Attibutes, Weapon Reqs, and Damage Output

(This is an article about the damage output of a weapon at various attribute levels. For those scanning before opening the thread.)

I recently started a fresh character. Since I had many max damage weapons already in storage, I was wondering how effective they would be if I was unable to meet the attribute. So I investigated Guild Wiki (original, not official), under the hopes that someone else was similarly curious before me. I found an article titled Requirement. This is the relavent bit that it had to say:

"For melee weapons, bows and spears (see the different skill types), the min. and max. damage is reduced by 1 for every point the requirement is not met. Example: A Warrior wielding a max dmg Axe (6-28) with req. 9 in Axe Mastery will only do 4-26 damage when having his Axe Mastery set to 7."

For some reason, that didn't strike me as being accurate. So I decided to test it out.

The Test:
The Weapon:

Slashing 9-41 (Requires 9 Scythe Mastery)
It was not sundering.
There was no damage bonus from customization.
There was no damage bonus from an inscription (not a 15^50 or anything of that nature).
I chose this scythe for its "normalcy."

The Target:

Armour 60 targets on Isle of the Nameless

The Methodology:

I started striking the target with 0 in scythe mastery, and recorded the maximum* damage and the minimum damage. After numerous blows, I would increase the attribute by 1 and begin striking anew.



The Results (attribute, damage range):

(0,1-6)
(1,1-7)
(2,1-8)
(3,2-8)
(4,2-9)
(5,2-10)
(6,2-11)
(7,2-12)
(8,2-13)
(9,7-45)
(10,8-49)
(11,8-53)
(12,9-58)
(13,10-60)
(14,10-62)
(15,10-64)

Regarding the Wiki statement:
If the wiki statement were true, at attribute 7, the damage range should have been 7-39. As you can see from the results, having the attribute lower than the weapon requirement by merely 1 reduces the damage range by much more than 1 at both the maximum and minimum values.


What Does All This Mean?
Well, it illustrates that missing a weapon requirement by even a small amount will have a tremendous impact on the damage output. It also illustrates that exceeding the weapon requirement, by as little as three points, can have a dramatic impact on the maximum damage output (though the minimum damage output is not significantly effected).

This test did not take into account mean damage, or frequency of critical hits. It wasn't intended to do so.

*It might be noteworthy to mention that I believe all the top damage results for each attribute level were the results of a “critical hit.” I believe this to be the case because of the unique sound effect that accompanied the top value hits. As one might expect, the frequency of these "critical hits" increased with higher attribute scores. I did not measure the frequency.

Yeah.....? This has been common knowledge for 2 years....


Edit:

As for the wiki maths, don't trust everything you read on the wiki. A lot of the stuff there isn't really calculated correctly, as there is a lot of factors that they forget to take notice of.

Interesting, I always thought it was the case that if you didn't meet the requirement of the weapon, the damage it did was equivalent to a starter weapon of that type. The increase in damage over the starter weapon damage is due to how many points you have in the weapon attribute.

In other words, a starter scythe has the damage set at 4-6. If your Scythe Mastery is set at 12, you do 100% of the weapon's damage. This should be easily seen if you had a scythe with 13 req, and set your SM at 12, you should be dealing 4-6 damage, not counting crits. So every level of SM below 12, and still below the req of the weapon will do less than 4-6, not counting crits.

This seems consistent with what you provided as data. Each level of SM over 12 is doing a higher percentage of the weapon's base damage, as long as it's over the req. That is how I've always understood it (since I was first explained it and tested). Just meeting the requirement simply means you are no longer doing "starter weapon" damage, but the damage listed on the weapon, and then a percentage of that according to your level in weapon mastery.

Maybe it was common knowledge two years ago. I've been playing for less than two years, and this was not in my general repertoire of knowledge. In a general sense, I knew that not meeting the req was bad, but until I did this I didn't know how bad. Some common "mis-knowledge" is that the damage output when not meeting a weapon requirement is half the damage listed (like one receives 1/2 the energy from not meeting the req of a focus item, or half the armor for not meeting the req of a shield).

I have also been the victim of misinformation in regards to exceeding the weapon req. I've been told by many people that once you pass the requirement by +1, there is no additional benefit to the amount of damage you will do (only the frequency of critical hits). This shows that isn't the case.

You've been around for more than two years, maybe even since the beta, so I can see that you would likely already know this. But it's possible that many other people currently playing did not. Someone may have posted this on the forums in the past, but the forums are a bit awkward when it comes to searching for older material. That leaves the wiki for easily pulling up game info. Unfortunately, the wiki isn't always accurate (not unlike some of the people posting misinformation on these forums). Hopefully other people who have not been playing for over two years will find this info helpful.

Wiki has always been iffy on this, because the 'maths' is not properly tested, and often not tested at all. I believe there was a thread a LONG while ago explaining a lot of the mechanics of GW, I think it was in the Gladiator's Arena section or something. Aside from that, usually just testing stuff yourself is the best way to go.

One thing that is VERY important about your tests, is that Critical Hits haven't really been taken into account. They play a big part when determining Damage Per Second, and the average damage a weapon can put out. Although in this case you weren't measuring those specifically, it is handy to know about them anyway.

I play far more PvE than PvP, and so for my purposes while it might be interesting to know critical hit information, it's also not quite as useful. With the wider variety of levels in foes (ranging from 18-28), any information about the frequency of critical hits is going to vary quite a bit. For the most part, i find that in PvE it's nice when critical hits happen, but at later stages of the game they can't be expected to happen with any reliable frequency.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...nics-id674.php

I'm pretty darn sure there is no difference what-so-ever. That is a common question about requirement, and it's simply not true. If you have 12 in your weapon mastery, you will do 100% of the weapon damage no matter if the weapon is a req.7 or a req.12. Period.

The math in that link seems pretty much right, but it's all assuming you are meeting the requirement of the weapon on every level. For instance, if you have 3 SM, and the scythe you have is req.3 dmg 5-27, you will deal 45.9% of 5-27 damage. If the scythe is req.9 max dmg, you will deal 45.9% of 4-6 dmg (starter weapon damage), because you don't meet the requirement.


EDIT: Whoa... post go bye-bye? What the heck? Posts have been disappearing a lot recently....

since i began playing i heard that for each point over the req of a weapon you do max damage plus a certain percentage of the damage... like...

from a req 9 weapon... if you meet the attribute at 12 you will do max damage plus... 50% or more... i can't rememeber correctly but i think that if you go over two or three extra points in the weapon attribute you will do 100% more damage...

the damage i usually do to lvl 24 PvE monsters with 16 marks is around 30 and 60 if im not mistaken... with no skills

anyway... nice work...

NO.

Do not spread blatant nonsense if you have no clue how things work. Educate yourself.

As far as I've believed;

Weapon damage is starter unless the req. is met. This is why there is a sudden jump between 8 scythe mastery and 9 scythe mastery.

At the same time, weapon damage scales to 100% at rank 12, and continues upwards at higher weapon skill levels. This is why the damage improves after each attribute rank is added, even beyond the statistics of the weapon above 12.

And yes, your upper statistic is inaccurate due to critical hits.

That's what I've believed all along. I'm sure I read this in a thread a long time ago by a Guild Wars employee (can't remember which one) when there was debate as to whether a req.7 weapon would deal more damamge or increase the liklihood of a critical hit than a higher requirement. He/she said it what Avarre said (Attribute: 12 = 100% damage) and when a requirement was not met, the damage would be equivelant to a starter weapon.

The chance of landing a critical hit scales with the rank of weapon mastery and has nothing to do with your weapon's requirement - as long as you meet the requirement. Obviously, assasssins are slightly different.

Troll much? The poster said "I heard" meaning he wasn't spreading solid facts. His post was more of a contribution than your one line of egotism.

That is not misinformation - It is very true that going beyond the requisite will not increase the damage. The increase in damage you have shown is due to a higher attribute, not for meeting the req by more. You will do exactly the same amount of damage with a R9 sword at 12 swordsmanship as you would with a r12 sword with 12 swordsmanship.

If you look at the damage calcutions (see the article posted by seut), you will see that increasing your attribute beyond 12 (independent of a weapon's requisite) yeilds diminishing returns in terms of straight damage - perhaps you just misheard a quote to that effect.

I always thought that the damage was halved if you don't meet the requirement.

Interesting if it is confirmed that the damage is STARTER weapon quality if you don't meet the requirement...

Trolls? 55hp monk? Hello Makosi.

When such ridiculous misinformation is spread, it is fair to call it. Especially when actual test data disprove the misinformation in the very same thread. From the original test with a req9 weapon shown here:

From the babble:

According to this the rise from 9 to 12 should be: 7-45*2 = 14-90. That is obviously way off, and all he needed to do was to look at this modest test presented in the OP.

I believe a critical hit will always deal the same damage (dealt damage != received damage, in terms of defense), so you could use [skill]wild blow[/skill] on a certain mob to get a fixed result for the purpose of getting an idea of how weapon damage scales.
Doing this will also confirm what people have said about exceeding the weapon's attribute; you do the same amount of damage with 12 mastery using a 9 req weapon as you do with 12 mastery using a 12 req weapon.

I have always been a big fan of SonOfRa's damage article. Except for a couple of things that I strongly suspect were undocumented changes since it was written, its damage formulas have matched my experience closely.

Paraphrased slightly, SonOfRa tells us that:
and
where
He also tells us that :
Though he does not tell us what a "level 5 weapon" is. The best explanation/speculation I ever read was someone's post to the effect that it was the same damage range as that of weapon a lvl-5 monster could drop.

Using that as a starting point, I decided to plug your results into SonOfRa's formulas. I assumed that your max damages were all critical hits.
As I expected, your figures for ranks 9 and above matched the formulas' predictions for a max scythe perfectly.
Perhaps more interestingly, the figures for rank 8 and below matched what the formulas would predict for a 3-13 scythe almost perfectly.
There were two exceptions: (1) The predicted critical hit for 0 mastery was 6.5, which should have rounded to 7, but the observed max was only 6, and (2) the predicted minimum for 3 mastery was 1.4ish, which should have rounded down to 1, but the observed min was 2.

From this I would theorize:

• On the whole, your observations seem to indicate that SonOfRa was correct: Weapons have, as a hidden stat, a single fixed (very crappy) damage range that is applied in place of the displayed damage range if you don't meet the attribute requirement - in this case 3-13.
• Perhaps you did not perform enough tests to get a critical at mastery 0 and/or a min roll at mastery 3. After all, a scythe is a very poor choice for this sort of testing due to its very, very wide range.
• Perhaps SonOfRa's equations do not properly capture the order of operations, resulting in rounding errors when dealing with very small figures.

A couple questions that still need answers:

• Why 3-13? Does that correspond to anything in particular, or is it just random?
• Are all scythes 3-13 when you don't meet the req? If not, what's the range of possible damage ranges? Is there any rhyme or reason to them?

[Edit: removed my idiocy where I confused a 5 and a 6.]

I decided to do some minor testing on this. The critical damage is always the same, and slightly above the weapons normal max damage, so I used wild blow (100% critical chance) with attribute ratings 0-16 for three seperate swords (2-3, no requirement ;; 15-22, 9 requirement ;; 15-22, 13 requirement)

0 - 2 ; 4 ; 4
1 - 2 ; 4 ; 4
2 - 2 ; 4 ; 4
3 - 2 ; 5 ; 5
4 - 2 ; 5 ; 5
5 - 2 ; 5 ; 5
6 - 3 ; 6 ; 6
7 - 3 ; 6 ; 6
8 - 3 ; 7 ; 7
9 - 3 ; 24 ; 8
10 - 4 ; 26 ; 8
11 - 4 ; 29 ; 9
12 - 4 ; 31 ; 10
13 - 4 ; 32 ; 32
14 - 5 ; 33 ; 33
15 - 5 ; 35 ; 35
16 - 5 ; 36 ; 36

I think I can safely say the requirement for a weapon does nothing other than determines when it jumps from it's hidden damage code (not the same as a starter weapon) to it's listed damage code.

Further testing is required, but I also believe that the hidden damage for a given type of weapons with the same listed damage is always the same (15-22 swords always have the same hidden code, but may not have the same code as a 15-22 bow).