Numbers Help Please

[sirpoopsalot]

Numbers Help Please

I have a two-part question, seeking a definitive "what's best?" for a particular scenario. It's pretty simple to explain the background:

I currently have a level90 Whirlwind Barbarian that's running Pindleskin and horking his guts out (literally, 51% of the time :wink. My end-goal is (eventually) to get to level95, and the primary method of getting there will continue to be (/players7) Pindleskin runs. So I am looking at a few thousand runs. He's dual-wielding, using a Grief Phaseblade (+356) and Azurewrath. Those facts are not going to change, so if you feel like saying "use Grief+eBotD/Beast and run Baal you noob", you can stop reading now and go "help" someone else. :wave:

My AR is a little low (5742), so while I was leveling up to this point I have socketed an 'Eth' rune in the Azurewrath for it's cheap boost to my hit-chances. However, as the barb has gone up in level the benefits of the 'Eth' rune are starting to wear off - I think - and I'd like to resocket something that will boost my damage (as much as possible) instead.


Part1: Verification of Chance to Hit
I seldom delve very deeply into the numbers behind D2, so I could've easily made a mistake (or three) in my calculations so far. And since this is one instance where I'd like a more concrete answer of "what's best?", I'm asking for someone to confirm my chance-to-hit numbers are reasonably accurate first. My primary goal is to maintain 80+% chance to hit against non-Stoneskin Pindle, preferably ~85+% or higher. After that goal is safe we can move on to part two.

I've managed to track down a little info and plug the numbers into a calculator and I think I have my chance-to-hit figured out:

- my level = 90, pindle's level = 86 (I know I at least got this much right)
- My AR: 5742 (I'm trusting the LCS here - please tell me this is one case where it's accurate :nervous
- Pindleskin's base Defense Rating*: 1192 (retrieved from Rhettius' backup of d2data.net)
- with the Eth rune working at half-effectiveness against a super-unique, that would leave him with (1192 * 0.875 =) 1043 base defense. Do Eth's work this way?
- If he spawns Stoneskin, Pindle's defense will be doubled (according to the Arreat Summit). That's 2384 defense without the Eth, and 2086 DR with it.
- the CTH formula I used was found here, and, to save you swapping pages back and forth, is:

100 * AR / (AR + DR) * 2 * alvl / (alvl + dlvl)
AR = Attack Rating; alvl = Level of Attacker; dlvl = Level of Defender; DR = Defense Rating

*I'm not concerning myself with Pindle's minions; I'll assume that if I can easily hit Pindle, I'll easily hit them too. Likewise, I'm not concerning myself with my CTH with the Grief.


So, plugging that all together, I came out with the following chances to hit, with and without the Eth rune.

Barb is Level90
Without the Eth: 574200 / 6934 * 2 * 90 / 176 = 84% chance to hit
With the Eth: 574200 / 6785 * 2 * 90 / 176 = 86%
Stoneskin, without the Eth: 574200 / 8126 * 2 * 90 / 176 = 72%
Stoneskin, with the Eth: 574200 / 7828 * 2 * 90 / 176 = 75%

Barb makes Level91
Without the Eth: 574200 / 6934 * 2 * 91 / 177 = 85% chance to hit
With the Eth: 574200 / 6785 * 2 * 91 / 177 = 87%
Stoneskin, without the Eth: 574200 / 8126 * 2 * 91 / 177 = 72%
Stoneskin, with the Eth: 574200 / 7828 * 2 * 91 / 177 = 75%

... yada, yada. 2-3% difference in CTH looks pretty insignificant on paper, especially when a 40% Ruby Jewel, or maybe even a 75% Eld rune might provide an extra 1k damage per hit (or it might not ).

Is my math correct thus far? I did a quick run to confirm it's close in the LCS (it is), but I trust the LCS about as much as I enjoy getting stuck questing through the Great Marsh with poor lightning resists and Gloams all around. Assuming my CTH reaches my goal (80/85+% CTH) without the Eth rune, that leads us to...


Part2: Eld rune vs. (40% ED) Ruby Jewel vs. "Other"
Here's where my "knowledge" ends: the Damage-to-Undead modifier is calculated differently than on-weapon Enhanced Damage. Actually, I'm not even certain that's true, but I think it is.

So, since this barb is purely an undead-hunter at this point (and when he's not, he won't be using the Azurewrath), I'm trying to figure out if sticking an Eld rune (+75% Damage to Undead, +50 AR) in the Azurewrath will provide more benefit than one of the 40% Enhanced Damage jewels I've been hoarding forever. None of the jewels I have has a noteworthy 2nd modification.

Or maybe there's something else like a Sol (+9 min damage), Fal (+10 Str) or even PAmethyst (+150 AR) would actually make more sense for increasing my damage (sorry, no spare Ohm's, Lo's or Ber's to drop in there, so don't suggest those). I'm skeptical of this case, but it never hurts to think about.

Other (possibly) salient facts for determining damage:
- I have 177 str, and that probably won't drop. It certainly won't go up.
- He's running with an Act2 merc that provides a Might aura (Act2, NM, Offensive merc). The merc is level90 too, and keeping pace with the barb just fine.
- The Azurewrath has a level13 Sanctuary aura (510 ED%) and 263 base ED% (120 base weapon damage, average)
- 20 skillpoints spent in Sword Mastery & Whirlwind, with no +skills beyond the +1 on the Azurewrath, and no other consistent source of +physical damage.


But I don't know how to figure damage-dealt out, especially factoring Might+Sanctuary auras, Mastery and Whirl-skill damage, On-weapon ED% and Damage-to-Undead modifiers, etc. So I'm asking for your help here. Thoughts? Suggestions? Links?

Thank you in advance.

 

[stephan]

Re: Numbers Help Please

If the numbers are correct, your calculations should be too. I believe though that Stoneskin gives triple defense though (+200%).

As the for %ED: damage to undead works as skill ED% (Whirlwind, Mastery, Might) even when on weapon. You'd get most damage out of a 40%ED jewel. The %ED to undead on Sanctuary doesn't work. Or rather, it will give the %ED to Pindle&Co instead, so praise yourself your barb still belongs to the realm of the living. Well, most of the times anyway.

I don't think that any of this is going to make much difference in your run times though. At least in my experience 70-80% of the time is spend getting to him, so you can only improve the last few seconds. It might be different on p7 still.

 

[krischan]

Re: Numbers Help Please

Do Eth's work this way?

It might be the case that the -% target defense is subtracted from bonuses which e.g. stoneskin bosses receive instead of applying it in a separate multiplier. That would lead to a defense of 1192*(100+stoneskin_bonus-15)/100 and to a lower chance to hit in this case. I'm not sure about that, however.

 

[Borje]

Re: Numbers Help Please

Hi poops!

Like Stephan pointed out the ED% from sanctuary is bugged allthough the effect of piercing undeads physical resistance it still boosts your damage.

To calculate the damage from your Azurewrath we need these numbers:
Might is level 18: 210% ED (when you hit lvl 91 it will become lvl 19 giving 220%)
WW lvl 21: 110% ED
Sword mastery lvl 21: 128% ED
177: 177% ED
a total of 625% ED

To make it a little easier I'll just calculate the avg dmg and the formula is

[base weapon dmg]*(1+[weapon ED]/100)*(1+[off weapon ED]/100)

that makes for:

33*3.63*7.65=916 dmg

If you add an Eld to the socket the formula would be


[base weapon dmg]*(1+[weapon ED]/100)*(1+[off weapon ED]/100+0.75)

and if you add a 40% ED jewel to it it would be


[base weapon dmg]*(1+[weapon ED]/100+0.4)*(1+[off weapon ED]/100)

By then you just calculate the damage for the both cases and compares them to find which is bigger but the simple way to go about this is just to see which is the biggest number of:

0.4*[off weap ED]=0.4*7.25=2.9
0.75*[weap ED]=0.75*3.63=2.7

So for the reason that you allready have so much off weapon ED we see that adding almost half of the ED directly to the weapon itself you gain more damage!

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Numbers Help Please

Thank you all very much. :flowers:

I did socket the plain 40% jewel.

The %ED to undead on Sanctuary doesn't work. Or rather, it will give the %ED to Pindle&Co instead...

Did I misread this, or are you saying that the higher the aura-level on my Azurewrath, the more danger I'm in because Pindle&Co will have higher damage against me? So ideally, I should have a level10 aura on the Azurewrath (since I care much more about the damage I receive than the radius of my Sanctuary aura)?

I don't think that any of this is going to make much difference in your run times though. At least in my experience 70-80% of the time is spend getting to him, so you can only improve the last few seconds. It might be different on p7 still.

That was my expectation too, but over the first ~125 runs it has actually dropped my average runtime by almost a second. It's not much of an improvement, but I'll take it.


@krischan, yeah I had considered that possiblity too, but didn't type it up. Sticking with the numbers I used above though and using that approach, at level90 I believe my CtH would be 73% as opposed to the 72% I listed, so the difference is surprisingly small.


@borje, thanks very much for the formula. It makes it a lot easier to know that off-weapon ED% (including DamageToUndead that's on-weapon, skill-based ED, etc) is all added together. I'd heard that before, but this time I actually listened. There's a slight chance I'll remember it now (or probably not :whistling.

 

[Darkoooo]

Did I misread this, or are you saying that the higher the aura-level on my Azurewrath, the more danger I'm in because Pindle&Co will have higher damage against me? So ideally, I should have a level10 aura on the Azurewrath (since I care much more about the damage I receive than the radius of my Sanctuary aura)?

The %ED to undead on Sanctuary doesn't work. Or rather, it will give the %ED to Pindle&Co instead, so praise yourself your barb still belongs to the realm of the living. Well, most of the times anyway.

@poops
Sanctuary aura works only vs. undead, so your barb is in no danger of getting extra damage dealt to him :wink:

 

[SmittySixTen]

Re: Numbers Help Please

I can't really offer any help, but I have a question for your setup just because I am curious.

Did you choose the Azurwrath because of any specific mod, or did it just give you a number of different things you are looking for? Not saying, "you should change", just honestly wondering because I don't use barbs much.

 

[krischan]

Re: Numbers Help Please

Probably because he's playing on single-player (he mentioned /players 7 in the first paragraph) where decent weapons or HRs aren't as available as on bnet with its trading, duping etc.

 

[lionheartthebrave]

Re: Numbers Help Please

decent weapons or HRs aren't as available as on bnet with its trading, duping etc.

I would call Azurewrath a decent weapon, with a nasty lvl req, and say that not all weapons require a bunch of HRs to be of any use

@SST: Azurewrath means not worrying about a PI Pindle anymore

 

[SmittySixTen]

Re: Numbers Help Please

@SST: Azurewrath means not worrying about a PI Pindle anymore

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks. :thumbup:

 

[krischan]

Re: Numbers Help Please

I would call Azurewrath a decent weapon, with a nasty lvl req, and say that not all weapons require a bunch of HRs to be of any use

I didn't mean to say that Azurewrath isn't a decent weapon, but there are other decent weapons as well and a couple of them are runewords involving HRs.

 

[onderduiker]

Re: Numbers Help Please

- with the Eth rune working at half-effectiveness against a super-unique, that would leave him with (1192 * 0.875 =) 1043 base defense. Do Eth's work this way?

Yes. -% Target Defence works at 100% effectiveness against normal monsters, minions and random Champion and Unique monsters, while it works at 50% effectiveness against Super Unique and boss monsters.

It might be the case that the -% target defense is subtracted from bonuses which e.g. stoneskin bosses receive instead of applying it in a separate multiplier. That would lead to a defense of 1192*(100+stoneskin_bonus-15)/100 and to a lower chance to hit in this case. I'm not sure about that, however.

-% Target Defence is applied to defence after +% Enhanced Defence from the Stone Skin Unique modifier or Madawc's Shout. However, Cloak of Shadows, Battle Cry and Conviction actually apply -% (Enhanced) Defence, which is subtracted from +% Enhanced Defence.

 

[sirpoopsalot]

Re: Numbers Help Please

@SST: Azurewrath means not worrying about a PI Pindle anymore

Yep, that's why I chose it. And the fact that I've never used an Azurewrath before (because of its ridiculous level requirement), and wanted an excuse to use one of the more-rare uniques in the game...

... plus, aside from the Grief that I'm already using, I don't really have any other swords that are significantly better than the Azurewrath anyways (Oath, Doombringer and The Grandfather are each close in some departments, but none are especially better... maybe an upgraded Vile Husk has the most potential, but I'm not sure that would be any better either).


@onderduiker, thanks, that clarifies that.