A comprehensive guide on damage dealing in Elder Scrolls Online

OG_Kaveman · January 2020

. @Ek1 To my understanding its only three that benefit whole group, both fractures and crushing (boosted or not).

Pen Debuffs of the enemy benefit everyone, self pen buffs only benefit you. Simple.

. @Ek1 Based what i read, having that oh so popular destro staff as back bar for tank does not really help with the crushing uptime nor trying to keep up two weapon enhancement effects. Did I understand right?

You understand wrong. Not sure what makes you think different. Crusher is not a status effect. Crusher can be on the target nearly 100% of the time.

Also, this-

. Dozen or so typos that could be fixed but solid math.

Is not needed, I am almost certain that he is not a native English speaker, pretty sure he is European from his YouTube channel. He for sure writes better then I ever could or would want to on a gaming forum. Maybe go watch some of his videos if you want to point out small flaws. Here it is- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChVEG6ckuAgGs5OyA6VeisA

OG_Kaveman · January 2020

first,

@Ek1 Most of us are not native English speakers and even native ones use e.g. chormes word processor.
Need to be understood is quite critical in communication, yet that was not the point. The text would be better without the typos.

if you are not a native English speaker as well, then you probably have never heard of Prescriptive vs. Descriptive grammar. you clearly land on the Prescriptive side of thing. http://amyrey.web.unc.edu/classes/ling-101-online/tutorials/understanding-prescriptive-vs-descriptive-grammar/ read a bit more about it here. i used to think like that as well but as i got older, i land on the side of Descriptive, as long as your audience can understand or at least figure out what you are trying to say, there are no real rules to language or grammer, as the whole thing made up and can change at anytime.

and translators, like the chrome example, are not really the best to use, they only give the literal transliteration of thing, not the actual meaning of the things, so much meaning can be lost by doing this.

now to the meat of your post.

I am not talking about status effects. Also, this does not either answer my question if back bar detro staff benefits from prolonged effect or not.

okay, the rub here that word "prolonged". you are thinking that infused makes the efect last longer? it does not, it simply lowers the cooldown of the enchant, from 10 seconds to 5 and since crusher itself lasts for 5 seconds total, the enfect of crusher goes from 50% uptime to ~100%.

then if you mean, does you back bar enchant fire when you are on the front bar, then yes, with a ground based aoe, those being wall of elements for staff users and Stampede, Volley and Blade Cloak for 2h, bow and DW users receptively, Blade Cloak if not really a ground aoe but the skill still procs enchants from your back bar. S/B does not have an aoe dot that can do this and also only has half strength enchants (strength meaning size of crusher, the cooldown reduction from infused is still there, ie, the 10 second to 5 second), so you need to use one of the aforementioned skills, out side of Blade Cloak, to get the full sized enchantment.

That is not really what I asked but yes, that's how it works. Let me rephrase, do you know any other effects, debuffs or status effects that would reduce enemies resistances beside the two (three) mentioned?

there are 4 pen debuffs, major fracture/breach, minor fracture/breach, crusher and roar of alkosh. all these benefit everyone in the group, as masel said in the original passage you quoted, not really sure what you are having trouble with here. the way he explains this in that paragraph is fine too, again, not really sure what you dont understand from it.

just to be clear, here is a list of both spell pen sources and physical pen sources, that is mostly complete-

Spell Penetration:

target debuffs

crusher enchantment - 1,622

Infused Crusher- 2107

Infused Crusher with Torug- 2740

Roar of Alkosh- 3010

Major Breach- 5280

Minor Breach- 1320

self only buffs

lover with no divines-2,752

lover with 7 divines- 4,196

Light Armor Passive- 4,884

Spinners set- 3,450

Auroran's Thunder- 1,487

Icy Conjuror- 1,487

Flame Blossom- 1,487

Perfect Wild Impulse- 1,487

Sharpened 2h- 2,752

CP's: Variable, depending of sets and debuffs in use.

also the destro 10% gets taken off after all the debuffs on the target just like maces, ie crusher, major and minor breach, alkosh, so it is really not worth mentioning. the absolute most it could be is 1820 pen but most of the time you will have at least Major Breach on the target, which bring it down to 1282. then it just gets worse from there.

Armor Penetration:

target debuffs

crusher enchantment - 1,622

Infused Crusher- 2,107

Infused Crusher with Torug- 2,740

Roar of Alkosh- 3,010

Major Breach- 5,280

Minor Breach- 1,320

self only buffs

lover with no divines-2,752

lover with 7 divines- 4,196

twice fanged snake set- 4,300

spriggans set- 3,450

Tzogvin's Warband set - 1,487

Kra'gh monster set - 1,487

Unfathomable Darkness set - 1,487

Dro'zakar's Claws- 1,487

Perfect Radial Uppercut- 1,487

Sharpened 2h- 2,752

Sharpened 1h -1,376

CP's: Variable, depending of sets and debuffs in use but up to 5280

also the mauls/maces 20/10% gets taken off after all the debuffs on the target, IE crusher, major and minor breach, alkosh, so they are worth mentioning.

Ek1 · January 2020

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

and translators, like the chrome example, are not really the best to use, they only give the literal transliteration of thing, not the actual meaning of the things, so much meaning can be lost by doing this.

Not translator, word processor. A thing that e.g. underlines a typo with a red.
And we are talking about math, not a much of cultural things there.
I'll quote myself to make the point clear.

Ek1 wrote: »

The text would be better without the typos.

Has nothing to do with culture, has everything to do with minimized errors in the medium for communication. 'Then' means 'after something' while 'than' means 'instead of/aside from'.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

you are thinking that infused makes the efect last longer?

No. I rephrase as it seems to be hard for you to understand. Is there a way to prolong a crusher effect beyond its listed duration and/or having two effects on at the same time? Alas, if no then backbaring destro staff has no real use.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

there are 4 pen debuffs, major fracture/breach, minor fracture/breach, crusher and roar of alkosh. all these benefit everyone in the group, as masel said in the original passage you quoted, not really sure what you are having trouble with here.

Feel free to backtrack to the part and notice how all 'there are multiple debuffs 'personal penes are mentioned before weapons and after personal ones but no word what weapons are. Are weapons affecting everyone? Why mention there are multiple debuffs when there is only four, two for each damage category, crusher and then alkosh.
Penetration is important but reduction is more important.

ZOS_FalcoYamaoka · January 2020

Greetings,

Some posts have been removed due to violating our rules on inappropriate content.

OG_Kaveman · January 2020

@Ek1 Has nothing to do with culture, has everything to do with minimized errors in the medium for communication. 'Then' means 'after something' while 'than' means 'instead of/aside from'.

thing is, 80%+ of English speaking people either dont know that "rule" or dont care and understand what the writer was trying to say anyways. no reason to point it out. besides a smug way to put down the author.

@Ek1 And we are talking about math, not a much of cultural things there.

if there are mistakes in his math, that is different from "typos". as far as i have tested myself in the game, all the math he has in the op are correct.

@Ek1 No. I rephrase as it seems to be hard for you to understand. Is there a way to prolong a crusher effect beyond its listed duration and/or having two effects on at the same time? Alas, if no then backbaring destro staff has no real use.

you are right, i am having a real hard time understanding that. and you are just flat wrong that back baring a destro staff "has no real use". there is no other way to get almost 100% uptime on a full value crusher then to have an infused destro, 2H or bow on your back bar and using wall/stampede/endless hail. if you dont see that, i really dont not understand how else to explain this.

you keep coming back to extending crushers duration. i have explained this twice now. lets do it a third time. infused cuts the cool down by 50%, which for non damage enchants is 10 seconds. an infused crusher will proc every 5 seconds. crusher lasts for 5 seconds. so crusher can proc as soon as the debuff ends. making it, in effect, have "effect beyond its listed duration". it is really simple man. i mean you do understand that if you cast wall from your bar and swap to your front bar, the back bar enchant will proc off cooldown right? even if you are on your front bar.

and what are you getting at with "two effects"? are you asking of you can have 2 different crushers on a target? that is no, if you have 2 different crushers (like having a full value back bar and a half value front bar with s/B) on the target, the higher debuff value of the 2 will be the only one that does anything. if you are asking if you can proc your front bar enchant that is different, like say weakening, along with your back bar crusher, this is yes, leading to "having two effects on at the same time".

Feel free to backtrack to the part and notice how all 'there are multiple debuffs 'personal penes are mentioned before weapons and after personal ones but no word what weapons are. Are weapons affecting everyone? Why mention there are multiple debuffs when there is only four, two for each damage category, crusher and then alkosh.
Penetration is important but reduction is more important.

okay. read the whole thing in this order-

1.

Then we have the target's resistance, which is 18200 in PvE for all veteran content mobs and target dummies. In PvP, it depends on how much spell or physical resitance your target has. Then we deduct all the debuffs the target has on it. There are multiple debuffs that apply to this category, such as major and minor fracture or breach (5280 and 1320, respectively), the 5- piece of roar of alkosh (3010) and the crusher weapon enchantment (which is amplifiable with torug's pact and infused and yields 1622, 2108 and 2741, respectively).

the above section is all about debuffs that impact everyone hitting the target.

2.

Afterwards we deduct % penetration amps, such as the Maul + Mace bonuses that ignore up to 20% of the target's resistance. The key takeaway here is that these %- amps are applied after debuffs, but not after your own penetration. This means that major and minor fracture reduce the effectiveness of mauls and maces, but sets like spriggan, twice-fanged serpent, penetration cps etc do NOT. So be aware which debuffs you have available, because if there are only few debuffs, you might even be better off with a mace over a dagger. The Break-even point between amces and daggers lies somewhere around 5000 & 6000 of penetration debuffs (which is often achieved in trials, but less in four man and solo content). I can provide statistics on this upon request.

the above is explaining how percent self pen buffs work.

3.

After that, your own penetration value is deducted, so here's where most of the sets and the lover mundus belong. You might notice how penetration is mostly shown as a flat value, such as 5280 and 1320 for the major and minor debuffs. This needs to be converted into a % value so we can multiply it with the rest. That's what the denominator of the above formula is for:

then the above explains all your flat self pen is last. this is the way the paragraphs flow in the op and they are pretty simple to follow and understand. nothing confusing about it at all.

Ek1 · January 2020

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

thing is, 80%+ of English speaking people either dont know that "rule" or dont care and understand what the writer was trying to say anyways.

Well now there you are wrong. If a typo or gramar msitakes makes asentncerili härd tostand ur känses its meaning then thats really bad mmkay. Also could you provide the academic source for that 80%+? Because 100% of people that don't understand what the messages is are going to understand it wrong. That is the very definition of understanding. It's a quite bold statement to say that huge majority of any speaking people that don't understand the language or simply ignore the meaning of the word or grammar can somehow understand that underlying meaning in it. The ability to understand a single unknown word or term in a text needs especially strong understanding of the topic and language. Someone might eventually figure out that you are using mom when you are referring to your dad but those 'rules' makes understanding lot easier.
Your comment is especially humorous note in later part of my response.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

no reason to point it out. besides a smug way to put down the author.

First of all only smug here is the one picking up the topic over and over again after i simply pointed out that the OP could use some polishing. Habit of being vicariously offended for something that is not even offensive is quite frankly lame, if not outright poor trolling attempt.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

you keep coming back to extending crushers duration. i have explained this twice now. lets do it a third time.

Your again either not understanding the question (this was the fun part mentioned earlier), deliberately misunderstanding it or I am really bad in my output. If you haven't noticed I have now twice not quoted your explanations as they are not answering the question and will do it for the third time.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

if you are asking if you can proc your front bar enchant that is different, like say weakening, along with your back bar crusher, this is yes, leading to "having two effects on at the same time".

Thank you for after three posts getting to my initial question.

If inactive bar cant proc its effect then having whatever effect proccing effects and there is no way to prolong the effect (not reapplying the effect but prolonging aka making it last longer than the listed time) then it sounds that no matter what you do, you need to swap after 5 seconds as the effect from inactive bar can't be refreshed nor made longer. So it seems the only point of having a e.g. desto staff is to keep enhancements proccing easily and has no additional trick in them. Like making some inactive bars enhancement to last as long as the wall of elements that initially procced it.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

the above section is all about debuffs that impact everyone hitting the target.
the above is explaining how percent self pen buffs work.
then the above explains all your flat self pen is last. this is the way the paragraphs flow in the op and they are pretty simple to follow and understand. nothing confusing about it at all.

There is only two categories of that affect targets armor, those that reduce it and thus benefit everyone and penetration that only affects a single player. There is three sections/paragraphs. 'One of the apples is poisonous and one is not' says the wizard while handing you three apples.

"There are multiple debuffs that apply to this category, such as major and minor fracture or breach breach, the 5- piece of roar of alkosh and the crusher weapon enchantment"
Using words like 'such as', the use of 'multiple' and then listing only handful examples leaves reader to wait for the rest fo the list. There are no multiple ones or more than the few listed ones, there are exactly six.The rules and meaning of words that those 80%+ English users ignore sadly have a meaning that affect the message that you can't simply ignore if you want to be clear or avoid lengthy pointless off topic discussions like these that I no more plan to take part of.

Masel · February 2020

Ek1 wrote: »

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

thing is, 80%+ of English speaking people either dont know that "rule" or dont care and understand what the writer was trying to say anyways.

Well now there you are wrong. If a typo or gramar msitakes makes asentncerili härd tostand ur känses its meaning then thats really bad mmkay. Also could you provide the academic source for that 80%+? Because 100% of people that don't understand what the messages is are going to understand it wrong. That is the very definition of understanding. It's a quite bold statement to say that huge majority of any speaking people that don't understand the language or simply ignore the meaning of the word or grammar can somehow understand that underlying meaning in it. The ability to understand a single unknown word or term in a text needs especially strong understanding of the topic and language. Someone might eventually figure out that you are using mom when you are referring to your dad but those 'rules' makes understanding lot easier.
Your comment is especially humorous note in later part of my response.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

no reason to point it out. besides a smug way to put down the author.

First of all only smug here is the one picking up the topic over and over again after i simply pointed out that the OP could use some polishing. Habit of being vicariously offended for something that is not even offensive is quite frankly lame, if not outright poor trolling attempt.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

you keep coming back to extending crushers duration. i have explained this twice now. lets do it a third time.

Your again either not understanding the question (this was the fun part mentioned earlier), deliberately misunderstanding it or I am really bad in my output. If you haven't noticed I have now twice not quoted your explanations as they are not answering the question and will do it for the third time.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

if you are asking if you can proc your front bar enchant that is different, like say weakening, along with your back bar crusher, this is yes, leading to "having two effects on at the same time".

Thank you for after three posts getting to my initial question.

If inactive bar cant proc its effect then having whatever effect proccing effects and there is no way to prolong the effect (not reapplying the effect but prolonging aka making it last longer than the listed time) then it sounds that no matter what you do, you need to swap after 5 seconds as the effect from inactive bar can't be refreshed nor made longer. So it seems the only point of having a e.g. desto staff is to keep enhancements proccing easily and has no additional trick in them. Like making some inactive bars enhancement to last as long as the wall of elements that initially procced it.

OG_Kaveman wrote: »

the above section is all about debuffs that impact everyone hitting the target.
the above is explaining how percent self pen buffs work.
then the above explains all your flat self pen is last. this is the way the paragraphs flow in the op and they are pretty simple to follow and understand. nothing confusing about it at all.

There is only two categories of that affect targets armor, those that reduce it and thus benefit everyone and penetration that only affects a single player. There is three sections/paragraphs. 'One of the apples is poisonous and one is not' says the wizard while handing you three apples.

"There are multiple debuffs that apply to this category, such as major and minor fracture or breach breach, the 5- piece of roar of alkosh and the crusher weapon enchantment"
Using words like 'such as', the use of 'multiple' and then listing only handful examples leaves reader to wait for the rest fo the list. There are no multiple ones or more than the few listed ones, there are exactly six.The rules and meaning of words that those 80%+ English users ignore sadly have a meaning that affect the message that you can't simply ignore if you want to be clear or avoid lengthy pointless off topic discussions like these that I no more plan to take part of.

Boy, I havent been on the forums for a week and they never disappoint.

In response to the point of polished grammar and concise writing; I wrote this in my free time and I have limited time to go through it again in so much detail. I can be very productive in a day if I want to (wrote this post in one day), so the grammar was something I polished over time. It is on a level where I am fairly confident anyone who is not very nitpicky will have a good time reading it (hence no one complaining about it before). I for myself am very nitpicky about grammar when I write scientific studies (which is part of my job as a research assistant), but in a game like this, not that much.

As to your question of prolonging the enchantment effect: to my knowledge, there is no way to do that. However, thay does not mean you have to swap every 5 seconds. Ground aoes from the off-bar will keep producing your off-bar enchantment, which is why tanks use elemental blockade a lot on the off-bar (or backbar if you want to call it that).

OG_Kaveman · February 2020

@Ek1 Well now there you are wrong. If a typo or gramar msitakes makes asentncerili härd tostand ur känses its meaning then thats really bad mmkay. Also could you provide the academic source for that 80%+? Because 100% of people that don't understand what the messages is are going to understand it wrong. That is the very definition of understanding. It's a quite bold statement to say that huge majority of any speaking people that don't understand the language or simply ignore the meaning of the word or grammar can somehow understand that underlying meaning in it. The ability to understand a single unknown word or term in a text needs especially strong understanding of the topic and language. Someone might eventually figure out that you are using mom when you are referring to your dad but those 'rules' makes understanding lot easier.
Your comment is especially humorous note in later part of my response.

okay. you are going back into the prescriptive vs descriptive use of language argument. you really need to look into that. heres another good link- https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/what-correct-language

First of all only smug here is the one picking up the topic over and over again after i simply pointed out that the OP could use some polishing. Habit of being vicariously offended for something that is not even offensive is quite frankly lame, if not outright poor trolling attempt.

habit? vicariously? lame? how observant for someone that cant understand the simple way enchants work in a video game.

Your again either not understanding the question (this was the fun part mentioned earlier), deliberately misunderstanding it or I am really bad in my output. If you haven't noticed I have now twice not quoted your explanations as they are not answering the question and will do it for the third time.

i have admitted to not really understanding your question, the way enchantments work is actually quite easy to understand and straight forward. it blows my mind that you dont understand.

Thank you for after three posts getting to my initial question.

If inactive bar cant proc its effect then having whatever effect proccing effects and there is no way to prolong the effect (not reapplying the effect but prolonging aka making it last longer than the listed time) then it sounds that no matter what you do, you need to swap after 5 seconds as the effect from inactive bar can't be refreshed nor made longer. So it seems the only point of having a e.g. desto staff is to keep enhancements proccing easily and has no additional trick in them. Like making some inactive bars enhancement to last as long as the wall of elements that initially procced it.

you are welcome.

now you do realize that wall of elements lasts for 14 seconds right? you also do realize that the skill itself will porc the enchant on cool down right( ie the skill elemental blockade will proc the enchant on the 1 tick, then the 5th tick and finally on the 10th tick(well may not those exactly but the concept is simple. ))? i mean, you are making it sound like you think that enchants only proc on the cast of the skill itself. this is incorrect. it is baffling to me that you could think otherwise.

oh and the "additional trick in them" for staffs is in the way wall can wither set mobs off balance or immobilize them, with lightning wall or frost wall, respectively, this is part of what makes destro and wall better then other options.

There is only two categories of that affect targets armor, those that reduce it and thus benefit everyone and penetration that only affects a single player. There is three sections/paragraphs. 'One of the apples is poisonous and one is not' says the wizard while handing you three apples.

no. there THREE categories, flat pen debuffs, percentage based self pen buffs and flat self pen buffs. , these are all different and are in different parts of the equation. that is why there are 3 paragraphs, they all play into the end number you get. making up some poor analogy instead of trying to understand this, is probably why you are not getting it.

"There are multiple debuffs that apply to this category, such as major and minor fracture or breach breach, the 5- piece of roar of alkosh and the crusher weapon enchantment"
Using words like 'such as', the use of 'multiple' and then listing only handful examples leaves reader to wait for the rest fo the list. There are no multiple ones or more than the few listed ones, there are exactly six.The rules and meaning of words that those 80%+ English users ignore sadly have a meaning that affect the message that you can't simply ignore if you want to be clear or avoid lengthy pointless off topic discussions like these that I no more plan to take part of.

who cares? i understood what he was saying, you understood what he was saying, most people understood what he was saying, as evidenced by this going 3 pages and no one asked about that. and the fact you think it is "sad" that a person would not follow made up rules 100% of the time is sad. just let people be (yes, i get the irony that i am telling you whats what) and stop trying to think you are better then most people because you follow "the rules". this is a gaming forum, it is way more casual then even the effort the op put into already.

aetherial_heavenn · February 2020

Thanks again @Masel . Another bump.

I thought the explanations were clear concise and to the point enough for even ESL speakers and users of machine translators to cope with. (And you, the OP have fixed the then/than typo since.)

@ZOS_FelipeF As this grammatical/linguistic to and fro between Ek1 and OG_Kaveman has occupied nearly the entire last page and is now completely irrelevant could you delete all the posts or edit them to get rid of the off topic linguistic theory/grammar stuff?

It is extremely confusing when the explanations of the calcs and mechanics are quite clear in the OP and this last page is not clear or is just plain wrong in one poster's case.

Thanks.

SteveyP777 · November 2020

Hi,

First of all, want to say a huge thanks for taking the time to put this together. I'm also watching your YouTube equivalent of the same thing. It's amazing how much depth you've gone to.

So please bear that in mind when then reading the following...

As someone who is still beginning out in the game I find the following to be my experience; the guidance provided is either too simple or too complex and there is no guidance I can find that comprehensively takes you on a journey from a simplistic to a comprehensive understanding of the workings/mechanics of this game without making jumps I am unable to keep up with.

As amazing as this entry is, there are still things I remain confused about - including some terms used in the descriptions which don't cater for less experienced gamers (when you say 'amps', I assume you mean 'amplifiers', and I am not 100% sure what those are).

I am starting to get to grips with parts of the formula but worry when I don't even fully understand the very beginning of it: "Average damage done="... so is this a formula that aims to generate a number that indicates 'average damage done' by your entire character? Or is this a formula to assist you to calculate the damage that would be done by one single action/spell? Or both? Does the figure it generates basically mean your DPS? How would I use the figure it generates to assist me?

Please don't read this the wrong way - it is amazing what you have done... I am an analyst in my business and have been playing this game now probably for more than 50 hours so I don't consider myself to simply be incapable at understanding numbers, logic or mathematics and I also don't consider myself to truly be a 'beginner' at this game.

Is this guide, therefore, targeted at people who have already reached CP160 (I only just hit level 50 on my first character)? I just wonder why I'm getting stuck as it is quite discouraging being a number cruncher that I'm not able to fully understand this guide and yet it is being thoroughly praised by people who I can only assume are either smarter than me or more experienced with the game.

What I'd like to ask is... is anyone able to take this formula and give me an example - with actual numbers, with the base stats and all the influences on those numbers even if it's a very simple i.e. based on a completely new character with one piece of armour (for example) so I can at least get the gist?

Really appreciate any help offered.

S.

eKsDee · November 2020

SteveyP777 wrote: »

Hi,

First of all, want to say a huge thanks for taking the time to put this together. I'm also watching your YouTube equivalent of the same thing. It's amazing how much depth you've gone to.

So please bear that in mind when then reading the following...

As someone who is still beginning out in the game I find the following to be my experience; the guidance provided is either too simple or too complex and there is no guidance I can find that comprehensively takes you on a journey from a simplistic to a comprehensive understanding of the workings/mechanics of this game without making jumps I am unable to keep up with.

As amazing as this entry is, there are still things I remain confused about - including some terms used in the descriptions which don't cater for less experienced gamers (when you say 'amps', I assume you mean 'amplifiers', and I am not 100% sure what those are).

I am starting to get to grips with parts of the formula but worry when I don't even fully understand the very beginning of it: "Average damage done="... so is this a formula that aims to generate a number that indicates 'average damage done' by your entire character? Or is this a formula to assist you to calculate the damage that would be done by one single action/spell? Or both? Does the figure it generates basically mean your DPS? How would I use the figure it generates to assist me?

Please don't read this the wrong way - it is amazing what you have done... I am an analyst in my business and have been playing this game now probably for more than 50 hours so I don't consider myself to simply be incapable at understanding numbers, logic or mathematics and I also don't consider myself to truly be a 'beginner' at this game.

Is this guide, therefore, targeted at people who have already reached CP160 (I only just hit level 50 on my first character)? I just wonder why I'm getting stuck as it is quite discouraging being a number cruncher that I'm not able to fully understand this guide and yet it is being thoroughly praised by people who I can only assume are either smarter than me or more experienced with the game.

What I'd like to ask is... is anyone able to take this formula and give me an example - with actual numbers, with the base stats and all the influences on those numbers even if it's a very simple i.e. based on a completely new character with one piece of armour (for example) so I can at least get the gist?

Really appreciate any help offered.

S.

This guide is more for delving into the mathematics behind how damage is calculated, so that players can better understand the inner workings of the combat system from a mathematical standpoint. As such, this guide does expect an understanding of what each of the variables are, what they represent and roughly how they work, so that the guide can explain why they work the way they do from a mathematical standpoint.

If you're looking for something as simple as "put build in, get stats out", the UESP build editor is better suited for that, as it uses the same math behind-the-scenes as this guide shows (this guide is based on UESP's formulae), but wraps it in a neat little UI and skill/set database, making it way more convenient to use.

Unfortunately, the UESP build editor doesn't show you damage corresponding to the result of the damage equation for skills, only the tooltip damage value of skills, but it does give a comprehensive overview of all your stats, as well as an estimate for how "powerful" your character is, using an equation derived from the damage equation.

Given that, you could take the numbers shown in the build editor, plug them into the damage equation (substituting parts of the equation with numbers in cases where the build editor has already done the math for you), and you should get an approximation for how much damage you should expect, given those numbers.

On that subject, since you asked, yes, this equation is for a single attack. To estimate the actual expected DPS of an entire build is a more inolved task, as you'd need to estimate the expected damage of each action (in the case of DoT's, making sure to normalize it such that you get the damage dealt per second, not the total damage), and add them all up.

But yeah, unfortunately this isn't a beginners guide on how to deal damage in ESO, it's more of a guide on how damage is calculated in ESO. If you're looking for a beginners guide on how to deal damage, I'd maybe look at this guide by Alcast.

MirandaSharp · November 2020

SteveyP777 wrote: »

"Average damage done="

We cannot know what the damage will be as there are things like critical chance, which is like playing roulette, sometimes you win and get a critical, sometimes not... What we can know something about is the % chance that this will happen, so we can say that on average this amounts to "Average damage done".

eKsDee · November 2020

MirandaSharp wrote: »

"Average damage done="

We cannot know what the damage will be as there are things like critical chance, which is like playing roulette, sometimes you win and get a critical, sometimes not... What we can know something about is the % chance that this will happen, so we can say that on average this amounts to "Average damage done".

You can approximate it, though.

The formula I use to approximate the average damage with critical strikes included is `damage * (1.0 + (critDamage - 1.0) * critChance)` (this is the exact same approximation that this guide uses, except while this guide removes the base 1.0 from the crit damage multiplier, I like to keep it to make the math more convenient, so I have to remove it by subtracting 1.0), and it's pretty close to the "real" average, where crit is actually based on RNG, with the accuracy going up as more strikes are added.

With a base damage value of 5500, a crit chance of 35%, and a crit damage multiplier of 1.75x, this is roughly what the output of my testing function looks like:

approx: 6943.75
real over 10 hits: 6737.5
real over 100 hits: 7026.25
real over 1000 hits: 7018.0
real over 10000 hits: 6939.2125

Where `approx` is the approximated damage, and `real` is the real average damage with the given amount of hits. In this case, hits is basically equivalent to how long the fight lasted for, as the longer the fight lasts, the more hits the ability gets in.

10k hits isn't enough to fully converge on the approximate, sometimes it'll overshoot and sometimes it'll undershoot, but as you add more hits it'll fully converge on the approximate. For instance, here's a different run with 100k and 1 million hits:

approx: 6943.75
real over 10 hits: 7562.5
real over 100 hits: 7108.75
real over 1000 hits: 6935.5
real over 10000 hits: 6948.2875
real over 100000 hits: 6943.13125
real over 1000000 hits: 6943.432375

Notice how the real damage is different here, though, due to RNG. But, this run converged on the approximate, ignoring the decimal, with 100k hits. Again, due to RNG, sometimes it may only converge with 1 million hits.

So yeah, while the approximate isn't entirely accurate for short fights, it can be more accurate for longer fights, but, the big take away is that you can approximate the effects of crit on the average damage of an attack.

Bowmanganie · November 2021

Thanks a lot for this. I have been trying to get better with damage dealing and this will help me understand what I am doing.

Athan1 · November 2021

@Bowmanganie This thread is 3 years old, it should have been locked and archived long ago. Combat changes with literally every update that brings about major overhauls to how armor, damage, buffs, gear, and skills work. Please use more recent guides or, if you can't find one, perhaps start a new thread. I'm a healer so I can't give you much advice on dps unfortunately!

Amottica · November 2021

Knowing this, we can already say that maximising your base stats is important to increase your damage. However, you need to take into account that the returns you get from either of those stats are diminishing with increased size prior to the additions you make. Your damage increase in % from going from 2000 spell damage to 2500 is bigger than your damage increase from 2500 to 3000:

This statement made in the OP, while accurate, is also inaccurate.

Yes, going from 2000 SD to 2500 SD will give a greater % increase than going from 2500 to 3000 SD. However, the increase in actual damage should be the same.

As such, diminishing returns is when you gain less flat damage from adding the next point of a stat vs adding the previous point. That does not seem to be the case with ESO as I do not see soft caps that would cause this. At least that is not what the OP is bringing up here.

I just noticed this is a necro thread.

eMKa8 · March 2022

Is there somewhere a newer 2022 comprehensive guide out there ?

Would be nice to read !

Vevvev · March 2022

eMKa8 wrote: »

Is there somewhere a newer 2022 comprehensive guide out there ?

Would be nice to read !

Only rule change would be that the system takes your highest resource pool and then your higher damage pool and uses that for the calculations.

If your Stamina is higher than Magicka then it'll use Stamina for the calculations, and if on that same build your Spell damage was higher than your Weapon damage it'd use the Spell damage.
In this scenario all your offensive and healing abilities that scale off offensive stats would scale with max Stamina and Spell damage with every 10.5 max Stamina being roughly equal to 1 Spell damage in the formula.