At 9/8 it is a single target damage increase and well worth the 1 point.
No, aside from the mastery points required to get it, it is much better than AQC. Excecution at 5/8 actually deals more damage on a proc than a Cadence hit at 16/1/12!
Also it hits once with both weapons.
AQC does NOT accelerate/provide faster Candence stacks.
All WPS procs only give you one Cadence stack, no matter how many hits.
What you are attributing to AQC is probably just the default dual wield proc that occurs during a Cadence hit.
Even at 9 WD is usually a DPS decrease (depends on build)
AQC hits 3 times in a quick row with +%Crit Dmg and can be seen as an overall DPS increase. And yes, it doesn’t provide Cadence stacks
Execution and AQC are both viable. Which one to put more skill points into is more of a build choice. Both are very viable
Also BC has its place in some builds, but the attack animation is clunky and results in a slight DPS loss for many NB toons
Even as a pure Pierce BM I’d always skill into Execution (and AQC ofc). It’s free DPS, the points in the Mastery Bar don’t hurt and SS will have AOE thanks to Nightfall.
For a Pierce NB, pretty much the only way to get it to 9 for 1 point, it is an increase.
The problem is you kind of have to use Cadence as a Blademaster. At first glance it looks like one could go down the WPS tree OR the Cadence tree as they aren’t really compatible.
Both give bonus flat damage, both have bonus % weapon damage and both have moderate AoE.
The trick? Flat phys damage from Deadly Momentum(DM) is the best flat damage bonus you can get as a BM, and probably the highest source of flat ,easily converted, damage in the game. A Cadence user can get this plus the flat damage from the WPS tree without getting any WPS skills, while a pure WPS user loses out on the DM flat damage.
As someone who made a BM with the idea of going WPS Pierce, it was a sad day when I finally gave in, specked Cadence/DM and saw a huge increase in damage.
Indeed, to make full use of WPS, you need a solid source of flat damage. Mere 50-100 damage from your one-handed weapons wont do. Generally, that means you either want to use Fire Strike (that provides shitloads of flat damage itself), or use Lethal Assault for acid or poison damage, along with other sources (like, Malediction relic and overleveled BoD for significant acid damage boost, etc).
There is no way to get decent flat pierce damage to 1-h weapon in the game, aside from DM, of course. Maybe, it former patches, like 1.0.1, etc. But not now.
I’m curious as to why you said this. Cadence 16/16 does 0.75*420%= 315% main and off-hand damage, plus 182 physical. Execution 5/8 does 250% main and off-hand damage plus 80 cold. Execution also deals 17% health damage, which is great against fodder but meaningless against more dangerous enemies.
Given that a Cadence strike occurs on 33% of default attacks, and Execution procs 20% of the time (or 13% if you’re using Cadence as well), the higher damage-per-hit of Cadence 16/16 is going to be magnified in terms of DPS. In fact, the DPS of Cadence 5/16 is better than Execution 5/8 unless your cold damage modifier is higher than physical:
Cadence 5/16 0.75*206/3= 51.5% main and off-hand damage, plus 72/3= 24 physical damage
Execution 5/8 250/5= 50% main and off-hand damage, plus 80/5= 16 cold damage
I recorded some dummy hits to see where my damage was coming from. Was surprised to see my Execution hits were more than the Cadence hits! Though mind you it wasn’t by much, but certainly more than AQC.
Your formula is definitely wrong tho, I think it goes something like this:
To simplify lets say our main hand = our off hand
MH=OH=H
420%H + 182phys + 50%H
470%H + 182phys
This is because Cadence magnifies the 3rd single weapon strike. If we happen to get a dual wield proc it only adds a regular default attack to the Cadence. Mind you this proc is still amazing as it gives us another Cadence stack in the same attack we used Cadence.
Actually thinking about it I’m most assuredly wrong. For Pierce one is most likely playing a BM, which means we are using Cadence, which means WD is messing up our chance to get a dual wield proc and accelerate a Cadence hit.
Are you certain that’s how it works? The sheet Damage per Hit on the character tab fits a straight 420% of whichever weapons hit in the attack, following the usual 50/25/25 distribution of DW attacks, but it’s entirely possible that it’s displaying an incorrect value. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
After recording more dummy hits I’m not so sure I understand how Cadence works .
For certain when Cadence hits it only magnifies the damage of one hit, no matter how many hits during that attack.
What confuses me is that when holding down left click, a WPS attack can proc during a Cadence hit. Basically you see the WPS attack and one of the hits is replace by Cadence. This is confirmed by Deadly momentum refreshing, as well as the higher damage for one of the strikes.
The Cadence icon, however, doesn’t disappear…. The following attack then won’t be a Cadence hit even though the icon is still there; but the attack after that will be one.
The only way I can reason this is that on a Cadence attack the game checks to see if you will proc a dual wield. If yes then Cadence only overrides one hit during that attack. Then the game Checks to see if you proc a WPS. If yes then the WPS overrides the dual wield proc, but Cadence is still allowed to override one attack so you get a WPS attack with the first hit replaced by Cadence.
Then maybe the dual wield code is what removes the Cadence icon (which is separate from the stacking and triggering code), and since it was overridden by the WPS which isn’t supposed to coincide with a Cadence, the icon stays.
Since the next attack then isn’t a Cadence hit, only the following hit, we can assume the icon is simply desynchronized and out of place but the stack and hits of Cadence are correct.
The problem with this is that when i left click the dummy with intervals, no WPS proc during a Cadence hit and there is no icon desynchronization…which is how I always expected it to work.
I’m pretty sure I just don’t actually understand Cadence and WPS interaction.
Do note, that in REAL combat, you wont just left-click your enemy (most probably, you will stop attack to switch to another target, use debuffing skill like Blitz, etc.
Maybe, when you press left-click button, some kind of bug happens with Cadence and WPS, because i’m pretty sure that Cadence behavoir when you stop attacks is the intended one.
Yeah, I tried to test it myself last night and left more confused than I started. Doesn’t help that my frame rate’s abysmal; I’ve been relying on my CPU’s integrated graphics since my dedicated graphics card died. It did look like you’re right about the Cadence damage only applying to one hit.
Cadence hits, unfortunately, with just one hand.
When dual wielding you have chance of 50% to hit with both hands and 50% to hit with one hand.
If cadence occurs when you are hitting with both hands one hand will commence cadence attack and other one will hit like regular attack (100% weapon dmg).
This situation in some cases can bug, since this mechanic was fixed/changed not so long ago, but I would say it only tends to bug visually and other hand can look like it did some wps but in reality it didn’t. I pulled that conclusion by observing values of the hits when that occurs and it looked to me that they were regular hits or in other word I never noticed, as example, execution value hit (which is substantially stronger than regular one) to occur.
Im not 100% sure about the bug thing but it seemed to look like that.
I can definitely say that WPS may proc during a Cadence hit, not sure if it was different in the past. You will see the animation, the first hit (AQC, all others hit at the same time) will be a Cadence hit with the follow up hits being whatever WPS was procd.
I unequiped/equipped items to make my damage variance low (±500 to the below) and noted all crits.
On an Execution attack the numbers looked like:
C ~ 10,000
E ~ 6,000
On a Shears attack:
C ~ 10,000
S ~ 3,000
On a AQC attack
C ~ 10,000
A ~ 2,000
A ~ 2,000
default attack ~ 2,000
There are two bugs : If you attack to slow, the WPS animation won’t proc, although you may still get the 2nd had hit damage. I say this because some of Cadence dual wield attacks(no WPS animation) had an offhand hit of 5,000 (Execution) or 3,000 (Shears). Only AQC seems to suffer from this bug (as you miss the 3rd hit), but no one should be attacking that slowly unless they are testing (its just to confuse us:p)
Second bug: If you proc WPS during a Cadence hit, the Cadence icon will bug and not disappear. The stacking and triggering still work separate from the icon. This is actually an interesting bug, because you can use it to determine when you get WPS. Just watch your Cadence icon while fighting mobs, it should flash on and off quickly, but sometimes it will just linger - when it does you are proccing WPS
A final interesting note: no attack can give you two Cadence stacks, no matter the number of hits, and this includes a default dual wield attack. The only thing that speeds up a Cadence hit is when you proc a dual wield attack during a Cadence hit. Regardless of WPS animation or not, you get to expend the Cadence stacks and get 1 stack in the same attack.
I was almost assured its only visual bug, but if your testing are correct that simply means that there isn’t any better default attack replacer for WPS based build than cadence. Not just that DM buffs all your WPS hits but cadence also enhance your main hand WPS hit to cadence one
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