Damage bonus for split vs single type weapons
Mon, 05/30/2011 - 10:50
culture
Legacy Username
So I read this post about the obvious relation between split and single damage type weapons against monsters weak/strong vs a type. I was wondering how much of a difference does it make actually make?
Divine Avenger Hit 1
D. Wk. Neu Str Bonus Penalty
19 229 184 115 24% 38%
20 249 200 125 25% 38%
21 266 213 133 25% 38%
22 288 231 144 25% 38%
24 311 241 152 29% 37%
25 312 235 150 33% 36%
26 321 238 153 35% 36%
27 324 236 153 37% 35%
28 328 234 153 40% 35%
Divine Avenger Hit 2
D. Wk. Neu Str Bonus Penalty
19 292 247 151 18% 39%
20 314 265 152 18% 43%
21 340 287 176 18% 39%
22 368 311 190 18% 39%
24 404 338 208 20% 38%
25 411 342 210 20% 39%
26 422 349 215 21% 38%
27 433 356 220 22% 38%
28 445 363 225 23% 38%
Divine Avenger Charge
D. Wk. Neu Str Bonus Penalty
19 434 389 232 12% 40%
20 473 424 253 12% 40%
21 513 460 275 12% 40%
22 554 497 297 11% 40%
24 611 545 327 12% 40%
25 625 556 334 12% 40%
26 648 575 345 13% 40%
27 667 590 355 13% 40%
28 682 600 362 14% 40%
Acheron Hit 1 and 2
D. Wk. Neu Str Bonus Penalty
19 197 150 96. 31% 36%
20 215 163 104 32% 36%
21 233 176 113 32% 36%
22 251 189 121 33% 36%
24 270 198 xxx 36%
25 275 199 xxx 38%
26 279 198 xxx 41%
27 283 198 xxx 43%
28 292 203 xxx 44%
Acheron Hit 3
D. Wk. Neu Str Bonus Penalty
19 253 209 129 21% 38%
20 277 228 141 21% 38%
21 301 248 153 21% 38%
22 325 268 165 21% 38%
24 356 291 xxx 22%
25 365 293 xxx 25%
26 374 301 xxx 24%
27 381 300 xxx 27%
28 382 292 xxx 31%
(I don't have enough Acheron Charge data yet. Also, missing Stratum 6 vs Fiend/Undead for obvious reasons.)
Final Flourish Hit 1 and 2
D. Wk. Neu St Bonus Penalty
19 193 148 31 30% 79%
20 208 159 33 31% 79%
21 222 169 36 31% 79%
22 236 180 38 31% 79%
24 258 193 42 34% 78%
25 265 195 43 36% 78%
26 272 197 45 38% 77%
27 278 200 46 39% 77%
Final Flourish Hit 3
D. Wk. Neu St Bonus Penalty
19 229 184 36 24% 80%
20 246 197 39 25% 80%
21 264 210 42 26% 80%
22 282 224 45 26% 80%
24 307 241 49 27% 80%
25 315 245 51 29% 79%
26 323 250 52 29% 79%
27 331 254 53 30% 79%
Final Flourish Charge
D. Wk. Neu St Bonus Penalty
19 312 267 53 17% 80%
20 336 287 53 17% 82%
21 360 307 57 17% 81%
22 384 327 61 17% 81%
24 420 342 68 23% 80%
25 432 362 70 19% 81%
26 444 382 72 16% 81%
27 456 402 74 13% 82%
(Don't have flourish data at D28.)
Ash Elemental Blast
D. Wk. Neu St Bonus Penalty
19 158 113 26 40% 77%
20 170 121 28 40% 77%
21 184 131 30 40% 77%
22 198 141 33 40% 77%
24 215 150 36 43% 76%
25 222 152 37 46% 76%
26 228 155 38 47% 75%
27 234 156 39 50% 75%
28 240 153 41 57% 73%
The penalty amounts seem to be in line with what would be expected if damage was half normal/half special. DA, Acheron mostly be 40% penalty against strong defense. The Flourish/Ash has ~80% penalty against strong defense.
The bonuses don't make much sense though. Subsequent hits have lower bonuses and the charge attack is particularly low compared to what is expected. Even weirder is that the Flourish, a "pure" piercing weapon, has a marginally better bonus compared to the DA/Acheron. I would think the bonus would be double since all the damage is concentrated against the monster's weakness.
Can anyone make some sense of this?
Thu, 06/02/2011 - 16:00
#2
culture
Legacy Username
Update
Round 2 of this damage calculation stuff... I started with a few hypothesis and then included the proof (+) or contradictions (-).
1) Each hit increases the normal damage portion, but not the elemental damage.
+ Explains the lower % bonus of later hits
- Even if the elemental damage did nothing to resistant creatures, their percent should drop each hit but instead it is steady.
2) Pure damage weapons are not pure
+ Flourish appears to have a similar bonus as a split damage type like DA/Acheron
- Flourish has double the penalty compared to a DA/Acheron
Examining these two, led me to believe that the calculations for weakness and resistance cannot be the same.
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So to test Hypothesis 1, I started with DA at Depth 22. There are many unknown variables and too few formulas to determine their values. So I started with the guess that Hit 1 is half normal and half elemental damage. This would mean that the Elemental Bonus would be calculated as follows:
E = N = 115.5
E*Ebonus + N = 251
Ebonus = 1.49351
Then checking the Hit 2 and Charge attacks, I found them to match up perfectly:
......D...E.....N.....Calculated Damage for Weak
Hit 1 288 115.5 115.5 288
Hit 2 368 115.5 195.5 368
Chrge 554 115.5 381.5 554
Calculated damage is E * Ebonus + N.
How about that. The numbers match up exactly. Repeating the process for Depth 19 with an elemental bonus of 1.48913 had results within 0.2%. Depth 24 and 28 have Ebonus values of 1.58091 and 1.80342 with calculations withing 13%. I think that the defenses of creatures in Strata 6 is not perfectly linear as they are in other strata, which makes the calculations deviate from normal. But the results are still close enough to show that the elemental portion of attacks does not change.
So Hypothesis 1 might be true. Only the first hit of a split damage weapon does half elemental damage. After that, only the normal portion increases whereas the elemental portion remains the same.
One problem though - this isn't true at all for creatures that are resistant to elemental. The normal portion of damage in the second hit is already higher than the resulting damage. I think that the calculation for them is just a straight Total Damage * ~60% (aka 40% penalty).
So why bother? Well, if the DA's charge attack was 1/2 elemental and 1/2 normal then the hit would do 620 instead of 554 damage vs weak at D22. Maybe that was way too high, so subsequent hits are nerfed by not increasing the special damage component of the weapon along with normal. Or maybe it is a bug.
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Hypothesis 2 - pure special damage weapons (i.e. Flourish) are not pure. I couldn't think this one could possibly be true, I had to be missing something. Especially since there is a whopping 80% damage reduction due to an automatic calculation for pure damage against resistant creatures.
Depth 22 Piercing Bonus = 1.62222
......D...P..N...Calculated Damage for Weak
Hit 1 236 90 90. 236
Hit 3 282 90 134 280
Chrge 384 90 237 383
Calculated damage is P * Pbonus + N.
Yep. The Flourish vs Weak is actually 1/2 normal and 1/2 piercing for the first hit, Also, like the DA, the piercing damage doesn't increase for subsequent hits only the normal damage component.
These numbers check out for D19, D24 and D28 too, all within 1-6%.
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Thoughts? Other possible explanations for the phenomena?
Thanks for doing this. These tables definitely help and can be applied to other things like the slow vs. med sword debate, especially when you add in UV's.
I'm also confused about the diminished return on the final blow of the weapons, since there is an inherent risk of finishing your combo sometimes (cf with 2hit-shield cancel on a medium sword). My initial thought was that it was a balance issue, where the devs probably didn't want to 2-hit everything to death, but a quick test on a random zombie on d19 proved otherwise, with HP's that exceeded 2 hits, and sometimes even the 3 hit. As to the flourish, I think it's kind've weird too, considering the huge penalty associated with it.
And for what it's worth, a glacius is equivalent to an acheron in terms of absolute damage (ie. I was getting the same numbers).