Bow damage formula?

[bcbrown]

I ran a couple experiments with three variables:
* Swarmcaller versus Swiftblade of Zek/Swiftwind
* Bow of the Huntsman(20/30) versus Rain Caller (20/45)
* Bought arrows (1 dmg) versus Summoned arrows (3 dmg)

I didn't realize until after the experiment that my two bows had the same damage with different delay. I knew Huntsman had a better ratio but completely forgot they had same damage. Oops.

I killed one hill giant with each setup, and I didn't do all the possible permutations. For one fight I killed Shiel instead, so for that fight I'm not including the average damage. This data is all incredibly noisy, since each fight is only 40-50 hits. I was hoping it would hint at a similar situation to melee damage, where there's a modal value that's the most common value to hit for, with long tails above and below that value that are affected by str, attack, offense/defense skill differential, level differential, whatever else.

Here's the data. The first row is against Shiel, the rest hill giants. The three numeric columns are modal hit, average hit, and the calculated MH bonus + bow damage + arrow damage.

bought arrows   sboz    gleeds      32      31
bought arrows   swarm   gleeds      49  48  48
summoned        sboz    gleeds      34  37  33
summoned        sboz    raincaller  34  40  33
summoned        swarm   gleeds      51  55  50
summoned        swarm   raincaller  51  53  50

The fact that both bows have the same damage value is too bad, but it does look like the MH bonus + bow damage + arrow damage calculation does predict the modal value pretty well. I'm guessing (MH bonus + bow damage + arrow damage) / delay is gonna work about as well as a rule of thumb as (2x damage + MH bonus) / delay does for mainhand melee.

[bcbrown]

Here's an interesting chart I just made, graphing (dmg + bonus dmg + arrow dmg) / delay for a bunch of bows. The y-axis is the ratio, and the x axis is cycling through various mainhands. The mainhands are swiftblade of zek, swarmcaller, argent protector, earthshaker, and they're repeated three times, with 1dmg arrows, 3dmg arrows, and 8dmg arrows.

The thing that stands out to me is that Bow of the Huntsman and Exquisite Velium Reinforced Bow are virtually identical. If you have a low-bonus mainhand the velium is better, but with an AP or Earthshaker the Huntsman is actually better damage-wise, although it'll still eat a little more arrows.

Seems like if I've got Huntsman/Swarmcaller the Earthshaker will be a bigger upgrade than the Exquisite Velium, which is a bit of a surprise to me.

This is all predicated on using (dmg + bonus dmg + arrow dmg) / delay as the comparison.

Edit: this is using the bonus damage chart for a level 57, which is my current level.

[Snaggles]

Yea I did some rustic testing on spectres around 2020. Found the dps on those two bows similar that I sold my exquisite to spend the plat elsewhere. The only issues are the arrow burn rate and the proc breaking root ends up being annoying for close quarter work.

I’d pick up a light Velium bow for rotting when arrow efficiency matters.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

If it is the melee formula then:

[Max Damage] = ([Mod] x [Weapon Damage]) + [Main Hand Bonus] (rounded down)
[Mod] is calculated as: ([Offense Skill] + [STR]) / 100

Do you know if Mod uses offense or archery?

If I guesstimate (210 + 215)/4 = 4.25 for my Mod @54

Then 12dmg bow, 5dmg arrow and an argent protector so 25dmg bonus

(4.25 x 17) + 25 = 97 max hit.

I'd have to double check but I'm not sure i've ever seen a 97dmg bow hit ever, highest has been mid 60s without crit but I'd have to reconfirm, haven't used bow extensively the last few levels. Am I missing something?

Using dext (110ish) instead of str gives a 80 max hit, probably much closer to the truth but a zillion people (one guy from my research?) reported bows use str so I don't know about that.

Yeah the question I haven't answered is if bows use STR, DEX, or neither for the damage calculation. If your parses show that you never hit for higher than 80, my guess is STR isn't used for bows specifically.

In the EQEMU code they have a specific exception for bows to use DEX instead of STR. Since that special exception is already in place, it wouldn't be difficult to modify the special exception to use neither STR or DEX for bows on P99.

My SK at 68 Archery Skill has hit for up to 150 with a weighted axe in mainhand using a 25 damage bow with 1 damage arrows. My DPS calculator shows a max damage of 152 using my setup from the previous sentence if my STR was set to 1. I didn't do a ton of testing, but it is an interesting result that supports the idea that STR isn't used for bows.

Can you do some more parsing to get a better idea of your max damage with your bow and arrow setup?

[Goregasmic]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah the question I haven't answered is if bows use STR, DEX, or neither for the damage calculation. If your parses show that you never hit for higher than 80, my guess is STR isn't used for bows specifically.

In the EQEMU code they have a specific exception for bows to use DEX instead of STR. Since that special exception is already in place, it wouldn't be difficult to modify the special exception to use neither STR or DEX for bows on P99.

My SK at 68 Archery Skill has hit for up to 150 with a weighted axe in mainhand using a 25 damage bow with 1 damage arrows. My DPS calculator shows a max damage of 152 using my setup from the previous sentence if my STR was set to 1. I didn't do a ton of testing, but it is an interesting result that supports the idea that STR isn't used for bows.

Can you do some more parsing to get a better idea of your max damage with your bow and arrow setup?

Fired a couple stacks this morning.

54 ranger
Min hit 27
max hit 70

12dmg bow
5dmg arrows
25dmg bonus (42/49 weap)
227str self buffed
101dex
1110atk

I just leveled so offense/archery/2hs moved a bit but they were all maxed at 53 so probably won't move the needle much.

Btw, as far as I know the claim that archery doesn't use dex but str comes from this post where Ivory states:

We discovered it when we were both archering, and I noticed him hitting way more than me. Surely this was impossible, since my DEX is 226 unbuffed...and his is only 100 or so. BUT he had 225+ str!! and mine is only 99!!

So we stripped him naked and had him archery with low str...and it was true!!! Archering is using the wrong stat!!! Crazy? I agree!! Super crazy!!

Notice no mention of weapons used so if she was DWing and he stripped his swarmcaller then that could explain the disparity but who knows. Seeing most rangers have a huge str/dex disparity this should easily be figured out with the proper max hit formula.

[Goregasmic]

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Here's an interesting chart I just made, graphing (dmg + bonus dmg + arrow dmg) / delay for a bunch of bows. The y-axis is the ratio, and the x axis is cycling through various mainhands. The mainhands are swiftblade of zek, swarmcaller, argent protector, earthshaker, and they're repeated three times, with 1dmg arrows, 3dmg arrows, and 8dmg arrows.

The thing that stands out to me is that Bow of the Huntsman and Exquisite Velium Reinforced Bow are virtually identical. If you have a low-bonus mainhand the velium is better, but with an AP or Earthshaker the Huntsman is actually better damage-wise, although it'll still eat a little more arrows.

Seems like if I've got Huntsman/Swarmcaller the Earthshaker will be a bigger upgrade than the Exquisite Velium, which is a bit of a surprise to me.

This is all predicated on using (dmg + bonus dmg + arrow dmg) / delay as the comparison.

Edit: this is using the bonus damage chart for a level 57, which is my current level.

Thanks for saving me 20k!

Seeing my sarnak war bow is slightly worse than a windsaber which is second highest that's pretty nice. Huntsman is cool too but there's only a 5dly difference in the end, no huge arrow savings to be made there. The stats on the sarnak are pretty nice too.

Indeed surprising that exquisite sits on top of huntsman when the former has an extra 12dmg for only 6delay.

Also good to know (bow + arrow + bonus damage)/delay is a good indicator, I'll check a couple more bows later.

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by Snaggles [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yea I did some rustic testing on spectres around 2020. Found the dps on those two bows similar that I sold my exquisite to spend the plat elsewhere. The only issues are the arrow burn rate and the proc breaking root ends up being annoying for close quarter work.

I’d pick up a light Velium bow for rotting when arrow efficiency matters.

Good to see that your testing agrees with my extremely tenuous napkin math. Agreed the velium bow has a better quality of life, but I'm going to bump that down several slots on the priority list of gear acquisitions.

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Thanks for saving me 20k!

Seeing my sarnak war bow is slightly worse than a windsaber which is second highest that's pretty nice. Huntsman is cool too but there's only a 5dly difference in the end, no huge arrow savings to be made there. The stats on the sarnak are pretty nice too.

Indeed surprising that exquisite sits on top of huntsman when the former has an extra 12dmg for only 6delay.

Also good to know (bow + arrow + bonus damage)/delay is a good indicator, I'll check a couple more bows later.

Yeah it saves me 20k too! I'm jealous of your sarnak war bow; I want to eventually farm a windsaber but I think for now I'll let the Huntsman take me to 60. It was surprising to me as well, but makes sense now. You can essentially think of the ratio as being the sum of three ratios, one for base damage, one for arrows, and one for damage bonus. With earthshaker and tolans this looks like 0.67 + 1.5 + 0.27 = 2.43 for Huntsman, and 0.89 + 1.25 + 0.22 = 2.36 for Velium. So essentially the contribution from base damage is vastly outweighed by the damage bonus, which lets the Huntsman catch up. I actually kind of like how it all works out; there's real tradeoffs between maximizing DPS with lower-delay bows versus maximizing arrow efficiency with higher-delay bows which means all of these bows have a time and place where they can shine.


DSM's earlier post on the BFG made me a little curious, so I did some parsing against hill giants with Tolan arrows. My prediction for damage calculation was base damage of 20 plus bonus of 10 (assuming it uses the 1h damage table) plus arrow damage of 3 for 33 damage, doubled to 66. The data was a little messy because I sometimes pulled with a bow, and since when fleeing I don't get the doubled damage.

I had:
207 misses
623 hits
527 double-damage hits
32 crits for 825 damage
75% hit rate, average hit of 92, modal hit of 82.

I have no idea what to make of this. Try as I might I can't find a way to make a modal hit of 82 make sense. Dividing in half to account for the double-damage hits, that's 41. There's no way to get to that number with 20 base damage, 3 damage arrows, and 10 damage bonus.


Looking at the graph, there's another smaller bump at 58. 17/24 of the 58-damage hits were not double-damage hits. I can get to that number by (20 + 3 + 1) * 2 + 10, and from there to 82 by (20 + 3 + 1) * 3 + 10. That would imply that when used as melee, the BFG is treated like a 24 damage weapon, doubled like usual for melee, with a 10 damage bonus added. And the "double damage" actually just adds another 24 damage, with the damage bonus not doubled. That would be absolutely crazy.

I want to do some further testing with 1dmg arrows instead of Tolans, and also do some testing with fear-kiting to see what the modal hit truly is without the "double damage" modification.

[Botten]

One note... I would caution on believing that the Bow of the Destroy is the better bow in all of this.

What you are seeing in all of these experiments is the bonus damage from the mainhand delay is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.

My suggestion: Get the slowest main hand (Earthshaker) for the bonus damage and as close to the floor delay on the bow (with the use of haste) -- while then trying to strive for higher damage on the bow.

With full haste you may see the sarnak bow doing more damage.

Even before bow quest it was known that BotD has bugged damage issues.

The "bug" with the Bow of the Destroyer (BotD) and haste in EverQuest is not a bug in the traditional sense, but rather a long-standing mechanical interaction related to the game's haste formulas and minimum attack delay.

The "Bug" Explained

Fast Bow Delay: The Bow of the Destroyer has a base delay of 17, making it the fastest bow in the game.
Haste Caps and Minimum Delay: EverQuest has a minimum attack delay that any weapon cannot go below, regardless of haste.
Wasted Haste: Because the BotD's base delay is so low, it quickly hits this minimum delay cap with standard haste, "wasting" any additional haste.
Quiver Haste Interaction: Quiver haste is applied differently than other forms of haste and could make slower bows perform better than expected relative to the BotD.

Resolution
This interaction is a fundamental aspect of the game's mechanics. The Bow of the Destroyer remains the fastest bow, but its potential DPS advantage is limited by the game's attack speed floor.

Edit - Note the highest haste cap of 100% is at level 60

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Good to see that your testing agrees with my extremely tenuous napkin math. Agreed the velium bow has a better quality of life, but I'm going to bump that down several slots on the priority list of gear acquisitions.



Yeah it saves me 20k too! I'm jealous of your sarnak war bow; I want to eventually farm a windsaber but I think for now I'll let the Huntsman take me to 60. It was surprising to me as well, but makes sense now. You can essentially think of the ratio as being the sum of three ratios, one for base damage, one for arrows, and one for damage bonus. With earthshaker and tolans this looks like 0.67 + 1.5 + 0.27 = 2.43 for Huntsman, and 0.89 + 1.25 + 0.22 = 2.36 for Velium. So essentially the contribution from base damage is vastly outweighed by the damage bonus, which lets the Huntsman catch up. I actually kind of like how it all works out; there's real tradeoffs between maximizing DPS with lower-delay bows versus maximizing arrow efficiency with higher-delay bows which means all of these bows have a time and place where they can shine.


DSM's earlier post on the BFG made me a little curious, so I did some parsing against hill giants with Tolan arrows. My prediction for damage calculation was base damage of 20 plus bonus of 10 (assuming it uses the 1h damage table) plus arrow damage of 3 for 33 damage, doubled to 66. The data was a little messy because I sometimes pulled with a bow, and since when fleeing I don't get the doubled damage.

I had:
207 misses
623 hits
527 double-damage hits
32 crits for 825 damage
75% hit rate, average hit of 92, modal hit of 82.

I have no idea what to make of this. Try as I might I can't find a way to make a modal hit of 82 make sense. Dividing in half to account for the double-damage hits, that's 41. There's no way to get to that number with 20 base damage, 3 damage arrows, and 10 damage bonus.


Looking at the graph, there's another smaller bump at 58. 17/24 of the 58-damage hits were not double-damage hits. I can get to that number by (20 + 3 + 1) * 2 + 10, and from there to 82 by (20 + 3 + 1) * 3 + 10. That would imply that when used as melee, the BFG is treated like a 24 damage weapon, doubled like usual for melee, with a 10 damage bonus added. And the "double damage" actually just adds another 24 damage, with the damage bonus not doubled. That would be absolutely crazy.

I want to do some further testing with 1dmg arrows instead of Tolans, and also do some testing with fear-kiting to see what the modal hit truly is without the "double damage" modification.

Interesting data! Thanks for that.

I took another look at the EQEMU code. The stationary double damage bonus is just damage * 2, done before the damage bonus is applied. So if you did 23 * 2 = 46 damage, you would end up with 46 * 2 + 10 damage = 102.

https://github.com/EQEmu/EQEmu/blob/...tack.cpp#L6384

One of the unique things about Archery is it has a global adjustable damage modifier that can be set on a per server basis, before the damage bonus is applied.

https://github.com/EQEmu/EQEmu/blob/...tack.cpp#L6390

For example, we could get 82 damage by doing the following:

23 damage * 2 = 46 * 2 (stationary double damage) = 92 * 0.783 (archery damage modifier) = 72 + 10 (main hand damage bonus) = 82.

If we could get some more data with different bows and/or arrows to get their modal hits, we could see if the global damage modifer for archery is being used. We should be able to use the same multiplier to get the modal hit for each bow/arrow combo.

To be clear, the 0.783 damage modifier number is just a guess I made based on the data you gave so far.

I think 0.783 may work for my data. 26 * 2 = 52 * 0.783 = 40.7 +110 = 150 rounded down. So far 150 damage is the best I've done with a 25 damage bow, 1 damage arrows, and a 110 damage bonus via weighted axe on my SK with 68 archery skill. I didn't do a large test, so I can't guarantee that 150 damage is my limit. But it is an interesting coincidence at least.

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Interesting data!

Thanks! Looks like the BFG uses the 2H bonus table, not the 1H values. With 1dmg arrows and unrooted the modal value is 78. When rooted with 1dmg arrows the modal value is 56. That works out to 22 + 34 = 56 and 2*22 + 34 = 78. That's the 50-delay 2H bonus at level 57. What a weird weapon. You can dual wield with it but it uses the 2h damage table.

And that means the base damage that gets doubled is (dmg + arrow dmg + 1). That's still a little strange. But I guess the standard melee damage before damage bonus is (2xdmg + 1), so if I squint I can see how it all works out. I'm close to 58 which means an increase in the damage bonus so I'll be able to do more parses in a week or so.