Originally Posted by
soulholder
Don't get me wrong; I think dagger crit giant will be the best PvP build in the game from snatch and its raw damage scaling. I've been saying that ;)
The thing is, realistically, do you see yourself actually dealing damage uncontested for ten continuous seconds on an avenger? When I last played R:BF, Order Swing provided 7% per hit for 40s, and KS which ignored even more defense and had higher scaling with 4 melee attack per 1 str instead of 0.6 : 1 (an 85% reduction in damage innately and 40% less per stat than dex : RA) which even got better scaling on a higher-speed CS on higher base attack speed than guardian has now due to the lack of attack speed reduction on dual wield, with strictly worse crit scaling, was still only barely able to really come close to inflicting a OHKO at the full end of its duration. That's WAY more damage than 10% at 10s can inflict At a crap example of 1 attack per second, you're looking at 1.07^40 (14.697) vs 1.1^10 (2.59), and the guard in R:BF had way better ways to keep its damage going from better/more CC and Stone Skin which is no longer available for them, and an extended Protection of Roha to cover the full duration So even if we assume the guard gets denied of hits for 30s of the 40 from debuffing roha and getting CC-locked, it's still doing much better than it would now. I agree that avenger will be a potent endgame build, but understand that the nature of katars suggests that the damage per hit will be substantially less than you think, especially starting out, given the fairly mediocre nature of katar weapon damage and lack of attack speed modifier to scale the AA's.
I just don't think people are realizing how important weapon damage is; in those other servers, people had like 30k+ attack. We're looking at a perfect build here on a maxed-out ranger with objectively some of the highest attack force numbers possible probably having something like 9k. Until stats started getting very inflated in R:BF, str dhan was either played predator for Ruin trap or basically a PvE build.
In the 1v1 you neglect to consider the ranged silence and toxic potion and literally permanent CC locking it can do from range, 50% of which literally cannot be removed or negated as it's mobility stat denial. The ranger also has no real combo anymore which makes it much harder to negate its damage, and has (ranged) buff removal, so getting into something like a siege/speed combo and countering that really isn't a concern. Cooldowns for offensive abilities are much shorter than defensive ones like damage negation and so on. The Guard, avenger, and giant can't engage if they're silenced, nor can they rebuff. None of them can get any damage in while they are. None can heal or fake death or negate damage at that point, either. Strip Shot, if it acts like it did in R:BF will ignore all damage negation bonuses including immunity effects, as well.
Murder Shot is also the rough equivalent to DPP and a little extra. While it may not crit, that's the point of the weapon damage bonus; it's so substantial it may still outdamage a critical MS/crit on DPP. Even the 100% dex:crit damage from Fatal which stacks into attack-force-related hits will likely have less damage throughput than weapon damage. And it's also why I don't think there's so much value in a crit build for the crossbow (Vital Point is also a waste of skill points - 10% crit damage level 7 is horrible); other classes will likely deal similar damage on their crit builds. They won't be able to pump such insane raw numbers from 70% WA, though.
Don't get me wrong, I still think the ranger in GvG will not have value and will thus instantly die in most cases due to its lack of any form of defense aside from its single-target CC. I do suspect that it will be a top-notch duelist and math-wise at the moment have the best burst in the game, while having value for the 1v1 just from its capacity to keep a target literally permanently locked down with only 4s intervals every 10s where a cleanse effect could actually do anything whatsoever, to which WF will share a cooldown with their release and they can just be kited out. Ranger has historically been skill-intensive, and it definitely got a lot harder, but I think in the right hands it will provide noteworthy numbers.
It could be that the state of the game is too volatile to make these predictions now, but I don't see much changing in the foreseeable future, honestly.
