Combat mechanic breakdown?

[RindFisch]

Just stumbled across this game yesterday and already decided to splurge for the full version from the demo. Great game. Have a lot of fun. Although I do have some questions.
Are the combat mechanics actually explained anywhere? The in-game descriptions are really vague and while I broadly know what the stats are for, I have no idea what they ACTUALLY do. Like, I know the attackers accuracy has to "beat" the targets dodge, but how? How high is the chance to hit if both values are the same? How fast does the chance change if one value is higher? Is it an absolute or relative comparison?
Same thing with hit vs. armor / block. Why is block the only defense with both a value and a percentage? What does the block value even do, when it doesn't decide if you block in the first place? Is the damage reduced by it if you succeed at the percentage check? Is it an absolute or relative reduction?
I don't even know how damage is decided. Hit seems to be the upper bound, but there's some variation, it seems? Or maybe that's the result of the defense layers.I feel kinda blind trying to evaluate the relative value of certain items and powers, because while higher numbers are obviously "better", I don't really know what gaining 50 dodge would actually DOES.

On an unrelated note, why is the damage potential called "hit"? That doesn't feel like a good name. First, there's already an important in-game concept called "hit", so you're doubling up on terminology and second, an intuitive thought about what "hit" means had me guessing "accuracy", not "damage". Are there any plans to rename the stat to something more evocative of its actual effect?

[Ulfsire]

Originally posted by RindFisch:

Just stumbled across this game yesterday and already decided to splurge for the full version from the demo. Great game. Have a lot of fun. Although I do have some questions.
Are the combat mechanics actually explained anywhere? The in-game descriptions are really vague and while I broadly know what the stats are for, I have no idea what they ACTUALLY do. Like, I know the attackers accuracy has to "beat" the targets dodge, but how? How high is the chance to hit if both values are the same? How fast does the chance change if one value is higher? Is it an absolute or relative comparison?
Same thing with hit vs. armor / block. Why is block the only defense with both a value and a percentage? What does the block value even do, when it doesn't decide if you block in the first place? Is the damage reduced by it if you succeed at the percentage check? Is it an absolute or relative reduction?
I don't even know how damage is decided. Hit seems to be the upper bound, but there's some variation, it seems? Or maybe that's the result of the defense layers.I feel kinda blind trying to evaluate the relative value of certain items and powers, because while higher numbers are obviously "better", I don't really know what gaining 50 dodge would actually DOES.

On an unrelated note, why is the damage potential called "hit"? That doesn't feel like a good name. First, there's already an important in-game concept called "hit", so you're doubling up on terminology and second, an intuitive thought about what "hit" means had me guessing "accuracy", not "damage". Are there any plans to rename the stat to something more evocative of its actual effect?

Thanks, this is something that’s been an issue for a while. There is a relatively detailed breakdown if you mouse over all the different fields in the inventory, but yeah the whole attack/hit/damage thing is definitely one of the more non-intuitive elements

[RindFisch]

Well, could you tell me how it works? Maybe we can put it in a steam guide, at least, until it's in the game. I think that's important information to plan builds. I haven't found any detailed breakdowns yet. The description of armor implies it always works 90% of the time if the value is higher than hit and never if it's lower, which would obviously be terrible if that were the case, as armor increases would be literally useless 99% of the time.

[Ulfsire]

Originally posted by RindFisch:

Well, could you tell me how it works? Maybe we can put it in a steam guide, at least, until it's in the game. I think that's important information to plan builds. I haven't found any detailed breakdowns yet. The description of armor implies it always works 90% of the time if the value is higher than hit and never if it's lower, which would obviously be terrible if that were the case, as armor increases would be literally useless 99% of the time.

Armor always reduces damage from attack hits, depending on your resistance to the damage type if it's non-physical, unless that 10% chance happens (you'll get a "penetrates your armor" message)

Block is the same, except its chance to fail is dependent on a variable block chance (up to 90%) (increased by dexterity, each held weapon, hand armor, and specifically a shield in your off hand)

The "equal to or higher than" language refers to if it will trigger the "blocked" or "shrugged off" event, it will still reduce damage unless it fails

Dodge, Accuracy, and Hit "score" are all "rolls" from 1 to that value, so an enemy with much higher hit than your block can still get "shrugged off," and 3000 dodge can still get hit by 1000 accuracy

None of these apply to damage dealt by abilities, like Trample, which is done directly without interacting with dodge / block / armor

[murmulous]

Par exemple, to go through step by step for my own benefit. let us say that I have 500 Dodge, 50% Block Chance, 500 Block "Power", and 500 Armour, and an enemy with 500 Hit and 500 Accuracy is attacking me - the devil!

Attack & Dodge: 10% of the time, he just hits me. 90% of the time, because his Accuracy is 500 and my Dodge is 500, we both roll from 1 to 500. If their roll is greater than (or equal to?) mine, they hit me (i.e. about 50% of the time). Otherwise, it is Dodged - so overall I have a 0.9*0.5=45% chance to dodge. (Alternatively, we compare numbers every time and 10% of the time I get hit when I should have dodged - the maths is the same).

Hit: If the attack doesn't get Dodged, it will cause a Hit. Now we are comparing against damage rolls, so the attacker will roll between 1 and their 500 "Hit"/Max Damage. I believe that Block is applied before Armor, which means if you have an On Shrug Off trigger you need to both not Dodge and not Block to activate it, however Blocking is generally less likely to happen due to the % activation + flat reduction.

Block: I have a 50% Block Chance. This number is capped at 90% per UI - so we don't need to adjust, there is simply a 50% chance I get to do Block reduction against incoming damage. If I do block, and his attack is physical and doesn't have the 90% armor penetration ability, I get to reduce the incoming damage by my 500 Block "Power". If it wasn't physical and I have no resistances to the type, I would only reduce the damage by 125 (25%). On average our guy is gonna roll (very slighty over) 250, so if it was physical I would reduce it below 0 due to my 500 Block "Power" and Block the attack, if it were non-physical and I had no resistances I would reduce it to 125.
Due to 50% Block Chance and 500 Block "Power", on average I block 250 phys damage and 0.5*500*(25%+resistance%) all other damage.

Armor: Nice and simple - applies 90% of the time. Otherwise the same thing with resistance and penetration as Block and subtracts from incoming damage. This means we reduce incoming phys damage by 450 on average, or 0.9*500*(25%+resistance%) all other damage.

Damage: If we didn't Dodge or Block or Shrug Off the damage, we get dealt however much damage is left over after Block/Armor calculations. If we have resistances (e.g. to pierce or fire), these reduce this number multiplicatively.

A few questions do spring to mind -
- Is the above Accurate? Did I Hit the mark? Or did I "Hit" the mark? :)
- Some effects say "performs a Hit" rather than Attack or "deals damage". Both Ulfsire above and the UI says Dodge/Armor/Dodge don't apply to "non-Attack sources", but reading the rest of Block / Armor it's unclear if they apply to Hits that aren't from Attacks (i.e. can't be Dodged). My assumption is that an Attack does a Hit if it's not dodged, but do the same damage reduction calculations apply if the Hit isn't the result of an Attack hitting?
- Would a name like Power or Potency be better than Hit for the max damage value? Or perhaps something more apt is already considered?

[murmulous]

Golly, what a long post! Non-math important bits at the bottom.

[RindFisch]

If the above is correct, it seems quite harsh on dodging in particular. It has a 10% failure chance on top of having to roll for effectiveness (which already included a chance of "failure" just by rolling really low) and if it gets beaten, it's the only defensive stat that doesn't even lessen the blow. Does it really need the 10% guaranteed fail chance?

And yeah, as in the OP, I also think "hit" is not a good name for the damage potential. "Power" or something would be better.

[murmulous]

I think the 10% fail on all defensive stats is pretty fair, even in the white-room example above with all the stats at 500 Dodge is balanced out by completely preventing damage.

If fighting a monster dealing 500 damage flat every attack with the stats above:
Dodge prevents 0.45*500 = 225 damage on average per attack
Block prevents 0.55*(0.5*500) = 137.5 on average per attack
Armor prevents 0.55*(0.5*(0.9*500)) = 123.75 on average per attack.

If it were elemental damage, without other resistances the other defense types would be 1/4 as effective (on average).

In practice Dodge is possibly even a little better than block/armour, because it prevents "on hit" effects triggering which can be pretty brutal for many builds (high tangle or corrosion stacks come to mind), and it automatically prevents "on damage" which the other defensive types only do if they beat the incoming damage.
I don't know the exact maths on how quickly you can scale Dodge vs. enemy Accuracy / Block/Armor vs. enemy "Hit", but all of them have powers that allow you to stack them to very high numbers, maybe a different limit is pref for different stats but 10% is simple enough to prevent super degen builds.

This is very white room though, I'm not sure how useful the numbers above are. Rather, stacking multiple defenses is the best strategy. Better than all of these options is health, there are some very good discussions about defense in https://steamcommunity.com/app/2128270/discussions/0/3878221099914922304/

[JackThejil]

So far as scaling goes, it's... wonky? Enemy accuracy scales up tremendously slower than Hit (high cycle in particular, there's regularly 2-4 digit differences between an enemy's accuracy and their hit, and it's fairly rare to see acc break 1k), from what I've seen, so there's an argument there Dodge is better on that front?

But block and armor has the strength scaling and several more ways of stacking buffs, so your numbers on those two also spike much, much harder than you can pump dodge (easily, anyway).

Corrosion's also fairly rare, while freeze and entangle aren't (nevermind the master powers), so you get dodge debuffs more often than block or armor ones... and the block/armor ones you do get are less severe anyway due to block and armor numbers being much easier to stack up high.

Functionally, I just don't know, heh. It's remarkably messy and then at the end of the day you're just stacking health anyway because for all doing a defense build is certainly fun all the armor or block or dodge in the world won't save you from a bad roll but having enough health (and healing) just might :V

[murmulous]

Thanks for the practical detail @JackTheJill. I was wondering if the correct way to compare them was actually the potency of their "on [effect]" powers, but with the number of options comparing the relative offensive & defensive utility of diff builds requires a lot more experience than I have. How much does a liturgist care about any of these stats other than HP? What about Blood Link, and so on. Questions only time or one of the homeboys can answer :v)


Bringing back to general fight mechanics though, my belief was that Attacks cause a Hit if they land, but that all Hits were dealt with basically the same (inc. Armor/Block reduction) regardless of if it's an Attack or a Hit triggered by another effect like Pugilism or the Kaza Whip. Based on "Does not effect damage from non-Attack sources" it shouldn't, but am not sure.

[RindFisch]

That's a good question. It's clear that powers that directly cause "damage" don't care about any of those defenses at all (which makes all of them inherently weaker than just stacking HP, as they simply don't work against some attacks), but what if a power causes a 100 hit hit? (I really dislike the double use of that term)?
Does that mean it can't be dodged and "hits" automatically, but can be blocked and shrugged off? Or is it basically the same as a "damage" effect, ignoring defenses entirely, with the only difference being that it activates "on hit" effects?
EDIT: The help-text says hits ignore defense, so I assume they can't be dodged? They are like "damage" in that way? That means causing "hits" is strictly superior to causing "damage". Good to know to evaluate powers.

[murmulous]

Good spot, tested it and can see that e.g. Projection deals the same to enemies of different Armors, so a Hit is the same as "Damage" except it also triggers "On Hit" effects.
So what we know is:
- an Attack does a contested Accuracy/Dodge check to see if it Hits. An Attack's Hit damage based on a roll on the attacker's "Hit", and can be reduced by Block and Armor (and Resistances) as above. Can cause "On Attack", "On Hit", and "On Damage" (and correspondingly "On Dodge", "On Block", and "On Shrug Off", as well as "On Being Attacked/Being Hit/Taking Damage")
- a Hit can also happen from a non-attack. These deal damage automatically, and the damage from these Hits can be a flat number or based on weapon "Hit" (depending on ability), but is not reduced by Block or Armor. Will cause "On Hit" and "On Damage" (+"On Being Hit/Taking Damage")
- abilities can also "cause Damage". This is the same as a non-Attack Hit, except it will only cause "On Damage" triggers (+"On Taking Damage"). The only way to reduce non-Attack Hits and pure "Damage" is with Resistances and effects that reduce damage.

[murmulous]

Above is specifics, but looking around it's impressive how much of this *is* relayed to the player in a relatively small amount of text, mostly in the inventory page - although some clarification helps. This is something I like about Brogue's description system too.