Hey,

 

Yes, I do know our Mainstat is Aim, but considering the crit chance of Aim has a diminishing return and cunning gives troopers, aside from the normal TECH bonus dmg, also TECH critical chance, I was wondering if it would be viable to go for cunning at a certain point.

So I have been calculating and parsing at which point the total damage would balance out.

 

Using MOX I noticed 71% of my damage is TECH based. Using this percentage I calculated the amount of appliable crit (taking the 71% in mind by the crit chance from cunning) chance I got with aim or cunning.

Also I calculated the bonus dmg I get from both stats, keeping in mind both that 71% of my dmg is TECH based and the bonus from the skill tree/buff (9% for aim and 5% for both).

 

When I looked at 2000 aim, there would be around 0,000111 critical chance from aim. Comparing that with the crit chances of cunning I came upon a cunning of roughly 800. Of course that isn't all, since cunning also lacks the bonus dmg from ranged attacks. So I looked at the loss of bonus dmg between cunning and aim when you would have 800 cunning, which was 63.12 bonus dmg. For this amount of bonus damage you would need roughly 270 aim to make up for.

 

So that would result in the fact that when you got 2000 aim, 530 cunning would be viable, and probably even better than to go purely for the aim. Of course a total of 2530 aim+cunning is hard to get, so I would have to look at a bit lower numbers. For an example 1700 aim that would be 340 cunning, an amount which is actually easy to get at the moment.

 

Is there something wrong with my calculations (I used the formulas from mmo-mechanics.com) or am I forgetting something or could it be that a bit cunning is viable for an assault vanguard (this could also be the case for other advance classes like the sharpshooter gunslinger)

 

If you want the spreadsheet with my used formula and the resulting numbers, I could link them or something similar. It's just a try out, there definitely could be something wrong with my calculations.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Diagorias

So you lose:

 

Ranged Damage Bonus (including 9% aim boost on it)

Ranged Critical Chance (including 9% aim boost on it)

Healing Power: Tech (including 9% aim boost on it)

 

You keep:

 

Tech Power Bonus (MINUS 9% aim boost because this is now from cunning)

 

You gain:

 

Tech Critical Chance (on a different DR curve from the AIM curve) (no 9% aim boost)

 

 

So you can see the Tech Critical Chance gain has to increase damage on tech attacks to outweigh the loss of damage from ranged attacks and the loss of the 9% boost on the tech power because it is now from cunning not aim.

 

I dunno, sounds like a bit of a leap.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Gyronamics

Well that's exactly the reason stacking your mainstat in the first place is better than power. Here is a link to the spreadsheeth where you can see the used formulas https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiCVIa2o11hCdHMxZW03UFdiM3FtaU9LNldKMFNZdXc

 

Power gives purely damage, where your mainstat gives slightly less damage, but also some crit, with a diminishing return. Aside from that the 9% boost to your mainstat is quite small, namely an increase of 0,09*0,2=0,018. But nevertheless it is taken in consideration, as you can see in the spreadsheet.

I looked at this before because I had the same idea, and after I crunched numbers it didn't work out. Cunning was good but not better than aim overall... Though I didn't go over 2k primary. The funny thing was cunning vs power... But really when is your choice ever cunning vs power? If you can prove it... Heck I'd give it a whirl! I couldn't prove it though, and through working it I convinced myself it wasn't optimal.... But hey I've been wrong before!

Well you could go for maximum aim mods, with little endurance and crit, and get the the crit for enhancements.

That way you would minimize your power (also go for crit/acc/surge/aim on implants/earpiece) and maximise your Aim gain.

Then you will get your Aim high enough for cunning to be viable.

 

Atop of that, with newer gearsets coming out, the maximum amount of stats will increase as well, so it might be even more likely after makeb for an example.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Diagorias

Get cunning datacrons. Maybe if you get a barrel or offhand armoring upgrade with cunning instead of aim it wouldn't be too bad. Otherwise, ignore cunning. Aim will always be better. Even if you had high aim everywhere and went the tactics/AP build that doesn't use HiB/RS, aim will always be better

 

Its not even close and isn't worth considering outside of datacrons and maybe barrel/offhand armoring.

Get cunning datacrons. Maybe if you get a barrel or offhand armoring upgrade with cunning instead of aim it wouldn't be too bad. Otherwise, ignore cunning. Aim will always be better. Even if you had high aim everywhere and went the tactics/AP build that doesn't use HiB/RS, aim will always be better

 

Its not even close and isn't worth considering outside of datacrons and maybe barrel/offhand armoring.

 

And where do you base that on? Seeing these calculations 1900 aim and 525 cunning would still be better than more of the cunning put into aim. Pure statements like these are not really that usefull, better back it up with calculations or parses.

Not gonna bother doing calculations for something so criminally obvious. Even if the only "ranged" ability you use is rapid/hammer shots, and you don't have any points in the +aim% talent, aim will pull ahead by virtue of affecting more abilities. The minute increase you'd see in tech crit will never overcome that.

 

Not to mention the op is talking about assault/pyrotech, which sees a very substantial (30% in his own words) amount of damage from HiB/Rail, which would not benefit at all from the cunning.

Not gonna bother doing calculations for something so criminally obvious. Even if the only "ranged" ability you use is rapid/hammer shots, and you don't have any points in the +aim% talent, aim will pull ahead by virtue of affecting more abilities. The minute increase you'd see in tech crit will never overcome that.

 

Not to mention the op is talking about assault/pyrotech, which sees a very substantial (30% in his own words) amount of damage from HiB/Rail, which would not benefit at all from the cunning.

 

It's apparently not so 'criminally obvious' if the calculations prove otherwise, and yes the loss in ranged damage and crit is considered and calculated with, like it is stated in my first post. That's why the crit chance and damage from cunning is multiplied with 0,71. The skillbonus is also incalculated.

 

If you only look at damage, sure then cunning would never be viable, but then neither would aim be, since then you would only want power, for power gives the most raw bonus damage. But aim is generally better, at least for a long while, since it also got extra critical chance, only the critical chance has a diminishing return.

 

Please don't go saying things like these, they are totally not helping the threads on the fora, just because you feel like it is that way, doesn't mean it necessarily is. Come with good arguments or calculations or something to back it up.

Arg did some math then reread it and it's for assault spec. doh! Edited December 23, 2012 by deadandburied

Arg did some math then reread it and it's for assault spec. doh!

 

It shouldn't be too different for other specs, since you only have to know what percentage of your attacks is techbased (DoT's, shockstrike, Ion pulse are Tech based and hammershot and High Impact Bolt are Ranged based)

 

So if you find another percentage, say 60%, you multiply instead with ,071 with ,60. Then you will get a different, but similar spreadsheet and you can check wether cunning would be efficient. If the total amount of cunning and aim would exceed 2600, you would likely to come in conflict with Power, since power has a softspot around that amount of Aim.

Ok, went and did some math. Please forgive the poor formatting, just wrote it up in notepad. If you find any errors in my reasoning or calculation, please let me know. Note that I did all of my calculations (except for the blurb at the end) assuming that one would be fully buffed, have the 9% aim talent, and assuming a 70%/30% damage split tech/ranged.

 

Removed my helm from my dps set, and fully buffed without the helm I have 2190 Aim and 147 cunning.

 

My tanking helm has 113 aim, while the helm I had on Mako has 114 cunning. I figure this gives a slight edge to cunning, but it shouldn't matter as this won't be close anyway.

 

FYI: I am running the Assault/Pryo spec which takes the 9% aim talent (8/5/28). Numbers below will reflect AFTER 9% buff and all class buffs.

 

So, looking at Aim and cunning without the helm slot on.

 

Aim(2190):

Ranged Damage Bonus: +438

Ranged Crit Chance: +13.44%

Tech Dmg: +438

Tech Crit: +13.44%

 

Cunning(147):

Tech dmg: +29.4

Tech Crit: +1.17

 

Alright, so let's put the aim helm on, an increase of 113 aim (cunning stats will remain the same)

 

Aim is now at 2319 (a bit more than the 113 on the helm due to the sorc buff and the 9% aim talent)

Rng/tech Dmg: +463

Rng/tech Crit: +14.00%

 

So an overall increase of:

Rng/Tech Dmg: +25

Rng/Tech Crit: 0.56%

 

 

Alright, now with the cunning helm. Aim is back to 2190, cunning now at 267.

Cunning of 267 gives me:

Tech Dmg: +53.3

Tech Crit: +2.09%

 

Which is an increase over the base cunning value of:

Tech Dmg: 23.9

Tech Crit: +.92

 

Multiply that by .7 (because 30% of our damage as Assault/Pyro is ranged) and we get:

Damage: 16.73

Crit: .64%

 

 

So, by swapping out 113 aim in favor of 114 crit, we lose 8.27 bonus damage (equiavalent to about 36 power, fully buffed), and we gain .08% chance to crit (again, adjusted because tech is only 70% of our damage)

 

So, how much crit rating will give an equivalent amount of crit (remember, we should be modifying our stats so that crit and power are roughly equal, so I'm going to conver that .08% crit into crit rating.

 

My crit% from crit rating at 262 crit rating is 9.78. Dropping my matrix cube (27 crit rating) lowers this to 8.95 a change of .83% crit (again, only looking at the crit % from crit rating, not taking the change in aim into account) So by my calculations, the crit difference in cunning is worth about 1.79 crit rating.

 

TLDR: For fully buffed assault/pyro (with 3 points in 9% aim), trading 113 aim for 114 cunning is roughly equivalent to dropping 36 power for almost 2 crit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok, so let's just assume somehow that 90% of our damage is tech (if we were playing something like a marksman sniper or Adv Prototype Ptech/Tactics VG) and see where the comparison brings us.

 

The cunning additions will now be equivalent to:

Damage: 21.51

Crit: +.83

 

So now there's a damage differene of 3.49 and a crit difference of .27%

 

Damage difference = about 15.19 power equivalent

 

Crit difference = 8.78 crit rating equivalent.

 

Still firmly in Aim's favor over cunning.

Doublepost deleted. Edited December 25, 2012 by OlosBC

Thanks for the constructed reply, that's something I can work with

Seems like there was a mistake in one of the formula, which screwed up the calculations of all the critical chances.

So that indeed means that the secondary stat is at the moment still useless, too bad, cause that would have made things a bit more interesting. I any case this also proves that power is better than cunning (quite a bit), maybe in the far future (around 3k aim will have a similar crit increase as cunning in the early 300, although this will also conflict with power, so it will be a bit more complicated) a secondary stat will be viable for a build, but for now and probably for quite a while it is not.

Also adjusting the spreadsheet to show the correct values.