Guild Wars 2

There is a combat section in chat which will report damage you are doing as it occurs. There is also a set of white numbers on the screen, indicating damage you are doing. I find them widely differing.

Why?

I initially guessed my chat log display was the raw output of the weapon/skill and the on screen display was after combat modifiers, (buffage, opponent defenses, etc) were applied.

If I try to correlate them, to find a potential ratio factor, I’m not too successful, and some of the screen numbers are so large I find it difficult to find any modifiers that could work. So, are the on screen displays wrong?

if it is a channelled skill, like flamethrower auto attack and mesmer greatsword auto attack for example, the white damage number adds to itself (infinitely) until you press another skill or the enemy dies. not sure why, but as far as I remember it’s always happened, so it’s sometimes best to ignore the white popup numbers when using them.

other than that I haven’t noticed any difference between the combat log and the white damage text. admittedly though, I don’t pay much attention, so I could be wrong on how accurate it is.

Thanks for the input.

I was actually trying to test airborne firing on a ground target, in particular the Legendary Unbound Guardian. It seems to be a fight designed to be done from the air, but prevailing wisdom is that the airborne few are freeloaders on the work of those suffering down below. Comparison of damage is the basic need to resolve this.

The issue is definitely not autofire amping up, as skill 1 does not autofire unless you set it to, and resets each time you drop out of the air. I have noticed the greatsword effect on the mesmer that you mentioned, in the past, and that made me overall suspicious of the display screen. That and overload induced dropout of that form of data in low FPS fights.

I’ll have to take a “normal” character out to the PVP test range and do some tests for display consistency. Meantime I’ll contemplate my navel in trying to decide what to do about airborne testing.

In terms of condition damage, condition damage is aggregated over the course of ~1s and given to you as a display, but if you need a more accurate display of conditions damaging, turn on “Simple Condition Floaters”. As for actual display, it’s an aggregation of total damage. Tuning your chatlog to have DPS on a tab, then using the tab, will see what does what in real time.

Skill 1 hits 3 times by default the damage popup is a sum of all hits. As long as there isn’t a break longer than a certain time period the damage will continue to be added to the popup. Some of the other channelled skills used to have the same bug. Some of those skills used to have the bug, got fixed then have the bug return.

Another thing with the same bug is the flamethrower at Claw of Jormag.

altermaven.7385:

In terms of condition damage, condition damage is aggregated over the course of ~1s and given to you as a display, but if you need a more accurate display of conditions damaging, turn on “Simple Condition Floaters”. As for actual display, it’s an aggregation of total damage. Tuning your chatlog to have DPS on a tab, then using the tab, will see what does what in real time.

Yes I understand the 1s time increments for conditions, and some DD DoTs. I do have simple conditions turned on. However, Skill 1 of flying reads as DD. I occasionally see conditions proc, but that varies with the charcter I’m playing and audits to traits.

More in my next response, below.

Khisanth.2948:

Skill 1 hits 3 times by default the damage popup is a sum of all hits. As long as there isn’t a break longer than a certain time period the damage will continue to be added to the popup. Some of the other channelled skills used to have the same bug. Some of those skills used to have the bug, got fixed then have the bug return.

Another thing with the same bug is the flamethrower at Claw of Jormag.

Do you mean skill 1 of airborne damage? I’m aware of the bug in Mesmer greatsword skill 1.

Back to the experiment. I’m trying to discern, with at least some measured evidence, that fighting the Unbound Guardian in Bloodfen Maw completely airborne is at least as viable as ungrouped on the ground with the same character, and it’s a great deal easier. The numbers I see on the display for skill 1 are great enough to affirm that but they do not correlate to what I read in combat chat.

I sometimes see multiple hits per skill use, and though perhaps it was 3 hits per use, but at other times I see only 1, or 2. Still possible a 3 hit skill, but each one has a hit/miss dice roll, and since it’s a Legendary, you miss a lot. However, that doesn’t solve the problem of the single hit correlating to chat. I test a little each run, but not so much as to be obsessive.

I do the UG once a night, and rotate 3 characters though, to accommodate whatever the node gathering reset nonsense is in LS3. All are nearly full ascended elites, so probably of hit is about maxed.

I plan on testing more, but not obsessively, and I plan to continue to remain completely airborne. The skill 1 numbers I see seem sufficient to equal or exceed my ground numbers. Skill 2 is an explosion of damage numbers on the screen, sufficiently impressive, but not likely to be analyzed from that display. Skill 3 is healing, and each time it procs 540 healing 20 times, spread over 5 characters on the ground. 2160 healing on 5 players every 10 seconds is probably enough to get several flyers up just for that. It’s an easy fight to get downed in on the ground.

2 does around 20-30k assuming your aim was good and it isn’t moving around.

1 is fairly weak unless you get close to the target, it did half the damage as my autoattack from far away, up close it did around 3x as much

Hmm on a power build gliding isn’t too bad. On a condi build you end up doing around 1/10th the damage.