Guild Wars 2

I’m trying to figure how in more detail how exactly damage is influenced. I found on the wiki that this is the equation that gives us our final direct damage:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

I’m not sure how to exactly look up the skill-specific coefficient, but I figured I could just calculate its value by doing damage to one golem, then use that value to predict the damage done to another different armored golem.

I’m using a steady sword with a Ranger, doing just the first skill of its basic chain attack.
Power: 1770
Weapon Damage: 121

(Found the following values on a random post here)
Golem Armor:
Light – 2000
Medium – 2200
Heavy – 2600

When attacking a light armor, I do 71 damage.

So
71 = 121 * 1770 * x / 2000
x = 0.6630247 (screw sig fig!)

Now that I know what the skill coefficient is, I should be able to calculate the damage I do to a medium golem.

damage = 121 * 1770 * 0.6630247 / 2200
damage = 64.5454

Yet I do 66 damage. Shouldn’t my damage be either 64 or 65? Do I have the wrong armor value for medium golems? Am I looking at something wrong or doing some stupid error? On heavy golems, I calculated 54.6, and I do 54 damage, so that seems right.

Also, is there an easy way to tell what the damage coefficient of a skill is? I look at the damage values that the skill detail gives us, but I find that value useless when using this equation.

Haha, hope I didn’t do some stupid error, I didn’t double check my math :P

The math is probably just being fuzzed a bit with rounding somewhere. The modifier itself probably isn’t longer than two decimals. I’d wager that it’s 0.67 in your specific example.

Also, did you unlearn your traits? You might have had a passive boost somewhere that was affecting some of your tests.

Pinch.4273:

The math is probably just being fuzzed a bit with rounding somewhere. The modifier itself probably isn’t longer than two decimals. I’d wager that it’s 0.67 in your specific example.

Also, did you unlearn your traits? You might have had a passive boost somewhere that was affecting some of your tests.

Ok, and no I didn’t unlearn my traits. But now that I think about it, when a trait gives a 5% damage increase with sword, does that 5% increase show in the current weapon damage stat?

I have my whole rig unplugged and packed up ready to move back to my apartment, so I can’t mess with stuff right now. When I get back tonight I can give some better feedback and play with stats then

PS: If anyone has the whole damage system and different stats and items down, please feel free to explain it in awesome painstakenly detail! I’m sure I and some others would greatly appreciate it!

The formula you listed is correct, although you’re missing two pieces of information.

First, is the compound modifier, which is also multiplied. The compound modifier is added up from all of your bonus damage stats, like +5% damage while using a Greatsword, +5% damage from a force sigil, etc. Once you add all those up, there is a single multiplication of 1 + modifier / 100. 10% bonus damage would obviously be 1 + 10 / 100, or 1.1

The other is the crit damage modifier, which works the same way as the compound modifier. Everyone has a base of 50 crit damage, and every point of crit damage is added to this number. If you crit, your damage is multiplied by 1 + crit damage / 100.

As for other information, it’s all reasonably well known. Key points:

• Everyone has 916 of the four base stats at 80.
• 21 precision = 1% crit at 80, but everyone has 4% crit base and the first 916 points don’t count.
• Direct damage does not have a “base value” like some people seem to think (“oh just nerf the base damage of this skill”).
• Attack is a meaningless number that is not used for anything.
• Every condition has its own scaling coefficient and base values
• Every heal has its own scaling coefficient as well as a base value
• Doubling your armor stat means you will take half damage.
• If you want to think of damage mitigation in terms of percentages, consider that the minimum armor value you can have is 920 (light armor) + 916 (base toughness) = 1836 . That can be considered 0% damage reduction, since you can’t reduce any less than it. Compare that to heavy armor, which is: 1211 (heavy armor) + 916 (base toughness) = 2127. That means heavy armor by default will take 15.85% less damage than caster classes (it’s not as much as people think).