Spell Damage

Nestor

Reading through the thread on why someone's spell damage seems lower than it should be got me to thinking. Which is always dangerous. And, I also don't want a bunch of numbers flying all over my screen, so my in game feedback is rather coarse.

Anyway, just what does Spell Damage mean, or rather do? (the value in the character sheet, I know the ability does damage to the enemy) When I cast a spell from an Ability on my hotbar, it will say X Damage over Y Time. How does the Character Spell damage factor in to this? Lets use an example I pull out of my head and ignore any passive effects.

Spell Damage from the stats in the Character Window 50

Ability Damage 100 plus 100 over 10 seconds.

So, does the Ability do 200 total damage, or 250 total damage or some other number from an equation that includes these two values?

Does it matter if the Ability does Magic Damage or Physical Damage?

kitsinni

I don't know the exact equation but it basically works like this. All class skills do more damage the more magicka and spell damage you add. All weapon skills will do more damage with weapon damage and I think stamina.

Now there are some tricky parts to it. A class skill like NB's melee attacks will do more damage with spell damage but work off weapon crit. So those are kind of physical magic attacks. A Resto or Destro staff will do more damage/heals based off of weapon damage not spell damage and rely on spell crit.

So crit is a bit confusing but as far as spell damage if it is a class skill it will be increased by magicka and spell damage. If it works off a weapon it will be increased by weapon damage.

madangrypally

Put simply its this.

Base Ability Damage = (a/b + c*d)

a = Max Magicka
b = Max Magicka required for 1 damage gain.
c = Spell Damage
d = Spell Damage needed for 1 damage gain.

Then passives and other boost are added after this. An example is Cycle of Life from the Restoration staff. This adds 10% damage.

Base Ability Damage * (1.10) = New damage based on 10% addition damage.

If a player has multiple sources of increased damage then its
Base Ability Damage * (all increase damage added together) = new damage.


Max Magicka required for 1 damage gain is not the same across all abilities. Heals work the same way.
Example:
Grand Healing requires 30.70 Max Magicka increase to add +1 base heal.
Blessing of Protection requires 12.70 Max Magicka increase to add +1 base heal.

Spell and weapon damage works the same way. I have not updated my spell damage table recently so will use Weapon Damage as an example instead.

Example:
Grand Healing requires 0.31 Weapon Damage for +1 base heal.
Blessing of Protection requires 0.80 Weapon Damage for +1 base heal.

Spell damage for class abilities work the same way.
IE: Crystal Fragment will require different Spell Damage and Max magicka to increase its damage by 1 then Endless Fury would.


The above is one reason why Stamina builds will never be as viable as Magicka builds. Max Magicka has a big effect on the classes abilities and if going a Max Stamina route then all the players class abilities will suffer greatly.

The numbers seem low but they quickly add up.

Nestor

madangrypally wrote: »

Put simply its this.

Snip

I am so glad you did not give me the complicated answer.

Merlin13KAGL

Nice to see 3 months later, the affect these numbers have is still as ambiguous as ever.

We were having discussion about this in zone chat just yesterday.

Specifically, how Magicka affects Spell Damge (which ties in with Spell Critical)

Some of these can be directly seen via hovering over a Magicka based skill.

With weapon attack, it's still screwy and in limbo. Staff has weapon damage & spell damage? Weapon damage (though quite magical) is still based off of stamina?

Both crits come into play, one crit comes into play?

The stamina part makes sense only during a bash.

A side question involves resistance. There is spell resistance (presumably resistance to spells) and there are specific resistances (fire & poison, for instance).

I assume if the damage is spell based, you get benefit from both (spell based poison damage having to go through some combination of spell resist and poison resist).

I equally assume that there are non spell based sources (environmental damage, stamina based attacks like poison arrow) that do not look at spell resist at all, but do look at the specific resist.

How ESO loves to bury the specifics of their mechanics.

Some of it's about as non-intuitive as can be, and patch after patch, Azura knows how it's been changed behind the scenes...?

Cuyler

madangrypally wrote: »

Put simply its this.

Base Ability Damage = (a/b + c*d)

a = Max Magicka
b = Max Magicka required for 1 damage gain.
c = Spell Damage
d = Spell Damage needed for 1 damage gain.

Snip

That's a great explanation, thk u!

I do wonder where you got that equation from however. Was it listed somewhere? Trial and error? Determining constants with a program, etc.?

jluceyub17_ESO

Class abilities - boosted by Magicka and Spell Damage, Crit chance is Spell crit
Destro/Resto - boosted by Magicka and Weapon Damage, crit chance is Spell crit
All other weapons - boosted by Stamina and Weapon Damage, crit chance is Weapon crit.
Not super complicated.

Nestor

jluceyub17_ESO wrote: »

Not super complicated.

Correct, figuring what boosts the damage is not that complicated. Figuring out how much the damage is boosted by the stat is what's complicated....

jluceyub17_ESO

Nestor wrote: »

jluceyub17_ESO wrote: »

Not super complicated.

Correct, figuring what boosts the damage is not that complicated. Figuring out how much the damage is boosted by the stat is what's complicated....

Oh ya, I don't even bother to dig that deep, though I guess one would if they wanted to figure out how deep to go into softcaps before focusing on the other stats. I just check my DPS and tweak blindly.

Aett_Thorn

jluceyub17_ESO wrote: »

Class abilities - boosted by Magicka and Spell Damage, Crit chance is Spell crit

Except for some that go off of weapon crit.

catpower

jluceyub17_ESO wrote: »

Class abilities - boosted by Magicka and Spell Damage, Crit chance is Spell crit
Destro/Resto - boosted by Magicka and Weapon Damage, crit chance is Spell crit
All other weapons - boosted by Stamina and Weapon Damage, crit chance is Weapon crit.
Not super complicated.

I'm pretty sure that some class skills critical chance uses your weapon crit, Templar biting jabs being one example, there are surely others.

It may not be complicated, but it is definitely not 100% consistent as your post would lead someone to believe.