Assassin/Ninja Melee + Sorcery Analysis - Heavy Melee, Fast Hybrid & Cancelstack

Introduction
A while back I made a post about using Time Rift in a heavy melee build (https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/heavy-melee-time-rift-analysis.269592/). Although I concluded the Time Rift build had a slightly higher dps than the standard build, I made a few mistakes in that post - I used Dawnbreak in the Time Rift build but not in the standard one, I multiplied poison damage by the repetition multiplier, and I did not take Quake damage into account - so I'd like to start off by correcting those mistakes.

Before we begin however, in case you didn't read the previous post, here are my calculations on how Sorcery affects melee dps:

Spoiler: Sorcery Calculations

The Major ID states there's a 30% chance for attacks to be cast a second time, but this should be elaborated on a bit. There is a 70% chance for there to be no repetitions, and 30% for at least 1 repetition, seeing as attacks can repeat again after already having been repeated by Sorcery, and so on. Using this, the probability of n repetitions occurring is as follows:


This equation can then be used to find how many repetitions will occur on average:


The series above can be solved to yield E[N] = 3/7, or approximately 0.4286. That is to say, on average, each melee hit will repeat 0.4286 times.

Heavy Melee
As mentioned earlier, I'll start off by properly comparing the Sorcery and regular heavy melee builds of the previous post. To this end, Quake damage should be taken into account - the repeated hits count towards charging powder specials, resulting in more frequent Quakes.

Considering it takes 3 hits to charge a powder special at super slow attack speed, and a Sorcery heavy melee build has 0.51*(1 + 3/7) = 0.51*10/7 = 51/70 (or approximately 0.7286) hits per second on average, it will take 3/(51/70) = 70/17 (or approximately 4.1176) seconds on average to charge a powder special, instead of the usual 5.88 seconds.

Here is the Mythic-free Time Rift Assassin heavy melee build: https://wynndata.tk/s/fmtk91
The dps of this build, minus 1094/3 poison damage, is 7240. Its effective dps, taking into account Sorcery and Quake, can be calculated as follows:
10/7*7240*(1 + 4.15/(0.51*70/17)) + 1094/3 = 31147 edps.

Now, let's compare this to the regular Assassin heavy melee build: https://wynndata.tk/s/me89za
The effective dps of this build can be found to be:
12125*(1 + 4.15/(0.51*5.88)) = 28905 edps.

Assuming all repeated hits land perfectly, the Time Rift heavy melee build has a higher edps than the regular heavy melee build by 7.76%. While there's less mana sustain in the Time Rift build, the spells are also considerably cheaper. However, the regular build is much tankier, having close to double the hp of the Time Rift build.

Ultimately, would I recommend this build? Not really - at least, not on Assassin. What makes Assassin heavy melee so strong is its synergy with Vanish, and Sorcery kind of messes with that. However, I could see this being used on a class like Mage or Archer, which have a lot more range and can better keep aiming at enemies to increase the odds of repeated hits landing.


Fast Hybrid
I recently made some fast hybrid builds, and realized that it could be a good fit for Sorcery on Assassin - you'll often be close to, and looking towards the enemy, meaning repeated hits will have a higher chance to land. Plus, it's easier to build intelligence, and the spell damage% of Time Rift would actually be useful.

Here's the build I made: https://wynndata.tk/s/owb62y - Nona EWA fast hybrid, with Time Rift.
8325 dps, 1mr 5ms, 1 mana 6.8k spins.

Let's carry out the calculations on charging powder specials with Sorcery again, this time at super fast attack speed - 22 hits to charge , with 4.3*10/7 = 43/7 (approximately 6.1429) hits per second on average, results in 22/(43/7) = 154/43 (approximately 3.5814) seconds to charge a powder special, instead of the usual 5.12 seconds. The effective melee dps of the Time Rift build can thus be found to be:

10/7*8325*(1 + 4.15/(4.3*154/43)) = 15098 edps.

Here's a similar Nona build without Time Rift to compare this with: https://wynndata.tk/s/4akt0b
11348 dps, 3mr 7ms, 1 mana 6.3k spins. The effective melee dps of this build can be calculated in similar fashion:

11348*(1 + 4.15/(4.3*5.12)) = 13487 edps.

Spoiler: Item choices

In the build above, Dune Storm could be used instead of Aquamarine (https://wynndata.tk/s/9ech0g) to reach an effective dps of 15945 and similar spin damage to that of the Time Rift build. However, I prefer compensating for the -hpr of Nona with Aquamarine. I looked into using other daggers but couldn't find any that fit the super fast EWA requirement.

If you'd like, you can use Rewind for Sorcery instead of Time Rift: https://wynndata.tk/s/2abzgk. The effective melee dps is significantly higher (17590) and the build has considerably better mana sustain, but the spin damage takes a hit.

EDIT: For even higher melee dps you can use the following Rewind build: https://wynndata.tk/s/12hz7a.

10/7*11664*(1 + 4.15/(4.3*154/43)) + 1235/3 = 21565 edps.

Naturally, the spin damage is lacking, but the walk speed is excellent at 162%.

As a side note, Impudent can be swapped with Old Keeper's Ring in most of the builds posted here for a lot more life sustain (especially when using Aquamarine).

Assuming all repeated hits land perfectly, the Time Rift fast hybrid build has a higher effective melee dps, with higher damage spins, compared to the standard build. However, the standard build has better mana sustain and higher walk speed. Furthermore, the many repeated hits in the Time Rift build can make casting spells more difficult.

This build is actually pretty fun to use - the repeated spins, smoke bombs and Quakes provide a lot of cc when fighting large groups of mobs.


Cancelstack
With heavy melee and fast raw done, of course I had to do cancelstack too. I wanted to refrain from using Shaggy Boots since it's getting nerfed soon(ish), but Writhing Growth locks you out of using Rewind, and there's just not enough sp for Time Rift + Necrosis, so here we are. The true dps, well... it's there, but again, this build will be unusable soon: https://wynndata.tk/s/thawx7

10/7*19447*(1 + 4.15/(4.3*154/43)) + 8503/3 = 38102 edps.

Spoiler: Post-nerf Shaggy Boots

At the cost of some damage, you can still make it work post-nerf as follows: https://wynndata.tk/s/ies4kx

10/7*17226*(1 + 4.15/(4.3*154/43)) + 6182/3 = 33301 edps.

For comparison, this is the highest dps I could reach with a regular Assassin cancelstack build (again using pre-nerf items): https://wynndata.tk/s/he4m1i

28956*(1 + 4.15/(4.3*5.12)) + 8952/3 = 37398 edps.

As can be seen, the Rewind build has a higher edps than the regular cancelstack build (by 1.88%). While arguably this isn't much, consider how the Rewind build has higher walk speed, cheaper spells and more mana sustain for better cc, and higher life steal.


Concluding
All in all, I'm surprised at how consistently Sorcery increased the melee edps, although sometimes only by a bit. Of these builds, I see the fast hybrid and cancelstack variants being the most viable, and probably also the most fun. I hope these builds show that Sorcery can be used for more than just spell builds!

Thank you for reading :)

If you find any mistakes in my calculations, please be so kind as to let me know!