Talk:Damage calculation

From Guild Wars Wiki

Contents 1 just wannt check something 2 Speculations on the official wiki? 3 removing the "level 20 / AR60 / Attribute 12" base 4 Moving away from the "Armor level" terminology 5 "heritage" of the research results 6 Question About % Bonus Damage 7 Note about weapon requirements 8 Hit Locations 9 Clarify weapon damage calculation 10 Physical Skill Damage 11 Random variable added? 12 Discrepencies 13 How does the game round damage? 14 Actual ingame damage 15 Percentile damage reduction and damage multipliers 16 A formula for calculating damage increase or decrease 17 Hit Locations? 18 Weapon Requirements 19 First chart 20 Where is the information about Level disparity?

[edit] just wannt check something

What happens if I type up an article from scratch, and 95% of the content, format, and structure just happens to coincide with the version on GuildWiki? Things doesn't seem to have changed much since I last took a stab at majorly restructuring the damage calculation sections on GuildWiki last time... -PanSola 21:13, 22 February 2007 (EST)

[edit] Speculations on the official wiki?

On GuildWiki, a great part of the Damage calculation article contains speculations about how damage is calculated in Guild Wars, with many math formulas which were derived from observation. These formulas seem correct as far as any player can tell, but are not necessarily exact from a game developer's point of view. Maybe things are just coded another way, but appear to give a rather similar result. Given that, what policy should we adopt about content which is subject to speculation on this official wiki? Is there any chance that "official formulas" will be released, to be included in this article? Or should we follow the same policy as in GuildWiki, indicating that some parts of the article are subject to speculation? I would not personnaly be totally satisfied with the second solution, as I feel that this wiki should contain mainly exact information. --Funky Jah 07:56, 6 April 2007 (EDT)

Very good point. I don't believe the powers that be monitor recent changes (like I do :)), so maybe it would be an idea to put a note to this effect on Izzy's or Gaile's talk pages. --Snograt 08:17, 6 April 2007 (EDT)

Indicating that some parts of the article are subject to speculation would be usefull to prevent other users from making the same mistake I did. I mistaked the article informations for "official" ones and linked to it then realized my error and had to revert back an edit. Serge Yseron 18:43, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Hmm, Mike O'Brien uploaded this as "a base revision for this article." I can't see this being added to by anyone without a developer's POV. Is Mike saying this is gospel? :D --Snograt 18:52, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Disagree. The source is a guru post by Ensign, and "It has since been enhanced with additional findings and clarifications from the Guild Wars community and development team." Thus what Mike uploaded is everybit as uncertain as what is on GuildWiki. -PanSola 19:15, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

(ec)Well yes - that's the way that I see it. But if it's that uncertain, why would someone of Mike's standing upload it? It's almost official recognition... --Snograt 19:28, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

(edit conflict) You are kidding aren't you? The fact that Mike O'Brian is coming through this page and editing it shows that it is probably the *most accurate* information anywhere on damage calculation. I find it funny that you suggest that one of the top arenanet people doesn't know his own game. --Aspectacle 19:30, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Ensign's article is close enough to the actual implementation that it's far easier to start with his article and correct any inaccuracies than it is to write a new article from scratch. I added the text about "enhanced with additional findings and clarifications" in hopes of the community and ArenaNet working together to perfect this article. To get us started, I just provided some corrected information about hit locations.--Mike O'Brien 19:39, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for the hit locations. That and the critical hit probability are the only two parts of damage calculation that I can't type up from scratch with my eyes closed (due to their statistical nature). (-: -PanSola 23:08, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] removing the "level 20 / AR60 / Attribute 12" base

If no one strongly disagrees, I'm gonna rewrite the information without using level 20, 60 armor, and 12 rank of attribute as basis. It greatly simplifies the mathematics while being completely equivalent.

60 armor cancels out 12 martial attribute and level 20 spell/wands/staff. There's no reason to throw all of them into the formula just to watch them eventually cancel out after you do all the extra work. -PanSola 19:22, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

I think you're right that this article would be easier to understand if everything weren't normalized around AL 60. --Mike O'Brien 20:39, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Moving away from the "Armor level" terminology

This was a major movement I pushed for back on GuildWiki, and I would like to reuse all my arguments from there. Basically, the in-game terminology is simply "armor". Additionally, there is a general correspondence between the value of "armor" versus character level, which is profession-dependent.

Given several characters (Heros/Henchies/NPCs/Pets/Monsters) all at the same level, we expect them to have different armor depending on their profession.

The most concise and simple way to represent this idea, is to set up a one-to-one correspondence between the "level" of an armor and the expected character level of the Hero/Henchman/NPC/Pets/Monster; then use a different terminology for the stats that the game simply calls "armor".

The proposal I made for GuildWiki is to refer to the stat as "armor (rating)", or "armor rating". I'm fine with the use of other terms, as long as they don't contain the word "level" in it.

Correspondingly, the "strike level" used in this article should also be renamed to avoid the usage of the word "level". For example, if we decide to call the stat "armor" as "armor rating", then we can rename "strike level" as "strike rating".

This might come off as somewhat GuildWiki-centric, as I am pushing for a system currently used by GuildWiki. However, back in the days GuildWiki also had this exact problem, when the usage of the term "armor level" was way more established over there than it is here right now. -PanSola 23:28, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

Your argument seems to hinge on a supposed confusion of the word "level". Due to how armor becomes available to the player at specific stages of the game with precise values (unlike typical RPGs which feature piecemeal armor values), it's not hard to understand where the concept of a level for armor comes from. When used together, the term "armor level" is using armor as an adjective to describe what kind of level, like "character level" or "dungeon level", exactly like your proposition of "rating" coupled with "armor" or "strike". AL is also a common acronym to express one's armor rating. It's simply part of the game's community vernacular and isn't likely to change at this point. -- Hercanic 12:30, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "heritage" of the research results

Does anyone know if Ensign's article was an extension of SonOfRah's research results, or if SonOfRah's research was based off an older article of Ensign's, or if they were completely independent of each other (or if they are actually the same individual)? My knowledge of damage calculations all came from the extensive discussions on GuildWiki talk pages, whose foundation was in turn based on SonOfRah's research results. If SonOfRah's research results were not based on Ensign's, then I will feel very uncomfortable contributing to this article if Ensign gets credit but SonOfRah doesn't.

I can actually type up a damage calculation article from scratch that is actually more detailed and informative than the current article here (with exception of hit location probabilities that Mike added), with my eyes closed (or with one hand tied behind my back plus monitor off, but not with eyes closed and one hand tied behind my back, because that will produce too much typos). The main omission in Ensign's article is how skills modifying damage factor in the equations, especiallly with respect to effect stacking and order of operations, which I all know by heart (assuming they haven't changed in the past 5 months).

If the "heritage" of my knowledge originated from Ensign's work, gone through additional research by SonOfRah, added by extensive findings of the GuildWiki community, and eventually trickled to me, then I'm fine with SonOfRah remaining uncredited. Alternately, if I am allowed to produce an article (from scratch) strictly more informative than Ensign's original document, and add in Mike's info on hit locations, then I'm fine if only a general credit towards the Guild Wars fan community is acknowledged (but not to any individual in particular).

I don't personally know who SonOfRah is, but if there is only one single thing about Guild Wars that I know very well, it's because of the prior work SonOfRah has done before me. Of course, what I know is also publicly known to many other guild wars fans, and I can't stop them from adding the information without crediting SonOfRah. Not to mention I already released all my contributions to GuildWiki under GDFL as well (and I also already typed up from scratch a damage calculation article in Traditional Chinese released under GDFL). Still, to me the heritage matters. -PanSola 23:51, 17 April 2007 (EDT)

I really don't know the heritage of Ensign's work, and I guess other people must not know either since there hasn't been a lot of discussion about this. Anyway, since SonOfRah clearly made a big contribution to the Guild Wars community, why not just credit his work too in the "References" section? --Mike O'Brien 14:04, 26 April 2007 (EDT)

Cool, will do. (-: -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 03:33, 27 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Question About % Bonus Damage

Would, say, +15%+20%+20%, equating to slightly more than 55%, also provide bonus damage for the armor-ignoring damage of skills? Say, I had +5% bonus damage on my weapon, and I used a skill that dealt +100 damage, and NO weapon damage. Would my final damage then be 150 damage, or would it remain at 100, as if % bonus damage only affected actual weapon damage? -Omigawa

It'd remain at 100. -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 17:11, 23 April 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Note about weapon requirements

It's been this way since day 1, but I don't know if it's a bug but it should be noted that unless you have a level 12 in the appropriate requirement, even a weapon with no requirement (candy cane weapons) will not do it's max damage vs AL60.

And if you have rank 12 in the appropriate attribute, the weapon with no attribute requirement will deal twice its damage vs AL20. It's noted in the Weapon Damage section of the article already. -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 00:08, 15 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Hit Locations

Hmm so all this time the 3/8 stuff for the chest was kind of right but not really...--Life Infusion «T» 20:13, 21 May 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Clarify weapon damage calculation

To assist me in understanding the damage calculation for weapon damage, could someone clarify the following for me --IAmAI 19:04, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

From the article, Effective Damage calculation for weapons is defined as:

[Effective Damage] = [Weapon Damage] × 2^((5 × [Attribute Levels Under Threshold] + 2 × [Attribute Levels Over Threshold] - 60) / 40)

From my interpretation of the above, I believe the variables Attribute Levels Under Threshold and Attribute Levels Over Threshold can be expressed, for the purpose of calculation, in terms of the maths functions min and max:

[Attribute Levels Under Threshold] = min([Attribute Threshold], [Attribute Level])

[Attribute Levels Over Threshold] = max(0, [Attribute Level] - [Attribute Threshold])

Expressed as a whole equation:

[Effective Damage] = [Weapon Damage] × 2^((5 × min([Attribute Threshold], [Attribute Level]) + 2 × max(0, [Attribute Level] - [Attribute Threshold]) - 60) / 40)

[edit] Physical Skill Damage

I was recently told that armour DOES NOT affect the + damage from weapon skills. I don't beleive this to be the case and I may very well be wrong. I'm trying to find somewhere on the wiki which clarifies this as I can't seem to come to the conclusion myself. I was pretty sure, almost certain, you can reduce physical skill damage to 0 with + armour as this is how I used to farm trolls with my warrior before the armour stacking nerf. I belive this is also how Kinetic Armour now works, + damage from skills does not ignore armour unless it otherwise states it does. This is why Illusionary Weaponry is a fun skill. Can someone clarify this for me as I am confused from the layout of this page and what I have been told. Dancing Gnome 06:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

+damage has always ignored armor. In increasing your armor, you reduced their base damage (which is what they're using most of the time) and thereby kept most of your damage to a minimum. --Kale Ironfist 07:13, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Is there somewhere on the wiki where this is mentioned? I did some more testing with blessed insignia armour and kinetic armour skill and to my suprise the trolls outside droknars were able to hurt me without skills, but with skills they did +40 dmg to me through my armour. I was unaware (or forgot) +dmg skills ignored armour and I don't beleive the skill description reflects this. Perhaps we should mention this specifically somewhere in the wiki? Dancing Gnome 09:17, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I keep forgetting to completely rewrite the article on this wiki. The GuildWiki damage calculation article should have a much more detailed explanation. -User:PanSola (talk to the File:Follower of Lyssa.png) 12:36, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Random variable added?

I was looking at the various formulas on the stuff here, and i came across an integer that just seems to randomly appear in places. For example, using the formulas at the end of the article.

When talking about Level 15 Elementalist fireballs against the Charr.

69 × 2^((3 × 15 - 21 ) / 40) = 104.6 damage

When talking of the level 2 Warrior critting a Flash gargoyle.

10 × 1.20 × 2^((5 × 2 + 20 - 6 ) / 40) = 18.2 damage

I've bolded this seemingly random number in the formula above.

What is this number for? I've looked at the entirety of the article, and have seen nothing about this random number. It seems to only be there and in effect when talking about weapon attacks. Are weapon attacks under the effect of this random integer? If so, is it changeable, mutable, or otherwise affectable in such a way to be in your advantage? MysticSword 07:45, 28 January 2008 (UTC)MysticSword

Errr, nevermind. Forgot about Customized weapons. MysticSword 07:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)MysticSword

[edit] Discrepencies

It is important to note that this equation, though close, is not completely accurate. I've tested every weapon's critical damage in game, both with +35% damage and +0% damage, and many of the results don't match what the equation would give. For example, a vanilla max damage axe criticals for 40 at rank 12, yet the equation comes out to 39. As a more extreme example, +35% damage scythes in-game crit for 92 at rank 16, and the equations only come out to 89. I've considered how the game may or may not round, and some of the numbers still don't match. I've tried getting my calculator as close as possible by multiplying the character's attribute rank by a constant, and though it gets closer results, there are still problems. ~Shard (talk / Nerf List) 00:43, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How does the game round damage?

If I deal 49.5 damage, will the target take 49 or 50 damage? Anyone knows how the game rounds damage? --SkyHiRider 21:19, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

I would assume up because of the rules of rounding. — ク Eloc 貢 19:51, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Computers always truncate decimals to get integers. It wastes less time processing. ~Shard 20:30, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Unless the programmers used something other than a basic cast. It takes the same amount of procession power to always round up as it does to trunicate, and while true rounding might take an additional step, theres no reason why the programmers couldn't use it. I've seen games that round rather than trunicating for damage. 71.84.240.55 02:47, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

It's inefficient. It takes almost twice the time to round to the closest integer than it does to drop decimals. It's certainly possible, but unlikely. Maybe we can ask someone who wrote it. ~Shard 06:53, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Now shard whats a big noob like you using a big word like truncate? Oops, NPA, i meant noob in a good way. Like armond, he's a noob but thats good... right? I have a feeling this comment is going to be deleted --adrin 07:49, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Truncating and rounding both take a good nanosecond to perform on a high-quality server. I'm fairly certain that, considering everything else that is being performed on Guild Wars servers, the speed of rounding a floating point value is not at the top of anyone's list. As for the answer, I can only make an educated guess; I think it would round instead truncating. --24.113.82.206 03:35, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

But when your server is catering to nearly a million players at a time, each of them needing hundreds of calculations per millisecond, that processing time adds up. I've seen frame rates drop from simple things like rounding. ~Shard 03:40, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Actual ingame damage

Something I don't understand. If these results are true, and the damage calculater link is true, with an axe hitting a caster(in pvp), even using a skill such as evicerate or excutioner strike, it should be impossible to hit beyond 100 damage. Yet, I often hit well above 100 damage while using attack skills, even going near (and sometimes above) 100 without using any skills. Therefore, ether this page is wrong or theres more to the damage calculations then what is writtin here. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:125.237.14.144 (talk).

tl;dr: hitting moving targets, bonus damage, and armor penetration from strength quickly add up.

It's difficult to account for what you're describing if you don't provide data or screenshots we can check against; there's a variety of reasons that could happen. I know for a fact autoattacking a moving caster with a non-vamp customized 15^50 max axe at 14 axe mastery hits for 59 damage, and the calculator confirms that (it gives 58.6 for a critical hit). Try the same example, but using Bull's Strike at 13 Strength with a vampiric axe instead of autoattacking. Now you have not only bonus damage from Bull's, but armor penetration from Strength (since you're using an attack skill) and 5 unconditional damage from vamp, and your damage should be 72(calculated)+27(bonus)= 99 damage. The same situation with a hammer gives 89+27 = 116 damage. Eviscerate and Executioner's should do 42+29=71 and 42+38=80 damage to a stationary target, on average, and 72+29=101 and 72+38=110 damage to a moving target.

There's also the possibility that the people you're fighting don't have max armor, though. -- Mafaraxas 21:17, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Weapon bonus damage gets added on top of all this, so a rank 15 power attack from an axe critical will do 69 (axe crit vs 60 armor) + 40 (power attack damage ignores armor) = 109. Sundering also works into this. The highest nonskill damage you can normally get is 92, a rank 16 scythe critical. Oops, that's nonsundering. It would probably be closer to 97 or 98 then. ~Shard 06:50, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Percentile damage reduction and damage multipliers

How do percentile damage reduction and damage multipliers fit into the order of operation? I've brought it up at Guild Wars Wiki:Requests for research. -- Gordon Ecker 00:45, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A formula for calculating damage increase or decrease

If I understand the normalized math correctly in this page you can easily calculate (with a calculator) how much of an increase or decrease in damage is done when the attackers strike level or the target's armor level change. If you know the level change in strike level - armor level then:

new damage = original damage * 2^( level change /40)

or

The change in damage (as a multiplier) = 2^( level change /40)

For example:

If you add 20 armor points to your defense you take 2^( -20/40) or 70.7% of what you would've taken before. So an attack that once did 100 points of damage would now do 71.

Similarly if you have a spell that reduces your opponents armor by 50 the multiplier is 2^( 50/40) or 238% of the damage previously done with skills or weapons.

If you increase your sword attribute from 8 to 10 the level change in strike level is 10 (5 * 2 skill levels), so the multiplier would be 2^( 10/40) or 118% more damage with a sword swing than you would have.

If you gain 1 level, any level, all your skills do 5% more damage. The level change is 3 (3 * 1 level) so the damage increase is 2^(3/40) or 105% of the old damage when attacking the same target with the same skill.

Maybe this should get a by-line in the page.

76.216.23.160 06:58, 18 December 2008 (UTC)Mercus Maximus

[edit] Hit Locations?

What about spells (especially AoE spells)? Do those count as ranged attacks when determining armor location hit? Do spells like Lightning Strike and Earthquake have greater chances of hitting the head or feet?151.201.236.169 15:55, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Weapon Requirements

I'm finding that some bonus/collector staves are behaving differently. How does the requirement affect the energy these staves provide? The staves I'm referring to are the Soul Shrieker and any of the BMP collector staves. I receive the full energy bonus from them. Alt-tabbed back just then, equipped two staves I didn't meet the requirement for - both provided full energy. One was in-class (Necro), one was off-class (Ele). Adding a note now. RandomJF 10:07, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, forget it. Just checked the staff page. Also, forgot to sign. RandomJF 10:07, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

IIRC the damage is based on attribute, not the energy. Same with shields that add hp. The "Req att XX" only affects the stat it is on. StatMan 14:42, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] First chart

Someone needs to clarify that first chart. What the heck does "to RANK 0 / to RANK 12" mean? What, in fact, does this chart apply to and why is it there? --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.50.100.207 (talk).

Rank and value are used synonymously. The chart illustrates the relative effect of the various attribute values (ranks) on weapon damage: the first row is relative to a rank of zero; the second relative to a rank of twelve. --DryHumour 15:25, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Rank is how many attribute levels you have in your weapon skill. So if you have 16 Axe Mastery and are using an axe, you will do 115% of the damage you would do if you only had 12 Axe Mastery. Is that clearer? 141.14.133.231 17:07, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Where is the information about Level disparity?

There used to be info on level disparity between creatures and the damage mitigation due to being a higher level.~>Sins WDB 00:35, 1 October 2009 (UTC)