Wyrd’s Style Spreadsheet InfoFAQ v.1
Research and Formulae
by Jay Ambrosini aka Wyrd
FAQ written by Peter
Waterman and Jay Ambrosini
Introduction
Wyrd’s Style Spreadsheet:
Midgard
-- http://www.classesofcamelot.com/other/styles/Midgard.htm
Spreadsheet InfoFAQ: http://www.classesofcamelot.com/other/styles/Styles.htm
This InfoFAQ
is intended to go hand in hand with Wyrd’s Style
Spreadsheet, linked above, to explain how to interpret the Spreadsheet and its
inner workings. Viewing one without the
other may be confusing, though as you gain familiarity with the workings of the
Spreadsheet (as explained in this document), you will be able to discard this InfoFAQ – but never the Spreadsheet itself!
There are three primary tabs
for this spreadsheet, one for each realm. If you click on a realm tab, you will
see the available weapon spec lines for that realm, as well as the individual
styles in each spec line. Of particular
note on this spreadsheet, and what makes it unique and critical to anyone
considering the inner workings of melee styles, is Column B, a small number on the left side of each style. This number is what Wyrd
has termed the Growth Rate of a style
– in a very small nutshell, this Growth Rate is equivalent to the value the
game developers have inputted into their style database, which is used by the
game to determine how much damage a style will do at any given point.
By using the Growth Rate
number, all styles can be compared in an even environment. The higher the Growth Rate on a style, the
higher the average style bonus will be when the style is performed, while the
lower the Growth Rate, the lower the average style bonus. This means that, for example, a style with a
Growth Rate of .8 will on average outperform a style with a Growth Rate of .4
over time.
This Growth Rate, how to use
it in calculations beyond a basic comparison of the numbers, and where it comes
from, is explained in detail in the questions below.
Frequently Asked
Questions
1. How
do melee styles that add damage work?
Simplified, a damage style
is a DPS (Damage Per
Second) based addition to the base melee damage of an attack. It adds damage via a multiplier based on the
Growth Rate of the style, weapon specialization in the style’s line, and
Effective Speed of the weapon wielded.
Higher weapon spec and a higher growth rate will both lead to a larger
style multiplier, while higher quickness, a faster weapon, and more haste will
both lead to a lower style multiplier (though a faster swing rate on the same
speed weapon will always have a higher damage output over time in spite of a
smaller style multiplier).
To walk through a basic
example, let's assume a player used a style on an opponent and saw the
following output in his chat screen:
You perform your Test Style perfectly! (+50)
You hit your test subject for 150
damage!
We immediately know two
things from the above lines: The style
added 50 damage to the attack (shown by the style bonus, which is the +50 on the style line), and the attack
would have done 100 damage if it had been unstyled
(by taking the total damage of 150 and subtracting the 50 style bonus from
it). Anyone that regularly attacks with
melee styles understands that the style bonus and the base damage both tend to
vary constantly - the same style might add +50 on this attack, but might add
+70 on the next. What most players don't
realize is that currently in DAOC, there is only one random roll where variance
is seen, and that is on the base damage of an attack. The ratio of the style bonus to the base
damage will always remain the same, thus when players see the style bonus
fluctuating, it is only due to the fluctuation of the base damage (as long as
effective speed and weapon spec remain the same) – note that this also means it
is critical to overall style effectiveness that the base damage be as high as
possible, as the higher the base damage is, the higher the style bonus will be.
Looking at the above
example, we can determine what we call the Style
Multiplier, which is the relationship of the style damage to the base
damage. To do this, we take the total
damage dealt, and divide it by the damage that would have been dealt if the hit
was unstyled.
In this particular example, that leads us to 150/100 = 1.5 – this is
our Style Multiplier. This means that
any further hits we perform using that style (again, as long as spec and
effective speed remain the same), the style will always increase our base
damage by 1.5 times. The following is
another example of a typical melee hit, where the base damage is slightly lower
(due perhaps to the target being a higher level mob), yet the style multiplier
will remain exactly the same:
You perform your Test Style perfectly! (+30)
You hit your test subject for 90
damage!
Thus, we see that while the
base damage varies, the connection between the base damage and the style bonus
(the Style Multiplier) will always remain a constant as long as no changes are
made to the equipment used - regardless of the target being attacked. More base damage means a higher style bonus
and more overall damage, while less base damage means a lower style bonus and
less overall damage, yet the entire time the relation between the style bonus
and the base damage will be exactly the same.
2. How does the Growth Rate on the spreadsheet
relate to actual damage dealt and the Style Multiplier?
Wyrd has spent a lot of time tracking this down, and after
extensive testing and analysis, has come to the following conclusion (these are
fairly easy to follow formulas but do require some thinking about) about how to
determine a style multiplier (which works as described above) for a given
style:
((Growth Rate * Weapon Spec) * Effective
Speed) / Unstyled Damage Cap
The following shows how to
determine the values for the variables above:
1) Growth Rate: Consult the
left column of Wyrd’s Spreadsheet.
2) Weapon Spec: Check the
modified weapon specialization for the appropriate style being used by
examining your character sheet in-game.
For example, if you are using an Alb Thrust style, and your weapon spec
is 34+12, then the value for this variable will be 46.
3) Effective Speed: This is the actual
speed at which the weapon being wielded is swung. Stats such as Quickness over 60 increase your
swing speed, as do “haste” spells. To
determine your effective speed, use the following equation, where SPD is the stat listed in a delve of
that weapon for speed*, Quickness is
the value of that stat listed in your character sheet, and Haste% is the percentage value of any haste buffs the character may
be using (see the Camelot Herald for exact percentages for haste buffs):
Effective
Speed = SPD * ( 1
– ( Quickness – 60
) / 500) ) * ( 1 –
Haste%)
It’s
important to note that in some occasions, this Effective Speed may drop below
1.5 – unfortunately the game caps melee attacks at 1.5 seconds, hence if your
effective speed drops that low, you need to reassess the weapons you are
using. For the purposes of these
equations, please change any Effective Speed below 1.5 to exactly 1.5.
*NOTE: For
Left Axe users, your actual swing speed is determined by averaging the SPD of
the Right Axe and the Left Axe. Since
the style multipliers than Left Axe adds are only
affected by the Effective Speed of the mainhand
weapon, and not the actual swing speed, please use only the SPD value of your mainhand weapon for these calculations. (This also applies to Celtic Dual and Dual
Wield users, who see the same “haste” effects when both weapons actually swing,
but this haste effect is less commonly counted on with those spec lines as the
offhand swing is not a guarantee and hence the haste effect of a slow/fast
weapon is not reliable)
4) Unstyled
Damage Cap: To obtain the unstyled
damage cap of a weapon, you must hit a target with an Armor Factor that is
considerably lower than your Weapon Skill without using a melee style. The easiest and most common way to do this is
to go to a low level area and hit a very low level gray mob – it’s best to hit
two or three to make sure that you are seeing the same damage on all of them.
Once the above calculations
have been made, the Style Multiplier will be found. Note that this will vary with weapon spec and
stats such that two different people will rarely see the same Style Multiplier.
Using the above formula,
it’s possible to illustrate how style bonuses vary depending on a player’s
weapon spec and weapon speed, etc. For
example, it’s possible to generate Style Multipliers across a range of weapon
specs for a character, keeping all other stats the same, and apply those
multipliers to a typical base damage hit to see how much impact weapon spec has
on a particular style.
3. Can you show me how the Growth Rate is really
accurate?
Absolutely. Using actual
in-game attacks and data that were done without looking at Wyrd’s
Spreadsheet, the following examples show how the Growth Rate is an accurate
real reflection of how styles work in the Real World (well, in the Real Game
that is), across many different levels of toons,
specializations, and realms:
(note: These are example cases. Tests in reality may yield varying results as
rounding does have a significant effect on the calculations. If you run into constant discrepancies,
please PM Wyrd77 on the VN)
Example #1:
Infiltrator using the Garrote Style
For this example, the
character is a level 50, Realm Rank 5 Infiltrator. This character is heavily buffed with the
best Cleric specline buffs available. He has a Quickness of 255, a weapon spec of
50+15 Critical Strike, and is wielding two 2.9SPD Long Dirks – he is not under
the effect of any haste buffs. First, we
will calculate his Effective Speed:
2.9 * ( 1 – ( 255 – 60 ) / 500)
) * ( 1 – 0) = 1.769 Effective Speed
This means that our
Infiltrator will swing his 2.9SPD weapon at a rate of once every 1.769
seconds. Before we can use this
Effective Speed in the final calculation, however, we must determine the unstyled damage cap of the Infiltrator while using these
weapons and buffed in this manner. In
this case, we simply had the Infiltrator attack, unstyled,
a sitting level 50 Cleric who was wearing no armor. The Infiltrator consistently hit the Cleric for 147 damage, which shows that his unstyled
damage cap is exactly that. An
alternative method of discovering this would have been to attack a level 0 mob
in the same manner.
Now that we have the
Effective Speed and the unstyled damage cap of the
weapon being used, the next step is to calculate, using the Growth Rate on Wyrd’s Spreadsheet, what the Style Multiplier for this
character will be. First, we obtain the
Growth Rate from looking on the Spreadsheet, where we see that Garrote has a
Growth Rate of exactly .75. Now, plug
that into the formula including the Growth Rate, the Effective Speed, and the
Weapon Specialization of the Infiltrator, and we get:
((.75 * 65) * 1.769)
/ 147 = .58665
This means that any time we use
the Garrote style on this Infiltrator, it should add
an extra 58.665% of his base damage as a style bonus. For example, if he were to hit a mob for 100
damage, but used the Garrote style, he would see output such as:
You perform your Garrote perfectly! (+58)
You hit the test mob for 158 damage!
This all works well on
paper, but does it bear out in reality?
Let’s see! The following is an
excerpt of an actual chat.log where the above
described Infiltrator, with the same stats and weapons as described,
attacked a standing L50 Cleric in epic armor using the Garrote style:
[
[
The first thing you’ll
notice is that in all of the examples above, we have assumed no
resistances. For players unfamiliar with
the way melee (and magical) resists work, the amount in parentheses after the
damage shows how much of that damage was either added or substracted
due to resistances. In the above
instance, +3 damage was added because the target was
weak to thrust. Since our calculations
only concern actual damage, the resistances are ignored – hence the total
damage dealt was 168 – 3 = 165.
In Question 1 above, we
explained how to get the Style Multiplier from this kind of output. In this particular example, we see:
165 / (165 – 61)
= 1.58654
If we compare this actual
real-world Style Multiplier (1.58654) to the ideal multiplier according to our calcution (.58665% = 1.58665) we see that they are
remarkably close. In this particular
situation, the very small variance (in the tenths of a percent) can likely be
attributed to the way the game rounds numbers.
Clearly, 1.58665 is close enough to 1.58654 to prove that in this
circumstance, the Growth Rate for the Garrote style according to Wyrd’s Style Spreadsheet is 100% accurate.
As an exercise in
application, we can reverse calculate this particular melee hit shown in our
log, changing the amount of weapon specialization. Using the math above, let’s pretend that this
same Infiltrator (same weapon, same effective speed) was only spec’d to 39+11 Critical Strike, for a total of 50 instead
of 65. Since the Critical Strike
specialization line only affects style damage, and not base damage, we can show
that if this character was spec’d to a total of 50
Critical Strike and had made the same melee attack, it would have looked like
this:
[
[
It’s interesting to note
that while the extra 15 weapon spec in the Critical Strike line certainly makes
a noticeable difference in this circumstance, it’s not an incredibly massive
amount. Obviously if this was a base
weapon spec, the 15 points would have affected base damage as well, thus the
impact of the extra 15 points would be more noticeable.
Example #2: Blademaster using the Bumblebee’s Sting style
In this example, the subject
is a level 40 Blademaster with 40+3 Pierce. He is wielding a 3.5SPD weapon which has a
144 damage cap, and has a Quickness of 136.
3.5 * ( 1 – ( 136 – 60 ) / 500)
) * ( 1 – 0) = 2.968 Effective Speed
The following is a from an actual log of said Blademaster
using this style with the above mentioned stats against a red con mob:
[
[
for 46 (-8) damage!
To determine the actual
Style Multiplier from this example:
54 / (54
– 18) = 1.5
To determine the percentage
increase based on the Growth Rate in the Spreadsheet:
((.58
* 43) * 2.968) / 144
= .51
Comparing the percentage
increase of .51% (1.51x) to the actual Style
Multiplier of 1.5x, we see again that the spreadsheet is accurate in this
circumstance.
4. Why does this all matter?
It’s really quite simple –
once the Growth Rate for a style has been determined, tested, and confirmed, it
becomes a baseline number that can be used to compare the effectiveness of the
style across all specs, weapons, and realms. Unlike tests that compare actual
melee damage, there is no inaccuracy due to relics, stats, weapon type, test
mobs/players, etc. – it is a flat out, 100% accurate number that clearly points
out whether Style A will outperform Style B if everything is the same. Want to know what the most damaging style in
the game is? The one with the highest
Growth Rate – it’s that simple. Want to
know if that Warrior is hitting your Hero harder than you hit him because he
has better styles? Compare the Growth
Rates, and there’s your answer. Want to
know if it’s better to spec Hammer or Axe if all you care about is raw damage
output? Compare the Growth Rates of the
styles in those two lines, and there’s your answer.
Having the Growth Rates of
these styles makes this spreadsheet an extremely valuable tool for those
looking to really get into the game and compare melee styles.
5. How do the Assassination styles work?
Assassination styles (BS,
BS2, PA) work differently than normal styles. Since these styles can only be used as an
opener from stealth, these styles have had the DPS portion coded out and just
add a static damage value. This allows
for assassins to use fast weapons and still hit hard with their assassination
styles. Furthermore, since the
assassination styles add a static damage amount, faster weapons actually allow
for a higher DPS than slower weapons in this case. Thus, one can debate the benefits of a slow
assassination weapon versus a fast one.
Perforate Artery Cap = 75 + Critical Strike Spec *
9 + Nonstyle Cap
Backstab II Cap = 45 + Critical Strike Spec * 6 + Nonstyle Cap
Backstab I Cap = ~5 + Critical Strike Spec * 14 / 3 + Nonstyle
Cap
6. Starter Styles
The starter styles also do
not seem to have a growth rate. Some are
adding +6 damage, others +10. Overall
there has not been much study into these styles since they are rarely used past
level 5.
7. Known Bugs
There are a few styles that
work oddly which are still being analyzed by the testing community. This section will be updated as we get more
information. All of these bugs have been
reported to the Devs.
1) Ripper – Style sometimes performs with a high Growth
Rate other times with a low growth rate.
No consistency has been found to the style’s damage as of yet.
2) Sidewinder – Style is not growing with spec.
3) Growth Rate Glitch – Sometimes a style will hit for
much less than its growth rate would indicate.
This is a fairly seldom occurrence (<2%), but instances can be found
in data sets
8. Final Comments
This document is a living
document in that it may change at any moment with or without notice. New examples, grammatical changes and the
possible event of patch changes or bug effects may be added or removed at any
time. Jay nor Peter is in no way
responsible for any actions you take after reading this document. This information is merely here to inform.
Please feel free to use this
document as you see fit. However, any
reproduction of any of the information within this document should be properly
cited back to the original source. If
you believe you have found an error in this document or the Spreadsheet, please
make sure to include detailed logs and information and contact Wyrd77 on the
Vault Network.
InfoFAQ written by Peter Waterman (aka Squawking Tiger), with massive
collusion and feedback from Jay Ambrosini (aka Wyrd) – Jay is the originator of the
formulas and concepts found explained within this document, Pete just helped
write the FAQ. ;)