Valla's Bequest Interaction *SOLVED*

Demon Hunter
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Please remember that the mark is applied after the hit. To benefit from Calamity (more damage, hatred, healing) you need to hit an enemy a second time before you hit any other monster. It happens from time to time with strafe, and it may happen that the “second hit” comes from an HA, actually dealing some damage.

But overall, this video is still valid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxR0zWrLQYA

For GoD, I would guess its a 0.5 to 1% damage increase, and ~0.3% healing on average, but that would require MfD on the skillbar.

Grim Reaper Is not working like normal AD. If you hit a monster with 100 damage, 15 damage is divided among nearby enemies. If there is only one, he gets 15 damage. But if there are 10, each of them gets only 1.5 damage

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Wudi’s video makes it clear that auto generators are procced by Strafe hits. Valla’s indirectly increases average DPS by increasing the rate of Strafe damage instances which increases the rate of auto generator fire.

Sometimes the increased rate of Strafe hits will not cause an additional auto generator to fire, but on average it will increase DPS. That much is not up for debate any more.

The only questions are “by how much?” and if there are other tweaks we can make to the build given that new knowledge.

Open questions:
What is the ICD formula for auto generators? It could be the same as Stricken for most skills [60F * 0.9 / Attack-speed-total] or the formula for mobility skills [60F * 0.9 / Attack-speed-total / (1 + movement speed)].

Can we make improvements to the build knowing what we know now? If the ICD resembles the Stricken formula, we can get the Strafe FPA down to 6 with 7 IAS on weapon and enchantress. Echoing Fury by itself reduce the Strafe FPA down to 4 and further increase your movement speed, potentially reducing the ICD as low as 1 frame, though without using Valla’s in that setup it would be difficult to leverage.

There is still more experimentation to be done.

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DiEoxidE and I will try to do some new tests with 2 other stationary targets in the Scorched Chapel later this week. We will line up all 3 target players in a line and see how many projectiles are spawned with a video analysis. Additionally, we plan to test with other mechanics as well such as Rocket Storm rune and Demolition.

Now that we know that the thing to look for is additional primaries and not extra damage procs (e.g. double pierce count) or something else, we can focus our attention on that.

Again, as a reminder, I specifically used the words “Our theory” in the original post to leave room for correction if new evidence surfaces. I’m not one of those people that plugs their ears when they hear information that contradicts their beliefs! I will update the main thread and redact my comment of placebo/bandwagon effects if this is indeed the case (with sufficient evidence).

Ah, I forgot about that part. In that case Calamity is only useful for the boss or another isolated target, so I will remove the Calamity paragraph in my earlier post. Thanks for the reminder.

Since I am quite active on the forums I have earned Trust Level 3 privileges which enable linking to external domains which aren’t whitelisted such as YouTube and Blizzard-related sites.

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I look forward to the results of the new tests. Thank you for spending your time on this.

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Now that is one of the funniest (haha) answers I have seen so far. :joy: There was always the possibility that when the strafe pierced from Valla’s the hungering arrow did too simultaneously but if it did, you would have picked up on that based on your tests.

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BlessedWrath

38 posts

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15h

I did some (very limited) testing on my own, in the PS4 version. Please note that my testing was not as extensive as Iria’s, and also that I make no claims of authority or whatever else might be falsely attributed to me, etc, etc, disclaimer, disclaimer, and so on.

What I saw was a significant increase in clear time on my GR100 runs. It’s impossible for me to keep track of whether any mythical secondary procs are happening in all that mess, but I tried my best to keep an eye out for them. Didn’t see any. What I did see was a faster trash-clearing potential once I switched to Rocket Storm or whatever the grenade rune is called (I literally just used it and can’t remember).

My theory at this time is that the additional projectiles from those two runes are the real reason players are clearing faster than the general community thinks they should. It could be that these players are throwing Valla’s Bequest into their builds to try to shift focus to an item which has no bug, in order to hide the benefit of the runes so they won’t get nerfed.

Again, my testing was too limited to be conclusive. Might have just been some lucky runs. In any case, the benefit I saw was nothing close to what’s being claimed.
"

Did anyone else test this?

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Iria has made noises that more tests will be conducted, and under similar conditions to Wudijo’s tests. If their data matches, we’ll be closer to an answer.

Please note that my testing was on an actual run, not trying to create special conditions. I paid attention to the timer and how fast/slow monsters were dying with one setup versus another. I felt that those conditions would be more telling for a real game scenario than anything, so I just went for it. I tested a very few runs, with just the two setups, so my sample size is not large enough to be conclusive.

Iria and others who have more accurate methods will be able to shed light on it, I’m sure. I just did it because I was curious.

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In my country, we have a saying: “On every gossip, there is a bit of truth” (in english it does not rhyme :smiley: ) and it means to not discard any possibility, even if it seems unbelivable or far-fetched at first :slight_smile: Who knows, maybe you found the real reason behind those 150 clears. Or maybe blizz should ban cheaters on Asia server and those 150s will disappear too :smiley:

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I’m not ready to make such wild claims yet. Let’s see what Iria and DieOxide turn up.

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Much like Valla’s Bequest, Rocket storm provides “extra” strafe projectiles in the form of rockets, which in turn, can possibly trigger additional generator shots from strafe.

I was messing around with it today and was able to replicate said interaction with rocket storm, albiet for a short while. What appeared to be extra shots, were very random and sometimes far in between. For sure this would be unintended.

Iria and I are planning on doing more test very soon with new info gathered throughout this thread. Thank you everyone for participating on this journey to find truths! :slight_smile:

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In today’s episode of D3 mythbusters… :slight_smile:
I just hope… no… i pray, that your findings will be recognized by dev(s) and there won’t be another “lamentationgate affair” or brainless hotfix.

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That’s just it, though…if it’s true, then there are multiple methods to get those extra procs; it won’t just be Valla’s Bequest that gets banhammered. Easiest way to fix it would be to remove automatic firing of generators from the set, which would instantly trashcan the entire setup. We have to remember that they’re not going to take the long way to get there.

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with switching it to “on-use”, instead of “on-hit”. That way, additional pierces wouldn’t trigger additional primaries, no matter what’s doing what. The only difference that would make is whether there has to be an enemy present in order to generate hatred from Strafe.

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Valla’s damage benefits in open maps is very noticeable, the 50% upper end power increase is real from a ‘feels like it works’ standpoint.

This item has performed better than the Buriza setup, and, anything else I’ve tried.

I have even tried equipping Buriza with Vallas instead of Dawn. (Don’t waste you’re time with this)

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It’s not that obvious. If it was as simple as each hit generates a primary, then hitting N targets in a line would generate N primaries which is not the case. One possibility that is still being investigated has to do with internal cooldowns and Valla’s or Rocket Storm enabling a more efficient proc rate.

We still don’t know for sure, so don’t jump to conclusions quite yet.

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LoL I was so going to try that, itd be rough in hc for obvious reasons

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See this is the really confusing part about that… so the 4 set originally on PTR did not proc area damage, usually what you do to cause that is to make the spell an actually cast not a proc… at least I think thats what they did with Ulianna’s 2 set to make it auto AD.

So like sVr tests this set and attack speed doesnt have an effect on the 4 set. I wasnt watching the test to see how he did it but lets say it was based on proc’s … Well attacking faster = more occurances if based on procs, and Strafe does attack faster if you have faster attack speed… (unlike Tempest Rush now for example where it keeps the same tick rate and just costs more Spirit) so it would logically make sense that its not based off of procs, since it seems to be the case that # of attacks you do in a second does not increase the rate at which the 4 set fires…

Now we put on Vallas Bequest and all of a sudden you’re getting extra attacks … so it almost seems like it is based on cast very confusing… do the extra primaries proc AD? I mean I have to assume they do because they shouldnt have that high impact if they dont.

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I think I might have found out why I couldn’t see better results with Valla’s before. I was using the cold rune (Icy Trail). Is it possible that the DoT blocks somehow the interaction with GoD-4? After switching to Rocket Storm I do see faster clears … I also switched Cull the Weak with Archery (now using Ambush, Archery, Single Out, Awareness)

Can somebody confirm this? Or was it just good luck?

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Now we put on Vallas Bequest and all of a sudden you’re getting extra attacks

Just following the discussion, but current working theory seems to be that the generator procs rely on an internal cooldown. Like stricken and so on - standard mechanic they use.

  • gen procs don’t work in town, they rely "on hit "
  • you get 4 gen procs per sec in a standard scenario (APS don’t matter).

Let’s say there would be a 1/4s cooldown. Every 0.25s a generator.
But 0.00s left.

This would work in a laboratory but not in a real game - because there is project travel time and player and enemies move. If a single enemy moves towards you (or you move towards the enemy) - you’d miss the 4th hit. So only 3 hits.

Maybe Blizz wanted to avoid that make sure that you always get the 4 procs. So they probably added a threshold. Let’s say 90%. So cooldown would be 1/4/(1/0.9) → 1/4/1.11111 → 0,225.

0.25-0.225= 0.025s (so 1,x frames - wouldn’t actually matter).
After 10s this would generate another gen proc - even without valla or other mechanics - but not really noticeable. In a normal scenario you’d get the 4 procs per second always.

With valla piercing and/or rocket storm rune + huge pull you might hit that tiny timeframe to generate another generator proc before.

Very hard to test that as timeframes are super low and we are talking about milliseconds and single frames here. But the more strafe hits you get, the higher the probability is to actually hit that small timeframe. Kinda random though - very hard to replicate that in a testing scenario - but would explain the random.

This could also explain why those projectile slowing elites get so much damage. Maybe you get multiple strafe hits on these (because of hitboxes - see the old blue ball mechanic, where big enemies could get hit 9 times with enough slow on quiver). Slowed strafe projectiles might generate 3 hits and therefore 3 gen procs. I’d probably test with Act 2 warden - think he has always that slow effect.

Edit: 90% threshold is just made up by me. Have no clue here - just a theory. Speed Pylongs or APS would help in that case too. Maybe the reason why 2hand crossbows are not ruling - normally they should have 33% more DPS (DPH).

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thans alot for the sugestions :smiley:

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After watching some runs by Woogmoog today, it seemed like there was some truth to the Valla’s producing extra primaries but the difference in speed was not statistically significant with the limited number of GR tests made (we noted a correlation with low significance). Even if we showed statistical significance, it wouldn’t answer the question as to why Valla’s is better.

As for theories, the most likely theory I am considering now is that it has something to do with ICD optimization as suggested by Landy and Kindergarten. If this is indeed the case, I have a great test idea that can maybe reveal the gimmick once I do some additional tests with DiEoxidE.

The test I plan to do is have 3 players: a strafer and 2 targets in the Scorched Chapel. The attacker will Strafe in place as DiEoxidE did before but this time with one target in melee range and the other at varying distances in a colinear formation with the attacker so that the pierces on the close-target player hit the distant player too.

By varying the distance between the two targets, we can adjust the delay between the melee-range proc and the distant pierce proc. If there is indeed some magic ICD difference that Valla’s is able to access, it should show up as the distance between the melee target and ranged target divided by the strafe projectile speed!

If this works, we can also test Rocket Storm, Demolition, and even varying amounts of attack speed to see if there is some way to get around needing Valla’s in the first place.

Lastly, if this is the secret gimmick that made Valla’s work, it could also explain why DiEoxidE and myself didn’t seem to notice the Valla’s effect when tested it ourselves since we often Strafe-weave (interweave Hungering Arrows while Strafing) which could mess-up the ICD timing enough to make it less viable.

I will update this thread tomorrow with the results of this test. I am hoping that this will be the secret of Valla’s Bequest and end this debate once and for all. However, if the test fails, then we will continue our search and try to come up with new ideas.

Edit: I made some adjustments to the conclusions section of the original post to better reflect my stance on the issue and explain why I am hesitant to claim anything even with some indirect evidence.

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