44 réponses à ce sujet

[Blazomancer]

I guess that'll work. Anything you can do to immobilize the bomb will certainly work. Similarly, that party set up sounds like a good one when focussing on denotating bombs.

[dainbramage]

Blazomancer wrote...

dainbramage wrote...
There are a few reasons.

Talent spam as you mentioned. Rogues are welcome to backstab, but hitting 4 enemies with a sweep still does a ton of damage. Cunning rogues have horrendous attack - like it tops out at just over 100, while a warrior's at 130 or more. My cunning rogue only had an 85% chance to hit at the end of the game, despite having Wynne's tactics permanently set to spam heroic offense on my rogue. My warrior was at 97% with no outside help. But then even if you do have a 100% chance to hit rogues are only slightly ahead - but you can't backstab 100% of the time. Anything holding a shield, anything you draw aggro from and turns to face you, or simply the time taken to position yourself is time you're not backstabbing while a warrior would be doing full damage.

But the main reason is that dual striking is really weird, and if you abuse it properly, even with both parties never missing (apart from the buggy animation in dual striking) and not using talents, a front-attacking warrior will quite easily outdamage a backstabbing rogue in idealized situations. And yes, that is taking into account the tendency of dual striking to miss. Mostly, it's because the game only checks the speed of your main weapon when dual striking - so with a dagger in your main hand and a large weapon offhand, you attack twice as fast as if you were dual wielding daggers. A third of those attacks miss and you can't crit, but that's compensated for by making 4 hit checks per second.

Right, with talents warriors have lot more damage potential. What I'm wondering here is what is the correct way to compare DPS. To be honest, I have no idea myself. I mean, one can argue that a mage casting the 'Storm of the Century' combo outdamages everyone. Would that be wrong? For comparing DPS, should we use single target DPS, or rather AoE DPS? I don't know if it's right to say that one class outdamages another class flatly, as it seems to me, everything is situational. I mean, if there's a room full of enemies, and a mage casts SotC without even needing an LoS, he outdamages everybody. If suddenly ambushed and surrounded, a warrior can unleash Whirlwind, Sweeps, and outdamage his team members. A single target battle, say a revenant or an Ogre battle, an a rogue will strip down it's HP faster than his team members, and will outdamage them. So, what I'm getting to here is that we can theorycraft in a laboratory setup and calculate who has more damage potential, but doesn't it depend on the setup of the battlefield in a practical sense? I may be wrong, but it seems to me that cross-class comparasion is not really possible and will always remain ambiguous!

My personal experience with 'attack' and backstabs:
I know this will vary from person to person, but I had no problem stealing backstabs most of the time.
I had Alistair, Leliana, Wynne in my party the last time I was playing a cunning rogue. I spec'ed out Alistair from templer to Reaver, to augment his 'taunt'. Most of the time enemies were surrounding him. So, backstabbing was easy. Then of course, some critters would rush towards me every now and then, but all I have to do is use 'dirty fighting' or 'riposte' to eliminate them, and coup de grace ensured that these are counted as backstabs. Then carry on with the usual backstabbing of the ones surrounding Alistair. There is also the option to just stealth out if swarmed. I've set up Leliana to unleash scatter shot if I'm swarmed, and thus free Coup de graces. I don't take the Mass paralysis line generally, but for this very playthrough I got that tree for Wynne, for a couple of more backstab fodder. Positioning for backstabbing doesn't even come into the picture when someone's stunned or paralyzed. And the unusual thing is even Shield wielding foes can be backstabbed when stunned or paralyzed, unllike how upgraded shield talents available for a tank behaves, which provide immunity to backstabs. Even a revenant can be backstabbed when paralyzed. On top of that, I got the weapons enchanted with 6 paralyze runes of different tiers and used Conc.deathroot extract/Conc.crow poison. That is a considerable amount of paralyzing chance, and IIRC i got the high dragon to paralyze twice during the battle for a couple of seconds, in which a lot of backstabs can be stolen. I had 'tainted blade' sustained all the time, and by endgame that meant over 20 damage bonus for each hit.
Regarding attack rating, I topped out at 136 attack with two SoC's and Heroic Offense. When I'm in the tanks rally range, it went up to 146. So, no, I had no problems with attack rating.
As I said, this was a personal experience, and i can't really expect others to have similar experience.


If I may ask, what are you taking as the reference for calculating the % to hit? Doesn't it depend upon the enemy's defense rating?


That thing you mentioned about dual striking is not much clear to me. So please correct me if I am wrong. I don't get how is it really outdamaging a rogue. It seems to be situational. I mean for example, by the time a dual striker will undergo 12 attack hit checks, a rogue will complete only 6 backstabs. Because of 1/3 hits registered as miss, only 8 of those will connect. So we are essentially comparing 8 normal hits to 6 backstabs(or crits). Is it outdamging?
Of course, i understand this is just a laboratory test set up, ignoring all the time taken for target switching and positioning, etc.

Late reply since I had no internet connection...

The simplest way of comparing autoattack DPS is simply to calculate it for each setup. Now for example, at level 25 a cunning rogue assassin does between 191 and 195 DPS depending on weapons when absolutely min-maxed (interestingly, axe/dagger is actually the best contrary to Discobird's thread - however, equipping the veshialle can be *interesting* especially at low levels). This comes from Veshialle doing 180 average damage and The Rose's Thorn doing 126 average damage per backstab, with dual weapon expert adding 5.3 DPS and lacerate adding 7.2. It attacks every 0.84 seconds (average of 1.0 and 1.4 weapon speeds, times 0.7 for momentum).

Now, a dual striking warrior averages only 68 main-hand damage (thorn), and 88 off-hand (starfang) - way less per hit than a cunning rogue. But it makes 2 hit checks every 0.5 seconds (from momentum plus blood thirst), though a third of these will miss (one of the 3 animations simply makes no attack rolls). So that'd be 312 DPS, but because of the whiffs it's only 208. Add in dual weapon expert and it's up to 213 DPS. If we swapped the main and off hands, it'd only be 160 DPS though - like I said, dual striking's kinda weird.

Talent spam is weird when trying to compare DPS, mostly because numbers aren't really very friendly as you pointed out, and additionally it varies wildly from fight to fight. I wouldn't have made that claim if all I was going off is talent spam, but autoattack (when properly built) is higher as well.

Also, minor nitpick. A rogue will never outdamage a warrior against a revenant. Shield mastery means you can't backstab them.


EDIT: As for attack - warriors will hit 140+ with no external help. Sure it's what your cunning rogue reached, but that's with help from 3 party members. To play devil's advocate, Wynne (or Morrigan) could've been doing damage instead of every 5th spell being a heroic offense on your main.

Modifié par dainbramage, 28 décembre 2012 - 05:49 .

[Blazomancer]

dainbramage wrote...
Late reply since I had no internet connection...

The simplest way of comparing autoattack DPS is simply to calculate it for each setup. Now for example, at level 25 a cunning rogue assassin does between 191 and 195 DPS depending on weapons when absolutely min-maxed (interestingly, axe/dagger is actually the best contrary to Discobird's thread - however, equipping the veshialle can be *interesting* especially at low levels). This comes from Veshialle doing 180 average damage and The Rose's Thorn doing 126 average damage per backstab, with dual weapon expert adding 5.3 DPS and lacerate adding 7.2. It attacks every 0.84 seconds (average of 1.0 and 1.4 weapon speeds, times 0.7 for momentum).

Now, a dual striking warrior averages only 68 main-hand damage (thorn), and 88 off-hand (starfang) - way less per hit than a cunning rogue. But it makes 2 hit checks every 0.5 seconds (from momentum plus blood thirst), though a third of these will miss (one of the 3 animations simply makes no attack rolls). So that'd be 312 DPS, but because of the whiffs it's only 208. Add in dual weapon expert and it's up to 213 DPS. If we swapped the main and off hands, it'd only be 160 DPS though - like I said, dual striking's kinda weird.

Talent spam is weird when trying to compare DPS, mostly because numbers aren't really very friendly as you pointed out, and additionally it varies wildly from fight to fight. I wouldn't have made that claim if all I was going off is talent spam, but autoattack (when properly built) is higher as well.

While playing a DW rogue, i like to use the Rose's Thorn and the Edge, rather than Veshialle. So, my calculations will be probably a bit different.

I will be using the attribute allocations of two wardens I created during my playthroughs for comparison. So, I won't assume these calculations will hold true for everyone. Correct me wherever/if i'm wrong.

Assumptions:
#Only the +30% crit/backstab damage modifier from rose's thorn is applied to both wardens.
#Damage from runes and armor damage reduction are ignored.
#Lacerations from Dual Weapon Expert is ignored as it will simply cancel out while comparing; and since it will vary depending upon the enemy's rank, for sake of simplification, it can be safely ignored.
#Since Lacerate adds damage over 4 seconds, i'm calculating the damage for a total of 5 seconds for each set up before calculating DPS.
#Character speed modifiers like momentum are ignored for simplifying calculations. While a warrior can max out with momentum + blood thirst, a rogue can do the same with momentum + swift salve, which I have been using incessantly during my playthrough.

DW Rogue

At level 25, my cunning based DW rogue had 48 Dexterity and 102 Cunning, modified. Assassin and Bard are the chosen specs.

Additional character damage bonus:
#Level damage bonus = 0.2 for rogues, which makes 5 damage at level 25.
#Exploit weakness = (0.173 * (Cunning - 10)) additional damage per backstab. For my build, it equates to (0.173 * (102 -10)) = 15.916
#SoC = (2 + 0.05 * (Cunning - 10)) damage = 6.6
#The Tainted Blade = 5 + [(Cun-10) * 0.2] damage = 23.4
#Bonus damage from weapons = 8

Total bonus damage = 58.916

Average Backstab damage for Rose's thorn = 1.8 * (8 + 0.375 * 0.425 * (102 + 48 - 20) + 58.916

                = 110.61

Average Backstab damage for the Edge = 1.8 * (7.5 + 0.375 * 0.425 * 130) + 58.916

                = 109.71

If I'm not mistaken, lacerate adds 0.25 of a particular backstab damage over four seconds. So, starting with a hit from thorn, we have 0.25 * 110.61 = 27.65 damage over the next 4 seconds.

So, in 5 seconds duration, we have 3 thorn hits, 2 edge hits plus the lacerations which equals to 578.9.

Hence, DPS = 115.78.    (with an attack duration of 1 second)


DW Warrior using Dual Striking:

At level 25, my strength based warden had 96 strength and 43 dex modified after equipping rose's thorn and starfang. This is after having invested in whirlwind at 30 dex.

Character Damage Bonus:
#Level damage bonus = 0.4 for warriors, i.e. 10 damage at level 25.
#Bravery = +1
#Berserk = +8
#From weapons = +6

Total = 25

Average Normal hit damage for thorn (main hand) = 8 + 0.375 * 0.425 * (96 + 43 - 20) + 25

                    = 51.97

Average Normal hit damage for Starfang (off Hand) = 14.875 + 0.375 * (96 - 10) + 25

                    = 72.13

In 5 seconds, we'll have 5 Thorn hits and 5 Starfang Hits, for a total of 620.5 damage.

Taking into account the neglected attack rolls, this turns out to be 413.67.

DPS = 82.73    (with an attack duration of 1 second)


Now, if we consider using swift salve as cumbersome, notwithstanding the fact that I personally don't find it cumbersome, and prevent a rogue from it's use, then the dual striking warrior would have an advantage of 0.2 speed modifier from Blood Thirst.

Then, DPS for the dual striker would be 413.67/4 = 103.42.

It is possible that I got something wrong in between. If so, please do correct me.

dainbramage wrote...
Also, minor nitpick. A rogue will never outdamage a warrior against a revenant. Shield mastery means you can't backstab them.

It's been about two months since I did my last playthrough, and my memory is not real good. So, I can't really defend what I wrote. But I do seem to remember to have backstabbed a paralyzed revenant. Probably revenants don't have the exact passive talent 'Shield Tactics' that makes the character immune to backstabs. When I checked the wiki article about revenants, it doesn't straight out say that they are immune to backstabs; instead in it's own words - "Highly resistant or immune to flanking and backstabbing."
Another interesting thing I found out via the wiki that revenants don't turn on Shield Wall till Mana<=50%, with a use chance of 50%. Although Shield wall have nothing to do with backstab immunity, I'll be keeping an eye out the next time I play DAO.

Having said that, I'm sure about most of the other shield wielding foes such as the Howe Guards, that they don't have access to shield tactics. They can be backstabbed when stunned/paralyzed.

dainbramage wrote...
As for attack - warriors will hit 140+ with no external help. Sure it's
what your cunning rogue reached, but that's with help from 3 party
members. To play devil's advocate, Wynne (or Morrigan) could've been
doing damage instead of every 5th spell being a heroic offense on your
main.

Agreed. Speaking only for myself, I want my team members to do as little damage as possible and rather act as buff bots, so that I can enjoy all the killing.

Modifié par Blazomancer, 29 décembre 2012 - 12:30 .

[termokanden]

Another minor nitpick: you can stack Song of Courage, meaning that there is an extra advantage to the cunning rogue (and another source of attack rating) if you have Leliana in the party (and you assume for the warrior that Leliana with 80 cunning is there... bit high isn't it?).

[Blazomancer]

termokanden wrote...

Another minor nitpick: you can stack Song of Courage, meaning that there is an extra advantage to the cunning rogue (and another source of attack rating) if you have Leliana in the party (and you assume for the warrior that Leliana with 80 cunning is there... bit high isn't it?).

Just to keep things simple, considered only one rogue in the party.

80 cunning is achievable for Leliana. If someone cares about prebuffing by changing gear it can go even higher I suppose.

For this particular instance, she had 58 base cunning, and +22 from equipments.

[termokanden]

Blazomancer wrote...

Just to keep things simple, considered only one rogue in the party.

Maybe, but it's an unfair comparison if the warrior gets a bonus from a party member and the rogue does not.

But like I said. Minor nitpick!

Modifié par termokanden, 28 décembre 2012 - 05:00 .

[Blazomancer]

@termo - You are right. Removed the SoC contribution for Warrior.

[dainbramage]

When considering blood thirst, don't compare it to without momentum. With momentum, blood thirst actually provides a significantly larger benefit. W/O momentum, blood thirst makes the animation go from 1 to 0.8 seconds, which means you attack 25% faster. With it, the animation goes from 0.7 to 0.5 seconds, which is a 40% boost in DPS.

Including momentum puts your DPS numbers about equal for a rogue and a warrior. You also left out runes - a DS warrior hits 87% faster than a rogue and has 6 slots rather than 5 (if you're using edge offhand), so they get a much bigger benefit - the warrior gains 40 DPS while the rogue only 17.9 (interestingly, veshialle/thorn and thorn/edge both get exactly the same DPS from runes). This brings the warrior ahead.

There are a couple of other discrepancies but they're not major. Mostly you're giving the rogue 2 specialisations and the warrior one - to make it "fair" again you'd probably want to add some damage for reaver spec.

Modifié par dainbramage, 30 décembre 2012 - 02:44 .

[Blazomancer]

dainbramage wrote...
When considering blood thirst, don't compare it to without momentum.
With momentum, blood thirst actually provides a significantly larger
benefit. W/O momentum, blood thirst makes the animation go from 1 to 0.8
seconds, which means you attack 25% faster. With it, the animation goes
from 0.7 to 0.5 seconds, which is a 40% boost in DPS.

Including
momentum puts your DPS numbers about equal for a rogue and a warrior.
You also left out runes - a DS warrior hits 87% faster than a rogue and
has 6 slots rather than 5 (if you're using edge offhand), so they get a
much bigger benefit - the warrior gains 40 DPS while the rogue only 17.9
(interestingly, veshialle/thorn and thorn/edge both get exactly the
same DPS from runes). This brings the warrior ahead.

There are a
couple of other discrepancies but they're not major. Mostly you're
giving the rogue 2 specialisations and the warrior one - to make it
"fair" again you'd probably want to add some damage for reaver spec.

Isn't momentum+blood thirst same as momentum+swift salve?

For rogue, DPS (momentum + swift salve) = 578.9/2.5 = 231.56     (0.5 s attack duration)
                   DPS (momentum) = 578.9/3.5 = 165.4     (0.7 s attack duration)

For warrior, DPS (momentum + blood thirst) = 413.67/2.5 = 165.47     (0.5 s)

Swift salve should be used anyway. Anyone who's not using it is probably being stupid to miss out on all that DPS, when the option is available. The only comparasion comes in when swift salve is restricted, which is like handicapping the rogue.

With runes,
Extra DPS for rogue = 15 * 2 = 30 (only main hand runes trigger for backstabs)
Extra DPS for warrior = 30 * 2 * 2/3 = 40

This 10 extra damage simply doesn't make up the above 66.09 difference. And to be honest, I've probably yet to see a GM rune provide full 5 damage every hit.

As for reaver spec, I guess those damage numbers are dicey to say the least. With already depleting 12 health per 2 seconds from blood thirst, adding another -5 per second for blood frenzy and another -5 for aura of pain, plus -20 again each 4 seconds duration for aura of pain is not what I'd prefer personally. Even then if someone's willing to do it, the maximum possible damage via blood frenzy is only +9 at 10% health. And if to maximize aura of pain damage someone is getting surrounded with such a dwindling health and lesser defense than a conventional tank, probably we can't expect much of a life expectancy. Even if someone pulls out such a stunt with health pot chaining, and with good ol' Wynne and Morri, it's only 20 damage per 4 seconds per enemy on a 4 m circle, and i don't really think many enemy will come inside that circle unless someone's taunting his/her ass out. Not to mention that health pot chaining is actually cutting out on DPS.
Even so, the above difference is not covered anyway.

Edit: Did a little bit of testing and it seems like runes are triggered randomly. Sometimes only 1 or 2 of the runes triggers. In my case, it was on the werewolf alpha random encounter. Although unlike what I wrote earlier, saw a few 5 damage numbers on some critters, but mostly it was like 4 or 3 damage.

Modifié par Blazomancer, 30 décembre 2012 - 06:34 .

[dainbramage]

Off-hand runes trigger separately. If you're going off discobird's thread, that was fixed in like 1.03 or something. And runes always trigger, but won't always display if there's a lot of floating numbers already. And most critters have 0 resistances, dunno what you're testing on. In particular, just about nothing resists electricity. For reaver skills, health regen won't go below 0, so apart from aura of pain's ticks you're not taking any damage. Though it does make the regeneration spell hard to use. And I highly doubt you're using a swift salve every 60 seconds that you're in combat.

Finally, you're still ignoring cunning rogues' poor attack (even with a mage set to heroic offense spam, hit rate is still often below 90%), that they have to spend time flanking (a warrior doesn't, obviously), that they can't afford to take aggro (they not only can't take hits, they also lose backstabs), talents are much weaker, and some targets can't even be backstabbed (importantly, anything holding a shield). These are hard to take into account in just numbers, but you also can't pretend that these factors don't exist.


Like, if you've got your entire party making up for a cunning rogue's deficiencies, it'll outdamage a warrior... maybe. Whereas a warrior is as good or better, and importantly, works on his own.

[termokanden]

dainbramage wrote...

Like, if you've got your entire party making up for a cunning rogue's deficiencies, it'll outdamage a warrior... maybe. Whereas a warrior is as good or better, and importantly, works on his own.

I just don't think it's as simple as that.

SoC for example affects the whole party, but Berserk does not. Rally helps the party, but it doesn't add damage. Reaver adds damage, but really playing to its strengths requires extra healing. A ranger may also add a pet to the equation (I wonder how much DPS that does) and that can both do damage and tank.

Finally, you talk about the problem of having to flank. True, if you have a tanking problem, it will really hurt your DPS. On the other hand, you do not mention stealth, which is a shame, because it's a massive benefit in most fights. While a warrior has to run into the fight under fire from mages and such, the rogue starts out backstabbing and stunning them. It's part of the charm and the power of a rogue to be able to do this, and leaving it out in a comparison is a bit of a shame.

I love both classes but I play them very differently. With a rogue, I really do play to its strengths. I use stealth liberally, I stun a lot, I use SoC (I really, really like SoC if you haven't noticed) and try to flank as much as possible (which implies having a tank in the party).

For warriors, I find DW rather dull but I love 2h instead. I love it the most when I get my AoE knockdowns and can really control the battlefield. I often don't bring a tank and just rely on knockdowns, stuns and brute force to get me through the fights.

[dainbramage]

termokanden wrote...

dainbramage wrote...

Like, if you've got your entire party making up for a cunning rogue's deficiencies, it'll outdamage a warrior... maybe. Whereas a warrior is as good or better, and importantly, works on his own.

I just don't think it's as simple as that.

SoC for example affects the whole party, but Berserk does not. Rally helps the party, but it doesn't add damage. Reaver adds damage, but really playing to its strengths requires extra healing. A ranger may also add a pet to the equation (I wonder how much DPS that does) and that can both do damage and tank.

Finally, you talk about the problem of having to flank. True, if you have a tanking problem, it will really hurt your DPS. On the other hand, you do not mention stealth, which is a shame, because it's a massive benefit in most fights. While a warrior has to run into the fight under fire from mages and such, the rogue starts out backstabbing and stunning them. It's part of the charm and the power of a rogue to be able to do this, and leaving it out in a comparison is a bit of a shame.

I love both classes but I play them very differently. With a rogue, I really do play to its strengths. I use stealth liberally, I stun a lot, I use SoC (I really, really like SoC if you haven't noticed) and try to flank as much as possible (which implies having a tank in the party).

For warriors, I find DW rather dull but I love 2h instead. I love it the most when I get my AoE knockdowns and can really control the battlefield. I often don't bring a tank and just rely on knockdowns, stuns and brute force to get me through the fights.

True. That was a bit poorly worded - I meant in DPS only. Obviously each class have their own advantages elsewhere.

[Blazomancer]

dainbramage wrote...

Off-hand runes trigger separately. If you're going off discobird's thread, that was fixed in like 1.03 or something. And runes always trigger, but won't always display if there's a lot of floating numbers already. And most critters have 0 resistances, dunno what you're testing on. In particular, just about nothing resists electricity. For reaver skills, health regen won't go below 0, so apart from aura of pain's ticks you're not taking any damage. Though it does make the regeneration spell hard to use. And I highly doubt you're using a swift salve every 60 seconds that you're in combat.

Finally, you're still ignoring cunning rogues' poor attack (even with a mage set to heroic offense spam, hit rate is still often below 90%), that they have to spend time flanking (a warrior doesn't, obviously), that they can't afford to take aggro (they not only can't take hits, they also lose backstabs), talents are much weaker, and some targets can't even be backstabbed (importantly, anything holding a shield). These are hard to take into account in just numbers, but you also can't pretend that these factors don't exist.


Like, if you've got your entire party making up for a cunning rogue's deficiencies, it'll outdamage a warrior... maybe. Whereas a warrior is as good or better, and importantly, works on his own.

Off hand runes triggers only with autoattacks. While backstabbing, only the main hand runes trigger or at least that is what is shown onscreen. I am sure about that. I was testing it on the random encounter where you face a werewolf alpha with a few werewolves. Having enchanted thorn with only electricity and edge with only fire, only 3 electricity numbers were popping up while backstabbing. And those numbers were never 5, more like 4 or 3. Probably werewolves have some electricity resistance or whatever the case may be. Unless the game doesn't show the off hand rune damage onscreen, I'm sure while backstabbing only the main hand rune triggers, or at least, that is the case in my PC.

I am also at a loss with what you mentioned about aura of pain and health regen rate not going below 0. What I did to see if that is the case is to respec a 2hander as a reaver. And then kept only aura of pain sustained during battle. I didn't do it with a dual weapon warrior, because we have that self dot because of dual weapon expert or something. Then I just kept him on hold away from the battle. He was losing health every second along with the spike every 4 seconds. Since there was no external source of damage whatsoever, i wonder what gives!

I was actually using swift salve every 60 seconds in combat. It is just a mouse click after having dragged it to the toolbar. In fact i have been reusing it sometimes unnecessarily even before it expires out in 60 seconds, for I had crafted bunches of those salves. After all, with all those DLC stuff, there is hardly anything to buy and lots of money leftover.

About that attack rating thingy, if I talk about my warden, she having 146 attack with party buffs, an enemy would need a defense rating of 110 and above to actually bring her hit chance to 90% and less. And I can't really think of many/any enemies having that much defense. The archdemon has 69, ser cauthrien 101, as per the wiki.

A little bit of aggro once in a while is all right for a rogue, where I'm concerned. Dirty fightning, riposte, paralyzing runes, poisons are enough for me.

I disagree again with the notion that anything carrying a shield cannot be backstabbed. I did the landsmeet again, and as expected, those loghain guards and loghain himself can be backstabbed when stunned.

I'll restate some things that I mentioned earlier, as it seems I was mistaken to think that I've made myself clear. I did say that this comparison is just in an impractical isolated test condition, ignoring all the variables that may come into picture in the battlefield, including time needed for positioning, target switching and stuff like that. I did acknowledge the fact that talent damage for a warrior would be much higher than a rogue's.

I still hold on to the belief that cross-class comparison is ambiguous at best.

[dainbramage]

OK, I have 2 different cunning rogues. A city elf I finished the game with, and a human noble I kinda abandoned once she got to the alienage (half because the landsmeet onwards is somewhat boring, and half because the toon was boring). The city elf was more balanced with a decent amount of dex (well, 30 anyway), the human an attempt to maximise damage as much as possible (i.e. best possible as measured by discobird), even at the expense of other stats. Incidentally it was my experience with the HN that basically convinced me that cunning rogues aren't all they're cracked up to be. Basically when setting up all the conditions where there theoretical OMG BEST DPS could work I was usually instead thinking "I could just be killing everything instead".

Attack:
HN: At level 20, attack was at 123 with heroic offense, rally and duelling (my first rogue was assassin/bard so I figured I'd make the second one a duelist), using rose's thorn + duncan's dagger. Cunning was at 93, so if I was a bard instead I'd have 0.4 more attack. I'm guessing you invested more into dex which helps with attack, but it also means that your 100% hit DPS suffers - so then still under best conditions you still wouldn't match a warrior.

Elf was at 108 with no external buffs at level 25.

Runes:
No runes main + runes off - no procs
Runes main + no runes off - proc every second hit
Runes main + runes off - proc every second hit

Conclusion - offhand runes don't proc when backstabbing as Discobird concluded, but main hand runes don't proc instead; rather nothing at all procs. This is actually worse than what I was previously going by. The same seems to be true for other forms of elemental damage like inherent enchantments and poisons. It's also different to whatever I remembered previously.

Backstabs vs shield tactics:
Couldn't backstab any tevinter soldiers (all of whom were SnS), except when coup de grace kicked in. At earlier levels presumably not all will have shield tactics, but it's still a big consideration. A rogue only comes with 2 disables, after that you're relying on mages or rune/poison procs. The first is needing party support (this seems familiar...), the second reduces your damage compared to using runes and is unreliable.

Reaver talents and hp drain
I grabbed my 2h warrior, loaded a save from the start of the archdemon battle and hit it until it flew off. Took off lifegiver (his only source of hp regen) and activated blood frenzy. No hp loss in the 10-ish second interval between the archdemon spirit blasting me, and regen ticks are every 2 seconds (and stamina did go up in these intervals), so negative regen certainly doesn't hurt you. Repeated with lifegiver on to make sure something was happening - no hp regen, so its negative regen definitely works.

Aura of pain's description is somewhat wrong. It's a 6.66 damage tick every 1.33 seconds rather than 20 damage every 4 (it is still 20 damage every 4 seconds - it's just broken up into 3 ticks). That's probably what you were seeing.

Aggro
You can deal with it, but it's still definitely annoying, and reduces your damage. Runes' and poisons' paralyzes/stuns are also very unreliable if you want to activate coup de grace with them. And if you do draw aggro from a few at once you can get into trouble - you're lacking AoE crowd control, and even stealth can be unreliable as arrows and attacks mid-swing will still hit and have a good chance of knocking you out of stealth.

Comparing classes/DPS
Ideal DPS is one of the few things that can be directly compared. It's also what advocates of cunning rogues always claim, and it's not even true. The fact that achieving ideal situations is much harder for a cunning rogue than a warrior compounds it, but this is a qualitative thing so I can't really go into it more than "it's harder".




As for using items and external help: there's bascially a reason I didn't include these - if you want, you can go absolutely insane. I mean I could stack every poison and flaming and frost weapons onto my DS warrior, and attack a target whose resistances have been lowered to -100 through hexes. The result is over 700 DPS, with each hit doing over 200 elemental damage. So rather than set some sort of "sensible" limit, I instead just went no items or party support at all.


EDIT: OK, and I think this is going to be my last post on the subject, as it's really not going anywhere. So here's a TLDR

Even in ideal situations, backstabbing rogues do less damage than autoattacking DS warriors. With external help it's pretty similar, but the extent can obviously vary a lot. Importantly, it's much harder for rogues to meet ideal conditions that for a warrior. Talent damage is hard to compare to autoattacks, but warriors definitely have a large edge in it. Dexterity rogues do less dps than warriors in all situations. but don't have the drawbacks of cunning rogues.

Modifié par dainbramage, 01 janvier 2013 - 05:49 .

[Blazomancer]

@dainbramage - If that is you opinion, all right then, it's your right to believe what you want. I'll stick to what I said earlier - that cross-class comparison is always unfair, because I believe all of these classes are built for different purposes, and thus were endowed with different abilities. Comparing them is somewhat like comparing who has the most important role in the sustenance of earth - the plants, the microbes, the phytoplanktons, the animals?

If you care to read on:

I didn't invest more into dex, just 30 for whirlwind, everything else came from gear.

I don't understand how you are getting no procs at all. Unless I'm not blind and/or colorblind, I've been seeing pretty colorful numbers all the time.

I don't really see why should we be judgemental towards a cunning rogue being party dependent. It is a squad based game, as far as I'm aware, and those members are there for a reason. Just because a warrior can solo better doesn't mean that we have to take that into consideration. Solo'ing is not how the game is supposed to be played if I'm not wrong. During a battle, are all enemies carrying a shield?; can't a rogue just concentrate on the archers, the mages or the others before taking on the shield wielders? Isn't there a pause button to assess the battlefield before choosing targets?

People may have problem with aggro, but honestly, I didn't; hardly more than one enemy ever rushed towards me with alistair doing his job exceptionally well. If the concerned player can't manage aggro, then good luck to that, but I can manage it pretty well, if I to say that myself. And with riposte having only 20 seconds cooldown, i don't have to worry about that either. In most of the fights, I don't even had to use stuns, or other talents unless there were mages. Alistair can similarly keep taunting every 20 seconds. No, i never had to worry about aggro at all. Period.

And about them aura of pain ticks, no, i noticed those invidual per second ticks plus the spike tick every 4 seconds as i already mentioned. I can count if you doubt it. But I'm not trying to talk you out of anything. If you can't take my word in this case, it's all well and good.

As for Ideal DPS, i don't believe there is anything like ideal dps on the battlefield. It can be only calculated using a formula and that's about it. I have no idea what is an ideal situation either. But if that means positioning a rogue, that is not really hard to achieve, at least for me. When the tank is surrounded by 5-6 enemies, a rogue has only to sidestep every two hits to get in position. And I've never seen a rogue drawing aggro while doing this, Alistair being solid.

If you are doing 200 damage with stacking everything, even if that is really humanly possible, then the rogue would probably do around what? some 40-50 damage less, theoretically speaking. Another variable that goes unheeded in a practical setup is that the missing attack roles are just a probability. In theory we can just calculate DPS by neglecting 1/3 of the damage. But in practical sense, it's always a bargain, sometimes a very good one at that. The rogues attacks are guaranteed (with party buff all right), the enemy will be already down with 2-3 hits, and the rogue can move on to the next target, while the dual striker might have to wait for another hit. And such infinitesimal variables are endless that goes for and against both the classes. A DW warrior might get scattershot'ed while the rogue would be out of the range behind the archer's back. A rogue might be pommel'ed and knocked down by a hurlock alpha, while a Warrior would resist. If there are two enemy mages, a warrior might get prisoned while the rogue is taking out one of them. There are infinite possibilities of events that can take place depending on the player's ability and strategy. Nevertheless, someone who's playing to the strength of the class, would probably do great.

It's hardly fair to put forth the aoe damage of a warrior as a testament of his superiority, since rogues have no acces to aoe abilities at all. Probably they should have allowed them acces to something like flicker in origins.

And why wouldn't rogues use items(swift salve) when they are so foolishly restricted to use haste with momentum without running into bugs. Is it even fair that warriors reach 0.5 attack duration but rogues have to stick with 0.7, even when using a lighter weapon that have lower damage plus less attribute modifier. If I'm not wrong, the faster speed of daggers are supposed to make up for their deficiency in raw power? Doesn't all sort of ideal comparison goes out the window, when something like attack speed bug screws up, and then you accuse of using swift salve as bringing into the equation the use of items.

What I'm getting here is what I've been saying from the beginning. When using the same number of talents, a warrior will far outdamage a rogue. That naturally means a far higher DPS for a warrior over a rogue. But if I'm not mistaken, I'm led to believe that the gaming community across the world uses the autoattack damage numbers to calculate DPS. Now, what i question about this practice is that - is autoattack DPS really possible to calculate outside of an isolated test condition, without taking into account all those variables in the battlefield that are not really predictable? Isn't the only way to calculate it is to allow a character to beat on a meat bag of infinite HP, without any external negative influence and interruption, and then jot down the average damage over a time? Is such a thing really possible in-combat? The same thing applies to the calculation I did above, it is simply theoretical. I really do not believe there is anything like an ideal situation outside of theory just like there is no ideal gas.

This is just my opinion, in case someone feels I'm being rude or anything. And like everybody, whatever I'm saying here has the possibility to be wrong. After all, I don't have any knowledge whatsoever about how the game developers balance the different aspects of gameplay.

[termokanden]

I'll also add that my previous point about party damage went completely unnoticed. Say you have one rogue and that's it or one warrior and that's it. The warrior clearly wins the comparison. If the rogue gets to backstab, I don't know, haven't done a billion calculations so I'll just take your word for it.

Say at the other extreme that you have one rogue and three warriors vs four warriors. SoC is going to buff four characters now. If those happen to be dual-wielders, the damage bonus is going to be massive.

Everyone's party is going to be something in between (I'm assuming nobody plays a cunning rogue solo, that would be silly) and I haven't done the necessary calculations to check what's "best" and when.

The point is that a cunning rogue does not exist in a vacuum. Those kinds of comparisons don't make sense for it because it's a horrible type of rogue to play solo. They do make sense for a warrior.

Modifié par termokanden, 01 janvier 2013 - 10:59 .

[Blazomancer]

@termo - What you are saying is true without a doubt.

All i'm trying to express from the beginning of this discussion is my belief in the notion that dps comparison is a futile process.

The fact that a warrior can solo effectively and a cunning rogue can't is irrelevant. Soloing is a self imposed handicap for a gamer's own satisfaction, and a rogue is not bound to adhere to it.

I assume what you mean by vacuum is a pure theorycrafting setup, and if that is so, i disagree that cunning rogue cannot exist in there. To calculate dps, it is necessary to assume a 100% hit rate (by whatever means possible - either by party buffs or against a target with 0 defense), which is possible continuously only in an isolated system. For if you can't "calculate" Dps, how are you going to "compare"? Hence, my point that 'cross-class DPS comparison is meaningless'. The DPS shown in the character screen of DA2 is an example, which is calculated by taking each hit as a success, irrespective of the attack rating against normal/elite/boss.

And to reassert, comparison for solo play is irrelevant as a cunning rogue is obviously at a disadvantage.

Edit: If I'm not making sense, what I mean is that IMO, 'the autoattack DPS calculated with a formula for anybody is just a potential damage per second number against a single target without taking into account any other factors that can present itself in combat.' And since this number is itself based on a loose footing, it hardly makes any sense to compare it to another and say that A outdamages B. It is not even necessary that someone who has comparatively higher dps potential, is going to deal more total damage at the end of the day than someone who has a lower dps potential. It all depends upon the playstyle, strategies and competence of the gamer and some factors that are beyond his/her control.
When I checked my post-origin saves, my warrior archer has dealt around 780000 total damage compared to the DW warrior's 670000 damage. Of course, it is a consequence of my favoured playstyle.

So, to cut this short:

"I'm not talking about soloing, not about total party damage, not about attack rating, not about single target/aoe talent damage; I'm just saying the calculated potential damage per second is just a general idea, and just because my backstabbing rogue dealt more damage than my DW warrior doesn't necessarily mean it will be the case for every possible gamer out there in the universe, i.e. autoattack DPS is not a Law."

Modifié par Blazomancer, 01 janvier 2013 - 01:30 .

[Last Darkness]

dainbramage wrote...

 Oh, and DW warriors outdamage cunning rogues, contrary to popular opinion.

Blazomancer wrote...

@dainbramage - How so? Don't cunning rogues get lots of backstab damage bonus and still maintain a good enough attack rating?
I'm guessing you are referring to talent damage rather than dps. Well, of course without backstabs things may change, but why wouldn't someone who's playing a cunning rogue won't keep backstabbing all the time?

termokanden wrote...

You don't need a tank in DA:O.

That's not to say they are bad. If I had to make a tank, I'd make a DW warrior with massive armor, daggers and lots of dex. That gives you high armor, makes you hard to hit, and you could still deal good damage.

Someones using my build 

Alot of the playstyles in game are boring and generic as presented. Its up to you to spice them up.

Rogues come in 3 types really. Archers who aim for 100% auto attack, Strength Duel Wield with Large Weapons (These guys spam attacks pretty good), and Backstabbers who stun and autoattack.

The first isnt useful unless in a full ranged party doing the same, the second is built wrong because they end up being in heavier armor and acting like warriors and the third does great in Ideal conditions.
See my Sig link on archery for some info on the first.
backstab rogues really need tanks and combat stealth to work their magic (And its rather impressive once you get the right gear to hit critical caps)

I do want to discuss the middle option though, as its a personal theorycraft build ive discussed. The Black Whirlwind build is for a Warden only rogue(due to bonuses only the warden gets) thats built to have duel veshialles, and be a Cunning build with Bard/Duelist spec. 31 Str, 36 Dex, all other points Cun, this looks to be a very powerful group character with a ton of utility (Due to such a High Cun, you need minimal investment into Coercison and Lockpick skills which frees up others)  Particularly useful if you also make this character a poison/trap maker and use combat stealth.

I'll ignore mages because they are what they are, though theres some intresting non-standard builds ive seen. I personaly hate the normal Arcane Warrior tanks.

But Warriors have some very intresting options as well that very few people acknowledge. Most are generic tanks, twohanded dps or duel wield dps. twohanded has been discussed to extreme length and well agree 100% str and talent spam your way to victory.

Weapon and Shield Warriors are often overlooked though as aggressive damage dealers, you can focus only 26 points in Dex to get all shield talents then put all other points into strength to get equipment freedom and great damage especialy if you use a axe. This allows you to tank and deal damage along with a fair amount of cc. more so with proper Spec choices (Reavers Stun and Champions Warcry are strength based)

Then we come to Duel Wield warriors, most go full size weapons and talent spam/auto attack which works well with Deathblow to keep their stamina up.  They really shine though when wielding duel daggers, having a heavy dex investment and focus on crit, and auto attack bonus damage. Duel Dagger warriors do the highest damage in the entire game without the ideal conditions nessasary for a perfect backstab rogue setup. Plus they have great defenses. They are however not immune to enemy cc, but can be made 100% dodge rate and spell immune with the right gear and spec choices.

There also another lesser known spec, Tanking archer is viable on a Warrior thanks to being able to reach 120 defense pretty easy and other effects. Though a Warrior Archer is significantly better in Awakening can deal the highest possible single damage hit in the game easialy one shoting bosses like a good mana clash does to others. Ive heard of Awakening Warrior Archers doing 6,000+ points of damage per Arrow of Slaying.

Anyways kinda long, take what you will. I woudl love to go into more detail but il save you that block of text.
Hope it helps.

[Blazomancer]

Once, I hit 16K with my spirit warrior archer in awakening with an AoS; shows as 9999 in the character sheet though. Yay.

[Last Darkness]

Blazomancer wrote...

Once, I hit 16K with my spirit warrior archer in awakening with an AoS; shows as 9999 in the character sheet though. Yay.

^ There you go ^


Also forgot to mention pure Dex is a viable build for backstab rogue as well that adds more survivability at the expense of some damage. (Bards Song of Courage is still useful its bonuses are just going to be a bit lower)
Point for Point I belive Dex/Cun gives the same damage bonus with Daggers at least. You just lose additional benefits from a couple Cun based buffs.

In reguards to duel wield, kinda funny how rogues that build to be warriors dont do very good but warriors who build to be rogues really shine.