Blowpipes vs Bows dmg

[Lindor 438]

I know that Blowpipes are supposed to do less damage than bows, but this damage gap gets truly massive in later levels for me up to the point where a bow does x5 times more damage than a blowpipe. Is that normal? The Wiki states that Blowpipes should gain damage with Dexterity. Is it possible that EE disabled that? I don't have another explanation atm.

[gogoblender 3,069]

3 hours ago, Lindor said:

I know that Blowpipes are supposed to do less damage than bows, but this damage gap gets truly massive in later levels for me up to the point where a bow does x5 times more damage than a blowpipe. Is that normal? The Wiki states that Blowpipes should gain damage with Dexterity. Is it possible that EE disabled that? I don't have another explanation atm.

I love blowpipes,

Bows have more damage per strike but the amount of damage or hits that the blow pipes can do it’s supposed to be higher over a period of time as compared to bows .. This was my experience and that of others playing up to Naomi… I don’t think I ever saw someone handling a bow at niobium levels though  that could’ve been fun

Kill speed with blow pipes is supposed to be faster than with a bow no matter what the damage per strike as the travel speed for the blow pipes is instant

😸

gogo

[Flix 5,116]

Vanilla weapon damage ranking:

• 50%: Throwing Stone
• 70%: Throwing Potion
• 75%: Dagger / Fistweapon 
• 90%: Throwing Dagger / Shortbow
• 95%: Blowgun 
• 96%: Club / Shortsword
• 99%: Energy Pistol 
• 100%: Longsword / Saber / Katana / Axe / Lightsaber / Mage Staff
• 102%: Recurve Bow
• 104%: Hammer
• 105%: Throwing Star
• 108%: Longbow
• 110%: Barsteward Sword
• 118%: 2H Energy Weapon 
• 119%: 2H Mage Staff
• 130%: Pole
• 140%: 2H Sword / Javelin
• 145%: 2H Lightsaber
• 150%: Halberd
• 160%: 2H Axe
• 166%: 2H Hammer

EE 3.0+ weapon damage ranking:

• 70%: Throwing Stone
• 75%: Dagger / Fistweapon / Throwing Potion / Throwing Star / Throwing Dagger
• 95%: Shortsword / Club / Blowgun
• 100%: Longsword / Saber / Katana / Axe / Lightsaber / Energy Pistol / Mage Staff
• 105%: Hammer
• 110%: Barsteward Sword
• 120%: Shortbow
• 140%: Longbow
• 160%: 2H Sword / 2H Lightsaber / Recurve Bow
• 165%: Pole / Javelin 
• 170%: Halberd / 2H Energy Weapon / 2H Mage Staff
• 175%: 2H Axe
• 180%: 2H Hammer

So as you can see blowguns were not changed but bows were improved.  This was a discussion you took part in to an extent in the main EE thread.

[Lindor 438]

16 minutes ago, Flix said:

So as you can see blowguns were not changed but bows were improved.  This was a discussion you took part in to an extent in the main EE thread.

Oh you have a memory like Data, really impressive! Found it in the S2EE Topic, that's where Caledor's awesome Attack Speed list comes from, a discussion I completely forgot about

That however does not explain the dmg gap getting larger over time. Judging by these values, Longbows should do around 1.47x of Blowpipe Dmg, not really close to the values I'm seeing.

[Flix 5,116]

Hmm, the only thing I can think of offhand is that the material the item is made from also has an effect.  An item assigned material  "W_wood", is going to have lower base damage than the same item with material "W_metal_elvensteel".  But bows and blowpipes should mostly be wood variations.  Another possibility is some flat damage coming into play somehow.  Of course specific examples will help narrow down the cause. 

[Lindor 438]

I didn't have time today until now, but I'm gonna prepare some sort of spreadsheet then.

 

EDIT: Bonusgroup 159 seems to be unused. The idea of writing programs to find unused bonusgroups came into my mind.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Lindor

[Flix 5,116]

3 hours ago, Lindor said:

Bonusgroup 159 seems to be unused. The idea of writing programs to find unused bonusgroups came into my mind.

It is used. Each usable itemtype has a "base" bonusgroup applied in typification.txt, which is also where I reworked the base damage scaling.

[Lindor 438]

Finished. I hope it's not too confusing. On the left I listed all the dmg as shown in the tooltips, on the right list I took the average from the lower and higher number of the tooltip dmg and the bottom right is where my data analysis is.

Take it with a grain of salt. Or two.

• I used a character editor to create the characters at the levels in question.
• All the items were freshly dropped and might have contained tooltip bugs (in fact the weapons contained attack speed malus tooltip bugs)
• The chars I question had no smithing arts or jewelry socketed which might have influenced the damage shown on the char where I noticed the damage gap
• Since one naturally looks only for the weapons with highest damage output, there is a natural bias which restricts the weapons where I noticed the dmg gap to a few

Here's the spreadsheet:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13r3z6l5kcVjGrzTCijBRxFWcGwETpnts/view?usp=sharing

2 hours ago, Flix said:

It is used. Each usable itemtype has a "base" bonusgroup applied in typification.txt, which is also where I reworked the base damage scaling.

Thx. You saved me from unnecessary work.

[Flix 5,116]

Thanks.  Unique and set items are going to skew the max. and avg. values due to often having flat damage added in the blueprint.  Taking that into account, the numbers look ok after a cursory glance.

[idbeholdME 389]

Seeing as Flix has the base weapon damage percentages on hand... Do you also happen to have the % at which different weapon types scale with their attribute for damage bonus?

For example, the heaviest bows gain like 40% of dexterity as bonus damage while short bows only use less than a third.

Unique weapons seem to have the best bonuses where stuff like Bull's Eye bow uses almost 45% of dexterity for bonus damage. The damage from main weapon attribute was massively reduced in Ice & Blood, but some weapons still seem to retain decent scaling. Would be great to have a list.

[Flix 5,116]

3 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Seeing as Flix has the base weapon damage percentages on hand... Do you also happen to have the % at which different weapon types scale with their attribute for damage bonus?

Weapon damage scaling from attributes is controlled by the line in balance.txt:
attrWdam_fact = XXX

There's no difference in how this scaling is applied across different weapon types. However you will see more dramatic improvements for items with higher base damage, which is why Longbows seem to improve more than Shortbows, and why weapons with extra flat damage like Bullseye seem to improve even more.

Just for clarity, the values in typfication.txt that I posted above are not exactly a % multiplier, but rather the base flat values that I just converted over for simplification.

[Lindor 438]

I was awake too long yesterday, my brain wasn't really working good enough to interpret the numbers anymore.

12 hours ago, Flix said:

the numbers look ok after a cursory glance

Yes I agree, the testchar analysis revealed that the avg. dmg is not too far off from the expected typification.txt value of Longbows doing 147% of Blowpipe dmg, in the list it starts with 157% and has a slow and steady decrease down to 152%. What interests me though is the max dmg, which is taking the bias into account I mentioned above, esp. the jump from Gold (155%), to Platinum (184%) difficulty which may not even be the peak of the curve. Given that this is exactly the level my current non-testchar dryad is running at, we got a start. However that does not explain the insane 300%-500% dmg gap I am seeing, there needs to be something else influencing that gap.

This

2 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

Seeing as Flix has the base weapon damage percentages on hand... Do you also happen to have the % at which different weapon types scale with their attribute for damage bonus?

is a good idea and this explanation

32 minutes ago, Flix said:

However you will see more dramatic improvements for items with higher base damage, which is why Longbows seem to improve more than Shortbows, and why weapons with extra flat damage like Bullseye seem to improve even more.

may be it. Another factor might be that most of my bows are level 180, my blowpipes level 170 so there's a 10 level difference. But imho that's still not enough to explain it, there needs to be some other factor involved. I'm thinking maybe +dmg% on gear influences bonus damage from blueprint.txt more than base dmg?

[Lindor 438]

To clarify: My bow I use atm, Bullseye, does 524-650, my best blowpipe, "Hauch des Todes" (Whisper of death?) does 250-302, which is a 213% value. So the gap is already starting to close, a couple lvls back it was even more extreme. Btw Bullseye is not even my highest dmg bow, that would be dragon's nemesis, but I accidentally sold it unfortunately so I can't tell exact dmg anymore.

EDIT: I didn't sell it, I just didn't find it in the chest. It's a 551-680 dmg bow.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Lindor

[idbeholdME 389]

1 hour ago, Flix said:

Weapon damaage scaling from attributes is controlled by the line in balance.txt:
attrWdam_fact = XXX

There's no difference in how this scaling is applied across different weapon types. However you will see more dramatic improvements for items with higher base damage, which is why Longbows seem to improve more than Shortbows, and why weapons with extra flat damage like Bullseye seem to improve even more.

So the deciding factor for the effectiveness of main attribute is simply the base damage? No hidden intrinsic properties of the different weapon types?

Understood.

25 minutes ago, Lindor said:

To clarify: My bow I use atm, Bullseye, does 524-650, my best blowpipe, "Hauch des Todes" (Whisper of death?) does 250-302, which is a 213% value. So the gap is already starting to close, a couple lvls back it was even more extreme. Btw Bullseye is not even my highest dmg bow, that would be dragon's nemesis, but I accidentally sold it unfortunately so I can't tell exact dmg anymore.

EDIT: I didn't sell it, I just didn't find it in the chest. It's a 551-680 dmg bow.

Out of interest, how much bonus damage does dexterity give you for those two bows? I'd assume it'd be a slightly higher percentage on the nemesis, due to higher base damage? Just hover over dexterity in the inventory screen to see the damage bonus.

 

And a slightly out of topic question. Bull's Eye has a chance to bypass armor. Does it simply mean that the target's armor is completely ignored if it procs? I've recently swapped to a about a 57% chance to bypass armor gear and haven't noticed the damage climbing up that much, if at all. I'd assume that full damage would be dealt if the bypass procced. But some enemies still take much less damage from a basic attack than what my inventory stats say, no matter how many times I try shooting them.

Edited April 1, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Lindor 438]

16 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Out of interest, how much bonus damage does dexterity give you for those two bows? I'd assume it'd be a slightly higher percentage on the nemesis, due to higher base damage? Just hover over dexterity in the inventory screen to see the damage bonus.

Dragon's Nemesis: +964
Bullseye: +1021
"Hauch des Todes": +480

I didn't actually know that this is how to look up the bonus dmg, thx xD

[idbeholdME 389]

38 minutes ago, Lindor said:

I didn't actually know that this is how to look up the bonus dmg, thx xD

38 minutes ago, Lindor said:

Dragon's Nemesis: +964
Bullseye: +1021
"Hauch des Todes": +480

So Bullseye has a larger dex bonus than Nemesis even though it deals less damage? Interesting, and doesn't seem to correlate with what Flix said Could be something finnicky due to the nemesis doing 3 damage types or something like that.

What was you dexterity when you checked?

Edited April 1, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Lindor 438]

36 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

What was you dexterity when you checked?

Don't know exactly because I leveled up and swapped some gear already. Currently it's 1118 and without any other bonus other than natural survival bonus it's 1080. It was probably around 1110 or so.

 

[Flix 5,116]

If you're playing EE, Dragon's Nemesis has an Ice Damage % multiplier on it that will improve its damage.  That is not the same has having higher flat base damage (boosted by Dex), however. The % boost from the modifier is applied after since it is a global modifier that will improve all sources of ice damage. So, Dragon's Nemesis has lower base damage than Bullseye and receive less of a boost from Dex.

[idbeholdME 389]

6 hours ago, Flix said:

If you're playing EE, Dragon's Nemesis has an Ice Damage % multiplier on it that will improve its damage.  That is not the same has having higher flat base damage (boosted by Dex), however. The % boost from the modifier is applied after since it is a global modifier that will improve all sources of ice damage. So, Dragon's Nemesis has lower base damage than Bullseye and receive less of a boost from Dex.

Oh, right. I didn't realize Lindor was on EE.

Ignore what I said then  I just looked on the wiki and BE has noticeably lower damage than DN, which is why I was surprised at first by Lindor's results.

So, I'm assuming that Nemesis will have better Dex scaling in the vanilla/PFP than Bull's Eye. Unfortunately can't compare as I haven't got a Nemesis yet (drowning in Bulls' Eyes though...).

Edited April 2, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Lindor 438]

A couple of notes:

 

• After reaching Niob level 200, I can for sure say that the standard yellow Blowpipe outlevels all Unique/Legendary/Set Blowpipes when it comes to damage which is something worth considering rebalance for. Added in my to-do-list for my mod.
• A level 235 Platinum Dragon's Nemesis does more than a hundred points more damage than a level 205 Niob Dragon's Nemesis which is super unusually high if compared to other weapons. Even outleveled by this much, Niob weapons usually still do equal or more damage than their Platinum counterpart. There's something going on here.

On 4/1/2022 at 10:48 PM, Flix said:

Dragon's Nemesis has an Ice Damage % multiplier on it that will improve its damage.

• After paying attention for dmg shown on weapons for days now, I can pretty safely say that %dmg multipliers don't influence the damage shown on the weapon itself (which is what I listed), even after reloading the game. But I can confirm Flix's explanation for Dex bonus dmg! Just wanted to make clear that it doesn't affect the dmg listed in my analysis.

 

I think there is some sort of hidden bonus damage scaling going on in the background which may be the cause of the damage gap if that scaling does not happen for Blowpipes. The constant change of the best max dmg weapon in my analysis reinforces that suspicion, but it's not enough to confirm it.

Edited April 7, 2022 by Lindor

[Flix 5,116]

I believe I figured out the Bullseye vs. Dragon's Nemesis problem.

Typification can't be the culprit because they are both CLF_LONGBOW

Material can't be the culprit because even when they are changed to use the same material and respawned, the Dex bonus gap remains.

There's no bonuses on the bows themselves which affect attributes.

BUT

There's some kind of inverse relationship between item level and attribute bonus.  Due to the item level jumps being different on the two items, normally they'll never spawn at the exact same level.  Initially in my tests Bullseye (200) had a lower level than DN (205). Bullseye therefore had lower base damage but was, as we noted, strangely receiving a bigger Dex bonus.

I then edited the blueprints to make them spawn at the exact same level.  That's when it all became clear.  When I bumped Dragon's Nemesis down to level 200 to match Bullseye, the Dex bonus increased. With the same material (resulting in same base damage), the Dex bonus matched exactly.  When using their respective separate materials, they nearly matched, only offset by the slightly higher base damage of Bullseye.

 

 

So, the rule that higher base damage = higher attribute scaling only applies to items of the same level.

[Lindor 438]

1 hour ago, Flix said:

I believe I figured out the Bullseye vs. Dragon's Nemesis problem.

There's some kind of inverse relationship between item level and attribute bonus.

Whoa! That is indeed a very intrigueing finding!

Two questions:

First, how is the flat bonus dmg on the screenshotted weapons? In EE it looks like this:

bonusgroup0 = {519,1400,1,9,0}, --flat bonus poison dmg on bullseye
bonusgroup3 = {521,1600,1,9,0}, --flat bonus ice dmg on Nemesis

Since Nemesis only has phys and poi in allotment_pmfpi in EE, I think they're still active? But I wonder then why Nemesis does less dmg than bullseye in your screenie as if it was only base dmg showing. I mean the slightly higher base dmg of bullseye shouldn't compensate for the higher amount of bonus dmg on the weapon. Or does this mean that flat bonus dmg also doesn't show on the weapon dmg? Because this would really skew the results of my analysis above because then this right here:

On 4/1/2022 at 4:04 AM, Flix said:

Thanks.  Unique and set items are going to skew the max. and avg. values due to often having flat damage added in the blueprint.  Taking that into account, the numbers look ok after a cursory glance.

wouldn't be true anymore.

I don't have current d2f anymore and last time download took me all day.

 

 

And secondly: Does the dex bonus drop with the level still happen if you remove the flat bonus dmg on the weapon? Because I wonder wether the blueprint bonus dmg is the cause of the dex bonus dmg drop. If I'm allowed to drop a theory, it may be that the devs wanted dex bonus dmg to be only dependend on base wpn dmg, but the function to remove flat blueprint bonus dmg out of the equation is buggy.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Lindor

[Flix 5,116]

48 minutes ago, Lindor said:

But I wonder then why Nemesis does less dmg than bullseye in your screenie

It's {519,1500,1,9,0}, --flat bonus poison dmg on bullseye in D2F. So it's higher in D2F.

Bullseye is also made from material elvensteel as opposed to DN's crystal material which has slightly lower base damage.  Material.txt contains these values.  Not all materials are created equal and some outright suck in vanilla/PFP.  EE rebalances some and D2F even more.

Together these two facts result in slightly higher base damage on Bullseye.

Sorry for D2F info but that is the mod I am currently developing.  The principles still hold up.

51 minutes ago, Lindor said:

And secondly: Does the dex bonus drop with the level still happen if you remove the flat bonus dmg on the weapon?

You may have to test before me since I won't get a chance until tomorrow.

[idbeholdME 389]

7 hours ago, Flix said:

BUT

There's some kind of inverse relationship between item level and attribute bonus.  Due to the item level jumps being different on the two items, normally they'll never spawn at the exact same level.  Initially in my tests Bullseye (200) had a lower level than DN (205). Bullseye therefore had lower base damage but was, as we noted, strangely receiving a bigger Dex bonus.

 

So, the rule that higher base damage = higher attribute scaling only applies to items of the same level.

So the main takeaway is, that the higher the item level, the less powerful the attribute scaling is?

I assume this holds true also for the vanilla/PFP?

Edited April 8, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Lindor 438]

14 hours ago, Flix said:

You may have to test before me since I won't get a chance until tomorrow.

Ok. There is smth wierd going on.

I tested it with a level 205 and a level 190 Niob Nemesis. The inverse dependency of the bonus dmg on the item level is still there. BUT: The bows still do ice dmg despite the allotpment_pmfpi={500,0,0,500,0} line. Despite me removing the bonus dmg off the bow. I don't know what is happening here. I don't have any dmg conversion on my char.

EDIT: And another observation is that the bonus ice dmg increased the dex bonus when I enabled it again, meaning that the dex bonus dmg does depend on bonus dmg and not, as we previously thought, only on base dmg.

Edited April 8, 2022 by Lindor