I was recently having a discussion about whether or not it is a good idea for a 16-24-person raid to have 2-3 support players running Warhorn as opposed to another useful ultimate. As most of us know, every PvE trial group worth its salt tries to maintain a high up-time (80%?) on Warhorn, which provides the entire raid with a 10% increase to Health, Stamina, and Magicka, as well as Major Force (30% bonus to critical damage), for 9.5 seconds. Now obviously the effectiveness of critical damage in PvP is reduced by the Critical Mitigation provided by the Impenetrable armor trait, CP points into Resistant, and the Impregnable set. However, this does not mean that critical damage is meaningless in PvP. For one thing, many players also put CP into Precise Strikes, which boosts critical damage. For another, very few players have more than 2000 or 2500 critical resistance. Anecdotally, I have heard several good players comment that critical damage is underestimated in PvP and can sometimes make a big difference if you build for it.
So wondering about this, I made a few back-of-the-envelop calculations, based on my own Stamina Nightblade, who has a buffed Critical Chance of 51% and a 13% boost to critical damage with 31 points into Precise Strikes. I'm not a math wiz, but here's what I came up with based on the critical resistance damage formulas
shown here.
My critical damage modifier without Major or Minor Force: 1.5 + 0.13 (Precise Strikes) - 0.30 (the modifer resulting from a typical critical resistance of 2000) = 1.33
My critical damage modifier with Major Force: 1.5 + 0.13 (Precise Strikes) + 0.30 (Major Force) - 0.30 (critical resistance) = 1.63 (with Minor Force, provided by Beast Trap, it could rise 1.75)
The up-time of Warhorn is 9.5 seconds. For the sake of simplicity, let's say I hit an enemy player with Surprise Attack 10 times over that period.
Surprise Attack tooltip damage: 10,526/2 (Battle Spirit) = 5263
Surprise Attack critical hit without Major Force: 5263 *1.33 = 6700
Surprise Attack critical hit with Major Force: 5263 * 1.63 = 8579
Now with 51% critical chance, let's suppose half of my attacks are critical hits.
5 non-critical hits: 26,315
5 critical hits without Major Force: 33,500
Total damage: 59,815 (/10 = 5982 dps)
5 non-critical hits: 26,315
5 critical hits with Major Force: 42,893
Total damage: 69,208 (/10 = 6921 dps)
Therefore, in this hypothetical scenario, Warhorn could potentially allow my Nightblade to do about 15% more damage over a period of 9.5 seconds than without it.
So what might this mean for the raid? If I can approach 15% more damage against a typical opponent, then so could the other dps players in the raid, depending of course on their critical chance and how many points they have into Precise Strikes. What's more, everyone gets a 10% buff to their Health and their main stat, upping their damage a little bit more (not accounted for in the above figures).
It seems to me like it would be worth it for the raid to run Warhorn. The real question, of course, is how to balance the benefit of Warhorn, which costs 250 Ultimate, against the benefit of having those 2-3 support players slot another useful ultimate.
Finally, Major Force can also be provided by the Restoration Staff ultimate Light's Champion, though for only 5 seconds.
Any thoughts?