Mid’s Guide on Damage Maximization [2.5]

Midlumer · February 27, 2017, 3:21pm

Here we go, it is there !

Contents

1 GENERAL

1.1 Introduction
1.2 Acronyms

2 MATHEMATICS

2.1 The Formula
2.2 A Word on %
2.3 Additive Damage vs. Multiplicative Damage
2.4 Generalization and Damage Increase Comparison
2.5 Damage Increase per Slot (DIPS)
- 2.5.1 PvE DIPS Categorization
- 2.5.2 PvP DIPS Categorization
- 2.5.3 DIPS for Slot Combinations
2.6 The Critical Damage Multiplier (CRIT) Part
2.7 The Damage per Second (DPS) Part

3 PvE SIMPLIFICATIONS AND AIDS

3.1 General Approach for Damage Maximization
3.2 FWD Simplification (PvE)
3.3 FWD DM Lists (PvE)
3.4 CRIT Flowchart (PvE)
3.5 DM List of important Affixes (legend and below) (PvE)
3.6 Set and Mythic Affixes (PvE)

4 PvP SIMPLIFICATIONS AND AIDS

4.1 FWD Simplification (PvP)
4.2 CRIT Flowchart (PvP)
4.3 DM List of important Affixes (legend and below) (PvP)
4.4 Set and Mythic Affixes (PvP)

5 PvE EXAMPLE

6 WHAT I LEFT OUT

6.1 Ignore Resist vs. Weaken & Effective
6.2 Elemental Critical Hits
6.3 Bleed
6.4 Crushing Blow (CB)

7 PDF VERSION

1 GENERAL

1.1 Introduction

This is the guide I wish I had some years ago when I first started playing DQ. In the
following sections I will unfold everything you need to know about damage calculation
and maximization - I’ll explain and simplify the formulas for you as much as possible,
lay out how to theorycraft your char, have a short word on defensive affixes and split the
considerations up into PvE and PvP.

1.2 Acronyms

APS - Attacks per Second
AR - Armor Rating
ASpd - Attack Speed
AT - Attack Time
av - average
BWD - Base Weapon Damage
CB - Crushing Blow
CC - Critical Chance
CD - Cooldown
CH - Critical Hit
conv - converse
CrD - Critical Damage
CRIT - Critical Damage Multiplier
DIPS - Damage Increase per Slot
DM - Damage Multiplier
DMG - Damage
DoT - Damage/Debuff over Time
DPS - Damage per Second
DQ - Dungeon Quest
DS - Deadly Strike
EAC - Extra Attack Chance
EC - Elemental Critical
ECD - Elemental Critical Damage
ED - Elemental DMG
FWD - Full Weapon Damage
HP - Hit/Health Point(s)
iLvl - Item Level
LOHKO - Lucky One Hit Knockout
GG - Green Garden
MA - Multi Attack
MH - Main Hand
MOD - Modifier
MP - Mana/Magic Point(s)
PTL - Push the Limit
PvE - Player vs. Enemy
PvP - Player vs. Player
RCD - Reduced Cooldown
Regen - Regeneration
WD - Weapon DMG
WIQ - Weapon’s Item Quality

2 MATHEMATICS

I know you probably don’t like it, but it is essential that you understand what actually
happens behind the curtains. We start by presenting the almighty damage formula and
split it up into subparts which we can work with.

2.1 The Formula

So this is it, the formula in all its beauty. So there’s a few things to be noted here, first
of all that all % enhancements come in the form (1 + MOD%) except Skill% (Blast, Orb,
Torrent % etc.), that’s why I underlined it. There are other exceptions, but those result
in more complicated subparts like Druidic and CRIT for example (see subsections 2.5
and 2.6).
Then I introduced the abbreviation Full Weapon Damage (FWD), so I can properly
talk about it later on. MOD% stands for the damage percentages from set affixes like
Defiant, Identity, etc. and other affixes like Push the Limit, Barbarian, Glasscannon etc.

2.2 A Word on %

An important thing to know is that “%” is a simple replacement for “· 0.01”, same as “k”
and “M” stand for “· 1,000” and “· 1,000,000”, respectively. So 100% = 100 · 0.01 = 1.

Increase damage by 25% actually means (1 + MOD%) with a MOD% of 25% and is
calculated as (1 + 25%) = (1 + 25 · 0.01) = (1 + 0.25) = 1.25 - or in other words: if you
increase your damage by 25%, you actually multiply your old damage with 1.25 to get
your new damage.

2.3 Additive Damage vs. Multiplicative Damage

This is very important. In a general manner of speaking, damage from the same source
is additive and damage from different sources is multiplicative. An example (2x 50%
Push the Limit (PTL) vs. 50% PTL and 50% Barbarian):

2x PTL: 1 + 50% + 50% = 2
PTL and Barb.: (1 + 50%) · (1 + 50%) = 2.25

So multiplicative » additive, wherever possible get different damage sources! This gener-
alization is of course only true if your damage source is not embedded in a more difficult
subpart of the formula like FWD, CRIT or Druidic etc.

2.4 Generalization and Damage Increase Comparison

If you look closely, you’ll see that the formula is very simple, really:

That is great! Normally you don’t want to calculate your whole damage (albeit interest-
ing), you just want to know: What increases my damage more?
Say you have 50% PTL on your equipment, and you want to know: Is it better to
get another PTL, or is Barbarian the better choice? What you do now is:

You don’t care about all the other irrelevant Damage Multipliers (DMs) for your
problem, they stay the same!
You introduce a new DM for both options and compare them, and you’re done.

This is how you do it:

Voilà, adding another 50% PTL gives you 33.3% more damage, Barbarian gives you
50% more damage: Barbarian is better. You can even calculate how much better:
(4)/(3) = 1.125, so Barbarian gives you 12.5% more damage than a second PTL.
This works for everything. Say you want to know if it’s better to add 5000 WD+
or Glasscannon: You divide FWDnew/FWDold and compare it to the 50% from Glass-
cannon. This of course means that you sometimes have to calculate more complicated
subparts of the damage formula, but there are solutions:

Use Excel, LibreOffice Calc or comparable for the more complicated parts. Most
comparisons are easy and fast to calculate with a calculator (app) though, I rarely
use LibreOffice Calc for this.
Read on, because I’m still gonna simplify some things for you.

2.5 Damage Increase per Slot (DIPS)

You are reading this because you want to maximize the damage of your build. In order
to do that, it is good to think in terms of How much damage do I get from this slot/each
slot of this combination?
Your available slots are limited, and you can divide them into subcategories:

Damage slot,
defensive/survival slot,
both.

If you’re lucky, you can use things that boost both, your damage and your survivability
(like Defiant for instance). In most cases though it’s either or. It makes absolute sense
to analyze the damage of each slot, even those which also give defensive bonuses.
We already calculated the Damage Increase per Slot (DIPS) for one slot in subsection
2.4, where we derived the DM/DIPS for a second PTL and compared it to Barbarian.
I personally like more to think in terms of Damage Multipliers since they directly enter
the formula. DM and DIPS do mean the same though, and are interchangeable with
DIPS = DM − 1.
In the following two subsections I’ll categorize the DIPS for both PvE and PvP on
the basis of my experience for you.

2.5.1 PvE DIPS Categorization

50%: Great! Definitely get this.
30%: Very good! Definitely get this as well.
20%: Good! Get this too.
15%: Okay! Get this if you run out of those above.
10%: Grey zone! Take only if really nothing else can push your damage. I bet
you either didn’t spend enough slots on defense or you oversaw a better boost.
< 10%: Ouch! Use this slot for something defensive rather than wasting it with
this.

2.5.2 PvP DIPS Categorization

30%: Insane! Not many of these out there.
15%: Very good! Take it.
10%: Good! Fill up with these.
< 10%: Nah! You need defense too, you know? Especially in PvP.

2.5.3 DIPS for Slot Combinations

Sometimes you come across damage increases which only work because you use several
slots for them. This means you cannot easily calculate how much each slot contributes.
Either you calculate it step by step (as laid out for CRIT in subsection 2.6) or you say
this is a slot combination.
You can still calculate a DIPS value for a slot combination, and I’ll show you how to
do it. Let’s use a Green Garden (GG) derived combination as an example:

Druidic (5): Increases HP and MP Regen by 125% and increases DoT damage by
(HP + MP Regen)/4000.
Cosmic Power (5): Increases MP Regen by 125%.
1000 Regeneration (legend): Crystal 1500 MP Regen gives 281 more HP + MP
Regen in this combination, but legend Regeneration saves a crystal slot while also
giving some HP Regen.
500 HP Regen (Strength) + 500 MP Regen (Intelligence): Both don’t take any
slots.

That makes 3 slots in total. The corresponding Green Garden DoT Damage Multiplier
is:

This means these 3 slots give an equivalent of 55.3% DoT damage increase per slot -
that result in a total of 274% DoT damage increase for all 3 slots combined. Hence in
this case, all 3 slots fall into the category “Great”.
What you do here is you calculate the total Damage Multiplier for all n slots, and
then take the n-th root of that to get the DM per slot and thus the DIPS of the slot
combination.

2.6 The Critical Damage Multiplier (CRIT) Part

Most players manage to calculate FWDs quite accurately, but this is the part where I see
numbers flipping over wildly in this forum, most of the time not only wrong, but very,
very wrong.

So let me put this bluntly before I talk about chances here:

There is no such thing as Lucky One Hit Knockout (LOHKO). Well there is
actually, but it’s a stupid concept. Nobody cares if your char can deal a gazillion damage
with one hit - what counts is how much damage your char deals on average (per second
of course, but see subsection 2.7 for that).
In PvE, more average damage is more damage. The only exception where LOHKO
actually could be a viable concept is in PvP if your opponent regenerates so much that
you need to apply lethal damage at once in order to win. But since HP values are high
and regeneration values are low in the arena nowadays you never gonna one-hit anyone.
There is the effect of Defiant however, but it’s negligible. If you needed 10 hits on
average to trigger your LOHKO, the damage of this hit equaled exactly the opponent’s
HP and the other 9 hits before didn’t deal any damage, you would need 9% higher DPS
with 10 hits of even damage to kill the same opponent.
In reality, the effect is of course a lot less distinct since hits before LOHKO deal
damage (thereby increasing Defiant’s absorption) and you deal excess damage.

In other words:

Maximize your average damage.
If you deal a gazillion damage every 100 hits, it looks fancy on pictures but nothing
else. You gain naught from pushing spike damage for its own sake - it might come
naturally from maximizing your overall damage. In most cases though Deadly
Strike (DS) for instance is not optimal.

I’m emphasizing this because it is tempting to think: “Brutal + Deadly: Woahh, three
times the damage!!” while this is far from true. Different from the rest of the formula
where the modifiers apply always, we look at chances here.
An average damage increase from Critical Hits (CHs) must therefore correctly take
into account what happens if Critical hits, and what happens if Critical does not hit.
Further things to know about CHs are:

CHs have a base Critical Chance (CC) of 10%.
CHs have a base Critical Damage (CrD) of 50%. This is additive with CrD from
crystal/epic affixes.

Let’s cut to the chase:

Equations (7) and (8) give you the converse probability to CC and DS (i.e. the miss
chance for CH and DS), respectively.
Equation (9) reads as follows (in human words): “If Critical hits, your damage will
be increased by 50% plus the increase from all Critical Damage affixes. If Deadly Strike
hits hereupon, this damage will be doubled; in case you have Brutal, it will be tripled
instead. If Critical misses, your damage stays the same.”
Equation (10) just simplifies this as much as possible. Damn it, this looks compli-
cated! But don’t worry, I’ll break it down for you in the subsections 3.4 and 4.2.

2.7 The Damage per Second (DPS) Part

Of course what you actually wanna be doing is maximizing your Damage per Sec-
ond (DPS). Until now I pretty much ignored this part, also because normally you spend
around 30-35 slots on damage, 4-6 on survivability and 1-2 on Attacks per Second (APS).
In PvP it’s more on survivability, but even less (or none) on APS.

The formulas for this part are:

The remaining abbreviations are Attack Time (AT), Attack Speed (ASpd), Cooldown
(CD) and Reduced Cooldown (RCD), respectively. So you also have to see if APSnew/
APSold for each consecutive slot spent on APS (the same categorizations from subsection
2.5 apply) increases your damage more than another DM would - but I’m not going to
dive into the details here.
On the one hand, everything you’ve read so far gives you the tools to do so and I
believe in you, and on the other hand @Clogon wrote a great post about that (better
than I could ever do):

3 PvE SIMPLIFICATIONS AND AIDS

3.1 General Approach for Damage Maximization

The general approach to maximize your damage is straightforward:

Compile a hierarchical DM/DIPS list,
take affixes from the top until you run out of slots.

Of course there are affixes that cannot be obtained via crystals hence there are going to
be some limitations, but that’s part of the fun designing your char ;). Here’s a list on
crystal crafting restrictions by @Emman:

And then there are the affixes whose Damage Multiplier (DM) depend on other affixes
like the ones in FWD, CRIT and Druidic for example. You can compile sublists for
those, starting with what gives you the biggest initial damage boost, what gives you the
greatest damage increase after that and so forth.
But because I’m really nice, I’ll even do it for you in the following (sub)sections!
(Okay to be honest I tend to forget a lot, and I’m doing this for myself so I don’t have
to do it over and over again.)

3.2 FWD Simplification (PvE)

Consider this table:

As you can see in table 1, ED+ hardly increases the damage at all - and this is for a low
BWD weapon where it has the largest effect. 3x 100 ED% is a realistic value; the more
ED% you have the worse it gets.
We conclude:

Don’t use ED+ for PvE.
We can therefore scratch ED+ from the formula.
Because we scratch ED+ , ED% becomes a normal Damage Multiplier (DM).

We rewrite equation (1) as:

3.3 FWD DM Lists (PvE)

According to equation (13), we only have to consider BWDav, WD%, Power and WD+ for
the FWD multiplier. Examples are given for high and low BWD weapon representatives
with base/299 Power.

These (sub)lists give you an idea on how much the different FWD contributors increase
you damage in case you use a high/low BWD weapon with base/299 Power.
If you use a weapon with very different BWD, cannot obtain 100 WD% or put some
intermediate amount of points in Power, you will have to calculate your own list, but
it’s a rather fast exercise. This list you can then merge with the values/lists/suggestions
given in subsections 3.4 to 3.6.

3.4 CRIT Flowchart (PvE)

As we’ve seen in subsection 2.6, the formula for CRITav is rather difficult. That’s why a
DM calculation for a slot combination only makes sense for the first two slots. After that
you need to look at the full tree to decide which path is best, and whether it’s worth it
to invest more slots in the CRITav part or if it’s more rewarding getting legend affixes
instead.
Figure 1 shows you a flowchart with the corresponding paths. A few observations:

45% CC and 225% CrD together give an equivalent of 54.7% DIPS. That is huge!
I can’t think of a PvE char that could use two crystal slots better than this.
All subsequent slots give you DMs deep in the range of legend affixes already
(subsection 3.5). Since only 6 crystal slots at most are available and normally 2-3
are used for Block/Dodge/RCD/ASpd, the amount of slots left for the CRITav
path are limited - normally you won’t spend many more than the first two on it
(also because they don’t add that much damage, mostly below 30%).
You can max out CrD with epic 75% CrD + 5x Strength Nature, but keep in mind
that the six Natures you have act together as roughly one epic slot equivalent -
which you normally use for “one” thing only (9% Dodge or 15% ASpd or 50% CrD +
2.5% CC or 150% Luck or . . . ).
If you already have 30% DS at any point, it makes no difference in average damage
if you take Brutal or another 30% DS as your next DS-related slot. Brutal gives you
spike damage and doesn’t occupy a crystal slot, 60% DS distributes the damage a
bit more evenly.
If you use 3-4 Slots on CRITav it makes sense to max out CrD (first). In case you
use 5 slots it is slightly better to go for 60% DS and Brutal. At 6 slots it doesn’t
matter (obviously).
Brutal does not triple your damage. It increases your damage by ∼20% if added
upon 30% DS and by ∼33% with 60% DS.

3.5 DM List of important Affixes (legend and below) (PvE)

3.6 Set and Mythic Affixes (PvE)

This is where things get really complicated, because Sets and Mythics can give insane
damage but normally only in combination with other affixes. You can calculate DMs
for them as shown for Druidic in paragraph 2.5.3 for example, or determine your gain in
damage for adding single slots as shown in subsections 2.4 and 3.4.
If you want to visit really high floors (1000+) at M3 difficulty, you normally need one
(or a combination) of the big three:

Plagued,
Frozen,
Arcanist + Ascendent.

Then there are a few Sets that are good on almost every char like Defiant and Adventurer
for instance. Others can give a huge damage boost with some restrictions like the Sets
Living Force, Identity and Masochism or the Mythics Skilled, Exposed, Ruptured etc.
This is where the beauty of DQ lies, you can freely combine anything you want with
each other and I highly encourage you to try things out - you might come up with a new
char idea/killer combo that is unique and your own.
Therefore I’m gonna leave you to it - you gonna find your way ;).

4 PvP SIMPLIFICATIONS AND AIDS

4.1 FWD Simplification (PvP)

Consider this table:

As you can see in table 5, WD% and ED% are totally useless - and this is for a high
BWD weapon where they have the greatest effect. A comparison between BWD and the
damage added from the slots also shows that difference in BWD hardly matters.

We conclude:

Don’t use WD% or ED% for PvP. We can therefore scratch them from the
formula.
ED+ » WD+ because it boosts all attacks.
Put as much ED+ as you can. When you are done with ED+ , you may
add WD+.
You can freely choose whichever weapon is best for your build. You don’t
need to take the one which has the highest BWD because you’ll add as much ED+
as you can ;).

We rewrite equation (1) as:

4.2 CRIT Flowchart (PvP)

As you can see in figure 2, CHs is very ineffective in PvP. Regardless of what you do,
you gain less than 8% damage per slot. With subsequent slots (DS etc.) it gets only
worse, that is why I didn’t even bother showing them here.
To make matters miserable, there’s Flawless Trophy. Although it is currently bugged,
chances are it will be fixed in the upcoming patch: An eternal version will then reduce
CC by 10% and thus render the CRITav tree completely useless. We conclude:

Don’t use CC/CrD/DS/Brutal in PvP. They are a waste of slots.

I know you like big damage numbers, but be smart and make your char better will you?
Take a look at subsection 4.3 for an idea on what to add instead.

4.3 DM List of important Affixes (legend and below) (PvP)

As you may have noticed, Elemental Critical Damage (ECD) is missing in table 6. There
is a reason for that: It is ineffective. Let me give you an example:

You have 10% EC and 2x 28% ECD - so 3 slots in total.
You deal ice/shock damage. We take 20% as a rough estimate you manage to deal
ECD (enemy is sometimes frozen/paralyzed so you get some consecutive hits with
higher damage).
Your increase in damage thus becomes: per slot

And this is disregarding Flawless Trophy, which will make ECD completely useless once
fixed (see subsection 4.2).

There is another thing completely left out in table 6, and that is Procs/MirrorCast/Spe-
cialist. These can be very rewarding and make your AI incredibly hard to predict, but
this also depends a lot on your build. I’ve heard rumors that there will be changes in
this area in the upcoming patch, so watch out .

4.4 Set and Mythic Affixes (PvP)

Sets and Mythics are your main damage source in PvP (apart from ED+) and can give
huge boosts. You define your char here. I’m just gonna throw a list of good possibilities
at you, but don’t forget to look at the ones that are not mentioned .

Offense

Angelic (Set)
Cerebral Vortex (high HP builds) (Set)
Defiant (Set)
Demonic (Set)
Hunger (Set)
Identity (Set)
Living Force (Set)
Terrashaper (high HP builds) (Set)
…
Discordance (with MA and EAC) (Mythic)
Exposed (Mythic)
Ruptured (Mythic)
Skilled (Mythic)
…

Defense

Battle Mage (HP + AR) (Set)
Defiant (Set)
Faun’s Gift (HP + Resist, with tons of Luck obviously) (Set)
Plagued (HP + AR) (Set)
Satyr’s Spirit (AR, with tons of Gold Find obviously - would go nicely with Buc-
caneer) (Set)
Vampiric Touch (HP) (Set)
…
Sanctuary (Mythic)
…

5 PvE EXAMPLE

This section will host one of my chars as an example when I find time to write it.

6 WHAT I LEFT OUT

Of course I could write ages and ages here, but my time is limited. Maybe I will elaborate
on some of the following things in the future.

6.1 Ignore Resist vs. Weaken & Effective

It seems like 2x crystal Weaken + Effective can give you an enormous gain in damage
and are better than Ignore Resist. I’ve started testing this here:

Still waiting for an answer on some questions in the Developer Q&A though, to be rock
solid about this.

6.2 Elemental Critical Hits

The mechanics behind this make it kind of difficult to determine how much you increase
your average damage with Elemental Critical Hits, so I didn’t.

Orbit: Triggers with a chance, rather simple to calculate.
Freeze/Paralysis: When the effect is active, you deal higher damage. When not
active, you have the chance to activate it. Hmm. Don’t know for instance if you can
“reapply” Freeze/Paralysis while the effect is active (I guess not). Many difficult,
much mathematics.
Toxic: Triggers almost always because you have monsters in groups.
Immolate: Triggers with a chance. Applies Bleed, which I also left out.

Basically you want to use the EC tree and max ECD unless you use Arcanist/Ascendent/
Prismatic/Elements.

6.3 Bleed

Well kind of not so hard to understand. Triggers with a chance which is low (epic affix)
if not granted by a skill. Some Sets give bonuses (Inferno, Vampiric Touch and maybe
others I forget right now) and 50% increases can also be obtained from epic affixes. Short
info:

You may do the calculations yourself with what you’ve learned in chapter 2; don’t forget
to include the converse probability (miss chance).

6.4 Crushing Blow (CB)

Well I didn’t touch this because opting for high damage is better. CB could be used with
skills that have very high Hit Frequencies (i.e. Orb) in conjunction with Demonic, but
even there it takes away big slots (2x crystal + 1x set). After a rough estimation of mine
it is better to increase the damage by other means with the crystal slots since CB is way
more ineffective for the enemies you’d need it for, i.e. epic/legend/eternal enemies. If
you want to know more about the mechanics, take a read here:

Maybe I’ll add an example on why not to use it later.

PDF VERSION

Because I’m awesome, and I mean overwhelmingly awe-inspiring , you can download this guide as PDF below:

DQ-Mids-Guide-on-Damage-Maximization_v1.pdf (453.9 KB)

Midlumer · February 27, 2017, 3:39pm

Please do correct me if something is wrong ;).

RahkeidDragneel · February 27, 2017, 4:24pm

… Speechless im done my brain just explode

Midlumer · February 27, 2017, 4:29pm

took me a long time to get my head around this as well ;)!

CuzegSpiked · February 27, 2017, 4:33pm

Thanks for the must needed guide. Mind= Blown! I mean I kinda knew how to build very effectively but this guide makes it all that much better. I mean it was thanks to Mid that I learnt about the ED thing even though Illidans guide existed for PvP. The DPS formula I may have known about but it’s good that we get a further simplification of this complex but wonderful game. I was cheering you secretly at the back of my mind for you to get this guide done eventually and I’m glad you finally got it out at least. The new cronos lol. Hehe I’m joking but yeah.

ZARAKI · February 27, 2017, 4:46pm

@Midlumer +1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1
Effortless

Midlumer · February 27, 2017, 6:51pm

Thanks mate, much appreciated kinda blushing right now. We do it all out of love for this cool game !!

Hardly but yeah thanks!

Clogon · February 28, 2017, 1:24pm

Nice guide.

I understand that this is a DPS guide, but this game is even more complex. Hopefully I will be able to find the time to proof read and add chapters 3, 4 and 5 of my Rogue guide. They tell you why, depending on the build, you want high Burst instead of high DPS. They are 90% finished IIRC. I thought I posted them already since I know I showed it to ppl and asked for feedback about it. Oh, well. You can find the guide here: Unfinished Rogue . Will let you know when I update those. Lots of IRL and Testing stuff so it might take a while.
In PVP, there are affixes that boost DMG by more than 50%. IE: the first WD+ or ED+ affix will increase your DMG by about 300% if you had no other affixes and no investment into Power. Then there are the mythics that boost by 50%.
Your EAC calculation is wrong. But I guess the Dictionary entry is difficult to understand? You have a 50% chance of 1 Extra Attack at +1 EAC. This EA is not reduced. So by default it gives a min of 50% DPS. Each subsequent EA is dependant on the previous EA succeeding (all at 50%). Gtg 2 work but I hope this is enough info for you to calculate it. +2 EAC (Zenith in PVP) gives 75% DPS.

I will provide more feedback when I get back home.

Midlumer · February 28, 2017, 1:36pm

Thanks looking forward to this! Never quite understood the fuss about spike damage, eager to learn something ;).

I bet it has something to do with Frozen

Of course, but if you check table 5 (subsection 4.1) you’ll see these higher values mentioned Exposed/Skilled/Ruptured briefly in 3.6 and 4.4.

It is not wrong. Of course if you’ll only add EAC, you get an increase of 75% for PvP. But If you already have 2 MA, the increase in overall damage shrinks to 37.5% - Note (c) in table 6.

Nice, would be an honor . Found a minor mistake in my PvE CRIT flowchart on slot 5, but I will only correct this with the next major update… Too lazy right now

Eater · February 28, 2017, 3:56pm

brain hurts lol thanks

Clogon · March 1, 2017, 10:33am

It is one of the reasons but not the only reason. But I am not gonna spoil anything yet.

As you could probably tell, I was in a hurry when I first saw this guide.

So:

I did not notice the “>” and “<” symbols. Sorry.

Sorry, was in a hurry didn’t see it.

Anyways the more detailed feedback:

How much experience do you have writting guides? I really like the format. But there are many parts that are confusing and not so easy to notice and understand. Overall a very good written piece.

As someone who is skilled in math, I understand how easy it is to use acronyms. I can understand you easily, but for a someone not so skilled will have a lot more trouble. You have a bit too many acronyms many do not need to be defined at 1.2 as they are either already a known gaming term, a term with rampant use on this forum or are used in only 1 section of the guide. Section 1.2 is deemed very important but the long list makes it easily forgettable.

I recommend moving all the section specific acronyms to the section you use them. Also remove the unnecessary ones. Does someone who wants to optimize DPS really need to know what LOHKO (which is a player made up term for a specific build) means? You only bring up this term a few times in 1 specific section and never bring it up again. You use chose some confusing or unpopular terms:

CC - Crit Chance. I recommend changing this to Crit%. It is much easier to understand and cannot be confused with Crowd Control a highly used gaming term for disables and stuff.
CH - Critical hit. How about just Crit?
conv - converse. If you talk to a random stranger, what do you think this word means to them? What does “talking” have to do with DMG optimization? Yes, you touched on its math meaning in 2.6 but I am a random noob at 1.2 and am now totally confused.
CrD. How about Crit DMG?
CRIT. How about Crit Mod?
DM - Damage multiplier. Too confusing especially with the multiple ways you use this term. The normal understanding of DM is “the damage multipler of 300% ED is 3x”. The information you are describing in many of your calculations is actually called MI% - Marginal Increase % which is the change between the new and old values.
DQ - Dungeon Quest. Are you talking to someone who has no clue what game they are playing or someone who has already played the game and is looking to improve?

In the beginning of a written piece, an author needs to know who they are talking to and adjust their speech to their audience. You seem to expect the person reading this to have no idea what HP or even DQ is. Yet, you also expect them to magically know the math meaning of converse instead of the normal “to converse = to talk”. There is common language and uncommon language. Yes writting is difficult.

2.3, this section is not very effective. [quote=“Midlumer, post:1, topic:14021”]
So multiplicative » additive, wherever possible get different damage sources!
[/quote]

This generalization is not very accurate. For example a newb might not have access to +100% ED. 100% Glasscannon (easily available for newbs) is way better than 50% Glasscannon + 20% ED. For end game players, 200% ED is the same as 100% ED + 50% PTL. What message are you trying to send here? The meaning of Additive + Multiplicative or help the reader know what is more important?

Again, the way you are using and describing DM in 2.4 is against the norm and is highly confusing.
2.5.3, I do not understand the message of your example. What is Green Garden? Why use Cosmic Power over Equality?
2.6 and 2.7, remove the word “Part” from the section title. XD
change the word AIDS to HELP. Most people have forgotten the meaning of the word Aid and link it to the name of the disease.
I am surprised you did not mention Hit Frequency in this. There are other DMG increasing mechanics that you did not go into like Damage per Pierced.

Given the limited information that you have, bravo. Very good job with this guide. Thank you for putting time and effort in helping others.

Midlumer · March 1, 2017, 12:07pm

Thanks for the detailed feedback gonna fix some points accordingly (don’t know when though ).

Points taken. I will try to clean that up - converse can be replaced with miss chance, that should be easy.

Well I opose here, because damage multiplier does exactly as the name says, it multiplies the damage. 300% ED of course is a multiplier of 4x, but this is kind of the point. It is a lot easier to work with multipliers because you can directly multiply/divide them and see what’s happening.
In my mind MI% as you describe it and DM is interchangeable, everyone can substract 1 from a number. But if I have them in multiplier form, I know in an instance that 50 PTL and 50 Barbarian give me 1.51.5=2.25 → 125% increase in damage, whereas that is not easily visible from 50% and 50%.
I could think about renaming it though, open for suggestions. MI% is not a good choice imho. The purpose here is to be able to compute rapidly what different damage increases yield: 45 Crit% and 225 Crit DMG% together give me 1.5471.547=2.393 → 139.3% increase in damage.
You can calculate the whole Crit Mod tree with these numbers without even blinking, whereas if I have them in % I need to always do (1 + X%) * (1 + Y%) * (1 + Z%)…

True, I’ll need to rephrase that .

I’ll simply scratch the term Green Garden there. Why Cosmic Power over Equality? Let me explain: With Equality you need Equivalence as well (+1 Slot). Let’s compare:

Baseline (Druidic + 1000 Regeneration, Strength, Intelligence): 1 + 2.25*(1500 + 1500)/4000 = 2.6875
With Cosmic: 1 + 2.25*(1500 + 2.25*1500)/4000 = 3.7422
With Equivalence + Equality (OH): (1 + 1.3752.25(1500 + 1500)/4000) = 3.3203
With Equivalence + Equality (MH): (1 + 1.3752.25(1500 + 1500)/4000) * 1.375 = 4.5654

Therefore:

Boost from Cosmic: 3.7422/2.6875 = 1.392 for one slot
Boost from Equivalence + Equality (OH): (3.3203/2.6875)^(1/2) = 1.112 per slot
Boost from Equivalence + Equality (MH): (4.5654/2.6875)^(1/2) = 1.303 per slot

Equality only gives damage to MH skills, that is the main problem… Green Garden works with SkullShield, which is OH. But even for MH Cosmic is better in the “per slot” sense. For OH Cosmic is better than both slots from Equivalence and Equality combined (I use Taunt and Teleport ).

The message was the calculation “per slot” of a combination and how to do it.

Good Points.

Yes I should definitely add Hit Frequency sure there are other mechanisms, but I cannot compile all only the most common ones used by almost every char. Maybe I’ll add a few more chapters to “What I left out”^^

Thank you for the acknowledgement wrote this as much for others as for myself of course the guide can and will be improved!

Mr_Scooty · March 1, 2017, 4:25pm

@Midlumer thank you from all of the Dungeon Questers for taking time to develop your guide. Your document is very professional, well thought out, simplified and easy to understand. You were able to deduce a lot of information that is not readily available to all players. +1

Clogon · March 1, 2017, 5:57pm

This is my mistake. What I meant was that for most people damage multiplier is just that, the multiplier. When you ask some one what is the damage multiplier of 100% ED, they will say 2x. If you ask someone what is the multiplier of 200% ED, they will say 3x. Only when you ask them what is the ratio of the 2, will they answer 1.5x. A ratio (MI%) is not a multiplier but a comparison between the different values. For us math users, they are equivalant since we are comparing the multiplier of the extra affix. But for a normal person, it gets confusing.

What I am asking here is for more information on the example. You explained that you were using Druidic for Poison DoT calculation and why Regeneration over Crytal MP Regen but no mention on why Cosmic Power over things like Equality/Plague. I can figure out the answer, but a normal reader might get confused since you are so detailed in explaining your other choices but not this one.

f00kee · March 1, 2017, 6:04pm

+1 very detailed.

Hope you could add Hit Frequency here in the future as it is as important as maximizing your damage.
Example, none of this matters when you are playing in 5K M3 floor if you have a very high
damage build but has low hit frequency

DQ-Pat · March 1, 2017, 7:32pm

+1

SteigerBox · March 1, 2017, 9:18pm

Amazing, very well done @Midlumer! What program did you use for your figures/math, looks very professional

Clogon · March 1, 2017, 9:33pm

I was busy asking for feedback that I totally forgot to ask this. I think it is the PC version of Mathlab.

LARRYBIRD17 · March 19, 2017, 3:14pm

my brain walk away from my head.

rushbone · April 26, 2017, 10:39am

To the set affixes, my opinion. As a “base” I took Arcanist+Ascendent. Next damage boost is Epiphany with bonus, you only need to stack APS to 70%+, which is DPS anyway, and then you get 70% total damage on top of it. Then there is Adventurer which adds 37.5% and boosts movement speed almost the whole time, I can’t stop using it, really. Then I noticed that as soon as there is like 70% dodge, the Pathfinder set affix also makes a huge boost, and Dodge is important and very useful anyway. The last one I am using is Nadroji for more rare legends, I need ultra rare crystals.
When I tried Plagued and Frozen instead of Pathfinder I had a feeling that I am dealing less damage. Maybe I did something wrong?
Thanks a lot for this awesome guide.