Hi everyone!
I had a question regarding using Marked for Death (especially in 2 player grifts since I do that a lot with one of my friends). It seems most people recommend using Fan of Knives, but that only seems to add about 2% damage reduction from looking at my armor stat. I don’t seem to have a lot of durability issues right now (we tend to speed run around 110 and are peaking out around 127) so I thought marked for death valley would help us more since it’s a 15% increase for both of us (he’s a barb so he groups enemies up for us a lot).
I know sometimes it’s not as easy as just looking at the percent increases/decreases for value since sometimes the values are additive or multiplicative, but I was hoping someone could help me better understand why the fan of knives seems to be valued so much more than marked for death (especially for 2’s which might shift the balance).
Don’t look at the raw DR value. That can be deceiving.
Going from 0% to 2% DR from armor is not even close to the same as going from 90 to 92% DR from armor.
Going from 0 to 2% DR from armor will be a 2% toughness increase. Going from 90 to 92% DR from armor will be a 25% toughness increase.
You should find that FoK: Bladed Armor is somewhere in the ballpark of a 25-30% toughness increase (biggest difference will be whether you use Taeguk or not). Definitely a lot more than 2% toughness.
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That makes sense for the mitigation. Is the 15% increased damage not a significant increase to your own output though as your damage gets higher and higher with upgrades and paragons levels especially since it affects multiple players though? I don’t seem to see many people using marked for death so I fear I’m missing something about its effect.
Well, it’s additive in the DIBS pool, so it’s not a straight 15% damage. It’s only a straight 15% DPS if you have no other buffs/debuffs from that pool. Depending on how many other additive buffs/debuffs you have, it can be worth a fair bit less than 15%.
For example, it’s in the same pool as Taeguk and skill damage on gear (e.g. Hungering Arrow %), . If you have 2 or 3 Hungering Arrow rolls and a decently levelled Taeguk, Valley of Death might only be worth 7-8% DPS.
It’ll depend a bit on what your friend is bringing in terms of buffs too. There’s a bunch of group buffs/debuffs that would also be in the same pool as Valley of Death, so depending on what the group is running it might dilute the value as well. On the other hand, if your friend is playing a DPS build and he doesn’t have a bunch of additive buffs/debuffs, it could be worth more to him than you. If he has 0 DIBS buffs, and you are running Taeguk + some Hungering Arrow rolls, it might be worth 7-8% DPS to you but as much as 15% DPS to your friend.
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Awesome, thanks so much for the assistance! I’ll keep playing and testing for now. As long as I’m not dying much, I’ll try to stick with marked for death and if I start to feel too squishy I’ll switch back to the bladed armor.
I’ll often run MfD in place of my pet. I enjoy marking an elite with Grim Reaper and pulling the pack into a larger mob. It’s a fun way to play, MfD is always up, and I can keep track if the real boss in an illusionist pack.
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