Best bashing class

Lim

Is anyone else able to confirm that athletic is better compared to stalwart/resilient?

Do you need to be a weaving syssin or cornering werewolf for it to be really useful?

Rowena

Moirean said:

Oh derp, I just realized I have chocolates up, haaaa. So, without, it's like uhh 760 a swing. Still decent damage, but I think the crit uptime and attack carrythrough to a second target (and lack of bal cost if you kill in first swing) is more important. Rowena puts out more raw damage than I do, I know that. Maybe Zsadist as well, but during the Great Hunt, they were bashing globes and I was running around killing mobs in hunting areas and I was outpacing them.

For life-side classes, Templar is pretty great for that reason. I haven't bashed as one with artis, but they are definitely a really solid bashing class, with nice speed, versatility and tankiness. Shaman might be a bit tankier (I did Xaanhal fine as a sub-100 Shaman with no artis), but it's slower and really really draining on willpower. Sentinel's passive heal is eh, but the loss of resist made them take a bit of a nose-dive in tankiness. Refresh body is nice (extra con/str) but it's only for a short time, on an hour CD. Lumi is basically the life-side Teradrim or Prae, tanky as a truck, but not very fast. Really good for really punching above your weight, though, with certain areas (I was bashing fire elementals in volcano as an unartid level 80).

During the Great Hunt I admit I was bashing globes but at the same time I only bashed for a few hours over the entire weekend because I was busy with family and work. I just stacked buffs until I was frenzying for 3500, cleared some globes and placed off of that alone. I put zero effort into the hunt.

I wasn't trying to win it, just get massive experience from hunt, chalice, mint etc.

Ianea

I was wondering if people had thoughts on either Luminary or Sentinel for a bashing class. I picked up Monk originally and I admit I'm not very happy with how squishy(I do have transmute and use it.) it is plus how little dps it seems to do compared to others. I'm hoping for a class that will be decent with about a trans skill plus a bit.

Preferably not Templar, though I know it is a great bashing class. (If you had stats and dps numbers, that would be awesome.)

And in that vein, for Monk:
Trans Tekura
18 str
red orb
scorpion stance
speed enhancement
1108 damage over 2.51 seconds
441.4 dps
Armour 25/25 (The academy stuff that is about to decay.. sad.)

Irruel

Similar numbers for shaman, Ianea, without the red orb.
Sentinel trails a little behind.
Lumie is probably really good. Tanky.

Toz

Monk isn't bad for bashing. It's no master class because it's so squishy, but I can auto-bash Xaanhal fine atm. I'd suggest dropping that point in str for one in con maybe, pick up a blue orb for a better phys audit especially.

Class-wise, I remember sentinel being really solid for bashing, but I got end-game on mine the same day as they did the revamps. Daru's great but you've got monk already, Luminary is so sloooow (Indo speed). Shaman is pretty beefy, like it ought to be - but it's slowish too.

Lycan might be a good pick.

Ianea

For enhancement I have 1 con, balance and xp x2. The strength is from blessing and I'm currently hunting with a Templar for +2 str aura. Every time he and I compare dps numbers I want to stab him. Good thing Monks don't have a weapon.

Lim

Monk bashing strength comes from its crit overkill efficiency due to it having three attacks. I suspect that's why it has a so-so dps. Should be able to feel that speed better with crit boosts, so remember not to overlook that!

Jensen

I always had better luck with sentinel over lumie. Lumie is really nice for killing heal per hit mobs, since you don't combo.

Baemyr

I'll just continue on this thread rather than starting a new one and hope I'll get a bit more up to date info.

I'm just about to start my character and I want to choose a class on the Life side that's great for PvE. I'm ultimately looking for a class with fast attacks that can tank good enough to hang with the big monsters out there when I get to the end game later on.

What would you suggest for a completely new character that won't have any artifacts for quite some time? Please provide numbers on balance recovery and damage dealt if possible, so I can valuate the class a bit on my own based on that.

Areka

How fast do you want? There are tradeoffs. Templar is a really strong class with adaptable skills to cover what you need for defenses/bashing, and a range of bashing options (Strike = 1hander and shield, decent damage and boosts your audit, DSW = 2hander 2hit attack, modified by weapon speed, ZEAL = 2hander 4 hit attack, highest dps, ignores weapon speed so slower, not good for areas where you're stunned/proned/paralyzed but awesome elsewhere). For defs, you can have 1 aura and 3 blessings. Healing aura gives +2 con, while Purity aura gives +2 str, so you can mix and match for what your needs are.

Edit: Zeal is 5 seconds, DSW with a 140/130 weapon is around 3.4? Can get it down to 2.9 with an artifact level 3 weapon rune down the road. You can aim for just speed hits (DSK), but you won't deal out much damage. I'll need to pull Strike's number, 140/130 weapon's best there, it peaks the DPS. WE can also empower weapons with Sacrifice, which does extra damage, but also damages us a bit, so should be used with care.

Toz

Give me a day and I'll have an answer for you. With GRAPHS.

Kendri

This only covers a few of the lifer and neutral classes, but it is some information at least. In my opinion for bashing Templar always looks the best, they have so much range of choices that you can swap around depending on where you are bashing. Hunting an easy area? Throw up +2 str and use sacrificex2 to rip through everything faster. Something harder? Time for +2 con and sword and board if needed. Plus you can protect a hunting buddy so they benefit from that str or con or whatever.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1X2i5-pn-2Jk0s7ITqW5OVDoBRNTN3WYdCuxYx3NwAYk/edit#gid=0

Toz

Ah, awesome. I can use this for my own nefarious purposes... Thanks, @Kendri! If you have any more numbers, I'd like to see 'em - aiming for 16 str for when I do my tests, but anything'll do.

Areka

STRIKE DPS will go up with a 140/130 weapon instead of the speed one, as an aside. Is the Extra Damage column for Sacrifice?

Toz

Without checking my numbers at all, here's the list:

16 in relevant stat, with +bal or +eq as appropriate.
Key:
Ascendril: Orange
Luminary: Blue
Monk: Red
Templar: Black, Dotted Black (using sacrifice)
Shaman: Yellow
Lycan: Gray
Sentinel: Green

The y axis is dps, the x axis is crit chance. Cheers!

Thanks to @Areka for the Templar numbers, and my alt army for the rest. @Baemyr @Kendri <---tags so they see.

Kendri

Areka said:

STRIKE DPS will go up with a 140/130 weapon instead of the speed one, as an aside. Is the Extra Damage column for Sacrifice?

Yeah it was. Basically we were doing a comparison to see how bad Ascendril dps was compared to some others for the Guild. Those were the classes and numbers I had fairly easy access to.

Baemyr

Nice work and thanks for the numbers! I would have loved to see the speed on each attack and possibly what attack was used.

I think I'm leaning towards Sentinel, Shaman or possibly Monk (not sure which of the two) based on the style I want to play. So based on that, what would you choose between the three (four)?

Toz

@Baemyr:

1. Sentinel: Stab/Heartbreak as per the guild's ghelp did 620(stab) + 510 (Heartbreak) every 2.31s.
   
2. Shaman: Lightning did 1310 every 3.02s.
   
3. Monk: 539 sidekick, 203*2 uppercut (you punch twice) - I was in scorpion stance
   

Me personally, Sentinel. With crit chancex2+decent tankiness+nightingale healing+some thing they do that heals them when they hurt an enemy+speed, they've got it pretty much in the bag with the highest DPS of the lifer side outside of Templar spamming their sacrifice empowerment, which hurts them too. Shaman's a lot of fun but you have to go +EQ instea dof +balance when you get to enhancing your speed since they use that to attack instead of balance, and the only other lifer classes that really can use that also have two of the worst DPS - Luminary and Ascendril. So going Sentinel gives you options to play around with, plus the class is potent, if complex, in pvp as well.

Areka

Though it's worth noting, just as far as crit chances go, Sacrifice empowerment can crit, so DSW (2hand attack at 3.1 seconds with +bal statpack and 140/130 weap), you can have 4 crits (the damage to yourself is static and does not change).

Toz

Areka said:

Though it's worth noting, just as far as crit chances go, Sacrifice empowerment can crit, so DSW (2hand attack at 3.1 seconds with +bal statpack and 140/130 weap), you can have 4 crits (the damage to yourself is static and does not change).

Yeah, that's why their curve shoots up so much frickin' higher than anyone else's, my calculations took crit chance into account when figuring DPS.

Kendri

@Toz Nice on the chart, you should add shadow side to it as well though!

Lim

Why does having more, but less damaging attacks translate to higher dps? 

Areka

Higher crit rate if you've got more attacks in less time.

Lim

But the crit rate is exactly the same no matter how many attacks you have.

Say your crit rate is 2%. 2% of the time, you crit, 98% of the time, you don't.

If that happens four times, it's 2% 2% 2% 2% criticals, 98% 98% 98% 98% normal.

Toz

Lim said:

But the crit rate is exactly the same no matter how many attacks you have.

Say your crit rate is 2%. 2% of the time, you crit, 98% of the time, you don't.

If that happens four times, it's 2% 2% 2% 2% criticals, 98% 98% 98% 98% normal.

For Templars, they're doing more damage flat-out with sacrifice, ON TOP OF sacrifice crit chance. With more hits, you crit more often. Not % wise, but you actually go through more hits. So with a 50% crit rate, you crit half the time, and half of 1000 hits (500) is more than half of 500 hits (250), even though they technically hit 'harder'. I just ran the math anyway.

@Kendri, I'll add shadow side eventually, but probably not today.

Rashar

2% chance to crit 234058924524572457 times in one second is better than 2% chance to crit once a minute.

<- hillbilly math. I dun gud.

Lim

Yeah, there is DPS, which is independent of crit rate. If you have a higher DPS, you deal more damage.

There is crit rate, which is the %. If you crit at 50% and do 250 hits, that's 125 criticals, 125 non-criticals. If you do four times the attacks, that's 1000 hits, 500 criticals, 500 non-criticals. Yes, 500 criticals is more than 125 criticals. But 500 non-criticals is also more than 125 non-criticals. By the same proportion. Ergo, crit rate is constant.

The reason why doing more attacks is better is that it is more efficient. There is less overkill damage wastage.

But that is entirely different from crit rate, which is a function of no. of critical attacks/total attacks, where total attacks = critical attacks + non-critical attacks.

Lim

Maybe I can explain it a bit more.

So with that, there are three things that we've identified affecting bashing:

• DPS
  
• Crit rate
  
• Overkill efficiency
  

Crit rate is constant for all classes. It varies only with the buffs that affect crit rate. Pills, artifacts, orbs, etc.

DPS and overkill efficiency are the two that varies.

DPS is the damage that you can deal over time, not factoring in critical hits. The base damage divided by the time it takes for you to deliver that damage.

Overkill efficiency is the amount of damage you waste from overkill, where you dealt far more damage than is required to kill the mob. For classes with multiple attacks (but each doing proportionately less), they would have better overkill efficiency, because their attacks are smaller. This means your overkill damage is split up into multiple, smaller attacks. This means that you in effect get to use your overkill damage on the next mob, rather than have it wasted.

Typically, the higher your overkill efficiency, the lower your DPS. This explains why monks have pretty low DPS, but are pretty solid bashers nonetheless. It also explains why classes like Shaman or BB have higher DPS. The higher DPS is there to offset the lower overkill efficiency.

That is one general way to look at it. There are other factors, aside from the abovementioned three, that affect bashing. Tankiness/survivability is one. This explains why despite also having single-attacks, classes like Luminary have relatively poor DPS. Another factor, that is linked to overkill efficiency, is the type of mobs that you kill. The higher the health of the mobs you're killing, the less your overkill damage will tend to be wasted, i.e. you are more efficient. Conversely, the lower the health of the mobs you're killing, the more your overkill damage will tend to be wasted, i.e. you are less efficient. Another factor would be resource cost of bashing - some bashing attacks consume willpower and endurance, and that reduces the length of your bashing runs. If you are bashing to level, this matters a lot more than if you're bashing to complete a round of questing.

Toz

My DPS chart shows the damage capabilities of each class on a single target that is susceptible to critical strikes with an infinite amount of health. That is all the simulation warranted, but it DOES take into account the multiple critical hit chances of each class. It's possible to mathematically model all of the rest of that, but I'm not going to.

To clarify, my DPS chart shows your damage, with respect to critical strikes, at between 0% crit and 60% crit.

Lim

Yeah. If that is the case, then the graph is a comparison of DPS. This is because a person's critical rate does not vary according to the class.

To use the graph:

1. Check AUDIT to see your crit rate.
   
2. Check the corresponding set of values on the graph to see which has the best DPS.