I’m hoping someone can assist me in comprehending how the game calculates the damage displayed in a skill’s tooltip within the game.
I’m working on creating some basic calculation formulas for myself using Excel, as the online calculators I’ve encountered don’t appear to be entirely reliable.
Even in my initial attempt at calculating weapon damage, core attributes, non-conditional “main bucket” damage modifiers, and the primary DPS skill, I’ve encountered a dilemma:
The game appears to condense the range between the minimum and maximum damage values when displaying the damage output of a skill. In my particular case as a Bone Spear necromancer, my character sheet and skill tooltip present the following:
Weapon Damage = 2047
Bone Spear Damage = 12,234 – 14,592 [153%] <- averaging at 13,593 damage
Now, upon my own calculations, my weapon’s stats with a shield yield a range of 1638-2455 (averaging at 2047). When I calculate the core attribute, non-conditional modifiers, and the Bone Spear modifier, I end up with:
Bone Spear Damage = 10,878 – 16,308 <- averaging at 13,593 damage
What perplexes me is that the ratio of minimum to maximum damage, when using the flat weapon value, stands at 0.667. This same ratio is consistent through each step of my calculation, culminating in the final number I’ve mentioned above. Yet, the ratio of minimum to maximum damage displayed in the tooltip for Bone Spear is 0.818.
So, somewhere in the process, the game seems to compress the range between minimum and maximum damage values.
For those who might be interested or could shed further light on this matter:
It appears that the actual skill itself (in this case, Bone Spear) is responsible for the “compression” evident in its tooltip. Based on my observations, it seems the game disregards the weapon’s minimum and maximum damage values, and instead employs the “weapon damage” (average) as seen on the character stat sheet for its calculations. Whatever the precise sequence of these calculations might be, during the point when the game computes skill damage for the tooltip, it takes the average value and then adds a 20% range to establish the minimum-maximum values for that skill.
I’ve verified this across all nine ranks of Bone Spear, comparing in-game tooltips. At each rank, the minimum-maximum damage range is consistently within ±10% of the average damage.
Upon briefly examining and calculating for my Ice Shards sorceress, I’ve noticed a similar “compression” and a consistent 20% damage range for the skill. While I’m unsure about the universality of this approach across different skills and classes, this information might prove beneficial to those involved in damage calculations.
Does anyone possess insights into how or why this occurs or perhaps a formula associated with it? More discussion at MMOexp.com, buy Diablo 4 gold from us now, instock & more off.