Bow damage formula?

[Jimjam]

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

This broke my brain until I realized you were quoting some rando dummy on ZAM, lol.

I really enjoyed the 8 skill archer laying down the law on how to play a ranger [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Jimjam]

I believe I may have found evidence for some interesting bow damage on live (though post classic).

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/...10235874183573

It starts off noting what we remember from live (bow dmg + arrow dmg = max damage) then conceeds extra damage is possible at higher skill (level? gear?). They note that there doesn't seem to be a damage bonus / min damage is 1.

What caught my attention was this quote:

"Wondering how bow damage progresses beyond 175 skill? Saw an ogre shoot for 120 other day and was not a crit. Thats alot better than bow dmg + arrow damage which would be a max of about 50 with 40dmg bow and 10dmg arrow."

In 2002, why may an ogre non crit be 120? In 2002 how would this be possible? Fellstrike? Or some kind of damage bonus glitch from a 2 hander (which seems in conflict with the comment that at 175 skill the min damage is still 1)?

[Baugi]

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

It starts off noting what we remember from live (bow dmg + arrow dmg = max damage) then conceeds extra damage is possible at higher skill (level? gear?). They note that there doesn't seem to be a damage bonus / min damage is 1.

What caught my attention was this quote:

"Wondering how bow damage progresses beyond 175 skill? Saw an ogre shoot for 120 other day and was not a crit. Thats alot better than bow dmg + arrow damage which would be a max of about 50 with 40dmg bow and 10dmg arrow."

In 2002, why may an ogre non crit be 120? In 2002 how would this be possible? Fellstrike? Or some kind of damage bonus glitch from a 2 hander (which seems in conflict with the comment that at 175 skill the min damage is still 1)?

Sub-50 players were mostly below the damage mod floor of 1x, which is why archery max damage mostly looked like just bow dmg + arrow damage. 120 is consistent with Luclin era warrior bows (e.g. War Bow of Rallos Zek - 43dmg) and the upper end of the damage mod range at 60 (capped at 2.85x). Live had no damage bonus for archery outside of trueshot, but I've never seen any indication that it otherwise deviated from the melee formula. TAKP did a much more thorough job with researching and replicating the original formulas - https://github.com/EQMacEmu

[Goregasmic]

Well so far, from the data bcbrown posted we know modal damage is not stat dependent and max hit seem to be governed by strength. Maybe the data is too noisy due to low samples but dex doesn't even seem to have a significant impact on crit rate which is the only thing it was supposed to do outside of procs. Doesn't seem to have an impact on hit rate either (that's probably archery skill). I've kinda been hoping dex does more than just proc rate since proc rate is pretty useful for rangers but so far it seems like it does little to nothing else.

The min damage on p99 seems to be weapon bonus since he scored an 11 lowest using 1handers.

For the comment about the ogre 120 damage I think a lot more context is needed to say anything.

[bcbrown]

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

In general, with moderate gear (or even solid) you can’t end up with a ton of STR, DEX, hps and MR so a cut has to happen. The obvious choice for me outside WIS is DEX.

Yeah, I think that's probably right. Perhaps dex over MR until level 50 or so. And one huge benefit of dex is faster swarmcaller procs. But I think I've reached the point where I'm ready to transition out of str/dex gear and into hp/resist gear. Now that my dps weapons don't proc I have less use for dex, and my str is significantly above the point where FoS caps it on raids. But it's still nice to be able to self-buff to 240 str while soloing. I'll be getting some Skyshrine armor in the couple months so that'll be a nice boost as well.

I hit 58 the other night off frost giant elites in GD. I was surprised at them being decent xp, a little slow but steady. I was able to kill 2 or 3 between breaks, and if I had a fungi it would have been a lot smoother. But alternating between melee and bow-rotting gives time for Chloro and the ikky bp to heal me up. And since I started at Allied with the Kromrif it was tons of fun not being kos to the green giants while pulling the elites.

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

Are you all testing this with max str? Because str increases atk, so even if bow damage relied on dex it would still increase with + atk. You need to max str and then test the difference between something like 100 dex vs. 200 dex, adjusting for crits.

Not with max strength. I ran four trials: The first two kept dex constant and varied str at 239 and 162: max hit changed. The second two kept str constant and varied dex at 89 and 153: max hit didn't change. So if max hit didn't change with an extra 64 dex I'm pretty confident saying that dex doesn't affect max hit.

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

In 2002, why may an ogre non crit be 120? In 2002 how would this be possible? Fellstrike? Or some kind of damage bonus glitch from a 2 hander (which seems in conflict with the comment that at 175 skill the min damage is still 1)?

One explanation would be that the OP was bowing without any weapon in mainhand (so no bonus), or that their statement about min-hitting for 1 damage was from experiences prior to hitting the level where damage bonus starts.

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

I really enjoyed the 8 skill archer laying down the law on how to play a ranger [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Fantastic quote! The combination of inexperience and overconfidence can be pretty funny... but you know I bet that guy was having the time of his life scooting around Qeynos Hills with a 10/50 bow, kiting grizzlies or whatever. I'm honestly starting to think it might be a lot of fun to try an SSF human ranger. Short Sword of Morin, Electrum-Bladed Wakizashi, Wakizashi of the Frozen Skies, Ivy-Etched Armor, there's some fun ranger quests.

[Duik]

A condescending cockbag says what?

[Jimjam]

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

what

[Duik]

Hehe

[Snaggles]

It really doesn’t matter what TAKP did/does. We will never have auto fire or AA’s.

I’d take auto fire if nothing else. Outside a BFG shooting bows is a PITA (I’ve killed Lucan about 20 times with a bow…).

[bcbrown]

I've spent the past quarter-level farting around killing frost giant elites with a mixture of melee and bow-rotting. This wasn't a controlled experiment, it was just leveling and gaining faction. I swapped between Rain Caller for stats and Huntsman for better bow dps. Sometimes I had 1h in melee, sometimes Swarmcaller, and sometimes OT hammer for the better damage bonus. I tried to keep up a full complement of buffs (spikecoat, skin like diamond, call of earth, strength of nature, storm strength, chloro, greater wolf form, levitate, call of flame, shield of brambles/spikes) but there's definitely fights where one or more faded midfight or I didn't bother to refresh before the next fight. So for anyone inclined to skim/misread this post let me say in bold that this data is very messy. Strength ranged from 180 to 240, dex was usually 145-150; just swapping my 1hs for a 2-hander drops strength by 25 and dex by 5, not to mention the haste or +atk. Also early into this dataset I leveled from 57 to 58.

First attachment is a chart of bow damage. You can see the main peak at 60 which corresponds to OT hammer: 20+1+3+36. There's also another lower spike for the swarmcaller 20+1+3+29 = 53. The 1h peak of 20+1+3+11=35 is mostly drowned out, so I guess I did a pretty good job overall of swapping out of 1hs whenever I was bow-rotting.

2519 hits, 1217 misses, 67.43% hit rate. That's 186 stacks of arrows, or 46 minutes spent summoning. Max hit discounting crits and double damage is 98. Average damage is 57.66, but that's going to be heavily affected by the mix of various mainhand damage bonuses. Crit rate of 6.43%; second attachment is a graph of the crits. If I squint I can see a repeating pattern of succesively decreasing peaks at 28, 49, 79, and 98; perhaps worthy of further investigation but just as possible to be randomness. I know almost nothing about crits and if anyone has a sense of the conventional wisdom around how they're calculated I'd love to hear it.

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

Where did you get this formula? The more I think about it and look at it the more dubious I am about it. But I see it referenced in this 2011 thread. I also found this TAKP thread where Torven talks about archery. What jumps out to me is "I did some investigating on this today and it appears that there's some rounding error somewhere making normal shots do a couple extra damage and Trueshot damage is a bit too low." That seems to reinforce that the +1 modal damage I noticed is real, but perhaps unintentional or an artifact of rounding somewhere.

I'm gonna do another experiment, keeping str and dex constant while adding +atk from swiftwind, greater wolf form, strength of nature. I'll be fighting frost giant elites and I'm interested in the impact on hit %, max hit, average hit.