v0.9.8 — The training dummy
There’s never been a way to answer the question every build eventually asks — is this actually better? Now there’s a sparring post that tells you.
Highlights
A sparring post in camp
A training dummy stands at the right edge of the camp scene. Click it, pick an opponent, and you get a full damage report. The fight is simulated instantly — it plays out five minutes of real combat and hands you the result immediately. You don’t wait and you don’t pay: no durability, no potions, no XP, no loot, no risk. Run it as often as you like.
Three opponents
The post stands in for an enemy of your own level, at whichever rarity you choose. Each dummy is built from the same enemy stat curves the game spawns, at the matching rarity multipliers, minus the per-spawn jitter so repeat runs stay comparable:
| Health | Attack Rating | Defense Rating | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common | baseline | baseline | baseline |
| Rare | ×1.8 | ×1.2 | ×1.2 |
| Unique | ×3.0 | ×1.4 | ×1.4 |
Common is the yardstick for comparing gear; Unique is the dungeon-boss test. The gap is subtler than it looks: a higher-rarity dummy’s Defense Rating eats your hit chance, so your DPS actually falls as you climb even though your gear hasn’t changed.
Where the damage comes from
The report opens with one number — your damage per second — then breaks it down by source, widest first: your main skill (by name), weapon swings, elemental damage (from affixes or converted by a skill), damage over time (poison, ignite, bleed), Crushing Blow, and Thorns/Retribution counters. Below that sit offense (total damage, attacks landed, hit chance, life leeched, time to kill, throughput) and defense (damage taken per second, blows landed against you, block rate and damage blocked, and how long your health pool would last).
The dummy hits back
A post that took hits without answering would quietly lie about half the builds in the game — rage on block, proc-on-struck affixes, Thorns and Retribution all need incoming damage. So the dummy swings. Your health is held full throughout, so you can never die on the post and every number is an at full HP figure. Three things sit the test out as a result, and the report says so: Last Stand never activates, on-kill healing never fires, and Rampage starts at its cap instead of building from kills. Everything else is the live combat engine.
Also in this update
- Retribution counters are named in the combat log. A counter used to read as an ordinary swing; it now reads as a counter — Retribution counter on Rotting Hound: 47 — and the miss line names the skill too.
- Active-skill elemental damage is no longer miscounted as a weapon swing. Damage converted to an element by an active skill now lands in the elemental row of the breakdown where it belongs.