What is the deal with EWD + Ruthlessness?

[Yesheron]

Can anyone explain to me why this would be a good option? I am clueless.

[kimwong]

Ruthlessness is just a luck astral, generally it is useless

[Ziggythewiz]

Ruthlessness is only useful for events where you can try again till you get lucky, so in ToK or Sky Trails it may be useful if that extra X% would help you pass if it hits at the right time.

[CrizzyB]

Like kimwong said, ruthlessness is a luck astral. You can hit extra hard, or hit extra soft. Just depends on luck.

Some people do feel that you get more big hits than weak hits, so they like to run it in world boss or in fights where they are trying to score massive delphics/sylph delphics in the hopes of gambling a bit and killing the opponent faster.

[Yesheron]

The reason I ask is that I have seen people using the combo, and I read this (very weird) post...

"Boost a cow6/19/14, 10:20 AM

I'm really curious about the Ruthlessness astral anymore. I've been using it for over a month now. I just decided to use it for fun, since i'm camped at lvl 59 (so thought no real harm) and to look at it in a different light. How well it compliments EWD. From lvl 4 Ruthlessness up Lvl 8 I made, due to it working so well. My WB fights alone from the get go of using a lvl 4 Ruth, I saw a dramatic increase in gains. From a rough median of 600k to 800k. And as the higher the level of the astral the gains increased as well. PvP as well was a noticable change. After the first 1 week, I began taking screenshots, reviewing about 1200 (800 est. were PvP) captures, all with lvl 6 Ruth it was not a maintained average damage. Yes there are those weak attacks and strong ones but with the astral my average dmg climbed about 20%. Now overall it is a small cross section of what a test needs to be. But, there is more to the astral I think, and since it has been discounted for so long, I'm sure it will always be overlooked as a compliment to EWD just as Determination has its synergy with Crit. But, I dunno I just did it to help pass time while I'm camped."

From another site.

I know what the astral is supposed to do... but I also know that my WB earnings using Crit-Deter-Ruth is higher than without Ruth. Like, maybe 200-400k less per WB. With just level 4 Ruth.

Are these people just ignorant/talking out of their ***?

[Boostacow]

The deal was just "curiosity". As stated, being camped I need to find other ways to pass time while in the game. Using floating damage came about after a guildmate noticed (back in May) that his illusion astral seemed to not be working the same as it used to. Then info starting cropping up about "Block" "Crit" and Illusion not working the quite the same as it used to. So always wondering if Ruthlessness is "useless". I just decided to find out. So swapped HP for it. Fair trade, didn't really care about the 2000hp loss at my level. But the moment I put it on for the first WB fight I broke 1 mil gain. From usual 600-700k. I figured "probably just a crazy lucky run", or "WB probably has some algorithm applied to make it useful." But a month straight the gains increased as the lvl of the astral did. And was running it in PvP the whole time as well. Took screenshots quite often for later personal data. To sum up and cut short. It seems it does more positive then negative. So now on the time I have left to chase down Lord Divine before I level to 60. I plan I running another test with the astral for fun.

*Side Note: Today in Class Wars ran into a buddy who was running with Ruthless lvl. 6. (42% Floating Increase) We have comparable stats, She is just lvl 67. Both went into a Hades duel. Doing very much the same damage until the Delphic happened. Mine did about 30k dmg total (15k+15K). Then Hers came next. Expecting the 30k, that is when I realized the astral. First hit was 26K dmg second was 9K. For that 1 min until next fight I saw once again a small example of top end damage and bottom end damage not equating to what the median should be. Yielding a higher damage overall. That has sparked my interest in collecting more data and try to see where and when the floating damage gets applied with-in the damage algorithms.

Thesis: Ruthlessness does not work as simply as people discredit it to be. And does a synergy between Will Destroyer and it (Ruth) exist.
(For now, or until things "change" again.) And if it is still maintained at higher Player and max Astral Level.

Sorry for length and really, who cares, I play not to win. Just play to have fun.

[Yesheron]

Thank you for the explanation.