Offhand Question

[Hiro1034]

After reading posts on what type of weapon to use in the offhand, I see that Rangers (or any dual wielder) want to use the best ratio. Now I'm wondering what would be better to use:

Silken Whip of Ensnaring 14/28 or
Jade Mace 9/18

I know I've read that delay doesn't matter for the offhand, but I swear I unleash way more attacks when using the mace in my offhand over the whip.

Does anyone have any insights to this?

[Thulack]

you would see more attacks from the mace cause its faster.....Both have the same ratio though so go with the higher dmg weapon in my mind. bigger hits and less Dmg taken from ripostes or a ds if mob has one. Just save up for a woodsman staff though and this discussion is moot.

[Yinikren]

I would go with the bigger offhand hits for less DS damage, etc. I don't follow the woodsman's staff cult following, though, but I will have to level my ranger and parse to see for sure. On paper, fast one handers appear to deal a lot more damage than the staff simply because two-handers have crappy damage bonuses at this point in the timeline.

Fun fact: Did you know that at level 50, with a damage bonus of 8, a Revultant Whip will cause around 650 damage per minute on a dark blue con mob, at 50% haste, just using its damage bonus by itself? There's a reason the mosscovered branch got nerfed to offhand only.

[BlkCamel]

Look at yinikren below.

[Yinikren]

DW isn't a proc. DW is a skill check. It is a calculation performed at (DWSkill+Level)/500=DWChance. A 60 ranger has a 60% ((240+60)=300, 300/500=.6, so 60%) chance to dual wield per swing attempt. A 24 delay weapon will attempt a DW check in the offhand every 2.4 seconds regardless of mainhand attack delay. You simply want the faster mainhand weapon because the damage bonus is a static value which is applied more with a faster weapon. This is why a Revultant Whip (5/14) probably comes close to out damaging most high-end kunark weapons - that static damage bonus.

They have a further check for Double Attack (59%@(235+60/500)=.59) regardless of which hand swings. This is how you can double attack off the mainhand and then a half a second later off the offhand with two different weapon delays.

It should be noted that DASkill needs to be >150 to attempt a double attack from the offhand.

[BlkCamel]

Look at Yinikren info above

[Yinikren]

For sure, I agree. But saying that your offhand swings have anything to do with your mainhand swing timer isn't correct, and we don't want to pass along incorrect information.

[BlkCamel]

For sure, I agree. But saying that your offhand swings have anything to do with your mainhand swing timer isn't correct, and we don't want to pass along incorrect information.

I appreciate the response, I cleaned up my response and if you want to elaborate further but you cleared up a misconception. I only hope I wasn't making similar mistakes when I was playing my monk and wasting a bit of his efficiency!

[Thulack]

Lol please do a parse for me with Rev whip compared to high end weapons. While damage bonus is nice for mainhand ratio is still king. No ranger would be caught dead using a rev whip more then a month into velious.

[Yinikren]

Probably not Bongs, but that's because in Velious some stupid ratios come out which outweigh the benefits of a fast mainhand weapon. We don't have any 15/21 weapons running around currently.

STR also has the effect of skewing your damage curve upward and making the damage bonus via mainhand speed a bit less relevant.

The question is this: at 100% haste and level 60, a Revultant Whip will cause 950 or so damage per minute just from its damage bonus. An Earthcaller (or CSS, or any 24 delay mainhand) will only cause around 500 damage bonus damage. At what strength level, then, would the harder, slower hits from a better ratio weapon outdamage the guaranteed damage of such a fast weapon?

[lecompte]

A revultant whip is amusing and an earthcaller (14/24) will get you killed with the procs but ... at 9/17 a fayguard parrying dagger will do some nice damage and piss of enchanters. At 60 you get a mainhand bonus of 11 (I think). So (earthcaller) 25/24 vs (fayguard) 20/17 vs (revultant) 16/14

[Yinikren]

Correct on the damage bonus being 11, but it isn't added to the weapon damage like you think.

((Offense+STR)/100)*WeaponDamage+DamageBonus+1=Maxhit.
So, a 60 Ranger with 200 STR:
(240+200)/100=4.2.
4.2*X+12=MaxHit. Replace X with weapon damage.

[williestargell]

Quoted from Alla's post at http://everquest.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=1&mid=1085863025478334105

3) Damage bonus is damage added *after* all other damage has been calculated. Thus, with a damage bonus of 1 in your primary hand, your minimum hit will be 2.

Basically your min hit at 60 is going to be 13 - 12 of which is the "damage bonus +1" half of your equation. This highlights the importance of damage bonus vs. ratio. The damage bonus might be a small portion of your max hits, but it is over 90% of you min hits. The better a mob's mitigation is, the more important damage bonus becomes.

At some point the low delay of a weapon is good enough that the ratio doesn't matter. Obviously something like Moss covered Branch/Twig fell into this category or it wouldn't have to get nerfed into secondary only. I don't know at what point that is, if fayguard dagger or revultant whip will measure up with better ratios. But they are worth testing on high end mobs with alot of mitigation.

Haste effects are also difficult to calculate. Hasted characters using low delay weapons may benefit less if there is a "minimum delay" - I recall on live there being talk of a minimum delay of 1 second (delay of 10). So at 100% haste your 17 delay would get cut to 10 instead of 8.5. And swinging the pendulum back in favor of ratio - with delay of 20 being optimal.

The only way to tell is to parse them out because we all know that things don't work quite the same on p99 as they did on live.

[Thulack]

Thanks willie. I knew people here were all messed up with how they thought damage bonus worked but i couldnt find the info i needed to post. and when i said 1 month into velious i ment 1 month into Kunark.

[lecompte]

Correct on the damage bonus being 11, but it isn't added to the weapon damage like you think.

((Offense+STR)/100)*WeaponDamage+DamageBonus+1=Maxhit.
So, a 60 Ranger with 200 STR:
(240+200)/100=4.2.
4.2*X+12=MaxHit. Replace X with weapon damage.

So fayguard at 200 str is 4.2*9+12= 49.8 divided by rate /17 = 2.93
Revultant at 200 str is 4.2*5+12= 33/14 = 2.375
Earthcaller at 200 str is 4.2*14+12=70.8/24 = 2.95

And, of course, this doesn't really talk to how much damage you may actually do unless we are talking about a mob with zero mitigation. I have a few thousand parses but I cant tell what weapons I was using or what haste I had at the time. My head hurts.

[Yinikren]

Good math discussion Willie, I like it. Your minimum hit will actually be 12 at level 60, which is your DB+1. Also, minimum delay on this server is 5, so users of extremely fast weapons don't have to worry about losing attacks because of a delay cap.

It would be interesting to collect enough parses to see at what weapon damage/str point does using a higher damage weapon outdps something like a Rev Whip. I guess it would also become dependant on mob mitigation, where more mob mitigation=more of your damage is done by your damage bonus alone, so a faster weapon would win.

Do any of you high level rangers regularly run around at 255 STR? My newbie has decent(read:not the best) gear and only hits 135 str with all his bonus points into STR. Is it possible to easily hit 255 STR raid buffed or should something like 200 STR be used as a high-end milestone instead?

[Yinikren]

Also, another thing I just thought of: parse times. In Kunark, with 32k hp mobs, fights are over in about 20 seconds, so burst is king. Come Velious, with 440k+hp mobs, burst will have a much smaller level of relevance, and sustained dps will become king. It would not surprise me one bit to see fast onehanders outparse better ratio weapons simply because of the rate of attacks vs. mob mitigation - that damage bonus is guaranteed damage.

[koros]

The formula you want to use to determine weapon performance is ((damage * 2) + (damage bonus))/delay.

This assumes the hit distribution is normal, which it approximately is for most mobs. High AC mobs change the skewness of the probability distribution to the left, while extremely low AC mobs change it to the right. Until Luclin there were very few examples of extremely high AC mobs.

TL;DR use ((damage * 2) + (damage bonus))/delay to determine relative weapon performance for mainhand.

[Elmarnieh]

I'd like to see some parses on even 7 level under non raid mobs, even cons, and equal level warriors.

The fact is that level/ac and ATK is going to determine a lot of best weapon for the scenario. If you're going to be hitting in the top 25% of the scale go for your high damage weapons, if you're hitting in the bottom 25% go for fast...anywhere in the middle well thats where the parsing comes in at.

[koros]

Your hit distribution changes are relatively small. The skewness isn't going to change enough to ever put your average hit in the top 25%.