Warrior Math

Shedrin

So I was in a bit of a "number-y" mood, so I made a spreadsheet of warrior wounding over time.

Link (Warning: ugly)

Feel free to make a copy and play with the numbers.

Notes:

• The attack speed base is set to 3.5s. I'm not sure how all the following combines together: speed enhancement, lightning combatstyle, racial bonuses, balance bonuses.
• The hinder time means how much time the warrior loses from attacking, aka they would've been on balance and not stunned/webbed/whatever, so they lose that many seconds of attacking per minute. Also includes hitting parry and losing time from that. Feel free to adjust to whatever approximation you think is accurate for various situations.

Interesting stats:

• 2-handed specs deal 20% more wounds per round, but that means a lot more than in wounds per minute. Because ice curing is a set amount per second (ignoring stuns, aeon, locks, lag etc for now), the higher amount of wounds 2-handers do makes them deal about 50% more over time, and significantly more than that if counting hindering.
• Two warriors hitting the same target deal significantly more than double the amount of wounds. The reasoning is the same as above, just even more exacerbated. This also applies to any "pressure-based" kill strategy (e.g. damage, mana kills, tk vessels), so isn't unique to warriors. This does show why focusing a target is very important, and why escaping when you've been targeted in a group is paramount. Also shows the difficulty of balancing solo and group in Lusternia.
• Even 10s of hindering (16% hindering time) reduces a warrior's net wounds output by 30% to 40%.
  

Subjective thoughts:

• The extra wounding that 2-handers do is potentially too much. There are drawbacks to 2-handers, notably less afflicting prowess, and somewhat harder instakill requirements, though.
• Using non-ice modifiers is very dubious. Increasing attack speed but lowering wounds output to compensate would make warrior afflicting more usable. This also lowers the wounding gap between 1-handers and 2-handers.
  
• A return of the group warrior interference penalty might be warranted.
• I probably made a significant mistake somewhere, let me know!
  

Xenthos

The significant mistake that I'm seeing is this: When you do an affliction with a weapon, you do no wounding at all.  You are choosing to do wounding OR affliction, but not both.

1h weapons can choose to do 2 afflictions, 1 affliction or 1 wound application, or 2 wound applications.

2h weapons can choose to do 1 affliction OR 1 wound application (which, as you indicate, does a little more than the 2-wound option from 1h weapons).

As such, the moment a 2her starts applying afflictions, their wound buildup effectively acts as if the user got webbed / hindered whereas 1hers can still keep some wounding pressure going.

Wounding by itself does nothing at all really, it's the afflictions that are important, so you also need to take the afflictions into account in consideration.

* Note: There is an envoy report in to address this disparity.  At that point, it MAY be worth looking into adjusting the 2h weapon wounding bonus, but that will require testing.  Dual-wielding specs will still have the advantage of 2x the chance at afflictions and 2x the chance of poison procs, though (and that's what the wounding bonus is meant to counteract-- 2h weapons giving more wounding, 1h weapons giving better affliction control & distribution).

Shedrin

Xenthos said:

The significant mistake that I'm seeing is this: When you do an affliction with a weapon, you do no wounding at all.  You are choosing to do wounding OR affliction, but not both.

1h weapons can choose to do 2 afflictions, 1 affliction or 1 wound application, or 2 wound applications.

2h weapons can choose to do 1 affliction OR 1 wound application (which, as you indicate, does a little more than the 2-wound option from 1h weapons).

As such, the moment a 2her starts applying afflictions, their wound buildup effectively acts as if the user got webbed / hindered whereas 1hers can still keep some wounding pressure going.

Wounding by itself does nothing at all really, it's the afflictions that are important, so you also need to take the afflictions into account in consideration.

* Note: There is an envoy report in to address this disparity.  At that point, it MAY be worth looking into adjusting the 2h weapon wounding bonus, but that will require testing.  Dual-wielding specs will still have the advantage of 2x the chance at afflictions and 2x the chance of poison procs, though (and that's what the wounding bonus is meant to counteract-- 2h weapons giving more wounding, 1h weapons giving better affliction control & distribution).

I didn't specify in my post, but I did remember the envoy report and I expressed my support for it. My position on that report hasn't changed. Though it is something to watch out for when especially in a situation where a warrior is being hindered, the 2-handed spec is doing that much more wounds.

Tangentially, even ice affliction modifiers are equal to a lower effective wound buildup. Each ice affliction is effectively 4 wounds (one apply), while a normal strike is 1 (or 2 potentially for 2-handers under the report) more than that. So if going for a warrior kill, each modifier used has to have a very good reason, such as significantly hindering the opponent to stop them from hindering you, or allowing bypassing of parry to hit a higher priority bodypart.

Which reminds me, these numbers are just a general wounds number, and don't take into account the various bodyparts. It's pretty rare against anyone competent that you have free reign to hit your choice bodypart. They'll parry, and you have to spend time hitting other parts to draw them away/build up to modifiers to bypass the parry.

Synkarin

I think on a basic level - this is accurate, but when you get into the nuances it's going to start staggering greatly. 

Just for more 1 hand vs 2 hand disparity, on any general hit - a two hander deals 3 ice applications worth of wounds to one body part. A one hander can deal a strike to two different body parts and effectively apply 4 applications of ice to cure due to the fact 1 wound is light wounds. This plays a big part because I can now break legs (more ice applications) and move my hits around to pull applying pressure elsewhere. This is obviously not true every single round, but that 1 wound sticking around enables a more varied offense, and lets me take advantage of other things. If they spend the time curing that 1 wound - they've wasted wound curing that could be done elsewhere.

My general feel is that 2-handers do no have enough variance in their strategies (wound or aff), and I don't think the 20% wound increase is enough. 

Shedrin

I feel there's a lot of modifiers that aren't very good, especially among the 2-hander specs. Pre-Overhaul, not only did 2-handers deal more wounds, they also had better afflictions and at lower wounds levels. I don't feel that's not really true anymore, with some exceptions. Though, I don't yet have the lessons to test any spec other than Blademaster at the moment, so I'm largely extrapolating on that and observing other warriors.

Deichtine

Ive a big old bag of numbers and spreadsheets on this already folks. Looking at all warrior specs most modifier are not worth the time, most are junky fillers it seems with some very very situational uses.

But well one point you just made is we can't look at wound generation in itself. You need to look at the abilities and afflictions that go with them. Just straight up buffing the wounding/affliction of 2handers dosn't take into account the state of play of the different two hander specs, they are really different it seems.

Heavy wounds is fairly easy and quick to reach for a few body parts, critical wounds is vastly harder to get to than heavy wounds are to maintain.

Axelord seems pretty strong, probably the top 1v1 and group spec I can see on paper and in practice, its instant kill is based on three areas, 2 heavy 1 crit, dosnt matter which, which makes it harder to parry against. This lets it bypass parry in an easier way by the simple mechanic of just not having to target anywhere it dosnt want to. It has mutlegs and paralysis at heavy which is decent for hindering and an easy prone for more hindering. The rest of the afflictions are eh sort of why bother it seems, except in exceptional circumstances.

So it can just focus on building wounds and then using wound based afflictions to hinder so its not really got much downtime for afflicting. Axelord needs min 145 wounds to kill vs good parry and the kill is then unavoidable no way to parry or stop it.

Bonecrusher needs crit head wounds to kill, so a focus on the parry on head forces a build up to get critical wounds on the chest. Crit chest wounds are a requirement to be able to build wounds on the head through parry. Bonecrushers have literally the best defensive hindering that I can see. Not much offensive hindering though for stopping runners, no double mutilates etc

Bonecrushers are quite bad at getting around parry compared to other warrior specs they rely upon the chest stun, nothing else will actually work.(Aside from cheezing your balance recovery time with tons of artifacts) They don't have the ability to double mutilate prone 

Bonecrushers need an effective 150 wounds min to kill vs a good parry but they can also hinder very well with double limb breaks and these hinders simply do not slow down the building of wounds what so ever. Even once critical head and chest wounds is reached the brain bash still wont go off automatically like the axelord kill. A successful parry will stop a brainbash combo. No way around this for the bonecrusher other than a lucky proc on poisons or a lucky failed parry or lucky beast spit hit so the bonecrusher instant kill relies on a fair bit of luck at the end.

Blademasters I've seen a few but its hard to judge them exactly, the ones I've seen I think can do better in general and I'm beating them often because their parry isn't up todate for them, I'd need more experience to judge it right. 

Blademasters are akin to bonecrushers in that they can go for the double limb breaks to hinder without slowing down wounding.  They have a few advantages and disadvantages vs them though. Blademasters have more versatility in their options with critical leg/arm wounds. They are like bonecrushers in that they can technically kill with just one part at critical but against anyone with a good parry they will want at least the gut to high wounding levels as well as the chest.

The Blademaster instant kill seems a bit more reliable than the bone crusher due to remiss, being able to set up a potential parry bypass. Still on paper and with a few spars to me it looks like you'll want at last crit on both chest and guts to make the instakill more safe.

Cavs and pure blades I've just not simply seen enough of them to give any valid criticism or judgements but they both seem to suffer from the same problems that some of the other specs have, an over reliance on one to two bodyparts for all the good afflictions so shut down by an effective parry when it comes to the instant kill. I mean looking at Cav on paper I can't see why I cant just parry gut like 100% of the time at high wounds as they need crit gut, crit chest and me impaled. So the parry should just keep catching the impale so to do the insta kill reliably they'd need to double mutilate my legs to bypass the parry and have crit on two body parts which seems like a lot of wounding compared to what the other warriror specs need. Unless I'm not understanding how the cav works.

Just boosting the wounding that these specs do wont fix their underlying problems and it seems like it would just make the axelord instant kill even more of a race against time. 

Deichtine

@Synkarin Hi ya just a few quick numbers you were asking about.

Striking 3.3 seconds, standard buffs in lightning stance. With a level 3 agility boost. 

Ice curing works out at 1.6 per second.

Knock down parry=1.515 wounds per second. Knockdown/strike cant build wounds on a parried target if the enemy is able to apply ice.

Knock down strike only becomes a potentially possible wound building tool if you are able to strike at aprox 3.1 seconds when at this point you just start to out pace ice curing. Any small hindering will stop you right in your tracks though. Plus I've not even been able to come close to that kind of speed boost even with lolipops so it seems a crazy speed to be ya Also even then a smidge of hindering would stop the wound build.

Knock down aint bad, its got its place but it is not a wound builder.

I can't quite find the figures I had on the stun at the moment sorry! I may have them saved on a different computer  but from what I remember the chest stun has to reach approx 2 seconds only in order for it to ever so slightly outpace wound curing at a stun level of three seconds it starts to out pace it rapidly. Don't quote me on this one just yet until I check it out though.

The other sort of kinda issue with knock down as a parry bypass is that it dosn't jell with the instant kill issue we talked about.  The blackout is too short to be used in an earlier combo, the chest black out is similar in that the blackout is cured before you recover balance.

So for smash brain to work you need to smashhead/brainbash in the same combo. You also need a head wound affliction on before that takes 4 seconds to cure at critical so against you need to

1. strike(anything but stun is the best)/strike blackeye and then 2. strike smashhead/strike brainbash.

The knock down or stun will cover the first part of bypassing parry but the second combo simply fails vs parry.

There's no way for a bonecrusher to land brainbash without a bit of luck in that the smashhead strike bypasses parry on its own luck or a beast spit paralysis isn't shrugged etc.

Its a good idea to use the stun+double para poisons on the first combo because with the 3 second stun at crit if the para hits they won't have cured it before the kill lands but still that requires a bit of luck. Unlike other warrior instakills that are more reliable such as the axelord one.

You can stack the odds in your favour but at the end of the day you are really relying on a lucky poison proc or just randomly bypassing parry to get a kill.

Also well poisons trade skill and mantakya immunity plus parry head 100% means that to get a kill the bonecrusher is pretty much entirely reliant upon just hoping that your 100% parry dosn't proc on a power based combo

Deichtine

Oh side note, the only reliable way to bypass the parry for the brain bash is to get speed enhancements, weighted enchantment, lightning stance and enough artifacts to give you a level 4 agility balance boost. Then you can do that combo I listed but the stun will last long enough for you to land the final kill during it to bypass parry.

So you can get all artifacted up to get the level 4 speed or you can pray for a random parry bypass to kill people. Although to be fair you can then defend against this kill with an artifacts of your own as well sooo its maybe a bit of a artifacts arms race

Shedrin

Veyils said:

Ice curing works out at 1.6 per second.

Is that a theoretical change or what you've noticed it is now?

Deichtine

okk weird I was working out ice balance at like 2.5 seconds so my calcuations are off in favor of the curer sorry.

Shedrin

I think it's supposed to be 2s. Or maybe 2.2s? My testing has been around there, but it's hard to test with ping and server tics.

Synkarin

All I've looked at has been around 2s as well.

Deichtine

yes your right its 2 seconds, getting 2.23 as an average which makes sense for normal latency etc etc. 

No idea where i got the 2.5 seconds time from now I think about it well it means that the knock down thingy is even less effective than I thought then. 

Sorry about that.

Deichtine

Shedrin said:

Veyils said:

Ice curing works out at 1.6 per second.

Is that a theoretical change or what you've noticed it is now?

Ohh sorry I worded that super bad. I ment to say it works out at aprox 1.6 wounds per second over an average time scale.

Deichtine

yea my post looks a bit of a mess now I go over it.

Point stands but I've just explained it horribly.

Shedrin

I feel Bonecrusher is in a pretty good spot. Sure there's no 100% reliable way to land a Bashbrain, but it's more reliable than most (Execute being the big outlier). I think instas should be balanced to be around Bashbrains level. But notably, they have good modifiers, especially on the head and chest. Head is notable because while you're building towards your instakill, you also open up options to use some decent afflictions. Granted, damagedthroat is more of a group thing than useful 1v1 without some good poison rng.

Eviscerate is a little wonky, but there's some special reports pending that should help it a lot. The chest modifiers for BM aren't great. Asthma is reliant on other afflictions (requiring more wounds) to do anything, and paralysis has similar problems to knockdown in addition to the fact that the bodypart you'd want to bypass parry on is usually chest anyway (also, it's readily available as a poison, which if you really need it is 100% for BM with Stab). Sensitivity has a role in groups, though. Double damaged legs is alright, though doesn't hinder anything on it's own unless you can sprawl along with it (morphite rng). Mutilate is really nice at crit, though. Arms are garbage, there's no damaged arms modifier, it's only available through remiss, which is a heavy penalty to wounds building due to power and that it does no wounds by itself. Gut doesn't contribute to any hindering, and the bleeding from InternalBleeding is very ignorable I feel. DamagedOrgans is about a 33% to 50% penalty on curing balanced, which sounds nice, but it's yet another thing that requires multiple other afflictions to gain any benefit.

Axelord has another nice advantage that mutilateleg is at heavy, though that won't necessarily let you bypass parry on it's own.

I'll put my disclaimer here that I'm mostly an average warrior atm, though getting better I feel.

Shedrin

Shedrin said:

Arms are garbage, there's no damaged arms modifier (actually I'm just an idiot), it's only available through remiss,

Ok, I knew I wasn't crazy. Despite the AB, it still does clumsiness.

Deichtine

I do agree I feel bonecrusher is in a pretty good state as far as I can tell.

I suppose it depends on how you want the warrior insta kills to work. Unavoidable at high wounds like the axelord or still potentially avoidable with proper parry and luck like blademaster/bonecrusher.

EDIT: The double leg breaks hinders monks katas though @Shedrin if a monk is going crazy on you if you spam double break arm/legs you can get some pretty good breathing space and it won't slow your wounding either.

Shedrin

Veyils said:

I do agree I feel bonecrusher is in a pretty good state as far as I can tell.

I suppose it depends on how you want the warrior insta kills to work. Unavoidable at high wounds like the axelord or still potentially avoidable with proper parry and luck like blademaster/bonecrusher.

Personally, I think there should be a high chance of getting the kill off at critical of the relevant bodypart, and the difficulty should be in getting that bodypart to critical. I think this lines up best with how long it takes to get one specific bodypart to critical, or two specific bodyparts to two. I'm not set in stone on this, though.

Ushaara

If any warrior envoys need to fill a slot, having the periodic blackout ticks of collapsed lung made visible, like old vapors ticks used to be, would be nice!

Collapsed lung: 1s blackout on an 8s tick, 4s ice cure as a critical chest aff for BCs (uncertain if  other specs get it earlier?)

Deichtine

Ushaara said:

If any warrior envoys need to fill a slot, having the periodic blackout ticks of collapsed lung made visible, like old vapors ticks used to be, would be nice!

Collapsed lung: 1s blackout on an 8s tick, 4s ice cure as a critical chest aff for BCs (uncertain if  other specs get it earlier?)

I honestly do not think any other warrior spec gets collapsed lung.

Lerad

Nekotai do, but they're getting revamped, anyway.