monk ratios, primary and offhand choices

[Vivitron]

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

What's the reason behind 2hb sucking on high AC targets?

That's a good question; I thought people were suggesting low hits would mean a larger portion of the damage comes from the damage bonus. But it seems 2 handers give better damage bonus dps?

According to the lucy chart linked above you're looking at +11 for a prime hand one hander and +29 for a 30 delay two hander (e.g. abashi or tstaff), so is the "damage-bonus-only-ratio" 11/18 for a FoN and 29/30 for an abashi, favoring the 2 hander by a convincing 58%? (I'm not sure that the lucy chart is accurate. I'm also not sure that a two hander swings the same number of swings per round as the primary hand when dual weilding.)

It seems to me that two handers should do better relative to one handers on high ac mobs than on low ac mobs.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

That's a good question; I thought people were suggesting low hits would mean a larger portion of the damage comes from the damage bonus. But it seems 2 handers give better damage bonus dps?

According to the lucy chart linked above you're looking at +11 for a prime hand one hander and +29 for a 30 delay two hander (e.g. abashi or tstaff), so is the "damage-bonus-only-ratio" 11/18 for a FoN and 29/30 for an abashi, favoring the 2 hander by a convincing 58%? (I'm not sure that the lucy chart is accurate. I'm also not sure that a two hander swings the same number of swings per round as the primary hand when dual weilding.)

It seems to me that two handers should do better relative to one handers on high ac mobs than on low ac mobs.

When looking at the normal distribution (assuming a pure 50% hit rate on average), you would be correct that some 2h weapons could outperform 1h weapons on high AC targets. At 100% haste the 11/18 would have 9 delay, and the 29/30 would have 15 delay. 9 divided by 15 is 0.6. For every 100 swings of the 9 delay 1h weapon, you'd get 60 swings out of the 2h weapon. When factoring in a 50% chance to dual wield, that would be 150 1h swings for every 60 2h swings.

(150 1h swings × 0.5 hit rate) x 11 damage bonus = 825 damage

(60 2h swings x 0.5 hit rate) x 29 damage bonus = 870 damage

The catch is fights with high AC targets are usually raid mobs you fight once in a while (that you don't want to lose), instead of XP mobs you are constantly killing. This means you want to look at how an individual fight could play out, rather than a large number of fights (the normal distribution).

1h weapons give you a lot more individual chances to hit in a single fight.

If you hit 40% of the time on the first 60 swings:

(60 1h swings x 0.4 hit rate) × 11 damage bonus = 264 damage

(60 2h swings x 0.4 hit rate) x 29 damage bonus = 696 damage.

If you hit 60% of the time on the next 60 swings:

(60 1h swings x 0.6 hit rate) × 11 damage bonus = 396 damage

0 2h swings = 0 damage

If you hit 50% of the time on the next 30 swings:

(30 1h swings x 0.5 hit rate) x 11 damage bonus = 165 damage

0 2h swings = 0 damage

1h damage total over 150 swings: 825 damage

2h damage total over 60 swings: 696 damage

After you've fought thousands of a specific raid target, you may see that the data shows some 2h weapons would deal higher damage on average. But the goal of each individual raid target fight is to kill it asap. So you are banking on the idea that you will outperform the 2h weapon in that individual fight.

The same concept applies to how much damage each individual hit does. The 1h weapon has more opportunities to randomly roll higher damage-wise. An unlucky streak of low damage 2h rolls will lower your damage in an individual fight.

[Goregasmic]

Thanks, makes sense I guess.

I also noticed that even if on average it doesn't matter, people HATE missing with a slow 2hander.

Is it also taken into account that for a single encounter lasting only a few minutes, a potential miss streak on a slow 2 hander could hurt more than 1handers that would average better over a shorter period? If you're lucky the 2hander could also pay off but if people are going to be risk averse to that point on those raid mobs then they might want to not risk it with a swingy 2hander.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Is it also taken into account that for a single encounter lasting only a few minutes, a potential miss streak on a slow 2 hander could hurt more than 1handers that would average better over a shorter period? If you're lucky the 2hander could also pay off but if people are going to be risk averse to that point on those raid mobs then they might want to not risk it with a swingy 2hander.

Correct. 2h weapons are more swingy, where some fights are going to be well below average, and some fights are going to be well above average. After killing a few hundred XP mobs, the 2h weapon averages back out to the midpoint. This means when killing hundreds of XP mobs, you just want to pick whichever weapons give you the best average.

On high AC targets a good set of 1h weapons are going to be more consistent, and thus closer to the midpoint during any individual fight. In a scenario where losing the fight means you lose the kill to another guild, consistency is what you want.

High AC targets make the swingy nature of 2h weapons worse as well. This is because you are less likely to get a max hit, which would normally smooth out a previous miss or low damage hit.

[Vivitron]

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

When looking at the normal distribution (assuming a pure 50% hit rate on average), you would be correct that some 2h weapons could outperform 1h weapons on high AC targets. At 100% haste the 11/18 would have 9 delay, and the 29/30 would have 15 delay. 9 divided by 15 is 0.6. For every 100 swings of the 9 delay 1h weapon, you'd get 60 swings out of the 2h weapon. When factoring in a 50% chance to dual wield, that would be 150 1h swings for every 60 2h swings.

(150 1h swings × 0.5 hit rate) x 11 damage bonus = 825 damage

(60 2h swings x 0.5 hit rate) x 29 damage bonus = 870 damage

But offhand doesn't get the damage bonus, so call it 870 damage vs 550.

The catch is fights with high AC targets are usually raid mobs you fight once in a while (that you don't want to lose), instead of XP mobs you are constantly killing. This means you want to look at how an individual fight could play out, rather than a large number of fights (the normal distribution).

For a raid on a high AC fight: 5 monks on a six minute fight might be roughly representative; call it 30 monk-minutes of dps (maybe about 1,500-3,000 2h swings): I think this should be more than enough swings to wash out any risk of high variance, and whichever weapon provides the highest average dps should be used (my argument does not address what that weapon is; it only argues that on high ac mobs two handers should compare better to one handers than they do on low ac mobs; the top one handers could still always win afaik).

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

But offhand doesn't get the damage bonus, so call it 870 damage vs 550.

Fair point! I forgot to remove the damage bonus on offhand. So you'd be looking at 550 damage 1h vs 696 2h damage in my example where the 2h weapon hit under the average.

We would probably need some parses to see how bad the lower damage rolls are on the 2h weapon due to the high AC.

[Vivitron]

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

Fair point! I forgot to remove the damage bonus on offhand. So you'd be looking at 550 damage 1h vs 696 2h damage in my example where the 2h weapon hit under the average.

We would probably need some parses to see how bad the lower damage rolls are on the 2h weapon due to the high AC.

It's 550 vs 870 given equal hit rate. 0 vs 870 on my example where the one hander hit under the average.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

It's 550 vs 870 given equal hit rate. 0 vs 870 on my example where the one hander hit under the average.

The point is on an individual fight, 2h weapons have a higher chance to hit under the 50% hit rate due to having less dice rolls to work with. 1h weapons are more likely to get the 50% hit rate on an individual fight. Things like dodge/riposte/parry also play a factor. Any time one of your 2h max hits gets dodged/parried/riposted, you are set back more than a 1h weapon, regardless of what it rolled.

[Vivitron]

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

The point is on an individual fight, 2h weapons have a higher chance to hit under the average, due to having less dice rolls to work with. 1h weapons are more likely to get the 50% hit rate on an individual fight. Things like dodge/riposte/parry also play a factor. Any time one of your 2h max hits gets dodged/parried/riposted, you are set back more than a 1h weapon, regardless of what it rolled.

Interesting when soloing and maybe for gaters, but I don't see how it applies to high ac raid targets. For example take AoW -- looking at parses it seems it typically takes our raid force about 20,000 hits to kill him. Sure an individual chunk of 2hb (or backstab) is higher variance than an equivalent time of 1h swings, but suppose swapping 6 monks to two handers reduces it from 21,000 hits to 19,000 hits, would that be a noticable increase in variance? I don't see it. With that many samples I don't think you stray far from the average.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Interesting when soloing and maybe for gaters, but I don't see how it applies to high ac raid targets. For example take AoW -- looking at parses it seems it typically takes our raid force about 20,000 hits to kill him. Sure an individual chunk of 2hb (or backstab) is higher variance than an equivalent time of 1h swings, but suppose swapping 6 monks to two handers reduces it from 21,000 hits to 19,000 hits, would that be a noticable increase in variance? I don't see it. With that many samples I don't think you stray far from the average.

Apologies. I didn't provide a clear example due to accidentally leaving in the damage bonus for the offhand in the previous example. I will do the full math to hopefully give you a better idea.

I'll use the damage range from my SK as a quick example. His 46/44 ratio weapon does 46-258 damage self buffed, with the 37 damage bonus. This means the damage roll range is 9-221 (the part affected by AC). We will still use two 11/18 weapons for dual wielding in the example.

For argument's sake, we will say AoW reduces your damage rolls by half on average.

This means my average damage per hit on the 2h weapon is (9 + 221) / 2 = 115 × 0.5 = 57.5 + 37 = 94.5 damage.

At 100% haste you have 22 delay on a 46/44 weapon. You have 9 delay on an 11/18 weapon. 9 delay divided by 22 is 0.41. So you'd get 41 swings per 150 swings of the 11/18 weapons when including dual wield.

94.5 damage x 20.5 hits = 1937.25 total damage.

I don't have the max hit for the 11/18 weapon, but we can take a rough guess. 46 divided by 11 is 4.18. 221/ 4.18 = 52.9. So the damage range is 9-52.9 (the part not affected by AC).

(9 + 52.9) / 2 = 30.95 x 0.5 = 15.475 damage without the damage bonus.

15.475 damage x 75 hits = 1160.625 damage + (11 bonus damage × 50 hits) = 1710.625 total damage.

So the 1h weapons would do roughly 225 less damage per damage set of 150 1h swings and 41 2h swings. 225 damage is basically 1-2 hits from this 2h weapon.

This means the 2h weapon will underperform the 1h weapons basically anytime you miss more often than the pure average, which is more likely with a 2h weapon in an individual fight. The 1h weapons also have a higher chance to roll above average damage in an individual fight, due to having more damage rolls. Parry/dodge/riposte also affect 2h weapons more when they nullify a high damage hit.

I agree that the 2h weapon should outperform the 1h weapons on a normal distribution. But in individual fights 2h weapons are more swingy.