Feedback talk:User/Jette/Make scythes less abusive

The Scythe is to the Axe as the Hammer is to the Sword

Everyone knows that the Axe spikes harder then the sword, even tho its also only 6 difference, the average damage of the Scythe is actually fairly low, if you just stay auto attacking a none moving opponent, more likely the hammer will out dps it... The problem comes with crits, first of all the way thier calculated - its about 1.4 times max damage, so the higher the max the higher the crit, the real problem is tho that its ALWAYS max damage, the scythe was given a huge range so that its higher max is met with a lower min... to push the problem even deeper, you ALWAYS crit a running target

That leaves us with a weapon that is designed to have lows and highs to always being high

The problem isnt scythe damage but the ways criticals are calculated, what they need to do is remove the "always max damage" from criticals, and merely make it - your attack crits are 1.4x stronger

However my suggestion might be far too huge, since it will SEVERELY nerf melee pressure damage, melee spike damage, melee punish for kiters, and hell even make sword a much more powerful weapon..... Talamare 01:21, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, right, the criticals. How the hell did I not remember that? I knew they'd be OPd with criticals the second I saw them during the preview weekend and I thought they'd be too strong. I think I'm losing my memory. Maybe drinking all that petrol on a dare was a bad idea... —Jette 01:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) "derp dee derp nerfs crits instead of scythes" That's what you said right? The scythe range just needs to be moved slightly downward (the maximum moreso than the minimum) and the actual scythe attacks need to be fixed. I also think that the number of targets hittable should be reduced to 2, or else the other targets hit only suffer the damage from the basic attack and not the effects of preparations/a scythe skill. Really, it just needs to be changed a bit several times until Anet finds something that works. Then they'll throw it all out the window and make scythes do 0-4 damage instead. (Talamare was right about the way critcals work, mostly - the damage of the weapon is maximized and then {I think} multiplied by the square root of 2.) --Gah_ 01:36, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, my point is that the problem is that scythes are too synergistic with criticals, and changing criticals would mess with all the other weapons unnecessarily - just nerf scythes. --Gah_ 01:37, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Multiplied by the square root of 2? What the hell kind of stupid arbitrary decision was that? Why not just make it D * 1.4? Or if they wanna be really precise, 1.414? It's not as if that extra irrational number will ever actually matter. If we did damage in the tens of thousands or something, it make a difference, but seeing as how the highest I've ever managed to hit with a scythe was 494, it's completely idiotic. —Jette 01:41, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

the number they decided on is square root of 2 which is 1.414 - its true that my suggestion would be the more complicated one, but it is the better fix... since the problem isnt directly the scythe but how the crit system works

btw I did a little testing, at 12 mastery auto hitting, The hammer max hit is 68, The Scythe is 80... the average dps for scythe was 36(in 5 seconds lowest dps was 20 highest was 58), the average dps for hammer was also 36(in 5 seconds the lowest dps was 27, highest was 53)..... In other words their basically perfectly balanced damage wise... Talamare 01:50, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Crits doesn't add sqrt(2) damage, they decrease your target's armor by 20. ~Shard 01:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Also, Talamare, scythes don't always hit one person. ~Shard 01:51, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

yea yea, its kinda of hard to miss seeing the extra hits when wacking the master of damage, tho scythe doesnt have KDs... imo KD > small aoe Talamare 01:55, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Stab > simultaneously casting 3 guardians. King Neoterikos 01:59, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Cant stab yourself, and that balanced stance wont last forever Talamare 02:02, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Scythes outpower hammers not only because of criticals from hitting kiters (KD'd foes don't kite much), but because of their attack skills. Notice how all hammer skills have either little or no +damage and high costs, while scythe attacks are mostly 5 with low and high +damage or DW. -~=Sparky (talk) 02:18, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually I noticed most scythe skills are about +20~, yea they have short recharge and use energy... but saying something like is like - why dont hammer wars just use power attack more... as far as scythe deep wound goes, they tend to have a pretty annoying condition or are elite... tho its also true that most hammer attacks are also +20, and the ones most bars bring are +0 but there are some with +40, its just that most of the +40 ones dont have utility....... Talamare 02:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I prefer hammers because they require a degree of skill (a lot of skill, in some cases) to run properly, whereas scythes are for farming. I wonder if ANet made scythes scythes because they were originally farming implements, and never used in war. Also: being elite doesn't mean a skill isn't overpowered, it just means it's elite. Searing flooms and shadow form are elite too. —Jette 02:38, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Nobody uses the hammer attacks that deal +damage (because they suck, 7 for 40 damage is crap on a slow weapon). Scythe attacks (namely Victorious Sweep, Chilling Victory, and Mystic Sweep) deal much more damage than the attacks usually on a hammer's bar. -~=Sparky (talk) 02:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Often times the + damage on scythe is pointless too, wild blow hits as hard as a +30 with scythes like 80% of the time Talamare 03:01, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

i though i throw in a chart stating the dps of the weapon to help this discussion alitte, i calculated all this with the following factor.

• base weapon damage from min~max

• Number of time a weapon strike in 20 sec, daggers= 20, sword/axes = 15, hammes/scythe = 10

• the average dps with critical assumes crit rate is +1% per rank, so by math dagger/swords/axes get rough 2 crits while hammers/scthe get 1, during that time

• The holy **** is if every hit during the 20 sec was a crit, calculating crit damage at Max* root 2

• Note,this uses only what the weapon attribute gives you, with dagger's double strike at 24% at r12, giving 5 extra hits over 20 secs on average.

alittle side project im doing, i thought i give alittle what i came up with so far,--BobbyT 03:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

DPS of weapons at @r12 over 20sec

Rank	per strike,crit	# of hits	base	average crit	holy ****
Daggers	7~17,24	~20	140~340	174~354	480
swords	15~12,31	15	225~330	257~348	465
axes	6~28,40	15	90~420	158~444	600
hammers	19~35,50	11	209~385	240~400	550
scythe	9~41,58	11	99~451	148~468	638

I dont understand the chart Talamare 03:30, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Now I understand except its flawed... First of all figure out how much damage each weapon does with per swing... it might say 9-41 on the scythe, but that increases as you increase attribute past 9... once you know the min/max and crit for each weapon its extremely easy to get duration of test by simply figuring out (number of attacks/time)..... atm that chart doesnt help at all Talamare 04:03, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Im sorry im under the impression that weapon damage at rank 12 is 100%, so one swing of a scythe at @12 would be around 9-41, according to this. This is just from a unmodded weapon, no 15^50, and no customize, i can add the per swing damage to the chart if you want, and that what i did with rate of attacks, i fiqured out how many swings each weapon did during 20 sec and mulitiply each weapon damage by that--BobbyT 12:56, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

It seems my own stupidity is hitting me harder and harder, tho the more you say the quicker Im learning, and youre right apparently at 12, the weapon does damage = listed... Talamare 14:26, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

thats alright, i know it can be confusing. i've add listed damage +crit damage, and nummber of hits as well--BobbyT 15:15, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

btw 20/1.75 = 11 hits Talamare 16:38, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Bobby, lern2indent; just use :'s for each level of indent you want. Jette, the reason that "only 6 damage higher than hammers" is an issue is that +6 damage with crit + customized + 15% (1.414 * 1.2 * 1.15) about doubles the added damage, so a scythe crit is about 12 damage higher than a hammer crit. --JonTheMon 17:08, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I Really liked your chart, so I hope you dont mind If I added one too, using 20% customization and 15% conditional(as in 15^50), we multiply them together and it increases our damage by 38%

The chart rounds up from 0.5, down from 0.49 Over 1 minute

Weapon	Damage Range	Critical	# of atks 1min	Damage per Minute	Crit Avg	100% crit
Dagger	10-23	33	56	560~1288	698~1348	1848
Sword	21-30	42	45	945~1350	1050~1410	1890
Axes	08-39	55	45	360~1755	715~1835	2475
Spear	19-37	52	40	760~1480	925~1555	2080
Hammer	26-48	68	34	884~1632	1052~1712	2312
Scythe	12-57	80	34	408~1938	0680~2030	2720

I dont know how to make a table like he did, but the numbers/names line up the same to bobbyt table Talamare 17:23, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Average Damage

• Dagger - 1023
• Sword - 1230
• Axes - 1275
• Spear - 1240
• Hammer - 1382
• Scythe - 1355

Talamare 17:27, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

sry for indent issue :P. I'm stupid, how the heck did i think ten, now i need to redo that chart a bit, also don't worry about the mods like 15^50 and custom, i working on that as well plus how different armor rating effects them. bit of a big project as i doing the mods seperate, and in combination along with also sundering. and once im done i'll post them on my user page, but won't be for while if i keep making mistake like that >.< --BobbyT 21:02, 8 September 2009 (UTC) EDIT: Fixed the numbers on hammers and scythe

I'm a bit late to the party, but the reason why scythes are overpowered is not because of their crits - Daggers, comperatively, do more damage per second and spike harder when you spam skills. Hammers got KD, which is, arguably, just as powerful as a DW or two. The damage - as you said - is little greater than hammer damage (6 points of damage don't make and break games, fyi), and only a tad greater than that of a hammer. Couple that with the lack of KDs, adrenal skills (which are awesome, because on a warrior you get to use shock and bulls) and every other cool shit warriors have, and Scythes begin looking bad on paper.

The true reason why scythes are lolrape right now is because they hit 3 people. Or rather, they hit 3 people at HA and sometimes two or three people at anywhere else. HA's crampdness is another issue, so I'm going to go straight to GvG. Now, I don;t know much about the current backline meta, but I figure that the infuser is still necessary at a balanced team, right? Well, as an infuser, (again, you gotta play monk to understand monk) your job is to watch the redbars, conserve 10 energy and infuse the moment a teammate begins losing health really really fast. This isn't a very demanding task if you got your keys mapped and a bit aof a practise under your belt, just point and click (which is why, incidentally, it used to be that you dedicated an entire bar to killing the infuser, and they used mostly stuff like blackout and gale). Now, preprotting the spike is usually more efficient and safe, but prots aren't as reliable (shatter and drain says hi) and it takes a fuckload of attention and skill to accomplish that ( or it used to be - again, not sure how rt's fit into the equation). So you pack an infuser.

Scythes fuck that balance up. When you strike a single target with, say, WS, it sucks to be the monk but you can deal with it. Guardian? Rc? Enjoy your failed bar. But because scythes swing at three people simultaneously, there is a chance, no matter how minute, that 3 people are going to get axed. That's 3 people to prot and heal afterwards, all from a single character. think about how bad shit gets for the monk when you got 3 dervishes.

Now, let's take a look at the pinnacle of the scythe line, the Wounding Strike. It's spammable DW, and bleeding can go suck on a dick. A dervish can pretty much hit it on recharge, meaning that whatever he's attacking, that thing is missing a limb or two. From a monk's perspective, that sucks hell, but, again, dealable. A single RC and a Guardian is enough to stop that pressure, and your blind bot will be happy to complement our monks. But sometimes, just once in a hundred, the dervish hits three people with the two handed axe. Three people just lost 100+ health. From an infuser's perspective, that is fucking armageddon, because suddenly the spike flag went high over 3 bars. Which one are you gonna infuse? Also, remember that infuse costs at leat 15 energy (you need a self heal, too), WS is nearly free with mysticism. Plus, the enemy has 3 dervishes, and you only have 1 infuser. What is you get spiked afterwards?

The AoE is the offender. Get rid of that, and dervishes stop exploding teams. One lucky strike (again, a very remote one, but with a swing every 3 seconds, laws of probability are in the dervish's favour) breaks a battle, and GW can't cope with that. In HA, shit is even worse, because you are guaranteed to hit at least 2 people. The only thing that is more efficient than that is SH, and we all know how they usually go as the belle and the price of the ball. -- NUKLEAR IIV 23:11, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and there is a reason why we only got a single hammer elite in play. Guess which one and why, it's the same reason. -- NUKLEAR IIV 23:12, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

You mean 3. Dev Hammer, Earth Shaker and Magehunters. Pika Fan 06:34, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Nuclear, stop trying to be original. Scythes are broken because of the crits. If the game took all damage ranges, nobody would care when you crit on a 9, but that isn't the case. You can roll a dervish with 15 scythe mastery and get crits just under half the time to kiting targets (because dervishes also come packed with godly speed boosts that shouldn't exist). You're right in that hitting 3 people is retarded, but scythes do wtfhax damage anyway, even against single targets. That's why people run scythes on everything, everywhere. ~Shard 06:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Except GvG. Well, dervs are more or less limited to the lower ranks, which don't matter anyway. Pika Fan 06:44, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

@pika: Dev hammer is a subpar choice when you can have Earth Shaker. I feel the same way about MH, but I won't argue that.

@Shard: I'm not trying to be original. AoE is the main problem. I'm not saying that crits while moving isn't retarded - it is - but consider this: Scythe damage is halved. Their DPS drops considerably, but do they stop being ran? No way, not with AoE Deepwound. Nerf WS, people run Pious Assault or reaper's sweep. The AoE is the problem. The ability to inflict 3 deepwounds with the same skill at the same time is the problem.

I'd say one of the reasons we don't see many high level GvG's with is because people know to avoid AoE damage. That's less so with lower levels, and totally wron in HA. There are other factors too, of course, but I won't go into that. -- NUKLEAR IIV 21:28, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a combination of being able to Eviscerate people every 3 seconds, batshit damage and the ability to hit 3 people. Scythes should do less damage to secondary targets (have you ever actually stabbed someone? It's not as easy as those slasher films make it look. If you just stab someone with, for example, a knife, you stand a good chance of cutting yourself as the person's density causes your grip to slip and run across the blade -- this is why swords have guards), since they're, y'know, secondary. The damage itself should be reduced and criticals in general should be fixed. Then Dervishes can be buffed so that they can do more than just pure domages without being overpowered. —Jette 21:32, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Question about those charts: Why do they say daggers attack faster than axes and sword? Is it because of double strikes? Because dags hit in 1.33 seconds just like them. Haru 00:19, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

yes, 12 attribute will give you a 24% chance to double strike, which gives you an extra 11 hits in 1 minute --- edit another thing that makes scythe over powered is weapon mods, 1.41 extra damage on crits isnt that much, but when you combine it with a 1.15 and a 1.20 from weapon mods youre suddenly getting nearly twice as much damage from the original 41 max damage - another way for them to fix scythes is to lower the passive customization bonus from 20% to 10% - which would reduce scythe crits damage by 16%(from 80 to 72) and scythe damage by 12%(from 57 to 52) -Talamare- feedback 05:42, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

@Nuclear I was clearly referring to GvG. Nobody runs Earth Shaker in GvG except for Byob and messing around. Earth Shaker is considered by top players to be subpar when compared to Dev Hammer and Magehunters because DH provides good lineback power with weakness, and mostly because it is the fastest knockdown to charge, and MHS bypasses prots like guardian. Pika Fan 10:25, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and I'd like to link to this. Guess why this was used with scythes? NuVII 23:40, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

agree

i agree with you on this one. i think an easy fix would be to lower the damage a scythe dose to that of a hammer. and add maybe a armor bonus to make up for the loss of damage? i don't really know i do know that scythes do way more damage then they should. and that they will never nerff wounding strike unless the go though and buff all the other useless dervish elites, hmmm maybe for pvp they make avatars stances so they can be removed but are still usable?- Zesbeer 06:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I support this suggestion for one reason only: b/c it brings the low-range (Random(r)) UP where it belongs. I honestly couldn't give a crap about the high-range ((r)) on scythes b/c I almost never seem to hit it very often. (I've been told I'm prone to bad rolls IRL, lawl). Also: Whoever it was at Anet who came up with the idea of such random DOMIJEZ on a weapon CLEARLY built around orbital rotation and w:Centripetal Force; was a friggin Tool who didn't understand its accuracy implications! --ilr 20:58, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Scythes are OP and dervs just suck and their primary attribute is lame as hell = Nerf scythes without buffing dervs = Dead profession, easiest solution would be removing sin/rit/para/derv from game that would solve sooooo many issues just like the planned TA/HB remove. Raemon 08:12, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a Scythe

Thus it must pwn everything. Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ аІiсә ѕνәи Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ 04:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)