Heartpierce

[Leto]

I decided to do some viability analysis of this weapon.

Assuming the buff refreshes itself and does not create a new buff that can run simultaneously, the absolute best-case scenario would be 100% uptime, yielding a consistent 1 e/sec.

I modified Aldriana's mutilate spreadsheet to include Heartpierce by copying Ribspreader and removing the extra stats. The stats provided 325 dps in my current gear.

I then added 1 energy/sec to the regen in the calculations sheet, and the overall dps was brought up by a couple hundred, but it was still short of Ribspreader by 40 dps, and short of Gouge(258) by 19 dps.

A 75%~ uptime of the buff would have resulted in an additional 80 dps loss compared to 100% uptime.

To be thorough, I repeated this process with a BiS gear set, and heartpierce yielded ~70 dps less than ribspreader.


Now for the interesting part:

I messed around with my FoK spreadsheet, and it appears energy regen scales much better for FoK than a traditional single-target cycle. This makes complete sense, as FoK generally has a much higher damage/energy ratio than other abilities.

I compared some stat adjustments, and it looks like the heartpierce buff would only need at least a 40% uptime to provide more benefit than the extra stats on ribspreader.

My hesitation here is the random nature of the proc. Most AoE situations occur in short bursts, so there is no guarantee that swapping to heartpierce before using FoK would cause a proc soon enough to utilize the full effect of the buff. On the other hand, the high frequency of attacks while FoKing multiple targets would likely cause the proc to happen relatively quickly.

Conclusion:

Heartpierce is inferior to similar ilvl daggers for single-target dps, but is likely BiS for AoE heavy situations. I would recommend picking one up to swap into the off hand with instant poison for fights with a large AoE component.