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Edit: updated spreadsheet and mild priority changes can be found here: http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Sit...2#pid12362
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Hi again guys. I've made a little spreadsheet expanding on the ideas of my previous post:
http://www.mediafire.com/?a3prie2j8e3our8 (please excuse ODS format, it's all I have).
Base stat inputs are
Weapon,
MBonus,
FBonus,
Melee Crit,
Force Crit and
Surge, and then additional values for min and max
FpGCD. I've gone with 14.35 <
FpGCD < 17.85 with the default values; this is to account for
Dark Ward upkeep. I figured since it doesn't do any damage, is off the
GCD, has a variable upkeep cost (anywhere from 10 Force per 12 seconds to 10 Force per 20 seconds) and is absolute top priority always, it might as well be considered a constant energy drain rather than an ability in its own right.
Damage formulas are adjustable to take care of differences in skill tree specs. This basically assumes a 31/0/10 spec though; I've not looked at anything like
Death Field or
Crushing Darkness. Each ability also has a threat mod, so that for instance
Wither has a 1.5 multiplier when speaking solely in terms of threat. Note that the tooltip for
Electrify suggests that
Shock has an additional 1.15 modifier for threat, but I don't know if this is accurate (all the sources I've read suggest that all threat modifiers where mentioned should be 1.5). Change that if you're unhappy with it. I've ignored the 1.5 from
Dark Charge just because this should be the same for every ability, and this is only supposed to be a comparison; you can add another 50% to everything if you want.
Each ability has a min and max value based on the two
FpGCD bounds. To cope with overlaps I'm going to have to assume abilities are reasonably well behaved with respect to Force regen. In particular, if you have, say, min(
X) < min(
Y) < max(
X) < max(
Y), it should be reasonable to expect
X <
Y. I can't think of any reason this wouldn't be the case within realistic inputs. However, what is almost certainly possible is something like min(
X) < min(
Y) < max(
Y) < max(
X), in which case there's no way to know for sure what is greater. Luckily that doesn't appear with the inputs I'm using, but if it does crop up you'll just have to use your judgement (in such a case it probably doesn't matter too much what you do).
First column
Thrash,
Assassinate and
Maul. I must have messed up somewhere in my last calculation, because
Assassinate is even better than I thought. It beats everything except heavy AoE; even
Force Lightning with 3
HD stacks isn't as good.
Maul is just there for comparison; it might be of interest for PvP or something.
Second column
Shock,
Energized Shock and "
Thr/EnShk", meaning "
Thrash until
Energize, then
Shock". Notice that
Shock >
Thrash, but that
Thr/EnShk >
Shock. Also note
Thr/EnShk >
Maul, which henceforth confirms the latter to the dustbin:
even if you've lost aggro and are able to use Maul, it isn't worth using over Thrash.
Next,
Force Lightning, where the number in brackets is the number of stacks of
Harnessed Darkness. More stacks is significant extra damage of course.
TC is "Thrash Combo", meaning the priority
FL(3) ->
EnShk ->
Thr, which is the presumed normal single target strategy (it's heavily implied by the skill tree). To test this,
TC(1) and
TC(2) represent the same combo finishing on
FL(1) and
FL(2). We see clearly that
TC >
TC(2) >
TC(1), so we can be assured that:
it always makes sense to gather up three charges of HD before using FL.
On the other hand,
Shk(3)/FL is three non-energized
Shocks followed by an
FL(3). This is a hypothetical combo due to the cooldown on
Shock, but makes for an interesting comparison. Notice
Shk(3)/FL is very close to
TC in damage. In fact, if the +15% threat on
Shock is correct,
Shk(3)/FL actually outperforms
TC. What this means in real terms is: if
Shock comes off cooldown and you've yet to proc
Energize, using
Shock instead of
Thrash then continuing the combo as normal is virtually identical damage. Even though
Thr/EnShk >
Shock, using
Shock speeds up the combo giving you more
FL(3)s over time, which makes up the damage difference.
I presume there's some sort of duration on
HD, in which case using a non-energized
Shock to keep the combo going will certainly be an improvement. The comparison here would be
Shk(3)/FL versus
Thr/EnShk. Missing a
HD timer is a considerable damage loss.
Fifth and sixth columns are
Lacerate and
LC ("Lacerate Combo"), with the numbers in brackets representing the number of targets.
LC is just like
TC but with
Thrash replaced by
Lacerate. I've gone with LagunaD's observation that
Lacerate has a 50% chance to proc
Energize per target, and adjusted the length of the combo accordingly. We see that:
TC wins on one or two targets, LC wins on three targets, and Lacerate on its own wins on five (and six or more, by projection). Four targets is more interesting, with Lacerate and LC nearly exactly the same. If the threat value on
Shock is correct,
LC comes out ahead of
Lacerate for four targets, and you might expect this to be preferable due to the extra healing from
FL(3). On the other hand, if there's any chance we might miss the
HD duration (we'll be short on Force against 4 opponents due to
Wither and
Discharge; see next paragraph),
Lacerate spam might be the safer option.
Seventh and eighth columns are
Wither and
Discharge, versus the given number of targets. Here we're interested in whether we should cast these on cooldown, or just to refresh debuffs. To see this we need to compare them to the main combo used on the same number of targets. In other words, for 1-2 targets we compare to
TC, 3-4 to
LC and 5 to
Lacerate. The numbers show that:
Wither and Discharge are both a damage loss against one or two targets, and a damage gain against three or more.
Wither is also a threat gain against two targets, so you may wish to use it on cooldown here as well.
Based on all of this, the priority should look something like:
Dark Ward ->
Debuffs ->
Assassinate ->
Main Combo
where "
Debuffs" means:
Refresh where needed, for 1-2 targets
Cast on cooldown, for 3+ targets
and "
Main Combo" means:
FL(3) ->
EnShk ->
Thrash, 1-2 targets
FL(3) ->
EnShk ->
Lacerate, 3-4 targets
Lacerate, 5+ targets
with the additional caveats mentioned above. Technically
Assassinate should come before
Discharge (cooldown, not refresh, and not above
Wither) on 3-4 targets, but the difference would be negligible since
Discharge has an 18 second duration and a 15 second cooldown.
Open questions:
1) Is the +15% threat on
Shock from
Electrify correct? It's easily seen what that would change within the current settings, as the only other ability with a threat modifier is
Wither, and this is never used in combination with
Shock (simply use
DpGCD figures for everything else).
2) What are the durations on
Energize and
Harnessed Darkness, and what is the likelihood of "missing" such an opportunity due to lack of Force or time? Here the
Main Combo is least priority, and it is presumed that you would stop and do more important things (like
Debuffs) when needed, then go back from where you left off. In effect,
Main Combo is just what you do in your spare time. Is this realistic? We can, of course, pool Force for quicker bursts if needed.
3) To what extent do the above rules change with different (but realistic) gear values? For instance, we can see that
Crit and
Surge will affect
Shock and
EnShk disproportionately; will this change any priorities?
