General

Icelightningarchmage

Chain Lightning vs Glacier Chain

[header]Chain Lightning (CL) vs. Glacier Chain (GC)[/header]

Previously, GC was no match for CL. All of this will change (in half a year) when adventurer hyper skills arrive! We will get a hyper skill that lowers the cooldown of GC... [b]BY 100%[/b]. That means no cooldown, and choosing what skill to use just got a little more difficult.

All of the following calculations assume that you are at least level 160! Until you can remove the cooldown from GC, it is undoubtedly worse than CL. Also, both skills have a special attribute that I factor into the DPS. CL gives 25% extra critical rate, and GC gives 40% PDR ignore. These cause most of the uncertainty in which skill is better.

Seriously, a lot of this is assumption and estimation. The conclusion is fairly accurate though. Now, let us begin.

[header]Glacier Chain Calculations[/header]

GC, post-hyper skills, will hit 340% 7 times on 14 monsters. It has a DoT of 135% every second for 15 seconds. The execution time for the skill is 1.120 seconds.

We must also take into account GC's PDR Ignore of 40%. Here are the calculations for PDR Ignore average benefits for several types of monsters.
Just Monsters: ((1-10%)+(40%*10%)) / (1-10%) = 1.04
LHC Monsters: ((1-20%)+(40%*20%)) / (1-20%) = 1.10
Master Monsters: ((1-30%)+(40%*30%)) / (1-30%) = 1.17
Pre-Pink Bean Bosses: ((1-50%)+(40%*50%)) / (1-50%) = 1.40
Pink Bean and Beyond: ((1-70%)+(40%*70%)) / (1-70%) = 1.93

Those benefits weaken if the player has other sources of PDR Ignore. I will assume that most players do not surpass 100% PDR Ignore. Therefore, Pre-PB Bosses have a minimum benefit of 1.25, and Post-PB Bosses have a minimum benefit of 1.39. We will discover later that the DPS for other monsters is already too low, so I will leave those minimum benefits out. Using these, we can find the DPS per monster of GC.

Just Monsters GC: (340%*7/1.120+135%) * 1.04 = 2350%
LHC Monsters GC: (340%*7/1.120+135%) * 1.10 = 2490%
Master Monsters GC: (340%*7/1.120+135%) * 1.17 = 2640%
Min Pre-Pink Bean Bosses GC: (340%*7/1.120+135%) * 1.25 = 2830%
Max Pre-Pink Bean Bosses GC: (340%*7/1.120+135%) * 1.40 = 3160%
Min Pink Bean and Beyond GC: (340%*7/1.120+135%) * 1.39 = 3140%
Max Pink Bean and Beyond GC: (340%*7/1.120+135%) * 1.93 = 4360%

[header]Chain Lightning Calculations[/header]

CL, post-hyper skills, will hit 240% 7 times on 7 monsters. The execution time for the skill is 0.720 seconds. By the way, I get 240% by multiplying 200% by the extra 20% from a hyper skill.

CL gets more complicated than GC when we factor in the extra 25% critical rate. Its benefit varies based on the player's personal critical rate and average critical damage. However, I was able to find the minimum and maximum benefits. Here are the calculations:
Player with 100% Critical Rate and Base Min/Max Critical Damage: (Range*0.25+Range*1.35*0.75) / (Range*0+Range*1.35*1) = 1.07
Player with 35% Critical Rate and 90% Min/Max Critical Damage: (Range*0.4+Range*1.9*0.6) / (Range*0.65+Range*1.9*0.35) = 1.17

I suppose it is possible for one to already have a 100% critical rate without the bonus from CL, which would make the benefit 1, but that would be very unusual. Now, taking all of that into consideration, we can calculate the DPS per monster of CL.

Min CL DPS: 240%*7/0.720*1.07 = 2500%
Max CL DPS: 240%*7/0.720*1.17 = 2730%

[header]Regarding Max Damage[/header]

Yes, if you are an overpowered damage outputting machine, just forget everything you've read so far. There is a certain point of overpoweredness where CL surpasses GC in every scenario except when attacking 11 or more monsters. No, I don't feel like explaining where that number came from. Trust me.

Alright, for a player without any %Total Damage, the minimum range needed to hit maximum damage on a zakum-like boss are as follows:
CL: 140,000
GC: 83,000

The DPS of those two ranges are:
CL: 820,000
GC: 890,000

Now I divide the CL DPS by the GC DPS, and multiply that by the max damage range of GC. Therefore, at a range of 91,000, the player should use CL as their main bossing skill instead of GC. That range gets lower as more factors not included in range, such as %Total Damage, are included. For example, with 24% Total Damage, the range needed for CL to surpass GC is reduced by 20,000.

[header]Conclusion[/header]

"What does all of this mean? Why should I care?"

It means that CL and GC are both useful in different scenarios. If you are a low-moderately funded bosser, GC is a must have. Just look at that 2830%/s min for GC vs a pitiful 2730%/s max for CL. On the other hand, if you are the kind of person that grinds at LHC/Stronghold all day, CL is the way to go. The damage difference is minimal, but CL's range and chain effect make it your most useful skill in a mobbing scenario.
Regarding bossing, if your range is below 50k, GC safely wins, and if it is over 100k, CL safely wins. If you are in that gray zone, do some calculations to figure it out.

"Now wait just a second! GC hits [b]twice[/b] as many monsters as CL!"

Ok, get real. When do you ever attack more than 7 monsters right in front of you? If you ever end up in that situation, then GC will be better. But it never happens.

[header]Lightning Sphere[/header]

Will add calculations regarding this skill soon.

[header]TLDR[/header]

OP Players use CL.
Bossers use GC.
Mobbers use CL.

September 16, 2012

5 Comments • Newest first

Quickjumper7

@42isawesome - The levels weren't up on Max's blog when I wrote this yesterday. I guess GC will really only be used by end game, low funded bossers.

Reply September 16, 2012
kopred98

Power-leveling time
I guess the 100% reduction in cooldown time is useful, along with the DoT, but apparently CL is supposed to have a longer range due to the bounce. In any case, I would still use CL over GC, but use GC once in a while to activate the DoT and the storm magic.

Reply September 16, 2012
XxSluhsiexX

I can see spamming GC being useful over CL in high defence bosses, but at the same time those tend to be ones where you have very little time to react and using such a long delay skill could prove fatal. Due to it's current cooldown state, I also haven't had any practice with spamming it whilst moving around, telecasting could be an issue with its speed.

Also, I don't think you've taken into account storm magic for the DoT from GC. At the same time, no sane archmage would only spam CL and not GC once every 15 seconds to activate the DoT. But that just makes your job a lot harder haha.

Reply September 16, 2012
IcePhoenix

Uh...you need to use GC to activate Storm Magic anyway...besides, it pulls things into you...as a mage do you really want to tank touch damage? -_-"

Reply September 16, 2012
SGJin

I guess i fall under the OP players.
Looking forward to Lightning Sphere calculations.

Reply September 16, 2012