A6 - Comparing Practical Damage Levels

[Slawbug]

I put together a spreadsheet to calculate expected damage output given skill levels and weapon and spell choice.

 

I then levelled up brand new characters to level 30, plugged in their traits and skill points to optimize pole weapons, melee weapons, bows, throws, mage spells and priest spells, and looked at the results. (I did fool around with different skill point placement to maximize damage output.) For weapons, I used about the second- and third-best weapon choices, which are available halfway through the game, much earlier than the very best options.

 

On the one hand, I didn't account for extra points from items or trainers; on the other hand, I also didn't account for points lost to general skills like Endurance or Nature Lore. The damage figures should provide reasonable ballpark comparisons for most of the mid-to-late game. Note however that I did not take into account armor, resistance, or the like. Here are the results:

 

POLE WEAPONS

6 Str, 14 Pole, 20 Blademaster, 10 QA, 6 Anatomy, 6 LB

Blessed Halberd

Average Output: 204

 

MELEE WEAPONS

6 Str, 9 Melee, 20 Blademaster, 10 QA, 10 DW, 5 Anatomy, 2 LB

Blessed Broadsword

Single Wielded Output: 127

with Flaming Sword

Dual Wielded Output: 251

 

BOWS

10 Dex, 20 Bows, 27 Sharpshooter (yeah... forcing it!)

Heartstriker Bow

Average Output: 133

 

THROWN WEAPONS

10 Dex, 20 Throws, 27 Sharpshooter

Fine Razordisks

Average Output: 169

 

MAGE SPELLS

24 Spellcraft, 19 Mage Spells

Fireblast: 146

Arcane Blow: 184

 

PRIEST SPELLS

24 Spellcraft, 20 Priest Spells

Smite: 138

Divine Fire: 141

Divine Retribution: 123

 

DAMAGE OVERVIEW:

251 Melee (Dual Wielding)

204 Halberd

184 Arcane Blow

169 Razordisks

146 Fireblast

141 Divine Fire

138 Smite

133 Heartstriker

127 Melee (Single Wielding)

123 Divine Retribution

 

Conclusions:

 

1. Dual Wielding really is better than Poles, even for Sliths. Even with the Jade Halberd poles do less than dual-wielded blades.

 

2. Once skills are developed, melee will do more single target damage than magic to any target that isn't heavily armored, and even then the Flaming Sword evens things out.

 

3. Missile attacks just aren't worth it. The betters throwing weapons may make a good backup attack for non-magic-users, and sometimes it is nice to have a zero-MP, plinking attack. But even the Heartstriker just does pitiful damage. You might as well invest in priest spells and cast Smite.

 

4. Magic is great! Area effect spells will do more damage per turn if you need to kill multiple enemies. The main issue is being able to cast them over and over, but Magical Efficiency helps with that quite a bit. On the other hand, AoE spells don't get a uniform boost from battle disciplines, and spellcasters can't load up on Blademaster as easily, for its fatigue reduction.

[Lilith]

Quote:

1. Dual Wielding really is better than Poles, even for Sliths. Even with the Jade Halberd poles do less than dual-wielded blades.

This is really only true in the late game, when your dual-wielder is using two broadswords. Dual wielders are much less impressive early in the game when you're using a broadsword and a short sword, especially since on Torment they can actually miss things early on. If you have one dual-wielder, you can have him kitted out with dual broadswords once you reach the Eastern Gallery. If you have more than one dual-wielder, they can't both wield two broadswords until after you get a boat, and that's assuming you do the Dragon's Gate quest as soon as possible -- and even then, one of your dual-wielders is stuck with the Flaming Sword, which is only situationally useful.

Even in the endgame it's not quite so cut and dried. The dual-wielder will put out more damage, but the pole user has slightly better late-game defensive ability, thanks to the Jade Halberd. Of course, a dual-wielder can use the Bonding Knife, but then you've removed most of your offensive advantage and deprived a spellcaster of a useful defensive weapon. (The Jade Halberd isn't as good for a spellcaster, since it can't be used with a shield.)

Quote:

2. Once skills are developed, melee will do more single target damage than magic to any target that isn't heavily armored, and even then the Flaming Sword evens things out.

A major disadvantage of the Flaming Sword is that it works poorly against sliths, which you'll likely be fighting a lot of quite soon after you get it.

Quote:

3. Missile attacks just aren't worth it. The betters throwing weapons may make a good backup attack for non-magic-users, and sometimes it is nice to have a zero-MP, plinking attack. But even the Heartstriker just does pitiful damage. You might as well invest in priest spells and cast Smite.

Bows aren't bad at low levels when Smite seriously risks running you out of MP and your fighters haven't invested heavily in Quick Action yet because they're still unlocking battle disciplines; my archer/priest was nearly matching my fighters for physical damage until about level 15. The trouble with investing heavily in archery is that you'll regret it later on. Investing in Bows just to unlock battle disciplines isn't the worst idea, but there's no reason to ever put skill points in Sharpshooter. At higher levels, bows are mostly useful as a way to apply status effects (like the Bow of Decay's acid or the Shield Breaker discipline) from a distance without using magic, and you don't really need any skill point investment in them if you're just doing that.

Quote:

4. Magic is great! Area effect spells will do more damage per turn if you need to kill multiple enemies. The main issue is being able to cast them over and over, but Magical Efficiency helps with that quite a bit. On the other hand, AoE spells don't get a uniform boost from battle disciplines, and spellcasters can't load up on Blademaster as easily, for its fatigue reduction.

I can confirm that Magical Efficiency does not work for area-of-effect damage spells (Icy Rain, Fireblast, Divine Fire, and Arcane Blow). It does work for all other spells, as far as I can tell. This is a pretty serious consideration when deciding whether to invest in Intelligence or ME.

Also, Adrenaline Rush is clearly the best discipline to use when casting area-effect spells, despite its costs. Six AoEs can wipe out many enemy groups in a single round, even when you're quite far into the game.

Also also, Divine Retribution is pretty lame now. Its range has been significantly reduced, so you have to stand pretty close to a group of enemies to blast them with it. But hey, at least priests now have some way of doing magical damage.

An aside: another combat-relevant skill you haven't factored into your analysis is Quick Strike. With a single +AP item and some points in QS, it's pretty easy to get two attacks per round most of the time. With heavy investment in QS, you may not even need the +AP item any more. With a base AP of 10 or more, you can also get a chance of a triple attack when you're both hasted and frenzied, which is nice. In practice, it's going to be pretty hard to work out the optimal level of QS for a character without knowing what equipment they'll be using and when. As a general rule, because of the way QS works, piling all the +QS equipment on one character and trying to get them close to 20 is probably a better idea than spreading it around the party.

[BrownieMix]

Despite the math, I have to say that so far I've been very pleased with my decision to have two slith pole fighters as my main melee guys. My first one, at level 28, kicks major major ass. My second one, also at level 28, is not quite as strong because I made him the dedicated Tool Use guy, but he still deals excellent damage.

 

One thing that I have definitely noticed is that the Skribbane = Level Up "exploit" has really made my decision to go with two pole fighters much easier to live with. I feel they are very powerful for where I am at the game (just got the boat, defeated the Fang Clan and the Dragon Gate). With my mage users at lvl 30, and everyone having Battle Frenzy, I'm pretty much destroying everything in my path. I even managed to go back and defeat that drake I was complaining about earlier.

[Slawbug]

Re sliths, note that they have zero armor, so there's no reason to use the Flaming Sword against them anyway.

 

More generally -- obviously broadswords are helpful, but they are surprisingly irrelevant. For both pole and melee, but especially melee, the majority of the skills that increase damage do it by increasing total damage by a percent, not by adding on levels of damage. So switching from short to broadsword will increase a portion of your damage by about 1/3, which means it will increase your total damage by less than that... that means switching your second weapon from short to broadsword will increase your total damage by less than 1/6, maybe by about 1/8 depending on skill levels and the weapon in question. Obviously that's a very nice boost, but it isn't enough to put dual wielding damage below halberd damage.

[Slawbug]

On the subject of Quick Strike and AP, because it hasn't been posted since A4, I thought I'd regurgitate some Quick Strike stats.

 

If you need 2 bonus APs from Quick Strike, you need a lot of Quick Strike: 14 for 49% success, 18 for 81%, 20 for 99%.

 

If you only need 1 bonus AP from Quick Strike, however, you need less: 6 for 51% success, 10 for 75%, 13 for 88%.

 

There are few enough AP increasing items (and many of them come late) that training a PC in Quick Strike isn't totally unreasonable. Plenty of AP increasing armor is available early if you don't mind crafting it. But the 2 Quicksilver Bulwarks, the Quicksilver Sandals, and the Cryos Spear don't appear till fairly late... plus, the Quicksilver Sandals are the only one of those that can reasonably be put on a melee or pole fighter.

 

Note however that because the (cheap, hassle-free, always available) Haste spell doesn't provide any effective extra attacks if you have 2 attacks at 10 AP anyway, getting the QS bonus effectively increases your damage output by 50% and not 100%. QS starts at a cost of 3, which gives us a total cost of:

 

024 for 06 QS (51% +1) = +25% damage w/one AP item

050 for 10 QS (75% +1) = +38% damage w/one AP item

075 for 13 QS (88% +1) = +44% damage w/one AP item

 

084 for 14 QS (49% +2) = +24% damage

126 for 18 QS (81% +2) = +40% damage

150 for 20 QS (99% +2) = +50% damage

 

A handful of items provide QS bonuses, but most of those require passing up bonuses from alternative equipment, so I'm not counting those points here.

 

Conclusion: Quick Strike is better than nothing, but is not worth using without one AP-increasing item, and is inferior to two. Even then, it probably isn't worth bringing it any higher than 10 or so.

[Lilith]

My experience is that many of the QS-boosting items are actually very good in their own right, even if you discount the Quick Strike bonus. Getting one character to 20 QS isn't unreasonable when 8 of those points are coming from items.

[Slawbug]

Yes, it's certainly doable, but the question is whether or not those skill points would produce more damage output if plugged into other skills. The answer is that they probably would, beyond the first handful of bought points.

[Lilith]

Damage output isn't everything, though, especially for fighters. If two Horde Warlizards have just run past you and are about to eat your mage, you need to be able to shoot both of them in one round so that they pick on the fighter instead, and no amount of extra damage will let you do that.

[Randomizer]

Re: Sliths

 

While regular sliths have no real armor resistance to physical damage, theo horde sliths in the Occupied Lands and at the Horned Gate in the Eastern Gallery have physical resistance about 50%.

 

Quick Strike items:

 

There are enough ones like Airy Greaves that are available early to help out a fighter.

[Slawbug]

For defensive use such as above, QS seems a poor choice since it is not even guaranteed to give you the bonus AP.

[DokEnkephalin]

QS does change your average damage output significantly enough to take it seriously. But if you're comparing pure pole/melee/thrown/bow/spell, a more useful list might compare average damage output per skill point spent. You'd need a party of all humans with no combat/magic traits, and avoid buying training in any attack skills, so it'd be a suboptimal chargen.

[Brocktree]

 

BOWS

10 Dex, 20 Bows, 27 Sharpshooter (yeah... forcing it!)

Heartstriker Bow

Average Output: 133

 

I've been playing through Avernum 6 in Torment mode with a 2 cleric + 2 mage party, and I can say that I have 19 in sharpshooter, 13 in bows, and 3 in dexterity with *no* skill point investment for one character. With a blessed long bow, I'm hitting for 85 hit points a pop, with cloak of bolts I can push that to 120. Steel javelins under cloak of bolts hit for as much as Smite does under an Arcane Cloak (150).