How does Dexterity interact with armor's recovery penalty?

[TomReneth]

Something I am a bit curious about is exactly how the "action speed" benefit from Dexterity interacts with the recovery penalty for armor. Let me break down my current understanding, setting aside dual wielding and Durganized equipment for the moment, and someone tell me if I am wrong or right. I will work with a Dexterity of 20 (+30% action speed) for the sake of simplicity in deomnstration.

 

Plate: 0.5 modifier to recovery speed. 30% of 0.5 is 0.15. 0.5 + 0.15 = 0.65. With 20 DEX, will I then recover at 65% of the rate I would with 10 DEX (+0% action speed) and no armor?

 

If yes, how does DEX interact with a character with no armor penalty?

 

If no, I would like to see a breakdown of how it works.

[Jojobobo]

Here's a post that will answer most of your questions, particularly how the speed benefit works. In terms of no armor penalty, 0 x anything is still 0 so you won't feel a benefit to your recovery. However all the other phases (attack, reloading, etc.) will still be sped up by Dexterity. It's for this reason a fair number of melee builds leave Dex at 10 but look to minimise recovery as this already significantly increases DPS, obviously Dex in addition is even better but you'd probably have a better investment going for the other attributes.

[Boeroer]

Read that post behind the link - then shake your head and read it again!  

[Loren Tyr]

That's a general issue though, that's just how additive bonuses work. This applies to all stats from all attributes, not just DEX. Whether that would be considered diminishing returns rather depends on your perspective. In any case, you'd need to switch to a multiplicative bonus (eg. speed x1.03 for every +1 DEX) for it to be a constant relative increase. Then from 10 to 20 DEX action speed would be multiplied by about 1.34, and by 1.34 again moving from 20 to 30 DEX. But now it would look counter-intuitive from the additive scale, because relative to the base action speed at 10 DEX that would be +34% for the first 10 DEX from 10 to 20, and +46% for the second 10 DEX from 20 to 30. 

 

Anyway, what it boils down to is that an action cycle duration is essentially built up as follows: (total duration) = (idle time) + (action duration) / (DEX modifier), where (action duration) = (animation time) + (recovery time) + (reload time, if any). And in fact the recovery time is just the animation time multiplied by a recovery parameter, so that can be simplified further. In any case, DEX scales the entire action duration, the only thing it doesn't affect is the idle time (around 0.2s, but it varies a bit). 

 

So to translate it to your example: not wearing armour, you have your normal 100% recovery duration. Adding Plate, you have 150% recovery duration. If you have 20 DEX, the DEX modifier is 1.3, so you will end up with (equivalent to) about 100/1.3 = 77% recovery duration when not wearing armour, and 150/1.3 = 115% recovery duration if wearing plate.

 

Though of course in total you are better off, because DEX scales the animation duration as well. So extending the example to there, and let's assume you're attacking with a single fast weapon (1 second animation duration). Base recovery duration is (animation duration) / 0.6, so in this case 1/0.6 = 1.67sec. With this we get the following action durations:

- normal, DEX = 10: 1 + 1.67 = 2.67 seconds

- plate, DEX = 10: 1 + 1.67 x 1.5 = 3.5 seconds

- normal, DEX = 20: 2.67 / 1.3 = 2.05 seconds (whereas DEX = 10 plus 77% recovery would be 2.28 seconds)

- plate, DEX = 20: 3.5 / 1.3 = 2.69 seconds (whereas DEX = 10 plus 115% recovery would be 2.92 seconds)

 

In other words, 20 DEX in plate is as fast as 10 DEX and naked. 

[TomReneth]

That's a general issue though, that's just how additive bonuses work. This applies to all stats from all attributes, not just DEX. Whether that would be considered diminishing returns rather depends on your perspective. In any case, you'd need to switch to a multiplicative bonus (eg. speed x1.03 for every +1 DEX) for it to be a constant relative increase. Then from 10 to 20 DEX action speed would be multiplied by about 1.34, and by 1.34 again moving from 20 to 30 DEX. But now it would look counter-intuitive from the additive scale, because relative to the base action speed at 10 DEX that would be +34% for the first 10 DEX from 10 to 20, and +46% for the second 10 DEX from 20 to 30. 

 

Anyway, what it boils down to is that an action cycle duration is essentially built up as follows: (total duration) = (idle time) + (action duration) / (DEX modifier), where (action duration) = (animation time) + (recovery time) + (reload time, if any). And in fact the recovery time is just the animation time multiplied by a recovery parameter, so that can be simplified further. In any case, DEX scales the entire action duration, the only thing it doesn't affect is the idle time (around 0.2s, but it varies a bit). 

 

So to translate it to your example: not wearing armour, you have your normal 100% recovery duration. Adding Plate, you have 150% recovery duration. If you have 20 DEX, the DEX modifier is 1.3, so you will end up with (equivalent to) about 100/1.3 = 77% recovery duration when not wearing armour, and 150/1.3 = 115% recovery duration if wearing plate.

 

Though of course in total you are better off, because DEX scales the animation duration as well. So extending the example to there, and let's assume you're attacking with a single fast weapon (1 second animation duration). Base recovery duration is (animation duration) / 0.6, so in this case 1/0.6 = 1.67sec. With this we get the following action durations:

- normal, DEX = 10: 1 + 1.67 = 2.67 seconds

- plate, DEX = 10: 1 + 1.67 x 1.5 = 3.5 seconds

- normal, DEX = 20: 2.67 / 1.3 = 2.05 seconds (whereas DEX = 10 plus 77% recovery would be 2.28 seconds)

- plate, DEX = 20: 3.5 / 1.3 = 2.69 seconds (whereas DEX = 10 plus 115% recovery would be 2.92 seconds)

 

In other words, 20 DEX in plate is as fast as 10 DEX and naked. 

Oh, okay. Thanks for the simple breakdown. I don't like doing a lot of math...