Is the Ancient Knowledge passive bugged?

merpins · June 2023

I'm just asking, as since the last major update, I've not noticed any difference in damage with or without this passive on both Destruction Staff and Lightning Staff. It's not reflected in the statistics of skills that it should effect, and upon testing on the dummy, my dps margins are within 2%, which is average for my skill testing build for normal RNG on testing without the skill. It should be an average 5% increase, but it isn't, so to my testing the passive seems to be bugged. Anyone else having this problem?

virtus753 · June 2023

The ice staff part of the passive has never been reflected in the stats but has worked, based on testing from a patch or two ago. I will try to test the fire/lightning parts.

Keep in mind that it isn’t going to be exactly 5% or 10% relative. Damage done from this passive almost certainly stacks with other sources - major and minor berserk, major and minor slayer, the new velothi amulet, etc. So your actual relative damage increase won’t be what it says on the tin. The increase will be the sum of your already extant bonuses plus this passive divided by the extant bonuses, so if you had 30% extra damage already then 5% on top of that would be 1.35/1.3 = 1.0385, or a 3.85% relative increase. 2% sounds a bit low, but I’ll see what I can find in testing.

virtus753 · June 2023

Definitely working, and the math seems to work out right.

With no gear, no passives, no CP, nothing except a white level 1 untraited, unenchanted destro staff, I compared 0 points in Ancient Knowledge to 1 point in it. I tested this on one of those 6m dummies, not the trial dummies or Precursor, to get as clean a test as possible.

With a fire staff, single-target abilities and light attacks increased as expected: LA went from 835 to 877, Force Shock from 574 to 603, Templar's Javelin from 1808 to 1898.

With a lightning staff, all those increases reverted, and AoE skills were increased instead: Sweeps went from 735 to 771, and Spear Shards from 1438 direct/111 DoT to 1510 direct/116 DoT.

Those are all exactly 5% increases. The reason I'm seeing it at exactly 5% in this test is because I have no other bonuses whatsoever (naked, no CP, etc.).

To show the impact of additional bonuses, I slotted Biting Aura (which also requires taking the Piercing passive). This is what happens to the lightning staff with AoE abilities once I add Ancient Knowledge to Biting Aura:

Sweeps goes from 796 (with Biting Aura alone) to 833 (with Biting Aura + Ancient Knowledge).
Shards goes from 1558 direct/120 DoT to 1632 direct/125 DoT.

Since I had Biting Aura already, for 6% extra damage to AoE abilities, I was at 1.06x damage for those abilities initially. Adding Ancient Knowledge with a lightning staff added 5% more to that, for a total of 1.11x damage. 1.11/1.06 = 1.047

833/796 = 1.047
1632/1558 = 1.047
125/120 = 1.042

I suspect the last one is a bit off because the number is so low that rounding will come into play. If I were doing this with gear, buffs, etc., the numbers would be higher and therefore I expect more accurate.

The more "damage done" buffs you add, the less of a relative impact the Ancient Knowledge passive will provide, since it is additive, not multiplicative.

ZOS_Hadeostry · June 2023

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic, as it's asking the community for help.

Thank you for your understanding