Im playing a minion mendlin build. Doing ok in Torment 4 and can beat most tormented bosses, but im trying to figure out whicu aspect is better foe my buld. I can only fit 1 with my current gear
Aspect of frenzed dead : minions gain speed
Aspect of reanimaiton : minions do 40%x more damage
I have more than enough in attack speed cap 1 to get to 100%, so the Cult Leader paragon is active.
From what i undeestand , Frenzied dead goes againat cap 2, so thats an extra 45% minon attack speed.
So here are my questions please:
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is attack speed capped at 100% total? Meaning that my minions cant have moee thab that even if both caps equal 145%?
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in a mendelin build, its the proc that counts and isnway higher than normal minion attacks. If the extea AS i get in cap2 applies , woudlny that get me more DPS overall ?
Google doesnt help as i constantly get conflciting answers. Appreciate any expert help!
You aren’t incorrect that it could give more dpa. Though (last season) when I tried to put together a mendeln build, getting to 152% total speed didn’t seem to make a difference that was noticeable. Maybe if you were able to hit the 200% hard cap, you could theoretically see a difference ,but you would have to give up a lot of more beneficial stats to get there (like minion mastery on gloves).
You can push both attack speed and minion attack speed to 100% each for a 200% total bonus. Whether you’d want to depends.
The Cult Leader cap is based on the attack speed bonus to your minions. Standard attack speed on your character applies here via stat inheritance and minion attack speed applies directly to them. Thus, you need 100% total between the two to cap Cult Leader.
In a general context attack speed bonuses can be viewed as damage multiplication. Aka, if you had a 100% attack speed bonus you’d deliver 2x the attacks per unit time when fully leveraging it, effectively doubling your output. Under these conditions Frenzied Dead would be worth a 22.5%{x}. 2.45 / 2 = 1.225 = 22.5% increase.
This last bit answers your Reanimation vs Frenzied Dead question. Assuming both aspects are at max value, after the wind-up, Reanimation is going to be superior. Given every minion build is at minimum pushing for 100% attack speed you’ll be well beyond the point where Frenzied Dead is better (break even point is around 12% attack speed?). The more attack speed you have the more this comparison shifts in favor of Reanimation.
Obviously this ignores the wind-up period on each aspect. Frenzied Dead takes 3s and Reanimation 10s. I doubt this is worth worrying about too much and my brain does not feel like thinking about it right now. It also ignores golem active value. Those are limited by the CD.
I wouldn’t imagine Mendeln has any special considerations here. If you deliver more hits per unit time you get more procs per unit time. This is exactly how everything else scaling with attack speed behaves.
All that said, it’d also be important to know any relevant attack speed breakpoints related to frame-times for minions specifically. Assuming they apply. That would dictate what you’d aim for when exceeding the 100% bonus to cap Cult Leader. This is not a rabbit hole I’ve explored. I don’t intend to either.
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Thank you for being the maths guy! I also wanted to know the answer to this question. Though I had assumed reanimation would be better as its its own bucket of multiplier while frenzied dead adds to an existing bucket of attack speed which has gone beyond 100% therefore with magic (maths) probably is less.
I also know the windup with reanimation is irrelevent (minions are not dying) while the wind up with frenzied dead is very real between packs.
Well, it’s not terribly complex math. This is how you’d evaluate pretty much any improvement to an already present damage multiplier. Compare the multiplier contributions after you’ve increased it to what it was providing before you increased it.
It’s a reasonable assumption to make. It’s often how it plays out. Grab new multiplier > increase existing multiplier. There are exceptions if the increase provided by the former is tiny compared to the increase provided by the latter though.
Generally speaking if you’re at the Cult Leader cap and have to drop an offensive aspect for minions you cut Frenzied Dead. For the most part the others give more value. If you have the others with room for another offensive aspect it’s a reasonable choice.
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But isnt mendelin proc way more damage than normal miniom attacks ? Everywhere i look it says priority is attack speed to proc it as much as possible and increase dps.
This is what sucks about diablo 4, there is no reliable way in gamr to test damage output between chsnges in your build. The dummy is too cumebrsome for a full minion build
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to make it crystal clear base on what Iridium31 said.
A 16/21 rolled Frenzied dead aspect will act like a 22.5%x multiplier on Mendeln damage if you are at exactly 100% IAS soft cap and Frenzied dead brings you over this cap to 145% IAS. This is assuming perfect uptime, so in a real scenario its less.
A 16/21 rolled Reanimation aspect will act like a 40%x multiplier on Mendeln damage if your minions have been alive for at least 10 seconds. In a real scenario this is pretty much bang on the money given minions rarely die.
So Reanimation is much better.
Yes but attack speed is going to scale everything in the same way, for the most part. For simplicity, pretend like affixes aren’t in the picture at all and all minions attack at the same rate. Now consider the difference between a 0% attack speed bonus and 100% attack speed bonus. If your minions deliver 12 hits per 10s in the first case they’d deliver 24 hits per 10s in the second case. In case #2 you get twice as many hits per 10s. It’s 2x the DPS.
Mendeln triggers every 6th hit. In the first case you’d get 2 procs per minion over that 10s. In the second case you’d get 4. You’d end up with 2x as many normal hits and 2x as many Mendeln procs over that 10s. No matter how you slice it everything doubles because everything happens twice as often.
Obviously partial attacks do not exist so it’s not an exact approximation in all scenarios. If you set the combat length to some value yielding an integer number of attacks, or an attack count with no partial hits, it would be. Minions don’t attack at the same base rates either. Sometimes things need to be approximated or it’s much more convenient to do so.
Reanimation is a standalone multiplier. If minions are alive for 10s they do 40% more damage. It’s a 40% damage increase. The only way Frenzied Dead can give a 40% damage increase is if your total attack speed bonus is 12% or lower. Minion builds all push to at least a 100% attack speed bonus for Cult Leader. Frenzied Dead is always going to be the weaker aspect.
I suppose Golem actives play in there too because they don’t seem to care about/scale with attack speed at all. You press the button, the active happens and goes on CD until it’s up again. It’s another minor area favoring Reanimation.
Funnily enough, they added the ability for golems to leap at targets. At least during last season it seemed like that leap takes longer to hit because it has a much longer animation. Your golem has to dive bomb the target and then smack it. Instead of just smacking it when the target is at point-blank range.
Frenzied Dead is more relevant during leveling and when you have extra space. Say, Frenzied Dead vs Inner Calm. Sure, you could run Inner Calm. Then you’d have to constantly time when you stop moving to fully leverage it. It’s not a fun aspect. It’s right up there with needing to arbitrarily cast skills to shift on Druid when you drop combat for too long or travel through a portal to the 2nd level of a Pit run.
Thank you for all that.
But somrthing still isnt adding up. Using your 20 second example, with Frenzied dead, tha t is literally 2x the damage in that time.
Using Reanimaiton, its a flat 40%.
Other benefits of faster minion attack speed, is more cooldown reduction for things like Soulrift if you use Reaper cooldown and lucky hit decripify cooldown etc
Thing is thoguh im only getting 45% increased speed becuase i dont have Frenzied on a 2 hander, so not really getting 2x dps in practice
To give you an example:
Using a 2h scythe (atk 0.9) and 145% combined atk speed increases.
That gives 2.25 attacks per second
versus the same with only 100% attack speed:
This gives 1.8 attacks per second.
This only turns out to be a 25% increase in attacks per second (2.25 versus 1.8).
While reanimation is a straight 40% increase in damage.
The breakpoint to even out that 40% is around 2.60 attacks per second. This is around 175% attack speed net bonuses.
Thats why reanimation is much stronger.
175% speed increare for minions right ? I might have that if we are talking about the 2 attack speed stacks.
Does your math still apply with mendelin proc ? Its so mucu more damage than a normal minion attack
Yes, its 100% in bucket 1, then put reanimation on your 2H weapon to get there. So basically, you are giving yourself a massive nerf by doing so.
You could stick an 80-90% straight bonus damage there or get a 40% damage bonus. So you are losing a net of 40%x no matter how high you get.
Edit: Yes, it even nerfs mendeln damage to proc it only 25% more for 28% net less damage (keep in mind, 40%x really means 140% and 180%x on a 2h at max rolls).
You would literally need 200% attack speed to get ahead at anything noticeable.
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In the example provided it’s assumed attack speed is at a 100% bonus to cap Cult Leader. Whether Frenzied Dead is being used or not. Every end-game minion setup would aim for that Cult Leader cap. In that case, under ideal conditions, the 100% attack speed bonus would essentially give a 2x. And under those same ideal conditions Frenzied Dead would be worth a further 1.225x (22.5% damage increase).
Put differently, best case Frenzied Dead gives what functionally amounts to a 1.225x damage multiplier. Reanimation provides a 1.4x.
Yes, there are other considerations. It’s much harder to account for that stuff. I seriously doubt they are enough to push Frenzied Dead ahead of Reanimation though.
I understand that 10% attack speed means you do 10% more damage. Otherwise you’ll have to cater to breakpoints which messes up everything.
And that’s assuming you don’t put reanimation on your 2h. If you do, then it’s seriously a no brainer. Even still, you are talking linear scaled damage versus a multiplier.
The way the two modifiers are calculated are vastly different.
For the initial 10%, sure. You should be at a minimum of 63% attack speed for minions through the passive and paragon. Than that 10% addition becomes 6.1% damage increase (1.73/1.63). You are better off capping at 100% attack speed (easy with Mendeln ring or if you focus on Golem for damage) for Cult Leader bonus then using other aspects for pet damage.