Asajj Ventress
what are the best mods. The game suggests offense, cc. Would she be better with Speed and CC. or should i go CD, CC. what are your guys suggestions. i would like to put her with the count. I am trying to get Nute so those 3 can be together.
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I actually find CC pretty useless for Ventress. In easy battles, why bother, and in harder battles with zombie dying you get +15% CC for every death of enemy OR ally, so you'll rack up a 100% CC chance pretty quickly in the more difficult battles (like HSTR).
Therefore, DO NOT use CC% mods.
Likewise you'll gain a lot of offense. The game often encourages you to increase a toon's strength, so if they're good at offense, the game suggests continuing to mod that and make them the BEST at offense. Mathematically, though, it's hard to support. CD is based on your total damage before taking the Crit into account. That is based on your offense + defense penetration vs. the opponents Defense. You can read all the blah, blah, blah below, but trust me when i say that there's a small but noticeable advantage as soon as either allies or enemies have died 3 times. Remember that zombie dies twice for free, so I'm saying that as soon as you kill a single enemy, either you're better off with a CD set, OR none of your night sisters have been dying, in which case you didn't really need the advantage anyway.
Go CD set, go.
The blah, blah, blah if you want to read it:
100% offense (base)
480% offense (unique)
15 % offense (mod set)
By the time you've sent your offense into the stratosphere like this, 15 is only (15/595) = 2.5% of your total offense.
So by using an offense mod set, when Ventress is at her most awesome, that mod set is only adding 2.5% to your base damage.
But when Ventress is at her most awesome, her CC% is over 100%, so using a CD set gains you 30% critical damage (making Crit Damage = 180% of base damage instead of 150% of base damage), but off a base damage which is 2.5% less. Of course, that person that invested in Offense mods still gets a 100% crit chance by then, so to compare final damage (with defense penetration the same in each case), you just perform this calculation:
97.5 * 1.80 = 175.5
100 * 1.5 = 150
175.5/150 = 1.17 (or 117%)
Ultimately, then, when you're cranking out the nastiest damage Ventress can dish, you're getting well over 10% more damage by using a Critical Damage set compared to an Offense set. This is a huge advantage when using Ventress in raids (she can be used in solo teams for HAAT and p3 Solo squads for HSTR). The break-even point is only around 4 deaths (I haven't calculated it precisely), and you're going to getting a lot more than 4 deaths in p3 HSTR since you'll be killing the Telekinetic Sabers 3 times for each topple with at least 2 topples (6 deaths already, so already it's a tiny bit better to use CD set) and at her best Ventress is doing less than 2% damage, so you have to more than 50 attacks by Ventress, which requires more than 50 attacks by Daka, which means more than 100 assists by your dead night sister (should be initiate). Your advantage of +17% was calculated after 32 deaths. Imagine the advantage at 106 deaths. Ultimately this means a much higher chance of completing the phase before Traya has a chance to use Isolate.
This doesn't necessarily help you in GAC (or in any game mode when you're early on in the fight), but unless you want to maintain 2 different mod sets for Ventress, I would assume her success in raids is more important and use
Crit Damage (4 mods) + Potency (2 mods)
or
CD + Tenacity
and make sure to use a CD triangle. Offense secondaries are still good, but I'd prioritize Speed since what little you gain in offense will be overwhelmed by her +Offense% bonuses in a long fight. Speed isn't super important because over the long haul she gets all that bonus TM, but it's never bad to get in that first shot.
Even if you're optimizing for GAC and not raids, remember that it only takes a few deaths to reach 100% CC. At gear 12+5 she has 39% crit chance. This means that a mere 4 deaths (and you get 2 of those free with zombie) gets you to 99% CC. So DO NOT use CC mods on Ventress even for PvP.
After 4 deaths, doing the calc means
100 (base offense)
60 (bonus from unique)
15 (bonus from mod set)
Or 175 total vs. 160 total for a CD set.
Meanwhile, since every hit is going to crit, you get
175 * 1.5 (critical hit with offense mods) = 262.5 % of base damage
or
160 * 1.8 (critical hit with CD mods) = 288 % of base damage.
288/262.5 = 1.097 or 109.7%
So crit damage gets you a better advantage even pretty early in the fight during PvP.
So the lesson here is that Ventress has to be g11 or less to go with an offense mod set in PvP, and even then you should switch it out against raids and other PvE content for a CD set. And you should NEVER use CC% sets.
You should definitely be using a CD triangle.
Given identical mods except for set bonus, damage from the offense set is 99.46% that of a CD set once 100% CC has been reached (3-5 defeats) and does not change with increasing defeats (relative damage reaches an equilibrium). Prior to this the offense set is better. Hence why the in game recommendation is offense since most PVP battles (though NS fights are often an exception) are basically decided after 3-5 defeats. Not to mention if your opponent throws on an anti-crit arrow it’s going to delay the tiny benefit of the CD set even more.
If you are min/maxing for raids, then CD is minutely better. In basically all other circumstances they are for all intents and purposes identical. The mods with the better secondaries should be the deciding factor.
Not CC, Not Potency (I think its bad for Sith raid), Surely not Defense. So Health? or Tenacity?
My thought is Health set, but added Tenacity never hurts anyone.
Originally I had her with a health pair because she's also gaining health alongside her offense and CC every time someone dies.
This was with the +15 faster CD/Health combo. Not that the speed mattered much in the long run with the TM train:
I just mod her with CD
High speed helps with deathstorm.
Thanks for the correction, Train! That does indeed make a significant difference!
And you're right, if they're going to be evening out in the long run with raids (or very nearly evening out, as your math tells us) then secondaries are more important and when secondaries are fairly close, go with Offense Set Bonus for the temporary advantage at the beginning of the fight.
I will make one amendment to what I said. At ludicrous numbers of defeats, even the small % difference between the two results in some increased damage for the CD set. At 3500 offense, it’s around 100 more damage per hit at 10 defeats, around 700 more per hit at 100 defeats. That does add up over time for raids.
Assuming 100% CC:
X = Offense without set bonus
Y = Number of defeats
CD-SET_DMG=X*(1+.15Y)*2.22
OF-SET_DMG=1.15X*(1+.15Y)*1.92
Simplifying and taking the ratio:
OF-SET_DMG / CD-SET_DMG = (2.208+.3312*Y) / (2.22+.333*Y)
@Y=000, Ratio=.99459
@Y=050, Ratio=.99459
@Y=500, Ratio=.99459
Ratio remains unchanged even if you make Y a million.
As to the 2 piece set, I agree that’s more complicated. For PVP under MT lead, potency could be a good choice (for stun on basic). A high potency NS squad that keeps stun locking everyone can be a pain to deal with. Her base potency is so low and it’s only 50% stun chance, so I wouldn’t use it under her own lead though. Also agree that potency not as good for (her role in) raids. I like the health suggestion since she also gains 15% max health on defeats. Possibly tenacity. I don’t think CC is bad for lower gear either (natural CC under 40%). If you have G12+ or relics, it’s much less useful as has already been explained.
First, offence set definitely NOT multiplies ALL the damage. It's not multiplies flat offense bonuses, for example. Second, why do you think that set bonus is multiplicative with Rampage? Why 1.15(1+.15Y) but not (1+.15+.15Y)? For example, Offense Up is also percentage offence buff but it's definitely NOT multiplied by Rampage, it's very easy to see in NS-Anakin HSTR runs where Asajj damage on later stages is not visibly increased if she takes Offence Up buff from Anakin's special.
This is the math that I did, and it does indeed come out very differently. @Train explained that Rampage's boost is to the Offense that Ventress starts the encounter with. I'm not clear where Train got that info (or I wouldn't have done the calculation my/your way the first time), but it seems legit to me. In fact, the very fact that the two options (CD set & Offense set) track each other closely under Train's assumptions but Offense sets are clearly inferior under my assumptions makes it incredibly unlikely that the game would recommend Offense sets under my assumptions. Since the game does recommend Offense sets, that makes me think that Train's method is much more likely to be correct than my method, even without finding any clear statement from CG (or examining the code itself) confirming that 100%.
So i'm going with Train being right on this one.
To your first point, yes having other offense bonuses on mods (whether percent or flat) would not be multiplied by the set bonus and do slightly shift the benefit towards CD, but not drastically. I stand by my recommendation: pick the set with the better secondaries. For raids that rely on a lot of defeats to boost Asaaj damage, CD is the better choice in the long run.
As to the second part, the short answer is that it's my understanding that mods are not the same as in-battle effects. My understanding and experience is that mods are loaded in at the start of battle as part of your 'initial' stats. In battle effects (offense up, health down, uniques, leadership, etc.) are computed based on these 'initial' stats which include the contribution from mods. I thought CG had posted semi-recently that this is how mod stats are applied, but I could not find it doing a brief search. Would be a good Q&A question to get a definitive answer.
@MasterSeedy
Just ran a test using a character with a big in game buff: Vandor Chewbacca who provides himself 80% more Max health with his unique. Conveniently he also has an attack based on max health so we can get some feedback on how much is health has increased.
Method A: Calculating his max health with mod benefits being added to in-battle bonuses (the way MasterSeedy had originally calculated) he would have 48,327 health.
Method B: Calculating his max health with mod benefits applied before in-battle bonuses (the way I suggested) he would have 56,302 health.
His special ability does damage based on 10% of his max health (based on SWGOH.GG). I have no CD on VC, so 150% CD. I did his special attack based on max health while he had 'prepared' (which does double damage) and hits twice.
Damaged Observed on Critical Hit (per hit): 16,129
Method A Critical Hit no defense (per hit): 10% * 48327 * 200% * 150% = 14,498
Method B Critical Hit no defense (per hit): 10% * 56302 * 200% * 150% = 16,891
So even with no defense to reduce damage in the calculated value, if mod benefits apply additive with in battle effects the calculated damage is less than the damage level seen in game. To me, it's pretty clear mod benefits apply prior to in-battle effects as the predicted damage aligns closely with what is seen in game.
You've really gone over and above in providing helpful contributions to this thread.
Relic Kyl-U, Bossk, Malac, etc etc.
The guys that when you hit w/o a crit and it barely moves a sliver if that.
Punching through that Regen/Defense/Mitigation, whatever, w/ a big hitting Crit can help.
Which permutation you do:
Offense set with CD triangle
CD set with CD triangle
+ offense and + speed + health + potency secondaries all depends o. The mods you have available
Tenacity might be a better secondary than potency considering she is a cleanser.
Grand Ivory modded mine like this and I am fine with it. Potency cross cd triangle health circle