Excelsior

hey, i brought up a topic i originally thought would just be a quick answer in world chat yesterday...

on a weapon intended to be used as a weapon is it better to spend 40 points on spell hits or on sdi.

I was wrong, seems to be many thoughts on this and i a bit confused, isnt a simple math problem? hits change the chance, sdi changes the impact, both are a %... is there something im missing?

i made up an excel sheet and for example, if you have 0% sdi (spell damage = 100%) then spending the 4 points on a new point of hit spell is better right up to the point where you have 50% hit, an then it switches to sdi being better for 2%, then hit for another %... the break even line is actually linear based on this.

at 100% sdi, (200% spell damage total) the break happens at 100% hit... 200% sdi it is 150% hit.

So for me my gear has 235 SDI, and based on that i should need 168-169 total spell hits before i should consider adding sdi...

Is there a behind the scenes diminishing returns i am not accounting for? i assume in this math that the actual spell damages dont matter because each number here is a % so it modifies all damage the same and im assuming 1% spell hit is 1% spell hit regardless of if its the 1st or the 60th.


Thanks!
Renton

SDI works on gear and relayers. Personally I take all the the hit % (hit fireball for instance) to 50% then use the leftover points in SDI. Then let my relayers do teh rest of the SDI work.

guess im wondering if there were concrete reasons behind it though. most people said 'i just do x'.

the actual choice for me i guess comes down to
a total of 161 hits and 235 sdi
or
a total of 151 hits and 255 sdi

when i cut off the decimal points on the results, the values i get for those two are ~541 with a base of ~27 and ~538 with a base of again ~27 ... what these mean is that on a single weapon swing you would expect ON AVERAGE 146 spell damage from set up 1 and 145 from setup 2 IFF resists are all 0. 1 damage difference, less if resists are figured in... (if curious the base number is the weighted average damage of the spells by breakdown on the weapon prior to factoring resist)

Im starting to see the do what makes you happy thing here.

this really is a tiny difference so in the end we might be talking about something that is meaningless in practical application, though i sit near the cross over line so in some instances it might be more dramatic, i dunno.

I am guessing the do 'x' thing is from a logical point of reasoning, rather than math. Armor cant hit anything, so use the hits you need on a wep. Then put the leftovers on it for SDI.