User:Khomet/Paragon DPS

the rules: these are hero builds, therefore no PvE skills of any kind and consumables are not allowed. the results are ordered from lowest to highest damage as reported by the master of damage. results are taken from an average of at least three runs with each run being 30 seconds.

Profs	Weapon	Primary skills	DPS	Notes
	spear	soldier's fury, sundering weapon	49
	bow	prepared shot, read the wind	52
	spear	cruel spear, FGJ	55	not sustainable
	spear	soldier's fury, conjure flame	57
	spear	soldier's fury, FGJ	60	not sustainable
	scythe	zealous vow, blazing finale	62	no IAS, pre-update
	axe	soldier's fury, FGJ, blazing finale	65	not sustainable
	hammer	focused anger, blazing finale	65
	daggers	focused anger, golden/ff/db, blazing finale	67
	spirits	SoS, bloodsong, painful bond, etc	68
	sword	dragon slash, FGJ, blazing finale	69	not sustainable
	scythe	soldier's fury, blazing finale, they're on fire	70
	spear+pet	enraged lunge	72	no IAS on paragon

so what does all of this mean? my interpretation is that even with 14+ spear mastery and full IAS the paragon's spear damage is inferior to the same paragon running any other weapon. why is this? the spear's base damage and attack rate seem well balanced compared to the other weapons, the problem is that the paragon skills have less bonus damage than other professions and they have no damage buffs to help them do better. It's pretty easy to see that the other professions can deliver higher numbers because of runes and benefits from their primary attribute (strength, critstrikes, etc). The P/R with bow was tested with 3 heroes standing idle (but within shout range) to help with energy management issues. I am pleasantly surprised that the P/R enraged lunge build compares favorably with dragon slash and spirit spam, even without IAS for the paragon, and especially considering that deep wound is not factored into the damage. P/D and P/R are unquestionably the highest damage for paragon hero builds, at least the ones I have tested... P/D has constant AoE damage while P/R has great single target damage and deep wound spam.

in summary... spear damage is too weak relative to the competition, the paragon delivers less damage with spears despite having 14+ spear mastery versus 12 weapon mastery with anything else. This suggests that the paragon skills need a buff, either to the spear mastery skills or adding some preparation-like damage buff. (natural temper, focused anger, soldier's fury?) Scythe, Dagger, Axe, Sword, Hammer, Spirits and Pet all show superior damage to the spear even though the paragon uses them without benefit from runes. Bows have roughly the same damage as the spear but we would expect the spear damage to be greater since the spear mastery attribute is higher and the bows have slower attack speed. On top of this, all other weapons are superior to the spear in PvE because of multi-target attacks such as whirlwind attack, sun & moon slash, cyclone axe, crude swing, dual strikes, death blossom, dual shot, barrage, volley, etc. Other weapons get more benefit from Orders, Splinter Weapon, and other buffs compared to the spear; hopefully future skill updates will address this problem.

note: my thanks to Tennessee Ernie Ford for putting the data into a table, it looks much nicer this way.