Meele Damage Calculation for off tanks & styles

Hello together,

since several players belive that the style system and meele damage system are kind of buggy - I did some calculation and testing.

Based on the bug reports for Merc and BM:

https://tracker.playphoenix.online/issues/f9c00252-fc01-49c7-98ad-6885dee4f166

https://tracker.playphoenix.online/issues/babbc0f4-b304-4e36-ae83-aa274e14112d

Phoenix is currently using the following damage formula:

STYLE_DAMAGE = (STYLE_BASE + (SPEC - STYLE_LEVEL) * STYLE_GROWTH)
* SWING_SPEED
* DAMAGE_MODIFIER / 10
+ BASE_DAMAGE * TOA_STYLE_BONUS

(the rest and all details can be found here)
http://camelotherald.wikia.com/wiki/Melee_Damage

The Sources for the three major values for the formular (Sytle_base, Style_grwoth and Style_level) are leveraged from the following site:
http://camelotherald.wikia.com/wiki/Dual_Wield
http://camelotherald.wikia.com/wiki/Celtic_Dual
http://camelotherald.wikia.com/wiki/Left_Axe

Now the issue start:

- the page is providing all three values for the styles but:
- the style chains on the website are in the wrong order
- the style level is sometimes wrong
- the style effects are somtimes different
- the style position requirements are sometimes wrong

Since the pages are used as source, the style chains seems to be broken and just dont feel correct.
For example on live the normal BM Backsnare Combo would be Snow Shower + Thunderstorm.

But Thunderstorm has currently the damage values of a detaunt based on the old style system - therefore the follow up with more damage would be Icy Brilliance.

In short it looks like that the style chains are implemented based on the new style system but the damage of the styles is taken from the old style system.

Please correct me if I am wrong here - but it would be great to see what is acutally implemented. Based on the oberservations from me and Dathron it loos like new styles with old style damage values. This for example also leeds to the fact that the highest hitting any timer for Merc in the DW line is the taunt.

I put together a excel sheet based on the style chains and effects as implemented with the style damage figures based on the above mentioned links. Furthermore I put used all meele damage formulas based on the source which were provided in the issue tracker for the merc bug report.

The following assumptions are in the sheet:
- compare all relevant style chains between Zerker, BM and Merc
- Base stats of an Half Ogre to make it compareable
- Hitting a Lvl 50 Caster with 10%asborb buff, 26% resist, 51 useable af and 250 AF buff
- 4,2 sec weaponspeed with 16,5 DPS
- Spec 50 + 17
- style chains as implemented
- style values from the source provided in the issue tracker

Please find enclosed the spreadsheet with the calulations.

I hope this post helps to investigate and potentially fix the behavior.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WzoKjlV-WI9BOWq48CW-Cuj_Z_2kbXaRNQUVTLiSS7c/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you all!

Thu 30 Aug 2018 6:26 PM by Dathorn

You put this reverse.

"In short it looks like that the style chains are implemented based on the new style system but the damage of the styles is taken from the old style system."

You mean the chains are the old system chains and the damage is the new system damage. The new damage is based on the reworked NF spec lines. So i know what you meant, it was just typed backwards. Rear chain is always medium into High. So it causes severe functionality issues.

Example: Rear Chain
Old rear Chain: Snow Shower into Thunderstorm.
Old style is Medium damage > high damage > Medium Damage > High Damage.

New rear chain: Hurricane into Supernova.
New style is Medium damage > high damage > Medium Damage > High Damage.

Old Chain with New Damage Values: Snow Shower into Thunderstorm.
Old chains mixed with new values is Medium damage > Low damage >Medium damage > Low damage.

You of course would never use your low damage style. So your rear chain becomes just a rear style spam of Snow shower over and over.

Old chains mixed with new values: Snow shower only.
Medium damage > Medium damage >Medium damage > Medium damage.

Thu 6 Sep 2018 2:23 PM by Gwendolein

Hello,

are there any internal discussion or is someone looking into it.
The fact that the merc position styles (back and side) are weaker than the frontstyle is not really hitting the intention of a off-tank - see patch notes 1.62:

There's been a lot of discussion, controversy, and misunderstanding about light tanks in Dark Age of Camelot. One of the main requests we get is an explanation for what purpose a light tank serves in a group (both in PvE and RvR). In our definition, light tanks are Blademasters, Mercenaries, and Berserkers. There is a fuzzy line in some places (the Savage can also be considered a light tank) but for the purposes of this discussion, we're only talking about Blademasters, Mercenaries, and Berserkers.

The purpose the light tank was designed for was to be a damage dealer, but not have much defense. Because of this, they should not be a good one-on-one class, but they should be able to do a great amount of damage when not holding aggression from an enemy player or monster.

A way of illustrating this is that a Blademaster should not be able to go head to head (one on one) with an Armsman or Warrior (primary tank) and reliably win. However, a Blademaster and a Hero working together should be much more effective in dealing damage than two Heroes working together. The same holds true for the other Realms - A Mercenary should not be able to take on a Warrior head to head and win reliably, but a Mercenary/Armsman team should be quite effective. This is why the primary combat style chains for these light tanks are positional in nature - they assume that someone else is holding a monster or enemy player's aggression.

Mercenary Changes

- The Mercenary Dirty Tricks special ability is now on a 7 minute re-use timer (it was previously set to 30 minutes), and has changed in effect. It now activates a 30 second offensive proc effect on the Mercenary that applies a 10 second debuff on the Mercenary's target every time it is hit. This debuff gives the target a 50% chance to fumble all their melee attacks while under the debuff's effect.

- The damage for both styles in the Flank -> Shadow's Rain combat style chain has been increased for Mercenaries only (Infiltrators are not affected).

- Increased bleed damage for Dual Wield combat styles Dark Tendrils and Dual Shadows. This is a Mercenary ONLY change - other classes that receive Dual Wield will not see increased bleed effects on these styles.

- The Dual Wield combat style Dark Tendrils is now based off Parry for Mercenaries. Formerly it was based off Evade. Please note that Infiltrators will still have Evade as the opening for this style.

Sat 8 Sep 2018 9:38 PM by Yint

All melee lines need an in depth look because of these issues.

- the style chains on the website are in the wrong order
- the style level is sometimes wrong
- the style effects are somtimes different
- the style position requirements are sometimes wrong

The damage modifiers on styles were balanced for the new style requirements and effects. Having the old style effects with new style dmg modifiers has every melee class in a strange place.

Perhaps you could create custom dmg modifiers for each skill that would match more in line with the old style growth rates. Without having to change the entire formula used for melee calculations. Using the current live modifiers just wont work >,<

Edit: This is also not just off tanks, it seems to be an issue on all melee classes. Warrior and armsman have same issues with growth rates on followups. Conquers followup does the same dmg or a little less than conquer itself and it doesnt have a snare component, rendering it useless high level style. Armsman has defenders rage style which is supposed to be a 1.20 growth rate in 1.65 and is hitting less than .90 growth rate phlanx followup. Poleaxe has much lower damage than it should because its using the updated anytime style dmg modifier instead of 1.65 version where its a followup and had much higher dmg. Every single melee line that saw reworks on live needs to be looked at and dmg should make some sort of sense.

Thu 13 Sep 2018 11:22 AM by Gwendolein

Hello,

is there any progress or feedback on this?
There multiple post in the forum and bug-tracker, but no response yet.

Are you looking into it or is it "works as designed" for you"

Thu 13 Sep 2018 11:30 AM by

gruenesschaf

Some lines already received adjustments to the style scaling and other will follow at some point.

The style chains should always have been the correct chains with the correct effects though and only the style damage should be wrong / using the new values.

Thu 13 Sep 2018 8:41 PM by Cider

I believe there area also other issues with melee damage in general. At the moment a flat rate seems to apply with no variation, as in if you hit a certain target with a certain style, the damage will always be the same every time on that target with the same style with no variation (tested and confirmed).

With a full comp 50 or 51 in a weapon skill there is supposed to still be some damage variation (I believe 100-150% or similar). At the moment this just seems to be set at 100% and this is hurting the main tanks (Arms, Warrior, Hero) the most, as well as some of the the 2h/slow weapon users (which are also supposed to have a slow weapons bonus, which I am also not sure is being applied).

There also seems to be an issue with warriors specifically. One of the unique things about the warrior is they are supposed to be in a damage unique table of their own, 1 higher (23 compared to 22 of other main tanks/light tanks) than anything else in game (this does not mean they have the highest damage output over time, which is still the domain of the light tanks and assassins due to celtic/dual wield mechanics and style damage). This higher damage table should equate to something like a warrior doing 5-10% more damage per hit using the same style/speed weapon as a char in the damage table below ( for example a zerker). At the moment this does not appear to be the case here. (confirmed by testing Warrior and Zerker 2h styles on same target, which showed a negligible/non-existent difference per hit of ~3hp on a 5.5 speed, which could have actually be down to different quick stats). Someone also claimed they had tried some testing comparing a thane melee damage (much lower damage table) to a warrior for the purpose of showing a thanes viability, with the outcome reported to be a thane doing 92% melee of a warriors, which simply should not be the case. I believe this highlights more an issue with warriors melee damage than it does anything else.

Please no flaming, if any of the above is incorrect, please explain and correct me, but having played a warrior, so far they seem to be a little lacking in both tanking ability and damage output in PVP/RVR due to a combinations of the above issues.. This does not mean they are currently useless, just not where I believe they should be.

Thu 13 Sep 2018 9:43 PM by

gruenesschaf

The slow weapon bonus is applied. There is no variation from spec, having less than 52 comp spec (against a level 50 enemy) is just a flat reduction (0.75 when at 1, 1.25 when at 52). The normal variation is turned off at the moment, it also hurts nobody as the variation is just a random(50) which is currently set to flat 26.

And I have no idea where you get the small differences, have you tried to compare the cap damage? That is obviously always the same regardless of your class.
Everything being the same the thane does about ~82% of what a warrior does unstyled on the yellow dummy, Zerker does about 96%.

Thu 13 Sep 2018 10:30 PM by Cider

The damage variation not being in affect does actually impact slow/2h weapons users, especially with slam, more than it does others due to them being about burst damage (normally during slam duration). With it being set as it is at the moment does impact on this style of play as the damage is lower during their "free hits", but that being said, if this is something that will change/implemented later, this is a moot point. Will test again once its implemented with variation correctly, but it sound like this will sort the problem anyway. Great stuff.

Glad to hear the 2h bonus is in although the details on this I have found seem to be a little sketchy. Is it possible to know what the bonus is/how its applied please?

Forgot it was about unstyled damage, I can confirm the zerker does about 96% of warrior unstyled after retesting. Thanks and glad to have been corrected here. Thanks for the quick response.

Fri 14 Sep 2018 10:12 AM by schreon

gruenesschaf wrote: ↑
Thu 13 Sep 2018 9:43 PM
The normal variation is turned off at the moment, it also hurts nobody as the variation is just a random(50) which is currently set to flat 26.

Will the variation be turned on again on release?

Is the random(50) scaled somehow, or is it always the same no matter the haste, skill, weapon speed etc?

Hence, are the current flat 26 damage reduced if we increase haste?

Fri 14 Sep 2018 12:31 PM by

gruenesschaf

Cider wrote: ↑
Thu 13 Sep 2018 10:30 PM
The damage variation not being in affect does actually impact slow/2h weapons users, especially with slam, more than it does others due to them being about burst damage (normally during slam duration). With it being set as it is at the moment does impact on this style of play as the damage is lower during their "free hits", but that being said, if this is something that will change/implemented later, this is a moot point. Will test again once its implemented with variation correctly, but it sound like this will sort the problem anyway. Great stuff.

It's 26 instead of random 50, that means it's currently slightly higher than what you would expect as average with the variation turned on and while it could have lucky hits where the random 50 is >26 it could just as well be <26 and hence make your damage worse for those swings.