doubled up/halved copies of the fast bows, they actually are quite a bit better. Ratio is used to figured out average damage per shot. Not really for anything else. Oh, and one other thing I mention to all the Rangers I group/raid with. Max out your STR value ! Why do people put all their effort into AGI ? CA damage is based on STR. 60% of our DPS comes from CAs. I've been in raids with Rangers who have 300 STR, and that's way less than half of what it "should" be. Completey agree.

07-02-2007, 01:52 AM	#4
FuRiouSQ Loremaster Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Texas Posts: 127	Go get you ichorstrand shortbow from DT 4.5 delay and then get the start darkened long bow or rigid scale bow both 9sec delay and test them out. sure you can cycle your CAs between autos with the short bow with 1 ca 1 auto method but you wont produce the zw dps that you can with a 9sec bow and higher damage/crit. BTW i have all 3 and have tested it in like our 2 group lab runs and the short bow always loses by about 300 to 400 dps sometimes more. longer delay = easier CA cycles and higher damage/crits. __________________ Vanadia ~ Deaths Door's Ranger Warester - Deaths Door ~ Retired

07-02-2007, 11:53 AM	#6
Effidian Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 304	Vanadia@Everfrost wrote: Go get you ichorstrand shortbow from DT 4.5 delay and then get the start darkened long bow or rigid scale bow both 9sec delay and test them out. sure you can cycle your CAs between autos with the short bow with 1 ca 1 auto method but you wont produce the zw dps that you can with a 9sec bow and higher damage/crit. BTW i have all 3 and have tested it in like our 2 group lab runs and the short bow always loses by about 300 to 400 dps sometimes more. longer delay = easier CA cycles and higher damage/crits. You'd have to test on comparable bows. Ichrostrand v.s. Sinew Wrapped Longbow for example. Sinew is slightly better, so you should get slightly more dps, but it shouldn't be night and day just because of the delay. Comparing Ichorstrand to the Rigid Scale would be like comparing Ichorstrand to an ironwood long bow... LevLo wrote: There is a small flaw in the math however Crit chance and proc chance is not a set number of times depending upon %.. every arrow has a set % chance to crit or proc. I don't think there is a way to calculate that accurate anyways, but it does matter. The point is really only that you cannot put 27% up on a board and think that it will proc 27% of the time. So the thing with procs and crits is that the lower the delay the higher your crit/proc chance is. Poison procs on a 9sec bow is above 50%. Now that doesn't mean you will proc more.. it just means you can proc more. if the RNG would let it, you could probably go a whole day without proccing once, and this is why long delays affect proc/crit. The higher % per hit you get, the less is it likely that you will avoid getting a proc off. The point is that the randomness you are alluding to should be consistent with the numbers over the long term. Using the numbers provided is the best way figure that out. Long delay bows need a higher proc rate because they get less shots off than a short delay bow over the same time period. In the same time period, both should proc the same number of times. And where are you getting that crit chance is affected by delay? You are the second person that has said that, but I have never seen that and it wouldn't make any sense for them to base crit chance on the delay. Proc chance makes sense, crit chance does not.

07-03-2007, 04:04 AM	#8
FuRiouSQ Loremaster Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Texas Posts: 127	Ok back when i first strated out my first decent bow was the sinew bow, week later i got the ichorstrand and i always used the sinew but with the new ammo from ichor. i found it easier to time my CAs with longer delay bows and well they hit harder. i would also use the ironwood bow imbued over the ichorstrand as well __________________ Vanadia ~ Deaths Door's Ranger Warester - Deaths Door ~ Retired

07-03-2007, 09:40 AM	#9
Star Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 481	I think that the argument for a long delay has less to do with procs (because while the proc% goes up the higher the delay the Procs per Unit Time does not as you've shown). The main argument is that many rangers CAs are on longer cast timers. With the advent of Poise in KoS and the Multishot line is EoF this is less of an issue now, but there are still some CA combinations that will cause a short delay bow to miss/delay auto attacks. __________________

07-01-2007, 01:43 PM	#1
Effidian Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 304	I've always heard that you should go for a long delay bow so that you proc more. However, I'm not so sure it matters. Let's take 3 theoretical bows: As you can see, you end up with the exact same number of procs. So what am I missing? Why is a long delay better for procs, if you end up with the exact same number in the same amount of time?

07-01-2007, 02:12 PM	#2
EQ2Magroo Loremaster Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 756	I've always heard that you should go for a long delay bow so that you proc more. I've never heard that it makes you proc more, but I guess it could do with various buffs and the way % work out when hasted. What is important and why you should use a slow bow for max DPS is the the effect of haste and how our CA attacks end up interrupting our AA attacks. With a decent haste buff, that nice fast 4.5 second bow with haste ends up with a crazy short delay of 2 seconds or so, whilst the 9 second bow will reduce down to 4 and a bit seconds. What then happens with the fast bow is that your AA attacks (which are now only 2 seconds apart) start to get delayed whilst you are queuing up a Combat Art attack. With the 9 second bow (now 4.5 seconds), you'll be able to get off 2 CA attacks, wait for the AA, then another 2 CAs etc. The effect would appear at first glane to only be slight, but experience has proven that it is actually very important. The key to mega DPS is to not delay any of your AA attacks, whilst balancing firing off as many CAs as possible. The other point to mention, is that a long delay bow has a higher max damage (ignore damage range, this is a bit of a red herring). A crit hit will always hit for 130% of max damage, and we (should) crit hit a lot. The conventional wisdom around here is that the slower bow will end up doing more damage due to the crits assuming both bots crit at the same %. Now in theory this shouldn't be true if both bows are truly equal as the overall crit damage for a bow that hits half as fast for twice as much will be the same as the other bow. e.g. 10 x 100 + ( 5 * 130 ) = 20 x 50 + ( 10 * 65). However, the slower bows are not just doubled up/halved copies of the fast bows, they actually are quite a bit better. Oh, and one other thing I mention to all the Rangers I group/raid with. Max out your STR value ! Why do people put all their effort into AGI ? CA damage is based on STR. 60% of our DPS comes from CAs. I've been in raids with Rangers who have 300 STR, and that's way less than half of what it "should" be.

07-02-2007, 08:49 AM	#5
Lev General Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 171	There is a small flaw in the math however Crit chance and proc chance is not a set number of times depending upon %.. every arrow has a set % chance to crit or proc. I don't think there is a way to calculate that accurate anyways, but it does matter. The point is really only that you cannot put 27% up on a board and think that it will proc 27% of the time. So the thing with procs and crits is that the lower the delay the higher your crit/proc chance is. Poison procs on a 9sec bow is above 50%. Now that doesn't mean you will proc more.. it just means you can proc more. if the RNG would let it, you could probably go a whole day without proccing once, and this is why long delays affect proc/crit. The higher % per hit you get, the less is it likely that you will avoid getting a proc off.

07-02-2007, 12:31 PM	#7
Lev General Join Date: Feb 2005 Posts: 171	yea sorry not sure why I put crit in there I just did a lot of math with poisons to try and show my point, but I dropped it cause it really didn't help my point hehe. Then I did some math with dices and times per minute to try and prove my point. But yet again I came to the same conclusion as you. However I think it's very hard to do an accurate calculation whenever the RNG is involved.

07-05-2007, 11:34 AM	#10
Gareorn Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2004 Posts: 1,144	EQ2Magroo wrote: The other point to mention, is that a long delay bow has a higher max damage (ignore damage range, this is a bit of a red herring). A crit hit will always hit for 130% of max damage, and we (should) crit hit a lot. I just noticed this. And, it's not exactly right. The 130% rule only applies to CA Damage. Crits are calulated differenlty for auto-attack damage. I don't have the formula handy, but the damage range is in the formula. The bigger the damage range on a non-CA attack, the more effective crits are at raising your damage. The high end divided by the low end provides a ratio. 300/100 = 3 and therefor the ratio is 1:3. A 3:5 attack is raised by ~0.36% per point of crit, a 1:3 attack is ~0.58% per point of crit, and a 1:9 attack raises it by ~0.88% per point of crit. So you can see that damage range plays a significant part in your crit calculation on auto attacks. There is a really good article on this stickied in the combat section. __________________ Leader of the vast right-wing conspiricy... Hiding from the world's smartest woman in a bunker under a Hooter's restaurant.

07-05-2007, 01:25 PM	#11
Effidian Loremaster Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 304	Gareorn wrote: I just noticed this. And, it's not exactly right. The 130% rule only applies to CA Damage. Crits are calulated differenlty for auto-attack damage. I don't have the formula handy, but the damage range is in the formula. The bigger the damage range on a non-CA attack, the more effective crits are at raising your damage. The high end divided by the low end provides a ratio. 300/100 = 3 and therefor the ratio is 1:3. A 3:5 attack is raised by ~0.36% per point of crit, a 1:3 attack is ~0.58% per point of crit, and a 1:9 attack raises it by ~0.88% per point of crit. So you can see that damage range plays a significant part in your crit calculation on auto attacks. There is a really good article on this stickied in the combat section. The crit thread that you are referring to is an attempt to find overal dps increase based on crit%. The reason crits affect a wide spread bow more than a low spread bow has to do with finding average damage per hit. I'll attempt to give a simple example to illustrate. Bow A: dmg 50 - 450 (ratio 1:9) Bow B: dmg 150 - 450 (ratio 1:3) Without crits Bow A would average 250 dmg per shot ((50 + 450)/2) and bow B would average 300 dmg per shot ((150 + 450)/2). At 100% crits, Bow A would average 468 (250 * 1.87) and Bow B would average 474 per shot (300 * 1.58). Each point of crit increases the average more for Bow A than Bow B, but the top end damage for both bows is still the same at 585 (450 * 1.3). I believe that is why EQ2Magroo said to ignore damage range. It is important for calculating average damage for a bow, but seems to be looked at as more important than it really is.

07-05-2007, 04:13 PM	#12
stryker268 Loremaster Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 30	EQ2Magroo wrote: Oh, and one other thing I mention to all the Rangers I group/raid with. Max out your STR value ! Why do people put all their effort into AGI ? CA damage is based on STR. 60% of our DPS comes from CAs. I've been in raids with Rangers who have 300 STR, and that's way less than half of what it "should" be. Oh wow. I'm sorry but I really can't agree with this statement as a whole. Yes, strength contributes alot to how how hard your attacks hit. But I don't agree with a ranger's CAs being 60% of our damage. I've been playing with ACT and on our last couple raids I've found a couple interesting things. 1) Auto-attack is anywhere from 40-48% of my total damage on raid. 2) Caustic poison does roughly 13-16% of my total damage 3) quick shot (proc off of our offensive stance) was about 6-8% of my damage 4) Power of Marr (proc off of Qeynos Kilij) was roughly 5-7% of my damage. In fact the ONLY CA that made it into the top 8 list of damage types was Triple Volley at about 3% of my total damage outpput. Now granted, alot of the other procs came of of the CA's that I used. But in a strict snese the actual CAs only made up about 15% of the actual damage that I did. While in raid i typically run around 700-750 str and about 400 int (Int being what increases your proc damage I believe.) My gear is pretty good except for my bow. Haven't been able to get my hands on top tier bow yet and I am using the Recurved Hearslinger. Once I get a good bow I can only see that as taking even more away from CA's as my auto-attack damage should be even higher. While Str is very important, what people are really missing is the importance of Int in their damage. The Agi is only important to me because of the AGI AA line with the increased casting speed. I used to be speced STR-AGI until i re-geared and got some +Int equipment. Once i did this I changed my spec to AGI-INT. My parses went up by about 400-500 dps. I guess what i am trying to say is that while Str is important, it is not the end all stat that we need. IMO Int is actually just as important and should not be ignored. If I am missing something or my thinking is flawed please tell me. I am always trying to improve and would appreciate the help.