Lago PARANOIA wrote:
Those numbers you threw up are wrong.
They're your numbers.
First off, from a percentage standpoint it's not an extra 20% damage. It's more like 10-15% because it adds only an effective '+2' to the to-hit roll.
Let's go over this carefully, because you're switching stuff around so fast it's hard to track the ball.
First, we need to assume a base 50% chance to hit...change the base, all other estimates change.
So, at 50% chance of hitting, you hit on an 11 or better. If you reduce defenses by 2, you're now hitting on a 9 or better. Now you're hitting 60% of the time. This increases the expected damage by 20%, honest.
A simple example. A guy hits for d10 damage, 50% of the time. His expected damage is (chance of hitting) * (expected die roll) = (0.5) * (5.5) = 2.75
Let's see what happens when you change chance to hit to 60%.
(0.6) * (5.5) = 3.3.
Note that 3.3 = 2.75 + (0.2)*(2.75), an increase of 20%.
All the modifiers in the world won't change how this works. Nothing past this point will mean much to you until you understand this.
Your huge example violates this assumption and tosses in so many others and twists so much around it's really hard to realize what's going on...and even then comes out so close as to be almost indistinguishable (a 3% difference in damage, over 5 rounds).
Back to the point:
RB: increases expected damage of one player by 30%
AS: increases expected damage of whole party by 20%
And, again, this disregards the releative difficulty of hitting AC with RB, as opposed to hitting Ref with AS and a built-in +2 bonus, and disregards the healing effect.
Yes, of course, there are particular cases where RB is a better deal, but AS pays off in full or larger parties, parties that use teamwork, and parties that use encounter powers.
RB pays off slightly better in small parties, parties that don't work together except for the two people involved, and parties that don't have encounter powers.
Disregarding criticals, if you hit on a 12 or more with an average damage roll of 40, your adjusted DPR is 24.
No, your expected DPR for (40 damage and 45% chance to hit) is 18. It really makes much more sense to look at things in terms of expectations, rather than continue to toss up wrong numbers.
With AS, you hit on a 14 or more, meaning your adjusted DPR is 28, or 4 extra damage.
I think you have your numbers backwards here. We'll try some easier examples in a bit.
Yes, RS is less accurate (ony barely though, since they have an easier time getting CA),
In the high level example you give, getting CA with ranged attacks isn't that hard if the rest of the party is doing anything...and even high level monsters typically have lower Ref than AC (eg, Fire Giant has a 6 point difference...even Orcus has a 2 point difference, only a few monsters are any better than this--not even a single drow in the MM).
but it does way more damage to make it up. Seriously.
No, it does as much damage as RB...and nobody wets themself over the damage a cleric does with RB, it's the modifier that makes RB useful.
(huge particular case example violating the basic assumptions, and assuming no encounter powers being used in 5 rounds, netting a 3% advantage for RS, or 0.6% damage difference per round)
Uh, yeah, that's not exactly dominating, or even convincing.
At-Wills once or twice if that. Meaning that Astral Seal would be of more use. But not really that much more, because while their buddies are burning through their power ration, both clerics are probably using their own encounter powers.
Yes, if you assume the party is stupid, AS isn't quite as good.
Meaning that by the time the cleric is ready to use Astral Seal the other peeps will be down to their own At-Wills anyway.
That is some extreme stupidity, indeed. You're seriously assuming the cleric will
deliberately not use his powers to assist the other players.
Frank pretty much summed it up best: there are circumstances where it is awesome. That's something you don't often get in an at-will.
