It all comes down to how the in-game math works. Basically as fair as I'm aware this is how damage is determined in practice for a single volley.
Additive Modifiers, these are not effected by anything else and provide a flat addition to the base. The base is the weapon's damage itself which is determined by its mark level and rarity. Note that a Mk 10 white will get the same exact numeric bonus from these modifiers.
Then you have your Multiplicative Modifiers. These are applied to the total of the above.
Crit Modifier (Crit Chance * Crit Severity so 5% chance at 100% severity would be a 1.05 modifier)
Boff Abilities (attack pattern omega, emergency power to weapons, etc)
Miscellaneous (energy levels, etc)
It's worth noting that some of what we might expect to be "multiplicative" buffs are in fact additive. And there are even several different types of "multiplicative" buffs (doh!)
1. First, you have a weapons base damage.
2. Then you have additive buffs: these include bonuses from skillpoints, [Dmg] Procs, any kind of "+damage%" buffs (Tactical Consoles, Attack Pattern Omega, Beam Overload, etc. etc.) All these bonuses get added up and applied to the base damage.
This is the value you typically end up seeing in the game's weapon tooltip readout.
3. Next you have Multiplicative Buffs. there are very few of these in the game - basically, it's only weapons power, enemy resistance debuffs (Attack Pattern Beta, Fire on my Mark, etc) and weapon firing time reductions (MACO 2-piece bonus, Cannon Rapid Fire, Projectile DOFFs, Mine Dispersion Patterns, etc). These multiplicative buffs are applied to the previous total (after additive buffs), and are applied independently.
For example: Let's say you run 4x DHCs. You can use skillpoint investment to increase your weapons damage by 100%, and then use APO for another 30%, for an inflicted total of 230% of your Base damage. You can then increase this further by using Cannon Rapid Fire 3 to increase your weapon's rate of fire by 50%, bringing your total inflicted damage to 230*1.5= 345% of your base damage. You can also reduce an enemy's resistance to your damage by 50%, resulting in you dealing 345*1.5=517.5% of your base weapon damage to an enemy's hull, (assuming no damage is lost due to resistance debuff diminishing returns, or firing from range!)
Multiplicative debuffs (such as damage dropoff over range) work the same way.
Really, "sweeping changes" aren't needed; a simply buff to the [DMG] modifier would be decent, because constantly using it as the go-to modifier is weak.
Increasing the effectiveness of a core modifier mechanic involved in our itemization that is present in the entirety of the game's content and combat systems... that's a sweeping change. It may, indeed, be the one we decide to make. But it is not a change that can be lightly made without considering the ramifications it could have on the rest of the game.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Increasing the effectiveness of a core modifier mechanic involved in our itemization that is present in the entirety of the game's content and combat systems... that's a sweeping change. It may, indeed, be the one we decide to make. But it is not a change that can be lightly made without considering the ramifications it could have on the rest of the game.
Hi Bort,
Without going into what you guys are considering for the future, would you be able to enlighten us on the design intent (up until now) of the mods and the reason [DMG] is so often added to things like Quad Cannons, Aux DHCs, Spiral Wave Disruptors, Fleet Weapons, Dilithium Store Weapons, etc.?
Is it because [DMG] is easier to keep under control in terms of power added?
Is it because the weapons are intended to be good, but not the best?
Yeah... Because [Dmg] is nice and all but for PvP and eng-game content, its multitudes more useless than an [Acc] modifier. I'd love to see quad cannons with ONE [Acc] mod on them so they'd be more useful against highly maneuverable targets (or heavy plasmas/tricos).
My understanding was as above except i was lead to belive weapons power was addattive as well.
Weapons power is an exception, it's another thing that's a bit... odd.
The baseline that default weapon damage tooltips (the ones you get when you're not a space map) are calculated from is 50 weapons energy. And given what we know about percentage-based damage buffs, you'd expect that every point in weapons energy you have over 50 would grant you an extra 2% Base Energy Weapon DPS, additively.
However it's not that simple. You can see weapons power stacking non-additively with certain additive buffs... and if it's drained to zero, you will do no energy damage at all (not "-100% base damage", which would mean you'd still do some damage as long as you had a few additive buffs active).
When you say "sweeping changes" it smells of nerf. No offense.
Really, "sweeping changes" aren't needed; a simply buff to the [DMG] modifier would be decent, because constantly using it as the go-to modifier is weak.
I would say they are needed. The difference between modifiers is negligible in all things except PvP.
This.
[edit: a quick search shows Flekh posted an accurate breakdown on [Dmg] mods quite recently here]
So it does not increase the actual weapon damage but instead acts as an independent proc that is not effected by anything? WHY!!!!!!!!
I stand corrected
Actually though in that case even though I'm going to guess that it doesn't does that mean it ignores enemy resistances perhaps? I doubt it but that would be kinda nice.
*edit extra info*
Just tested with my tac. When using APA, Go Down Fighting, and Tac Fleet combined a 104.5% total damage increase for me, the fleet weapon went from 1438.8 DPV to 2859 a 98.1% increase whereas my borg went from 1374.8 to 2850 or a 107% increase.
My simple conclusions from that are pretty simple but please let me know if I goofed Maelwyns as this was a quick n dirty test.
1) [Dmg] Mod does indeed not scale properly with other modifiers. I consider this a bug though personally as I cannot fathom a single reason why that would be the desired behavior I hope Bort will chime in on this.
2) The +% damage boosts are actually a multiplier not added to the base damage like skill/consoles, but they do stack additively with themselves. Those being the Tac Captains abilities along with possibly APO.
Weapons power is an exception, it's another thing that's a bit... odd.
The baseline that default weapon damage tooltips (the ones you get when you're not a space map) are calculated from is 50 weapons energy. And given what we know about percentage-based damage buffs, you'd expect that every point in weapons energy you have over 50 would grant you an extra 2% Base Energy Weapon DPS, additively.
However it's not that simple. You can see weapons power stacking non-additively with certain additive buffs... and if it's drained to zero, you will do no energy damage at all (not "-100% base damage", which would mean you'd still do some damage as long as you had a few additive buffs active).
So it does not increase the actual weapon damage but instead acts as an independent proc that is not effected by anything? WHY!!!!!!!!
I stand corrected
Actually though in that case even though I'm going to guess that it doesn't does that mean it ignores enemy resistances perhaps? I doubt it but that would be kinda nice.
*edit extra info*
Just tested with my tac. When using APA, Go Down Fighting, and Tac Fleet combined a 104.5% total damage increase for me, the fleet weapon went from 1438.8 DPV to 2859 a 98.1% increase whereas my borg went from 1374.8 to 2850 or a 107% increase.
My simple conclusions from that are pretty simple but please let me know if I goofed Maelwyns as this was a quick n dirty test.
1) [Dmg] Mod does indeed not scale properly with other modifiers. I consider this a bug though personally as I cannot fathom a single reason why that would be the desired behavior I hope Bort will chime in on this.
2) The +% damage boosts are actually a multiplier not added to the base damage like skill/consoles, but they do stack additively with themselves. Those being the Tac Captains abilities along with possibly APO.
So taking that all into consideration, would it be accurate to say that a MK XII [CrtH]x3 or [CrtD]x3 would be better than [DMG]x3 (leaving out the fleet weapons having a 4th modifier, as this thread is aimed primarily at the [DMG] mod itself and how it's abundantly found on endgame weapons).
I've just done some testing of my own with non dmg weapons, (borg stuff), and various ta abilities.
APA, APO, GDF all multiply the post weapons power + console damage by their modifiers, if several are active together then the % are added together then the multiplier is applied.
Tactical fleet is not working as expected and neithier are consles. With or without consles the Tac fleet boost was only adding 17%. I'd have to do some very careful testing to figure out what's happening here.
Consoles where boosting damage by 33%, total consle bonus was 101% and this was at 75 weapons power. This makes no sense, so again i'm goig to have to do more testing, but my gut says that the bonus damage from consles is calculated without skill modifiers factored in.
@ussultimatum: Without a doubt they would be. Granted it is still a very minor difference likely around 1% total difference. But they might even beat out fleet weapons I will do the math laters.
@Carl: Consoles are working perfectly fine I have recently tested them. They add a flat amount to base damage and stack additively with skill modifiers, they do not multiply anything at all but they can be multiplied by other things.
Example: Weapon does 100 DPV. The two damage boosting skills are maxed which would add 50% or 50 DPV. A console we will say is adding 30 DPV each and you have two. So the DPV would be 100+50+30 for a total of 180 DPV. Then you add in the weapon power modifier lets say your gaining 50% boost it goes from 180 DPV to 270 DPV. These numbers are all made up just to illustrate the example and it can get much more complicated.
Consles add %'s Bareel, if you really had tested them recently you would know this.
Thje problem is their percentages do not make sense. a set of consles with a grand total of +101% modifier, even working off base damage should at 75 weapons power be increasing total damage output by 66%. They do not on my toons siege destroyer, they increae by only 33%. this implies that the wepaons are actually working under a 3x modifier on base damage. So unless wepaons power scaling is much more drastic than we've previouslly belived, (i'm confident it's not), somthing else is at work here. They are not working in the same way as wepaons power OR Tac abilities. Never mind whatever Tac fleet is doing.
I haven't had chance to test how consles interact with weapons power yet though, but the way it's claimed verywhere else is that they add to the % modifier of weapons power, not weapons power multiplying by them.
Consles add %'s Bareel, if you really had tested them recently you would know this.
Thje problem is their percentages do not make sense. a set of consles with a grand total of +101% modifier, even working off base damage should at 75 weapons power be increasing total damage output by 66%. They do not on my toons siege destroyer, they increae by only 33%. this implies that the wepaons are actually working under a 3x modifier on base damage. So unless wepaons power scaling is much more drastic than we've previouslly belived, (i'm confident it's not), somthing else is at work here. They are not working in the same way as wepaons power OR Tac abilities. Never mind whatever Tac fleet is doing.
I haven't had chance to test how consles interact with weapons power yet though, but the way it's claimed verywhere else is that they add to the % modifier of weapons power, not weapons power multiplying by them.
The bonus they provide (last I checked) was not modified by weapon rank or anything like that, it was instead a flat number based on weapon type and the console only. Weapon power and abilities will modify their bonus though.
I'm in the middile opf testing the number now but i can confirm that yes, the apply their benefit to the damage value that is there before weapon skill modifiers. Though even then their magnitude is, (to within the margin of error given the low magnitude figures), only half what ti should be, (a +26.2% consle was applying only a +12.7% boost in reality, i'm investigating still though as i type).
To add to that. The bonus remains constant, (in percentile terms)m at any weapons power of 50 or above, indicating the bonus scales upwards wiith weapons power. But at weapons power settign below 50 it drops of in percentage terms. At 35 weapons power, (as low as i could go due to inatte benefit), it was granting only a 10% bonus from a 26.2% console.
Tactical Fleet si officolly borked. it's adding 17.5% instead of 30% irrespective of skills or consoles. The percentage remains constant regardless of weapons power.
Now to see what skills do . Ok totla magnitude of effect if all skills ar at 9 ranks is 48.7%, bearing in mind base 9 ranks is 99 skill points this suggests that the total cumalative bonus is 50% at 100 points, due to certain factors this is impossibbel to verify, but highly probable. And i've confirmed it. The consle bonus, (in adittion to being half magnitude it should be), is applied before skill effects and is itself unaffected by skill's. This means a Fleet Defiant with 5 MKXIII purples will only see a grand total of a +50% boost to damae at any weapon power of 50 or more, and less than this at weapons power setting below 50.
Now to see what skills do . Ok totla magnitude of effect if all skills ar at 9 ranks is 48.7%, bearing in mind base 9 ranks is 99 skill points this suggests that the total cumalative bonus is 50% at 100 points, due to certain factors this is impossibbel to verify, but highly probable. And i've confirmed it.
Ok just started doing testing on how the weapons work and I'm going to have to challenge the way the [Dmg] modfier is thought to work. It IS scaling with weapon power and attack pattern omega.
The Toon: Level 50, no accolades effecting, no skills effecting.
The Weapons: Two Blue Mk X tetryon beam arrays, one with [CritH] x2, one [Dmg] x2
Results @50 Weapons Power, all listed DPV, consoles blue Mk XIs
Conclusion
Bonus damage granted by [Dmg] Modifier does infact scale with weapon power and APO. I would assume it will also scale with crit and will test latter. Also consoles add a FLAT AMOUNT ignoring weapon grade and quality only taking into account the weapon type like beam array, cannon, etc. But more testing is needed.
Comments
It's worth noting that some of what we might expect to be "multiplicative" buffs are in fact additive. And there are even several different types of "multiplicative" buffs (doh!)
1. First, you have a weapons base damage.
2. Then you have additive buffs: these include bonuses from skillpoints, [Dmg] Procs, any kind of "+damage%" buffs (Tactical Consoles, Attack Pattern Omega, Beam Overload, etc. etc.) All these bonuses get added up and applied to the base damage.
This is the value you typically end up seeing in the game's weapon tooltip readout.
3. Next you have Multiplicative Buffs. there are very few of these in the game - basically, it's only weapons power, enemy resistance debuffs (Attack Pattern Beta, Fire on my Mark, etc) and weapon firing time reductions (MACO 2-piece bonus, Cannon Rapid Fire, Projectile DOFFs, Mine Dispersion Patterns, etc). These multiplicative buffs are applied to the previous total (after additive buffs), and are applied independently.
For example: Let's say you run 4x DHCs. You can use skillpoint investment to increase your weapons damage by 100%, and then use APO for another 30%, for an inflicted total of 230% of your Base damage. You can then increase this further by using Cannon Rapid Fire 3 to increase your weapon's rate of fire by 50%, bringing your total inflicted damage to 230*1.5= 345% of your base damage. You can also reduce an enemy's resistance to your damage by 50%, resulting in you dealing 345*1.5=517.5% of your base weapon damage to an enemy's hull, (assuming no damage is lost due to resistance debuff diminishing returns, or firing from range!)
Multiplicative debuffs (such as damage dropoff over range) work the same way.
Increasing the effectiveness of a core modifier mechanic involved in our itemization that is present in the entirety of the game's content and combat systems... that's a sweeping change. It may, indeed, be the one we decide to make. But it is not a change that can be lightly made without considering the ramifications it could have on the rest of the game.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Hi Bort,
Without going into what you guys are considering for the future, would you be able to enlighten us on the design intent (up until now) of the mods and the reason [DMG] is so often added to things like Quad Cannons, Aux DHCs, Spiral Wave Disruptors, Fleet Weapons, Dilithium Store Weapons, etc.?
Is it because [DMG] is easier to keep under control in terms of power added?
Is it because the weapons are intended to be good, but not the best?
Weapons power is an exception, it's another thing that's a bit... odd.
The baseline that default weapon damage tooltips (the ones you get when you're not a space map) are calculated from is 50 weapons energy. And given what we know about percentage-based damage buffs, you'd expect that every point in weapons energy you have over 50 would grant you an extra 2% Base Energy Weapon DPS, additively.
However it's not that simple. You can see weapons power stacking non-additively with certain additive buffs... and if it's drained to zero, you will do no energy damage at all (not "-100% base damage", which would mean you'd still do some damage as long as you had a few additive buffs active).
I would say they are needed. The difference between modifiers is negligible in all things except PvP.
So it does not increase the actual weapon damage but instead acts as an independent proc that is not effected by anything? WHY!!!!!!!!
I stand corrected
Actually though in that case even though I'm going to guess that it doesn't does that mean it ignores enemy resistances perhaps? I doubt it but that would be kinda nice.
*edit extra info*
Just tested with my tac. When using APA, Go Down Fighting, and Tac Fleet combined a 104.5% total damage increase for me, the fleet weapon went from 1438.8 DPV to 2859 a 98.1% increase whereas my borg went from 1374.8 to 2850 or a 107% increase.
My simple conclusions from that are pretty simple but please let me know if I goofed Maelwyns as this was a quick n dirty test.
1) [Dmg] Mod does indeed not scale properly with other modifiers. I consider this a bug though personally as I cannot fathom a single reason why that would be the desired behavior I hope Bort will chime in on this.
2) The +% damage boosts are actually a multiplier not added to the base damage like skill/consoles, but they do stack additively with themselves. Those being the Tac Captains abilities along with possibly APO.
So taking that all into consideration, would it be accurate to say that a MK XII [CrtH]x3 or [CrtD]x3 would be better than [DMG]x3 (leaving out the fleet weapons having a 4th modifier, as this thread is aimed primarily at the [DMG] mod itself and how it's abundantly found on endgame weapons).
APA, APO, GDF all multiply the post weapons power + console damage by their modifiers, if several are active together then the % are added together then the multiplier is applied.
Tactical fleet is not working as expected and neithier are consles. With or without consles the Tac fleet boost was only adding 17%. I'd have to do some very careful testing to figure out what's happening here.
Consoles where boosting damage by 33%, total consle bonus was 101% and this was at 75 weapons power. This makes no sense, so again i'm goig to have to do more testing, but my gut says that the bonus damage from consles is calculated without skill modifiers factored in.
@Carl: Consoles are working perfectly fine I have recently tested them. They add a flat amount to base damage and stack additively with skill modifiers, they do not multiply anything at all but they can be multiplied by other things.
Example: Weapon does 100 DPV. The two damage boosting skills are maxed which would add 50% or 50 DPV. A console we will say is adding 30 DPV each and you have two. So the DPV would be 100+50+30 for a total of 180 DPV. Then you add in the weapon power modifier lets say your gaining 50% boost it goes from 180 DPV to 270 DPV. These numbers are all made up just to illustrate the example and it can get much more complicated.
Thje problem is their percentages do not make sense. a set of consles with a grand total of +101% modifier, even working off base damage should at 75 weapons power be increasing total damage output by 66%. They do not on my toons siege destroyer, they increae by only 33%. this implies that the wepaons are actually working under a 3x modifier on base damage. So unless wepaons power scaling is much more drastic than we've previouslly belived, (i'm confident it's not), somthing else is at work here. They are not working in the same way as wepaons power OR Tac abilities. Never mind whatever Tac fleet is doing.
I haven't had chance to test how consles interact with weapons power yet though, but the way it's claimed verywhere else is that they add to the % modifier of weapons power, not weapons power multiplying by them.
The bonus they provide (last I checked) was not modified by weapon rank or anything like that, it was instead a flat number based on weapon type and the console only. Weapon power and abilities will modify their bonus though.
To add to that. The bonus remains constant, (in percentile terms)m at any weapons power of 50 or above, indicating the bonus scales upwards wiith weapons power. But at weapons power settign below 50 it drops of in percentage terms. At 35 weapons power, (as low as i could go due to inatte benefit), it was granting only a 10% bonus from a 26.2% console.
Tactical Fleet si officolly borked. it's adding 17.5% instead of 30% irrespective of skills or consoles. The percentage remains constant regardless of weapons power.
Now to see what skills do
http://home.comcast.net/~amicus/Skill%20Point%20Effects.htm
For other effects, etc. check this thread.
There's also a whole load more knocking about concerning the underlying maths and modifiers.
The Toon: Level 50, no accolades effecting, no skills effecting.
The Weapons: Two Blue Mk X tetryon beam arrays, one with [CritH] x2, one [Dmg] x2
Results
@50 Weapons Power, all listed DPV, consoles blue Mk XIs
[CritH]x2: @0 Consoles 205, @2 Consoles 257.5 (+52.5), @Omega 225.5 (+20.5), @100 power 410 (double base)
[Dmg]x2: @0 Consoles 215, @2 Consoles 267.5 (+52.5), @Omega 236.5 (+21.5), @100 power 430 double base)
Conclusion
Bonus damage granted by [Dmg] Modifier does infact scale with weapon power and APO. I would assume it will also scale with crit and will test latter. Also consoles add a FLAT AMOUNT ignoring weapon grade and quality only taking into account the weapon type like beam array, cannon, etc. But more testing is needed.