300% ed from armor

merc does 5k-10k with hellrack and elemental set

beter armor out there im only in act3 hell btw

also is kiras with 4 uber emreardls best helm for dmg

ED on armor is just like ED on a weapon.
It only effects its base amount of damage from your weapon.

So depending on how much ED your hireling already has, depends on how much 300% ED will effect them, and of course it does nothing for elemental only physical.

off-weapon Enhanced Damage acts as ED from skills. ED from your stat points also acts as Skill-ED.

Since bows gain 3% ED from every point of Dexterity, Fort armor's 300% ED is exactly the same as +100Dex for your rogue. If your rouge already had 400Dex, then Fort armor would improve her damage by 25%. Note that any 4os armor with 4 lvl88 Emeralds gives 360% skill ED. It is only the very high ED from Dex that makes Fort armor completely redundant for Bowzons.

Bow Physical Damage Forumla
Damage = BaseWeaponDmg * SkillED
BaseWeaponDmg = (BaseBowDmg * on-weapon ED) + "+Dmg from all sources"
SkillED = 3 * Dex + "total %ED from all non-weapon sources"

There are 2 main parts of the damage formula to consider, so to maximize your damage you either increase the weapon damage (when you have lots of SkillED) or increase the SkillED (when you've got lots of weapon damage)

The best setup for damage depends on your rogue's bow. Hellrack only has about 300 dmg, so emeralds will only increase your character's listed damage by about 270 each. It's no exactly 270, because rogues have a base damage, and you've almost certainly got +Dmg from other parts of her gear (e.g. WarTravs, RazorTail belt, etc). Nonetheless, it probably won't be too far off a 350 dmg increase for each Emerald.

Consider the case where your Rogue already has about 300 Dex (900% Skill ED) and no other sources of skill ED (no Might or Fanat auras, etc). With Hellrack she's doing about 3000 dmg. Increase her SkillED by 90 via an emerald will increase that to about 3270. Using an average PhysicalFacet (+22min/max dmg and 30% ED) instead will increase her damage by (22*100 + 322*0.3), or about 316. The phys facet brings her to 3316 rather than 3270. It's not a big difference, but shows you that for a low damage bow, the average phys facet is a perfectly reasonable alternative to an Emerald. For a bow with more damage (quad-socketed eth rare or similar, typically around 500 avg dmg), Emeralds give more damage by a fair margin (in my 900% SkillED example, the emerald would add 450Dmg while the Facet adds 376).

It's hard to test, but I'm told that CriticalStrile and DeadlyStrike doubles merc elemental damage on attack, in which case your rogue's bow with elementalist set should be very handy against phys-immunes. However, a phys-rogue can use magic arrow anyways, so I guess any rogue can handle phys immunes regardless of weapon.

I've seen three posts from you now that are full out wrong. You're either trying to misslead people or just plain unknowing. As Brevan said, it's like skill %ed and won't do much for your merc. A 4 socket armor with emeralds are better for damage.

Best merc setup is

eth cc
ruby craft diadem with dex and 4 emeralds
sapphire craft amy with dex and dex/lvl
diamond craft armor with dex and 4 emeralds
2x con rings
champ fists
razortail
war travs

can get 33-35k damage

Sounds good, I didn't realize crosbow damage was so narrow that your damage range would only be 2k, or is that 33k-35k just the top damage or average?

Please tell me what that merc's dexterity is after that gear is on. Also, is there any other sources of Skill-ED (Might, Fanat, etc) in that 33k-35k?

Top damage only, the minimum would be about 20k. 800 dex is possible with all perfect gear.

thanks, i dont have nor think ill get any con rings in the near future, so stick to elemental set? ALso was planning on using Kiras for the +2skills and res etc w/ 4 emeralds

Thanks Sapphire, then your answers to my questions are
1) There was no other forms of Skill ED on that character other than Dexterity, which was 800. The rogue has 2400% Skill ED.
2) The Damage of the rogue was about 20k-34k, so average of 27k.

Those two statements mean that the optimal rogue's base weapon damage is 27k/25 or about 1080. This means that the rogue's base damage plus their bow and all their gear (war travs, etc) does an average of 1080. It certainly looks like Emeralds are the way to go with that massive base damage, but let's run a test to prove it.

Base Damage = 1080
Original SkillED = 2400
Original Damage = 1080 * (2400%) + Base Damage = 1080 * 25

1) Switch out an Emerald (90% ED) for a perfect Phys Facet (+30 min/max +40% ED) off-weapon:
Base Damage = 1110
SkillED = 2350
New damage = 1110 * 24.5 = 27.2k

Wow, it's a super small and insignificant difference, but if you had a good facet, then it would be better than an Emerald. Let's consider how crappy the facet could be while maintaining an advantage over the Emerald.

2) There's a 200 dmg difference between the Perfect Facet and an Emerald, so how much can the +Dmg of the 40% ED Facet be lowered while maintaining the advantage, and then consider how much the ED% can be lowered on a +30min/max Facet. To be honest, I'm not even sure if Phys Facets can vary anymore, but this math will give us a bit of a clue about whether or not swapping out another Emerald is worthwhile.

2.1 (+30 min/max dmg jewel) )
Base Damage = 1110
Skill ED needed to reach 27k = 27k / 1110 = 2332% = 22% ED Facet.

2.2 (40% ED jewel) )
Skill ED = 2350
Base Damage to reach 27k = 27k / 24.5 = 1102 = +22 Dmg Facet.

Moral of the story:
For at least 1 of the gem sockets on a rogue with 770 Dex and a base damage of 1080, it's better to use a Phys Facet, but not by much (0.8% increase in damage. For such a small difference, it's a waste of time to not use an Emerald, but if you've got the facet, then go for it, since apparently no one uses these (only the massive SkillED of bowzons makes these worthwhile).

blinky99:
Kiras with Emeralds or PhysFacets sounds good. When debating which one to use, just consider if the +30 dmg of the phys facet improves your base damage more than the 50% SkillED of the Emerald improves your overall SKillED.

e.g. If your base dmg is 500 and your SkillED is 1000, then the +30dmg of the Facet is a 6% improvement to base damage, while the 50% ED of the Emerald is a 4.8% improvement in SkillED. In this example go with Facet if you've got it, but it's a minor difference. The more Dex and SkillED you have the better Facets will be, and the more base damage you have the better Emeralds will be.

Does that include the off-weapon min/max/ed bug? I would think phys facets are far worse than emeralds.

Unless you see the bug within the math presented, then I did not consider the bug. Last I knew, the bug was that +Dmg had something like tripple effect for rogues, but I thought that was dismissed as "Oh, you just forgot that the dex bonus is 3%ED for bows." I liked that explanation because it also explained why +Dmg has less effect for other mercs (it's usually about 2% ED per stat for non-bows).

If you solidify exactly what the bug is, then I don't mind re-evaluating the numbers. Currently, I'm pretty sure that the numbers are fine, but if the bug really is that +Dmg acts with tripple effect, then phys facets completely dominate Emeralds in just about all cases.

Find any jewel with +Dmg on it, socket a plain hat from Charsi, and then tell us how much damage the rogue gained (and what SkillED she's got from gear and Dex) from just that jewel.

This is the bug in a nutshell.

In the case of a 40ed/30min/30max facet, the 40 ed modifies the 30 min and 30 max to 42 min/max, but the bug part is the ed doesn't tack on to the skill ed pile like it should, it just disappears.

Wow, a bug specific to phys facets? Stunning. I never get ahold of facets often, so I wasn't familiar with that issue.

At the 2310% ED of 770 Dex, a +42/42 jewel in this bugged case would add 1012 dmg, while the 90%ED of the Emerald with a base damage of 1080 would add 972. The facet's still better, but not by nearly as much as before. Two bugged facets at 2220% ED would add 1949 dmg, while using Emeralds for those 2 sockets adds 1944. After that, clearly the bugged facets aren't worth it. At least it's nice to know that when your Skill ED is about 2400%, then it's worth using a couple of the facets in your gear rather than just selling them.

the one thing is though that these numbers (42/42) are for completely perfect phys facets. you take something more average (lets say 30%ed, 23, 23), then you are looking at around 30/30 min max with the bug applied, so the emeralds might already win out.

Critter's site seems to have been recently (like yesterday or maybe day before I think) changed to show phys facets with unvariable stats. Can anyone confirm that they vary still?

If they're still something like 15-30min/max with 20-40%ED, then the lowest average [(Min+Max) * (100+ED%) / 200] you can use while outperforming an Emerald (with base Damage 1080) is 41. That average gets lower as you add SkillED (maybe Might or Concentration aura, etc). If you had like 2800% SkillED (Added about lvl 20 Might), then you could use a 34dmg jewel.

Moral of the story:
1) Figure out your base damage (char screen damage divided by total SkillED + 100%)
2) Emeralds only add your BaseDamage * 0.9 to your total damage.
3) If (facet avg damage ) * (SkillED + 100%) is bigger than step 2, then use that Facet.

My apologies to the thread creator for hijacking the thread, but I think this line of discussion is finally over

so ppl seem to say best helm is crafted ruby w +dex and +dex/lvl
as opposed to 4 uber emeraled kiras,

i crafted a helm w 30 dex, 3LL, and 16%deadly strike and thought this would be decent? or kiras still better cuz of +skills, resist, and CBF i think

a question on the saphire craft ammy does the quality of saphire matter?

yes, moonstone will provide the best results

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