Engineer Exploration
During the last stress test I did a little exploration into the depths of numbers and math. Let me hear you say "Yay"!
With a release date in sight, it's time to start making spreadsheets, right? Maybe we don't need to go that far, but I did want to see how traits really affect our damage and see how effective different trees were. Arena.net claims we will be able to play our play style without feeling hampered, so let's see how that claim stacks up.
All of my numbers were done in the PvP area, at level 80 with the default BWE gear.
| 30 points in Alchemy | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tranquilizer Dart | 210 | 320 |
| Elixir F | 390 | 580 |
| With Deadly Mixture (Trait) | ||
| Tranquilizer Dart | 265 | 382 |
| Elixir F | 485 | 760 |
That's really just a teaser, the interesting stuff is in the Firearms and Explosive tests I did.
Adding points in Explosives increases power, which increase damage.
Adding points in Firearms increases condition damage and precision, which increases crit chance.
How did I test?
What a great question, here's a short video of me testing:
| Normal Dmg | Crit Dmg | Bleed Dmg | |
|---|---|---|---|
| No Trait Points | 280 | 420 | bleed 49 |
| 30 points in Explosives | 340 | 520 | bleed 49 |
| 30 points in Firearms | bleed 64 |
Adding 30 points to Explosives, which adds to pure damage, is a 21% increase in normal damage and 23% in critical damage.
| Number of Critical hits (out of 10) | |
|---|---|
| No Trait Points | 4, 6, 2, 3 = 3.75 |
| with 30 in Firearms | 4, 5, 6, 6 = 5.25 |
| 40% increase | |
To get the damage we do over ten seconds, I add the crits to the normal hits, and then add the tick damage in. To determine the number of ticks I drew this sweet chart:
So here's some math:
3.75 * 520 + 6.25 * 340 = 1950 + 2125 = 4075 + 34(49) = 5741
5.25 * 420 + 4.75 * 280 = 2205 + 1330 = 3535 + 34(64) = 5711
Wow, that's almost the same! So at least for the pistol, Firearms and Explosives yields the same damage over a significant time.
