Sith Assassin Deception analysis

[Alratan]

Please remember that you can edit previous posts rather than making new ones.

Thanks for that Kahuna! Is there any chance you could look up Polarity Shift and post the results in the Sorcerer DPS thread?

(08-31-2011 01:10 AM)swtorfan84 Wrote:  Honestly, w/o playing the game I don't know how feasibile it is to discharge and then activate another charge. Would have to see the force regen rate myself.

As hinted in my previous post, at last check, force regeneration for Assassins was 11: 8 for being an Inquisitor, and 3 from Martial Training. This improves by between 0.5 - 1.0 fps with the benefits of Saber Conduit. Also, all charges costs 50 force and Discharge costs 20 force, so it is most likely that Discharge does not wipe your current charge, as it would be prohibitively expensive. Plus, it's a 30min buff, so it makes no sense for it to be wiped.

(08-31-2011 01:10 AM)swtorfan84 Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 06:21 PM)Piree Wrote:  Trash, Lacerate, Voltaic slash and low slash are heavily boosted by this talent. I would make it mandatory and not optional.
EDIT: Forgot Maul lol.

I guess my thing is, Shock is the only force attack that would activate this, and it is only used sparingly. Seems to me that it would activate very rarely. Again, not sure if discharge is considered melee or not.

I think that we will crit fairly often, as beta players have reported crit chances of about 20% - and that's without high level gear. As we will use Shock alone at least twice every 20 seconds, we can expect crits to be quite frequent. Also, we want to increase our crit chance anyway, in order to gain maximum benefit from Crackling Blasts.

That said, Discharge is probably a force attack, and we will use that at least once every 20 seconds, on average. Discharge being a force attack is the most likely outcome when one considers how it is termed for Jedi Shadows: 'Force Breach'.

(08-31-2011 01:10 AM)swtorfan84 Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 06:21 PM)Piree Wrote:  Why is this mandatory? It just increases your speed and stealth level, in PvP it's nice, but in PvE there is no need for this. I would rather take the next one:

I imagine that a w/o this talent you'll need blackout to have any chance to sneak up on a mob. Remember Devs have said that stealth isn't as powerful in this game as WoW/

I had similar considerations. Regardless, prior to T3, there isn't much else to put skill points in.

(08-31-2011 01:10 AM)swtorfan84 Wrote:  

(08-30-2011 06:21 PM)Piree Wrote:  Discharge will probably be our highest hitting/(critting) attack, and with crackling blasts boosting it's Critical damage a lot, a 3 seconds shorter cooldown is mandatory.

I guess my thinking is 3 secs isn't alot. And after you discharge, will you have enough force to activate another charge/discharge in 12 secs (w/ the cooldown)? You likely wouldn't have built up very many static charges to increase the damage dealt my your discharges.

3 seconds is 2 GCDs/attacks, and 20% of the cooldown, or an extra 1 use every minute. Even without many of charges, it is most likely one of our higher base damage abilities in its own right. It's certainly one of our highest fpd abilities, as it costs a mere 20 force.

[Draeveus]

Great discussions so far. Just wanted to point out that I updated the calculator (http://war-tools.com/t73007.html). Mostly a few name switches, but the most notable change is to Energize(formerly Charged Strikes). This now reduces Shock cost by 50% at 2 stacks instead of the previously believed 60%.

Also wanted to take a look at force use vs. force regen, so here goes.

Base for regen is 8 + 3 (Ability: Saber Attunement
--- Description: Increases the rate at which your force regenerates by 3 per second. thanks kahuna!)

So 11 fps or 11x60=660 force per minute. At best case right now, Saber Conduit provides 60 force per minute, but due to double-low proc chance, I'd say 40 is a more probable number. This brings us to 700 FPM. Dark Embrace will grant us +50% regen for 6 seconds at the start of battle, and if Blackout (off the GCD-yay!)is activated right at the 6sec mark and again as soon as it is off of CD, 51 seconds into battle, then this will provide 14 seconds of total Dark Embrace uptime in the first minute.
So: [14sec x (11x1.5)(Dark Embrace uptime)] + [46sec x 11(normal regen)] + [40(saber conduit)] = 777 FPM. This is just in the first minute of stand-still raid boss encounter. Subsequent minutes will decreases due to less much less Dark Embrace uptime.

Now let's look at usage:

Ignoring opening moves for the moment, an ideal rotation will be based on a 12 second cycle, which will be repeated exactly 5 times per minute. This rotation (although somewhat debatable due to the fact that we don't know exact damage/coefficients of all of our attacks) would consist of: 4x Voltaic Slash, 2x Shock, 1x Maul(on EW proc), 1x Discharge. Force costs are: 4x25(100) + 2x(16.5-22.5[with and without torment, I'll use the higher for now])(45) + 1x25 + 1x20 = 190 in 12 sec. This equals 950 FPM (890 with Torment).

With a force pool of 110, if we stand still and dps non-stop for one minute, we will still end up short. Only 3 force short with torment, but a whopping 63 force short without it. It only gets worse as the battle drags on.

Is this a problem? If this were WoW, then yes. But this is Swtor, and based on what we've seen, and promises made by Bioware, encounters will be more dynamic and you will most likely NOT be standing still hacking away for 5-10 minutes straight. Once we get our hands on the game I'm hoping that we find the regen for Assassins is sufficient to maintain our optimal rotation (yes, even WITHOUT Torment, lol).

On to damage potential:
(note: all values are BEFORE target armor and bonus damage coefficients are taken into consideration, because we don't know what they are yet)

If you look at some dissections of recent Eternity Vault footage, Surging Discharge deals 889-923 internal damage, and Shock deals 923-965 energy damage, while Thrash does 404 weapon damage twice (808 dmg), and we can only assume that Voltaic Slash does similar damage or (hopefully) slightly higher. Haven't seen max rank Maul yet but a I've seen a lower ranked Maul do 433.5 avg dmg vs. a similarly ranked discharge which did 279.5 avg dmg. This is a 55% increase. If we use max rank discharge and this ratio stays the same, max rank Maul should do about 1404 dmg. Also have no numbers on max Surging Charge damage so I can't comment on that.

Shock is buffed in a few ways. 2x VS increases its damage by 30%, bringing its average damage up to 1227.2. Critical damage is also boosted 50% by Crackling Blasts. We have been assuming that most melee/basic attacks crit for 2x damage, and other abilities/"spells" crit for 1.5x damage, as this is how it has been in previous mmos. This is quite a big assumption, so please correct me if I am wrong. Also the wording on Crackling Blasts can mean two things. 1) crits do 150% damage, this boosts the bonus % by 50%, meaning crits now do 200% or, 2) crits do 150% damage, this boosts TOTAL damage by 50%, crits now do 225% damage.

So if we take our previously established 1227.2 and make Shock crit, it will do either 2454.4 or 2761.2 damage. If I had to guess, I would go with the lower of the two. Shock is cast 10x a minute, and let's assume 20% crit chance, total damage from Shock in a minute will be (8 x 1227.2) + (2 x 2454.4) = 14726.4 damage.

Let's not forget Chain Shock (if you choose to take it). It will proc 4.5 times per minute at 50% of normal damage, but it should be able to crit independently. Damage will be 472 avg on normal hits and 944 on crits(assuming it also benefits from Crackling Blasts). Total damage from chain shock procs in a minute will be: 3.6x472 + .9x944 = 2548.8 damage.

All told, activating Shock every CD nets you 17275.2 DPM. From this we can see that Chain Shock gives a 17.3% increase to total Shock damage. Again, this is all with 20% crit chance, and before coefficients are calculated.

Discharge has almost identical base damage and bonuses from talents as Shock. A 30% increase from 5 stacks of Static Charges brings avg dmg to 1177.8. It is worth stating, however, that 5 stacks may not always be achieved every 12 seconds. If it turns out that waiting till 5 stacks is ALWAYS better dps than using on CD then Recirculation will probably end up being useless. I'm pretty sure using Discharge every 12 secs, regardless of SC stacks, will end up better. This will need some thorough testing.

But, assuming 5 stacks every time, and 20% crit chance, Discharge will be cast 5x per minute. (4 x 1177.8) + (1 x 2355.6) = 7066.8 DPM. This is a lot less sexy than Shock's number's, but still an important part of our dps cycle.

Maul will also be cast 5 times per minute, and assuming 100% uptime on Exploitive Strikes, and 20% base crit chance, Maul will do (1404 x 5 x 1.29) = 9055.8 DPM. Slightly higher than Discharge. The armor ignore on Duplicity will not increase this damage, only the amount reduced by enemy armor.

Voltaic Slash. If this does identical damage to Thrash I wouldn't be surprised, just disappointed. A top tier talent should do more than a base skill, imo, regardless of the buff to Shock it provides. Being optimistic, let's say that VS does 10% more damage than Thrash. This, plus 6% bonus from Thrashing Blades, would put VS damage at (808 x 1.1 x 1.06) = 942 damage. This will be used 20x per minute. Again, with 100 ES uptime and 20% base crit chance, this will do (942 x 20 x 1.29) = 24306.9 DPM.

Total DPM = 17275.2(Shock) + 7066.8(Discharge) + 9055.8(Maul) + 24306.9(Voltaic Slash) = 57704.7 DPM.

Now lets account for the 14 seconds in which Dark Embrace is active (10% bonus damage).

14sec/60sec = 23.33%. (57704.7 x .2333 x 1.1) + (57704.7 x .7666) = 59051.1 DPM or 985.19 DPS.

This doesn't account for Surging Charge damage, Recklessness, or Overcharge Saber, and only pertains to the first minute of stand-still combat. If someone wants to try and figure out the numbers with these included, feel free. As for me, I'm tired and going to bed soon, and doing all this is making my head hurt. Anyway, hope everyone finds this informative!

[Alratan]

(08-31-2011 05:02 PM)Draeveus Wrote:  Great discussions so far. Just wanted to point out that I updated the calculator (http://war-tools.com/t73007.html). Mostly a few name switches, but the most notable change is to Energize(formerly Charged Strikes). This now reduces Shock cost by 50% at 2 stacks instead of the previously believed 60%.

A pity, but I'm sure we'll survive. Makes Torment more important.

(08-31-2011 05:02 PM)Draeveus Wrote:  Is this a problem? If this were WoW, then yes. But this is Swtor, and based on what we've seen, and promises made by Bioware, encounters will be more dynamic and you will most likely NOT be standing still hacking away for 5-10 minutes straight. Once we get our hands on the game I'm hoping that we find the regen for Assassins is sufficient to maintain our optimal rotation (yes, even WITHOUT Torment, lol).

Whilst I hope we won't be standing still hacking away for 5-10 minutes, 12-36 seconds (1-3 rotations) is still highly likely, I think.

I actually suspect that any time we stand still and just hack away, it will be specifically designed so that we can't maintain this rotation. This is because they will want us to use Saber Swing as part of our rotation as a basic attack. Part of me wouldn't be surprised that if anyone from Bioware reads this discussion, Saber Conduit would have its purpose completely changed (or be nerfed slightly) so that even with Torment we'd have to put in at least one SS every rotation or two.

(08-31-2011 05:02 PM)Draeveus Wrote:  Shock is buffed in a few ways. 2x VS increases its damage by 30%, bringing its average damage up to 1227.2. Critical damage is also boosted 50% by Crackling Blasts. We have been assuming that most melee/basic attacks crit for 2x damage, and other abilities/"spells" crit for 1.5x damage, as this is how it has been in previous mmos. This is quite a big assumption, so please correct me if I am wrong. Also the wording on Crackling Blasts can mean two things. 1) crits do 150% damage, this boosts the bonus % by 50%, meaning crits now do 200% or, 2) crits do 150% damage, this boosts TOTAL damage by 50%, crits now do 225% damage.

Everything we know, including from beta testers, leads us to believe that crits are indeed +50% for force abilities. No idea about melee, but I have no reason to believe it would change from WoW's example. Typically (in pretty much RPG I've ever played, from tabletop D&D to MMORPGs like WoW), +% damage, such as from Crackling Blasts, is based off base damage. Thus, crits will do +50% base damage, not +50% of the crit damage. This prevents more exponential scaling growing out of control.

(As an aside, it's also worth bearing in mind that there seems to be an attribute called Surge Rating, which increases critical damage, which I imagine will be of use to Deception Assassins.)

I agree regarding Discharge. It'll be worth using every 12s regardless of charges, and we can probably assume that there'll be 2 charges up each time, on average. Like you, I am too lazy to run the numbers any further at this point with the little information we have so far.

[Anubis Black]

(08-31-2011 05:02 PM)Draeveus Wrote:  crits do 150% damage, this boosts the bonus % by 50%, meaning crits now do 200%

This is the way it is implemented.

[Grim]

Ok - I've been trying to model out a few things for the optimum rotation that doesn't leave you out of force (oof?) to soon

The first thing I will point out is that I have been playing Shadow on beta so all my ability names will be using the republic terminology

Below is the key for the core abilities
Clairvoyant Strike = CS = VS = Voltaic Strike
Shadow Strike = SS = M = Maul
Project = P = S = Shock
Breach = B = D = Discharge
Sabre Strike = S = ? = ?
Sabre strike is the base attack that costs no resource

In all scenario's that I ran - I ran 2 minutes worth of attacks I triggered Blackout at the 11 second mark and 69 second mark. All runs assume that the first attack is coming out of stealth.

I did not take into account increased damage from battle readiness, nor increased crit from Force Potency

So the first thing I tried was a straight: CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> B It yielded the highest theoretical output that I modeled but with Force taken into account - began to sputter at the 70 second mark, and completely ran out of gas at the 92 second mark.

Please note*
1) One of my base assumptions is that I will get the 10 force proc every 10 seconds - I know that is not realistic but I don't feel uncomfortable using that as an assumption at this in beta.
2) Another assumption that I rely on is that every Shadow Strike will be unter Expose Weakness. There are simply enough attacks (Clairvoyant Strike counts as 2) between shadow strikes that it should be up)
3) My final assumption is that the 6 attacks before I use breach will have granted me 2 stacks increasing breach's damage by 12%

My Next run retained the above rotation for 2 cycles (while shadow's respite is up) and then was modified to S -> CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> B

The inclusion of Sabre Strike reduced the theoretical damage, but by the end of the 2 minutes I had only used 25% of my force pool.

I then got silly with a 2 runs that just focused heavily on Shadow strike, but those were complete wastes of time so I won't get into detail here.

My 5th run decided to adjust the rotation and delay breach to accumulate stacks.

My opening rotation went as follows:

CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> B

As blackout is hit just before the 4 CS, shadow's respite is expiring just as I hit Breach.

From there I once again add Sabre Strike to the rotation

S -> CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> S -> CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> B

As there are 14 attacks between breach's I used an assumption of 4 stacks for Breach damage.

I still thought I could squeeze more out. Adding a 3rd rotation before breach use gave me 21 attacks between breach's - I instead opted to drop the third sabre strike to make it an even 20 to accommodate the 25% proc on stacks and began my 6th run

Run #6 used the same opening rotation from Run #5

CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> B

Then for the normal rotation went into:

S -> CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> S -> CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> CS -> SS -> CS -> P -> B

Again, the key assumption here is that now Breach is hitting with 5 stacks - also, I have a little less force efficiency by the removal of a sabre strike.

In the end this yielded the highest modeled DPS and sitll left me with 75% force at the 2 minute mark.

Additionally - this last run lined up very nicely with the blackout used at the 69 second mark as it lead to shadow's respite being up for a Shadow strike and a clairvoyant strike.

One other thing to note here though - this rotation is fine in the situation that you can just stand behind the boss and go nuts for 5 minutes. However that is not the case so if a fight has a lot of down time - you can always go to the highly inefficient rotation that includes no sabre strikes - The only difference from my first run that I would advise is going for 2-3 cycles to accumulate stacks for breach.

G_

[swtorfan84]

^ Good Anyalysis

2 things, first Project = Shock

Second do u recommend getting the talent thay reduces Discharge/Breach's cooldown by 3 seconds? Or are u better off building up all 5 charges?

[Grim]

Building stacks pays off - so the talent is not a must.

The thing is that it's in the low area of the tree so your options instead are:

Shadowy Veil: Increases armor by 15%

or

Subduing Techniques: Reduces enemy movement speed by 60%

Both feel more like pvp talents, but I could see Subduing techniques having more value if you find yourself in a fight with lots of mobs or if for some reason a boss likes to move around.

I think we'll need to see more of the boss design to get a feel for if ST has more value in the group environment, but in the leveling environment reducing Breach/Discharge CD is pretty good - you don't need stacks for basic world/quest mobs.

Edit - Updated the project = shock. Thank you.

[Alratan]

Welcome Grim, and a nice analysis you've provided here! Nice to have some more hands-on experience to make use of. Your caveats are noted, although the force restoration proc caveat is terribly optimistic, even though this is but beta. I'd give it a good 5 seconds delay for a slightly more reasonable one, at present. I think that your final comment about lots of down time seems most likely, however, as it does not take more than a second or two of downtime to recover very large amounts of Focus. We can probably afford to be inefficient very frequently indeed.

When it comes to damage per attack, is it possible that you could give us an indication of your level and gear quality, as well as the damage you actually do for each attack so we can analyse further? This would be very useful for determining coefficients for the various abilities, as well. Additionally, when some of this gear is taken off and the stats decrease, does the same rotation become inferior, for any reason?

Saber Strike is called the same thing for both Assassins and Shadows.

As for Subduing Techniques, I can't see bosses being vulnerable to any movement speed reductions, so in raid situations I imagine that that would be fairly useless unless there were specific kite situations. If more stacks is definitely superior to a 3s shorter cooldown, Shadowy Veil might have more value in PvE situations in case of off-tanking - especially in flashpoints.

[Grim]

(09-05-2011 02:26 AM)Alratan Wrote:  Welcome Grim, and a nice analysis you've provided here! Nice to have some more hands-on experience to make use of. Your caveats are noted, although the force restoration proc caveat is terribly optimistic, even though this is but beta. I'd give it a good 5 seconds delay for a slightly more reasonable one, at present. I think that your final comment about lots of down time seems most likely, however, as it does not take more than a second or two of downtime to recover very large amounts of Focus. We can probably afford to be inefficient very frequently indeed.

When it comes to damage per attack, is it possible that you could give us an indication of your level and gear quality, as well as the damage you actually do for each attack so we can analyse further? This would be very useful for determining coefficients for the various abilities, as well. Additionally, when some of this gear is taken off and the stats decrease, does the same rotation become inferior, for any reason?

Saber Strike is called the same thing for both Assassins and Shadows.

As for Subduing Techniques, I can't see bosses being vulnerable to any movement speed reductions, so in raid situations I imagine that that would be fairly useless unless there were specific kite situations. If more stacks is definitely superior to a 3s shorter cooldown, Shadowy Veil might have more value in PvE situations in case of off-tanking - especially in flashpoints.

Unfortunately they delayed the release of max level pre-mades so I I have not been able to get time with the full range of abilities/talents. As such, everything is fully theoretical based off the base damage of attacks - obviously, when I can get target dummy data (or you know - beating up live mobs as I haven't seen target dummies) that will be a lot more reliable in terms of actual damage of the abilities - especially once the melee attacks are mitigated by boss armor (Eternity Vault is still not available on beta either so I will need to work on some of the world boss's out there)

I do not foresee a situation where itemization will change the rotational priorities. Willpower grants equal damage to melee and force. I have not seen Strength Light Armor, and even then, you do not accumulate melee damage faster with strength so by focusing on it you are simply gimping yourself.

The big differentiator comes in the form of Power and Force Power. I have read though that those stats might be getting phased out in favor of the core stats. However it is possible that if those stats remain, you could make a gear set that greatly favors one type of attack over the other.

Lastly, the reason for the aggressive regen assumption is that I wanted to know if under the best of conditions possible, could the inneficient rotation work. It seems that most fights they are showing off have dynamic strategies - especially the ones in the eternity vault video, and those leave plenty of room for regen. But in leveling, a lot of those group quests just have a lot of those high health boss tank and spanks - so there is a portion of this game where it comes down to standing behind the boss and going nuts.

I am hoping that one of these stress test weekends in September will open up the high level pre-mades for me to collect live data.

[Gorodetski]

as to the 'should be wait for 5 stack, or drop Discharge on CD' debate..

I know it's sslliigghhttlllyyy shakey but as a Shadowpriest on WoW we have a vaguely similar mechanic, where we build Shadow Orbs as we Dps, and our Mind Blast (a direct damage spell on a CD) consumes said orbs for bonus damage...

and after ALOT of theory crafting it was worked out that it's not worth waiting for the orbs to be on full, it's much higher Dps to drop MB on CD, every CD, than it is to wait and get full stacks.

This is because not only are you trading actual damage for potential damage, but every second you delay casting your current discharge, you're delaying EVERY further discharge.

lets take a hypothetical situation. 5min Boss fight, you use Discharge every 15 seconds, that's 20 discharges overall, even if you delay each of those discharges by ONE second, you end up with one Discharge every 16 seconds, for 18 overall in 5 mins, so that's 2 'lost' discharges, and that's with the tiny delay of 1 second, the longer the delay, the more 'lost' discharges you get.

I'm going to take a wild guess here, and say that with charges being only 6% bonus damage per proc, there will be NO situation (other than 'LOLBIGNUMBERS') to delay a Discharge until you have full charges.