Epic Sword of Shadows vs TWF Lit 2?

[Droken]

Why should anyone care? There is a reason we refer to it as "trash."

Does this mean we should bust out our Silver Flame clubs against trash mobs? ;p~ Every DPS wants to know which weapon makes them most effective for any given situation.

I just wanted a comparison of the weapons themselves, without regards to classes. Like for instance, duel wielding any two lit 2's versus holding an ESoS, regardless of whether you're a barbarian, a kensai, a halfling wizard, or in my particular case, a Stalwart Defender. =D

I wasn't asking about whether I should make a new character and decide between making it a fighter duel wielding lit 2 Kopeshes or a barbarian with an ESoS.

From a quick once-over of the math involved, however, it looks like the difference between an ESoS and a pair of Lit 2's is really quite small. The difference in obtaining an ESoS is freaking rediculous though. Not to mention Lit 2's can be wielded by level 12.

But yeah, acquisition asside, in the hands of the same character, which choice is prefferable?

[Shade]

Oh look this thread.. The same one with the same replies with the same made up silly numbers we've all seen a thousand times, and have been proven time and time again to be wrong with verifiable real ingame results. Feel like we're stuck in a timeloop or something lol. But yea I'll reply to the OP at least, maybe he missed the last 5000 of these threads somehow.

Really gota wonder what the math fans angle is.. Are they just so over-confident they think they can really accurately handle everyting in this game and put it into numbers and act like that means anything at all in what is really an ultra complex game?
Are they trying to proove X build is the best?
Trying to drive up the price of large mats for lit2 khopeshs?
lol whatever it is, youd think they'd eventually get it and at least start purposely skewing there results towards whats been proven as better so it at leas appears the stuff there making up was at least acccidently accurate.

Just boggles my mind.

Why not just do what I did, look at real ingame results and let them speak for themselves. DPS Challenge has your answer in plain 100% pure hd video where no amount of personal bias, lack of game knowledge or math mistakes can get in the way.

Relevant top 3 results against giant (closests to trash as the OP asked):
#1 Cetuss (Half-Orc lvl20 Ftr THF - Twitch ESoS) 2:07
#2 Children (Half-Orc FB Bbn/Ftr 18/2 THF - Autocleave ESoS) 2:16
#3 Laeris (Half-Orc lvl20 Ftr TWF - Dual Lit2 Khops) 2:19

THF wins, by a small margine. But enough of one to throw a major obvious wrench into the useless math.

And theres no need to take my word for it. Simply review the videos yourself, you be the judge. The evidence and links are all in the dps challenge.

[grodon9999]

. . . no amount of personal bias, . . .

- No bard
- No Sneak attack

Do you refute that TWFing gains more from those factors than THFing?

And you may be luckier than most with your ESoS, I know people who are on 200+ dragon runs who have NEVER PULLED A SHARD for the ESoS. And without the ESoS it's not even close. It is far easier to craft Cannith Weapons and Lightning IIs than ESoS.

With the damage boost changes THFing ESoS barbs will be on top next update, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[TheDjinnFor]

Oh look this thread.. The same one with the same replies with the same made up silly numbers we've all seen a thousand times, and have been proven time and time again to be wrong with verifiable real ingame results.

Bull****.

You wrote the DPS challenge, you know exactly what it prevents players from using. People shouldn't have to explain why your challenge is useless, except maybe for figuring out which build makes the best solo melee hate tank.

"Silly made up numbers"... how about we talk about your meaningless and arbitrary restrictions?

Explain exactly how you think your challenge measures "real results". At best it cherry picks a handful of factors that are relevant to DPS comparisons, but certainly doesn't include very many of them. At least I'm willing to concede and correct mistakes in the math, when will you make a real DPS challenge? I've already made posts outlining what you screwed up on... which were, of course, ignored.

"Just boggles my mind" indeed.

Are they just so over-confident they think they can really accurately handle everyting in this game and put it into numbers and act like that means anything at all in what is really an ultra complex game?

You know, there's the process of scientific inquiry and discovery, where people make hypotheses and then test them to refine and develop their understanding of the world... and then there's you, Shade, who apparently won't contribute to that process. Part of explaining a complex world is to break it up and test isolated effects, then combine them together into cohesive models. If, in the process, the model is found to be flawed, the correct followup is to correct and refine and reevaluate the model, not to dismiss the validity of models in their entirety. Whether the model is ever perfected is irrelevant: what matters is that you keep moving forward, advancing in your knowledge of the world.

People have measured attack speed, measured the effects of doublestrike, measured the effects of base damage increases, and then they combined those models together. Maybe you think their models don't match with your personal experience; maybe that's the fault of the modeler, or maybe that's your own biases clouding your judgment. Just to show you what I mean, I'll make a DPS prediction of my own character and then go take a video of him taking down Sor'jek. I did it before with portal DPS and I'll do it with standard trash too. If it matches, I'm right, and you can go fly a kite for all I care. And if I'm wrong, great, back to the drawing board, I don't mind reviewing my theories and numbers.

[TheDearLeader]

Flame Bait

Bait Taken

Hook line and sinker

Hey Shade, erm... /point.

Your, *ahem*, Khyber is showing. Might want to cover that back up. Or not - Drama at this time of morning is good.

[Forzah]

With the damage boost changes THFing ESoS barbs will be on top next update, I'm looking forward to seeing it.

The best melee, but still not close to any arcane...

Let's face it. Melee dps is in the margin right now. Even if you max out your dps, you will still have a handicapped toon compared to casters.

[TheDearLeader]

The best melee, but still not close to any arcane...

Let's face it. Melee dps is in the margin right now. Even if you max out your dps, you will still have a handicapped toon compared to casters.

I think one performs slightly better than the other when Madstoned. Can we make that comparison?

[TheDjinnFor]

Hey Shade, erm... /point.

Your, *ahem*, Khyber is showing. Might want to cover that back up. Or not - Drama at this time of morning is good.

Thanks for contributing nothing to the discussion.

It's early in the morning and I'm grumpy and tired... but really now, Shade's just flaming and trolling, and you're not helping.

[TheDearLeader]

Thanks for contributing nothing to the discussion.

It's early in the morning and I'm grumpy and tired... but really now, Shade's just flaming and trolling, and you're not helping.

/hug

Better?

I'd have to say that I dig the Lit II more than the eSoS. I have both. Even with my Pally getting some max smite of like 1100 first number damage or something (helpless mob), it's still just cooler to me to have Lightning crashing down from the sky all the time.

So, given that the DPS margin between the two is rather small, and Bard Songs/other non-Str DPS buffs prefer TWF... why not go with the one that brings lightning crashing down on your enemies? Seems like a lot more fun to me.

[Moltier]

Oh look this thread.. The same one with the same replies with the same made up silly numbers we've all seen a thousand times, and have been proven time and time again to be wrong with verifiable real ingame results. Feel like we're stuck in a timeloop or something lol. But yea I'll reply to the OP at least, maybe he missed the last 5000 of these threads somehow.

Really gota wonder what the math fans angle is.. Are they just so over-confident they think they can really accurately handle everyting in this game and put it into numbers and act like that means anything at all in what is really an ultra complex game?
Are they trying to proove X build is the best?
Trying to drive up the price of large mats for lit2 khopeshs?
lol whatever it is, youd think they'd eventually get it and at least start purposely skewing there results towards whats been proven as better so it at leas appears the stuff there making up was at least acccidently accurate.

Just boggles my mind.

Why not just do what I did, look at real ingame results and let them speak for themselves. DPS Challenge has your answer in plain 100% pure hd video where no amount of personal bias, lack of game knowledge or math mistakes can get in the way.

Relevant top 3 results against giant (closests to trash as the OP asked):
#1 Cetuss (Half-Orc lvl20 Ftr THF - Twitch ESoS) 2:07
#2 Children (Half-Orc FB Bbn/Ftr 18/2 THF - Autocleave ESoS) 2:16
#3 Laeris (Half-Orc lvl20 Ftr TWF - Dual Lit2 Khops) 2:19

THF wins, by a small margine. But enough of one to throw a major obvious wrench into the useless math.

And theres no need to take my word for it. Simply review the videos yourself, you be the judge. The evidence and links are all in the dps challenge.

Take away twitch and autocleave and TWF will be no.1
The dps calcs show normal THF and TWF dps, a good base, to see what their capabilitys. Nothing more or less.
Also TWF wins the portal challenges. 1 tied with your THF, but the other is clearly a TWF win. 2 monk and 1 khopesh user.

I also stated why THF is way better trash beater.

[Droken]

What in the world is Twitch and Autocleave?

Also, in the DPS challenge, the weapons are wielded by different characters. Other gear may come into play, and different enhancements, etc.

Ok, so I was eager to test out the ESoS versus Dual Lit2's personally. What better way than the way I know best? A VoD solo of course! Haha. You have your trash mobs and even a raid boss mixed in!

My ESoS is slotted with Devil's Ruin red augment crystal.



64 mins. This was 3 mins slower than my most recent normal run shown using dual Lit 2's.



I didn't even have my ravager ring on for a big portion of the duel wielding fight (because I simply forgot; had on strider's ring to get to the quest and forgot to switch back). Hrm, not a big fan of the ESoS so far... For the record, I don't even duel wield kopeshes. Main hand scimitar, off hand kukri. I don't have the feats to spare since I'm an AC build. In the two weapon fight, against Sully, my dps drops even further. I resort to silver holy burst greater lawful bane main hand, min 2 shortsword off hand. Even after all that, this run was 3 mins faster. I didn't use any haste pots for the ESoS run. I ~don't think~ I used any for the duel wielding run because I don't like using consumables normally, but I'll double check for sure in 3 days when I'm off timer again and make another go at it.

[Skani]

@TheDjinnFor

When/if you'll be fixing math, add Heroic Companion to "Full-******" option.
+5 dmg (to both weapons in case of TWF)

[Moltier]

What in the world is Twitch and Autocleave?

Autocleave is the new toy for barbarians.
Currently cleave gives you your glancing damages, breakes your attack chain, but quickly start a new one.
So here is how it works:
Supreme cleave: full aoe damage + glancing blows
quick normal attack: normal damage to 1 target + glancing blows
Supreme cleave again...

Its lame, but even its single target dps is better then just swinging.

About Twitch, ask Shade, or check his, or some of the DPS challenge vids.
Basically you give up the glancing blows for more base attacks. Base attack can crit, glancing cant, so if your twitch skill is good enough, its worth it.

Edit coz your edit.
eSoS power comes from strength and base damage. And as far as i know, your strength is less then 40.
For a fighter or barb whos damage is 100+ the esos is the king (as long as crit works).
But for your intimi/hate tank, lit2 will be better.

[RandomKeypress]

What in the world is Twitch and Autocleave?

Twitch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDBBEwmIJv8&hd=1 (from Shade's 'DPS Challenge')
When a THF swings, the attack animations don't all move with the same speed. There are also two sets of animations - moving and standing. The animations determine your hit rate.

The standing animations are roughly fast, fast, slow, slow and then repeats
The animations for when you're moving are Fast, slowish and then repeats (something like that - someone somewhere has the numbers to the microsecond, I'm sure).

There was a very nice page or post that described it in useful detail, but I can't find it at the moment. Short form - you do more DPS if you take the first two standing attack animations and then move, shunting you into the moving attack animations. Twitching between the two gives a measurable improvement in DPS against a single target. Practice against a training dummy and you'll see the results.


Autocleave
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1QxFfaYcsI&hd=1 (again from Shade's 'DPS Challenge')
I think this is in reference to the improved attack rate available to barbarians when using supreme cleave. The attack interrupts the attack animation with a fastish attack and then gets back to the good first two strikes. The downside of this approach is that the attack costs 10hp per spin. Add to that the 2d3 damage per mob hit (you do have death frenzy and frenzy turned on, right?) and if you're surrounded and you don't have a dedicated healer, your 700HP can go down surprisingly fast.

A barbarian can do some amazing area damage when in full on DPS mode - the problem is that some of that damage is to themselves.

I'll let someone else talk about the impact all this has to glancing blows DPS.

[Alex301]

All spreadsheets are biased to make TWF look superior... Link to biased DPS challenge as some kind of solution.

You make this argument every time and we respond every time explaining why you are incorrect and outline the flaws in your DPS challenge

In future could you just quote the counter arguments so we don't have to copy and paste these responses? ty

[Kinerd]

Shouldn't it be multiplied by 19, though? It doesn't have a chance of proc'ing on crit misses.

Quite right, quite right! That's two you've cleaned up, good eyes.

I just wanted a comparison of the weapons themselves, without regards to classes. Like for instance, duel wielding any two lit 2's versus holding an ESoS, regardless of whether you're a barbarian, a kensai, a halfling wizard, or in my particular case, a Stalwart Defender. =D

Unfortunately this is not possible. Consider: a barbarian gets +3 critical multiplier on 19 and 20. This is worth much more for an eSoS than a khopesh, as an eSoS has approximately 9000 times as high base damage. A barbarian also gets much better glancing blow damage: this is wonderful for an eSoS and meaningless for a khopesh.

However, for a Stalwart Defender paladin, the choice against trash is clear: TWF lit 2 khopeshes.

Why not just do what I did, look at real ingame results and let them speak for themselves. DPS Challenge has your answer in plain 100% pure hd video where no amount of personal bias, lack of game knowledge or math mistakes can get in the way.

Relevant top 3 results against giant (closests to trash as the OP asked):
#1 Cetuss (Half-Orc lvl20 Ftr THF - Twitch ESoS) 2:07
#2 Children (Half-Orc FB Bbn/Ftr 18/2 THF - Autocleave ESoS) 2:16
#3 Laeris (Half-Orc lvl20 Ftr TWF - Dual Lit2 Khops) 2:19

THF wins, by a small margine. But enough of one to throw a major obvious wrench into the useless math.

And theres no need to take my word for it. Simply review the videos yourself, you be the judge. The evidence and links are all in the dps challenge.

The OP plays a paladin.

[Shade]

You make this argument

Thats where you've fallen.

You guys argue, you guys make up fake numbers and fake reasons why your inaccurate stuff is X or Y.. Thats called arugements. Have fun with that, but some players are smart enough to see through the smoke screen.

The challenge is clear. No smoke and mirrors. It has pure and simple results. I'm not making any arguements, I'm presenting truth.

[Therigar]

Does this mean we should bust out our Silver Flame clubs against trash mobs?

Duh!

[Alex301]

Thats where you've fallen.

You guys argue, you guys make up fake numbers and fake reasons why your inaccurate stuff is X or Y.. Thats called arugements. Have fun with that, but some players are smart enough to see through the smoke screen.

The challenge is clear. No smoke and mirrors. It has pure and simple results. I'm not making any arguements, I'm presenting truth.

How are the numbers fake and what are these fake reasons? We don't create spreadsheets and do the math to fool ourselves and everyone else into believing whatever it is you think we're trying to prove. While your DPS challenge may be clear and simple, it's also misrepresentative and not very realistic. Add in all the extraneous variables and the ability to compare builds based on your times is severely compromised.

Each build achieves it's dps in different ways and therefore different conditions will some builds over others. When we look at builds in ideal conditions with their top dps those with more attacks tend to benefit the most, i.e. TWF. When we look at your dps challenge that allows only a limited number of buffs and prohibits sneak attacks etc, then those conditions suit THF builds wielding an esos due to their higher inherent damage.

I do agree that the conditions used by most spreadsheets are not very realistic for most players either and they are too simplistic imo; they should look at each build's performance under more conditions for a more accurate and eclectic comparison. Your dps challenge is not free from these flaws either though.