Filigree set question

[JoeShmo]

Hi all. I am playing an unarmed whirlwind monk. I am trying to decide between Prowess set vs. Beast's Mantle set. The extra melee power for 10 sec is no doubt a huge increase in damage; but that being said, it is just 10 sec out of the 30 sec action boost. On the other hand, Beast's Mantle offers 14d6 extra damage on melee and missile attacks which is constant. All that being said, I'm failing my math and not sure which one is better overall. Has anyone tried either set and has gameplay support? I'm not sure how much of a difference 14d6 extra slashing damage would do, but it sounds like a pretty big amount. Thanks!

[Cableman]

Hi all. I am playing an unarmed whirlwind monk. I am trying to decide between Prowess set vs. Beast's Mantle set. The extra melee power for 10 sec is no doubt a huge increase in damage; but that being said, it is just 10 sec out of the 30 sec action boost. On the other hand, Beast's Mantle offers 14d6 extra damage on melee and missile attacks which is constant. All that being said, I'm failing my math and not sure which one is better overall. Has anyone tried either set and has gameplay support? I'm not sure how much of a difference 14d6 extra slashing damage would do, but it sounds like a pretty big amount. Thanks!

I use the set that gives 14d6 acid damage and that gives me about 40 acid damage per hit on reaper 1, so probably a bit more on elite and below and scales down further with higher reaper.

[Draxani]

I think it probably depends on you're double-strike + attack speed. I tested with the electrocution set, and it didn't appear to scale from spell-power, capping at 84 dmg, but generally hitting in the 50's. It also depends on your base dmg and melee power. I have yet to test, but running in LD should give you a 50% uptime for the melee power bonus, though without the shortened cooldowns its more like 33%. One thing I want to see is if boosts that can be activated at the same time as other boosts will also trigger the melee power (ex. clicking haste boost and 10 seconds in clicking action boost: thick skinned), because that would enable a 100% uptime. All in all, if you hit for a lot of base dmg, the prowess set may be better, and if you have fairly weak hits, but hit a bajillion times a second, the mantle set may be preferable.

[Hamagawi]

I don't think that it matters at all what your attack speed or doublestrike is for this comparison, after all faster procs of the on hit damage aren't any different than faster procs of higher base damage. It does however depend on what your current base damage and melee power are.

The on hit damage offers 49 (14 * 3.5) extra damage per hit. That is easy to compare to how much you hit for without it and see how much of a % increase it is.

The MP is more complicated because it depends on how much MP you have already (adding 10 MP when you have 0 MP is a 10% increase to damage output while adding 10 MP when you have 100 already is a 5% increase in damage output) as well as what your up-time on the MP buff is. If you are in a situation like a boss fight where you are using action boosts on cooldown and constantly hitting your target then you get a 33% up-time using a destiny that is not LD and a 50% up-time if you are in LD. This means that for that situation non LD users gain 25 MP while LD users gain 37.5 MP. However this is a very unusual situation to find yourself in, most of the time fights are of variable length which makes evaluating the up-time much more complicated. For example if you never have fights that last longer than 10 seconds and you also never run out of action boosts in between shrines then it's a pure 75 MP increase. With an average fight length of 30 seconds LD users get a 66% up-time, again provided you have enough action boosts to constantly use them on cooldown and not run out, while non LD users still have a 33% up-time. Another difficult to evaluate consideration is that usually in a fight you will try to kill priority targets first and while hitting that champ or caster for the first 10 seconds of a fight you have the full 75 MP active.

Overall without having any personal experience with either option my feeling is that if you use LD and find that you don't run out of action boosts then Prowess is likely to be better, if you prefer a different destiny or are using a different destiny for etr purposes then it likely becomes closer and you can probably just choose whichever you like more or try to do the individual math for your situation.

Edit: I just looked at what the actual filigrees that make up the set are and the beast's mantle ones are significantly less useful, beast's mantle offers +1 con, +1 str, +10 natural armor, +10% fort bypass vs prowess with +1 dex, +1 hit/dmg, +5 prr, +2 seeker, and +2 action boosts. This is assuming that you get all rare variants and your 5th filigree (filigrees beyond 5 will take a really long time to unlock though hypothetically beast's mantle allows you to fit in a 3 piece bonus alongside it) is a 5 MP filigree to make up for the 5 MP in the prowess set bonus. Also the 14d6 assumes being at level 30, if you happen to be using it for epic leveling rather than playing at cap it scales from 4d6 up to 14d6. I think this definitely tilts things towards the Prowess set although if the natural armor bonus ends up stacking with natural armor from gear being that it is part of a filigree set that could be interesting for someone trying to max their ac. Given that it specifically states a natural armor type though that seems unlikely

[JoeShmo]

I don't think that it matters at all what your attack speed or doublestrike is for this comparison, after all faster procs of the on hit damage aren't any different than faster procs of higher base damage. It does however depend on what your current base damage and melee power are.

The on hit damage offers 49 (14 * 3.5) extra damage per hit. That is easy to compare to how much you hit for without it and see how much of a % increase it is.

The MP is more complicated because it depends on how much MP you have already (adding 10 MP when you have 0 MP is a 10% increase to damage output while adding 10 MP when you have 100 already is a 5% increase in damage output) as well as what your up-time on the MP buff is. If you are in a situation like a boss fight where you are using action boosts on cooldown and constantly hitting your target then you get a 33% up-time using a destiny that is not LD and a 50% up-time if you are in LD. This means that for that situation non LD users gain 25 MP while LD users gain 37.5 MP. However this is a very unusual situation to find yourself in, most of the time fights are of variable length which makes evaluating the up-time much more complicated. For example if you never have fights that last longer than 10 seconds and you also never run out of action boosts in between shrines then it's a pure 75 MP increase. With an average fight length of 30 seconds LD users get a 66% up-time, again provided you have enough action boosts to constantly use them on cooldown and not run out, while non LD users still have a 33% up-time. Another difficult to evaluate consideration is that usually in a fight you will try to kill priority targets first and while hitting that champ or caster for the first 10 seconds of a fight you have the full 75 MP active.

Overall without having any personal experience with either option my feeling is that if you use LD and find that you don't run out of action boosts then Prowess is likely to be better, if you prefer a different destiny or are using a different destiny for etr purposes then it likely becomes closer and you can probably just choose whichever you like more or try to do the individual math for your situation.

Edit: I just looked at what the actual filigrees that make up the set are and the beast's mantle ones are significantly less useful, beast's mantle offers +1 con, +1 str, +10 natural armor, +10% fort bypass vs prowess with +1 dex, +1 hit/dmg, +5 prr, +2 seeker, and +2 action boosts. This is assuming that you get all rare variants and your 5th filigree (filigrees beyond 5 will take a really long time to unlock though hypothetically beast's mantle allows you to fit in a 3 piece bonus alongside it) is a 5 MP filigree to make up for the 5 MP in the prowess set bonus. Also the 14d6 assumes being at level 30, if you happen to be using it for epic leveling rather than playing at cap it scales from 4d6 up to 14d6. I think this definitely tilts things towards the Prowess set although if the natural armor bonus ends up stacking with natural armor from gear being that it is part of a filigree set that could be interesting for someone trying to max their ac. Given that it specifically states a natural armor type though that seems unlikely

Thank you for the response! I am in fact level 30 and plan on staying at cap for quite some time. I agree with the individual pieces of the prowess set being more useful than the pieces from the beast's mantle set. My concern was the scenario you brought up about boss fights vs. the majority of fights. In that 10 second window of increased melee power, the mobs could be kited, insta-killed, or some other situation that prevents maximum efficiency upon activation of boost for increased MP. There definitely doesn't appear to be a clear cut better option. Might just have to acquire a few toolkits and experiment for a while with each set.

[Hamagawi]

Thank you for the response! I am in fact level 30 and plan on staying at cap for quite some time. I agree with the individual pieces of the prowess set being more useful than the pieces from the beast's mantle set. My concern was the scenario you brought up about boss fights vs. the majority of fights. In that 10 second window of increased melee power, the mobs could be kited, insta-killed, or some other situation that prevents maximum efficiency upon activation of boost for increased MP. There definitely doesn't appear to be a clear cut better option. Might just have to acquire a few toolkits and experiment for a while with each set.

X= base dmg
M= melee power
H= on hit effects
U= melee power buff uptime
A= X*(1+M/100) + H
(49+A)/A = (X*(1+(M + 75*U)/100)+H)/A

49+A=X*(1+(M + 75*U)/100)+H

49+X*(1+M/100)=X*(1+(M + 75*U)/100)

(49+X*(1+M/100))/X= 1+(M + 75*U)/100

(49+X*(1+M/100))/X-1=(M+75*U)/100

(100/X)*(49+X*(1+M/100)) - 100= M+75*U

(100/X)*(49+X*(1+M/100)) - 100 - M=75*U

4900/X + 100+ M - 100 - M = 75*U

65.3333/X = U

Edit: My original equation was flawed but I believe this is now accurate, this would indicate that you would need a base damage of roughly 260 for prowess to be worth it with an average uptime of 25% which I think would probably be a fairly conservative estimate for uptime. In the boss fight scenario using LD you need a base damage of 130 for it to be worth it. Assuming you use duality with a baseline 7(1d6+6) I think (assuming i'm not forgetting things) having a 14.5W at 30 is about right. That would give a base damage of 152.75 before any dex modifier or other + damage bonuses aside from the handwraps themselves. I'm not sure exactly what kind of values are possible at 30 but having at least 200 base damage seems reasonable which would make the prowess set worthwhile with a 32.6% uptime. So likely anyone not using LD would prefer beast's mantle but it is likely to be a solid option for those using LD.

Edit 2: you can adjust this if you are looking at a level besides level 30 by replacing 65.3333 with (epic level + 4) * 4.6666

This calculation does not take into account sneak attack scaling with 150% melee power but factoring that in would have made it even more complicated, if you want to find out how much of up-time you need for the prowess set bonus to be equal in damage to the on hit effect this will approximate it although depending on how much sneak damage you have the real value will be lower. You could look at it as a benchmark of this is what I need to get in order to make the slightly more inconsistent damage worth it over the constant damage, and then look at your own gameplay and see if you think you can manage having the buff active that much of the time.

[Bodic77]

for me the Snake Bite 3 piece looks nice 3 Pieces: Sentient Poison: Melee and Ranged attacks get 4d6 + 1d6 per epic character level in poison damage. This effect will not stack with other Sentient weapon procs.

or the long shadow 4 piece // 3 Pieces: Assassin's Sentience: Melee and Missile attacks deal an additional 4d6 +1d6 per character epic level in acid damage. This effect will not stack with other Sentience weapon procs.
4 Pieces: +1% to Dodge and Maximum Dodge

the Prowess is nice but long in the tooth with a 5 piece req. You max at 7 and they get super expensive to unlock. I just put what I think will best benefit my monk. I mean poison who is really immune to that.

[Vish]

I am running 3 long shadow, 2 one against many, all rares
On my staff build
Get +1 dex, 20 mp, and 14d6 acid damage

Next 2 slots will take a while to unlock.

[xTethx]

I’m not 100% verified as I don’t really play, but from the wording and past mechanics of other abilities I’m going to say if you are running Legendary Dreadnaught go for the 75 melee power easy. If it works like I think it should you will get the proc of melee power due to advancing blows. So every time you crit you will get your buff refreshed, also when you boost as well ofc

Ofc it’s all speculative, but I’d be willing to bet it works. Sorry for run-on sentence.

[JoeShmo]

I’m not 100% verified as I don’t really play, but from the wording and past mechanics of other abilities I’m going to say if you are running Legendary Dreadnaught go for the 75 melee power easy. If it works like I think it should you will get the proc of melee power due to advancing blows. So every time you crit you will get your buff refreshed, also when you boost as well ofc

Ofc it’s all speculative, but I’d be willing to bet it works. Sorry for run-on sentence.

I can confirm that this does NOT work on advancing blows. At the moment, it only works on haste, attack, and damage boost. Unstoppable and Thick Skinned currently also do NOT work for activating the Prowess melee power.

[kendo]

I mean poison who is really immune to that.

believe all undead are immune to poison, so may not be the best choice in the new content. but could work well elsewhere and might be fun to use against the Drow, they don't appear to be resistant or immune to poison and would be great to give them a taste of their own medicine

[seskie1]

prowess beats all for DPS