1.0.0.6 - Cadence Commando - Heavy-Duty Warborn Build

Grim Dawn Classes, Skills and Builds
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21

Ah was thinking about a dual wield Warborn. But I don’t have a single item from this set:) Looks pretty

Just a thought on phyisical damage output. As I have a Phys commado myself with shield I have to say that Oleron’s relic would benifit your build far more than Oblivion. +1 potentially+2 do Deadly momentum matters, The proc is good too. Also more flat phys damage from it and ~50 OA. Oleron’s belt. In the video nothiced you are not very excited about Tinkerer belt. Falt phys damage. More deadly momentum better crits.

Perless Eye vs Bloodreager not sure what to say. One has more OA and elemental resists. The other Vit resist and more %phys dmage. The +1 to temper from peerless might compensate for what Bloodrager gives.

Thanks for the video

22

Well to be honest, I have not used dual-wield cadence before…
My info is mainly from here however (for those of you who can read Japanese)
although it may be outdated, as it is patched at 1.0.0.5
http://wikiwiki.jp/gdcrate/?Masteries%2FSoldier%2FCadence

注意点として二刀流や二丁拳銃で1回に2発以上攻撃してもすべて「1チャージ」の扱いになる他、カデンツ本体の攻撃はメインハンドのみ参照されるため、これらのスタイルとは相性がすこぶる悪い
If I were to translate it:
As a point of attention, dual-blades or dual-guns, even if you hit twice or more in one time, it is counted as one charge, and also, the cadence attack itself is referred to from the main hand; hence these do not combine well at all, as in, the worst.

Apparently here it says (at the skill table) only the main hand is used… maybe this is wrong… or actually, my apologies if that is the case of my misunderstanding, it can also mean that cadence itself will gain a charge only from the main hand… the text is not so clear…
also, as here, there is a 0.5 second limit time for gaining a charge, meaning that regardless of attack speed, the charge gain rate is capped.

Or is that part also outdated…? I see a comment from July this year below that says in practice it seems only the off-hand is used.

23

Besides sword and board combo, Cadence lacks (a bit) behind Beronath’s Fury (DW), Fire Strike (DW? and ranged) and Savagery (2-hander) right?

Also, among Beronath’s Fury and Fire Strike. Which one would be more suited for a lightning DW melee build?

24

Can you elaborate on this? The skill description says it uses two weapons, but when I hit the training dummy, the damage seems to only correspond to what would happen with one weapon. I’m testing this only very casually, using random stuff I equipped on a low level character designed for another purpose, but when I have one weapon equipped, I hit for 150-200 or so on a cadence hit and I get the same result, only once overall, not once for each weapon, while dual wielding.

This leads me to believe in two possible outcomes. Either cadence does not actually use both weapons, in spite of the skill description, intentionally or otherwise. Or it does, but the game doesn’t display the damage properly. That seems unlikely, though, because while casually smacking enemies with either one or two weapons equipped, the enemies don’t seem to take more damage on the prime cadence hit while dual wielding than with one weapon. I admit I could be wrong on this point, however, since it’s hard to measure and I didn’t test very carefully.

Second, does dual wielding actually make you attack faster for the purpose of Cadence? Of course it does overall, but since cadence doesn’t count the dual attacks from dual wield, is there an overall advantage? Does dual wield apply an overall attack speed increase to your attacks aside from the chance to attack twice? Again, testing casually with a stop watch and measuring by closing my eyes and listening for the special sound of a cadence hit, I noticed that with one weapon or two, the cadence hit typically came every 1.5 seconds. I did not control by using two weapons of exact same speed, but I did notice that while dual wielding, my measurements erred slightly under 1.5 seconds, whereas they were slightly over with one weapon. I expect that’s explained by my error of using a faster off-hand while dual wielding, but I could be wrong.

Another argument I’ve heard for why cadence is good with dual wield is that multi-hit WPS skills count each hit. That’s not true according to my tests, they only count as one swing.

At any rate, my experience just swinging at the dummy is that the prime cadence hit gains nothing from dual wield in terms of frequency or power. The huge amount of flat damage gained from deadly momentum might make it worth it anyway, however.

25

Well, when dual-wielding even without any NB skills there is a chance of using both weapons to strike… (not sure what the % is)…
Perhaps cadence is subject to that same chance? (sometimes you get lucky with a HUGE hit with both hands, but most of the time is just one)

1.5 secs seems to corroborate what the Japanese wiki (way more complete and useful than the English version) says… that charges can only be gained at most every 0.5 seconds… now I suppose that if your weapon is fast, you reach the cap already with one hand then dual-wield does nothing for accelerating charge gains. Dual-wield MAY help (not sure) if your weapon is slower than 0.5 secs per hit however.

Otherwise think about it… Amarasta’s quick cut would by default give us one cadence hit at the end, which frankly would sound VERY OP.

26

Even without considering DoT casters in the mix, why is OA so damn good? I just kind of follow the mainstream here and amass OA. I treat it like orange juice and just drink it up because people say it’s good for me, but I don’t know why exactly.

I understand what’s explained about crits and the OA/DA formula but when I try to break down damage output with differences to criticals (0% to crit and some non-trivial chance to miss, 10% chance and almost 100% chance to hit, 20% chance to crit and almost no chance to miss) mathematically, it’s not that big of a difference especially with the damage multiplier capped at 2.5x unless I’m misunderstanding how crits work. Even the max 2.5x damage triggered 15% of the time is just 122.5% total damage (+22.5% total damage is definitely not bad, but not enough of a game changer to me if it requires really skewing our builds and sacrificing a lot of stuff to get enough OA).

The one exception to me where critting 8% more often and getting harder towards that 2.5x cap, e.g., might make a huge difference in damage throughput is if you have procs that trigger on crit. In that case I can see why getting crits frequently helps a whole lot. Otherwise I don’t see crits boosting damage to the extent of going so far out of our way to try to make sure we can always get better than 0% crit chance on a nemesis.

27

Higher OA means higher chance to crit and also means more crit damage. OA is really useful in the endgame because when you reach max level, enemies can be at max 8 levels above you, widening the gap between your OA and their DA.

28

As said I understand that part. But let’s say you have 15% chance to crit at 2.5x damage. And let’s say you sacrificed a whole lot of base damage, defense, etc. to get your OA at 3000+ to crit nemesis at a healthy rate. All those sacrifices just amount to a +22.5% improvement in total damage throughput, which is not a bad improvement (considering it’s total damage throughput, not just like a +x% modifier) but it makes me wonder if it’s worth the sacrifices to get there unless I’m misunderstanding the math. At the end we just end up killing the enemy in like 8.16 seconds instead of 10 seconds as a result of all that OA and the crits (unless critical procs are involved, in which case I understand the value of critting a lot more).

29

3000+ OA is pretty much pointless. Around 2500 to 2700 is more than enough. Also, you never sacrifice too much base damage for extra OA. Sure, sometimes you need to sacrifice some damage for OA, but never too much.

30

I see. In my case my gear isn’t so great so I tend to have to make some sacrifices and combine with DA debuffs even to get it effectively above 2500.

In my case I have blind fury so it makes total sense to be able to crit everything, since it definitely increases damage to a healthy degree when it’s triggering all the time.

Without the procs involved though, I keep coming back to the basic thought where, say, I give you a dollar every second but I tell you that, 10% of the time, I’ll double how much I give you. You’ll see some big numbers but after a hundred seconds have passed, you’re only 10% richer ($110 vs. $100) than if I didn’t include that bonus 10% of the time.

I just keep coming back to this thought since OA is kind of worshipped as one of the most important DPS concerns for a lot of builds, and I never really understood why. I keep thinking I don’t understand the math or something.

31

Procs are pretty much necessary in endgame. Several of them have a 100% proc chance everytime you crit, hence why you need high OA. Also being able to hit every enemy 100% of the time is pretty much required, a miss is a loss of damage output.

32

A whopping 10% chance to miss is a 10% loss in damage output which is definitely not trivial but not something I’d deem crucial from a net throughput point of view…

Where I can see a miss being more awful is actually from a defensive standpoint. If you rely on attack damage converted to health, a miss could mean a greater window of time where you’re receiving more damage before healing it back, and could effectively be fatal. In that case the benefit of missing less is more to get consistent and deterministic results than damage throughput which doesn’t actually increase that much with or without misses (unless we’re missing like 50% of the time which would suck and halve our damage).

Procs I definitely understand for builds that rely on critical procs a lot (as the case with my witchblade).

33

I deem misses crucial when it involves Cadence, Execution and the other high damage skills.

And 10% chance to miss is not a 10% damage loss. It’s actually much, much more than that. I remember when i start a new character and it has a 95% chance to hit, but it misses 5 times in a row. The 95% is not an average like you are implying, it means my character has a 5% chance to miss everytime it attacks. You don’t want to miss ever in Ultimate or anytime for that matter. Misses decreases damage output and clear speeds, hence why high OA is needed.

34

I got a chuckle. :smiley:

35

I see, that’s a very important point! The attacks are not all equal with skills like cadence and WPS in the mix.

How about a CT sorceress with no crit procs though? I’m kinda questioning why it’s crucial for so many builds. I can understand why critting and missing very little is crucial for mine.

I remember when i start a new character and it has a 95% chance to hit, but it misses 5 times in a row. The 95% is not an average like you are implying, it means my character has a 5% chance to miss everytime it attacks.

That’s kind of a bias we have with probabilities involved. It’s something every poker player can attest to that their pocket aces lost repeatedly to pocket kings, since they remember the times they get so unlucky but not all the times their aces held up in that scenario. It’ll always seem like the kings are beating the aces again and again, but over the long run and a large sample the aces are still beating the kings ~80% of the time. Just the 20% of the time it’s missing will seem really pronounced and we’ll feel like the unluckiest people in the world each time it happens… but over the long run, do it over and over and the person consistently holding aces comes out with ~80% equity while the one with kings just has ~20%.

It’s like being incredibly unlucky and missing a lot with one boss in one session might happen here and there and there might be cases where it takes 15 seconds as opposed to 10, but overall a 95% chance to hit over a 100% chance to hit(excluding the special WPS/cadence cases you mentioned where each individual attack is not equal in damage) means that, over the long run, the one that doesn’t miss is going to take, say, an average of 10 seconds, while the one that misses 5% of the time is going to take an average of ~10.5 seconds. It’s just a little over a half a second difference between these two on average (though the one missing might have a lot more variance in the short term).

36

Why? A 530% weapon damage proc is high damage.

37

Hey! I got a 130k crit with it on my Blademaster. So it’s not that bad. Though, i ask why you don’t find it to be a high damage skill.

Again, 100% chance to hit is much better than 99% since it means you won’t miss ever. Hence you need high OA because of the level gap between you and the enemies in endgame.

It seems we are running in circles, so i’m done here.

38

Yeah, that’s very sexy when it happens! But how much non-crit damage do you do, and how often do those crits happen?

From a long term standpoint I’m not sure you are doing that much extra overall damage with a 130k crit here and there… though it does make things complicated if not all attacks are equal, and you critted on a cadence strike or WPS, e.g.

I’m looking at this purely from the standpoint of how much damage total over a long period of time (not a brief period, long term, like damage per hour).

39

265% x2 weapons isn’t really all too high. That’s like…what…25k?

40

It’s pretty high. On the low end I’ll get around 30k per weapon from an execution proc.