this is neat but glosses over the life on kill vs crit... crit is great, but if you already have +300 crit its less great, while if you have zero life on kill then 200 life on kill is huge
As a fighting game player who's spent over 25 years dealing with frame data, I like that the diablo community have dedicated this much effort to understanding it and also the investigation for finding IAS (improved attack speed like diablo 2) breakpoints. I look forward to future results that this research will bring! There are a few important things to consider; You need to know the rate that the game engine (or server polling rate) does calculations. If you're measuring frame data at 60fps (which is a good number to go with, that's normal for fighting games), if the server polling rate is only 20 (updates from the client to server) then your numbers will always be off. If the game engine calculations are done at 30fps, your calculations will be slightly off but it shouldn't be massively noticeable. Also consider input delay from your devices (mice, controllers, arcade sticks all have different delays), the output delay from the capture devices for recording (capture card, monitor, OBS being slow etc). Most of this can be eliminated with testing diligence which you seem to have done a great job with so far, there's always things we don't think of though. One last thing to note is, slightly faster frame data on a 13 frame attack than a 15 frame attack will feel very slightly smoother to the user and does mathematically net more dps or safety when moving. In terms of the blood mist delay (i've died after hitting the button too) the difference in 15-16 frames is under what humans are capable of reacting to with visual input (people are around 20-25 frames at their fastest @60fps) so neither you or myself would have lived or died with scythe vs sword. I do note that you're not being super serious about that though! What I am most looking forward to is seeing how this testing reflects on minions! Sorry for the 200 word essay, keep up the good work
I think the observation that Mac was getting odd-numbered frame lengths for animations at 60 fps implies that the game probably calculates speed at 60 rather than 30, but we know from prepatch Blood Lance causing the entire instance to glitch that at least part of the math is being done (or confirmed) server-side
Phenomenal work as always. I think the most important question to ask right now is whether breakpoints exist in any meaningful way in D4, in the first place. D2 was very specifically locked to 25 ticks per second for the purposes of any in-game interactions, and the breakpoints in that game are a logical result of that limitation - you simply can't change the speed of any single interaction by non-integer ticks, so a small percentage change to any interaction speed does not necessarily push you into the next integer frame tick. It is extremely likely that D4 has some internal tick rate on its servers analogous to D2's 25TPS rate. After all, servers need to be synchronized with eachother, and discrete tick rates make this easier from an architectural standpoint. The existence of these tick rates may then, similarly to how it happens in D2, create the breakpoint phenomenon, but this is heavily dependent on the actual tick rate. A very high tick rate (or some subtick system like recently advertised for Counter-Strike 2) might still *theoretically* result in breakpoints, but in a practical sense, if there are *enough* breakpoints, they might as well be imperceptible. The way to figure that out would be to change attack speed bonuses on your character by very small increments and recording longer sequences of ability use at as high visual FPS as possible, to determine if there is a continuous relationship between % attack speed and actual in-game time it takes to cast an ability a certain amount of times. The above is distinctly different from any sort of discussion on diminishing returns or explicit, artificial breakpoints introduced by game design decisions, of course. I assume the devs did not create any artificial breakpoints (though they might have, and they would be hard to distinguish from tick-rate caused breakpoints, or worse, muddle the analysis). In any case, until otherwise proven, I'm going to assume that D4 does not have a low enough tick rate to cause the same sort of architectural breakpoints that D2 enjoyed, and small percentage increases of attack speed do in fact affect your actual interaction speed. But that question is, as far as I know, still very much open.
Diminishing returns and opportunity cost are forever gonna be part of that discussion since we have finite slots for stats. For the analysis part people should probably use a much much faster class and weapon type.
The thing is, Scythe is a must have if you aren't playing a blood build. I take 5 damage reduction while crowd controlled gems, so even when I get stunned, my minions keep me alive by killing adds. Obviously you could get life on kill elsewhere, but it takes up a vital slot and is hard to roll with other stats you want. The other issue is having the essence to cast the increased attack speed, since most people will ditch the essence generator in endgame. Besides, what's the point of playing a Necromancer without using the Psythe :P
While leveling resource generation might be not ideal. In that case damage per resource might be more valuable than maximizing dps. Also, when I was leveling my character, it was very convenient to instantly restore any missing health.
Except while leveling, the scythe does less damage because it has less damage modifiers, than the sword. It isn't until you have 200+ crit damage that the sword implicit stat can be outweighed by higher base damage. But like all things, it all depends on every stat you have, and trying to whittle it down to a single answer will mess some people up.
Thanks for all the tests! Hope i can clear some of the confusion. Speed and time are different concepts, they aren't "efficiency". 30% speed increase gives ~23% time decrease, nothing weird there. Why do you chose to compare the smallest numbers possible, when your measurements can be off by almost a full frame? If you are able to move 3 frames faster and start casting again 4 frames faster - you don't get 7 second difference. If you start casting 4 seconds earlier - you also stop moving 4 seconds earlier.
For me it is just a question of which feels better. The extra crit damage of course is nice but for what I do with my Sever/BCE Necromancer (max out at about lvl. 50 NM dungeon, farming Helltides or PvP zone, etc) the life on kill from Scythe just makes playing feel smoother. Getting topped off all the time and rarely needing to use potions just feels better. While leveling up I just would use whatever drop was the best no matter what weapon it was. But always felt better with Scythe so once I got to a level where upgrades were rarer I switched to Scythe permanently.
Im in the same boat as you, I carry both scythe and sword with me all the time at endgame, use the scythe almost all the time only use sword in 1 on 1 fights for the reasons you mentioned. Ive died more then few times because I just didnt notice I was half health and then got hit by an elite's big shot.
If you use Temerity, it'll also give you a barrier so the extra health from kills aren't wasted. It's definitely not a bad way to increase survivability for necros.
You can achieve the same with blood orbs from Corpse Tendrils. Or you can press Q when missing 1/8 of health.... Or run 1 bubble when elite is struck / you get immunity bubble when you are struck - win. Life on kill is pretty useless overall if you play responsibly. The only use case I found for myself is spearing a pack of mobs for healz while running for my life in Fields of Hatred :D :D
@@andreychetvertakov4574 you are looking at it from the min-max perspective, which absolutely valid, until you take into account skill, lag and fatigue. If i return from work, tired, hold shisha hose in left hand, im much more efficient at playing "simple", like not having to push extra buttons for heal, than when i play half asleep. In my case scenario, ill have better result in simplified, passive play, that averages "good", than having to rely on not making mistakes to be "great", but will drop to "poor" if i do these mistakes. And oh boy i do make these mistakes.
@@Rencol666 I understand your point. Totally valid and true. I have been there myself, but now it is a little easier with a better job. Thanks for bringing me down to earth in the most reasonable way. Peace ✌
Thanks for the breakdown. If all things are equal, I do think the implicit stat and the slight attack speed makes sword slightly better. I just want to being up two things that are maybe not explicitly stated in this video that can affect efficiency by more than a few frames per second. 1. The base damage of your weapon is almost certainly more important than your weapon type, for bone spear necro. I found a 808 item power scythe at level 79 and have yet to find any weapon with the same base attack. The scythe also has +crit damage and +crit damage with bone and 189 int (max roll). It's going to be hard to justify a sword over this power of weapon until I get very lucky. 2. There is some anecdotal advantage to not have to watch your hp while you fight. Using potions and being concerned with your life total can absolutely slow you down more than a couple frames per second. If you use scythe, and you're doing content that isnt too hard (say level 60 nm and below), the life gain on kill means you barely ever have to potion yourself and keeps you moving and getting to the next mob. It's really really hard to objectively test something like this but I figured I'd bring it up. This "mental stack" advantage comes up a lot on fighting games as well. The recent sf6 has a modern mode control scheme that lowers mental stack and allows folks to input complicated motions with a single button. A lot of newer players and pro players alike have noticed theres some advantage to having less to think about when controlling your character. I could see the life on kill stat contributing to that as well. But you could also just get that stat on a helmet and use a sword so who knows how much value that has. Anyway just some stuff to think about.
The discrepancy in expected attack speed bonus and observed increase is just because the game can only do an integer number of frames, so after calculating the decimal frame count after the speed increase, it rounds up to the next integer. This is why there's some variation but you pretty much always get less than you "should" (This also prevents 0-frame animations. There might also be locked frames that aren't affected by speed at all or minimum frame lengths) This means that with complete frame data we could indeed min/max attack speed bonus.
Looking forward to when you start testing some wand/focus builds for bone spear speed farming. 1.2 base speed and an extra slot to fit accelerating aspect feels pretty darn great when you can still 1-shot mobs in helltides, T51-60 dungeons, all the easier content.
Focus also have attack speeds which may complicate 1hd sword vs scythe vs wand. Then you have shields which have no attack speed but boost MH damage by a fixed value regardless of ipower.
@@Pondering133 they also have essense lucky hits to compensate spammability. I wonder if 2 of those kind stack. I am talking "Lucky hit: Chance to restore % primary resource"
Tried 1h + focus with Core skills grant % Attack speed. Felt like a machine gun. Definitely better for Helltides farming. With bonespear costing only 16 (got 3 points in Imperfectly balanced still), I don't run out of essence at all (2 lucky hits + dmg on vuln restotres 48 essence - total of 37.5%). Cleared Raethwind Wilds lvl 71 NM dungeon and it felt ok. Will try Lilith tomorrow and maybe some PvP. Now I want to put this IAS aspect on amulet. Character feels very mobile, I can move instantly after shooting.
I absolutely love how deep you dive into these types of game aspects, because even when you think you know the game, there are always questions about specifics that aren't published. This was fantastic, so thank you!
@MacroBioBoi - Just wanted to say I really appreciate you putting this video together. 1 month after season 1 release, I think this is still the most comprehensive investigation on IAS breakpoints in D4 that is made public. Not sure how much interest there is in your community for more of this, relative to your other content because I imagine it would be quite time consuming. I would very much be interested in seeing you do this for other skills/classes or at least talk about how you can go about testing a generalizable rules on how IAS breakpoints work in the game overall. Thanks again
While I don't doubt that these might be how the game works, but how math normally works is that when you speed up things by x%, the bigger number reduces faster, meaning that there should be a point where they have the same amount of frames.
I'm theorycrafting a Hemorrhage Overpower build that maxes out attack speed and healing/hit (S4 currently). Don't know if it will be any good, but I love the data you've put together.
There was a fair amount of math here than went over my head but it was cool to see such a deep dive into the numbers. You explained the concept of a breakpoint really well in layman’s terms so that even I understood it haha.
I honestly do not understand how they came up with the idea that a Scythe is slower to swing or specifically continuously swing that a full on Greatsword...
@@raidenpz see thats the thing, its not a black or white situation my guy, sure its fantasy land but concepts are based off of OUR reality... so in other words, sht makes sense because we can relate it to our own so the idea that "anything goes" because "fAntAsY" is stupid! A Scythe is a tool but can be used to harm like a weapon and a Sword is a weapon but can be used like a tool, however, in neither case should for example a Knife be slower to swing than a Hammer regardless if one is a tool and the other is not or uf its fantasy land or reality. I also dont understand how soneone cannot grasp such a simple concept of sudo realism.
One thing to consider with the variances you ran into, it might be the game engine. Your personal FPS in an online game literally doesn't matter, you could have 7000fps, but the game engine itself runs at like, 15-24fps for "MMO" type games like these where precision doesn't matter that much (a first person shooter would run at way higher of a tick rate ideally). And so regardless of your personal frame rate, the game engine only actually accepts input lets say 24 times per second, and if the global cooldown isn't neatly divisible by 24, you'll pick up some differences if you're counting frames. Although with this, I would expect it to be _worse_, not better, since I would expect the game to pick it up on the next available game engine tick.
When u spam a button and move at the same time it was very much faster because of Animation canceling. Same works with holding down basic and spam core.
There's something slightly wrong here. For the sword, you've got 15 frames precast, and 22 frames post-cast, for a total of 37 frames per full cast. Two casts plus the precast of a third would be 74 + 15, or 89 frames. This means there's 10 unaccounted frames. If the Scythe is scaled by its base attack speed, it should be 15/0.9 = 16.67 base frames precast and 22/0.9=24.44 base frames post-cast, for a total of 40 frames per cast assuming floor rounding to match your findings. Two casts plus a precast would be 80+16, or 96 frames. This means there's still 10 unaccounted frames. Since 10 frames cannot be divided by 3 and it does divide into two, I assert that there are 5 additional post-cast frames that exist for chain casting. This may mean stutter-stepping as soon as it's possible before recasting can save 1-4 frames per cast, which would also explain how your spamming went faster than chain-casting.
I'm not not what 15 frames precast means. From skill use to spear creation takes 15 frames and then on the 22nd frame of that animation you can run. The full animation back to idle actually takes 80 frames, but there's no use in showing that since it doesn't define any restriction on actions you can take.
@@MacroBioBoi Perhaps precast is more often used in Mobas, but the general idea is that you push the button to cast the skill, and there's a number of frames between you pushing the button and the skill doing something. Post-cast is the number of mandatory frames before a target can begin acting once more, excluding precast frames. Since you've clarified there's only 7 post-cast frames before movement can begin again, this makes the three casts taking 99 frames even stranger since it should take 22+22+15, or 59 frames, meaning there's 40 missing frames instead of 10.
@@TheAstyanii I assume there are some fixed attack recovery frames that are not influenced by faster attack speed but don’t impair your ability to move. That could explain the missing frames and the difference between faster attack speed percentage and actual frame count.
But how does that relate to damage? You summarized how attack speed very, very thoroughly but for example, if you compare a sword to a scythe in a weapon calculator do we use DPS or the actual damage? I have ilvl 826 scythe that is 2,665 DPS but it does 2,946 in the character pane. Is that what the skills scale off of? If so, dealing dmg a few frames faster means jack shit if the damage that is getting multiplied like 60x after all the buckets is hundreds higher. A sword at the same level would do like 150 less damage, which multiplied x50 is a VERY big difference. I thank you for the time in testing this but all you really determined was that IAS does affect skills and there may be break points. But how does that actually translate to data? Especially with a "skill" like shadow blight that's literally hitting 20 mobs like 15x per second. And does shadow blight tick faster with IAS? Does it get applied faster? So this video left me with more questions than answers.
I decided before season 1 released I was going to make a blood spear build... right now using a wand in T3 for the lucky hit chance. Thanks for the video.
Being at the advent of a new game and mapping out all these values in client is both interesting and terribly tedious. Do we think that all of the values used in D2 were all experimentally derived like this? or was the game data mined for these calculations? I may just be impatient, but I have so many questions and it might be literally years before we pin down how the game works. From a testing standpoint: does AS decrease DOT duration? or use a similar breakpoint system to deal additional ticks over the same duration? if the ladder I could see a paradigm where AS would be a core stat for shadow builds which may help us break out of the VD/CSC/CSD meta.
This is why summon skills with cooldowns feel so awful to plug into your sorc build. They have the cast speed of a normal ability and are not as fast as many of the Sorc defensives.
This is an impressive dive into the numbers but what it tells me more than anything is how, once again, Blizzard gets Necromancer wrong. How in the world is anything better than Scythe for a Necromancer?! It’s iconic!
Honestly the whole idea of increased attack speed for skills that have no actual cd and immediate effect always felt weird/confusing for me, like I see how attack speed would influence basic attacks - reap (how fast you swing), decay (how often dot procs), how it affects minions since they actually attack with intervals, but skills like bone spear or curses that visually look like they will hit as fast as you can click the skill didnt make much sence to have attack speed associated with them, and then you have skills like blood mist and bone storm that are just "fire and forget" skills, like how would attack speed influence that? does it affect how often the instance of damage occurs? yes? no? why not? Anyway thx for the video but I will still prefer scythe as a fashion stement
I recently tried a Barbarian and share your bias on this subject, and by level 25 using dual wield and buffing attack speed my lunging strike is a powerhouse for fury gen and get-around (zoom zoom)
So do we know at how many fps the engine is running? I assume you just picked 60 fps for convenience but that could explain some things for sure. Amazing content btw !
2h sword base 1.0 "APS": * 99 frames / 3 bone spears = 33 frames / bone spear * (60 frames / second) / (33 frames / bone spear) = 1.818 real bone spears per second 2h sword with +31.4% sheet "aps" bonus: * 75 frames / 3 bone spears = 25 frames / bone spear * (60 frames / second) / (25 frames / bone spear) = 2.40 real bone spears per second 2.4 / 1.818 ~= 1.32x faster. Seems to be really non-intuitive. Best info was that shoot -> move -> shoot is the same frames overall as shoot -> stand still -> shoot.
the delay with the i-frames from bloodmist... this explains ALOT... died a few times when I already pressed flameshield or bloodmist, so it isn't instant, thought it was serverlag
tbh as some1 whom so bad at math i wished if u just told me at the end of the video the important question" What should i use sword or scythe" or when i shud each of em , some ppl like me wana minmaxing and some ppl are interested in the knowldge , and it would be good if u can provide both and ty u macro for ur awesome vids like alwayse
I personally prefer sword and don't think scythe has any redeeming qualities. If you often take damage while doing normal content and find it difficult to manage your life with options, scythe can help with that.
although it is certain that sword will have higher damage potential than scythe, but I found myself favor the scythe much more due to life on kill. I die a lot less with scythe and I also spend a lot less time "healing", "picking up orb", "evading due to not at max hp" etc. I think in general for NM dungeon farming, scythe provide a much safer and smooth gameplay experience than sword.
Quick question, does decompose benefit from Attack Speed? I'm not expecting a change in damage, but wondering if there's a difference in the frames between hits
Hey there. Very interesting findings! I have a question though, that I feel is important. How does the difference of base weapon damage affect the damage of skills? In particular does if affect them at all? If so, does it affect them all the same way or is there a difference for example between blizzard and firebolt? What I get as a feeling, but I have no data to back it up, which I would really love to see, is this: Weapon speed seems to affect skill damage. So a scythe attack will do 0.9/1 of the base damage of a sword, and if that is the case, then that base speed is important. Because that means that your X resource for casting that strong skill will do more damage per resource spent (and if your resource generation is not tied to a basic attack, so you don't get less resource/second, you can do more damage/resource spent with a slower weapon). The same reasoning applies to skeletons for example: how is their damage calculated? If they attack speed is set and their damage scales with weapon speed (slow->more) then maybe 2h scythes are the way to go for skeleton builds? Do you think you can do some research on these questions? Thanks a lot for the video and for the data!
@@MacroBioBoi Thanks! Do you know how this applies to skeletons and spells like Blizzard? Does the blizzard animation happen faster? Do skeletons attack faster?
Things I would look for. 1- How much attackspeed do i have to give a scyth to make it cast at the same speed as sword. 2- How much more attackspeed do i need to give scyth to get same frames reduction as sword. (could be that scyth would hit at the same rate as sword but get a 10% reduction of AS and that reduction is also applied to additionals IAS)
You also will have to overcome the implicit +CSD on the sword. Not only would you need more AS, but you would also have to make up CSD for equivalent values. Rather than trying to make the two "balanced" in DPS I think the devs should instead give more value to the Life on Kill stat to offer a compelling alternative to damage; which could be via something like a buffed Temerity.
@@bobnewkirk7003 We are kinda talking past each other. My goal is to find out the formulas and rules behind different weapons and attackspeed. Your goal is to get more DPS :D
@@maxogge i see what you mean lol. My understanding of your statement was "test to see what the cost of running a scythe is" and wanted to add the CSD vs LS component. From an explorative standpoint both of your objectives are good. Its pretty amazing we had information like this for previous games, I'm just now starting to understand the time that went into teasing the equations out.
Was the testing carried out in or out of combat? I know for example a Rogue can stutterstep faster out of combat, but if you're in combat you're locked in place for longer. Not sure if this affects Necro in any meaningful way.
Great work, really appreciate the effort and time you put in. We've been debating sword vs scythe for pvp, since there is a 200% crit cap in pvp and sword of course has crit on it... Similarly higher damage of a scythe might get better scaling... This video comes in clutch! And so much more testing too do.... I wonder if you are going to continue with necro or switch to another class season 1?
For theory crafting sake, I totally get the allure, but pvp in this game is straight up dog shit. For one, they only have far west central/west NA servers so anyway east gets fucked with 90+ms. Secondly, when you're in the pvp zones, if you're by more than one person, expect there to be a near almost doubling of your ping. Thirdly, there are some builds that just can't be beat no matter what level you are. No counter play = dog shit pvp. Thankfully no one actually takes pvp seriously because there's zero complexity/competitiveness.
@@johng8162 Laggy zones are an issue. I solve this problem by relogging. Game puts you in a different lobby 99% of the time where there is no lag. That is infrastructure problem - whatever. Pvp is not balanced - yes. But remember, I playing necromancer - the bottom tier character for pvp. And I managed to make it work just fine. Not saying it is easy or anything, I am working about x20 times harder than a HoTa barb, but it is still fun. And if I get friends - it's a different story :) They said this game is not meant to be for pvp - sure... There are a ton of bugs and broken mechanics that ruin experience for us. To me the journey and discovery of these mechanics and specs, and stats, and builds is the most fun. I love it. I die in pvp zone and get mad, but I also kill and it is so very rewarding. Farmed about 5-6m red dust so far. I could safely state that farming fields of hatred rivals NM dungeons in terms of quantity of drops (quality is high too, but harder to target specific families of mobs).
I genuinely nerfed myself for a good while so I could use scythes, attack speed drop off and crit damage was very noticeable though. Necromancers should use scythes though, not a fan that swords are objectively better.
Because I literally explain I don't have time to test more data sets? Also no one is actively discussing the meta between 1 and 2 handers on bonespear currently.
@macrobigboi this is almost exactly what i was after! I've been searching for a few days for a video that shows breakpoint caps. As in, barrier generation for bulwark expl druid build. Is it capped at 60% and anything beyond being useless, for example. My main question which applies to all classes though is basic skill attack speed, for resource generation and lucky hit proccing. Can you keep stacking attack speed % and skill buffs (howl +20% 4 secs) infinitely? Or is there a xx% cap at which point youre just wasting resource's? I wish someone had that info 🧐
I prefer 2HScythe because of 300+ Life per Kill for sustain, instead of the %-CritDmg and 10 % AS, but I see how this is statistically more efficient. Id say this doesnt matter until trashmobs arent 1hit anymore.
If the 2 hander pushes my per-hit damage up to one shotting a higher class of enemy, it's worth it. Otherwise, the extra legendary affix slot is just too nice to pass up.
How long before you can upgrade attack speed.. Basic attacks are way too slow. I couldn't even bring myself to finish leveling a character. I've started three characters, not one of them are actually max level.
Any conclusion about breakpoints? do you know a site which has them already, like we have in d2? i wanna know breakpoints of Sorceress. and skills in specific. Also is there a IAS cap? ppl say 100% bonus IAS, is this right...and can basic attack go higher? or its all bull because skills are also capped. For example Ball lightning with the Legendary node, seems to be able to cast only around 15 balls, it wont go higher even if you increase IAS.
I'm curious how the two weapons compare when they are both maxed out to 5 attacks per second. Obviously they will have the same attack speed at that point but will it also give them the same delay to run time 🤔 If that's the case then if you max out attack speed then scythe will be the clear winner
Hi, very interessting. But shouldn't you have had a look at the average damage output per second on two weapons with same calculated damage per second according to base damage and attacks per second? If you are able to show that sword is better in these cases, thats big news, otherwise it's just a thing which playstyle you prefer.
For the 31.4% chest increase vs 20% actual increase - I think that's a breakpoint issue. How much AS was the highest breakpoint you hit? How much more AS do you need for the next break point? I think we really need breakpoint calculators to make it easy for everyone to work this out. We have them for Diablo 2 and I think in tone we will get them for Diablo 4 as well.
@macrobioboi Has there been any hard testing to show if/how attack speed affects Shadow DoT ticks, channeled ticks, or Bone Storm effectiveness? Seeing Lidless Wall have +attack speed makes me think that attack speed correlates to a better Bone Storm since that is what that shield is all about. I’m trying to theorycraft a Lidless Wall build and if attack speed makes bone storms better then it would be best utilized in a blood Lance build I would think. Stacking attack speed and using Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen on amulet and just using the dots applied from shadow bone storms to make everything take more damage via blighted aspect on ring and +damage to enemies affected by shadow dots (prom paragon nodes and weapon). Something like that.
i test something similar and atm focus on attackspeed for sever (crit-based) and bonestorm. mainly shadow, but use all aspects for attackspeed + lance for speed + overpower for the attackspeed aspect. it works pretty well and with lidless and w/o barber its nuts. after patch with new exposed flesh (more essence - more spam)and temerity (more attackspeed - more heal etc.) im pretty sure it will shine more and more, but it works also now atm with +ressource on lh on gloves
Cool video can’t wait for the IAS calculator 😂 but do u think at least for farming purposes the life on kill from sythe is nice quality of life? I think it’s annoying to have to heal when I have 80% of my health just so I can get my “healthy” buffs
I don't know someone who is taking enough damage that they can't maintain healthy, that is also 1 shorting with a slower weapon, that is worried about speed farming. I think scythe is better for people who don't want to think about playing efficiently, to not lose too many benefits IF they need healthy status that badly.
What happens if you are locked to 30fps or 60fps or are running a PC that maxes out at 20-25fps during heavy battles? Wouldn't this limit how much gains you receive from % Attack speed and weapon choices?
So I can’t say about actual power and damage but when the aspect I have on one of my weapons triggers it definitely feels lots more fun as I go from whack .... whack ..... whack to whack whack whack and stuff seems to die faster. So in short ied guess it dose but I don’t know what kind of brake point you need to hit in order for it to really count, I mean if you go from 1 hit every 3 seconds to 1 hit every 2.8 seconds then it’s not going to really count unless your in a 10 minute long fight.
I wonder what damage values we could see if that could be tested. As far as I can see my bone spear one-two shots pretty much everything I come across so scythe might be better for raw damage output if I deal 300 more base damage it should be better then +30% more crit damage(of which I already have about 400%)
Keep in mind the 400% in your character sheet is with the iron golem bonus already applied while the 30% is just the base value on an unupgraded sword. At 725+ item level a 5/5 upgraded two hand sword is adding 68% crit damage with iron golem just from the intrinsic stat alone.
@@Rombizio If you one shot the monster no matter what, then casting your spell faster is the only way to gain efficiency. It literally speeds up every gameplay interaction you can have. This is like asking why running faster would matter in a footrace.
I love these kind of videos. So too me it sounds like it's not worth building into speed and the other stats are better. Also in combat things are different great video though
Glad you enjoyed. I'd actually say the opposite though. Building into speed is a massive upgrade to your overall efficiency. 31.4% speed gained a greater than 20% efficiency gain. That's like a new 1.2 damage multiplier.
So sword is doing more dmg while being faster than scythe lol and life on kill is sh*t even while lvling u can get that life on kill with just ironmaiden if you want but you dont need it.
The Data Sheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eJ6kXBTV4fLRoWLyV0aKycRAOeNYoGg-t2PU7x6DX4Q/edit?usp=sharing
this is neat but glosses over the life on kill vs crit... crit is great, but if you already have +300 crit its less great, while if you have zero life on kill then 200 life on kill is huge
@@Keefe_Outdoors life on kill is a non stat on bone spear. It's build identity is off screen one shotting monsters before they are a threat.
As a fighting game player who's spent over 25 years dealing with frame data, I like that the diablo community have dedicated this much effort to understanding it and also the investigation for finding IAS (improved attack speed like diablo 2) breakpoints. I look forward to future results that this research will bring!
There are a few important things to consider;
You need to know the rate that the game engine (or server polling rate) does calculations.
If you're measuring frame data at 60fps (which is a good number to go with, that's normal for fighting games), if the server polling rate is only 20 (updates from the client to server) then your numbers will always be off. If the game engine calculations are done at 30fps, your calculations will be slightly off but it shouldn't be massively noticeable.
Also consider input delay from your devices (mice, controllers, arcade sticks all have different delays), the output delay from the capture devices for recording (capture card, monitor, OBS being slow etc).
Most of this can be eliminated with testing diligence which you seem to have done a great job with so far, there's always things we don't think of though.
One last thing to note is, slightly faster frame data on a 13 frame attack than a 15 frame attack will feel very slightly smoother to the user and does mathematically net more dps or safety when moving.
In terms of the blood mist delay (i've died after hitting the button too) the difference in 15-16 frames is under what humans are capable of reacting to with visual input (people are around 20-25 frames at their fastest @60fps) so neither you or myself would have lived or died with scythe vs sword. I do note that you're not being super serious about that though!
What I am most looking forward to is seeing how this testing reflects on minions!
Sorry for the 200 word essay, keep up the good work
You're not reacting to the blood mist immunit. You're reacting to a dangerous situation. One frame of advantage is almost always gonna be safer.
I think the observation that Mac was getting odd-numbered frame lengths for animations at 60 fps implies that the game probably calculates speed at 60 rather than 30, but we know from prepatch Blood Lance causing the entire instance to glitch that at least part of the math is being done (or confirmed) server-side
Love your no nonsense approach in these videos. Thanks for al the work Mac, really appreciate it.
Phenomenal work as always.
I think the most important question to ask right now is whether breakpoints exist in any meaningful way in D4, in the first place. D2 was very specifically locked to 25 ticks per second for the purposes of any in-game interactions, and the breakpoints in that game are a logical result of that limitation - you simply can't change the speed of any single interaction by non-integer ticks, so a small percentage change to any interaction speed does not necessarily push you into the next integer frame tick.
It is extremely likely that D4 has some internal tick rate on its servers analogous to D2's 25TPS rate. After all, servers need to be synchronized with eachother, and discrete tick rates make this easier from an architectural standpoint. The existence of these tick rates may then, similarly to how it happens in D2, create the breakpoint phenomenon, but this is heavily dependent on the actual tick rate. A very high tick rate (or some subtick system like recently advertised for Counter-Strike 2) might still *theoretically* result in breakpoints, but in a practical sense, if there are *enough* breakpoints, they might as well be imperceptible. The way to figure that out would be to change attack speed bonuses on your character by very small increments and recording longer sequences of ability use at as high visual FPS as possible, to determine if there is a continuous relationship between % attack speed and actual in-game time it takes to cast an ability a certain amount of times.
The above is distinctly different from any sort of discussion on diminishing returns or explicit, artificial breakpoints introduced by game design decisions, of course. I assume the devs did not create any artificial breakpoints (though they might have, and they would be hard to distinguish from tick-rate caused breakpoints, or worse, muddle the analysis). In any case, until otherwise proven, I'm going to assume that D4 does not have a low enough tick rate to cause the same sort of architectural breakpoints that D2 enjoyed, and small percentage increases of attack speed do in fact affect your actual interaction speed. But that question is, as far as I know, still very much open.
Diminishing returns and opportunity cost are forever gonna be part of that discussion since we have finite slots for stats. For the analysis part people should probably use a much much faster class and weapon type.
The thing is, Scythe is a must have if you aren't playing a blood build.
I take 5 damage reduction while crowd controlled gems, so even when I get stunned, my minions keep me alive by killing adds.
Obviously you could get life on kill elsewhere, but it takes up a vital slot and is hard to roll with other stats you want.
The other issue is having the essence to cast the increased attack speed, since most people will ditch the essence generator in endgame.
Besides, what's the point of playing a Necromancer without using the Psythe :P
While leveling resource generation might be not ideal. In that case damage per resource might be more valuable than maximizing dps. Also, when I was leveling my character, it was very convenient to instantly restore any missing health.
Except while leveling, the scythe does less damage because it has less damage modifiers, than the sword. It isn't until you have 200+ crit damage that the sword implicit stat can be outweighed by higher base damage. But like all things, it all depends on every stat you have, and trying to whittle it down to a single answer will mess some people up.
I highly doubt the lvling crit dmg while being low on crit strike will outway acwhole additional cast
Thanks for all the tests! Hope i can clear some of the confusion. Speed and time are different concepts, they aren't "efficiency". 30% speed increase gives ~23% time decrease, nothing weird there. Why do you chose to compare the smallest numbers possible, when your measurements can be off by almost a full frame? If you are able to move 3 frames faster and start casting again 4 frames faster - you don't get 7 second difference. If you start casting 4 seconds earlier - you also stop moving 4 seconds earlier.
For me it is just a question of which feels better. The extra crit damage of course is nice but for what I do with my Sever/BCE Necromancer (max out at about lvl. 50 NM dungeon, farming Helltides or PvP zone, etc) the life on kill from Scythe just makes playing feel smoother. Getting topped off all the time and rarely needing to use potions just feels better. While leveling up I just would use whatever drop was the best no matter what weapon it was. But always felt better with Scythe so once I got to a level where upgrades were rarer I switched to Scythe permanently.
Im in the same boat as you, I carry both scythe and sword with me all the time at endgame, use the scythe almost all the time only use sword in 1 on 1 fights for the reasons you mentioned. Ive died more then few times because I just didnt notice I was half health and then got hit by an elite's big shot.
If you use Temerity, it'll also give you a barrier so the extra health from kills aren't wasted. It's definitely not a bad way to increase survivability for necros.
You can achieve the same with blood orbs from Corpse Tendrils.
Or you can press Q when missing 1/8 of health....
Or run 1 bubble when elite is struck / you get immunity bubble when you are struck - win.
Life on kill is pretty useless overall if you play responsibly.
The only use case I found for myself is spearing a pack of mobs for healz while running for my life in Fields of Hatred :D :D
@@andreychetvertakov4574 you are looking at it from the min-max perspective, which absolutely valid, until you take into account skill, lag and fatigue. If i return from work, tired, hold shisha hose in left hand, im much more efficient at playing "simple", like not having to push extra buttons for heal, than when i play half asleep. In my case scenario, ill have better result in simplified, passive play, that averages "good", than having to rely on not making mistakes to be "great", but will drop to "poor" if i do these mistakes. And oh boy i do make these mistakes.
@@Rencol666 I understand your point. Totally valid and true. I have been there myself, but now it is a little easier with a better job. Thanks for bringing me down to earth in the most reasonable way. Peace ✌
Huge updates like these are why I'm subscribed, only a month in and you're already finding the existence of as breakpoints.
Thanks for the breakdown. If all things are equal, I do think the implicit stat and the slight attack speed makes sword slightly better.
I just want to being up two things that are maybe not explicitly stated in this video that can affect efficiency by more than a few frames per second.
1. The base damage of your weapon is almost certainly more important than your weapon type, for bone spear necro. I found a 808 item power scythe at level 79 and have yet to find any weapon with the same base attack. The scythe also has +crit damage and +crit damage with bone and 189 int (max roll). It's going to be hard to justify a sword over this power of weapon until I get very lucky.
2. There is some anecdotal advantage to not have to watch your hp while you fight. Using potions and being concerned with your life total can absolutely slow you down more than a couple frames per second. If you use scythe, and you're doing content that isnt too hard (say level 60 nm and below), the life gain on kill means you barely ever have to potion yourself and keeps you moving and getting to the next mob. It's really really hard to objectively test something like this but I figured I'd bring it up. This "mental stack" advantage comes up a lot on fighting games as well. The recent sf6 has a modern mode control scheme that lowers mental stack and allows folks to input complicated motions with a single button. A lot of newer players and pro players alike have noticed theres some advantage to having less to think about when controlling your character. I could see the life on kill stat contributing to that as well. But you could also just get that stat on a helmet and use a sword so who knows how much value that has.
Anyway just some stuff to think about.
The discrepancy in expected attack speed bonus and observed increase is just because the game can only do an integer number of frames, so after calculating the decimal frame count after the speed increase, it rounds up to the next integer. This is why there's some variation but you pretty much always get less than you "should"
(This also prevents 0-frame animations. There might also be locked frames that aren't affected by speed at all or minimum frame lengths)
This means that with complete frame data we could indeed min/max attack speed bonus.
Man you really are an exceptional content creator. Keep up the great work and excited for continued success to find you
Looking forward to when you start testing some wand/focus builds for bone spear speed farming. 1.2 base speed and an extra slot to fit accelerating aspect feels pretty darn great when you can still 1-shot mobs in helltides, T51-60 dungeons, all the easier content.
Focus also have attack speeds which may complicate 1hd sword vs scythe vs wand. Then you have shields which have no attack speed but boost MH damage by a fixed value regardless of ipower.
@@Pondering133 they also have essense lucky hits to compensate spammability. I wonder if 2 of those kind stack. I am talking "Lucky hit: Chance to restore % primary resource"
Tried 1h + focus with Core skills grant % Attack speed. Felt like a machine gun. Definitely better for Helltides farming.
With bonespear costing only 16 (got 3 points in Imperfectly balanced still), I don't run out of essence at all (2 lucky hits + dmg on vuln restotres 48 essence - total of 37.5%).
Cleared Raethwind Wilds lvl 71 NM dungeon and it felt ok.
Will try Lilith tomorrow and maybe some PvP.
Now I want to put this IAS aspect on amulet.
Character feels very mobile, I can move instantly after shooting.
I absolutely love how deep you dive into these types of game aspects, because even when you think you know the game, there are always questions about specifics that aren't published. This was fantastic, so thank you!
@MacroBioBoi -
Just wanted to say I really appreciate you putting this video together. 1 month after season 1 release, I think this is still the most comprehensive investigation on IAS breakpoints in D4 that is made public.
Not sure how much interest there is in your community for more of this, relative to your other content because I imagine it would be quite time consuming. I would very much be interested in seeing you do this for other skills/classes or at least talk about how you can go about testing a generalizable rules on how IAS breakpoints work in the game overall.
Thanks again
I'd love to return to this and make it more robust for sure.
While I don't doubt that these might be how the game works, but how math normally works is that when you speed up things by x%, the bigger number reduces faster, meaning that there should be a point where they have the same amount of frames.
i didnt even watch it yet, but IMO: The crit damage implicit +11% atk speed surpasses the flat damage deficit
I'm theorycrafting a Hemorrhage Overpower build that maxes out attack speed and healing/hit (S4 currently). Don't know if it will be any good, but I love the data you've put together.
There was a fair amount of math here than went over my head but it was cool to see such a deep dive into the numbers. You explained the concept of a breakpoint really well in layman’s terms so that even I understood it haha.
I honestly do not understand how they came up with the idea that a Scythe is slower to swing or specifically continuously swing that a full on Greatsword...
How did they get the idea that a scythe can be an effective weapon against anything but grass demons?
@@raidenpz see thats the thing, its not a black or white situation my guy, sure its fantasy land but concepts are based off of OUR reality... so in other words, sht makes sense because we can relate it to our own so the idea that "anything goes" because "fAntAsY" is stupid!
A Scythe is a tool but can be used to harm like a weapon and a Sword is a weapon but can be used like a tool, however, in neither case should for example a Knife be slower to swing than a Hammer regardless if one is a tool and the other is not or uf its fantasy land or reality.
I also dont understand how soneone cannot grasp such a simple concept of sudo realism.
@@vitorvena See thats the thing, you presented your argument as if it was indeed black or white. It's not.
@@mimcduffee86 feel free to elaborate, otherwise your words mean nothing.
It’s almost like it’s a video game and doesn’t need to be realistic 🤯
One thing to consider with the variances you ran into, it might be the game engine. Your personal FPS in an online game literally doesn't matter, you could have 7000fps, but the game engine itself runs at like, 15-24fps for "MMO" type games like these where precision doesn't matter that much (a first person shooter would run at way higher of a tick rate ideally). And so regardless of your personal frame rate, the game engine only actually accepts input lets say 24 times per second, and if the global cooldown isn't neatly divisible by 24, you'll pick up some differences if you're counting frames. Although with this, I would expect it to be _worse_, not better, since I would expect the game to pick it up on the next available game engine tick.
When u spam a button and move at the same time it was very much faster because of Animation canceling. Same works with holding down basic and spam core.
I thought they specifically nerfed this after the beta?
Ofc Blizz would fail to fix that
@@SuperCatacata it is still working thats the reason why modpacks on controller or mouse makros are still broken.
There's something slightly wrong here. For the sword, you've got 15 frames precast, and 22 frames post-cast, for a total of 37 frames per full cast. Two casts plus the precast of a third would be 74 + 15, or 89 frames. This means there's 10 unaccounted frames.
If the Scythe is scaled by its base attack speed, it should be 15/0.9 = 16.67 base frames precast and 22/0.9=24.44 base frames post-cast, for a total of 40 frames per cast assuming floor rounding to match your findings. Two casts plus a precast would be 80+16, or 96 frames. This means there's still 10 unaccounted frames.
Since 10 frames cannot be divided by 3 and it does divide into two, I assert that there are 5 additional post-cast frames that exist for chain casting. This may mean stutter-stepping as soon as it's possible before recasting can save 1-4 frames per cast, which would also explain how your spamming went faster than chain-casting.
I'm not not what 15 frames precast means. From skill use to spear creation takes 15 frames and then on the 22nd frame of that animation you can run. The full animation back to idle actually takes 80 frames, but there's no use in showing that since it doesn't define any restriction on actions you can take.
@@MacroBioBoi Perhaps precast is more often used in Mobas, but the general idea is that you push the button to cast the skill, and there's a number of frames between you pushing the button and the skill doing something. Post-cast is the number of mandatory frames before a target can begin acting once more, excluding precast frames.
Since you've clarified there's only 7 post-cast frames before movement can begin again, this makes the three casts taking 99 frames even stranger since it should take 22+22+15, or 59 frames, meaning there's 40 missing frames instead of 10.
@@TheAstyanii I assume there are some fixed attack recovery frames that are not influenced by faster attack speed but don’t impair your ability to move. That could explain the missing frames and the difference between faster attack speed percentage and actual frame count.
But how does that relate to damage? You summarized how attack speed very, very thoroughly but for example, if you compare a sword to a scythe in a weapon calculator do we use DPS or the actual damage? I have ilvl 826 scythe that is 2,665 DPS but it does 2,946 in the character pane. Is that what the skills scale off of? If so, dealing dmg a few frames faster means jack shit if the damage that is getting multiplied like 60x after all the buckets is hundreds higher. A sword at the same level would do like 150 less damage, which multiplied x50 is a VERY big difference.
I thank you for the time in testing this but all you really determined was that IAS does affect skills and there may be break points. But how does that actually translate to data? Especially with a "skill" like shadow blight that's literally hitting 20 mobs like 15x per second. And does shadow blight tick faster with IAS? Does it get applied faster? So this video left me with more questions than answers.
I decided before season 1 released I was going to make a blood spear build... right now using a wand in T3 for the lucky hit chance. Thanks for the video.
Being at the advent of a new game and mapping out all these values in client is both interesting and terribly tedious. Do we think that all of the values used in D2 were all experimentally derived like this? or was the game data mined for these calculations? I may just be impatient, but I have so many questions and it might be literally years before we pin down how the game works.
From a testing standpoint: does AS decrease DOT duration? or use a similar breakpoint system to deal additional ticks over the same duration? if the ladder I could see a paradigm where AS would be a core stat for shadow builds which may help us break out of the VD/CSC/CSD meta.
All values in D2 were manually observed and recorded afaik
This is why summon skills with cooldowns feel so awful to plug into your sorc build. They have the cast speed of a normal ability and are not as fast as many of the Sorc defensives.
This is an impressive dive into the numbers but what it tells me more than anything is how, once again, Blizzard gets Necromancer wrong. How in the world is anything better than Scythe for a Necromancer?! It’s iconic!
Please play necro in season 1, you are my go to guy for info and builds on this class!
Can do
Honestly the whole idea of increased attack speed for skills that have no actual cd and immediate effect always felt weird/confusing for me, like I see how attack speed would influence basic attacks - reap (how fast you swing), decay (how often dot procs), how it affects minions since they actually attack with intervals, but skills like bone spear or curses that visually look like they will hit as fast as you can click the skill didnt make much sence to have attack speed associated with them, and then you have skills like blood mist and bone storm that are just "fire and forget" skills, like how would attack speed influence that? does it affect how often the instance of damage occurs? yes? no? why not?
Anyway thx for the video but I will still prefer scythe as a fashion stement
Well done, you're my favorit source for necro stuff. Keep going
my man you could have just compared a 1h to a 2h but you split the hairs. Well done sir
I recently tried a Barbarian and share your bias on this subject, and by level 25 using dual wield and buffing attack speed my lunging strike is a powerhouse for fury gen and get-around (zoom zoom)
So do we know at how many fps the engine is running? I assume you just picked 60 fps for convenience but that could explain some things for sure. Amazing content btw !
Tldr.: 10% faster across the board
be it mist immunity, walking after cast or cast speed.
It's still a tradeoff isn't it? 10% raw weapon damage vs 10% faster casting and movement?
2h sword base 1.0 "APS":
* 99 frames / 3 bone spears = 33 frames / bone spear
* (60 frames / second) / (33 frames / bone spear) = 1.818 real bone spears per second
2h sword with +31.4% sheet "aps" bonus:
* 75 frames / 3 bone spears = 25 frames / bone spear
* (60 frames / second) / (25 frames / bone spear) = 2.40 real bone spears per second
2.4 / 1.818 ~= 1.32x faster.
Seems to be really non-intuitive.
Best info was that shoot -> move -> shoot is the same frames overall as shoot -> stand still -> shoot.
the delay with the i-frames from bloodmist... this explains ALOT... died a few times when I already pressed flameshield or bloodmist, so it isn't instant, thought it was serverlag
Yup
tbh as some1 whom so bad at math i wished if u just told me at the end of the video the important question" What should i use sword or scythe" or when i shud each of em , some ppl like me wana minmaxing and some ppl are interested in the knowldge , and it would be good if u can provide both and ty u macro for ur awesome vids like alwayse
I personally prefer sword and don't think scythe has any redeeming qualities. If you often take damage while doing normal content and find it difficult to manage your life with options, scythe can help with that.
although it is certain that sword will have higher damage potential than scythe, but I found myself favor the scythe much more due to life on kill. I die a lot less with scythe and I also spend a lot less time "healing", "picking up orb", "evading due to not at max hp" etc. I think in general for NM dungeon farming, scythe provide a much safer and smooth gameplay experience than sword.
exacly and now when Swords gets crit dmg nerf - only 21 crit dmg amx " is better use scythe
Quick question, does decompose benefit from Attack Speed?
I'm not expecting a change in damage, but wondering if there's a difference in the frames between hits
Hey there. Very interesting findings!
I have a question though, that I feel is important. How does the difference of base weapon damage affect the damage of skills? In particular does if affect them at all? If so, does it affect them all the same way or is there a difference for example between blizzard and firebolt?
What I get as a feeling, but I have no data to back it up, which I would really love to see, is this:
Weapon speed seems to affect skill damage. So a scythe attack will do 0.9/1 of the base damage of a sword, and if that is the case, then that base speed is important.
Because that means that your X resource for casting that strong skill will do more damage per resource spent (and if your resource generation is not tied to a basic attack, so you don't get less resource/second, you can do more damage/resource spent with a slower weapon).
The same reasoning applies to skeletons for example: how is their damage calculated? If they attack speed is set and their damage scales with weapon speed (slow->more) then maybe 2h scythes are the way to go for skeleton builds?
Do you think you can do some research on these questions?
Thanks a lot for the video and for the data!
Base weapon damage is the initial value that all other multipliers and modifiers work off.
@@MacroBioBoi Thanks!
Do you know how this applies to skeletons and spells like Blizzard? Does the blizzard animation happen faster? Do skeletons attack faster?
Tbh it makes bone splinters much more effective provided you're specced in to crit damage.
Outside of that it's nothing major to me.
Thanks for putting in the work appreciate you
Things I would look for. 1- How much attackspeed do i have to give a scyth to make it cast at the same speed as sword. 2- How much more attackspeed do i need to give scyth to get same frames reduction as sword. (could be that scyth would hit at the same rate as sword but get a 10% reduction of AS and that reduction is also applied to additionals IAS)
You also will have to overcome the implicit +CSD on the sword. Not only would you need more AS, but you would also have to make up CSD for equivalent values.
Rather than trying to make the two "balanced" in DPS I think the devs should instead give more value to the Life on Kill stat to offer a compelling alternative to damage; which could be via something like a buffed Temerity.
@@bobnewkirk7003 We are kinda talking past each other. My goal is to find out the formulas and rules behind different weapons and attackspeed. Your goal is to get more DPS :D
@@maxogge i see what you mean lol. My understanding of your statement was "test to see what the cost of running a scythe is" and wanted to add the CSD vs LS component. From an explorative standpoint both of your objectives are good. Its pretty amazing we had information like this for previous games, I'm just now starting to understand the time that went into teasing the equations out.
From a technical standpoint, can we be sure that game at 60 fps renders exactly one frame every 1/60 of a second?
We can't be sure of anything without info from the devs
Was the testing carried out in or out of combat? I know for example a Rogue can stutterstep faster out of combat, but if you're in combat you're locked in place for longer. Not sure if this affects Necro in any meaningful way.
Great work, really appreciate the effort and time you put in.
We've been debating sword vs scythe for pvp, since there is a 200% crit cap in pvp and sword of course has crit on it... Similarly higher damage of a scythe might get better scaling...
This video comes in clutch!
And so much more testing too do....
I wonder if you are going to continue with necro or switch to another class season 1?
For theory crafting sake, I totally get the allure, but pvp in this game is straight up dog shit. For one, they only have far west central/west NA servers so anyway east gets fucked with 90+ms. Secondly, when you're in the pvp zones, if you're by more than one person, expect there to be a near almost doubling of your ping. Thirdly, there are some builds that just can't be beat no matter what level you are. No counter play = dog shit pvp. Thankfully no one actually takes pvp seriously because there's zero complexity/competitiveness.
@@johng8162 Laggy zones are an issue. I solve this problem by relogging. Game puts you in a different lobby 99% of the time where there is no lag. That is infrastructure problem - whatever.
Pvp is not balanced - yes. But remember, I playing necromancer - the bottom tier character for pvp. And I managed to make it work just fine. Not saying it is easy or anything, I am working about x20 times harder than a HoTa barb, but it is still fun. And if I get friends - it's a different story :)
They said this game is not meant to be for pvp - sure... There are a ton of bugs and broken mechanics that ruin experience for us. To me the journey and discovery of these mechanics and specs, and stats, and builds is the most fun. I love it.
I die in pvp zone and get mad, but I also kill and it is so very rewarding. Farmed about 5-6m red dust so far. I could safely state that farming fields of hatred rivals NM dungeons in terms of quantity of drops (quality is high too, but harder to target specific families of mobs).
@@johng8162 speccing necro for pvp is the most fun I had so far.
20k life, armor cap, defensive aspects, stacked ms, etc...
Necro for a long time
Mac dropping another straight up 🔥 video.
I genuinely nerfed myself for a good while so I could use scythes, attack speed drop off and crit damage was very noticeable though. Necromancers should use scythes though, not a fan that swords are objectively better.
I'm not sure why you would only be using sword and scythe for your data. Wand and knife literally have a faster attack speed
Because I literally explain I don't have time to test more data sets? Also no one is actively discussing the meta between 1 and 2 handers on bonespear currently.
@macrobigboi this is almost exactly what i was after!
I've been searching for a few days for a video that shows breakpoint caps. As in, barrier generation for bulwark expl druid build. Is it capped at 60% and anything beyond being useless, for example.
My main question which applies to all classes though is basic skill attack speed, for resource generation and lucky hit proccing. Can you keep stacking attack speed % and skill buffs (howl +20% 4 secs) infinitely? Or is there a xx% cap at which point youre just wasting resource's?
I wish someone had that info 🧐
I prefer 2HScythe because of 300+ Life per Kill for sustain, instead of the %-CritDmg and 10 % AS, but I see how this is statistically more efficient. Id say this doesnt matter until trashmobs arent 1hit anymore.
If the 2 hander pushes my per-hit damage up to one shotting a higher class of enemy, it's worth it. Otherwise, the extra legendary affix slot is just too nice to pass up.
Good stuff.Still waiting for that infinimist bone spirit build tho
No way!!! Crossbow good bow bad big brain me! I'm so tired of people saying how's are bad.
How long before you can upgrade attack speed..
Basic attacks are way too slow. I couldn't even bring myself to finish leveling a character.
I've started three characters, not one of them are actually max level.
Any conclusion about breakpoints? do you know a site which has them already, like we have in d2? i wanna know breakpoints of Sorceress. and skills in specific.
Also is there a IAS cap? ppl say 100% bonus IAS, is this right...and can basic attack go higher? or its all bull because skills are also capped. For example Ball lightning with the Legendary node, seems to be able to cast only around 15 balls, it wont go higher even if you increase IAS.
The answer is no, we don't know yet.
Iike the neard aproach, explaining evrything on paper. Makes sence.
Whatever is reflecting in your glasses distracted the shit out of me.
Studio lights sadly
I'm curious how the two weapons compare when they are both maxed out to 5 attacks per second. Obviously they will have the same attack speed at that point but will it also give them the same delay to run time 🤔
If that's the case then if you max out attack speed then scythe will be the clear winner
What does "maxed out to 5 attacks" mean in this context?
Hi, very interessting. But shouldn't you have had a look at the average damage output per second on two weapons with same calculated damage per second according to base damage and attacks per second? If you are able to show that sword is better in these cases, thats big news, otherwise it's just a thing which playstyle you prefer.
For the 31.4% chest increase vs 20% actual increase - I think that's a breakpoint issue. How much AS was the highest breakpoint you hit? How much more AS do you need for the next break point?
I think we really need breakpoint calculators to make it easy for everyone to work this out. We have them for Diablo 2 and I think in tone we will get them for Diablo 4 as well.
Would have appreciated a quick summary in the beginning. Not gonna watch 22 minutes for two sentences of text.
Ok, so Sword is better, but I'll just use Scythe because it looks so much cooler and more appropriate for a necro imho.
great work. you definitely have a researchers mindset :-)
I wonder how shadow over time is affected of attack speed vs base damage
We need break points now for each tier for each weapon
Something I was thinking about the other night. Is decrepify effected by attack speed.
Every animation is
If attack speed is so important, any value in going with one-handed weapons?
Plenty of builds use a 1-hander. Depends on the build
You should do 1 hand sword/scythe and dagger as well.
Any updates to the doc for 1 handed weapons?
@macrobioboi Has there been any hard testing to show if/how attack speed affects Shadow DoT ticks, channeled ticks, or Bone Storm effectiveness? Seeing Lidless Wall have +attack speed makes me think that attack speed correlates to a better Bone Storm since that is what that shield is all about. I’m trying to theorycraft a Lidless Wall build and if attack speed makes bone storms better then it would be best utilized in a blood Lance build I would think. Stacking attack speed and using Aspect of Rathma’s Chosen on amulet and just using the dots applied from shadow bone storms to make everything take more damage via blighted aspect on ring and +damage to enemies affected by shadow dots (prom paragon nodes and weapon). Something like that.
Not to my knowledge but I legitimately don't think it affects it.
i test something similar and atm focus on attackspeed for sever (crit-based) and bonestorm. mainly shadow, but use all aspects for attackspeed + lance for speed + overpower for the attackspeed aspect. it works pretty well and with lidless and w/o barber its nuts. after patch with new exposed flesh (more essence - more spam)and temerity (more attackspeed - more heal etc.) im pretty sure it will shine more and more, but it works also now atm with +ressource on lh on gloves
But..But..Scythe looks so much better :( - Nice Math! But alone the Crit Dmg Guaranteed Roll is a no brainer to use Sword i guess :D
Cool video can’t wait for the IAS calculator 😂 but do u think at least for farming purposes the life on kill from sythe is nice quality of life? I think it’s annoying to have to heal when I have 80% of my health just so I can get my “healthy” buffs
I don't know someone who is taking enough damage that they can't maintain healthy, that is also 1 shorting with a slower weapon, that is worried about speed farming.
I think scythe is better for people who don't want to think about playing efficiently, to not lose too many benefits IF they need healthy status that badly.
lol the irony (after watching wudijo podcast).
Haven't watched it yet. What's the reference?
What happens if you are locked to 30fps or 60fps or are running a PC that maxes out at 20-25fps during heavy battles? Wouldn't this limit how much gains you receive from % Attack speed and weapon choices?
What you see, and how quickly the game calculates stuff are not related typically.
So I can’t say about actual power and damage but when the aspect I have on one of my weapons triggers it definitely feels lots more fun as I go from whack .... whack ..... whack to whack whack whack and stuff seems to die faster.
So in short ied guess it dose but I don’t know what kind of brake point you need to hit in order for it to really count, I mean if you go from 1 hit every 3 seconds to 1 hit every 2.8 seconds then it’s not going to really count unless your in a 10 minute long fight.
attack speed is very important, I always use the potion with 20% on my necro
How is the calculation to channeling skills or Pets Like Hydra?
Thoughts on scythe +temerity pants? Consistently generating the barrier
Temerity actually only barriers for base life and not max life so it's pretty trash
I’m trying to make a 60% increased Basic Attack Speed Puncture Rogue here lol
This video wasted more time than I'll ever get back from 4 frames per cast
Thanks bestie
Can we talk about necromancers not being able to gamble 2h swords please? These is obscene! They are forcing us into mediocrity :(
Does attack speed affect damage over time?
Thanks,
Comment for the Skull Throne
Just a tip scythe is great if paired with temerity pants
Temerity pants are actually incredibly bad in the end game. Whole they say 80% of max life, it's actually only 80% of base life.
Imma keep using scythes and my boys gonna keep me alive
I wonder what damage values we could see if that could be tested.
As far as I can see my bone spear one-two shots pretty much everything I come across so scythe might be better for raw damage output if I deal 300 more base damage it should be better then +30% more crit damage(of which I already have about 400%)
Keep in mind the 400% in your character sheet is with the iron golem bonus already applied while the 30% is just the base value on an unupgraded sword. At 725+ item level a 5/5 upgraded two hand sword is adding 68% crit damage with iron golem just from the intrinsic stat alone.
Attack speed eends up being irrelevant at late game with Bone Spear necro when you can one shot the entire screen dead.
That's the opposite take away. It ends up being the ONLY thing that matters.
@@MacroBioBoi Why? There is no need for 2 attacks.
@@Rombizio If you one shot the monster no matter what, then casting your spell faster is the only way to gain efficiency. It literally speeds up every gameplay interaction you can have. This is like asking why running faster would matter in a footrace.
@@MacroBioBoi you are not making any sense.
is projectile speed affected by attack speed? v relevant for bonespear, and curious how it might affect other skills
If it did, I'd find a way to slow myself. The interaction with the Deathless Visage helmet and enemies slowing you is hilarious.
Not to my knowledge
subscribed, thank you so much for this : )
Thank you!
Love the video but I think the people who use scythes just like the aesthetic of it so they don’t mind attacking slower(me being one of them).
Scythe looks cooler, therefore scythe is superior
On dot builds yes very much, guess all builds really. It just depends on what you're trying to do...
I love these kind of videos. So too me it sounds like it's not worth building into speed and the other stats are better. Also in combat things are different great video though
Glad you enjoyed. I'd actually say the opposite though. Building into speed is a massive upgrade to your overall efficiency. 31.4% speed gained a greater than 20% efficiency gain. That's like a new 1.2 damage multiplier.
Mmmmhhhhhh does Blood Mist tick more often with more Attack speed? I mean every tick can does Overpower damage.
It actually just ticks the same number of times, but faster, so you stop doing damage halfway through.
Still a complete no brainer am i right? A two handed sword wins every day
No brainer to me, many people have been convinced that scythes are better because of some reason
Interesting. Good stuff
But what if my computer can only run the game at 30 fps
What you're seeing doesn't change when things occur in the game, only your ability to react to them.
So sword is doing more dmg while being faster than scythe lol and life on kill is sh*t even while lvling u can get that life on kill with just ironmaiden if you want but you dont need it.