SPOILER Wynn 2.0 Combat Changes Discussion (+ spin cube poll)

forgive me but i find it incredibly hilarious that the horribly inaccurate compass was used for a misinterpretation of the context in which the term "dps" resides

the confidence in believing that it referred to spell dps (as a concept) instead of base dps (that's used in calcs) really goes to show how bad in-game info is

and is probably a symptom of the need for further revision/other clarification in wording bc what we've seen so far doesn't really make it clear

 

I put up the picture because that's the damage the spells should be referring to, not because it's accurate. You asked what damage was, I pointed out what it should be and I don't see how the numbers there being calculated wrong takes away from the point that there is a place where damage can be shown to contextualize the spell menu or that means damage as a term is confusing or misleading when in theory, it could be very straight forward. If the compass is a bad display of what damage is, that's a conversation we should be having about the compass display, not why damage is a confusing metric because there's no reason for why it should be.

On a related note and as a genuine question if the numbers were to be right, would you agree they should be what the game uses as a point of reference? That seems like a really minor issue in the grand scheme of things and I feel like it would fix basically all the issues you have with damage calculations so I don't see why that isn't the better solution than using DPS which you already admitted to as being confusing and to paraphrase, sub optimal (my words to be clear).

I also understand that you're talking about weapon base DPS, I thought that was made clear when I pointed out that DPS makes sense in the context of normal attacks because for those, their speed is an essential component of their mechanics because if you exclude speed, you misrepresent the damage capabilities for fast weapons. Spells aren't speed up by attack speed so time isn't a factor which is my point. My entire point is that DPS is a bad measure for spells specifically because time isn't a factor and that measuring their output isn't the same as regular attacks.

The only argument anyone has made to support DPS as the measure is that it's somehow less confusing than damage but that's based on the compass being wrong which isn't really an argument at all since if the compass were to be fixed, it wouldn't be an issue. The issue I'm having here is I want to know how much damage a spell does. If I do an arrow storm, how much does each arrow does and how many are fired, if I case meteor, I want to know how much the initial impact does, how much the residual does and how many times it ticks and I don't see why any of that makes more sense as a rate, even if it uses time as a part of that calculation. If spells cast faster based on attack speed like attacks do, then yes, the rate would matter but they don't so it really doesn't.

Also, if the terms are poorly defined, I don't understand why we can't just have more straight forward definitions, like say, having the base numbers in the compass properly calculated so those can be used as context for the now incredibly complicated spell system.

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You clearly missed the point I was making which is that there is a place in game where damage is shown as flat values. The values being wrong doesn't discredit the idea of representing spells as a number rather than a rate, it just means the numbers need to be fixed so they can actually be relied on by the player. I was asked to point to where it shows damage, so I did, but since we're playing this stupid game I'll flip it on you and ask where it shows the DPS because without a base saying -20% DPS means just as much as -20% damage since at that point, neither have context.

Laugh all you want but if your main arguments against using damage as the measure has to do with the damage portion of it, DPS (Damage per second) will have all the same issues so any argument made will apply to that just as much, only with the additional confusion thrown in thanks to the use of seconds in a game where a "second" is never actually a second long.

Here's some food for thought, just because spells use attack speed in their damage calculation doesn't mean they need to be expressed as a rate, at the end of the day every spell has a fixed damage range per hit which has no business being expressed as a rate.

 

This is incredibly short-sighted because you don't take into account the fact that base DPS in the context of damage calculation is damage x attack speed, a number that gives the "power" of a weapon in a game with varied attack speeds.
The lack of a comparable statistic on the weapon itself (people have been asking for base DPS to be listed along with the damage per hit for years) is the issue

And your argument that spells have a fixed damage range per hit is even more nonsensical. Why would you put explicit damage ranges on spell descriptions rather than using a multiplier/unit that can be compared? Even if that were as easy to implement, I don't see why you would ever want to make the game *less* clear about multipliers and internal workings in general.

You hyperfixate on the nature of base DPS being a rate, completely ignoring that it's how weapons can be compared on equal ground (and the main factor in spell damage calculation)

Also I don't get your aggressive response in the slightest when I'm agreeing that just throwing "DPS" in there without context is unclear? Like that was the entire point of my reply?

 

This is false. Base attack speed (which doesn't include the attack speed bonus ID) does affect spells. When hppeng says there's a point of confusion, he means that you don't appear to understand this.

The compass being wrong isn't the only example of DPS being less confusing than damage.

Cavalryman, which purports to apply a -70% penalty to 'damage', actually applies the equivalent of having -70% melee damage and -70% spell damage in identifications. This penalty isn't multiplicative. This makes it fundamentally distinct from having 70% less overall damage in both spells and melee.

On the other hand, Assassin's +80% 'damage' boost from Vanish is multiplicative. This means it boosts things like heavy melee DPS, despite additive boosts like courage having negligible effect.

 

I never said I don't want a multiplier rate, in fact, that would be as useful. I'm also hyperfixating on it being a rate for the sole reason that the comparison that's being talked about is between damage and damage per second where the time component and area of effect are the only differences. This is also entirely about spells, I get that when the speed of attacks (not attack speed) is a material factor, you need to use time, but for spells it isn't.

I should also say, I don't care that you're agreeing because I'm not looking for agreement or affirmation that damage is stupid, I don't think anyone ever called that into question. What I'm confused about is why DPS is being used, I'm looking for an actually good explanation since it makes no sense, people keep bringing up attack speed but spells are cast at a fixed rate so if one does 10 DPS over 10 seconds then just say the spell does 100 damage on a hit and takes 10 seconds to cast, that way if you do a damage reduction you can just say -20% damage, if you do a time reduction you can just say that and if you do both, you can show both.

To me, if the compass (let's just say it's right) says an arrow storm does 600 damage, I assume it's 600 per arrow over however many arrows (that should also be stated) which makes sense since I want to know how much it is per hit so if some miss, I'll know how much I lost out on. What doesn't make sense to me is expressing that as a DPS since either 1, 2 or 3 arrows can land which means DPS will either be 300% or 33% of what a DPS counter would say depending on how it's represented. Same for an AOE spell, in theory the DPS can literally be infinite assuming you have enough monsters grouped up. I guess that's my issue with this, DPS is situational so giving the raw numbers, the time and the targeting just makes more sense as descriptors.

As for having an aggressive response, the part about playing stupid games is in reference to making arguments against damage as a concept since damage needs to be reflected somewhere, somehow for a percentage reduction to have context. It's a "stupid game" because criticizing damage as a concept and how it's shown isn't related to the issue of using DPS as a measure, it has literally nothing to do with the any of the issues here. As for the next part,

Then I said "Laugh all you want but...". If what I said was aggressive to you, maybe you should reflect on what you said because aggression was never part of the plan there.

 

All spells use a spell multiplier, which is just some arbitrary value that gets multiplied on top of the base DPS. Because they're so closely related, neither measure is theoretically more confusing than the other. It also happens that this relationship makes base DPS a good candidate for comparing power across builds or classes.

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Ironically, the attack speed is a material factor, but the speed of attacks isn't. We are not only trying to justify this, we claim that it's exactly what makes base DPS so appropriate. Base DPS is only named this way because of how it's calculated, but we don't intend to imply that there is a time factor at play.

 

Okay, are there any examples beyond cavalryman because if not, that major ID is pretty stupid anyways since it should increase the damage you take, not reduce the damage you do (maybe a hot take, idk). Beyond that, you can still do flat and multiplicative deductions on damage since it is literally just DPS without the S, nothing about the math changes, you just take the DPS, multiply it by the number of seconds and boom, you've got damage but no more rate.

Also, in the case of the major ID, that's just more poor descriptions, I don't really see how that's an argument against just using damage.

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Yes, I'm very aware they use a multiplier, I don't see why that matters though. Like, it obviously matters in the calculation and would be nice to have in a spreadsheet somewhere since it allows third parties to do damage calcs but in terms of displaying the data it isn't particularly important, all that matters is the damage per hit, the number of hits and the time it takes for those hits to go through. By combining all those together you lose a lot of information since 1K DPS could be 1K in one second or 10K over 10 seconds which makes a big difference.

I also understand that attack speed is a material factor, but only in calculating how much damage the spell does, not how fast it does it which basically means the time component of that number doesn't actually matter. When you can attack faster, it matters because more, weaker hits would be undervalued but for spells that isn't an issue, if a smoke bomb does 10K with one build and 11K with another build, the time in which they do that damage is the same. Time is probably the least relevant component in comparing spell damage between builds, I would argue that damage per mana would even be a better rate since at least with that, you could estimate actual, realizable DPS.

Since something clearly isn't clicking, let me be crystal clear about my point. If spell speed is a constant, which as far as I'm aware, it is (if is isn't just say that), then speed, therefore time, isn't a factor in damage when comparing between builds for the same spell. For that reason, DPS is a bad measure since it includes arbitrary information and doesn't accurately reflect the damage you actually do per hit of said spell under any circumstance beyond that of which the DPS is described for. If it were to be represented as the damage per hit (in the compass), the number of hits (or AOE) and the casting time (displayed on the spell page ideally), a DPS could still be found to compare between spells, but it would also more accurately reflect how much damage is being done. That is my point.

 

Are you aware that DPS is not being used in a spell DPS context at all? By anyone? Ever?

it's only for base DPS, damage x attack speed of a weapon, the easily comparable and central metric for damage calculations.

Now whether just throwing "DPS" there is confusing or not, well, your confusion kinda proves it is very confusing.

 

i'd like to add as an afterthought that base dps is potentially more accurate than final damage at representing the boost/penalty, due to the effect of eledefs...

edit: actually i think eledefs precedes both during damage calculation, doom

 

yeah eledefs works on damage per hit (sf weakness abuse/walled)

 

I am aware, because spell dps is really, really dumb for all the reasons I pointed out plus a bunch of other reasons I'm sure a lot of other people have figured out. I feel like it's been pretty clear that we all agree with that actually. I'm also aware of how to calculate DPS, I feel like that should have been made clear when I pointed out that attack speed is a material value for melee attacks.

We do seem to be getting somewhere though since I understand why they're using DPS as it factors in weapons attack speed but what I don't get is why that can't just be done beforehand so the number can just be given as a range of values like how the compass should work. The issue I'm having hasn't really changed even knowing that though since representing a change in spell damage using DPS at all is still off to me because you could just, not do that since it's way more complicated. Like, if you want bash to do 20% less damage, just make it do 20% less damage and say -20% bash damage, I still don't get why base DPS is being used to do that.

I get this isn't how balance works in practice, but you would think the base DPS of an extremely fast build and an extremely slow one (the extremes) wouldn't be different enough to the point that said difference is worth complicating the system to this degree, would the damage difference really be that much because I just can't imagine it would be. Again, to be clear with this I'm not saying that for calculating the base rate, just for the modifiers like the 4x bash one which is what sparked this. To be clear, I'm not saying that I know for sure it wouldn't be an issue, I just can't picture it being more than maybe a 5 or 10% difference which to me, is worth the simplification, that's obviously not calculated though.

Okay, so what I'm getting from all this is that the damage calculation is overly complicated in the backend, which is fine I guess but I still don't see why spells can't just be pre-calculated to be a set of flat ranges which you add/subtract/divide/multiply from (maybe in that order? kind of beyond the point though) based on the numbers themselves. Complexity is good, don't get me wrong but this all seems like the wrong type of complexity only abstracted further by the game giving straight up wrong information.

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Okay, wait a minute, I think I'm starting to get this. Assuming you can make a spell build with a really low DPS (attack speed times weapon damage) that still has very high spell output (like with that EO wand), that would mean it's less of an issue of attack speed and more of an issue of DPS which is why they're using that as a measure since that effect is more punishing to builds which spec into both spell and melee as opposed to just specing into one or the other. By how much I'm not really sure but there's definitely divide between melee and spell builds so it's probably worth factoring in.

If that's the case though, the damage info box should show the DPS instead of the damage rate for regular attacks since that's the actually important number for both spells and melee. From that perspective, I can see why you were saying DPS is a more useful measure since if you just used a flat damage rate fast weapons would have a huge advantage since their rates are so low. That also means spells as a flat number would be good for display, but if you just cut into them it would disproportionately hurt spell builds which is probably an issue.

All of which means the compass is pretty shit at giving relevant information so I can see why you took issue with that lol

 

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dash confirmed (again) as new assassin base movement spell

 

The real question is whether the Shurikens count as melee or spell damage

 

acrobats throw shurikens

 

always spell damage, they are unlikely to risk mana steal on spells. That was removed very-early-Gavel if I remember right, multi hitting spells just gained way too much from it.

 

True
Also, does someone on the CT play Risk of Rain 2? Because uhhhh

 

Spoiler: Damage

 

it's only able to activate at most once per real main attack though. besides, powder specials already kinda do that. if it's too op it can always get the shaman treatment

 

Summoner real (necromancer fans clinging onto hope)