Just out of curiosity, has any DH players here tested out using one ruby & one emerald in their double-socketed Manticores yet? i.e., is it better to use double emeralds, double rubies, or one of each? Especially if the gems aren't at the same level.

I'm currently using a pair of Perfect Star emeralds (cause I can't afford to upgrade or buy Radiant Stars), but since it looks like I've won a Radiant Star ruby in the I Love Monday's giveaway, I am wondering if it's worthwhile to replace one of those emeralds with the ruby, especially since it's one tier higher...?

Judging by the Topend DH players, there's multiple with a mix of rubies

Examples : here and here and here

Posted by gnawol at 02/19/2013 12:50 AM

Judging by the Topend DH players, there's multiple with a mix of rubies

Thanks, @gnawol. Wow, all three of those examples are using the new Marquise rubies & emeralds already...! :-0 Any idea if a mix is still the best for lower tiered gems...?

the third one...Lon, 700+ K Damage...my god!

Wow.. and he's using Zuni boots for some reason?

My Taiwanese is pretty bad at reading the stats though ;)

@eastdragon42

I tried doing a comparison of your weapon with two emeralds or emerald and your new ruby using this DPS calculator.

In your case you'll lose about 7K in DPS taking out one of the emeralds and putting in your new ruby.

The three keys are: crit chance, crit damage and Radiant Star vs. Marquise

Crit chance is pretty obvious. The more often you Crit, the more often you trigger your Crit Damage bonus. If you were running 10% CC (relying on Sentries for damage, for instance), Emeralds are pointless.

Marquise Rubies are +160/+160 which is a 23% higher damage bonus. The difference between +130/+130 and +160/+160 can certainly make a difference overall. The lower your weapon damage, the more pronounced that difference will be.

You've focused your build very heavily on CC/CD and less so on Dex. Without any emeralds, your gear and passives start your CD at an impressive +285% CD. The first PS Emerald bumps you from 385% to 475% damage on a crit (recall each hit is 100% damage for the weapon strike +CD% so +50% CD means each crit strike hits for a total of 150% damage). That's a relative increase in damage when you crit of 23%. The second PS Emerald bumps you from 475% to 565% damage on a critical hit for a relative increase of 19%.

To calculate the impact on overall dps, you weight your weapon strike damage by your CC. If you include the Bait the Trap bonus, you have a total 48.5% CC (51.5% with the Scoundrel). So we'll say you crit about half the time. So half the time you hit for 100% and half the time you hit for 565%. 0.5 * 100% + (1-0.5) * 565% = 333%. The overall impact of your gear with 2 PS Emeralds is +233% damage above base damage.

Now, instead, make that second slot a RS Ruby. You're back to +375% CD, but your weapon has increased from 646-1100 base damage to 776-1230 base damage. Taking into account the base 1.22 aps, your base weapon damage increases from 1065 to 1224 - a 15% relative increase in damage. That means your damage on crit strikes is 475% * 1.15 = 547% damage. The overall impact on your dps: 0.5 * 115% + (1-0.5) * 547% = 331%. The overall impact of 1 PS Emerald and 1 RS Ruby is +231% damage. In your case, they're about even for dps.

Another thing to keep in mind, though, is that dps is going to be extremely misleading for you with that much CD on the lower MP levels. If a monster has 20k HP, you're going to kill it just the same if you hit it for 45k damage than if you kill it with 300k damage. Overkills don't matter in Diablo.

The key to killing things is that you generally do a minimum damage above the monster's base HP. In-game dps display, however, only takes into account your average damage including crits, not your minimum damage. With so much CD, that average dps number is going to be extremely far above your minimum damage. In terms of the time it takes you to kill trash mobs, you might get more benefit from the +130/+130 from a Ruby than an Emerald, because the +130/+130 will increase your minimum damage.

Let's take an extreme example to demonstrate. Let's say for the sake of argument, you have a minimum (non-crit) base damage of 20k per weapon strike. Your 2x PS Emerald setup has +465% CD so your min crit strike damage is 113k. Let's say an average white mob monster has 45k HP.

50% of the time, you'll crit and kill them in 1 strike (113k total damage)
25% of the time, you'll go non-crit then crit and kill them in 2 strikes (133k total damage)
12.5% of the time, you'll go non-crit, non-crit, crit and kill them in 3 strikes (153k total damage)
12.5% of the time, you'll go non-crit, non-crit, non-crit and kill them in 3 strikes (60k total damage)

This works out to a weighted average of 1.75 strikes/kill.

Let's instead say you have 1x PS Emerald and 1x RS Ruby. Your minimum non-crit damage is now around 22.5k and your crit minimum weapon strike is well above 45k (getting lazy on the math now). Now check out the scenarios:

50% of the time, you'll crit and kill them in 1 strike
25% of the time, you'll go non-crit then crit and kill them in 2 strikes
25% of the time, you'll go non-crit, non-crit in 2 strikes (exactly 45k damage)

This works out to a weighted average of 1.5 strikes/kill. That's a 17% increase in killing speed.

While the 2nd PS Emerald increases your dps more than the 1x PS Emerald + 1x RS Ruby, the average time it takes to kill the average white creature will be shorter with the Ruby. The higher the monster HP, the better in-game displayed dps will represent your true killing rate. So when killing Elites, Uniques, Act bosses or high MP levels, you can go by your dps and be happy. For MP0 and MP1, you might find your in-game dps is giving you the wrong information. With the new XP bonuses for MP levels, knowing which MP level to play is much more important than in 1.0.6.

As ever, @ecocd, your love of math informs the masses..thank you sir!

@ecocd

Excellent points, and something I had not considered. Even if I replaced my emerald with a ruby, I would lose about 3000 DPS, but my "normal" DPS would go up about 3600 DPS. Might be worth the tradeoff, since as you say, the normal DPS is more reliable.

Thank you everyone for the replies, especially @ecocd for the very in-depth mathematical analysis in a nice, easy "laymen's terms" explanation! Also to @theoryzero for the link to that DPS calculator--didn't know about that one, & it seems like a fairly easy-to-use tool.

Posted by ninjax at 02/19/2013 03:49 AM

Wow.. and he's using Zuni boots for some reason?

My Taiwanese is pretty bad at reading the stats though ;)

I'm guessing he's using the Zuni boots for the attack speed bonus:
+6% poison damage
+231 dexterity
+64 vitality
+6% attack speed
+12% movement speed

Also, I'm guessing it's actually the legacy Zunimassa's Journey boots, which used to have attack speed on it (http://d3db.com/item/i/zunimassas-journey)

It's all Chinese btw. That is to say, the characters used for the different dialects of Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, etc.) are all the same, though the pronunciation is totally different. Thus, persons from different ethnic groups in China or Taiwan might not be able to communicate at all verbally, but they could still do so via writing. Just fyi. :)

This needs to get an upvote for @ecocd really good based maths (as always).
Thanks for the explanation.

Posted by ninjax at 02/19/2013 03:49 AM

Wow.. and he's using Zuni boots for some reason?

My Taiwanese is pretty bad at reading the stats though ;)

Legacy Zuni Boots have 5% attack speed

Posted by theoryzero at 02/19/2013 12:51 PM

@ecocd

Excellent points, and something I had not considered. Even if I replaced my emerald with a ruby, I would lose about 3000 DPS, but my "normal" DPS would go up about 3600 DPS. Might be worth the tradeoff, since as you say, the normal DPS is more reliable.

Well, I have to correct myself here. That calculator I used must of been wrong because I swapped out my radiant star emerald with a radiant star ruby and my reported DPS in game actually went up not down. Adjusting for that and using a calculator that seems more accurate, here is what my DPS breakdown would be:

Radiant Star Ruby: 113,411 DPS (current)
Radiant Star Emerald: -3,448 DPS
Marquise Emerald: -1,788 DPS
Marquise Ruby: +4,629 DPS

I was surprised by this, seems like Ruby for-the-win for me. I was surprised that the Marquise Emerald would not beat the Radiant Star Ruby either. Everybody's situation is different, I wonder if this has something to do with me having a black damage weapon vs. an elemental damage one.

Posted by theoryzero at 02/22/2013 10:55 AM

Everybody's situation is different, I wonder if this has something to do with me having a black damage weapon vs. an elemental damage one.

Nope. They changed it so black vs. elemental damage doesn't impact the choice between Gems. It all has to do with your balance of base damage, CC and CD. It sounds like you benefit from base damage.

You might want to consider looking for an AH weapon with similar stats, one fewer socket, but more than 130 average base damage than your current weapon; note base damage, not dps, because dps depends on the attacks per second.

You may actually find an upgrade now that you know base damage is important in your build. There probably isn't an upgrade, but it won't hurt to check. If you don't need any sockets, you can sometimes find great deals, because, for the most part, no one wants those weapons.