Precision vs power attack vs both on a pure rogue assassin

[CThruTheEgo]

What is better for a pure rogue: precision, power attack, or both? Here are my thoughts so far:

-First off, to-hit doesn't seem to be much of an issue now, so neither the +5% from precision or the -5 from power attack will make much difference in overall dps.

-Against high fort mobs 25% of a pure rogue's sneak damage is obviously better than +5 damage. But against mobs with little to no fort, precision doesn't really add anything.

-So is it best to have both to use as the situation demands? And what is the fort cutoff where precision becomes better than power attack? What do you all think?

[Jaid314]

the +5% to hit absolutely makes a big difference. if you're hitting, say, 65% of the time, it bumps you to 70% of the time.

unless you're always hitting except on a 1 (which i don't think anyone is right now, but just for the sake of argument) making it 19 times out of 20 instead of 18, it's adding a minimum of ~5.6% to your number of hits and therefore your DPS. in a more realistic (say, hitting 70% of the time going up to 75, or 15 times out of 20 instead of 14), it's about 7.1% increase.

now, the to-hit penalty on power attack is a bit harder to evaluate, but for the sake of argument we'll pretend it has no effect 100% of the time (i personally suspect that -5 has an effect rather more often than people give it credit for, but whatever). so now we have to ask: is +5 to damage better or worse than +7% damage? well, if you're doing 70 damage per hit or better, you want the +7% actually. if you're doing 89 damage or better per hit, you are better off taking that +5.6% damage as well. end-game, for most rogues... well, the only time you shouldn't be doing ~70 or better is when you aren't getting sneak attack. which means you either need to invest in aggro reduction, or you're fighting something with fortification... and if it's the latter, of course, we're right back to wanting precision. (if it's the former, you need to worry about dealing with that first, *then* worry about which feat adds more DPS).

[Rogann]

For my rogue, I have both. PA for trash. Precision for high fort mobs. Of course rogues can already pen 35%(Opportunist 10%, Grim precision 15%, 10% Blackscale) 40% when ever you roll a 20(which is rather common, if Shadowdancer).

So is 10% fort > PA(+8 damage from horc)? Im not sure. Of course theirs outside abilitys that can play into this. Is someone using Destruction items? Is their a FVS? ETC.

[kierg10]

if you are a high strength rogue power attack might be better.

if you are a low strength rogue you are relying more on sneak attack and assassinate to kill mobs, so precision is better.

if you have the feats to spare, choose both.

In the end if you had to choose one or the other, i would say choose precision, because there are many highfort enemies (most bosses) and that 25% extra fort bypass will add a lot more than +5 damage from power attack (right now my rogue is at 60% fort bypass, 25 precision+15 shadowdancer+10 black dragonscale armour+10 opportunist=60)

[BrianTheHun]

I find that it is good to have both feats. I usually run around with PA on, but switch to Precision against high-fort bosses and in quests that feature a lot of undead, constructs, elementals, etc.

[sandypaws]

As far as which feats to take, I'm in the both camp.

I almost never turn power attack on, except against things like sneak-immune constructs/high base DR things like ellies.

However, power attack is a prerequisite for improved sunder, which you will probably be wanting. Yeah, it's nice if someone else in your party has it, but I've actually run into a large number of groups that seem to not have any IS folks in them. Oddness.

-15 fort save(or whatever) and -10% fortification that the entire party can benefit from is absolutely huge.

[JOTMON]

Precision - you gain +5% to hit and reduce the target's fortification against your attacks by 25%
Power Attack -5 Hit & +5 Damage (two-handed get +10 to damage)

Assuming 2WF (S/B and 2HF...rogue splashes and helf dilantes I would go Power Attack as the PA favors 2HF.)


I dropped Power Attack in favor of Precision and have been very happy with it.
More base damage was not as meaningful to me as breaking fort and apply SA crits to normally Fortified mobs.

Most rogues heavily invest in SA damage...
Breaking Fortification + successful sneak attacks = happy rogue SA damage.

Precision without Sneak Attack is not quite as effective and I would tend to go PA if you are not utilizing SA on a regular basis.

[Cap_Man]

if you are a high strength rogue power attack might be better.

if you are a low strength rogue you are relying more on sneak attack and assassinate to kill mobs, so precision is better.

if you have the feats to spare, choose both.

In the end if you had to choose one or the other, i would say choose precision, because there are many highfort enemies (most bosses) and that 25% extra fort bypass will add a lot more than +5 damage from power attack

What he said.

[Jaid314]

What he said.

actually, the higher your strength, the better precision gets, unless you're already hitting on a 2 and can't get any more accurate.

precision is a % increase in DPS. power attack is a set amount. once your damage per hit exceeds a certain amount, precision is better all of the time against everything. power attack is actually better on a rogue that deals poor damage, precision is better for a rogue that deals high damage.

[RS-Makk]

How about for a rogue splash? (Mine is a fighter with 7 rogue)

[Cap_Man]

actually, the higher your strength, the better precision gets, unless you're already hitting on a 2 and can't get any more accurate.

precision is a % increase in DPS. power attack is a set amount. once your damage per hit exceeds a certain amount, precision is better all of the time against everything. power attack is actually better on a rogue that deals poor damage, precision is better for a rogue that deals high damage.

Not sure I follow you on this.

My thinking is ...

Assuming a strength rogue, the higher the strength the less likely they are to miss therefore the less use precision is?

Assuming a dex/finesse rogue, the higher the dex the less likely they are to miss therefore the less use precsion is?

And then we get into fortified mobs which are generally hard to hit and land sneak attacks on. Here I would guess the extra hits and SA you get from percision far out weigh +5 damage from Power Attack plus Power Attack may cause you to miss more (-5 to hit).

I guess if you always hit on a 2 (-5) and rarely come across fortified mobs, then Power Attack may be a better choice than Percision.

Power Attack is certainly nice to have and I would fit it in if I could. However, I only had room for one and felt I was better off with Precision because if it's not fortified I'll kill it quick with or without +5 damage but if it has fort then not as fast.

And I'm sure there are many situations/mobs where Power Attack is better than Precision but overall I felt Precision served me better.

(lol, this is my second shot at typing this up, I was just about to hit send the last time and the power went out)

[benneburg]

Power Attack is certainly nice to have and I would fit it in if I could. However, I only had room for one and felt I was better off with Precision because if it's not fortified I'll kill it quick with or without +5 damage but if it has fort then not as fast.

This, everything you get SA on already, will die fast enough for PA to not make much difference at all, certainly not something noticable in my opinion.

Always trying to improve on the weakest points, and it has worked so far, so the new Precision was a very longed for change.


benne^

[Qezuzu]

Complete no brainer that Precision is better than PA on things with fortification.

Also to consider, I have precision and Combat expertise, using the Improved CE enhancement from Dreadnought. Very useful when you're going to be taking a lot of damage (especially for some of the epic elite bosses which do +400 a hit). You won't be a tank, but you'll be a hell of a lot sturdier.

[goodspeed]

The to hit is nice, but I think the real use for precision is the bypass. Sittings fine and dandy, but hitting, critting, and especially seeing SA fly is bee's knee's.

Only thing is I wish they would add precision as an alternative to getting improved sunder.

[Jaid314]

Not sure I follow you on this.

My thinking is ...

Assuming a strength rogue, the higher the strength the less likely they are to miss therefore the less use precision is?

Assuming a dex/finesse rogue, the higher the dex the less likely they are to miss therefore the less use precsion is?

And then we get into fortified mobs which are generally hard to hit and land sneak attacks on. Here I would guess the extra hits and SA you get from percision far out weigh +5 damage from Power Attack plus Power Attack may cause you to miss more (-5 to hit).

I guess if you always hit on a 2 (-5) and rarely come across fortified mobs, then Power Attack may be a better choice than Percision.

Power Attack is certainly nice to have and I would fit it in if I could. However, I only had room for one and felt I was better off with Precision because if it's not fortified I'll kill it quick with or without +5 damage but if it has fort then not as fast.

And I'm sure there are many situations/mobs where Power Attack is better than Precision but overall I felt Precision served me better.

(lol, this is my second shot at typing this up, I was just about to hit send the last time and the power went out)

not sure where you're going, but i'll try to explain again. it looks like you've come to the same conclusion (precision should always be better), but you're not clear on why power attack can actually be better for a rogue with poor damage per hit.

simply put, precision takes your chance to hit, and adds 5% to it. from what we've been told, it doesn't take your hit chance and multiply it by 1.05, nor does it take your to-hit modifier and multiply that by 1.05 before calculating your to-hit chance.

because of the new formula, most people will be hitting somewhere around 60-80% of the time, i would guess. to figure out how much precision is improving your damage (by improving how often you hit), you simply take the old chance to hit (which will always be a multiple of 5 because of how the system is designed) and you have your denominator. you then take your new chance to hit, and you have your numerator. the result is the fraction for how much more often you will hit. because DDO is essentially forcing the situation to reduce down to a d20 roll, it's easier to represent this as, for example, 18/17 (if you used to hit 17 times per 20 swings, precision will make you hit 18 times per 20 swings, which is approximately 1.059, or about a 5.9% increase)

now, if we work under the theory that you're not hitting 19 times out of 20 already (because such a to-hit value would require absolutely ridiculous to-hit numbers which i don't think anyone in the game has yet), the absolute smallest increase will be the increase from 18/20 hits to 19/20 hits, an increase of 19/18 or approximately 1.056, 5.6% more often.

now then, to figure out which adds more damage per second, you just have to ask yourself: is 5.6% of a hit (the increase from precision) worth more or less than the 5 points from power attack? (the math will change a bit for half-orc and WF rogues, but i'm not convinced either is particularly optimal for rogues any more; human and half-elf add a *lot* because of racial damage boost).

so then, at what point does 5.6% of a hit become equivalent to +5 damage per hit? you just take 5 (our power attack number) and divide it by .056 to get your answer, which is about 89.3 for the record... so, at 89 damage, you're slightly better off using power attack, and at 90, you're slightly better off using precision.

now, granted, crits are going to muck around with this, but they're on both sides of the equation for DPS, and it's not going to be a huge difference (also, higher to-hit chance means higher chance to confirm crits as well... the math gets substantially more muddled). but in general, the crit damage increase from +5 isn't going to equate to a truly absurd amount... it also depends on what weapon you're using and blah blah blah. short version: this gets you a pretty close number to work with. (it also means we don't have to figure out how much less often you'll hit from power attack's penalty, which is dependant on mob AC... which means that you're going to need a full table comparing to-hit vs AC for something like 30-40 different to-hit numbers and probably an equal number of AC values... it won't be pretty).

of course, as i've noted... hitting 90% of the time before precision is rather uncommon. i would expect anyone who hits that often to hit for substantially more than 90 damage per hit (without power attack) anyways, because they probably have absolutely ludicrous DPS gear.

so if we use what is likely a much more reasonable amount, of hitting 75% of the time normally, the numbers change. we have 16/15 (or 80% / 75% if you prefer), or about a 6.7% increase in hits (and therefore DPS). the new number there is about 74.7 damage, assuming standard power attack values.

74.7 damage per hit is (or should be) well within the reach of any decently built assassin: you're already getting 17d6 damage from sneak attack if you take the capstone, or 59.5 damage per hit already. throw in rogue enhancements and a good sneak attack item for another 20 damage per hit, or a total of 79.5 right there just from sneak attack. assuming all of your other sources of damage don't work out to -5 damage or so... precision is better.

so that's why an assassin should generally go with sneak attack (it's much more messy if you're, say, a half-orc acrobat with 6 levels of monk and a level of druid... and also, i suspect most of those builds will want legendary dreadnought and cleave and great cleave, making power attack a requirement anyways)

now, as to why the less damage you do, the more valuable precision is (and the more valuable power attack is in comparison)...

well, that's a bit more simple. precision's DPS increase is most easily represented (as i've done above) as a percent of your damage to hit. if your damage as a rogue is really really low (for example, if you splashed a non-rogue level and are a melee mechanic for some unfathomable reason, plus you completely dumped strength and use terrible weapons and gear), you're using the same percentage, but it's a percentage of a smaller number. the worse your rogue is, the less valuable precision becomes and the more valuable power attack becomes in comparison.

or, for the short version: if you know what you're doing, precision is probably always better. it's better against 0% fortification because you deal so much damage per hit that hitting more often is worth more than hitting harder, and it's worth more against opponents with fortification because you will crit and sneak attack more often.