DW Rapid Strikes Damage Calculation Broken In PVP??

BrokenGameMechanics · July 2018

Something is (has) been wrong with how damage is calculated on a player in PvP with the DW Rapid Strikes skill.

Yea, so by some miracle you get within 7 meter melee distance with you're No Stun, No CC, No Purge, No Gap Closer, DW Medium Warden build. But it's all good as you are THE damage skill line, the skill line that eschews the very concept of defense or CCs for pure unadulterated damage baby. And somehow, someway you got up close and personal with your opponent. They are soooo dead as you unleaseh THE primary damage melee skill in THE overall melee skill line in game and smite on that poor sap for ..., wait for it, ... around 2-3K of damage.

Seriously however the damage is being calculated with Rapid Strikes against a PLAYER in PvP results in 2-3K of damage, sometimes even LESS!!!.

This is with dual wielding Gold Swords, putting a100 freaky points CP in Thaumaturge, Sword Dancer Set with the 440 DW damage, Major Brutality AND Minor Berserk, ALL Weapon Damage jewelry etc ... gives a tool tip of 1665 damage on Rapid Strikes from 41K Stam with 3,600 Weapon Damage. And yea you smite on around 2-3K of damage. SERIOUSLY!? Of course they X,Y Crystal Shards, Mage Explosion and you dead in a 2-shot cause .... Medium Armor and they hit for 6-8K a pop. But that is a separate story ...

Rapid Strikes appears to at least do expected damage i.e, damage that isn't laughable, in PVE, Dungeon, Trials, Skeletons. It also appears to do damage on PVP NPC's ... it only looks broken in PVP opposing Players.

Can someone look at this and confirm and if confirmed, a fix would be ... well a godsend.

VaranisArano · July 2018

If the damage from Rapid Strikes vs players is roughly half of what you'd expect to see when fighting in PVE, that would be Battle Spirit.

Battle Spirit is active in all PVP zones and gives 5000 extra health, 50% damage reduction, and 50% healing reduction to all players.

It would probably help if you can compare the numbers of the damage vs PVP players (2-3K) to the damage vs PVE enemies (?). Again, if the damage is about halved, I'd guess Battle Spirit is the culprit.

BrokenGameMechanics · July 2018

I do understand "Battle Spirit". Despite the tongue in cheek nature of my report, I'm pretty sure there is a problem with the calculation code for Rapid Strikes which is a odd 0.6 channel DOT thing that probably has its very own hand crafted code logic which is broken.

For example, I can spam Rapid Strikes on a 300K skeleton and get anywhere from 16-18K DPS. I can spam Flying Daggers and get off the top of my head like 8-12K(?) DPS. i.e, Rapid > Flying

In Cyrodiil, Flying Daggers does the expected damage (yes, accounting for Battle Spirit) but and I'm not joking here Rapid Strikes does only 2-3K damage SUBSTANTIALLY less damage then a Flying Dagger fired at the exact same player. This with 100 CP in Thaumatruge (DOT!!) and a handful for Direct Damage CP. Rapid should be doing much more damage then a Flying Dagger (and it does in PVE!!) but it does only 25% of the damage in PVP that a Flying Dagger does.

Another example, my tool tip for Rending Slashes is 3084 each weapon and then does a DOT of 13630. That initial 3084 direct damage hit also does substantially more damage then the entire Rapid Strikes skill IN Cyrodiil against a Player. This should not be the case.

As noted the relative damage from all the DW skills works as expected against NPCs in Cyrodiil. Rapid Strikes does real damage against an NPC at a resource. The RELATIVE damage in comparison to my other skills all aligns. In other words, the damage that Rapid Strikes does is MORE damage than a Flying Dagger or the initial direct damage from Rending. So all ok against an NPC, but against a Player the relative damage flips. There is no reason I can think of that in every case the damage from Rapid Strikes > Rending > Flying Dagger EXCEPT against a PVP Player where Rending > Flying > Rapid Strikes, where the damage is actually much, much less.

Another fact that something seriously wrong here is that I can put 100 CP points in Thaumaturge, the max amount possible, giving a 25% to DOT damage, Rapid Strikes which is 100% a DOT skill, ONLY hits for 2-3K, while a Flying Dagger effectively getting no CP bonusing at all will easily do >5K and often a lot more then that in PVP against a Player. Again that is not the case in PVE or against an NPC in Cyrodiil.

Battle Spirit affects all the skills equally.

There is a serious calculation logic flaw that is happening with Rapid Strikes probably from the "does 5 strikes, channeled over 0.6 secs" whatever complexity. I don't know if Battle Spirit is applied twice incorrectly once to the whole skill damage, and then for each "strike" or where the code bug is. But I'm betting Rapid Strikes unique nature gives its own unique damage code and it's not working correctly.

FWIW I'm seeing the minuscule damage for Cirt, non-Crit, shielded or blocked damage numbers.

Waffennacht · July 2018

Just gonna post my random thoughts about this.

Iirc on a typical build the tooltip is something like 2k dmg per strike for 5 strikes at per .6 sec right?

Or 10k dmg in 3 sec, or 3.3 ish dps.

In PvP that's 1.65k dmg per sec

Any armor, CP, effects (which there are) drops that at minimum 20%

So like 1k dps at most?

You're probably just seeing why no one runs it

Edit: to see a number worthy of replacing your standard single Target dmg ability, it would have to have a tool tip around.... 6/7k ish

Ragnarock41 · July 2018

I saw people in no cp hitting me for 4k+ with rapid strikes. You are doing it wrong.

BrokenGameMechanics · July 2018

@Ragnarok41 No I'm not doing it "wrong". Please read my previous posts with build info, tooltip data, weapon damage etc and the specifics of the context when Rapid Strikes is not working correctly. If I sort of overwhelmed you on the info let me know I can and go through it slower step-by-step so it is a bit clearer for you. Thanks.

@Waffennacht the specific details to the best of my knowledge are as follows.

Tooltip description:

"Flood an enemy with five consecutive attacks that each deal 1661 Physical Damage. Each hit increases the damage of the subsequent hit by 3%. The final hit deals 300% more damage." The 1661 is my tool tip, food, armor, buffs, divines, mundus ... In combat, it should be even higher than this because of Minor Force from Beast Trap etc.

There have been numerous posts in the past that have asked for clarification on what that means all of which have been ignored. But let's assume the most simple interpretation.

Strike 1 - 1661
Strike 2 - 1711 (1161 * 1.03)
Strike 3 - 1762 (1711 * 1.03)
Strike 4 - 1815 (1762 * 1.03)
Strike 5 - 5608 ([1816 * 1.03] * 3)
Total Damage (Effective Skill Tool Tip) = 12,557

Also the entire skill, all 5 strikes occur in the channel of 0.6. It is NOT 1 strike every 0.6 seconds. However, 12,557 / 0.6 = 20,928 DPS is misleading AFAIK.

On a 300K skeleton, I can spam the skill 15 times in 15 secs. i.e. 15 times, of the "5 strikes". AFAIK the 0.6 channel has no effect on damage numbers. AFAIK the ONLY reason ESO has this as a channel is to allow for "self" skill interruption. But that is another topic.

On that 300K skeleton, depending on crit hits on the 5 strikes, a SINGLE execution of Rapid Strikes will vary from 12K to 18K of damage. Remember the entire 5 strikes execute in <1 second. The "stats" in chat will also show 12K-18K DPS. For those who don't know, on XBox console there is very limited combat stats offered. On console if you attack a skeleton, after you stop attacking, after a few second delay, the system will show "Result: 18,567 DPS, 1 sec (Precursor)" in chat.

Bottom line on a 300K skeleton, 10 Rapid Stikes in a row, takes 10 seconds and will show in chat as doing +/- 16,000 DPS.

And that is not taking into account the DW Passives of 20% bonus under 25% Health and the 15% Bonus for attacking Stunned, Immobilized, Disoriented or Silenced enemies.

So a "perfect" Rapid Strikes would be 18K + 35% = 24,300 damage in a second on a 300K Skeleton (assuming the stun worked on skeletons). And yes, I've have seen a number of > 20K hits on a 300K skeleton.

For Flying Daggers my tooltip is 10,515. On a 300K skeleton, I can spam 1 Flying Dagger per second and typically firing off 10 dagger in a row will show in chat as roughly +/- 12,500 DPS.

In summary in PVE, Dungeons, Trials, and PVE only (also PVP NPCs):

Flying Daggers -> 12,500 DPS
Rapid Strikes -> 16,000 DPS

I do observe this sort of damage in a dungeon run.

OK, now we enter Cyrodiil.

Sure enough, Flying Daggers in Cyrodiil will hit for 4,5,6K whatever. Rapid Strikes will hit for LESS THEN HALF of that on the exact same targets. I have XBox Capture recording of over a dozen encounters all showing the same thing. IF I run over to the nearest Farm and attack an NPC sure enough Rapid Strikes does EXPECTED damage relative to a Flying Dagger (more).

Also I expect most people put more CP in Direct Physical Damage defense then they do for DOT Physical Damage. So why why does a Flying Dagger in PVP do 2-5x more damage, while in PVE it does 20% less damage (as it should, see skeleton numbers).

The reason why no one runs Rapid Strikes in PVP is because damage calculation code logic is broken.

There is also the fact that for a DW Stamden, Rapid Strikes is the only single target skill the Combat Designer offers. There is no other alternative single target melee attack skill for DW / Warden.

Stratforge · July 2018

Based on what you're saying it does sound like something is perhaps not working correctly. Any PC players willing to run some numbers and find out?

Kadoin · July 2018

BrokenGameMechanics wrote: »

The reason why no one runs Rapid Strikes in PVP is because damage calculation code logic is broken.

OR no one runs it because direct damage skills do more base damage, have a better CP multiplier, AND can be spammed just as easily with better secondary effects. I've used that skill on a DK and I can honestly say, without maximum penetration and weapon damage it's worthless in PvP unless you have a proc set on that can use it or are fighting a permablocker. The damage on it definitely terribly scaled for targets as their resistance goes higher. Honestly, this patch all channels seem to be trash, especially since people with movement speed just move out of the range before the animation begins and the damage gets negated or NBs cloak mid-channel and it also negates the damage, even for jabs

. If that guy was moving and you don't have damage text on, perhaps that was the case? Combat team needs to address that bug soon...

IZZEFlameLash · July 2018

Maybe Battlespirit affects each tick and then double dips with total? ZOS works in mysterious ways.

Waffennacht · July 2018

No, not all strikes happen in .6 seconds. It's each strike occurs .6 seconds apart

Edit: I guarantee you the cast time is 3 secs total. Just use it and watch the animation occur for 3 sec - without any animation canceling

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · July 2018

Waffennacht wrote: »

No, not all strikes happen in .6 seconds. It's each strike occurs .6 seconds apart

Edit: I guarantee you the cast time is 3 secs total. Just use it and watch the animation occur for 3 sec - without any animation canceling

This is flat out wrong. All five hits of damage are within .6 seconds.

To the op, instead of long ranty posts, how about some screenshots or a video. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that. I know you are on the Xbox, there are those functions there.

Waffennacht · July 2018

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

No, not all strikes happen in .6 seconds. It's each strike occurs .6 seconds apart

Edit: I guarantee you the cast time is 3 secs total. Just use it and watch the animation occur for 3 sec - without any animation canceling

This is flat out wrong. All five hits of damage are within .6 seconds.

To the op, instead of long ranty posts, how about some screenshots or a video. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that. I know you are on the Xbox, there are those functions there.

I just watched you tube videos.

That animation is sure as @#$& far longer than .6 sec
And according to the video I just watched (not on ATM) the listed tooltip said 1.3 channel time not .6

Reference:

And while I'm still originally wrong, I know that thing doesn't feel any shorter than 2 sec

Edit: I also can't help but think you can't bypass GCDs, meaning that excess time after it's odd channel cannot be used to cast an ability, so even though the channel may not last a full 2 GCDs, you're still locked out until the 3rd GCD

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · July 2018

Waffennacht wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

No, not all strikes happen in .6 seconds. It's each strike occurs .6 seconds apart

Edit: I guarantee you the cast time is 3 secs total. Just use it and watch the animation occur for 3 sec - without any animation canceling

This is flat out wrong. All five hits of damage are within .6 seconds.

To the op, instead of long ranty posts, how about some screenshots or a video. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that. I know you are on the Xbox, there are those functions there.

I just watched you tube videos.

That animation is sure as @#$& far longer than .6 sec
And according to the video I just watched (not on ATM) the listed tooltip said 1.3 channel time not .6

Reference:

And while I'm still originally wrong, I know that thing doesn't feel any shorter than 2 sec

Edit: I also can't help but think you can't bypass GCDs, meaning that excess time after it's odd channel cannot be used to cast an ability, so even though the channel may not last a full 2 GCDs, you're still locked out until the 3rd GCD

That video you conveniently screenshoted instead of just linking, here is the link to the video,

https://youtu.be/_7mbaNHtt6I as you can see, the video is from 2 years ago. Flurry and it's morphs got a buff after that video, from 1.3 second channel to .6. go look at the tooltip in game or here, http://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoSkills?&id=40582&level=66&health=8744&magicka=7958&stamina=7958&spelldamage=1037&weapondamage=1037&showall=1

Waffennacht · July 2018

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Waffennacht wrote: »

No, not all strikes happen in .6 seconds. It's each strike occurs .6 seconds apart

Edit: I guarantee you the cast time is 3 secs total. Just use it and watch the animation occur for 3 sec - without any animation canceling

This is flat out wrong. All five hits of damage are within .6 seconds.

To the op, instead of long ranty posts, how about some screenshots or a video. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that. I know you are on the Xbox, there are those functions there.

I just watched you tube videos.

That animation is sure as @#$& far longer than .6 sec
And according to the video I just watched (not on ATM) the listed tooltip said 1.3 channel time not .6

Reference:

And while I'm still originally wrong, I know that thing doesn't feel any shorter than 2 sec

Edit: I also can't help but think you can't bypass GCDs, meaning that excess time after it's odd channel cannot be used to cast an ability, so even though the channel may not last a full 2 GCDs, you're still locked out until the 3rd GCD

That video you conveniently screenshoted instead of just linking, is from 2 years ago. Flurry and it's morphs got a buff after that video, from 1.3 second channel to .6. go look at the tooltip in game or here, http://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoSkills?&id=40582&level=66&health=8744&magicka=7958&stamina=7958&spelldamage=1037&weapondamage=1037&showall=1

Well you could have just said it has been changed.

Like I said I'm not on, and clearly the last time I used the ability was prior to this.

Well that makes a lot more sense.

I posted the screenahot because it's way easier to see than a video, and people like me won't watch a video. Wasn't some diabolical plan to make someone look wrong. Happened to be a video and was exactly what I remembered the ability doing.

Figured you would have just started with what I was saying is just out dated rather than "completely wrong" because it's not

Derra · July 2018

i´ll be looking into this a bit later - but so far the skill hasn´t been greatly underperforming for me on my stamsorc.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · July 2018

Waffennacht wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

. Figured you would have just started with what I was saying is just out dated rather than "completely wrong" because it's not

It's not?

No, not all strikes happen in .6 seconds.

Wrong.

It's each strike occurs .6 seconds apart

Wrong.

Edit: I guarantee you the cast time is 3 secs total.

Wrong.

Just use it and watch the animation occur for 3 sec - without any animation canceling

Wrong.

So which part of what you said was right? And it is not just wrong right now. It was always wrong, the worst it was was 1.3 seconds. Not 3.

That it wasn't.6 and clearly took more than 1 GCD?

Lol I even admitted to being wrong lmfao. You're just pretty committed to being a D+&# huh? That's cool.

Ya got me bud, I was completely totally entirely absolutely emphatically torrentially wrong! Oh my whatever will I do? I hope my ESO career isn't over?!

Please PLEASE forgive me!

Now hopefully you can stop being a way that would definitely get me banned if I typed what I thought lmfao.

K

BrokenGameMechanics · July 2018

Kadoin wrote: »

OR no one runs it because direct damage skills do more base damage, have a better CP multiplier, AND can be spammed just as easily with better secondary effects. I've used that skill on a DK and I can honestly say, without maximum penetration and weapon damage it's worthless in PvP unless you have a proc set on that can use it or are fighting a permablocker. The damage on it definitely terribly scaled for targets as their resistance goes higher.

If you read my post, yes my build DOES emphasis weapon damage. Read "all weapon damage jewelry". Read uses "Sword Dancer Set" which offers 440 Weapon damage bonus to all DW skills.

I play DW Melee, Combat Support style, because it is a challenge and offers the opponent a handicap to keep the fight "fair".

It is also why I play straight up 7 Medium Armor, which means I'm 1-Shot or 2-Shot dead from any of the major combos out there. Like I said, its my little handicap. But when our primary spammable skill is broken ... its a lot tougher. Still got my 5 Gold Rings every campaign however.

@Kadion, throw me a bone here with regard to "better CP multiplier?" Thaumaturge scales point for point EXACTLY as Master-At-Arms, e.g. DOT vs Direct. Are you referring to some other secondary CP areas the give the "better multiplier"? Honestly would like to know.

BrokenGameMechanics · July 2018

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Maybe Battlespirit affects each tick and then double dips with total? ZOS works in mysterious ways.

This is my current best guess theory as well, at a minimum, a very minimum, Rapid's damage is off by a factor of 2x. For a skill that I can spam on a target skeleton for an average of 16,000 DPS to literally do at MOST 3-45 against any build in Cyrodiil just has to have a bug in there somewhere. None of my other skills have 70% of their damage attenuated on average.

Sparr0w · July 2018

Might have to test this out later, did notice rapid doing less dmg than dagger, reason for swapping on my sorc.

raasdal · July 2018

You are in doubt, why not just test it? You have damage numbers on consoles now. Just record some footage and see if all the numbers align and add up or not.

I use the other morph (bloodthirst) on my Stamsorc, have done for years. Not noticed anything wrong myself. But i also don’t rely on it for damage, but rather for procs.

ZOS_JesC · July 2018

Greetings, we've removed a few comments for baiting. This is a friendly reminder to keep comments civil. It's fine to disagree however, posts should remain free of baiting and personal insults. Thank you.

BrokenGameMechanics · July 2018

@raasdal I did post a bunch of numbers that literally 1 person seemed to have read. You can't verify the calculation off of the damage numbers alone unless you have complete visibility of the stats of the opponent. I'm making my case on relative damage numbers between in the DW skill line being weird in PVP.

I can only keep restating the following "intuitive" numbers:

I can buff up and stand in front of a 300K Skeleton and weaving in only 2 or so LAs to proc my weapon enchant I get the following numbers with NO debuffs on the target (Major Fracture etc):

To spam 10 Rapid Strikes skill executions takes 10 secs.
The reported DPS by the console is 19,000 +/- 1500.

Standing there spamming this skill over and over is not quite 20K DPS. A single skill spammed . IF the target is below 25% health the DW passive adds another 20% giving: ~22K DPS. Which I also see on a skeleton: I can do nothing but spam this skill, with a LA every 5 secs to keep up the Weapon Damage enchant and get somewhere between 18-22K DPS, depending on the target's health (passive active or not). As you can spam Rapid Strikes once per second, literally 1 Rapid Strikes = 18-22K Damage on a 300K skeleton.

Note Rapid Strikes does more damage than any other DW skill.

In PVP, I'm not sure I've ever seen an individual strike hit for more than 600 damage, seeing 300 damage is not uncommon at all. Maybe the average damage is around ~400 for a total damage of say 2,800 = 400 x 4 + 400 * 3. (FWIW, 65 in Thaumaturge, 55 in Mighty) So an almost 20K skill hits for around 3K in PVP. So maybe everyone's a Tank ... But a Flying Dagger easily hits for far more. I'm looking at a screen shot in PVP right now showing a Flying Dagger hitting for 6064! + 1526 = 7,590 damage (crit and an enchant). I've never, ever seen any Rapid Strikes in PVP come even close to that. In PVE Rapid Strikes will do substantially more damage then a Flying Dagger, while in PVP it is the exact opposite.

Same observation with Rending Slashes. Rending Slashes does an initial direct damage hit and then does the bleed DOT. The initial direct damage hit for Rending will do about the same damage (often MORE) than the entire damage from Rapids. i.e. Rending's initial direct damage hit will do 2-3K. This does not make sense either. Once again in PVE, Rapids does far more damage than the initial direct damage strike from Rending. Not the case in PVP.

Something is not right.

The problem is, the problem is not observable in PVE (everything seems to work). In Cyrodiil, against NPCs everything appears to work. It is only against opposing PVP players that the calculation for Rapids appears to be broken. Is Battle Spirit applied to each strike and then incorrectly applied again to the result of the entire skill?? Who knows ... but something like that is happening.

Since I don't know the opponents stats I can only observe the relative damage of Rapid vs Rending / Flying damage in PVE and PVP and it doesn't look right at all.

Sharee · July 2018

I did a quick test. The conditions are not exactly equal, but the damage against player does not seem much lower than expected.

The guard is taking ~1000 damage per tick:

The player is taking ~400 damage per tick:

Too bad i didn't think about using flying dagger on both for comparison - maybe will do later.

BrokenGameMechanics · July 2018

@Sharee Thx for taking the time for the quick test. Worth noting that in earlier thread posts I mentioned that it appears that the relative damage is fine for all PVE content. It is fine against skeletons and target dummies. It is fine against NPC combat in Cyrodiil. Here I'm assuming the "Dominion Honor Guard" is an NPC target.

Rapid relative damage to Rending and Daggers appears to be skewed only against PVP opponents. Which is why one plausible explanation would be Battle Spirit is incorrectly applied twice or something along that line.

Sharee · July 2018

BrokenGameMechanics wrote: »

@Sharee Thx for taking the time for the quick test. Worth noting that in earlier thread posts I mentioned that it appears that the relative damage is fine for all PVE content. It is fine against skeletons and target dummies. It is fine against NPC combat in Cyrodiil. Here I'm assuming the "Dominion Honor Guard" is an NPC target.

Rapid relative damage to Rending and Daggers appears to be skewed only against PVP opponents. Which is why one plausible explanation would be Battle Spirit is incorrectly applied twice or something along that line.

That's why i attacked a NPC guard first, and a player second. To be able to compare the relative damage difference between hitting a PvE target, and then a PvP target.

Player enjoys a 50% damage reduction. That means if i hit a guard for 1000, i would expect to hit a player for 500, give or take.
I'm hitting him for 400 - however i did not have relentless up, and the player (unlike the guard) might have "Thick skinned" CP ability, so the result is more or less okay.

As a side note: this was a very rough test. For example the guard was a "tank" guard - im hitting for ~1300 against a mage. Then, the damage the player will get hit for will vary wildly with his equipment. Basically its too inaccurate for anything but a rough assessment on whether rapid strike is affected by battle spirit twice, or only once. I'd say if the 1000 was reduced by battle spirit twice, i would have hit that player for less than 400. But, YMMV.

glavius · July 2018

Found an issue with rapid strikes: Final hit does not scale correctly with CP. Same issue executes had at some point I think.

I tested first with no points in thaumaturge:

First hits=424 dmg (403,8*1,05), final hit 1635 (403,8*4,05). I had sorcerer passives so +5% melee dmg but no points in mighty.

I added 20% damage with thaumaturge.

First hits=504 (403,8*1,25), final hit 1715 (403,8*.4,25)

Base dmg without sorc passive 403,8 dmg. Final hit 403,8x4=1615 dmg. (calculated from original damage, did not test this. but the numbers add up)

Basically if you add 20% dmg from thaumaturge, the final hit is only boosted around 5% (depending on other modifiers like sorc 5% passive, and dw +execute dmg.

So only use the skill on no cp where it works as it should

Prabooo · July 2018

has anyone made calculations with Master-at-Arms? I don't because I know poop about calculations

glavius · July 2018

Prabooo wrote: »

has anyone made calculations with Master-at-Arms? I don't because I know poop about calculations

Nope but 99% sure master-at-arms has no effect whatsoever, considering it's already buffed by thaumaturge.

BrokenGameMechanics · July 2018

@glavius Thx for looking. I had noticed something fishy there as well, but as I had convinced myself that there a larger problem I sort of ignored it for now. Again thx for finding and pining down the exact cause. 5% is 5%, I've juggled my skill bar to achieve less than that many a time.

So last post on this topic for now.

After poking around I've come to the following conclusions:

Except for the CP scaling on the final strike issue found by @glavius, I'm not really seeing any huge problem with regard to "calculation".
The reason why, subjectively I see Daggers handly outperform Rapid on PVP, is because of Skill Combat Design decision as opposed to systemic "bug" in calculation.
Daggers can proc either enchantment, left or right hand. I use Weapon Damage Glyph, Infused trait, on the left offhand and my Crit is a little over 50%. So when I'm sending Daggers into a scrum, I get lots of procs of from both the +452 Weapon Damage from the Glyph and then also from the 4282 Frost Damage + the Dagger Damage. So net-net you tend to notice these 4,5,6,7K Dagger Shots while comfortably kiting around. Sure its not 10K Poison Injection / Focus Aim / Lethal Arrow, but at least you're leaving a bit of a scratch.
Then you decide to go for broke, dive in the middle of it all, working you butt off to successfully get up close and personal within 5 meters and smite what is supposed to be your best melee combat damage dealing skill ... and wait for it ... for all of ~ 4K +/- 1K of damage.
Why does it appear that Rapid has so little damage, while granting zero buffs, or debuffs to boot, in comparison to stand safe away from the fray at 36 meters ranged Flying Dagger skill, that appears to do 2x the damage, does 50% slow, and a cherry on top, grants Major Brutality all with a lower tooltip? Well ... First, Rapid ONLY procs the right hand enchantment. It never procs the left. So despite the animation showing you striking right-left-right-left ... the whole left doesn't happen for enchantments. So in my case while comparison testing Weapon Enchantment Glyph procs in one and not for the other. And yes I do weave in an LA which will proc the left hand, but you really don't often build up a steady rotation pattern in PVP over a span of time like in a dungeon run. FWIW, the Dagger animation always shows a left hand throw, but of course either hand may enchant proc. Yea, fooled me as well.
Another reason is Crit. In 5 strikes, rarely all, rarely none, about 1/2 of them will Crit. You don't get those nice double crits from Frost and Dagger damage that pop up with a few extra 1000s of damage. What you see with Rapid is a whopping 380 damage strike and then YES you Crit!! for 570! With the last hit being over not quite 1/2 (between 3/7 and 4/7) of the overall Rapid damage and that damage not getting CP scaling makes it even weaker in comparison. In summary, on a skeleton with a steady rotation, Rapid does noticeably more damage then Dagger. In real life PVP, these design differences between enchantment procing makes a big difference in apparent damage output.

I will admit, in the back of my mind it's like there still has to be something not quite right here. And I'm going to (eventually) dive into it deeper on the following question:

Base Weapon Damage w Food: 3344 (Jewelry, Divines, The Warrior)
Buffed Weapon Damage w Food : 3901 (Major Brutality)
Automaton + Sword Dancer + Buffed + Food: 3901 + 391 + 450 = 4742
Plus Weapon Glyph Proc = 4742 + 452 = 5194

That is IF Major Brutality only applies to "base". Does anyone know for sure how Major Brutality applies or not with regard to Set / Glyph Weapon Damage?

If Major Brutality stacks over all of it. Then:
3344 + 391 + 450 + 451 = 4636
Then Major Brutality gives: 4636 * 1.2 = 5563.
Then an 8% kicker on damage from Minor Berserk all for whopping ...4K.

So the circle I need to square here is: Given Weapon Damage between 5194 and 5563, CP assigned "pretty much" in all the right places, and with 39K Stamina, my best slottable physical melee damage spammable gets 3.2-4.5 K damage on average in PVP. And then to top it off 30-40% of the time the skill "interrupts" in combat getting ~ 2K from LOS dancing at 5 meters, necessary quick block, a roll for survival ... SMH I just have to run it through on a spreadsheet before I can wrap my head around all of it.

But for now, best if I just put the controller down and just walk away for awhile.

glavius · July 2018

You don't loose 5% damage. you loose alot more.

A proper build probably has 20% thaumaturge+5%sorc+10% mighty. That means the final strike does 435% of tooltip damage. If it calculated properly, it should be doing 400%*1,35=540% of total tooltip damage.
And if we look at the total channel damage it does 975% of tooltip damage, but should be doing 1080% of tooltip damage.
A loss of 10,8% of your damage. And even more if you use rapid strikes morph, or if attacking a stunned target or a target in execute range.

Potentially a 20% plus damage loss if all the above factors are added. (did not thoroughly test that, it's an assumption based on how the cp and racial modifiers are calculated).

Quite alot....

BrokenGameMechanics · July 2018

@glavius You are on the Christmas card list.

All, how does one get this to attention of anyone who can fix it?

At this point I know of two confirmed bugs with DW Rapid Strikes Skills:

CP points are not being properly applied to the last strike. Thaumaturge is confirmed.
I'm concered, CP Mighty, and the DW passives MAY not be applying as well. Can this be checked as well??
Rapid Strikes does not apply the Left Hand Weapon Enchantment.

I have two possible Combat Design suggestions as well:

Given that the Rending Skill is hybrid, part is Physical Direct, part is Physical Indirect (DOT), for procing purposes, please consider making the "final" 5th strike of Rapid a Physical Direct as well. This make Sets, looking at you Selene's, that are single target melee combat focused compatible with the DW skill line and play style.
And finally, can the nature of Rapid Strike and a 0.6 Channel be reconsidered. Given the fact that Rapid is already on a relative basis one of the lowest damage dealing skills one can slot as well with no buff or debuff effects, the additonal burden have having the skill "self" interrupting with only 30-40% of the damage occurring is just too much. After reviewing a number of captures will tracking down the low damage calculation issues, it is astonishing to see the frequency in which the skill never completes. It is at least half of the time. You have to close within <5 meters to the opponent for Rending to be in range and at that close a distance in 1v1 combat you are going to turn (likely at least one of you are running around with Major Expedition) or reposition breaking LOS, block or dodge roll all of which interrupts the skill with only 2-3 strikes completing. As it is the last strike, which is at least 42% of the skill damage, roughly speaking greater than 1/2 the time, less than 1/2 of the damage occurs.