DD Staff Build - Is it missing the obvious?

[Bobbryan2]

They are monk weapons. They're not Dragon Disciple weapons though

If they give everything to DD tree, then there's very little reason to do a Henshin stick build. Both give you an imbue, both give you WIS trance. DD has the SLAs. Henshin supports stick, that's its identity.

SF could make the same argument too since they're also a Ki class - they either need to splash /1 monk or rogue to get the 15%. They also dont get Shuriken support or proficiency, though those are Centered weapons too. Should we bake Adv Ninja Training into Shuriken natively too, since shuriken are pretty much pointless without that enhancement?

That was the case. It's not now. Literally that one enhancement is the only thing in henshin that supports it now.. and it's just flavor.

It should be added to DD.

 

[droid327]

That was the case. It's not now. Literally that one enhancement is the only thing in henshin that supports it now.. and it's just flavor.

It should be added to DD.

That one enhancement is what's being argued is the one thing you need to make staff viable. Again, just like Shuriken only really need ANT.

 

[Bobbryan2]

That one enhancement is what's being argued is the one thing you need to make staff viable. Again, just like Shuriken only really need ANT.

Yes... but Henshin used to be completely centered around QS. It's not like that now. Henshin can use any monk weapons equally well.
Essentially, it makes DD better at non-monk weapons than monk weapons.

That's a silly design choice.

But honestly... QS is in a bad place right now. No one should be using it... but you definitely shouldn't be using it without the 15% attack speed increase.

 

[Purr]

15x3->15x4 is ~17% (gotta include the typical extra 19-20x2) or 15x3x5->15x4x6 for a 41/35 ratio.

It's equivalent to MP+68 for the classic 300 MP melee. For comparison, a Prowess swap weapon is just 10s of 50 MP. CM+1 is a huge bump that just gets bigger once you include activated attacks. It's usually much too big to wave off as inconsequential.

I'm not trying to "sell" the 15x4 DL VKF build. It's just really easy to make and thus provides a metric to beat similar to how INQ+DS does atm for ranged. If your goal is "raid DPS" and you're not beating the easy builds, there's either more work to do OR you can give in. The goal is ultimately "have fun". If mathing out a raid build is "not fun", get in on a known easy win and play!

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BTW, Patience is only an auto-win for ranged. I would not even consider it for SWF or TWF; eg. it's a 47/41=14.6% gain on a DL VKF Kukri with a 10~11% loss for a maybe 2% overall win. If you have any imbues or sneaks or procs at all (and most 1H builds do have them), it will be a net loss.

Unsure about 2H -- I'd have to crunch or review again, but those builds usually win by activated attacks and CM leans hard into those. I don't use 2H much outside Qstaff TR builds. Even for the builds that math out to a win, Patience can completely destroy the "feel" and make play horrifically sluggish.

Fortunately, patient wins for 1H melee are usually so tiny that punting it in general is easy. Ranged, however, often loose nothing at all on attack rate. It's a big automatic win there.

What's DS in inq+DS?

 

[Jasparius]

Yes... but Henshin used to be completely centered around QS. It's not like that now. Henshin can use any monk weapons equally well.
Essentially, it makes DD better at non-monk weapons than monk weapons.

That's a silly design choice.

But honestly... QS is in a bad place right now. No one should be using it... but you definitely shouldn't be using it without the 15% attack speed increase.

QS at end game maybe but QS while levelling is awesome fun.

 

[Bobbryan2]

QS at end game maybe but QS while levelling is awesome fun.

Definitely agree, and the attack speed isn't a complete deal breaker in heroics.
But... that's not what we should be gearing enhancements around. Honestly, I think they should remove the enhancement entirely and just add the speed to QS base speed.
There's zero reason a fighter should have to splash rogue or monk to have the same attacks per round as a non-martial class.

 

[Bjond]

What's DS in inq+DS?

Doubleshot. The original INQ "buff" patch removed INQ's 50% penalty for doubleshot, effectively giving it "Double-Doubleshot", since each bolt could double separately.

Excessive scaling is probably the most common mistake SSG makes and the first one I look for when building for high DPS. INQ has scaling on scaling, which has potential for "giggle/silly" levels of OP.

 

[Bjond]

QS at end game maybe but QS while levelling is awesome fun.

Yeah, you can feel the mediocrity at end game, but Stick builds are still one of the top levelers.

When I do TR cycles it's as either INQ or Stick (rogue, not monk). I focus on I/ETR, though. If I wanted racials, it would be Sorc.

 

[Bobbryan2]

Doubleshot. The original INQ "buff" patch removed INQ's 50% penalty for doubleshot, effectively giving it "Double-Doubleshot", since each bolt could double separately.

Excessive scaling is probably the most common mistake SSG makes and the first one I look for when building for high DPS. INQ has scaling on scaling, which has potential for "giggle/silly" levels of OP.

Such an unforced error in retrospect (and... with foresight a little, too)

 

[Jasparius]

Yeah, you can feel the mediocrity at end game, but Stick builds are still one of the top levelers.

When I do TR cycles it's as either INQ or Stick (rogue, not monk). I focus on I/ETR, though. If I wanted racials, it would be Sorc.

What does Rogue give which Monk doesnt? Having Whirlwind by 6 seems too good to give up ?

 

[Bjond]

Such an unforced error in retrospect (and... with foresight a little, too)

It was not hind-sight. Maybe 5~10 of us warned them on the Lam thread up front AND gave them solid alternatives that addressed the issue without creating OP builds or nerfing sub-cap play.

It wasn't just one warning. It was an entire thread of "uh, lol? noooo .. "

Honestly, it was like a loony-tunes reenactment of a Brer Rabbit story, "Please oh please Mr Bear, don't throw INQ into the OP S-Tier, it's scary bad!" "Muhaha Wabbit. You'll take this nasty OP, like it or not!"

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BTW, Lam threads do indeed sway them sometimes, but not always and not in the way you might like.

 

[droid327]

Essentially, it makes DD better at non-monk weapons than monk weapons.

That's a silly design choice.

No, they're better with DD weapons than Monk weapons

That's not silly at all, that's the whole point lol

Such an unforced error in retrospect (and... with foresight a little, too)

Not at all. Do you remember how much inqui sucked at endgame with half dshot? Dshot penalty is a death sentence to scaling, you just can't make up for losing half of an entire multiplicative channel like that. It'd be like casters getting a 50% penalty to caster level

 

[Bjond]

What does Rogue give which Monk doesnt? Having Whirlwind by 6 seems too good to give up ?

AE trip in T3 Acrobat and Light Armor with high dodge cap -- similar dodge to monk cloth.

IMHO, Acrobat is MUCH nicer than monk for staff, but for TR'ing it's limitted to maximum 9 levels as a carry build and can't make use of improved d.roll.

 

[LurkingVeteran]

Your math is way off. Quick accurate model for profile assumes never miss/graze. Add up "hits" of which there would be 19 for zero criticals. Add 1 hit for each potential bonus. So, a Kukri, which has 15x3x2 from VKF + Overwhelming Critical 19x1 + ED T5 19x1 has

35=15x3x2=19 (base) + 12 (6x2 from 15x3) + 4 (2x 19x1)​

33=15x3x1=19 (base) + 12 (6x2 from 15x3) + 2 (1x 19x1) .. for your 19x1 example​

​

CM+1 on those changes the "12" from 6x2 to "18" from 6x3 and the above becomes

​

41=15x4x2=19 (base) + 18 (6x3 from 15x4) + 4 (2x 19x1)​

39=15x4x1=19 (base) + 18 (6x3 from 15x4) + 2 (1x 19x1) .. for your 19x1 example​

​

If you want to compare them, divide. 39/33=18% or 41/35=17%. If you include patience rate reduction, multiplying by 0.90 isn't correct, but it's close, for 6.2% and 5.4%. Not sure where you're getting the magic 11%, but it's not from Kukri math.

IMHO, you may want to adjust your thinking on profile gains. Even the ~5% from adding 19x1 is similar to adding 20 MP to a 300 MP build, something that is often worth spending 20+ AP to get.

Patience v DL is bringing a knife to gun fight. One is pure CM+1. The other ties CM+1 to a drastic rate reduction. Kukri+DL = DPS+18%. Kukri+Patience = DPS+5.4%.

Getting back to DD Qstaff. 2H builds often use adrenaline and other activated for a BIG chunk of their DPS -- activateds that scale heavily on profile and who's CDs aren't increased by patience. It's much harder to napkin-math those versus autos, but gain without loss is win.

Qstaff with patience and actives feels nice, too. My current Qstaff TR'ing build uses it.

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For OP's which should I do next Q, it depends. If you liked the SWF+Orb feel and want to improve that, punt the handaxe. It's only nice for swashbucklers.

VKF+Sky Pirate Dagger is good for 4->20 with an optional upgrade to Guardian of the Liturgy (doesn't look good at first, but it's 1d10 dice bumps up v.nicely with VFK's +1W). It's annoying to farm, though.

If you go with Dagger, I'd highly recommend taking Item Defense from somewhere or your weapons can break very quickly. 1 Dark Hunter would be my pick for that, since it would also give trapping and 2s deflect arrows and item defense for 7 AP. It's a bit irksome that Ninja does not include item defense as it can be pretty important for a 1H weapon build in heroics before you can break most DRs.

I'd stick with the orb thought, but only because staying centered with one is a big deal for a monk; it's a DD signature style.

My numbers were with Patience, as I said. If you don't like the attack speed slowdown that's fine but when discussing crit options it exists. Your numbers above ignore it, which is why you don't arrive at 11%.

Btw, you can greatly simplify your calculations by just realizing that one outcome of a D20 dice is 5%. Kukri has a base 15% chance of crit, 30% with IC and 35% with VKF +1 range. It does 2x extra damage with VKF +1 mult, 3x with Patience or DL, and 4x with both.

You can therefore simplify the average crit multiplier to (1 base + 0.35 * 3) or (1 + 0.35*4) respectively. This is then the crit factor you plug into full DPS calculations to get the final DPS.

Similarly, the 19-20 +1 mult feats translates to +10% of 1x damage = +0.1 average crit multiplier. This results in VKF+Patience vs. VKF+Patience+DL being (1 + 0.35 * 3 + 0.1) =2.15 or (1 + 0.35*4 +0.1) = 2.4. The improvement in average crit multiplier is then simply 2.4/2.15 = 11%.

Yes, you can also just compare VKF + Patience vs. VKF + DL, as the crit profile is identical this is just the 10% attack speed penalty from the feat.

If you won't be taking Patience regardless, then I agree that going /5 DL becomes a more substantial increase than 11%.

Finally, we ignored a bunch of content-dependent and attack-dependent variables above to analyse the average crit multiplier per attack in isolation: by assuming that you only auto-attack, that you always break fort and that you always hit and confirm crits. However, as Patience also synergizes well with special attacks, while attack speed usually doesn't, I suspect the DPS increase might be even more noticable in practice.

 

[Kimbere]

They are monk weapons. They're not Dragon Disciple weapons though

If they give everything to DD tree, then there's very little reason to do a Henshin stick build. Both give you an imbue, both give you WIS trance. DD has the SLAs. Henshin supports stick, that's its identity.

This.

Henshin is intended to be the Quarterstaff monk tree. Dragon Disciple is intended to be the clubs/scepters/orbs + caster monk tree.

If they give Quarterstaff attack speed to Dragon Disciples, they should also give the Henshin tree a spellbook and multiple SLAs.

Of course then, they might as well just call it the Henshin Dragon tree and delete DDM...

 

[Bobbryan2]

This.

Henshin is intended to be the Quarterstaff monk tree. Dragon Disciple is intended to be the clubs/scepters/orbs + caster monk tree.

If they give Quarterstaff attack speed to Dragon Disciples, they should also give the Henshin tree a spellbook and multiple SLAs.

Of course then, they might as well just call it the Henshin Dragon tree and delete DDM...

Again.

This is false.
The monk changes explicitly changed this. Shintao was explicitly handwraps. Henshinw as explicitly quarterstaff. Ninja spy got short swords.
The monk changes essentially removed all this, but they left the QS attack speed in somewhere, so you could access it.

Henshin DOES have SLAs...

 

[Kimbere]

Again.

This is false.
The monk changes explicitly changed this. Shintao was explicitly handwraps. Henshinw as explicitly quarterstaff. Ninja spy got short swords.
The monk changes essentially removed all this, but they left the QS attack speed in somewhere, so you could access it.

Henshin DOES have SLAs...

Since the devs chose to leave quarterstaffs as a Henshin-specific bonus, short swords and shurikens as Ninja Spy specific, and handaxes, picks, hammers, clubs, scepters and orbs as DDM specific, clearly it is NOT false.

Clearly, the devs intentionally chose specific weapons to associate with each tree. All they really changed was making Shintao non-weapon specific and letting the +hit/+dmg bonuses lines in the trees work with any weapon while centered.

Just because you wish it were otherwise doesn't make it true.

 

[Bobbryan2]

Since the devs chose to leave quarterstaffs as a Henshin-specific bonus, clearly it is NOT false.

Just because you wish it were otherwise doesn't make it true.

You're overextrapolating a single data point... a single data point that this thread is attempting to change.

Got a single other point?
Like... seriously... did you expect them to move it to shintao or something? The issue is that they dropped henshin from DD... not where they happened to leave a legacy enhancement.

 

[Kimbere]

You're overextrapolating a single data point... a single data point that this thread is attempting to change.

Got a single other point?
Like... seriously... did you expect them to move it to shintao or something? The issue is that they dropped henshin from DD... not where they happened to leave a legacy enhancement.

I edited my original reply to include the additional data points while you were typing this reply.

The tl'dr version is, aside from Shintao, each tree still has unique, weapon-specific bonuses so clearly the devs intended there to be differences between the trees with regards to weapons.

Again, just because you wish it were otherwise doesn't make it true.

 

[Bobbryan2]

I edited my original reply to include the additional data points while you were typing this reply.

The tl'dr version is, aside from Shintao, each tree still has unique, weapon-specific bonuses so clearly the devs intended there to be differences between the trees with regards to weapons.

Again, just because you wish it were otherwise doesn't make it true.

Again... No.
They removed every other quarterstaff enhancement from Henshin. IF they removed the QS attack speed penalty, it would have simply removed QS from monks entirely.
A shintao can still specialize in staff by taking 4 ap in henshin. A shintao DD cannot.


This wasn't a design decision. It was an unintentional oversight because they don't think about things like that when they add archetypes.

You typed that whole response out and didn't even add a single additional data point.