WM: Now that Slow & Interrupt are free, do we need Focused Leap?

[neeman]

Pre 1.2, I found it necessary to pick up Focused Leap from the Combat tree in order to ensure that I could reliably cast a 50% slow with Leg Slash and/or interrupt my target. Now that slowing and interrupting are essentially Focus-free, it seems to me that Focused Leap may no longer be necessary.

 

Our standard opening without Focused Leap would be Leap (3) -> OS (0) -> ZS (6) -> C (4[+1 via Burning Focus=5]) -> MS (1). The likelihood that Burning Focus will proc us that key +1 Focus is 30% per DoT tick; OS will tick twice and C will tick once, giving us a 90% likelihood to proc it. (Not really worth anything, but, out of 40 trials, I got it 30 times. Looking for yellow damage, it at least appears that three ticks come off before I would hit MS.)

 

If what I've said so far is correct, then putting two points into Focused Leap for the sake of our opening is basically a very expensive way to change a 90% gamble into an 100% guarantee. If you, like me, would put your house on a 90% gamble, the next question is where else to put those two talent points.

 

For reference, I'm 33/3/5 (http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/jedi_knight/sentinel/#::f5ef6df7e5fe11f10e2f7: ) currently. (So as to dissuade off-topic spec talk: unless they ever make it so that offhand damage scales with the ability, the math proves DWM to be very negligible; given that Crusader can proc only once every 3s, a 50% chance every 1.5s is fine with me; now that Sorcs can no longer hybrid into 0/13/28, the most prevalent instant AoE attack is out of the game; and I generally favor Transcendence over Zen.) If I were to untalent Focused Leap, I think I would honestly consider Swift Slash. With about a 30% melee crit chance from gear, 5% from buff, and 15% from Swift Slash, I would be critting 50% of the time with Slash. Now, I don't exactly like to use Slash, but I find I still regularly do. Turning it into a 2k damage nuke is for better or worse attractive to me -- unless one of you reasons otherwise?

[Swarna]

Focused Leap was never "necessary" to begin with. It offered smoother rage generation under the assumption that you were starting from scratch AND starting with leap. Under those circumstances, it would (at best) save you a global and basic attack.

 

Talent trees are highly dependent on personal preferences. Take Close Quarters, for example. I'd argue that you'd very rarely make use of Leap within 5m, especially now that you're dropping Focused Leap. You can strafe a step or 2 backwards a global beforehand if you were planning to use it as an interrupt. As such, 1/2 CQ would suffice for 99% of situations (in my experience, of course).

 

Since you don't want to take Defensive Roll and (apparently) Force Fade, it looks like you're looking to increase your damage output a little bit. I'd suggest you fire up a combat parser and see how much of your overall damage comes from Slash in any given warzone.

 

In my case, it makes up a very small fraction (<5%) which discourages me from taking Swift Slash. Most of the time I'm building rage in between Cauterizes, Merciless Slashes, and Overload Saber to use them right away off CD, anyways.. In terms of damage-dealing, I suspect that Dual-Wield Mastery would actually give me more bang for the 2 points because around 60% of my damage comes from every DW melee attacks (based on my WZ parses) as opposed to the less than 5% coming from Slash. I'm not sure why you're under the impression that offhand hits don't scale with abilities. My Merciless Slash OH hits are hitting twice as hard as my Slash OH hits. Furthermore, DWM 3/3 is adding 100-500 to all my OH hits (depending on the ability) and double that to my OH crits with no relics or adrenals against 35% mitigation targets. Considering that those abilities account for ~60% of my damage, I'd take that over the 15% critical chance on a rarely used single move. Of course, you'd have to do your own parses and calculate the math yourself to decide conclusively.

 

I personally prefer utility talents like Force Fade and Defensive Roll in any case. But w/e.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Swarna

[neeman]

Yea, opening up a parser would certainly be the way to do it. I try to avoid using Slash as much as possible, but I'm quite surprised that its overall DPS totals less than 5% for you. As WM mechanics are generally the same, I imagine a sober look at the numbers would show me something similar.

 

Now, as far as DWM and OH mechanics go -- I've been away from the game for a little bit, but when I left the consensus (on these forums) was that OH attacks did not scale with the ability used. To quote myself from another thread:

 

"Your offhand weapon does (assuming it has the same hilt as your mainhand), without Dual Wield Mastery, 30% of your /base/ mainhand damage (i.e. no bonus from stats) at a base 57-63% accuracy. So, with Dual Wield Mastery, you're doing on average 66%*60% (let's say) = 39.6% of your mainhand's base damage range in offhand extra damage per strike that uses the second saber. This is 21.6% more than it would be untalented. Each talent point in Dual Wield Mastery thus buys an extra 7.2% of your base weapons damage (Strength or Power bonuses not being applicable) to the attacks that use the offhand.

 

"To put this into perspective, the damage range of a Champion saber is 302-453, avg 378. With one point in Dual Wield Mastery, as many builds call for, you're looking at a +27.2 dmg increase. With three points, you'd get a +81.6 dmg increase. Mind you, this is with T2 gear. +81.6 extra /weapons/ damage at that point, although I suppose it'll add up over large sequences, is really not that much."

 

Is this confirmed not to be the case? If OH damage scales with the ability used, the points will go most assuredly into DWM.

 

I didn't care much for Defensive Roll pre-1.2, as some AoEs could be avoided altogether, but now that Sages can no longer use TWave off of PoM procs, it seems even more useless to me. No complaints with Force Fade, just haven't got around to trying it out yet.

[Swarna]

You're correct about the amount of base damage you're buying per talent point of DWM (usually between 7-8% of your main-hand's base damage, depending on your accuracy bonus). Your OH damage DOES scale with abilities, btw, the same way your MH damage does. If the melee damage on your stat sheet is, say, 700, and you add 70 damage to that to make it 770, all your melee abilities would hit exactly 10% harder in relation to before because you have 10% more of the damage stat. The damage added isn't a static increase to your melee ability but rather a number that is multiplicative with it. Merciless Slash has around twice the multiplier of Slash, as an example. A stat damage increase would add around double the actual damage dealt to your MS than it would to your Slash. This is how it works for your OH as well and it has always been this way to my knowledge.

 

An OH hit for Merciless Slash deals almost double the damage an OH hit for Slash does. With 3/3 in DWM, the OH hits on any given ability is 2.2x (0.66 talented modifier divided by 0.30 modifier) stronger.

 

For reference, in full BM gear on a fleet training dummy my Annihilates (Merciless Slash mirror) that are hitting for 1800-2400 from the MH yield OH hits in the 400-500 range with 3/3 DWM. Without DWM, they would hit for 180-240ish. With my basic attacks they're hitting for ~200 as opposed to the ~100 they would hit for if untalented. Crits weren't taken into account. It's a marginal damage increase (potentially adds 0-500 damage to all DW attacks when taking into account accuracy and crits), but before doing the math it seems obvious to me that it's better than Swift Slash at the very least.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Swarna

[neeman]

Looking through a parser, it is clear that OH damage does scale with the ability. I wonder if you have ready access to the ability coefficients here?

 

Oddly enough, with Swift Slash, just over 15% of my total damage is coming from Slash, using Merciless, Master Strike, OS, C, ZS, essentially whenever they're off CD and can reasonably be cast (e.g., C not significantly overwriting itself, Merciless typically being cast after C, etc.). It's hard for me to imagine that that 10%+ is due to my critting on Slash, so perhaps we're doing something different after all.

 

About 12.5% is coming from Master Strike, here being cast under ideal conditions (i.e., against a dummy that does not move). Makes me question Master Focus a bit.

 

I'd be interested in peeking at your build, if you'd care to share it.

Edited April 19, 2012 by neeman

[Swarna]

I was talking about warzone parses since I assumed this was a PVP discussion where we'd be talking about dropping damage on 16k-ish HP targets one at a time. In a raiding parse, Slash is definitely be a larger contributor.

 

I don't have a concrete build. I've been respecing quite a bit and trying out various talents over the past couple of days. This is what I currently have going (32/8/1) :

 

http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/jedi_knight/sentinel/#::fe2f2ef6df6e6fde9f12cf7

 

Keep in mind I primarily solo queue and use Zen much more than I use Transcendence. I also play a very aggressive Rambo-like playstyle often taking on more than one enemy by myself, so my talent choices are thus reflective of that.

 

Master Focus, Insight, DWM, and Swift Slash are all nice minor damage-boosting talents (most being mandatory for increasing raid DPS), but they're too "minor" in my mind to place precedence over utility talents. I honestly didn't even notice when I took points out of them, but was immediately noticing serious drawbacks to not having utility talents. Defensive Roll (by itself but even moreso when used in combination with defensive CD's like Rebuke and Camo) allows you to brush off lots of fire and poison damage in the pit, laugh at AOE-spec'd warriors/knights, surprise a Sniper when he feels safe sitting inside his own Orbital Strike, and just be all around a LOT beefier in AOE-happy warzones (like Void Star). Force Fade just adds a butt-load of extra versatility to Camo and creates new possible uses of it. The extra duration and movement speed boost effectively "doubles" its effectiveness in escaping, target-dropping, gap-closing, 1vX'ing, and ambushing. It makes Marauder stealth VERY competitive to a traditional stealth class IMO. It also stacks very nicely with Transcendence if you use it at the same time allowing you to be an invisible Speedy Gonzales for a short duration. It's one of those things you'd have to try out for yourself, though.

 

As for ability coefficients, there should be something on sithwarrior.com. I know that they can be extracted from the game files, and someone has probably done all of that there.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Swarna