Mard's Hammer vs. Furious Blade: by the numbers

By Nucleus Accumbens on September 4, 2009 5:20:04 PM from

I've only recently been experimenting with different UB builds lately, so forgive me if all this has been posted before. While this analysis of favor items doesn't apply only to UB, he was the inspiration for it. I was curious about the relative value of Mard's Hammer and Furious Blade, two assassin favor items that increase damage output in different ways.

Mard's Hammer: +40 weapon damage, +5% attack speed

Furious Blade: +100 health, +5% attack speed, 15% chance on hit to increase attack speed +30% for 5 sec

I've been using the calculator at http://www.demigoddb.com for some of what follows, but you can hand-calculate it yourself as well.

Let's take a UB at level 1, no other items, no abilities.

Damage/sec = 121/sec (168 average damage per hit * .72 attack rate)

With Mard's Hammer: 157/sec

With Blade: 127/sec, unless triggered (15% chance per hit), in which case it increases to 163/sec for 5 sec

For sake of an example, let's assume that UB is in melee for a 10 second period. At level 1, he would get 7.2 attacks in that period of time.

With the Hammer, he'd do: 1570 damage.

With Blade, let's assume that the Blade triggers once during this time period and that the beast gets full benefit of it (all 5 sec worth of enhanced damage). So.. (5 sec x 127) + (5 sec x 163) = 1450 damage. (this is best-case scenario)

This makes Hammer seem like the obvious choice, but Blade does have 2 additional advantages:

1. It gives +100 health.

2. Overall, it provides a higher average attack rate. Higher attack rates can be very useful for triggering critical hits and other big-damage effects (e.g. Slayer's Wraps, Nature's Reckoning, etc.)

Comments, mistakes, feedback?

-- NAc

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EDIT (based on Sly's comment): The Scaling Issue

UB at Level 10, no other items or abilities:

Base UB damage/sec: 197/sec

with Hammer: 243/sec

with Blade: 207/sec --> 274/sec (triggered)

Blade will pull away the more damage-enhancing equipment you stack on UB. So, early game advantage to Hammer; late-game to Blade?

+15 Karma | 15 Replies

The hamer won't scale as well as the blade when you have more dps (higher level, more dps eq). For a lvl 1 ub, yeah 40dmg is enormous, but later on getting more attacks in is more significant.

Also, you don't mention the "surprise" factor. 40dmg extra is "consistent"; when people fight you, they can see their bar going down faster and know when to get out of the way. The blade makes it more difficult to ascertain when you need to run, as if the effect could fire right when both demigod's hp bars start getting low and then your adversary is in a world of hurt.

Quoting Sly_Squash,

reply 1

The hamer won't scale as well as the blade when you have more dps (higher level, more dps eq). For a lvl 1 ub, yeah 40dmg is enormous, but later on getting more attacks in is more significant.

Also, you don't mention the "surprise" factor. 40dmg extra is "consistent"; when people fight you, they can see their bar going down faster and know when to get out of the way. The blade makes it more difficult to ascertain when you need to run, as if the effect could fire right when both demigod's hp bars start getting low and then your adversary is in a world of hurt.

I have to agree with sly.

personally, though, i prefer blood of the fallen ( +800hp & 5hp per sec)

If you're going to do it "by the numbers", you need to use probability/statistics to calculate how often Blade's proc is active, not just assume it's going to be on 5 seconds in a 10 second period.

Quoting Wogrim,

reply 3

If you're going to do it "by the numbers", you need to use probability/statistics to calculate how often Blade's proc is active, not just assume it's going to be on 5 seconds in a 10 second period.

Sigh...

Ok, the cumulative probability of getting (at least) one single trigger out of 7 attacks (in a 10 sec period) is 68%.

You have a 99% chance of triggering the effect in 30 attacks.

Regardless, my larger point was that Mard's is better for straight up damage/second calculations at low UB levels, no matter how you cut the cheese.

Sly: your point is well taken.

At level 10...

Base UB damage/sec (with no abilities leveled, mind you): 197/sec

with Hammer: 243/sec

with Blade: 207/sec --> 274/sec (triggered)

And, as you say, Blade will pull away the more damage-enhancing equipment you stack on UB.

So, early game advantage to Hammer - late-game to Blade.

what happens if the blade triggers during the 5 secs of its effect?

How well does the 5% attack speed buff stack with, say, UB's skill attack speed buff? As both of these give a flat 5% boost, it may not matter so much, but it would help to compare it with other items.

Blade of the serpent is better than both anyway though. Every assassin has abilities that do more DPS than anything you do with auto attacks, and the mana from them lets you do them much more often, and in consistent burst scenarios.

Not if we're dealing with an Ooze UB.

Right, but if we are talking about good builds, then it is true, which I think is really the point. That's like saying that an 'auto attack' regulus without mines, mark, or snipe will also get better use out of one of these two. It really doesn't mean much.

It's not my impression that Ooze is inherently weaker than Spit regardless of opposition or map. Of cause I could be wrong. You're a proponent oh Hybrid Beast right?

Yes, Zechno plays a mean Hybrid

On topic:

Furious Blades rocks on two maps: Prison and Exile. Exile has crystals so mana that a BotS gives you or the HP that Blood gives you is not quite as essential (assuming you can keep that crystal locked and secure). Blades is great on Prison for chasing and also good for a lucky surprise skill. Blades also proc's itself (eg, the 30% increased attack speed CAN and WILL re-proc and extend the timer back to the full 5 seconds) and has excellent synergy with Wyrmskin + Claws for a highly probable 20% snare with a +30% attack speed.

That said, Furious Blades is probably a poor choice on Cataract (where a Hybrid Beast rocks because of the Celerity flag, meaning you can spam Spit + Grasp better), and loses out to Blade.

Also, Mard's Hammer isn't even that good... guys +5% attack speed at the beginning of the game is something like 8 dps. You get more mileage with the 400g gloves.

Thanks for the post. I was going through the numbers in my head the other day as well and came to the same conclusion re: mards v furious.

Quoting 2kheron5,

reply 10

It's not my impression that Ooze is inherently weaker than Spit regardless of opposition or map. Of cause I could be wrong. You're a proponent oh Hybrid Beast right?

Very much so, because in hybrid you do not compare ooze to spit (both are awesome) but rather spit to... small static bonuses. I will say that blade of the serpent isn't always the best (Sometimes blood of the fallen is better), but I think that hybrid is.

Quoting Zechnophobe,

reply 13

I took a look at your build and it does seem interesting. I'll definetly try it out, the other Hybrid Beast I've seen have been Spit til level 10 then Ooze rather than both at the same time. The main weakness of the build would probably be the low speed. Might not be optimal against an all general enemy team either, since Spit harrasing is neutralisez by Monks. Anyways, will definetly try it and see how it goes.

Someone needs to try an all out DPS build

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Mard's Hammer vs. Furious Blade: by the numbers