Damage Clarification...

[Duped]

I was told today that my Ice Wand of Fate was a horrible weapon to be using.

When I asked why they said DPS is irrelevant and that because it has such low damage, my spells damage suffered as a result (which they correctly argued is the majority of the damage a mage does).

I was under the impression your spell damage was tied directly to your INT, not your weapons damage (I'm a pure INT mage too btw).

I ran a very quick test and only used lightning spell, and it did seem to do a little more damage on average when I switched to the Alien Staff versus the Ice Wand.

What determines the spell damage for a Mage?

And what is a good weapon to be using for a level 51 Mage?!

[Pharcyde]

INT is the driving factor for a spell mages damage. Wands contribute 99% of their damage to spells, while staffs contribute about 70%. There are certain exceptions, such as the keeper staff of the cosmos.

[Otukura]

Get some sewer wand, preferable gemstone/star

Blizzard stick.. ick... it's nice for the freeze proc, but the low damage makes you hit under 20 damage a hit, due to armor. like 5-10 damage in mana cases at that level.

Spell damage is determined by the amount of INT(get only int, imo), and the weapon. It's not really base damage or dps, or any certain thing. It's really random...

Bottom line: liquidate the wand! Get a lvl 51 sewer wand!

Others will give you more info...

[Pharcyde]

I would suggest using a laser wand of the cosmos, or cyber wand at level 51. Glow stick and level 51 sewer gears are crazy expensive, and dropping in price. So if you buy them now, you will loose a couple hundred thousand by the time you get to 55 to upgrade your sets.

[Otukura]

the level 51 sewer gear is still less expensive than the elite lvl 50 pinks....

and better, too...

[Duped]

I can't find a cyber wand in CS. Can't find a cyber anything actually. Is that the name?

So, if my damage is 55-80 on the blizzard stick, and 106-152 in the Gemstone wand, then my spells WILL be more powerful right? almost doubling the damage added from the wand.

[Pharcyde]

Cyber gear is nontradeable. It is from the cyber quests in Alien Oasis 3.

[noneo]

You can use a Lowman's Gemstone Wand. It has a nightmare proc, it's a green, so it is dirt cheap on CS, and it does comperable damage to MegaMage Gemstone Wand.

Or you can go with Scrubber's (Orange) and get a bit more damage, but sacrifice armor.

EDIT: Both drop pretty often in Sewers as well in case you were wondering.

[Duped]

So, if my damage is 55-80 on the blizzard stick, and 106-152 in the Gemstone wand, then my spells WILL be more powerful right? almost doubling the damage added from the wand.[/QUOTE]

Is the Adept's Gemstone Wand a good choice? Its all I can find in CS ATM and seemed better than the others for the money

[noneo]

The Adept's is alright. It has no M/S which is pretty important as an int mage.

Try to find a Scraper's - Better damage, better M/S, and Nightmare proc
or, like I said earlier, try and find a Scraper's or Lowman's Gemstone.

You could even try out a Lowman's Gem Star. It does almost the same everything as the Gemstone, except it has slightle less damage, and no proc.

[Hullukko]

The Adept's is alright. It has no M/S which is pretty important as an int mage.

Try to find a Scraper's - Better damage, better M/S, and Nightmare proc
or, like I said earlier, try and find a Scraper's or Lowman's Gemstone.

You could even try out a Lowman's Gem Star. It does almost the same everything as the Gemstone, except it has slightle less damage, and no proc.

The gem star and gemstone wands have the same damage. The other has more min and the other more max but they average out to equal damage, both in weapon damage and in spell damage. Gemstone wand has nightmare proc, regardless of it's type. My impression was that the gem star didn't have lightning proc inspite of it being a lightning weapon, but do correct me if I'm wrong.

Gem shard is another story, it indeed has a lower dmg but it has a slight aoe proc I think.

And what comes to choosing between lowman's, scraper's, scrubber's and what not. It depends entirely on what you're wearing besides the wand, if you have lots of mega you're unlikely to need any more m/s and picking scraper over scrubber would then be pointless, but if you're low on m/s then you probably should go for lowman's or scraper's depending on your needs in armor and damage.

The thing is that no single stat is linear in it's usefulness, and that is especially true for mana regen with mages. If you're lacking in that department it is the most crucial stat and if you're overboard (say 30+) it's fast becoming redundant or at least it's no longer as important as some other essential stats. Where one's sweet spot lies depends on your play style and many other factors and because of that there's no single choice any more for gearing up as a pure int mage.

[lilbyrdie]

Game mechanics question on this:

1. It's posited that DPS doesn't matter because the weapon in question is low damage. This means the skills get less in bonus damage from the weapon. This, of course, makes sense.

2. Armor (of the mob) subtracts damage on a per hit basis (skill or weapon). This means a weapon that does (for simplicity sake) 50-50 with a DPS of 50 (1.0 speed) against an armor of 10 would strike for 40 (per hit, DPS, too). Move to a 25-25 with a DPS of 50 (0.5 speed) and each hit now does 15 (against same armor of 10) and you have an effective DPS of 30. Same listed DPS, but with a 25% reduction in damage.

Together, if I'm getting my mechanics correct, both of these reasons are why DPS is not a very good number to look at. And if someone can confirm my mechanics assumption (about armor and it being per hit and a point for point reduction down to some area minimum), the resulting calculations would actually be fairly easy -- even to incorporate the average expected effect on skills (e.g. 99% vs 70% wand vs staff, and whatnot).

[Plasticuproject]

I had trouble convincing someone (lvl55) to ditch the ice wand the other day. They had trouble seeing pasts its high dps due to its speed. It seems to me that dps most matters on 1v1 or bosses? But in groups getting that spell power up for aoe damage seems much more important.

[Moogerfooger]

This has been discussed several times before, but look at this post, especially the section X on Damage vs DPS

http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?16817-Guide-to-Advanced-Mechanics-in-PL-DPS-Crits-etc.

[lilbyrdie]

So, I did some calculations. Here's the spreadsheet: http://goo.gl/SBd2m (Google docs public link)

Summary?

A 1.2 weapon with a DPS of 105 equipped on my char ends up leading to an increase in overall damage by 2.15% versus a 1.0 with a DPS of 115, despite the nearly 8.7% apparent decrease in damage the lower DPS one would do. Understanding the mechanics of the game is important to deciding what weapons to use. :)


That's assuming perfect speed with skills, no armor, etc. Add armor in, and the slower weapon will gain on the faster higher DPS one.

Interestingly, the 1.0 is a wand of 72-97, which increases each skill (min and max -- the base) by 44 pts. The 1.2 weapon is 89-105 and a staff, and increases each by 59 pts. This is not the 99% or 70% talked about.

The spreadsheet shows all of the details, including the character's int and other stats.

Of course, you'd also need to compare armor, crit, hit, and other components to truly compare two weapons. This is just an illustration that neither DPS nor speed matter because of the boost to skill damage.

It's conceivable that you could get a fast enough and weak enough weapon that skills would drop under 50% of overall DPS. When using the 105DPS staff, skills are 2/3 of the total DPS. But by doing so, you'd have a pretty large drop in overall DPS anyway.


On another note... Neither weapon increased the max damage shown on the stat screen by the amount listed on the weapon. But they both increased the min damage by the amount show on the weapon. Not sure what's up with that.

[lilbyrdie]

This has been discussed several times before, but look at this post, especially the section X on Damage vs DPS

http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?16817-Guide-to-Advanced-Mechanics-in-PL-DPS-Crits-etc.

That thread does discuss it, but doesn't take into account the adjustments made to skills for mages. Here we can clearly show that the math is more complex than just damage vs DPS. Then again, the results both lean in the same direction: you want higher base damage.

That said, if you're comparing two weapons and the _only_ difference is that one is faster, that -- of course -- is better. (Unless it contributes less to the skills, but the only way to know for sure is by looking at the difference...)

[Moogerfooger]

That thread does discuss it, but doesn't take into account the adjustments made to skills for mages. Here we can clearly show that the math is more complex than just damage vs DPS. Then again, the results both lean in the same direction: you want higher base damage.

That said, if you're comparing two weapons and the _only_ difference is that one is faster, that -- of course -- is better. (Unless it contributes less to the skills, but the only way to know for sure is by looking at the difference...)

True true, but I am also pretty sure that this has been discussed several times in different depth/detail in the Enchantress forums as well. Look for posts by Royce, noneo, or WhoIsThis, they are all very knowledgeable on Enchantress mechanics/equipment, etc.

Higher base damage is generally desirable in all three classes. More important than DPS, because it lets you guesstimate the actual damage you can deal to an enemy with armor value=x, whereas DPS is hypothetical "against air" damage that does not account for armor.

Not to mention that different weapons have different procs (or none at all) and have differing AoE spash areas, and this could also affect your choice of weapon and factor in to damage dealt.

I am not sure about the mage weapon/skill damage connection, but there are a lot of knowledgeable people about the mage situation that can hopefully chime in.

p.s. maybe read your earlier post wrong, but are you suggesting that skill damage contributes to displayed (not real or actual damage dealt, just displayed on avatar page) DPS?

[lilbyrdie]

True true, but I am also pretty sure that this has been discussed several times in different depth/detail in the Enchantress forums as well. Look for posts by Royce, noneo, or WhoIsThis, they are all very knowledgeable on Enchantress mechanics/equipment, etc.

Higher base damage is generally desirable in all three classes. More important than DPS, because it lets you guesstimate the actual damage you can deal to an enemy with armor value=x, whereas DPS is hypothetical "against air" damage that does not account for armor.

Not to mention that different weapons have different procs (or none at all) and have differing AoE spash areas, and this could also affect your choice of weapon and factor in to damage dealt.

I am not sure about the mage weapon/skill damage connection, but there are a lot of knowledgeable people about the mage situation that can hopefully chime in.


Yeah, I'd have to compare a few more to see if I can generalize an "eyeball formula" -- or see enough variation to know it's just weapon specific.




p.s. maybe read your earlier post wrong, but are you suggesting that skill damage contributes to displayed (not real or actual damage dealt, just displayed on avatar page) DPS?

No, it definitely doesn't contribute to the displayed DPS. At my chars level, when DPS is displayed at 105, the overall DPS (with skills) is more like 303.

What I did find to be odd was that the max damage shown on a weapon (e.g. 97) wasn't the amount the displayed max damage increased by (e.g. 91). This difference is consistent between weapons (the fact that it's different, not the specific difference).

All that does it make it harder to compare weapons without actually equipping them.

[Moogerfooger]

Yeah, I'd have to compare a few more to see if I can generalize an "eyeball formula" -- or see enough variation to know it's just weapon specific.




No, it definitely doesn't contribute to the displayed DPS. At my chars level, when DPS is displayed at 105, the overall DPS (with skills) is more like 303.

What I did find to be odd was that the max damage shown on a weapon (e.g. 97) wasn't the amount the displayed max damage increased by (e.g. 91). This difference is consistent between weapons (the fact that it's different, not the specific difference).

All that does it make it harder to compare weapons without actually equipping them.

Yeah, that display glitch for DPS has been noted before...several of us tried to figure out why it was happening (Physiologic has a post on it somewhere) but could not come up with a constant formula for why it happens and abandoned trying to figure it out. Sometimes a displayed error of 1 is due to the way Cinco rounds up or down, but often it'll be off by several like you said. Set bonuses throw it off naturally, but if one is just talking about non-set-completing gear, it seems to be off by a few DPS in some cases

[lilbyrdie]

Yeah, that display glitch for DPS has been noted before...several of us tried to figure out why it was happening (Physiologic has a post on it somewhere) but could not come up with a constant formula for why it happens and abandoned trying to figure it out. Sometimes a displayed error of 1 is due to the way Cinco rounds up or down, but often it'll be off by several like you said. Set bonuses throw it off naturally, but if one is just talking about non-set-completing gear, it seems to be off by a few DPS in some cases

Right. Maybe items meant to be in a set but not in one take a penalty. :)

I actually find the number of hidden interactions to be both highly frustrating (from a "trying to calculate and min/max everything just right" point of view) to very freeing (there's enough randomness and strange stuff, that it's best to just play and not fuss too much with it).

Like the calculation I did between two pinks at my level... 2% difference? Almost not worth writing home about... Lag, alone, will eat more than that on any given run. (And I actually do use the wand, but because of the armor, m/s loss to the staff and not having 4 items.)

[Physiologic]

Here it is: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?20512-I-have-a-question-about-damage

Royce believes having bare fists give some sort of a damage boost, which is probable too. And "unequipping" your fists and replacing it with an actual weapon accounts for that decrease in damage.

[lilbyrdie]

Here it is: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?20512-I-have-a-question-about-damage

Royce believes having bare fists give some sort of a damage boost, which is probable too. And "unequipping" your fists and replacing it with an actual weapon accounts for that decrease in damage.

Ah, interesting. Having a "fists" weapon does account for the difference.

I'll be curious to try this with my bear and see if "fists" increase with strength.

.... look over shoulder .... all clear .... tap tap tap .... 8-14 + 42-52 should equal 50-66, but really equals 59-59, a discrepancy of (drum roll) 1-7.

Well, at least it's consistent. But so much for dreams of a weaponless Ninja class. (At least, not by Lvl 14 and 80 strength.)

Thanks for the link.

(OT warning)
(As for other discrepancies, here's one I saw while fiddling: no shield armor: 26. shield = +4. Click on shield shows "30 (+5)". The final number is, in fact, +4, but the boost seems to be shown wrong.)