Attack/Damage Types: A Request For ZOS

furiouslog

So the new Diamond's Victory set got me wondering about this (and the tooltip has been revised during the PTS apparently), but it's still not clear to me which skills and abilities count precisely as what. It procs differently on melee or ranged damage, but what does that mean? Based on the tooltip I would infer that it's just an >8 or <8 meter thing. But the ambiguity does not stop there.

I've looked through all of the usual places that document skill trees, but I have not found one that explicitly states which attacks count as which kind of damage. There's also the issue of what things proc poisons and enchants, but I'm not even talking about that stuff. With the CP tree changes, we have these other options. How am I supposed to know what to try if I can't tell what kind of damage I'm doing?

The different dimensions as far as I can tell, that appear to have mutually exclusive elements, fall into the following groups:

Damage Types: (Pretty straightforward, generally, as these are often identified in the tooltip)
Magic
Flame
Shock
Frost
Physical
Bleed
Poison
Disease

Ability Characteristics: (Again, straightforward as it's usually identified by virtue of the skill tree)
Class
Weapon

Casts: (Generally well defined in the tooltip)
Cast Time
Channeled Casts
Instant Casts

Damage Characteristics: (Here's where it starts to get messy)
AOE
DOT
Direct

Damage Target Effects: (Again, pretty messy and often ambiguous)
Single Target
Multiple Targets (static ground effect, mobile effect centered around target, mobile effect centered around player)

Abilities Range: (Numerical attack ranges are stated but not classified as one or the other)
Ranged
Melee

Damage Influencers:
Max Attribute
Max Damage Stat

I think that covers the different possible overlaps for a given ability or proc. If I forgot something, please let me know. I'm ignoring status effects and poison/enchant procs, which is a whole separate thing that also needs clarity.

So, with all of this, when we are putting builds together, the tooltips don't provide enough information to allow us to conceptualize the practical benefit of different combinations of skills, passives, sets and CP allocation. I play magplar a lot, so the biggest question to me is how any new stuff is going to affect Puncturing Sweeps, whose tooltip reads like so:

Puncturing Sweep

Cost: 2700 Magicka
Channel time: 1 second
Target: Area
Radius: 8 meters
Effect
Launch a relentless assault, striking enemies in front of you four times with your Aedric spear. The spear deals 872 Magic Damage to the closest enemy and 334 Magic Damage to all other enemies. Each strike reduces the Movement Speed of the closest enemy by 40% for 1 second. You heal for 40% of the damage done with this ability.
New effect
You heal for a percentage of the damage done.

So here is what I think I know from that:

1. It's a channeled ability.
2. It's an area attack, centered around the player, with no ground effect.
3. It hits 4 times in 1 second.
4. It does magic damage, and is therefore mitigated by spell resistance.
5. It heals me for a percentage of the damage done, and if I do less damage with it, I'll get lower heals.
6. It's a class ability.

From that, I'd infer that it's an AOE and a DOT. So if it's my main spammable, that's what I should be working with when it comes to optimizing builds and CP.

Here's what I don't know:

1. Is it a ranged or melee attack?
2. What affects the baseline amount of magic damage?
3. What affects the baseline amount of the healing?
4. Which CP skills affect the final damage?
5. Is there a limit to targets?
6. What's the "cone" of attack? Is is the 180 degrees in "front" of me?

Beyond that, we also all know that this skill counts as single target for parts of it, and that it apparently does not count as a DOT. At least, I think? Maybe? Unless something changed again?

And there is probably other stuff about this skill that I don't know that I don't know.

Now I have to go look at 50 other available damage skills and try to make sense of those as well. Like Ritual of Retribution apparently has a limit on the number of times that the synergy can be hit, but no one seems to know the exact number. Where is that written down?

And that's my point. Even the most diligent content creators can't keep up with the details of these skill attributes and characteristics well enough to confidently post them on their websites. Our best authors of combat documentation are forced to resort to vague and general descriptions, and the rest of us have to go through burdensome scientific tests to look at cause and effect. We are constantly redocumenting stuff that you guys should know for certain, because it's right there in your code. Some people have gone to great lengths to figure out the inner workings of various combat formulas, but there is not broad agreement when it comes to individual skills, or at least, the formulas do not match reality, and this is probably due to unknowns. And some of the stuff posted out there is just wrong. There is a lack of clarity.

So how about it, ZOS. Put the necessary data in your tooltips, or at least somewhere. I've seen threads on this forum asking for this kind of information since 2015. It still has not happened. It's long past time that we got the level of transparency we need to be able to figure out your incredibly complex and frustrating, yet still enjoyable, combat system. Please, I'm exhausted.

Malkiv

I understand the frustration with not being able to see some of the more critical (i.e. advanced) information for min/max play. I would agree that some of the information needs to be expanded on since we are unable to see the source code to make those connections. For not, the best we have is deductive reasoning and test play.

furiouslog wrote: »

From that, I'd infer that it's an AOE and a DOT. So if it's my main spammable, that's what I should be working with when it comes to optimizing builds and CP.

Here's what I don't know:

1. Is it a ranged or melee attack?

It's melee, because it does not fire a projectile.

furiouslog wrote: »

2. What affects the baseline amount of magic damage?

Same with any other magicka ability; it scales from max magicka, spell damage, equipped weapon damage, spell penetration, critical, and CP perks.

furiouslog wrote: »

3. What affects the baseline amount of the healing?

Damage dealt after damage modifiers.

furiouslog wrote: »

4. Which CP skills affect the final damage?

Only Biting Aura. More information on that below.

furiouslog wrote: »

5. Is there a limit to targets?

It seems to only hit a maximum of 12 targets. It's very hard to verify this outside of recording an encounter of more than 12 and doing a frame-by-frame analysis. Consider my observation as anecdotal since I have not done this. It's not really important, anyways, as AOE encounters are rarely larger than 12 unless you're SR farming. For end-game PVE, AOE budgeting is laughable at best.

furiouslog wrote: »

6. What's the "cone" of attack? Is is the 180 degrees in "front" of me?

The cone is fairly wide, and will hit things within range if they are in front of your character. I don't know an exact measurement in degrees, because ESO does not come with a protractor. If I was forced to make a guess, it would be 60 degrees.

furiouslog wrote: »

Beyond that, we also all know that this skill counts as single target for parts of it, and that it apparently does not count as a DOT. At least, I think? Maybe? Unless something changed again?

The entire skill calculates as AOE damage, and ignores the single-target component of the attack, when applying damage modifiers. As for DOTs, the CP perk, Thaumaturge, does not currently boost damage. So whether that means Thaumaturge is broken, or that Sweep is broken, or it is working as intended is unknown to me. Before the CP 2.0 change, Thaumaturge did affect the damage from Sweep.

furiouslog wrote: »

And there is probably other stuff about this skill that I don't know that I don't know.

Now I have to go look at 50 other available damage skills and try to make sense of those as well. Like Ritual of Retribution apparently has a limit on the number of times that the synergy can be hit, but no one seems to know the exact number. Where is that written down?

People go onto the PTS and test these things over-and-over, then test them in live over-and-over. This is why theory crafting is not for everyone. When it comes to data collecting, many content creators will not go as far as giving absolute answers to things that are not 100% verified by them, because it is a liability to their reputation and as being a source of information.

The reason you see so many mixed answers, is because people want to parrot what they think is correct. You see this all the time with people saying that partially-looted chests and harvest nodes do not respawn; They do, it just takes 10 minutes. Like the information I gave above - whether you believe it is correct or incorrect - is verifiable with nothing more than test-play and observation.

Bonus:

furiouslog

Malkiv wrote: »

I understand the frustration with not being able to see some of the more critical (i.e. advanced) information for min/max play. I would agree that some of the information needs to be expanded on since we are unable to see the source code to make those connections. For not, the best we have is deductive reasoning and test play.

furiouslog wrote: »

From that, I'd infer that it's an AOE and a DOT. So if it's my main spammable, that's what I should be working with when it comes to optimizing builds and CP.

Here's what I don't know:

1. Is it a ranged or melee attack?

It's melee, because it does not fire a projectile.

furiouslog wrote: »

2. What affects the baseline amount of magic damage?

Same with any other magicka ability; it scales from max magicka, spell damage, equipped weapon damage, spell penetration, critical, and CP perks.

furiouslog wrote: »

3. What affects the baseline amount of the healing?

Damage dealt after damage modifiers.

furiouslog wrote: »

4. Which CP skills affect the final damage?

Only Biting Aura. More information on that below.

furiouslog wrote: »

5. Is there a limit to targets?

It seems to only hit a maximum of 12 targets. It's very hard to verify this outside of recording an encounter of more than 12 and doing a frame-by-frame analysis. Consider my observation as anecdotal since I have not done this. It's not really important, anyways, as AOE encounters are rarely larger than 12 unless you're SR farming. For end-game PVE, AOE budgeting is laughable at best.

furiouslog wrote: »

6. What's the "cone" of attack? Is is the 180 degrees in "front" of me?

The cone is fairly wide, and will hit things within range if they are in front of your character. I don't know an exact measurement in degrees, because ESO does not come with a protractor. If I was forced to make a guess, it would be 60 degrees.

furiouslog wrote: »

Beyond that, we also all know that this skill counts as single target for parts of it, and that it apparently does not count as a DOT. At least, I think? Maybe? Unless something changed again?

The entire skill calculates as AOE damage, and ignores the single-target component of the attack, when applying damage modifiers. As for DOTs, the CP perk, Thaumaturge, does not currently boost damage. So whether that means Thaumaturge is broken, or that Sweep is broken, or it is working as intended is unknown to me. Before the CP 2.0 change, Thaumaturge did affect the damage from Sweep.

furiouslog wrote: »

And there is probably other stuff about this skill that I don't know that I don't know.

Now I have to go look at 50 other available damage skills and try to make sense of those as well. Like Ritual of Retribution apparently has a limit on the number of times that the synergy can be hit, but no one seems to know the exact number. Where is that written down?

People go onto the PTS and test these things over-and-over, then test them in live over-and-over. This is why theory crafting is not for everyone. When it comes to data collecting, many content creators will not go as far as giving absolute answers to things that are not 100% verified by them, because it is a liability to their reputation and as being a source of information.

The reason you see so many mixed answers, is because people want to parrot what they think is correct. You see this all the time with people saying that partially-looted chests and harvest nodes do not respawn; They do, it just takes 10 minutes. Like the information I gave above - whether you believe it is correct or incorrect - is verifiable with nothing more than test-play and observation.

Bonus:

This is exactly why I want the level of transparency I requested. I don't want to have to do a doctoral level research project to confirm and reconfirm every scenario to figure out what the hell is going on with my DPS. If a game has rules, the rules should be pretty clear to everyone, or the game results in chaos. I'm not blaming the content creators for their reluctance to make a declaration under uncertainty. I'd feel the same way.

Thanks for all of that, BTW. I found the same thing with Thaumaturge, which is what was driving me nuts. I can't find anything in the patch notes that confirms a change. It's like some days I log in after an update, and my numbers look different, and I can't figure out why. And so I'm like, did they change something? Did I just have an off day? And then the process of figuring it out starts. Some people would just say "stop worrying about it and go play the game". But if my numbers change, and I can't solve it, and I'm not contributing enough DPS to cleanly clear vHOF all of a sudden, or if bosses suddenly start just hitting harder and I die more, I either stop playing or I figure it out. ZOS makes it REALLY HARD to figure this stuff out. It's a massive time sink. Even if it's obvious that a change was made, we still have to figure out how to deal with it, and that's a whole separate process after you've determined the root cause. I am seriously exhausted with all of this. I can't imagine the work hour equivalent put forth by players of this game to work out the details over and over again. It has to be more time than ZOS spends actually designing and coding the game.

I still don't know how many purify synergies are available to group members via Ritual though before they are all gone. I don't even really care today. I think I'm close to being done with this game. It asks for too much.

FluffWit

This is too much for me to read sorry.

I'll just say the first thing they should do is rename Magical damage or scrap it entirely and assign its damage dealing skills and sets to one of the other 3 magical types of damage. Because having a damage type that's just called "magic" is bloody confusing for new players.

oterWitz

furiouslog wrote: »

5. 5. Is there a limit to targets?
6. What's the "cone" of attack? Is is the 180 degrees in "front" of me?

I could be way off base here but it occurred to me whilst reading all this that one could test 5 and 6 above with target skeletons. You'd have to buy/make/borrow a few, but then just pack them all in front of you and increase one by one until you hit the target limit. Then arrange them in different ways to find the approximate cone.

As Malkiv said, testing and theory crafting isn't for everyone. Even for those who like it, I imagine they don't do it at the expense of enjoying the "game" part of the game. If you need a break from testing that's okay, if you need a break from the actual game, that's different but okay too

YandereGirlfriend

For the life of me, I have no idea why ZOS insists on obscuring this information from the players.

There really ought to be one single online compendium maintained by ZOS for accessing basic mechanical functions. Another bonus would be to simply dump the code for abilities and combat mechanics so that players could cut through all obfuscation and see the precise workings of the systems for themselves.

I would add that the enduring mystery around what counts as a "Projectile" for certain sets and abilities is also infinitely infuriating.

phaneub17_ESO

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

For the life of me, I have no idea why ZOS insists on obscuring this information from the players.

There really ought to be one single online compendium maintained by ZOS for accessing basic mechanical functions. Another bonus would be to simply dump the code for abilities and combat mechanics so that players could cut through all obfuscation and see the precise workings of the systems for themselves.

I would add that the enduring mystery around what counts as a "Projectile" for certain sets and abilities is also infinitely infuriating.

Because they keep changing the rules even after stating they're changing the rules!

furiouslog

oterWitz wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

5. 5. Is there a limit to targets?
6. What's the "cone" of attack? Is is the 180 degrees in "front" of me?

I could be way off base here but it occurred to me whilst reading all this that one could test 5 and 6 above with target skeletons. You'd have to buy/make/borrow a few, but then just pack them all in front of you and increase one by one until you hit the target limit. Then arrange them in different ways to find the approximate cone.

As Malkiv said, testing and theory crafting isn't for everyone. Even for those who like it, I imagine they don't do it at the expense of enjoying the "game" part of the game. If you need a break from testing that's okay, if you need a break from the actual game, that's different but okay too

I like trying sets and messing around with builds. That's the fun bit of theorycrafting. I guess I like tinkering. I'm a statistician and engineer. Tinkering gets a lot more complicated and frustrating if the laws of physics are constantly in flux.

I like the game. I love the ESO world. I'm progging vet trials, I PVP regularly, and I run a social guild with 480 members. I've spent thousands on this game since beta. My guildmates look to me to sift out the information they need to get better at DPS and provide them with guidance. I like those guys. I wish we could hit the point where we can just go play the game together without worrying about all of the stuff you need to learn, know, and practice to get decent at it without so much periodic chaos. Also, the ever present (but not universal) PVP cheaters are the icing on that cake; they never seem to get banned despite volumes of reports with some pretty clear proof.

I think it just came crashing down on me today, as I was trying to reverse engineer a build from a combat log, exactly how much I needed to test and understand to be able to do that, and it hit me just how much time I was spending on this in the name of being able to play in Cyrodiil on a fair playing field, because it's no fun otherwise. I've golded so many gear sets out and parsed on all of them to see if I could squeeze out 2K more on a trial build. I did hundreds of hours of daily crafting writs to get the mats to do that. Where does it end? I just want to play the damn game with my friends, confident that it is fair and will work, and be able to understand its rules without seemingly endless hours of research sifting through disparate volumes of content that are difficult to access. Am I crazy? Call it a bad day, I guess.

I think that my request is fair, though, and I don't see any risk to the game. If their combat system is really approaching balance, there would be no reason to conceal any of it.

ExistingRug61

Just some points of clarification:

One important point here when talking about the mutually exclusive categories of damage is that it is instances of damage, rather than abilities themselves that we have to think about.

An ability can have multiple instances of damage, which can each fall in to different categories, so it becomes difficult to classify the skill as a whole into the categories. Each instance of damage follows the mutually exclusive rules (as far as I know), but you can't always just look at the skill overall and classify it.
Examples include:
An ability may have some upfront damage (which would be considered direct), and then also apply a following damage over time effect (considered a dot). Or the reverse - damage over time followed by a direct damage burst (ie: unstable wall)
An ability may do a instance of single target damage, but then also have an AoE explosion effect (ie: mages wrath).
You can see this sort of thing in the notes of the table provided by Malkiv.
(Although even so, there are still some skills components that don't seem to always behave exactly as one would expect)

With that in mind:

furiouslog wrote: »

Damage Characteristics: (Here's where it starts to get messy)
AOE
DOT
Direct

Damage Target Effects: (Again, pretty messy and often ambiguous)
Single Target
Multiple Targets (static ground effect, mobile effect centered around target, mobile effect centered around player)

There are two mutually exclusive pairs here. An instance of damage is (should) always be
Either Direct OR DoT
AND
Either Single Target OR AoE (with AoE having many variants and generally encompassing everything that isn't single target)

Now, on to Jabs/Sweeps:

Malkiv wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

Beyond that, we also all know that this skill counts as single target for parts of it, and that it apparently does not count as a DOT. At least, I think? Maybe? Unless something changed again?

The entire skill calculates as AOE damage, and ignores the single-target component of the attack, when applying damage modifiers. As for DOTs, the CP perk, Thaumaturge, does not currently boost damage. So whether that means Thaumaturge is broken, or that Sweep is broken, or it is working as intended is unknown to me. Before the CP 2.0 change, Thaumaturge did affect the damage from Sweep.

As of Dragonhold these abilities were changed to be a sequence of direct damage hits rather than a dot. From the patch notes on Puncturing Strikes:

This ability and its morphs will now properly be considered Direct Damage attacks rather than a hybrid of Direct Damage and Damage over Time. Note that some item sets may still erroneously trigger from the attack, and will be fixed in a future update.

So Thaumaturge stopped affecting Sweeps/Jabs as of Dragonhold, and given the patch notes this appears to be as intended (note at the time this meant it benefitted from the now non-existent Master at Arms CP).
So now Sweeps/Jabs is only affected by Biting Aura, and I believe all of it is considered AoE as stated above.

(However, directly inconsistent to this is rapid strikes and morphs, which one would think should follow the same principle but doesn't and instead is still considered a DoT rather than a sequence of direct damage, as of FoA at least as it benefits from both the single target and Dot CP. So yes its confusing/inconsistent)

I agree with your general idea though - having this sort of information available somewhere, like the tooltips, would be beneficial. Rather than having to keep on top of every little change that happens through patch notes.
Could get messy given you have to put the words in to classify every instance of damage a skill does though.
And as you identify, there is so much information about how skills work that simply isn't provided in game, which is not ideal.

Naftal

ExistingRug61 wrote: »

(However, directly inconsistent to this is rapid strikes and morphs, which one would think should follow the same principle but doesn't and instead is still considered a DoT rather than a sequence of direct damage, as of FoA at least as it benefits from both the single target and Dot CP. So yes its confusing/inconsistent)

Afaik the dot part is a bug and afaik the cp doesn't affect it, but on PTS some stuff like Azureblight procs from it.

oterWitz

Naftal wrote: »

Afaik the dot part is a bug and afaik the cp doesn't affect it, but on PTS some stuff like Azureblight procs from it.

Maybe this is the reason they don't release their data. Somehow the system for deciding damage types has gotten so convoluted, with numerous instances of bugs, that they're afraid to show it to us

furiouslog

oterWitz wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

Afaik the dot part is a bug and afaik the cp doesn't affect it, but on PTS some stuff like Azureblight procs from it.

Maybe this is the reason they don't release their data. Somehow the system for deciding damage types has gotten so convoluted, with numerous instances of bugs, that they're afraid to show it to us

hahaha

Seriously though, maybe if they wrote it down somewhere, enterprising players could actually test the PTS against the specification, and the game would be better as a result. Apart from all of the angry templars, of course.