So 3 health worth of guard? Suddenly it seem rather lacklusting.
And don't be so condescending! By doing the Skull-quest, you get a bunch of "2 + fire/frost/spirit resistance!" Which is, indeed, %. The tooltips in this game are dogshit. Half of them are wrong, the other half doesn't work. Which is why we ask those who knows; so we get a clear answer.
i didnt mean to be condecending, but seeing that the same question gets asked over and over and then after someone answered it, it still needed further clarification i wanted to express it as clearly as possible
3 guard isnt really lackluster by any means
having guard makes you imune to certain effects (like knockdown), so getting guard on rogues and mages is nice. as long as barrier holds your guard will not diminish, so having 3 guard and a fresh barrier makes you immune to these effects for a short while
ranged characters are able to not take damage for long periods of fights, so they can stack up this extra buffer
high armor warriors can get enemy damage down to 1, so for every autoattack they do they can take 3 enemy autoattacks meaning they can use more stamina for offensive actions instead of guard generating actions.
all in all guard on hit is useless in a lot of situations, but very good in other situations.
propably the best user of guard on hit enchant is the knight enchanter, that should have a full barrier in most cases. getting that little guard on hit makes him immune to some effects and generating a buffer in case his barrier ever runs out
next come the ranged characters that can ramp up some guard for the time an enemy archer finally decides to shoot them instead of blackwall
/edit
btw, has anyone testet if using any damage rune will result in double the guard generated? or granting double proc chance for anything? from the few times i took vivienne for a ride i remember her spirit blade generating 2 damage numbers due to the rune
guard helps a LOT since guard does not decay, it only goes when its damaged, your armour rating applies to your guard too. Finally enemy has to destroy your guard before it can damage you.
+Guard per hit is quite useful on mages or dagger rogues. Their attack speeds are very fast (especially mages). Even their regular staff attacks tend to hit 2-3 times per attack, and if the mage has energy barrage? Suddenly it generates anywhere between 24 to 60 guard depending on the material's tier.
I find it completely lackluster on bow rogues, and moreso on 2H warrior and SnS warrior.
In most situations, Attack % is the best thing to put in a cloth/metal offence slot, while Crit % is the best in a leather offence slot.
Willpower is definitely the best stat in an Utility slot, assuming you can get it. Otherwise, Cunning is the best in a leather slot for non-rogue, Dex is best for rogue, and as for metal utility slot, Constitution all the way.
Defense slot is fairly straight forward. Magic (cloth) > Ranged (leather) > Melee (metal). You usually don't get much of a pick, but sacrificing some melee defense for valuable magic defense is always worthwhile.
From what I've heard about Multiplayer, I think perhaps ranged defense is even more valuable there? Archers in multiplayer tear parties apart, unlike singleplayer where everything shits magic.
Archers in solo can be a major pain in the ass if you don't eliminate them quickly (at least in difficult/nightmare).
As for the guard on hit I find it useful on any class that is not supposed to take aggro (basically everyone but the tank), it builds a shield over time to sponge the next hit and avoid a useless loss of health, and since barrier works first it makes it even better. I wonder if the guard on hit works nicely on chain lightining aswell, or is it just on autohit related spells ? such as energy barrage, spectral blades and autohits ? I haven't checked everything yet but it sounds like there's way to have an OP party or a completely crap one just for changing details in the stuff/build/behaviors even if often it's very poorly explained by the game itself.
Willpower
- 0.5% Attack
- 0.5% Magic Defense
Attack %
- Increases damage of basic attacks and most* abilities by 1%.
- Damage bonus applied after deduction by enemy armor.
- (Weapon - Armor) * (1 + Attk%), NOT Weapon * (1 + Attk%) - Armor.
*Note: some abilities may calculate damage differently and fail to apply the bonus properly. So far, Longshot's bonus damage based on range is not affected by attack %. I'll test more abilities in the future, as a lower priority task. Please let me know if you find any ability that doesn't benefit or doesn't benefit fully from attack %.
Magic Defense %
- Reduces final damage taken from magical attacks by 1%.
So after playing for a while, I've had the sneaky feeling that WP wasn't worth it, as compared to straight Attack% or Magic Defense%, so I did some rough experimentation:
+10 WP showed a 5% Attack and 5% Magic Defense increase, just as expected from GhoXen's findings
However, +9 WP showed the 5% Attack increase, but only 4% Magic Defense increase, and +5 WP showed a 2% Attack increase, and a 3% Magic Defense increase.
Having worked in the gaming industry for some time (NCsoft on Aion, Bioware on SWTOR, Riot on LoL) I know that the display value to the player is rarely the exact value used by the combat engine on the back end. That being said, there's still a wierd rounding issue revealed here, as the displayed values show Attack% is rounded up for +9 WP, but rounded down for +5 WP and vice versa for Magic Defense. You'd expect the displayed value to round consistently, assuming the value used on the back end conforms mathematically to GhoXen's theory.
I'd love to see some other results from people with greater WP changes, like +30 or +17 WP and what the displayed value is.
Sigh, +% skill rings have methodically stopped working on all my companion chars. No matter what I do to try to re-activate them, equip/unequip, move skills around, etc. they just don't work. The only ring that still works is +% Rally duration on Cassandra.
Rings on the Inquisitor seem to work just fine though.
Sigh, +% skill rings have methodically stopped working on all my companion chars. No matter what I do to try to re-activate them, equip/unequip, move skills around, etc. they just don't work. The only ring that still works is +% Rally duration on Cassandra.
Rings on the Inquisitor seem to work just fine though.
This is a really good guide, thank you so much!
I have a quick question about rogue. I'm assuming that when you're dual wielding daggers, both masterworks would activate for each weapon, but they wouldn't stack, so having one "10% hidden blade" would be the same as having two of them, but having one of them be hidden blade and one of them be chain lightning would give me a 10% on each, no matter which dagger was hitting, right? Unless if I have it on the left dagger, only the left dagger has the chance (Which could be the case, since runes will stick to a single dagger, but if you masterwork your armor it'll still have an attack bonus on your daggers).
My other question is if there's a point where boosting attack or flanking damage becomes less useful than increasing critical damage? It'd probably be impossible to actually calculate, but with the stamina perk from the rogue tree, raising critical chance high enough could keep you almost permanently at full stamina, at the cost of pumping your attack or flanking attack if you're attacking from behind. Utility masterworks like the one that increases your stealth speed by 50% are also tough to figure out, becuase they can really help you stay in the blind spot.
Also: I know that twin blades and deathblow are bugged and when you kill someone with them and you have deadly dance on, you won't get your stamina back, it has to be by different attacks. Is this also the case for the masterwork abilities that refund your stamina on kill, or do those work even with twin blades? Sorry for all these questions!
DPS Attribute Ranking
Assumptions:
- Weapon damage 150; enemy armor 50. Existing stats: 10% Attack, 0% AP, 40% Crit Dmg Bonus, 25% Flanking Dmg, 10% Crit Chance.
- A well-balanced party, with removals dedicated to Guard (Shield Bash, War Horn, etc.) and Barriers (Dispel).
- Ranking is for a pure DPS character. Not a tank/support who may want Stagger % to allow the party easy combos, or crit % to trigger party-wide effects.
Crafting Priority:
3% Flanking Dmg > 1.75% Attack > 3% Armor Pen > 1.75% Crit Chance = 1.75 Dexterity (rogue) >1.75 Willpower > 1.75 Magic (mage) = 1.75 Strength (warrior) > > 1.75 Cunning > 3% Crit Dmg > 3% Barrier Dmg > 3% Guard Dmg
Gear Equivalents:
- 0.67% Flanking Dmg
- 1% Attack (benchmark)
- 2% Armor Pen
- 1.6% Crit Chance
- 1.5 Dexterity
- 2 Willpower/Strength/Magic
- 3.2 Cunning
- 7% Crit Dmg
Hey GhoXen, your attribute rankings for DPS have been spot-on (along with all the other information about DPS priority in this thread). Other than "guard generation is king", what are your thoughts on Tanking Attribute priorities?
At first blush, I'm leaning towards this as a solid prioritization, but would like to see what the more mathematically-inclined have to say:
Health > Constitution > Magic Defense > Melee Defense > Ranged Defense > Armor > Willpower > Strength
Guard cap is 25% Max HP, so it stands that stacking HP will allow for greater total guard (is guard generation a percentage or a flat value?), hence straight HP as highest priority, followed by Con for the 5hp/point.
According to your enemy damage calc above, it appears that armor and penetration are calculated before attack attribute (melee/ranged/magic), but only apply to physical attacks, so I prioritized them below the attack types, due to the percieved over-saturation of magic-type attacks rendering armor null.
That takes care of survivability, leaving only the threat generation and maintenance portion of tanking. I assume that damage has some relevance to maintaining threat beyond the warrior's taunts, so unless you can keep enough uptime on the taunts to maintain aggro (not a Warrior main, so I don't know), your tank will need to deal some damage, and thus Willpower followed by Strength to round out the stats.
Additions? Rebuttals? Thoughts?
-EDIT-
Also, when crafting, you'd want to prioritize your slots as below (based on the same priority)?
Metal Defense > Metal Utility > Cloth Defense > Leather Defense > Cloth Utility > Cloth Offense = Metal Offense
*non-relevant*
Srlsy dude, don't do that. Manners.
If you're having problems with the game's mechanics, go to the gameplay section, not into a theorycrafting thread.
Reported.
-EDIT-
I see you already did. Several times. As copypasta. In several threads.
Double Reported.
What if you combine it with the mastercraft that reduces your character health down to 12, but only take 1 damage per hit when attacked? It may be highly powerful, since on Nightmare a mage would die in 3-4 hits in normal circumstances anyway.
I did post this in the masterwork thread as well, but just in case it gets missed, I tested this specific masterwork and it appears to not work at all. It lowers your health to 12 fine, but I stood in front of a Hyena in the Western Approach and got 1 shot. I think the damage does not get reduced at all and you still take full damage, unless I missed something?
Hey GhoXen, your attribute rankings for DPS have been spot-on (along with all the other information about DPS priority in this thread). Other than "guard generation is king", what are your thoughts on Tanking Attribute priorities?
At first blush, I'm leaning towards this as a solid prioritization, but would like to see what the more mathematically-inclined have to say:
Health > Constitution > Magic Defense > Melee Defense > Ranged Defense > Armor > Willpower > Strength
Guard cap is 25% Max HP, so it stands that stacking HP will allow for greater total guard (is guard generation a percentage or a flat value?), hence straight HP as highest priority, followed by Con for the 5hp/point.
According to your enemy damage calc above, it appears that armor and penetration are calculated before attack attribute (melee/ranged/magic), but only apply to physical attacks, so I prioritized them below the attack types, due to the percieved over-saturation of magic-type attacks rendering armor null.
That takes care of survivability, leaving only the threat generation and maintenance portion of tanking. I assume that damage has some relevance to maintaining threat beyond the warrior's taunts, so unless you can keep enough uptime on the taunts to maintain aggro (not a Warrior main, so I don't know), your tank will need to deal some damage, and thus Willpower followed by Strength to round out the stats.
Additions? Rebuttals? Thoughts?
-EDIT-
Also, when crafting, you'd want to prioritize your slots as below (based on the same priority)?
Metal Defense > Metal Utility > Cloth Defense > Leather Defense > Cloth Utility > Cloth Offense = Metal Offense
I don't know what it's like in MP, since I haven't really dabbled into that, so I'll speak from a single-player NM perspective.
For a tank, the most important thing is not stats, but grabbing Turn the Blade and Turn the Bolt. Without those your character cannot be a tank.
After that, health becomes a highly irrelevant stat, as you'd only take 1 damage from the front most of the time. As an extension, Guard also becomes highly irrelevant for a tank.
In terms of priority, I'd say it's something along these lines:
Armor > Magic Defense > Melee Defense > Ranged Defense. If you are stuck with a Utility slot, consider Consitution or Willpower depending on which you are lacking more (magic or melee defense).
Ranged defense has the lowest priority because you'd take so little damage from ranged attacks due to damage reduction stacking (30% from shield, 20% from Turn the Blade, and 50% from Turn the Bolt), you will never take any damage from archers as long as you are facing them. The ranged defense is pretty much only there to defend your character when you are flanked by archers and cannot reposition yourself perfectly.
Once your defense hits the soft cap for melee and ranged, which is fairly easy, you will want to value magic defense over armor, since magic is the only damage you cannot mitigate fully. It's worth noting that magical projectiles (including dragon's breath) are affected by Turn the Bolt, so you will usually only take damage from AoE magic, such as burning ground, fire mines, etc.
For crafting slots, cloth defense > all.
One other thing about Guard, from what I can tell its max HP from Base + con. It seems to wildly ignore +max HP items like health belts. I say this because, early game I was like 'yeah, stack tons of HP that'll help' had like 800 hp and could only have about 160 guard, not 200. After dropping all +HP items, and focusing entirely on +Con, bull has almost 1k HP purely from Con and he has 250 guard. So... yeah +hp is pointless, +con is far more useful if your working toward hp numbers.
While I agree with everyone on the whole 'soft cap' with armor and all that, on NM it's not always as simple as that. Sure you might be taking 1 dmg from the front, but that 'front' is about a 90 degree cone in front of you. From the sides and behind your ignoring that 20% DR and in any real fight your getting hit from the sides. This ultimately results in constant non-ideal situations. In those cases having non-shitty HP and Guard is a useful thing to have. It's just not number 1 priority.
On normal difficulty you can probably get that 1dmg thing from purely armor ignoring passives though so... kinda depends what your playing on. I've also been thinking about Guard on hit and the all dmg you take is reduced to 1 but you only have 12 HP Fade-touched item. That little combo could make you immortal regardless of the armor your using. Well, in the 'right conditions' anyway. Take enough rapid hits and things can go real bad real quick. The main thing about it, and I haven't had a chance to test but I'll be using Iron Bull as a test subject in the coming days and see how his AI handles it.
Well, either way, it could prove interesting. I'm curious if the 1% max HP on attack would result in +1 hp heal or 0. If its 1, that could be extremely interesting combo as well. 1 HP per hit when you have 12 max and can only take 1 dmg from ALL sources? Sounds amazing, has to be a catch.
One other thing about Guard, from what I can tell its max HP from Base + con. It seems to wildly ignore +max HP items like health belts. I say this because, early game I was like 'yeah, stack tons of HP that'll help' had like 800 hp and could only have about 160 guard, not 200. After dropping all +HP items, and focusing entirely on +Con, bull has almost 1k HP purely from Con and he has 250 guard. So... yeah +hp is pointless, +con is far more useful if your working toward hp numbers.
While I agree with everyone on the whole 'soft cap' with armor and all that, on NM it's not always as simple as that. Sure you might be taking 1 dmg from the front, but that 'front' is about a 90 degree cone in front of you. From the sides and behind your ignoring that 20% DR and in any real fight your getting hit from the sides. This ultimately results in constant non-ideal situations. In those cases having non-shitty HP and Guard is a useful thing to have. It's just not number 1 priority.
On normal difficulty you can probably get that 1dmg thing from purely armor ignoring passives though so... kinda depends what your playing on. I've also been thinking about Guard on hit and the all dmg you take is reduced to 1 but you only have 12 HP Fade-touched item. That little combo could make you immortal regardless of the armor your using. Well, in the 'right conditions' anyway. Take enough rapid hits and things can go real bad real quick. The main thing about it, and I haven't had a chance to test but I'll be using Iron Bull as a test subject in the coming days and see how his AI handles it.
Well, either way, it could prove interesting. I'm curious if the 1% max HP on attack would result in +1 hp heal or 0. If its 1, that could be extremely interesting combo as well. 1 HP per hit when you have 12 max and can only take 1 dmg from ALL sources? Sounds amazing, has to be a catch.
Yeah, Iron Bull tanking as 2H (and being my only tank where I let his AI handle it so.. not ideal there) hes actually pretty unstoppable in most situations. But I have Vivienne setup for barrier spam, and she'll do he slow bubble thing if a fight becomes extended. I also use the %dmg turns into regeneration. This little thing is pretty amazing when you realize it heals your HP even if guard or barriers get hit.
That's the big one, actually, when Barriers get hit. Now I'm not 100% sure if the heal is based off total dmg recieved or dmg recieved ignoring armor/DR (that is, would taking 1 dmg from what was originally a 500 dmg hit result in the same heal per second as if it hits barriers?). I can tell you though it keeps his health topped off more often then you'd think, and a little guard generation + general defensive maneuvers and he just kinda doesn't die all that often. When he does its usually a lot of elemental dmg or some other bizar situation all just lining up just right to make things go bad.
That all said I'll go hours with his health juggling between 90-100% though so... somethings working heh. Still gadda get the 12hp thing and make him some armor with it.
I play on Nightmare, and I tank with/mainly control my Inquisitor; tactical mode is very rarely used. Front is not a 90 degree cone; it's surprisingly generous. I'm ignoring health entirely, and indeed the only Constitution I get are from abilities. Nonetheless, nothing short of AoE magic has ever managed to break my guard even once since level 10 or so. It's not because I have a lot of Guard or generate a lot of it. It's simply that enemies only hit me for 1 damage, and via proper control it's always kept that way. Even flanking attacks often hit only 1 damage (except from dragons, bosses and the like), since my tank has (and any tank should) have the immunity to flanking ability.
In practice it's quite easy to always ensure that the tank takes only 1 damage ALL the time on Nightmare. Heck, I don't even bother taking regeneration potions on my tank nowadays. That's the easy part. It only becomes more interesting when you want the tank to contribute further to the party, by converting that extra survivability into utility or damage output. i.e. To the Death/Bodyguard.
While Turn the Blade / Turn the Bolt are very powerful talents, i don't think that they are absolutely neccessary. I'm currently playtesting a dwarven warrior in legion armor running around with 350 overall armor rating, 30% melee and magic defense and all non-magical damage is completly irrelevant. Even those pesky Venatori Brutes in Rampage mode with To the Death on them deal only 1-3 damage from whatever side. Archers as well, btw, and my warrior is deep in champion, battlemaster and 2 handed without a single point in SnS. Amusingly, this can be done once you have access to skyhold, which means as early as level 10. All of that on Nightmare, no less. Rather silly, but definitely quite easy to do.
While Turn the Blade / Turn the Bolt are very powerful talents, i don't think that they are absolutely neccessary. I'm currently playtesting a dwarven warrior in legion armor running around with 350 overall armor rating, 30% melee and magic defense and all non-magical damage is completly irrelevant. Even those pesky Venatori Brutes in Rampage mode with To the Death on them deal only 1-3 damage from whatever side. Archers as well, btw, and my warrior is deep in champion, battlemaster and 2 handed without a single point in SnS. Amusingly, this can be done once you have access to skyhold, which means as early as level 10. All of that on Nightmare, no less. Rather silly, but definitely quite easy to do.
The difference is that with Turn the Blade and Turn the Bolt, magical projectiles (affected by both abilities) also become irrelevant, and other forms of magic also become 20% weaker. By the time you reach 50%-ish magic resistance, then even magic damage becomes irrelevant.
Ultimately, theorycrafting isn't about what's necessary. It's about what's optimal. That's the whole point of min-maxing.
There seems to be something seriously screwy with either the Attributes screen, or the base stat bonuses listed on page 1, or certain weapons, or all three.
With no weapons, my stats were:
76 Dex
43% Attack
6% Crit Chance
138% Crit Dmg
25% Flank Dmg
I then equipped two of these:
Dual-Curved Blades
+6% Attack
+17% Crit Chance
+6 Dexterity
+9% Flank Dmg
My listed stats changed to:
88 Dex
61% Attack
40% Crit Chance
138% Crit Dmg
43% Flank Dmg
With +12 Dex from the weapons, it should be 150% Crit Dmg, not 138%. According to the stat bonuses on page 1, the Dex bonus to Attack is being applied, but the bonus to Crit Dmg is apparently being ignored?
I also looked at this with another set of daggers:
Masterwork Dual-Curved Blades
+21 Dexterity
+17% Crit Chance
My listed stats then increased to:
There seems to be something seriously screwy with either the Attributes screen, or the base stat bonuses listed on page 1, or certain weapons, or all three.
With no weapons, my stats were:
76 Dex
43% Attack
6% Crit Chance
138% Crit Dmg
25% Flank Dmg
I then equipped two of these:
Dual-Curved Blades
+6% Attack
+17% Crit Chance
+6 Dexterity
+9% Flank Dmg
My listed stats changed to:
88 Dex
61% Attack
40% Crit Chance
138% Crit Dmg
43% Flank Dmg
With +12 Dex from the weapons, it should be 150% Crit Dmg, not 138%. According to the stat bonuses on page 1, the Dex bonus to Attack is being applied, but the bonus to Crit Dmg is apparently being ignored?
I also looked at this with another set of daggers:
Masterwork Dual-Curved Blades
+21 Dexterity
+17% Crit Chance
My listed stats then increased to:
118 Dex64% Attack40% Crit Chance168% Crit Dmg25% Flank DmgThis time, Crit Dmg increased, but it should be 138 + 42 = 180%, not 168%, shouldn't it? There is something screwy going on here.(If anyone's curious, the second daggers hit substantially harder with Twin Fangs on a lvl 16 Venatori Zealot.)
The bonuses did apply. As mentioned in the original thread, even when your character has no weapon equipped, there are invisible "default weapons" on your characters' hands, since fighting with fists is illegal in Thedas. In particular, rogue's default daggers give crit damage bonus %. In other words, your base crit damage bonus without weapons was never 138% in the first place.
On my rogue, I perceived the difference as 18%, but it seems to be only 12% in your case. Perhaps there was some other factor I was not aware of. Nonetheless, every class has default weapons that may distort your base stats. Give this a try: equip a bow with no crit damage bonus or Dex, and see the crit damage bonus % actually drop.
That explains it, thanks. 
FYI, this was a level 12 rogue - what level was your rogue when you tested this? Level 18?
Another question - How confident are we that the damage calc spreadsheet is accurate? I'm asking because the numbers from my in-game tests are not lining up with the spreadsheet.
For example, with listed stats as follows:
129 weapon damage
64% Attack
0% Armor Pen (+50% from Ambush)
168% Crit Dmg
25% Flank Dmg
Against a level 16 Venatori Zealot, Twin Fangs flanking crits from stealth (500% ability damage) had a range of 1885-2221 damage (10 trials). Meanwhile, non-crits ranged 1170-1206 (4 trials).
I cannot get these numbers to reconcile with the spreadsheet ("Physical Ability" and "PA Crits"), regardless of Armor rating. Either the "PA Crit" number is much higher than what appears in-game, or I need to set armor absurdly high (~180) and then "Physical Ability" damage declines to less than 500.
On top of that, with +168% Crit Dmg I would expect the crits to be much higher than non-crits, according to the formula on page 1. In particular, they should be at least 2.68 times higher, and more than that if the target has any armor. Instead, they're a disappointing 70% higher.
Am I missing something here?
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