Thoughts on Handwrap damage and Monk schools in general....

Greetings Folks!
Just some random thoughts about weapon damage since we were discussing it in Monk Issues. This is not intended for IMMEDIATE use, but for historical purposes when rebalancing does happen. I hope that this provides some additional insights that might help in planning.

Here's a brief breakdown of some common weapons and their delays.
WEAPON - Level
Damage
Delay
DPS (est)
Handwraps - 91 (TWO handed)
44-70
22
2-3
Fine Dagger - 90 (One handed)
31-49
20
1.5-2.45
Fine Mace - 90 (One handed)
99-119
34
1.76-2
Fine Staff - 90 (TWO handed)
99-119
46
2.1-2.6
*Note that with Daggers and maces the user also has the possibility of using Shields.

We can see that Handwraps numerically should lead the way, even compared to the Fine Staff, a 2 hand crush. However the problem comes in a few places:

1. Armour reduction: Armour is SUPPOSED (as per previous posts by devs) to be Weapon Delay adjusted... Meaning that faster weapons are affected LESS by armour. HOWEVER, there is something wrong with that mentality because there is still a thresh-hold to make before damage starts on monsters. Because of our relatively low damage this thresh-hold is taken off of EACH hit, and our speed doesn't make up for the per hit reduction.

2. Damage shields - Cloak of Thorns, Quills, Pulsing Spectrum... these hit us for the same amount if the damage we do is 10, or 10,000 HP. Because of our lower damage it will take us a LOT more hits (AND TIME, where we are being hit) to kill the same monster. So we end up taking 3-4 times the damage that a weapon wielder would take from these.

3. Percentage based attacks and Styles, for example, Crit and Flurries. Since these are percentage they really don't 'translate' well for low delay low damage weapons. Chains, smashes, and Stone Hammer work GREAT. They are damage ADD. However if we try a crit, which is percentage based, a mace might do up to around 600, a fist will do around 250.
Flurries are even a worse deal as they add MORE attacks, but each one takes a much higher damage 'penalty'. I NEVER used flurry as a Disciple within about 10-15 levels of getting a new level of flurry because my damage drop would reduce my per attack damage from a flurry, even if all landed was slightly better than or in my first few flurries, WORSE than a normal hit, even if all of them landed (See related problem #1).

4. Alacrity/speed buffs. I know that it's been thrown around that delay is supposed to be reducable to 1 second (or 10 delay), but from MY experimentation, it really makes not much of a difference once you get to 20 delay. Meanwhile, there is a MAJOR gain on the heavier weapons like a 2 handed staff. Compare our delay gain of 11.5 delay for a 2 Staff, to a total delay of 34.5, pushing a staff DPS to around 2.87-3.45. With handwraps, we see no real benefit due to a cap on the speed.
Woo Hoo!!! Additional Testing by Grem, our very own Gnomian harasser, on an unwilling Blighted portal has shown that the speed cap has been removed! Grem even wore out the portal's Pulsing Spectrum in his hours of exhaustive testing. :D Kudos!

5. Delay Adjusted Damage bonuses. Well these are obvious. A Dark Garnet Weapon Crystal will bump a staff by around 5 pts of damage... a handwrap...2. Same with our Amulet of the Disciples. To be TRUELY a useful amulet for a monk, it SHOULD be a damage ADD. As is, these just push the disparity in damage from #1 and #4 even higher.

I LIKE the idea of monks and disciples. I see a place for them in the world if a few tweeks were made. I often envision them as the Always dangerous (even when holding a bucket at a well hehe), fast hitting, accurate, and evasive. I don't know if this is the vision that Tulga has for them or not, but that's how *I* see them. That we can choose different Disciplehoods just adds that much MORE flavour to them. To achieve that, currently, there are a some problems remaining with this vision due to the mechanics of the game. I don't know if they will ever be fixed, but as I see it here are a few:

1. Evasiveness:

EDIT: I was incorrect. It is 10 evasion for Monks and Disciples except for FlameD's.

Disciples get the SAME evasion (9) as any other fighter class, warrior or cleric in full PLATE. Monks get 1 more. Granted we get things like Evasive Style, but the only thing we get that really helps is Flow Like Water, where we can approach the dodging of a Spider for a few moments. Perhaps more passive evasion bonuses? Cap on max evasion of heavier armours? This would put some REAL thought balancing damage reduction VS damage avoidance.

2. Fast hitting: See above. We aren't really all that dangerous. :) I run across a Blight or Lem and I giggle. My success against mobs comes primarily from multiclassing and tactics.

-HratLi

EDIT: DISCLAIMER! The trading of speed for damage makes PERFECT sense for SPIRIT disciples. Consult your inner voice and your Sifu before doing it. My fists are based off of damage done. It makes little or no sense for Flame or Storm D's. Flamies do their fist damage PER HIT, irreguardless of the damge done on that hit. Stormies stun based on percentage of their hits. So more they hit, the more they stun and less they get hit. Ice D's it will help since their slows debuff the mobs and they stay debuffed long enough between hits.

While we he fast, there's a cap on just how fast we can hit. After a point it becomes kinda pointless. We'd need some kind of better weapon. Try adding a few other things like Fine 2H Swords and Fine 2H axes to your weapon comparison of DPSes. I'd like to see a more comprehensive list where handwarps stand against other 2H weapon's DPS of their teir.

I would like to see some other weapons and their DPS as well, as to how they compare.

The overall basic thought.. is that handwraps are supposed to do less damage per hit, because our very low delay makes up for it in the end.

But that is the basic thought. And yes, when you do add the many other things (like Alacrity ) into the mix, it becomes far more complicated.

And you know, one of the big things about handwraps was that they could be socketed and have techs. I can still make a ironsilk bag, with DexV, StrV, and HealthV... and a triple socketed tool, with a couple of the newely beefed up crystals.. ( +45 str, dex, and a 100 health crystal). The only real loss to that compared to the handwraps is ParryV. I'm actually considering going that route instead of the handwraps.

I'd love to see the chart also show the difference in DPS for all those weapons, when alacrity V is used and isn't. It would be very useful and valuable, to both us monks as well as Tulga when they start on class balancing.

-Menkure

A 1 handed sword and 2 harded axe would be far more common than a dagger And a war hammer more so than a mace. Some more weapons would be nice to see and your points on armour, damage shields and delay adjustment are so true.

Hratli ALL monks, disciples get 10 evasion except flame disciple who get 9. Do you not have 1000 base evasion? http://horizons.gamersinfo.net/schoo...item&id=92

I personally think we should attack more often and evade more how I would achieve this is give handwraps an automatic extra attack with perhaps a damage reduction on the second attack. This would increase our damage significantly and would simulate using more than just one hand. The other thing that could be done would be to increase UAM and handwrap damage.

For evasion due to the problem of multiclassers I would add stepped abilities that are non masterable to each of the monk/disciple classes. Evasion mastery gained once every 10 levels that eventually add a total of about 75-100 or more evasion to us as well as improved dodge for all classes not just monk.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by evilkarl

A 1 handed sword and 2 harded axe would be far more common than a dagger And a war hammer more so than a mace. Some more weapons would be nice to see and your points on armour, damage shields and delay adjustment are so true.

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I'll redo another worksheet with the Level 95 weapons then. Maces are even 10's (70,80,90) and Warhammers are on the 5's, meaning 75/85/95.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by evilkarl

Hratli ALL monks, disciples get 10 evasion except flame disciple who get 9. Do you not have 1000 base evasion? http://horizons.gamersinfo.net/schoo...item&id=92

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EEK! I was thinking evasion and looking at DEX... ignore me :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by evilkarl

For evasion due to the problem of multiclassers I would add stepped abilities that are non masterable to each of the monk/disciple classes. Evasion mastery gained once every 10 levels that eventually add a total of about 75-100 or more evasion to us as well as improved dodge for all classes not just monk.

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Stepped evasion/dodge bonuses would be nice and lend flavour. Also an improved Dodge, where it is applicable to all mobs attacking would be nice, especially if it were non-masterable. Else I could easily see 'teh ubar comb0' as having it and then AoEing everything alive.

-HratLi

Handed Weapon Dam-min Dam-Max Delay DPS-Min DPS-Max DPS Alac Min DPS Alac Max DPS-Alac DGWC Min DPS-Alac/ DGWC Max 2 Handwraps 95 46 74 21 2.19 3.52 2.3 3.7 2.41 3.81 2 FineMaul 95 118 137 51 2.31 2.69 3.08 3.58 3.22 3.72 2 Fine Qstaff 95 110 130 48 2.29 2.71 3.06 3.61 3.19 3.74 2 FineMithBattAx 95 90 140 44 2.05 3.18 2.73 4.24 2.86 4.38 2 FineStaff 90 99 119 46 2.15 2.59 2.87 3.45 3 3.58 2 Fine Shillelagh 90 106 126 49 2.16 2.57 2.88 3.43 3.02 3.56 2 FineMith2hSword-95 83 132 43 1.93 3.07 2.57 4.09 2.71 4.23 1 FineMithBroadsword-90 36 74 29 1.24 2.55 1.66 3.4 1.79 3.54 1 FineMithHandAx-95 48 88 34 1.41 2.59 1.88 3.45 2.02 3.58 1 FineWarhammer 95 67 77 35 1.91 2.2 2.55 2.93 2.69 3.07
Here is my attempt to paste it in. As you see, THEORETICALLY we are middle of the road even with the speed capped, DGWC, and Alacrity. The reality is that our damage falls significantly sub par with the internals of the game, even compared to one hander weapons that NOMINALLY should be equivalent in damage though they have a higher delay. I don't understand it entirely but my guesses are in the original post. Another benefit that One handers get is that they also get to wield a shield, which assists survivability.

Once the damage gets tweeked just a LITTLE I think we will be one of the most unique classes in the game. We really will be the smaller damage, fast hitting monks of legend. This is unique because if we can truely match the other 2 hander weapons, meaning about half the damage in TRUELY half the time it's an entirely different pace than the other classes. No area bombs, or single crushing blows, just focused, rain of blows against a monster.

My calculations are as follows:
DPS is actually Damage per 'delay' unit.
I capped Speed at 20 since experimentally I have noticed no statistically significant benefit from Alac5 and a delay of 20, vs just a speed of 20. Alacrity is a 25% delay reduction, and DGWC is an additional 1 damage/10 delay of weapon.

-HratLi

nice work hratli thanks for the extra info.

Here we see another example of % based increases barely benefiting we monks. We get a 0.18 on the max end dps increase with alacrity while a Maul gets a 0.89 increase and an axe 1.06.

Now if only we can get Amon in here to comment on it..

-Menkure

:D I'm sure he's seen it and filed it away in his mind somewhere. I think they spend a few minutes at leas browsing through every post on the forums even if they don't comment. If/when they get around to the rebalance this thread will be around for them. I'm hoping that it'll start their gears spinning and thinking of this in different ways. Very often people will complain, but the numbers don't match up, this disjoint suggest that they are just 'whiners'. Here I hope the analysis will help with respect to WHY the numbers (which admittedly look FINE) don't fly in the world simulation of HZ.

Besides, it'll help new monks who might find using 2HC as a secondary melee damage useful.
I find that swapping between Staff and handwraps to be pretty useful, satisfying, and highly effective. Nothing like whipping out your staff for a BIG crit in blue stance, slinging it behind you to finish a chain of uppercuts, back flip kicks, breaking out the staff again for a series of multistrike jabs. Multistrikes and Crits are VERY worthwile to switch, since both only take one 'attack' to use, you can switch back to handwraps for normal bashing.

-HratLi

Well done thread, HratLi. 8D

Would it be possible to include the knoc summoned sword on the list? I don't know the stats offhand, but have seen them linked in game, and a level 100 KNoC sword has nearly the damage and delay of a level 90 two handed sword. (they were linked by a KNoC guildie who has tried both - level 90 is highest 2hs they can use without multiclassing)

If oneconsiders average DPS on HratLi's chart (well, take (min+max)/2 or do ballpark figure thereof),you'd notice that handwrap (with alac/dgwc) average dps - 3.11 - is below the average for every other two handed weapon, even below the minimum dps of level 95 maul and qstaff. Add in PowerStyle, Weapon Adept/mastery, Guardian'sForce / flame/ice/energy attack, allto the DPS adjusted, and Unbridled Energy and Saja's potionto the delay modifiers, and the difference grows.
*note: Idon't mention nature's fury and unbridled for damage as they are % based, not DPS based, and Boar's Hide Mask for delay/damage since it's an item of rather limited ownership. I left off Infix because it wears off too fast to be viable, for me at least.

Also, level 95 handwraps are delay 20.

On a side note, alacrity makes a big difference for me,but if delayapproaches but never reaches 10, alac V would lower our delay from 20 to 17.5, not 20 to 15 (approaching 0, not 10) if it is correct. If this *is* the case, then a delay 50 weapon with alac V would go to 40 delay, not 37.5... effectily a 20% attack speed boost as opposed to our effective 12.5% speed boost. Notice something here?

Ifdelay approaches 0 and simply caps at 10, then it's a bit more even, alac V would put my unarmed delay at 15, and a 50 delay weapon at 37.5, so we each get an effective25% boost,a lot more even. Until I use Gnomian Prowess and hit cap, of course. This is how people usually seem to calculate it, probably because it would reflect the description of (delay -25%) the best.

Kudos to HratLi's table of numbers, and can anyone confirm which way delay works? Approaching but never reaching 10 as I did in the previous paragraph, or approaching 0 but capping at 10, which is how people usually seem to estimate delay?

I like numbers... -Gremblthrg

Ya! Those thoughts had niggled my brain too :(

I'll add the averaged DPS just for completeness. I was looking at that while crunching numbers.

As for the delay, if you have time, go try it out. As I said, for ME, I don't really notice any significant delay improvement beyond around delay 20. I heard rumours of delay 10 being the cap, as you said and everything approaches 10 as the cap instead of 0.

Unfortunately All I have available to me right now is Alac and Unbridled to affect my delay, and the only time I ever really notice an improvement is in the switching from Specials to normals. I don't do that unless I have 3 specials to use in a row, else I just end up where I started. That whole 'lost time' accounting that is supposed to be there might only work well on spells, cause it doesn't SEEM to be keeping track of it on melee switching. With your Gnomian Prowress it might be interesting. Take a look at your log files and see if you see a consistant improvement from prowress and Alac V. Mine hits at around 2s a hit with or without Alac, so that's why I was thinking the cap is around 20.

-HratLi
(also likes numbers :) )

HASTE CAP IS LIFTED!

I think it was lifted either last week or the week before; I'd noticed that I'd seemed to attack faster than usual once as mage using gnomian prowess, but mostly been crafting and using bombs as mage lately, so didn't pay it much mind...

But I did some data mining to answer my question on the delay; in the process I noticed that the haste cap is no longer capping my speed at 1 round per second like it used to.

Thank you Amon, or whoeverlifted it! With that out of the way, us gnomes can now turn our sights towards freeing Old Rachival! ;)


Back to the question of delay - delay approaches 0, and stacks multiplicatively: so 20 delay handwraps, alac V (-25%), unbridled energy (-20%), Saja's puissant elixer effect (-10%), and gnomian prowess (-50%) would be:
20 * .75 * .80 * .90 * .50 = 5.4 delay
I know it used to cap at 10, I would use gnomian prowess and see almost no difference (10.8 vs 10), but now I can see a clear difference, nearly two rounds per second burst damage, for which I am quite glad. 8D
Here's the results of my delay testing:
delay mods (all tests with 95 wraps cept one) secs/roundexpected delay
no delay modifiers, lvl 95 wraps2.0 - 2.1 secs20
no delay mods, no wraps (100 monk)2.0 - 2.1 secs 20
alac V1.6 secs15
alac V, gnomian.8 secs 7.5
alac V, gnomian, unbridled.65 secs6.0
alac V, gnomian, unbridled, saja's .55-.6 secs 5.4

So I think it's safe to say both that this formula is correct, and that delay does not cap, at least not by this point.
The seconds per round is approximate, they are observed values. For this test, I would attack a Blighted Portal 21+ times, then check log for times for 1st and 21st attacks I do, counting attacks manually 2-3 times each set, then take the difference in time from first to 21st and divide by 20. (eg, first attack at 11:00:05,twentyfirst at 11:00:46 would be 21 attacks, and therefore 20 delays between attacks, in 41 seconds)
The portal'sPulsing Spectrum limits how many attacks I can do without stopping or healing, or I would do more attacks per set.
For all of these tests, I was 100 monk; I will tryto test as flame disciple with flurry to see how much is lost to lag due to attack volume, if I can outwait the Pulsing Spectrum or some such. ><

-Gremblthrg

Pulsing spectrum seems to wear off after two hours. 8)
Doing flurry as flameD, I got .7 seconds per round (unbridled energy doesn't stack with flurry)... so there doesn't seem to be any speed lost due to combat spam lag.

- Gremblthrg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gremblthrg

Pulsing spectrum seems to wear off after two hours. 8)
Doing flurry as flameD, I got .7 seconds per round (unbridled energy doesn't stack with flurry)... so there doesn't seem to be any speed lost due to combat spam lag.

- Gremblthrg

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Hahahaha... The imagery is REALLY classic. Lone Gnome monk out there standing at a Blighted portal... for HOURS, punching a few times... taking a break... sipping some Gatorade... punching and kicking again.... take a breather.....
[:P] It's all about persistance hahaha... Thank you VERY much for the laugh.

As for your numbers, GREAT! :D Last time I did any numbers on my punching times was EARLY last fall. I think it makes the delay factor moot on the above. Now all we need to pay more attention to is the delay adjusted and % based buffs.

-HratLi

I was out with Tigris at the Ironsilk and she used Static Aura..

I've never seen myself hit that fast.. ever.. I was literally on speed.

She and I took out the named purple spider, Sermontus, and a breeder add.. in cargoes.. neither using Iron Body (we forgot.. )

-Menkure

Mmmkay I'll remove the speed cap thinger from the issue list.