Guild Wars 2

Ok, so me and another guy ended up in an argument whether the ranger signet “Signet of the Hunt” applies 150% damage or 50% damage, and if “Signet of the Wild” which supposedly adds ~25% damage stacks in a linear manner or not.
The tooltip and wiki says nothing of this, so no help there.

So, we went by the damage i did to a glass thief (19.44k) and tried to backwards calculate using the damage and critical damage formula on the wiki. Now, normally, math does not lie. However, we dug around, and calculated that a ranger should be able to produce 305730 damage against a enemy with 2300 armor (around full glass canon medium armor). Which we know ain’t happening ingame. So there is a x-factor.

Now, the formula looks like this;
base damage = Weapon damage * power * weapon coefficient/enemy armor
crit damage = Base damage * (1+crit chance)+base dmg*(crit chance*(crit damage*1.5))
Now following these formulas;
Maul skill tool tip reads 1494 damage, according to wiki, the coefficient is 1.5
My character has 2315 power (No bloodlust or food)
My enemy is a imaginary glass cannon medium armor which has around 2300 armor

Base damage = 1494*2315*1.5/2300
Base damage = 2255.615
This is what i can expect to hit when using maul. And this result makes sense. As it is around where i hit.

Now, additional info;
My character has 55% crit chance and 103% crit damage

Crit damage looks the following;
2255.615*(1+0.55)+2255.615*(0.55*(103*1.5))
Crit damage = 84.975 times normal damage

This is where the fun stops. No answer past this makes any sense, and the numbers are already insanely much larger then what is produced without the buffs…. If an Arenanet employee or dev would be so nice as to answer how this stuff calculates, i would be very happy.

Prysin.8542:

this explains some more, however given my power is a lot lower, it still does not explain the output done to that thief. Sadly, i should have taken the time to screen it, but given the circumstances, i was more worried about the fight going on around me.

19k is quite high, but I think it would be possible.

With might stacks you’d probably be sitting at around 2800-3000 power.

You’d also have additional damage modifiers, like 10% damage when endurance is full and 10% while flanking, vulnerability can be quite a nice damage modifier (1-25%).
A full berserker thief with no toughness from anywhere would have 1836 armor.

EDIT: It’s actually 1980, used the value for a light profession by mistake.

Let’s try another calculation with these.

Damage = (1047.5 * 3000 * 1.5) * 1.1 (endurance full) * 1.1 (flanking) * 1.05 (force sigil) * 1.5 (soth) * 1.25 (sotw) * 2.53 (your crit damage) / 1836
= 15473.561

Factor in say 10 vuln stacks? -> damage goes to 17020.91
Frost spirit? Additional 10% damage if it procs -> damage goes to 18723.011

Then maybe the thief wasn’t in full exotic armor or an upscale, remember rares and lower gear have less defense than exotic pieces.

Isn’t Crit chance telling you how often you might crit? I am not sure that has anything to do with damage.

‘Critical Chance is the probability percent of an attack to be a critical hit.’ ~wiki

And with your 103% Crit damage, your crit hits should do 153% of their original damage.

Plus whatever else you might have/use that effects crit damage.

Or so I understand from the wiki, etc.

formulas is from wiki. dunno why, but crit chance seems to play in as to decide the “average” spike damage.
From what i can understand, the system is built up in a way that it tries to decide the average maximum damage you can produce with an attack, opposed to a min/max value.

Yes, in theory they should do 153% of normal damage, however no matter how much i look at this, it makes no sense.

If normal damage is 2255.615 X 153% = 345109.095…. that number makes no sense. This is probably why they have the overly complicated formula.
However, following Arenanets formula, my total crit damage is 154.5% of normal damage (103*1.5)… while in reality is should be done like this 1.03+1.5 to make sense as to how one would expect the “minimum” value and the “stat increase” to scale.

There is just no way i can see this making any sense.

Ok, but adding crit chance to crit damage isn’t going to work. One is how often, one is how much.

Signet of the Hunt is a +50% damage modifier on one attack, not +150% (that would be insane).

Regarding where your math went wrong is, you used the damage listed in the tooltip (which is part of the calculation already done) as Weapon Damage.
Weapon Damage is the range of values listed on your weapon.

The value shown in the tooltip is the value received from this calculation.
Tooltip damage = (average weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / 2600
It does not take into account any damage modifiers you have, and uses a fixed armor value of 2600.

Damage modifiers also stack multiplicatively, so in the example you said.
1.5 × 1.25 = 1.875 damage modifier.

A quick simple calculation to show this would be;
(going to use easy numbers here for demonstration purposes)

Let’s say you have 3000 power, 100% chance to crit and 100% crit damage.
You have no other damage modifiers except the 50% from SotH and 25% from SotW.
Enemy armor is 2000 (probably about average for a zerk thief)
Using ranger greatsword and the skill Maul, whose co-efficient is 1.5.
Weapon strength is the value between the two numbers listed on your weapon, every time you attack a number between these two is rolled for and then used (effectively making your damage slightly random each time).
For this we’ll use the middle ground value – 1047.5

Damage = (Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient) * damage modifiers / Armor
Damage = (1047.5 * 3000 * 1.5) * 1.5 * 1.25 * 2.5 / 2000
Damage = 11047.8515625 (which seems about right considering the stats and modifiers used)

Crit Damage is applied as a damage modifier, in this case we will always crit (100% crit chance), and 100% crit damage is a 2.5x modifier (as 0% crit damage is a 50% damage increase).

Crit Chance cannot be factored into the calculation of a single attack, it is simply a yes or no possibility, you will either crit, and gain the extra modifier, or you will not.

If you want to look at average damage over large period of time and many attacks, then you can factor in crit chance.

Renny.6571:

The number looks a lot more likely when your crit damage in the second forumla is changed to a decimal.

If we correct for this, the formula now outputs
4172.323 damage upon crit. Which, isn’t too shabby, however i can easily do 5k without the signets, might or bloodlust…. I feel like there is something missing.

I deleted my post; Redball’s is much better.

Redball.7236:

Signet of the Hunt is a +50% damage modifier on one attack, not +150% (that would be insane).

Regarding where your math went wrong is, you used the damage listed in the tooltip (which is part of the calculation already done) as Weapon Damage.
Weapon Damage is the range of values listed on your weapon.

Damage modifiers also stack multiplicatively, so in the example you said.

1.5 × 1.25 = 1.875 damage modifier.

A quick simple calculation to show this would be;

(going to use easy numbers here for demonstration purposes)

Let’s say you have 3000 power, 100% chance to crit and 100% crit damage.
You have no other damage modifiers except the 50% from SotH and 25% from SotW.
Enemy armor is 2000 (probably about average for a zerk thief)

Using ranger greatsword and the skill Maul, whose co-efficient is 1.5.
Weapon strength is the value between the two numbers listed on your weapon, every time you attack a number between these two is rolled for and then used (effectively making your damage slightly random each time).
For this we’ll use the middle ground value – 1047.5

Damage = (Weapon strength * Power * Skill coefficient) * damage modifiers / Armor
Damage = (1047.5 * 3000 * 1.5) * 1.5 * 1.25 * 2.5 / 2000

Damage = 11047.8515625 (which seems about right considering the stats and modifiers used)

Crit Damage is applied as a damage modifier, in this case we will always crit (100% crit chance), and 100% crit damage is a 2.5x modifier (as 0% crit damage is a 50% damage increase).

this explains some more, however given my power is a lot lower, it still does not explain the output done to that thief. Sadly, i should have taken the time to screen it, but given the circumstances, i was more worried about the fight going on around me.

I know it wasnt an upscale, however yes, i cannot be sure of the armor (this is why i factor in using my own zerker stats since thieves are using medium armor anyway)

rangers got a build called “22k Maul build” which has been proven to produce in extent of 22k damage. So the damage is possible.

Prysin.8542:

If normal damage is 2255.615 X 153% = 345109.095…. that number makes no sense. .

It makes no sense because that’s not how you multiply percentages.
2255.615 * 153% = 2255.615 * 1.53 = 3451
But even this is not correct, if your critical damge stat is 103% then a crit will do 153% MORE than a regular hit which is 253% of normal. So, if a normal hit does 2255 on average, then the average crit with 103% crit damage will do 2255 * 2.53 = 5705.

Also, maul applies vulnerability, does it not? That again increases damage dealth with further attacks.