The time has come. I finally decided to post the thing I worked on as hobby project for years… Although I still feel like it is not completely ‘done done’, missing the smallest things of accuracy, and feeling a bit rushed, this should be sufficient. Otherwise I am stalling forever 
. Definitely when a dps balance is getting closer and closer…
What I am talking about is a full simulation of all 4 dps classes. Including every detail that Orbus has.
So what to be aware of and keep in mind in judging this simulation:
- Outside boosts (e.g. bard super) are not accounted for.
- Dps downtime from boss fights are not accounted for (every boss is different)
- It uses in game obtained numbers to calculate the dps. Things like bugs in the game are accounted for too. And the program acts the exact same way like those bugs. (except shaman totem breaking
) - A little bit of human tweaking was done to prevent impossible rotations. Example, you will never consistently hit your ranger charged piercing arrow with a tileset up that is going to expire within 0.1 seconds. This is because a human can easily be 0.1 seconds slower over a timespan of multiple arrows. Or not every scoundrel bullet shot will be exactly 1.7 seconds. But more like 1.71 seconds. This would be humanly improbable but still possible. But 1.7 every shot is humanly impossible.
- The mage max dps in particular is not possible to pin down because I am unable to prove what the max cast speed is, so I set it a speed that is known to be possible instead of guessing way faster. Which is still something to keep in mind might happen in the future with some players having an increased cast speed…
- The max dps is an AVERAGE MAX. So if you crit way more than normal or you get way more bleed triggers then you would jump above this max dps that is shown on the chart. And visa versa.
- Humans make mistakes. Last time I checked I am a human. If you find something completely wrong about what I am doing with class X or Y then don’t hesitate to tell me.
Lets jump right into one of the most important views of them all. I hereby show you the max dps off all 4 dps classes (not 100% true, more explained in the next graph):
First of all quick note, don’t get fooled that the dps classes look very close to each other, because the mage is stretching the view very much. There is definitely a dps gap between them
On the X axis you see time in seconds, which is 230 seconds on the graph. And on the Y-axis the dps. There is alot of background to this graph… but lets get straight what we are looking at here first. This is the dps you would see all 4 classes do when a player would be nearly perfect in their execution of the class with:
- A +6 weapon
- The best weapon affixes for the class (e.g. charged strikes + bleed)
- The best armour + affixes for the class in question.
- The best rings + affixes for the class in question.
- The best potions.
- And the best tilesets that I could figure out. (used another program to help me out puzzling and my own experience)
- The best talents combination.
- Accompanied by the best skill and rotation known in the game.
To show accurate dps the simulation is run 100x (depending on the class RNG influence how much) before taking the average on every datapoint and drawing the graph. This repeated simulation run was needed because:
- Different outcomes of crit chance change dps. The average could have been pre-calcuted (and was in the beginning) if shaman’s crazy critting mechanic and scoundrel critting mechanic didn’t exist.
- The tileset 1 second hits per second timer which would make tilesets trigger different every time the program is run. (because that is what happens in Orbus life sadly)
- Class mechanics which require RNG. Like which scoundrel card is grabbed in which part of the rotation.
So what is that “kinda” in the max dps classes? Well if you noticed, there are two graphs hidden on that photo. The fire mage and the manip_ranger. Bringing those to the view will show:
It is interesting how high the dps is for the fire mage which is only fireball spam. The other mage graph is a full rotation with Affliction being part of it. This is not really what I wanted to talk about but a hidden graph needs to be explained xD.
The more interesting one is the manip_ranger, hiding behind the scoundrel dps graph mostly. Most rangers who played their 1000s of hours kept their rotation to the default. And right so because the manipulation_ranger is manipulating the game mechanics in their favor to get better tilesets. This comes at a cost of having a much much more difficult job playing the class. More difficult to what it was intended to be. Which is why it was hidden for the view of max dps of all classes. But it is still viable and I think because this is still doable I think it should be considered as the max dps for the ranger.
Okay so lets talk about the first graph and compare the dps classes. So what do we see:
- Mage on top jumping ahead of all the competition
- Shaman second far behind mage
- Followed kinda closely by scoundrel (theoretical best scoundrel, reality is too hard to keep up with shaman)
- And lastly ranger falling behind.
If we compare this to Mishka’s post (New Data for DPS Balance, this time with Potions!) it shows the same picture but more extreme for Mishka’s real scenario. This extreme difference is shown in the fact that to master the Scoundrel and Ranger will cost way too much time. To master the shaman you just have to be smart (for max dps) and play the class alot less to achieve this. There is more to it but I would be talking for hours about all the factors in play. Where Mishka’s test only scratched the surface of reality (no downtime boss taken into account, no trash walking in each others way, no other class boosts)
To get to a recommendation for the devs for class balancing, with what I know from all real situations this max dps does not show the whole picture as mentioned before. What I want to see is that the theoretical max dps of the ranger should jump up significantly to a point where it is above shaman and even scoundrel. Scoundrel should be barely below this ranger number and shaman should stay like it is now for max potential. This is if we talk about only tweaking numbers though. If we add mechanic changes into the game, that would automatically mean for things like Shaman that an increase in difficulty would also grant an increase in max potential dps. Do not confuse this with adding a feature that causes an increase in crippleness. We don’t want shamans to be even less useful in fights like the Sewer Slime boss. But rather more useful.
So to make this more a cut clear one. If the only thing that would be done is tweak numbers then this should happen:
- Mage stays at their 100% Which is 132k max dps (or 108k as fire ranger)
- Shaman stays at their 100% Which is 75k max dps. (maybe a very small 7% boost to 80k, but I personally think that is not needed until playing the class itself would be more challenging)
- Scoundrel should get a boost from 70k max dps to 85k max dps. (121%) (number increase is based on the apparent high skill requirement and low engagement of the class). Edit: Looking at everyone’s dps ATM (Mishka’s data) including myself from a 21% boost to a 35% boost wouldn’t be too far fetched either. Which would mean max 95k dps.
- Ranger should get a boost from 64.7k max dps (manip_ranger) to 92.5k max dps (143%) Or for the special hardcore ranger path (manip_ranger) from 69.8k to 99.8k dps. (Numbers are based on the many situation that it loses dps because of mechanic A or B which causes dps loss. Being above dps on average without anything lowering the dps would equalize this problem when it does get lowered)
Because this is max potential those numbers you won’t ever see in practice until someone basically beat the class. So keep that in mind when seeing these recommended dps jumps. If the devs plan on changing other things than just numbers than I would recommend a big factor of the dps gap is contributed by the lack of good tilesets for scoundrel and ranger. That would not fix the whole problem though. Only bring them closer to shaman. Or if mechanics get reworked or bugs get fixed, the numbers will look different. Which I am able to tweak in the program if that would be needed…
What I am going to do is make 4 other posts to go more into detail of the 4 dps classes themselves. Their rotation and everything around it like tilesets and affixes. Because this is really needed to actually paint a picture of what is all going on, and this post is getting really long already… You can see the links to the other posts in the bottom of this thread.
What I will also do is post a link to the program I made to calculate the dps. A warning though, it is not cut-clear easy to use or fool proof (you can shoot a poison arrow every shot if you want to 
) and it was mostly made for me being able to figure things out with it. But if you can code and are determined, I think this program might be interesting for you. Because it shows alot of information of the game. And potential to tweak and add your own class rotation. To use it download it from this discord (yes that is the method I choose to file share now, don’t judge! xD):
Thanks for the read 