Weapon Ratios

[curtischoy]

Originally Posted by Synthol

The topic I'm trying to gain insight on is whether ceteris paribus, do equal ratio weapons truly produce the same average damage output?

i did not read any other posts after you said this because this is a very easy question to answer. All you have to do is take something like, as you suggested, a 10/20 wep and a 15/30 wep and parse them.

Parse them on the same type of mobs, or if you can, the same mobs from a static spawn. (Brutes in WW caves near dalnir will always spawn at the same level, meaning that in the room with 3, the one on the left will aways be lvl x, middle will always be lvl y, right will always be lvl z) Parse them and look at the data by using a two sample t test for means to see if they are statistically different or not.

This method completely eliminates any other varaibles and it does not care how ac is calculated etc. It only cares about the number of swings, mean, and standard deviation of each sample. The only variables that have to be controlled are the weapons you are using, your skill using those weapons, your class, and the level of the mobs; all of which are very easy to control.

Problem solved.

[Synthlol]

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

i did not read any other posts after you said this because this is a very easy question to answer. All you have to do is take something like, as you suggested, a 10/20 wep and a 15/30 wep and parse them.

Parse them on the same type of mobs, or if you can, the same mobs from a static spawn. (Brutes in WW caves near dalnir will always spawn at the same level, meaning that in the room with 3, the one on the left will aways be lvl x, middle will always be lvl y, right will always be lvl z) Parse them and look at the data by using a two sample t test for means to see if they are statistically different or not.

This method completely eliminates any other varaibles and it does not care how ac is calculated etc. It only cares about the number of swings, mean, and standard deviation of each sample. The only variables that have to be controlled are the weapons you are using, your skill using those weapons, your class, and the level of the mobs; all of which are very easy to control.

Problem solved.

I've thought about this, but there's a roadblock that always stops me short of doing my own testing, which is also why I came here to see if anyone has an answer.

I don't know how to 'parse'.

[Ele]

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

I don't know how to 'parse'.

Turn your logs on and use Gamparse.

[curtischoy]

Oh and control for str as well. There may be a few others you have to control for that I am missing, but they should be super easy to control.

[emdubwubwub]

Download and read about Gamparse.

[Foggon]

Synth. Here is my answer to you, and it is not very scientific so-to-speak. I don't run a parse or anything(Kind of takes away from the fantasy right?) but I have asked friends to parse me from time to time and this is what I find...

Using faster weapons with less damage I notice my DPS is generally always about the same.. give or take about 3-4 dps..

Using harder hitting slower weapons of or about the same ratio, I tend to have about the same DPS on average as the quicker weapons, but with a bit more variance... maybe 15-20 more or less dps.

Before I had my epic I played with many weapons. Bags of weapons. My quick weapons(and my overall average dps) was about 45 dps. I feel like I saw that number everytime I asked for a parse, 44 or 45.. sometimes 48. But when I pulled out the meat luggers.. sometimes I would reach up to 68 dps, and other times I had seen it as low as 34 dps.

Some nut somewhere probably has all this calculated out, and like I said I don't have the fractions and numbers to min/max these tests of mine.. But I think simply enough it is because if you miss with a high delay weapon then you just lost a ton of play time. If you miss twice with a big delay weapon you might as well start the bus and go home.

Of course on the other hand you have the chance to hit two doubles in a row for maximum damage(Mmm dat feels) and that's the kind of stuff that causes the fluctuation in dps.

[GinnasP99]

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

Synth. Here is my answer to you, and it is not very scientific so-to-speak. I don't run a parse or anything(Kind of takes away from the fantasy right?) but I have asked friends to parse me from time to time and this is what I find...

Using faster weapons with less damage I notice my DPS is generally always about the same.. give or take about 3-4 dps..

Using harder hitting slower weapons of or about the same ratio, I tend to have about the same DPS on average as the quicker weapons, but with a bit more variance... maybe 15-20 more or less dps.

Before I had my epic I played with many weapons. Bags of weapons. My quick weapons(and my overall average dps) was about 45 dps. I feel like I saw that number everytime I asked for a parse, 44 or 45.. sometimes 48. But when I pulled out the meat luggers.. sometimes I would reach up to 68 dps, and other times I had seen it as low as 34 dps.

Some nut somewhere probably has all this calculated out, and like I said I don't have the fractions and numbers to min/max these tests of mine.. But I think simply enough it is because if you miss with a high delay weapon then you just lost a ton of play time. If you miss twice with a big delay weapon you might as well start the bus and go home.

Of course on the other hand you have the chance to hit two doubles in a row for maximum damage(Mmm dat feels) and that's the kind of stuff that causes the fluctuation in dps.

This is spot on, its made drastically evident using the imbued fighters staff 38/40. Sometimes you double attack for 200 several times in a row, other times you'll miss for 7-10 seconds straight. Quicker weapons will parse much more consistently but you can get really lucky with an IFS or something similar and put out great damage. Riposte is also alot better with a heavy hitter

[fastboy21]

its really not very complicated. if you can't trust the ratios and math to predict to what your dps should be then you need to parse. the more you parse the more data. the more variables you control for the cleaner your data will be. you may also take into account that depending on class, level, skills, stats that certain weapons will produce different results due to the attack/damage formulas changing for a character as they progress. you may also want to control for whether your are tanking or not (reposte damage, etc.).

generally speaking, when i am parsing i am generally only looking for my pure melee dps when I am not tanking. I do not care about holding aggro, I do not care about reposte damage, etc. My "benchmark" figure is just pure auto-attack on a mob while somone else is holding aggro. Obviously, in real EQ, there is more to take into account, but I use pure dps as my standard to compare weapon setup for my own information.

as stated above, the more attacks you are making the tighter the spread on your data will be. with less attacks the bigger the spread. averages are still averages, but the consistancy will be more reliable with faster weapons. Example, I know fighting any golem in CoM with my regular weapon setup on my 50 war (sarnak warhammer and troc skean) I can basicly go afk and come back a minute later to find a dead golem. When I equip my ogguk cleaver, I might not always win the same fight, regardless of my expected average DPS...I might win big too. The very slow (and potentially heavy damage) attacks create a very very big chance that I might win big or die if I go afk.

the short of it is, that if you want to play the min/max numbers game (and many people don't---in fact, many group mates will HATE if you are parsing them while you fight) then you need to parse. if it makes the game less magical for you to reverse engineer the combat formulas then don't do it. some folks find playing with data to be a fun part of the game though.