Substantial changes to mundus and trait bonuses have warranted a new approach in optimisation. My current approach involves brute force calculation of DPS metrics of all possible mundus and weapon trait combination followed by CP optimisation via gradient descent then search of nearest jump point neighbours.
The CP optimisation method is unchanged since Morrowind..
Summary
- Differences between best and worst mundus and weapon trait combination is around 6%
- Mundus order
- Solo: Lover > Apprentice > Shadow > Thief > Mage ; range ~2.4%
- Group: Shadow > Apprentice > Thief> Mage > Lover ; range ~3.4%
- Weapon trait order
- Solo: Sharpened > Infused > Precise > Nirnhoned ; range ~1.4%
- Group: Infused > Precise > Nirnhoned > Sharpened ; range ~2.5%
- 7 divines is generally preferred for the best weapon trait/mundus combination. However Infused/Divines (on large and small pieces respectively, is on average better). The average difference is minimal <1%
- Link to brute force optimiser: http://asayre.mygamesonline.org/HoTRoptimisation/CPOptimisation.html# (some instructions listed below)
To reach these conclusions, I simulated a Breton Sorcerer with 2 Ilambris, 4 Infallible Aether (including 1 weapon) and varied the 5 piece set. The DPS metrics were calculated for all combinations of weapon traits and mundus, finally the data was stratified. Two buffs scenarios were considerd, the first being a minimal debuff situation where Major Breach and Major Sorcery are active and the second where the majority of buffs were applied, particularly Major Sorcery, Minor Sorcery, Major Breach, Minor Breach, Infused Crusher, Warhorn (33% uptime) and Minor Breach were present. For simplicity, the first scenario will be referred to as solo and the latter as group. It is assumed that Infused is being used with a Glyph of Weapon Damage and the uptime of the glyph is virtually 100%. For the 5 piece set, the following were considered as they were suitable for comparison with DPS metric
- Julianos
- Spinner
- Destruction Mastery
- Twice Born Star
The DPS metric is defined as
where
In some of the images below, the right hand ordinate axis is scaled differently to better reflect % differences. For comparison of only mundus or weapon trait, the median value of all appropriate data was used.
Set comparison for soloSet comparison for group
We see that in a solo scenario, Spinner is preferred due to the lack of penetration. Note that using the best mundus/trait combination Spinner is only 0.4% better than Julianos. In both group and solo situations, Destruction Mastery and Twice-Born Star are underperforming by 1.9 and 3.5% compared to Julianos, respectively.
We can examine the average trait behaviour for all mundus combinations to determine which trait is generally preferred. Sharpened is on average the most preferred trait followed by Infused for solo situations. In groups, Infused and Precise, in that order, are ideal. Sharpened clearly underperforms in group situations where a lot of armour debuffs are being applied. Note that Nirnhoned is always strictly worse than Infused. It provides 200 spell damage whereas Infused provides (up to) 278 spell damage.
Trait comparison for soloTrait comparison for group
In terms of mundus, in solo situations the Lover is the preferred mundus as lack of penetration is the main problem in solo situations. In both solo and group situations the Mage is the worst performing mundus.
Solo mundus comparisonGroup mundus comparison
Overall, the trait and mundus work appears to be successful in reducing the gap between traits and mundus and should promote a bit more diversity.
Comments on site usage
- Put your average stats pre-mundus/weapon trait
- Number of divines can be used to check the difference between infused and divines. It is assumed that divines pieces are legendary
- Clicking 'Brute force' will eventually generate a table of DPS metric for all relevant trait/mundus. It takes ~40s. This can be significantly reduced if 'Search Neighbours' in the Advanced tab is set to 1.
- The DPS metric calculated is stamina or magicka based depending on which pool is higher.
- The CP distribution after pressing 'Brute force' does not correspond to the ideal CP distribution for the best performing mundus/trait but instead corresponds to the last calculated combinatio
- I'm too much of a html/javascript noob to figure out how to highlight the highest DPS metric row or show the ideal CP distribution when hovering over different rows