Daggers have hidden damage modifiers

[meow]

I did a series of tests by using ashes of war to try and equalize the weapon damage as much as possible between several weapons.

The data:

| Dagger |
Crit modifier		| 130
Attack Power		| 102 
Riposte			| 497
Backstab		| 318
Backstab (Stealth)	| 400
Fully Charged R2 	| 78

| Wakizashi |
Crit modifier		| 100
Attack Power		| 104
Riposte			| 366
Backstab		| 233
Backstab (Stealth)	| 294
Fully Charged R2 	| 80

| Rapier |
Crit modifier		| 130
Attack Power		| 107
Riposte			| 412
Backstab		| 246
Backstab (Stealth)	| 310
Fully Charged R2 	| 119

| Shortsword |
Crit modifier		| 100
Attack Power		| 103
Riposte			| 252
Backstab		| 153
Backstab (Stealth)	| 192
Fully Charged R2	| 108

| Lordsworn's Straight Sword |
Crit modifier		| 110
Attack Power		| 112
Riposte			| 317
Backstab		| 191
Backstab (Stealth)	| 239
Fully Charged R2	| 124

The numbers I'm getting are consistent, but they might look somewhat erratic due mostly to floating point numbers.

The takeaways from this are:

1. The closest you can get to the number displayed on your Attack Rating on the status page is going to be a fully charged R2, which appears to be 110% your attack rating for most weapons. I didn't list it here, but uncharged R2s are significantly lower in value and appear to be less than 100% of your displayed attack rating.
   
2. Daggers appear to have a hidden negative damage modifier for standard attacks and a hidden damage modifier for critical attacks, even outside of the listed "Critical" stat. This means comparing a dagger and a non-dagger with an identical listed Critical stat, the dagger will still do more damage on critical attacks.
   
3. Normal damage reduction appears to be about 25%, and critical hits (ripostes and backstabs) appear to get an approximately 50% damage boost BEFORE the "Critical" stat is applied.
   
4. Backstabs do more damage on enemies who don't yet see you. It goes with saying, however, this applies to most stealth attacks. In the case of backstabs, at least, this appears to be roughly a 25% damage boost.

This means yes, the Misericorde is in fact significantly better for riposte damage because it is receiving a hidden dagger class critical damage boost on top of its outrageous 140 Critical.

This also means that yes, daggers are miserable for actually doing non-critical damage. The Attack Power you're being shown in your status is functionally impossible to achieve outside of critical hits and is a dirty little liar.

My math is likely off in some places because I'm not a professional mathologer and I didn't go to math college, but I think this data is useful to share regardless.

[Drake Ravenwolf]

you'd get more visibility on reddit

[chaosavy]

Every Souls game lures me in with cool looking daggers and every souls game then breaks my heart with low damage :(

[Drake Ravenwolf]

Originally posted by chaosavy:

Every Souls game lures me in with cool looking daggers and every souls game then breaks my heart with low damage :(

what about reduvia?

[meow]

Originally posted by chaosavy:

Every Souls game lures me in with cool looking daggers and every souls game then breaks my heart with low damage :(

Dual daggers are a decent way to get status procs at least. And the misericorde is still ridiculously strong with ripostes.

They're niche. You can't unga mash R1 with keen daggers and max dex and get good results. You have to use them for what they're good at.

[lpnlizard27]

no misericord ?

[meow]

Originally posted by lpnlizard27:

no misericord ?

I use my misericorde and have upgraded it to +8. I wanted the numbers to be as close as possible and also possibly eliminate any errant scaling issues or damage bonuses granted by weapon upgrades.

[Ghost]

Did you take into consideration damage resistances? also not to mention movesets can have individual modifiers themselves for example if the zamor curved greatsword and bloodhound curved greatsword were to have the EXACT same damage stat values the different animations that they have very well could have a different damage modifier attached to it

[meow]

Originally posted by lGhostWolfel:

Did you take into consideration damage resistances? also not to mention movesets can have individual modifiers themselves for example if the zamor curved greatsword and bloodhound curved greatsword were to have the EXACT same damage stat values the different animations that they have very well could have a different damage modifier attached to it

Every single one of these tests was done on the same exact enemy so none of that matters.

[TrueEvil]

The reason you are not seeing damages like the listed AR is because of how negation and defenses work. Most weapons will not deal their listed AR, but daggers get hit especially hard because of defenses in particular.

Anyways, the reason dagger crits are so insane is because of some behind-the-scenes stuff called Motion Values. These are multipliers applied to your AR before defenses when you attack enemies. I believe most weapon R1s have a Motion Value around 1, backstabs of around 1.7-2.0, etc.

Daggers in particular have a really high Motion Value on backstabs and ripostes that is applied on top of the listed 130 crit modifier. Because this Motion Value is multiplied with the weapon AR before the defenses, split damage is not nearly as disadvantageous as it typically is, so odds are good the elemental infusions are once again the strongest for unbuffed crits.

[Ghost]

Originally posted by nepdisc:

Originally posted by lGhostWolfel:

Did you take into consideration damage resistances? also not to mention movesets can have individual modifiers themselves for example if the zamor curved greatsword and bloodhound curved greatsword were to have the EXACT same damage stat values the different animations that they have very well could have a different damage modifier attached to it

Every single one of these tests was done on the same exact enemy so none of that matters.

Actually it does matter as the same enemy can have different resistances to different damages, that's like saying hitting an enemy with magic and physical in a comparison having 20% mag resist and 90% physical resist is going to offer accurate results when it won't

[Kyutaru]

Originally posted by chaosavy:

Every Souls game lures me in with cool looking daggers and every souls game then breaks my heart with low damage :(

The shortest weapons = the most skill required = the least damage???

The giant weapons = the least brains needed = mega ultra chicken

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by nepdisc:

My math is likely off in some places because I'm not a professional mathologer and I didn't go to math college, but I think this data is useful to share regardless.

My conclusion reading your numbers is the same. Good post, thanks for sharing this information. Didnt know that daggers get such a huge bonus on criticals.
Also impressive to see how much damage a Riposte can do with a level 0 dagger.

Originally posted by nepdisc:

• Backstabs do more damage on enemies who don't yet see you. It goes with saying, however, this applies to most stealth attacks. In the case of backstabs, at least, this appears to be roughly a 25% damage boost.

From memory this should be the same amount for any attack launched from stealth.

[meow]

Originally posted by lGhostWolfel:

Originally posted by nepdisc:

Every single one of these tests was done on the same exact enemy so none of that matters.

Actually it does matter as the same enemy can have different resistances to different damages, that's like saying hitting an enemy with magic and physical in a comparison having 20% mag resist and 90% physical resist is going to offer accurate results when it won't

Okay that's very cool but I'm clearly not using magic infused daggers here. What are you getting at?

[meow]

Originally posted by Evil:

The reason you are not seeing damages like the listed AR is because of how negation and defenses work. Most weapons will not deal their listed AR, but daggers get hit especially hard because of defenses in particular.

Anyways, the reason dagger crits are so insane is because of some behind-the-scenes stuff called Motion Values. These are multipliers applied to your AR before defenses when you attack enemies. I believe most weapon R1s have a Motion Value around 1, backstabs of around 1.7-2.0, etc.

Daggers in particular have a really high Motion Value on backstabs and ripostes that is applied on top of the listed 130 crit modifier. Because this Motion Value is multiplied with the weapon AR before the defenses, split damage is not nearly as disadvantageous as it typically is, so odds are good the elemental infusions are once again the strongest for unbuffed crits.

I did some basic testing and using drawstring grease before ripostes rarely increases the damage done by more than 50 in a +0 dagger, so there's that. I'm otherwise not testing split damage at all because it's too much math for me to be considering all these different numbers.

[doublejesus]

Originally posted by nepdisc:

Originally posted by lGhostWolfel:

Actually it does matter as the same enemy can have different resistances to different damages, that's like saying hitting an enemy with magic and physical in a comparison having 20% mag resist and 90% physical resist is going to offer accurate results when it won't

Okay that's very cool but I'm clearly not using magic infused daggers here. What are you getting at?

I don't think it matters with crits because iirc crits ignore defensive values but they also don't take into account scaling, that is why it's suggested to use split scaling on daggers because you have more base damage to multiply and it ignores the defensive formula so it being split damage doesn't matter. This is if I understood it correctly.