Guild Wars 2

The damage stat loss from 30 into Trix is offset by five facts: first, that you’re getting more initiative, and thus will be able to attack more often and be more flexible (and, by the way, you’re also getting more damage because of Lead Attacks). Second, you’re getting more sustain from Assassin’s Reward by being able to burn up more initiative. Third, the ability to swap to a Shortbow while still maintaining the same amount if not more initiative than Jumper’s build (and certainly more than Nag Nag’s) allows the build more versatility than the two most prominent thief builds have. Fourth, By investing so much into Trickery, you’re getting higher recharge on Steal, which is useful not only because you get so much utility from steal itself (four boons- three automatically, four if you hit- healing, damage, poison, double boon steal, and of course whatever item you stole), but also because Steal gives you more mobility, which, in a mobility-based build, could mean everything. Finally, all of the traits that you get in Trix are good. In CS, you get one good minor (First Strikes), one good major (Executioner), and a bunch of mediocre or bad majors and minors for the rest of your traits (especially considering that nowadays Opportunist is so awful). That’s what differentiates 30 into Trix from 30 into DS for a Necro- I do get more damage and sustain, but I also get a lot, lot more for what I invest as well. I’m not saying that my build must, by necessity, be better, but that’s the theory behind 30 into Trix- not to mention the absolutely abhorrent bonus damage you get from 300 precision and 30% crit damage…

The damage also “flies off the charts” with just a zerker amulet (which is what I run nowadays, particularly since Sword is not nearly as good with boonsteal any more and because other classes have far surpassed thief in a number of areas). Having a high critical chance means nothing without high critical damage, and even so, it requires a lot of power (earlier I said ~1280) just to make 1 point of precision equal 1 point of power with 50% critical damage.

There are only two differences between power and precision: first, that power is more consistent (though I use the averages from precision in my damage formula, so it doesn’t really matter), and second, the way power scales with damage as compared to precision. Precision is only 1/21 of a single percentage of critical chance; power scales directly with damage. Protection isn’t overridden by critical hits, though even if it was, the small amount of prot you can get in this game would still make power a very powerful trait (especially since I have some boonsteal, anyways). Your logic seems to be “if I see a large number in red on an opponent with protection, then power must suck because you don’t see a large number in red on an opponent with protection”. In all honesty, I use averages, because that’s the only way to objectively compare between stats, and because matters of chance are always going to trend towards an average anyways.

With Soldier’s amulet, the build was designed to sustain and provide team support via boons and boonsteal, and even then it did a fair amount of damage. If you still think I’m running that amulet- I’m not. I haven’t been for somewhere around… 5? 6? months. I can take out tanks and bunkers easily.

My build is the only build that takes into account how damage works- just look at the math.

Juan Ignacio.8903:

Anet way of balance: u dont do enof condi dmg? ok here is another condi, oh u cant remove condis? ok here have more condi removal or inmunity , oh u are not doing so much dmg now? here have more conditions and so on … having that way of thinking its impossible that they reach “balance”.

I think i posted months ago that they nerf stuff that dont need to be nerfed and they change stuff that it doesnt make sense, they just throwing stuff and hoping some day to reach something even close to balance.

anyway game is fun still lol.

It amazes me that more people don’t point this out. Take a look at the nerf to elementalist’s condition clears and the follow up buff by adding dhuumfire and torment. Also take a look at boons and boon steals/hate.

A Problem is A-net probably feels picked on since so many people bash them for their design. So they ignore hostility and negativity even if they are valid points. So this doesn’t help the feed back process. -_-

“We’re gonna do things slowly for the greater good =D”

Sounds ok but then they do it wrong. If X needs a buff, and Y needs nerfs in the current meta, they have to be brought to the same level and see how one impacts the other. Not wait 4 months and over buff X while nerfing Y in the areas X is being buffed. This creates hard counters and is not good design.

A-net should balance test. They claim to test things but I feel it’s more like “does this skill work?” A lot of what they do is based on numbers but sometimes the numbers on paper don’t translate to actual play.

They need testers who can play every class and run every meta build against another class. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t to insure proper 100% balanced 1v1 play but things will be a lot closer and give more play and fun between builds by reducing hard counters, while making the FotM builds less of a re-roll train bandwagon.

Arganthium.5638:

There are only two differences between power and precision: first, that power is more consistent (though I use the averages from precision in my damage formula, so it doesn’t really matter), and second, the way power scales with damage as compared to precision. Precision is only 1/21 of a single percentage of critical chance; power scales directly with damage. Protection isn’t overridden by critical hits, though even if it was, the small amount of prot you can get in this game would still make power a very powerful trait (especially since I have some boonsteal, anyways). Your logic seems to be “if I see a large number in red on an opponent with protection, then power must suck because you don’t see a large number in red on an opponent with protection”. In all honesty, I use averages, because that’s the only way to objectively compare between stats, and because matters of chance are always going to trend towards an average anyways.

About this issue, you should also remember than spike damage is better than sustained damage. A big spike can down an opponent that is going to heal, is important when focusing targets and might be the ture thing that takes down a bunker.

The fact that someone can heal a lot over a long period of time is irrelevant if he/she can’t last that long.

Increasing crit chance might end up in less sustained damage, but has a higher chance of bringing exactly the damage you needed at the right time with a crit.

From what I’ve seen, glass cannons that really are glass (not hambows, and some might argue not even s/d because of their evades) play on burst, not spike.

redslion.9675:

Arganthium.5638:

There are only two differences between power and precision: first, that power is more consistent (though I use the averages from precision in my damage formula, so it doesn’t really matter), and second, the way power scales with damage as compared to precision. Precision is only 1/21 of a single percentage of critical chance; power scales directly with damage. Protection isn’t overridden by critical hits, though even if it was, the small amount of prot you can get in this game would still make power a very powerful trait (especially since I have some boonsteal, anyways). Your logic seems to be “if I see a large number in red on an opponent with protection, then power must suck because you don’t see a large number in red on an opponent with protection”. In all honesty, I use averages, because that’s the only way to objectively compare between stats, and because matters of chance are always going to trend towards an average anyways.

About this issue, you should also remember than spike damage is better than sustained damage. A big spike can down an opponent that is going to heal, is important when focusing targets and might be the ture thing that takes down a bunker.

The fact that someone can heal a lot over a long period of time is irrelevant if he/she can’t last that long.

Increasing crit chance might end up in less sustained damage, but has a higher chance of bringing exactly the damage you needed at the right time with a crit.

From what I’ve seen, glass cannons that really are glass (not hambows, and some might argue not even s/d because of their evades) play on burst, not spike.

But other arguments can be made as well- perhaps the player has high health, you get one lucky spike, and then he/she heals it back up. Just because it’s harder to predict doesn’t mean that it’s going to favor you. You could also argue that you might get lots of non-crits when your opponent is low on health, or that a good bunker will be able to heal (especially with Shelter) before he/she gets spiked to death. On the other hand, power doesn’t run into any of these problems- it’s going to be just as predictable for your opponent as it is for you. That way, you don’t start going into burst mode hoping for a lucky crit, and a good opponent will still heal his/her way through your damage just like he/she should’ve done against spike damage. Playing by hoping your opponent is incompetent is not a very good way to play.

Having higher crit chance as opposed to power could also mean that you’ll have exactly the amount of damage you don’t need at the wrong time- it’s a two-way street. It could also give you lots of damage but at a bad time (when your opponent blocks you, puts of prot, etc). It also makes it harder for you to predict how many hits it will take to take down an enemy. Your opponent might be suffering from the information game, but so are you, and there’s no reason to believe that you can get just as unlucky with your crits as you can get lucky.

S/D, generally speaking, isn’t a GC. It might be a spike build for some. For me, it’s certainly a sustained damage build, but that shouldn’t be interpreted as being a tank build. It just means that I’m trying to maximize my long-run damage.

everything is balanced. stop the qq’s already.

Arganthium.5638:

jmatb.6307:

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What I got out of this is that you’re only looking at the relationship between precision and power, not the relationship of all three together

When your crit damage multiplier is at least 50%, the damage output of every combination of power and precision is increased considerably vs. having 0% crit multiplier.

This chart is explained more on Arcturus’ post on the first page on this thread: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/37607-attack-vs-precision/

It shows that crit damage increases average damage at the highest levels when there is a combination of power and precision and at 50-60% crit damage.

Your argument that power alone gets the job done is shown on the graph on the right side. The “extra power” measurement is a combination of prec/power and on that side is where there is no precision and maximum power. It is lower than the combination of the two in average damage because it has hit the peak of its output, whereas the crit multiplier has taken the damage past that point with optimal combinations.

jmatb.6307:

Arganthium.5638:

jmatb.6307:

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What I got out of this is that you’re only looking at the relationship between precision and power, not the relationship of all three together

When your crit damage multiplier is at least 50%, the damage output of every combination of power and precision is increased considerably vs. having 0% crit multiplier.

This chart is explained more on Arcturus’ post on the first page on this thread: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/37607-attack-vs-precision/

It shows that crit damage increases average damage at the highest levels when there is a combination of power and precision and at 50-60% crit damage.

Your argument that power alone gets the job done is shown on the graph on the right side. The "extra power" measurement is a combination of prec/power and on that side is where there is no precision and maximum power. It is lower than the combination of the two in average damage because it has hit the peak of its output, whereas the crit multiplier has taken the damage past that point with optimal combinations.

Admittedly, it took me a bit to search through his text, but I found the error in his calculation. Actually, it was more like two different errors, though ultimately one surpassed the other in terms of importance.

We can now express everything in terms of "extra points in power", and make it a 2D function

I shall also use the the same definition of minimum Attack (base power + weapon) as 1500

Substituting these into the original formula gives (using 1.5 crit multiplier)

AveDmg = (1500+x)*(1-0.04-(1403-x)/2100)+(1500+x)*1.5*(0.04+(1403-x)/2100)

Recall that he had earlier stated that

AveDmg = Attack * (1-Critchance) + (Attack* critmulti * Crit chance)

where:
Attack = Base power + x x is the extra points in power

Arcturus made the unfortunate mistake of mixing up the definition of Attack. Attack...

...is derived from adding the character’s power attribute and the max weapon strength of the equipped weapon (or average of max weapon strength if two one-handed weapons are equipped).

However, as that link also states, as well as the Damage link, it turns out that Attack has nothing to do with how much damage you deal. Attack is just the sum of power and max weapon strength, but the damage formula actually uses the product of power and average weapon strength. His initial equation is, therefore, inherently flawed.

After making adjustments to it (I changed 1500+x to 916+x, which is the base amount of power), I got the attached equations (crit damage values go from outer to inner, 1.5 is the outermost and 2.2 the innermost parabola to intersect with the x axis). Interestingly enough, the optimal level of power before investing into precision with 50% critical damage is in fact slightly higher than the value I showed beforehand- approximately 1335 power is required for 1 point of power to equal 1 point of precision. It’s probably due to a few little odds and ends, but nevertheless, there’s no denying that I was at least very close to the actual measurement if the equation listed above with its adjustments is perfect, which it probably isn’t.

Anyways, to tie up some loose ends here- there’s obviously no doubt that having more critical damage is going to increase your damage, no matter how much power you have. It’s just that that critical damage must often come at a cost, and the fact that it comes in such small quantities makes it difficult to justify over getting, say, 100 Toughness, at least in some situations. Still, it’s undoubtedly a good stat to try and get when possible. It’s just that the value of power over precision is markedly higher no matter how much critical damage you can realistically have in sPvP. That’s clearly displayed by the maxima of the parabolas, the point where power starts becoming less beneficial than precision.

Arganthium.5638:

But other arguments can be made as well- perhaps the player has high health, you get one lucky spike, and then he/she heals it back up. Just because it’s harder to predict doesn’t mean that it’s going to favor you. You could also argue that you might get lots of non-crits when your opponent is low on health, or that a good bunker will be able to heal (especially with Shelter) before he/she gets spiked to death. On the other hand, power doesn’t run into any of these problems- it’s going to be just as predictable for your opponent as it is for you. That way, you don’t start going into burst mode hoping for a lucky crit, and a good opponent will still heal his/her way through your damage just like he/she should’ve done against spike damage. Playing by hoping your opponent is incompetent is not a very good way to play.

Having higher crit chance as opposed to power could also mean that you’ll have exactly the amount of damage you don’t need at the wrong time- it’s a two-way street. It could also give you lots of damage but at a bad time (when your opponent blocks you, puts of prot, etc). It also makes it harder for you to predict how many hits it will take to take down an enemy. Your opponent might be suffering from the information game, but so are you, and there’s no reason to believe that you can get just as unlucky with your crits as you can get lucky.

Well, sure, high hp classes will have less problems. I was thinking about bunkers, who have low hp but can sustain potentially for ever. More crits might be decisive for taking down a bunker faster.

Even if you have a crit when you don’t need it, that doesn’t remove the fact you’ll be more likely to have one when you need it.

However, it’s also about the build. I’ll take the example of the warrior, because with engi is the only class I have the patience to play semi conistently, trying to avoid Fotm.

There is no worse thing for a power sword warrior to see his Final Thrust, for which he waited and spent some pretty high effort (wait until the enemy is at 50%, while waiting for the right moment to land a Shield Bash that will not be dodged/blocked), not crit.
Same goes for an axe warrior.

That means that I’ll have to stack enough crit chance to actually have a good chance for that burst to crit. Like unlocking unsuspecting Foe (by going 30 points into Arms, to get Blademaster and Attack of Opportunity too).

Soul.5947:

For those who haven’t figured it out already, balance is impossible to get in gw2. Many of the top pvp players figured this out a long time ago and quit. I’m not saying that you can’t enjoy pvp all the same but don’t expect balance and i will tell you why.
The trait system is to complex for balance to be achieved in this game. When the devs are trying to balance 1 skill they have to take into account all that traits that might affect it and then compare it to all the other classes and their skills with traits. Can you even imagine what’s that like?
Just think how weapon skills there are and then add all the utilities and then think of all the traits that can change those skills.
This game will never be balanced and it was never meant to be. GW2 pvp is about builds and counters to those builds. That’s why pvp teams are supposed to take bunkers, counter to bunkers, counters to condi spammers and so on.
If you are all expecting some sort of magical balance which allows you to kill a counter to your build with skill alone i am sad to tell you that will never happen. You can take comfort in finding builds and think of that as having skills but when it comes down to the action it’s not very much skill involved, there is some but not much.
TL;DR GW2 is about builds not skill

In Dark Souls, there is some sort of balance:

every player goes down in a few hits.

BUT if you build tanky, you have the chance to go down in a few hits more, while being able to take the enemy down in less hits (at the same time, you might be a bit less mobile). This makes a great difference.

If you build glassy, you can move fast and need less hits to take down people, but so will them, no matter how they are built.

Dark Souls doesn’t have such a wide array of abilities, but every weapon in that game is unique.

(there are some cheap spells and backstabs, but they are never used and with the right setup you can counter both).

Morale of the story: every setup (glassy, sustained, half and half) is playable, and requires you to work on its advantages in order to win, without someone being easier than the others.

redslion.9675:

Arganthium.5638:

But other arguments can be made as well- perhaps the player has high health, you get one lucky spike, and then he/she heals it back up. Just because it’s harder to predict doesn’t mean that it’s going to favor you. You could also argue that you might get lots of non-crits when your opponent is low on health, or that a good bunker will be able to heal (especially with Shelter) before he/she gets spiked to death. On the other hand, power doesn’t run into any of these problems- it’s going to be just as predictable for your opponent as it is for you. That way, you don’t start going into burst mode hoping for a lucky crit, and a good opponent will still heal his/her way through your damage just like he/she should’ve done against spike damage. Playing by hoping your opponent is incompetent is not a very good way to play.

Having higher crit chance as opposed to power could also mean that you’ll have exactly the amount of damage you don’t need at the wrong time- it’s a two-way street. It could also give you lots of damage but at a bad time (when your opponent blocks you, puts of prot, etc). It also makes it harder for you to predict how many hits it will take to take down an enemy. Your opponent might be suffering from the information game, but so are you, and there’s no reason to believe that you can get just as unlucky with your crits as you can get lucky.

Well, sure, high hp classes will have less problems. I was thinking about bunkers, who have low hp but can sustain potentially for ever. More crits might be decisive for taking down a bunker faster.

Even if you have a crit when you don’t need it, that doesn’t remove the fact you’ll be more likely to have one when you need it.

However, it’s also about the build. I’ll take the example of the warrior, because with engi is the only class I have the patience to play semi conistently, trying to avoid Fotm.

There is no worse thing for a power sword warrior to see his Final Thrust, for which he waited and spent some pretty high effort (wait until the enemy is at 50%, while waiting for the right moment to land a Shield Bash that will not be dodged/blocked), not crit.
Same goes for an axe warrior.

That means that I’ll have to stack enough crit chance to actually have a good chance for that burst to crit. Like unlocking unsuspecting Foe (by going 30 points into Arms, to get Blademaster and Attack of Opportunity too).

Less crits might also be decisive in taking down a bunker slower.

It doesn’t matter if Final Thrust hits for 6k if his previous kittens all hit for 1k, when he could’ve made final thrust hit for 3k and all of his previous hits for 2k. That’s the reality of the situation. Furthermore, taking power over precision means that your Final Thrusts are, on average, going to hit for more. Given the value of power over precision, that’s much more. If you have, for example, 200% Crit Damage and 50% crit chance, then your Final Thrusts will, on average, hit for 150% base damage. With power, that number ends up looking more like 175%, and often much, much more. The more precision you take, the less power you take, and crits also require power to be effective (note that that isn’t true the other way around- if you have 0 power, all of your crits will hit for 0, but if you have 0 precision, you’ll still hit, still for good or even great damage depending on what you get for that 916 precision and 150% crit damage). You could have 100% critical chance, but if you only have 916 (base level) power, you’re still going to be hitting like an absolute chump with Final Thrust. The unpredictability ultimately favors your opponent more than you in terms of damage, particularly given that you could do a FT at what you think was the right time when it turns out to be the completely wrong time because you don’t crit.

Well, with Unsuspecting Foe I can make FT a guaranteed crit.

And, better than that, it might definiteley be important. For example, I might down someone before he heals.

redslion.9675:

Well, with Unsuspecting Foe I can make FT a guaranteed crit.

And, better than that, it might definiteley be important. For example, I might down someone before he heals.

Yes, you can. But having a guaranteed crit with a +20% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage still isn’t as good as having a 50% chance of getting a crit with a +100% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage. The averages still work out in favor of power. Not to mention- if you have over 50% critical chance from precision prior, then you’re actually wasting the benefits of UF, which wouldn’t occur with power.

You might also do enough damage to a person to make his/her heal worth using, or you’ll do too little damage to down an opponent before he/she heals.

Arganthium.5638:

redslion.9675:

Well, with Unsuspecting Foe I can make FT a guaranteed crit.

And, better than that, it might definiteley be important. For example, I might down someone before he heals.

Yes, you can. But having a guaranteed crit with a +20% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage still isn’t as good as having a 50% chance of getting a crit with a +100% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage. The averages still work out in favor of power. Not to mention- if you have over 50% critical chance from precision prior, then you’re actually wasting the benefits of UF, which wouldn’t occur with power.

You might also do enough damage to a person to make his/her heal worth using, or you’ll do too little damage to down an opponent before he/she heals.

Yeah, obviously I’m talking about not so high differences. Like the one that stays between 1800 and 2000 power (I usually try to stay above 2000).

redslion.9675:

Arganthium.5638:

redslion.9675:

Well, with Unsuspecting Foe I can make FT a guaranteed crit.

And, better than that, it might definiteley be important. For example, I might down someone before he heals.

Yes, you can. But having a guaranteed crit with a +20% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage still isn’t as good as having a 50% chance of getting a crit with a +100% damage boost from power and 200% critical damage. The averages still work out in favor of power. Not to mention- if you have over 50% critical chance from precision prior, then you’re actually wasting the benefits of UF, which wouldn’t occur with power.

You might also do enough damage to a person to make his/her heal worth using, or you’ll do too little damage to down an opponent before he/she heals.

Yeah, obviously I’m talking about not so high differences. Like the one that stays between 1800 and 2000 power (I usually try to stay above 2000).

That’s fair. Still though, the truth of the matter is that the mathematics does in fact favor examples like the ones I mentioned above. For example, I just measured the benefit of 1000 power versus 1000 precision with 50% critical damage in my spreadsheet. The absurd truth is that while 1000 precision (52.1% critical chance) will amp up your damage to ~143.7% of what your current damage is, 1000 power will amp up your damage to ~213.7% of what your current damage is. That’s pretty much exactly a 70% difference in damage. That’s massive. And that’s not even rounding down on the precision (a process I don’t do because it simply makes the entire process infinitely more complex than it already is; I can just get rid of points of precision until I get an integer value for % critical chance. Usually not that much of a difference though).

This is how this game actually works; you can have a decent amount of critical damage, and precision will still get completely blown away by power.

Actually we all think it can be balanced it’s just not us at the wheel is it?

First let’s make it clear that class balance isn’t what everyone’s talking about, because in this game class balance has always been pretty great really. The gameplay just needs improved because it’s not so great right now.

We all have our visions of where the game could go, and it would be drastic changes at this point.

Maybe during January and February earlier this year the game could have just used tweaks but it is WAY beyond that now. Practically every class has many layers of changing I would do.

The max direct damage approach with Berserker, 50-60% crit dmg, low survival approach has its place and always will, especially with Thieves and Mesmers. They aren’t supposed to be duelists, they come in and blow up focused targets and decap points. They make sense in a team composition because they can lower the TTK for a team and in small engagements if they can keep out of the fire themselves.

It does present an argument, however, of what a high power, medium condition damage build could do. Everyone knows what purely condition based damage can do on a variety of classes, but what if precision and crit dmg was abandoned in favor of around 600-700 condition damage and might stacking?

Example build I threw together:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNAT8cjkOxwpQuQMxBEUhv48IJWimI9QMGQzA-ToAA1CuI0SplTLjWStsaNEZJC

Power alone is a sure thing, as is condition damage when you have regular application of at least a couple damaging conditions you protect with cripples, chills, etc.

Arganthium you’re right about how power is better alone vs. other stats and economically it makes sense to consider alternatives to max direct damage for the rest of the team. One super bursty guy is all you’re gonna need.

Everyone else’s builds are the bigger question – condi vs. more burst vs. this class vs. that class etc. etc.

No, balance is possible. The problem is the methodology used by the balance team. Here is what happens. They discover a problem with the meta. So, they either nerf or buff different things. After a few days, everyone realizes an area was either over or under nerfed. So, what is the smart thing to do? It would be to modify the skill they just changed. Instead, the balance team refuses to admit their mistake and instead modifies a ton of other skills to try to make up for it.

So, to the OP…. the game could be balanced; it just will not ever be with the current design methodology.

lordkrall.7241:

Arganthium.5638:

It’s possible, ANet just supposedly doesn’t have the “resources”.

I would love to see a single game that have 100% balance while still having more than 1 class/weapon/skillset.

Starcraft 1 got pretty kitten close. The game became mostly about APM/micro and was boring for anyone that wasn’t korean @ competitive levels. Ironically, Arenanet was founded by people who actually played a major role in creating SC1 (and almost every other successful part of Blizzard pre-WoW). It’s actually a pretty interesting story, I encourage you to check out Mike O’Brien, Patrick Wyatt, and Jeff Strain sometime (the 3 founders of Anet). They pretty much made blizz what it is today then left to start their own studio that would end up competing with them.

Arganthium.5638:

That’s fair. Still though, the truth of the matter is that the mathematics does in fact favor examples like the ones I mentioned above. For example, I just measured the benefit of 1000 power versus 1000 precision with 50% critical damage in my spreadsheet. The absurd truth is that while 1000 precision (52.1% critical chance) will amp up your damage to ~143.7% of what your current damage is, 1000 power will amp up your damage to ~213.7% of what your current damage is. That’s pretty much exactly a 70% difference in damage. That’s massive. And that’s not even rounding down on the precision (a process I don’t do because it simply makes the entire process infinitely more complex than it already is; I can just get rid of points of precision until I get an integer value for % critical chance. Usually not that much of a difference though).

This is how this game actually works; you can have a decent amount of critical damage, and precision will still get completely blown away by power.

Well, it depends on how much power you already have.

If you have 2000 power, the damage increase by adding 1000 power is just +50%, right?

I agree that, in general, Power is the main stat you have to raise, and the main reason why Barbarian’s Amulet is subpar.

And there is also a problem about tradeoffs:

as a sword war, for example, spending 30 points in arms and getting blademaster gives me +510 precision when wielding a sword, that might be better than +300 power.

So power is king, even if it’s not always clear how you have to build to get optimal damage.