Biting Jabs vs. Rapid Strikes = Stamplar

Mricci1988

Hey guys!

Silly question....for things like VMSA and Trials....i am not looking to be the TOP damage dealer (min max)....i just want to be able to clear everything and be somewhat smooth....

I was thinking of going:

Reflective Light (solid AOE + DoT)
Blood Craze (Healing)
Blood Thirster (its like puncturing sweeps but for single target healing / damage
Ritual of Retribution (AoE + Healing)
Blade Cloak / Repetance / Evil hunter (More AoE damage or more sustain)
Flawless Dawnbreaker

The problem is I look at burning light....with biting jabs its really strong....how bad will my DPS suffer without Biting Jabs????

Thoughts?

Totalitarian

Looks like you have some kind of hybrid build going, so if you try vMA, you'll probably get chewed up and spit out by the mobs and bosses. For vMA, you need to have very good damage and sustain going in, which is accomplished by focusing on either stamina or magicka.

Also, your vMA clears won't be somewhat smooth until you have plenty of practice.

But for both builds of Templar, the respective morph of Puncturing Strikes is a very good ability to take. If we do not factor in the Burning Light Procs on Stamplar, I say that Rapid Strikes does more DPS, but it lacks AOE.

Mricci1988

Totalitarian wrote: »

Looks like you have some kind of hybrid build going, so if you try vMA, you'll probably get chewed up and spit out by the mobs and bosses. For vMA, you need to have very good damage and sustain going in, which is accomplished by focusing on either stamina or magicka.

Also, your vMA clears won't be somewhat smooth until you have plenty of practice.

But for both builds of Templar, the respective morph of Puncturing Strikes is a very good ability to take. If we do not factor in the Burning Light Procs on Stamplar, I say that Rapid Strikes does more DPS, but it lacks AOE.

This is really good advise and I agree - vMSA i would have to say you are right....I am using the hybrid build(?) as my leveling / grinding fun build and will tweak it as needed to suit vMSA.

However what you said was interesting..."if we dont take into consideration burning light passives rapid strikes is stronger".

Now that being said - question - is it actually stronger? Burning light?

Forgetting AoE (as that would make it stronger (obviously due to more mobs being hit)....is it single target stronger or how badly gimped would I be by not using biting jabs?????

Mricci1988

anyone else?

Mricci1988

@Alcast
Hope all is well with you bud - you answered a previous posting of mine and wanted to inquire your thoughts on this one....

I was wondering what you thought of it Biting Jabs vs. Rapid Strikes on single target DPS....factoring in Burning Light.

Acsvf

Mricci1988 wrote: »

I was wondering what you thought of it Biting Jabs vs. Rapid Strikes on single target DPS....factoring in Burning Light.

They should be both rather similar, although you may want Jabs for AOE.
Please don't use reflective light or ritual though. Both are a waste of a slot for you.

juhasman

Rapid strikes > Bitning jabs , if You have maelstorm dual wield.

Totalitarian

Mricci1988 wrote: »

This is really good advise and I agree - vMSA i would have to say you are right....I am using the hybrid build(?) as my leveling / grinding fun build and will tweak it as needed to suit vMSA.

However what you said was interesting..."if we dont take into consideration burning light passives rapid strikes is stronger".

Now that being said - question - is it actually stronger? Burning light?

Forgetting AoE (as that would make it stronger (obviously due to more mobs being hit)....is it single target stronger or how badly gimped would I be by not using biting jabs?????

Okay, so, there are a ton of things to consider in the calculation. One is whether or not Biting Jabs has a cap as to however many mobs hit, and the second is the internal cooldown of Burning Light

We're testing if


So, damage, in general, is represented by


So, we'll assume you keep DOTs up the same with each ability (slightly unrealistic due to channel times + animations) (note that both Rapid Strikes and Biting Jabs are DOTs, but in this case, they will be considered as spammable abilities)

Damage of Biting Jabs not including crit or penetration or shields, is given as

As you can see, the formula represents the AOE nature of Biting Jabs, which deals 140% damage to the closest target, and then attacks everyone else for the tooltip damage, alongside adding up the total damage of Burning Light procs, and the proc has a cooldown on it.

Meanwhile, Rapid Strikes (I'll use the morph that increases damage on each sucessive hit), not including the execute passive and assuming 100% hit rate, is



I want to note how I have not factored in crit or anything into any of these. In addition, the two abilities have a different number of strikes, which affects how much damage they can do depending on crit. In addition, Biting Jabs grants + 10% crit chance.

Also, because the two abilities do not deal a constant amount of damage over their channel time, the individual DPS of each ability is actually depentant on if you cancel it or not, because each of them does more damage on the final hit. The varying DPS of each ability then becomes a function of time, which may require you to take a derivative to find the DPS ( DPS is still just the total damage dealt during channel divided by the channel time completed) This may not seem like much, but the .6 channel time of Rapid Strikes allow it to hit faster, so there's less need for you to cancel the animation to have to heal yourself, whereas Biting Jabs has a longer cast time that may require you to cancel it to heal yourself.

NOT JUST THAT! Also, I did not even consider weaving in light/medium attacks! Again, the difference in cast time allows Rapid Strikes to weave in more attacks, which allows for more weaves than Biting Jabs.

Needless to say, it is a very complex, in depth calculation that is required to fully determine whether or not Biting Jabs or Rapid Strikes is better, in a purely mathematical scenario, however. You'll be much better off testing each ability separately instead of deriving formulae for hours to correctly determine DPS. Try it out, and find the better match for you.

Mricci1988

Acsvf wrote: »

Mricci1988 wrote: »

I was wondering what you thought of it Biting Jabs vs. Rapid Strikes on single target DPS....factoring in Burning Light.

They should be both rather similar, although you may want Jabs for AOE.
Please don't use reflective light or ritual though. Both are a waste of a slot for you.

Okay i get reflective light - i udnerstand what you mean - that is for my leveling and grinding / AoE pull....

for ritual of ret why not? its a solid skill?

For PVP - Purifying Ritual 100% .....but i see in solo PVE Ritual of Ret as a pretty solid skill....passive DoT - free cleanse....and HoT....add into blood craze + bloodthirster i can face tank a lot while maintaining DPS

Panth141

To answer the original question in the OP: go with whichever you prefer.

There will be situations where jabs is better than rapid strikes, and vice versa. Your choice between the two won't have a real impact unless you're aiming to get the extra 2% DPS for min-maxed hardcore play.

Personally, I prefer jabs. AoE, Burning Light, plus it's such a uniquely Templar ability. I like using it more than rapid strikes, so I do. The only time when RS is an absolute must is when you have maelstrom daggers - though I'm not sure how potent they are on a stamplar, I'll have to give them a try!

Acsvf

Mricci1988 wrote: »

for ritual of ret why not? its a solid skill?

For PVP - Purifying Ritual 100% .....but i see in solo PVE Ritual of Ret as a pretty solid skill....passive DoT - free cleanse....and HoT....add into blood craze + bloodthirster i can face tank a lot while maintaining DPS

It's a very good ability. You're a stamplar, though.

Totalitarian wrote: »

Needless to say, it is a very complex, in depth calculation that is required to fully determine whether or not Biting Jabs or Rapid Strikes is better, in a purely mathematical scenario, however. You'll be much better off testing each ability separately instead of deriving formulae for hours to correctly determine DPS. Try it out, and find the better match for you.

Pretty much- just do a single target DPS test. Mathematically calculating DPS is very difficult due to the number of factors involved.

Totalitarian

Acsvf wrote: »

Pretty much- just do a single target DPS test. Mathematically calculating DPS is very difficult due to the number of factors involved.

If anyone were to put in the time to calculate everything, it would be possible to code everything into C++ and then write a simple program where you input all this stuff and get out:
YO [optimal] DPS IS "X".

Grawlog

I'd go with Biting Jabs. I think the Major Savagery it gives is amazing and allows me to build less crit into my base stats. It's AoE, and it procs burning light. Also, you get 10% crit damage for having it slotted. The passives really make Jabs amazing in nearly all situations.

I actually prefer Bloodthirst over Rapid Strikes when going the Flurry route, though. I don't have Maelstrom daggers yet, but I'm pretty comfortable with my Stam Sorc setup. I get 10k crits on the last tick of Bloodthirst (without Warhorn), which equates to a 6k heal. Pretty awesome when you can fire one off with a light attack every 1s or so.

Ritual is pretty pointless for a Stamplar. If you want major mending for Vigor buffs, then toss Rune on your backbar. Don't bother with Ritual though.

KingYogi415

It's in the title, lol.
http://alcasthq.com/jabsmania/

Smasherx74

Totalitarian wrote: »

Mricci1988 wrote: »

This is really good advise and I agree - vMSA i would have to say you are right....I am using the hybrid build(?) as my leveling / grinding fun build and will tweak it as needed to suit vMSA.

However what you said was interesting..."if we dont take into consideration burning light passives rapid strikes is stronger".

Now that being said - question - is it actually stronger? Burning light?

Forgetting AoE (as that would make it stronger (obviously due to more mobs being hit)....is it single target stronger or how badly gimped would I be by not using biting jabs?????

Okay, so, there are a ton of things to consider in the calculation. One is whether or not Biting Jabs has a cap as to however many mobs hit, and the second is the internal cooldown of Burning Light

We're testing if


So, damage, in general, is represented by


So, we'll assume you keep DOTs up the same with each ability (slightly unrealistic due to channel times + animations) (note that both Rapid Strikes and Biting Jabs are DOTs, but in this case, they will be considered as spammable abilities)

Damage of Biting Jabs not including crit or penetration or shields, is given as

As you can see, the formula represents the AOE nature of Biting Jabs, which deals 140% damage to the closest target, and then attacks everyone else for the tooltip damage, alongside adding up the total damage of Burning Light procs, and the proc has a cooldown on it.

Meanwhile, Rapid Strikes (I'll use the morph that increases damage on each sucessive hit), not including the execute passive and assuming 100% hit rate, is



I want to note how I have not factored in crit or anything into any of these. In addition, the two abilities have a different number of strikes, which affects how much damage they can do depending on crit. In addition, Biting Jabs grants + 10% crit chance.

Also, because the two abilities do not deal a constant amount of damage over their channel time, the individual DPS of each ability is actually depentant on if you cancel it or not, because each of them does more damage on the final hit. The varying DPS of each ability then becomes a function of time, which may require you to take a derivative to find the DPS ( DPS is still just the total damage dealt during channel divided by the channel time completed) This may not seem like much, but the .6 channel time of Rapid Strikes allow it to hit faster, so there's less need for you to cancel the animation to have to heal yourself, whereas Biting Jabs has a longer cast time that may require you to cancel it to heal yourself.

NOT JUST THAT! Also, I did not even consider weaving in light/medium attacks! Again, the difference in cast time allows Rapid Strikes to weave in more attacks, which allows for more weaves than Biting Jabs.

Needless to say, it is a very complex, in depth calculation that is required to fully determine whether or not Biting Jabs or Rapid Strikes is better, in a purely mathematical scenario, however. You'll be much better off testing each ability separately instead of deriving formulae for hours to correctly determine DPS. Try it out, and find the better match for you.

It heavily depends on the build. In most cases for Stamplars Biting Jabs in PvE at least will be more optimal.

Like you said, Jabs gives you the 10%+ crit increase, plus jabs has the 1/4 chance to proc for 4-5k damage on each hit.

Not to mention Jabs is an AOE dps, and you can get better DPS with spamming jabs on 3 aligned enemies than spamming Steel Nado for example, obviously. Plus using rapid strikes is going to REQUIRE the maelstrom gear to make it better than regular jabs.

Biting jabs >

Reorx_Holybeard

Using our Skills Browser and doing some very basic math it looks like Biting Jabs does more DPS even single target than Rapid Strikes although they are relatively close. This is without considering the Maelstrom DW weapons which definitely would favor Rapid Strikes.

• Inputs are the default: 20000 Stamina, 2000 Weapon Damage (higher stats don't really change the comparison)
• Biting Jabs = 5875 damage (612 x 4 x 240%)
• Rapid Strikes = 4425 damage (541 + 557 + 573 + 590 + 2164)
• Biting Jabs = 1.1 second cast time, minimum actual cast time is closer to 1.3 seconds
• Rapid Strikes = 0.6 second cast time, minimum actual cast time is closer to 1.0 seconds
• Modified Rapid Strikes = 5753 damage (4424 * 1.3)

So the base damage single target is 5875 Biting vs 5753 Rapids. Pretty close but Biting has a bunch of advantages that further increase its DPS:

• Burning Light proc
• +10% Critical
• +10% Critical Damage
• Area Effect spell (more mobs means more damage)

So I would say its pretty clear that Biting Jabs wins the DPS contest vs Rapid Strikes if you don't have Maelstrom DW weapons.