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Great Weapon Mastery - once more into the breach! (with math)
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7199301" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>Your original words, with which I disagreed, were these:</p><p></p><p></p><p>I thought your whole argument was that GWM was good and gave a "minimum" of +10% damage even if you completely ignore the -5/+10 part. Did I misunderstand the assumptions of your analysis? Are you restricting your analysis only to DPR-focused heavy weapon wielders after all?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Exactly my point. At most it will give you a +Str or +Dex to damage, if you're dual-wielding without benefit of the TWF fighting style. (Paladins sometimes do this BTW.) But you'd never consider GWM as boosting your damage by +10%, because it doesn't.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You're treating being forced into using Divine Smite over smite spells as a positive, but smite spells are typically superior to Divine Smite, so you'll want to use them. Again, this means you don't get that "minimum" boost of +10%.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>At this point I think I <em>must</em> be misunderstanding your argument, because if you were arguing for the strength of the GWM bonus action attack as a substantial damage boost, you couldn't possibly say this. A Polearm Master Great Weapon Master fighting a high-AC foe gets near-zero benefit from GWM, because (1) he's already got a bonus action attack, and so all GWM does is occasionally boost that attack from d4+Str to d10+Str; (2) the enemy AC prevents -5/+10 from being a net benefit. An 8th level PM Str 20 fighter vs. a CR 6 AC 20 Hobgoblin Warlord does <strong>13.5 damage</strong> to the hobgoblin per round; adding GWM for the -5/+10 on the haft attack boosts the damage to <strong>13.63</strong> per round (-5/+10 isn't helpful on the main attacks); on rounds when the GWM bonus action attack applies, you'll average 15 damage per round (again, the -5/+10 isn't helpful). If you're a Champion you can expect to get that bonus action attack 19% of the time (two attacks, each with a 10% chance of critting), so your expected damage is 15 * 0.19 + 13.63 * 0.81, giving you an expected <strong>13.89</strong> DPR. GWM boosted your average damage by 0.39/13.5 = 2.9%, far short of that 10% minimum you estimated.</p><p></p><p>That is why it is fallacious to analyze GWM's bonus attack without considering opportunity costs.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again I ask--was I misunderstanding your point? Because the point I thought you were trying to make has been thoroughly debunked, and you aren't even trying to defend it, which makes me suspect that it's not your position after all. The bonus action attack is <em>not</em> a minimum of +10% to damage to all warriors, and you seem to acknowledge that by concentrating your rebuttal on scenarios where the -5/+10 component of GWM applies.</p><p></p><p>The examples I named were chosen to make a point; but only two of my six examples might be using heavy weapons in the first place.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 7199301, member: 6787650"] Your original words, with which I disagreed, were these: I thought your whole argument was that GWM was good and gave a "minimum" of +10% damage even if you completely ignore the -5/+10 part. Did I misunderstand the assumptions of your analysis? Are you restricting your analysis only to DPR-focused heavy weapon wielders after all? Exactly my point. At most it will give you a +Str or +Dex to damage, if you're dual-wielding without benefit of the TWF fighting style. (Paladins sometimes do this BTW.) But you'd never consider GWM as boosting your damage by +10%, because it doesn't. You're treating being forced into using Divine Smite over smite spells as a positive, but smite spells are typically superior to Divine Smite, so you'll want to use them. Again, this means you don't get that "minimum" boost of +10%. At this point I think I [I]must[/I] be misunderstanding your argument, because if you were arguing for the strength of the GWM bonus action attack as a substantial damage boost, you couldn't possibly say this. A Polearm Master Great Weapon Master fighting a high-AC foe gets near-zero benefit from GWM, because (1) he's already got a bonus action attack, and so all GWM does is occasionally boost that attack from d4+Str to d10+Str; (2) the enemy AC prevents -5/+10 from being a net benefit. An 8th level PM Str 20 fighter vs. a CR 6 AC 20 Hobgoblin Warlord does [B]13.5 damage[/B] to the hobgoblin per round; adding GWM for the -5/+10 on the haft attack boosts the damage to [B]13.63[/B] per round (-5/+10 isn't helpful on the main attacks); on rounds when the GWM bonus action attack applies, you'll average 15 damage per round (again, the -5/+10 isn't helpful). If you're a Champion you can expect to get that bonus action attack 19% of the time (two attacks, each with a 10% chance of critting), so your expected damage is 15 * 0.19 + 13.63 * 0.81, giving you an expected [B]13.89[/B] DPR. GWM boosted your average damage by 0.39/13.5 = 2.9%, far short of that 10% minimum you estimated. That is why it is fallacious to analyze GWM's bonus attack without considering opportunity costs. Again I ask--was I misunderstanding your point? Because the point I thought you were trying to make has been thoroughly debunked, and you aren't even trying to defend it, which makes me suspect that it's not your position after all. The bonus action attack is [I]not[/I] a minimum of +10% to damage to all warriors, and you seem to acknowledge that by concentrating your rebuttal on scenarios where the -5/+10 component of GWM applies. The examples I named were chosen to make a point; but only two of my six examples might be using heavy weapons in the first place. [/QUOTE]
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