Mendanbar

Okay retard, it's entirely feasible that there is a weapon out there with a spread of 2-100. It is also entirely feasible that there is a weapon out there with a spread of 22-120. These weapons have the EXACT same amount of spread. One will own the shit out of the other. STFU.

Guess why the weapons with the damage spread of 199-200 don't exist? Because their "average" measure of equitability, Damage Rating, needs to be kept balanced, and to do that AND make weapons with high ends, the spread has to be made wider to make that average come into line. It's all interrelated. You're still wrong, "spread" doesn't mean shit, and to say that it's the spread and not just the high-end damage makes yourself look foolish and gives people the wrong info.

Antrig

Damage spread is important as it means that critical hits (normal damage roll x 1.3) are more likely to be less than the max damage, and therefore get boosted to max damage + 1.

Simple example - Vraksakin Claw Club (damage range 1-404) is godly for high melee crit classes (such as clerics).

Still puzzled why Gladius is more damage than Sabre - that just feels broken.

Mendanbar

If you're talking about wanting to do high damage, however, having that huge of a range actually hinders your damage. My point still stands, your rolls would be better if you had LESS of a spread. It's not the spread, it's that the spread enables higher end damage by making the lower end lower. Stop saying it's the spread, because a weapon with a higher low end but the same high end WILL consistently give you higher damage in the 1.3xRoll formula, as the roll will on average be higher every time :P

Dirge of Death

I agree with Mendanbar.

It's the high end in relation to the delay that are the important aspects at least in relation to critical hits when comparing otherwise like weapons. Assuming all things equal in terms of DR and Delay, than the weapon with the higher high end damage will be better (it as a product of having a higher high end and the same Damage Rating, will also have a lower low end- aka a larger spread). But what I think Mendanbar's point is that having a larger spread is just a balance, the larger range does nothing to help the weapon other than serving as a check damage rating wise that is allowing it to have the high high end, allowing it to critically hit for the most damage. In terms of landing high hits, having a lower low end doesn't help.

The whole discussion is really pretty pointless though (it happened on the SOE dirge forums a few months back and in the end we realized, I think, that we were all arguing over semantics). I prefer to think of it the way Mendanbar is describing it, but if thinking about it in terms of spread is more appealing to someone it doesn't much matter. A higher high end and a larger spread will both be present on good weapons with the same DR compared to bad weapons with lesser high ends and lesser spreads, this will be the case regardless of how one chooses to word it or think of it.

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Pinski

Big spreads give you a higher highend and lower lowend, which when combined with really high crit chance, or a crit robe, you end up getting a lot more dps than with a smaller spread.

We'll compare the 3 "popular" weapons, GDoH, Soulfire Sabre, and Bisected Saber. At 10% crit, the order is Bisected, Soulfire, GDoH. At 20% it's Soulfire, Bisected, GDoH. At 80% it's Soulfire, GDoH, Bisected. Of course, getting to 80% would mean you have a Crit Robe. Another weapon to compare with is the Dagger of Purity, which starts off at the top, but at 50% crits it drops below Soulfire.

So please stop saying it's not the spread. By the way, if you have a weapon with a higher low end and the same high end you now have a weapon with a much higher DR, so of course that weapons going to be better! If you want to compare weapons, do so with weapons that are similar. But according to you, the Bisected Saber is better than the Soulfire Sabre, which is completely untrue considering how easy it is to get 20% crits. While the GDoH is inferior to the Bisected in most cases, but if you get high enough crits(aka you have a crit robe), it is superior to the Bisected Saber, even though it's DR is far lower, and it has a much lower-low end while having only a few points different from the high end.

Also, just to let you know, all auto-attack crits give you 30% bonus, unless that 30% bonus takes you below normal max+1, in which case it will automatically do max+1 damage, thus making it so if you have really high crits, a bigger spread is better, thus the reason why a bigger spread is better in those cases, and why a weapon that is 30-273 vs. 87-262, the 30-273 starts winning out at really high crits.

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Mendanbar

No, I know, I guess my point was it's just a partial misnomer to say that it's the spread though. The spread gets to be large, as both you and I said just because they need to keep things like the DR average balanced. Dirge hit my point on the head pretty much. Spread is affected by balancing, and through causality of their design, most weapons with big spreads happen to be better than those without, particularly if their high end damage is higher. It is not the spread itself that makes the weapon awesome though, it's the high end damage. Your 30-273 weapon will win out there because of really high crits, if you found one with 31-273, it would beat it, even though it has a smaller spread. It's semantics, yes, but it's how the mechanics work. People are arguing that weapons are better because of a side-product of what makes the weapon good rather than the actual motivator, see what I mean? :P

And I already know what your response is going to be... if the low end is higher and the high end is the same, then the damage rating isn't the same, but tbh, I don't really care, that wasn't what started this argument, hell, the start of this thread was people yelling at each other to not pay attention to the DR at all because it doesn't matter, so I don't feel too bad about boiling it down to just the low end and high end but not the "spread" :P

twoboxer

Don't feel bad, just feel wrong.

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Mendanbar

Except it's not wrong, nice try, jackass.

alaya

it's sad how people read something once and when no one jumps in and tells them that it's fucking bullshit they will keep on repeating it, denying everything else even though they aren't able to actually write down a rational argument.

if you look at the weapons everyone is wearing, next to none of them has the same dmg rating as the other, as soon as that is the case the spread doesn't mean anything at all, if you don't get that, you have no clue of math or the game mechanics.
now what was said over and over again here is that only the max dmg matters when looking at crits (together with the delay of course), which is comparable throughout all weapons no matter what their dmg rating is, spread is not!

i have no clue when or where some crazy guy came up with spread as a buzzword, but it has to go if people want to be taken seriously.

twoboxer

I agree pretty much with the rest of what you said, and once you know what's going on the shortcut way of thinking about it that you prefer is perfectly appropriate.

Trouble is, others who take the shortcut advice come up with the wrong answers more often than perhaps you think. And that's because - as you admit above - spread, DR, and delay are the important things. Pinski's example shows why.

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