Numbers for the Cleave / Eviscerate Debate

[Ensign]

Not that I really think it's a debate - the gratuitious spike damage from Eviscerate is the scariest thing an Axe has to offer. But the mathematics behind the over time debate have a lot of useful information that I'd like to go over.

First off, an adrenal attack *does* charge itself. So while every adrenal skill is going to require an extra hit up front, over time a given skill can be used as often as its adrenal cost. Cleave gets used every four hits, Eviscerate every 7. Since that first hit is universal it doesn't skew the balance for anyone and can safely be ignored.

Since we're working over time we're interested in average damage. Since every Axe Warrior worth talking about has a 16 in Axe Mastery we'll use that as our basis, with a 10 in Strength as that's a pretty typical value for that attribute. The critical hit percentage of an axe at level 16 is roughly 24% (critical percentage is roughly 1.5% * attribute level for level 20 on level 20, with a minimum chance of around 1-2%. The percentage when there's a level disparity is a nightmare that I'm still working on.)

Thus we get these numbers:

Average Axe Hit (No Skill): 35.55 damage
Average Axe Skill (No Bonus Damage): 39.44 damage
Average Cleave: 65.44 damage
Average Eviscerate: 81.44 damage
Average Penetrating Blow: 64.76 damage
Average Executioner's Strike: 81.44 damage

It's trivial to get the average per hit damage if you only have one of these skills, being spammed as often as it comes up. It's just the damage from the skill, plus the damage from all of the strikes up to that skill (adrenaline cost -1 times), divided by the adrenal cost of the skill:

Average Cleave Series: 43.02 Damage
Average Eviscerate Series: 42.10 Damage
Average Penetrating Blow Series: 41.39 Damage
Average Executioner's Strike Series: 41.28 Damage

Or in terms of the bonus:

Average Cleave Bonus: 7.47 Damage
Average Eviscerate Bonus: 6.56 Damage
Average Penetrating Bonus: 5.84 Damage
Average Executioner's Bonus: 5.74 Damage

So if you're just using a single attack elite, Cleave will eke out just over an extra DPS over Eviscerate under Frenzy.


With me so far? Good. Now it's time to start mixing in multiple attack skills. Again, we're using attaks as often as they come up and averaging over the number of attacks.

For two adrenal skills with adrenaline costs A1 and A2, the maximally efficient over time attack chain involves ((A1-1)*(A2-1)) normal attacks, (A2-1) uses of adrenal skill #1, and (A1-1) uses of adrenal skill #2. Dividing by the number of total attacks gives the following average damages:

Average Cleave + Penetrating Series: 46.45 Damage
Average Cleave + Executioner's Series: 46.74 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Penetrating Series: 46.10 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Executioner's Series: 46.39 Damage
Average Penetrating + Executioner's Series: 45.50 Damage

Or in terms of the bonus:

Average Cleave + Penetrating Bonus: 10.91 Damage
Average Cleave + Executioner's Bonus: 11.19 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Penetrating Bonus: 10.56 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Executioner's Bonus: 10.85 Damage
Average Penetrating + Executioner's Bonus: 9.95 Damage

The gap between Cleave and Eviscerate narrows when you add a second skill to the mix, and Executioner's, while slightly weaker than Penetrating over time by itself, is suddenly a noticible upgrade. What changed? The interactions between the adrenal skills.

When you're using more than one adrenal skill, each of your adrenal skills is used less frequently than it would be if it was the only adrenal skill on your bar. This is simply because each use of an adrenal skill costs you a strike of adrenaline from each of your skills, and even though you'll get that strike back if the attack hits you're just breaking even.

The lower an adrenal skill's cost, the more frequently it is used, and the bigger a tax it puts upon the rest of your adrenal skills. On the other hand, attacks with a high adrenal cost are used less frequently, and end up having a much smaller impact on your other attack skills. On the other hand, the higher cost adrenal skills are hit harder by the more spammable attack skills - the needier attacks get spammed more often, and the high cost skills take longer and longer to charge.

Some attack percentages to illustrate:

Cleave % when used alone: 25%
Cleave % with Penetrating Attack: 21.05%
Cleave % with Executioner's Strike: 22.58%
Eviscerate % when used alone: 14.3%
Eviscerate % with Penetrating Attack: 11.76%
Eviscerate % with Executioner's Strike: 12.73%

Cleave Usage Reduction from Penetrating Attack: 15.79%
Cleave Usage Reduction from Executioner's Strike: 9.68%
Eviscerate Usage Reduction from Penetrating Attack: 17.65%
Eviscerate Usage Reduction from Executioner's Strike: 10.91%

So Eviscerate, with its higher adrenal cost, gets cut into more by adding another skill than Cleave, while Penetrating Attack cuts into the effectiveness of your elite more than Executioner's Strike. Cleave, of course, similarly cuts into the effectiveness of your other attack skills.

From this the initial numbers start to make more sense - While Cleave and Penetrating Attack were the best two by themselves, their low adrenal costs conflict with each other and create for a much weaker combination overall. Eviscerate and Executioner's Strike, on the other hand, interfere with each other minimally so their combination is that much stronger.

What's telling in the debate is how close all of these numbers are. The elite spammable Cleave, in combination with the low impact Executioner's, is only 1.24 damage per hit stronger than just using the two non-elite attacks.


Ok, now it's time for the show: mixing up three damage skills for maximum damage output.

Same assumptions as before - you use your adrenal skills as often as possible. The math is a little messy. For adrenal skills 1, 2, and 3 with adrenaline costs A1, A2, and A3, respectively, you end up with an attack series containing ((A1-1)*(A2-1)*(A3-1)) normal attacks, ((A2-1)*(A3-1)) uses of skill 1, ((A1-1)*(A3-1)) uses of skill 2, and ((A1-1)*(A2-1)) uses of skill 3. Divide by the total attacks for the average damage. That gives us the following combinations:

Average Cleave + Penetrating + Executioner's Series: 49.35 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Penetrating + Executioner's Series: 49.34 Damage

and bonuses:

Average Cleave + Penetrating + Executioner's Bonus: 13.80 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Penetrating + Executioner's Bonus: 13.79 Damage

Virtually identical. What happened here? Cleave playing poorly with other damage skills really started to take a toll, it's spammability cutting into your other attack skills enough to wipe out any benefit you'd get over using the slower but more synergistic Eviscerate. While Cleave is still the best damage over time tool in a max damage configuration, it's grip on that distinction is tenuous at best.

There's one more set of numbers I'd like to go over since I think it demonstrates the all of the issues in one nice little package - an elite attack plus a normal attack, plus Disrupting Chop:

Average Cleave + Penetrating + Disrupting Series: 45.67 Damage
Average Cleave + Executioner's + Disrupting Series: 45.87 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Penetrating + Disrupting Series: 45.28 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Executioner's + Disrupting Series: 45.47 Damage

The bonus damage over normal attacks yet again:

Average Cleave + Penetrating + Disrupting Series: 10.12 Damage
Average Cleave + Executioner's + Disrupting Series: 10.32 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Penetrating + Disrupting Series: 9.73 Damage
Average Eviscerate + Executioner's + Disrupting Series: 9.93 Damage

And one last statistic - the percentage of your attacks that interrupt if you use all three attacks as often as they come up:

Disrupting Chop Percentage with Cleave + Penetrating: 11.21%
Disrupting Chop Percentage with Cleave + Executioner's: 11.93%
Disrupting Chop Percentage with Eviscerate + Penetrating: 12.37%
Disrupting Chop Percentage with Eviscerate + Executioner's: 13.25%

There's a lot to look at here so we'll go over it piece by piece. First off, all of the conbinations with Penetrating Blow are strictly worse than the combinations with Executioner's Strike - they do less damage and disrupt less often. The taxing effects of multiple adrenal attacks does that combination in, so we can pretty much ignore those.

If we look at the gap between the Cleave and Eviscerate combos, it actually widens by adding Disrupting Chop into the series. Why is that? Well look at what we know already. Lower cost adrenal skills weaken higher cost skills more than lower cost skills are weakened by higher cost ones. Cleave, being more spammable than Eviscerate, has it's damage boost toned down noticibly less than Eviscerate's. The difference is in the Disrupting Chop, as seen in the percentages. While Disrupting Chop weakens Cleave far less than Eviscerate, Cleave weakens Disrupting Chop far more than Eviscerate does. So in the whole, the effect is that the lower cost adrenal skills tend to express themselves more - in this case, Disrupting Chop is the dominant feature of a Chop + Eviscerate series, while Cleave is the key feature of its own series. Thus, Eviscerate creates a more disruptive chain with Disrupting Chop, while Cleave tends to keep its damage up better.


There are the numbers that are relevant to this debate. While they might not solve anything, they should at least serve as a guide, with the general principles outlined here giving some perspective on how these skills work, on their own and with each other.

Take care.

Peace,
-CxE


***Addendum - Adrenaline Boosts***

The use of adrenaline boosting skills can create some interesting chains, since hitting with an adrenal attack will end up charging your other adrenal skills in the process. This section will look at triple-attack chains while under two excellent adrenaline buffs, "For Great Justice!" and Dark Fury.

Under "For Great Justice!" you'll gain 150% of normal adrenaline from each hit (the skill description is bugged). Because of the fractional adrenaline costs and gains, it takes several hits for you to establish a repeating rhythm with multiple attack skills. There are several repeating sequences you can use, but the ones with the highest average damage output for each skill are as follows:

Cleave:

Hit, Cleave, Hit, Penetrating, Cleave, Hit, Executioner's, Cleave, Hit, Penetrating, Cleave, Hit, Hit, Cleave, Executioner's, Penetrating.

Average Damage of the Cleave Sequence: 56.10 Damage Per Hit

Eviscerate:

Hit, Hit, Penetrating, Hit, Eviscerate, Hit, Executioner's, Penetrating, Hit, Hit, Eviscerate, Penetrating, Hit, Hit, Executioner's, Penetrating, Hit, Eviscerate, Hit, Penetrating, Hit, Hit, Executioner's, Eviscerate, Penetrating, Hit, Hit, Hit, Eviscerate, Penetrating, Executioner's.

Average Damage for the Eviscerate Sequence: 55.47 Damage Per Hit

So Cleave comes out slightly ahead under sustained use of "For Great Justice!".


Then there's Dark Fury, which gives you an extra strike of adrenaline with each hit you land. Like with "For Great Justice!", there are several repeating options that you can use but these are the best ones:

For Cleave:

Hit, Cleave, Penetrating, Hit, Cleave, Hit, Executioner's, Cleave, Penetrating, Hit, Cleave, Hit, Cleave, Executioner's, Penetrating, Hit, Cleave, Hit, Cleave, Penetrating, Executioner's.

Average Damage of the Cleave Sequence: 57.63 Damage Per Hit

For Eviscerate:

Hit, Hit, Eviscerate, Penetrating, Hit, Executioner's, Hit, Eviscerate, Penetrating, Hit, Hit, Executioner's, Eviscerate, Penetrating, Hit, Hit, Eviscerate, Penetrating, Executioner's.

Average Damage of the Eviscerate Sequence: 58.61 Damage Per Hit

Which elite is better under an adrenaline boost? On the whole an adrenaline boost doesn't affect either elite more. Which elite comes out ahead in numical analysis depends entirely upon which sustainable sequence you choose to use, and each one fluctuates by 1-2 damage per hit. In other words, one performing better than the other under an adrenal boost is a product of noise, not one being fundamentally superior under an adrenal boost, so just use the results without an adrenal boost when making your comparisons.

[pagansaint]

VERY nice info.

Good reference for making builds using bonuses from secondary since their durations would effect the series for each combo deifferently.

I'd say sticky this and make one for the popular sword and hammer attacks each. :D

If you need help crunching numbers I'll do some if you do decide to do that.

[Allmightybob]

Why did they nerf Cleave and adrenaline gain? Wasn't it enough to nerf the conjures and Warrrior's Cunning (among some other things)? I just never remembered warriors being complained about alot in beta, except the W/Mo....... which was a class of it's own.

[coleslawdressin]

Since every Axe Warrior worth talking about has a 16 in Axe Mastery we'll use that as our basis,


Ensign, have my babiez plx ;) nice info

[entropy]

... I'm sry but i didn't understand much of it after reading it 4 times I got up to Understood it till their. Got a bit into what you meant about the skills weakening

So if you're just using a single attack elite, Cleave will eke out just over an extra DPS over Eviscerate under Frenzy
Then it went down hill with the percentages. lol

[Tigris Of Gaul]

So, if you're an axe warrior, what're the best skills for you to use in a spike, in order? Eviscerate, Executioner's, Penetrating? Where should the Deep Wound come into play?

[Tuna]

Muwahaha, I was right, cleave does better in the 3 adren dmg skill setup by .01 dps! Take that eviserate lovers :p

[White Designs]

... I'm sry but i didn't understand much of it after reading it 4 times I got up to Understood it till their. Got a bit into what you meant about the skills weakening

So if you're just using a single attack elite, Cleave will eke out just over an extra DPS over Eviscerate under Frenzy
Then it went down hill with the percentages. lol

Basically, the math says that Eviscerate is a much better choice.

[pagansaint]

eviscerate should be the first skill used in the spike chain, doing even "more" damage with its deepwound by decreasing max hitpoints by 20%

At the end of the chain adding axe rake would be wise, after that they'll want to run. ;)

[ElderAtronach]

Ensign: was the 20% max health from deep wound figured into average damage calculations with eviscerate? If not, then from the math (if it's correct) eviscerate would be the better elite to take, if only for the deep wound. On a teambuild, I think I'd only have one person bring evisc while any other axe warriors would bring cleave for the extra (if slight) DPS over time.

[varyag]

Since every Axe Warrior worth talking about has a 16 in Axe Mastery


Nice article except this unsupported line. I recall reading about damage amplification with attributes - you reach 100% at a certain number, at 9% increments, and then the increment drops to +4.5% damage per point and isn't really worth it.

Insignificant increase for skills compared to the sacrifice.

[White Designs]

Critical Hits are why you always want 16 in the primary weapon attribute.

[Ensign]

So, if you're an axe warrior, what're the best skills for you to use in a spike, in order? Eviscerate, Executioner's, Penetrating? Where should the Deep Wound come into play?

I'm of the belief that the Deep Wound needs to come the attack before the fatal blow. This is because the health loss from a Deep Wound does not trigger until the next hit on the target (bug?), so putting it on the target right before the killing blow gives you the strongest 'spike', as well as giving your opponent the least time to remove the Deep Wound. So to spike the hardest, I'd want to use Penetrating, Eviscerate, then Executioner's Strike, in that order. Eviscerate -> Executioner's is the strongest spike available, and I can see arguements for putting the Penetrating on either end of it (whittle them down a bit before the big spike, or get a stronger hit to finish 'em off if the spike doesn't do it)


Muwahaha, I was right, cleave does better in the 3 adren dmg skill setup by .01 dps! Take that eviserate lovers :p

It's actually 0.009881381 damage per *hit* better. Total WTFPWNage if I ever saw it.


Ensign: was the 20% max health from deep wound figured into average damage calculations with eviscerate?

No, that's just raw damage. The 20% health drop from Eviscerate, or the constant re-application of Deep Wound on the target over time, was left out of these numbers entirely.


If not, then from the math (if it's correct) eviscerate would be the better elite to take

Yep.


On a teambuild, I think I'd only have one person bring evisc while any other axe warriors would bring cleave for the extra (if slight) DPS over time.

That's the popular viewpoint. Personally, I don't understand why someone would give up the ability to absolutely mangle someone with upwards of 200 damage in less than a second, as well as weaken all of their other adrenal skills, for .5 DPS or whatever trivial over time boost they might get from Cleave. Can anyone explain why anyone would play Cleave over Eviscerate, well, ever?

Peace,
-CxE

[Phades]

Nice article except this unsupported line. I recall reading about damage amplification with attributes - you reach 100% at a certain number, at 9% increments, and then the increment drops to +4.5% damage per point and isn't really worth it.

Insignificant increase for skills compared to the sacrifice.
Spreading the points around on a warrior doesnt make alot of sense, due to the nature of most other skill lines not having a lasting effect in amplifying the damage. There are a select few that do, but are better used on a different character, which allows the warrior to focus on moving and applying melee attacks.

[Blackace]

The reason for 16 attribute isnt for the attack damage from regular weapon swings, its for the damage on attack skills.

[Ensign]

Nice article except this unsupported line. I recall reading about damage amplification with attributes - you reach 100% at a certain number, at 9% increments, and then the increment drops to +4.5% damage per point and isn't really worth it.

Raw weapon damage is boosted by 9.05% per attribute level until attribute 12. After that, it's boosted by 3.53% per attribute level, for a net base damage bonus of 14.87% You also get another four attribute levels worth of damage out of your attack skills, and your critical hit chance rises from 18% at level 12 to 24% at level 16. Not counting the skills, you're looking at an aggregate 18.86% damage boost from going to level 16 over level 12.

An average Eviscerate / Executioner's Spike at 12/12 Weapon/Strength will deal 127.35 damage. That same spike at 16/10 deals 153.09 damage. That's a 20.2% damage increase. For the sake of comparison, the difference between a level 16 Chain Lightning and a level 12 Chain Lightning is 29.3% damage.


Insignificant increase for skills compared to the sacrifice.

What are you sacrificing? Tactics? Not a whole lot of skills you want there. Strength? The passive benefit is trivial and you get a bigger boost from your weapon skills, too. Health for the Superior rune? Please. Your secondary attribute? Just what are you doing that requires a secondary attribute level over 10? No, running a PvP Warrior without 16 in his weapon attribute is akin to running an Air Spiker without 16 in Air Magic - the only 'sacrifice' is when you're not dealing max damage because you wanted to be cute. Real Warriors pump that weapon to 16 and never look back.

Peace,
-CxE

[ElderAtronach]

That's the popular viewpoint. Personally, I don't understand why someone would give up the ability to absolutely mangle someone with upwards of 200 damage in less than a second, as well as weaken all of their other adrenal skills, for .5 DPS or whatever trivial over time boost they might get from Cleave. Can anyone explain why anyone would play Cleave over Eviscerate, well, ever?

Correct me if I'm wrong but deep wound doesn't stack. If there are multiple axe warriors (hypothetical) focus hitting a single target in an 8v8 situation, wouldn't the extra deep wound effects be wasted? You yourself recommend deep wound be put on the next-to-last hit on the target, so I would think that the extra bit of DPS from Cleave chains would make it a quicker finish.

On the other hand, would tasking the warriors to each go after a separate target and destroy them with evisc be more effective?

[Blackace]

Spike different targets. A buffed axe warrior with Eviscerate and Penetrating Blow does have the ability to solo a monk.

[Tuna]

I've been able to solo most monks with a buffed cleave warrior, but it looks like I'm gonna have to switch to eviscerate now :p

[Ensign]

Correct me if I'm wrong but deep wound doesn't stack. If there are multiple axe warriors (hypothetical) focus hitting a single target in an 8v8 situation, wouldn't the extra deep wound effects be wasted?

Yep. The second Deep Wound doesn't do anything. That really doesn't bother me but I guess it bothers some people.


so I would think that the extra bit of DPS from Cleave chains would make it a quicker finish.

That's where the misunderstanding is, then. The extra DPS that everyone seems to care so much about only matters over the very long term. Over the course of 30 seconds, with Frenzy running nonstop against a stationary target, Cleave + Executioner's is going to deal around 12 more damage than Eviscerate + Executioner's. When you're looking at dealing well over 1500 damage in that timeframe, I don't think that +12 damage is particularly relevant.

Now, what I do find interesting is the amount of damage that a Warrior can deal in less than a second. That would be a Cleave/Eviscerate followed by an Executioner's Strike while under Frenzy. Eviscerate is going to deal 16 more damage in that one second spike than Cleave will.

If you want to be more abstract and actually look at the long term plan, instead of spiking people out, I still think that Eviscerate is better. Why? Because dropping a Deep Wound on your target four times over the course of 30 seconds is going to do a whole lot more than an extra 12 damage. More guys on the same target? More Deep Wounds to remove. We're talking about 12 damage on a target that's taking 1500+ damage per Warrior.

Personally? I'd use Eviscerate over Cleave even if it didn't give Deep Wound. Sustained damage over time isn't nearly as scary as gross damage spikes, and Eviscerate simply does spike better. If I had 3 Axe Warriors on the same target, I'd prefer that they all had Eviscerate, and used it all at the same time, because that's 32 more damage to pile onto a spike in under a second.


On the other hand, would tasking the warriors to each go after a separate target and destroy them with evisc be more effective?

If I wanted to do that I'd use hammers. Hammers are for getting solo kills because they bring their own disruption. Axes are for WTFPWNing people with gross damage spikes in focus fire situations. Cleave is for...eh, I really don't know what Cleave is for. That's why I don't use it.

Peace,
-CxE

[wolfy3455]

Correct me if I'm wrong but deep wound doesn't stack. If there are multiple axe warriors (hypothetical) focus hitting a single target in an 8v8 situation, wouldn't the extra deep wound effects be wasted? You yourself recommend deep wound be put on the next-to-last hit on the target, so I would think that the extra bit of DPS from Cleave chains would make it a quicker finish.

On the other hand, would tasking the warriors to each go after a separate target and destroy them with evisc be more effective?
The thing is that extra DPS overall is very small compared to what you lose in spikes.The deep wounds won't stack but combined with another axe warrior spiking, eviscerate has a much greater chance of taking down the target.

[Sarus]

Correct me if I'm wrong but deep wound doesn't stack. If there are multiple axe warriors (hypothetical) focus hitting a single target in an 8v8 situation, wouldn't the extra deep wound effects be wasted?
In a perfect world yes, the deep wounds would be wasted. In the real world deep wounds get removed so having 3 guys constantly applying them is probably the better way to go. If those deep wounds are getting removed it's also costing their monks 5 energy a shot :)

[ElderAtronach]

Very informative.

Just out of curiosity, what did Cleave do before it was nerfed?

[Blackace]

the same thing iirc, just it used to cost like 2 adrenaline.

[Mandy Memory]

anyone wanna calc in the deep wound against a warrior with 480 health?
i think this would put evicerate on top because that comes out to a....actually i dont know

how exactly do deep wounds work?

[Zelnox]

Hehe, poor Cleave* then.

Could you please do an analysis for swords too? ^_^

[Blackace]

DW is -20% of max hp applied to the target's current health. So a character at 500 max hp loses 100 health to both max hp and it lowers their current hp by the same also.

[Mandy Memory]

okay more specifically what happens when it wears off....does the health get remultiplied or what....for a little while i noticed that the health went the other way and the damage got multiplied again(twas quite devistating when i noticed i killed someone by using sever then gash....then switching targets....this was in pve tho...)

[LoneDust]

when deepo wound wears off, the target regains the 20% health.

[Ensign]

Just out of curiosity, what did Cleave do before it was nerfed?

It was a 2 Adrenaline attack that added 17 damage per use at level 16. That proved to be a scary amount of damage, so it was nerfed to 4A. That of course was weak, so the damage got buffed up to what it is now.

Also, Eviscerate recieved a slight buff just before retail, from 34 max to 42 max, I believe.

Peace,
-CxE

[Jake]

Good article, I've always sorta had an intuition that low cost spammable adrenaline skills weren't good due to the fact that it interferes with your other skills. Never really went indepth with it though. Cleave needs a buff! :) Even if cleave had a decent dps lead there'd still be the lack of saving a skill slot for deepwound factor holding it back. It's just all around not even remotely close to eviscerate. Spike factor is always important and that alone is basically enough to warrant evis over cleave even if you have 3+ warriors.

A good potential article to me would be whether or not it's beneficial enough to bother going with a swords warrior to combo with an eviscerate spiker or just to stick with 2 axers. Only problem is I don't know what elite to use to go with galrath/FT. I guess hundred blades would suffice, just swap out the 3 skill combo from axes with those 3 sword skills and see how the damage matches up.

Hopefully Anet starts reworking skills... I think warriors are on the road to becoming very one-dimensional soon...

[Makkert]

And the high quality information of Ensign/iQ just keeps coming...
I can only imagine the tedious testing it took to come up with these numbers.
I take my hat of for you.
thank you for this information.

~ Makk.

[dog13000]

way too much time on your hands

[Rey Lentless]

Good thread, but I'd like to see a couple more situations.

A cleave string with 4 attacks (maintaining the deep wound), and the eviscerate string with 3. Also like to see a 5 adrenal string (adding disrupting), and then the eviscerate string with 4.

I think when you're dealing with cleave, it has to be an additional attack you stick in the chain with adrenal buffers. You keep the attacks you have, and instead of eviscerate replacing dismember, you have cleave just being added in. That's how I personally use cleave builds.

[Genos]

Whoa very nice data here Ensign.. as to waht cleave is for, heres a little theroy - i currently dont have Evis, but i have grabbed me self cleave, and use it as my only true "attack" skill in the skill bar - i use a Zealots fire + Fear Me/Watch Yourself/Cyclone axe for the rest of damage.. nwo because of this, Cleave is much better - i can reguraly spam it, with good effect... however thats PvE, so who knows what Cleave is for in PvP.. In any case, nice post - Kudos to you for the number crunching!

[Louis Ste Colombe]

Very interesting data.

There is one assumption that, IMO, needs to be written in big bold italic whatever number, it's 10 in Strenght.

It would be interesting to see what result we would get with say 0 in Strenght, or with 12/13, and if that changes really anything.

I play mostly PvE, a warrior who take either Cleave or Evis... depending on ... well, overall feeling and what I got to do in the map. I am fully aware that PvE may not be the most interesting part of the game for you guys...

Still, I feel entitled to give my opinion.

If I go down to 0 in strenght, I go for Eviscerate and Executioner.

If I got 10 or more, and my job is to hold/kill mobs then my skill bar will be cyclone axe, penetrating, cleave... If I fight groups one by one, chance are cyclone axe will fills up penetrating and cleave right away, so I'd go; cyclone, penetrating, cleave, cyclone, penetrating, cleave, etc... With Strenght bonus applying to all attacks. With a normal size group (3/4 baddies), I can't get Evis or Executioner filled right away. In Ensign very interesting analysis, the missing part might be cyclone axe when it comes to adrenaline boost. At least for PvE. (for PvP... not sure you want to cyclone that much). With cyclone and in a very large mob environement, maybe eviscerate would be better, since the very large mob would provide the adrenaline.

If my job is to kill one specific target, who got some chances to be alone (like.... a priest in thirsty river to kill in 20 secs), I'd go for frenzy/ berserker stance, executioner, eviscerate, fill the adrenaline and spike :)
But, in PvE, it's not the most frequent situation.

Louis,

[Jak o]

I would say the main reason people use Cleave over Eviscerate is simple that Cleave is easier to unlock!!!

I have never heard of anyone in a pvp guild using Cleave that also had Eviscerate unlocked, but because there are hours of difference in unlocking Eviscerate compared to Cleave, it still get use from time to time (less efter faction was implemented though).

[Blackace]

Well, we just finished a long run in Team Arenas with me using a build to buff Ensign running an Axe warrior. There were some sickening 2 and 3 hit kills all night from Eviscerate+Executioner spikes.

[Asplode]

That's great, but at the same time you gotta take into consideration that cleave, other than having raw DPS, doesn't consolidate competitve damage with the utility of a deepwound chain. If you want to have good dps with cleave and at the same time you want to drop an axe rake in, you have to use three skill slots rather than the two you'd have with eviscerate. Why axe rake? How does it influence DPS? Well, until the cripple is removed, you won't lose DPS to chasing, and it's a cripple that requires no outside help.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that numbers are great, but in actual play, there's MUCH more going on than meets the eye. People run, people use protection spells, have different armor levels in different situations, you can lose adrenaline in one of many ways, etc.

[Ensign]

I'd like to see a couple more situations.

A cleave string with 4 attacks (maintaining the deep wound), and the eviscerate string with 3. Also like to see a 5 adrenal string (adding disrupting), and then the eviscerate string with 4.


Evisc + Penetrating + Exec
49.33823586

Cleave + Penetrating + Dismember + Exec
48.47575536

Evisc + Penetrating + Exec + Disrupting
48.21319771

Cleave + Penetrating + Dismember + Exec + Disrupting
47.61232552


I think when you're dealing with cleave, it has to be an additional attack you stick in the chain with adrenal buffers. You keep the attacks you have, and instead of eviscerate replacing dismember, you have cleave just being added in. That's how I personally use cleave builds.

Well Cleave + Dismember is worse in every way than just running Eviscerate, lower damage, worse on your adrenal skills, more skill slots - it's just suboptimal. The only reason you would even think about using Cleave is because you don't want the Deep Wound, and don't want to damage spike, and don't want to use other adrenal skills. Ah, I really can't tapdance around it, Cleave sucks, don't use it. =/


i use a Zealots fire + Fear Me/Watch Yourself/Cyclone axe for the rest of damage.. nwo because of this, Cleave is much better - i can reguraly spam it, with good effect...

You're using Cleave with Fear Me and Watch Yourself? Eviscerate is so much better than Cleave in that situation it isn't even funny. Your adrenaline is smoother, you'll deal more damage, you'll get free Deep Wounds on top of all of that, and you'll spike harder. I don't see how Cleave is better given what you've told me. In fact the only reason I'd even consider running Cleave in that build is exactly what you mentioned - you have yet to acquire Eviscerate.


There is one assumption that, IMO, needs to be written in big bold italic whatever number, it's 10 in Strenght.

It would be interesting to see what result we would get with say 0 in Strenght, or with 12/13, and if that changes really anything.

It really doesn't. The Cleave sequences gain roughly 8-10 damage per minute over Eviscerate sequences if you pump Strength up into the 11-13 range - The Eviscerate sequences gain 8-10 damage per minute over Cleave sequences if you drop down into the 5-7 range. I'm not sure of the break points because I haven't tested all the rounding, but the net result is not particularly significant.

In fact the insignificance of the differences is perhaps the most striking thing about these results - as far as damage over time goes there isn't a meaningful difference between the various adrenal axe attacks over long timeframes, so just take the ones with the most perks.


If I fight groups one by one, chance are cyclone axe will fills up penetrating and cleave right away, so I'd go; cyclone, penetrating, cleave, cyclone, penetrating, cleave, etc... With Strenght bonus applying to all attacks. With a normal size group (3/4 baddies), I can't get Evis or Executioner filled right away.

Well, I'm not about to run all of those permutations again with Cyclone Axe being used every fourth attack without any attack speed boost.

I will put this out there, though - Cyclone Axe does not help Cleave charge faster at all. No matter how many enemies you're fighting, you're going to get to use Cleave once every four attacks, so Cyclone Axe doesn't help Cleave in the slightest. What it does do is help you use other skills while using Cleave - Cyclone Axe hitting 3 targets per use will let you use Cleave at its normal frequency, and Penetrating Blow at an increased frequency as well. On the other hand, Cyclone Axe does help Eviscerate immensely, allowing it to be used more frequently, and thus making the skill proportionally better. From some cursory numbers it would appear that Eviscerate outperforms Cleave under Cyclone Axe, in terms of sustainable damage, as long as the number of targets hit by Cyclone Axe is greater than or equal to two.


the missing part might be cyclone axe when it comes to adrenaline boost.

Well it doesn't appear that way, but keep trying. The Cleave fanatics need to find some straw to grasp at, because accepting that they're using an inferior skill certainly isn't an option.


But, in PvE, it's not the most frequent situation.

Right, in PvE you're much more interested in sustainability that spiking because healing in PvE tends to be terrible and you just want to save resources. Which, of course, is what this analysis focused upon and the numbers are sitting out there for public consumption.


Peace,
-CxE

[Rieselle]

Hmmm, this might not be the time or place, but I wonder if swords, or low cost axe adren skills, have their place in builds that need more skill slots for other things?

Just to pull an example off the top of my head, would Cleave then be the skill to use if that was the only Adren skill you're carrying? As for what else you'd be carrying, I dunno... maybe a Mo/W packing multiple enchantments, or a E/W with armor spells+pbaoe spells or something.

As a side note, most people say that axes are superior in damage due to the skills that you can use for it. Does that mean swords are better if you are mostly using it for normal attacks, and are carrying a lot of other types of skills? For warrior secondaries, for example.

[Louis Ste Colombe]

It really doesn't. The Cleave sequences gain roughly 8-10 damage per minute over Eviscerate sequences if you pump Strength up into the 11-13 range - The Eviscerate sequences gain 8-10 damage per minute over Cleave sequences if you drop down into the 5-7 range. I'm not sure of the break points because I haven't tested all the rounding, but the net result is not particularly significant.

In fact the insignificance of the differences is perhaps the most striking thing about these results - as far as damage over time goes there isn't a meaningful difference between the various adrenal axe attacks over long timeframes, so just take the ones with the most perks.

That is indeed surprising. Does that mean Strenght is not working as advertised? or as I understand it (ie, on attack skills only, meaning that with high strenght it's better to have lot of skill attacks over a few powerfull attacks) ?
Or maybe % penetration of armour is overrated... Without hard number to suport it, I'd have thought the difference would have been wider. Thanks for having looked at that, given the range of difference (10dmg/ min), it's probably not worth spending a lot of times searching for the break point.


Well, I'm not about to run all of those permutations again with Cyclone Axe being used every fourth attack without any attack speed boost.

I will put this out there, though - Cyclone Axe does not help Cleave charge faster at all. No matter how many enemies you're fighting, you're going to get to use Cleave once every four attacks, so Cyclone Axe doesn't help Cleave in the slightest. What it does do is help you use other skills while using Cleave - Cyclone Axe hitting 3 targets per use will let you use Cleave at its normal frequency, and Penetrating Blow at an increased frequency as well. On the other hand, Cyclone Axe does help Eviscerate immensely, allowing it to be used more frequently, and thus making the skill proportionally better. From some cursory numbers it would appear that Eviscerate outperforms Cleave under Cyclone Axe, in terms of sustainable damage, as long as the number of targets hit by Cyclone Axe is greater than or equal to two.

Given cyclone axe recharge time (... well it would be too good otherwise), I *think* (need to check it) that there is time for 3 attacks in between 2 cyclones.

You are right that I can only Cleave once in between 2 cyclones and that makes Cleave happen only 1 per 4 attacks. Cyclone does not change cleave dps alone, but it does change cleave dps when combined with other adrenaline skills, mainly penetrating blow. If there were another non eliteaxe attack in 4/5 adrenaline cost ranges, it would be possible to get all attacks with attack skills and so get strenght bonus on all of them.

You mentionned the Cleave sequence beats the Eviscerate sequence with higher Strenght... Is that a hit/hit/hit/cleave sequence? or a mixed sequence with other adrenaline skills too? (which would make strenght probably more valuable then).

As far as cyclone axe helping Eviscerate immensly: no doubt, cyclone axe helps any adrenalin skills immensely!

What I am pointing at is: when using cyclone axe as a mean to gather adrenaline, I try to empty all adrenaline pools in between two cyclones... Because cyclone refill them up really well.

Given the average mob size, it's difficult to do that with 7/8 adrenaline cost skills. With that philosophy, and knowing that I don't gain adrenaline in between two cyclones (because I use adrenaline skills at every attack... or try to... so am locked in +1/-1=0 adrenaline gain), I have to wait for cyclone axe to recharge if I want to use eviscerate/executioner.
The alternative would be to cyclone, then hit/hit/hit/eviscerate/executioner/ cyclone (by then it would have recharged) and drop all the small adrenaline skills that I can use today with 1 cyclone axe, because they would stand in the way of adrenaline gain before eviscerate/executioner.


Well it doesn't appear that way, but keep trying. The Cleave fanatics need to find some straw to grasp at, because accepting that they're using an inferior skill certainly isn't an option.

I am not a Cleave fanatic, hey I use both skills :)

Given the low influence of Strenght on Cleave sequence, I think I will review my builds and probably use Eviscerate more, which also means dropping low adre cost spammable that feel free in between two cyclones (stuff like penetrating blow but also skills like Watch yourself).


Right, in PvE you're much more interested in sustainability that spiking because healing in PvE tends to be terrible and you just want to save resources. Which, of course, is what this analysis focused upon and the numbers are sitting out there for public consumption.


Peace,
-CxE

Yes, you're right on that. I know I go evi/exe for Thirsty desert because of the monk/ priest combination, or because of some specific mursaat boss.
Also there are a few cases where one does not want to give conditions to opposition in PvE... It looks like every necro past the desert got Plague Touch/ Signet built in, so deep wound is kind of self inflicting.
But that would be a poor argument to use against eviscerate :) like saying Enchant are bad because of shatter enchant :)

Louis,

[Xploit]

If no one knows this by now, im just stating fyi, Strength doesnt add armor penetration to normal hits, only gives the armor penetration to skills that are on the strength attribute line. So when you look over strength skills and see that they dont do as much damage as you're other -leet- sword or hammer or axe skills, just remember the strength skills get armor penetration. Which can do alot to casters and also do more damage on warriors than normal weapon skills.

[Syno Nym]

If no one knows this by now, im just stating fyi, Strength doesnt add armor penetration to normal hits, only gives the armor penetration to skills that are on the strength attribute line.

When I was analysing pO build I tried to use Irresistible blow with hammer 16 and strength 13, and hammer 16 / strength 10. The first one deals 122 when critical, the second 118.

So... it seems Strength bonus applies to whatever attack skill you use, not only those who are in the Strength attribute line.

[Rey Lentless]

Well Cleave + Dismember is worse in every way than just running Eviscerate, lower damage, worse on your adrenal skills, more skill slots - it's just suboptimal. The only reason you would even think about using Cleave is because you don't want the Deep Wound, and don't want to damage spike, and don't want to use other adrenal skills. Ah, I really can't tapdance around it, Cleave sucks, don't use it. =/

Yah, I don't agree with that. With more adrenal skills, and adrenal buffs, you have fewer normal attacks, which is what you'd be shooting for. More attacks, each with their own pool being recharged while using the other adrenal skills. I'm not sure the math illustrates how you'd actually use the skills either. Cleave would really have the lowest priority in the chain, but it would be recharged to avoid less normal hits. Skill slot saving's fine, but I think that build would be a 16/15 build with not much coming from the secondary.

Pretty obvious cleave is worse in most situations though, maybe someone will see this and realize it needs a buff. I think it also shows that strength is underpowered. If it was adequately powerful, the strength bonus would be enough to make the quicker recharging adrenal attacks more powerful (in high str situations) even if the bonus damage from the skill itself wasn't that great.

[Ensign]

That is indeed surprising. Does that mean Strenght is not working as advertised? or as I understand it (ie, on attack skills only, meaning that with high strenght it's better to have lot of skill attacks over a few powerfull attacks) ?

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.


Given cyclone axe recharge time (... well it would be too good otherwise), I *think* (need to check it) that there is time for 3 attacks in between 2 cyclones.

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


You are right that I can only Cleave once in between 2 cyclones and that makes Cleave happen only 1 per 4 attacks. Cyclone does not change cleave dps alone, but it does change cleave dps when combined with other adrenaline skills, mainly penetrating blow.

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.


If there were another non eliteaxe attack in 4/5 adrenaline cost ranges, it would be possible to get all attacks with attack skills and so get strenght bonus on all of them.

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.


You mentionned the Cleave sequence beats the Eviscerate sequence with higher Strenght

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.


Given the average mob size, it's difficult to do that with 7/8 adrenaline cost skills.

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.


(stuff like penetrating blow but also skills like Watch yourself).

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.


If no one knows this by now, im just stating fyi, Strength doesnt add armor penetration to normal hits, only gives the armor penetration to skills that are on the strength attribute line.

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.


With more adrenal skills, and adrenal buffs, you have fewer normal attacks, which is what you'd be shooting for.

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.


I'm not sure the math illustrates how you'd actually use the skills either.

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.


Cleave would really have the lowest priority in the chain, but it would be recharged to avoid less normal hits.

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.


I think it also shows that strength is underpowered.

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

[Rey Lentless]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that numbers are great, but in actual play, there's MUCH more going on than meets the eye. People run, people use protection spells, have different armor levels in different situations, you can lose adrenaline in one of many ways, etc.

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.

[Ensign]

Adding dismember to the chain does not lower your damage if you want a deep wound. Don't be ridiculous.

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 always stated, I would only considering using cleave with adrenal buffers.

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're flattering yourself.

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


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.

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'.


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.

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

[Man With No Name]

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..?? )

[Rey Lentless]

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.

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?

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*.

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.

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

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.

If you know of any analysis that shows that Cleave is a better skill that Eviscerate, I'd like to see it.

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

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.

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.

[neoflame]

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. :p
Well, half of your tests already show the dps ahead on cleave strings.
Take note that those DPS numbers do not take into account the effects of Deep Wound, or show the spiking effect.

[Louis Ste Colombe]

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.

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 :D

Louis,

[Nash]

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

[Rey Lentless]

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.

Take note that those DPS numbers do not take into account the effects of Deep Wound, or show the spiking effect.

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.

[JimTheMighty]

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?)

[Ensign]

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

[Phades]

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).

[Hippie Crack]

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.

[ICURADik]

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?

[Avaran]

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?

[Rey Lentless]

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.

[Dzan]

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 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.

[Saerden]

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

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.

[ICURADik]

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./agree
/bump

[nohooiam]

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

[Calibretto_9]

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.

[Savio]

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.

[Phades]

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


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.

[Ensign]

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.

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.


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.

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.


Ensign, what is your take on a group witih multiple warriors?

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.


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.

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.


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?

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.


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?

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.


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.

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

[Calibretto_9]

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.

[Ensign]

If you're an ele (And currently want to be effective IMO), you'll go earth.

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

[Calibretto_9]

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.

[Phades]

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.

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.

[Savio]

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.
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.

[Calibretto_9]

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.)

[LeetSkeet]

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.

[Phades]

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.

[entropy]

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

[lhurgrokoyv]

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 :)

[Rossaroni]

[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.

[dont feel no pain]

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

[Moskel]

That's the popular viewpoint. Personally, I don't understand why someone would give up the ability to absolutely mangle someone with upwards of 200 damage in less than a second, as well as weaken all of their other adrenal skills, for .5 DPS or whatever trivial over time boost they might get from Cleave. Can anyone explain why anyone would play Cleave over Eviscerate, well, ever?

Peace,
-CxE

I play Cleave over Evisc when soloing the Grawl outside of port sledge :D 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 :D

[Fred Kiwi]

ARRRRGGHHGGHG!

do you expect me to read all of that?

[Savio]

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?

[goefNL]

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

Só people have to start recalculating

[twicky_kid]

this is the one and only reason i support cleave as my elite instead of eviscerate, we have dismember. you don't need eviscerate for the dmg and deep wound. i can deal huge amounts of dmg fast and then dismember when they are about half life then finish off with pentrating and cleave chain. you get the spike from eviscerate the first time you use it. after that it becomes another executioner's strike that is too expensive to use in a chain.

fgj and tf axe warrior with cleave is devistating. i have single handedly killed boon monks, pro monks, healing monks, and smiters.

[cro kickass]

hehe now cleave deal +30 dam , that mean that with cleave i deal about +93 dam to monk when with eviscirate +110 ---> eviscirate sucks
for great dam use this combo :
dismember, axe rake , cleave , pentrating and distrupting chop , hola it works

[smurfhunter]

im starting to think cleave (under the new update) would be better in certain circumstances, for example in a degen group as the only warrior, spiking wont get you anywhere since the monks are busy healing the degen anyway. i think a more constant output of damage would be better in that situation at least.

anyway im still testing this stuff out.

[twicky_kid]

hehe now cleave deal +30 dam , that mean that with cleave i deal about +93 dam to monk when with eviscirate +110 ---> eviscirate sucks
for great dam use this combo :
dismember, axe rake , cleave , pentrating and distrupting chop , hola it works

i'm using just about the exact same build. using wild blow instead of disrupting chop. i hate rangers with a passion.

[id0l]

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

Só people have to start recalculating

No it wasn't, the lowering to +33% is in regards to stacking speed buffs, i.e. stacking Frenzy and I Will Avenge You. But I thought the same thing at first.



hehe now cleave deal +30 dam , that mean that with cleave i deal about +93 dam to monk when with eviscirate +110 ---> eviscirate sucks
for great dam use this combo :
dismember, axe rake , cleave , pentrating and distrupting chop , hola it works

Nice unsupported conclusion you have there. Since you totally take everything into consideration, and all.

Hmm, so Cleave does a small bit more damage now. Whoopdee freakin' doo. I think I'll stick with Eviscerate. I love my free deepwound AND damage in one skill. No wasting slots for me. Plus, it still spikes better, and Cleave still wastes adrenaline (because you know you spam it as soon as it's ready; why else would you use a 4 adrenaline skill).

Cleave may be good if you have 2 adrenaline skills only, or Cleave alone. Which means you aren't really an Axe Spiker.

At most, I can see the damage over time of the two possibly breaking even. In this case, you have to decide what you want to do:

a) Take small-to-medium size chunks of health from the enemy, a little at a time...
b) Take huge chunks of health from the enemy, really, really quickly.

IMO:
Eviscerate/Executioners/Penetrating FTW.

But I can see how each may have their uses...

Ensign, care to fill us in with same hard data with this update? So we don't get misinformation spread such as "Eviscerate sucks, Cleave is still crap," etc.

[entropy]

Umm Don't post BS. its was like a 5 points boost OMG CLEAVE IS NOW THE UBER L33T SKILL, right? /sarcasm

Twicky I really find that you still don't understand the point of spiking. Its damage fast. Cleave + dismember is just bad. Its a wannabe eviscerate. Cleave + dismember + executioners just isn't the same type of damage output that Executioners + Eviscerate + Swift chop is. Its constant and constant damage is just shitty for pvp! Great Twicky you killed boon monks. My hammer warrior could kill a boon monk. Many things can kill 1 monk. Nobody is talking about 4vs4 where you can run the sh**iest builds ever and still win. With 2 healing monks and a prot monk I doubht cleave will be enough to spike and good team.

Cro would you like to backup those statements with actual facts? +93 dmg? umm since when does cleave add 93? Your not counting the deep wound. which takes away 20% and reduces healing. Add eviscerate in their and you could run more dmg skills. Cleave +dismember is basically what eviscerate is. 3 more adrenaline is like nothing. Its not a high cost adrenal skill since i never hear anyone say executioners sucks yet its 8 adrenaline. WTF!?!?!?! is it just me or is something wrong with that?

Spiking=QUICK FAST MASSIVE DMG, Adding unnecasarry skills in their only gimps your combo

[twicky_kid]

Umm Don't post BS. its was like a 5 points boost OMG CLEAVE IS NOW THE UBER L33T SKILL, right? /sarcasm

Twicky I really find that you still don't understand the point of spiking. Its damage fast. Cleave + dismember is just bad. Its a wannabe eviscerate. Cleave + dismember + executioners just isn't the same type of damage output that Executioners + Eviscerate + Swift chop is. Its constant and constant damage is just shitty for pvp! Great Twicky you killed boon monks. My hammer warrior could kill a boon monk. Many things can kill 1 monk. Nobody is talking about 4vs4 where you can run the sh**iest builds ever and still win. With 2 healing monks and a prot monk I doubht cleave will be enough to spike and good team.

Cro would you like to backup those statements with actual facts? +93 dmg? umm since when does cleave add 93? Your not counting the deep wound. which takes away 20% and reduces healing. Add eviscerate in their and you could run more dmg skills. Cleave +dismember is basically what eviscerate is. 3 more adrenaline is like nothing. Its not a high cost adrenal skill since i never hear anyone say executioners sucks yet its 8 adrenaline. WTF!?!?!?! is it just me or is something wrong with that?

Spiking=QUICK FAST MASSIVE DMG, Adding unnecasarry skills in their only gimps your combo

for 8v8 i would use evis for the massive spiking. for 4v4 cleave rapes.

4v4 has its own challenges. everything isn't always about 8v8.

[stefan16]

With alot strenght, i'd say Cleave
(Triggers streght penetration more, calculate THAT ftw, and the diffrence becomes bigger)
Dismember+Cleave ftw

[entropy]

Umm Cleave still won't compare to the spike of eviscerate. DPS is not the issue but if you want dps go with cleave and ur miserly 10% boost with strength... Eviscerate also gets 10% so its even better. The dps has already been debated so your post is pretty useless. DPS is not the issue. Its which one actually kills a person. ;)

[Neutron Star]

The new numbers as found here (http://www.theamazonbasin.com/gw/forums/index.php?showtopic=3186) on the Basin forums. Eviscerate still beats Cleave.

Average Cleave: 70.44 damage

Average Cleave Series: 44.27 Damage

Average Cleave Bonus: 8.72 Damage

Average Cleave + Penetrating Series: 47.51 Damage
Average Cleave + Executioner's Series: 47.87 Damage

Average Cleave + Penetrating Bonus: 11.96 Damage
Average Cleave + Executioner's Bonus: 12.32 Damage

Average Cleave + Penetrating + Executioner's Series: 50.32 Damage

Average Cleave + Penetrating + Executioner's Bonus: 14.77 Damage

Average Cleave + Penetrating + Disrupting Series: 46.60 Damage
Average Cleave + Executioner's + Disrupting Series: 46.86 Damage

Average Cleave + Penetrating + Disrupting Bonus: 11.05 Damage
Average Cleave + Executioner's + Disrupting Bonus: 11.31 Damage

Average Damage of the Cleave Sequence: 57.67 Damage Per Hit (For Great Justice!)

Average Damage of the Cleave Sequence: 59.30 Damage Per Hit (Dark Fury)

[AkUmA]

actually if you actually read the whole thread through it says Cleave out damges eviscerate in constant DPS... but the value of the Deep Wound and spike possibility may be win in the end. But my point is the article doesn't say that. So please quote carefully

[Zonzai]

DPS is not the issue. Its which one actually kills a person. ;)

Very true, and a great example of the problem with simple number crunching.

When I play my warrior in PvE I prefer cleave.

When I play my warrior in PvP (which isn't often because I usually play an ele, necro or mez in PvP) I prefer eviscerate.

I also like eviscerate when I know I will be facing a lot of difficult enemies in PvE.

[Sayshina]

... Cyclone Axe does not help Cleave charge faster at all. No matter how many enemies you're fighting, you're going to get to use Cleave once every four attacks, so Cyclone Axe doesn't help Cleave in the slightest. What it does do is help you use other skills while using Cleave - Cyclone Axe hitting 3 targets per use will let you use Cleave at its normal frequency, and Penetrating Blow at an increased frequency as well. On the other hand, Cyclone Axe does help Eviscerate immensely, allowing it to be used more frequently, and thus making the skill proportionally better. From some cursory numbers it would appear that Eviscerate outperforms Cleave under Cyclone Axe, in terms of sustainable damage, as long as the number of targets hit by Cyclone Axe is greater than or equal to two.

Peace,
-CxE

Considering the fact that I havn't played the game in a few months now, there's most likely a school of thought out there that I should not be commenting anymore, but here goes anyway.

I obviously can't test this myself, but if memory serves me correctly, shouldn't it be:

Assuming full charge
Cleave, Cyclone, Cleave, hit, hit, hit, Cleave, Cyclone, Cleave ...?

This would one Cleave/3 hits. instead of 4 as stated.

To the guy claiming the dynamic nature of the game would somehow muddy up the picture, I cannot think of a single situation (running, healing, ect.)where superior spiking would not lead to a superior outcome.

To the debate of whether or not the metagame is boiling down to a few select (debatably superior) builds: Those posts were written a while ago, and there seem to have been a couple of earth moving nerfs in between. I said before release that it was inevitable that the metagame would devolve in this manner. I said then that given a stable environment without outside intervention, ALL builds would evolve toward a common form. This is just the way things work. It is the same when designing fighter aircraft or Formula 1 racecars. As long as the rules are stable, everyone has access to the same data, so any good engineer is going to come up with the general answers.

To quote the leading Formula 1 designer concerning 1 aspect (wheelbase): "So you have a variation of less than 175 MM across this year's field."

Out of 26 cars, every one of them falls within 2 centimeters in length. Every single designer came up with more or less the same conclusion. The laws of physics don't change, the rules havn't changed, so the cars are more or less identical.

Back to GW, the skills HAVE changed, but only some of them, and there have been no new skills added. Therefore, it is unrealistic to expect something radical to appear in the future.

The devs used to compare this game to Magic the Gathering a lot. The single most important lesson MTG has to teach us is how the metagame operated. There have nearly always been 2 - 3 "superior" builds in any given card set. Generaly 1 single deck boils down as the best of the bunch, and is met by "hate" decks designed specificaly to defeat it.

The only surprise GW has for me is that there seems to be relatively little metagame "hate" going on. I suspect this has mostly to do with the decreasing level of competition, with many of the best designers leaving the game for whatever reasons. This decrease in competition is a much more likely source for many of the "new" builds you see such as the MM builds that seem to be enjoying some sort of revival.

[SnipiousMax]

Was this debate ever decided?

[Detis Zan]

Um well seeing it's been dead for months I don't think so.

Times have changed in the with the updates... Plus with all this numbercrunching it doesn't apply to the field.

Okay first off what sayshina said (I'm also a MTG player) is right about the "hate/counter builds" to the builds that's winning a lot.

Look at it like this. This doesn't apply too much in random Arenas.. sense think about all the same build mesmers (or slightly different) they all have the same staples. I.e. Distortion and other blind conditions and hexes to kill the warrior or put him out. Necros have Spiteful Spirit + Empathy etc to stop the Warriors.. Warriors who are adren based are useless unless they have something to be rid of those conditions and hexes which is hard to do to either protect yourself to deal enough damage or go straight out with the damage output.

Basically...with Eviserate monks can rid of that deep wound effect easily so it's useless unless you want to spike it at the last second. Cleave is great but it doesn't have that "CHUNK!" effect like Eviserate.

If we're talking HoH or GvG that's different too. =P Because more or less there's a build that sometimes doesn't concern the whole C. vs. E. debate.

If you want to deal fast, nonstop damage to get them down eventually then C is the way to go..

If you want to deal massive dmg in one quick blow (in a spikish way) this E is the one for you.

It really depends on what you're playing on.

[LightningHell]

Hey! I also play Magic!

I must say, it's quite true how the metagame in Magic works like. A (few) "better" decks out there, and some hate decks. Usually the hate also forms part of the other types of decks.

I think Guild Wars has less of this because for example, IWAY requires about 1-3 skills of counter, unlike, for example (this just came in my mind), Ravager Affinity, which required, like, 12 cards out of 60 to beat. Not to say Ravager Affinity was by far the most popular deck, too. :D

Not to say the control players (MEEEEEEE! UB CONTROL FTW!) that were always there from the beginning to end.

I've always wondered how an Axe war with Eviscerate and another with Cleave would do. Cleave's damage + Eviscerate's damage + Deep Wound would be alright, right?

[Maxiemonster]

I like both Eviscerate and Cleave, but I can understand both choices, though, what I don't get is that so many people think Cleave isn't worth to be Elite, and Eviscerate is obviously the only Elite Warrior choice. They're very wrong, and both Elites are pretty close to eachother when it comes to good use.

Eviscerate users, get a grip. Don't use Eveiscerate because everyone else does, and don't call Cleave a useless skill because noone does, the only thing that you're proving by saying such a thing, is that you don't think about your skill bar, and that you simply picked it because many others did.

[Jetdoc]

To me, Eviscerate is clearly better in PvP due to the quick "spikes" that you're trying to effect.

To me, Cleave is clearly better in PvE when you are soloing, to preserve as many skill slots as possible for the preservation of your health/providing armor.

If you PvE in a group, then it's probably a matter of preference.

[Detis Zan]

Hey! I also play Magic!

I must say, it's quite true how the metagame in Magic works like. A (few) "better" decks out there, and some hate decks. Usually the hate also forms part of the other types of decks.

I think Guild Wars has less of this because for example, IWAY requires about 1-3 skills of counter, unlike, for example (this just came in my mind), Ravager Affinity, which required, like, 12 cards out of 60 to beat. Not to say Ravager Affinity was by far the most popular deck, too. :D

Not to say the control players (MEEEEEEE! UB CONTROL FTW!) that were always there from the beginning to end.

I've always wondered how an Axe war with Eviscerate and another with Cleave would do. Cleave's damage + Eviscerate's damage + Deep Wound would be alright, right?

Yay magic discussion.

On the topic of Ravager. God I hated that block, every freaking card was too much artifact and also every card was too freaking good, there was no real balance. I'm glad that set isn't type 2 anymore.

Anyway Ravager was retarded in Worlds Championship... Almost everyone had that stupid deck as well as red hate and green recurring hate for that deck. It wasn't that hard to beat but in Magic when it comes to game metas and tournys it usually becomes a high power deck and then the high power counter deck to beat it.

Oh yeah UB is great but I'm the White B*tch player with life gain and control.
(Wipe the board, bring all my stuff back and gain life.)

Anyway I'm more casual than competitive.. (Maybe that's why I don't do PvP in Guildwars.. =P )

On the subject of C Vs. E: Maxie, and Jetdoc is right. It comes down to what your skillbar is and what you prefer.. =P No real "better" skill out there if you can make it work wonders.

[LightningHell]

So do I hate that block, but it's one of the most striking ones there is. Everyone had it - just proves the point. ;) Mirrodin is long gone now >:)

I still don't get why I have four pages of lotus petals, they're not worth much :S

[fallot]

A very interesting read, but I've never had any doubts about Eviscerate's superiority. Eviscerate + Executioner's Strike = Joy.

[Jancid Brennberg]

I have a reason for Cleave. Fighting Necros, which return conditions. Fighting monks, which heal themselves with condition removal. Sacrificiers, which actually GAIN from less max. HP.

This is specific. But it has a point, doesn't it? ;)

[Doctor Death]

I have a reason for Cleave. Fighting Necros, which return conditions. Fighting monks, which heal themselves with condition removal. Sacrificiers, which actually GAIN from less max. HP.

This is specific. But it has a point, doesn't it? ;)

This is my view also.
I know the debate probably revolves around PvP but when soloing Jade scarabs (damn you plague touch) Cleave>Evis anyday of the week.

It is also view that many warriors with Cleave>many warriors with Evis focusing on one target because we all know deep wounds dont stack.
The ideal would be a balance of the 2 skills eg 1 Evis warr and 1 Cleave war.

[Poison Ivy]

Both has it's uses.

I prefere cleave really, stacked with dismember, works like a charm.

[Jenosavel]

I have a reason for Cleave. Fighting Necros, which return conditions. Fighting monks, which heal themselves with condition removal. Sacrificiers, which actually GAIN from less max. HP.

This is specific. But it has a point, doesn't it? ;)

I still like Eviscerate. I'm just careful that when I use it, it's the second to last attack. You take them from somewhere rather high in health and drop them in two blows; they never get a chance to return the condition or otherwise take advantage of it.

[Raxxman]

or have plauge touch yourself for condition tennis!

[Ole Man Bourbon]

You'll lose a plague touch war with a necro

[Ole Man Bourbon]

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but Cleave is the better skill to use if you're using Wild Blow, as WB makes you lose all adrenaline and decreases your chances of getting to Eviscerate.

Before Nerf Day, WB was a very valuable skill, since people were using Distortion all the time. With the boosts to the W stances, WB may actually gain in value. I'm sure there will continue to be the regular favorites--Whirling Defense, Tiger's Fury, Mantra of Resolve, Sprint, Storm Chaser, etc--so I'm keeping WB and Cleave on my skillbar for now. Unless I go to Swords. :)

[XX Deathwish Warrior XX]

excuse me, i dont know if anyone has posted this yet, but the reason to use evicerate is for the deep wound (20%)

edit:hmmm now that i think of it... i really think that cleave is more of a pve skill and evicerate is a pvp skill. b/c in pve, more damage over time is better than a spike because the monsters can't heal for sh** anyway. have you ever heard of fow ranger spike groups? no, neither have I. Maybe that is because you dont have to worry about pve monsters healing cuz they really cant.
In pvp, damage over time is horrible because healers can easily heal over it whereas a spike, it is alot harder to get enough heals off.
so, basically my analisis is that: cleave=pve skill, Evicerate=pvp skill
and since im more of a pvp'r i would say Evicerate>Cleave

[Savio]

excuse me, i dont know if anyone has posted this yet, but the reason to use evicerate is for the deep wound (20%)
Yeah, it's been mentioned, but some people keep going about "DPS" this and "more damage over time" that, which generally doesn't help as much as being able to spike out someone.

It is true that since this was originally posted that Cleave got a damage buff and Eviscerate costs one more strike of adrenaline now, but 1. DPS is still not as good as being able to do ~200 damage in a second, and 2. you use Eviscerate with Executioner's Strike anyway.

[Yukito Kunisaki]

I think the earlier posts regarding game environment said it best.

Cleave is great with Pen. Blow/Chop for the PvE area where healing and self-sufficiency is more important.

In PvP where you need Death asap, let the sword be the dps king and let the fear of HOLY CRAP WHERE'D MY HP GO own your foes. Evis + Exe. Strike ftw.

[SziP]

I think the earlier posts regarding game environment said it best.

Cleave is great with Pen. Blow/Chop for the PvE area where healing and self-sufficiency is more important.

In PvP where you need Death asap, let the sword be the dps king and let the fear of HOLY CRAP WHERE'D MY HP GO own your foes. Evis + Exe. Strike ftw.

Yup i agree, i liked Cleave also, but u cant spike with it in PvP. I mostly PvP so id rather use a skill that gives ALOT of dmg when i can. Giving half of that dmg but then giving that dmg again soon after(cleave) it will prepare the ememy and will have time to heal or run.

[Wacky]

What are the numbers like now?

[S!carius]

The numbers probily aren't much different. They just lowered the +dmg a little bit. Evis still has the deep wound and it still hits for a lot of damage.

[fallot]

Who cares ? Eviscerate isn't run because of its DPS, even the first post makes that clear.

[Fender]

I posted this over on TGH, but it got dismissed.
Assumptions: both lvl 20, AL60 target, no weapon prefix, only 2 adren skills
DPS of an Evisc+Exec war: 44.0
DPS of a Dismem+Cleve war: 41.9 BUT 50% miore deep wounds

Looking at the GWFC skill usage, most of the evisc+exec wars used the combo about 24 times a match. All things remaining equal, they could do a Dismem+Cleave combo about 36 times a match. 12 more deep wound spikes at the cost of a lower average DPS. Note, I didn't take in to account the health loss from deep wound.

[ubermancer]

I posted this over on TGH, but it got dismissed.
Assumptions: both lvl 20, AL60 target, no weapon prefix, only 2 adren skills
DPS of an Evisc+Exec war: 44.0
DPS of a Dismem+Cleve war: 41.9 BUT 50% miore deep wounds

Looking at the GWFC skill usage, most of the evisc+exec wars used the combo about 24 times a match. All things remaining equal, they could do a Dismem+Cleave combo about 36 times a match. 12 more deep wound spikes at the cost of a lower average DPS. Note, I didn't take in to account the health loss from deep wound.

Your still better off following Dismember with Executioner's on 'serious' spikes (you can use your combo on the more regular spikes). If your spamming Cleave around you can fairly easily preceed a Dismember with a Cleave without arousing suspicion. Try comparing Penetrating+Evisc+Exec vs Cleave+Dismember+Exec.

[Edge Of Malan]

One question...have you tried taking the elite skill that gives adrenaline recharge in conjunction with a few adrenal attacks and a furious weapon to see what the dmg output would be?

[dndhatcher]

Im mostly putting this post in for the person who said that there is only one good skill and build per weapon. I did not see anyone contradict them so I thought I better. I will go on record now saying IMO Neither skill is better for general team PvE. I will explain below, and please understand nothing I am saying is relevant to PvP other than:

"For PvP battles, the spike damage of deep wound is obvously going to make Eviscerate a better choice for at least one Warrior in a group."

Some people seem to think this is debate is relvant to PVE, but there are whole lot of other factors make it theoretical and frivilous (but still fun). The assumptions seems to be that you are supposed to do as much damage as possible and that is the only consideration. In a perfect world with you own personal monk running behind you to keep you alive that might be true, but in a multiple stupid opponent, multiple teammate environment, doing mass damage to one opponent might not be the best job for a Warrior.

Other factors to consider for PvE:
1> the opponent is stupid and can be counted on to do specific repatable behaviours that cna be pridicted and thus controlled.
2> if you are engaging multiple opponents, it is possible you actually need to keep yourself alive as your monk just might have to run around to keep from getting killed.
3> if you can manage to get a bunch of stupid monsters attacking you, and you continue to hit them frequently, they will generally continue to attack you regadless of how suicidal that decision may be. and almost every mob has some hand-to-hand monsters in it.
4> (this one has PvP relevance also) assassins use attack chains that can be rendered useless by blocking
5> you have other people in your group that can ONLY do damage and can NOT absorb damage (mesmers, necros, assassins and eles).
6> you need to protect your weaker teammates so you can not always charge in and attack the targets that need to go down first.

Anyway, for PvE I think you should try to draw as much aggro as possible and hold it. You need to be able to absorb that mass aggro for long enough for the rest of you team to setup and then eliminate the most threatening elements of that mob. I also think you need to minimize the stress you put on the party healers as any backfield squishies getting attacked need their full attention.

My proposal is you try this:
Engage the opposing mob ahead of your party so all their warrior and assassin type attack you. Use cyclone axe to hold their attention (and when you are attacking around 4+ opponents -someone else can do the exact math- cyclone outdamages any other skill) You soften up all their warriors at once forcing any healers to spread their energy out and allow your ranged attackers to pick their target and spike it without fear of reprisal from the enemy warriors. Also this allows your friendly SS Necro to be highly effective as a single SS can take out everything attacing you. Then trigger what is my personal favorite elite skill for PvE - Gladiators Defense. It 75% blocks everything and damages everyone in melee with you. This effect causes the computer healers to have to spead their skills around and burns energy. Another benefit is it eliminates the thread of assassin chains, even from bosses. Because Deep Wound is so effective of a spike damage dealer I like to also have dismember, and it was recently buffed to only 5 adrenalin so it is now very spammable. I like to have one other defensive stance like shield stance to use while gladiators recharges so I can stand up to huge numbers of attacks without taxing the healers.

So anyway, I think that Gladiators Defense is a better PvE skill than either because it both does damage and protects you is far more effective if you are doing the job of controlling enemy aggro and not trying to be the primary damage dealer. Although like Eviscerate, it cna be validly argued that if there is more than one Warrior in the group, it is a skill best left for one of them. (The other should probably have eviscerate and be tasked with quickly dispatching any warrior type that runs by you and attack the weaker party members, then moving to attack high threat targets.)

[Sarevok Thordin]

I'm with Cleave for a number of reasons

Mainly Evicersate is overused like crazy

I had a look over a few factions skills for a bit.......and thought of this

Even tho I'm not up to date on what the favourite skillbars of warriors are, a combo like this could make cleave interesting to use in PvP

Cleave, Exec, Dismember, "You Will Die!", Your favourite IAS here

Try this

Cleave your target for a bit till they get to a certain ammount of HP (perhaps waiting for you to do enough damage to warrent the energy loss to heal). Once it goes down enough, Whip on your IAS and Dismember them for Deep wound. Now your damage does ALOT MORE to their HP bar, CLeave them, Exec them, QUICKLY hit "You Will Die! right as exec hits (they should be below 50% HP by now) and then Cleave them again. They should hit the deck with this.

This chain should do EVEN MORE damage than the normal Evis + Exec combo, allowing you room for the enemy trying to heal, plus your other adren skills will get charged too. Since you put out more damage, even warriors should feel the burn with that combo =p

Oh well, that came off the top of my head in 5 mins, and I can't really experiment till Nightfall comes out anyway (My PvP Slot has a paragon sitting in it >_>)

[CalypsoX]

I'm with Cleave for a number of reasons

Mainly Evicersate is overused like crazy

I had a look over a few factions skills for a bit.......and thought of this

Even tho I'm not up to date on what the favourite skillbars of warriors are, a combo like this could make cleave interesting to use in PvP

Cleave, Exec, Dismember, "You Will Die!", Your favourite IAS here

Try this

Cleave your target for a bit till they get to a certain ammount of HP (perhaps waiting for you to do enough damage to warrent the energy loss to heal). Once it goes down enough, Whip on your IAS and Dismember them for Deep wound. Now your damage does ALOT MORE to their HP bar, CLeave them, Exec them, QUICKLY hit "You Will Die! right as exec hits (they should be below 50% HP by now) and then Cleave them again. They should hit the deck with this.

This chain should do EVEN MORE damage than the normal Evis + Exec combo, allowing you room for the enemy trying to heal, plus your other adren skills will get charged too. Since you put out more damage, even warriors should feel the burn with that combo =p

Oh well, that came off the top of my head in 5 mins, and I can't really experiment till Nightfall comes out anyway (My PvP Slot has a paragon sitting in it >_>)
Yes it will, considering you're using only 2 skills in Evisc+Exec vs. in your case 5 or more skills. If you're going to spike someone, you want them to go down as quickly as possible. The only way you're going to be able to pull off your chain is if the other team's monks are afk or braindead.

[Sarevok Thordin]

Yes it will, considering you're using only 2 skills in Evisc+Exec vs. in your case 5 or more skills. If you're going to spike someone, you want them to go down as quickly as possible. The only way you're going to be able to pull off your chain is if the other team's monks are afk or braindead.

Actually, 3 in the case of Evis + Exec + Frenzy. only 2 extra here and "You will Die" has NO use time.

So the only extra bit of time is from inflicting the Deep Wound. Also, if the monk manages to heal during your spike you will not be able to get a kill. In this combo, you MAY get the kill with a followup attack or two.

------------EDIT----------------------

On another note

I tried this today.

It kicks serious arse. You can cleave them TWICE in rapid succession after YWD goes off, which can KO even warriors with a bit of luck. The damage output is just stupid. I think I found my new love.

[zombie_shrink]

Can I point out that with the release of Nightfall the axe's spike ability has found a rediculously powerful and previously unmentioned combo with Decapitate, weapon swap for energy, Critical Chop?

[bricktamlin]

I would also like to know what happens when you get hit...ive been thinking about some warrior builds that lower their armor on purpose, in order to get more adrenaline hits *they gain life to make up for it* just wondering if faster adrenaline helps...you might think that the difference doesnt matter cuz its still 4 to 8, but i'm wondering if there is some weird point differential

to the above poster:
you can also use leech signet for some stupid fun: decapitate->leech signet->to the limit->cyclone axe->decapitate

[Yukito Kunisaki]

I know it's been a while but thanks to all the nerfs to Eviscerate [sob...] it looks like from the recent pages I'm reading, Cleave will win now in terms of overall usage.

We now had a skill that was a combined Dismember + Exe. Strike whittle down to a Cleave + Dismember (for 1 less combined adrenaline to boot)

Seems to me the numbers have hit the point where Cleave should win out using a more massive DPS vs. a single hit 'rare' spike every so often.

You can cleave 2x and dismember in almost the same amount of time it takes to hit with Evis. + Exe. Strike and with more instances of +'d damage [and more reapplication of the dreaded deep wound], that Cleave may be the new elite. Hell, Dismember + Cleave alone is hot and coupled with Dis. Chop as part of a combo: Cleave, Dismember, Disrupting Chop, you've got some crazy shut-out potential.

I'm still feeling [albeit now guilty of fanboyism] a little bit of lovin' for Eviscerate but with these new nerfs to it, I'm starting to wonder [I've got all 3 campaigns btw], if Cleave is now better than Evis with the addition of Dismember + other skills on the skill bar...

Is anyone willing to update the #'s to show this? [or do I need to actually sift through the entire thread to find someone who already did it?]

Any clues / links would help thanks!

[yaxattax]

I made one observation throughout this thread.
Ensign, your posts command belief of others, only through the means of a dismissive manner and providing numbers without any true basis. Where others challenged, you asked them to back up what they said. It must be said however that simply providing numbers (some of which were clearly wrong) on its own form a basis for well, nothing. Meaning that you failed to back up your findings.
Purely for the sake of substantiating what I say, I'll tell you now that your figure of 35.55 average damage per hit was well .... very wrong. Since you're quite the mathematician (or present yourself as such), you can go figure out why ^^

[martialis]

I know that's not true, because you gave no supporting evidence, and even if you did it doesn't matter, because numbers don't mean anything.

Both of you are wrong, the average damage per hit is...pineapple. Proving that I'm right is left as an exercise to the reader (since you're so smart).

This is a good pineapple. You should read it.

[D Fault]

I made one observation throughout this thread.
Ensign, your posts command belief of others, only through the means of a dismissive manner and providing numbers without any true basis. Where others challenged, you asked them to back up what they said. It must be said however that simply providing numbers (some of which were clearly wrong) on its own form a basis for well, nothing. Meaning that you failed to back up your findings.
Purely for the sake of substantiating what I say, I'll tell you now that your figure of 35.55 average damage per hit was well .... very wrong. Since you're quite the mathematician (or present yourself as such), you can go figure out why ^^

You seemed to have missed one critical observation...the post date of this thread.

[hotman]

No, running a PvP Warrior without 16 in his weapon attribute is akin to running an Air Spiker without 16 in Air Magic - the only 'sacrifice' is when you're not dealing max damage because you wanted to be cute. Real Warriors pump that weapon to 16 and never look back.

Peace,
-CxE[/QUOTE]

would that be why every high level PvP Warrior uses 14 right?

the extra health (75 points of it) can an usually will save you from an early grave if you get spiked.

in high level PvP, mostly in GvG health is far more important then doing 5-10 more damage for a warrior.

-Lan

[hotman]

No, running a PvP Warrior without 16 in his weapon attribute is akin to running an Air Spiker without 16 in Air Magic - the only 'sacrifice' is when you're not dealing max damage because you wanted to be cute. Real Warriors pump that weapon to 16 and never look back.

Peace,
-CxE[/QUOTE]

would that be why every high level PvP Warrior uses 14 right?

the extra health (75 points of it) can an usually will save you from an early grave if you get spiked.

in high level PvP, mostly in GvG health is far more important then doing 5-10 more damage for a warrior.

-Lan

[MisterB]

The quote you are replying to is 23 months old. Since this is an online game, many of the rules have changed, including nearly all the axe skills in the first post.
The key skills in this discussion, Cleave, Dismember, and Eviscerate, are radically different now than they were then.

Also, the metagame does change over the course of two years.

[Snow Bunny]

Lol. Ensign is much more qualified on this subject than 99% of you, so I wouldn't respond with "14 Axe in High lvl pvp."

You ever ran a Frenzy Axe in a serious GvG? I'm not talking about your little rank 2567 guild, I mean a rank 300+ guild.

Run Axe at 14 and tell your teammates you did. "Brace Yourself!" for the criticism. You gotta man up on this and take faith in that monk.

Back on subject though, I think I looked at the two the other day and saw that currently, they deal the same damage. Except...that if Evis criticals, it's a spank. If cleave does, it's not nearly as good.

[TheOneMephisto]

Lol. Ensign is much more qualified on this subject than 99% of you, so I wouldn't respond with "14 Axe in High lvl pvp."

You ever ran a Frenzy Axe in a serious GvG? I'm not talking about your little rank 2567 guild, I mean a rank 300+ guild.

Run Axe at 14 and tell your teammates you did. "Brace Yourself!" for the criticism. You gotta man up on this and take faith in that monk.

Back on subject though, I think I looked at the two the other day and saw that currently, they deal the same damage. Except...that if Evis criticals, it's a spank. If cleave does, it's not nearly as good.
Running 14 in weapon mastery is perfectly acceptable after the nerf to armor swaps and in the context of generally increasing max health. Max health on characters has been increasing in general over time (monks used to run with around 500-550 health, now it's almost never under 600). Nowadays, plenty of high-level warriors run with 14 mastery, especially on hammers. 15-16 is okay, but most people will tell you to run 14.

EDIT: Maybe I should explain why you don't run sups on warriors anymore rather than just stating it. When you get to VoD, possibly with a little DP, and you march up to the flagstand with NPCs, you're going to get your warriors killed over and over if they don't have enough health. All the things about VoD just combine to do that. The damage increase + health loss, the NPC damage, the constant overextending to attempt to take out NPCs, just everything. Combine this with an overall power creep and stronger damage options than before, and the loss of armor swaps, and things get ugly. Basically, if you're overextending to kill archers or something, you're at such a risk of dieing very quickly to the most minimal of concentrated fire that you want every bit of health that you can get.

[Yukito Kunisaki]

I run W/N, if I wanted health, I'd get Demonic Flesh :D

lol...

I haven't been in pvp in any form in a while but are warriors JUST NOW becoming the REAL focus fire in any scenario?

I'm sure they didn't get any AL nerfs or defensive nerfs and Warriors should still be the hardest class to kill in the game if they're wearing armor and their own buffs [ Sentry Inscription owns me ]

110 al vs. phys. 90 vs. elemental, good stuff

but with SOO much defensive layers up, I still am a firm believer of 16 weapon mastery

Can someone from a very highly ranked guild explain to me why they'd ever run anything less?

[note, I want to hear from killing warriors, not pansy flag runners or utility wars... I want to see a warrior out for blood tell me that lessening their weapon mastery actually helps them do their job...]

[zling]

ever since the introduction of nightfall what do u guys preffer as the axe spike?
evis->executioner's->something else(furious, penetrating, etc) or
executioner's->decapitate->(weapon switch)wild blow(or power attack or whatever energy attack u choose)

[kvndoom]

Decapitate sucks. Decapitate blows. Decapitate swallows. There might be a PVE farming build that can make use of it, but for serious PVP it's worthless. I'd take Dismember over that skill any day if I was using any elite besides Eviscerate.

Agonizing Chop is an excellent follow-up to a deep wound application. Because of its fast activation time, it can easily score a kill before DW is removed, and it can interrupt your target's reactive skill. I'd still take Executioner's, but it would follow Agonizing in case they still had a sliver of health left over.

@Yukito: A warrior not using Frenzy might be the hardest class in the game to kill, but a warrior not using Frenzy isn't a huge threat anyway. Staying alive tends to help you do your job a whole lot better than being dead. With so many blocking/blinding/missing skills, your extra 2 points in weapon mastery won't get realized most of the time anyway. You're only assuming that most of your hits will land, and that simply doesn't happen for warriors in high-end team play. And armor does no good against degen.