Sundering vs. Vampiric - The Final Showdown

What he said :P

So many more reasons than just the fact vamp has better overall DPS. It ignores prot SoA/PS/SH etc, it wont trigger spirit bond on a crit at 14 mastery, the dmg wont be taken off by RoF and wont be given back as healing.

Thats just a few i can think of, the list goes on, sundering is for PvE dolyak signet warriors, always has been always will.

Thread Winner, Got nothing to add.

VAMPIRIC

- Ganni

There's a lack of clarity as to what's actually being assessed. Is it DPS vs DPS? Or a comparison of general efficiency?

It's common knowledge that Vampiric, for each weapon type, has higher DPS but it's also known that Sundering can make the difference between a spike killing the target and not killing it. Vampric is less likely to score a kill in those circumstances.

Vamp all the way....'nuff said.

I don't understand why this was tested on a Warrior. Strength already has an inherent % of armor penetration and so using a Sundering weapon on a Warrior is somewhat redundant(I use between battles so I don't die from degen ). Any weapon + Strength= better armor penetration(due to consistency) than a Sundering weapon.

We've come to a definitive answer about the -5/20 and yet we still argue about Sundering.



Why play with guess work when we can have a slightly different, constant gain?

Use vamp for pressure and sundering for spikes.

It is that simple.

No it isn't.

Sundering is going to get you far in a caster spike:S
ranger spike has hornbows.
paraspike is already 25% with spear of lightning

Sundering stacks with other forms of AP.

This entire thread is completely pointless because all the number theory means crap in actual practice.

Vamp will likely get you more DPS in ideal circumstances. It will also be blocked and negated to a point that the offensive total can be less than the degen penalty on you. It's situational and also dependent on playstyle to an extent. If you're getting a large number of hits in, it can be effective through some forms of prot.

Sundering gives you random bursts of damage. A random burst of damage can kill people. If you spike someone and they get protted/healed at a fragment of their health, there is a chance that if you had gotten a sundering hit in the spike they would have gone down. Damage at a point gets you kills in some situations, DPS gets it in others.

It is hard to select the better mod because of the situational and playstyle nature. There are amazing players that use either. Trying to say one mod is better because of a higher potential DPS in ideal circumstances is flawed as in actual combat circumstances vary, there are spikes, and so on. If you took all of that into account, which none of you have done or most likely will do, maybe you could get a solid answer.

You should probably read this as well.

You seem to have forgotton that if you apply blocking, protection, etc to vampiric, it must also be applied to sundering. Otherwise it's a rather unfair comparison. Vampiric is the ideal choice because of it's solid and consistant extra damage. Sundering is a varible and unreliable source of extra damage.

You seem to forget Sundering doesn't pressure your side back when you are prevented from hitting.

You also apparently did not read the rest of my post.

Axe is the only weapon where I actually think there's much of a choice in the matter. For Hammers, the sundering activations are so monstrous, I think you'd have to be crazy to take vamp instead. Once you get a bull's strike on someone for a stupid 140 damage or so, you never want to go back. Sword is the opposite, in that I don't think the damage for most the attacks will benefit as much from the activation. Getting a Sundering Final Thrust is about the most amazing thing you'll ever see on a warrior though, if you ever get lucky enough to get a sundering + critical hit on it.

I prefer sundering on axe myself for pvp, because the -3's from vamp really seem pretty negligible to me. Both the extra damage you're dealing and the degen you suffer will probably just be heal party fodder (or protective was some-dead-guy). Getting sundering+critical activations on both evis and executioner's means the guy you're attacking is dead.

That said, Vamp does have one pretty huge advantage over Sundering when you're just using normal attacks... At 14 axe (read: what your axe mastery will always be unless you're bad or are Chop Chop--and I'm aware many people don't see these as mutually exclusive traits) your normal crits will be 59, which is conveniently located just below spirit bond's break-point. If you're playing a monk that spams spirit bond up the butt (a lot of them do), making sure your normal attacks stay under that 60hp can be important to keep pressure on him after the large prots have hit. Sundering could end up giving the opponent free spirit bond triggers after your evis/exec spike is over.

What about with scythes? Are scythes like hammers - you're aiming for spike damage?

There's no real pressure when it comes to using it properly, a -1 regen is neglible. As for vampiric being the mod of choice, it doesn't make it the be-all-end-all of things. That's why there's switchouts. The arguement whether Sundering is better or worse than Vampiric, Vamp comes out on top.

That -1 (2dps) is about as much damage as you're getting through in a lot of cases from the mod. If the pressure on you is negligible, then so is the mod's pressure on them (HP fodder). If you are successful in shutting down passive defense and HP, then it may become more effective. As I mentioned, the benefits are situational.

I'd think with the huge damage output of Dervish attack skills, you'd be getting more benefit from Sundering. Then again, I haven't played a Dervish in quite a long time so I can't say much regarding that.

That needs to be applied to Sundering as well. Just because you're using Sundering doesn't mean your opponent isn't using passive defense and heal party. What I meant is taking it all into account, Vampiric is better than Sundering. Applying passive defense into the equation of Vampiric and not Sundering is a bad way to go about it.

The Scythe does come out on top with Sundering as opposed to Vampiric. Due to it having a higher damage range and critical than a Hammer, which the 5:1 Vampiric is balanced for, 20% AP every 5 hits will do more dps.

Nope, vampiric does more DPS than sundering on any weapon.

The issue between theory and practice is that DPS is not what always gets kills.

Go back to my original reply in this thread "if I am counting on the lottery to land an attack might as well hope big for double adrenaline".

Personally I dont count on the mod as part of my damage output but more like an ecto drop .. not expected but nice if it happens. Anet wouldn't know 20% or 10% if it came up and bit them so it is kind of hard to factor either in given the fact that they do not trigger as described. If we were talking old school ranger spike then hell yes vampiric. This is warriors though .. sorry.

So, as someone who doesn't really have a dog in this fight can I take the following to be true (based on 9 pages of posts so far):

There are four cases in which I may be trying to do damage with a weapon.

1: building adrenaline. If doing this I care little what my damage is (though I still want some) as DPS "pressure" doesn't seem to work and I am looking at the latter spike. Furious works best here as I get to the spike quicker.

2: spiking damage: In this case I am looking for the maximum damage in a single skill (or skill chain) and am often using some that automatically result in a critical. In this case, due to the high damage in a single skill Sundering gives the better damage.

3: Damage over time: In this case I am looking to apply pressure and my DPS is king. I may be also building adrenaline at the same time for a spike, yet my DPS is important. In this case Vampiric is best.

4: non-physical damage: This mostly just needs to be elemental. I may find a target that has high resistance to a specific element, though in that case I can always revert back to my physical weapon or bother to swap weapons from my inventory.

So far, for this crappy PvE player (and, being mainly a PvE player I obviously have no idea what I am talking about) this is what is being argued and what seems to mostly be obvious from math behind damage and the mods. DPS == vampiric, spike == sundering, adrenaline gain == furious and which results in the most kills depends on your build and you team tactics. And, lastly, which is the "better" strategy has always seemed to be which one you and your team can co-ordinate the best and if all things are equal then, well, they are equal (best being swapping out at different point, though I suppose when facing humans they would very well see the spike coming if you had different skins for you adrenaline/DPS weapon vs your spiker).

Ah well, I guess I'll continue assuming the above is true - I've pretty much done so since I found the formula's for damage. But then being a piddly PvE'er I know nothing about anything anyway - once you guys finally figure out which is always better I'll use it.

Back to my self imposed ban on commenting in PvP threads I suppose - flame away!

Actually you hit the nail squarely on the head here.

Most practial tests have proven exactly what you just stated.

The current debate is less about Sundering vs Vampiric and more about DPS vs Spikes and the builds used in PvP.

As you stated the Weapon should match the Build which should match the Strategy.

Furious = you have multiple(4+) adren skills you wish to chain together.
Sundering = you have 1 or 2 skills your spiking with.
Vampiric = your using dps to keep constant presure on foes.

Weapon swapping as needed for multi purpose builds.

And that makes as little sense as the constant arguing of Vampiric vs Sundering too.

Even in PvE land there are places where DPS is worthless and places where spikes are worthless. I use both from time to time. However, AoE tends to be more important in PvE than anything else followed by general DPS. But then a spike based team is also effective - pretty much anything in PvE is as long as you have modicum of team work and know the area you are in (It would be interesting to see how the ladder would change if the top ten guilds had to use a sealed deck while others didn't, see how much truly is personal/team skill - I bet they would still stay right up at the top of the ladder).

I would imagine in PvP land it would depend on what the current meta-game is and would change over time. And what little bit I have played many teams use a little bit of both (pressure with DPS following up with a spike).

I also notice a VERY high correlation between those that want to argue one is absolutely the best along with those that want to argue one of the mods is absolutely better than the other. In fact, I would argue that it is nearly impossible to separate the two arguments.