Monk Epic Fist... is it REALLY that good?

[Tasslehofp99]

To give you an idea of just how inconsistent monk DPS is at high levels with different weapon combinations: My highest recorded DPS on a 59 monk with 255 str and max haste was 121 with an imbued fighters staff. Fuck epic fists and AC/SOS! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Pan]

EQdpm is not a totally broken yardstick.

It's not a yardstick at all. And that's my point and that's why the discussion is continuing. Perhaps I should have said it's not a micrometer which is the only thing that would settle this discussion (read real data here).

"Worse than useless" describes an untestable hypothesis...

Would you settle for equivalent to useless? What P99 hypothesis can you test with EQdps? When one is hypotesting, one requires relevant data. EQdps cannot falsify a hypothesis on P99.

"So eqdpm and p99 have a transitive relation. You act like Eqdpm is a random die."

In a transitive relationship, the curves would be the same shape and one could extrapolate accurately. This is not the case with EQdps. For the purposes of this thread, I'd say that EQdps is worse than a random die for the reason that people put unwarranted confidence in it (for this question). Were we to roll a die and give an answer, at least no one would have any confidence in the conclusions.

"You don't seem to get the precision/accuracy thing in this situation, but I also see that I didn't explain myself well. EQdpm uses an equation that, because it is not an utterly failing model (use it and tell me its data does not correspond somewhere around "very well" with your experience), collects data that shows some amount of precision. It's outputs have undeniable correlation with the "real" values and with each other, although we can be dead certain they are not accurate. I guess I should have said "an equation that describes reality precisely but inaccurately" instead of "a precise but inaccurate equation?" "

I'm not misusing any terms.

You don't seem to get that the way you used accuracy and precision (and the link that you provided) pertain to measurement and not modeling. Nobody I've worked with would conflate these two uses. Those are two different animals. If you me to agree to use the words in the same way that you for this conversation, I'll go with that and give you that EQdps will ballpark okay-ish. But the question of this thread requires real data to make a determination. Ballparking is not good enough. If it were, we'd be done.

I figured I didn't even need to refer to your offhand to shoot down the idea of a 1h combo involving a 9/20 weapon outdamaging a tstaff. There is no level after 20 where that can happen.

Pure assertion. Conflicts with what I have experienced.

The combat system will never treat different starting delays as equivalent when hasted, because this would utterly break itemization. Assuming there is a delay floor, haste would calculate as a percentage of the difference between weapon delay and the floor instead of as a percentage of just your weapon delay. This would ensure that a 9/20 is never as good as a 9/16.

Support this, too. I don't see any reason why the floor would not be a hard stop.

I don't know for sure which setup is better, but I can say for sure that monk epic fists are not some kind of undisputed champ of the dps mountain.

Support this with data.

____________________

It is an empirical question. And with Tasselhofp99's latest post, it gets murkier.

So let's test it.

I have a L58 monk epic-ed with CoF.

I propose I try 10 min runs on the PoD as well as a L50-ish player character (thinking this will give an insight into variation in some way) with the following loadouts:

Fist/ADC

SBH (is it warhammer?) - anyway, the 9/20 and ADC

T-staff (if I can find one to borrow)

IFS (if I can find one to borrow)

RFS (if I can find one to borrow)

Max haste with chanter or shaman haste. No other buffs.

No kicking, but lotta clicking to keep the fist haste fresh.

I'll post the results (and a link to the data) in a day or few.

Will separate procs from the dps but will included them in the dataset.


Any other suggestions for the test? What am I missing and is there anything I'm thinking about wrong in the proposed methodology?

Anyone going long on T-staffs and IFS? Could be a value changer.

[Vicatin]

Fist/ SoS needs to be added as well if possible.

[Pan]

Originally Posted by Vicatin [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Fist/ SoS needs to be added as well if possible.

Agree. Also fist/fist for the sake of completeness.

[Nordenwatch]

We should do this on a 60 monk for sense of what is best on the end game. Someone PL Pan to 60!

[Versus]

I'll volunteer to do this with any combination of weapons with the exception of 2x Wu's Fists of Mastery if someone will make the fancy chart thing

[Ryba]

I think we all know EQDpm is not a tool for parsing, so it isn't measuring anything in realtime. But you act like just because it isn't, it's outputs aren't based on real, quantified data from the game, e.g. haste, weapon damage and delay. You can map eqdpm's numbers to numbers from the game and then talk about its predictive precision and accuracy. Yeah, it isn't the dictionary definition of accuracy and precision, but it is a pretty minor cognitive leap I'm asking you to take here. The terms accuracy and precision can describe a simulation OR measurements taken by instrument. My only error here is that I don't actually have real numbers to justify what I'm saying, but that was admitted from the beginning.

There is no replacement for laboratory (in game) measurements, but their downside is that any mistakes you make are less likely to show up as systematic bias. In other words, it might be even harder to draw conclusions from in game data because it will be wrong in unreproducible ways. At least with a simulation, most confounding variables will cause skew of equal magnitude for high and low values.

We are dealing with a messy system here and I didn't want to make it seem like I know the answer. But barring the possibility of p99 being wildly wrong with its combat mechanics, we should expect similar performance from epic fist/whatever and epic hasted tstaff based on our limited, flawed data.

Also, I don't need any additional support for my idea of an asymptotic approach to the delay floor, other than that it would be totally unreasonable from a game design perspective to allow a 9/20 weapon to perform like a 9/16 weapon. It destroys the risk/reward structure the game is built around. Again, it is possible the code is actually hugely unfair about this, but it is not a hallmark of a successful game to stop rewarding effort by removing proper scaling as limits are approached. Your 9/20 should go to 9/13 and a 9/16 should go to 9/11 with 81% haste.

Not sure why it is my job to provide data while you can just bring anecdotes. EQDpm is still useful for ranking items--it has a well-tested internal precision and uses real item data as input values--though it fails to accurately model P1999 dps.

I love your idea of doing some real parsing. I hope you can find a way to control the environment enough to get meaningful numbers. I don't wanna fight here, because you are mostly right. A parse is pure data, all I have here is a simulacrum. But it isn't pure garbage.

[Splorf22]

Originally Posted by Ryba [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

elay floor, other than that it would be totally unreasonable from a game design perspective to allow a 9/20 weapon to perform like a 9/16 weapon. It destroys the risk/reward structure the game is built around. Again, it is possible the code is actually hugely unfair about this, but it is not a hallmark of a successful game to stop rewarding effort by removing proper scaling as limits are approached. Your 9/20 should go to 9/13 and a 9/16 should go to 9/11 with 81% haste.

I think you are making some bad assumptions here about how Verant would choose to design their game. After all, EQ in general is horribly unbalanced.

Also I don't buy your EQDPM arguments. Sure it's not *worthless*. However the goal here is to compare two values that are probably within 10-15% of each other. Rough estimation won't do that.

In other news I look forward to some Phisting parses.

[Ryba]

Yeah, everything I'm saying is backed up by some pretty tenuous assumptions. But it is still a little better than a collection of anecdotes.

The title is "Monk Epic Fist...is it REALLY that good?" I'm only saying that the answer is no, several other setups live in the same dps neighborhood, i.e. within 10% (or so). It will be very hard to parse out the real difference, even with game data. DPS is so conditional and the theoretical dps of these setups is so close that you are probably better off just picking the one you like.

If you are on a mission to find the min/maxer's grail setup down to 5 decimals, you can safely ignore everything I've said. If you were just unsure whether anything can compete with epic fist dps, I think the answer is yes.

Besides, innerflame is so much cooler with IFS or tstaff [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Fyreant]

I just happened across your site here the other day and started looking around a little bit. Reading this thread totally reminded me of old school EQ talking about formulas and comparing weapons and ratios.

That led me to looking for an old thread I remembered reading. It's got a lot of good info about how lower level damage works, why speed is king for 1h, ratio for offhand/2h, and such.

I'm not sure what your max level is at right now, or how similar the combat mechanics are here vs. classic EQ, but even if the majority of this information is useless here, it might be an interesting read for some if you feel like taking the time. Perhaps moreso if if you were around back then, especially if you remember reading the thread.

The original from 2000 is dead, but here is a currently good link to where someone copied it in 2003. http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/forum...ead.php?t=1541