new Bonereaver's Edge

Xizorz · 03/31/06, 12:39 PM

Anyone have this and do some extended testing on it? I respeced 18/33 to 2h fury with this sword, and I'm getting incredible results with about a 1/3 procrate on twilight trash in silithus.

The weapon really shines in WW/cleave situations, where more hits = more chances to proc = more procs = more procs on more enemies, but how does it do in single target boss situations with and without WF?

hellsoap · 03/31/06, 12:43 PM

Originally Posted by Xizorz,March 31st, 2006 @ 11:39AM

how does it do in single target boss situations with and without WF?

pretty good.

♦ Praetorian · 03/31/06, 12:45 PM

I've been wondering about this too. I think practically all of our Bonereaver's crew has an Ashkandi these days, so I'm not sure we've had much of a chance to test it, but this seems like it could really be an excellent ability. We've got a couple of rogues trying to figure out how the hell to quantity the benefit from Badge of the Swarmguard, and I expect this is a similar case.

Part of the problem with measuring it is that because of how armor scales, this has a variable effect depending on how many other debuffs it's combined with. If you're taking a mob from 4k to 3.3k armor, that's nice. If you're taking a sundered and faerie-fire'd mob from 700 armor to 0 armor, that's incredible.

Xizorz · 03/31/06, 1:00 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian,March 31st, 2006 @ 11:45AM

I've been wondering about this too. I think practically all of our Bonereaver's crew has an Ashkandi these days, so I'm not sure we've had much of a chance to test it, but this seems like it could really be an excellent ability. We've got a couple of rogues trying to figure out how the hell to quantity the benefit from Badge of the Swarmguard, and I expect this is a similar case.

Part of the problem with measuring it is that because of how armor scales, this has a variable effect depending on how many other debuffs it's combined with. If you're taking a mob from 4k to 3.3k armor, that's nice. If you're taking a sundered and faerie-fire'd mob from 700 armor to 0 armor, that's incredible.

I've been thinking of picking up the Badge of the Swarmguard myself, to get even more armor piercing. The question, of course, is whether mobs have enough armor to make 2250 sunder + 1400/2100 bonereavers + 1200 Badge worthwhile.

But some math behind this:
5000 armor provides some 48% mitigation which means enemies deal 52% dmg
4000 armor provides some 42% mitigation which means enemies deal 58% dmg.

Thus, 1000 armor piercing gives you 11.5% increase. ((.58-.52)/.52)

3000 armor provides some 35% mitigation which means enemies deal 65% dmg.

Thus, your 2nd 1000 armor piercing provides a 12% increase. ((.65-.58)/.58)

I guess this is what you were trying to say with your 700-0 example, where the closer you get to 0 the better the effect is.

• Wodin · 03/31/06, 1:03 PM

Quick question: where are the AC mitigation formulas living? That's one set that I've been unable to find.

♦ Praetorian · 03/31/06, 1:06 PM

Right, I just meant the scaling since mitigation at level 60 is [Armor / (5500 + Armor)].

It takes 1833 Armor to get to 25% mitigation, another 3667 on top of that to get to 50%, and then 11000 more to get to 75%. So the less armor your target has to begin with, the larger the % benefit from armor penetration.

Digo · 03/31/06, 2:14 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian,March 31st, 2006 @ 11:45AM

We've got a couple of rogues trying to figure out how the hell to quantity the benefit from Badge of the Swarmguard, and I expect this is a similar case.

Unless the proc rate has drastically changed from test, by the time you've stacked the Badge effect on yourself, the buff has almost worn off. I can only see this being useful for taking out casters in a fortified pvp situation like a flag cap in AB. Otherwise, I'm just going to stick with the passive benefit of Blackhand's Breadth and not have to worry about it.

Now, if they changed the Badge to function like... oh... say... Hand of Justice with a chance to proc, so you'd always have the strikethrough benefit up and stacking, then I'd be all over it.

• Hamlet · 03/31/06, 3:14 PM

Originally Posted by Wodin,March 31st, 2006 @ 12:03PM

Quick question: where are the AC mitigation formulas living? That's one set that I've been unable to find.

from http://forums.elitistjerks.com/index.php?showtopic=5749 :

Mitigation = A/(A+85*AtkrLevel+400)

• Hamlet · 03/31/06, 3:35 PM

Armor is designed so that, for a constant pre-mitigation DPS input, a target's longevity goes linearly with armor. Briefly, M goes like A/(A+C), and effective HP goes like 1/(1-M), which is like (A+C)/C.

So, one would expect an armor reduction of Q to reduce the time it takes to kill a target by a fraction equal to Q/(A+C).

This is more confusing in the context of mobs, however. To first order, they take half physical and half magical damage. Also, some armor debuffs (like the one discussed here) affect only one person. But the above expression is a decent approximation of the precentage increase by which an armor reduction improves the DPS contribution from the people who benefit from it.

EDIT: On which bosses is it a bad idea to use Curse of Recklessness? I can only think of a few that have AP-multiplying abilities.

Ultramax · 03/31/06, 3:53 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion,March 31st, 2006 @ 1:35PM

To first order, they take half physical and half magical damage.

What? I mean, what?

♦ Praetorian · 03/31/06, 3:57 PM

Originally Posted by Ultramax,March 31st, 2006 @ 2:53PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion,March 31st, 2006 @ 1:35PM

To first order, they take half physical and half magical damage.

What? I mean, what?

He's saying that mobs aren't just taking physical damage, so you can't neatly derive a relationship between physical armor reduction and the time it takes to kill a mob.

As for the CoR query, anything with Mortal Strike or a similar ability. Broodlord, notably.

• Hamlet · 03/31/06, 5:27 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian,March 31st, 2006 @ 2:57PM

As for the CoR query, anything with Mortal Strike or a similar ability. Broodlord, notably.

Ok, so I'm right in thinking that, in the absence of MS or WW, CoR adds about 8 DPS to a mob's output (maybe increases his melee damage by about 16)?

♦ Praetorian · 03/31/06, 5:36 PM

No, it's definitely more than that. Mob stats scale funny. Otherwise it'd be trivial regardless. It's something I need to test. If AP worked the same way on mobs as it does on players, then even on a mob with MS, CoR would add like 50 damage or so, which is nothing on a 4k+ attack.

• Hamlet · 03/31/06, 5:48 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian,March 31st, 2006 @ 4:36PM

No, it's definitely more than that. Mob stats scale funny. Otherwise it'd be trivial regardless. It's something I need to test. If AP worked the same way on mobs as it does on players, then even on a mob with MS, CoR would add like 50 damage or so, which is nothing on a 4k+ attack.

Yeah, looking again, that makes no sense at all, but we've never actually used CoR, so I have no idea. All I have to go on are tanks balking at the very suggestion of CoR, based on anecdotal claims of much damage AP adds to mob hits (which, on flip side of things, were too high to possibly be true).

I figured it was somewhere in between. However, nobody seems to know. I need to get a tank who's interested enough in these things to run some combat log parses.

My impression, based on very little, is that while it's good to keep Demo Shout up, the lack of it doesn't suddenly send the tank screaming for his life. CoR is about half that big, and I'm wondering whether it's even noticeable against a typical mob.

• squiffy · 04/01/06, 12:04 AM

Slightly back on topic, BRE + Sword Spec + WF + HoJ = the most fun I've had in MC.

My spec is slightly weird, no Impale/Enrage (31/4/16) but I do have 2H specialisation, and I've been seeing MS's in the 1800+ range, and white damage in the 1300 area.

Given the boost the weapon feels like its gotten, I fervently hope Blizzard doesn't nerf it.

Anglakel · 04/01/06, 6:27 AM

Originally Posted by squiffy,March 31st, 2006 @ 11:04PM

Slightly back on topic, BRE + Sword Spec + WF + HoJ = the most fun I've had in MC.

My spec is slightly weird, no Impale/Enrage (31/4/16) but I do have 2H specialisation, and I've been seeing MS's in the 1800+ range, and white damage in the 1300 area.

Given the boost the weapon feels like its gotten, I fervently hope Blizzard doesn't nerf it.

Do you hate deep wounds that much or did your warlocks convince you they needed that debuff slot?

Slug · 04/01/06, 9:13 AM

Squiffy is best warrior.

Every time I see 5+ deep wounds knock my spells off a mob, I am reminded that Blizzard is still completely unaware of the fact that the warlock class actually made it out of the initial concept build and into the final game.

My suggestion for a realistic fix to this problem is to give warriors a new skill called "Knitting". This skill would be warrior-specific and would enable them to make pretty +resist sweaters (shirt slot) for players. Naturally, it would be the prereq in-line for Impale. At least that would serve a useful purpose in the raidgame and wouldn't continually bump off the actual important debuffs on targets.

Xizorz · 04/01/06, 2:46 PM

Originally Posted by squiffy,March 31st, 2006 @ 11:04PM

Slightly back on topic, BRE + Sword Spec + WF + HoJ = the most fun I've had in MC.

My spec is slightly weird, no Impale/Enrage (31/4/16) but I do have 2H specialisation, and I've been seeing MS's in the 1800+ range, and white damage in the 1300 area.

Given the boost the weapon feels like its gotten, I fervently hope Blizzard doesn't nerf it.

I've gotten white damage crits in the 1700s, heroic strikes in the 2k range.

Speced 18/33 fury. Went on a ZG run last night, the damage a warrior can do with healer backup in a setting like that (WW + cleave + WF) is utterly insane.

• squiffy · 04/01/06, 6:03 PM

Originally Posted by Anglakel,April 1st, 2006 @ 5:27AM

Do you hate deep wounds that much or did your warlocks convince you they needed that debuff slot?

Neither as such.

I was MT'ing for our guild as we progress through BWL now, hence no enrage. (We've been around since release but we're a very close circle of friends that has very slowly expanded to the point where we have the numbers to run 40 person raids.)

I'd also seen some theorycraft on the DPS increase of 2H specialisation vs deep wounds/impale line and felt like giving it a go.

I pvp very little on this warrior character as I find personally the implementation of pvp, the BG grind, as it stands is a colossal waste of what little time I have to play. World pvp is fine and generally fun, but I've not queued for a BG in months. Sorry for the story but sort of explains why I didn't go cookie-cutter in the arms tree.

The debuff thing is also a factor, although a very minor one.

Xizorz, I'm guessing those numbers are with enrage in our spec? It is very very tempting to go Fury I must admit.

Xizorz · 04/01/06, 6:23 PM

Originally Posted by squiffy,April 1st, 2006 @ 5:03PM

Originally Posted by Anglakel,April 1st, 2006 @ 5:27AM

Do you hate deep wounds that much or did your warlocks convince you they needed that debuff slot?

Neither as such.

I was MT'ing for our guild as we progress through BWL now, hence no enrage. (We've been around since release but we're a very close circle of friends that has very slowly expanded to the point where we have the numbers to run 40 person raids.)

I'd also seen some theorycraft on the DPS increase of 2H specialisation vs deep wounds/impale line and felt like giving it a go.

I pvp very little on this warrior character as I find personally the implementation of pvp, the BG grind, as it stands is a colossal waste of what little time I have to play. World pvp is fine and generally fun, but I've not queued for a BG in months. Sorry for the story but sort of explains why I didn't go cookie-cutter in the arms tree.

The debuff thing is also a factor, although a very minor one.

Xizorz, I'm guessing those numbers are with enrage in our spec? It is very very tempting to go Fury I must admit.

I believe they were with enrage, didnt stop to check.

This is definitely THE 2h fury weapon, more instants for more procs.

EJforumsaccount · 04/01/06, 8:25 PM

I watched my flat mate using this over a whole MC clear yesterday, it appeared to be a lot better than it used to and was frequently stacking 2 or 3 times on boss fights.
He's in your basic MC/BWL DPS plate and I was seeing HS/MS crits up to two thousand. Also note; this is on an Alliance warrior, 31/20 with no Windfury etc. so I can imagine how awesome this weapon would be with a HoJ + WF.

I think this will be more beneficial to a raid than a little armour debuff, Warriors screw 'locks up enough with deep wounds, and on fights where it was proccing the most it was up ~50% of the time, I think. I'm also interested in using CoR, every little bit helps I suppose.

NiXXeD · 04/03/06, 2:06 PM

Originally Posted by Digo,March 31st, 2006 @ 1:14PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian,March 31st, 2006 @ 11:45AM

We've got a couple of rogues trying to figure out how the hell to quantity the benefit from Badge of the Swarmguard, and I expect this is a similar case.

Unless the proc rate has drastically changed from test, by the time you've stacked the Badge effect on yourself, the buff has almost worn off. I can only see this being useful for taking out casters in a fortified pvp situation like a flag cap in AB. Otherwise, I'm just going to stick with the passive benefit of Blackhand's Breadth and not have to worry about it.

Now, if they changed the Badge to function like... oh... say... Hand of Justice with a chance to proc, so you'd always have the strikethrough benefit up and stacking, then I'd be all over it.

Do the procs stay for a set period of time regardless of the badge's expiration?

I've somewhat wondered this myself, as the wording is fairly tricky as is.

So for instance, the trinket itself lasts for 30 seconds, and in this 30 seconds, you stack, say, the 6th proc (max) on yourself at the 28th second in the trinket use.

Does the proc:
1. Last 30 seconds of all 6 procs
2. Last 30 seconds, but reduce based on when the procs happened
3. Last 2 seconds and end with the trinket.

It seems to me if it's either 1 or 2 (1 seems more likely, but I swear I remember something like 2 happening in the game), it's going to be very beneficial, however I would guess in a pvp situation it's not going to matter as your damage is mostly in the form of SS/BS.

♦ Praetorian · 04/03/06, 2:07 PM