Giantkiller only adds an additional 3% dmg to the boss. Is this a bug or is that intentional?
If it’s not, I would suggest an increase. For an affix that can only be used on bosses, I think this is to low, especially compared to other affixes. Iceheart does 5% and charged strikes can be around 6-8%. I think for Giantkiller to live up to its name, it should be closer to 10% since it only works on bosses and nothing else.
It is 3% currently…
I’m not sure that it can go a whole lot higher. Again, affixes should be somewhat powerful but they are not meant to trivialize content. Giving 5 (or 10 with Raids) people an extra 10% damage against bosses would not be super great.
Iceheart gives 5% if slowed, so it’s not worth using giant killer at all. Would it work to up giant killer to 5% so it’s more balanced? Both affixes would then have a requirement but be equally as useful/powerful
I’m guessing an affix balance will be mixed in somewhere along the roadmap based on this. Looks like Iceheart and Charged Strikes could use a nerf to put them on the same level as Bleed and Giant Killer.
As far as I know, nobody uses Elite Hunter or Elite Protector. There just aren’t enough elite mobs in the game to justify using them over other affixes. I could see Sticky and Clear-headed being situationally useful, and I am kind of hoping some later boss fights are designed with affixes in mind, not that you’d need the affix to clear the boss, but that using the right affix can give you a little bit of an advantage.
Yeah this makes sense. 3% is already significant if isolated from other affixes so I get not wanting to make it any higher. The fact that it’s an unconditional buff as long as one is attacking the boss seems really strong. I guess the concern is that if there’s always a chill on the target people min maxing won’t seek the affix when they could do 5%. In the end this is probably a lot of discussion over a system that is about to change substantially with talents and 10% buff to all would just cause an unnecessary re-tune on the bosses.
Edited to add that without a damage meter on some level this is all supposition and Riley may have data the rest do not. 3% ends up being a huge amount of damage over a longish boss fight.
Maybe 10% is to much, I just like seeing big numbers from my spells:) I think it would make sense to at least put it on par with Iceheart which is 5%.
A minmaxed Ranger that hits cooldowns perfectly and attacks non-stop could theoretically see a damage increase around 30000 for a 5 minute boss fight. Approximately 100 DPS bonus. This is calculated before Hunter’s Mark, range bonuses and runes; just basic attacks and spell arrows.
An ideal assumption, but it gives a sense of scale to how Giant’s Killer can affect a boss like Sentry.
So I am not at home to actually reference my numbers but a precision arrow crit with charge is over 12k (conservative)alone. It is complex enough to try and evaluate the current DPS I do over that time without any extraneous factors. If a single shot can vary by 8k or more and we go to a time as long as 5 min I just haven’t seen what I would consider concrete data on this stuff.
My calc is bare minimum DPS increase. It’s just a baseline assuming perfect rotation.
Yeah, for sure, and theories have to build from somewhere. I am just concerned we have very little practical info yet. This can create inflated views of importance on particular builds or practices, without the proper fundamental backing for which to properly interpret the results(What results Achan? Touche…). Until there are sufficient APIs in game and out to make addons and websites this will be a fun and mysterious pursuit!
I think a larger question here is if all affixes are intended to be roughly equivalent, just the damage boosting ones, or if there are meant to be clearly better and worse ones.
In terms of damage boosting for example as has been called out, if Giantkiller is +3%, Iceheart is +5%, and even if Charged Strikes is 6%, it would be the clear winner as there is no pre-requisite for the target.
If the design vision for them is to be equally viable, then there would need to be rebalancing (and it’s a little tricky to take into account contextual requirements like boss only, elite only, has to be frosted, etc), but if the design vision is for each of them to be interesting and it’s ok if they aren’t the same power level, then it’s fine.
Is the chilled debuff always up during a boss fight? Something I like about Ranger is that you can spit a fair amount of DPS even during movement phases and during small gaps in the action. If that chill debuff is down even some of the time it would be pretty easy to make up that 2% over a fight. Another instance is on add phases, where I still leave poison arrow on the boss and kill with instant shots to not lose a huge amount of DPS to less DoT uptimes on stuff like worms and mushrooms.
It seems like they already have serious differences in effectiveness on certain encounters and that swapping for certain fights would make sense. It may not be as obvious an advantage between the two as it seems on the surface.
This is why without any real numbers even substantial simming is only so useful, and why major TC forums are like r/askscience… prove it with logs, cite a source or it’s all a waste of breath other than for fun conversation which is cool too.
In my experience, if you have a runemage in your party, the boss is always frosted.
In terms of the numbers, I’m pretty comfortable with saying Giantkiller is +3% (especially as Riley confirmed it himself), and that Iceheart is 5%.
Would you mind saying how long the chilled effect lasts before needing refreshing? Honestly would like to know and lazy.
In terms of numbers I mean less so the damage or buffs since those are easy to discover in isolation, and more the actual damage done by a player over a given encounter. There are a ton of factors at play as I mentioned above, and often a “perfect” sim rotation does not translate well into practice for a variety of reasons.
Can’t remember the exact time, but I can do 5 spells (ice lance and affliction) before needed to refresh
They recently nerfed the duration and the slowdown effect on frost spells so my frame counts for those are off now. It’s something like 8-10 seconds for Frost 2 now I believe.
Thanks for sharing your info guys! Much appreciated. 8-10s is indeed a long time. On a boss where the main assist is targeting ads, would it have a major impact on your rotations/dps to keep frost on certain targets? I know from watching you that you can spit a frost 3 in short order.
We definitively have a mobs priority kill list internally. But frost is mostly use to counter mechanics and not maximise DPS.
(Talking from a Ranger perspective here).
The heart of it is whether one can depend on 100% uptime, 80% uptime, and on which targets. Fights vary quite a bit and I can think of several Tradu bosses we killed where i’d take 3% sustain on boss over sporadic 5% dependent on cc requirements, no need for decurse etc interrupting the debuff of another class that causes me to drop off by 5%. Even in a situation where a stop is called to DPS, a mage spell has travel time that my arrows do not and I may lose significant dmg getting 0% because the debuff is not on yet and that will be the same on low hp ads such as mushroom or small worms which the mage won’t even get a chance to cast on, negating the disadvantage of the “boss only” affix.
Seems like it may be great to have a bow collection on hand…
It’s pretty easy to keep the frost debuff up 100% of the time. Even when you stop, you can cast frost and while it’s traveling already have another spell up and running to hit the boss.