Dual Wield DOK AOE damage output analysis - Comparison with other AOE dps classes

[leftayparxoun]

All in all, 2h WP seems at a much better place compared to dw DOK regarding AOE output. I'd have to perform detailed calculations again to quantify it, but in theory it seems like their kit is slightly better designed for that role and perhaps shows the direction that AOE dw DOK should take.

I'm back with more calculations. Unlike dw DOK, 2h WP doesn't give us a clear cut answer regarding what the BIS builds could be.
Smite (their AOE spammable) does physical damage, Soulfire (their AOE dot) does Spiritual damage, the Guilty Soul proc also does Spiritual but requires Crits to proc and finally Prayer of Righteousness deals Spiritual damage too but doesn't scale with STR and does not require crits.

This leads to complications when it comes to finding the direction the BIS build should take so instead of making any assumptions I decided to brute force it:

• 6 different Gear Setups

• 4 potential Mastery builds

• 14 Renown Point allocations

resulted in a total of 90 unique builds (some combinations didn't make sense so that's why not all 6*4*14 = 336 permutations were tested)

I had to properly estimate the Guilty Soul procs, ticks and stacks for all builds which took a while, but the results should be accurate.
The methodology followed is similar to dw DOK's and you can read more about it here:
2h WP theorycrafting

As for the results themselves, I calculated the DPS output of all 90 2h WP build variations vs the 5 BIS enemy archetypes and in the end I decided to normalize the results as a fraction of the best output vs that archetype. Here's the results of the top 10 performing build variations or so:


The 3 character IDs correspond to the Gear (1 to 6), Masteries (A to D) and Renown/Talis/Pots used (α to ζ). More on the specifics can be found in the doc that was linked above. What's interesting is that on 2nd place (~96.5% of best output in all categories) we have a build that does not involve the Victorious Jewelry meaning that the pre-BIS is actually cheap.
The true BIS (~98.5% of best output in all categories) is probably one of my favorite RoR builds due to how unconventional it is. A couple little niche things it has going for it are:

• It uses the recently buffed Chivalrous Shoulders T2 Epic Quest reward, which can proc very reliably now especially due to the 40ft range of Smite
  

• It uses 5pc Victorious which is one of the only sources of dmg% bonus that still affect damage procs (Guilty Soul, Prayer of Righteousness)

• It also uses the Fortress Weapon meaning that you can proc Guile similar to WLs

other than it's a Crit-STR build.

Here's how these 2 best builds compare to dw AOE DOK and the other regular mdps that were previously examined:


Surprisingly, 2h WP has more or less the same AOE output as dw DOK and, similarly to DOK, it pales in comparison to other proper DPS classes.
Especially so if your targets are under Absolute Preservation where your damage becomes laughably low even compared to dok and especially towards proper dps like WL which is doing 2x or 3x your damage then:


2H has a Incoming Healdebuff and a WOU party proc going for him compared to dwDOK, but other than that it seems they also need certain buffs to catch up to the other dps classes. A buff to Smite/Essence Lash or to their respective AOE tactics should be the best approach to achieve that (since it would be mirrored).


You can find all the calculations and the results (final 3 sheets) in this spreadsheet

[Lucino]

Thanks a lot for the calculations for 2h wp! I was hoping someone with big brains would do those.

[Lucino]

Couple of questions:

1. I read a lot about people not using soulfire in their rotation. It is just smitespam. What does this do to the calculation?
2. What if you went for a flat WS statbuild?

You would use this for rr:
https://builder.returnofreckoning.com/r ... ;0;2;0;0;0

This for career:
https://builder.returnofreckoning.com/c ... 2111,32107

You gear setup 1 gives ws 491. You add 120 from rr, 191 from talis (7x24, 1x23), 35 from ring talis, 80 from tactic and 60 from lini = 977 ws.

Could go for fortress weapon for another 36 ws.

Str would be 612

[Lucino]

It would also be interesting to see if you could take into consideration defensives. It kinda looks like we need to go glasscanon to come near 70% of the damage on WL. While they still have less chance to be crit, etc.

[leftayparxoun]

Alright. Another update time.
After a private conversation with Halcite, I went ahead and tested a build he recommended that was not part of my testing: 5 Warlord 2 off-Sov 2 Victorious.
The build (abbreviated as REC) came toe to toe with the 4Aμ BIS I had calculated. Later today I found a small error in my calculations regarding Guilty Soul procs which when corrected shifted the results around:


The recommended build ends up being a bit better than the 4Aμ build.
The reason for this is because in the old Guilty Soul proc calculation, I had started counting the first Smite hit at 3 seconds in instead of 1.5.
The explanation on why the Recommended build caught up and surpassed the high crit build that focuses mainly on Guilty Soul (4Aμ) just by making this little change is because while high crit builds have a lot better GS damage early on in the fight (they stack it to 3 much faster), this advantage gets lost the longer the the fight goes on, where even midrange crit builds (like the 39% in Halcite's build) have 3 stacks on each target.
I used a 11 GCD rotation in my analysis, but in real fights you might see less than that. In those cases GS focused builds like the 4Aμ should perform better.

1. I read a lot about people not using soulfire in their rotation. It is just smitespam. What does this do to the calculation?

For the same 11 GCD rotation (after the above fix) I checked what happens if instead of 2 Soulfires we use 2 more Smites:


First of all we are seeing Halcite's build at the top, but a different contender emerges. I'm going to focus on the damage to non-tanks here since that's what you should care about in a wb. 3Aη is a 5 Victorious - 4 Warlord mix that similarly to Halcite's 5 Warlord 2 off-Sov 2 Victorious build in that it focuses in Crit, WS and STR.


As you can see the 3Aη build performs a bit better on healers and a bit worse on dps/tanks compared to Halcite's.
The reason why 4Aμ performs worse here is because that build basically ignores WS and stacks STR and Crit. This means that losing Soulfire that can both crit and does non-physical damage is a significant loss.

As for how non-Soulfire rotation compares to rotation with Soulfire, here is how the best builds compare:


You can see that the no-Soulfire rotation performs 10 to 15% worse. If a fight lasts a very short duration (e.g. 6 seconds) where Soulfire can only proc 1 or 2 times then it might not be worth using. Otherwise, if you can actually hit people with it, it's better DPS than just Smite-spam.

2. What if you went for a flat WS statbuild?

While I don't have the build you requested tested, the closest thing that I tested to it was 1Dη and 1Dθ:


Here is how the perform on the non-Soulfire rotation (since you want to Smite-spam to take advantage of the physical pen% you have):


They do quite ok vs Heals and Tanks, but fall short compared to Halcite's build or even 3Aη when it comes to DPS targets. Overall, not worth it.

It would also be interesting to see if you could take into consideration defensives. It kinda looks like we need to go glasscanon to come near 70% of the damage on WL. While they still have less chance to be crit, etc.

I don't have Halcite's build calculated, but for example regarding 4Aμ or 3Aη, we are looking at 735 and 745 WOU (with self-buff) and you will have +2.4 and -1.1% chance to be crit respectively (when the 4pc Victorious buff is up).

Chance to be crit is comparable to WL's (a bit higher) but Wounds are significantly lower. 40 ft on Smite should enable you to still do damage while having better positioning and as such not having as much incoming damage (in theory).

[Panzer80]

I want my old dps dok and wp back it feelt so much better both damage and rotation.

Im sure you do. It was OP af.

[Lucino]

Thank you leftayparxoun. I really appreciate you taking the time to calculate all this and asnwering my questions.

Do you know the details of the Halcite build? Which gear pieces? Which rr, talis, etc

I looked him up on killboard, but there he is still using the 6 warlord, 4 vic combo instead of the 5, 2, 2 build.

Or if you are reading this Halcite