Hoard Level DOES NOT affect Dragon Breath

[Chasing]

This is going to be an interesting 'debate'

As far as I can tell having maximum hoard level at level 100 does not appear to affect Dragon Breath damage.

I am looking at Breath of Fire III ability for this (60-100 damage before delay adjustment).

According to an old old post (Tazoon.com i think) each hoard level should add +1 damage to Dragon Breath. Therefore at 100 there should be a +100 damage applied.


Now where does that appear on your character?

• Dragon Breath skill stays at 1000 base (10 per lvl of DRAG)
• No Passive ability to add +100 damage
• Current Dragon Breath skill only shows the 10% bonus from stats (unless you are using techniques)
• Accurate Breath passive only adds a + to chance to hit

Bear in mind that you have to take the damage that BOF does (60-100) and then apply Power, Dragon Breath skill, Casting Delay for delay adjusted damage dealt.

Breath attacks are a magical attack btw

Free free to prove me wrong :P

[Raptress]

I don't have anything concrete, but somewhere along the line, I started to get the feeling that this was the case after I saw that my dragon breath skill remained at 1000 base no matter what. If I can't see it on my character somewhere, I get the feeling it doesn't exist.

[AmonGwareth]

Thats because it doesn't alter your skill, it alters the damage inflicted. But only at the point at which the damage is calculated on the server. So it won't show up in an examination of the ability.

Basically the way it works is that your hoard level is the amount of damage added to the attack's damage.

[Chasing]

Thats because it doesn't alter your skill, it alters the damage inflicted. But only at the point at which the damage is calculated on the server. So it won't show up in an examination of the ability.

Basically the way it works is that your hoard level is the amount of damage added to the attack's damage.

Aha, thank you for clarifying Amon.

Am I right in thinking at max hoard level for 100 adv it adds 100 points of damage?

[AmonGwareth]

Aha, thank you for clarifying Amon.

Am I right in thinking at max hoard level for 100 adv it adds 100 points of damage?

Yes... the calculation on the server is basically:

DamageAdded = DamageAdded (from the Ability) * HOARD_CONSTANT_MULTIPLIER (which is set to 1) * HoardLevel

DamageAdded is whatever bonus damage is added to the ability from various sources, such as techniques or buffs or anything.

[Akrion]

Yes... the calculation on the server is basically:

DamageAdded = DamageAdded (from the Ability) * HOARD_CONSTANT_MULTIPLIER (which is set to 1) * HoardLevel

DamageAdded is whatever bonus damage is added to the ability from various sources, such as techniques or buffs or anything.

Why is it that skill doesn't seem to add anything beyond the ability to use things? I can get my biped's Spirit magic skill up to 1800 and see absolutely zero difference vs his skill at ~1250. Doesn't seem to affect damage or healing at all. I notice similar results with Tooth and Claw & Primal for Dragons.

[awdz]

Does hoard level have any impact on spell damage? Or any not claw-to-claw fighting?

[Guaran]

Yes... the calculation on the server is basically:

DamageAdded = DamageAdded (from the Ability) * HOARD_CONSTANT_MULTIPLIER (which is set to 1) * HoardLevel

DamageAdded is whatever bonus damage is added to the ability from various sources, such as techniques or buffs or anything.

Hmm. Then why did it appear in my testing (was a few years ago) that a level 100 with max hoard did same damage breath wise as another level 100 with maybe a million hoard? Was the above formula a recent fix in say the last year?

[AmonGwareth]

Why is it that skill doesn't seem to add anything beyond the ability to use things? I can get my biped's Spirit magic skill up to 1800 and see absolutely zero difference vs his skill at ~1250. Doesn't seem to affect damage or healing at all. I notice similar results with Tooth and Claw & Primal for Dragons.

It does have an effect. Looking at the code now for calculating damage. But, without seeing examples I can't really say one way or another in your case. To truly do a balanced test you'll need to fight the same mob repeatedly with the same spell/weapon but with two difference skill levels. And of course, you have to remember that buffs and debuffs (both on you and your opponent) as well as the damage range itself and some fuzziness (a gaussian curve) is applied at the end so that the damage can vary a bit can all have an effect on the final damage.

[AmonGwareth]

Hmm. Then why did it appear in my testing (was a few years ago) that a level 100 with max hoard did same damage breath wise as another level 100 with maybe a million hoard? Was the above formula a recent fix in say the last year?

*shrug* Dunno. No, it has not been touched in years to my knowledge.

[Guaran]

Why is it that skill doesn't seem to add anything beyond the ability to use things? I can get my biped's Spirit magic skill up to 1800 and see absolutely zero difference vs his skill at ~1250. Doesn't seem to affect damage or healing at all. I notice similar results with Tooth and Claw & Primal for Dragons.

It does have an effect. Looking at the code now for calculating damage. But, without seeing examples I can't really say one way or another in your case. To truly do a balanced test you'll need to fight the same mob repeatedly with the same spell/weapon but with two difference skill levels. And of course, you have to remember that buffs and debuffs (both on you and your opponent) as well as the damage range itself and some fuzziness (a gaussian curve) is applied at the end so that the damage can vary a bit can all have an effect on the final damage.

Skill does add damage and accuracy. I've done tests for that in the arena. When using another player as the target you can always be assured of identical armor and resistances. (Just do it with no buffs on the target and always wear the same armor.)

Then do 10 minutes of autoattacks, stop, copy that out of the chat log, making note of attackers weapon skill, strength , dexterity, focus, power (and which weapon, what techs are applied, etc). Then move training points and do it again. For each 10 minute chunk, you count up the number of hits that landed, the number of misses, add that for total number of attack attempts, and then add up all the damage done. divide total dmg done once by number of successful hits, for average damage per hit, then again by total number of attempts for average damage over time per hit. I also like to take # of misses divided by number of attempts, to get a % of misses.

If you are wanting to test a weapon skill, have the points all in evasion for the first part of the test, since that will not affect the to-hit or damage chance at all, and then the change in t&c will be only affecting factor for the second half of the test.

[Thicklesip]

If I may pretend to know what I'm talking about for a moment...

If you want a variable to have a large impact on a damage outcome, you either 1. make it big or 2. apply it AFTER the obscuring factors (RNG, gaussian curve, defense calculations, etc).

1. Make it big: the hoard value adds between 0 and 100 damage to something listed on the tooltip* as having a 60-100 range. For the sake of argument, we'll call that a reasonably big variable.
2. Apply it late: here's why despite it being a "big" variable you can't easily eyeball the impact. It's not just 0-100 damage on top of whatever's happening, it's 0-100 damage chucked into the soup of numbers used to figure out how hard your breath CAN hit, which gets influenced by RNG, and then gets blurred by a gaussian curve, and THEN has a caged deathmatch with the target's defenses.

Essentially, the hoard bonus ends up being a single drop in the bucket, which then gets shaken, stirred, and left in the sun for two days.

Good layman's explanation?


*Tooltip is only privy to some of the final damage calculation. Which parts those are and how much they matter is probably the kind of headache it's best not to worry about too much unless you're either the one coding the game, or a hardcore math geek.

[Guaran]

Good layman's explanation?

Yes. I especially liked the caged deathmatch part

Granted, my above scenario would be a pain to do for dragon breath, because you need a 100 or so samples (attack attempts) to be sure you have averaged it out, which helps smooth out the random number generator so you can see a real average. (I usually prefer to get 300 to 500 samples). And dragon breath is what, 30 second recycle? so it would be more tedious to collect the data. Luckily we can move training points into Dragon Breath skill.

I believe that since the simulation treats Dragon Breath as a spell skill, when in the game it isn't, that the skill needs a boost to get around all the spell evasion mobs have. That or change every single mob to have permanent negative dragon breath ward or something. Probably much easier to change the skill on the dragon than change every mobs' database entry. but it does need addressed.

[AmonGwareth]

I believe that since the simulation treats Dragon Breath as a spell skill, when in the game it isn't, that the skill needs a boost to get around all the spell evasion mobs have. That or change every single mob to have permanent negative dragon breath ward or something. Probably much easier to change the skill on the dragon than change every mobs' database entry. but it does need addressed.

Since there is no such thing as "dragon breath ward", yes, that might be very difficult to do.

Once the simulation gets to the part where it calculates the to-hit, evasion/dodge, and damage its does not distinguish what-so-ever between spells, weapons, abilities, etc. They are all the same to it at that point.

[Akrion]

It does have an effect. Looking at the code now for calculating damage. But, without seeing examples I can't really say one way or another in your case. To truly do a balanced test you'll need to fight the same mob repeatedly with the same spell/weapon but with two difference skill levels. And of course, you have to remember that buffs and debuffs (both on you and your opponent) as well as the damage range itself and some fuzziness (a gaussian curve) is applied at the end so that the damage can vary a bit can all have an effect on the final damage.

Alright I did some testing, and yes it does seem to have an effect. I tested at ~1250 spirit and ~1700 spirit (couldn't get 1800 because I can't use all my blighted armor because of the silly armor rating system disallowing you to use top armor regardless if you're level 100, so I could only use the lower tier tier 5 blighted armor).

The damage of Blood Bolt does seem to jump a significant amount against an unbuffed, unarmored Dragon. An average of 260 vs an average of 290 (though for some reason I missed more with higher skill, but I could have just been unlucky).

What I did notice, however, is that the change for Self Sacrificium is rather insignificant. I believe I made a ticket regarding this once and was redirected to a thread that said skills should boost healing up to a maximum of twice their heal amount. Self Sacrificium V does 684-836 and I've only ever hit 4 digits (1000) once. That was with my average of 1500 spirit. I only got as close as 997 with 1700 spirit and 950 with 1250 spirit.

[AmonGwareth]

Hoard Level has no effect at all on any ability that isn't a Breath attack. Its Breath Attacks and Armor, thats it.

[Guaran]

Right. I think an additional question was raised, as to whether spell skill affects damage output at all in general, not just for Dragon Breath (Akrion had mentioned spirit spells).

[Frith-Rae]

Wait..all those millions of hoard, if I max it out, only give me another 100 points of damage??

Or did I misread that statement...

Do we know roughly how much a maxxed hoard would increase armor? Cuz if its 100 points of damage I have even less reason to add to it with any gusto..lol.

[Chasing]

Wait..all those millions of hoard, if I max it out, only give me another 100 points of damage??

Or did I misread that statement...

Do we know roughly how much a maxxed hoard would increase armor? Cuz if its 100 points of damage I have even less reason to add to it with any gusto..lol.

+480 Armor at 100 adv

[AmonGwareth]

4 points of armor per hoard level.

And yes, Frith, hoard level of 100 will give you +100 damage (delay-adjusted and adjusted by resistances and armor) to your breath attacks.