The thread you've been waiting for: highest single foe damage exhibition.

[his1roguenation]

First of all, there are surprisingly some revelations so it might be worth reading :).

My fellow Arisen, this is about the one thing you can't stop thinking about, what's the highest single-hit damage you can deliver?
This stat is shown in your history and was never fully tested because you can't reset it just like that and stat editing was kinda tedious on console.

But we are on PC now and thus everything can be done with enough moral flexibility.

Well, first of all, what exactly is the question we pursue?
There are 3 major skills in the game to be looked at: Arc of Deliverance (Obliteration, Warrior skill), Great Gamble (Ranger) and Great Sacrifice (Magick Archer).
Which one deals most damage? ... ... well fine you smartass, of course it's Great Sacrifice.
But... how much exactly? That, and which of the other 2 skills wins, is the question.
Also, why not testing High Maelstrom? Short answer: it would win, but it's not a single hit bro.
Maelstrom, Fulmination, Immolation completely outlass the skills above, but are they as fun to play? Nah.


To truly get the best possible outcomes, I had to mod my poor character so he has the highest possible strength, magick attack and stamina (Great Gamble). This can be calculated via "start value + 8x base class growth + 90 x advanced class pre-100 growth + 101x advanced class 100+ growth.
This creates a character with these stats: http://i.hmp.me/m/aa2590f12faae42a5557a9bd7fc80ad9.jpg (yeah I don't like flooding my steam acc with pics so bear with this, much much better hoster)
Mind, no augments attached - but they were added later. All 4 of them. Of course also the respective periapt, self-explanatory.

The test subject: http://i.hmp.me/m/84b2771c7d5dc15ea7fb455cc987ba48.jpg
Yes, a rat. Not the ox, not a spider. Deal with it.
Its stats are unknown, but after a few slaps I decided that its resistances can't be that high.


Let us finally begin then:

First and most important: references. What are the numbers we can compare to?
During these tests I wrote no equipment aside weapons (applies to all tests), no periapts and no other boosters.

Regular melee strike, barehanded: 3,301 damage (lol?)
GDF Revenant Wail Comet Shot: 11,400 damage
Perfect Reaper's Arrow using Blast Arrows: 48,443 damage

Now to the actual tests that matter:

GREAT ♥♥♥♥ING GAMBLE

Great Gamble with Blast Arrows: 163,205 damage (you surely expected more :P)
Great Gamble with Blast Arrows using the Savior Ring (+500 stamina): 169.058 damage
Now the self-taught Arisen knows, Great Gamble only deals true damage when it hits a weak spot. And rats, like several other enemies and creatures, don't have one! So I did the smartest thing possible, walked up some floors and aimed for the Cursed Dragon's heart.
- result: 241,693 damage (seems more like it, no?)

Of course the dragon isn't all that weak so I repeated the test on a cyclops... exactly the same number showed up.
Let's leave this for now.

ARC OF meh

So I went up to the rat. Smashed it, like this: http://i.hmp.me/m/67b595fd04db10146b73435d3cc4c1e6.jpg
And the resulting damage was: 95,791

While it is a huge number, all the Warrior haters out there, here is your reason.

Final Flash

First and foremost, the pawn who had to give her life. The best pawn in the world: http://i.hmp.me/m/37fa70de3e75e0950d33f241a814034c.jpg

Great Sacrifice on a rat (can you guess it?): 241,693 damage
This is the moment when you realize, there is a limit how much you can deal, or at least a limit how much the game registers.
HOWEVER, I did not use periapts for this one shot. I then repeated Great Sacrifice with 4x periapt and this happened: http://i.hmp.me/m/cde9022096373e27f4080c6dd4612e1c.jpg
Yep, the rat survived, my pawn died, and the damage was: 378,494 (!)


So yeah, it seems 241,693 is what the game returns as a max output value in terms of your behavior, but by skipping a certain breakpoint you can deal so much damage that healthbars get glitched, not going to think deeply about how this happens, but can't be that far away from older games' problems where 0 hp=immortality.
This also leaves us with the thought that Great Gamble deals more damage than that, since it must deal more damage to the Cyclops than to the dragon, but even if so, the damage is likely (!) smaller than the one of Great Sacrifice, as we were not able to test it on an enemy as weak as a rat.

proof: http://i.hmp.me/m/dd4dd56c1cab1440cfd72a98a5337383.jpg
(to newbies, yes the game stops counting at some point)


And last but not least, a random screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/3rpLyNj.jpg

Hope it was fun while it lasted.

[Greb]

The Coinpurse of Charity deals 14x your base strength, with an Assassin solid build you can hit 15,000 damage with one throw at the cost of 10,000 gold. That's pretty evil, but definitely not the most damaging...but for a cheap item with no skill requirements, it's a fantastic go-to killer.

Not sure if it scales off any other boosts such as Crackdown, though. Definitely doesn't with Conquerers I don't believe, or Strength boosting equipment.

I've one shot the Gazer with it once, but that's nothing special really.

It doesn't quite come close to landing 241,693 damage of course, but it's still pretty powerful in a small package. Money is power, eh?

[Rizilliant]

you're using decimal points, and its confusing.

[otakon17]

Originally posted by Rizilliant:

you're using decimal points, and its confusing.

This, it's a comma for thousands, COMMA!

[his1roguenation]

I hate commas :/
but I guess I should fix, thanks guys

[Wraeclast_Ranger]

I'd be interested to see what Iraklis + Arc of Obliteration + 1.8x STR from Augments + 4x Conq Perries can pump out.

[his1roguenation]

Thanks for the input, I guess I can talk about some of this:

First of all, yeah, the Coin Purse can oneshot the Gazer even at level 1, making it a pretty crazy way to speed-level in hard mode by going to BBI as soon as possible. Funny little item.


Update on Arc of Obliteration:

First of all, the damage I stated is the damage of the actual swing. It hits only stuff at the height of ~your loins, means a rat wouldn't even be hit by that unless it's somehow elevated. The actual shockwave deals around .5 the damage of said swing and is basically a second hit, raising the total damage output to around 150,000.
Since I was clearly talking of single hits, I excluded these thoughts in the first post.

Originally posted by Wraeclast_Ranger:

^

I totally forgot about that weapon.
While I can't be sure that this calculation is right and I won't edit my save again (deleted it and restored my original already), using a perfect Iraklis should result in the following:
With my GDF Devil's Nail I had a total strength value of around 4100, with Iraklis that value would be around 1033, around 1/4 of what I had with the Nail. But with the 6x critical multiplier, that total damage output should be 1.5x what the Nail was able to deliver (quite impressive, I admit), making the swing deal ~150,000 on its own and raising the total damage to 225,000. Arc doesn't seem all that crappy all of a sudden.

However, even in the most extreme cases, Great Gamble wins, even without blast arrows. >: )
Unless there is something I did wrong, you can't exclude that.

regards

[GrayHound]

Originally posted by otakon17:

Originally posted by Rizilliant:

you're using decimal points, and its confusing.

This, it's a comma for thousands, COMMA!

, = decimal. For thousands it's... NOTHING because, well, there is nothing, ok? You could use a space if you have trouble with counting large numbers.

[his1roguenation]

It depends on your country whether you use space, comma or point. US and GB always use commas for thousands and points as decimal separators, thus I actually changed my post to fit that.