In Anticipation to level 28 PVP

Total Main Hand Damage: 80 - 197 with Burning Arrow while Hatred is active

Current Critical Multiplier: 840%

8.4 * 197 = 1655 (majority physical)
8.4 * 80 = 672

Supposing that my opponent has 75% fire resist and 40% physical damage reduction... I've calculated that on average, I will do 60 base damage on hit to my opponent.

8.4 * 60 = 504 damage per hit

I am currently using



So that makes it theoretically 1008 damage during 1 period of firing during a diamond flask. If I can get my attack speed up, I can make 2 attacks during a diamond flask's duration, potentially allowing my build to do 2016 damage in the first 1.8 seconds of a match.

So, in short, if my calculations are correct...

I hope everyone has 75% fire resistance and more than 40% damage reduction if they can't get in range to kill me instantly at the start of a fight.

/gloat

Also, this is with really crappy gear. My rings/amulet/quiver add almost no damage right now. Burning Arrow is currently only being supported by faster projectiles. I also am not sure whether I will be able to run added fire/lightning damage or not, but I suspect I will be able to.

If I suspect my opponent to have 75% fire resist, I'll also probably use puncture too, which will add ridiculous bleed damage, enough to negate any life restoration flask, probably. Is there any way for someone to even have 1500+ health at 28? It seems unlikely.

edit: I've upgraded some of my gear, the new damage range is about 20% higher with 894% critical multiplier. This approximately puts me in the range of 2000 damage on a critical strike, before damage reduction.

This means, if you have a high life pool of 800-1000 life, you will need at least 75% damage reduction and a sizable amount of quick regen in order to stave off 3 hits, when you factor in the critical burn damage of burning arrow.

Update (oct 25):

Got a whole bunch of new items.

634 life
851 evasion rating (estimated 45% evasion)
nearly 53% in all resists

While only running Hatred:

Base Main Hand Damage: 124-347
Critical Multiplier: 840%
Average Damage Done Per Attack: 236
Average Critical Damage Done Per Attack: 1982.4
Attacks Per Second: 1.45

Necessary damage reduction in order to live if you have 1000 life: 50%~

With the way armor works though, reducing less damage the more damage is done... I don't think it's possible to get sufficient armor rating to reduce the damage by 50%, unless you pop a granite flask and have 4 or more endurance charges up, but if my opponent is so gung-ho about leap slamming my character, no way they're going to have any endurance charges up. Even with a granite flask, I'm still going to be doing 30-40% of the crit damage as elemental damage, so you can't rely on that either. I COULD see a perfect storm of end+granite+lots and lots of life reducing my damage just enough that you can weather my attacks, and that'll be interesting to see, for sure!

Now, it's been stated in this thread that PVP will have a "damage scale down", which I don't really understand since matches are timed and tanks already absorb lots of damage, but I'll just have to wait and see, how much damage I'll be losing, but even if I were to lose half of my damage done on a crit, I could still reasonably 2 shot somebody with one diamond flask.

yeah.. um

Maybe specialty flasks will have their level requirements raised to 29?

Or maybe all flasks in PvP should start empty, and refill quickly, since you wouldn't really be refilling them from killing enemies except in large scale arena PvP. This way, no potions can be spammed at the very start of the match.

Either way, it sounds like your build is going to be quite deadly in the lvl 28 arenas!

We won't be moving the level of the utility flasks out of level 28 PVP at this stage.

With the current implementation, flasks do not replenish between PVP rounds of Arena PVP (playing to 5 wins).

So Crit builds are definitely interesting, but you need to make Flask use count.

In general any kind of combo action in PVP, even if as simple as drink flask then hit opponent, is a lot harder than single click actions.

Oh that's some interesting detail. Thanks for sharing Qarl.

I'm doing this build just to prove that Diamond Flasks are balanced or not for 28 pvp. If they are, then this build will have a 50% or less win rate (well, something like that). If they aren't, I'll be giggling as I'll make quite a few people scream in agony when their character can't even do anything against me :p

Also, I just upgraded my gear. Here are the new calculations with some slightly better gear:

Main Hand Damage = 98 - 219; critical multiplier = 894%
This now bumps my damage to

98 * 8.94 = 876
219 * 8.94 = 1957

Before resists of course.

Can't wait til' I've got added fire damage and weapon elemental damage linked up. I also need 16 whestones desperately!

But as you can see, this build can go even higher. Though, I think with things as they are currently, my crit mult won't raise any higher than it's sitting at. I could push it up to 1000 if I wanted to, but I'd rather focus on straight up damage right now.

Well, how about Uniques like Voll's baptism dominating?

Arrows don't shotgun

"

Xendran wrote:

Arrows don't shotgun

They don't need to, though it is annoying. I thought Death's Harp fired two arrows one after another - in reality, it's got a mini-LMP on it. So it does reduce my potential damage by quite a bit, I underestimated my Ranger's current attack speed. I can make 3 attacks in the duration of the crit flask right now, which almost makes up for the miscalculation.

"

Qarl wrote:

With the current implementation, flasks do not replenish between PVP rounds of Arena PVP (playing to 5 wins).

I really like this idea. It will add additional long term strategy and help facilitate exciting comebacks.

I haven't done the math but I thought that elemental hit would work well with death's harp.
What I did do math on though is that it isn't as viable as some other options when it comes to later game stuff though (lvl 50+)

When I planned my build (literally had it up in running in one night so not much serious thought)

55% block
65% DR (pre granite)
25% eva
1.2k life (not much on gear)
Max resists
cannot be frozen
cannot be stunned

Oh, If I remember correctly 500ish dps.

Good luck guys. Enjoy those crit builds. Hope you can withstand a flicker strike from a guy who laughed at your diamond flask attempt.