about pushing attributes to >12 with equips and runes

i know that max attribute you can gain by using points is 12, and with superior runes, and weapons/headgears that give another +1 bonux, you can push it as far as 16. what i want to know is, does this affect skills? let's take for example, holy strike:

Target touched foe takes 10-46 holy damage. If knocked down, your target takes an additional 10-34 holy damage.

the description would suggest that the skill does 10(+10) with 0 smiting prayers, and 46(+34) with maxed smiting prayers. well, i have 10 smiting prayers right now, and i'm already doing 40(+30) with it. it *should* do 46(+34) with 12 smiting prayers( (46-10)/12 = 3 damage per attribute point), which is the max as stated in the skill description.

so what will having 16 in smiting prayers do, then? is it already capped at 46+34, or will it increase to 58+46? or more than 58+46?

The point of runes is to keep your attributes at 12. Say you have a major rune of marksmanship (adds two marksman ranks) I would then knock my marksmanship attribute down to 10. Let the runes make it 12.. then spend thoes left over attribute points to increase my other attribute. From what i have seen there is no point in having rank 14 marksmanship.

hope you follow me here, im not thinking 100% clear.

I would like to know this for sure as well.

by some weird luck, i just got a minor smiting rune from a friend, so i went and made a smiting scalp design to get another +1. my holy strike now says

Skill. Touched target foe takes 49 holy damage. If knocked down, your target takes an additional 36 holy damage. (Attrib: Smiting Prayers)

with 13 in smiting prayers.

that should clear up lots of stuff.

True. The LISTED damage you read (xxx...xxx) is based on a skill of 0 to 12. The progression of increase is STILL the same as you go higher than 12, equivalent to any other increases of the same number.

In other words... say you have a skill that you read does damage 10-46. This means, with 0 points in whatever the focus skill is (let's say Smite) you do base 10 damage. Every point you put into it give you another 3 points of base damage, so with 12 skill, you do 46 damage. With 13 points, you do 49 damage. With 14 points, 52 damage, etc...

Notice that the base damage increase from 12 to 14 levels in your skill (6 points) is the SAME as going from 1 to 3 (6 points).


Jana

any linked skill scales linearly with the attribute. there is no hard cap that we know of.

Yes, raising your attributes past 12 will affect skills. Otherwise there wouldn't be much point. In skill descriptions - ours, the ones in game, and others - we've all adopted a format of listing a skill's range as (value at rank 0) to (value at rank 12). This can be slightly misleading as it doesn't tell you about the underlying formula governing just why those values are what they are. Those forumlas are usually a bit messy though - a lot of fractional values and rounding, although they've been getting simpler.

For Holy Strike the damage you'll deal is equal to 10+(3x(Smiting Prayers rank)) with an additional 10+(2xSmite). That means each rank of Smiting is worth 3 more damage with a chance for 2 more. And from there you can figure it out for any rank. If you could get to rank 16, you'd do up to 100 damage (or 58+42).

Figuring out the forumla isn't hard and you don't even need the 0...12 format to do it. You just need a value at one rank and another at a higher rank. You subtract the lower rank from the higher and then divide by the number of ranks they were different. That's how much each rank of your attribute is worth. Multiply that times either of the ranks and subtract that from the original value and that tells you the "bonus" or starting value at rank 0 (the 10 damage for Holy Strike, in other words). And from there you can tell what the skill will be like at any given rank. It gets a bit fuzzy when you have fractional values that require rounding, it's hard to figure ut just where the sweet spots are on Mending or something like that, but it will at least give you an idea. I'd like to see such formulas detailed in game so I didn't have to do the mental arithmetic each and every time but they'd probably confuse more people than they'd help.

So then this post needs to be deleted...Cause everything else in this thread reads different and I thought I had it all figured out ofter reading this one post.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...ttribute stuff

This will answer all your questions, good read.

yes sorry i just confirmed this, however it still seems rather dumb to have that extra +2 fire damage when you can swap out and put thoes 36 attribute points into something else.

note: 36 attribute points (how many needed to go from 10-12) is almost how many to go from 1-8

think about it

well it's all about specializing. let's say most skills get +2 more damage per point, and you push it all they way to 16, that's already 8 damage bonus. per-skill. what if you always carry around with you 5, 6, or even 8 fire spells? and with spells like firestorm that rains down not just once, 8 damage is a lot.

good point, i guess firestorm and other degens that extra 2 points of damage is alot. I was looking at powershot what seems to give +1 damage every two attributes.

also, look at skills that has a huge range, like Divine Healing:

Heal yourself and nearby party members for 10...210 health.

1 attribute point should increase the healing by at least 10.