Does a “default” attack for a dual wield melee character mean a swing with one weapon (alternating between main hand and off hand) or with both weapons?
This matters when comparing the value of spending skill points to ensure that weapon pool skills are always replacing default attacks, versus maxing out a smaller number of weapon pool skills so they hit harder when they land.
Also, does the default attack have exactly the same animation duration as any weapon pool skill that replaces it? If no, then which attack animations take longer to carry out?
On a related issue, does the bonus to all damage from Markovian’s advantage last for the same duration as the DA shred (ie: 5 seconds)?
No, not the same. I haven’t saw such a thing as frames per animation for Grim Dawn (as for D3) though it’s obvious even on sight that Belgothian Shears animation is quite long and takes longer than default sword swing.
No. Bonus damage applies only to Markovian hit itself. Also it hits only with one weapon (mainhand I suppose though maybe it can change left-right, depends on tooltip, if it displays 2 numbers. Cannot check it now). The thing you describe is Deadly Momentum on Soldier Cadence tree. It gives bonus damage for all the time it’s active.
As far as i know, MA hits with both weapons (that’s why DW blademasters used it in favour of Zolhan’s Technique). BTW, the latter (ZT) acts like default attack while dual-wielding (has chance to hit with left hand, with right hand, or with both).
I’m also not sure that DW default attack has 50% chance to hit with both weapons, it rather looks like 33% (though to be sure, you should make ~3k hits and count the number of each animation.
I’ve heard the 33/33/33 value and the 25/25/50 value in the past for left/right/both, but I couldn’t say for sure from my own experience since I always go for WPS over base attacks. What is certain is that a ‘default attack’ can be one weapon, the other, or both at random.
I can confirm that MA uses both weapons as well which is why it is often paired with the dual blades line on blademasters to get 100% WPS chance.
I’m reasonably sure it’s 25/25/50. i did a bit of a test a while back, using a newly created nightblade, getting 2 weapons with the same attack speed (used 2x the frost damage hatchet from one of the corpses in the zombie village) and… simply counted the double swings and single handed swings for a few minutes.
after about 500 or so swings, it was pretty close to 50:50 (i think something like 245 double swings and 255 left or right - i didn’t count the onehanded swings separately).
now 500 samples are a bit low from a statistical point of view, but i couldn’t be bothered to continue after that. a 33/33/33 split would be ~166 double hits vs. 333 single hits, so either i was incredibly lucky with my double hits or it’s actually 50:50
Thank you all for your feedback. I’ll aim for 100% chance to get WPS procs, then, as that seems to lead to better damage than default attacks (except whirling death, but that’s an AOE for up to 8 mobs and a celestial proc machine, so I’ll keep that in the rotation).
MA lists attack damage for both hands, so I believe both hands hit with every attack.
I’ll give ZT another look, as I have +1 all skills for soldier for my blademaster. That might end up letting me pull a couple points out of WPS skills and still have 100% uptime on them. I’m wondering if the slowdown on incoming enemy attacks from ZT doesn’t work on those with slow resist, though, which if true would sharply reduce ZT’s value.
Iirc for every dual wield, ranged or melee, there is 50% chance to hit with both hands and 50% chance to hit with one hand.
Tho I didnt played with BM for long now, if you want to maximize your single target DMG take only Markovian advantage, Execution and Amarasta quick cut. All other nightblade/soldier wps are dps lost, due to shear strenght of hits or due to animation time needed to execute them.
Zolhan’s Techique isnt a loss, it has the same animation time as normal attack (if i remember correctly), the same hit distribution (as you say, 50% chance to hit with both hands, and 50% with one) and deals 175% Weapon Damage at level 8.
Might also argue about Belgothian Shears, after its damage was buffed to 128% of weapon damage (and it hits with both hands), even despite slow animation, i dont think it’s DPS loss.
Unfortunately dummy testing say otherwise, both are DPS lost with belgo shears being higher one.
For testing purposes I used cadence based full cunning BM, 5 times killed dummy w/o zolhan and belgo, 5 times with zolhan, 5 times with belgo and 5 times with both of them. To get clearer picture I disabled all celestial procs, unequipped BSOD, turned off veil of shadows/night chill and didnt used blade spirit (basically was just holding lmb with cadence on it).
Average dps lost was ~7,5% with both of them, with only belgo ~4%, with only zolhan ~3%.
Note that both zolhan and belgo were one point investment so they were 5/12 and 6/8 respectfully.
Picture of setup used for testing with cadence on lmb and constant auras:
In my experience Zolhan’s is a dps gain at 12/12 and somewhere around even at 9/12 (where it’s proc chance finishes its scaling). I rarely just one-point it and never overcap it. It’s kind of an all-or-nothing-but-not-too-much sort of skill.
So you measure WPS effectiveness with Cadence? That isnt right, you know.
I suppose, that WPS add only one Cadence stack, even if they hit with both weapons, while default attack gives 2 stacks if it hits with both (so 50% chance to get 2 stacks). Since lion’s share of Cadence DPS is “focused” in 3-rd hit, the damage of “normal” hits doesnt really matter, all that matter is how fast you gain stacks. And to get stacks faster, you shouldnt use any WPS skills (because default attacks gives 1.5 stacks on average, while WPS give 1).
WPS are only good if you use default attack, Fire Strike and Savagery (and its 2 lesser versions from component and relic).
If I’m reading this correctly, then 1 point in Cadence and 1 in Deadly Momentum could be a boost in damage for a DW phys / pierce or a 100% phys-to-pierce conversion build (dual slicers, double pierce %), especially if you have +skills to soldier. The added flat physical on DW alone may easily justify two mastery points in the Cadence line and tying up every third hit with cadence instead of a WPS attack.
If MK is correct, then keeping WPS skill point investments relatively low and putting more into cadence / deadly momentum may be the way to maximize damage on a phys-pierce or all-pierce DW blademaster.
I’ll experiment a bit with this in the coming days and report back.
This has been a really helpful thread; my thanks to all who have contributed.
PS: Even with a fairly modest DPS drop for single target, I still see a case for Shears and WD. It’s just RSI-inducing to target one mob at a time and WD is quite helpful for getting celestial procs that depend on critical hits (adds for bosses become quite helpful, with WD).
You see, Cadence itself hits 3 targets (with 12 Fighting Form), it’s already decent AoE. I think, if you’re using Cadence and DW, you shouldnt put learn any WPS at all. If you use Cadence but arent DW, you may put 1 point into some WPS (like MA and ZT).
Cadence + DM is too powerful combo, and is probably the only ability available for DW BM in endgame.
If you want to use WPS, try something based on Fire Strike (saboteur) or Savagery (trickster). Or Lethal Assault, at least (acid WH/ cold SB).
Reading this Im really asking my self do you ever test stuff or only make random assumptions?
No offense man but things you wrote are plain hilarious.
To understand things bit better try testing cadence based DW BM only with cadence and then add wps like execution, markovian and acc, test again and you will notice significant DPS increase.
There’s a lot of misinformation around with Cadence and WPS. Yes, Cadence overrides your attack on every third hit, but those first two hits STILL MATTER. The only issue is, having heavily invested in Cadence already, how much can you afford to invest in WPS? That’s an issue for the player to decide.
No, they dont really matter. Your Cadence hit deals 450-500% Weapon Damage, and adds ~300 physical damage on top of it (which will be ~100% of your weapon damage). So, it’s 550-600% weapon damage, that is NOT affected by WPS in any positive way, opposed to 200% from 2 normal hits, that are affected by WPS. Even against single target, your WPS will have 1/4 of their effect if you use Cadence, and at this point, they arent worth your investments past 1 point.
I can’t even fathom what’s going on in your head anymore. Those first two hits are still going to happen regardless, so you might as well be more powerful while doing them. Anyway, I’ve said my piece. You can continue to make bad arguments and crappy builds all you want.
I tested out a couple of combinations, one WPS-based, and one leaning more on cadence.
I was prepared to be “wow’d” by the Cadence-based setup. And, I was surprised by the results, but not in the way I was expecting. The WPS setup performed much better than the Cadence setup during in-game testing, with packs going down quite a bit faster and bosses also going down faster. Plus, I took less damage with the WPS-based setup, on an overall basis.
Trying to figure out why, I noticed that each WPS skill has flat damage attached to it and that flat damage goes up with each point in the skill. Also, I got more celestial procs with the WPS setup, which probably contributed noticeably to clear speed. Finally, I think the stun from shears might have been a partial cause for taking less damage, or perhaps it was just RNG or my own mis-perception.
On a perhaps related note, I believe Dual Blades was buffed moderately recently. Was testing done before that buff to figure out how to optimize skill point allocations for DW blademasters?
The grimtools to explore the build / gear I used to test this is in my sig (BangCrashBoom). Perhaps somebody more experienced and clever with skill point optimization can come up with a better combo than I came up with on my own.
