Runes of Magic US / AU

15% more damage/heals on spells cast..nothing more. so a 500k flame would hit for 575k.

you may be at the maximum dmg you can do on that mob. take off your weapon and try with and without vahtos.

nemisis did a detailed write up about this a while back, it may be unfindable since the forum update but i remember reading it, something to the effect of magic power is a different calculation than mattack/mdam, a wholly seperate umm, equation? I could be wrong but, it is different than just mattack/mdam calculations.

Do Warlocks get magic damage applied to their Shadowstab?

Try a spell that's all magic based- I dunno how the shrimplet skills work that well yet. It's also possible that the damage bonus doesn't work on Warlocks, like cast-time buffs apparently don't work on them either, if what Babzz said is correct. Not sure if that's a bug or working as intended.

Test it some more Warpro, maybe?

Quoted from "mnkmurphy885;547408"

Do Warlocks get magic damage applied to their Shadowstab?

With the lv 20 Elite http://www.runesdatabase.com/skill/498672/soul-hit it should.

I dont know about the difference between mpower and mdam equations, and i've use vahtos set a lot. It does add appx 15% damage and adds to heals too. Lower lvl mob shouldnt affect it. Your damage will still increase. Now as a glitch to warlock, i could not say. Vahtos is actually better than almost anything u can get up to the juggler set for damage. 20% additional crit I tested on dod 1st boss, but vahtos was still way better. People underrate vahtos set. My opinion.

Quoted from "MPHick;547428"

Ok after doing a bit of testing I learned some things. On the mobs outside of Varanas the Vahtos set made me hit much harder to where my normal attack with the vahtos equaled my crit with the ohter set (this is all using Shadowstab). BUT when I moved up to Savage Land mobs the margin got so small to were there wasn't even 1k difference. I might try what pazuzzu said and take off my staff.

Yes Fan our SS does do magical damage thanks to our 20 elite. I do need to do some more testing I just havent had much time to do more than some basic tests.

This maybe due to MA not actual mdam, limo my SS will land 45k-62k on mobs, but I have 37k ma, im well beyond the ma soft cap for the trash mobs, therefore I crit more.

With that said Vhatos affect mdam, so if your ma is lower then the mobs mdef all the mdam in the world won't make a difference. Warlock is such a heavy MA/Int build, you really have to sacrifice health, but that's another topic.

The vahtos set is still one of the better mage sets to this day only becuase of the 15% increase in magic power and from what I could see this 15% was calculated before the cast timer which means it is more then 15% and as with all % magic power increase from all the different accessory sets it also helps heals so it is beneficial to healers as well especially before they can get the better healing sets level 57+. Druids benefit more from the magic power increase then priests do so the magic power sets like the jugglers set is very good for druids but the Aoth set is better for mages. The reason mages will go with different sets other then vahtos is very simple the vahtos set lacks magic attack and magic crit rate and there is a massive difference in those values and the vahtos makes u use all 5 accesory pieces the Aoth set only makes u use 3 and lets u use other pieces to help ur gearing and statting much easier. The aoth set from varanas nightmare also adds %8 intelligence increase which again is huge especially for end gamers with 20+k int. Yes the vahtos set is great for mages up to about level 62 then the jugglers, and aoth sets are much better but also much harder to get as the jugglers set requires u to kill annelia and get the jugglers cape, and the aoth set requires u to either buy the aoth pieces or kill nightmare androilier in VN and farm fear fragments from the 3 sub boses in there and time consuming. All in all the % magic power sets are far above and beyound the crit sets for mages.


Mearkin 72/72/52 m/d/w

Quoted from "regentego;547437"

This maybe due to MA not actual mdam, limo my SS will land 45k-62k on mobs, but I have 37k ma, im well beyond the ma soft cap for the trash mobs, therefore I crit more.

With that said Vhatos affect mdam, so if your ma is lower then the mobs mdef all the mdam in the world won't make a difference. Warlock is such a heavy MA/Int build, you really have to sacrifice health, but that's another topic.

This is actually incorrect. If your damage goes up you will hit for more on any mob you can hit period (if you compare apples to apples, ie average non-crits).

Extra mdam is ALWAYS beneficial in every context. However, there are circumstances when more ma or crit will be MORE beneficial, which is why Vahtos is no longer the preferred caster accessory set, despite the fact that it still has the highest magic power bonus in game.

No matter how low your ma is, if your mdam goes up, and you can actually hit the mob (if it's too much higher than you are you'll miss), you'll do more damage, even if the increase is small. Depending on how close you are to the ma threshold of the mob (say it has 120k mdef and you have 100k ma) ma food may make a much bigger difference in how hard you hit. But the relationship of mdam is static in the sense that it's a fixed value. As it goes up, your damage goes up.

Ok, back to actual topic: Warpro, I think more testing needs to be done, and you might want to pm Pazuzzu, cause he's the US-side caster damage testing expert. If anyone could help you figure out how Warlock damage is calculated, it would be him. Bad thing is, he doesn't have a handy shrimplet on Osha to test on that I know of, so you might need him to come over to Palenque to help, but if you ask nice enough he might. Numbers are like crack to him.

Quoted from "regentego;547437"

With that said Vhatos affect mdam, so if your ma is lower then the mobs mdef all the mdam in the world won't make a difference.

Well higher mdamage will make a difference as the mattack/mdef difference takes a % of damage off the damage you deal so with higher damage you will hit harder even without increasing your mattack. (Same with rogues when you were running tosh with juggler knife and then you got the shint dagger, so your damage output increased without increasing pattack.)

The problem you have is with other accessories you get more mattack that helps you to get over soft cap of mobs mdef and when you wear vahtos you get less mattack and even 15% magic power doesn't help you to hit harder because the mdef of mobs is much higher than your mattack. To hit 15% harder on mobs you need to get mattack higher than their mdef that is what happens with varanas mobs where your mattack is higher than mobs mdef with vahtos or other set.

Vahtos acc set is no longer a viable set for casters... unless of course your not going to take your lvl up to 60-62 then go ahead stat it up, it will be the best you can get... period

i tested this to death back in early ch3 when it was very rare to see a mage using a crit set. AFAIK the 15% is added at the end or outside of the mage dmg equation..it doesnt give mdmg or ma, it's just a % dmg bonus like tamb. but, as has been mentioned, the dmg equation is complicated.

i had made both so i could swap back and forth to really figure out which was best, but that was specifically for m/k in pvp. since i was chaining 4-6 instants in a rotation made to avoid as many gcd as possible crit ended up being WAY more, well critical than the % mpower. dbl dmg in siege > 15% by far since scout's could barrage you with a million hits so fast back then. in the end the crit you could get with vahtos was FAR too low to make it viable in endgame. up to then it rocks ballz

at launch of ch4 in gch every night one of our mages was almost exactly same statting/gearing as me, but had vahtos. (this was before juggs/aoth obviously.) in pve mage vs mage dps is almost 100% random; who crits the most is the one at the top of the failmage epeen scrut. i was a pure crit build and had broken sets just to stack more..he was at i think 54% with vahtos in burn and i was at 80.2%. the outcome was obvious...when he went crit we became almost identical. was just random whoever got crit lucky.

but aoth was a shock even compared to juggs..at least for m/w in pve. after completing the set back in january i was actually shocked into being speechless, for once :p. mpower + crit set + int! boost + only 3 pieces = win. aoth cape is fantesticle compared to juggs too. i had changed to a pve build (since i was tired of being in siege alone against an entire guild ><)..and preparing for aoth had changed to a stupidly low hp, high int/ma statting. being able to get over ~130k ma while using mdmg food in gch gave me nerdgasms. O.O not for epeen scrut battles but for really nailing down the damage mechanics. (which are depressing in the end.. crit resistance > all) tosh getting over 150k with mdmg food needed support class' buffs like p/s but the level difference btw us the bosses limited its effectiveness

You forgot being overleveled in instances lets you crit more so the crit sets are going to do better.

I would say vahtos is a relatively cheap set to obtain and viable, but in competitive endgame you'll be looking for juggler/aoth.

Quoted

[COLOR=black !important]You forgot being overleveled in instances lets you crit more so the crit sets are going to do better.[/COLOR]

Isn't this backwards? If you are overleveled compared to the instance, it's easier to reach the crit cap rate... so stacking more crit won't do all that much. As far as I know, all rings have the same crit damage, whether lvl 1 or vahtos or otherwise.

It would seem to me that vahtos set would be better in the lower instances, while Juggler would be better the closer you get to current content.