SS vs GH vs Lion atma and Twilight Dagger problem?Follow

Well first off, we're really dealing with a huge sh*t is situational game now so I can't give any hard and cut rules, but I'll say this to your thoughts.

First off. Atma of Lion versus (other atma) -- Atma of the lion gives 10% triple attack rate which is nice, but it also gives thunder elemental magic attack (useless on thief), and physical damage taken -10% (situationally useful dependent on your activities). Atma of the alpha and the omega on the other hand gives 10% triple attack increase (idential to the lion), 50 attack and -25% hp, so again...what are you doing? I'd take alpha omega long before lion if I was fighting lesser game mobs or farming generic stuff or exp allying, but if I wanted to tank or was fighting high level NMs with really damaging attacks I'd shy away from AO.

Twilight Knife -- I actually never liked the knife alongside our other daggers. I don't know why, but it was never a fav of mine. My thoughts on this are limited due to the fact that I rarely used it.

Gnarled Horn versus SS -- I like this tradeoff. Really I do!! The difference between 20% crit hit rate and 30% crit damage however will boil down to different aspects of our DoT spectrum. SS will increase sneak and trick attack by considerable amounts (30% stronger than before) but the effects on DoT and unstacked WS damage are difficult to measure. The law of diminishing returns applies to critical hit rate as you close in on the 95% cap and we'd still have a 59% DoT crit rate with af3 legs + razed (higher % in WS because crit rate % is boosted on evisceration), but a crit raises pDIF by 1.0 and adds the razed ruins/crit attack bonus traits damage which a non crit doesn't get, so 20% crit rate versus 30% damage is more than just linear math. Sanguine Scythe will have a significant impact on Rudra's Storm/Shark Bite and Mercy Stroke (also Man Stab for Vajra users) whereas gnarled horn is nearly useless in raising those weaponskills damage (50 agi on ta versions is it). The secondary benefits of SS vs GH are counter and 50 agi versus enmity and max hp + 30%, and I like the HP/enmity more than I do the agi/counter. 50 agi is a small bonus to ta damage relative to our total DoT spectrum and the counter is nice but still a fairly low %. 25 eva is nice but I already have a powerful eva swap and have high parry skill now, so I prefer 30% HP to 25% more eva (I also like the enmity increase tbh). I like the SS extra perks more than the GH. SS is a damn awesome tanking atma though, so at the very least when I'm tanking I intend to swap from GH >>> SS.

I could offer sh*t is situational scenarios where you spend more time TA/SA than DoT (HNMs where you're just increasing TH levels while waiting on weakness proc or w/e ...... and this possibly has voidwatch implications but that event is young so I don't know what strategies will be used on higher eschelon bosses or what the role of atma will be after it's figured out). In these cases SS >>>> GH once more.

I've found too many sh*t is situational situations to go by a hard rule of thumb, so I work off basic principles and gauge how effective a setup seems. I judge pros and cons of my choices and use what I like best for the stuff I'm doing. If it's highly effective then I stick with it.

EDIT: I did do some basic numbers on the difference between SS/RR/GH versus GH/RR/AOA and posted them here. While the considerations of DoT between GH and SS are fuzzy, it's a given that RR/AoA + either SS OR GH is better than a full RR/GH/SS combo. It's not worth sacrificing AoA to have both, so if you want to ago the DD rout then use either GH or SS and keep RR/AoA.

Edited, May 12th 2011 7:31am by Melphina

Minor edit, We can merit crit rate up to 5% now... :D

Its ok Melphina, I actually totally forgot about it until I saw your post, and I spent 15 merits getting sword from 2 to 7 last night for my pld.

For some reason I had thought AO had Double Attack, not Triple Attack.

So then it boils down to tanking 3rd Atma. For pure DD: Lion vs GH vs SS. Excluding their additional useful buffs (HP, counter, pdt etc) as those are really just personal prefferance, I wonder of the three which would be your generic best 3rd atma when you don't want the -HP of AO?

Melphina, use ranged attacks. There is little to no variance in damage from hit to hit and you could tell whether it does 20% or 30% much easier.

That explains my original discrepencies in this post since I was using my ranger to gather data. I just gathered some numbers on thf/war with ziskas and bloody bolts.

EDIT: Gathered a few numbers here. Thf//war using ziska's crossbow and bloody bolts against lizards in konstant abyss.

normal melee hit

111
113
115
112
113
115
113
111

Critical damage with no crit atma

147
147
153
156
156
156
154
147
152

Critical damage with only Razed Ruins

222
224
218
222
222
224
222
218

Critical damage with only Sanguine Scythe

222
215
224
220

Critical damage with both Razed Ruins AND Sanguine Scythe

240
253
253
253
253
246
243

And with that I have to head to work. I don't even have time to analyze the numbers >.<.

RE-EDIT: I had a chance to break that down and yeah, it's a 30% increase.

Edited, May 13th 2011 6:01am by Melphina

I posted the new memloc the other day, but probly wasn't very noticeable. Uploaded new version of KParser with new memloc, along with revisions to the Extra Attack tab coding. Will make the public postings later tonight when I have more time.