Monk Epic Fist... is it REALLY that good?

[Treats]

Originally Posted by Ryba [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

from eq dpm calculator and borne out by personal experience. also, ripostes should be considered, because they happen. nobody is good enough to not get riposted, so why pretend they don't happen when you're theorizing.

eq dpm is probably not a perfect match with p1999's weapon damage algorithms, but the t staff still comes out a full 300dpm or 5dps ahead of fist/sos. Even if they got it slightly wrong, you are looking at setups that are at least equivalent. For my money, I will take the +stun and better defensive setup.

Ripostes are a low factor in measuring damage per second. When you are fighting a mob from behind he cannot block/dodge/riposte/etc (this is why you fight from behind when you can.)

EQ DPM does NOT use the correct damage bonus, those numbers are faulty. It probably also has a formula for Triple Attack.

Epic Fist/SoS is better than the Tranquil Staff, if you have proof otherwise post your logs from P99.

[webrunner5]

Originally Posted by Ryba [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

no parse info here but t staff plus epic haste is better than any droppable 1h combo with epic haste, including h2h. 2hb skill cap is higher and dmg bonus is higher than with h2h. That means much higher guaranteed minimums with higher hit ratios. The epic is for song haste, not primarily for weapon replacement, unless you have crap.

not only that, if you are "epically-fisting" a raid target that gets turned unexpectedly, you will be shattered by ripostes before you can turn auto attack off.

2hb is the tits, from 20-60. Unless you are trying to roleplay or something, in which case you have other problems to focus on

What he says. Still the same now.

[Vicatin]

Nice, appreciate the graph. Good stuff, exactly what i am looking for.

Should have epic in the next few weeks. Will test this out myself and report back here when done [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Versus]

Make a graph for Epic fist + wu's fist of mastery vs. Bostaff, stat.

[fishingme]

My experiences with the T-staff, albeit I don't have any numbers I just always kept track of the numbers. But I found having 1hand weapons as apposed to the T-staff to be better for damage. Not to mention, as a monk you're the puller and the time you should be spending on a mob before pulling another is probably like 4-5 seconds.

[Pan]

A few notes:

The damage calculation here vs. live is really quite different. The saying "speed kills" does not apply as heavily here as on live.

I also believe that there's a max cap on how low a delay can go. Apocryphally, it seems to be 9.

From 55 to 58 or so, I've been running with a 9/20 in the main hand and the 15/25 in the offhand (not acquired the 17/28 yet). Self-buffed (CoF & epics), that loadout parses (over time and NOT counting the 60dd from the stuns - I'm not a believer in counting procs toward dps for a variety of reasons) within ~1 pct of the fist damage, give or take. When I've got chanter/shaman haste, that loadout runs about 3pct better. I can only attribute that to a minimum delay cap (coupled with the lower h2h skills vs. 1hb). T-staff parses 10-15pct lower for me at those levels.

Further, running doublestunners (when soloing or with a good tank) really seems to make a difference in survivability - a stunned mob is not doing damage (nor is it running off to find buddies after it turns). It's not particularly reliable, but over time it makes a big difference in my efficiency.

P.S. Nobody should be interested in anything but real, P99 data. Copeland's and all other calculators/equations that assume a mirror of live are pretty useless in a conversation like this (in which the margins/differences are pretty thin and are what's in question anyway).

[Ryba]

P.S. Nobody should be interested in anything but real, P99 data. Copeland's and all other calculators/equations that assume a mirror of live are pretty useless in a conversation like this (in which the margins/differences are pretty thin and are what's in question anyway).

That thin margin between outputs in the EQdpm chart is a result of a precise but inaccurate equation. Even though p1999 isn't using the live model, it is a decent approximation. So even though the EQdpm chart is wrong (and it is, e.g. damage bonus is off by up to 10), you can still see the weapon choices are roughly equivalent.

I also remember the (apocryphal) delay floor of 9, but since we are speculating, the rumor used to be that monk fists were the one exclusion to that limit. If this is the case on 99, epic fists trump tstaff.

I cannot imagine how you got a tstaff to parse at lower dps than a 9/20 1h. Also, not sure why you wouldn't factor an unresistable 120DD proc into your dps calculations. Can't really call my numbers suspect if this is what you're working with.

[Pan]

Originally Posted by Ryba [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

That thin margin between outputs in the EQdpm chart is a result of a precise but inaccurate equation. Even though p1999 isn't using the live model, it is a decent approximation. So even though the EQdpm chart is wrong (and it is, e.g. damage bonus is off by up to 10), you can still see the weapon choices are roughly equivalent.

I also remember the (apocryphal) delay floor of 9, but since we are speculating, the rumor used to be that monk fists were the one exclusion to that limit. If this is the case on 99, epic fists trump tstaff.

I cannot imagine how you got a tstaff to parse at lower dps than a 9/20 1h. Also, not sure why you wouldn't factor an unresistable 120DD proc into your dps calculations. Can't really call my numbers suspect if this is what you're working with.

EQdpm is irrelevant to this conversation. EQdpm may approximate how it worked on live, but has nothing at all to do with how it works on P99.

Further, EQdpm, Copeland's, and the rest of them didn't ever have access to live equations anyway and were trying to approximate what was going on in that world. A guess mapped on observed data. So that calls into question the precision and accuracy of their observations as well as the math they used to represent the replication of that data.

Therefore, I'm not calling your numbers suspect. I'm calling them non-existent. Until it's established that damage is calculated here exactly as it was on live (and that Copelands/EQdpm/et al was an accurate model - which was hotly contested in the Rangers Glade, Steelwarriors, the Safehouse, Monklybusiness among other places), EQdpm is useless. It's worse than useless when trying to compare two weapons (or weapon sets).

Finally, precision and accuracy are terms that are used in data measurement (collection/acquisition), not in data interpretation (and the subsequent model building). So if you're talking about precision and accuracy with respect to EQdpm, you can only be talking about how its makers collected data use to come up with their approximation equation(s). If you're talking about the model itself, you're misusing the terms.

I never claimed I tested a T-staff vs. (only) the Sarnak Battle Hammer. I tested the T-staff vs a SBH in the main with an ADH in the off. What, did you assume that I'd put a GLS in my offhand for the parses? Seriously, though, the question's mostly been fist & good offhand vs. T-staff. I threw in the SBH as an alternative to the fist into the mix.

As far as procs go, recall the 60dd on the ADC when you're considering them. Further, even at (a too generous) 2 procs per minute (on each), the difference only works out to be 2dps. The reason that I leave out procs in my calculations is that they're too streaky to be considered when talking about dps (soloing I've had as many as 8 T-staff procs on a single mob - and gone some number of mobs in a row without a single proc - all hail the rng). If you're talking about DPM, I suppose I'd think about counting them. I'm wondering about sustained damage which is a different question from unreliable burst damage. YMMV, but whatever the case, I don't think it's enough to put it over the top. That said, the 2x ranger 625DDs deserve seperate consideration. So there's a threshold somewhere, obviously.

Finally mob level (and type?) need at least a nod in this conversation as do the previously mentioned ripostes (from the mob), your ripostes (or is this absolutely equiv curve to dps calculations?), and mob damage shields. Those should all be considered, at least, when choosing a loadout.

So the genesis of this all for me is that while I was leveling up, I thought the monks who had abandoned the T-staffs post-epic were nuts. So I decided to see for myself. My data showed that they were right.

I didn't mean to make this a pissy rebuttal to your post. I'm trying to understand the data that I've seen/am seeing and offering guesses about it.

This is what I guess so far:

1)- Speed doesn't kill the same way here as it does on live. (To wit, on live, an RFS owned an IFS by a wide margin - here not true.)
2)- H2H skill vs. 1hb (and 2hb) skill plays a significant role.
3)- There may be haste-percentage at which the in-game combat damage engine treats a 9/20 and a 9/16 as identical (save for the weapon skill check).

[Splorf22]

Some food for thought: P1999 seems to let you hit for 'median' damage quite a lot. I saw a monk post with some simple models and he suggested over half of the hits would be 'min' hits which doesn't seem to happen here.

[Ryba]

Didn't seem any pissier than my post. Don't worry, I don't get mad on the internet. I just leave [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]


EQdpm is not a totally broken yardstick. It is definitely wrong, but definitely in the ballpark. "Worse than useless" describes an untestable hypothesis, which is what is generally put forward on forums. I'm only saying that an inaccurate model can still preserve the deltas of the accurate model.

EQdpm and Project1999 both approximate an EQ combat system that, though changed many times on live, never rearranged its core algorithms. So eqdpm and p99 have a transitive relation. You act like Eqdpm is a random die.

You don't seem to get the precision/accuracy thing in this situation, but I also see that I didn't explain myself well. EQdpm uses an equation that, because it is not an utterly failing model (use it and tell me its data does not correspond somewhere around "very well" with your experience), collects data that shows some amount of precision. It's outputs have undeniable correlation with the "real" values and with each other, although we can be dead certain they are not accurate. I guess I should have said "an equation that describes reality precisely but inaccurately" instead of "a precise but inaccurate equation?"

A guess mapped on observed data.

How is that not better than pure conjecture or a random number? In fact, this is exactly why we can derive that EQdpm has some precision. And if output values are skewed, they should skew nearly identically.

I'm not misusing any terms. It is simply not true that precision and accuracy are properties only of the methods they used to come up with the equation. You could measure those, too, but someone would probably have to pay you. I'm talking about the resemblance of EQdpm's educated guesses to data from the actual box. And obviously I am not presenting hard data from p99, I am only putting forward the idea that even if EQdpm data points are miles off, they are likely the same number of miles off, and in the same direction. So we get unusable single values, but useful ratios: congruence.

Also, I realized you didn't have a GLS in offhand. I figured I didn't even need to refer to your offhand to shoot down the idea of a 1h combo involving a 9/20 weapon outdamaging a tstaff. There is no level after 20 where that can happen. The combat system will never treat different starting delays as equivalent when hasted, because this would utterly break itemization. Assuming there is a delay floor, haste would calculate as a percentage of the difference between weapon delay and the floor instead of as a percentage of just your weapon delay. This would ensure that a 9/20 is never as good as a 9/16.

I don't know for sure which setup is better, but I can say for sure that monk epic fists are not some kind of undisputed champ of the dps mountain.