Asherons Call: ElgarL's look at CS, CB and Non-imbued DoT statistics

Originally Posted on the Turbine AC Forums.

I've just spent the day running tests on different Imbues to see how much of an effect CS really has over a Non-Imbued wand. I included in these tests on CB as well as they are sometimes the second choice for a mage when hunting Large health monsters.

Following are my findings, but I don't expect anyone to take them at face value. Due to who I am, the stigma some try to attach to me and that I'm asking for an Aegis imbue for a wand (Link) I expect to draw a lot of flak, as has already been seen in the last thread. People claiming I only want it to help macroers (macroing is legal), or just plainly arguing because of mage hate. I'm providing these figures but also the testing method will be released in the next version of ELTank, along with source to these functions if anyone is interested in them.

First off all of these tests were performed in Caulcano in a fellowship killing Biaka. These are stats taken on a mage maxed in Focus, Self and War (trained). His Base war without buffs is 353. Buffed with level seven spells it's 413. I used no cantrips or other aids to artificially raise or lower any of his abilities.

These tests were performed using No-Wield wands with no elemental bonuses. Old style wands if you like. I tested each wand through 200 successful hits, casting level seven Frost Arc and Frost Bolt spells on Biaka vulned with a level seven Cold Vuln spell

First is the CS wand -

<ELTank> [Brass Sceptre] : Crit percent = 48.5% : Average Hit = 547 :Total Hits = 200 : Standard [Min = 330 Max = 541 Average = 422] Critical [Min = 574 Max = 785 Average = 679]

Next is the CB wand -

<ELTank> [Onyx Wand] : Crit percent = 3.5% : Average Hit = 519 :Total Hits = 200 : Standard [Min = 319 Max = 541 Average = 436] Critical [Min = 2702 Max = 2935 Average = 2815]

and Last is the Non-Imbued wand -

<ELTank> [Sunstone Sceptre] : Crit percent = 2% : Average Hit = 442 :Total Hits = 200 : Standard [Min = 319 Max = 541 Average = 438] Critical [Min = 574 Max = 707 Average = 623]

Comparing the results you'll see that there are two irregularities in the figures. In two cases these wands failed to achieve their maximum and worst potential. First is the CS wand. It's Minimum damage possible under those circumstances is 319 damage, the same as both other wands. Yet it failed to reach that low figure due to the sample size.
The second is the Non-Imbued wand (we'll refer to this as NI from now for simplicities sake). It should have been able to achieve its upper limit of 785. However it failed due to the sample size and the percentage chance of critical hits when using it. If run for a few days then perhaps we'd have seen both hit their targets, but what we are interested in here is averages. For a wand to hit it's absolute minimum once in over 200 casts is not going to skew the figures by any measurable amount, at least not enough to worry about for these tests.

Now that we have our sample results we can begin with some comparisons. Lets begin with the average damage, as that's the main focus of this example.

CS = 547, CB = 519 and NI = 442

The difference between the CS and the NI is 105 points, if taken as a percentage that's (100 / 547) * 105 which is a fraction over 19%. That's an average reduction of 19% on each spell.

If you take a Biaka as an example, as they were what this test was performed on, which have 6000 health. If you then perform some calculations using the average damage we have gathered above, we can see some interesting results.

Using a CS wand it would take an average of 11 war spells to kill a single Biaka. Using a NI wand it would take an average of 14. That may not seem like much of a difference when counted by spells, until you apply the same calculations to the experience produced over time.

A Caulcano fellow will average around 40 mill an hour. Apply the same reduction and that then becomes (40 / 100) * (100 - 19) = 32.4 mill. Just a slight drop, 7.6 mill an hour to be precise.

Now I know there's a lot of mage hate out there, this is just to prove that a 19% hit to a mages DoT is a big deal to a mage. One I believe that is ample when considering creating an aegis wand for a mage.

There is ONE flaw in my thinking though which just sprang to mind. With this type of wand there is absolutely no drawback to a life mage or a melee/archer that uses it to debuff a monster. Then again there's no draw back to an archer with no melee D from a Dark bow either, so I guess it evens out. You might even say it will help to even the playing field as a melee/archer no longer has to drop his aegis protection to buff or debuff and a life mage gets it good all round.

Anyway those are the facts, read them, check them all you like. It's there to see. Hard figures that are reproduce able and provable.
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http://rathgar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk