Guide Ned Reddavis' Guide to Voodoo Doll Damage (Updated to pyp-v1.0.0)

[Ned_Reddavis]

You've come to discuss weapon damage and we're talking dolls this time. It's likely the least used weapon type for damage in the game and spoiler, there's a reason for that, but we'll discuss how much damage an optimal build will do anyway. As always let's look at what parts of the skill tree are important for damage.

Attune
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Looking at the top skill, attune doll, this let's one attune multiple targets at once while splitting the damage. It appears to correctly split the amount of you would have done to one target across however many have been attuned, so this actually does not change how much overall damage nor how much damage per second (DPS) one does, with the exception of the scorch damage over time (DOT). For the sake of damage this skill may be ignored, though one will likely have points to spare that can go into this skill anyway.

Passives​

The second passive, spirit ward, only servers to protect against other voodoo users and has no effect on at all and can be safely ignored. The other passive may indirectly affect damage since it increases the amount of total voodoo a player has and therefore the amount of hexes one can continuously employ. In practice however, this is again not necessary for dolls(at least for a level 50 pirate) but extra points may go into this skill if desired (if you use voodoo staffs). Not noted in the image is the effect of another passive from the voodoo staff skill tree named spirit mastery, which says it boosts damage by 25% at rank 5. This is however false and is not currently working.

Hexes
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For damage, the hexes that can be disregarded entirely are heal, cure, and grave shackles. Those all provide no damage benefits. Curse is the only other non damage dealing hex, but is important to use at the beginning of any decently challenging fight to make use of its 30% damage increase. Rank 1 curse gives a 30 second buff, which should be plenty of time to win most fights. Perhaps 1 or 2 points can be spent on them to extend the timer for real tough fights. With the other four hexes that deal damage we have enough skill points to max all of them out at rank 5, and for optimal damage this is the path to take. Scorch not only deals more base damage per rank but also more ticks of scorch damage for its DOT per rank, increasing its damage further. Notably for the hex rotation tactic described right after this, there is little benefit to having a scorch higher than rank 5.

Hex Rotations
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This is the trickiest part of finding the most damage as there are a lot of variables to account for to determine when to use what hex. In general, life drain should be used first since it deals the most DPS, and then from there we are looking to do the most damage before that life drain is back off cool-down in 30 seconds. From what I have tested I believe that scorch should be used earlier rather than later because it's DOT actually does do a decent amount of damage if you let it, and then from there you are looking to use the doll skills so that there is as little down time as possible. So, employing these tactics, the following combination of hexes is what I believe to be the most hex DPS possible: life drain, poke, swarm, poke, scorch, poke, swarm, poke, poke, swarm,poke (then repeat from start). Technically you should also curse, but let's assume it's already there.

Doll Damage Equation
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This time around it is as straight forward as it can possibly get:

D= 1.5*B*(1+.005*A) where​

• B= Base damage of an attack as displayed by your skill tree
• A= Attack value of doll being used
• D= Damage outcome of attack being calculated

Doll DPS
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Using the described hex rotation method above, we do that much attack damage of all those hexes divided by about 30 seconds and that gives our DPS. Like I said it is admittedly rather simple this time around, which is nice for everyone involved. Before you look at the DPS chart I want to point out two things that you may notice. First, all of the DPS value are very close together for the dolls with the exception of the two legendary dolls, but not by very much. This is mostly just because dolls already do so little damage that a boost in one doll compared to another is a less significant DPS increase than for weapons with inherently higher DPS such as swords. In testing, it was not guaranteed to have the same amount of scorch damage ticks on an enemy, making the maximum damage ever so slightly higher than twice the minimum damage. Also as I mentioned before, spirit mastery is not working properly but I have put in the data for when it does if you have it at rank 5.

DPS Analysis
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I don't really have anything too insightful here. As expected the legendary dolls deal the most damage, and dolls that have excellent boosts to swarm or life drain tend to also deal high damage. Overall, compared to what we have seen from other weapons, these reign supreme at the very bottom of the food chain, so I can conclusively suggest rarely if ever using dolls against anything tough, other than to provide that curse bonus. I do want to say, however, that dolls provide the best healing utility in the game and for that reason are a long shot from useless to a pirate.

That's all for me, I hope you found this useful as always. Ned Reddavis out!

 

[Misha]

@Ned_Reddavis Great work! Out of curiosity, is there any method in which you could compare Calypso's Radiance to the Soulweaver? I'm curious how either add up in a full-on comparison. If not that's alright, but appreciated anyhow!

 

[Beggar]

Good stuff

 

[Ned_Reddavis]

@Ned_Reddavis Great work! Out of curiosity, is there any method in which you could compare Calypso's Radiance to the Soulweaver? I'm curious how either add up in a full-on comparison. If not that's alright, but appreciated anyhow!

Good catch; a bit embarrassing on my part to miss something that important, but I updated the guide accordingly to also discuss the Soulweaver. It still does better damage than famed dolls, but a decent amount less than Calypso's Radiance.

 

[thehappybub]

Hey great guide, one thing I'm still not getting though is why even put points into scorch? At rank 5 it seems to do max damage of 14 x 24 or 336 base damage. To be honest, in the time you wasted casting scorch you could already be casting life drain and starting the swarm/poke cycle. Plus, I doubt many enemies will be surviving long enough to allow the 30 second timer to even run.

Those 5 points from scorch could go into one (or both) healing abilities if you want to have more support possibilities, into more attune (though I doubt that's super helpful), into shackles for pvp, or into spirit ward (which I think gives you a chance of resisting Jolly Roger's attacks during invasions, which would be the only reason I see to do that).

Is my reasoning flawed?

 

[Ned_Reddavis]

Hey great guide, one thing I'm still not getting though is why even put points into scorch? At rank 5 it seems to do max damage of 14 x 24 or 336 base damage. To be honest, in the time you wasted casting scorch you could already be casting life drain and starting the swarm/poke cycle. Plus, I doubt many enemies will be surviving long enough to allow the 30 second timer to even run.

This probably won't be too satisfying of a response, but it's been a while since I've looked at my doll dps spreadsheet. I think the reason why scorch is still useful here is because when you cycle through all of your hexes inevitably you're left with scorch and nothing else to use, at that point it's helpful to use it. You're right though, it has very low damage so if you have something else up it's not worth popping the scorch.

Those 5 points from scorch could go into one (or both) healing abilities if you want to have more support possibilities, into more attune (though I doubt that's super helpful), into shackles for pvp, or into spirit ward (which I think gives you a chance of resisting Jolly Roger's attacks during invasions, which would be the only reason I see to do that).

Is my reasoning flawed?

Also true; In my opinion doll is not a tool for damage but rather for, well utilities, like healing and cursing. However, the goal of this guide was to discuss how to get the most damage out of dolls regardless of how great that damage is. Since damage isn't really the goal with dolls, I completely agree that pulling points off abilities like scorch in exchange for the utility hexes is best.

 

[Ned_Reddavis]

Bump for minor DPS chart updates.