Damage Formulas - QW2

[Mechalibur]

Most of my analysis is based on slarty's post here for the previous game: https://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/25033-damage-formulas/ This post is updated to include the damage dice of new abilities.

 

Basic Attacks

Damage = Weapon Level + Weapon Base Damage + Bonus Damage + Die Roll

Number of Dice: 1 +1 per odd character level.

Dice Size: Dependent on weapon

 

Weapon Level: Each weapon has its own weapon level. You can see what this is by placing it in a box - the item icon in the container will show the weapon level under the image.

Weapon Base Damage: This is 0 or 1 for most weapons, but some have an unusual value, like 10 for the Dhagan Defender. Can't be viewed in-game.

Bonus Damage: Your total bonus physical damage for physical weapons or magical damage for magical weapons. Also includes bonus damage from the Haven's Command passive cultural ability.

 

Damage Dice by Weapon

(Bold is new or changed in QW2)

d2 - Dagger, Bow, Wand, Fool's Shot, Ice Bow

d3 - Sword, Axe, Arcane Sword, Staff, Scourge, Dhagan Defender

d4 - Cutlass of Radiance

d5 - Spear, Halberd, Arcane Spear, Pirate Sword (d4 for cleave damage)

 

Skill Damage

Skill damage gets a bit more complicated as the type of skill you use depends on what affects the damage. We'll ignore abilities like Brutal Blow since they just modify basic attacks and use the basic attack formula.

 

General Damage Formula: Weapon Level + Skill Base Damage + Bonus Damage + Die Roll.

 

Weapon Level: For "spell" type abilities, you add the weapon level of your equipped weapon only if it is a weapon that deals arcane damage. For example, shock will add weapon level to damage if you have an arcane sword equipped, but not if you have a dagger equipped. Some other skills like Whirlwind add the weapon level of your ranged weapon. No abilities seem to use your melee weapon level.

Skill Base Damage: Each skill has its own base damage. Weapon base damage is not used here.

Bonus Damage/Dice Roll: Same as basic attacks

 

Spell Damage

Damage for all these abilities are modified by your weapon level if you have a magic weapon equipped.

 

Shock: 5 + d5

Icy Wave: 8 + d3

Poison Rain: 2 + d2

Shockwave: 1 + d2

Fireball: 10 + d4

Ensnaring Vines: 9 + d3

Mad Flurry: 5 + d2

 

Ensnaring Vines and Mad Flurry are a bit weird because they do physical damage, yet still benefit from having a magic weapon equipped.

 

Ranged Skill Damage

Damage for all these abilities are modified by your ranged weapon's weapon level

 

Whirlwind: 5 + d3

Stonespires: 0 + d3

Bull Rush: 0 + d4

 

Healing Skills

Healing Formula: Base Skill Healing + Die Roll

 

Base healing from skills is very simple as you can see. They are modified by your healing bonus, however, so they'll often heal more than their low numbers might suggest.

 

Healing: 5 + d3

Healing Wave: 5 + d3

Restoring Rain: 5 + d2

Haven's Mercy: 18 + d5 (wow)

Spectral Armor: 5 + d3 (note: this is affected by Blessing Duration instead of Healing Bonus)

 

I think that covers everything. Please let me know if I missed anything

[BenS]

Thank you for the write-up. Do you have any clue what the Haven's Command bonuses would be like? I had 2 skill ranks of that in my 1st game, but w/ no way of knowing if those were skill ranks better placed elsewhere. I'm on my 2nd game and...15th level I think...just put 1 skill rank there. But skill ranks are quite limited w/ the 20-level cap, and I'd like to make more informed choices about placements for them.

[Mechalibur]

I think it maxes at 3/6 extra damage to the party at rank 1/2. It's reflected in the damage tooltips.

[BenS]

4 hours ago, Mechalibur said:

I think it maxes at 3/6 extra damage to the party at rank 1/2. It's reflected in the damage tooltips.

Oh, those sound pretty decent, thank you.

[BenS]

For the 2nd game in a row, my Prince and 2h weapon user have used the Fool's Shot and Ice Bows. Does that mean, based on the above (D2 for them) formulae, they do less dmg w/ Whirlwind than if they used vanilla bows that output more physical dmg? I mean Fool's Shot is still great for the bleed add-on, and having at least 2 party members be able to apply magic dmg isn't a bad idea, but I'm still curious.

 

Separate question I keep forgetting to ask: critical hits; how does that dmg calculate? Is it 150% and armor is ignored? I'm trying to figure out what happens sometimes when a PC takes massive dmg and the console text tells me none of my armor was used to soften the blow.

[Randomizer]

Fool's Shot is physical damage and the Ice bow and Dragon Defender are magical damage, so check those bonuses on the character. The bonuses make the major difference.

[Mechalibur]

I don't know about crits. I *think* it's 50% bonus damage, then apply armor, but armor has consistently confused me in how it's implemented, so it's hard to say.

 

Whirlwind damage is affected by your bow's weapon level, so it gains bonus damage regardless of whether it's a magic damage bow or physical damage bow. However, if you have a bunch of physical damage bonus and not magical, you're better off using a physical bow.

[BenS]

Hmm, I must not have come across the Dhagan (?) Defender; maybe in my current, pro-Ro game I will. I think I understand what to look for now vis a vis physical v. magical bonuses for the character, and making sure I pick an appropriate bow--especially if I have and use Whirlwind. My 2nd, melee PC (2h) is using Temptation (magical) and the Ice Bow (magical), and I'm pretty sure his magical bonus > his physical bonus (he's a bit of a Gish-type PC). Later I'll switch to the Warp Spear, assuming my current band survives the Arena combats, and I'll upgrade the Piretical Sword to the oddly-named Cutlass of Radiance (which is 2h) for my staff-wielding mage.

Thanks. 

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

So if you're using mad flurry with an arcane weapon, will you get more damage from equipping bonus magic damage items or bonus physical damage items?

[Mechalibur]

It does physical damage, so +physical would affect mad flurry damage, regardless of whether you have an arcane weapon or physical weapon equipped.

 

Yes, it's counterintuitive.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

Ok, interesting. Wait though -- by "mad flurry damage" is that damage vs the primary target or damage against the peripheral targets? So, arcane weapon equipped, + magic damage boosts against primary, + physical boosts against peripheral targets of the flurry? Or do you lose +mag damage bonuses against all targets with mad flurry?

 

 

[Mechalibur]

You've got it right. The weapon attack portion is independent of the physical damage caused by Mad Flurry, so if you have an arcane weapon, +magic damage effects the weapon damage, and +physical would affect the flurry damage.

[Dr. Hieronymous Alloy]

How do critical hits factor into this math? Is there a point where, say, a +5% critical rune is better mathematically than a + damage rune?

[Mechalibur]

Criticals are +50% damage, so 5% more critical is effectively +2.5% of your base damage to your damage output. So you have to do the math on that, but it depends on what your base damage already is as well as how much crit you already have.

[ZorroDragonslayer]

On 9/21/2022 at 7:51 PM, Randomizer said:

Fool's Shot is physical damage and the Ice bow and Dragon Defender are magical damage, so check those bonuses on the character. The bonuses make the major difference.

The down side on some of the special weapons is that there is a speed penalty. This makes me think twice about picking them up. The Dhagan Defender has a 35% speed penalty which is hard to ignore.

[Mechalibur]

Yeah, it's not a very good weapon by my estimation. Even without the speed penalty, I'm not sure if I'd use it much: the damage bonus is barely higher than something like the Ice Bow, and it requires 3 levels in both combat and magic trees compared to 2 for the ice bow. Vulnerability is nice in theory, but it comes at a point in the game where most enemies are rocking a huge amount of curse resist.

[mikeprichard]

Not sure this is a good place to ask, but I have a rookie question re: some possibly vague tooltip text: the text for the "Blessing" effect granted by e.g. Haven's Might states "All of your abilities get a bonus to damage." Does this include standard physical/magical weapon attacks, or only actual unique "abilities" (Brutal Blow, Shock, etc.) as implied? I hope/assume the former is the case and standard attacks also benefit from the blessing, but the wording is ambiguous. Cheers!

[Mechalibur]

Pretty sure it's all weapon attacks and abilities.

[mikeprichard]

Cool, thanks! That would make it significantly more useful.

[Mechalibur]

Yep. If you have some extra energy at the end of a dungeon right before the boss encounter, it can be worthwhile to cast enough blesses to get everyone to 5 stacks for a noticeable damage increase.

[mikeprichard]

One more sorta tangential question - what exactly does the "Damage to Kranas/Dhaga/Litha" effect given by the Conqueror's Venom necklace and some runes do? Does it a) add +5 physical and magical damage whenever fighting any enemies in those respective provinces, b) apply that bonus anywhere in the game but only when fighting human enemies from those provinces, or c) something else, and if so, what?

[Mechalibur]

I assume it's human enemies belonging to the Kranas/Lithia/Dhaga. I don't really have a reliable way to test that for sure, though.

[Randomizer]

The only real way to to be sure is repeat the fight with and without the item/runes and record th result for the same attack about a hundred times.  Then look at average damage and variance to see if there is a difference.

 

I did that once in Avadon and never waned to do it again.

[mikeprichard]

OK, thanks for the replies - I admit I'm also not looking to go through that kind of testing for something I'm not especially interested in, and it seems nobody else is likely to want to invest the time either.

[Enobarbus World]

I mean, +5 is a big enough difference that you can probably make a guess about its presence after 10 trials.  Just use a lower variance attack.

[Mechalibur]

Sure. I just don't wanna. 😅