Controlled Analysis -- Physical Damage
| Author | Topic: Controlled Analysis -- Physical Damage |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Wednesday, January 3 2007 22:33
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So, I've done the first set of (potentially) many tests to figure out what effect different stuff has on damage. I used 12 data points per scenario, which is not really enough to be statistically sound, but I'm going for breadth over depth here... and there are so many things to test. Possibly as a result, there are a few confusing results. My default test subject was a naked Lifecrafter, level 61 (the hardcoded max) with all stats at base except for Endurance pumped to 20, on Torment. The class and level shouldn't matter; the difficulty setting should matter for the data itself but not the underlying formulae. However, that could always turn out to be wrong. There was enough variation that 50 tests apiece would have been better. That makes sense, given the large number of die rolls involved in computing initial damage (before defensive modifiers). Oh well. My default attackers were the four Thahds at the east entrance of of the Northforge Gates. Anyway, here's some of what I've concluded. 1) Most damage reduction effects move their damage to the resisted number. Some, however, just remove it quietly without increasing the resisted number. Parry is quiet. 2) Str, Dex, QA, and Luck all have no effect on damage taken. Endurance probably doesn't, although that's mildly unclear in my data. 3) Armor reduces damage exactly as the manual says: each piece does its reduction separately, at face value. (i.e., wearing a 20% and a 10% piece will reduce your damage taken by 28%, not 30%.) HOWEVER, this is true only ON AVERAGE. The actual reduction to each blow varied from 9% to 30% when wearing one 20% piece. When wearing one 34% piece it varied from 24% to 44%. However, I didn't test weaker armor. I can't imagine a 2% piece of armor ranges up to 12% reductions. 4) Parry's a little weird. 10 Parry will reduce damage by about 17% (not counting the chance of blocking it entirely). 20 Parry will reduce it by about 38%. And 29 Parry (the highest I could easily get) will reduce it by about 42%. The numbers are a little odd. My best guess is that the 20 Parry test run got a little lucky, and that each point of Parry acts like a separate piece of armor at 2%. That would give us expected reductions of 18% at 10, 33% at 20, and 44% at 29. Note that the blocking percentage is capped at 50%, which is achieved at 25 Parry. Between the damage reduction and the chance of blocking, 10 Parry will reduce the damage you eat by about a third. 20 Parry will reduce it by nearly two-thirds. Even ignoring Parry's reduced effectiveness against magic attacks, this means that Endurance is generally a much better value. (That doesn't take ease of healing into account, though.) 5) One thing, at least, is sane. Spells. Protection gives a FLAT 20% damage reduction to all phyiscal damage, period. Steel Skin does the same thing, and the two effects are cumulative. Essence Shield, Essence Armor, and (unsurprisingly) Elemental Shield all have NO effect on physical damage taken. The first two do help your dodge rate by quite a bit, though. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Wednesday, January 3 2007 23:20
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quote:My best guess on that would be that if you're wearing a 20% piece of armour, each point of damage inflicted on you has a 20% chance to be blocked, independent of every other point of damage. If this is the case, the amount of damage blocked should follow a binomial distribution. Time to get your copy of SPSS out. :P quote:When you say they're cumulative, you mean that having both of them on at once gives you a 36% damage reduction, right, not a 40% reduction? (Okay, so we'd probably need more trials to know that for sure.) [ Wednesday, January 03, 2007 23:27: Message edited by: Cryptozoology ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Thursday, January 4 2007 00:39
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They are definitely cumulative the same way armor is, for a total of about 36% reduction. That I can say for sure. Also, I'm skeptical that the randomization would be per point of damage. In that case, wouldn't we expect naturally very low damage outputs to hit 0 damage post-reduction every so often with enough armor? Yet that's extremely rare. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Thursday, January 4 2007 00:59
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quote:I think the only reason it's rare is because the situation you describe (very low damage output attacking very high resistance) is rare, especially with physical damage. It's not all that rare for a poisoned or acided monster with very high poison or acid resistance to take 0 damage one round and 3 or 4 damage the next. [ Thursday, January 04, 2007 01:02: Message edited by: Cryptozoology ] -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Thursday, January 4 2007 01:38
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Hmm. That's true. It seems like the easiest way to test this would be to grab something with 1% or 2% armor and take a bunch of hits, and see how much it blocks. -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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Raven v. Writing Desk
Member # 261
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written Saturday, January 6 2007 13:01
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New results. I did some tests with magic, acid, and cold damage. Magic and cold damage work almost identically to physical damage, except for Parry. Up to about 10 Parry, Parry blocks a similar amount of damage. (The difference in parry % actually depends on melee vs missile, not phys vs magic damage.) After that however Parry stops doing much against cold and magic. At 20 Parry it blocked about 22% damage compared to about 38% for physical damage. Acid damage... yeah, about that. Acid drip doesn't do acid damage! Basically, although acid resistance does not reduce damage from a given number of levels of acid, as Schrodinger proved -- energy resistance does reduce acid drip damage! I kid you not. With 15% acid resistance and no energy resistance, I resisted 0 every time on acid drip. With 15% acid and 10% energy resistance, I resisted approximately 10-15% of the drip damage (with very wide variation, possibly because these weren't very big drips). -------------------- Slarty vs. Desk • Desk vs. Slarty • Timeline of Ermarian • G4 Strategy Central Posts: 3560 | Registered: Wednesday, November 7 2001 08:00 |
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The Establishment
Member # 6
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written Saturday, January 6 2007 13:31
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Sounds like a bug. Should probably e-mail Jeff about energy resistance blocking acid. He probably used a wrong variable somewhere. -------------------- Your flower power is no match for my glower power! Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |