Taalia’s tips: Damage Guide Part 2 - Damage Control
Author: Taalia (Rosmerta)
Damage! What is it, where does it come from, how do you get more, how do you get the most out of it?
Damage comes in two broad flavours, split into 9 specific types.
First there are the physical damage types:
Slash
Crush
Pierce
Then there are 6 elemental damage types:
Fire
Ice
Magic
Poison
Chaos
Divine
In this part we discuss the damage from auto attacks - rogues, rangers and dps warriors. We will cover the different flavours of damage more in the next part, where to use what type of damage and why.
Author: Taalia (Rosmerta)
Damage! What is it, where does it come from, how do you get more, how do you get the most out of it?
Damage comes in two broad flavours, split into 9 specific types.
First there are the physical damage types:
Slash
Crush
Pierce
Then there are 6 elemental damage types:
Fire
Ice
Magic
Poison
Chaos
Divine
In this part we discuss the damage from auto attacks - rogues, rangers and dps warriors. We will cover the different flavours of damage more in the next part, where to use what type of damage and why.
The way auto damage is calculated is totally different between physical and elemental damage.
Elemental damage is just added up.
But physical damage is based on a formula. That formula is unknown but experimenters on the forums have fit an expression to the data - the post was from someone called Swan so I’m calling this the "Swan Formula":
Auto Attack Damage =
[0.15818*sqrt(Strength) +
0.061069*sqrt(Weapon Ability) +
0.96523]
*Physical Damage
+ Elemental Damage
The actual numbers in the Formula are a decent predictor of your damage (they're experimental - and not accurate). I’d love OTM to release the game mechanics, but that’s not going to happen.
There are two lessons here :
Firstly you can't compare elemental and physical damage on a weapon.
180 pierce damage of a bow cannot be compared with say 180 heat damage. The heat damage is what it says: 180.
But the pierce is scaled up by your strength and weapon ability. For a character like Felicity that scaling factor, or “Swan number”, could be as high as 12. So an increase in a weapon's pierce actually increases total output by a lot more than what it states ; if I give Felicity a bow with 10 more pierce (190 instead of the 180 she uses), she'd actually be hitting 120 more pierce damage.
Secondly while increasing strength and weapon ability increases physical damage, doing so suffers from diminishing marginal returns to each.
This graph shows the swan number from strength.
This graph shows the swan number from weapon ability.
Again note diminishing returns through the square root. A basic weapon ability for a level 220 character is 2200. That gives a swan number of 2.86.
Felicity using 2 imperial oblivions has 4000 bow ability. Almost double. But that only gives a swan number of 3.86. A 34% increase in damage for an 80% increase in ability.
The forums talk of a "plateau". That's not strictly right. More strength or ability always adds damage. But if you have a lot, you need to add a lot more to notice the difference. Here’s a surface showing total swan predict:
How to get more physical damage?
Better weapons only get you so far. Strength and weapon ability. Both can be given by jewellery
Weapon ability is better if you can get it - because it also adds to attack (see “how much attack does a girl need?”). That's why blood rings (dagger ability) and oblivion rings (bow ability) are so sought after, they increase both physical damage and attack.
How to get more elemental damage?
Firstly, your quest armour may deliver it. For rangers and rogues getting DL or EDL massively increases elemental damage output. Ranger EDL adds 495 heat.
Be careful when getting that mord helm. Your EDL helm does 75 heat, and you’re giving that up when you switch to wearing dragonscale.
Doch gives elemental damage for rogues, rangers and warriors. Full Doch adds 800 damage. A Doch hat does 160 - more than a shadow Mordi damage helm.
Don’t forget that DL and EDL aura adds divine damage. That Hrung helm or occult brace might increase skill hit damage for lockers, but losing the aura will punish over a long battle with raid bosses. EDL set aura adds 200 Divine.
Some weapons or jewellery give elemental damage. Chiefly Skain / Gara sets. Bladeleaf gives heat, Stormleaf magic, Frostroot cold, and Bloodthorn poison.
Finally divine damage comes from quest weapons and arcane rings. Treasure these! These are the game changers. This is why 215 and 180 and rings are priority targets.
Felicity : Anatomy of a serial killer
Here are two layouts I use on Feli:
Tower Configuration
Armour
EDL boots. 50 Heat. EDL leggings 120 Heat
Doch Gul breastplate. 240 Cold
Doch Gul gloves 80 Cold
EDL aura. 200 Divine
Jewellery
Runic Valour Amulet. 240 Heat
Godly Anointed Ring 100 Divine
Weapons
EDL Quiver. 250 Divine
----
Total elemental --> 1280
Physical damage
EDL bow 180 Pierce
EDL quiver. 50 Pierce
Total. --> 230
Swan number:
0.16 x sqrt(1570) strength. 6.26
0.06 x sqrt(4000) ability. 3.8
0.95
Feli's predicted swan multiplier. 11.1
Actual swan number. 11
Total physical damage. 2530 pierce
Total (without boosts): 3810
Steady Aim 278
Total (perm boost). 4088
Reapers Touch. 100 Poison
Eldritch Wrath (offhand). 800 Divine
**Total (all boosts). 4988 **
Consisting of. 2808 pierce
1350 divine
100 poison
410 heat
320 cold
Armour
EDL boots. 50 Heat. EDL leggings 120 Heat
Doch Gul breastplate. 240 Cold
Doch Gul gloves 80 Cold
EDL aura. 200 Divine
Darkcake
Helm of the Moon. 100 Poison
Jewellery
Bloodthorn Aura. . 200 Poison
Godly Anointed Ring 100 Divine
Weapons
EDL Quiver. 250 Divine
Total elemental (no skills). --> 1340 total
Physical damage
EDL bow 180 Pierce
EDL quiver. 50 Pierce
Total. -->. 230
Swan number:
0.16 x sqrt(1850) strength. 6.80
0.06 x sqrt(4000) ability. 3.8
0.95
Feli's predicted swan multiplier. 11.63
Actual swan number. 11.5
Total physical damage. 2653 pierce
Total (without boosts): 3993
Steady Aim 283
Total (perm boost). 4276
Eldritch Wrath (offhand). 800 Divine
** Total (all boosts). 5076 **
Consisting of: 2936 pierce
1350 divine
300 poison
170 heat
320 cold
These two layouts have very similar peak output across damage types but the Carrow layout has much higher sustained poison damage than the tower layout. It has much lower attack though - not suitable for tough raid bosses.
In the next part, damage types, resistances, wards and lures.
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