Noticed this a while ago and decided to just double check with my fellow wizard players.
Basicly everyone and his dog is running Force Weapon for the +15% weapon dmg, but isn't the 12% damage increase + 20% of weapon dmg on spell cast a greater DPS gain?
You'd need a spell to deal 666% weapon damage (equalling an arcane bolt hitting 4 targets) to turn the force weapon into a DPS gain over sparkflint familiar.
Can anyone clarifiy the benefit of force weapon for me? It's not due to the 1.5% chance to knockback right?
PS: If hydra doesn't scale with sparkflint I'll just delete my entire post
I've heard that argument before, but mathematically it doesn't make any sense.
Increasing the damage done by your spells by 12% scales just as well with attack speed as increasing weapon damage, atleast itshould. And so does the 20% dmg on spell cast --> More spells cast = more procs.
example:
100 dmg * 1.15 (force weapon ) * 20 (2k intel) * 2 (attack speed) = 4600 dps
100 dmg * 20 * 2 = 4000 dps but your spells will deal 12% more dmg (and shoot an additional 20% bolt)
The familiar's attack is on cast, it doesn't just shoot on it's own like Hydra. If it DID then it would be worth it, but if you're running around kiting you're not attacking enough to make the familiar's damage worth it especially with the incoming IAS nerf.
Magic weapon currently increases your weapon's damage by 15%, and then increases your overall damage by another 15% at the end of calculations. I would guess this is a bug, but currently it's way better than sparkflint. Even if they fix this, it'll come down to the kind of build used. Sparkflint will only shoot when a spell is cast, and thus it's far less effective with blizzard/hydra builds.
To give some numbers, my sparkflint would crit for about 7k while my arcane orb crit for 60k. I'm also using arcane hydra, which shoots three projectiles at a time and crits for about 10k. So the sparkflint projectile is doing at most 8% of my overall damage to a single target, but it's really less than that because of how hydra works with familiar. When you add in more targets, sparkflint drops to a fraction of the damage. Also time I spend kiting, where arcane hydra is shooting, further diminishes the damage of sparkflint's projectile. Against a champion pack it's likely to do about 2% of my overall damage. If force weapon wasn't bugged, they'd come out about the same damage overall. With a blizzard/hydra build, clearly force weapon would win.
As far as I was aware, the massive dps increase from magic weapon is actually a display error.
So, even though your DPS display says you gain something like 20% or more dps... if you look at the damage you're actually doing... its really only giving you the 10 or 15% its supposed to.
As far as I was aware, the massive dps increase from magic weapon is actually a display error.
So, even though your DPS display says you gain something like 20% or more dps... if you look at the damage you're actually doing... its really only giving you the 10 or 15% its supposed to.
This is it. People have already tested and it seems as the dps increase shown on screen is not the real damage increase guys, thats why so many people use force weapon, because its such a huge damage increase on screen, that people just think "OMG this thing is so good I gotta use it always", and its just not THAT great, if you are ok with the 15% damage increase thats fine, just dont get fooled by that unreal 30% damage increase shown on the screen.
The reason I like Force Weapon over Sparkflint is my famliar has horrid aim. Also, for aoe groups I much prefer the extra 5% damage from FW because it makes every hit from my hydra, arcane orb, and piercing orb hit harder, but the familar shot only hits once. For elites I hardly notice if my familiar even hits anything since I just toss orbs at the edge of the screen where I hope the enemies are. Also, and correct me if I'm wrong, the familar does not slow mobs when you have temporal flux, which would have been another reason to consider using it over FW. For bosses I can see familiar being better though.
Im currently trying magic weapon with electrify, because Im using paralysis, however Im not seeing it triggering off of blizzard so thats kind of a let down...
I run with both and archon... get the gear to support it and you can melt entire zones, by the time archon wears off... your cooldown is reset. Once you hit about 70k+ dps... shit becomes a real joke... now that im pushing 120k, it really is a fantastic build.... just make sure you stay around 35k hp for act 3, so that you don't get 1 shot by anything with FA on.
pretty much best build once you get the gear to support it, run with scoundrel and about 12% move speed, with his semi regular aoe snare it works really well.
I run with both and archon... get the gear to support it and you can melt entire zones, by the time archon wears off... your cooldown is reset. Once you hit about 70k+ dps... shit becomes a real joke... now that im pushing 120k, it really is a fantastic build.... just make sure you stay around 35k hp for act 3, so that you don't get 1 shot by anything with FA on.
pretty much best build once you get the gear to support it, run with scoundrel and about 12% move speed, with his semi regular aoe snare it works really well.
I've started doing this too and it really is amazing if you can pull it off. One thing I do is run teleport with fracture and pop it right before I pop archon so that I have two decoys to make archon a little safer while I blow up the champ pack. Just a thought.
I havn't tried the scoundrel yet, I've been using the enchantress (with the 15% increased damage pools). How do you spec your scoundrel?
magic weapon is applied to everything and more than 15% dmg buff (bug?) sparkflint is only 1 target without any piercing and can miss and is capped with some proc per seconds (not sure on the amount but if you had fast atk spd it wouldnt do anything on some cast)
magic weapon is applied to everything and more than 15% dmg buff (bug?) sparkflint is only 1 target without any piercing and can miss and is capped with some proc per seconds (not sure on the amount but if you had fast atk spd it wouldnt do anything on some cast)
Did you read the whole post? i will recap for you:
1) there is a paperdoll tooltip bug with force weapon that shows a 30% increase, but the actual damage output (which counts, essentially) is only increased by 15% (as stated by the skill description)
2) sparkflint adds 12% (3% less than FW) but adds 20% single target damage (which can miss of course, but you can improve your aim) which is especially helpfull vs elites and bosses.
I have not seen or heard about an attackspeed cap
my wiz had an atk spd of ~3.6 per second and sparkflint would attack every 2 piercing orbs i would throw, sometimes 3... there is a cap on how fast it attacks.
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Basicly everyone and his dog is running Force Weapon for the +15% weapon dmg, but isn't the 12% damage increase + 20% of weapon dmg on spell cast a greater DPS gain?
You'd need a spell to deal 666% weapon damage (equalling an arcane bolt hitting 4 targets) to turn the force weapon into a DPS gain over sparkflint familiar.
Can anyone clarifiy the benefit of force weapon for me? It's not due to the 1.5% chance to knockback right?
PS: If hydra doesn't scale with sparkflint I'll just delete my entire post
Increasing the damage done by your spells by 12% scales just as well with attack speed as increasing weapon damage, atleast itshould. And so does the 20% dmg on spell cast --> More spells cast = more procs.
example:
100 dmg * 1.15 (force weapon ) * 20 (2k intel) * 2 (attack speed) = 4600 dps
100 dmg * 20 * 2 = 4000 dps but your spells will deal 12% more dmg (and shoot an additional 20% bolt)
To give some numbers, my sparkflint would crit for about 7k while my arcane orb crit for 60k. I'm also using arcane hydra, which shoots three projectiles at a time and crits for about 10k. So the sparkflint projectile is doing at most 8% of my overall damage to a single target, but it's really less than that because of how hydra works with familiar. When you add in more targets, sparkflint drops to a fraction of the damage. Also time I spend kiting, where arcane hydra is shooting, further diminishes the damage of sparkflint's projectile. Against a champion pack it's likely to do about 2% of my overall damage. If force weapon wasn't bugged, they'd come out about the same damage overall. With a blizzard/hydra build, clearly force weapon would win.
So, even though your DPS display says you gain something like 20% or more dps... if you look at the damage you're actually doing... its really only giving you the 10 or 15% its supposed to.
This is it. People have already tested and it seems as the dps increase shown on screen is not the real damage increase guys, thats why so many people use force weapon, because its such a huge damage increase on screen, that people just think "OMG this thing is so good I gotta use it always", and its just not THAT great, if you are ok with the 15% damage increase thats fine, just dont get fooled by that unreal 30% damage increase shown on the screen.
Blizzard and/or extreme kiting --> force weapons
else: Sparkflint familiar.
Ow well, currently running with neither \o/ slow but steady.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#RbmjOS!afY!bbcaYZ
pretty much best build once you get the gear to support it, run with scoundrel and about 12% move speed, with his semi regular aoe snare it works really well.
I've started doing this too and it really is amazing if you can pull it off. One thing I do is run teleport with fracture and pop it right before I pop archon so that I have two decoys to make archon a little safer while I blow up the champ pack. Just a thought.
I havn't tried the scoundrel yet, I've been using the enchantress (with the 15% increased damage pools). How do you spec your scoundrel?
my wiz had an atk spd of ~3.6 per second and sparkflint would attack every 2 piercing orbs i would throw, sometimes 3... there is a cap on how fast it attacks.