Raid Roach vs. Henchman's vs. Sentinel archer gear: a comparison

[Moogerfooger]

Archer Equipment comparison
A couple of us were wondering which of the upper level 50 and 55 archer gear was “the best”. Since there are a lot of combinations of helmets, bows and armor that had very different scores for damage, armor, and health regen, etc, I decided to try and map out some of the combinations to see strengths and weaknesses. Thanks to Argothewicked for starting me thinking about it, and Physiologic for help with the concepts and ideas. If anyone sees an error, let me know and I will fix it

Some statements:

1. This is for a pure dex 55 bird.
2. This assumes you have level 6 Focus like any attack-driven bird should :P
3. EDIT: This does not factor in other archer skills, or buffs and debuffs from other party members; this is for hypothetical solo damage using Focus only. Buffs/debuffs/other skills would be nigh on impossible to figure out and would take a whole lot of time and effort to figure out.
4. EDIT: This does NOT take enemy armor into effect. That would also take forever to test.
5. I did all of these stats with a vanity item for +1 armor, so subtract 1 armor if you like for pure stats.
6. This is over a 5 minute period and assumes that you hit Focus right at the start of the 5 mins, and re-cast it at soon as it cools down/recharges the entire time.
7. I crafted my Raid Roach Recurve into the Customized Gemstone Recurve. It was worth giving up a little damage for some heath regen, plus I just wanted to do it after all that running around doing Daily Quests. This was a personal choice of mine; not saying it is the way to go. Until there is a crafted set bonus (or IF), I will not be crafting the Raid Roach cap or leather.
8. There are no rings in any of these scores. Choice of ring can boost some of the stats however you want.
9. Crit scores are in decimal format. Example, 25 crit is figured as 0.25
10. This is only for the lvl 55 Raid Roach gear minus the RR Talon/Shield, the lvl 55 Henchman’s (blue/epic gear) and the lvl 50 Sentinel Shotgun and Talon Sets.
11. The stats below are valid and have been checked. I have a lot of the data columns hidden because the spreadsheet got way bigger than expected, but I included the ones I thought people would want to see.

Speaking of #5, I do not have the numbers for the regular Raid Roach Recurve because I thought of doing this after I crafted mine. So until I get my hands on one, it would be about the same as the Customized Gemstone Recurve with a little bit more average damage per hit, less health regen and 2 less dex.

I don’t have the 55 pink talon set, but the pattern would be about the same as the pink and purple bows.

There are way too many combinations of orange and green lvl 55 gear to include in this. Some of the green and orange equipment has pretty decent stats themselves.

If you want to see the full version, go here : Link to full spreadsheet







Results…in a Nutshell.

The right-hand green column is the hypothetical total damage you could do in 5 minutes, while using Focus.

EDIT (BECAUSE ROYCE IS SMARTER THAN ME): Again, this does not take enemy armor into effect, since there is not a way to do this easily. You can't compare a Talon Set against a Bow set directly because the fact that a 150 dmg hit from a Talon will not have as much effect as a 240 dmg hit from a bow on an enemy with (making this up) 100 armor....but maybe this will help you choose which bow setup, shotgun setup or Talon setup which is best for your style

The Raid Roach Leather/Customized Recurve/Raid Roach Cap has the highest overall damage due to its outrageous Crit; it has crummy armor and dodge, so pot usage will be higher.

The Raid Roach Cap and Leather with the purple Henchman’s Talon/ Shield has the highest overall Talon set damage, plus has decent armor. If you can deal with the crummy dodge and regen, is probably the "best" talon set.

Out of the Sentinel Talon/Wing combos, using it with the Raid Roach Cap and Leather had highest damage; the pure Sentinel Talon set has great armor and the dodge and health/mana regen is excellent.

Out of the Shotgun sets, the Raid Roach Leather and Cap had the highest damage.

The Henchman's bow set has decent damage and armor, but lower overall damage than the Raid Roach because the Crit for Henchman's gear sucks. However, it is way cheaper if you can deal with the bad health/mana regen.

Generally speaking:

Do not only look at DPS. DPS does NOT take Crit into account, and while using Focus as much as you can, Crit score seems to be actually more important than DPS.

The higher the damage output, the worse your armor, dodge and regen will be; this seems true for all Archer weapons

Using Rings will affect these stats, so see Physiologic’s post on rings about the possible best rings for Archers.

Talon Sets generally have lower damage than bows but have much better armor (most of us knew this) and shorter range than bows; this is the tradeoff for having better armor

Shotgun Sets have the worst damage, but better range than any other weapons.

The Raid Roach gear generally outperforms Henchman’s gear as far as damage goes due to its Crit scores (where Henchman’s is terrible), but the Henchman’s is way cheaper and has generally better armor.

The Henchman’s Talon/Wing sets do way more damage than the Sentinel versions, but the Sentinel Talon versions have much better dodge, health and mana regen. Armor for the two is roughly the same depending on which helmet and armor you use.

I am not trying to say one set or combination of gear is better than the others, or is "Teh Best". And again, this is hypothetical solo damage using Focus, just to see which sets "could" put out the most damage. I was just going crazy trying to figure out the best setup, and was curious if some of the gear’s “lower damage” was improved by having high Crit scores. And to see all the scores for everything in one place to help me decide what setups I wanted to try. That is all, hope this helps.

Edit: Added Sewer King Scarab data for use with various Raid and Sentinel gear; thanks to Drewcapu for the Scarab loan

[Turkster]

nice work. does physiologic have a rival now??

What enemies did you test this on? And how do you collect all the data? Just write down all the auto attack numbers really fast?

Also, were any skills used besides focus? The damage of our skills can vary a god bit depending on what weapon you're using. I reaallly wish this game
had damage meters so that true DPS could be calculated (using all our skills like
we would in a combat situation). I would imagine that recording all auto attacks + skill damages would be kinda hard though.

[Moogerfooger]

nice work. does physiologic have a rival now??

Haha not a chance, he is the man. He actually gave me a lot of info that I used for this, and we discussed it a lot as I was building it. He gets a lot of the credit for this.

[Moogerfooger]

No, no other skills were factored in, because there would be a billion combinations and I about went insane doing just this

This was just for pure hypothetical solo damage capabilities, and to see all the dodge/regen/crit/DPS/armor scores in one place.

[Physiologic]

Glad to see your work finally up Looks like after much deliberation, when you put in Focus in a 5 minute run, the new armor really does outshine everything else in terms of damage. If everything is being obliterated on sight then what good will H/s do The RR cap/RR leather/Henchman set comes dangerously close too though, almost to the point where the Henchman and Recurve are interchangeable. I suppose when they add in set bonuses later (like they did with Sentinel/Hate/Shadows), Henchman won't be as effective as the Recurve.

I'm also curious about field survivability because when I tested out Void/Sentinel/Sunblessed, I died more often with the Sunblessed set because of its range of shot. This was probably because I had to be closer to enemies to deliver successful shots. I wonder if the Recurve (shorter distance than Void/Sentinel) will carry with it the same problem.

Also, I wonder how different damage differences would be if you had a full non-crafted pink dex set (RR cap/RR leather/recurve) versus the crafted version - Would the 18 damage really make a difference over 18 m/s? I'll end up probably testing the non-crafted pinks myself soon.

Great work man, thanks for putting your time into this

[Moogerfooger]

Yeah, the RR Leather/RR Cap/Henchman bow does come close, but has 3 h/s vs 9 for the Customized Recurve. How much difference that +6 h/s makes is debatable, when you factor in the higher armor using the Henchie bow.

First few runs with RR setup, I had to use a lot of pots, which was to be expected. Using the +2 dodge/8 armor ring boosted armor to 91 and seemed to help a little and seeing a LOT of orange crit hits made me happy in the pants I certainly couldn't write numbers down in action, but seeing ridiculous amounts of crit hits during boss fights was the bomb.

Only way to truly test would be to do something like you did in Close Encounters with the Sent/Void/Megablaster set comparison. Would be hard to solo the Sewers even with a tank pot due to the dense hard-hitting mobs, fire grates, and limited space.

[Turkster]

As good as all this work is, you still can't see which set is best cuz no skills are used. Right?

[Moogerfooger]

As good as all this work is, you still can't see which set is best cuz no skills are used. Right?

You can get a good idea which set is best for the attributes like armor, dodge, regen, and overall damage to help you pick your setup. Some people love regen and dodge and might choose those setups even though maybe they do a little less damage and use less pots because their armor score is a little better. I wasn't trying to say which is best, just to help show all the different combinations possible and some of their good points and bad points

There is no real way to test which set is "best" unless there was a way to record damage hits during a run like you said, and at the same time have a record of every single other skill used by you/other people and exactly when they used, how far from the enemies, and what every single enemy's armor was, stuff like that. It would take a mongo recording program to do that and maybe STS could do it from their server logs, but for us to do it is probably close to impossible.

The only thing we can do is try different setups and pay attention to what 'seems' to be happening...like when I was using the RR setup with a +2 dodge/8 armor ring I 'seemed' to take less damage and use less pots and 'seemed' to be dealing massive damage more than with the Henchman bow.

[Royce]

Very nice work. The one major issue I have with this is that failing to account for opponent armor means you can't legitimately compare weapons of different speeds. The assumed damage over time figures will be artificially high, and that effect will be greater the faster the weapon. So while it's fair compare two recurve sets that way (and maybe the shotgun if it's speed is similar), it doesn't really work for comparing a bow set to talon set.

[Moogerfooger]

Agreed to most extent, Royce. However, trying to figure in enemy armor would be nigh on impossible, as you'd have to have a server log to compare what damage you were getting on what enemies who had what armor score.

What you don't see in the condensed screenshots is that I factored weapon speed into the damage totals, by breaking it down to crit and non-crit hits per minute. Enemy armor would affect the damage, because a Talon hit of 150dmg would have less effect than a Bow hit of 240 on an enemy with say, 100 armor, but it is the best way I could think of, relatively simply.

I wasn't trying to compare the weapons of different speeds, that is why I have it broken down into sections with the Talon Sets by themselves, and the Shotgun by itself....my main goal was really just to see all of the stats in one spot, and use them to pick and choose my setups.

[Moogerfooger]

Btw, Royce, you have your own special edit in the 'Nutshell' section.

[Physiologic]

I'll probably end up testing this again against enemy armor values as soon as I index the Balefort Sewer enemies on my Compendium so you know exactly how much damage you'll do.

That, and I'll need the set too, bah. Gotta wait until I hit 56 first though :/

[WhoIsThis]

There's no set to rule them all - that's the thing now. There isn't a set that is better in almost every way. In fact, I suspect that the domination of the Void, Cosmos, and Rift set was an exception to the long-standing method, rather than the rule (I haven't been here long enough so I wouldn't know), judging by the lower level pinks. Certainly, there are few outstanding items like Vyxnaar's helm, but otherwise it is the same.





If you want to compare the damage output (it is important when comparing one handed weapons to two handed ones to put both the weapon and the shield on for one handed weapons as shields do often offer damage and crit bonuses):

1. Find the speed difference
Speed Difference = Fast Weapon Speed / Slow Weapon Speed

2. Find the average effective weapon damage per hit for each weapon

3. Find the amount of armor of the targets tested (use Physiologic's enemy/boss/npc guide for this)

4. Then: Actual damage output per hit assuming zero armor for both weapons (remember to add the misses and critical hits in because different weapons give different critical hit bonuses)
Actual Average Damage Output = Effective Damage per hit + enemy armor

5. We now have an apples to oranges comparison.
To make it apples to apples, do this:
Faster Weapon Actual Average Damage Output x Speed Difference

You now have the damage output's of both the slower and faster weapons.





What is the significance of this?
To find out how much effective damage you will do to a target in a given amount of time, lets say we have a weapon that has a speed of 0.8 and one with 1.0. The beauty of adding critical hits and misses is that these buffs are already taken into account.

Damage in 1.0 seconds will be on the given target will on average be:

Faster weapon = (Actual Average Damage Output from Step 4 - Enemy Armor) x (1.0/0.8 - since those were the speeds of the weapons)
Slower weapon = Actual Average Damage Output from Step 4 - Enemy Armor




Edit: I should mention for abilities like break armor that it is important that they be fired at the same intervals when comparing each weapon. It is best to establish a baseline without special abilities then compare the damage output to when special abilities are activated to see how effective they are.

[Moogerfooger]

The damage numbers in the charts take weapon speed into effect; you don't see it because I hid the columns for the sake of data overload for most ppl and it was a size factor. I broke it down into crit and non-crit hits per minute based on weapon speed and factored it in.

But you are absolutely correct that we need the enemy armor numbers. Say an enemy has an armor score of 80.

A talon hit of 130 damage will hypothetically only do 50 damage, while a bow hit of 240 will do 160 damage...three times as much actual damage, even though the raw damage per hit score is less than two times as much per hit.

And correct, skills like break armor would change things up, but I did this with no skills other than Focus, because I did not want my head to asplode trying to figure out all of the other skills

[WhoIsThis]

Another thing you may want to mention for readers:

When levelling from level 51 to 55, just buy the henchman's set. It is reasonably cheap (the price of a few levelling potions) and represents an overall upgrade in most cases to the sentinel/void sets. It's when at 55 that deciding this could become a bit more debatable.

[Moogerfooger]

Good point about the Henchman's, I will make the edit. However, the drawback to the Henchman's gear is that a) its crit sucks, but many people may not care because it is much much cheaper than the pinks b) even though it has higher armor, its dodge score is horrific and I am rapidly discovering that having a dodge score of less than 7 totally negates any improvement in armor from the Henchman's. Not to mention you go through pots more often, because regen is very low. People are probably better off with the Sentinel gear...slightly lower damage, but vastly improved dodge and regen.

[Royce]

Might be interesting to look at skill damage differences between sets since damage alone can't tell you that. Just put on each set and check a reference skill or two so you can compare the effects of various sets on your skills.

[Physiologic]

The damage numbers in the charts take weapon speed into effect; you don't see it because I hid the columns for the sake of data overload for most ppl and it was a size factor. I broke it down into crit and non-crit hits per minute based on weapon speed and factored it in.

But you are absolutely correct that we need the enemy armor numbers. Say an enemy has an armor score of 80.

A talon hit of 130 damage will hypothetically only do 50 damage, while a bow hit of 240 will do 160 damage...three times as much actual damage, even though the raw damage per hit score is less than two times as much per hit.

And correct, skills like break armor would change things up, but I did this with no skills other than Focus, because I did not want my head to asplode trying to figure out all of the other skills

That's the biggest hurdle in these types of spreadsheets - the hypotheticals and theoreticals

Theoretically these are values of overall damage taken over the span of 5 minutes but enemy armor does give less than intended values. But high enemy armor values only theoretically apply if you're in a party in which enemy armor is never debuffed (God forbid you are in such a party).

[Moogerfooger]

That's the biggest hurdle in these types of spreadsheets - the hypotheticals and theoreticals

But high enemy armor values only theoretically apply if you're in a party in which enemy armor is never debuffed (God forbid you are in such a party).

When this happens, I do the famous "May a Rabid Squirrel Beserker Visit Your Underpants While You Are Wearing Them" dance...that'll learn 'em

[Moogerfooger]

Might be interesting to look at skill damage differences between sets since damage alone can't tell you that. Just put on each set and check a reference skill or two so you can compare the effects of various sets on your skills.

I think Phys may try this at some point, like his Sent/Sunblessed/Void comparo in Close Encounters. I would try it, but I am not sure if I have the mental bandwidth for it, haha.