Numbers for the Cleave / Eviscerate Debate

That's exactly how it works - more Strength works better with more attack skills. Thing is, the effect really isn't all that significant. A normal attack will deal 35.55 damage on average. With 10% armor penetration against a 60AL target, you're getting 3.89 damage from a typical attack skills - with 13% armor penetration from maxing out Strength with a minor, you're getting 5.29 more damage per attack skill. So you're looking at a difference of 1.4 damage per attack skill from pumping three levels of Strength. Not exactly the biggest jump.

This effect is diluted further when you're looking at attack chains of several skills, instead of just using your single elite - because the adrenal costs start to average out. For example, if you're just using Cleave you get one attack skill every four attacks for 25% of the Strength bonus - if you're just using Eviscerate you get one attack per seven for 14% of the Strength bonus. So by pumping Strength to 13, you widen the gap by .15 DPS, or around 11% of the difference between the 13 Strength damage bonus and the 10 Strength bonus.

But the 3 skill series are a lot closer. Take the Disrupting Chop series (because Penetrating Attack does not benefit from Strength). Using Cleave, Disrupting Chop, and Executioner's Strike as often as they come up has you using an attack skill 40.341% of the time - with Eviscerate, Executioner's, and Disrupting Chop, you're using an attack skill 33.754% of the time. So instead of an 11% gap in skill usage, you're looking at a 6.6% gap in skill usage, so the differences in Strength don't end up mattering much. Hence it really doesn't factor into these comparisons.

How much does Strength help overall? The average difference between a 13 Strength series and a 10 Strength series is .3 DPS, or 18 damage every minute.


Yeah, Cyclone Axe has a 4 second recharge which gives you exactly 3 attacks between each Cyclone Axes.


Sure, but I'm saying that the benefits from large adrenal boosts with Cyclone Axe are being largely wasted with Cleave and Penetrating. That is, you can find a perfect situation with the perfect number of enemies and Cleave will likely outperform Eviscerate over time in that circumstance, but outside of that resonance Cleave is going to be decidedly sub-optimal.

One such resonance is Cleave + Penetrating Blow at exactly 3 enemies. In this situation there is little to no overcharging of Penetrating Blow, things work out perfectly, and you're going to be dealing an average of 60.58 DPS amongst your targets. Eviscerate + Executioner's don't have any sort of inherent synergy at this level besides the faster adrenal charging, and actually have some bad resonance with spammed Cyclone Axe, so it follows up with only 59.53 DPS. Get over that resonance and Cleave turns to junk. At 4 enemies, the Cleave + Penetrating combo gets no additional benefit from Cleave, but the extra enemy cranks your DPS up to 70.41. Eviscerate + Executioner's, however, happily absorbs the additional adrenaline and now easily outperforms Cleave, with a DPS of 71.37.


Sure, but you'd need exactly four enemies for your resonance then. Below that and you're going to stutter - above that and you're going to get smoked by the higher adrenaline costs that continue to benefit.


Any sequence with Cleave substituted in for Eviscerate is going to benefit more, long term DPS wise, than then Eviscerate sequence from a higher strength. The more skills that are involved in the sequence, the smaller the difference is going to be.


Sure, but that really doesn't matter, because Eviscerate and Executioner's Strike are that much better than Cleave and Penetrating Blow that it comes out being comparable damage over time even if you're only using Eviscerate after 3 out of 5 Cyclone Axes.


I don't it's been mentioned in this thread yet - Penetrating Blow does not benefit from Strength at all. The armor penetration bonuses do not stack. So the higher your Strength, the worse Penetrating Blow is in your build.


Strength gives an armor penetration bonus to *all* attack skills. This includes both melee attacks in the weapon attribute lines, and if you're a Warrior/Ranger, all of your bow attacks.


Is it? You have the numbers staring you in the face. Cleave + Penetrating + Executioner's deals 49.35 damage per hit on average. Cleave + Penetrating + Executioner's + Dismember deals 48.48 damage per hit. At 13 Strength those numbers are 49.73 and 48.95, respectively. Adding Dismember to a Cleave chain makes you deal less damage.

Why? Because the Strength bonus from an additional adrenal attack is *less* than the damage you lose from having to wait longer for your attack skills to recharge. This isn't a matter of opinion, or a gut feeling, or anything like that - adding non-damage attack skills into your attack series makes you deal less damage, regardless of Strength. That's no opinion, that's cold, hard fact.


Well, you might not understand the math, but I assure you that I do, and it accurately models what you want it to be modeling.


It actually doesn't matter what order you use them in if you don't have any adrenal boosts, since the successful use of an adrenal skill is adrenaline neutral. If you have adrenaline boosts, you want to use the skills with the highest per-hit damage first for maximum damage - I went and calculated out all the different permutations with adrenaline boosts and only posted the most efficient ones. In general, the priority you want to put on attack skills for maximum over time DPS is Executioner's Strike, Eviscerate, Cleave, Penetrating Blow, Dismember, Disrupting Chop.


Well that's been known for a while. It's not really an insignificant effect - level 10 Strength is roughly a 10% damage boost on the more complex chains - but it certainly isn't something youre going to make a lot of sacrifices for.

Peace,
-CxE

Adding dismember to the chain does not lower your damage if you want a deep wound. Don't be ridiculous. Obviously the strength bonus isn't going to make up the damage if the deep wound isn't necessary considering dismember only adds the str damage and the deep wound. And as I've always stated, I would only considering using cleave with adrenal buffers.

I think you're flattering yourself. While it's certainly a better equation than 42/8 and 24/5, it's still not reflecting the exact way you'd be using these skills.

Reread that quote before you continue to pretend that your equation mirrors exact game conditions. You know it doesn't, and so do a few of the rest of us. Numbers are our friend, a tool to 'help' us. There isn't any new information here, but it is an upgrade from the previous IQ cleave/eviscerate equations.

Nice to see that you think so. Back it up. I've already posted the numbers above that show not only that adding Dismember to an attack chain lowers the damage, but I've also explained qualitively *why* the damage drops. You can continue to make ridiculous statements with no backing whatsoever, and I'll continue ripping them apart. It's what I do.


And as I've already pointed out in the initial thread, adrenal buffers don't alter the balance at all. Both Eviscerate and Cleave chains benefit from adrenal buffers. If anything, Eviscerate chains benefit *more* from adrenaline buffers, as they are better able to absorb the adrenaline boosts and avoid overcharging - though that only happens in extreme cases, as with Cyclone Axe. Using Cleave because you have adrenal buffers *doesn't make sense*.


I think you enjoy being contrary for the sake of being contrary.


No equation is going to reflect 'the exact way you'd be using these skills'. There are blocks, there's running, and realistically you're going to overcharge in order to spike better. That's why there's modeling. You look at the most important factors, boil them down to the basic issues, and re-evaluate it from there.

The conclusions that get drawn from these analysis, from spike damage, to damage over time, to utility and how they interact with other skills, to adrenaline buffs, to performance against runners, to utility against blocks and evades - you look at these things from a bunch of different angles to try and figure out what's good and what's not. The net result of *every* analysis is that Eviscerate blows Cleave away.

If you know of any analysis that shows that Cleave is a better skill that Eviscerate, I'd like to see it. But all I see so far are a bunch of gut reactions and people trying to turn what fundamentally is a numerical analysis into a 'personal preference'.


Yes, because unlike 'personal preferences' and gut reactions numbers get to the truth of the matter. There isn't any new information if you're someone who rejects mathematics, logic, and reasoning. For people who are interested in quantitative analysis and actually optimising their skill choices there's a wealth of information here. But if you'd rather stick with 'because I say so' non-arguments and wholeheartedly reject any arguments that conflict with your carefully crafted, non-sensical worldview, there's little I can do to change your mind.

After all, reason only works on the reasonable.

Peace,
-CxE

I don't know how anyone can really claim that Cleave is greater than Eviscerate...

In a game where you can bring only 8 skills to the fight -- I always like to bring:

- A movement speed buff
- An attack speed buff
- An interupt
- A stance breaker -- like Rigor Mortis or Wild Blow

That's half of my skill bar filled already...

Bringing a Skill that does +43 extra damage @ 16 and causes a Deep Wound, for around another 100~ points lost ( as long as the condition remains ) in one skill -- is surely better than bringing the low hitting Cleave + Dismember -- whilst losing a 2nd skill slot in the process.

Having to bring an extra attack skill ( just to Deep Wound, in this example ) -- means I'll have to drop something from my list above and I want to avoid doing that at all costs... ( what good is hitting for more damage -- if my attacks don't actually connect..?? )

I've appreciated most of the 'work' you've done and accepted most of it as most likely accurate, not bothering to retest anything that had your name associated with it. The point was, the deep wound damage wasn't going to lower the chain.. do we really need a number to show that? I think both know if the deep wound isn't coming from somewhere else, that dismember is worth having in there.. and if it isn't, then dismember lowers your damage. We agree here I think?

The difference is cleave doesn't replace dismember (although in your chains it does), so it would be an additional adrenaline skill, as opposed to an equal number of adrenal attacks like you've been comparing. Eviscerate does replace dismember, but cleave doesn't have to.

When people from your guild just try to scare off any other opinion by stating that it's been absolutely proven with some simple equation, I do feel the need to jump in there. The attitude was very poor and it's pretty consistent apparently. I'm glad you at least felt the need to bring more substantial support to this claim after reading that as well.

Well, half of your tests already show the dps ahead on cleave strings.

Most of the responses have the same basic conclusion. A lot of the time cleave will have higher dps (which initially started this, when saph said it didn't even do that) slightly, and eviscerate will obviously have a bigger spike. That dps gap isn't enough to make up for the spike of eviscerate. I think that's the general theme you get even from people half-way refuting the absolutes you guys have been throwing around.

Personally, I like battlerage over either of them. That has to do with actual game play and appreciating a skill that makes the rest of the my skill bar better. However, I'll fully admit that a frenzy/eviscerate spike is ultimately more powerful under optimal conditions.. so we don't need an equation on battlerage vs eviscerate.

If you take one adrenal skill, and seperate it into two adrenal skills, then necessarily your damage over time will be decreased, for two reasons: 1. your entire adrenal intake will be lower (in normal conditions, while using adrenal attack skills, you will lose 1 stroke and then gain 1 stroke on all other adrenal skills, resulting in a net gain of 0 adrenaline on all adrenal skills other than the used one; therefore, the more adrenal skills you use, the less often you will be able to use any given one.) 2. Obviously it takes more time to execute two attacks than one under identical circumstances. On the other hand, I might have misinterpreted what you mean, Rey, because I'm more or less guessing.
Take note that those DPS numbers do not take into account the effects of Deep Wound, or show the spiking effect.

If you got bot both Cleave and Eviscerate, I really see no reason to take Cleave + Dismember over Eviscerate.

It's certainly means losing 1 adrenaline using Dismember in all adrenaline skills, so it does slow all skills recharge unless you use some adrenaline saturation skills like cyclone axe or "to the limit" (not sure the recharge time really allows that last one). So each time you dismember, you're delaying the next cleave by one attack.

You also lose one skill slot. So it's not Cleave + dismember vs Evicerate... It's Cleave+Dismember vs Evicerate+whatever. Assume whatever is penetrating blow, and you won't need much number crushing to see that Evicerate + penetrating is going to win over Cleave + dismember.

I don't think you can make a good case for Cleave by pointing at Dismember.

A good case for cleave would either prove the cleave supposed better dps can outrun the deep wound effect or that the metagame makes deep wound not that desirable.
If everybody in my team will give deep wound, the additional beneift of deepwound is likely to be small.
If condition removal rules, then deep wound impact is also likely to be small.

As far as Cleave having better dps than evicerate, I think that would require a lot of number crunching with odd sequences of hit and adrenaline gathering and probably high Strenght. Although, the data presented here really ought to make me reconsider

Louis,

Yay, people arguing GW strategy with Ensign, that always makes for fun reading.

My last few responses in this thread were deleted, and probably rightfully so.. so I'll try not to take any more troll bait here.

I only said dps, so that's all I meant. I'm aware of what wasn't taken into account.

It was summed up in the other thread as well. The DPS can be better on cleave situationally ('depends on the build'), but it's only slightly higher in some situations. So the question is, is the small dps increase worth the lowered spiking potential? I think the consensus would be no, of course not.

I'm not some cleave lover trying to justify my past use of the skill. I do occassionally use it in pve to mess around with, but I've never thought highly of cleave or eviscerate in pvp. I think battlerage is a better choice personally. Eviscerate has a much better spiking potential and in optimal conditions is a much more powerful skill, but I find battlerage is more useful overall and use that in more axe builds. I just find that more in-game friendly considering the conditions you're up against.

My problem with these two threads was the attitude and insistence that these equations were absolute proof that we should all agree with. The equations in this thread are much more helpful than the last, and definitely worth looking at, but shouldn't have *too much* value put into them. Most of us aren't playing the game mashing buttons in order, while some other mindless thing sits there and takes it. If these equations were absolutely proof, this game wouldn't be worth playing.

I like to crunch numbers as much as the next guy, and blindly selecting skills is not an approach I like to take, but we all have to remember these numbers are a tool. Game conditions differ and we have to be objective in putting the proper amount of value into these equations. Numbers are our friend, not our lord.

I have a fairly limited experience with gw, and an even more limited experience with warriors (I come from Magic--where if the numbers can't absolutely determine the best pick its simply because they aren't good enough).
It seems fairly intuitive, however, that any disparities for the damage given by these equations and the actual damage can be considered in turn and further that it would be a simple matter to determine which skill is better in each case (note this is only in pvp).

1. Condition Removal (while they are sitting there). In this case, you have just exchanged several points of damage for 5 energy and some of their time. This is fairly evidently a good exchange, so eviscerate is easily favored.
2. Prot Spirit. Cleave allows you to get through more damage without being forced to inflict a deep wound. Cleave / Dismember, if you have the space, is obviously the best in this situation. Also, because Cleave and Eviscerate deal equal damage, Cleave becomes slightly superior. This is probably the one case in which Cleave is superior.
3. They run. If you have sprint, this scenario is the same as the earlier ones, except that the attacks will be made slower. I don't believe this is relevant to the comparison.
4. They get healed. Though this does not technically have a bearing on the equations presented, it does upset the equality in the sense that it favors the smaller window allowed by eviscerate.
5. Protective Barrier. Cleave becomes irrellevant and eviscerate just becomes a deep wound. It seems obvious that eviscerate is slightly better in this situation.
6. Their AL is increased. This favors a route using more penetrating attacks--that is to say eviscerate (if you are using penetrating--otherwise there is a fixed damage reduction and the 2 are equivalent).
7. Linear damage reduction. I haven't seen many people playing Shielding Hands, but its a possibility. Shielding Hands has the same effect on all chains (although it oh-so-slightly favors chains with more non-damage attacks for obvious reasons). Life Barrier effectively soaks up 50% of damage or ~25--whichever is less. Obviously then, in terms of a % reduction it favors the chain which does > ~50 more often. Eviscerate is obviously favored.
8. Aegis. Over a long period of time Aegis can be viewed as preventing 50% of damage. However, if it is up when you are attempting to finish a monk it can make getting a deep wound on slightly tricky. I suppose this could theoretically favor a warrior with dismember available, though the difference would be pretty minute, and I would say very nearly negligible (especially if you had multiple eviscerating warriors--in fact, in this case it is a strong motivation for more deep wounds). This one is roughly even.

So, in summary, Eviscerate is preferable if they heal, remove conditions, use life bond, or have their AL is increased. Protective Spirit is the one case in which cleave becomes slightly better.

I know that that last bit of analysis was probably not worth the minutes it took to write, but I am just attempting to highlight that if you consider fully enough there is no such thing as a true "intangible" aspect of ability comparison.

(As for Battle Rage, if its not too much effort would someone mind posting the damage for Battle Rage - Executioner's / Penetrating / Disrupting attack sequence?)

Assuming that Battle Rage never drops and never costs you any adrenaline loss, because I'm too lazy to put that into the model:

Executioner's + Penetrating + Disrupting + Battle Rage = 40.187 DPS
Eviscerate + Executioner's + Disrupting + Frenzy = 51.157 DPS

Peace,
-CxE

Unfortunatly whenever rage is refreshed it wipes out the adrenalin pool. In order to figure out the effect that has on adrenalin over time, you would have to calculate a arenalin pool that empties at the set time variable dictated by the strenght attribute. Long story short, the dps goes down even more, even though you are getting slightly more mileage out of strength armor penetration.

Actually, im getting rather depressed by this thread as more and more warrior skills are ending up to be worse than i thought they were. It also makes it seem like there is only one way to build a warrior (per weapon type) and there is alot of shared ground due to the nautre of adrenalin boosts and stances. This is of course excluding warriors masquerading as another profession (ie more non-warrior skills than warrior orientated skills).

I only read the first page, but another perk those cleave people are missing is the ability to use Axe Rake when their foe starts to run, and in PvP they WILL run. If they want to be able to rake them then that would require them to bring dismember, another skill slot wasted when they could have just brought eviscerate. It really helps taking down the monk when you can turn off sprint and put frenzy back on once he's been raked.

Ensign, what is your take on a group witih multiple warriors? It seems as though having more than one axe warrior isn't really necessary, especially since you should be spiking with deep wound, which will prevent earlier uses of eviscerate. Also, with the recent abuse of Victory is Mine in altar maps, and the subsequent dragging along of Balanced Stance, are swords an option these days?

I am rather suprised Battle Rage has a lower DPS than Eviscerate in a skill+2 adren + nonadrenattack skill combo. Due to not knowing the exact nature of how Adrenaline works (read your adren-post, then ate a bag of chips) I didn't do the calculations but can you post it here?

That's pretty simple. You can run frenzy while using eviscerate, with battlerage you can't. Battlerage is good because it eliminates the need for sprint, and allows you to always be moving at full speed. It's hard to measure in a calculation how valuable that it. Battlerage benefits from a higher strength attribute more than most builds, since the duration is very important and you're using the armor penetration more often.

Eviscerate is ultimately better if you can produce the conditions you need to make it better. Removing the need to have a speed buff (snares that the enemy can't remove, or knockdown chains) allows you to use frenzy and spike very heavily. Best case scenario is you being able to chain all your attacks while under frenzy, without having to move at all. If you can do that often, then use eviscerate. If you can't, then you might get more out of battlerage.

Battlerage is a more reliable, less powerful skill. It allows you to use a warrior without building around it since it's dps isn't as reliant on outside help.

An equation isn't going to help you figure out which skill's going to do more for you here.

I know you didn't ask me, but I believe you are right. In my experience, having two hammer warriors in a monk's face isn't very more helpful than 1, and having two axe warriors also has diminishing returns. But having 1 axe warrior and 1 hammer warrior makes each other MORE effective.

And schools should teach about the flying spaghetti monster ASAP! He created the world, after all!



Formulas are just tools that happen to approximate reality good enough to be useful, and wether they are indeed the LAWS of NATURE that some physicists claim that to be, noone can tell. (If you can tell, go back to preaching your "Sience Religion" based on "believe"). In the case of a game, one actually can be pretty sure how thinks work after asking the devs / reverse engineering the code.
And i have to add that giving more then 2 decimals is never a sign of seriosity in things that deal with reality in most cases (pure math is different, but totally useless anyway ). I doubt that Enisgn is too full of himself to realize this, and in the case of this thread, the fake precission actually seemed more like an ironic stab at cleave-lovers ...

numbers are however, better than guesswork based on emotional stuff or anecdotical evidence ("i totally pwned the others in tombs using only henches. Skill XXX rules!")


On a different note:
I dont like the fact that more and more warrior elites seem to be completely useless no matter what... oh well.

/agree
/bump

wow... this is probably the most informative gw thread ive ever read. much props to ensign. *i hope his numbers are correct though.

Unfortunately, it seems that the warrior class isn't the only one sliding into the "cookie cutter" phase. As time moves on and more and more people have time to experiment with (And discuss) the different skills, there eventually begins to blossom the most effective builds for each class. Now, maybe it's just me, but as a competitor I always like being as effective as possible (Even if that currently means sacrificing originality, for, well, pwnage). Eviscerate is by far the most effective tool on an axe warrior.

I miss my first days in Guild Wars when all kinds of strategies were flying through my head, but we're coming to the point where there are the best builds for each class, and that will remain until new skills are thrown into the mix. I'm just hoping the devs don't decide to tinker with the current skills to mix things up.

Cailbretto, you're the one sliding into "cookie cutter" phase. Different builds sprout up all the time. Spikers, suicides, spirit spammers (all s's?) - builds come and go. With the exception of NR, most builds aren't so overpowered that nothing else can beat them. And NR is losing its power in 2 days anyhow.

As for individual builds, there will always be calls for different things. Warriors CAN do more than just spike damage. How about knockdown warriors? Interrupters? Different group builds can call for different types of warriors.

Saerden, what are you getting at, really? Your post just goes nowhere.

Rey, Eviscerate allows you to do more than 10 more points of damage a second - a good tradeoff for having to switch between Frenzy and Sprint. You could toss in an Axe Rake if necessary, but since you're spiking them with the chain of skills, it's unlikely that they'll be running. If they're already running before you reach them, Sprint , Axe Rake, then Frenzy and unload.

It was a rebuttle at the attempt to disprove why numbers are invalid. The original statement was silly, because he was using how he felt through his experiences which were the byproduct of numbers.

Pretty much. The skill is terrible when you ignore all of the drawbacks so I don't feel a need to create a more complicated model to show just how much worse it is. Battle Rage is bad, don't use it.


Well there are so few skills per profession to begin with. But yeah, skills are imbalanced enough that once you tack on the particular needs of a given build you have convergent evolution towards a few very similar characters.

Right now I'm aware of only two competitive ways to run an organized team, PvP Warrior:

Eviscerate, Executioner's Strike, Frenzy, Sprint, Ressig, 3 skills
Devastating Hammer, Hammer Bash, Crushing Blow, Frenzy, Sprint, Ressing, 2 skills

There are certainly other ways to build an organized team Warrior, but I haven't seen a build that isn't just a bad version of one of the above. There's still some room to get creative, certainly, but things are tight.


No more than two on the same target, body blocking starts to become a serious problem. You can use two axes for spiking on a single target, but after that you want to use hammers for off targets, or just start morphing into a hammer spike build. Multiple hammers on the same target is generally dumb.


Hammer spikes give Deep Wound too, from Crushing Blow. Really you just have to suck down the non-stacking of Deep Wound and move on. Coordinate the spike, use two Eviscerates at once (it's still worth it), and get the kill. Might not be an optimal use of resources but it's better than anything else available.

One Hammer and one Axe on a target usually doesn't make a lot of sense - either you want the fast spike of an Axe to catch their Monks offguard, or you want the slower, disruptive spike of a Hammer to knocklock and guarantee kills. You could potentially mix and match but I haven't played around with that much.


Well, what's the worry, Deep Wound getting pulled off by Martyr/Mends? The Deep Wound from an Axe spike isn't even supposed to stick for a second, you're supposed to Evicerate / Executioner's / dead. .888- second duration under Frenzy. Balanced Stance would put a higher premium upon Axes than Hammers, but that doesn't give me a good reason to start using swords.


It's because you lose an attack speed buff. Adrenaline gain can't make up for the fact that you're losing the 50% damage buff from Frenzy, and with it, the 50% faster adrenaline charging.

As for the chains themselves, you just do the calculations for Eviscerate / Executioner's / Disrupting, and multiply that by the Frenzied attack speed (9/8 seconds), then for Battle Rage you find the optimal skill use chain and multiply by that attack speed (3/4 seconds).

Optimal (max damage) Battle Rage chain was two normal attacks, two Penetrating Attacks, a Disrupting Chop and an Executioner's Strike.


Don't look at some of the other classes then. Mesmers, for example, have exactly one playable Elite as far as I can tell.

Peace,
-CxE

Hmm, I'm not sure quite how to respond to that Savio, but I'll try to set irritation aside to clarify what I meant. If you're hammer warrior, there are proven ways to play the most effective hammer warrior. If you're an axe warrior, and not running eviscerate, you're a tool. If you're an elemental, you're running earth or getting owned by spirits. If you're a necro, you're a BiPer/Putrid. Get the picture? Of course I realize there are a few minor variations here or there, but if you'd look a little deeper, you'd find at the heart of each class there's a set of skills that never change. The closest you come is minor variations like a hammer warrior's choice between backbreaker/devastating hammer.

And I'd also respond that within the time frame Guild Wars has been out, a claim that new builds are sprouting "all the time" is relatively obnoxious and and asinine, at least considering my perception of "all the time." I'm not saying there are 4 builds - Play them or lose! I'm saying slowly but surely, if you choose a warrior you'll end up being one of the popular axe/hammer warriors. If you're an ele (And currently want to be effective IMO), you'll go earth. People are being forced into a way of gameplay in order to maintain competitive efficiency. Don't believe me? Look at all the 3 monks, 1 necromancer teams. Coincendence, or sign that ideas are being used up? Exactly how far do you think 450 skills are going to take you? Especially considering many just plain suck.
Savio, we obviously have a difference of opinions. But you claim that NR is the only "all powerful" build. I seem to remember enchantment heavy teams the only way to roll before it was around. If you ran heavy enchantments, you weren't threatened by suicide, spike, or any other form of strategy around. Anywho, we dont' agree, but again, this wasn't a personal attack so much as a reinforcement and clarification of my stated opinion.

Earth is a pretty weak offensive line outside of Obsidian Flame, though the defenses offered by the line, particularly the Wards, are excellent. I think that if you're an Ele, it's pretty clear that right now the best element is Fire, of the Zealot's variety. Smiting blows away just about everything the offensive Elementalist skills have to offer.

Fortunately, there's nothing saying that you can't run the Best Element and Earth defenses on the same character.

Peace,
-CxE

Oh, I wholeheartedly agree with you, and actually find myself carrying certain terminologies from a different thread into this one (My apologies). I had recently started a thread regarding the effectiveness of the pure elemental class, not what they can do with the dangerous monk secondary. I should have mentioned that I meant pure elementalists. =) Seems like some of this might change with the next balances tho.

Well there is also for great justice, warrior cunning, and fear me, with a situational wild blow. Any of these can easily fill out the remaining slots and still add to the melee aspect of the build. Beyond that, there seems like there is nothing else that is effective for the slots available or could be done by another character with a greater effect.

This leads to the feeling of only one way to build a warrior and contributes to how warriros are countered.

Hmmm...I get confused after the second negative...maybe that's why I couldn't think of it myself

Cali, I probably shouldn't have said all the time. I'll go with you saying that most people do end up doing the same builds. But, some people are Johnnys and go creative. Sometimes an original build will mess things up. I'm a Johnny, and I mainly play Arenas anyway, so I'm probably seeing this whole thing from a different perspective. But anyhow, this is a thread about Eviscerate/Cleave, so I'll leave it at that and let the big boys figure it out.

Most ways warriors are countered are countered by said warrior's teammates. A good warrior on your team is too valuable to allow him to be hindered, therefore it is completely worthwhile for other teammates to bring various skills to assist him where he lacks. My favorite warrior build is a war/nec axe warrior (And yes, eviscerate is my holy elite), because plague touch basically nullifies conditions against me. Therefore my teammates merely need some form of hex removal, and I'm free to go about my business.

Therefore, we may actually be entering a time when there ARE only a few ways to build a warrior. Please take into account this includes the majority, and does not include certain radical builds like "Fear Me" Warrior teams, or anything like that.

(And Savio, I agree, I'm dropping out of this thread as well. Ensign, my apologies for cluttering your thread with slightly off topic discussion.)

did you take into account that it's possible for eviscerate to be blocked by guardian or some such skill? it takes much longer to recharge than a cleave would, and if you're trying to finish someone that is at about 30% hp, you need as much damage as quickly as possible.

Averaging out the misses from repeate cleaves still tips the favor for eviserate. In the off chance that it was blocked evaded on the hit you needed to kill, it still would have been blocked and evaded, but you would have done less damage up to that point using cleave.

well how bout swift chop anyone? deep wound and dmg
then wild blow

well for all those cleave fans out there, (altho i prefer the deep wound on evis) i used to use this combo for assasinating the guild lord in gvg:
w/n putting up continous dark fury (also cleave axer and buffs his health with demonic flesh and endure pain, will also receive boost from w/mo's vital blessing)
w/r using cleave and penetrating and dismember and fgj (for great justice)
w/mo with vital blessing (axe cleaver with charge!, to the limit fgj)

this combo basically allows the warriors to put up an almost non stop chain of cleaves and penetrating attacks while still getting the deep wound on the target, this is because cleave charges almost instantly and once you use your cleave, penetrating charges.
so you can do normal attack, cleave, penetrating, cleave, penetrating, etc for a duration of 15 seconds. pretty decent dmg output, with grenths balance it'll take out the guild lord in about 13 seconds if properly played
the problem was it was almost impossible to time grenths correctly to max dmg so i scrapped the build since it only worked about 70% of the time, but i'd like to see someone make a good cleave build out of it so im hopin for comments

[I'm skipping over pages 2 and 3 because I just want to make this point, so I apologize if it was made on those pages.]

The reason I think that eviscerate is better than cleave can be seen if you look at this situation from the perspective of a healer. The way healers operate is by healing people when they need it, ie. when their health is either dropping rapidly, or is just low. Monks get their energy from their 4 pips of regeneration (typically speaking, I'm not a fan of the boon template in PvP, and why would a healer be running enchantments?). What this means is that, because of their energy regen, they have a certain ability to heal over time, whether thru chunks (Orison, Other, etc.), enchantments (Seed, Hands), or HoT's (Breeze). I'm going to ignore the second type for now and just lump the first and third types together.

The reason eviscerate is better than cleave is because of the spikes, as Ensign has repeatedly said. With cleave, you won't be doing as much damage in a small timeframe (2-3 hits) as you would with eviscerate in the same timeframe, so that means the monk has that much more time to heal someone under an axe warrior running cleave (opposed to a warrior with eviscerate). Put simply, eviscerate uses its huge spikes to kill the target before the monk can even react with a heal. This is better not only from the pure spiking perspective, but because if you're in a battle that has raged on for a while, chances are the enemy's monks are going to run low on energy sooner or later. Adrenaline is always in constant supply unless you can't hit a target, so in that sense, adrenaline-based damage dealers will have a slight advantage over energy-dependent monks. What this means is that with eviscerate's spike, you have a better chance of catching a monk low or out of energy, and then you can finish off your target quickly without leaving room for healing. With cleave, you may do more damage over time, but that kind of damage is easier to manage for monk healers than it is for them to manage spike damage. Thus the popularity of the air ele spike build. This type of view applies to HoT's and chunk heals, and shows why eviscerate is especially effective against HoT's. (In those 10+ seconds breeze takes to heal, you might get a spike just big enough to outdamage the healing, whereas your numbers with cleave will be more consistent, but you won't get the spike that you need to put your target at 0.)

Now as for heals that work from a per-hit basis like healing seed and healing hands. Let's say you have a 16 healing monk vs. a 16 healing axe warrior. We've seen already that in terms of raw damage over time, cleave works a bit better, but not really a noticable amount. Cleave has in its sequence of attacks less regular hits and more attack skills. Seed and hands heal for +32 for each hit. So, what that means is that unless you do more than 32 damage with your attack, you're not gonna get anywhere. This is sort of a toss-up, really. With cleave, you'll be getting to use it more often, so you'll have more hits that overtake that +32 heal mark, whereas with eviscerate, you'll have to swing more to get your skills charged up, so you'll have less attacks getting over the 32 mark, thus healing your target in between the spikes. But, the deal breaker is deep wound. Unless I'm gravely mistaken, deep wound cuts the effectiveness of healing by 20%. This means that your 32-damage mark just dropped to 25.6, which means that you'll most likely outdamage cleave because you'll have dropped the heal per hit amount by 6.4. Over time, that 6.4 will really add up.

It's not really fair in terms of a strict by-the-numbers comparison to throw in this healing variable, but we're looking at these two skills from a by-the-numbers perspective to enhance our perspective of these two skills IN GAME, so in the wider perspective of the PvP game, this point is very relevant, and essentially drives home why eviscerate is better than cleave in most, if not all, situations.

well realy cleave(4 adren) is a cheap +26 (max) extra dmg where
eviscerate is executioners strike+43 (max) + deepwound and it's 7 adren 1 less than normal executiioners
so realy eviscerate owns all muhahaha

I play Cleave over Evisc when soloing the Grawl outside of port sledge Thats about it. The rest of the time I run Evisc including all PvP situations. The Grawl Ulodytes have Plague Signet {E} and I really don't like Deep Wounding myself constantly

ARRRRGGHHGGHG!

do you expect me to read all of that?

Yes, if you take the Cleave vs Eviscerate thing seriously.

I know I wasn't going to touch this thread again, but things have changed with the update and whatnot. I'm still going to be running Eviscerate, but how much more DPS does Cleave gain under the new rules?

Well, as i can say, Frenzy was ''bugged'' it did +50% attack speed they lowered it to +33%...

Só people have to start recalculating