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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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)?

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.

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.