Weapon damage vs. speed vs. critical

[Hunter]

A simple question,

 

Suppose one wants to make the best direct attach damage (not int/spell)

What are the reasons to prefer weapon speed vs damage vs critical chance?

 

Almost at every game there's a moment (5th and 6th last tier item) whan I have anough $ to choose just about any item I want. I play tank or agi, and then I'm always stuck with the dilemma - more weapon damage, or maybe more speer or more crit chance... There must some reason/situation to choose from these.

[TaxHaven]

I don't understand your problem.

 

First why do tanks need weapon speed or damage or crit?

 

Second, you can easily max weapon speed on agis by 3rd or 4th item so why would you get another weapon speed item? Of course you need damage

[ginosaji]

It's never a question of Weapon Damage vs. Weapon speed vs. Crit. You always max weapon speed, always. Going Crit is ideal only under certain circumstances. The real question is survivability vs. Damage out.

[Hunter]

Can you please elaborate on this? Why speed > damage? And if so, what reason there may be to buy damage and not more speed in a first place?

 

My main (and best) hero is LZ. Naturally I buy speed, but I do it becasue I kind of copy what other ppl do.

 

What is the reason behind the damage output as for speed / damage / crit?

[Hunter]

PS: to Taxheaven. What I play my LZ, I usually decide if it will be more tanky or damag judgin on what the other team has. But even for tanky dps by the end of the game I kinda have all my favorite armor items and then there's a place and $ for some damage output, hence the question.

[EterNity]

You will neutrally get it without thinking about it when you are getting better at the game and going into In House community.

 

However, I will over generalize things for you as following:

 

1. Weapon speed is more effective if you can survive for a long time to deliver a lot of AA.

 

2. Weapon speed is more effective if you have a lot of on-hit effect skills or items.

 

3. Weapon damage is more effective if you generally hit only a few times in a team fight.

 

4. Critical damage is only effective if you have a high base weapon damage.

 

5. Critical damage is only effective if you have high critical chance.

 

There are also individual Hero, Armor, reflect, positions, and a lot more others to consider.

 

Once you are decent in the game through practice, you will never think about all these at all.

[mynhauzen]

In pubs theres rly 2 ways: barbed/cont/axe + damage or times/damage/pyre. If theres 0 tanks in opposing team, go for hp items

[Hunter]

Sadly and maybe naturally, public games are rather hard to learn from as experienced teammates don't really invest in "teaching".

So I'm kinda of stuck in trying all kind of things and checking the results, but even then there's too much variables to make a definitive conclusion.

Even the best possible build order can be mitigated by a couple of retards in the team (that could be either outright feeder or an OK dps that does

nothing for the team effort but rather roams the map to get his own kills.

 

Last night I was in a game vs some really good Lord Z player named Spooky, I sort of tried to keep taps on him throughout the whole game, to see what he does.

Naturally there wasn't a single second in game where he didn't have 1.5 - 2 times the statistics I had and it would seem he was going the "Strength"

build rather than weapon speed. I will probably try to mimic it the next game I play - but that's as far as I can go to actually learn. And it has another drawback,

I learn one hero and the moment I try some other I just feed too much.

 

BTW, is there a maximum possible weapon speed that a hero can achieve - that would be a good marker for me to know when to stop thinking weap speed.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Hunter

[Allstar]

Watch replays from the Tourneys. You can see how the best players do it and what they do to make it work.

[mynhauzen]

I will probably try to mimic it the next game I play

Sadly mimicing is not always the best way to learn. Some builds work best only if your position is as good as his. A lot of the time build is only 10% of success. And a lot of the time it depends on a teamplay as well. Which in pubs depends heavely on a luck or premades.

If you're mimicing a build, mimic strategy, mimic his map control, learn when to engage/retreat etc. You cant rly learn that in 1-2 games.

[Skydie]

Can you please elaborate on this? Why speed > damage? And if so, what reason there may be to buy damage and not more speed in a first place?

 

My main (and best) hero is LZ. Naturally I buy speed, but I do it becasue I kind of copy what other ppl do.

 

What is the reason behind the damage output as for speed / damage / crit?

 

I will address your questions chronologically in parts.

 

1) Pause for a moment to consider what an AA (auto attack) carry is also called, a DPS. DPS - Damage per second. Imagine this you have the same hero, but with 2 builds. Build A - 500 Damage. Build B 350 Damage. But Build A gives a weapon speed of 1.1, Build B gives a weapon speed of 0.45. Even though 1 hit with Build A hits harder, ultimately Build B does better sustained damage, you hit twice as fast and will do over 700 damage as compared to 500. This is why it's always good to get a low weapon speed figure (0.4 ish), which means a high rate of fire.

 

2) LZ is primarily a tank. If pubbies go weapon speed on a tank, fair-dos. You can build him as a DPS but at this present time I don't know any DPS LZ builds, and it doesn't seem as viable without Massamune. At the moment we can assume tanky items > weapon speed on LZ.

 

3) Crit damage negates armour (I think). Wait for someone like Midknight to explain properly what crit is. All I know is that crit does not leech, that's why I rarely build it. With the new meta, weapon speed + contam = GG (alongside a few weapon damage items). Going back to 1) Obviously your weapon speed is capped, by that time you want to get your weapon damage high, rather than trying to get more speed (which won't happen). The best balance is therefore very high weapon speed, with high weapon damage combined to form high DPS output.

[ANARCHY]

3) Crit damage negates armour (I think). Wait for someone like Midknight to explain properly what crit is.

 

Crit dmg;

wep dmg is applied to your target, it is then reduced by physical armour, then crit dmg is applied

 

no you cant leech from it

 

crit base dmg is 50% of your wep dmg, gettking khali will increase it to 100%

 

please dont confuse this all with crit chance which is obviously very simple, its your chance to crit out of every attack you do

[Moo]

Try playing nova instead of lord z, she is better fitted to the weapon speed and weapon damage builds. If you play on the NA server I would be happy to help you. My name is [iAOSI] Moo and when I am online I am in AOS chat. You can get to the AOS chat channel through the search at on the opening screen of starcraft right after you log in, just search "Aeon of Storms" and the chat should be one of the first results. Just ask me on here if you are confused on how to find the AOS chat channel.

[Hunter]

Thank you very much for the invitation. I play on Euro and I'm affraid that playing on NA would cause the latency that will ruin every1s game.

 

As for Nova, just like the Shadow imo in pubic games (i.e. with random teams) she's too important for me to play, I prefer not to catch any of those in hope that a better player will make a better use of it, which should eventually benefit the whole team. Both of them are fun I will start playing them the moment I'm sure I'm good enough to be really useful.

[Moo]

Thank you very much for the invitation. I play on Euro and I'm affraid that playing on NA would cause the latency that will ruin every1s game.

 

As for Nova, just like the Shadow imo in pubic games (i.e. with random teams) she's too important for me to play, I prefer not to catch any of those in hope that a better player will make a better use of it, which should eventually benefit the whole team. Both of them are fun I will start playing them the moment I'm sure I'm good enough to be really useful.

The reason I recommend nova is that she is very easy to understand and play and she is much better suited to an attack damage and weapon speed build than lord z. If you want to play a hero that isn't played in pubs as much, then try out voltron leo. He is very weak at early levels, but his ulti is extremely powerful and it makes him very strong once he gets it. If you decide to play him, there are quite a few quality guides already on the forums that are recent enough to not need updating.