Wow, that must be great armour. My staff does 744 against my beast.

minorsecond against my unicorn was 678.

Narynth's blademaster against my unicorn was 680 & 2/3rds

Unicorn is also kind of dead now

I thought that damage in general had an element of random in it, meaning a single test with each weapon isn't really going to be conclusive. And now that tattoos are out, the test should make sure that there are no damage boosting tattoos on one but not the other. Finally, I'm pretty sure there is a rune that boosts the damage of magic source attacks, so one should bear that in mind as well.

I hit my thunderbird three times, and it was 744 every time. I thought it was random too, but I guess not, against mobs.

Nope, very few damage skills have random elements.

Disregarding Krellan for a moment, this matches Talan's observations on the test server. She noted that when she was bashing together with Xenthos, they'd end up with equal corpse numbers most of the time. When they cleared Muud, she actually came out with a fair number more corpses than he! So either it is working as Veyrzhul has suggested, or something else is in play... maybe Muud mobs now have a weakness to magic source damage or something.

Also, in regards to raze, if we want to give casters a bit more of an edge here, how about this:

1. Allow magic sulfur to be used on mobiles
2. Allow you to use eq while you are off-bal from using it
3. ???
4. Profit

Do last hits really mean much?

How does that differ from just mobs that don't shield, besides being more complicated?

The number of corpses you walk away with when bashing in a group isn't really a good indication of how good a person's bashing is, since the damage from each person is cumulative. Xenthos, for instance, getting an obliterating crit and Talan finishing it off doesn't mean that Talan's bashing is as good or better than Xenthos's (just reusing names as an example, here). And if Xenthos is leading, and generally getting the first hit on things, it's very possible that something like that happened consistently.

Giving sulfur actual market value/use. If no one wants that, though, I guess we can pass it up.

It evens out the longer you go. You have a point if we're looking at a small number (10-20), but when each person starts having 100+? Not so much.

I also think that if there is a discrepancy from bashing remaining, it will come from ability to tank more so than dps. No one's dps is going to be enough if they can't survive, and if you have four linked urns hitting you and two of them can take WSCs and still keep going... how long you can hold out before needing to move will become a lot more relevant. The tankier the mobs are, the more important your own ability to tank is.

There's also an added cost in caster bashing often enough in the form of mana. Which means also in the form of potions, since you're now having to sip for mana and health, where you have less health and take more damage (is this true for sure? I have no numbers, but it always seems that way ) so you're already consuming more health potions.

So even if they can match up exp/essence gain /hour, they still have to spend more to do it, making the bashing for gold slower, and also are more likely to have to stop the trip shorter, unless they're carrying around even more potions.


Of course, I suppose I could just be doing it wrong. =)

To add to this, I haven't bashed with the changes yet, but during an astral bash, it was quite typical for me to acculmate 2-3 times more corpses than Talan and other caster. this 2-3 times was they would have 100 corpse and I would have 200-300 in about a straight hour or permalinking a node. Again, this is pre-changes, I'm not sure what it would be now, but I think we can draw the conclusion that I was bashing faster and more efficiently than Talan

You really have to compare Talan clearing Muud solo versus Xenthos clearing mud solo and even then there's movement time involved. I have credits on Xenthos being faster, no offence to the love of my e-life.

I've gotten a few linked astral critters that need 50+ hits to die. While solo linking.

It's been a long time since I've been around for wild nodes. Are we still able to link up mobs while the nodes are up? Because, uh... I think linking behind serpent/barrier/gpent while a city/commune's on their respective sphere just became impossible to recover from in most instances.

No, it's not possible.

No, it's not possible.

You can link up BEFORE which is what everyone does now. Highly annoying, but comical all the same.

The next Ascension will be fun, though!

From all of my testing...

PVE damage is static (non-changing). I am unsure how defensive DMP effects most mobs; however, I am very certain that offense boosting offensive DMP from tats does not apply to PVE bashing. The main element of PVE damage variability is crit rate and number of attacks per combat round. This is why testing PVE damage against a beast is fairly valid AND reliable.

Some PVP attacks also have static damage, such as monk asphyxiation choking. Certainly not sure about other types of attacks. Even less sure what damage looks like spread across other guilds. I do know that monk wounding has a variable damage range per hit, and that damage is further modified by wound level. Stack on top of that offensive/defensive DMP and every other damage/wounding mod out there (kata mods, runes, ibululu, etc).

Comparing PVE versus PVP damage is literally comparing apples to oranges.