You have to understand that a huge amount of our damage output is coming from those AD procs.
If we made it so that we could decide when and where to overwrite Ambo’s Rends with hard-cast Rends, or if we couldn’t be sure when and if we were going to proc AD, we would be in trouble.
If y’all think the bulk of our damage is coming from Ambo’s Rends, I got news for ya: AD is still huge in the build, and it deals far more damage in good density.
I’ll put it this way. You could play the build and never hard-cast Rend. Go for silky smooth spinning all the time. But that style of play is going to clear signficantly lower than if you use hard-cast Rends.
Hard-cast Rends are calculated from the compressed Rend that is modified by all the other modifiers (IB, Wrath, etc). This is huge. Test it for yourself. Load up on AD and open a GR where stuff doesn’t die as soon as you touch it. Don’t use hard-cast Rends and wait while Ambo’s and Bloodbath do their work.
Now, collect that same amount of density and use hard-cast Rend. Watch what happens.
This is covered in the guide, by the way. Y’all ought to read it if you’re gonna debate how Rend works.
We started talking about auto cast Rend in Ambo’s being good or bad, and one thing lead to another. Free said about the importance of Hard casting Rend to proc AD and maximize damage and efficiency (which I agree), but I pointed out that auto cast Rend isn’t bad just because hard casting is stronger (due to AD procs), then I added that this build could use a overwrite mechanic (pretty much like Bleeding mechanic in Path of Exile), where while you are applying bleed the highest damage overwrites all the other, that way you always will have the highest damage roll possible in your Rend damage (despite AD).
I can understand if this could make the build too powerful, and wouldn’t be good for balance, but how Free sees this hurts the build is beyond me. I have agreed with everything else he said, just added one thing to the table, and he is telling me to read the guide “before debating”.
I think this would be hard to do, since the game would have to compare individual Ambo-Rends, which can’t deal AD, with individual HC Rends, which can. Obviously, ability to deal AD is pretty valuable, but a HC Rend wouldn’t always be seen as “highest damage” by the game, since each instance of Rend (including Ambo-Rends) snapshots your CHC at the time (and if you are using Into the Fray, your CHC can vary quite a lot).
So you might end up with situations where the game sees an Ambo-Rend as being “higher damage” (and thus, unable to be overwritten), despite the fact that a “lower damage” HC Rend could end up doing a lot more damage if you’re in density.
I’m not sure I follow. Ambo’s Rends and hard-cast Rends deal the same base damage. The only difference is that one procs AD. The AD proc is why hard-cast Rends are so powerful in density, and why they are only used to proc additional Zodiac cooldown vs the RG.
Sorry, that wasn’t directed at you. Clarifying because I hit reply on your previous post.
But the whole idea of Ambo’s has made the build smoother is not true. In fact, it’s the opposite. The old Zodiac WW didn’t have to stop to hard-cast Rends in density. In fact, the only thing you stopped for with the old build was to use Spear.
Yes, you are right. This implementation could be problematic due to snapshooting. This would only work if the game kept the AD from hardcasting intact, while the continuous bleed damage keeps rising to the maximum damage rolls possible (we are applying bleed all the time through auto and hard casting). If you find the time try reading about bleeding and Crimson Dance node in Path of Exile, you will get the idea.
Yes, the idea is the base Rend damage overwriting itself to the maximum rolls recently applied. Pretty much what I have written above. This was supposed just be a side note, an idea. Not advocating for its implementation, though. I’m just brainstorming.
Kind of. I’d say we get 70% of the lag we used to get. I locked up the game in 125s quite a few times; you can that I had to use the pause trick a few times in my clear video on Floor 1. It’s a nice perk, but as long as the build greatly benefits from AD and density, we’ll always have lag issues.
Then again, the engine dates back to 2008, and parts of it are even older, so that’s to be expected.
I guess you can run a lag-free variant if you forgo all AD. That certainly nerfs your clear potential, though.
Part of me wishes they just removed Rend’s ability to deal AD completely. Then we’d have a lag-free, powerful build that isn’t quite as far above our other builds as it is now.
I’m about 99.9% sure that’ll never happen, however.
I smile every time you call me this. To date, we have had disagreements about 3 issues where the in game leaderboards let us know who was undeniably right. One case was about a claim of yours relating to historical data while two others related to forward-looking statements that the leaderboards would resolve. The leaderboards/in game data that was subsequently highlighted in my “tables” proved the merits of my conclusions.
Here, this is more nuanced difference of opinion that will not be resolved by simple inspection of the leaderboard.
You claimed earlier it was bad. I said it was good. The fact that it is not optimal for greater rift pushing does not mean it is bad overall as this is one of many aspects to the game. In totality, autorend is good.
Your own quotes highlight the fact that it is not bad. In addition, as I and others pointed out, autorend helps significantly with lag. This is another good thing.
What percent of players are playing rend “properly” in your mind? If this is the minority, then you are discriminating against the majority of the playerbase to fit your definition of “properly”. I strongly suspect that the majority play “spin to win” and greatly appreciate auto-application of rend rather than the few who are trying to get a couple more GRs out of this build.
So to recap, autorend good for the vast majority of players except those trying to optimize to push their GR caps. For these players, it is good for almost all speed endeavors just not capping out their GR clears. Autorend is also good in that it reduces lag.
My opinion expressed in this thread about whether whirlwind automatically applying rend is good contrast that of another poster who says it is bad.
What do you think?
For this topic, there is no way to ascertain right or wrong using in game data/leaderboards.
In terms of being labelled pejoratively as “Table guy”, I wear this nickname as a badge of honor as I would being called “math nerd” or “science geek” or “fact checker” or “statistics man”. Each of the labels suggest the use of fact-based and evidence-based approaches to reach conclusions. These conclusions may be unpopular and have led to false accusations that are unsubstantiated/proven incorrect by facts/in game data/leaderboards. In general on the internet, there is a diversity of opinions, differential aptitudes in analytical reasoning, and ethical standards in relation to what people post.
However, your conclusions about lamentation at the time you were calling for nerfs to it were based on claims of what might happen, not what had happened or we had evidence of, i.e. not facts, evidence or maths.
It is not worth relitigating this now that we know more about the top potential of this build with a lamentation buff for rend damage @ 150%. Distinct players have cleared GR 145 and GR144 in the current era/non-season with the belt nerfed to a max of 150% rend damage. I used the data available at the time to reach the conclusion that a rend buff at 200% would reach GR 144-146 in non-season (the minority viewpoint). We know that people do not push builds to their maximum on the PTR. Therefore, we must predict build potential without already knowing the truth before hand. Hypothesis driven science takes the available data to formulate a testable idea. In this case, it became a simple observational study.
For my prediction, I used my game knowledge, pre-existing data, math about FoT and how pylon RNG affects GR clears.
Cool. I have a hypothesis that Wizards can do GR150 solos in 2 minutes flat due to an idea I’ve had. Should we nerf their builds by another 10 GR levels in case I’m right?
In your hypothetical example, you are either right or wrong. If you are right about your prediction, then one definitely could make a well-justified case for a nerf. If you were wrong, then it would not make sense to nerf.
Hindsight is 20/20. We now know some PTR predictions were way off, while some were far more accurate. They are not basing their nerf/buff decisions based on what any one player says but as mentioned have there own metrics.
Indeed, but if the nerfs are made on the basis of “that might be right” but it turns out to be wrong, what then? 20/20 hindsight can also show you exactly why you were wrong.