Gladiator: Visual Guide to DPS

[Xenogrant]

Having gone as far as I want to go with my gladiator on C-Aion before NA release, I thought I'd sum up some things in regards to the their DPS, which seems to be an endless source of discussion and misinformation on the class forums.

First I'll cover the basics and then let the pictures tell a thousand words. To those who know nothing about the class, gladiator is the armored DPS class in Aion who brings third or debatabley second highest single target damage and undisputable highest AOE damage. They can wield every melee weapon in game, and can Dual Wield. AoE damage is only accessible with the use of 2 hand weapon, which also have a chance of knocking target down every time they crit, thus making them the weapon of choice for PvP, while Dual Wield (DW) outDPSes 2handers by a wide margin but loses AoE and knockdown.

1.2 nerfed attack speed stacking for DW, while 1.5 will nerf crit multiplier (which is a rumor based on bad patch note translation) or crit chance, which would not effectively change anything since most glads stack crit to soft cap of 450.

The way crit damage is calculated is this:
1H weapons crit for 3X or 2.5X the value
2H weapons crit for 2X or 1.5X the value.

Dual wield mechanics are a little unbalanced in 1.0. Equipping a dagger mainhand and mace, or +atk sword in offhand results in using attack speed of the dagger (and crit on skill usage) that's combined with a damage of a mace. It's the best of both worlds. 1.5 balances it by making attack speed the average of the two.

So Dual Wield's damage is
(Weapon 1 damage + Weapon 2 damage) x crit multiplier

Now as for the actual stats. I've recorded my kill times on same mobs over a course of 10 kills with a stop watch, to find out the averages. I did a test when I was level 20, 25 and 35. Upon reaching 35, I screenshotted most of the weapons I used in my early tests and replaced a few I no longer had in my inventory, and went to beat on some elites which have high HP pools, thus providing good test subjects due to the killtime margin being very narrow.

Now see the results for yourself.

[Deyth]

Nice writeup, thanks. I'll post it to VN.

[nomadimp]

nice guide, gonna pass this around to our aion crew.

[Xenogrant]

Bump, since the guide is still getting passed around on some forums, albeit it being from 1.0 client.

Quarter million views, didn't think it be getting this much attention and scrutiny. I'll start updating it when I get to 35 and have comparable weapons of same grade.

[Ozkar]

Fucking awesome dude!

[Xenogrant]

Redid 35 test now that 1.5 patch went in.

Some of the biggest changes being the crit multiplier going up for 2handers from 1.5 to 1.7/1.8, havent seen confirmation on which it is, and 1 handed crit multiplier going down from 2.5 to 2.2/2.3.

Just to demonstrate the effect that had on the math:

Say you hit for 100 thus you crit for:

2hander pre buff: 150 post buff 175
dw pre nerf: 250 post nerf 225

So when comparing 2hander vs DW pre 1.5 the difference was 150 vs 250 = 66% is now 175 vs 225 = 29%.

A few fraction points make a huge impact, which is not to say DW is bad, it still outperfroms equal conned 2 handers, it's just not as wide a margin as it used to be.

Also they fixed where auto attack speed isn't only determined by the main hand weapon, and offhand speed factors into calculation now. So back in the day, equipping dagger mace your auto attack speed would be same as dagger dagger, so now this broken mechanic was addressed. Anyway, without further ado, here are the lvl 35 results.



My char linky:
http://na.aiononline.com/livestatus/...436&serverID=4

I will update with proper DPS parsing meters that are starting to come out, when I hit 40s and have comparable gear. Platinum coin weapon quest cant come soon enough.

[darkane]

Originally Posted by Xenogrant

Platinum coin weapon quest cant come soon enough.

Considering you need 2000 plat coins for a fabled weapon in a quest that requires 50 random drops...good luck finishing that.

[Xenogrant]

Asians grind at least one weapon and full armor sets from it, i think i can do 2k before hitting 48 or so, if i start 44. 11k mob kills at 9 coins each with 50k kina turn in thingie.

[Setis]

Where/what is this platinum coin quest?

[Ozkar]

Sounds fucking horrible

[Xenogrant]

Here are the lvl 40+ quest weapons, that I know of:

http://www.aionarmory.com/search.asp...;201=45;202=50

http://www.aionarmory.com/quest.aspx?id=1619

http://www.aionarmory.com/quest.aspx?id=3908

http://www.aionarmory.com/quest.aspx?id=1690

I don't mind the platinum grind, XPing 40-50 is time consuming, keeping your eye on the platinum coins instead of XP bar, makes XP seem like it goes by faster. I like having more than one objective I'm trying to accomplish at the same time.

[Ozkar]

You're a masochist, Xeno. But a sexy one.