Riftshards vs. Savage Mace - Mathcraft

[[AzB]owner_strike]

edxs' Graph

For damage normalized by gold costs, see Macrohard's Graph

[[AKAU]Rilian]

It all comes down to your attack damage without the items.

Late game Riftshards will normally out-DPS a Savage Mace.
Before then, when your DPS is low-medium, Savage Mace will be better...

The Math.

Riftshards (MAX) - +75 damage, 10% to proc 2.4x Critical Strike
Savage Mace - +80 damage, 35% chance to deal an additional 100 damage.

Let's look at 100 base damage

Potential damage on a single strike:

Riftshards - (100 + 75) x 2.4 = 420 Damage
Savage Mace - 100 + 80 + 100 = 280 Damage

Factoring in proc'ing chance:

Riftshards - (100 + 75) + (100 + 75) x .24 = 217 average damage per hit.
Savage Mace - (100 + 80) + 100 x .35 = 215 average damage per hit.

Conclusion
As you can see, even with just 100 base attack, your average output with Riftshards will be slightly higher then with a Savage Mace.
Remember though, this is theoretical damage, based off the assumption that the items proc evenly (eg. Savage Mace will proc 35/100 times), which, in practice, does not happen.

[[SnoD]tuete]

i think riftshards is better at any time on full level

[`patrick`]

It all comes down to your attack damage without the items.

Late game Riftshards will normally out-DPS a Savage Mace.
Before then, when your DPS is low-medium, Savage Mace will be better...

The Math.

Riftshards (MAX) - +75 damage, 10% to proc 2.4x Critical Strike
Savage Mace - +80 damage, 35% chance to deal an additional 100 damage.

Let's look at 100 base damage

Potential damage on a single strike:

Riftshards - (100 + 75) x 2.4 = 420 Damage
Savage Mace - 100 + 80 + 100 = 280 Damage

Factoring in proc'ing chance:

Riftshards - (100 + 75) + (100 + 75) x .24 = 217 average damage per hit.
Savage Mace - (100 + 80) + 100 x .35 = 215 average damage per hit.

Conclusion
As you can see, even with just 100 base attack, your average output with Riftshards will be slightly higher then with a Savage Mace.
Remember though, this is theoretical damage, based off the assumption that the items proc evenly (eg. Savage Mace will proc 35/100 times), which, in practice, does not happen.

Your math is flawed.

You ignored armor, true strike and the +15 attack speed.
Which is obviously very disadvantageous for savage mace.
Also, savage mace is +88 damage not +80.

[[AKAU]Rilian]

i think riftshards is better at any time on full level

Considering most heroes have over 100 base attack by Lv 25, theoretically it's true.

Your math is flawed.

You ignored armor, true strike and the +15 attack speed.
Which is obviously very disadvantageous for savage mace.

Armor is assumed to be zero, and all attacks are assumed to hit. Better?
Also, the attack speed is almost negligible, especially when you consider that as base damage increases, as does the damage gap.
As I glazed over at the start of my post, when your damage is high enough, Riftshards wins outright. All due to the fact that Savage Mace's proc adds a static 100 damage to your total damage output, while Riftshards takes your total damage output and multiplies it by x2.4. Which means the more damage items you have already means the wider the damage gap.

[`patrick`]

In the best case +15 attack speed is +15% dps - that's not negligible.

All the things you ignore are what makes a savage mace good - the point at which riftshards takes over is much higher than 100 base damage.

(assuming average 25% armor reduction, which is much more likely than 0%, at the point you get a savage mace/riftshards; 1 attack/second)

(188*0.75 + 100*0.35)*1.15 = 202.4 DPS
[(100 + 75) + (100 + 75) * 0.24]*0.75 = 164.75 DPS

=> Without any other attack speed increasing items, at 25% average armor reduction, ignoring the true strike savage mace is better than riftshards 5, in terms of dps, until you have a base damage of >500.

I think thats a very different result than 100

[yyr_]

When calculating damage from Savage Mace you assume it gives +123 dmg and 15 attack speed. Crit is amazing in that crit is actually a percentage increase to damage which can be worked out by proc chance*crit increase, so 1.4*20%=28% damage increase. So from here its pretty easy

X is your damage before you buy either.

(X+123)*1.075=(X+75)*1.28

So Savagemace is better if you have below 177 or so damage before your purchase either of them. (So most of the time)

I multiply by 1.075 as thats a rough estimate of how much it will increase your damage purely off your base agilities + attackspeed. I really cant be bother to complicate this equation by taking agility gains into account, so dont rage at this fudge factor. I have worked it out for a majority of heroes before and this is a fair estimate but by no means perfect.

EDITED: 1.24 to 1.28 making finally answer 177 pre-purchase.

[yyr_]

I am pretty sure Malle (or for me, Maide) made a graph for riftshards vs shieldbreaker which was pretty cool as well. Ill probably end up doing a full post on all DPS items later.

[F0Sh1ZZL3]

Hammerstorm with EP and lvl4 Riftshards with galvenize and ulti up is a fun thing to do! =D

[[GGeV]Futte]

Hammerstorm with EP and lvl4 Riftshards with galvenize and ulti up is a fun thing to do! =D

yeah, then riftshards would be the best item. but when you're the new FA, then go split-shot lifesteal and mace.

It's really nice that you guys try to break down the numbers, but people should have a feeling for when they should go mace or riftshards.

Normally i buy Mace and Geo on agi carries, to save the modifier for lifesteal.

Riftshards is if, i have had a hard game, cus it's much more easy to assemble. Or if i'm melee without crit, because it's needed from time to time.

[[S2]ElementUser]

Crit is amazing in that crit is actually a percentage increase to damage which can be worked out by proc chance*crit increase, so 2.4*10%=24% damage increase.

It's 28% for level 4 Riftshards. 20% to do 2.4x damage, not 10%. Also, the formula is wrong like Malle informed me when I made the mistake a long time ago.

Your formula is not correct; consider the scenario where you have 100% chance to crit with a crit multiplier of 1 (i.e. you always do your normal damage). Your formula gives the output 2, which is obviously false.

A correct formula is

AvgDmgIncrease = CritProb * CritBonus

where CritBonus = CritMultiplier - 1

Thus, with Riftshards 4 you have an average damage increase of .2 * 1.4 = .28 which is equivalent to a damage factor of 1.28

For the above mentioned test scenario we then have an average damage increase of 1 * 0 = 0, or a damage multiplier of 1, which is correct.

EDIT: If you want to view it as ElementUser did, you have to take into account how often you do your normal damage as well: 20% to crit for 2.4 times the damage means you have 80% to do your normal damage. Sum these up and you have a damage factor of 1.28:
.2 * 2.4 + .8 * 1 = 1.28

[[AKAU]Rilian]

Looks like I was slow and the big boys finished the math...

[[S2]ElementUser]

Wow I just noticed, all of you listed wrong numbers for Riftshards.

It's 20% chance (not 10%.......) to do 2.4x damage at level 4, resulting in an average DPS increase of 1.28x or 28%.

[[AKAU]Rilian]

I went off the tooltip for the item on the site... it doesn't say anything about 20%...

So much outdated stuff on the main site...

[Tyrando]

ye dont trust the site, Madman still has his old skill lol

[[nCp]Puzzles1]

+100 damage is true damage, Savage Mace makes you not miss your attacks, the interrupt can stop channels AND it goes through BKB.

[[S2]ElementUser]

+100 damage is true damage, Savage Mace makes you not miss your attacks, the interrupt can stop channels AND it goes through BKB.

The damage is physical:

<item
    name="Item_Weapon3"
        
    icon="icon.tga"
    
    cost="0"
    components="Item_Halberd Item_Halberd Item_Voulge"
    autoassemble="true"
    allowdisassemble="true"
    
    actiontype="passive"
    
    damage="88"
    attackspeed="0.15"
    truestrike="true"
>
    <onattackimpact>
        <chance threshold="0.35">
            <condition test="not_target_type building">
                <damage effecttype="Physical" amount="100" />
                <popup name="bonus_damage" a="result" />
                <applystate name="State_Stunned" duration="100"/>
            </condition>
        </chance>
    </onattackimpact>
</item>

[CheshireKat]

situational really, if they have an agi carry that's likely to hit up a wingbow savage will be better dps wise even with 2342343 doombringers as the evade will block to much damage.

Mostly riftshards is luxury except for a few people like darklady.

[edxs]

Ignoring Savage Mace's secondary effects, it is always superior when attack damage is less than 96.429.

Otherwise, the region north of this curve is where level four Riftshards takes over:


Equation, if anyone needs exact numbers:

[[S2]ElementUser]

Care to explain the derivation of the equation?

(Particularly the fractions)