Effective Damage per Second (eDPS) as function of enemy armor class

[EightFeathers]

Since I´ve only used bows so far, I often wonder why so many birds carry heavy X-bows, and why pink X-bows are sold so quickly at respectable prices (the X-bow used in the present example was sold after 5 min after I found in the shop it for 7999). Using the excellent data from Physiologic, I therefore compared effective DPS (eDPS) of a lvl. 30 X-bow and bow, as a function of enemy armor class. I assumed a hit-rate of 85,6 % with both weapons (see Physiologics post), and also considered critical hits since armor-substracted damage is less relative to total damage when scoring a critical hit.

Edit: I was wrong on this point. Armor is actually subtracted twice from critical hits, crits does therefore not help to overcome high enemy armor.

Also, in this example Focus skill is active increasing crit to 35 % (approximate number!).

Bows comapred are Jewel Thiefs Heavy Crossbow (pink, lvl. 30, damage 40-54, speed 1.4, DPS of weapon only: 33,6) and Jewel Thiefs Recon Bow (pink, lvl. 30, damage 25-34, speed 0.7, DPS of weapon only: 42,1). To show how eDPS was calculated relative to enemy armor, I exemplify with enemy armor = 10:



Using this "algorithm", I plotted eDPS against enemy armor for the two weapons:



I finally get it. Despite higher DPS for the bow, the two weapons perform equally in terms of eDPS already at enemy armor = 20. After that, the X-bow performs better. Therefore, the X-bow is the logical choice for low-lvl archers in high-level dungeons!