"High Damage Bonus"?

[ride the spiral]

Posted this on the Discord but I'll post here too.

I was doing some digging through old Developers Corners posts via wayback machine. A post from 10/10/2001 is answering questions because of the October 2001 Melee Balance Patch (which I believe is active on both Blue and Green, it's the patch that rebalanced Melee classes a bit and allowed Warrior epics to be used in either hand). Here is something interesting that I haven't seen on the Wiki, and I'm curious if it's how damage works on P99 (I'm aware we are using a heavily modified EQ EMU engine and P99 is an approximation). Check this out, a Q&A response by Rich Waters, the lead in charge of the melee changes in 10/2001:

The new guy [Rich Waters] answering questions did not actually answer Samin Soulsaver's question. Please, we want to know..HOW does the damage bonus work? Does it change the actual damage/delay of the weapon, say from 20/30 a bonus of 7 would change the weapon to 27/30, or does it just add 7 dmg to each successful hit? - Obsession Toujours

I've seen this question several times now and don't want to leave people wondering how to use this new piece of information, so here is how the damage bonus works in the game:

What are Damage Bonuses?

Damage bonuses are an amount of extra damage points that are applied when a character hits something with his weapon. A damage bonus does not change the damage/delay stats of your weapon, or make you hit more often.

- Main Hand Bonus - All melee characters get a main hand damage bonus. This bonus starts at level 29 and slowly scales up until level 60. The main hand bonus applies to hits with the main hand weapon only. This bonus doesn't vary by weapon, only by class and level.

- High Damage Bonus - If you are using a weapon with a high damage stat, you gain bonus damage.

- Two-Handed Bonus - If you use a two-handed weapon, you get an additional amount of bonus damage. This bonus is the one you see listed on two-handed weapons. This bonus varies depending on your class, level, and the delay of the weapon being used. Slower weapons get larger damage bonuses, than fast weapons do. All two-handed weapons of a given delay receive the same damage bonus, for example a level 60 warrior with a 40 delay two-handed sword gets a damage bonus of 23, as listed on the weapon.

How are Damage Bonuses applied?

Every time you get a successful hit with a weapon, the game engine determines the amount of damage you do. This damage is in a range, based on your stats, skills, the damage value of your weapon, and the opponent you are fighting. This is your hit damage.

- If you are using a one-handed weapon, you get the main hand damage bonus described above, plus the high damage bonus. This is added to your hit damage every time you hit with the main hand.
(main hand bonus + high damage bonus + hit damage = amount of damage done)

- If you are using a two-handed weapon, you get the main hand damage bonus, plus the high damage bonus, plus the two-handed damage bonus listed on the weapon. This is added to your hit damage every time you hit with the main hand.
(main hand bonus + high damage bonus + two-handed damage bonus + hit damage = amount of damage done)

I hope this clears things up a bit.

- Rich Waters

Now, I'm just coming back to P99 after like a 9 year hiatus, so I'm curious if this has already been discussed. What I thought was interesting is the formula for damage bonus. I understand primary weapons get a damage bonus (the reason why faster weapons are better in mainhand, and ratio is best in secondary), but I didn't realize there was a built in bonus for having high damage on the weapon.

My question is, does P99 use the above formula for damage, including the "high damage bonus"? Or is it just a "main hand bonus + hit damage = amount of damage done"?

Here is the link to the post with the above quote (https://web.archive.org/web/20011113024943/http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/everquest/Forum1/HTML/000346.html)

And here is the link to the 10/2001 Melee Balance Patch (https://web.archive.org/web/20011106163959/http://boards.station.sony.com/ubb/everquest/Forum1/HTML/000340.html)

[eisley]

without getting too into the weeds - 2h damage bonus scales on delay.

[Jimjam]

Is it referring to the high strength damage bonus ? Idk cos the one we have is quite a random element, which doesn’t match how it works here. Devs often misidescrescribed things. Is out high strength random bonus even classic?

Certainly an interesting topic for exploration. Well found.

[Keebz]

Bump. Seems like a good topic to research.

[Samoht]

Damage bonuses are known and defined, information is made available in Lucy, which was an in-era database from back when we played on live.

https://lucy.allakhazam.com/dmgbonus.html

[Keebz]

A few things—those damage bonuses listed on Lucy refer to the "Two-Handed Bonus" defined above, were worked out sometime in 2002, and are decidedly different from those mentioned by the developer in the station post.


At level 60, those weapons actually have these damage bonuses listed on them-

Fiery Defender (40 delay) 23 point damage bonus
Innoruuk's Curse (45 delay) 27 point damage bonus
Nature's Defender (46 delay) 29 point damage bonus

You can see that weapons with larger delays also gain larger damage bonuses.

- Rich Waters


It is also different from those posted on these forums before. See this post (https://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3519830&postcount=123) by a 60 War—a couple posts down he describes the testing he did on p99 to verify.

That being said, Rich specifically calls out the "High Damage Bonus" as being separate from the Main Hand Bonus, no less than 3 times in that post.

[Jimjam]

Two handed bonus = main hand bonus + high damage bonus?

[Keebz]

Two handed bonus = main hand bonus + high damage bonus?

He specifically calls it out as a separate bonus and additionally mentions it is applied to one-handed weapons as well.

If you are using a one-handed weapon, you get the main hand damage bonus described above, plus the high damage bonus.

[Keebz]

[Re: main hand damage bonuses] I found a screenshot (https://web.archive.org/web/20011127224210/http://www.planeteverquest.com/eqwadb/detail.asp?ID=2994) that corroborates the dev stated damage bonuses. The top 10 (https://web.archive.org/web/20011107181324/http://www.planeteverquest.com/eqwadb/top10weapons.asp) has some screen shots with bonuses shown as well.

[Zuranthium]

A few things—those damage bonuses listed on Lucy refer to the "Two-Handed Bonus" defined above, were worked out sometime in 2002, and are decidedly different from those mentioned by the developer in the station post.

The Lucy table includes the main hand damage bonus all weapons gets. The developer post is stating only the additional two-hand damage bonus (which is dependent on the delay of the weapon). Those numbers line up: 29 bonus damage on a 46 delay two-hander + 11 mainhand bonus = the 40 damage listed on Lucy.

But there is still the issue of the additional "High Damage Bonus" that it seems all weapons of a certain attack value should get, in addition to the other bonuses.

Without any info anywhere of exactly what that bonus is supposed to be, I would personally ignore it as a dev. Late Velious era melee do not need more DPS.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

He specifically calls it out as a separate bonus and additionally mentions it is applied to one-handed weapons as well.

I am guessing the lucy table just combines it all together. The dev says a 40 delay weapon at level 60 gets a 23 damage bonus for 2h weapons.


for example a level 60 warrior with a 40 delay two-handed sword gets a damage bonus of 23, as listed on the weapon.


You could say Main Hand Bonus + High Damage Bonus = 11 at 60 for all weapons. Then you add the 2h damage bonus when wielding a 2h weapon.

23 + 11 = 34, which is the correct value for 40 delay 2h weapons on the lucy table.

[Zuranthium]

You could say Main Hand Bonus + High Damage Bonus = 11 at 60 for all weapons.

No, that's wrong. The main hand bonus damage was already 11 before the "high damage bonus" was introduced (if such a thing did exist). It also seems like the high damage bonus should apply to offhand weapons, but that part is even more nebulous.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

No, that's wrong. The main hand bonus damage was already 11 before the "high damage bonus" was introduced (if such a thing did exist). It also seems like the high damage bonus should apply to offhand weapons, but that part is even more nebulous.

I'd like to see some evidence for what the High Damage Bonus actually is, and if Main Hand Bonus by itself was 11. It is too much of a coincidence that 23 + 11 = 34, which is the correct damage bonus for a 40 delay weapon on the lucy table.

[Keebz]

The Lucy table includes the main hand damage bonus all weapons gets. The developer post is stating only the additional two-hand damage bonus (which is dependent on the delay of the weapon). Those numbers line up: 29 bonus damage on a 46 delay two-hander + 11 mainhand bonus = the 40 damage listed on Lucy.

That would make sense. It sounds like the damage bonus shown on weapons was only the additional 2h dmg bonus.

One confusing thing was reading about the "bonus" field showing up on 1handers as well. Like it showing up as 3 on a wurmslayer for a lvl 35 (https://web.archive.org/web/20011201201508/http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=355). Now it makes me wonder if that was a bug with wurmslayer or the delay based bonus applied to 1h as well.

But there is still the issue of the additional "High Damage Bonus" that it seems all weapons of a certain attack value should get, in addition to the other bonuses.

Without any info anywhere of exactly what that bonus is supposed to be, I would personally ignore it as a dev. Late Velious era melee do not need more DPS.

There is definitely precedent for features being implemented but unwittingly turned off for some reason so that's a possibility. But the clarity and certainty of the developer description is compelling. I bumped here in case anyone else wanted to research.

[Samoht]

Damage bonus is 100% applied to 1 handers. It's a flat bonus and doesn't increase based on delay. It's the first row included with the lucy data.

[Keebz]

Damage bonus is 100% applied to 1 handers. It's a flat bonus and doesn't increase based on delay. It's the first row included with the lucy data.

I'm not disputing that. What I was confused about is the "Bonus: X" text that showed up on weapon stats sheet at some point in era. For the two handers, it seems to be describing the 2-hand bonus (without the main hand bonus). As such, this bonus text does not seem to appear for 1-handers. However, confusingly there are reports of it showing up on the Wurmslayer stat sheet.

In the post I call out in particular, a level 35 ranger reports the stated damage bonus text on Wurmslayer is 3, which coincidentally matches both the expected main hand damage bonus and the expected delay-based 2 handed damage bonus if Wurmy was a 2 hander (i.e. the lucy number minus the main hand bonus).

Why the bonus damage text showed up on Wurmslayer in era is a bit of a mystery. Was it a Wurmslayer bug or is it something else?

[Zuranthium]

Damage bonus is 100% applied to 1 handers. It's a flat bonus and doesn't increase based on delay. It's the first row included with the lucy data.

That's simply the main-hand bonus, which existed from the day the game was released. It's why the Mosscovered Twig with 10 delay was overpowered when it came out and changed to offhand only, nullifying its power.

There is allegedly a "high damage bonus" that was added in addition to this, to all weapons of a certain damage rating. But there no information anywhere on what that bonus table is. We only have the bonus table for two-hander damage, which is another separate modifier and scales based on the delay of the weapon.