This past week it was announced that CullTheMeek is leaving GankStars and joining Alliance (formerly Ardent Alliance). I will miss him. Cull was welcoming towards me when I joined GS as the first analyst. He put me to work more than anyone else in those early days. As a parting gift, I’m dedicating this post to him.

Below you will find the very first analysis I did for GS and for Cull (updated of course). This should help you understand what a curious and precise player Cull is, as well as how deep an analyst must go to answer questions for competitive players.

See if you can find any holes in the below analysis! I always welcome debate.

Cull’s Question

To do the highest possible burst damage with Glaive, I do a combo with my Afterburn. The initial damage is Afterburn slicing through a target. Then I auto-attack them to get the knock back effect. After this, there’s a small window where I can Twisted Stroke or use my Bloodsong Stacks on the knocked-back hero. If I have a Tension Bow and I’m lvl 6, with 20 stacks on Bloodsong, would it do more single-target burst to use my Ultimate or Twisted Stroke?

Setting Up the Analysis

This seems like a simple question, Cull is merely asking whether he should do A or B. If this were a multiple-choice test, there would be a 50% chance of getting the correct answer. But anyone who regularly reads my blog should know that a simple A or B question never results in an A or B answer. The correct way to answer this question is consider every possible situation, list those situations one by one, and give an A or B answer for each situation.

1. Assumptions

Always start an analysis by listing all the numbers and logic you will use in the final calculations. It’s a best practice to also provide screenshots or other resources (ie. Google Spreadsheet) so players or other analysts can double check your work.

2. Video / Gold Analysis

Next I go look at competition videos to figure out how much gold Glaive will have at level 6 and what part of the match he reaches that level in. This gives me the context I need to consider all potential scenarios.

There is quite a range here in the amount of gold Glaive will have at level 6. From about 2,200 to 3,300 (about 1.5 times more if he hits lvl 6 a minute and a half later). This is either just enough for a Tension Bow or enough for a Tension Bow + 1000 into two T1 items or one T2 item. We can also expect our enemy hero to either be without any defense items or to have a light armor or light shield.

Since we have a T1 defense item in both situations, we will also assume we get a T1 defense item each time (either 250 or 300 gold), as well as 2 potions just to be realistic and round it out. This increases the total gold we need for this build to 2500.

We need to consider all of these scenarios independently to figure out the best build for any situation.

3. Calculations and Recommendations

This is the fun part, where we bust out the spreadsheets to try and solve the problem.

Here we see the damage done by Glaive’s abilities in our BASE CASE. Think of the base case as the starting point or the simplest case. In this example it would be Glaive lvl 6 with only a Tension Bow vs. Koshka lvl 6 with no defense items.

Bloodsong will do a base dmg of 100 with 5 extra dmg PER STACK. Twisted Stroke does the same dmg to a single target no matter how many points we add to it. More points will increase the damage it does to other targets in the cleave range around it, as well as increase the critical hit chance of our basic attacks. This analysis is focusing on taking out a single target, so for our base case, Bloodsong will do more damage as long as it has 14 stacks or more.

Now we need to examine the scenario where we have up to 1,000 extra gold to spend and the scenario where our enemy target has either a light shield or a light armor.

Extra gold is likely to be spent on weapon items, in this case it will make Twisted Stroke’s damage increase and require us to have more stacks for Bloodsong to be a better move. If our enemy has a light shield, this also works to Twisted Stroke’s favor whereas a light armor would work to Bloodsong’s favor.

Extra Gold & Enemies With Light Armor

Extra gold (above the 2500 we need for our Tension Bow build) is likely to be spent towards a Sorrowblade or Tyrant’s Monocle. For the Sorrowblade path we will buy: Weapon Blade, Weapon Blade, Six Sins. For Tyrant’s Monocle we will buy: Minion Foot, Weapon Blade, Six Sins. Neither scenario uses more than 1,000 additional gold.

In both scenarios, we see that the Sorrowblade Path has higher Twisted Stroke dmg.

If we have more gold but our enemy does not have any defense items, we see that Twisted Stroke has the potential to be better than Bloodsong with 20 stacks. With just a Weapon Blade the number of stacks we need jumps from 13 to 16. Anything more than two Weapon Blades means Twisted Stroke will be better.

If we have more gold but and our enemy has a light armor the situation changes. Bloodsong only needs 7 to 15 stacks to beat Twisted Stroke depending on how much extra gold we have. The more extra gold we have the more Bloodsong Stacks we need.

Enemies with Light Shield

When our enemy has a light shield, we need more Bloodsong Stacks at the with the same WP for Bloodsong to beat Twisted Stroke. Light shield adds an extra 40 shield. In Koshka’s case she jumps from 50 shield to 90 shield. This reduces Bloodsong’s base dmg to 79 with 4.21 dmg per stack.

The Light Shield has a pretty big impact here. As soon as we have more WP than a basic Tension Bow, Twisted Stroke is going to be at least as strong as Bloodsong with max stacks.

4. Total Combo Damage, aka Always Second Guess Yourself

The key part of being a good analyst is being able to second guess yourself and find things you may have left out.

One thing I realized is that the knockback attack Glaive does after his Afterburn is a basic attack, meaning it can crit and meaning points in Twisted Stroke increase the average damage it will do. This introduces another variable we need to consider, because while Cull is asking whether he should do Twisted Stroke or Bloodsong, what he really wants to know is the highest TOTAL COMBO DMG possible at level 6 with Tension Bow.

Above we have every possible ability allocation at level 6 which will allow us to find the highest possible combo damage. AVG ATK Crit. Benefit is the new thing here. Imagine we have a 10% critical chance to do 150% damage (the base crit. dmg % in Vainglory), aka 1 in 10 attacks will do 1.5 the damage of a non-critical attack. As a simple example, the AVG ATK Crit. Benefit here would be 5%, because 10.5 divided by 10 is 1.05.

From the above numbers we can see that while extra points in Twisted Stroke benefits our Afterburn knockback, it’s not enough of a benefit to warrant more than 1 point into Twisted Stroke (Afterburn’s Slice DMG increase gives us more total dmg). Now let’s see if this changes if we have more gold and if our enemy hero has a light shield, the main scenario that contrasts with our base case.

Just like before, more gold (ie. more WP) and an enemy with a light shield changes our conclusion. In this case we will do the most combo DMG with 4 points in Afterburn and 2 points in Twisted Stroke because the tradeoff between Twisted Stroke and Bloodsong has tipped in the opposite direction.

What About Life Leech Stacks And Other Gotchas?

Of course, the drawback from the build in this alternate scenario is that we won’t have life-leach stacks at anymore. Though remember, when we use our Bloodsong ability we lose the stacks, resetting our life-leach to 0. So whether or not we have Bloodsong in this fight, we won’t have the life leech from the stacks.

5. But is this the fastest way to take out 1 target?

The LAST GOTCHA here that I could think of, is that while this is the best strategy for the BEGINNING of our fight, it might not the best build for a COMPLETE fight. The thing is, our Bloodsong still does more damage than our basic attacks, so if we’re fighting lvl 6 Koshka, does that extra damage actually OUTWEIGH the extra combo damage we are getting from this optimized build. Another way of saying this is: does this build also allow us to kill Koshka with the least number of hits?

To calculate this we need subtract the combo damage from Koshka’s total health, then count basic attacks we need to land to kill her. If we have Bloodsong available, the first hit will be Bloodsong and will count towards the total number of hits we need to kill her.

And wallah! We see that this build DOES technically allow us to kill Koshka the fastest. This is because while it is no better than any other build and leaves her with the lowest health left. If anyone of our allies can deal 0.3 of our DMG Per Hit (23 dmg) then we will kill her within 3 hits whereas she would survive in the other builds.

Bringing It All Together — Final Recommendations

From the above numbers, we can see that if we plan to take advantage of our lvl 6 Tension Bow Spike to take out an enemy jungle carry, the best combo and ability allocation differs when our enemy hero has a Light Shield AND we have at least 30 WP.

In almost every OTHER scenario we want to go 4 into Afterburn, 1 into Twisted Stroke and 1 into Bloodsong. If we have extra WP or our enemy has a light shield, we need 19 or 16 stacks for Bloodsong to be the best combo (a lot). If our enemy has Light Armor, the number of Bloodsong Stacks drops to 7 - 16 depending on if we have extra WP (extra WP means we need MORE Bloodsong Stacks).

So if Glaive players remember nothing else from this post, when it comes to the mid game and the Glaive’s Tension Bow power spike, always go 4 points into Afterburn and if your enemy jungle carry gets a Light Shield and you’re not ready to attack as soon as you hit lvl 6, wait on using that last ability point. If you have enough time to get more WP before attacking, then put that point into Twisted Stroke. In all other situations put it into Bloodsong when you have 7 to 19 stacks. Less if your enemy has Light Armor and more if you have extra WP.

Note: It is not possible to allocate ability points 6, 0, 0 or 5, 0, 1.

6. Bonus: Other Enemy Jungle Carries

Since we used Koshka in every example above, the last thing I want to consider is the stats of other enemy jungle carries and if that could change our answers.

The main thing we notice is that every hero has equal Armor and Shield except for Joule. In Joule’s case (unless we can land every hit from behind) we want to use Bloodsong in every situation and will need a lot less stacks to beat Twisted Stroke. For all the other heroes we will get the same answers as above, including for Glaive vs Glaive.

For those who are still reading and can’t get enough of this stuff, Glaive and Rona will take 5 hits after our combo to kill instead of 4 for Koshka. Krul and Taka will take 3 hits to kill after our combo assuming neither leeches life from us.

7. Late Game Considerations

One consideration in every build / ability allocation guide is how it may restrict other parts of the game (ie. the Late Game or Early Game). In this situation, the recommendations above leave open every late game ability allocation possibility, making it complementary with any late game build that includes a Tension Bow.

8. Conclusion

While Cull asked us to research a simple A or B scenario, the analyst’s job is to know that no question is ever so simple. In this post I have shown you the level of depth we expect within GankStars for VG analysis and hope it helps you improve your own thinking and theorycrafting. If you love this stuff, be sure to say hello, we’re always looking to meet and recruit smart new theorists.