Thanks to everyone who applied for the role. We had many great applicants but can only choose 1. If you didn’t move on to the next round or even missed the app this time around, you will have a chance again in the future. We will continue to build our team and recruit new analysts as we need more help. The best way to get our attention between now and then is to start your own blog and start writing. Get your ideas out there and get feedback from other players.

Question 1: Calculate DPS (Damage Per Second) for basic attacks for lvl 9 Fortress with one Sorrowblade and Blazing Salvo.

This looks like a simple question but actually has a few tricks.

The first trick is that I do not say what armor you should use to make the calculation. This makes it easy to get the wrong answer. To get the correct answer you should have defined an assumption for the armor or specifically said the damage is based on zero armor (raw DPS).

The second trick is that there is a hidden multiplier that determines how many times a hero attacks per second. For every hero this number is 1.4, with the exceptions of Taka (1.65) and Rona (1). My friend Gadianton actually uncovered the numbers this summer and posted a guide on it on Broken Myth (shoutout to Keldegar as well for first showing me the post).

What if you didn’t know about this hidden metric you ask? One of the key parts of being an Analyst is VERIFYING your work through in-game testing. Every answer should be tested to make sure you did the math right. Even if you didn’t know about this metric, you should have been able to see that your work was incorrect by testing. As a testament to how serious of a point this is: one of our applicants used video editing software to measure the Frames Per Second between Fortress’s attacks and check his work. That’s the kind of attention to detail we want embedded in the culture of our team.

Other Common Mistakes:

1. Not getting the right lvl 9 stats for Fortress even though you can just get them in a Solo Practice.

2. Multiplying the lvl 9 attack speed stat by the Blazing Salvo attack speed stat instead of adding them together.

3. Getting hung up on abilities even though the question clearly states basic attacks.

Below is all the numbers you need to get the correct answer: 341 Raw DPS or 200 DPS vs Self.

Question 2, Part 1: Is it better to buy Sorrowblade or Tyrant’s Monocle for Taka lvl 10 with a Serpent’s Mask?

Another seemingly straight-forward question with three tricks.

Let’s start by figuring out Taka’s stats at lvl 10 with a Serpent’s Mask.

The first trick is correctly factoring in Taka’s heroic perk which gives you 40 bonus damage and 25% bonus Weapon Power. As the 1.10 patch notes explain, this extra damage can go critical so it essentially counts as WP. A strong answer not only calculates the final Damage Per Hit with the perk, but mentions how at level 10 he can use his Ultimate and Kaiten (1st ability) to reach 4 Ki stacks almost immediately (not 5, because his Ultimate can only have 2 points when Taka is level 10).

The second trick is calculating the Average Damage Per Hit while factoring in the critical chance from Tyrant’s Monocle. The formula for this is as follows:

(Critical Hit Damage * Critical Hit Chance) + (Non-Crit Hit Damage * Non-Crit Hit Chance)

Critical Hit Damage = Non-Crit. Hit Damage * Crit. Damage Mulitplier

Non-Crit Hit Chance = 1 - Critical Hit Chance

So let’s calculate it all out. Here we use 70 armor (aka 1.7 because with 70 armor we divide WP by 1.7) which is the average of all heroes at level 10.

At this point you might think, with 17 more damage, Sorrowblade is the right answer. Well, here comes the third trick. It is very common for a player to propose a specific situation such as the above. The Analyst’s job is to take as many factors into consideration as possible and model them all, giving both pragmatic and contextual recommendations. The pragmatist will say, well you can also afford a Weapon Blade on the Tyrant’s build for the same cost as the Sorrowblade build. If we do the math out on that we will see the Sorrowblade build now drops to a lead of only 3 points.

So the pragmatist will say, we’re indifferent at this point. They do almost the same Average Damage Per Hit. And that’s when the contextualist steps in and asks a few questions.

Are we going to use Taka to hit and run? This would make the Sorrowblade build strong because it’s more consistent damage.

Do we need to deal even more damage in the future or potentially use a Weapon Infusion? In this case the Tyrant’s Monocle build is a better choice, even if we add a Lucky Strike to the Sorrowblade build (note I upped Taka to level 12 and are armor assumption up to level 12).

And there you see it, the Tyrant’s Monocle build does more Average Damage Per Hit while also giving us more benefit if we need to use a Weapon Infusion.

My main point is this: whether one item is better than another must also take into consideration other factors, such as cost and the position it puts you in during earlier and later parts of the game.

And it’s critical we analyze these factors for players. Note: I won’t go into the early game analysis here to keep the post short, you get the idea though.

Question 2, Part 2: Is there a better purchase for the same gold?

In this question, I really wanted to see your knowledge of the game by answering as broad of a question as possible. There are multiple correct answers, but mainly I am looking to see if you will consider Burst Damage, Weapon Infusions, Tier 1 & 2 items, as well as both Armor Pierce and Attack Speed to see how you can do the most DPS or the most Burst Damage. Because Taka has the highest Attack Cooldown Multiplier, just adding a Blazing Salvo in the mix with Tier 2 Weapon Items will give you much more DPS than either the Sorrowblade or Tyrant’s builds.

One of our applicant’s went even further above and beyond, he sent me three pages of database queries to computationally find the best build. Talk about analysis!

The Final Criteria: Clear Presentation

Equally as important as getting the right answers is communicating those answers clearly and professionally. Individuals who wrote in complete sentences, with proper capitalization and punctuation, clearly explained their process step by step, and attached a spreadsheet I could tinker with got massive bonus points. It only takes a little extra time to make your work easier to read and scan, but makes all the difference for the people who read it.

So there you have it. All the answers to the GankStars Analyst Application.

Did you learn from this post? Please share it with friends or give it a vote on Reddit so more people will see it.

Think you can do this? We’d love you to join our team in the future. You can impress us by starting your own blog and writing about your theories.

Got feedback or questions? I’d love to hear from you, just write a comment below.