Vamp Or AP

why is everyone hating on sundering?I use it because the various spikes are useful a constant 3 damage AND heal regen is pretty nice...my assassin prefers zealous my warrior uses AP simple as that,its just...most people would choose sundering...right?

Boy, almost hate to jump in here...not. Spike... I think possibly your trousers are a little tight, relax chief.
Nobody is suggesting that vamp weapons are an effective way to HEAL... just that the extra damage from the MOD alone is higher for vamp than for sundering over time. Period. Nobody wants to make anyone 'like' vamp or sundering. Whether you 'like' it or not, Savio's facts are still true. He's put together the data here for anyone who wants to make up their own *informed-non-ignorant* decicion, so perhaps instead of throwing a tantrum about how this data is a personal attack, we can just learn...

nobody hates sundering, its just less efficient while fighting. I use a sundering axe when not swinging so Im not degening. and I also switch to it from zealous when my energy is running a little low.

Why not save a slot and switch to elemental ?

no ele axe...sword yes, it switches around. warriors not being my fave I just never botherd to set it all up right
Ranger ftw, I own 3 vamp bows and hardly ever use any of them. I much prefer zealous in general for pve with an ele swap, crippling or poison(build depending) and elemental in pvp. I concur however that elemental vamp and zealous melee weapon is the most efficient...with a big bow for pulling, Ive just never gotten around to collecting all the different weapons for warrior.

I've been involved in several discussions about this topic. One thing you'll notice is that lots of the "anti-sundering" people show you various calculations that "prove" that Sundering is worse than Vampiric. The formulas used for this are seen in many places, including the article on "Game Mechanics" and the "Damage Calculator" on Guru itself.
What they don't tell you is that they are using "typical" damage formulas from some unknown source. The fact is, ANet has not released any details about the "actual" formulas/calculations used to in the actual game. The only real way, at this time, to determine which is best, is to test them out in-game.

The 3 main points that come from using those "typical" formulas are:

1. Vampiric is "constant" damage, while Sundering is spike damage. Not true in actual use. In actual use, both damage types have individual per-shot damage values that cover a broad range.

2. Vampiric is better than Sundering over time. Also not true - they are roughly equal over time - depending upon the target.

3. Sundering is worse versus stronger armor. Most people have observed the exact opposite - Vamp seems to be better versus "squishes" while sundering is better versus "hard" targets.

The main thing is that neither one is intrinsically better than the other. Each (& Elemental) are best under certain circumstances versus certain targets.

Here's a link to some tests I did - http://www.theamazonbasin.com/gw/for...showtopic=6487

As I said in those posts - make your own conclusions - try it yourself.

Actually the majority of statistics that show Sundering being undeniably inferior are also based on testing; testing involving hundreds of hits in a range of controlled circumstances.

Your tests aren't NEARLY comprehensive enough to glean any kind of conclusion.

Lenneymon while savios data maybe true in testing. When PLAYING its NOT due to the FACT you do NOT hit 100% of the time. I never said vamp was a way to heal just that lost HP when useing it which btw savio proved him self to be true. The amount was not the issue just that you lost some.

The only ignorant people around here are those who A) ASSUME things and B) belive that testing = "REAL" life

No savio I'm not saying warriors should have only 1 weapon if you had read my posts you whould of seen my warrior has TWO weapons and my ranger THREE.

As far as stats go. I like this saying. "There are lies, damm lies and stats" Plus "You can prove ANYTHING with stats".

actually, savio proved that you GAIN health while using a vamp weapon...

anyways, if you really believe your little motto, how about you get my guild's stats from team-iq.net and guildwars.com, and use that "prove" that i'm a better monk than JR?

Personally, I like them both, and always carry your sets.

A zealous, vampiric and a 20/20 sundering ; whether its a bow, axe, hammer or sword. Better have all when needed right?

The point being made is that you never need sundering.

Quaker:
The damage formulas that people use were empirically derived from tests run ingame, with thousands of hits. They've been proven accurate time and again, only occasionally being off a point because of the way the game rounds. If you want to prove anything, you're going to have to do at the minimum several hundred hits per weapon. I'd personally do several thousand; if you don't have even a single hour to spare to wail away at targets, then why are you bothering to argue about it?

As far as your generalizations:
1. I don't understand why people think sundering is for spikes, as armor penetration doesn't apply to +damage. But then again I don't understand the majority of the GW population's reasoning.
2. You need to test it more as per the above to see a noticeable difference. If I flip a coin 4 times and get 3 heads, concluding that the coin is biased towards heads would be erroneous.
3. Actually, if you observed it at all there's practically no difference between the gains against a 60 AL target, a 80 AL target, and a 100 AL target. Percentage-wise you gain more against a higher AL target; but in terms of actual damage point gains you get about the same against all of them. Sundering loses a fraction of a point of damage against higher AL targets, but due to rounding you won't notice any change.

Spike:
Maybe I haven't made it clear before now, but nobody cares about losing 120 health per minute. Even if you didn't hit anything at all, 120 health lost is easily gained back by a heal sig, or any other healing for that matter. I don't care if you want to believe that -1 health regen is oh so deadly; but don't come on this forum, make erroneous statements, and then try to cloud the debate by claiming I'm the one "ASSUMING" things. As others have said, I'd run vampiric even if I didn't get any health back.

huMptY DumPty:
What JR said, and where are your elemental weapons?

Yes, Savio proved you *can* gain health while attacking an armor dummy on isle of nameless...
Yes you degen while wielding a vamp weapon
Both of these points are completely tangential to the discussion of which does more damage over time. If you miss 1/10 times with vamp... guess what... the same is true for sundering. The point remains that on average a 3:1 vamp sword or axe WILL deal better damage with the rare exception of a crit/sundering/headshot. There are exceptions... I'd use sundering for a wild blow build (not tested - just based upon my assumptions of how the mod and wild blow interact) for example, it may not be better but thats what I'd use.

On a side note, primal rage: anyone tested to see if the 20% ap from that skill stacks with sundering mods? It would likely take about a bajillion hits since you can't use wild blow. Edit: cool just thought of a good use for the candy cane weapons

Hehe, Spike another stat phrase to add to the collection '90% of all statistics are made up.'

Why is there an argument here?!?

I just wasted a ton of time (not really wasted I am at work after all) reading this thread, and I have to ask - Why is there even an argument?

@ Spike
You are an idiot. I am sorry, but are you just trying to make the point that vamp makes you lose health? Everyone knows and no one cares. The point that Savio is making is that the loss is not enough to matter in any way, and that the loss in health is not significant enough to make the switch (and loss of overall damage output) to a sundering mod. Is that about right Savio? That is what I got from your posts.


Here is a long bit on Statistics I suggest you read (intedned for Spike and all others who are having trouble understanding what statistics are).

Statistics don't lie. People can lie using statistics, but statistics don't lie. If you know anything about statistics you *should* know that ALL statistics should be taken only in context, and that statistics CANNOT PROVE ANYTHING. Statistics are not facts of a population, they are characteristics of a sample that can be used to represent a population. Usually in statistics you must define your confidence interval (90%, 95%, 99%). If you pick 99% it means that 99% of time, when you make a test, it will fall within the range defined by the statistical hypothesis.

Following from what Savio posted about coin flipping...Have you ever flipped a coin? Have you ever flipped a coin hundreds of times in a row? Have you ever flipped a coin thousands of times in a row? How many times did you get heads? Here is the basic truth of statistics - When you increase the number of times the coin is flipped, the ratio of heads to tails APPROACHES .5 (which is easily seen as the mathematic answer). It will never be exactly .5, so we rely on statistics to give us a general idea (with a specified confidence interval) of what is hapening.

here is another quote for you (I made it up myself)
People who trust all statistics are morons. People who trust no statistics are even worse.


Back to the topic:
My choice between vamp and sundering would be vamp, even if I could only have one weapon. I really prefer the constant damage over the 20% damage regardless of which gets higher overall returns. It is nice that, apparently, the highest overall also happens to be the constant.

Doesn't that fit with the rest of the game? Isn't the overall on a max constant absorbtion shield better than the max on a % abs shield? I am not going to try and find the thread that went over that, but I think that I remember correctly. This doesn't prove anything, I am just thinking about all the other areas of the game that seem to follow the same pattern.

EDIT:

One other thing I forgot -
You cannot prove anything with statistics. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of fact and theory.

Fact - CAN BE PROVEN. Can be counted, touched, seen, etc using human senses.
Examples of fact:
"I have 5 fingers on my left hand."
"2+2=4"
"I am wearing a shirt."

Theory - CANNOT BE PROVEN. Cannot ever be shown to be definitavely true. Cannot be seen, counted, touched, etc using human senses.
Examples of theory:
History
Cells
Atoms
Big Bang
Evolution

Just put 10 in strength and use vampiric, now you have 10% AP + 3 life steal . (If i'm not wrong here)

Well if no one cares about vamp weapons loseing them health why are 20/20 AP mods worth much more than vamp ones ? If everyone knew this surely it would be the other way?

History is not theory. EG D-Day is history. I can talk to people who where there and SAW it happending. Therefore its a FACT. I'm pretty damm sure cells and atoms have been proved to exist as well. Likewise with evolution. The only thing in your list that currently IS a theory is the Big Bang.

No wonder you have such strange ideas about theory lou if you have 5 fingers on your left hand :P


Oh and lou if I'M an idiot for makeing a point about loseing HP what does that make all the rest of you for agrueing with me about it. One of my other points was that vamp is NOT the best overall mod and savio agreed with me. Maybe you should go back and read the posts AGAIN.

from http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...2&postcount=39 in reponse to my post http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...2&postcount=38

In which I said "its NOT the best overall upgarde." He replied "Of course not"

Despite whether Sundering matches the damage from a vampric mod over time, I still use my Victo's as an all-purpose weapon. Especially when I know I may encounter degen... Degen + vampric = more trouble.

I'd say zealous or furious is still more useful than both...

Zealous = Much faster energy regen, allowing you to spam energy-based skills more and thus improving your dps (probably moreso than vamp or sundering)

Furious = Faster adrenaline gain, allowing you to spam adrenaline-based skills more and this improving your dps (provbably moreso than vamp or sundering)

Honestly, someone should test whether the benefiets from Furious/Zealous increase your dps... because I'm willing to bet both are better than vamp and sundering if you're concern is damage...

I <heart> zealous, dunno if I mentioned it or not on a wild blow vs test dummy its going to be outperformed by everything. I already know this and somehow I always do better when wielding zealous as a ranger, why? Because more interrupts means alesia can do her job instead of rezzing little thom every 12.6 seconds.

yes, vampiric is not the best overall upgrade, but it is better than sundering.

it is proven under controlled situations that vampiric is ALWAYS better than sundering. yes, not every situation is a "controlled situation", but tests like those that were done were designed to reflect "real life", as you put it, and represents a general case of usage. if sundering fare worse than vampiric under controlled situations, what makes you think that it will perform better in "real life"?

anyways, sundering costs more is because of the big numbers. that's about it.

sundering is garbage. anyone who prefers sundering isn't good at pvp.

there, discussion over.

That is my guild's website, lol.

And if you read the post by Khift, he explains vamp vs sundering very well.

But, if I flip a coin about 180 times and get 91 heads and 89 tails, I can say they are about equal. After all, I didn't just take four shots, I took around 179 just for those simple tests. If Sundering was as bad compared to Vampiric as people say it is, I'd think there's enough samples there to show the difference. This was not the first or only time I've run these sorts of tests. It is the first time I've bothered to record the results.

ay, i must say i like vamp>sundering.. just go to the 80 armor guys or sumtin in isles. Use wild blow, so everytime ull result in the same dmg from crit hit.. Then swap vamp and sundering weapons. You should b able to tell which is better for u.

Dammit! I have to agree with you that LouAI's view of what is and isn't fact is retarded!

Sundering is still inferior to Vampiric. So many people have already done the math.

If you still refuse to acknowledge it, there's just no point in going over it again.

First, not everybody has seen the math, or even knows exactly how the Vamp mod works.

Sundering is popular because it doesn't give you the HP degen. Lazy people don't like to have to switch weapons, they want just one. In the same way, lots of people like Mending, because it heals you without you having to do anything.

(It's hard to keep a reply in one post and not mix anything up, forgive me if I do.)

Quaker:
No, there aren't enough samples. You don't have anywhere near enough data to come to any conclusions about your "3 main points." In fact, I don't see how you came to those conclusions from your data at all. Your data shows that vampiric may be a bit stronger than sundering, that's about it. Anything else about sundering against different armor levels and spike ability you'll have to prove with separate tests specifically showing the increase due to sundering against different ALS and what effect sundering has on spikes.

Spike:
Since when does money prove effectiveness?

Hand of Ruin:
If you're under heavy degen, vampiric becomes better. If you've got 10 pips of health degen, you won't get an 11th pip by equipping a vamp weapon. So the good news is you're getting free life stealing. (The bad news is you're under 10+ pips of degen, so you're probably panicking and not worrying about attacking.) The -1 pip only comes into play if you're above -10 pips or you're trying to reverse it.

Zealous and Furious are good on energy-heavy builds and adrenal spammers, respectively. It's hard to give them a specific damage number, but they have their places.

moriz and Spike:
Pray tell me, what is the best overall upgrade? (You win a teddy if you figure out that "best overall upgrade" has little significance when you have 4 weapon slots and an inventory window.)

Thom:
Tell that to the Koreans and Pally. However, their superior playing abilities make up for item deficiencies.

Sereng:
No, Khift doesn't explain it very well. First off, the ability to go through damage-nullifying skills is a really minor point, something I wouldn't bother to consider. As far as RoF is concerned, at 10 prot it'll prevent 58 damage and heal for another 58. 3 lifesteal going through the prevention will just get mopped up by the heal.

Khift's point about different weapons has too many generalizations about weapon damage; the actual fact is that the 5 lifesteal on bows and hammers tears apart any bonus sundering can give. And what the hell is everyone's fascination with spikes and sundering? It rarely gives that oomph that's noticeable (a 10% chance to do 8 more damage in an Evis>Exe chain, whoopdedo. A monk assisting the spike by wanding would do more.)

Finding the average bonus a sundering mod gives isn't impossible as he claims. Just take the average damage for a weapon, find the bonus that the average damage will get from sundering, toss in critical hits and their bonuses from sundering, and you've got a nice average bonus number. In fact, I already did it.

retract your claws, savio, before you cut yourself.

i'm trying to defend your point of view. anyways, the question of "the best overall upgrade" is not answerable, because as you said, you can have 4 weapon slots, and each are better in some situations.

so where's my teddy?

Please show me the post where I said that sundering did more damage than a vamp weapon. I will be VERY supprised when you find as it because I have NEVER said that. My inital post said I prefed an ele damage mod or even sundering to LOSEING hp. Not that sundering did more damage.

IMHO the best overall mod is an ele one and probley fire at that. Now if someone wants to go test that. I would be intrested in the results, but this would have to be done "in game" and not on the isle of the nameless as many mobs seem to take extra damage from fire which would NOT be reflected by testing on isle of the nameless But as I've said before my warrior has two different weapons. One fire based the other cold.

No money does not prove effectiveness, but you said no one cares about loseing hp, which if they did'nt would mean lots more people would want vamp upgardes and therefore they would cost more which they don't.

Just out of intrest what was the strengh attrebute of the warrior you used to make these tests ? if it was'nt 0 have you tried it with one that had 16?

Oh one last thing you guys know you can get up 37% AP on an sword/axe/hammer

Reapeat after me

Sundering
Upgrade
Is
not
good

if anyone still thinks sundering is better then vampric, go to the Temple of B, wallk outside with a pvp sword, one has 20/20 and the other w/ 3/-1...without using any attacks and having 12 in sword, the vamp destorys the 100al target in about 37 sec, while the sundering takes 41...hmm........although the sundering does have an advantage v. casters, with a slightly quicker kill time, most intelligent casters in pvp are going to have more the 60armor, usually between 70-80 from armor bonus and offhands/shields, and in higher lvl areas of pve most monsters will have a greater armor level then a playable character, so there is no real justification for using sundering, vampric is far superior for damage as a battle wages on.
What if blinded?!?!?...switch weapons until condition ends, or is removed (you can do that ) and fyi if you are blinded...you wont even get the 20% sundering chance
Stop being so hard headed, and just accept that vampric is overall better for damage dealing then sundering. Try it on trolls, use a sundering axe, then a vampric...the vampric will be much quicker, it wont cause the "spike" that a sundering will, but it is better in the long run, as 99% of the time, you will kill an enemy quicker using a vampric weapon.

there is nothing that gives us any fact that you are wearing a shirt or have all your fingers.

evolution can be seen if you breed animals.

although, I like the fact that you say history is a theory-> very clever.


the person who said "ppl who use sundering arent good at pvp"-> thats an overgeneralized comment that is totally rediculous- granted I use Furious on my war-> are you going to call me a noob for that? Im pretty sure its flame bait. Thats like saying "ppl who use water magic are noobs, they do no damage" ???

+I dont use sundering.

Sundering is a gamble... sometimes you win the money, sometimes you get put on ice by a mob boss.

Vamp, especially for rangers with bows, is superior in every way to sundering. With bows and hammers you're looking at a guaranteed 5 extra damage every single hit as opposed to a one in five chance for sundering to kick in. I'm not exactly sure about how much extra damage you get per sundering hit that actually goes off but I do know that as far as the math goes a constant +5 to your damage versus an inconstant damage addition from sundering makes vamp the better choice.

so a sundering scythe wouldnt be good?

the only time I can see sundering being terribly worthwhile is if you "stack" with it. Example, you have a sundering bow and you use penetrating shot on top of it. Well you guarantee yourself at least the 20% AP and possibly 40%. But that's still only a one in five chance to get that extra punch though. For the sake of argument let's say that the sundering mod adds +10 to your damage when it triggers on an 80 AL target.

ok then from two series of fifteen shots one of the fifteen using a vampiric bow, the other fifteen using a sundering. (I use bows because it's what I know.) ok let us say that base damage for the bow every single shot will be 40. It always hits for 40, again not going to happen in game but it makes the math easier. Ok well the vampiric will hit for 45 damage on every single shot. that adds up to 675 total damage for the entire 15 shot series. Ok the sundering though will strike for fourty damage for 12 of those shots and 50 damage for three of those shots giving you a total of 630 damage for that fifteen shot series. You see you lose 45 potential points of damage on the sundering bow. The math is very simplified but the principle it is based on is sound

moriz:
I was serious about the teddy; PM me sometime. Any rage at this thread is more at Spike than you (he still doesn't get it).

Spike:
Maximum AP is 60% (any attack with 20% AP or Primal Rage + Judge's Insight + Sundering). At that point sundering does more damage over time than vampiric. But you're not going to be using the 20% AP attacks all the time, and Primal Rage sucks. At 40% or less AP, vampiric outperforms sundering.

As far as the market is concerned, 20 is bigger than 3 and 5. Along yours and the market's line of thinking, Fiery, Icy, Shocking, and Ebon upgrades are worth 500g or less, so they must be total crap. Just be glad the effective mods are cheap.

Your the one who does'nt get it savio along with everyone else who seems to be incapeable of reading my posts. I NEVER SAID THAT SUNDERING DID MORE DAMAGE THAN A VAMP WEAPON. I said I prefed ele damage mod or even sundering to LOSEING HP all the time. How does that turn into sundering does more damage than vamp?

Maybe the build is built around doing lots of AP AS USUAL you assumed otherwise. How do YOU know what someone is going to be doing in game. Just because YOU would'nt do it does'nt mean someone else would'nt.

I never said it WAS my line of thinking as I think the cheap ele mods are better than both vamp and sundering. But AS USUAL you missed the point. I was just useing it to show they obviously that a lot of people DO care about loseing heath as you said they did'nt.

I was NOT useing skills when takeing into account the amount of AP you could get. If you want to start useing skills and mods then you better start testing poison vs bleeding vs vamp vs sundering

so what you're saying is: you just simply prefer to use a less effective, more expensive upgrade....

well, if it makes sense to you, then it's your character and gold.

anyways, the extra AP additive. AP skill + inherent AP = AP skill + inherent AP. however, AP skill + inherent AP < AP skill + 3 unconditional damage.

Strength's ingame description:
When you use attack skills, each point of Strength gives you 1% armor penetration.

So, how do you get 37% AP without using skills?


moriz: I forgot that when I was doing the Primal Rage + sundering + JI comparison that I calculated it at 15 strength (it was in response to some person claiming a 16 weapon 15 strength build with PR was good). Dropping that to 9-10 strength results in vampiric winning. The additional critical hit factor of PR is the main reason why sundering becomes more effective.

Moriz since when is 500 more expensive than 55000 to 75000

Try READING my post next time. You might get it right one day.

So savio the Strength AP does'nt count when your just doing normal attacks? IE with out useing any skills ? Ok I thought it did.

I like furious but think we'll see a 20% furious mod in the future?

Well, let me explain it to you. (again)

1. Conventional wisdom: Vampiric is "constant" damage, while Sundering is spike damage. - The data in my post show both types of damage as having wildly variable results. Also both types show occasional high-value hits that you could refer to as "spikes" (although I made no statements about spiking). So basically, neither type is "constant", and both types "spike".

2. Conventional wisdom: Vampiric is better than Sundering over time. - In my tests, the time - as in the number of hits x the hits per second - was essentially the same for both types. Neither one gave any indication of being better over time, they each took the same number of hits to kill the target. If it takes a longer time to show the difference than it does to kill the target, the difference is meaningless.

3. Conventional wisdom: Sundering is worse versus stronger armor. Using the calculations, that some people do, leads to the "conventional wisdom" that sundering is more effective against "softer" targets and the effectiveness of Sundering goes down as the armor level goes up. However, in direct contradiction of this, all the tests I've done, in addition to the ones I posted, show Sundering to be more effective against "harder" targets.

I am willing to accept that more tests would be better, but, in all this discussion, I have yet to see anyone else post the results of their own tests. I have yet to see anyone explain why my test data does or does not support their case.

Why are the values I get all over the map instead of "constant" for Vampiric and "spikey" for Sunder? (Could it be that the chance/probabilty factors are not taken into account in the "formulas" and, therefore, the formulas are inaccurate?)

Why doesn't Vampiric show up as clearly superior to Sundering, if it so truly is?

And, as I keep saying - try it yourself!

And let me state this again, since so many people seem to ignore it:
I'm not saying Sundering is better than Vampiric. I'm saying that each damage/effect type - Sundering, Vampiric, Elemental, Furious, Zealous, whatever - is more useful in some instances than others. They each have their time & place. And particularly, I'm saying that Sundering is not "trash" when compared to Vamp.

By the way, I'm not trying to convince any of the pro-vamp die-hards about this. They seem to have an almost religious zeal for this subject, and I think if the programmers for ANet said differently, they'd argue with them too.

No, I'm trying to convince the other people, like the original starter of this topic, not to rely on the "conventional wisdom". Try it yourself - make you're own decisions - next time someone suggests you are a noob for using Sundering, just smile and laugh inwardly