Stamblade - Shadow or Lover

Mobius0

Assuming no proc sets, 7x Divines: which do you guys prefer?

Currently my pen is not that great. Like 20% +1600. Mark Target seems like garbage, so then lover does look appealing. But Shadow is nice thanks to guaranteed crits from stealth, and the little boost to healing.

I care about both CP and no-CP, but have no problem switching if it was better.

mikey_reach

I’d do shadow you can get pen from other sources like traits and glyphs but you cant get crit damage and heals from said sources.

Mobius0

Well, traits wise, as DW I am running Nirn + Sharpened. Seems like nirn on main hand is superior (for no proc build).

That's only the +1600 whatever. And what about no CP? No extra pen to be had there!

This is why I chose dual maces, but 20% plus offhand sharpened isn't going to get me to very high penetration!

It's a shame we have no good source of penetration debuff. Caltrops and Mark Target both seem kinda bad. I'd have to mark target after my opener from stealth, which uses up a GCD, and doesn't apply to the initial attack.

There's Kra'gh, but I'd rather not run a proc set. There's Balorgh, which I have been considering (Also considering Molag Kena though.). Not really a lot of +damage monster helms to choose from, honestly. With Camo Hunter I don't need Slimecraw.

pauld1_ESO

I run warrior personally.

Mobius0

I guess the nice thing about Warrior is the 20% boost from brutality buff.

My thoughts on that though, is that with hide and cloak being guaranteed crits, Shadow seems like it would be better. I may have to learn the weapon damage equations, but I'd think that the extra raw weapon damage would be less beneficial on a build that already has a lot of weapon damage. Shadow is a percentage multiplier, whereas Warrior is a flat boost.

What made you choose Warrior, and have you compared it to Shadow and/or Lover?

MurderMostFoul

Warrior sees +35% in medium armor.

Shadow isn't a multiplicative bonus to your crit damage, it's additive to your crit bonus:

Base crit: 1.5
Shadow: +0.11
Base + Shadow = 1.61 crit damage modifierc

erio

Mobius0 wrote: »

Assuming no proc sets, 7x Divines: which do you guys prefer?

Currently my pen is not that great. Like 20% +1600. Mark Target seems like garbage, so then lover does look appealing. But Shadow is nice thanks to guaranteed crits from stealth, and the little boost to healing.

I care about both CP and no-CP, but have no problem switching if it was better.

Steed is really nice

Mobius0

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

Warrior sees +35% in medium armor.

Shadow isn't a multiplicative bonus to your crit damage, it's additive to your crit bonus:

Base crit: 1.5
Shadow: +0.11
Base + Shadow = 1.61 crit damage modifierc

It is absolutely a multiplicative bonus to your DAMAGE. Obviously a % crit bonus isn't going to multiply off of your already multiplied crit bonus.

Shadow absolutely IS a 19% bonus to your damage, when you get a crit. Even if they have crit resist.

So if your crit chance is 50%, that's essentially a 9.5% damage boost (and it boosts heals now, which was the one thing Warrior was so good for.).

BUT, when you can guarantee crits, it's more than just 9.5%. And that burst on command is rather valuable too.

I seriously doubt Warrior can reach that kind of damage boost, even if you have a low damage build.

MurderMostFoul

Mobius0 wrote: »

MurderMostFoul wrote: »

Warrior sees +35% in medium armor.

Shadow isn't a multiplicative bonus to your crit damage, it's additive to your crit bonus:

Base crit: 1.5
Shadow: +0.11
Base + Shadow = 1.61 crit damage modifierc

It is absolutely a multiplicative bonus to your DAMAGE. Obviously a % crit bonus isn't going to multiply off of your already multiplied crit bonus.

Shadow absolutely IS a 19% bonus to your damage, when you get a crit. Even if they have crit resist.

So if your crit chance is 50%, that's essentially a 9.5% damage boost (and it boosts heals now, which was the one thing Warrior was so good for.).

BUT, when you can guarantee crits, it's more than just 9.5%. And that burst on command is rather valuable too.

I seriously doubt Warrior can reach that kind of damage boost, even if you have a low damage build.

OK, additive to crit multiplier/base damage multiplier addition - it's just semantics at that point.

But be careful what you call a % damage boost. Given all divines and a 50% crit chance and 50% crit damage bonus, you'll see an average damage increase equal to 9.5% of your base, pre-crit, damage. But, the actual overall damage increase is:

(1.69+1)/2 ÷ (1.5+1)/2 = 1.076 -> 7.6% overall damage increase.

The 7.6% will actually increase a little if you factor in crit resists.

Warrior in all divines with Brut and medium gives 490 WD. That's alot. I believe parses showed that warrior>shadow when shadow was 13%. So now the difference would be even greater. But obviously parses and pvp are very different. I think it comes down to personal preference and how reliable you feel your crits are. (NB having an upper hand here.) But I wouldn't dismiss warrior outright just because 9.5% looks good on paper.

Mobius0

Admittedly I haven't run through the damage equation to calculate it exactly. I'll do so for myself once my new sets are done.

But if you are talking percentage gains, Warrior is going to diminish your returns, the higher your weapon damage is, since it's a flat bonus.

If someone has 6000 weapon damage, and adds another 400, they are going to see a smaller percentage increase than someone with 3000 weapon damage getting that 400 boost.

The big difference in all of this, which I mentioned already, is the 100% crit chance from stealth/cloak. It's a much larger increase when you factor that in. And being able to set up that burst can be priceless.

Tivnael

Mobius0 wrote: »

Admittedly I haven't run through the damage equation to calculate it exactly. I'll do so for myself once my new sets are done.

But if you are talking percentage gains, Warrior is going to diminish your returns, the higher your weapon damage is, since it's a flat bonus.

If someone has 6000 weapon damage, and adds another 400, they are going to see a smaller percentage increase than someone with 3000 weapon damage getting that 400 boost.

The big difference in all of this, which I mentioned already, is the 100% crit chance from stealth/cloak. It's a much larger increase when you factor that in. And being able to set up that burst can be priceless.

Does scaling for WD work like you are assuming here? so does this "diminishing returns" also affect actual damage numbers?

Mobius0

We're talking percentage gains here. Just like an extra 9.5% boost to crit damage is technically not a 9.5% boost to your overall DPS.

But weapon damage is much simpler to understand, because it's not a percentage multiplier. Breaking it down to a basic example, say your skill does 1000 damage, and you have 3000 weapon damage, and you add 400 more, that would make the attack hit for 4400 instead of 4000 damage. But say you had 6000 weapon damage, then it would hit for 7400 damage instead of 7000.

400 ÷ 4000 = .1

So that 400 extra damage is increasing your damage by 10%. But in the case of 6000 base damage:

400 ÷ 6000 = .066

So in that case a 6.6% increase to your damage.

I think in the case of most DPS characters, +weapon damage will mean less added damage than +crit damage. But I will definitely run the numbers once my build is complete (new patch and all...), to see for certain.

But ultimately you can't exactly quantify the boost from crit damage so accurately, since it is so affected by how often you cloak. Also, if my understanding of crit resist is correct, the higher someone's crit resist is, the MORE your +crit damage is doing for you (unless their crit resist is higher than 3400), since the 1.5 in the equation posted above is reduced, making each crit damage increase a higher percentage gain to your overall damage.

Sahidom

IF you have a decent crit chance outside shadowy disguise; than Shadow offers decent burst on the critical damage, and its more countering to those high resistance targets. With Shadow, you can get upto 140% critical damage bonus, all buffed up. So critical chance outside shadowy disguise will help keep pressure for an execute. You will also need to have decent physical penetration from all sources to see notable benefits on a critical damage build.

Swomp23

I’m actually changing for serpent this patch. Serpent is worth 1.83 jewelry glyph, while warrior is only worth 1.37, and i’ll switch my actuel regen glyphs for wd ones. If you assume warrior and shadow are pretty much equivalent, it’s a net gain.

MurderMostFoul

Mobius0 wrote: »

We're talking percentage gains here. Just like an extra 9.5% boost to crit damage is technically not a 9.5% boost to your overall DPS.

But weapon damage is much simpler to understand, because it's not a percentage multiplier. Breaking it down to a basic example, say your skill does 1000 damage, and you have 3000 weapon damage, and you add 400 more, that would make the attack hit for 4400 instead of 4000 damage. But say you had 6000 weapon damage, then it would hit for 7400 damage instead of 7000.

400 ÷ 4000 = .1

So that 400 extra damage is increasing your damage by 10%. But in the case of 6000 base damage:

400 ÷ 6000 = .066

So in that case a 6.6% increase to your damage.

I think in the case of most DPS characters, +weapon damage will mean less added damage than +crit damage. But I will definitely run the numbers once my build is complete (new patch and all...), to see for certain.

But ultimately you can't exactly quantify the boost from crit damage so accurately, since it is so affected by how often you cloak. Also, if my understanding of crit resist is correct, the higher someone's crit resist is, the MORE your +crit damage is doing for you (unless their crit resist is higher than 3400), since the 1.5 in the equation posted above is reduced, making each crit damage increase a higher percentage gain to your overall damage.

That's not how skill damage is calculated.

Skill damage isn't -

Base skill damage + weapon damage

Skill damage is more complicated:

Skill damage ~ (skill specific WD modifier)*(weapon damage) + (skill specific Stam modifier)*(Max Stam)

I don't claim to be an expert, but the individual skill equations can be found on the wiki.

Mobius0

Sure. It was just an example to explain the percentage increase when dealing with a flat bonus of weapon damage.

It wasn't meant to explain how the damage equation itself works. The point I was making still applies.

Ultimately, the more I think about it, the more I think I want to stick with Steed, which is what I've been using, because the other Mundus stones are mostly crap. Part of me is even considering Lord, since that's probably a 15-20% boost to my HP.

How much does Dark Cloak heal per tick at like 30k HP?