BrendanatorX Posted March 27, 2020 Share Posted March 27, 2020 (edited) I apologize for how long and potentially complicated this is, I want to also say that I'm not a mathematician or game developer, so this is very on the fly, but I've done my best to show my findings and ensure that people understand what I'm talking about in the first place and furthermore how I came to these conclusions. I started writing this and investigating the workings of melee and how damage works when trying to figure out how to min/max some melee builds for finishers and heavy attacks about two weeks before Update 27.3.0 aka Operation: Scarlet Spear. This update has either fixed or changed a few of these things to some degree, but in no way invalidates the purposes of this article as the points I bring up here are interconnected and even when not working at the forefront may still be affecting something behind the scenes. List of changes I've noticed since the update that weren't listed in patch notes: Pressure Point now shows more accurately rounded damage numbers with decimals and totals. Internal finisher damage calculations for weapons using Pressure Point calculate more accurately now. Heavy attacks/slam attacks are now correctly multiplying the weapon's damage while using Pressure Point. Below this section are explanations of the different areas which need or needed to be looked at when I started writing this, though I will list a few important points here as a TLDR first: Arsenal UI shows rounded numbers and decimals which don't accurately reflect the weapon's actual base damage. This would not be as much of a problem if it were ONLY for modded damage values as adding percentages can end up causing complicated decimals and it makes more sense at that point, however this should be changed so that what you see is what you get and you don't end up with more confusing damage numbers and calculations down the line. Floating Damage Numbers sometimes appears to be off by a small margin, perhaps mostly noticeable in critical damage? but I now think that it may be to do with the real damage values that we only see rounded versions of in the Arsenal UI. Physical/Elemental damage added from mods only contributes 50% of it's value to Finishers and there is little to no good or logical reason for the developer in charge of that system to design it that way. How it ended up that way on a technical level is explained below. Finishing Touch (+60%) and Pressure Point (+60%) should function the same as far as final finisher damage, but I did see one or two examples where they gave different values. This may have been fixed since. Damage multipliers and forced status effects per hit for melee combos are undocumented in-game, and it would be great if that could be shown on the combo screen for each stance similarly to how the warframe wiki has it laid out eg. melee (100%), melee (200%), block+melee (3 x 100%) or heavy attack (600% + bleed status). Certain finisher multipliers which I have listed below are either way too low or broken and need to be looked at. The quantization mechanic that the damage system is built on, it isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a very behind the scenes system that tricks players who think they will actually be dealing the damage they see in the Arsenal UI. =============================================================== First and foremost, in 2018 someone discovered that all Damage is quantized into 16ths before hitting an enemy rather than damage going directly by the numbers listed in the arsenal ui, I only just learned this when I started all this and I'm unsure if this is the actual first mention/original source but: Total Weapon Damage / 16 = Quantum Damage Type # / Quantum = # Rounded to the nearest whole number. Rounded # x Quantum = Quantized Damage Type # This is done for each listed damage type for the weapon and after all damage types have been quantized, the distribution of total damage between damage types may be higher or lower than it started. With damage types now quantized, modifiers and multipliers for 'Criticals', 'Stealth Damage' hits and 'Finishers' can then be applied as needed, followed by 'Damage Vs Health Type' modifiers (Eg. vs Infested Flesh, Ferrite Armor or Shield). However finishers convert damage types into True Damage which ignore armor and resistances, therefore you should not include damage vs health type modifiers on top of a finisher multiplier. It is best ordered like this: Quantized Damage Type x (1 + (Stealth Multiplier -1) + (Critical Multiplier -1))Then x Finisher Multiplier or +/- Damage Vs Health Type Modifier. Stealth Multiplier is 2.0x at unranked +0.2x per rank. Totaling 8.0x at rank 30 and 10.0x at rank 40. Critical Multiplier can vary between numbers like 1.5x and 3.7x depending on the weapon. The 1 at the start of the round brackets denotes 'damage x 1', and the -1 for stealth and critical is to remove the 1x usually included in the multipliers when used on their own, thus allowing them to be used additively. And as mentioned at the start, here is and example of what it would look like if you were using a Krohkur: Total Weapon Damage (217) / 16 = Quantum (13.5625) 26.0 Impact / Quantum = 2 x Quantum = 27.125 Quantized Impact +50% Vs Shield = 40.6875 Quantized Impact Vs Shield 39.1 Puncture / Quantum = 3 x Quantum = 40.6875 Quantized Puncture -20% Vs Shield = 32.55 Quantized Puncture Vs Shield 151.9 Slash / Quantum = 11 x Quantum = 149.1875 Quantized Slash Total Quantized Damage Vs Shield = 222.425 If you were Invisible or the enemy was unaware of you, your Stealth Damage would be 222.425 x8.0 = 1,779.4 vs shield If you were to do a Critical hit your damage would be 222.425 x2.3 = 511.5775 (Ingame it will currently say 511 instead of 512 due to an error.) If you were to Critical hit your Stealth Damage, it would be 222.425 x 9.3 = 2068.5525 (Ingame it will currently say 2068 instead of 2069 because of an error.) =============================================================== Floating text numbers stating how much damage was done per hit or dot tick doesn't show decimal values for that intended damage, so it 'attempts' to round to the nearest whole number and display that. There have however been many occasions on which the numbers that showed up were on a small scale, not as expected. Some examples are: Krohkur 120% pressure point critical hit vs shield (1124 instead of 1125.4705 (1125 rounded)), Krohkur unmodded crit vs shield (511 instead of 512 rounded (511.5775) or Krohkur unmodded stealth crit vs shield (2068 instead of 2069 rounded (2068.5525), Krohkur 60% pressure point crit vs shield (817 instead of 818), Gazal Machete 120% pressure point Heavy Attack vs shield (609 instead of 608.49375 (round to 608)) =============================================================== Speaking of errors, ingame calculations have had inconsistancies that warrant fixing if possible. This I assume is directly tied to the aforementioned quantization, damage floaties and failure to round to nearest whole numbers at times. However there are cases of this going beyond just failing to round damage numbers up or down one digit and some things have seemed impossible to calculate because of either errors in the game's own calculations or because it uses different values than we are given. So far it appears to be better in some cases since the update, however prior to this update, using damage mods could break it quite often and I believe this was due to +% damage mods creating decimal values along with using different values than we were shown, which to quote others I have seen speaking about damage calculations in the arsenal.. 'is another lie we are being told'. An example of error using the Krohkur: (Using +120% pressure point) 477 listed (57.2|85.9|333.9) 477 / 16 = 29.8125 57.2 / q = 2 x q = 59.625 x8 = 477 x8 = 3816 85.9 / q = 3 x q = 89.4375 x8 = 715.5 x8 = 5724 333.9 / q = 11 x q = 327.9375 x8 = 2623.5 x8 = 20988 q477 x8 = 3816 x8 = 30528 While these numbers do not accurately represent +120% of the listed stats of an unmodded Krohkur, this math here in theory should have been correct going by what is listed in the arsenal, however different values or sequences of calculations were used ingame, leading instead to dealing 30544 finisher damage. Even attempting to substitute true +120% values retuns an incorrect answer as seen below. 477.4 / 16 = 29.8375 57.2 / q = 2 x q = 59.675 86.02 / q = 3 x q = 89.5125 334.18 / q = 11 x q = 328.2125 477.4 total x8 x8 = 30553.6 The same was true for Silva and Aegis Prime, however as of the recent update, the damage type values and total damage value shown in the arsenal while using pressure point have changed, and with it the ingame damage calculations, which now are correct both in theory and in practice, returning a damage value of 30554, 10 damage higher than previously achieved. =============================================================== I have noticed that where applicable due to damage mods, some listed decimals will actually show a rounded up/down amount of potentially larger than single digit decimal values, for example 10.1 instead of 10.1451. I believe it is less an issue that we cannot see reflected so exactly, but more of an issue that numbers are not correctly being calculated and not correctly showing up as what they are or should be as it is misleading. If a weapon says it does xyz amount total damage, that should be the exact damage the weapon does total, and if the weapon says it does xyz.x physical damage or xyz.z elemental damage, it should be the amount that the weapon does if possible at the very least when completely unmodded. That should always be absolutely true for every weapon. And ideally once mods are included after that, should be at least better reflected, even if unable to be 100% due to slight 100ths or 1000ths of a decimal. Whether it was intentionally/manually forced this way for weapons or if it is the game itself's calculation algorithms which do it is not something I know. Examples of some messed up values: Cassowar, 188 base damage total with a +100% pressure point shows 376 damage total listed but total damage if you added up the listed values for each damage type was actually 375.9 Silva & Aegis Prime & Shaku using pressure point at +60% or +120% which due to being single damage type, were messed up too, especially comparing +Damage to +Physical or +Elemental, which should all add the same amount of damage, but don't, and on top of that screwing with the decimals. Zaws on the other hand are like a crazy exception where everything is either working better or woking way way worse, decimals function properly, but the values are all over the place so it's harder to keep track of. Atterax has 129 listed total but 129.1 damage total from it's damage types and lists 581 heavy attack damage (4.5x for whips) rather than 580.5 or 580.95 total damage x4.5 depending on how you do it. Lesion has 237 listed total but 237.1 damage total from it's damage types and lists 1442 heavy attack damage (6.0x for polearms) which would be correct if it wasn't supposed to add up to 1422.6. =============================================================== Pressure Point/Spoiled Strike/Rivens (and possibly other similar mods for melee, secondaries and primaries) did not always add a true +% to unmodded damage type numbers listed or the listed total, nor to the listed heavy attack/slam attack values listed. Speaking of, half the weapons ingame do not show decimal values while the other half show at least a .0 at the end. Furthermore, said +% damage mods would erase decimal values for the listed damage total which as seen in previous examples, causes a Krohkur to show 477 rather than 477.4 and beyond that, mess up the order of operations when calculating damage by way of erasing decimals for the amounts damage added to each damage type rather than being applied to the listed damage type values which should be what we have before even starting calculations. Another Krohkur example of weird ways this worked: An unmodded finisher deals 13888 damage. 217 (26i|39.1p|151.9s) listed (Unmodded) 217 / 16 = 13.5625 26.0 / q = 2 x q = q27.125i x8 = 217 39.1 / q = 3 x q = q40.6875p x8 = 325.5 151.9 / q = 11 x q = q149.1875s x8 = 1193.5 q217 total x8 = 1736 x8 = 13888t (matches) If you add up the x8 numbers without decimals, you get 1735. 1735 +120% from pressure point = 2082 x8 = 16656 13888 + 16656 = 30544 which is correct, but this is bizzare because the finisher damage should be multiples of the base damage, which gets increased by +% damage mods. A +120% pressure point finisher deals 30544 damage. 477 (57.2i|85.9p|333.9s) listed (+120% Pressure point) 477.4 / 16 = 29.8375 57.2 / q = 2 x q = 59.675 x8 = 477.4 85.9 / q = 3 x q = 89.5125 x8 = 716.1 333.9 / q = 11 x q = 328.2125 x8 = 2625.7 q477.4 total x8 = 3,819.2 x8 = 30,553.6 (wrong) q476 without decimals x8 x8 = 30,464 (wrong) Again if you add up the x8 numbers without their decimals this method uniquely does work again, adding up to 3818 x8 = 30544 but any decimal altering should have occured at the very start, making this appear very broken. These occurances were near impossible to figure out without bending the rules and changing the order of operations. =============================================================== Finishing touch was not immune to these kinds of errors either and using a Finishing Touch +60% would only achieve the same finisher damage numbers as when using Pressure Point +60% half the time, being slightly off the other half of the time depending on the weapon and it's values. =============================================================== Another curiosity I found was in the case of Physical and Elemental damage mods which are applied rather differently. Firstly, two things I was already aware of, but will list for posterity. Physical damage mods only increase pre-existing physical damage by a percentage of that pre-existing number, Eg. 100 Impact +100% Impact will give you 200 Impact but if your weapon doesn't have any impact damage to begin with, impact mods will do nothing. Elemental damage mods add a percentage of the total weapon damage as elemental damage, eg. if you use a +60% Heat damage mod on a weapon with 100 Total damage (spread across 50 impact, 25 puncture and 25 slash) you simply add 60 heat damage as it is 60% of the total damage. Now for a few parts that aren't mentioned anywhere. Damage added by physical or elemental damage mods is calculated separately to pre-existing physical or elemental damage rather than as a combined number, and when quantizing those separate values, they are 16ths of the weapon's total damage before adding the physical or elemental damage mods, which going by the previously used example, 100 total damage (50 impact, 25 puncture, 25 slash) you would quantize each of the impact, puncture and slash values by a 16th of 100 total damage listed. However if you add 60 heat damage from a mod, you will see the arsenal say a total 160 damage, but still be required to quantize 60 using a 16th of 100 damage total and the same is true for if you added physical mod, for example +50% impact damage would add 25 impact damage but be quantized using a 16th of 100 instead of 125 total damage. Lastly is the interaction of added physical and elemental damage values with finishers. I believe I saw somewhere that physical and elemental damage mods did not contribute to finisher damage in the past. This is no longer the case, however it comes at the cost of a rather bothersome condition, only 50% of the damage added by physical or elemental damage contributes to finisher damage. I don't think this makes any sense, I'm hoping its unintentional and can be fixed, but that's how it is. Even if you more than double the weapon's total damage because of only physical/elemental damage mods, you still get less than double of an increase in finisher damage and probably struggle to to add even half the damage. Not only is this not mentioned anywhere but it's silly. There are currently maybe only two weapons left since the melee 3.0 rework which have a single damage type, Shaku which is Impact-only and Silva & Aegis (Prime) which is heat-only. For those weapons, adding a +60% pressure point is essentially the same as adding +60% impact or +60% heat to match the damage type it already deals as far as you will see in the arsenal, but get very different results in damage. At least now pressure point will show the same damage values with the mysteriously undocumented change since the update, though otherwise all of this is still true. =============================================================== A largely undocumented part of melee is the extra damage and forced status procs on different kinds of attacks depending on weapon type or stance used. Some attacks will deal flat multiples of total damage dealth and others may just add extra % of a damage type eg. Tatsu does +100% puncture damage after damage calculations for ground finishers. For example: Tatsu: 214 Listed ( 20i | 54p | 68s | 72r ) x12 Ground Finisher 214 / 16 = 13.375 20i / q = 1 x q = 13.375i 54p / q = 4 x q = 53.5p 68s / q = 5 x q = 66.875s 72r / q = 5 x q = 66.875r q200.625 total ( 13.375i | 53.5p | 66.875s | 66.875r ) 13.375i | +50% = 20.0625i | 20.0625i | 53.5p | -20% = 42.8p | +100% = 85.6p | 66.875s | = 66.875s | 66.875s | 66.875r | -25% = 50.15625r | 50.15625r | |total = 179.89375 | | | 222.69375 | x12 = 1672.325 =============================================================== As far as heavy and slam attacks which I briefly touched on already, they were intended as multiples of your weapon's current damage and to be affected by mods. This is not always easy to work out as for one a great deal of weapons will not display decimals at all for their heavy attacks and for the ones that do, some happily display .0 while others will happily display .1 to .9 but regardless of that roughly half of melee weapons displayed no decimal at all and even some of the ones that did, didn't even match up as a multiple of the damage values listed. Even so, heavy attacks and slam attacks damage appeared rather mismatched. Some seemed to work correctly as a multiple of the intended regular damage after mods were applied, though most appeared to instead scale based on an unmodded heavy attack which then had mods applied. Some examples of this I already added above where it seemed relevant, but deserve to be here too as they in particular served as good examples. Atterax has 129 listed total but 129.1 damage total from it's damage types and lists 581 heavy attack damage (4.5x for whips) rather than 580.5 or 580.95 total damage x4.5 depending on how you do it. Lesion has 237 listed total but 237.1 damage total from it's damage types and lists 1442 heavy attack damage (6.0x for polearms) which would be correct if it wasn't supposed to add up to 1422.6. Gazal Machete also makes this list as far as heavy attack damage not lining up correctly, however since the update passed, I no longer have the stats to list here. =============================================================== Lastly, random finisher fun fact, I went and checked the finisher multipliers for all weapon types during my investigation and there are a few which are either broken, don't make sense or deserve a buff which I will list here. Dark Split-Sword (Dual Swords): 2.0x stealth/back/front finisher multiplier while all other dual swords deal 8.0x. I don't think I have to explain why this is silly, finishers should be powerful and by comparison to other dual swords, this is a rather big downgrade. Dark Split-Sword (Heavy Blade): 3.0x stealth, 2.0x back and 0.5x front finisher multipliers while all other heavy blades deal 12.0x stealth/back and 2x front finishers. (Again, not very strong finishers, less than even a dagger and 0.5x? I mean imagine doing a special attack called a "Finisher" that hits for less damage than a regular attack, someone definitely messed that up.) Heavy Blade: 2x front finisher, which again, is rather low for a finisher, and I get that the weapon has high base damage already, but if you're gonna make a finisher do barely the same damage as a barebones critical hit it's not very exciting. Redeemer (Gunblade): 3x front finisher also quite a low amount. Sarpa (Gunblade) 1.75x front finisher, again, low, just how did this get decided on? Daggers are at 4x for stealth/back/front finishers but I wouldn't call it that excessively low either. Kesheg (Polearm): 6.543x stealth/back/front finisher while every other polearm deals 6x. I don't think this one is a problem, it is a kuva weapon after all so it's kinda canon for it to be stronger so that's awesome, just was an interesting find. =============================================================== Once again thank you for reading, this is the end of my investigation, I am absolutely drained and I hope I can finally get back to enjoying the game and start the new event. I would absolutely like to the points I've made here be acknowledged and to any Devs reading this, if there are any explanations you can give, info you can share for each of these systems, including whether what I've found is intentional or not, please do so, and if any changes are made to big systems like this, it would be great to see them properly documented in patch notes. Regards, BrendanatorX Post edit updates: I've discovered Atterax's true impact and puncture values are actually 6.45 rather than 6.5 listed, I'm sure this is the case for many weapons and as far as accurately knowing what your weapon will deal after being increased by multipliers and such, it does matter. Krohkur's IPS spread (rounded numbers) with a +165% pressure point currently say 69.0 instead of 68.9 for impact, 103.5 instead of 103.6 for impact, though slash remains accurate. I have no choice but to guess that it's listed values are also misrepresented like for Atterax or mods like Pressure Point are still not functioning properly. Edited April 15, 2020 by BrendanatorX Re-wrote the Intro to be more streamlined and tldr. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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