Left Axe damage for non-LA styles

I know that Left Axe spec affects left-handed weapon damage for all swings/styles.

I've been told that Left Axe spec only affects the main-hand damage for Left Axe styles. Other spec lines (Sword, Axe, Critical Strike) are not affected by Left Axe spec (for the main hand weapon).

Is this true?

Wed 25 Jul 2018 8:10 AM by Haruspex

No, this is not true. Left Axe directly effects the main hand damage for Berserkers and Shadowblades. Savages don't count because H2H functions differently and Maulers do as well, even though they don't exist here. Left Axe is unique.

The only exception is something like a Critblade or a Zerker who only use two handed weapons. The reason for this is because if you're using a Two hander, you're not dual wielding. If you're not dual wielding, you're not using the Left Axe damage calculations.

I will be very surprised if a staff member comes in and states differently, because that will mean they have rewritten the entirety of the Midgard Leftaxe code.

Wed 25 Jul 2018 8:32 AM by Joc

Your composite left axe will raise both your mainland and offhand damage for all specs. It's a strange formula, which can be explained here:

https://sites.google.com/site/daoctests/home/la-damage

It does effect all damage across all specs. Think of it as a penalty basically. The less you have in your composite spec, the greater the penalty. The more you have, the less the penalty.

The upside of this of course is that your offhand has a 100% chance to swing (very important when it comes to poison application). This is one of the reasons SBs tend to shine later on above other sneaks. High left axe with higher realm ranks makes the LA penalty nearly disappear (but not quite).

We all see that an NS and Inf has much larger mainland damage, and this is offset by the fact that they also need to spec points into DW or CD to get the offhand %chance to raise. It caps at 66 or 75% (I forget).

Early on the Inf has an inherent advantage b/c of the number of spec points. Mid realm ranks SBs and NS start to shine (NS cause of viper, and SB cause of lowered LA penalty). Late game the SB is king, but you really dont gain a noticable advantage until rr8+. The numbers back it up if you crunch them, but all in all the 3 classes are very well balanced.

The wrench that is thrown into this server is that the STR/CON rebuffed has been changed to a Weaponskill debuff. This WILL benefit the SB the most, but also benefit blades NS and Slash infs also.

I think if you can bare the early RRs the SB here is going to be lethal. The NS will have viper (very powerful). The inf has an easier early RR and has a 9s stun. As you can see they all have strengths and weaknesses.

Oh and the SB has 2h perf. Fun stuff.

I've been playing sneaks since release and have an 11L2 sb, 10L8 inf, and 10Lsomething NS, so they are sort of my thing when it comes to DAOC. I know a bit about them, but by no means everything. Please correct me if I'm wrong on something.

Wed 25 Jul 2018 10:52 AM by Ragnar

I really enjoyed your explanations since i never played SB or NS or Infi before 👍 I’m just afraid that with purge on a 30 min timer the 9 sec stun after evade for Infi will be a I WIN combo in many situations vs SB and NS, am I wrong ?

Wed 25 Jul 2018 11:21 AM by Ceen

Ragnar wrote: ↑
Wed 25 Jul 2018 10:52 AM
I really enjoyed your explanations since i never played SB or NS or Infi before 👍 I’m just afraid that with purge on a 30 min timer the 9 sec stun after evade for Infi will be a I WIN combo in many situations vs SB and NS, am I wrong ?

No

Add a minstrel to make it a noooooo

Wed 25 Jul 2018 12:10 PM by heardstheword

Ahh ok, so my critblade spec is pretty useless unless I stick to 2h.

I'm struggling to decide on a low RR spec for my SB, and someone suggested critblade (thinking LA doesn't not affect mainhand damage for CS styles). Needing to have composite 50 stealth/envenom is screwing up possible specs.

I guess I'll go drop the LA and try out the 2h spec for a little while and use LA to apply poisons for a single hit.

Looks like I can go:
44CS
39Sword
39 stealth
39 Envenom

Wed 25 Jul 2018 6:05 PM by Numatic

Joc wrote: ↑
Wed 25 Jul 2018 8:32 AM
Your composite left axe will raise both your mainland and offhand damage for all specs. It's a strange formula, which can be explained here:

https://sites.google.com/site/daoctests/home/la-damage

It does effect all damage across all specs. Think of it as a penalty basically. The less you have in your composite spec, the greater the penalty. The more you have, the less the penalty.

The upside of this of course is that your offhand has a 100% chance to swing (very important when it comes to poison application). This is one of the reasons SBs tend to shine later on above other sneaks. High left axe with higher realm ranks makes the LA penalty nearly disappear (but not quite).

We all see that an NS and Inf has much larger mainland damage, and this is offset by the fact that they also need to spec points into DW or CD to get the offhand %chance to raise. It caps at 66 or 75% (I forget).

Early on the Inf has an inherent advantage b/c of the number of spec points. Mid realm ranks SBs and NS start to shine (NS cause of viper, and SB cause of lowered LA penalty). Late game the SB is king, but you really dont gain a noticable advantage until rr8+. The numbers back it up if you crunch them, but all in all the 3 classes are very well balanced.

The wrench that is thrown into this server is that the STR/CON rebuffed has been changed to a Weaponskill debuff. This WILL benefit the SB the most, but also benefit blades NS and Slash infs also.

I think if you can bare the early RRs the SB here is going to be lethal. The NS will have viper (very powerful). The inf has an easier early RR and has a 9s stun. As you can see they all have strengths and weaknesses.

Oh and the SB has 2h perf. Fun stuff.

I've been playing sneaks since release and have an 11L2 sb, 10L8 inf, and 10Lsomething NS, so they are sort of my thing when it comes to DAOC. I know a bit about them, but by no means everything. Please correct me if I'm wrong on something.

This is somewhat wrong. Phoenix runs off 1.65. Which means LA runs off the 1.62 patch nerf (unless Phoenix staff changed it). That test you posted was from 2009, long after LA changed.

So I decided to look into it. LA does affect your base UNSTYLED damage. While this means LA does not affect your CS line directly, it does indirectly. This is because base damage is a multiplier for your style damage across all spec lines. As said before, it also increases your damage with your left handed weapon as well.

So while critblade with low LA is in no way gimped, using LA will increase your overall damage with that line. At 15+13 LA I believe your base damage is at around 74%, when your max is 86.6%. I'm on mobile right now so I'll have to edit later with the links I found.

Wed 25 Jul 2018 6:09 PM by heardstheword

Numatic wrote: ↑
Wed 25 Jul 2018 6:05 PM
So while critblade with low LA is in no way gimped, using LA will increase your overall damage with that line. At 15+13 LA I believe your base damage is at around 74%, when your max is 86.6%. I'm on mobile right now so I'll have to edit later with the links I found.

Do you mind clarifying this a bit more?

Is the 74% applied to just the left-handed weapon, or is this the style damage that is applied across all specs (while dual wielding), affecting both main-hand and off-hand weapon damage for any style?

Wed 25 Jul 2018 6:17 PM by Numatic

heardstheword wrote: ↑
Wed 25 Jul 2018 6:09 PM
Numatic wrote: ↑
Wed 25 Jul 2018 6:05 PM
So while critblade with low LA is in no way gimped, using LA will increase your overall damage with that line. At 15+13 LA I believe your base damage is at around 74%, when your max is 86.6%. I'm on mobile right now so I'll have to edit later with the links I found.

Do you mind clarifying this a bit more?

Is the 74% applied to just the left-handed weapon, or is this the style damage that is applied across all specs (while dual wielding)?

That's your base unstyled damage. As if you swung with no skill used. That base damage is then used as a modifier for your style damage.

Here is a post explaining how it works

Here are thePerforate artery, Backstab I & II caps, they don't have growthrates and work a little diferent:

Perforate Artery Cap = 75 + Critical Strike Spec * 9 + Nonstyle Cap
Backstab II Cap = 45 + Critical Strike Spec * 6 + Nonstyle Cap
Backstab I Cap = ~5 + Critical Strike Spec * 14 / 3 + Nonstyle Cap

Here are the growthrates of the most important LA and CS styles besides the PA or backstab chain:

Critical Strike:
Pincer - 0.92 - Sidestyle
Hamstring - 1.15 - Evade
Garrote - 0.78 - Anytime
Achilles Heel - 1.07 - Garotte follow up
Leaper - 1.31 - Harmstring follow up
Rib Seperation 1.29 - Leaper follow up

Left Axe:
Comeback - 0.93 - Evade
Snowsquall - 0.89 - Backstyle
Doublefrost - 0.72 - Anytime
Frosty Gaze - 0.99 - Comeback follow up

Here are three RR2/3 full autotrain specs for comparison:

44CS/15LA/38Weapon/38Envenom/38Stealth = 74,1 % basedmg (total 27LA)
39CS/12LA/44Weapon/38Envenom/38Stealth = 73,2 % basedmg (total 24LA)
34CS/39LA/38Weapon/30Envenom/38Stealth = 81,3 % basedmg (total 51LA)

Remember that more base dmg means a higher value of every stylemultiplier.

Add in some "Dualist reflexes", which increase the basedmg of main and offhand for 3% per level for even better results.

So, these numbers are proven facts, based on patch 1.65.

But wait there is more!

There are some more things you have to consider. Do you spec CS only to get the styles, or in detail, what is the difference on PA, compared with 34 and 50 in CS? How much value do you get from speccing over 51 composite on sword/axe? These are numbers i can not provide yet, but i will try to find some more data about it, or test it myself with alot of respec stones, as soon as i hit 50 again

The temporary verdict:

Every spec of these 3 can work well. It just depends in what playstyle you want to excel with. None of these are gimped or impossible to play with. 39LA might win you alot duels because of the 7 second stun. High CS might give you good numbers on the PA and evade chain. High weapon will give you more weapon skill and therefore more hits on shield and evade targets.

Wed 25 Jul 2018 6:47 PM by heardstheword

Numatic wrote: ↑
Wed 25 Jul 2018 6:17 PM
.....

Thank you so much for this. I'll go high CS for the time being and be slightly gimped on my dual wielding damage, for the sake of composite 50 stealth/envenom/sword. As I bump up the RR's I'll slowly drop those and raise LA to be more in line with the 5-spec.

Thu 26 Jul 2018 2:33 AM by Joc

@galahad @uthred

Maybe some input from the devs when they get a chance. Though I know this can be a very lengthy discussion since it involves LA mechsnics.