Something I've Never Understood: Elemental Damage/Weakness Numbers

[Eguzky]

I've played World & Rise, but this concept still eludes me.

Assume the Monster has Electric weakness: 20, on it's body.
Let's say a SnS weapon does 130 Raw and 15 Electric, yeah?
But I could also use a straight Raw weapon with 180 Raw.

* Is it worth using the Electric weapon over the pure Raw?
* What's the breakdown in weakness damage? Like, how does 20 Electric Weakness compare to 15 Electric weakness? I know the bigger number is better, so a 0 elemental resist means they no-sell that element.
* How does 15 Elec damage vary from 20 Elec damage? Is it a flat number? IE: The weapon does a flat 15 Electric damage before being modified by weaknesses/resistances?

I used SnS in my example, because I understand just ever so slightly that weapons with higher attack speeds benefit from Elemental damage more than slower weapons.
IE: If I had replaced the SnS with Hammer or GS, the answer would be 'Use Raw'.
Though I don't know why. x.x

[Nihrahk]

I'm not exactly an expert in that, but to me just going pure raw is usually worth more in most cases. Either that, or using a status like paralyze or sleep. Elemental would only be something to consider IMO if it interacts with the monster more than just a few extra points in damage. Such as fire softening Lavasioth's hide for example.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Nihrahk:

I'm not exactly an expert in that, but to me just going pure raw is usually worth more in most cases. Either that, or using a status like paralyze or sleep. Elemental would only be something to consider IMO if it interacts with the monster more than just a few extra points in damage. Such as fire softening Lavasioth's hide for example.

Depends on the weapon type.

[zmanbuilder]

A better comparison is a 180 raw vs a 170 with 25 elemental damage, in such case the elemental weapon will do slightly more damage to the monster than the raw only weapon.

[Tefty]

Very very high level:

Element and Raw damage are 2 different multipliers with overlapping factors.
Some examples of factors: Buffs, Sharpness and Hitzones points.
There is also an elemental modifier.

Basically you work out your raw only dmg numbers and then the elemental numbers dmg numbers and then your elemental numbers also have an extra modifier per hit and this is where the advantage comes in for faster swinging weapons.

Compare a GS and a Lance for example, in the time a GS takes 1 swing a Lance can do 5 hits therefore the lance gets a bigger boost to elemental dmg due to its 5 hits compared to 1 in the same timespan.

There are some slight adjustments and calculations to this with slower weapons but overall the simple logic is fast swinging weapons benefit greatly from elemental compared to slower hitting weapons but this is some real geek math sh*t min / maxing now.

I usually go with elemental where available unless I got a weapon that has a huge raw difference, at the end of the day i'm not a hardcore uber player, I want to craft all the weapons eventually (Lance and then GS) and i'm in no rush to burn out at end game or blast to the end and then go backwards to do easier content i fast forwarded over.

I'm a simple old man that likes to complete the current level and tier of weapons before pushing on as eventually towards the end you go "ow i want that weapon" and then realise you are missing all the previous ones.

Savour the time and challenge of each step rank!

Replaying MHR in the run up to WIlds and getting my Lance practice in I realised tonight how much i detest Bazelgeuse as a Lance player, the chip dmg from him and bombs is insane.

[AurumHawke]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Eguzky:

* Is it worth using the Electric weapon over the pure Raw?
* What's the breakdown in weakness damage? Like, how does 20 Electric Weakness compare to 15 Electric weakness? I know the bigger number is better, so a 0 elemental resist means they no-sell that element.
* How does 15 Elec damage vary from 20 Elec damage? Is it a flat number? IE: The weapon does a flat 15 Electric damage before being modified by weaknesses/resistances?

First answer depends on the other two:
Hitzones values are the % of damage a part will take for that damage type. 0% is of course 0 damage. 20% is the high point for Element and 60% is the high point for raw (higher values exist, these are just typical and approximate).
Raw ATK and Element are the base value. Flat values.

Then the weapon type, SnS in this case.
Standard hits with an SnS are going to be around 15-25% of Raw and 70% of element (fast weapons/attacks do less than advertised). SnS does have stronger attacks it would prefer to use instead.
GS would be closer to 100% and 100% for a basic Charge attack (GS goes higher for both).

So 130 Raw and 15 Thunder or 180 Raw SnS - since these look like "True" values:
20-33 Raw and 11 Thunder vs 27-45 Raw before hitzone.
12-20 and 2 Thunder vs 16-27 Raw after hitzone.
20 Thunder instead of 15 would add about 1 Thunder to the result.
170 Raw instead of 180 would subtract about 1-2 Raw from the result.

These are approximations, which should at least get the concept across.
It's still rather lengthy.

[DarkWilSin666]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Eguzky:

I've played World & Rise, but this concept still eludes me.

Assume the Monster has Electric weakness: 20, on it's body.
Let's say a SnS weapon does 130 Raw and 15 Electric, yeah?
But I could also use a straight Raw weapon with 180 Raw.

* Is it worth using the Electric weapon over the pure Raw?
* What's the breakdown in weakness damage? Like, how does 20 Electric Weakness compare to 15 Electric weakness? I know the bigger number is better, so a 0 elemental resist means they no-sell that element.
* How does 15 Elec damage vary from 20 Elec damage? Is it a flat number? IE: The weapon does a flat 15 Electric damage before being modified by weaknesses/resistances?

I used SnS in my example, because I understand just ever so slightly that weapons with higher attack speeds benefit from Elemental damage more than slower weapons.
IE: If I had replaced the SnS with Hammer or GS, the answer would be 'Use Raw'.
Though I don't know why. x.x

Monsters weakness exploit it sometimes it has effects to remove the fire around them or keep them grounded or to use their dragon abiities and keep them up longer or to harm you. Its all depends on the monster and if its even worth it to build against them also does more break damage to parts...

[zmanbuilder]

elemental is just bonus damage stacked on top of raw, so the 130 raw with a measly 15 elemental damage will be much worse than the straight 180 raw SnS.

Reason it is better on fast weapons is due to returns, lets say you are doing 10 damage per hit with raw, but elemental will bring that up to 13 damage per hit, a whopping 3 extra damage, if you are doing 50 damage with a greatsword then 3 extra damage does not matter as much.

If a monster has a 0 for a element, that means it is immune to that damage and will only take the raw from your weapon.

[zero]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l_Bzy2c3xc

before you get on me for 'this guy sucks' or w/e: i dont even know who they are, i skimmed ot see the math they were showing was to ensure they were explaining it well

[Eguzky]

Ursprungligen skrivet av zmanbuilder:

elemental is just bonus damage stacked on top of raw, so the 130 raw with a measly 15 elemental damage will be much worse than the straight 180 raw SnS.

Reason it is better on fast weapons is due to returns, lets say you are doing 10 damage per hit with raw, but elemental will bring that up to 13 damage per hit, a whopping 3 extra damage, if you are doing 50 damage with a greatsword then 3 extra damage does not matter as much.

If a monster has a 0 for a element, that means it is immune to that damage and will only take the raw from your weapon.

Uhh..If an weapon only does 3 Elemental damage; Sure, it's bad. But usually they do 10+.

On top of that, assuming it's 'only' doing the flat number (Be it 3 or 10 or 15), ignores elemental resistances.

To use your example; It would be 10 Raw + 3 Elemental modified by Resistances.
So that +3 would be closer to +4 or +5, which would be 50% more damage on your 10 Raw weapon, making it +14 or +15.

But that's just a guess, since I still don't understand how a Monster's elemental resist numbers work.
If a monster has 20 Lightning Resist: Is the '20' a flat 'add 20 damage'? Or is it 'add 20% to elemental damage'?

---

Still, I've been told to use Elemental weapons with DS or SnS, even if Raw is better, so there must be something to how the Elemental stat on weapons interacts with the Resist on a monster to make it stronger than it looks on the surface.
Which makes some sense; Why even HAVE elements if Raw would outperform in every situation, given that Elemental weapons are sometimes -30 damage (Or more) below Raw weapons.

[zmanbuilder]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Eguzky:

Ursprungligen skrivet av zmanbuilder:

elemental is just bonus damage stacked on top of raw, so the 130 raw with a measly 15 elemental damage will be much worse than the straight 180 raw SnS.

Reason it is better on fast weapons is due to returns, lets say you are doing 10 damage per hit with raw, but elemental will bring that up to 13 damage per hit, a whopping 3 extra damage, if you are doing 50 damage with a greatsword then 3 extra damage does not matter as much.

If a monster has a 0 for a element, that means it is immune to that damage and will only take the raw from your weapon.

Uhh..If an weapon only does 3 Elemental damage; Sure, it's bad. But usually they do 10+.

On top of that, assuming it's 'only' doing the flat number (Be it 3 or 10 or 15), ignores elemental resistances.

To use your example; It would be 10 Raw + 3 Elemental modified by Resistances.
So that +3 would be closer to +4 or +5, which would be 50% more damage on your 10 Raw weapon, making it +14 or +15.

But that's just a guess, since I still don't understand how a Monster's elemental resist numbers work.
If a monster has 20 Lightning Resist: Is the '20' a flat 'add 20 damage'? Or is it 'add 20% to elemental damage'?

---

Still, I've been told to use Elemental weapons with DS or SnS, even if Raw is better, so there must be something to how the Elemental stat on weapons interacts with the Resist on a monster to make it stronger than it looks on the surface.
Which makes some sense; Why even HAVE elements if Raw would outperform in every situation, given that Elemental weapons are sometimes -30 damage (Or more) below Raw weapons.

Elemental resist is how much of the elemental damage will be negated, I used simple numbers as MH has number bloat, the high element weapon with low raw i have seen have elemental damage in the hundreds, but due to number bloat it is hard to say exactly how much true damage will be dealt.

Lets say the head of the monster has the highest weakness level to an element, that means it would take the full damage, the whopping 3, but another part may only take a bonus 1 or 2 damage.

[Ame-kun]

from my understanding elemental damage, status inflict, and etc applies on every hit. So weapons that do several small hits are better for elemental damage than weapons that like to do one big high motion value hit. It gets more complicated sometimes, like supposedly Perfect Rush on SnS is better for Raw swords rather than Elemental ones, but I don't know exactly how that all plays out.

Oh, also, shield bashes don't apply element or status. But they apply bashing and stun damage (and maybe some fatigue?) so they're still worth using on certain monster parts, namely the head. They also never bounce and your sharpness gauge doesn't lower when using them.

[zmanbuilder]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Ame-kun:

from my understanding elemental damage, status inflict, and etc applies on every hit. So weapons that do several small hits are better for elemental damage than weapons that like to do one big high motion value hit. It gets more complicated sometimes, like supposedly Perfect Rush on SnS is better for Raw swords rather than Elemental ones, but I don't know exactly how that all plays out.

Oh, also, shield bashes don't apply element or status. But they apply bashing and stun damage (and maybe some fatigue?) so they're still worth using on certain monster parts, namely the head. They also never bounce and your sharpness gauge doesn't lower when using them.

It looks like wilds will have elemental damage on shield hits now.

Also status is only on every third hit for melee, but the full status is applied from every ranged hit.

[Ame-kun]

Oh! I didn't know that. I guess that still means fast hits is better for status, but fair enough.