Adrenaline - The Details

The question of how Balthazar's Spirit works came up today on IRC, and since no one really knew the answer we decided to figure out the details.

After a bit of testing between Lonedust, Silmor, and myself, here's how it all works.

There are 3 ways to gain adrenaline - from suffering damage normally, from landing attacks, and from getting hit while Balthazar's Spirit is up. Attacking is the most common way of gaining adrenaline - you get 25 'points' of adrenaline for every blow you land. You also gain adrenaline from taking damage - you gain 1 point of adrenaline for every 1/100 of your health that you take in damage, for 100 net adrenaline points for being reduced from full health to zero.

The adrenaline costs in the skill descriptions are approximations, not actual values. Most 4 strike skills actually cost 80 adrenaline 'points', with the exception of Sever Artery and Counter Blow which cost you 100. 5 strike skills cost 120. 6 strike skills cost 140. 7 strike skills are 160, 8 strike skills 200, and 10 strike skills cost you 240 adrenaline 'points'. If you're simply charging up with melee attacks you'll have charged your skills after the requisite number of hits, but if you're taking damage you'll charge up faster, in some cases faster than others. This is particularly obvious with most 4 strike skills, which charge up with 3 strikes and a token amount of damage taken.

The only other wildcard is Balthazar's Spirit. With the discovery of the granularity of the system we can finally give an accurate skill description:

"While you maintain this enchantment, target ally gains 2...5 'points' of adrenaline and 1 energy each time he takes damage."

The break points on the adrenaline gain from Balthazar's Spirit are at 3, 8, and 13 for 3, 4, and 5 adrenaline points per hit, respectively.

I hope this has been useful for something beyond indulging my own idle curiosity.

Peace,
-CxE

w00t! Another fine piece of Guild Wars knowledge brought to you by Ensign.

I just find it strange that many of the skill descriptions are incomplete and inaccurate still. That would have been some of the first things changed i imagine. The one thing ive learned from games that give out too little information, is that people will always find out exactly what they do and invariably end up using that information. In many cases the lack of information tries to hide some kind of hazy game imbalance that doesnt become that apperant until after its been exploited. In this instance, i doubt that is the case though.

I still wonder what the +CV387 or whatever the exact phrase was for dark fury means.

Very useful, I've always wondered exactly how Balthazar's Spirit worked and why it wasn't unlinked instead of being in the Smiting line.

I have a few questions which you may or may not be able to answer. The first is in relation to how adrenaline skills work, especially their recharge times. For example, since adrenal skills apparently have no recharge, an axe warrior should be able to Cleave twice in rapid succession (4+4) every time he would be able to perform an Executioner's Strike (8), yet this simply is not true. Often, you can perform adrenal combos such as Eviscerate + Penetrating + Executioners (20 Adren. total) but you couldn't do anything involving two of the same skill, like Penetrating + Executioner's + Penetrating (18 Total). So this means its likely that there is some sort of internal recharge system for adrenaline skills...any insight?

Also, sometimes you can perform combinations that don't make sense if adrenaline was assumed to be just standard 'build up and use.' And example is when you are charging your Devestating Hammer, and once it light's up you use it, but then are able to perform a Mighty Blow right after. Logic says that if you use Dev Hammer right after it charges, you should have expended all your energy, so Mighty Blow wouldn't be possible, yet it is...does this mean certain skills charge adrenaline faster?

Any thoughts or information from anyone is appreciated.

Are you sure? I used to think that until I had lots of times when using one adrenal skill made another unusable.

Does ferocious strike count as 1 strike/25adren or does it follow a pattern of its own?

Some adrenaline skills make you lose all adrenaline eg. Final Thrust.

Quick question, does Battle Rage and "For Great Justice!" stack or apply to Balthazar's Aura?

Battle range and for great justice are a additive effect, not a multiplying effect. With both rage and fgj in effect watch yourself charges on the second hit, not the first and disrupting chop also charges on the second hit from a zero adrenalin pool.

And another incredible discovery by Ensign. Nice find and thank you.

Using an adrenal skill seems to deplete the adrenaline pool for that skill, and take 25 adrenaline (one 'strike') from all other pools, so you can't use for instance "Fear Me!" and "Watch Yourself!" in succession. However, most adrenal skills, being attack skills, include an attack in their execution, thus netting you one strike of adrenaline, which replenishes the other adrenaline pools back to 'filled' level, which makes adrenal chains possible.

There is a slight issue with pain-based adrenaline gain that leads to slightly inaccurate numbers for large maximum health depleted by many small hits, but since the deviation it causes is relatively small this issue is negligeable.

Ah okay, that makes perfect sense now, thanks for the info on that everyone.

That's good stuff. Thanks.

Each adrenal skill has its own pool, and once it's charged it's just charged - you don't overcharge or anything, and any extra adrenaline is wasted.

Whenever you activate an adrenal skill, all of your adrenal skills lose a strike (25 points) of adrenaline. If it's an attack and it hits, you'll get that adrenaline right back. If it's not an attack or the attack misses, you'll need to build up another 25 points of adrenaline before you cau use any of your previously charged adrenal skills.


No idea.


That's just a rounding error. The granularity of the system is 1 point, so if you have, say, 1000 HP, you're looking at one point of adrenaline for a 10 damage hit, and due to rounding you'll have no adrenal gain from any hit of four damage or less. I don't know exactly how it rounds, but it does round, because it has to, and that's going to give you some 'error'.

If you have exactly 100 HP it works out right every single time.

Peace,
-CxE

And it consistently errs in your favour anyway; adrenal skills will always charge slightly faster than expected due to this phenomenom. In the course of losing 1000 hitpoints from 4-6 damage attacks your regular methods of generating adrenaline will dwarf the pain-based gain already, so the already insignificant bonus gain caused by this phenomenom is entirely negligeable. Was mostly mentioning it to make sure people who charge up their Sever Artery without dropping dead in the process know what kept them alive for a second.

Thanks for the info. I've been wondering about Balthazar's Spirit for quite a while.

By the way, how exactly do you do these trials? Find a creature that you can test consistant recieved damage on? Like the Tree of Judgement (as smiting skills ignore armour)?

Well, let's see if we can spell out the long process here...

First there were a bunch of tests done to see how much damage it took to charge Watch Yourself! from zero. Silmor used Battle Rage to zero it back out, Lonedust and I just zoned in and out. We found that the amount of damage needed to charge your adrenaline varied from trial to trial. So extremes were tested to see how much of a difference the packet size made. Silmor found some enemies that did 0 damage per hit, and observed that no amount of hits would cause his adrenaline to charge. Then, sacrificing his body in the name of science, he ran naked straight into an Aatxe, dying in one hit but with his adrenal skills fully charged.

So, whatever the fluctuations, they really weren't significant, as there wasn't a 'adrenaline per hit' gain, nor appreciable loss from all the damage coming at once. Looking at the data, it appeared that one 'strike' of adrenaline was roughly equivilent to 100 damage taken. This was also when I pointed out an anomoly I noticed back in the BWEs when playing a Warrior - Watch Yourself charges faster than Sever Artery. Fractional adrenaline costs were definitely in the picture. A quick test showed that Sever Artery required around 25% more damage to charge than Watch Yourself.

Around the time we started talking about Balthazar's Spirit I expressed some normalization concerns - one 'strike' per hundred damage is a nice round number, but it makes the mechanic significantly different for a low level character with no hit points as opposed to a high level character. I postulated that perhaps the amount of adrenaline gained from being hit wasn't one strike per hundred damage, but was one strike per one fraction of max health. We tested this with the Superior runes we had available, with the net result being that Sever Artery charged just before if not at the instant of death from damage, regardless of max HP.

To recap, we had some idea about how adrenaline scaled with hits taken, but didn't have any good numbers.

Hence the Balthazar's Spirit.

Silmor went and did some tests with Baltazar's Spirit up against those monsters that did no damage per hit, and observed that it took exactly 40 hits to charge Watch Yourself at level 0 Spirit. Checking some other adrenaline skills showed Sever Artery to charge at 50 hits, Penetrating Attack at 60 hits, and so forth. This struck me as a bit odd because those numbers clearly aren't in the ratios given in the skill descriptions. Anyway. He then tested again at level 4 and level 8 Spirit, and noticed that the number of strikes required went from 40 to 27 to 20, implying a 1 to 1.5 to 2 ratio in adrenaline gained. Looking at that obvious progression, he pumped to 12 and observed...20 strikes for Watch Yourself to charge. We double checked just to be sure, but it really was the same value as at 8. Postulated there might be cap. Cranked the skill up to level 16 and tested yet again, and this time it only took 16 hits to charge.

While he was doing this I was messing around a bit with straight attacks, confirming that each adrenal skill did charge in the requisite number of hits (and they do). From looking at the over-charges, I figured that each hit gave the equivilent of 12.5 hits on Balthazar's Spirit, as that was the smallest figure that would fit the data.

The Balth's Spirit progression still bugged me, though, until I doubled all the numbers to try and find some granularity - making it 2 per hit on Balth's Spirit instead of one, and 25 per strike of adrenaline. Looking at it this way, the gains from Balth's Spirit suddenly made sense to me, as they'd be what you'd expect from rounding on a 2...5 progression. If that worked out it'd make some great predictions about the granularity of the system as well, as Guild Wars only has break points at intergers. Silmor repeated his testing with a level 7 Balthazar's Spirit, and the results came back identical to the level 4 numbers we had before - meaning there was a clear break between level 7 and level 8 values. So at least under basic testing the hypothesis was correct, and data agreed with everything.

So with the granularity information in hand we repeated some earlier tests to pin some numbers upon the damage taken -> adrenaline conversion. Silmor checked the high end of the spectrum by dropping a bunch of Spirits and other health buffs, while I headed to pre-searing to charge Sever Artery with a 100 HP character. While his results showed some interesting rounding that ended up charging Sever Artery slightly before death, Sever consistently charged in pre-searing at death and not a moment sooner. At level 1, you have 100 health, and every damage taken translates directly into one of these 'hits' - not a whole lot to mistake there.

At that point, since we had an operational theory as to how these things work, and as we'd tested the extremes and still had the theory hold, we posted it for public consumption.

Peace,
-CxE

Ok, let's say you take 85% damage, so you have enough adrenaline to use a 4 strike skill. If you get healed, that adrenaline is still there right? Also, while under Battle Rage the values for each skill is effectively halfed, or is only the adrenaline gain from hits doubled? Do "attacks" refer to only your swings, or any attacks involving your character?

great stuff.
highly informative. thank you.

Thank you Ensign, for enlightening us once again :P

I did some more testing with a guildmate to test how the three methods of adrenaline gain mentioned are affected by skills amplifying the rate at which adrenaline is generated, and the following seems to be the case:

- Neither Battle Rage or Berserker Stance affect adrenaline gain through pain or balthazar's spirit, as advertised they only improve the adrenaline gain from your attacks.
- "For Great Justice!" affects all three methods of adrenaline gain, but multiplies the adrenaline gain by a factor 1.5, not 2 as advertised.

Since I was at it anyway, I checked the precise gain from "To The Limit!" and Wary Stance - "To The Limit!" gives 25 adrenaline (the equivalent of 1 attack, or 'strike') for each adjacent foe, capped through Tactics - works as advertised. Wary Stance gives 25 adrenaline (one strike) for each attack skill used on you. Might test the exact gain from the Beast Mastery elite Ferocious Strike once another guildmate with a W/R gets around to capturing it lateron.

A question I have about Balthazar's Spirit, is whether or not the damage taken affects the adrenal gain for the skill. Getting hit for 0 damage gets you 0 adrenaline without the skill and 2 points of adrenaline with Balthazar's Spirit(at low smiting). However, if you're taking larger hits(say, 10% of your health total), does this affect the adrenaline gain from Balthazar's Spirit? At 10% health in a hit, with level 0 Balthazar's Spirit, do you still get the 10 points of adrenaline via the hit and 2 points from Balthazar's Spirit, or is the adrenal gain from Spirit partially dependant upon the amount of damage taken?

Freyas: tested this with 0 smiting and 16 smiting, and in both cases the adrenal gain followed the fill points for regular pain-based gain added to spirit-based gain instead of filling quicker than expected, which would have been a required indicator to suspect any sort of spirit-based amplification of pain-based adrenaline.

I believe it's safe to conclude that Balthazar's Spirit only gives a set amount of adrenaline for each attack, and does not amplify pain-based gain.

great, exactly the info i searched

Right, the adrenaline stays - you never lose adrenline because you recieved healing. Basically the pain based adrenaline just scales up as your maximum health does, so your 4A skills will charge proportionally fast at level 1 with 100 HP and level 20 with 480 HP. So while 1 'point' of adrenaline at level 1 is 1 HP, at level 20 it's 4.8 HP.

This becomes particularly relevant for the 55 HP Monks running around, as even with their reduced damage their adrenaline continues to charge incredibly quickly.


Battle Rage gives you double adrenaline from each hit - it doesn't affect the costs of the skills at all. Adrenaline from other sources doesn't change at all.


Peace,
-CxE