krachall wrote: »

I'm currently running 5xHundings, 5xVicious Ophidian, and 2x Velidreth's. Being a crafted set, I'm guessing there are some better trial sets out there. I'm close to having the right pieces for Two-fanged Snake but I want to make sure it's superior to Hundings or Night Mother's Gaze before I gold it all out.

Is TFS/VO a good combo? Also have NMG and Spriggan's available. I realize that NMG is fairly situational, depending what other Stam DPS are wearing.

For what content is this build for? For solo situations such as PVP and VMA it's hard to look passed Spriggan's for Stamina Nightblade.

TFS is really only ideal if there are two stamina or less in the group. TFS/VO is a good combo but TFS/Hundings is probably better unless you're having issues sustaining.

I didn't say less crit is not viable, just that is not optimal. Let's take the example of a Stamina NB with 66 CP in precise strikes, running trap, and with 80% warhorn uptime. Each time he hits critically he will do 150% damage as base, another 22% from CP, 10% from hemorrhage passive, 10% from trap and 12% from warhorn, so you will do 204% damage on a critical strike, so 104% bonus damage, or more than double. 833 critical bonus amounts to 833/2191*10% = 3.8%. So each critical bonus from gear will increase your damage done over a longer period by 104% * 3.8% = 3.95%. Even if you are running solo and have no warhorn, that bonus is still 0.92 * 3.8% = 3.5%. So each critical set bonus piece adds between 3.5-3.95% damage done. This also means that daggers > axes, because each dagger gives you a 5% critical bonus, or, taking into account the multipliers above between 4.6%-6.2% damage done, which is higher than the potential bleed damage added by an axe, since the proc rate is small, only 8% per axe.

Let's compare that with weapon damage. Assuming you have around 4K weapon damage and 36K stamina, your "weapon power" upon which all your skills scale will be weapon damage + maximum stamina/10.24. So your "weapon power" will be around 7.5K. Note that actually weapon damage weighs a bit more in the calculation since heavy and light attacks scale mostly on that. Now let's take the multipliers that enhance any weapon damage bonus: 20% from major brutality, 8% from slotting flawless dawnbreaker and anoter 3% for any other fighter's guild skill slotted in addition to that (let's assume you have trap on your front bar). Another 12% from Agility medium armor passive. In trials you can also get minor brutality if a DK is using Earthen Heart class skills (ex. Molten Armaments, Ingenous Shields) near you. So a multiplier of between 40% (just with flawless dawnbreaker on front bar) and 48% (if you also slot trap and run with a DK). The 129 from set bonuses becomes between 180-191 weapon damage or weapon power. That amounts to between 2.4%-2.54% damage done per set piece bonus depending on skills slotted and group composition.

Now let's take maximum stamina bonuses, which are 1096 per set piece. The calculation is similar, except the multipliers are different. Racial passives add between 0-10%, undaunted mettle passive adds between 2% (all medium) and 6% (1 light/5 medium/1 heavy), and the longer buff given by warhorn another 10%. So between 2% and 26% depending on race, gear and group support. Divided by the 10.24 value that becomes between 109 and 145 "weapon power". Or between 1.45%-1.93% damage done, based on the average 7.5K weapon power.

It's easy to see that weapon critical > weapon damage > maximum stamina set bonuses, and the spread is the wider the more group support you have.

With penetration things tend to be more complicated. Mobs in PvE have a 50K base resistance value, and in group content their resistance is 18.2K, and 18.5K against things they are resistant to. That means that their mitigation is 36.4% and 37% respectively. That means that without any penetration whatsoever your skills will do just 1-36.4%=63.6% tool tip damage on a non-critical hit. But as I mentioned you have 0.1K penetration by default, and assuming 49 CP in piercing amounting to another 3.9K, so 4K in total, without any trait or set bonuses. The target resistance will become 14.2K, amounting to 28.4% resistance, so you will do 1-28.4%=71.6% of your tool tip damage. You should divide this value with the default one. So the damage increase is (71.6/63.6-1)%=12.58% damage increase. Each time you add a penetration bonus you should divide the new % damage done by the old and subtract 1 to find out the actual % increase, unless you have reached the mitigation cap. In this context Major Fracture will subtract another 5.3K resistance, bringing the target resistance to 8.9K, amounting to 17.8% mitigation. You will do 82.2% potential damage. An increase of (82.2/71.6-1)% = 14.8% increase. In the case of NB that's the default value, since you can have close to 100% major fracture up time since surprise attack is your main attack.

Now let's take various debuffs:
- A sharpened offhand weapon will add 1376 penetration (round that to 1.4K), lowering the target resistance to 7.5K, which gives 15% remaining mitigation, so 85% of potential damage done. Repeating the above calculation that's a 3.4% damage increase, according to the formula above, slightly better than precise unless you have reached penetration cap.
- Night Mother's Gaze will add 2.6K penetration, which will leave the targed with 6.3K resistance, amounting to 12.6% mitigation, so you will do 87.4% of your potential damage. An increase of 6.3% over your base damage.
- Spriggan or Sunderflame (w/o sharp weapons) will add 3.45K penetration, so the remaining resistance will be 5.45K so the remaining target mitigation will be 10.9%. That means an effective 89.1% damage done, an increase of 8.4%
- Twice-Fanged Snake will add 4.3K penetration, so the remaining resistance will be 4.6K, amounting to 9.2% mitigation. So you will do 90.8% of your potential damage. An 11% increase.

Penetration does seem to give big damage bonuses, but there's a catch. In an actual trial you may end up overpenetrating if you are using Spriggan or TFS. Why? Because there are various debuffs present:
- Your own penetration (4K)
- Major Fracture, from you and the tank taunt (5.3K)
- Sunderflame set (3.45K)
- Night Mother's Gaze set (2.6K)
- Crusher enchantment with infused Torug's Pact weapon (2.7K)
- Minor fracture from Power of the Light if you have Templar in group (1.3K)

So that will leave the target with 0 resistance almost constantly as the first 4 debuffs have 100% up time and the last 2 can have upwards of 80%. So even a sharpened weapon will be overkill at this point, let alone sets like Spriggan and TFS. Even if you add up the damage increase from 2-3-4p set bonuses Spriggan ends up as a really bad option.