Quick Analysis of the impact of summerset light/heavy attack scaling on damage production

Masel · April 2018

As I saw multiple threads on this topic, I wanted to grant some insight into how the scaling works in the first place and how changes could influence their damage with summerset. There's two ways this could be introduced:

To start, let's do a quick recap of ability scaling in eso (with Dual wield light attacks as an example):

Base Damage = 0.0139542*Stamina + 0.557374*WeaponDamage - 0.139753

Meaning that the base damage of the light attacks is determined by the maximum stamina and weapon damage. The scaling ratio that many players refers to is the division of the two slope coefficients (0.0139542 and 0.557374, respectively). In this case, it is around 40. Most other abilities have a scaling ratio of 10.5, so their damage is determined more equally by both stats. With Summerset, the scaling ratio of light/heavy attacks will change to 10.5 as well. Now there's two ways this could be done:

The first is that they kept the original strength (i.e. the sum of skill coefficients for stamina/magicka and weapon/spell damage), but changed the scaling ratio to 10.5. The second is that they increased the coefficient for stamina/magicka to match the usual 10.5 ratio. Here's a calculation of Dual Wield Light Attack Base Damage with example stats:

And here's the magicka counterpart:

Obviously, the third alternative is that they lowered the sum of coefficients to tone down stamina and keep magicka based light attacks similar, but based on the feedback of Pre-PTS-testers, the two alternatives presented above are ar more likely. Both lead to significant damage increases for both stamina and magicka DDs. Magicka will, however, benefit more from it because their resource pool is generally higher than their stamina counterpart, and therefore, this change alone will increase mag.

These calculations neglect the effect of all other amplifiers (such as CPs) on the damage values, but this is sufficient to show the general idea. So on top of all the other changes they introduced in order to raise magicka dps, this one is a big improvement for magicka DDs.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · April 2018

Sometimes I dont think we play the same game. Haha. Thanks for the info.

Masel · April 2018

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Sometimes I dont think we play the same game. Haha. Thanks for the info.

I'm a nerd, I know that

My PhD in Business Analysis and Statistics comes in handy for these things...

Septimus_Magna · April 2018

Good work on the math!

Im curious to see if they adjust the overall scaling values during PTS. For a magicka sorc a lightning heavy attack will generally deal aroud 10k dps, buffing that to 16,5k seems a bit much.

LittlePinkDot · April 2018

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Good work on the math!

Im curious to see if they adjust the overall scaling values during PTS. For a magicka sorc a lightning heavy attack will generally deal aroud 10k dps, buffing that to 16,5k seems a bit much.

Well I guess thats their fix for the crappy sustain nerf and class balance. Everyones new spammable, Light attacks!lol

code65536 · April 2018

The first is that they kept the original strength (i.e. the sum of skill coefficients for stamina/magicka and weapon/spell damage)

Your choice to look at the sum of the two coefficients seems rather arbitrary and makes little mathematical sense. Keeping the sums the same most certainly does not "[keep] the original strength". I fail to see how you come to the conclusion that this is a likely scenario.

I expect that final weapon attack damage to be similar--perhaps with a slight buff--but nothing nearly as drastic as what you paint. I guess this would be like your third scenario, which I think you had improperly dismissed.

The real implication of the ratio change is that the spell/weapon damage is more comparable to the max magicka/stamina stat.

For example:

A gold max magicka bonus is 1096. This gets passive buffs of 42-51% by CP (+20%), racials (+9/10% for the "good" races), Undaunted (+6%), guild (+7% with Inner Light), and class (+8% for sorc, warden, and nb), resulting in a final max magicka of 1556-1655 after passive buffs (ignoring combat buffs from War Horn).
A gold spell damage bonus is 129 SD. This is buffed by 20% by Major Sorcery for 155 SD, which is equivalent to 1625 max magicka at the 10.5 ratio (ignoring the sorc per-slot passive and combat buffs from Minor Sorcery).

So for abilities, a max magicka bonus is essentially equivalent to a spell damage bonus. But because the SD-to-max-magicka ratio is 40 for staff attacks, spell damage is the hands-down winner. This change in Summerset makes max magicka/stamina more comparable to spell/weapon damage. And makes the system a bit more intuitive by aligning it with the ability scaling ratio.

I don't think that we're going to see the kinds of huge buffs that you suggest--I expect that this intended as just a consistency change rather than a buff-the-hell-out-of-weapon-attacks change.

Alcast · April 2018

we will see if those changes go through. the scaling probably will, but there is other stuff that makes light attacks just outright broken.

Empower now buffing your next Light Attack by 40%.
Imbue Weapons (psijic) gives another 10-12k dmg on top of your Light attack (Basically could use this as spammable lmfao)
Elegance set another 20%.
35% Championpoints perk.

Fully raidbuffed LAs on magblade did about 42k dmg that was with 9 points in staff expert according to @Gilliamtherogue on a target dummy. And that was without any of the modifiers on top there.

And welcome to oneshotting people in Cyrodiil with Light Attacks

And if Light attack itself is not enough, Overload will definitely do the job

Bladerunner1 · April 2018

Bow light attacks have a 1/2 second cooldown if they're just spammed. Imagine having a primarily melee stamina character that can step up to 28 meters away during a boss mechanic and keep up 30kdps with LA spam.

Septimus_Magna · April 2018

@code65536

The thing is they probably dont want to nerf light attacks on stam builds who run relative low max stamina. So even if the stam build light attack dmg stays the same, magicka builds will still receive a significant buff due to their higher max magicka.

Jarryzzt · April 2018

If the final numbers/boosts on LAs are anything like this magnitude, then either a) ZOS has no idea what they are doing or b) they've decided to really play up to the casuals by letting people, as someone pointed out, get 30k (or even 20k) DPS just by LA spamming.

Incidentally, I wonder what the numbers on HAs end up like, meaning, what sort of a boost to Petsorces and various other HA-based magicka builds can we expect.

Savos_Saren · April 2018

Alcast wrote: »

we will see if those changes go through. the scaling probably will, but there is other stuff that makes light attacks just outright broken.

Empower now buffing your next Light Attack by 40%.
Imbue Weapons (psijic) gives another 10-12k dmg on top of your Light attack (Basically could use this as spammable lmfao)
Elegance set another 20%.
35% Championpoints perk.

Fully raidbuffed LAs on magblade did about 42k dmg that was with 9 points in staff expert according to @Gilliamtherogue on a target dummy. And that was without any of the modifiers on top there.

And welcome to oneshotting people in Cyrodiil with Light Attacks And if Light attack itself is not enough, Overload will definitely do the job

My wings will welcome you, Alcast.

Masel · April 2018

code65536 wrote: »

The first is that they kept the original strength (i.e. the sum of skill coefficients for stamina/magicka and weapon/spell damage)

Your choice to look at the sum of the two coefficients seems rather arbitrary and makes little mathematical sense. Keeping the sums the same most certainly does not "[keep] the original strength". I fail to see how you come to the conclusion that this is a likely scenario.

I expect that final weapon attack damage to be similar--perhaps with a slight buff--but nothing nearly as drastic as what you paint. I guess this would be like your third scenario, which I think you had improperly dismissed.

The real implication of the ratio change is that the spell/weapon damage is more comparable to the max magicka/stamina stat.

For example:
A gold max magicka bonus is 1096. This gets passive buffs of 42-51% by CP (+20%), racials (+9/10% for the "good" races), Undaunted (+6%), guild (+7% with Inner Light), and class (+8% for sorc, warden, and nb), resulting in a final max magicka of 1556-1655 after passive buffs (ignoring combat buffs from War Horn).

A gold spell damage bonus is 129 SD. This is buffed by 20% by Major Sorcery for 155 SD, which is equivalent to 1625 max magicka at the 10.5 ratio (ignoring the sorc per-slot passive and combat buffs from Minor Sorcery).

So for abilities, a max magicka bonus is essentially equivalent to a spell damage bonus. But because the SD-to-max-magicka ratio is 40 for staff attacks, spell damage is the hands-down winner. This change in Summerset makes max magicka/stamina more comparable to spell/weapon damage. And makes the system a bit more intuitive by aligning it with the ability scaling ratio.

I don't think that we're going to see the kinds of huge buffs that you suggest--this is more of a consistency change than a buff-the-hell-out-of-weapon-attacks change.

I guess we have to disagree on that one, because if you rewatch @Gilliamtherogue 's base game change video and one from Alcast, they say that the buff is giant and increased his light attack damage by a lot.

Alcast wrote: »

we will see if those changes go through. the scaling probably will, but there is other stuff that makes light attacks just outright broken.

Empower now buffing your next Light Attack by 40%.
Imbue Weapons (psijic) gives another 10-12k dmg on top of your Light attack (Basically could use this as spammable lmfao)
Elegance set another 20%.
35% Championpoints perk.

Fully raidbuffed LAs on magblade did about 42k dmg that was with 9 points in staff expert according to @Gilliamtherogue on a target dummy. And that was without any of the modifiers on top there.

And welcome to oneshotting people in Cyrodiil with Light Attacks And if Light attack itself is not enough, Overload will definitely do the job

Yeah, but 40k without raibuffs indicates that it is likely one of the two options i proposed above... We will see.

Aznox · April 2018

Will take the time to read this thread fully, for now i'm just dropping some basic calculations i made in our Werewolf theorycrafting thread.

The source values for stamina, weapon damage, light and heavy attack damage, come from my noCP werewolf build on uesp build editor, but it works the same for non-werewolf and magicka build.

If anything feels wrong or unclear, please tell me !

Aznox wrote: »

Ok i've run some quick math to know where such a change would get us with our LA/HA damage ...

... and it's seems maybe too big of a change for them to only change the ratio, they would probably tune down the coef too because a 42% increase (value for my example werewolf build, it would be around 100% for a petsorc build ...) would have a very big impact on the overall game balance.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · April 2018

Alcast wrote: »

we will see if those changes go through. the scaling probably will, but there is other stuff that makes light attacks just outright broken.

Empower now buffing your next Light Attack by 40%.
Imbue Weapons (psijic) gives another 10-12k dmg on top of your Light attack (Basically could use this as spammable lmfao)
Elegance set another 20%.
35% Championpoints perk.

Fully raidbuffed LAs on magblade did about 42k dmg that was with 9 points in staff expert according to @Gilliamtherogue on a target dummy. And that was without any of the modifiers on top there.

And welcome to oneshotting people in Cyrodiil with Light Attacks And if Light attack itself is not enough, Overload will definitely do the job

Yes, but now the breton stamblade spamming bow light attacks from the corner wont be kicked from the group finder. BALANCE!!!

Bladerunner1 · April 2018

Forceful from two hand LA and HA used to be a lot more AOE dps when penetration double dipped. To me it seemed like an even trade for clearing a dungeon on one build in particular, losing single target and gaining AOE dps by swapping to 2H. If the Summerset stamina buff turns out to be 40-50% this would be a noticable bump in AOE damage.

Lightning staff HA is already very good for dealing with groups of mobs. A 60-70% buff sounds pretty huge.

SmellyUnlimited · April 2018

So if I understand this from a layman’s perspective....

1. Currently, 40 stamina = 1 Weapon damage.

2. New numbers will reflect 10.5 stamina to 1 weapon damage, which means that (theoretically) stamina is now 3 times as effective as it used to be in affecting player light attack damage.

Is the above a correct summation?

Masel · April 2018

SmellyUnlimited wrote: »

So if I understand this from a layman’s perspective....

1. Currently, 40 stamina = 1 Weapon damage.

2. New numbers will reflect 10.5 stamina to 1 weapon damage, which means that (theoretically) stamina is now 3 times as effective as it used to be in affecting player light attack damage.

Is the above a correct summation?

Yes. But the exact damage we will get is unknown.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · April 2018

Masel92 wrote: »

SmellyUnlimited wrote: »

So if I understand this from a layman’s perspective....

1. Currently, 40 stamina = 1 Weapon damage.

2. New numbers will reflect 10.5 stamina to 1 weapon damage, which means that (theoretically) stamina is now 3 times as effective as it used to be in affecting player light attack damage.

Is the above a correct summation?

Yes. But the exact damage we will get is unknown.

They could just make weapon damage count for 3 times less in the calculation and it would bring the same amount of damage.

Ragnarock41 · April 2018

This is mainly a magicka buff, but all my builds benefit from this, as I always build my toons with massive stam or magicka bars.

Dracane · April 2018

I'm getting a bit confused. I thought, only light attacks receive this treatment. Will heavy attacks be buffed the same way ? Because some of you make it sound like that.

This all sounds great to me and I can't wait to toy around with imbue weapons. Sucks being a pet sorc this coming patch, I will have to drop it in order to make a proper build with these abilities.

NyassaV · April 2018

@Gilliamtherogue you might find this useful. Number hurt my thinking box

olsborg · April 2018

I dont understand why ranged weapons, particularily staff LA deal just as much if not more dmg then melee (2h) LA, its pretty riskier being in melee not to mention a whole lot harder to keep in range all the time to weave. DPS wise.

Joker99 · April 2018

Because melee 2h deal cleave dmg on LAs.