Israphil

Hammer of the Dragonborn is quite good as well for dps; I, like artwat, however use the cudgel of pain atm. wasn't about to spend dkp on it, but 10p from the broker ftw.

Mephiston

hmm theres a Hammer of the Dragonborn for sale on the broker atm, any ideas how well it parses. from a melee perspective?

Israphil

No, but its max/min is over 10, and it has decent stats...it's gotta be good.

Mephiston

aye, just hope the guy takes sumthing lower than the 70 hes asking lol.


guess ill see

LFG

Hey Art - I'll let you look at mine.

(I outbid Itoock for mine when I was in Disso, I think he isn't pissed at me anymore, so it was worth it )

__________________

Artwat

Stoic, there is one problem with what you pointed out. It is not just the max dmg and dly.

The way the melee hits work is that it will random a nmber in the spread (for ease in example I'll just throw out some numbers), like vraksakin is 1-400. So you swing, and hit the mob, If you hit for anything less than 310 ish? (top of my head) it will be 401 once you crit, as a crit = hit x 1.33 or max + 1. So therefore, if you parse it, your magic number (the number that shows up the majority of the time) will be 401, barring your strength and the mob in not debuffed. Which means, you only have a 20% chance or so to hit over 401.

What all this means is, the spread DOES affect your dps. a weapon with a spread of 100-130 will have an equal chance of hitting for 131 as it would 130 x 1.33. A weapon with a spread of 110-130 will NEVER hit for minimum (in this case 131) but will hit for 130x 1.33 5% of the time.

So we can take from this that a weapon with a smaller spread will technically be better. However, the max damage does still apply as well as delay. The delay of the weapon is very situational however. If your like me and have my spec as well as have a dirge just about always, faster weapons will benefit more from 1) 40% chance to proc Bolt of Pain 2) 20% chance to proc Tomb's Calm and 3) CoB procs.

Since those are not normalized, a faster weapon will take more advantage out of those.

Ephrael

Spinesnapper is a fine melee weapon. Procs is what matters if you want to dps espically for the battle clerics since it procs off melee, it has a +crush as well.

__________________
Ephrael of Paradigm
Inner Council

Namai

I have a Hammer of the Dragonborn and a Maul of the Wardens Fist on my Inquisitor. Although I dont have parses on hand, the hammer does parse a reasonable amount higher. Since it also has a proc on it, as opposed to FT, it actually ends up adding a decient amount to your DPS. The faster delay on it makes it harder to time casts between swings, but that is its only real drawback.

Would still take a Vraksakin Claw Club if one ever drops for us.

Kavoc

Isn't the point of having a wide damage range is so that even if you hit for the 1 (in 1-400) you still crit for 401?

Your imaginary weapon (with a range of 110-130) will always get a straight 30% boost in damage per hit, but a weapon with a range of 1-400 will only have a minimum boost of 30%, and anything that hits below 310 normally, will have recieved a greater than 30% boost. If you hit for the 1, then wouldn't you end up recieving a greater than 400% boost to damage?

Wouldn't that (procs aside) effectively make the Vraksakin better than your imaginary weapon, assuming that the weapons are approximate "equals" in SOE's eyes, and both weapons have a delay that would give about the same listed damage rating? Based upon the way that SOE balances weapons, a weapon that could consistenly hit for 401-401 with no crits would have to have about an 8sec delay to achieve the same listed damage rating as the 4sec delay gives on the Vraksakin.

Artwat

It would all depend on the delay of the 110-130 wep. I dont believe one exists, but the point of my post was that for a higher zonewide/average dps, you'd need a smaller range to guarantee a higher boost. However, If you have the 110-130 wep with even half the delay of the vraksakin, the vrak will still outdps it. You would need the 110-130 to have about 1/4ish (around 1.3ish? to the 4.0) of the vraksakin's delay to break even.

So your best bet with the current and possible future itemization is to go with a wep like the vrak, however, given the ability to get a weapon that will guarantee to hit over min everytime, it will maximize the effects of 100% crit.