Tradeoffs

kemton

Well-known member
I've always been interested in the tradeoff in DPS between 2HF & TWF and I finally did some semi decent comparative DPS tests with a couple of different builds. I use the same STR gear set across all builds, using attuned bone weapons(falchion and handwraps below, with the same components/sentient setup). and there was not any significiant differences in past lives between the below tests.(other than racial) Note that I don't believe that DPS should be the same between different builds since I think that's the fun in DDO in making tradeoffs. E.g. do you want CC, do you want survivability, insta-kills, etc... But I was always wondering how much I was giving up :)

I did the tests vs Vixorshal in Isle of Dread. I didn't stack things like Arcane Warrior beforehand since I felt like this was somewhat inconsistent in quests(I rarely noticed the counter above 5), but I did prebuff w/ Tensor's / any self buffs like primal scream, etc... I also tried to minimize random procs by unequipping the croc neck piece until the fight. Note that there's a fair bit of randomness so these numbers prob should just serve as rough guidelines to get an approximate idea of the performance of each build.

The builds:
Dragonborn 20 Dragonlord, 38 DL/41 Rav/15 DB/3 Harper, Falchion, 37 Fotw/24 LD/13 SD- Avg time 45.7s
Dragonborn 20 Dragonlord, 38 DL/41 Vistani/15 DB/3 Harper, Falchion 37 Fotw/24LD/13SD - Avg time 47.5s <- This was a bit surprising (might be due to MP tradeoffs)
Razorclaw 18 Barbarian/1 fvs/1 wl, 34 FB/41 Vistani/3 war soul/1 ES, Handwraps, 38 Fotw/23LD/13SD - Avg time 31s

For me currently the 2HF DL Ravager build still feels like the most fun, but I haven't tried a Razorclaw pure DL version. I plan to also test a 18 DL / 1 barb / wlk build at some point. Note that these times are probably not useful for you to benchmark against since you won't have the same gear, but it should give you an idea of the tradeoffs / comparative performance between builds.

If you've done similar tests, please post as I'd love to learn more about tradeoffs between builds.
 
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