Quote Originally Posted by drgrimmy View Post
Good review. You should take note of one important point, armor and damage reduction works differently in al than in pl. Although I still agree with going with a higher damage build, the mechanics in al makes dps not as useless a stat as in pl. In al damage inflicted is a factor of your damage times a percentage damage reduction based on your enemies armor. It is not damage minus armor like it is in pl. You can see how this distinction makes a huge difference...

In PL: say you have two weapons with 300 dps, one a high dps weapon with 100 damage and the second a high damage weapon with 300 damage. Throw in the mix an enemy with 75 armor. With the high dps weapon in one second you will only do (100-75)x3=75 damage. With the high damage weapon in one second you will do 300-75=225 damage. Here you can clearly see that a high dps weapon is not as effective as a high damage weapon against an enemy with high armor.

In AL: say you have two weapons with 300 dps, one a high dps weapon with 100 damage and the second a high damage weapon with 300 damage. Throw in the mix an enemy with 75 armor, which for the sake of this argument (since the numbers are not really known) yeilds 50% damage reduction. With the high dps weapon in one second you will do (100x0.50)x3=150 damage. With the high damage weapon in one second you will do 300x0.50=150 damage. So disregarding skill damage (which is a huge deal with mages and mob clearing), the same amount of damage is done to a single enemy over time with a high dps versus a high damage weapon with the same dps.

Again, needless to say I would always choose a high damage weapon over a high dps weapon as I focus my build to clearing mobs and charging aoe skills. I just wanted to clarify the armor and damage reduction side of things, as this makes dps not as useless a stat in al as it is in pl.
I don't think there are weapons with .33x (3x a second as in your example) weapon speed, are there? Maybe the example is a bit extreme but I get what you're saying. This mechanic would indeed explain why high DPS weapons are more effective as compared to PL.

But that's if you auto-attack (or however it's called here). I got hardly any dead spots in my skill rotation so I don't really get a chance to use the attack button a lot. And then there's that generally terrible weapon range, especially with those lv25 high DPS/rods.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying. Learning something new everyday