So, I normally have high CD+CC equipment that I use to archon with at low-mid MPs (just over 2 attacks/second). I have a buffed DPS of around 280k. I have been trying to find ways to make it more efficient to play mid (5-7) mps in multiplayer so I can have more fun with my friends, but it isn't working well.
Then yesterday instead of switching off of my high IAS+CC and little to no CD gear I just added archon instead of EB and found that things were dying MUCH faster with archon. Am I crazy? My sheet dps is around 160k but clearly things are dying faster with this gear than with the 300dps cc+cd gear. I figured someone here would know this answer and it's beyond my skills to search through the current posts to find that nugget.
One idea I'm toying with is the idea of weapon damage vs total damage. I know that some skills use your weapon damage instead of your sheet dps and I'm wondering if archon is one of those and if so, that would make sense as some of my skills and equipment are buffing sheet dps but I don't think they all affect weapon damage? The high IAS on my CM gear would certainly increase the weapon damage drastically, wouldn't it?
I appreciate any insight here and I apologize as I'm sure this has been covered elsewhere.
Try against Ghom in a timed fight and you should see it takes about 50% longer to kill him with the lower DPS setup.
In terms of elites, it should be the same as Ghom. For white mobs, you might see a slight increase in killing efficiency because you get faster tics so if you need a second tic to finish a white mob, it comes faster. Also, the damage is a bit more consistant because of the lower CD, so all that CD might be overkill for white mobs.
I think Archon uses an IAS breakpoint similar to WW, but with a different speed coefficient (3 instead of the 2 that WW uses, meaning more tics per second than WW). However, that should only impact small changes in IAS and droppin your DPS significantly to raise APS shouldn't results in higher sustained dps.
Timing MP10 Ghom is a great way to test your sustained average true dps. I do this for all my characters and setups. He has 138mil on mp10 solo so its a good sample size and he's right by the depths 3 wp for quick access.
I know for a fact that with base DPS (ias, cc, cd) with further increased ias (via Frenzied Shrine, for example), things will die faster, so ias does play a role in damage output.
But substituting one aspect of DPS for another, now that I may be interested in.
wow, that wasn't even close. On mp3 I can kill Ghom in about 15 seconds from "OK" to death, and with the IAS lower dps I couldn't even keep archon up long enough to kill him.
This did get me thinking, is 175k dps from IAS the same as 175k dps from cc or cd or just base damage? I have a feeling I don't have the money to test this theory, but it's something interesting to me that I might find a way to figure out.
When I did the testing I did beam only, but when I started messsing around I did notice that the higher IAS allowed me to do the archon blast many more times and proc'd storm armor rune shocking aspect more times (obviously). This resulted in much higher actual damage output than beam only at 180k dps and the time it took me to kill Ghom decreased more significantly for the IAS build than the cc/cd build. To put that another way, it took me 17 seconds to kill Ghom beam only and 15 seconds with blast on the cd build but the IAS build could only get ghom to half life before archon ran out on beam only and I can almost kill him with beam and blast.
This did get me thinking, is 175k dps from IAS the same as 175k dps from cc or cd or just base damage?
Yes, the beam dps should basically be the same, if you neglect APS breakpoints and are just using beam without SA. I always forget about SA in the build because I run scramble at low MP but I suppose if you're running higher MP then SA will be great for dps. However, the increased SA procs still shouldn't make up for a huge dps difference. The proc rate is still quite low for Archon (0.1 spell coefficient, approx 3XAPS tics per second). Also, the lower APS makes the Storm Armor shock hit harder, so without SA you have a higher effective dps with the lower APS build.
Then yesterday instead of switching off of my high IAS+CC and little to no CD gear I just added archon instead of EB and found that things were dying MUCH faster with archon. Am I crazy? My sheet dps is around 160k but clearly things are dying faster with this gear than with the 300dps cc+cd gear. I figured someone here would know this answer and it's beyond my skills to search through the current posts to find that nugget.
Here are my buffed stats for both:
Archon
build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#bmSjTl!Yfg!bccaYY
a/s 2.09
cc 42
cd 364
Int 2586
sheet dps 273,768.22
CM-WW
build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/wizard#VOSmXY!bWg!YZcccZ
a/s 3.09
cc 51.5
cd 202
Int 2355
sheet dps 164,822.77
One idea I'm toying with is the idea of weapon damage vs total damage. I know that some skills use your weapon damage instead of your sheet dps and I'm wondering if archon is one of those and if so, that would make sense as some of my skills and equipment are buffing sheet dps but I don't think they all affect weapon damage? The high IAS on my CM gear would certainly increase the weapon damage drastically, wouldn't it?
I appreciate any insight here and I apologize as I'm sure this has been covered elsewhere.
In terms of elites, it should be the same as Ghom. For white mobs, you might see a slight increase in killing efficiency because you get faster tics so if you need a second tic to finish a white mob, it comes faster. Also, the damage is a bit more consistant because of the lower CD, so all that CD might be overkill for white mobs.
I think Archon uses an IAS breakpoint similar to WW, but with a different speed coefficient (3 instead of the 2 that WW uses, meaning more tics per second than WW). However, that should only impact small changes in IAS and droppin your DPS significantly to raise APS shouldn't results in higher sustained dps.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
I know for a fact that with base DPS (ias, cc, cd) with further increased ias (via Frenzied Shrine, for example), things will die faster, so ias does play a role in damage output.
But substituting one aspect of DPS for another, now that I may be interested in.
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This did get me thinking, is 175k dps from IAS the same as 175k dps from cc or cd or just base damage? I have a feeling I don't have the money to test this theory, but it's something interesting to me that I might find a way to figure out.
When I did the testing I did beam only, but when I started messsing around I did notice that the higher IAS allowed me to do the archon blast many more times and proc'd storm armor rune shocking aspect more times (obviously). This resulted in much higher actual damage output than beam only at 180k dps and the time it took me to kill Ghom decreased more significantly for the IAS build than the cc/cd build. To put that another way, it took me 17 seconds to kill Ghom beam only and 15 seconds with blast on the cd build but the IAS build could only get ghom to half life before archon ran out on beam only and I can almost kill him with beam and blast.
Yes, the beam dps should basically be the same, if you neglect APS breakpoints and are just using beam without SA. I always forget about SA in the build because I run scramble at low MP but I suppose if you're running higher MP then SA will be great for dps. However, the increased SA procs still shouldn't make up for a huge dps difference. The proc rate is still quite low for Archon (0.1 spell coefficient, approx 3XAPS tics per second). Also, the lower APS makes the Storm Armor shock hit harder, so without SA you have a higher effective dps with the lower APS build.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard