Only if you could get close with the dps of a 2h. If the DPS of the 1h+source is much greater, the AP efficiency is a really a non-issue even without AP on crit.
TL;DR
Two-hander = More damage per attack
More damage per attack = better AP conservation
Better AP conservation = use non-signatures more often
Use non-signatures more often = more real DPS
If all you care about is the number next to DPS on your stat sheet, this is correct. However, attack speed and damage-per-attack can have as big, or bigger, of an impact than damage per second.Originally Posted by magicrectangle
To be honest, I play a demon hunter mostly; I have a level 60 wizard who I haven't used much since he hit Inferno. However, my demon hunter uses the slowest weapon possible (a crossbow) while having hatred regen on quiver and cloak, on Templar, and on Bat Companion... and is capable of spamming Frost Arrow nearly infinitely, and pseudospams Multishot (Fire at Will, of course), by which I mean I use it a lot, actually more often than Frost Arrow, but I will run out in a few seconds if I just stand there and spam it. This would be impossible with a bow or a hand crossbow because of the lower damage per attack. At the end of the day, regardless of what my DPS says, being able to Multishot as much as possible is what lets me farm faster.
Here's an example: Let's say you wanted to be able to spam or nearly-spam Disintegrate, without turning into an Archon (it turns off Illusionist, which you find unacceptable). You'd still want 10 AP on crit on your wizard hat; with Disintegrate's proc rate of two-ninths and, let's say a 36% crit rate, that would be 0.8 AP gained back per attack against a single target. Now with a cost of 19.2 AP per attack, at 0.9 attacks per second, that's 17.28 AP/sec. With a default regen rate of 10 AP/sec, an Arcanot gaining 2/sec, Astral Presence for another 2/sec, and a Templar mercenary, our net Disintegrate channeling cost would be 2.78 AP/sec, which means we could channel it continuously for 28.9 seconds nonstop, and for every 1 second you spend not channeling it (moving, teleporting, general kiting) you gain about 5 seconds of channel time. One additional target would reduce the cost to 2.06 AP/sec, which is 38.9 seconds nonstop.
Compare that with a wand setup with 9% more crit rate and maxed AP on crit; 2.7 AP would be gained back per attack, making the cost per attack 17.3 AP, but the increased attack speed would make it cost 24.22 AP/sec. With the exact same AP-regenerating skills and Templar, the net cost would be 9.72 AP/sec. Channeling it for 8.6 seconds would deplete all AP, and each second of non-use would only regenerate about one second of use. One additional target would reduce the cost to 5.94 AP/sec, which is 13.6 seconds before all dried up; a noticeable improvement, but dependent upon mobs being present and still far from the staying power of the slower weapon. Actually, the wand setup would only outperform the two-hander when hitting exactly 4 targets; with 3, the two-hander is still cheaper, and with 5 they are both generating AP faster than spending it.
I'm not trying to say this works equally well for all skills. I deliberately picked one with a bad proc rate to make AP-on-crit matter less. However, it's exactly those skills where two-handers become the most attractive and deserve the most consideration as a gear choice. Obviously if you're just spamming signatures you should be going for max DPS, not for AP regeneration.
I actually think the main difference between the demon hunter and the wizard here is not the very-obvious "but you can have a quiver with your two-hander!" but instead how the two classes try to get more out of their defensive skills. Demon Hunters are going to try to get more discipline by using Preparation or maybe getting Natalya's set; fewer will be going for a dedicated Night Stalker build. However, Wizards are a little more pigeonholed into going Critical Mass (so similar to Night Stalker it's mildly humorous) if they want to Teleport multiple times per second (something Demon Hunters can pretty much do by default). Slow weapons and Critical Mass don't get along at all, so perhaps the common assumption on two-handers isn't that far off. However, slow weapons and Arcane Power get along great, and maybe there's a build out there that can use that relationship to the fullest in order to spam the previously unspammable.
Note to OP: You might want to try dropping your signature spell for Ray of Frost - Cold Blood in the left-click. Should be very AP-efficient for you, and as noted above it won't suffer from a longer animation.
Last edited by Dethklok; 30-07-2012 at 06:33. Reason: added TL;DR section and a note to the OP
Disintegrate is an AoE spell, and you've decided to do all your calculations for one target, which is pretty absurd. You've also neglected prism, which is an essential part of a disintegrate spam build - a build which by the way, you should't use outside of leveling or loling your way through content you overgear.
You can't look at it in a vacuum. What you need to do is look at it in terms of specs that are actually viable and useful in inferno.
The most common specs are:
critical mass - needs fast weapons with ap-on-crit.
blizz/hydra - blizzard gains damage from slow weapons, but its damage is balls anyway and you want fast weapons to make kiting more friendly. Your damage comes from hydra and signature.
archon - der, AP not a problem. 1h+source for the damage.
orb spam / kite - benefits from slow weapons only with bad gear. If you can afford ap-on-crit gear, fast weapons and ap-on-crit will give more damage, and better kiting.
disintegrate - not really a viable build in inferno unless you're overgeared, so really who cares? When you're leveling through the lower difficulties a 2h and prism for infini-disintegrate can be fun, but you're not going to do well in inferno with that unless you outgear the content (in which case you can do anything you want anyway).
Demon hunters and wizards are different animals. Show me a good high end build that is better off with a 2h.
Last edited by magicrectangle; 30-07-2012 at 11:17.
Blizzard - You want a fast weapon to get more DPS because hydra only cares about DPS. The kiting-friendliness is IMO overrated, if you need to spend X% of the time moving rather than shooting, you would still have to spend that same X% regardless of weapon speed - You'll just need to run away more before each shot, but each shot would also take longer to cast and do more damage, so it doesn't really matter too much if you play it right. Yes, faster is a bit more flexible, but that's about it. The really big bonus of a fast weapon is the extra DPS for hydra.
Even with disintegrate, you have to keep the DPS in mind. How long you can spam disintegrate is not the only factor. How much damage is done during that spam is just as important if not more. And besides, even with a fast weapon by the time you run out of AP there often isn't much left to AOE, in which case magic missile does pretty good damage on its own anyway. Not that disintegrate builds should be used in inferno (even in hell difficulty you'd need to buy a good level requirement reduced weapon to really over-gear hell difficulty and make the spec worth it).
Demon hunters are definitely a different animal, but even for them, since hungering arrow is so strong and free, weapon speed is not all that important if you have to sacrifice DPS in order to use a slower one (though the slow ones often have the highest DPS anyway in the DH's case, so it's even more of a non-issue really). A fast weapon would make you lose less than a few % to your total DPS in the grand majority of the cases.
I was merely demonstrating how slow weapons save AP, I didn't mean it as an endorsement of a Disintegrate build.
DH and wiz only have on main difference: cooldowns vs discipline. They are surprisingly similar otherwise. Wizards have hungering arrow, spike trap, vault, smoke screen, bat companion, rapid fire, and jagged spikes... cept you call them seeker, arcane mines, wormhole, diamond skin, arcanot, ray of frost, and blizzard.
Regarding your top specs:
Critical Mass - no argument there, def want wand for that one. Also for the record I def think this is best wiz build.
Archon- it sucks anyway, but yeah, agree
Blizz/Hydra - there's really nothing in that build that depends on proccing. Maybe the signatures should be replaced with AP spenders and a two-hander used instead. Maybe.
Orb spam - you realize that not shopping for AP on crit allows you to put your money into other mods, right? I think you're dead wrong on this one.
Except hungering is much much stronger than seeker, and Blizzard is a much better kiting ability than jagged spikes and costs your main resource that ends up limiting your damage to hydra+missile (or piercing orb) spam.
The importance of AP efficiency changes a lot when your free/generator spells are stronger. Of course, for wizard with the weaker free skills comes the DPS boost for using a fast weapon, which combined with the extra stats makes the faster weapons win out regardless of any AP efficiency disadvantage. For DH, even though most of your damage doesn't spend hatred, you are still better off with a slow weapon simply because you don't lose any DPS for using one.
As for AP on crit with orbs, like you say it's very hard to predict, because AP on crit has a very significant cost so it is hard to figure if the benefits outweigh the costs (most likely will depend on what deals you manage to find). But not getting AP on crit on offhand means you have even more stats there for the same price, so again the 1h/oh combo gets a significant DPS bonus over 2h.
Assuming BEST possible gear, calculating damage per AP spent (NOT DPS)
Wand: 122-226 base, +286-667 elemental (408-893), +50% (612-1339, 1365.7 DPS), +110-405 source (722-1744) = 1233 DPA
1hand mace: 191-354 base, same elemental (477-1021), +50% (715-1531, 1347.6 DPS), source (825-1936) = 1380 DPA
2hand mace: 659-728 base, same elemental (945-1395), +50% (1417-2092, 1579 DPS) = 1754.5 DPA
Dmg / AP (wand) = 1233/(AP cost - 30 * CritRate * ProcRate * x)
Dmg / AP (1hand mace) = 1380/(AP cost - 20 * CritRate * ProcRate * x)
Dmg / AP (2hand mace) = 1745.5/(AP cost - 10 * (CritRate-.085) * ProcRate * x)
x = number of enemies hit
Let's assume Arcane Nova with a critrate of 52.5%
WAND
1233/(35-30*.525*.1666)=1233/(35-2.625x)
x=1, 1233/32.375=38.084 D/AP
x=2, 1233/29.750=41.445 D/AP
x=3, 1233/27.125=45.456 D/AP
x=4, 1233/24.500=50.327 D/AP
x=5, 1233/21.875=56.366 D/AP
1-HAND MACE
1380/(35-20*.525*.1666)=1380/(35-1.75x)
x=1, 1380/33.25=41.504 D/AP
x=2, 1380/31.50=42.857 D/AP
x=3, 1380/29.75=46.387 D/AP
x=4, 1380/28.00=49.286 D/AP
x=5, 1380/26.25=52.571 D/AP
2-HAND MACE (and cleanup edits) coming soon, back to work now...
Assuming BEST possible gear, calculating damage per AP spent (NOT DPS).
Wand: 122-226 base, +286-667 elemental (408-893), +50% (612-1339, 1365.7 DPS), +110-405 source (722-1744) = 1233 DPA
1hand mace: 191-354 base, same elemental (477-1021), +50% (715-1531, 1347.6 DPS), source (825-1936) = 1380 DPA
2hand mace: 659-728 base, same elemental (945-1395), +50% (1417-2092, 1579 DPS) = 1754.5 DPA
Dmg / AP (wand) = 1233/(AP cost - 30 * CritRate * ProcRate * x)
Dmg / AP (1hand mace) = 1380/(AP cost - 20 * CritRate * ProcRate * x)
Dmg / AP (2hand mace) = 1745.5/(AP cost - 10 * (CritRate-.085) * ProcRate * x)
x = number of enemies hit
Let's assume Arcane Nova with a critrate of 52.5%
WAND
1233/(35-30*.525*.1666*x)=1233/(35-2.625x)
x=1, 1233/32.375=38.084 D/AP
x=2, 1233/29.750=41.445 D/AP
x=3, 1233/27.125=45.456 D/AP
x=4, 1233/24.500=50.327 D/AP
1-HAND MACE
1380/(35-20*.525*.1666*x)=1380/(35-1.75x)
x=1, 1380/33.25=41.504 D/AP
x=2, 1380/31.50=42.857 D/AP
x=3, 1380/29.75=46.387 D/AP
x=4, 1380/28.00=49.286 D/AP
2-HAND MACE
I realized after framing the initial math problem that going with a two-hander limits the maximum Intelligence possible, from 2944 to 2766 (assuming source is both 178 Intelligence and socketed). Furthermore, crit rate drops from 46.5% to 38.0%. Assuming +385% critical damage, all those added together reduce effective damage per attack from 1754.5 to 1455.9.
1602.9/(35-10*.44*.1666*x)=1602.9/(35-0.7333x)
x=1, 1455.9/34.27=42.460 D/AP
x=2, 1455.9/33.53=43.421 D/AP
x=3, 1455.9/32.80=44.387 D/AP
x=4, 1455.9/32.07=45.398 D/AP
CONCLUSION
Assuming perfect gear, the wand has the best damage/AP once the number of effected targets reaches 4. A slower one-hander does better than a wand against 3 or less targets; a slow two-hander does better than the slow one-hander against 1 or 2 targets. Frankly I cant imagine the damage/AP with Arcane Nova mattering much except when against at least 3 targets; even at 3 targets, the wand is close enough to a slow one-hander, and better against any higher number of targets.
Which means galzohar was essentially right; the closer you get to perfect gear, the worse two-handers become. I think they should change it so you can use a source with a two-hander, but that's just me... the slower speed of two-handers alone, combined with the affixes found only on wands, is probably sufficient to make it more of a decision on whether to go two-hand or not, but not even being to keep up on damage/AP is just embarassing.
Quick side note:The reason I delved into the wizard section of this forum and made a fool of myself is because DH actually don't need generators at all if they use Bat Companion. All my attacks cost hatred.
I thought only cluster arrow can compete with hungering arrow for damage per shot in a very high % of the situations? After all, there is a reason hungering+cluster is the cookie-cutter, and it's not because cluster's awesome (read: crappy) hatred efficiency...
In any case, since signature damage is not 0 and time spent moving around is also not 0, it simply makes no sense to only look at damage/ap and ignore DPS.
I think most Demon Hunter builds suck. I think the class is good enough that they are not required to think of good builds the same way Barbarians and Wizards have to. For example, consider the following facts:
- Night Stalker and Critical Mass are actually the same passive, on different classes. The only difference is that Demon Hunters spread their cooldown among all defensive skills, using the discipline system, while wizards track it separately.
- Gas Grenades procs 50% on hit and an additional 50% per tic as an area-based attack that costs no resources to use.
- Jagged Spikes procs 65% per tic and slows enemies, although it costs 6 Discipline to use.
- Chances are that Gas Grenades and Jagged Spikes, like Run Like the Wind or Energy Twister, increase in tic rate as attack speed increases, allowing them to proc many, many times at the cost of a single action. Testing may be required.
- If you have the fastest weapon equipped, Archery gives +10% critical chance.
- You should be able to do some pretty nifty things with virtually unlimited Discipline. Like permanently be in Gloom or unlimited Vaults.
- Although the Whirlwind build is well known, and the Critical Mass build is well known, there is no massively popular Night Stalker build, and we can, at least for now, safely assuming that anyone using it is fumbling to make something happen and failing to do so.
Considering I can think of all these things, why haven't I gotten the gear to see if this build is viable?
- I would have to sacrifice MF/GF
- My primary concern is one-shotting everything I see with Multishot
All I can say further is that if anyone considers Hungering Arrow and Cluster Arrow to be cookie-cutter, I do not desire their cookies. (I blame Athene.)"Signature damage is not 0" is an assumption that, depending on build, is sometimes correct and sometimes not.
Time spent moving is usually best used as time spent stutter-stepping. Although that gives AP regen more time to work its magic, it does not totally negate the value of AP efficiency.
Despite your horrible reasoning, of course it doesn't make sense to only look at damage/ap and ignore DPS. The reasons to care about DPS are that monsters move towards you at a relatively fixed speed, and the faster you kill the faster you farm. The reasons to look at AP efficiency are because if you can't use your attacks, you have to wait/evade instead of attacking, and the less you wait on resource regen the faster you farm.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks