I am still confused as to why this is considered cheating. I didn't use the exploit, I was working when I heard about it, scheduled with my friends to do the exploit, then found it an hour later that they were going to hotfix it and punish the exploiters. Too bad for me.
However, I don't see this as an exploit, much less a cheat. How is using game mechanics to your advantage cheating? A similar example from WoW(Vanilla): UBRS drakes; line of sighting their aoe by stacking your 40 man raid in a corner of a door jam. This is using game mechanis: line of site, and a doorway, to progress. This was just a strat. How is it any different than than the blood shard thing? It isn't.
Also, another example of exploiting game mechanics: having set bonuses for 1 class whose damage stats are separate multipliers as opposed to other classes set pieces being additive bonuses. This set up a certain class, DH, to be the best dps where the other classes couldn't compete because their set bonuses were additive and not separately multiplicative. Should all DH's from season 2 get punished for exploiting a bug in game mechanics to their advantage?
As a side note, capping the max bloodshards that drop to 250 for every rift level above, what is it? like 45 or something? to fix the bloodshard bug is ridiculous; as evidenced by my ridicule.
Also, I think there may be a bug with wizards and slow time bubble damage and pain enhancer gem. See guys doing crazy damage from that gem with the time bubble buff when they have 2.2 million stat sheet dps buffed not counting elemental damage modifiers, and no +physical damage. If anyone else could test this out, I don't have a wizard, to see what is going on, that would be great.
Watch this video and it will explain the math about "relative" damage increases.
Diablo 3: How to maximize your damage by Quin C[/header]
They won't let me put the actual video link, but this is the title. Should be easy enough to google search. The spreadsheet is in the video description seciton.
Basically the answer to your question depends on your other + damage stats.
If you are very low in the additive damage multipliers then % multishot will be better almost always
If you have some in the additive multipliers, like I would guess around 40%, then discipline will be better.
Plus discipline will "almost always" be better up until you hit some threshold or you have 0% in the additive column.
If you don;t know for sure you can download that spreadsheet and put the discipline multipliers into one of the special columns. So 15% * 10 disciline would be 150% in one of the extra fields. Then you can mod based on your actual numbers.
Why guess when you can do the math.
to respond specifically to your examples:
example 1: get plus damage. 10% on the weapon is a separate multiplier which multiplies against the total disc bonus. You can't really do better on a weapon than 10% damage.
example 2: multishot is "probably" better than +3 discipline assuming you lack multishot damage on other gear pieces. However, there is another stat you could consider. You can't get resource cost reduction on your quiver but you could consider getting hatred regen. I think it maxes at 1.5. This "might" be superior, but again it really depends. Ideally you get to have hatred regen and multishot damage and max discipline and lose the vitality and attack speed. But that isn't an option for you right now.
You don' understand ratios very well. All dps stats are, after you have some of all of them, equal. Here is why:
at 6000 Strength an increase of 300 strength is something like a 5% increase.
At 10% crit a 0.5% crit chance increase is the same 5% damage boost.
This math works because each primary stat is 1% more damage. 1% crit is 1% more damage. However, dex bonuses add to dex bonuses, crit bonuses add to crit, so you total of each is multiplied by the other one and multiplied against your damage rolls.
Critical hit damage is slightly more difficult to calculate because it's value is totally dependent upon crit chance.
Another thing you will notice, if you are astute enough, is that especially in group play and for certain classes you get skill modifiers to crit chance. These tend to be over the cap of 75% chance to crit. So when you want to be the best you roll off your crit chance for... crit damage and primary stat. These buffs you get make the relative value of crit chance very much less. Again, though, with good gear and maximizing resource cost reduction I sit at like 43% crit and 450% ish critical hit damage with a 2h weapon. With the new set I might go dual wield for even more crit damage, but will have to test.
Reading through this response you can see how primary stat "is" the most important stat. Thats why you sit at 10000% increased damage from primary stat and not crit. This 10000% increased damage also multiplies out your crit. So your crit benefits from dex; hence the ratio argument.
This is also how a much lower dps 2 hand weapon can produce much higher, as much as 30% more dps with a 1.1 attack speed 2h bow at 2900 dps vs a 1.4 attack speed 2h bow at 3300 dps. The slower bow has higher damage numbers so multiplies out higher. Because you only have so much primary resource at any 1 time and over time you are better off hitting harder when you spend it than worrying about a dps number that assumes infinite primary resource.
All the dps stat increases are relative to the total of any given stat.
Your solution of always keeping the main stat the highest in priority can only be accomplished with a non-linear damage increase on primary stats. This would be interesting to see, but would just give too much more increased power to people with very high paragon. This would further skew the leader boards and make it where I couldn't not be on them in seasonal characters.
If you spend some time to apply 3rd grade math you can figure all of this out yourself.
FailguardOne: Polar station to spitfire, you should be slowing things with your cold attacks, yes? Then change cull the weak for singled out. When you have singled out you can change some of your crit chance to crit damage. It makes a huge difference on rift bosses and on trash that is spread out.
Also, your resource cost reduction is abysmally low. You can improve that and it will make a huge impact. I cleared 46 yesterday and my stats are not as good as yours. I also had my red gem in my helmet during my 46 clear with tethrys as the rift guardian. I run a slow weapon cluster shot build, though. Spitfire turrets and no cold attacks, except for the generator but I hardly use it.
Use an undying Enchantress with the Ess of johan and a thunderfury with unity and make sure all 3 of her jewelry items has max cool down reduction rolls. Run the charm spell, the blind, the confuse and the hex.
When you drop turrets I know you think to max range them because of the gem, but make sure they are in auto attack range of the RG the whole time. The extra damage from the Ballistics missles and the auto attacks accross 5 turrets is huge. Makes up for the minor loss, if any loss (I don't know if the auto attack range of turrets is more than 20 yards or not), you might get from them being closer.
Your critical hit damage is very low compared to your crit chance. This will get worse when/if you use singled out. And you will be even worse off when you run with a crusader.
Also, I don't know that 20% more frost damage is as much of a damage increase as a 1.1 attack speed bow. With your resource cost reduction being so bad I would say you can run a 1.1 attack speed bow and increase your damage output by like 10%. Ignore the change to stat sheet dps, just make sure the weapon damage and the +damage on the 1.1 bow is higher than that of the etreyu by more than like 16% and you will do more damage.
Seeing that you get to 45 with this set up I may have to put together a better frost set.
0
I am still confused as to why this is considered cheating. I didn't use the exploit, I was working when I heard about it, scheduled with my friends to do the exploit, then found it an hour later that they were going to hotfix it and punish the exploiters. Too bad for me.
However, I don't see this as an exploit, much less a cheat. How is using game mechanics to your advantage cheating? A similar example from WoW(Vanilla): UBRS drakes; line of sighting their aoe by stacking your 40 man raid in a corner of a door jam. This is using game mechanis: line of site, and a doorway, to progress. This was just a strat. How is it any different than than the blood shard thing? It isn't.
Also, another example of exploiting game mechanics: having set bonuses for 1 class whose damage stats are separate multipliers as opposed to other classes set pieces being additive bonuses. This set up a certain class, DH, to be the best dps where the other classes couldn't compete because their set bonuses were additive and not separately multiplicative. Should all DH's from season 2 get punished for exploiting a bug in game mechanics to their advantage?
As a side note, capping the max bloodshards that drop to 250 for every rift level above, what is it? like 45 or something? to fix the bloodshard bug is ridiculous; as evidenced by my ridicule.
Also, I think there may be a bug with wizards and slow time bubble damage and pain enhancer gem. See guys doing crazy damage from that gem with the time bubble buff when they have 2.2 million stat sheet dps buffed not counting elemental damage modifiers, and no +physical damage. If anyone else could test this out, I don't have a wizard, to see what is going on, that would be great.
0
Watch this video and it will explain the math about "relative" damage increases.
Diablo 3: How to maximize your damage by Quin C[/header]
They won't let me put the actual video link, but this is the title. Should be easy enough to google search. The spreadsheet is in the video description seciton.
Basically the answer to your question depends on your other + damage stats.
If you are very low in the additive damage multipliers then % multishot will be better almost always
If you have some in the additive multipliers, like I would guess around 40%, then discipline will be better.
Plus discipline will "almost always" be better up until you hit some threshold or you have 0% in the additive column.
If you don;t know for sure you can download that spreadsheet and put the discipline multipliers into one of the special columns. So 15% * 10 disciline would be 150% in one of the extra fields. Then you can mod based on your actual numbers.
Why guess when you can do the math.
to respond specifically to your examples:
example 1: get plus damage. 10% on the weapon is a separate multiplier which multiplies against the total disc bonus. You can't really do better on a weapon than 10% damage.
example 2: multishot is "probably" better than +3 discipline assuming you lack multishot damage on other gear pieces. However, there is another stat you could consider. You can't get resource cost reduction on your quiver but you could consider getting hatred regen. I think it maxes at 1.5. This "might" be superior, but again it really depends. Ideally you get to have hatred regen and multishot damage and max discipline and lose the vitality and attack speed. But that isn't an option for you right now.
1
You don' understand ratios very well. All dps stats are, after you have some of all of them, equal. Here is why:
at 6000 Strength an increase of 300 strength is something like a 5% increase.
At 10% crit a 0.5% crit chance increase is the same 5% damage boost.
This math works because each primary stat is 1% more damage. 1% crit is 1% more damage. However, dex bonuses add to dex bonuses, crit bonuses add to crit, so you total of each is multiplied by the other one and multiplied against your damage rolls.
Critical hit damage is slightly more difficult to calculate because it's value is totally dependent upon crit chance.
Another thing you will notice, if you are astute enough, is that especially in group play and for certain classes you get skill modifiers to crit chance. These tend to be over the cap of 75% chance to crit. So when you want to be the best you roll off your crit chance for... crit damage and primary stat. These buffs you get make the relative value of crit chance very much less. Again, though, with good gear and maximizing resource cost reduction I sit at like 43% crit and 450% ish critical hit damage with a 2h weapon. With the new set I might go dual wield for even more crit damage, but will have to test.
Reading through this response you can see how primary stat "is" the most important stat. Thats why you sit at 10000% increased damage from primary stat and not crit. This 10000% increased damage also multiplies out your crit. So your crit benefits from dex; hence the ratio argument.
This is also how a much lower dps 2 hand weapon can produce much higher, as much as 30% more dps with a 1.1 attack speed 2h bow at 2900 dps vs a 1.4 attack speed 2h bow at 3300 dps. The slower bow has higher damage numbers so multiplies out higher. Because you only have so much primary resource at any 1 time and over time you are better off hitting harder when you spend it than worrying about a dps number that assumes infinite primary resource.
All the dps stat increases are relative to the total of any given stat.
Your solution of always keeping the main stat the highest in priority can only be accomplished with a non-linear damage increase on primary stats. This would be interesting to see, but would just give too much more increased power to people with very high paragon. This would further skew the leader boards and make it where I couldn't not be on them in seasonal characters.
If you spend some time to apply 3rd grade math you can figure all of this out yourself.
0
FailguardOne: Polar station to spitfire, you should be slowing things with your cold attacks, yes? Then change cull the weak for singled out. When you have singled out you can change some of your crit chance to crit damage. It makes a huge difference on rift bosses and on trash that is spread out.
Also, your resource cost reduction is abysmally low. You can improve that and it will make a huge impact. I cleared 46 yesterday and my stats are not as good as yours. I also had my red gem in my helmet during my 46 clear with tethrys as the rift guardian. I run a slow weapon cluster shot build, though. Spitfire turrets and no cold attacks, except for the generator but I hardly use it.
Use an undying Enchantress with the Ess of johan and a thunderfury with unity and make sure all 3 of her jewelry items has max cool down reduction rolls. Run the charm spell, the blind, the confuse and the hex.
When you drop turrets I know you think to max range them because of the gem, but make sure they are in auto attack range of the RG the whole time. The extra damage from the Ballistics missles and the auto attacks accross 5 turrets is huge. Makes up for the minor loss, if any loss (I don't know if the auto attack range of turrets is more than 20 yards or not), you might get from them being closer.
Your critical hit damage is very low compared to your crit chance. This will get worse when/if you use singled out. And you will be even worse off when you run with a crusader.
Also, I don't know that 20% more frost damage is as much of a damage increase as a 1.1 attack speed bow. With your resource cost reduction being so bad I would say you can run a 1.1 attack speed bow and increase your damage output by like 10%. Ignore the change to stat sheet dps, just make sure the weapon damage and the +damage on the 1.1 bow is higher than that of the etreyu by more than like 16% and you will do more damage.
Seeing that you get to 45 with this set up I may have to put together a better frost set.
Hope this helps.