Major Force in PvP

Aztlan

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?

Taylor_MB

In practice I'd be inclined to say 3 meteors or 3 destro ults or even 3 well placed DBoS's would be more effective then a sustained 10% increase in damage. Sustained pressure can be out healed, instant burst cannot.

VaranisArano

I suppose that's the intent of Warhorn, given that it is one of the Alliance War skills. Its nice to know the exact numbers though.

Part of the reason you see less Warhorns has to do with the current tactics of groups using their ultimates for damage. With that tactic, you have a few healers throwing healing ultimates or Barriers while everyone else uses a damaging ultimate. Then you run away and line of sight any opponents you didn't kill until your ultimates are back up for the next big drop.

So a Warhorn would be an excellent support skill for a group that was actually making full use of its group members' damaging abilities as opposed to a group that was relying on ultimates for the majority of their damage.

Lexxypwns

Major/minor force don’t effect vicious death proc damage. That reason alone probably means you’re better off having more potential VD procs than have stronger eots

Aztlan

Yes, good points, but I'm still not sure. I think it would depend on the overall group comp. For example, if this weren't a group that relied heavily on Vicious Death procs, it might be a good idea. Wouldn't the extra damage affect all abilities, including ultimates, or does that just depend on max stats? 10% extra Health should also be considered. If the average member has 30K health, that would bring it up to 33K.

(By the way, I corrected my calculations to show a 15% boost to damage with Major Force. Just an error. An interesting side note: that 15% extra damage would exactly compensate for Minor Maim, that negative 15% damage debuff that sometimes hits the group due to Wizard's Riposte, Mass Hysteria, etc.)

kaithuzar

If a build's damage sucks then it sucks & an extra 15% isn't going to help them all that much. The problem with "groups" in pvp is that almost every single player is a "group support" build or makes "unnecessary sacrifices" to make them more "group friendly". This means you have almost no straight damage builds in group and no enemies are dying because of this.
Even if you were to throw in some good damage builds into group play, I think they have to be within the distance of warhorn to receive it. Not everyone is going to be stacked on crown all the time, especially if the opponents have a bomber with VD so it's not really worth it in my opinion.

You're right about 1 thing though, crit IS HOW you kill people in pvp.

-Kai

Lexxypwns

Aztlan wrote: »

Yes, good points, but I'm still not sure. I think it would depend on the overall group comp. For example, if this weren't a group that relied heavily on Vicious Death procs, it might be a good idea. Wouldn't the extra damage affect all abilities, including ultimates, or does that just depend on max stats? 10% extra Health should also be considered. If the average member has 30K health, that would bring it up to 33K.

(By the way, I corrected my calculations to show a 15% boost to damage with Major Force. Just an error. An interesting side note: that 15% extra damage would exactly compensate for Minor Maim, that negative 15% damage debuff that sometimes hits the group due to Wizard's Riposte, Mass Hysteria, etc.)

VD is critical to killing large amounts of players on live, due to aoe caps.

Next patch, I think your line of questions may be more relevant, but as long as there's aoe caps then there's no more lethal way to put burst damage on a large group than to chain VD procs, there's nothing else that hits as hard and can be used concurrently with other sources of damage. This in part contributes to the "tank+destro" or 30k HP raid build meta, previously ball groups were countered by a negate and big burst damage that would undoubtedly get a kill or two and start the VD procs, the ball groups then pushed their health up to a level that they're out of most burst thresholds and late combined that with earthgore to become as strong as they've been in recent memory

Aztlan

Great food for thought, guys. Thank you.