Comprehensive CoC Analysis - 1.2 Theorycrafting

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feyith wrote:

Overall clear speed was better with 100% hit vs anything below 90% (since it's rolled twice to crit, making it more like 80%).

What do you mean by "it's rolled twice to crit"? Diamond flasks?

No, not diamonds. Edited for clarity.

I can't remember what thread it was, but one of the devs was saying the way crit works is it rolls chance to hit to see if you hit. If you hit, it rolls chance to crit to see if you crit. Then it rolls chance to hit again to see if your crit actually lands. So on crit builds, you have to square your on paper hit chance to calculate your actual proc chance. It's weird. I'll see if I can find the post.

Edit: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Evasion

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Evasion gives an implicit chance to avoid taking critical strikes from attacks. If a critical strike succeeds its hit roll, a second independent hit roll is performed to determine if the critical is evaded or not. If this roll succeeds, a critical strike is scored. If it fails, the attack hits only for regular damage.

Hrm...actually, the way that's worded, I'm not sure if that means a crit miss would still count toward proccing CoC or not. Anyone know?

What this means is that you'll have this further diminishing factor on how likely you are to crit. ex. If you have a 60% chance to crit and 80% chance to hit, you essentially have a .6*.8*.8 = 0.384 chance to land a critical hit.

Now, I'm not sure if the "Hits can't be evaded" mod also means "Crits can't be evaded". If so, that would mean a 60% chance to crit means that you have a 60% chance to land a critical hit. However, if not, that would mean a 60% chance to crit and a 80% chance to hit would mean a .6*.8=.48chance to land a crit, with Lioneye's.

Character sheet chance to hit with Lioneye's is always 100%, so crits can't be evaded either. :)

Anyway, the point was options:

Windripper > 40-100ex Harbinger > Lioneye's > 1-10ex Harbinger > Doomfletch > Death's Harp > Quill Rain.

I've expanded the explanation of crit vs hit in the topic post.

I also asked this guy that's using Lioneye's for CoC what he does. He has on his Lioneye's Split-Chain-FasterAtk-CoC-EK-PCoC and a Frenzy setup on his chest.

Standard for bow CoC is SA + Chain + Arc + EK + PCoC for packs and Barrage + EK or a fully supported Frenzy/Puncture for single targets. IMO, Puncture is superior to Frenzy as a boss killer, as it only takes one good hit to safely kill something. (And then run Blood Rage for charges and life leech.)

Edit: My original comment was in reply to, "I personally would not try a bow CoC build without [Windripper]." IMO, any high damage bows are a very party friendly option, as it solves the running ahead to hit things problem.

Oh, and I meant to say nice writeup. I started doing something similar but there is just way too much to cover. You've done a nice job of fitting in a lot of information. Here's mine in case there is anything helpful to add. :)

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/757499

And here's the best wander guide:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/816178

Other mechanics stuff to add for HC builds: Capping your max per hit damage * critical strike multiplier * 0.0018 at well below what it would take to 1-shot yourself.

And one flask to add:

Nice writeup indeed, but ...

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Tell that to the Quill Rain CoC guys.

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One of those guys should say something. :P

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Only idiots use Quill Rain.

=> ok, can you stop the elitism here?



Well, i am not one of thoses, but i guess that's pretty simple... Quill rain = free. Windripper (damn OP bow btw, really probably the best for coc) = 30 ex minimum in ambush (and that's for a low rolls ones).

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The attack speed does not make up for the inconsistent, streaky crit rate

Quill has 50% more crit per second than a harbringer with 1.2 aps / 9.5% chance to crit, and still more than a 1.36/9.5. So I am not sure to get your point, unless we add the end of your sentence,

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and no damage.

This is more of a valid argument, but as i never had a decent harbringer to test it, i can't tell if the difference is huge. I can believe you that this "hybrid" dmg is indeed more efficient.

Honestly though, if you already kill everything almost instantly, i don't see the interest of investing much in a rare bow (some interesting mods? / resits? / stats? others?)

Btw, what range of price in thoses one are we discussing? Several ex? Or more like 30-100 ex, which most players can't afford (and in which case i think they would have a better time going with windripper, at least for the amazing 25% quantity/50% rarity).

The true probleme of Quill is that it usually makes you use thief torment indeed, which makes you lose a lot (it gives you insane life and mana on hit though, like full bars in the blink of an eye without any gems needed for that, not to mention that it brings item quantity, which is super hard to get in ambush). I would need to test it to see if you can do quill without thief, and without sacrificing soemthing else that is really important.

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I can't remember what thread it was, but one of the devs was saying the way crit works is it rolls chance to hit to see if you hit.

Yes, that's how it works, and also, i have just added a page on the wiki about "hits can't be evaded", tired of seing people ask the same question (i though i had seen an official claiming the contrary of mark though...)

That makes us discuss about the last bow out there, lioneye's. The hit can't be evaded is indeed big, cause in all thoses computations we are not taking accuracy rating into account. Now let's say my accuracy is shit, and i only touch mobs 80% of the time, then i would crit 64% of the time i would if i was using lioneye's (0.8*0.8=0.64). Which means that i will do 56.5% more criticals with lioneye's (1/0.64=1.56, if you don't understand this math, then tell yourself that by the time another bow with the same stats would have done one crit, lioneye's would have got 1.565 of them, and if you don't understand, then you need to work on proportionnality again :p). This huge advantage given to lioneye's diminish a lot with your chances to hit obviously, but in this 80% chance to hit scenario, a 1.8 aps lioneye's would basically fare as if it had almost 7.9 crit chance, hence making it better than the 1.75/6.9 thickets and 1.36/9.5 harbringer. It is left to see if you can get accuracy (not so much is needed to make up for the difference imo), or if you can get interesting mods on the rares bows.

And another thing, lightning arrow doesn't work anymore with coc, as it has been nerfed byt the 10 ms cooldown on coc. Stuff that hits multiple target at the exact same time will not proc multiple coc.

After test i can add that using thief torment is absolutly not mandatory with quill rain, it depends on various things, but you can go around it pretty easily (especially since lvl 1 barrage cost like nothing).

And after making a COC dual wand char that is destroying everything (or how to one shoot every monster in high lvl map), i can say that probably you are kind of right on reliability being really important here, as you most of the time 1 shoot everything. So the need for procing at every hit is realy important. And the fact that a succession of proc from quill rain can do a ton of dmg, it feel it would not compensate for the risk of a succession of non criticals doing nothing.