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[Zeratulr]

I've been doing some serious brooding on whether to choose Tempest or Assassin as my Double Daggers (DD) rogue's specialization for a few days now. Right now I have the Bottle of smoke and gathering ingredients for the Murder knife just to delay the decision for the last moment.

So here are a few things about the Assassin's build and gear and about rogue abilities I'd like to clarify for myself.

 

So far (without the specialization) the defining ability for my build and gear is the Sneak Attack. Double critical chance on flanking makes investments into cunning and/or critical chance itself far superior to dexterity/critical damage. I've been using Twin Fangs, Flank Attack with Skrimishers, Deathblow and Stealth for dealing damage with Evasion for mobility. The combination of 50% Stealth damage bonus (btw I'm not sure whether the stealth from Skirmishers gives you this bonus or is it just applied to the Stealth itself?) and frequent critical hits (I currently have 30% chance and 60% chance from flanking position) allow for a ton of damage and Looked Like It Hurt supplies lots of stamina.

 

It is my understanding that all this changes entirely as soon as you get Knife in the Shadows (KitS) passive ability of the Assassin's tree. Guaranteed critical hits from stealth greatly reduce the efficiency of high critical chance + the Sneak attack. Potentially to the point where the Sneak attack becomes unnecessary. Dexterity and critical damage become the top priorities. The big problem with that approach is the reduction of Looked like it Hurt's auto attack's efficiency because the stealth shouldn't be wasted on auto attacks.

 

To sum it up, the few points I'd like to clarify for myself:

• Is the 50% bonus damage applied to attacks from stealth after using the Flank Attack with Skirmishers or is it applied only after using the Stealth ability?
• Does the KitS (and the guaranteed critical hits produced by it) make Sneak Attack and cunning/critical chance gear unnecessary in terms of DPS?
• If the answer to previous is yes, would I experience stamina problems due to the reduced effectiveness of Looked like it Hurt if my critical chance is low?
• In other words should I respec without the Sneak Attack after I get KitS or not? And should I go for the dexterity/critical damage only on my gear after I get KitS or some combination of dex/damage with cun/chance is better?

Finally i'd like to understand the DD attacks mechanics better. The damage formula is roughly [(weapon damage)*(crit damage)*(flank damage)*(attack)*(ability bonuses) - {(armor)- (armor penetration)} * ability modifier ON EVERY HIT. But what is exacly a "Hit"? For example Hidden Blades' description says that it gives you 3 hits (6 if upgraded) for 300%. What weapon damage is used in calculation of  every hit: damage of the main hand dagger only, damage of main hand + damage of off hand dagger or the main and off damage in turn?

And what about critical chance calculation: if I use Hidden blades from stealth with KitS is it guaranteed criticals for all six hits or not?

 

Thanks in advance for all the answers. Also if all these things have already been explained in detail I wouldn't mind link to corresponding post(s)/guides.

 

 

[Arvaarad]

Using Hidden Blades from stealth will make all the hits crit. As for critical chance vs. dex... there's probably some magic sweet spot for maximum dps. You can't make every attack from stealth without sacrificing dps.

However, if you plan to attack overleveled enemies, every attack should be from stealth, so go full dex. And truthfully, this is the fun part of playing DW assassin. Sneak up on some high-level chuckleheads -> hidden blades -> stealth -> flank attack -> repeat until showered with XP. There's no satisfaction greater than showing up on Imshael's doorstep at level 13.

[INsaneyAC]

1) Skirmisher adds no damage, 50% is only when the attack is from a stealthed state. Skirmisher applies stealth after damage is calculated.

 

2) Well it is difficult to always remain in stealth in order to be able to always crit. In fact if you are waiting until you are in stealth to attack you will be crippling your overall damage output because of the cooldown on stealth, even using flank attack to help stay in stealth.

 

I always just keep 50% on crit chance because assassin DW rogues have few big hit abilities, they only hit one target, and they are cooldown most of the time. So if you want to continue being a useful contributor to party damage, you need to be able to dish out the criticals while waiting for Mark of Death (MoD) and Hidden Blades to reset. Plus being able to critical with every hit will keep your stamina topped off once you have the ability.

 

Further, one exceptional thing about MoD is that it totals up all damage done and then if you go stealth before triggering it, it criticals all that damage! So it is nice to be able to have stealth ready to go when MoD is about to expire. It is hard to do that if you already used it to launch HB out of. However, some say this is bugged and while it crits, it does not add any damage. (See this thread: http://forum.bioware...bat-mechanics/)

 

The other thing to note about criticals is that even if you are landing critical hits every time, you have to ask yourself how much extra damage am I really doing? So you need to make sure that after you reach 50% crit chance, you stack every extra drop in dexterity or crit damage bonus on your gear. Also, be aware that your crit chance is slightly increased in the field compared to Skyhold. For some reason sneak attack adds a small % to crit chance (like 4-5%) but only when you are away from Skyhold. So factor that in when gearing towards the 50% number.

 

3) You will find without Looked like it Hurt triggering every time that you may have a few instances where you have to wait an extra second or two for stamina to build. This happens most often with Twin Fangs due to the 50 stamina cost. But it will really hit if you launch a hidden blades without stealth and trigger no crits. You will be doing normal attacks for 3-4 seconds likely.

 

4) My opinion is that sneak attack is crucial to a rogue build. You need to keep stamina up to keep cycling your big hit abilities. Even the best rogue build however has a bit of downtime where everything is on cooldown (such as giving a dragon everything all at once), so your autoattacks should be criticals to maximize damage and build stamina. More damage output also builds focus faster, so it is critical to maximizing your DPS. Removing Sneak Attack may make your burst damage better when firing the big abilities out of stealth, but I just find it unreliable for consistent damage.

 

For the DD mechanics, that thread does go over the inconsistencies of how damage is calculated. It is main hand except in 2 cases -it is both hands for Twin Fangs and only off hand for Flank Attack. Hits just mean that you will strike that many times. So for HB, you will see "ghost attacks" from six different directions. So a hit is an attack, as opposed to the usual definition of hit or miss. As far as I can tell attacks always "hit" unless an obstacle gets in the way for a projectile, or the ability doesn't fire correctly (such as flank attack shooting way by the target, or shadow strike just whiffing).

 

Here is the damage calculation as per that thread (straight from game files:

final_damage = (base_damage * rand(0.95 to 1.05) - armor) * (ability_multiplier) * (1 + critical_damage_bonus + flanking_bonus) * (1 + attack_bonus + damage_multiplier + type_bonus) * (1 - magic_resistance)

 

So from that keep in mind that all damage bonuses are calculated off base damage after armor if factored in. So against highly armored enemies, your abilities and crit damage may not do all that much (if the base amount is only 1, all the multiplies in the world won't help) so armor penetration gear can be good to keep on hand. I don't carry it any more, but I do wear a ring that gives me 50% I think.

 

As for the HB question, it is bugged apparently when KitS is applied. Sometimes the crit applies to all hits except the last, sometimes only the first hit (according to that thread). But there is nothing we can do to manipulate mechanics, so I just play as if it will work properly every time.

[Zeratulr]

 

1) Skirmisher adds no damage, 50% is only when the attack is from a stealthed state. Skirmisher applies stealth after damage is calculated.

 

I think I didn't phrase that question correctly. I understand that Flank Attack executed with Skirmisher is not affected by 50% damage bonus. What I asked was if I enter stealth via FA (and not the proper Stealth ability) and then use for example Twin Fangs while still in stealth, will the 50% bonus be applied to that Twin Fangs or not? Well actually I played for a bit after the original post and now I am pretty sure that it is applied. But the additional confirmation still will be welcome.

 

Well it is difficult to always remain in stealth in order to be able to always crit. In fact if you are waiting until you are in stealth to attack you will be crippling your overall damage output because of the cooldown on stealth, even using flank attack to help stay in stealth.

I always just keep 50% on crit chance because assassin DW rogues have few big hit abilities, they only hit one target, and they are cooldown most of the time. So if you want to continue being a useful contributor to party damage, you need to be able to dish out the criticals while waiting for Mark of Death (MoD) and Hidden Blades to reset.

I must admit that I was trying to imagine how it could actually work without the Sneak Attack and I can't. Removing Sneak attack seems to be too radical, too min-maxing thing to do. At any rate it would come back by level 20 or earlier if only for stamina boost and +3 cunning (I mean so far it's not clear what to use the additional ability points for anyway). At the same time it's hard for me to believe that having 50% crit chance is the most efficient way to use the Assassin. That would make Knife in the Shadows useless which seems too radical as well. And Besides all that cunning instead of dexterity...

 

Thanks a lot for your input. In particular about DD mechanics and that link for combat mechanics topic. I really should give some time to reading it. Come to think of it my version of the formula is incredibly silly because it would make the Armor totally useless...

[Zeratulr]

As for critical chance vs. dex... there's probably some magic sweet spot for maximum dps. You can't make every attack from stealth without sacrificing dps.

 

Amen to that and to us finding that sweet spot!

[INsaneyAC]

Sorry, stealth is stealth, no matter how it is activated, so any attack from stealth after flank attack will get the bonus.

 

You do need a lot of cunning early, but once you get great bear hide (especially once you get the war table operation where Leliana can get it for you) you start to be able to have huge crit chance on your dagger grips so you don't need to waste your armor utility slots on cunning. There is also a helmet, in Hissing Wastes I think that gives 12% crit chance. That saves 24 attribute points! So eventually you can start loading on the crit damage materials and dexterity. I think I am at 183% crit damage bonus with 51% chance.

[OrionAnderson]

So far (without the specialization) the defining ability for my build and gear is the Sneak Attack. Double critical chance on flanking makes investments into cunning and/or critical chance itself far superior to dexterity/critical damage.

This is 100% wrong. Let's say you want to know how much bonus damage the critical mechanic is giving you compared to a game with no crits at all. We'll invent a new stat to track this called "Critical DPS" or CDPS. To calculate CDPS, you have to multiply your crit chance and your crit damage together. At the start of the game, you have 5% crit chance and 40% crit damage. If crits did double damage, 5% crit would equal 5% extra damage, but each crit is only giving you 40% of a bonus attack. 40% of 5% is 2%, so all characters start with "Critical DPS" = +2%.

 

When you multiply two numbers together, you get a higher result the more equal they are. 4 X 4 = 16, but 2 X 6 = only 12. If both numbers scaled up equally fast, you would always want to improve whichever number was lower. However, +1 dex gives +1% crit damage, and +1 cunning only gives +0.5% crit chance. Similarly, crit damage mods give twice the bonus of crit chance mods. What this means is, you should raise critical chance up to no more than half of your crit damage, then switch back to crit damage. Sneak attack doubles your critical chance, so it makes critical damage much more useful. If you made all of your attacks from flanking, you'd want to stop building crit chance one your base crit chance reached 1/4 of your crit damage. However, you won't be able to make all your attacks from flanking. If you assume that half of your attacks come from flanking, then damage is optimal when Critical Chance = Critical Damage/3.

 

Now, Dexterity adds to attack skill as well as to crit damage, and early in the game that's a huge deal. Each point of crit chance gives you +0.4% of your base weapon damage, but each point of attack gives you +1%. At the beginning of the game, attack bonuses are worth nearly 2.5x as much as critical chance. Now, this doesn't last forever. The higher critical damage gets, the more attractive crit chance becomes. Also, the higher attack gets, the more attractive both crit stats become. If you have 0% attack, then a +10% attack items improves your total damage by +10%, but if you have 50% attack already, then a +10% attack item only improves it by +6.7%. Your total amount of bonus damage from stats is equal to Attack X (Crit Chance X Crit Damage). Optimizing this equation requires a little more computation, but let's say you have 30% critical chance and 60% critical damage. In that scenario, you want to have 18% attack; if you have less than that, you're better off looking for attack items than critical items. If you're getting sneak attacks half the time, then you need 27% attack skill. Dexterity adds to two damage stats, while cunning only adds to one. The formula to computer the exact dexterity to cunning formula is extremely complicated, but if your attack and your CPS are close to equal, then dex will be worth about double what it would be worth if it affected only one stat. As a very rough approximation, Dexterity will deal more damage than cunning unless crit damage is already 4x as high as critical chance, or 6x as high using sneak attack. That means that if you have 30% critical chance and sneak attack, Dexterity will be better than Cunning as long as critical damage <270%. Or in other words, Dexterity will always be better.

[Zeratulr]

This is 100% wrong. Let's say you want to know how much bonus damage the critical mechanic is giving you compared to a game with no crits at all. We'll invent a new stat to track this called "Critical DPS" or CDPS. To calculate CDPS, you have to multiply your crit chance and your crit damage together. At the start of the game, you have 5% crit chance and 40% crit damage. If crits did double damage, 5% crit would equal 5% extra damage, but each crit is only giving you 40% of a bonus attack. 40% of 5% is 2%, so all characters start with "Critical DPS" = +2%.

 

When you multiply two numbers together, you get a higher result the more equal they are. 4 X 4 = 16, but 2 X 6 = only 12. If both numbers scaled up equally fast, you would always want to improve whichever number was lower. However, +1 dex gives +1% crit damage, and +1 cunning only gives +0.5% crit chance. Similarly, crit damage mods give twice the bonus of crit chance mods. What this means is, you should raise critical chance up to no more than half of your crit damage, then switch back to crit damage. Sneak attack doubles your critical chance, so it makes critical damage much more useful. If you made all of your attacks from flanking, you'd want to stop building crit chance one your base crit chance reached 1/4 of your crit damage. However, you won't be able to make all your attacks from flanking. If you assume that half of your attacks come from flanking, then damage is optimal when Critical Chance = Critical Damage/3.

Hmm, so its exactly the opposite: in terms of DPS the Sneak Attack makes reduces the value of cunning and chance when compared to dexterity and damage. Gee I feel stupid.

Although I have one question: how does the stamina regeneration affect this calculations (if it affects them at all)? I mean with Looked like it hurt critical hits seem to be the main source of stamina for rogues. If you have to wait to use some burst ability when the CD is already over it should reduce the DPS?

 

Thanks for your post, that's a lot to think about.