Death shot - Double time

This is not deja vu. Or is it? See how much this bow sold for after the jump.

Well hello again

All the gear that's fit to sell... twice

Yeah, I sold this bow. Twice.

After the events in this post occurred, I thought I would never see it again. But days later, a bow with the same stats and name appeared on the RMAH. For 20$. If you remember from the earlier post, this bow sold for around 25$.

...I guess the guy equipped the bow and realized it wasn't cut out for him, so he put it back on the RMAH. Why he put it back up at a drastically reduced price, I will never know. Ka-ching!

I bought it again.


Note: Alright, I lied to you. I know exactly why he relisted the Death Shot. That reason is the topic of today's article after all. So make a guess in your head right now, and see if your theory is confirmed by the end of this post!

All the hard work

oh god, not another math post

With the advent of build and dps calculators, we can easily determine if a piece of equipment will make you deal more damage or increase your effective hp. These are powerful tools because they allow you to gauge the effectiveness of an item before you physically have it in your hands.

But imagine for a moment for when these didn't exist.

Remember back to when your Demon Hunter was level 59. After cheezing Zultan Kulle grinding and grinding and grinding, you finally hit 60.

Woo, max level! Time to pop to the AH and buy the biggest gun that you can find.

So you look around for the highest damage weapon that you can afford, which turns out to be a 2-handed crossbow (they roll with higher base damage). You buy it. You equip it. You use it.

Roll forward 300 hours of gameplay.

Chances are, your Demon Hunter is still using a 2-h xbow. Why? It's not because you haven't found a good bow or a decent pair of hand xbows. It's because of gear synergy.

Your gear is optimized to maximize your weapon's damage. It's not the other way around; you don't pick a weapon to maximize your gear's damage. Weapons affect the dps the most, so naturally that's what you build around. When you equip a weapon for any class, you're making a commitment to select your gear around it. 

Back to your Demon Hunter. This whole time, you've been upgrading your gear in a way that optimizes your xbow. You might not be thinking about it in this way, but whenever you check a piece of gear and compare dps values, that's what you're effectively doing: Selecting special gear that makes your xbow do as much damage as possible.

Now let's say that some enterprising street peddler comes by with his wares. He notices that you're a Demon Hunter, and shows you a nice bow; he's so generous that he even lets you equip it before you buy it.

You put it on and instantly lose 10% of your dps.

The hell!?

You're angry that this peddler even has the gall to try to sell you something that makes you lose so much damage! And the worst part is that the bow has the exact same listed weapon damage as your xbow: They both have 1200 dps.

But for some reason, the bow does way less damage! The peddler must know that bows are just weaker for the same dps, and he's trying to play you as a chump!

If you think this, then you're an idiot. The truth is, he's just an enterprising peddle; he's not screwing with you. There's a clear reason why the bow is weaker than an xbow for you. And the reason?

Well, I just told you. Gear Synergy.

The bow only seems weaker to you because your gear is optimized around the xbow. If you dropped your IAS, and used it balance out your CHC and CHD values, then you would see that the bow is actually quite competitive (or perhaps even stronger).

What did that last paragraph mean? That's the topic of today's article. I intend on explaining (using words, not a ton of fancy numbers) how your weapon preferences are heavily biased due to your weapon's implicit demands on your gear. Because your gear is dependent on the weapon, changing your weapon type also usually means that you need to change your gear!

You did it subconsciously when you picked out gear to make your xbow as strong as possible. But now let's try to figure out, empirically, the most important affixes for each DH weapon type.

Let's keep vaulting rolling with that Demon Hunter example: Which affixes does a Demon Hunter need with an xbow?

Note: I'm using the Demon Hunter because it's the cleanest example. After reading, I want you to work out the numbers discussed below for a 1h+shield barb, a dual wielding barb, and a 2-handed barb (patch 1.04 anyone?) Homework!

Meaningful mods

When you use an xbow on a Demon Hunter, or, any weapon on any class, you will naturally want to stack some amount of critical hit chance, critical hit damage, and increased attack speed.

Let's start by breaking it down for the xbow case. 

Increased attack speed (IAS)

Because an xbow is slow, you generally want some sort of IAS boost to actually use the weapon effectively. Otherwise you will be stuck in the attack animation when a projectile comes at you, and be unable to move out of the way. If you die constantly with a Demon Hunter, it just means you need to either get more IAS, or learn to dodge. (See my guide to dodging.)

Critical hit chance (CHC)

CHC scales well with an xbow because of the +50% Bonus Critical Hit Damage from Archery Mastery. For every CHC you get, you will get a higher chance of dealing a crit, which increases your overall average dps. Because of the +50% CHD bonus, you also get an additional chance of dealing even more damage, which makes CHC that much sweeter.

Bonus critical hit damage, on the other hand, doesn't scale as well on an xbow. I'm not saying that you shouldn't use it, because it scales well with CHC. It's still amazing, but it's slightly less important than CHC. Why?

Critical hit damage (CHD)

With a theoretical 100% CHC, your damage looks something like:

(100% base damage + 50% base + 50% Archery Mastery) = 2x base damage per hit with 100% CHC and an xbow. 

If you equipped an item that increases your CHD by 100%, it would effectively increase your damage to:

(100% base damage + 50% base + 50% Archery Mastery + 100% bonus CHD) = 3x base damage per hit with 100% CHC, 100% CHD with an xbow.

This means that you gain 50% damage (from 2x to 3x) from a 100% bonus CHD. Now, if you didn't have Archery Mastery equipped:

(100% base damage + 50% base) = 1.5x base damage per hit with 100% CHC and an xbow, and no Archery Mastery.  

(100% base damage + 50% base + 100% bonus CHD) = 2.5x base damage per hit with 100% CHC, 100% CHD with an xbow and no Archery Mastery. 

As you can see, now you get a jump from 1.5x base damage to 2.5x base damage, which is a 67% damage increase.

The takeaway

Compare the 67% to the 50% increase from earlier, and we can see that adding CHD without Archery Mastery scales much better than when you do have it equipped. That doesn't mean you shouldn't equip the Mastery; it's free damage. Use it at all costs. The important thing to see is in the logical inverse: When you use an xbow, your CHD scales worse because of free CHD from Archery Mastery and the 50% base CHD.

So what should you do? For an xbow, it's more efficient to add CHC, and squeeze in CHD when you can't find CHC.

This should be met with the most resounding duh ever. This is obvious, right?

Because you already come with a free 50 + 50 CHD, adding more means less and less; the first 100% bonus means more than the next 100%. You don't need a graph to illustrate this, it's common sense.

So now we know that CHC is better than CHD for an xbow. But what does that really tell us? Not much. You can't just get infinite CHC after all; it gets too expensive. It's much more cost efficient to balance out the two. That's really all you need to know for xbows.

I've just described what is important for an xbow user. For most players, maxing CHC and then CHD is what they've been subconsciously doing when they pick out their gear. They might not realize it, but when they compare the dps in gear upgrades, that's what they're doing.

Let's get back to the main topic. Knowing what's important for an xbow user isn't enough. You need to know what's important for bows and hand xbows as well. We still need to solve that mystery of why that Demon Hunter lost so much dps with a bow!

From 1 to 10

Let's use a numeric scale. It'll help us compare between the three weapon types. Let's define the scale from 1-to-10, with 10 being, "I really really need to have this for my weapon choice".

For the xbow, I'd rate CHC as a 9/10. CHD on the other hand is more of a 7/10. (These numbers will make more sense later when the other 2 weapons are discussed.)

These numbers are a relative scale; given the opportunity, you should obviously have both. But if you can only pick one, then CHC is what you should be choosing. Of course, if you had to pick between 1% CHC and 60% CHD, then take the 60% CHD; that's not my point.

Let's say you had to pick a amulet with either 7% CHC or 60% CHD; it's not an easy comparison anymore. The answer will be different depending on the weapon and the rest of your gear. Off the top of my head, I would probably say that 7% CHC is generally a better pick on an Xbow and 1h-Xbow, and probably worse on a bow. That's what the scale system is supposed to provide you; a general sense of what is important for each weapon type. You should be using a build calculator for very precise calculations.

Now let's rate IAS for xbows. It can't really be rated using the scale, since you just need enough IAS to be comfortable. The less you have, the more difficult it will be to play; personally, I go with 2 or 3 pieces of IAS when I use an xbow. But just for the sake of this scale, I'm going to rate it at a 8, with the caveat of, "only get enough to not die". (It's really like an 11, which goes down to a 5 when you have enough of it.)

For an xbow user, CHC is a 9, IAS is a ~8, and CHD is a 7. The point of this scale is to compare how important these 3 affixes are for all three Demon Hunter weapon types, so let's go through the other weapon types too.

Dual wielding 1-handed crossbows

For a dual wielding 1h-xbow user, CHC is a 10, CHD is a 5, and IAS is a 1. IAS doesn't help you when you already shoot at 1.6 + dual wield speed bonus. It's definitely a 1/10 for dual wielders.

Being able to shoot ridiculously fast is great, but most AoE (area of effect) type skills have a resource cost; the only multi-targetting skill that actually gains hatred is Evasive Fire - Covering Fire. Barring that skill, a fast attack speed will cause you to quickly run out of hatred, forcing you to use your single target skills. This lowers your overall killing efficiency. You can always counteract this by getting hatred regeneration on your items, but stacking a bunch of 1.5 hatred/second regen is costly and causes a general decline in the quality of your gear.

A wizard, on the other hand, has multiple AoE signature spells that cost nothing. Stacking attack speed on a wizard is usually a good idea if you plan on using signature spells like Piercing Orb. Because the Demon Hunter doesn't have these, it's important to proceed cautiously when stacking IAS items.

The real benefit of using dual wielding 1h-xbows is that both weapons can have sockets and add damage via CHD. As long both 1h-xbows have this, you should have a massive amount of CHD (easily 450%). Therefore, all your other gear should maximize CHC, which is why it's a 10/10.
 
You would think that because of the 10% CHC Archery Mastery that you should stack CHD. (It would be like doing the reverse of the xbow case). However, you can't use a quiver when you dual wield, so you pretty much just break even on CHC. Because you have so much CHD from dual wielding, you paradoxically need to max CHC even when your passive gives you 10% CHC.

There's a caveat with the way I rated CHD: You must get 2 1-hand crossbows with sockets. The potential 100% + 100% CHD from a socket in each hand crossbow is an absurd bonus that you can't ignore. This is the whole point of the dual wielding build; ignore this aspect and your damage will suffer. But once that 2-sockets criteria is met, you don't need to worry about CHD for your other gear. Turn your focus back to the CHC, it's a 10/10 rating after all.

Awesome tangent: As a commenter brought up, jewelry that adds dps (like a +24-70 damage roll) are very effective on high attack speed, low dps weapons. Because your dps largely comes from the Crit chance * Crit damage interaction on 1h-xbows, +damage bonuses scale the best on this weapon type. For a simple estimate, I would say that that +damage bonuses are ~2.5 times more effective for a hand crossbow user than a 2h-xbow user.

However, there is one caveat here: You can't easily buy jewelry with the +damage affix. It's not a searchable criteria (which is also why buying mage offhands is so annoying). What does this mean for you? Because they aren't searchable, it's very difficult for players to find and value properly. This creates a hidden submarket of +damage rings and amulets, ripe for the picking.

Remember, the +damage affix scales well for builds that focus on high attack speed, low dps weapons that emphasize stacking CHD. This means 1h-xbow (Dex) and whirlwind barbs (Str) builds. What this means is that Dex or Str along with the +damage affix is worth significantly more than Int rolls. Witch Doctors and Wizards already have a Source to drastically boost their base damage, so the +damage affix from jewelry doesn't scale nearly as well.

Bows

For a bow user, CHC is a 8, CHD is a 8, and IAS is a 3. Let's talk about IAS first. It's nice, but it doesn't help you as much as it helps an xbow. Hopefully you are understanding the point of the numeric scales now. They are useful for understanding the relationship between each affix on each weapon type.

Because of Archery Mastery, you get a flat 15% damage boost. What does this mean for CHC and CHD?

Just balance them. Your passives don't naturally skew your preferences one way or another. You want a healthy amount of CHC, and a healthy amount of CHD. Don't focus too much on one or the other. An 8% CHC amulet will probably add around the same around of damage as a 60% CHD, so pick whichever affix that you have the least amount of. A simple dps check will tell you which one to use.

Here's a little chart I made with these ratings.

Use the chart 

not this chart

Now that we have some numbers, let's apply them.

Let's look back to that example from earlier, with the 150k dps DH that lost 10% damage when he equipped a bow. Now, Look at the chart. Now look back at me. I'm now made of diamonds.

Does it make sense why the DH lost dps? That DH probably has gear that emphasizes IAS and CHC more than a bow user would. Once the gear is optimized for a bow, then he would probably not lose any damage. More likely, he would do more damage, since the 15% bonus damage passive is generally stronger than a 50% CHD passive.

If you had 60% total crit and 200% CHD, this is your damage without the xbow's Archery Mastery:

(1.0 Base damage * 0.40 chance to fail a crit) + ([1.0 Base + 2.0 CHD bonus] * 0.6 chance to crit) = 2.2x damage multiplier

With the 50% CHD bonus from an xbow's Archery Mastery:

(1.0 Base damage * 0.40 chance to fail a crit) + ([1.0 Base + 2.0 CHD bonus + 0.5 Archery Mastery] * 0.6 chance to crit) = 2.5x damage multiplier

2.5x with respect to 2.2x is about a ~13.6% damage increase. This signifies the effective damage increase from the Archery Mastery for an xbow. Notice how this number is less than the 15% flat bonus you get from a bow.

And this is with 60% crit and 200% total CHD! The damage boost from an xbow's passive becomes worse with more CHD and less CHC.

1. 60% crit is nearly unattainable. From the CHC perspective, the xbow passive only gets worse.
2. From the CHD perspective, it's very easy to get more than 200%; it shouldn't be hard for a high end player. The xbow passive gets worse as you get more CHD.

The takeaway

For the same dps weapon, a properly geared bow-user will do more damage than a properly geared xbow-user.

Corrallary 1:
The reason people equip bows and see less damage is because the xbow-user's gear is not optimized for the bow.

Of course, bows are not just hands-down better. They consume more hatred. They also roll with less damage. Xbows simply have more base damage, which means it's more common to see a 1500 xbow than a 1500 bow, if that's even possible. But... go take a look on the AH for an 1200 xbow compared to a 1200 bow. They are the same price (until people read this post).

Corrallary 2:
People don't realize that a 1200 dps bow is much rarer than a 1200 dps xbow. They tend to value them about the same, rather than based on rarity. What does this mean for you? It means that going into bows isn't a bad idea if you aren't an advanced player that's looking for 1500 dps weapons.

Let me make a broad sweeping argument for why there is so much misunderstanding (which caused the bow market to become undervalued). Imagine if every Demon Hunter went through the situation I posited at the beginning of the article. Imagine they all picked xbows at the beginning of their careers, simply because they had more damage.

Now think for a moment about why practically every Demon Hunter still uses an xbow. It's because of gear synergy! They never wanted to swap out because it was practically impossible without changing up their CHC:CHD:IAS ratio! Because nobody wants to stop using their precious 2h xbows, bows became drastically undervalued.

Profit.

Remember Death Shot? I'm pretty damn sure that this is exactly the reason that it was relisted. An xbow user bought it, thinking it was cheap, only to see a 10% loss in damage as soon as he equipped it. Instead of doing something hard (ie, thinking about what happened and why he lost damage), he got mad and relisted the item, never to try bows again.

Double profit.

Scroll down to see how much my bow sold for.

Gear synergy - what it means for you

I've been going on and on about DHs for this entire post. Let's generalize gear synergy.

Whenever you find a weapon which seems like an upgrade for you... think about why its good. Even on a weapon to weapon basis, some weapons will be better or worse depending on your current level of CHC/CHD/IAS.

Here's 3 tips that you can use right now:

1. Understand the gear before you throw it on the AH for pennies. Even if a weapon has less dps for you, it might have more dps for someone else. Try to think about the situation it is best suited for, and price accordingly.
2. On the flip side, look on the AH for items that don't have the most popular affixes. These items are always going to be a steal because they don't fit the meta, and get much less viewing traffic. Remember this? I'm starting to think that this ammy is pretty good now. As long as you build around the items properly, you can turn weird non-meta gear into high quality, usable gear.
3. Be flexible with your own gear. Remember all that talk about the gear calculator? You can use it to figure out what dps you would have with a weapon if you had the optimal gear for it. Don't pidgeonhole yourself into certain builds; it's okay to make that jump from xbow to bow. It's not as difficult or as costly as you may think.
4. Keep your secondary gear. Lets say you have an IAS + CHD amulet. It might be a good idea to keep a CHD + CHC amulet around. They might add the same damage right now, but if you find a different weapon, the other amulet may add 2-3k more dps.

Let me give you an example of #4.

My wizard was using a 750 dps axe with 190 CHD. It was very good, because the CHD allowed my other gear to focus on CHC for efficient scaling.

But this morning, I found a 1000 dps spear. It had 200 intelligence, as well as 50 CHD. When I put the spear on, I noticed that I didn't actually gain that much damage, only about 1000-ish. Thinking back on this article, I realized that because I lost 190 - 50 = 140 CHD, my CHC was too high for my low CHD levels; I needed to balance the two instead of having a high value in one and a low value in another. My gear was not optimized for the spear.

So I looked around my inventory and found my CHD amulet. With the 750 dps axe, the CHD amulet and the CHC amulet (that I was using originally) added the same amount of damage. However, for the 1000 dps spear, the CHD amulet beat out the existing CHC amulet by a good 5k dps.

This is a great example of how items can be misleading if the rest of your gear isn't optimized for it: The much rarer 1000 dps spear deals around the same damage as my 750 because I optimized my gear around the CHD in the 750 axe.