Damage calculation guide - 165% doesn't mean 165% | Warframe

i've had a few requests to cover how damage is actually calculated in warframe it's quite an involved topic really with exceptions all over the shop so let's appear behind the arsenal and see what math lies within i'm the engineer let's solve a practical problem for the purpose of this video i will only cover weapon damage calculation enemy damage reduction adds a whole extra set of variables to consider not least of which every second enemy has yet another exception somewhere so i'm going to leave that out for the time being if you want to know more about enemy modifiers to your damage such as adaptive scaling let me know in the comments down below what i will be covering then is additive versus multiplicative versus absolute buffs the core damage equation status proc damage falloff and follow-through and melee stances also you should absolutely be following me at twitch.tv slash the engineer where we discuss topics like this live while absolutely decimating the origin system in search of corrupted holocaust anyway let's dive straight in every weapon has its base damage usually that's impact puncture and slash added together any innate elemental damage also features here and bonus elements from coover and tenet weapons additionally counter space damage a weapon will have various other statistics built into it including fire rate status chance critical chance magazine capacity reload time and sometimes multi shot technically multi shot is always there it's just normally a value of one and therefore hidden we can add various bonuses to these values and the way these bonuses come together to give you your total output varies mathematically there are three ways these bonuses all combine additive multiplicative and absolute when modding for most stats it's best to think of them as starting with a hundred percent regardless of the specific values so an unmodded weapon has a hundred percent of its fire rate a hundred percent of its damage a hundred percent of its status chance and so on the reason for this is that all mods and most bonuses are additive to the respective base value take for example serration at max rank it is 165 damage this adds to the existing 100 damage that to give you a total of 265 percent this is what we call an additive bonus the first such additive bonus on any stat does what it says on the tin in this case our damage actually goes up by 165 percent if we then add another damage mod say heavy caliber this will also give us plus 165 percent damage meaning we now have 100 plus 165 plus 165 for a total of 430 the mod has again done exactly as it promised however we haven't increased the damage more than two and a half times over like we did from nothing to having serration that 430 percent total is only 62 percent higher than the 265 total the damage hasn't even come close to doubling this is why additive bonuses are considered the weakest type each additional bonus affecting the same stat has a much lower true effect than the written value if instead of using heavy caliber for plus 165 percent damage we used prime cryo rounds for 165 cold we're now modding an entirely different stat we can refer to serration's damage bonus as pure damage and prime cryo rounds as elemental damage to distinguish between the two so we have a hundred percent plus 165 percent for 265 pure damage and 100 plus 165 for 265 elemental damage as these are different stats they multiply together for a total of 702 percent final damage that is quite a bit more than 430 different stats multiplying together is why using different types of mods is loosely considered multiplicative improving every damaged at once is usually far superior versus the same amount of modding spent just improving one stat some external bonuses in the game are multiplicative giving you a bonus outside of any part of the modding process for example corpus shields take 75 more damage from magnetic this 75 bonus is after all calculations are complete in terms of you firing your weapon or using a warframe ability and therefore it multiplies with the whole result for magnetic damage that is the magnetic portion gets multiplied by 175 another example of multiplicative bonus can be found in wukong celestial twin ability by recasting it on an enemy the twin deals double the normal damage to that target regardless of other stats then we come on to absolute bonuses there are relatively few of these around an absolute bonus is one which adds the literal value written on the bonus to your total rather than adding it to the percentage bonus or multiplying it by the percentage bonus an example of this is arcane avenger it offers you plus 45 critical chance when you take damage as an absolute buff it allows all other calculations to go through and then just increases the actual critical chance by 45 percentage points take for example the kuvanuka it starts with a seven percent critical chance using the additive mod primed pistol gambit you can increase the stat from a hundred percent of its value to 287 percent of its value which will raise the critical chance from seven percent to twenty point one percent with arcane avenger activated as well the critical chance rises up from 20.1 to 65.1 percent due to 45 percentage point increase in the main absolute buffs are stronger the lower the base and modded values are that covers the difference between additive multiplicative and absolute bonuses so let's look at the actual damage equation then for ordinary gun attacks not including absolute bonuses this equation determines the average damage per shot as i mentioned at the start base damage is the innate damage stats to your weapon before any bonuses are applied pure damage modifiers come next this includes a lot of different sources fuel damage mods like serration corrupted damage mods like heavy caliber nightmare mods like blaze arcanes like arcane primary charger status overload mods like condition overload some abilities like vex armor or shooting gallery even things like the new helminth invigorations all of these modifiers are added together because they're all additive bonuses along with a base value of 1 representing the 100 unmodified damage this process is done similarly with crits but the crits term looks a little bit more complicated as there are two moving parts crit chance and crit damage simply multiplying the base critical chance by one plus the critical chance modifiers gives us our actual critical chance however for critical damage it's different the critical multiplier in your arsenal is designed for ease of reading for ordinary yellow crits if the multiplier says three times then when you land a yellow crit you deal three times damage however without the crit you'd still be dealing one times damage so the actual increase is only two times if you use mods to increase critical damage it increases this multiplier including the base one times damage rolled into it essentially making critical hits a fair bit stronger than the mod value initially implies a 100 critical damage bonus taking you from three times to six times multiplier increases the bonus on a yellow crit from two times to five times extra damage so that bonus is actually 150 if this feels like a no-brainer to you that's fine i just know that some people i've spoken to have been surprised by this so i'm spelling it out for everyone taking this into account you can see why the multiplier is calculated first and then one is removed from that as that is the one times normal damage we always have that one times we take out is sat here at the front of the whole critical term conveniently then this means we don't need to make any fancy changes to accommodate orange or red crits each additional crit tier gives us the same damage bonus again that is 1 times less than the multiplier shown in the arsenal so on a three-time script weapon the normal damage is one times the yellow crit is three times the orange grit is five times the regret is seven times and so on by directly multiplying our modified critical chance with a modified critical multiplier without the one times we get our average critical damage multiplier this accounts for how some shots will land a lower crit and some shots will land a higher crit all in one simple set of terms remember this equation isn't including any absolute values mostly so i don't overwhelm you with them so things like arcane avenger would need to be added in here too if you want to take that into account if you instead want to use the damage equation for a specific hit of a specific critical tier you should change out the critical chance value for a flat number for how big a crit you're calculating the very next term is the faction modifier which is simply the multiplier for bonus damage against the faction you are shooting effectively we've got five factions corpus grenier infested corrupted and everyone else everyone else has its own faction modifier because we don't have normal faction mods for everyone else there is a sentient damage bonus of the sacrificial set but that's about it as you normally only face one faction at a time it's usually safe to just include faction modifiers in your calculation just remember to account for surprise extras like the stalker turning up now let's pause here you've got your base damage pure damage critical hit and faction damage modifiers all calculated up to this point here is what's called modded damage i don't know who called it that or why but it's what you'll find it named on the wiki and so i'm sticking with that term to make it easier if you refer to the wiki later modded damage is a thing used in other calculations such as proc damage so it's good to remember this grouping of stats next up we have our elemental and physical modifiers elemental modifiers affect the total base damage so they're a nice and easy one plus elemental bonus like with pure damage or faction damage elemental modifiers include the 90 mods 60 60 mods as well as modifiers such as from shock trooper augment this doesn't include the bonus damage from sister or lich weapons as those bonuses are actually part of your base damage physical mods are different they only buff up the portion of the base damage which matches the physical mod you are using a slash mod only gives a bonus to the portion of slash damage on your weapon for example if that slash damage is zero such as on the foreman then a slash mode will do absolutely nothing that's why they have their own terms in the equation and are multiplied by the physical proportion for each mod in the vast majority of weapon cases there is precious little reason to use the physical damage mods as a result so only use these if you know exactly what you are doing and then finally marking the difference between damage per bullet and damage per shot we have the multi shot turn again just like the pure damage and faction damage portions we're adding up the multi shot modifiers plus one however this time we're also multiplying them by the base multi shot this accounts for weapons normally shotguns which start off with more than one shot per shot the base multi shot is multiplied directly rather than added to so you still get the same percentage gain from multi-shot mods as with ordinary weaponry as you can see each separate term in the equation is multiplied by all the others stacking pure damage critical damage faction damage elemental damage modifiers and multi shots all on top of each other doubling the value of each of these terms a 100 increase each would give you a final multiply of 32 times to your base damage yet if you just instead say increased elemental damage by 100 five times over your final multiplier to base damage would just be six times once again multiplicative stats beats additive bonuses hands down following on from a weapons direct damage we have proc damage there are five types of status effect which deal damage slash electric toxin heat and gas the nuances behind each i've covered more extensively in my damage type guide so you can check that out there if you've not seen it yet or need a refresher in terms of damage they all work similarly but with some quirks slash proc is 0.35 times the modded damage times one plus fraction mods per second toxin is 0.5 times more damage times one plus two fraction mods times one plus two toxin mods per second electric is 0.5 times modded damage times one plus two fraction mods times one plus your electric mods per second gas is 0.5 times the modded damage times one plus faction mods per second and then heat is supposed to be 0.5 times more damage times one plus fraction mods times one plus heat mods per second i say supposed to be as in the current version of the game the first heat proc applied does indeed follow this rule however until all heat effects are cleared from that target every subsequent heat proc uses the original sources faction modifier and heat modifier this means if the first heat proc comes from an ember's fire blast which cannot be modded with faction mods or heat mods then all following heat procs will also have no faction nor heat bonus until all of the heat procs run out on those targets this goes the other way too allowing a weapon to be stacked with heat and faction mods apply a prop to a target and then swapping over to a damage focused weapon that also procs the heat now using the bonuses of the first weapon so yeah heat is bugged and i'm absolutely certain this is a bug because it allows both exploitation and accidental griefing i don't normally comment on exploitable bugs in warframe but this one can really mess with anyone trying to get their head around proc math so there you go for everything else though it's pretty easy to read off all damage ticks apply once per second all use your modded damage that is the base damage pure damage critical damage and faction damage combined i called out earlier but not including elemental or physical mods fraction damage buffs are then reapplied and the basic elements use their elemental mods to buff up the proc damage further but slash and gas do not now we've got our basic damage calculated this is usually the point someone stops when comparing weapons on a purely theoretical level and it's a reasonable place to do so as long as everyone remembers the limits to the theory reducing your damage in practice are three major modifiers depending on the weapon projectile fall-off explosion fall-off and melee follow-through projectile fall-off is typically used on shotguns and snipers they outline a short range below which you deal full damage and a long range beyond which you do so called minimal damage the minimal amount varies from weapon to weapon and is only known experimentally the wiki tends to be accurate for your reference on a weapon by weapon basis so if you want to know about your specific weapon that'll be the place to check whatever damage falloff modifier you have is directly multiplied onto your base damage affecting both direct hit and proc damage amount explosion falloff works similarly except it doesn't have a lower range explosion falloff immediately starts reducing damage with distance the range in the arsenal shows how far out the explosion reaches and the falloff shows how much damage is lost at the very edge of the range for example the tenet envoy has a falloff of 80 percent losing 80 percent of the damage at the extreme range with only 20 of the damage still being delivered at half the range from the center of the explosion it's half the fall off so only 40 is lost melee follow-through is quite a bit different melee swings can hit multiple enemies rather than delivering full damage to each enemy follow through is the fraction of damage that hits each subsequent enemy in the swing for example with a follow through of 0.6 the first enemy takes full damage the next one hit takes 0.6 times the damage the third one takes 0.6 squared or 0.36 times the damage and so on multiplying by 0.6 for each additional enemy this only applies to swings and other attacks which as the name suggests follows through the enemies explosions like with glaives instead use the explosion fall off base on range not the number of targets hit finally regarding melee they also have these elusive stances these provide different ways of actually wielding the weapon in combat complete with imaginatively named combos that otherwise do very little to explain what's going on it's been known for the longest time that these stances have different damage modifiers and different animation lengths which overall affects how much damage you actually deal while the values aren't given in game some studios tenno have figured them all out and made the information available on the wiki i'll grab one of these more complex ones to show you how to read it this is the moves table for the stance final harbinger breaking it down each distinct move within a move set is marked by a single circle such as this first one of null warning making a melee attack with this stance while not moving deals a strike with a 200 damage modifier and then another 200 damage strike which also has a guaranteed impact and slash brock you cannot do just a single attack with this move on this stance it deals two attacks each time the next melee action in the move set would then do two more attacks one for 200 damage and one for 300 damage the third move deals 300 damage and lifts the enemy up deals two strikes of 100 damage and then a fourth strike of 100 damage with a forced slash proc the final move deals three lots of 400 damage which all knock the target down these percentages are all multiplicative with the damage of the weapon typically with no additional modifiers a few stances have some exceptions in their notes on the wiki page because well nothing in life is simple this covers probably 90 percent of any damage calculation you'd need to consider when theory crafting and comparing weapon builds you will find niche factors here or there like sniper combos and focus schools but this will let you assess and compare the majority of weapons also try not to think about damage quantization because honestly that thing is just bonkers i do hope you have learned something from this video if you have make sure to leave a like and join the ever growing subscriber count on this channel as well that's all from me for now so as always add mods get results and fight well tenno

Channel: TheKengineer

Views: 161,128

Keywords: warframe, damage, equation, calculation, formula, calculate, melee, stance, stances, status, proc, effect, damage over time, dot

Id: N3n89cZpVTg

Length: 19min 45sec (1185 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 01 2021