I've been wondering about the effect of Elemental Damage for a while. So. Here's what I've learned. <tl;dr> Every swing calculates how much additional Elemental damage is done. The value added is a percentage of the Elemental damage based on the target's resist and a D200 roll. Even if the mob has 0 resists, the average additional damage is around half the additional damage shown. Many popular elemental arrows are less damage than the Shardwing arrow, but can make up the difference if the target mob's resist is low enough. Below is a list of popular arrows, and the mob's resist that makes the arrow effectively the same as the Shardwing arrow. Any more resists, and Shardwing wins, any less and you are potentially doing more damage. Shardwing Arrow is 12 damage. Flame Tipped Acrylia Arrow, Ice Tipped Acrylia Arrow, Shadow Tipped Acrylia Arrow, are all 10+4 Damage, equivalent to Shardwing at 40 resists. Mithril Champion Arrows is 11+3 mobs with 70 FR Blessed Champion Arrows is 11+4 mobs with 90 FR <end tl;dr> I yanked the algorithm out of the TAKP source, and brute forced each elemental damage found on a weapon or arrow to roll a million times against resist values from -100 (where you do full extra damage every hit) to 200 (where you do 0 extra damage) every 10 values. The way it works in code is a bit complicated. The additional elemental damage is calculated every time you land a hit. The function rolls a 200 sided die, subtracts the target's resist to the elemental type, and uses the result as a percentage of your elemental damage (capped at 100%). This calculation is done early in the process, and the result is simply added to the weapon DMG value before it gets multiplied by other factors. So each damage point added is quite powerful. For example, if the mob has 50 MR, and your arrow does 3 Magic Damage, you have to roll over 150 (25% chance) to add 3 damage, 117-149 (16.5%) to do 2 damage, and 84-117 (16.5%) to do 1 damage. Anything below 84 (43% chance) will do 0 damage. Over time, this averages out to 3*.25+2*16.5+1*16.5=1.23 additional damage. Slapping these average values into a quick and dirty google sheets chart, it looks like this: Here's my source code, and an example of the CSV payload it produces. Code: [ Only registered users can see the bbcode. Click Here To Register... ] Results Code: [ Only registered users can see the bbcode. Click Here To Register... ]
Interesting. I once parsed a shardwing arrow versus an 11 + 3 arrow and came to the conclusion that they were nearly identical at 25FR. Admittedly it wasn't a very robust test; The NPC was the level 1 (maybe a factor?) katta banker, and my parses were only about 1.5 hours each. The shardwing arrow came out very slightly ahead: 162.3 DPS versus 161.6. I recall asking you when you first brought this up in Discord if the level difference affects elemental damage resist modifiers like it does for casted spells and you said no, so i went ahead with the test. It's been a while since my college statistics classes so I can't say if my results are within the bounds of acceptable noise but it does make me question the discrepancy a little. When I get time I'll re-run my tests with longer parses. Unfortunately I'm limited to the katta banker for everything since nothing else would allow such a long parse.
I seem to recall people using stationary Thelin after port up as well to parse on AK? I think you trigger a hedge event but don’t talk to him after porting up? I believe he was attackable but wouldn’t attack back prior to the text exchange, allowing for him to be boarded on?
Interesting. I wonder if my averages have some EQ rounding to iron out to align them with your findings. Or if you could find "average hit" rather than "DPS" numbers for that test? I think that would be a more apples to apples comparison, since DPS takes into account misses and attack rate (which you possible accounted for, but we can simplify by not having to worry about that), and we're just trying to determine what the difference in average hit is.
Here's the images from the depths of NAG discord. A screengrab of a screengrab of a jpg at this point: Deerhunter doesn't belong to me... My ranger had the headshot AA which would have ruined the parse. He's level 60, probably using a stonewood bow.
They wouldn't enter summon range but because their resists are all capped the elemental damage would never apply
Awesome. I find it delicious that the average hit is 350.579 to 351.779 in favor of the Shardwing arrow, which is a 0.34% difference, and the Mithril arrow has a higher max and a lower min. Stonewood Compound Bow has a base damage of 42. At 25 FR, I estimate that the additional damage should be something like 1.64 additional damage. So it's like a 48 damage bow (shardwing) vs a 48.64 bow, which is a 1.2% difference. I think those numbers are close enough that the RNG can still make up the difference. I would be curious to find out if we could see the difference with a much lower damage bow. I'm also not as familiar with the damage calculations for Bows. I'm surprised that a theoretical .6 damage *isn't* visible, like I would expect from a Melee weapon. Meri's maxed out STR and worn ATK nets him about 3 damage per hit for every DMG point on the weapon. So, if the calculations were the same (and they aren't) I would have expected to see the +1 average hit difference go to the Mithril arrow, now the Shardwing. Math is fun. As for hitting a different target, I found that Meri's average hit against the level 1 banker in Katta to be nearly identical to the average hit against most trash mobs. The difference in DPS then was hit/miss ratio. Most trash mobs I'll miss or they'll evade (riposte, dodge, ect) roughly 50-60% of my swings. But the level 1 mob I could hit 99/100 times (I think I counted like a 200 hit streak). So I like Average Hit for apples-to-apples comparison for these Arrows, rather than DPS.
It turns out Thelin inside the hedge doesn't work for parsing; he can't be attacked at all. But I did re-run my previous experiment, this time with a much lower damage bow and for a much longer time. Parses were 12+ hours, using a Hunting Bow from an unlucky aqua goblin, and this time the Mithril Champion arrow did come out ahead as you would expect.
