So looking at Hurgon's setup, I wanted to pose a question to you fellow knights!
Rugged vs Emperor's Ward.
Rugged gives (me) 128 toughness which takes me from -72.4 DPS to -98 DPS.
Emperor's Ward however block 308 damage on a 25% chance on hit.
So, for me, the big question is "is this 308 damage pre-toughness/defense or is it post toughness/defense"?
Because if its all "equal" then
308/3seconds = ~102/sec mitigated damage.
So -25.6DPS means you need to get hit 4x a second for 3 seconds = 12x in 3 seconds to "equal" these out.
Not to mention the ward COULD be entirely eaten by 1 bigger blow for 600 which brings that hit down to <300 where as toughness would only mitigate it down to ~574 so Ward seems more beneficial against burst damage and probably CLOSE to, if not as good as, the -DPS from toughness.
It would get even better (ward would) if its all POST-DR numbers since then you would take current toughness and defense and resistances into play which means the figure is probably closer to 500-600 over 3 seconds.
Also, focused offense seems not worth the tradeoff. You lose Rugged or Emp Ward, and then lose another 33% armor (~20% damage resistance) to gain 15% damage which = about another ~75 STR equivalent. Eventhough you wont get "focused" much, I think that tradeoff will put extra stress on the healer since you should be guarding someone and will be taking several hits every few seconds if that person is MDPS, so eventhough your damage output goes up 15%, youll eat more damage, take some heals away from MDPS who could (in theory) spit out more than your increase in damage....
To look at this another way, if a melee attack hits you for 800 (after toughness), currently my armor (2367) mitigates 67.9% which nets it down to 256 damage. Going Focused Offense changes your Defense to 45.5% (~1600) which means that 800 attack now deals 436 - which is actually a (436/256) 70% increase in their damage!!!!!!!!! versus your 15%?!
Also, does anyone have any #s on soft-hard cap STR returns? Pre-soft cap (800) its 5:1%. It would be nice to know what it is post-soft cap to weight some stat returns such as extra toughness or WS.
Also, considering Weapon DPS gets multiplied by 150% in calculations for encounters, and STR is ~5:1% I think the blue PVP weapon is sub-par when compared to the Empire and Elf Tier 3 weapon rewards which boast more DPS and much higher STR than the PVP weapon. The only "value add" it has would be the AP/sec as well as 2% crit, which frankly might be over valued.
Crits for KOTBS are only a 50% damage boost, and while its important, 2% more crit at the cost of ~20-30 STR AND loss of weapon DPS is a big loss of consistent damage - both on AA and encounters. 2% crit is nice, but we already have 18% and going to 20% wont be a BIG boost in damage or frankly even burst potential. The chance of getting back to back crits goes from 3.24% to 4% which is hardly anything when compared to ~ 7+ % increase in total damage when you factor in STR/Weapon DPS from the Epic reward weapons.
Sure, I guess if you only care about KBs, going crit/focused offense makes more sense, but the total "value add" to the group is MUCH less than keeping yourself slightly tankier, spitting out on average 6%+ more damage.... Just my thoughts from trying to learn this 2H Knight stuff
