I wanted to check a few things out on my damage output during my normal fighting routines as well as check out the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 skirmishes. I also figured this would be a good opportunity to explain to folks a little bit about Cstats. Cstats can be used for a variety of things, but essentially it is a damage parser, you can understand precisely how much damage you do and how much the mobs do. So if can be used to compare classes, items, trait builds, strategies, skill rotations, and probably much more.
Cstats is pretty straightforward – download it here, and then while in game follow these steps to enable combat logging in game (assuming you still use the combat chat tab). Go fight some stuff, and then in Cstats use the File –> Start Parsing option and point to the created log file in your LOTRO install folder, as shown here. After that, you should have a presentation of all your fights contained in your log file. One thing to point out with regards to skirmishes, there is an acknowledged bug in Cstats that it doesn’t include Herbalist healing – which is disappointing, but I know my herbalist is doing her job. Looking at the update frequency, hopefully that will get hammered out soon enough. If you’re not a numbers geek like me, jump to the bottom for the video 😉
My examples here are from 2 separate skirmish runs – one at Tier 1 and the other Tier 2.
In the below shot shot you can see the DPS for every mob/person in the log file – now I’m not sure that the pure DPS number showing for me is 100% accurate as that number looks at tad high 😉 However, I am targeting multiple mobs and have lots of DoTs running all the time so I’m usually damaging at least 2 mobs at a time which does inflate my numbers. Back to the plot, you can now see which mobs are more damaging and by how much. This is also good for comparing incoming damage between fights, skirmish tiers, trait setups, equipement, etc.
Now looking at the same output from a Tier 2 skirmish:
While my damage is higher (I think I’m just trying much harder in this one) notice that the incoming damage from the mobs is also MUCH higher. Which shows pretty well the difference between the tiers in that not only do the mobs hit harder but they have 50% more morale too. Also, as the following charts will show all my attacks do significantly less damage on average, look at quick thrust as an example.
So now drilling down a bit more (this similar view is available when clicking the + sign on any other line) you can see every attack I use and the damage from them. Some real nice things here for a warden in that I can see my DoTs, my spear procs, auto-attacks, and then all my other skills.
So, this chart below shows my attack damage for the Tier 2 skirmish (above is the same but for the Tier 1 skirmish)– and you’ll notice my default melee attack is significantly lower (then the tier 1 skirmish) in both %damage and %attacks (confirming that I was trying harder) but really both of these show that my various bleeds really were making a HUGE difference. If you watch any of my videos, I pretty much have 4 DoTs working at all times and that accounts for about 30% of my damage! I also pull multiple mobs and make sure I try to keep those DoTs ticking on all of them as much as possible. So if you’re not using DoTs and AoEs as a warden you’re losing a LOT of damage. In theory you would expect %acts to be comparable to %dmg but if either of those are skewed one way or the other you might want to change how you use that skill. The one that stands out is the line for DoTs but remember each DoT that is applied by a warden has a certain number of “ticks” in that the damage is applied 6 times (for me, I use 2 traits to increase this from the standard 4 ticks) so yes they’re applied a lot, but I’m not actively applying them that often. And in looking at it per application they’re only 8% of my actions but 28% of my damage!
Now for an individual attack you can see a graph of every hit, and how often they hit that number. So, it really allows you to look at what attacks are better/worse or maybe which ones you use too often that you should remove from your rotation. You can also get a feel for which mobs are more resistant to various damage types if you wanted to since these are broken out per mob.
There’s lots more that you can do with Cstats but just these few things are real handy for me as it helps track down and understand how you perform in various battles. All of these reports can be saved and exported if you want to do further crunching, but I’m quite happy to use it in this fashion. I’ll probably log some more fights just to see how things chance with different skirmishes, group fights, single mob pulls, etc.
So just looking at these 2 skirmishes I feel pretty confident that I have a decent DPS output and that DoTs are a huge portion of it. Also, I’m pretty confident that this is a huge step up from Moria as I used to not allow auto-attacks in my rotations and still using my same flow/style but you’ll see I still get about 20% damage from my auto-attacks.
As promised, here’s another video from me in the skirmishes – I’m not sure how these guys fit in the lore, but they just look really cool 😉 This is a skirmish encounter from my Tier 2 fight “The Battle in the Tower” which is part of the battle up Dol Goldur. And yes you’ll notice my healer actually doing stuff 😉
Recent Comments