Shriven Souls vs Elder Things - RFM

Secret World Legends General Discussion Orochi Labs
1

RFM = Request For Maths!

So, the SWL Gear and Theorycraft spreadsheet says:

  • Ashes of Shriven Souls adds 0,13 CP if triggered every 4th attack
  • Ashes of Elder Things adds 0,15 CP if triggered every 7th attack

I’m guessing there is some assumptions made there, like the player having 50 % critical chance when using Shriven Souls? What if the chance is 10 % or 25 %?

And how does these fare/compare if you don’t manage to keep a rotation that manage every 4th/7th attack to be a power attack? If you are more or a random button masher, would a Chrushed Cities be preferable over these two?

Lastly, does we know how the “being hit” clause of Shriven Souls combine with hitting? Can one in theory (assume being hit once per second and hitting once per second) trigger it every 3 and 5 seconds?) have it As a solo player I get hit a lot, but I assume a DD in a group let’s the tank take the beating.

(Shamelessly tagging @DumbOx)

Reference for abilities on all three talismans mentioned:

  • Ashes of Crushed Cities: Whenever you hit the same enemy 3 times in succession, you deal 0.375CP physical damage.

  • Ashes of Elder Things: Whenever you hit the same enemy 6 times in succession, your next damaging Power Ability deals an additional 1.05CP physical damage.

  • Ashes of Shriven Souls: Whenever you are hit 5 times in succession of whenever you hit the same enemy 3 times in succession, your next Power Ability has 20% increased Critical Power.

2

Smyrill is assuming a 50% Critical Hit Chance, 170.1% Critical Power, and a Power ability that deals 5.25 damage. To arrive at his DPS estimate, compare the difference between a critical hit from a Power ability with and without Shriven Souls, divide it by four, and then multiply by 0.5:

((5.25 * 2.901) - (5.25 * 2.701)) / 4 * 0.5 = 0.13125

Crushed Cities and Elder Things, on the other hand, deal 0.125 damage and 0.15 before critical hit damage is considered. Using the same assumptions as Shriven Soul for critical hit stats, Crushed Cities deals 0.1460625 damage and Elder Things deals 0.175275 when adjusting critical hit damage for what affects proc damage:

Crushed Cities

(0.375 / 3) * 2.326 * 0.5 = 0.145375

Elder Things

(1.05 / 7) * 2.326 * 0.5 = 0.17445

I have not tested Shriven Souls personally, but I have tested the Tachyon Pigment. For reference:

Whenever you are hit 5 times in succession or whenever you hit the same enemy 3 times in succession, the duration of your currently running recharge timers on Special Abilities is reduced by 3%.

In order to reduce the duration of Special abilities, you must either get hit by the same hostile enemy five times in a row or hit the same enemy three times in a row. Any counters accumulated for hitting a target are reset when you receive a hit yourself, and hitting a target resets any counters accumulated for being hit by a hostile target. This behavior could carry over to Shriven Souls since it shares the same wording in its tooltip to the Tachyon Pigment.

Regardless what logic Shriven Souls follows, the damage of Crushed Cities is consistent without any special behavior on the part of the player. Shriven Souls and Elder Things are alike in that their mechanics require reactive input on the player, under conditions which some DPS builds would struggle to replicate, for what may or may not amount to a fraction of a percent increase in your overall damage per second over Crushed Cities. Elder Things is at most 20% more damage on average, while Shriven Souls is not as equally powerful as Crushed Cities until your Power abilities deal 5.815 damage, or as Elder Things until you deal 6.978 damage.

3

Wait, what? That makes it entirely pointless for tanking/soloing cause you’ll never be hit 5 times without attacking and most enemies attack every 2-2.5 seconds so you won’t be able to hit a target 3 times before it resets.

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4

I was as surprised as you when I ran some tests on it. In one test, I hit ten enemies every second for 20 seconds without a single Tachyon proc. It’s easiest to verify my claims if you make a video recording of each test, make note of the time in the video when you activate a Special ability and when it goes off cooldown. Each cooldown reduction is detectable when the cooldown bar on the ability resets its position at the bottom of the ability icon.

5

Are you sure about the proc rate of every 4th hit for Shriven Soul? Wouldn’t the 4th hit that has the 20% crit bonus also count as the 1st hit of the new 3 hits needed for the proc?

6

4th hit only consumes the Shriven Souls buff (whether or not you crit with the power ability). The counter starts again with the next ability.

7

Used souls in a blood build, +~1k dps compared to 230 dps for ashes at 870ip/30% crit/98%crit power

8

Shriven souls stacks up in 1 Maleficium cast. The crit damage buff, however, stays up entirely for 1 cast. So basically blood can get an average of 10% additional crit damage on every Maleficium - this is what makes it borderline OP for blood compared to anything else.

Shriven Souls should also be interesting for hammer (especially for hammer/fists with Unstoppable Force). For the rest of the weapons, i don’t see it being nearly as useful (probably not bad in the same fashion for pistols with Unload).

9

Yeah, seems like a design flaw. It’s clear they went with the dual trigger conditions because talismans no longer have a specific role dictated via their base stats, but they missed the conflict in conditions. Ideally the two counters should count and reset separately based on their own conditions, with the added rule that both counters reset when one of them fulfills the trigger.

Edit: According to someone else who tested this, only the “get hit” counter overwrites the “hit” counter, but not the other way around.

10

Were you using Maleficium mostly or watching for the trigger and trying to use any specific power ability? Your number sounds almost too good to be true, and since I use blood I’m super curious :smiley:

Ah, actually I think Szalord answered my question…

11

Just to really mix things up, I’ve had people recommend Tachyon Pigment for DPS purposes as well. I know Tach is meh at best for me as a shotgun main since I’m getting OS every 20 seconds no matter what.

12

It’s a viable choice in a cooldown/Special-heavy build that can take advantage of it - I played around with it with one of my Pistol/Ele builds that uses a lot of Specials (higher uptime on CF is nice, as are more frequent Kill Blind and Full House), and it was parsing roughly on par with Crushed Cities.

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13

Thanks for validation on this theory - I’m running a buff heavy setup with several non-elite CDs, so I’m hoping Tachyon really shines in the esoteric builds.

14

I think the math of Shriven Souls is off, in the sense it fails to account for external bonuses to power attacks such as Agents. By giving a bonus to crit power on the attack you are in effect going to dip into other bonus when this procs. For instance lets say I have 3 agents active with 2 buffing my primary weapon by 7% and 1 buffing power attacks. This means my power attacks are going to be increased by 22%. Potentially 24% with 3x power attack agents.

Now with Crushed Cities or Elder Things are a flat cp value proc they would not be impacted by the buffs from agents. Their damage is based entirely on equipment.

Shriven souls on the other hand as a buff to CP is going to be calculated after all buffs to your weapon have been taken into account, so ultimately will likely scale higher that previously calculated. Effectively lower on the bottom end of the gear curve, but higher at the top end. If you plan to play long term.

15

So, for KSR/ele build… crushed city is the way to go? Or Elder things? I’ve ruled out shriven souls for now.

16

Elder Things is as much as 20% better than Crushed Cities, but, when either of them are just over 1% of your damage output and Elder Things requires a Power ability to activate, it’s difficult to eagerly recommend it. Crushed Cities just works without extra input. It’s up to you whether Elder Things is worth the higher pricetag.

17

I’ve already got one… just haven’t built it beyond max epic.

18

My crushed cities is lvl 1 legendary. Eventually, I just want to maximize my numbers… wanted to make sure I’m going the right way.

19

Then you’ll want Elder Things. It’s not stupendously better than the alternatives for an Assault Rifle build–you’ll only notice a difference analyzing ACT logs–but better it is.

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