I am not saying you are wrong about the dmg vs endred slotting, BUT I want to understand why. So can someone walk me through my paper napkin calculations and make sure I am understanding this correctly?
Sure. Lets say we have a single attack that does 100 damage, costs 10 end, and recharges in 10 seconds. And just for now, lets assume the cast time is zero. We'll come back to this later.
Initially, if we cycle this attack we'd do 100 damage every 10 seconds, or 10 dps. We'd also burn 10 end for every 100 damage, or 10 dpe. And overall, we'd burn 10 end every 10 seconds, or 1 eps. Lets see what happens when we slot different things. First, lets slot one 33% damage SO. Damage increases to 133. Everything else stays the same. DPS increases to 13.3 dps. DPE increases to 13 dpe. EPS stays the same at 1 eps.
Now, lets slot one 33% endurance reduce. Now endurance costs drop to about 10/1.33 = 7.52. Everything else stays the same. DPS stays the same at 10 dps. DPE increases to 13 dpe. EPS drops to 0.75 eps.
Next, one 33% recharge reduce. Now recharge drops to 10/1.33 = 7.52 seconds. Everything else stays the same. DPS increases to 13 dps. DPE stays the same at 10 dpe. EPS increases to 1.3 eps.
If we focus on DPS and DPE, the damage per second and damage per endurance, then damage slotting is better. Its equal to endurance slotting for DPE and equal to recharge slotting for DPS. In other words, to replicate one 33% damage SO you'd have to slot *both* one endurance reduce and one recharge reduce.
The catch is that EPS isn't constant in these slotting options, and EPS represents the endurance burn rate
if you use your attack(s) as fast as possible. But EPS is something under the player control: they can choose to attack quicker or slower. DPS and DPE are
constraints - they say, in effect, what's the maximum damage you can pump out per second, and the total damage you could deal if you converted your entire endurance allowance into damage. So those two statistics are usually more critical to optimize if you are looking to optimize overall performance.
Cast time mechanics throw a curve ball here. As discussed previously, powers don't start recharging until their cast time expires. More importantly, recharge reduce enhancements don't reduce cast time. That means while a 33% recharge enhancement will reduce *recharge* by 33%, it won't reduce
cycle time by 33%, it will reduce cycle time by less. Going back to our hypothetical power above suppose it had a 2 second cast time. That means it can be used every 12 seconds, not 10 seconds. Suppose we reduce the recharge to 8 seconds so it now cycles in ten seconds. The power now starts off the same as before: 10 dps, 10 dpe. But when we slot recharge, we don't reduce cycle time to 7.52 seconds, instead we reduce recharge from 8 seconds to 8/1.33 = 6.02 seconds, and total cycle time drops to 2 + 6.02 = 8.02 seconds. Notice this is larger than previously. That's because recharge is only acting on part of cycle time, not all of it. And that means that the DPS of the recharge slotting case is actually 1.25 dps, not 1.33. So slotting that first damage enhancement is actually *better* than slotting one recharge for dps, not equal to.
So in reality, slotting one damage gives you equal DPE and superior DPS to slotting one endurance reduce *and* one recharge reduce, in this example. That makes it overwhelmingly better to use than either of the other two alone.
