Damage Penalty for Secondary Class??

Friend of mine tried a Mo/W the other day, and with 8 swordsmanship on equal level mobs - with a FDS, he was hitting for 6s.

I tried an "Arcane Archer" build in RA last night (E/R) and with a perfect longbow (17-28, IIRC) + Fiery Bowstring + Conjure Flame (+18) + Kindle Arrows (+17) for a total of what should have been 52-63 damage...without any marksmanship counted in...were hitting for about 10-20.

Is there some sort of damage penalty for secondary class usage or something?

We've got to be missing something here...

there are no damage penalties for secondary classes. you guys were suffering from low damage output because you didn't put enough points into the weapon attributes. 8 swordsmanship with a req 8 sword will only do about 70%-80% of the maximum damage. to achieve 100% damage, put it up to 12.

Do you even meet the weapon requirements? If not, reduced damage, like starter levels (3-5?).

What are you targeting? Warrior in general have high armor, rangers have bonus vs elemental damage, casters generally have the lowest armor.

I was generally targetting the monk, if available, then casters, then rangers, then warriors.

EDIT: Oh, as to stats - IIRC I was running 10Fire,10Wild.Surv.,10Marksmanship,8E.Storage

I didn't think to specifically check the weapon requirements - but the pvp-created bows shouldn't have req.s over 10, should they?

they should be req 9.

Go to the Battle Isles and you can target the dummies of various armor levels to check out damage. It is hard to say what a monk could have in RA as armor and gear can vary, not to mention enchantments, etc.

Your archer build should be producing 2 damages: arrow (including Kindle) + Conjure Flame, both of which would be reduced by any armor level over 60.

Marksmanship 10 means that your bow will not produce max damage, you'd need 12 to deal the 15-28 listed on the bow.

The only "penalty" Warrior secondaries suffer is a result of a lack of the Strength attribute, but Strength only takes effect when using skills anyway, I beleive.

LOL - I keep forgetting about Battle Isles - I've been using RA to test my crappy builds. LOL

Just been hitting RA with whatever harebrained idea pops into my head - if it works there, hit TA and refine it a bit...if it works there - HA. If it works there - I take the "Temp" off the front of it and make it a permanent template.

Say what now? I call BS on that! If you meet the req, you should get max damage, plain and simple. Unless its to limit people to using a weapon-using secondary to less-than-max weapons, or to keep them from having a fairly high level of skill with it, I cant see why that would be(not that it makes any sense anyway). Im going to assume(probably incorrectly), that for bow, as an example, your damage on a armor of 80 should be around the low 20s? I hardly ever test, so I really dont know much about it.

Ok, checked through the GuildWiki guide on game mechanics for damage - and I think what the person who said "70%-80% of the maximum damage" was talking about is what GuildWiki calls Damage Rating.

This damage rating affects how much armor affects your damage. Spell caster DR is based on level (3xLevel) while Fighter DR is based on Attribute level (5xAttribute)...so in match with lvl 20 players - anything below 12 will come off as sub-par damage.

Basically a Caster will do normal damage against armor 60 at level 20.
A fighter will do normal damage against armor 60 at Attribute level 12.

So, if you're not at 12 - armor becomes more effective. Though, for a fighter above 12 - armor does become LESS effective. Which, I'm also thinking, puts casters are a disadvantage against fighters for DPS, a fighter with maxxed attrib of 16 wil do +25% damage - while a caster has no real way to level past 20 for a similar bonus - although damage-based casters can use things like Glyph of Elemental Power to boost their damage.

I'll test the AA build again this evening to see if I can milk some decent damage out of it with this newfound knowledge.

Sounds like you've got it to me. Also, all the PvP equipment weapons/staves have a req of 9, always. Since you were running less than the req of the weapon you were dealing newbie weapon damage (3-5, IIRC). That's one of the few sticking points of the damage calculations, they assume that you meet the req on the weapon.

Thanks for the answer, Ive always found that kinda hard to figure out. Maybe Ill find it on a site, then keep a copy I can alt-tab to if I need to check mid-game.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Damage
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...nics-id674.php

And I remember seeing a damage calculator on this site somewhere, but I'm not too sure where that got off to. These should help a bit, though.

The info on some site info is incorrect. Normal attacks with a req 9 sword do the same damage with 9 swordsmanship or 12 swordsmanship. Obviously, you'll do less damage with attack skills.

@ OP: the monk probablly was running some sort of enchant build. Could have even been a 55ers. You see some wierd stuff in RA sometimes.

That's actually wrong.

If you have a Req 9 Sword and a Req 12 Sword and 12 Swordsmanship you'll deal the same damage with both weapons. If you only have 9 Swordsmanship with those same swords, then the Req 9 Sword will deal more damage. Why? Because you don't meet the requirement of the Req 12 sword.

Add on top of that, with a basic attack and a Req 9 Sword, you will do less damage at 9 Swordsmanship than you will at 12 Swordsmanship.

Both of the sites I linked to explain that in greater detail.

VGJustice is correct. As you put more ranks in swordsmanship, you'll get a greater damage percentage. I believe at 12 swordsmanship you hit 100% of the listed damage IIRC, and 16 swordsmanship would give you somewhere in the ballpark of 114%, I think.

And to repeat, There's no difference damage-wise on your req. As long as you meet the req for something, you get it's damage. Basically, a req 9 and a req 12 is going to hit the same on both (unless you're not meeting the req for it).