Plz tell me that I have misunderstood resistance...

[langarn]

Like Vulnerable that gives minus 5% to all resistances per stack. How does this effect my attack? Is it plus 5 %? So 5 if I did a 100 in damage its 5 extra?

[Ice-Nine]

mmaindi a écrit :

That is a basic feature of deckbuilding game design (and I'd say game design for all games where players construct a "build" of some kind). Cards, abilities -- whatever is appropriate in the context -- are layered in at all levels of utility so that players can enjoy the discovery of what is good or bad, how to use various things, find special contexts where otherwise-useless options become strong, etc. There are some old blogs getting into this from MtG's designers (such as https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/when-cards-go-bad-2002-01-28) if you want a better discussion than my abortive account.

I think AtO is fine, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that Magic blog is just ignorant justification for printing money. It's a bunch of dishonest tripe. Bad cards don't bring a sense of "exploration;" they just sell more cards because you got bad ones so now you have to buy more to get good ones.

[Razor Feather]

langarn a écrit :

Yes but enemy resistance affect the damage your hero deal to that monster. Why even discuss this?

So many cards seems totally useless with a so low effect on damage. Not worth a spot in the deck. I feel cheated.

Because the distinction between the two is important? If vulnerable were a multiplier on damage, then yeah its at best going to be a 5% increase in final damage dealt per stack. Instead, its an additive resistance modifier, which means as the initial resistance of the enemy goes up, so does the final damage multiplication of vulnerable.

In your op you say vulnerable is 5 extra damage on every 100, but that's only true if the enemy starts with zero resistance, which is pretty uncommon in this game. Instead the enemy may have say, 50 resistance, in which case the vulnerable is giving you 10 extra damage on every 100. Or they could have the cap of 95% resistance, and adding a single vulnerable stack *doubles* the damage they take.

Honestly vulnerable is a pretty important tool, especially once you get the perk that makes it fall off by only 1 per turn. Its the only way physical damage dealers have open to them to lower resistance, which lets their generally respectable raw damage shine. Its not vital to every build, but its far from useless.

[HAWAIIANpikachu]

Razor Feather a écrit :

langarn a écrit :

Yes but enemy resistance affect the damage your hero deal to that monster. Why even discuss this?

So many cards seems totally useless with a so low effect on damage. Not worth a spot in the deck. I feel cheated.

Because the distinction between the two is important? If vulnerable were a multiplier on damage, then yeah its at best going to be a 5% increase in final damage dealt per stack. Instead, its an additive resistance modifier, which means as the initial resistance of the enemy goes up, so does the final damage multiplication of vulnerable.

In your op you say vulnerable is 5 extra damage on every 100, but that's only true if the enemy starts with zero resistance, which is pretty uncommon in this game. Instead the enemy may have say, 50 resistance, in which case the vulnerable is giving you 10 extra damage on every 100. Or they could have the cap of 95% resistance, and adding a single vulnerable stack *doubles* the damage they take.

Honestly vulnerable is a pretty important tool, especially once you get the perk that makes it fall off by only 1 per turn. Its the only way physical damage dealers have open to them to lower resistance, which lets their generally respectable raw damage shine. Its not vital to every build, but its far from useless.

I would argue it's pretty vital to anything not elemental, and even with elemental it still helps buff damage there. (I guess mind/holy don't need vulnerable as much as others for a bit given sanctify and insane, but dark does)

[malogoss]

langarn a écrit :

malogoss a écrit :

Why discuss this? Good question.
Because you started this thread,

It was not a thread about semantics.

Your OP is about how +5% damage per charge is meaningless. You'd rather not play Vulnerable cards "if you understood it right".

Then I proceeded to show you why it's not +5% damage per charge in most cases. It can be more, it can be less than 5%. When an enemy has 60+% resistance, I'd say Vulnerable is the cheapest and easiest way to deal more damage, even more so if you picked the related perks. You'll still need Sharp or Bless or whatever, but it works a lot better when you use Vulnerable on top of those. This is not about semantics, it's just maths. Not to mention that many cards that apply Vulnerable also have other very useful utility effects. Uproot is an example.

If you don't need Vulnerable to be included in your decks at the madness level you're playing, if using it makes you feel "cheated" then fine, beat the game without using it. But in a card game where card rewards are based on how fast you can end a fight, things can get a lot tougher very fast if you're not using what you can to increase your damage output.

Another way to realise how powerful Vulnerable is : never dispel it when your characters are made Vulnerable. It is not a good idea. Especially with 8+ Vulnerable stacks, which you could apply to enemies if you wanted to.

Finally, Vulnerable is a very nice thing to have in this game, else you'd feel "cheated" for other reasons. Many characters quartets would be near unplayable or totally unplayable if it weren't for a universal way to reduce all resistance on any enemy.

If it all comes down to not using some cards to not feel cheated, then don't use them. It is that simple. If you're interested to know why Vulnerable is valuable, then there are many good posts explaining why in this thread already.

[mmaindi]

Ice-Nine a écrit :

I think AtO is fine, but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that Magic blog is just ignorant justification for printing money. It's a bunch of dishonest tripe. Bad cards don't bring a sense of "exploration;" they just sell more cards because you got bad ones so now you have to buy more to get good ones.

The main author of that article, Mark Rosewater, has been a lead designer on MtG for the better part of the last two decades, and has run a blog and/or podcast on design much of that time. He seems to be pretty invested in honestly discussing their design philosophy. We can agree or disagree with or like or dislike the philosophy, but I think it's an honest and certainly an informed account (I suppose you can take the position that it's deceptive, but personally I rather doubt it). Whatever their reasoning, their design philosophy seems successful, and the critique that MtG is filled with junk cards strikes me as pretty valid as well. Sure, the CCG monetization model is pretty different and drives different incentives, but I think the point remains the same. The whole reason people take to forums to discuss strategies and options for these games is because we enjoy the process of identifying various strategies -- designing the game not just around the play but around that process itself makes sense.

[Ice-Nine]

mmaindi a écrit :

The main author of that article, Mark Rosewater, has been a lead designer on MtG for the better part of the last two decades, and has run a blog and/or podcast on design much of that time. He seems to be pretty invested in honestly discussing their design philosophy.

Yes, the design philosophy of making money. It's entirely possible that he's even convinced himself that it's about good game design and not money, but that's still a lie. As the saying goes, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." He directly profits from making trash cards, so of course he's going to twist logic into pretzels to try to justify it.

mmaindi a écrit :

Whatever their reasoning, their design philosophy seems successful

Yes, financially successful. But does it set a high standard for game design? Absolutely not.

[mmaindi]

Ice-Nine a écrit :

Yes, the design philosophy of making money. It's entirely possible that he's even convinced himself that it's about good game design and not money, but that's still a lie. As the saying goes, "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." He directly profits from making trash cards, so of course he's going to twist logic into pretzels to try to justify it.

Yes, financially successful. But does it set a high standard for game design? Absolutely not.

I need no convincing that corporate profit and good design (for games or any other product) are more at odds than aligned, so I'll certainly agree with that. And I can also agree that even unconsciously, these pressures absolutely will corrupt the reasoning of designers. Is that at play here to at least some degree? Almost certainly.

However, I've seen and heard the same thing with regards to other games with complex build systems, whether those systems are collectible or not. There is *a* design philosophy that says every choice should be structured to offer meaningfully valuable distinct options -- another philosophy, that identifying "best" paths through some build-space is what players enjoy, isn't *wrong* it's just a different philosophy. Both can and do work in different contexts (or sometimes in quite similar contexts). One can certainly lean too hard on the latter, leaving no practical choices for skilled players if there is only one optimal sets of decisions, but I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that as long as an interesting and meaningful set of decisions remains, the build-space can be extremely uneven, giving players not only the enjoyment of making meaningful choices, but of sorting between good and bad choices.

I think it's presumptuous to attribute that entire philosophy to either profit motive or poor design. No design is universal.

[[EOGa] Shade]

I must admit that I didn't check the link. But it looked, by the URL, that it was about 6 years older than deckbuilding games.

When it comes to the original question. Here is a breakdown of how I understand the damage calculation. (I'm not sure about some of it. So I'm partially writing this up to get some confirmations.)


I don't know if static damage given bonuses (like Bless) are given before % modifiers (Fury, Insanity, Powerful, Weakness... I'm sure there are more) But these are listed on the cards themselves.

Then the damage is reduced by mitigation. (before block)
(Edit: I realized that this might be where Mark comes into play. As a sort of anti mitigation. I haven't removed the mention of Mark below. But I am making a note here about it.)

And then it's block.
(If you deal any damage here or later... it's a hit)
(Edit: Since I'm writing these. If there is any block left, it triggers blocked. It doesn't seem to count if the damage is exactly stopped by block. I have not done a lot of testing on this.)

After this comes resistance. This is a multiplyer of 1-resistance. (Meaning that the high end of 95% would result in 0.05 times damge. Where the low end of -95% would mean 1.95 times damage.)
(Any damage here... it's a hit with damage)

Lastly, damage taken modifier comes in. Mark is the only one I can think of right now.

[[EOGa] Shade]

malogoss a écrit :

It's not +5% in most cases. That's only if the enemy res is exactly at 0.

If you're dealing 100 "raw" damage on a 60% resistance enemy, you'd deal 40. Bring his res down to 55%, you'd deal 45. That's +12.5% damage.

On the opposite, an enemy already at -50% res on which you add 1 vulnerable, you'll deal 155 instead of 150. That's +3.3%.

This is 5% btw. Applying relativity here, could trick you a bit.
In both cases it was an increase of 5 damage from the 100.

[malogoss]

EOGa Shade a écrit :

malogoss a écrit :

It's not +5% in most cases. That's only if the enemy res is exactly at 0.

If you're dealing 100 "raw" damage on a 60% resistance enemy, you'd deal 40. Bring his res down to 55%, you'd deal 45. That's +12.5% damage.

On the opposite, an enemy already at -50% res on which you add 1 vulnerable, you'll deal 155 instead of 150. That's +3.3%.

This is 5% btw. Applying relativity here, could trick you a bit.
In both cases it was an increase of 5 damage from the 100.

If you think that raising net damage from 40 to 45 is the same as raising net damage from 150 to 155 (not from 100 raw damage), good luck min maxing damage dealt.

[[EOGa] Shade]

malogoss a écrit :

EOGa Shade a écrit :

This is 5% btw. Applying relativity here, could trick you a bit.
In both cases it was an increase of 5 damage from the 100.

If you think that raising net damage from 40 to 45 is the same as raising net damage from 150 to 155 (not from 100 raw damage), good luck min maxing damage dealt.

Again. Both cases increases the damage dealt by exactly 5.
It feels like your gut is comparing 45 to 155 instead of looking at the two cases separatly.
I recall a similar missunderstanding of how damage was calculated in LoL (Might be the same, but this was many years ago) made a lot of players undervalue armor and magic resist at high values. A lot of talk about how the effect was less the higher you got, but when I looked at the math, it was a flat line no matter how high you got. Every poin of armor (and resist) did exactly as much as the last.
The relativity confused them, as adding 50 armor to 100 is a higher % increase than adding 50 to 200. But in the formulas, it was just 50 more armor in both cases.

[malogoss]

Another way to put it, working with a "raw" 100 damage basis.

Enemy A has 0% resist. Suppose that by investing 10 energy into Sharp, your net damage goes from 100 to 150 damage dealt to that enemy. So +5 net damage per energy spent.

Enemy B has 60% resist. By investing the same 10 energy, you'll go from 40 to 60 net damage, if all other things are equal. That's +2 net damage per energy.

So before investing more energy into Sharp, YES, at this point the impact of +1 Vulnerable is the same in both cases. +5 net damage, you have that right. But let's put that aside for a second.

Say the tipping point in both fights is when you're able to deal 300 damage per attack. A will need 40 energy to get there. B will need 130 energy to get there.

Let's say that to apply and maintain a stack of 8 Vulnerable on an enemy, you need to invest a total of 15 energy. In case A, the +5 net damage per energy becomes +7 damage per energy if you factor in 8 Vulnerable. So to reach 300 damage, you'll need 15 energy (the cost of the vulnerable) and 23 energy worth of Sharp (base damage of 100 becomes 140 due to Vulnerable, need 160 more at +7 per energy), for a 38 energy total. In case B, same 15 energy for Vulnerable, but then what gave +2 net damage per energy due to Sharp becomes +4 net damage. So from 80 damage (accounting for Vulnerable) to 300 damage, that's 55 energy, for a 70 energy total.

Bringing A to 300 damage without Vulnerable : 40 energy
Bringing A to 300 damage with Vulnerable : 38 energy.
Bringing B to 300 damage without Vulnerable : 130 energy.
Bringing B to 300 damage with Vulnerable : 70 energy.

------------

So look at those numbers, and now tell me if 40 to 45 and 100 to 105, from a 1 Vulnerable difference, really meant the same thing at the start of the fight. In a vacuum, +5 net damage = +5 net damage. But this does not account for the fact that Vulnerable is much, much more valuable against high resistance enemies.

Plus the fact that anyone hitting an enemy with already stacked Vulnerable benefits from its lowered resistances. Which is not the case for Chill and Spark, for example, or not the case when Sharp is only applied to a single character, as it is with most cards.

[[EOGa] Shade]

I don't have to tell you.
But I also don't want to.

You have changed the parameters here, and are no longer looking at the effective damge, but instead are looking at cost effectivenes. This is another (possible more) important way to look at effectiveness.

In order to add to this, you can possibly get a better understanding of it, if you don't compare static and %. But why would we want a less complex/complete answer?

We are missing Block in all of this. That's where we can see the difference in... buffs vs curses?
Powerfull vs Vulnerable.
10 stack of Powerfull increases the 100 to 150
10 stacks of Vulnerable can change the 100 to 150. (As long as they have more than -45 resist beforehand, the static damage increase will be the same no matter what. The base damage will depend on the initial resistance. But this is a good thing for our breakdowns, as we can disregard it in the end, and treat it as 0%. the math will check out)
If we take the same 100 in those two, but throw 50 block into the mix. We suddenly see some changes.
(Powerfull 100 damage goes to 150. 100 after block.) +50 from 1
(Vulnerable 100 damage. 50 after block goes to 75.) +25 from any

We can do the same with static increases. Just to give a more complete breakdown.

[Fendelphi]

Having -100% resistance means you deal 2x more damage.
Even with a +50% boost from powerful, the best you can do is 3x damage compared to your base value(example. 50 damage, +50%, vs -100% resistance = 150 damage)

Having 90% resistance means you take 9x less damage. (example, 50 damage vs 90% resistance = 5 damage).
This makes Vulnerable far superior, as it can increase your damage potential by +500%.

Various examples of how this work:

50 damage is modified by -50% resistance(enemy is below 0 due to vulnerable), total damage dealt is 75 damage.

50 damage is increased by +50%(due to powerful), for a total damage dealt of 75.

- This is the only situation where the 2 are equal(when the enemy is at 0% base resistance).


- When an enemy is already below 0%(either naturally or due to other parameters), Powerful will get a bit more value.

Enemy is at -20% resistance and you deal 50 damage, boosted by powerful(+50%), for a total of 90 damage.

Enemy is at -70% resistance(due to vulnerable) and you deal 50 damage, for a total of 85 damage.

- Of course, if you have both, it is even stronger.

Enemy is at -70% resistance and you deal 50 damage, boosted by Powerful(+50%) for a total of 127.5 damage.


- But if the enemy is above 0% resistance, Vulnerable becomes VERY important.

50 damage increased by +50%(due to powerful), then reduced by 20%(due to resistance). Damage total 60 damage.

50 damage, against -30% resistance(due to Vulnerable). Damage total 65 damage.

- In the examples above, we can compare 85 to 90 damage(a little less than 6% increase in damage) and 60 to 65 damage(a little over 8% increase). Now, which one had the highest %-increase in damage? The one with Vulnerability.
Both situations were 20% in favour(either -20% base resistance, so in favour of powerful, or +20% base resistance in favour of vulnerable), but one clearly "did better" in terms of overall damage increase.

And if we go a bit further:

50 damage increased by +50%(due to powerful), then reduced by 50%(due to resistance). Damage total 37.5 damage.

50 damage, reduced by 50%(resistance) which is negated (-50% Vulnerable) is a total of 50 damage dealt.

- In these case, using both effects, will give a total of 75 damage done. That means, compared to only using Powerful, you DOUBLE the damage(+100%). While compared to using only Vulnerable, it is a +50% damage increase. So Vulnerable clearly has a much bigger impact here. Moving on.


50 damage increased by +50%(due to powerful), then reduced by 66.6%(due to resistance).
Damage total 25 damage.

50 damage reduced by 66.6%, which is partially negated(-50% vulnerable) is a total of 41.7 damage dealt.


- Vulnerable also assist the damage from Burn and Spark, while Powerful does not. It also assist all party members, not just the one applying it.
The benefit of Powerful is that it also boost healing and that it can be very good with strong AoE attacks, as it relies less on stacking multiple vulnerable on multiple enemies.
But Vulnerable will overall allow you to deal more damage for most team compositions.

[[EOGa] Shade]

I had to go back while typing this.
I really like all the work here. The math is good. I'm not trying to challenge, Just trying to add some prespective, and point out some (I believe) missconseptions.
It basically comes down to something like choosing between trading 5 coins into 10 coins
Or 15 coins into 20 coins. You can see that you get a higher % return on one of them, but in the end, you end up with 5 more coins no matter what. The % doesn't matter. There is no practical value in thinking about it.

Fendelphi a écrit :

Having -100% resistance means you deal 2x more damage.
Even with a +50% boost from powerful, the best you can do is 3x damage compared to your base value(example. 50 damage, +50%, vs -100% resistance = 150 damage)

Having 90% resistance means you take 9x less damage. (example, 50 damage vs 90% resistance = 5 damage).
This makes Vulnerable far superior, as it can increase your damage potential by +500%.

(Not relevant to the math, but resistance caps at + and - 95%)
This is not a great way to look at this practically. And thinking in terms of +500% is missleading.
We have been talking about 100 damage as base damage. Let's instead say that we are working with all your damage. 100% damage.
The damage you end up with is 100% - resistance (so it could be 5%, it could be 195% of your initial damage).
As long as there are 50% resistance for Vulnerable to reduce (-45 or higher). It will always add 50% to the base damage.

Fendelphi a écrit :

50 damage is modified by -50% resistance(enemy is below 0 due to vulnerable), total damage dealt is 75 damage.

50 damage is increased by +50%(due to powerful), for a total damage dealt of 75.

- This is the only situation where the 2 are equal(when the enemy is at 0% base resistance).


- When an enemy is already below 0%(either naturally or due to other parameters), Powerful will get a bit more value.

Enemy is at -20% resistance and you deal 50 damage, boosted by powerful(+50%), for a total of 90 damage.

Enemy is at -70% resistance(due to vulnerable) and you deal 50 damage, for a total of 85 damage.

- Of course, if you have both, it is even stronger.

Enemy is at -70% resistance and you deal 50 damage, boosted by Powerful(+50%) for a total of 127.5 damage.


- But if the enemy is above 0% resistance, Vulnerable becomes VERY important.

50 damage increased by +50%(due to powerful), then reduced by 20%(due to resistance). Damage total 60 damage.

50 damage, against -30% resistance(due to Vulnerable). Damage total 65 damage.

- In the examples above, we can compare 85 to 90 damage(a little less than 6% increase in damage) and 60 to 65 damage(a little over 8% increase). Now, which one had the highest %-increase in damage? The one with Vulnerability.
Both situations were 20% in favour(either -20% base resistance, so in favour of powerful, or +20% base resistance in favour of vulnerable), but one clearly "did better" in terms of overall damage increase.

Like I demonstrated above. This is not a practical way to look at it. In both cases you get 5 more damage out of your 50. 10% more.

Fendelphi a écrit :

And if we go a bit further:

50 damage increased by +50%(due to powerful), then reduced by 50%(due to resistance). Damage total 37.5 damage.

50 damage, reduced by 50%(resistance) which is negated (-50% Vulnerable) is a total of 50 damage dealt.

- In these case, using both effects, will give a total of 75 damage done. That means, compared to only using Powerful, you DOUBLE the damage(+100%). While compared to using only Vulnerable, it is a +50% damage increase. So Vulnerable clearly has a much bigger impact here.

This is true until we take block into account.
If there is 25 block involved, then you end up with 25 and 25 damage.
If it the block is 55 you end up with 10 damage and 5 remaining block.

Fendelphi a écrit :

Moving on.


50 damage increased by +50%(due to powerful), then reduced by 66.6%(due to resistance).
Damage total 25 damage.

50 damage reduced by 66.6%, which is partially negated(-50% vulnerable) is a total of 41.7 damage dealt.


- Vulnerable also assist the damage from Burn and Spark, while Powerful does not. It also assist all party members, not just the one applying it.
The benefit of Powerful is that it also boost healing and that it can be very good with strong AoE attacks, as it relies less on stacking multiple vulnerable on multiple enemies.
But Vulnerable will overall allow you to deal more damage for most team compositions.