Magic Damage

[J35u5_M4]

So I was messing around with my equipment, and found out something very interesting

 

With wand of treach and bloodfire barrage, I get the same damage as a drygore mace, which makes sense since magic weapons don't cap the damage as ranged ones do. Then I heard some friends saying that staves give damage boost. That made no sense to me because that doesn't happen in melee and ranged, but apparently, it seems to be true...

 

I compared the damage I get on chaotic staff and bloodfire barrage (2068) to prom 2h (2011). Obviously they're not the same, and this staff damage theory seems to be more true when I changed to another staff; polypore, the damage changed, which makes no sense because with wands, only accuracy chances.

 

So, from the looks of it mage seems to be more DPS, at least damage wise, not sure about that statement though, because with staff you can't use concentrated blast.

 

All of this just doesn't make sense to me, maybe I'm way off, but I still find it odd that the damage doesn't change when switching between wands, but it does with staves, despite these not having a visible damage boost

[Ammako]

Staff gives increased damage because it's 2h, in order for it to be on-par with wand+book.

This happens with Melee and Ranged too, 2h weapons have increased damage to be on-par with dual wield.

 

Magic is a little bit weird, though. If you are using momentum, then your spells use the full damage of the selected spell. However, when using abilities, the damage is capped at the level of your off-hand magic weapon (In essence, the wand determines your accuracy and the off-hand determines your damage.)

[J35u5_M4]

I think you misunderstood me, I know the damage has to change because 2h weapons are slower, and well, 2h. What I found curious is that, the damage is different from its melee counterpart, which doesn't happen with wands vs maces

 

I'm talking about the damage that is displayed on the equipment interface by the way.

[chenw]

Yeah, staves are perculiar like that, their damage isn't a straight addition like Royal Crossbow is. It's in its own world.

 

Also, the damage being capped by off hand is slightly incorrect, the damage is capped ON the off hand by the tier, not BY the off hand. The main hand part of the damage is completely unaffected by the tier of the main hand, ability or auto attack. (The difference between each tiers of 10 in terms of damage is only roughly 3-4%, the damage difference between 10 tiers at 70-90 region is at least 10%).

 

I am going with that there is a bug in there somewhere, but whether the bug is with the orb (which is good), or the wand (which is very bad).

[godwisper]

with virtus wand and book on Graardor and omnipower I did a hit of 7K...I never saw these types of hits with drygores and berserk

[chenw]

In essence, one is merely paying for accuracy in a Seismic wand, the damage is already there in the spell, which is both good and bad thing in some respects.

[Quyneax]

It's because wands are 'fastest' which means they have zero damage boost and take all their damage from the spell. The staff takes the same amount of damage from the spell, but only t80 damage from the staff.

 

Prom 2h is 2159, chaotic staff is 2068 as you said, you forgot to take into account the bonus from level.

 

Note that this is only relevant to autoattacks - abilities only ever use the tiers of the weapons you use.

[chenw]

Not for magic, the Wand abilities are identical for all weapons provided you use the same spell.

 

Orb on the other hand... (no pun intended), it, for some unexplainable reasons affect Ability damage, but as far as I am able to discern, only the OH part of the damage is affected, the MH is totally unaffected by damage.

 

If only the weapon tier is used, then it does not in anyway explain the mere 3-4% difference in wrack criticals between 10 tiers of wand/orbs, it should have at least 10% difference per tier.

[Quyneax]

The way it works for ranged is:

1) Take the lowest tier of bolt and crossbow. Get whether one or two hands are used for damage.

2) Calculate damage based on that. 2h vs. dw doesn't matter.

 

For magic, I'm not sure how it works, but it could just get the tier of the spell, tier of the orb and ignore tier of the wand, so you get (tier spell) * 2 + (tier orb) / 3 = average tier.

[J35u5_M4]

You're right, I forgot the level bonus on the prom 2h (I saw its stats on RSwiki instead of going to a dg and wearing it myself).

 

Also, I never heard about the abilities taking the tier instead of the damage, where did you hear this from?

[chenw]

It's more a general rule rather than the underlying mechanics, that Abilities damage are based on Tier level. This is the simplest way to describe how abilities do their damage without going into the whole dps discussion.

 

But it is still a general rule of thumb, because it is only true when all weapons from the same tier do the same dps. There some notable exceptions in the present and the past that deviates from the rule. The higher than usual side was taken by EE before it was nerfed, while the lower than usual side was taken by Brackish blade, which had lower damage than other weapons of the same tier.

[Quyneax]

No, it's definitely the underlying mechanics. Weapon damage for iron bolts + royal crossbow is 1116 damage but hits as an iron 2h crossbow (223 damage).

 

Some weapons are tiered wrong, for example the Brackish blade, but also Barrows weapons.

[J35u5_M4]

They should've just made 2h ranged weapons work as magic 2h weapons, give only accuracy and have all the damage come from the ammo. Would've been more consistent, but still, doesn't explain why magic has the upper hand on T80 2h weapons

 

EDIT: The other interesting thing being that, changing from staff to staff with the same spell changes the damage, but it doesn't when wielding wand + book/orb. Which doesn't make sense

[chenw]

That's probably because the origin of damage (at least the displayed figure) in case of a Dual wield and 2h are different, dual wield relies solely on the ammo/spell, while 2h has inherent damage within that's added to the actual damage, Ranged damage behaves in exactly the same way as Magic. Melee doesn't have that issue because the damage comes from the weapon automatically.

 

The display can be sometimes inaccurate though, in fact, sometimes the mechanics of ability damage determination makes absolutely no sense either (Did you know all 4 surge spells all do t90 ability damage after you reach level 90 when you dual wield, despite the character screen saying completely otherwise?)

 

I am in the process of analysing a clan mate's data he obtained recently regarding magic damage, I will post it in the coming weekend.