Bound Armaments doing significantly more sustained damage than Relentless Focus in PTS

Bladerunner1

I tried stamsorc for the first time on PTS days ago, shocked at how easily I could out DPS the stamblade.
Even so Liquidponyy said I was underutilizing bound armaments, and after reading this thread now I see why.

Four light attacks, are you freaking kidding me? Yeah I didn't bother reading the tooltip, my bad, I was treating it exactly like the night blade version with 5 light attacks building, and still got way better overall DPS.

Finedaible

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Tbh. I just find this to be hilarious at this point. Grim focus was nerfed in Elsweyr because apparently it was overloaded. A lot of NB skills in fact got wrecked back then.
#RedundancyRemoval - term that ZOS came up with...

And what we got now ?
- Turn evil: Mass Histeria on steroids and superior in every way...
- Bound Armaments: a copy-paste of a Grim Focud (a NB class identity skill btw) "copied" to another class and buffed to be a different class identity skill...
- Flying Blade - basically ambush available for every class...

Dont get me wrong, I am not saying that Bound Armements should be nerfed or something. I simply think that it is way to similar in terms of gameplay & class "feel" to be an identity skill. Different visual is not enough. It at least should have different proc condition / stack accumulation mechanics.

I just find it wierd that ZOS is simply copying class skills and adds them so they are available for every class or other classes. I mean what is the point of playing NB ? Cloak ? Well you have invisiblty pots, Turn Evil, Flying Blade and Bound Armements on sorc...

I mean the same thing would happened if ZOS would add for example "teleport" or "blink" skill to mages guild that would basically be streak, but better. There would be less reasons to play as sorc... Imagine seeing templars or dks streaking... Feels wrong...

They need to add minor berserk back to Grim Focus and remove the projectile delay if they keep pulling this bull with Nightblades. Mind you, Bound Armaments can also be released early with fewer stacks for weaker damage unlike Grim Focus which must be fully stacked and still have duration to even use it. Passive 8% stam and 10% LA damage FOR SIMPLY SLOTTING Bound Armaments is far more "overloaded" than Grim Focus was this last year.

WrathOfInnos

susmitds wrote: »

@WrathOfInnos It was scaling with Thaum in Pts 1, when I checked the scaling. Must have changed it.

With the same sustained DPS, Relentless Focus won't be better due to less cast as you will have empty casts every 30 secs instead of 40.

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

nesakinter

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

@WrathOfInnos It was scaling with Thaum in Pts 1, when I checked the scaling. Must have changed it.

With the same sustained DPS, Relentless Focus won't be better due to less cast as you will have empty casts every 30 secs instead of 40.

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

@WrathOfInnos

I was following both of your reasonings and find yours in particular quite logical. However also looking at his point and the bigger picture, one thing is true currently stamblade DPS is significantly behind stamsorc DPS in both ST and AoE aspects. Nor does it bring any DD specific utility like Major Berserk that tank can't provide. Right now, essentially if you think about it, as far pve DPS goes, stamsorc is closer to previous year's stamblade as far as capability goes than the current stamblade.

Right now, there is no reason to bring a stamblade DD instead of stamsorc DD as stamsorc DD outperforms stamblade DDs in every aspect. Also, with ZoS pushing DD utility on every class except NB, more and more classes will get a slot in the 8 DD slots. As a result, NB is getting more and more relegated as the tank class(that too only because of Minor Savagery).

One more thing, we must keep in mind are the class passives and other skills in the kit. For e.g., if we compare Dark Shade to Hurricane, essentially role-wise they both act as class DoT in PvE rotation but Hurricane is far better than Dark Shade in DPS.

Nostrabar

I'm glad someone else noticed this, I've spent the last couple days trying to write this exact post, but deleting it, overly-emotional-business-e-mail style.

We're told repeatedly that we should play how we want, that it should be any class, any role. This appears to be true, unless what you want is Nightblade and PvE DD. Pretty much every other class is a better DD at this point. The only thing you bring to the table as a Magblade is Master Architect, so you can buff the Sorc on your left, and Templar on your right that are allowed to wear the latest-n-greatest.

Except even that's pretty situational, because your cheap ulti is melee, and everybody in melee is wearing Lokkestiiz anyways, and you don't have a cheap ranged ultimate.

Oh, and for Magbldes, Assassin's Will is every six, not every five, because your fifth light attack has a travel time, so you either have to "waste" a light attack, or deal with that additional hiccup in your rotation. I say additional because obviously Inconveniencing Strike needed a cast time.

Folks, seriously, it's not Summerset anymore, it's not 8 magblades in a trial. It's zero. Content creators don't even bother pretending to put effort into their Nightblade PvE builds, because who cares?

nsmurfer

HaruKamui wrote: »

I see this as perfectly balanced.

Bound armaments, while bursty, is more consistent than relentless focus.

It's easier to proc (even if it isnt max charge) but it deals less damage in that instant. Good in combination with hurricane and dots that stam sorcs typically have. Spectral Bow is harder to build up but much more bursty. Perfect for doing big burst kills that stamblade do pretty well.

@HaruKamui Spectral Bow(at least the stamblade morph) has just 3% higher damage than Dagger Proc. Not what I would call much more bursty

WrathOfInnos

nesakinter wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

@WrathOfInnos It was scaling with Thaum in Pts 1, when I checked the scaling. Must have changed it.

With the same sustained DPS, Relentless Focus won't be better due to less cast as you will have empty casts every 30 secs instead of 40.

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

@WrathOfInnos

I was following both of your reasonings and find yours in particular quite logical. However also looking at his point and the bigger picture, one thing is true currently stamblade DPS is significantly behind stamsorc DPS in both ST and AoE aspects. Nor does it bring any DD specific utility like Major Berserk that tank can't provide. Right now, essentially if you think about it, as far pve DPS goes, stamsorc is closer to previous year's stamblade as far as capability goes than the current stamblade.

Right now, there is no reason to bring a stamblade DD instead of stamsorc DD as stamsorc DD outperforms stamblade DDs in every aspect. Also, with ZoS pushing DD utility on every class except NB, more and more classes will get a slot in the 8 DD slots. As a result, NB is getting more and more relegated as the tank class(that too only because of Minor Savagery).

One more thing, we must keep in mind are the class passives and other skills in the kit. For e.g., if we compare Dark Shade to Hurricane, essentially role-wise they both act as class DoT in PvE rotation but Hurricane is far better than Dark Shade in DPS.

@nesakinter Yes I agree with you, Stam Sorc is overall much better than Stamblade on PTS (a couple k more solo DPS and more group benefit from Major Berserk). I just don’t think the differences are coming from Bound Armaments vs Relentless Focus, and don’t want to see this new fun skill taking the blame for Stamblade underperforming. Buffing Shades or revisiting some NB passives is definitely something I could get onboard with, especially considering the poor state of Magblade as well.

Joxer61

what makes Stamsorc so strong? in the logs all I see is weapon skills, and that could be any flavor of class sadly. SO as a new sorc what makes them so "good"?

XIIICaesar

Aren't they supposed to be different though? Different classes so different abilities? If you like bound armaments or think it's better than relentless focus roll a Sorc then. They're both uniquely balanced to each class. They're supposed to be different abilities right cause different classes? Or we throwing the class identity people QQ for away & wanting homogenization now?

Grandma

it does seem like zos says they want to do xyz with skills and then go and make skills that follow those rules they mentioned in... literally 0 capacity.

pretty overloaded skill, i'm surprised the max stam increase stayed.

Celestro

Despite being a stamsorc main, I do agree the skill is essentially overloaded if Relentless Focus was deemed such. Still hate that it was butchered the way it was, as well as the rest of the class tbh.

At the same time though... Stamsorcs are still in need of usable class stuff, so I dunno. Definitely hope they do something to resuscitate NBs soon as I really appreciated the difference in the stam classes with stamblade sitting on top for ST damage.

Joy_Division

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

@WrathOfInnos It was scaling with Thaum in Pts 1, when I checked the scaling. Must have changed it.

With the same sustained DPS, Relentless Focus won't be better due to less cast as you will have empty casts every 30 secs instead of 40.

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

Doesn't Boundless also increase mas stam by 8% and light attack damage by 10%?

Nostrabar

Joy_Division wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

@WrathOfInnos It was scaling with Thaum in Pts 1, when I checked the scaling. Must have changed it.

With the same sustained DPS, Relentless Focus won't be better due to less cast as you will have empty casts every 30 secs instead of 40.

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

Doesn't Boundless also increase mas stam by 8% and light attack damage by 10%?

He is also not counting the damage done by the 6 extra BA procs when he comes to his conclusion, nor is he "subtracting" the extra refresh cast of Relentless.

WrathOfInnos

Joy_Division wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

@WrathOfInnos It was scaling with Thaum in Pts 1, when I checked the scaling. Must have changed it.

With the same sustained DPS, Relentless Focus won't be better due to less cast as you will have empty casts every 30 secs instead of 40.

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

Doesn't Boundless also increase mas stam by 8% and light attack damage by 10%?

Yep slotting it gives both of those passive effects as well as 2% Weapon Damage from the Expert Mage passive and 20% stam/health recovery from the Daedric Protection passive. Note that the recovery may be redundant if any other summoning ability is slotted.

Relentless Focus is accompanied by 0-10% mitigation, a self-heal, 10% Crit damage and 2% Crit Chance for slotting, and Minor Savagery (6% weapon crit) for the group on cast. Note that the Savagery and Crit damage may be redundant if any other Assassination ability is slotted.

I think the discussion has mainly been focused on activation damage in a vacuum, but yes the effects passives will definitely have an impact on class balance.

Edit: I’m also seeing Assassin’s Scourge averaging 58k in the best Stamblade parses, while Bound Armaments is around 48k. Unclear what is causing the difference if the tooltips are very similar.

universal_wrath

Joxer61 wrote: »

what makes Stamsorc so strong? in the logs all I see is weapon skills, and that could be any flavor of class sadly. SO as a new sorc what makes them so "good"?

Shhh, don't tell them.

Gaggin

Even if it did way more dmg, so what? You cant compare class skills on a vacuum like that, you have to consider the whole package a class brings.

Trying to get tjings nerfed before you even test them, how nice

WrathOfInnos

Nostrabar wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

@WrathOfInnos It was scaling with Thaum in Pts 1, when I checked the scaling. Must have changed it.

With the same sustained DPS, Relentless Focus won't be better due to less cast as you will have empty casts every 30 secs instead of 40.

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

Doesn't Boundless also increase mas stam by 8% and light attack damage by 10%?

He is also not counting the damage done by the 6 extra BA procs when he comes to his conclusion, nor is he "subtracting" the extra refresh cast of Relentless.

L2Read. I literally stated 3 casts vs 4 casts to refresh, and 30 procs vs 24 procs. The additional proc casts of Bound Armaments needs to be balanced against the higher tooltip and more spammable opportunities from Relentless.

If a skill had more frequent procs (aka more GCD’s consumed) without doing more DPS it would be a weak skill.

susmitds

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

@WrathOfInnos

There are few mistakes in your calculations.

Firstly you will get only 5 procs per cast of Relentless Focus and 9 procs per cast of Bound Armaments (not 6 and 10 like in your calculation).

Nextly, average spammable damage is useless here as it is variable by builds. You need to use the standards same as the devs. As we are using spammable as the damage standard for everything in the game as DoT, I am going to use it here as well.

Base spammable damage - 911 (Surprise Attack, Stone Giant and other class instant melee spammables have this exact value for a template character without gear/passives/etc)
Relentless Focus - 1527
Bound Armaments - 1480

Taking spammable damage as k, Relentless Focus damage as x and Bound Armaments as y

x = 1527/911 k = 1.676 k
y = 1480/911 k = 1.625 k

Now, lets take the 120 GCD duration again filling the gap with spammables like you did.

Stamblade - 4 empty cast + 4*5 procs + (120-4-4*5) spammables = 4*0 + 20x + 96k = 20x + 96k = 129.52k
Stamsorc - 3 empty cast + 3*9 procs + (120-3-3*9) spammables = 4*0 + 27y + 90k = 27y + 90k = 133.875k > Stamblade by 3.362415071% efficiency

As we can see, we are getting Stamsorc rota is coming out mathematically as more efficient even taking the GCD into account.

Additionally lets find out what should be the exact multiplier on both x and y by equating to both rotation values.

Solving for x,

20x + 96k = 27y + 90k
20x + 96k = 133.875k (putting it in y=1.625k)
x = 1.89375k

Solving for y,

27y + 90k = 20x + 96k
27y + 90k = 129.52k (putting it in x=1.676k)
y = 1.4637037037k

Now, lets find use these values to find how much relative damage they should have to be considered perfectly balanced with both solutions.

1.89375/1.625 = 1.16538461538

1.4637037037/1.676 = 0.87333156545

So, Relentless Focus has to be 16.538461538% higher damage than Bound Armaments or conversely Bound Armaments has to be (100-87.333156545)% or 12.666843455% weaker than Relentless Focus to be perfectly balanced.

nesakinter

susmitds wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

@WrathOfInnos

There are few mistakes in your calculations.

Firstly you will get only 5 procs per cast of Relentless Focus and 9 procs per cast of Bound Armaments (not 6 and 10 like in your calculation).

Nextly, average spammable damage is useless here as it is variable by builds. You need to use the standards same as the devs. As we are using spammable as the damage standard for everything in the game as DoT, I am going to use it here as well.

Base spammable damage - 911 (Surprise Attack, Stone Giant and other class instant melee spammables have this exact value for a template character without gear/passives/etc)
Relentless Focus - 1527
Bound Armaments - 1480

Taking spammable damage as k, Relentless Focus damage as x and Bound Armaments as y

x = 1527/911 k = 1.676 k
y = 1480/911 k = 1.625 k

Now, lets take the 120 GCD duration again filling the gap with spammables like you did.

Stamblade - 4 empty cast + 4*5 procs + (120-4-4*5) spammables = 4*0 + 20x + 96k = 20x + 96k = 129.52k
Stamsorc - 3 empty cast + 3*9 procs + (120-3-3*9) spammables = 4*0 + 27y + 90k = 27y + 90k = 133.875k > Stamblade by 3.362415071% efficiency

As we can see, we are getting Stamsorc rota is coming out mathematically as more efficient even taking the GCD into account.

Additionally lets find out what should be the exact multiplier on both x and y by equating to both rotation values.

Solving for x,

20x + 96k = 27y + 90k
20x + 96k = 133.875k (putting it in y=1.625k)
x = 1.89375k

Solving for y,

27y + 90k = 20x + 96k
27y + 90k = 129.52k (putting it in x=1.676k)
y = 1.4637037037k

Now, lets find use these values to find how much relative damage they should have to be considered perfectly balanced with both solutions.

1.89375/1.625 = 1.16538461538

1.4637037037/1.676 = 0.87333156545

So, Relentless Focus has to be 16.538461538% higher damage than Bound Armaments or conversely Bound Armaments has to be (100-87.333156545)% or 12.666843455% weaker than Relentless Focus to be perfectly balanced.

Calling in @Masel

I am genuinely confused. Too much maths for me, need someone to figure who is right

Pr0Skygon

Here's a big question: Why does Bound Armaments have to deal the same amount of damage compare to Relentless Focus? These are 2 different skills of 2 different classes, with a bunch of different passives, skill set and general gameplay style. Why on earth do you want them to be the same?

"But that's what ZOS have been doing for the last year or so with their skill audit". Not exactly, ZOS rounded the numbers so that they can have a better understanding of how each class passive and skill set function individually, it does not mean that every class with similar skill should function the same way.

To be short, I'm against the idea of comparing Bound Armaments and Relentless Focus, for now. Give it a patch or 2, then we'll see.

nsmurfer

Pr0Skygon wrote: »

Here's a big question: Why does Bound Armaments have to deal the same amount of damage compare to Relentless Focus? These are 2 different skills of 2 different classes, with a bunch of different passives, skill set and general gameplay style. Why on earth do you want them to be the same?

"But that's what ZOS have been doing for the last year or so with their skill audit". Not exactly, ZOS rounded the numbers so that they can have a better understanding of how each class passive and skill set function individually, it does not mean that every class with similar skill should function the same way.

To be short, I'm against the idea of comparing Bound Armaments and Relentless Focus, for now. Give it a patch or 2, then we'll see.

Bound Armaments is being compared to Relentless Focus because it is obvious that it was remade using Relentless Focus as a basis for its mechanics. The copy skill should not be better than the original.

fbours

susmitds wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

It’s not about empty casts, it’s about total GCD’s consumed. With perfect uptime and perfect procs of each skill, over a 120s window, Relentless requires 28 casts (4 refresh and 24 procs) while Bound Armaments requires 33 casts (3 refresh and 30 procs). This means that the Boundless Armaments rotation allows for 5 additional skills over that time period. Spammables are hitting for about 36k (higher if considering executes, but I’ll keep this calculation conservative), so 5 of them is 180k damage over 120s or 1500 DPS. Therefore Bound Armaments needs to outperform Relentless Focus by about 1500 DPS in order to have a similar effect on overall DPS when GCD’s are considered.

@WrathOfInnos

There are few mistakes in your calculations.

Firstly you will get only 5 procs per cast of Relentless Focus and 9 procs per cast of Bound Armaments (not 6 and 10 like in your calculation).

Nextly, average spammable damage is useless here as it is variable by builds. You need to use the standards same as the devs. As we are using spammable as the damage standard for everything in the game as DoT, I am going to use it here as well.

Base spammable damage - 911 (Surprise Attack, Stone Giant and other class instant melee spammables have this exact value for a template character without gear/passives/etc)
Relentless Focus - 1527
Bound Armaments - 1480

Taking spammable damage as k, Relentless Focus damage as x and Bound Armaments as y

x = 1527/911 k = 1.676 k
y = 1480/911 k = 1.625 k

Now, lets take the 120 GCD duration again filling the gap with spammables like you did.

Stamblade - 4 empty cast + 4*5 procs + (120-4-4*5) spammables = 4*0 + 20x + 96k = 20x + 96k = 129.52k
Stamsorc - 3 empty cast + 3*9 procs + (120-3-3*9) spammables = 4*0 + 27y + 90k = 27y + 90k = 133.875k > Stamblade by 3.362415071% efficiency

As we can see, we are getting Stamsorc rota is coming out mathematically as more efficient even taking the GCD into account.

Additionally lets find out what should be the exact multiplier on both x and y by equating to both rotation values.

Solving for x,

20x + 96k = 27y + 90k
20x + 96k = 133.875k (putting it in y=1.625k)
x = 1.89375k

Solving for y,

27y + 90k = 20x + 96k
27y + 90k = 129.52k (putting it in x=1.676k)
y = 1.4637037037k

Now, lets find use these values to find how much relative damage they should have to be considered perfectly balanced with both solutions.

1.89375/1.625 = 1.16538461538

1.4637037037/1.676 = 0.87333156545

So, Relentless Focus has to be 16.538461538% higher damage than Bound Armaments or conversely Bound Armaments has to be (100-87.333156545)% or 12.666843455% weaker than Relentless Focus to be perfectly balanced.

Can you state what your request is? Homogenization? Because that is what you get with this type of posts.

While the math looks sound and simplistic I feel many variables are left out specifically passives from each class. Is it consider part of ZOS balancing algorithm? Idk but I assume they do. Will passives have a swing in your math? Maybe

susmitds

fbours wrote: »

Can you state what your request is? Homogenization? Because that is what you get with this type of posts.

While the math looks sound and simplistic I feel many variables are left out specifically passives from each class. Is it consider part of ZOS balancing algorithm? Idk but I assume they do. Will passives have a swing in your math? Maybe

Call me biased but when my main class'es unique tools are being handed out like candies, I could care less about homogenization. Also, isn't copying a class indentity, changing the animation and duration and giving to a better version to another class not homogenization as well?

There could have been a thousand way to create a burst skill for stamsorc but no, ZOS had to copy paste the mechanics from an existing skill, so here we are.

Nostrabar

susmitds wrote: »

So, Relentless Focus has to be 16.538461538% higher damage than Bound Armaments or conversely Bound Armaments has to be (100-87.333156545)% or 12.666843455% weaker than Relentless Focus to be perfectly balanced.

Hey, just wanted to point out you're also not counting light attacks or the stamina buff---which works out to be a 4% buff for all stamina abilities, and a 14% buff for light attacks, right?

T3hasiangod

Your math is looking at the abilities in a vacuum, when in reality, they are not. Both classes have different passives that change the overall damage of the class as a whole. Looking at abilities in a vacuum is what caused the whole Dragonhold debacle in the first place.

In any case, your calculations are all wrong now in 5.2.4 since Relentless Focus now lasts a full 60 seconds.

WrathOfInnos

susmitds wrote: »

There are few mistakes in your calculations.

Firstly you will get only 5 procs per cast of Relentless Focus and 9 procs per cast of Bound Armaments (not 6 and 10 like in your calculation).

That would be true if charges were lost when the duration ended, but they are not. It’s true that the first cast you will get 5 or 9 procs, but the in the following duration you will have a proc as soon as you refresh the ability, allowing 6 and 10 from that point on. With a slow light attack weave you may miss building one charge while casting the refresh, but you certainly do not lose the entire stack that is ready to proc immediately. In a sustained fight with good weaving it is much closer to 6 and 10 than 5 and 9.

susmitds wrote: »

Nextly, average spammable damage is useless here as it is variable by builds. You need to use the standards same as the devs. As we are using spammable as the damage standard for everything in the game as DoT, I am going to use it here as well.

Base spammable damage - 911 (Surprise Attack, Stone Giant and other class instant melee spammables have this exact value for a template character without gear/passives/etc)
Relentless Focus - 1527
Bound Armaments - 1480

Taking spammable damage as k, Relentless Focus damage as x and Bound Armaments as y

x = 1527/911 k = 1.676 k
y = 1480/911 k = 1.625 k

Now, lets take the 120 GCD duration again filling the gap with spammables like you did.

Stamblade - 4 empty cast + 4*5 procs + (120-4-4*5) spammables = 4*0 + 20x + 96k = 20x + 96k = 129.52k
Stamsorc - 3 empty cast + 3*9 procs + (120-3-3*9) spammables = 4*0 + 27y + 90k = 27y + 90k = 133.875k > Stamblade by 3.362415071% efficiency

As we can see, we are getting Stamsorc rota is coming out mathematically as more efficient even taking the GCD into account.

Additionally lets find out what should be the exact multiplier on both x and y by equating to both rotation values.

Solving for x,

20x + 96k = 27y + 90k
20x + 96k = 133.875k (putting it in y=1.625k)
x = 1.89375k

Solving for y,

27y + 90k = 20x + 96k
27y + 90k = 129.52k (putting it in x=1.676k)
y = 1.4637037037k

Now, lets find use these values to find how much relative damage they should have to be considered perfectly balanced with both solutions.

1.89375/1.625 = 1.16538461538

1.4637037037/1.676 = 0.87333156545

So, Relentless Focus has to be 16.538461538% higher damage than Bound Armaments or conversely Bound Armaments has to be (100-87.333156545)% or 12.666843455% weaker than Relentless Focus to be perfectly balanced.

I see where you’re going with this in theory, but in practice these numbers are not accurate. In the parses I’ve seen, Relentless Focus is hitting about 58k, Bound Armaments 48k, and Wrecking Blow/Surprise Attack 36k each (WB actually slightly more if you consider the Empower). Killers Blade is averaging 86k and Executioner 77k. We could say the weighted average spammable was close to 55k, but this does not tell the whole story because Bloodthirsty + Execute makes spammables much more valuable near the end of the fight. You couldn’t simply use spammables instead of BA the whole fight because for the first ~75% they are inferior, and for the last 25% BA also gets the 30% increase from BT.

My point here is that tooltips are not very accurate, and the 1.67 and 1.62 ratios are way off for a real parse. Theory-nerfing is a bad idea that leads to useless skills and makes the game less fun. Every test I’ve seen shows that Bound Armaments is fine, and I find it unbelievable how hard people will fight against a boring old class getting buffed with something interesting and new.

susmitds

@WrathOfInnos I have no issue with Bound Armaments being a burst skill nor do I have any issue stam sorc getting buffs. My primary issue is the way ZOS is doing it. It is undeniable that Bound Armaments was inspired by Relentless Focus. In fact, BA is very similar to RF from three years ago. RF was also 4 LA stacks too and in fight affected LA/HA speed instead of damage then.
The similarities go as deep as addon API that you can literally change a few lines in the Grim Focus counter add-on to retrofit to BA.

They could have at least made BA somewhat different like making the daggers auto proc at max stacks and there by off-GCD. There are a thousand ways to do it, yet they copied the mechanics of an existing skill, which literally invited comparisons.

Also I am somewhat satisfied with duration buff, which should equalize the skill in theory at least from a proc damage perspective.

WrathOfInnos

Yeah, the Relentless duration buff was a good outcome. That’s not how these things usually end.

Nostrabar

I'd like to point out that I don't think the duration buff is the way this should end, because none of the math on this page is counting counting additional procs, max stam, or the LA damage buff.

These are all the things that Relentless/Merciless had stripped away from it over the last 12 months, which is a bit of extra salt, honestly.

kalunte

is it me or relentless was tweaked to have heal and mitigation bound to it that no one asked for, tied to melee range and the skill to be active and stacked while bound armament has 8% stam and 10% La/Ha dmg for only slotting it?

am i really the only one shocked about this?

regardless of the duration and the 4 vs 5 attacks to fullfil the skill?