Is area damage still > average damage?

Demon Hunter
1

Since the 3 piecing cap and a lot more DPS vs 1 target is it still worth maxing out AD vs AVG Dam?

TYVM

2

I don’t quite understand what you mean by AD>AVGD… AD is just a damage type that you can extra deal when enemies are very close to one another. But other than that I do think it is still worthwhile to invest on AD for pushing higher

3

I think AS breakpoints are going to become a higher priority stat for the latest iteration of GoD6. I didn’t try any min/maxing in the PTR, just ran apples to apples to see how the build felt, then played around a bit with followers.

4

Depending on the rune you’re using on Hungering Arrow, AD is still kind of important if you use Spray of Teeth, at least from my testing.

Some caveats though…

  1. I didn’t dual wield, instead using a Yang’s plus NCS. (I don’t much like using Fortress just for the ability to use Squirt’s.)

  2. I used Spray of Teeth because of Lyndon’s “every hit is a crit” zone he makes.

  3. My top clear in non season with the set before the nerf was 133 and that was dual wielding Fortress with Dawn. My top clear in PTR with the Yang’s is 123. I’ve tried a 124 but it’ll take some pretty good RNG for me to clear it.

  4. So all that said, it’s about a 10 GR drop in performance and that alone might explain my experiences with Spray of Teeth.

5

I think AD is way more important than it was before if what was in the PTR goes live.

6

It probably will be, imo. Regardless tho, It’s still going to feel like azz compared to before because of how consecutive pierces increases damage with each pierce. And AreaDmg proccing off of that, and it’s dmg.

7

Area damage is still important but not more important than before. The Devouring Arrow area damage scaled cubically with the number of targets in a spot, but after the pierce cap nerf this will revert to linear like most single-hit attacks.

That said, the total damage increases linearly with area damage pre- or post-nerf.

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8

I tried to explain it in another thread and am welcome to be corrected here, but here’s how I see it:

before I could go into a high GR, create a big ball in festering and once spinning, every monster in that pack would get hit by my piercing arrows as I circle and weave. I didn’t need AD here, but man was it amazing when I took it, so I did.

Post ptr, i take no AD into that same pack, only the monsters directly in front of me and 2/3 close to it will get ever pierced by each arrow. I could have the best pull in the world, 100 swarms on 1 pixel and yet the arrow will only damage upto 3 of them… without AD I might as well not bother?

I’m selfishly talking about this from a high gr pushing perspective too by the way.

2 Likes
9

Okay let’s compare the Devouring Arrow and area damage scaling on “n” targets pre- and post-nerf. I will assume n targets stacked on top of each other and that the arrow pierces exactly 3 times (so 4n hits pre-nerf, and 4 hits total post-nerf) and an amount of area damage given by the variable “a”.

In the following equations, the 0.7 is the Devouring Arrow scaling parameter (it increases by 70% each pierce) and the 0.2 is the average proc of area damage (20% always).

To analyze the importance of area damage, we can take the derivative of the expressions above with respect to “a” (the area damage coefficient) while keeping the number of targets “n” fixed. In this case, the derivative with respect to “a” is simple: just take the terms from the above equations that have an “a” and ignore the rest!

What these equations represent is how your total damage changes as you increase your area damage while keeping the number of pierces and targets fixed. The derivatives are equal to zero when n = 1 since neither case benefits from an increase in area damage with only a single target!

However, the amount that area damage helps is actually the same in both cases! This is because the two derivatives are constant with respect to “a”! That is, if we fix “n”, then the damage equations grow linearly with “a”.

We could have simply noted that the only places “a” appears in the damage equations are to the first power and thus deduced the linear growth with respect to area damage right away. However, by taking the derivatives we can see it more clearly.

If this is too math heavy, let’s just compare two situations: 10 targets stacked (3 pierces) with 100% area damage, and 10 targets stacked with 0% area damage.

In 2.6.10, 10 targets with 100% area damage would result in D = 1640.8.
In 2.6.10, 10 targets with 0% area damage would result in D = 586.0.
In 2.7.0, 10 targets with 100% area damage would result in D = 22.96.
In 2.7.0, 10 targets with 0% area damage would result in D = 8.2.

Now let’s look at the ratios:

In 2.6.10 with 10 targets, increasing area damage 0→100% yields 2.8 times damage!
In 2.7.0 with 10 targets, increasing area damage 0→100% yields 2.8 times damage!

Again, this is because the total damage derivatives with respect to area damage is constant, but that constant will be much smaller post-nerf.

Also, as an aside, we can see the massive nerf to GoD DH in high GR in all its glory here!

Edit: I forgot to mention that we have a 10,000%→15,000% buff to the GoD 6-piece bonus. That wasn’t included in the calculations, but if you want to include it, just multiply the damage numbers by 151/101 for 2.7.0 to compare it to 2.6.10.

14 Likes
10

I love it when Iria goes into full-math-mode. :bow_and_arrow:

3 Likes
11

What a post :smiley: Thanks for all the effort! And yeah, sadly a little too ‘math heavy’ for me haha, but my wife is a maths teacher, so I might ask her for help later :wink:

12

Inner maths nerd tickled pink.
+1

13

Iria, I am sorry but you lost me at HELLO

Let me ask a more specific to me Q. I am p 2670 btw, not 5k+. Right now I have 170% AD. I do not plan to climb up as the build is done for that, but goal is to play speeds 105-118’s mostly…

I can move 20ad away from gloves for 1000 dex. I can move 20% AD from ring for 60-100 avg dam. I can also move 24% AD from weapon for either 8% Elite dam or 7IAS (I figured they will rework breakpoints, so we’ll have to see on that)

I guess my q is: if i am still over 100AD, would I benefit more from 1000dex, 60-100avg dam, or maximizing AD still preferable play.

1 Like
14

Having around 130-170 area damage is fine (you can optionally take average damage on rings instead). Which is better depends on how dense you group stuff and how hard the boss is.

For less dense situations, average damage on rings will be better, especially on the boss. But if you get vile swarms with your follower using Ess of Johan, then area damage on every slot (except amulet) could be best.

The point of my post was to illustrate that the effectiveness of area damage does not change after the nerf. It’s equally as useful, not more, not less than before.

Edit: if your goal is speeds, then area damage is less important since you won’t group up stuff as much before it dies.

1 Like
15

YA, My goal is not truly sub 2min speeds, but more 3-4min 110-115’s situation… Since my follower will have FoT, then it won’t be much grouping. I think I will roll off area dam off my ring… For gloves, I am not sure if I do that 20ad for 7ias or 1k dex (unless I need IAS)

16

So, does this also mean my claim of ‘you’re more or less forced into AD now’ is incorrect too then? I still can’t get my head around how only being able to hit just 4 high hp monsters at a time (0% AD 2.7) can will ever be as good as being able to hit all 100 monsters in the pack with infinitely piercing arrows. (0% AD current)

It just feels illogical captain, even with all those lovely hieroglyphics you’ve got there :smiley:

(I’m not disputing btw, I’m just seeking confirmation)

edit: p.s the wife just explained the sum and differentiation symbols and it makes a little more sense now :smiley:

17

You’re comparing Devouring Arrow pre- and post-nerf; of course damage will be a lot worse in 2.7.0. I’m comparing area damage scaling only.

As I stated in the example, don’t compare total damage between patch 2.6.10 to 2.7.0, instead compare different area damage amounts with the same number of stacked targets and same patch version. The result is area damage is equally as important in 2.6.10 as in 2.7.0.

18

I’m possibly just really bad at explaining my self. I said AD is more important now. (and I should probably qualify that I meant in high grs) My feelings behind this are because without AD in 2.7 you won’t be able to hit enough mobs with your arrows, so AD is compulsory, or the pack won’t ever go down.

Where as before you could hit many mobs, and foregoing AD was more forgiving.

19

And I think that hitting AS breakpoints will become more important in 2.7.0 in many cases. So we’ll be having to make decisions on where to stack AD, AS and Avg Dmg. It’ll make the loot hunt more interesting.

20

In 2.6.10 and in 2.7.0 when dealing with a fixed number of targets in a tight area, area damage simply accelerates how fast you clean up the pile. The benefit of area damage as a damage multiplier is the SAME before and after the nerf if we use the SAME number of targets in our comparison.

The topic of this thread was to ask if one needed to change the priority of area damage versus other affixes on gear. My answer is there is no change in how you want to gear up your character.

I’ll try to spell it out more clearly in one more example:

You have 20 monsters stacked up on top of each other, you have 100% area damage already from gear. You now want to see how much more effective +20% area damage would be to your build. We’ll use the same assumption as before (3 pierces so 4 hits per mob, post-nerf is 4 hits total).

  • 2.6.10 damage with 100% AD = 11001.6 times base arrow damage
  • 2.6.10 damage with 120% AD = 12743.5 times base arrow damage
  • 2.7.0 damage with 100% AD = 39.36 times base arrow damage
  • 2.7.0 damage with 120% AD = 45.592 times base arrow damage

So how much relative damage did +20% area damage grant in each case? Simply divide the damage number with 120% by the damage number with 100% to get the relative boost. In both cases, it’s about 1.158x damage; the +20% area damage provides the same benefit when comparing the exact same number of targets.

Now the issue that might be misunderstood is how the damage scales with “n” the number of targets. This is the major issue why the nerf is so bad. As you can see from the equations in my earlier post, in 2.6.10 the damage scales with n^3 and after 2.7.0 it scales with n^1.

Because of this scaling, it might be more effective to not waste as much time grouping things up in patch 2.7.0. Thus the number of stacked targets will be lower in 2.7.0, but area damage is still just as important.

TL;DR: The nerf in patch 2.7.0 won’t affect how we want to equip our DHs regarding area damage vs other damage affixes. Instead, the nerf will affect how we want to gather density (don’t gather more than a small ball of ~10 yard radius) since the total damage won’t scale up nearly as fast.

No, that doesn’t change either! Where are people coming up with this random info.

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