Misguiding Damage Status

[holetz]

Trying to understand the damage mechanics of the game, I researched and found the following wiki page: Combat Calculations - Official Last Epoch Wiki. With the information I got from the page I understood part of the calculation, but I was unable to apply the formula to my status and reach the value I observed by hitting the training dummy.

One of the points that confused me was how to apply the different values ​​of increased global, melee and physical damage in the formula. I tried to use average and sum and did not get the expected result.

So, to solve my dilemma, I started a new character and gradually tried to understand the results of my tribalist’s wolf damage.

With a raw character I arrived at an average damage of approximately 18 and, discounting an 8% increase in damage due to 2 strength points, I arrived at a base damage of 17, the same amount that I had already read on this forum. With passives, I trained my strength and the damage followed the formula: [Total Damage = Base Damage * (100% + Strength * 4%)]

I then obtained equipment that added 26% physical damage to the wolf and, according to the wiki formula, the damage I got was exactly as calculated by the formula: [Total Damage = Base Damage * (100% + Strength * 4% + Physical Increment%)]

My next step was to obtain a passive that added melee damage to the wolf and, again according to the wiki, the resulting damage followed the formula: [Total Damage = Base Damage * (100% + Strength * 4% + Physical Increment% + Increment Melee%)]

It was then that when I equipped an item with increased global damage that the calculation went wrong. Now if I applied the previous formula, or added the global damage to it, I was unable to reach the expected damage. However, as I now knew where the problem was, it was relatively easy, but not intuitive, to understand the error.

It turns out that the damage status screen shows all specific increments (melee, physical, fire, etc.) with the added global increment. This would be practical and intuitive if the damage was pure, just physical for example, but I believe, and I’m probably wrong, that all the damage is kind of mixed since you have the modality (spell, melee, throw) and the type (physical, fire, ice, etc.).

In this way, the simple calculation of base damage for my wolf (apart from many other variables that I am not addressing), taking into account the data obtained from the damage status window, is given by the formula: [Total Damage = Base Damage * ( 100% + Strength * 4% + (Physical Increment% - Global Increment) + (Melee Increment% - Global Increment) + Global Increment)]

So here I leave my two cents on the subject that, seeing how far I had to go to understand the problem, I believe that the status screen should not add the global increment to the other increments. I would have understood the calculation much easier and I believe that many will benefit from it too.

And an addendum, I noticed that the damage variation is not 25% of the base damage as the wiki explains, but 20%. I don’t know if the confusion was due to the fact that the difference between the highest and lowest damage is 50%, but here is a tip for those who find this post while trying to understand the values.

[Llama8]

There was another thread around here somewhere on this.

A few points, the character screen double counts all applicable modifiers (so a % global damage modifier from passives or skills would be added in to all damage lines on the character screen), I’ll put up the damage formula when I get back to my pc (and a keyboard that isn’t on a phone).

[Llama8]

Right…

Base damage (ignoring minions) comes from your weapon (either melee damage or adaptive spell damage, throwing attacks don’t get any base damage from the weapon), passives and occasionally skills (eg, Flame Rive states it has a base damage of 15).

Non-skill base damage is then multiplied by the skill’s added damage effectiveness (100% if not stated).

This then gives you the skill’s base damage to be used for the next steps, the order of the next steps don’t matter.

Sum up all of the “increased” damage modifiers that are appropriate to the individual damage elements including the 4% per attribute & apply that. These increased modifiers are from gear, idols and passives.

Find all of the “more” modifiers on the skill tree (& potentially other skill trees, but I think that’s generally only Firebrand and some minion buffs like Dread Shade so you can probably ignore it) and apply them separately.

Apply your crit multi (200% = x2, I know that’s wrong, but that’s how it works in this game, don’t ask) if the skill crits.

Damage = (skill base damage + (flat added damage x added damage effectiveness)) x (sum of all “increased” modifiers, inc any from attributes) x (more modifier 1) x (more modifier 2) x (more modifier 3) x (more modifier 4) x …

The above calculation needs to be done by element, since +% fire damage won’t do anything for flat cold damage, etc.

I did that for Flame Reave buffed by Firebrand & it worked out fairly close to the crits I was seeing from Flame Reave.

Additionally, the damage spread is +/- 25% if you have a large enough sample, ailments don’t get the damage spread but skills with the DoT tag would. Pets might have a smaller spread, I’ve not really tested them for that.

This is what my quick spreadsheet for Flame Reave looked like (it’s only got so much on it because it’s buffed by Firebrand, the yellow cells are the skill nodes that I was tweaking to see what would give me better damage, more of the flat damage nodes or more “more” nodes).

As you can see, I pulled together the base data on the left (ignoring the character screen due to the aforementioned double-counting issue), then calculated the base damage by element (I summed up the cold/lightning because I didn’t have any separate increased modifiers for them, it was either +% fire or +% elemental), then applied the sum of the % increased (by element) & the +% more (by element).

[holetz]

Good explanation. I have to say that I would have been happier if I had found one like this before, although if the problem of double addition was not specified I would have arrived at the same problem mentioned.
As for the spread of the damage, I believe it may be specific to the minion, since I took a total of more than 1000 samples and no data set exceeded the 20% variation.
Also nice spreadsheet, will save it as example for later use =)