How does damage calculation work in this game?

[lazymagpie]

It took me an embarassingly long time to notice that your weapon doesn't deal a fixed amount, but rather a damage number in a certain range. Curious and annoyed, I did some testing on the training dummy with the following setup:

- test target is the passive training dummy in the hotel courstyard on new game (1st run)

- Weapon is Two Dragons +5 at 30 technique, a technique handle and no relevant amulets or damage nodes

- I always do one light attack from neutral (the stab) to the front of the dummy

- I repair my weapon after each hit, I also did some tests without repairing to see if it changes anything

- I reposition myself into roughly the same spot after each hit, with some positional changes to see if it changes anything

- I also make sure to wait between attacks until the dummy has fully regenerated and if applicable until groggy has worn off

I didn't do a mathematically relevant amount of tests, but my findings were the following

- the stab dealt damage equal to a number between 355 and 419, with it being weighted towards roughly 380 damage, which is wild in itself

- Remaining durability did not influence the damage numbers as far as I can tell

- position or distance does not seem to influence the damage either if you are hitting a non-armored target

- It seems like the first hit after a rest is more likely to deal damage on the higher end than the lower end of the damage spectrum, but I cannot really confirm this

Adding 5 more points increases the damage number on the stat screen quite a bit (15 points), but how this translates to actual damage numbers is unclear. You seem to get a slightly higher damage ceiling, while the damage floor stays the same, though it seems like it could be occuring less often.

I'm sure someone else has already done more thourough testing / looked at the code behind those numbers, but I wanted to share this anyway :)

[Baelfyr]

Somebody said it was 20 percent up/down. Either way it's a weird mechanic, like they tried to create the weapon sweet spot system from Souls but messed it up.

[lazymagpie]

I would definitely prefer it when each of your weapons attacks just dealt a fixed amount. Some attacks dealt up to 33% percent more damage despite being used in similar situations, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why (running attack on the katana from above between 299 and 402 damage on the butler puppets from chapter 6), unless it's really just a random number in a range

[Chad "The King" ThunderCuck]

did you reset all your p-organs before testing? theres abailities that add damage based on weapon durability, attack type, position in combo sting (i think i remember somethign like that), etc. also with some weapons there seems to be a "sweet spot" for attacks.

[Powercrank]

the random damage combined with seemingly deliberate obfuscation of important information really makes me think the game probably has some serious balance problems that have been hidden from the players.
I'm willing to bet most of the people who found the game "easy" before the patch actually just stumbled across an overpowered build and aren't actually good. I know that happened to me.

[Chad "The King" ThunderCuck]

Originally posted by Powercrank:

the random damage combined with seemingly deliberate obfuscation of important information really makes me think the game probably has some serious balance problems that have been hidden from the players.
I'm willing to bet most of the people who found the game "easy" before the patch actually just stumbled across an overpowered build and aren't actually good. I know that happened to me.

the final boss made me realize that was the case for me. i mean, he only took 3 tries, but the 2nd time was just him throwing me all over the room till my estus was out. 3rd time i had to just suck it up, equip a light weapon, and stop trying to spam my gun arm.

[lazymagpie]

Originally posted by Chad "The King" ThunderCuck:

did you reset all your p-organs before testing? theres abailities that add damage based on weapon durability, attack type, position in combo sting (i think i remember somethign like that), etc. also with some weapons there seems to be a "sweet spot" for attacks.

I did not, I did check however if I had any damage abilities beforehand (I didn't)

[Chad "The King" ThunderCuck]

Originally posted by lazymagpie:

Originally posted by Chad "The King" ThunderCuck:

did you reset all your p-organs before testing? theres abailities that add damage based on weapon durability, attack type, position in combo sting (i think i remember somethign like that), etc. also with some weapons there seems to be a "sweet spot" for attacks.

I did not, I did check however if I had any damage abilities beforehand (I didn't)

dunno then, i mean i have some variation in my damage, maybe 10-30 damage, so i think thats about what youre seeing, yeah?

[lazymagpie]

Update: With the respec cost drastically reduced (thanks Neowiz!), I took the opportunity to do some more extreme testing. Setup is the same as before, except I did one set of tests at 60 technique, and another set at 100. The stab at 60 shows approximately the same damage ranges like at 30, with the occasional spike to 430. At 100, it gets interesting, because now the damage never dipped below 402 over a set of 20 stabs, with occasional spikes to 497 damage.
I don't think the weapon scaling is working as intended rn beyond 30, but someone would need to look at the code under the hood to be sure