Evening, my fellow purveyors and practitioners of prestidigitation (and their paltry pretenders)
I come to you today with a question that's been tickling my brain over the last few days. Some may wish to maintain the mask of mystery surrounding our trade, but I myself would love to batter down the doors of mystique and plunder the treasures of fact and knowledge. I come to you today with a question about stacking. (Those of you who have yet to graduate junior high mathematics may wish to avert your eyes.)
The damage done by spells in game appears to be a simple range at first glance, but as soon as you start figuring in blades, traps, shields, and other percentile multipliers, it's almost a necessity to understand how those percentages are applied to the spells they affect. In fact, the differences in stacking (as niggling as it sounds) can easily mean the difference between victory and defeat, and would definitely change both the way I designed my spell decks, and what I chose to cast from round to round. Let me continue with an example...
A spell that does 300 damage, modified with a blade spell that increases damage by 30% will presumably do 390 damage. (300 x 1.3) If, however, the target of the spell was also under the effect of a trap for a further 30%, the end result becomes a little more difficult to predict. If the percentile multipliers stack linearly, then the damage dealt will be 480 (300 x 1.6.) If they're stacked sequentially, though, the damage will be 507 (300 x 1.3 x 1.3, or simplified, 300 x 1.69.)
"But Kandrel," I hear you cry, "It's only 27 measly damage. Why are you even bothering?" Well, my loquacious (and sadly fictional) nay-sayer, the more of these blades, shields, traps, and globals you have active, the more variance there is in the numbers you'd expect to see. Following the same example above, that 300 damage spell cast under more extreme circumstances (let us say a trap, feint, blade, and a global) has a much larger gap between the two values. In one case, the spell may deal only 765 damage, while in the other, it'll deal upwards of 1077! To complicate things even more, if the target had a single-school shield (of 85% reduction) the lower value of 765 would still hit for 510, while the huge strike of 1077 would be humbled to a measly 161!
As you can see, as the multipliers start to stack up, a wise (and wily) magician simply needs to know what to expect. Are their any starry-eyed scientists and statisticians amongst us wand-waggling wizards?
(For those of you who may be thinking now that I should go and discover this for myself, I have the feeling that the equations involved are even more complex than I've pondered here in the thread. While I have sufficient knowledge to posit a few hypotheses, I'm hardly qualified to number-crunch the many possibilities that we can observe in the live game.)
Thank you for your time, wizards and witches of this strangely stylized spiral. Perhaps tonight I will see you in game!
Damage stacks multiplicatively, not additively. Also, it truncates to an integer after every internal step, rather than only rounding at the end.
Intriguing! So in short, each subsequent bonus beyond the first is more effective, because it's multiplying a multiplier. I can't imagine that this extends all the way up the chain, though. If each step truncates, then having each piece of equipment multiply separately would cause quite a string of rounding "errors."
It's something interesting to think about, no doubt.
they also go off in order of appearence.. so a convert myth to storm spell followed by a storm sheild would bypass the sheild a storm sheild followed by a myth to storm converter would suffer the 80% discount, each buff or debuff is handled seperately off the effects of the last till all are consumed the question you have to ask yourself is , is it worth 6 turns to do 5k damage to a 500 health monster when 5 turns of a 100 damage wand would so the same? as for deck construction , there should be just enough zero cost to never ever have to "pass" your turn just my 2 cents
Quizzical is quite right about the multiplying (and from what I've seen has the most detailed knowledge about damage calculation in this game of anyone posting). A couple of added notes, since you seem interested in detail:
Buffs and debuffs are applied in order from the caster outward, i.e. caster gear, caster buffs/debuffs from earliest to latest cast, global effects, target buffs/debuffs from latest to earliest cast, target gear effects (PvP) or school effects (PvE).
Every combatant (wizards and monsters), on several turns per duel, arbitrarily has their health amended by 1-3 points (most I have seen on a single turn was 9) after damage calculation, at the beginning of the next turn (you can see your health bump up in your red crystal at the moment the cards come up for the next spell selection). Usually the bump is upward, but I have also seen health decreased by a point or two on rare occasions. If you knock out a foe with enough damage to take their health well below zero, it doesn't matter. However if you defeat a foe with damage that is within 0-3 points or so of their health at the time, it is not unusual for them to remain in the battle (even after appearing to die) and require another hit to finish them.
I have not found Quizzical's claim of truncation after every step to be universally true. For example, a myth wand of 95 (base damage) * 1.25 (myth trap) calculates out to 118.75, which would truncate to 118, but routinely in my testing produces damage of 119. Same wand, 95 (base) * 0.75 (weakness) * 1.25 (balance blade) * 1.35 (spirit blade) * 1.25 (myth trap) calcs to 150.293 without truncating, presumably less with truncating, but actual damage displayed was 151 (which doesn't quite match either the truncating or the rounding model). Still, these are differences of only a point or two and can pretty much be ignored.
If you're inclined to dig, I made a rather lengthy post explaining how damage is computed as a reply to a thread in this section of the forums a couple months ago or so.
they also go off in order of appearence.. so a convert myth to storm spell followed by a storm sheild would bypass the sheild a storm sheild followed by a myth to storm converter would suffer the 80% discount, each buff or debuff is handled seperately off the effects of the last till all are consumed the question you have to ask yourself is , is it worth 6 turns to do 5k damage to a 500 health monster when 5 turns of a 100 damage wand would so the same? as for deck construction , there should be just enough zero cost to never ever have to "pass" your turn just my 2 cents
I have to disagree with you here on two counts.
Appearance has never been a factor for me. Perhaps it's a bug, but the order I cast the shields has not been the order they are handled.
Also, I have a death wizard, so if I lay my traps and blades correctly, I not only defeat my enemy, but also bring my wizard back to full health. This is very useful in some of the agonizingly long towers in Dragonspyre.
Just my humble opinion, it means absolutely nothing to anyone but me!
