How to determine actual spell and staff damage?

Pallmor

Okay, I've been playing this game since launch, but I only recently created my first DPS alt, so bear with me. I created a sorcerer who uses a destruction staff and a lot of Storm Calling skills aimed at DPS. Now, it's my understanding that your damage with both magicka-based spells and with staffs somehow scale off your character's max magicka.

But my question is, is there a way to see what your actual spell and staff damage is? I see on my character sheet that there is a "Weapon Damage" and "Spell Damage" listed. But I also noticed when I take off all my magicka-boosting armor that these values don't change. So if actual damage scales off max magicka then those numbers can't be indicative of the actual damage I'm supposed to be doing (or they would change when I lose a bunch of my magicka).

Do I need a DPS add-on to determine this? And, if so, can anyone recommend one (preferably one that works with the gamepad interface and doesn't include a bunch of other unrelated UI changes)?

Nestor

Pallmor wrote: »

Come on there has to be someone who can answer this. Two years into the game and no one knows how to determine actual spell and staff damage?

Yes, it has been worked out

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/pts-2-1-2-sorcerer-arithmagic/

Dagoth_Rac

Pallmor wrote: »

But I thought weapon damage was also supposed to scale off magicka too. But my weapon is showing the same damage on the tooltip (501) both with and without my armor

Note that your fire staff (and any weapon) does not have a Weapon Damage or Spell Damage stat on it. It has a Damage stat on it. That becomes the base for both your Spell Damage and Weapon Damage stats. To get them higher, you need to rely on set bonuses, passives, buffs, etc. Or upgrading weapon to green/blue/purple/gold. If wielding a staff, you are likely a magicka build and will concentrate on getting your spell damage up. If wielding a Bow, you are likely a stamina build and will concentrate on getting your weapon damage up.

Since you are a magicka build, you have concentrated on getting spell damage up. So removing armor like Torug's Pact will reduce your spell damage and thus the tooltip of magicka based skills like Mage's Wrath. But that 501 "Damage" on the weapon will never change. It is not a calculated value from a formula like a tooltip is. It is just a flat number associated with that weapon.

Again, you have to think of "Damage" and "Spell Damage" and "Weapon Damage" as simply numbers, not indications of exact damage you will do to enemies. The wording is admittedly confusing.

Molag_Crow

Spell damage is pretty much determined by your weapon's damage, not "Weapon Damage" on your character stats. So, dual wielding legendary one-handed swords that have Damage 1335 will boost your spell damage up like crazy, but a normal legendary staff will cause you to lose about 200-ish spell damage.

Max magicka is just basically additional damage but I find that it's not as important when it comes to your overall damage with magicka spells.

[Edit: I hope that made sense, and made thing more clear to you.]

lolo_01b16_ESO

Spell damage is determined by the level, quality and type of weapon you use and can be increased with some armour sets, jewelery enchantments, some passiv skills, and the major / minor sorcery buff.

The damage your skills actually do is calculated based on both, your spell damage and maximum magicka. For most skills it's roughly:
Tooltip damage = skill coefficient x (max magicka + spell damage x 10)

This tooltip damage is then further modified by your enemies resistances and champion points.

Pallmor

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

Spell damage is determined by the level, quality and type of weapon you use and can be increased with some armour sets, jewelery enchantments, some passiv skills, and the major / minor sorcery buff.

The damage your skills actually do is calculated based on both, your spell damage and maximum magicka. For most skills it's roughly:
Tooltip damage = skill coefficient x (max magicka + spell damage x 10)

This tooltip damage is then further modified by your enemies resistances and champion points.

Tooltip damage is the weapon damage shown on the weapon's information blurb when you click on it in inventory, right? Because, IIRC, the damage shown there for me is way lower than the "weapon damage" stat on my character sheet. And it also doesn't change when I take off my magicka boosting armor.

And is the "skill coefficient" the same as your rank in the skill (aka your destruction staff rank or storm calling rank)?

Pallmor

My point is that if my spell damage and weapon damage really do scale off my max magicka, then there should be a stat somewhere that shows actual damage and that drops when I take off my magicka-boosting armor, right?

Does anyone know how to access that stat?

Pallmor

Come on there has to be someone who can answer this. Two years into the game and no one knows how to determine actual spell and staff damage?

If weapon and spell damage are based in part on max magicka then there must be an *actual damage* number that goes down when you take off your magicka armor, right? But damned if I can find it. And apparently none of you can either.

And people spend all day on here complaining about trivial stuff, when we can't even figure out what actual damage we're doing.

Dagoth_Rac

"Spell Damage" on character sheet is not the actual damage your staff does. Pretend the stat called "Spell Damage" was instead called "Magicka Power Converter" or "Unnamed Stat" or "X" or something like that. It might make more sense to think of it that way. It starts off as the damage value on your staff. But it will get buffed by things like upgrading your weapon to gold, Major Sorcery (20% buff from skills like Entropy, Power Surge), the Expert Mage passive, set bonuses, etc.

But once you get to that higher number, it is still just a number used in a calculation. It influences your actual damage numbers, but is not the damage itself. Higher Spell Damage = better damage and better heals, but it is part of a formula, not a 1:1 relationship.

Septimus_Magna

Ability DMG = ability coef x (max magicka/stamina + 10.49 x spell/weapon dmg)

For example:

ability coef = 0.1538
max magicka = 42000
spell dmg = 4400

Ability DMG = 0.1538 x (42000 + 10.49 x 4400) = 13558 Tooltip DMG


Note, Im not sure if the value of 10.49 has been adjusted lately.

Septimus_Magna

Molag_Crow wrote: »

Spell damage is pretty much determined by your weapon's damage, not "Weapon Damage" on your character stats. So, dual wielding legendary one-handed swords that have Damage 1335 will boost your spell damage up like crazy, but a normal legendary staff will cause you to lose about 200-ish spell damage.

Max magicka is just basically additional damage but I find that it's not as important when it comes to your overall damage with magicka spells.

[Edit: I hope that made sense, and made thing more clear to you.]

Staff: 1335 spell dmg

DW: 1335 + 1335*0.2 = 1602 spell dmg

Note, this difference (267) gets amplified by buffs like minor/major sorcery, sorc passives etc so the overall spell dmg increase will be higher.

Pallmor

Nestor wrote: »

Pallmor wrote: »

Come on there has to be someone who can answer this. Two years into the game and no one knows how to determine actual spell and staff damage?

Yes, it has been worked out

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/pts-2-1-2-sorcerer-arithmagic/

Okay, now we're getting somewhere! My max magicka and spell damage with my magicka-boosting armor on is 11416 and 546 respectively (10353 and 501 with armor off). And, solving for a, apparently the coefficient for the Mages Wrath (level I) skill is approximately 0.0388. So using the formula:

I get

Mages Wrath damage (armor on): 0.0388 * (11416 + 10.5 * 546) = 665

Mages Wrath damage (armor off): 0.0388 * (10353 + 10.5 * 501) = 605

This matches up with the tooltips I'm seeing:

But I thought weapon damage was also supposed to scale off magicka too. But my weapon is showing the same damage on the tooltip (501) both with and without my armor:

It's also showing 501 for "Weapon Damage" on my character sheet, both with and without armor.

WalkingLegacy

They really should work on making their tooltips and stats a bit smarter to reflect our setups.

Nestor

Pallmor wrote: »

It's also showing 501 for "Weapon Damage" on my character sheet, both with and without armor.

Unless you are wearing a set that boosts weapon damage (Ashen Grip or Hundings Rage for example) your Weapon Damage stat will not change with gear.