Weapon Damage in 1.6

[helminthauge]

the way to calculate it is:
First calculate the sum of all stats used of this weapon, which is just multiply and add. We refer the result as "STAT".
Then add STAT to your physical power (gained from STR, weapon mastery, and general physical power bonus), and rescale it as usual. Note that 2H penalty, daze and scoured happens after STAT is added and just before rescaling. We refer the result as "PHYS".
Add STAT to your base weapon damage (the lower number of the base power range). We refer the result as "A", and sqrt(A / 40) + 0.5 as "POWER".
The final weapon damage in 1.6.0 is 0.3 * PHYS * POWER * (1 + the % bonus shown in your weapon mastery talent).
The final weapon damage in 1.6.1 is (the number in 1.6.0) ^ 1.04.

I'm not a math expert so the only thing I can inspect so far is that weapon damage is far lower than before.

A simple test result in 1.6.0:
a lv50 berserker, with all base stats to 100, no talent but 6.5 effective lv of Weapon Mastery. Wielding Murderblade (60 damage, 120% str, +15 str), and the damage on character sheet is 138. ICCTW increases this by 46. AM increases this by 53. Superpower increases this by 22.

So I assume that ICCTW and AM are still good prodigy for increasing weapon damage. APR is probably far better than before.
And Armor and hardiness is also far better. On Insane difficulty, in 1.5.10 you can see white skeleton archers with about 250 character sheet weapon damage in high peak and rares/uniques/bosses with weapon class can easily exceed 400, yet now my friends say they rarely encounter things with more than 200 weapon damage there in 1.6.0.

Can some math expert come to explain how much impact weapon damage, physical power and stats have on weapon damage now

[helminthauge]

another test:
an ogre bulwark, with start T1 blank shield and mail and nothing more, 150 Str, 1 more size from ICCTW.
when wielding a T5 blank mace (42.5 base damage, the highest from 100 maces), the character sheet damge is 150;
when wielding a T5 blank greatmaul (72 base damage, the highest from 100 greatmauls), the character sheet damge is 160.

so now ogrewielding doens't seem that good (maybe except on Writhing One)

[Snarvid]

the way to calculate it is:
First calculate the sum of all stats used of this weapon, which is just multiply and add. We refer the result as "STAT".
Then add STAT to your physical power (gained from STR, weapon mastery, and general physical power bonus), and rescale it as usual. Note that 2H penalty, daze and scoured happens after STAT is added and just before rescaling. We refer the result as "PHYS".

Italics and bold added. Is this a change? My understanding from previous versions is that totstat is never rescaled, so your stat contribution to weapon damage never suffers from diminishing returns. So you rescale physical power, and THEN add it to totstat, not the other way around.

From the Combat Damage part of the wiki:

Surprisingly (for people who have played other RPGs), your stats are actually the most important factor in determining your combat damage, because all the other factors go through a reducing formula first. Which stats are used depends on the weapon, and in some cases, on your talents.

dam = 0.3 * (phys_power + totstat) * power * talented_mod

A few other points:
- When Sawrd was in the game, Ogrewielding was top tier because it let you access Sawrd. I don't have a ton of experience playing single-handed melee wielders outside of steamsaws, but I don't know of artifact single-handed weapons that are competitive with the best artifact two-handers in the game, so I think there's better fixed quality options in playing the latter. Black Spike, Anmalice, Butcher seem plausibly like the best of the one handers, I'd be happy to learn of more, but I feel like the core abilities and riders attached to things like the Black Maul, Obliterator, Borosk's Hate, Skymasher, Blighted Maul, Dream Malleus, and Dethblyd are probably better. Also, there's a lot of those latter ones listed, so although on any given playthrough you may not find a particular one you're probably going to find several of them. And then, of course, there's always Legacy of the Naloren if you go that route.

- Possessors also like Ogrewielding because it allows them to combine two-hander and dual wielding talents from their hosts with their native Psychic Blows and Battle Psionics trees simultaneously. So you could... I don't know... Flurry with Voratun Hammer of the Deep Below and Core of the Forge or something similar.

e: more clarification around totstat.

[helminthauge]

the way to calculate it is:
First calculate the sum of all stats used of this weapon, which is just multiply and add. We refer the result as "STAT".
Then add STAT to your physical power (gained from STR, weapon mastery, and general physical power bonus), and rescale it as usual. Note that 2H penalty, daze and scoured happens after STAT is added and just before rescaling. We refer the result as "PHYS".

Italics and bold added. Is this a change? My understanding from previous versions is that totstat is never rescaled, so your stat contribution to weapon damage never suffers from diminishing returns. So you rescale physical power, and THEN add it to totstat, not the other way around.

Yes it is. The whole formula is changed, and I'm trying to explain the new one in this post. Wiki needs a serious update.

[Snarvid]

Interesting. It wasn’t clear to me whether you had missed something or that this specific change is what you were trying to point now. Now I know. And they made mages hit harder. Wonder what this was trying to accomplish? Stop endgame melee users from murdering everything easily?

So, are static damage boosts like those found on the Truth now the sign of a top-tier weapon?

[GlassGo]

If armor now actually matters - it's good.
Because when I got as Demonologist with ~220 armor 97% hardiness with damned 900 ponts of damage from crit of Headshot form drake in Intimidating Caves JUST in Daikara - well, to say I was dissapointed is to say nothing.
350 damage in charshit, 23 APR with 41 APR from Headshot (and other bonuses of it and Aim I know) - and my armor was like a cigarette paper for it.
WHAT THE HELL.

[St_ranger_er]

350 + 23 + 41 - 220 (100% hardiness for simplicity) = 194.

Level 5 headshot with 1.3 mastery has 246% damage effectiveness. 194 * 2.46 = 477.2

If it was crit with 200% multiplier, then 477.2 * 2 = 954,4.

If monster had any +% phys damage, then it would be yet another multiplier.

Without armor: 350 * 2.46 * 2 = 1722.

[GlassGo]

It was 103 lvl drake, with like 27 lvl Headshot and 3 lvl Aim (+330 additional damage +30% for max distance) only 150 crit mult and ashen bow or would have been busted. Also ~20+% phys damage.

[visage]

Then add STAT to your physical power (gained from STR, weapon mastery, and general physical power bonus), and rescale it as usual.

EDIT: Ignore the following; I didn't actually read helminthauge's comment nearly closely enough.

Assuming this is correct, that changes just about everything about how weapon-based characters work... and explains why people are talking about weapon damage being lower in lategame even with weapon masteries going up to +76% now.

This suggests that the reigning offensive weapon prodigies (ICCTW, Arcane Might, Superpower, PES) are much weaker. It also suggests that stacking up armor penetration is now vastly more important to any weapon-based character.

Can anyone remind me where in the code the weapon damage calculation is?
EDIT: The weapon damage calculation is here.

[Snarvid]

Sorry to follow up without the answer, just wanted to throw in 2c more on the nerf to Flexible Combat - despite halving it’s proc rate, it might remain top tier if all the other top candidates are cramped by rescaling. Something like “Flexible Combat at 25, Legacy of the Naloren if you haven’t found a good weapon by 42, Windtouched Speed if you have” might be the new melee meta.

Start hording +Dex gear now!

[visage]

Ok, so as helminthauge posted above, it looks like combat damage basically damage boils down to:

0.3 *
WeaponSkillMult *
(((weapon.dam + totstat)/10 - 1)**0.5 * 0.5 + 1) *
traditional_scaling(totstat + combat_skill_power)

...where "totstat" is the accumulated (stat * stat_contribution_to_weapon).

Based on some experimentation with the lua console, it looks like this in practice means that translation from stats to weapon damage is roughly linear. If I recall correctly, it used to be approximately linear**1.1.

So, not the huge nerf that you'd see if all of a sudden the contribution of stats to weapon damage was simply subjected to scaling.

[helminthauge]

Sorry to follow up without the answer, just wanted to throw in 2c more on the nerf to Flexible Combat - despite halving it’s proc rate, it might remain top tier if all the other top candidates are cramped by rescaling. Something like “Flexible Combat at 25, Legacy of the Naloren if you haven’t found a good weapon by 42, Windtouched Speed if you have” might be the new melee meta.

Start hording +Dex gear now!

as my test states, ICCTW and AM stll icreases your weapon damage by ~ 1/3, and that helps more against things with high armor.

[Snarvid]

That's fair, particularly with the additional crit chance on AM. Concern withdrawn in face of simple math.

While trying to make sure changes to crit aren't baked into damage, I noticed that staves (or at least your starter staff as an Archmage) don't seem to increase their crit chance when you get AM. Anyone know what that's about?

[GlassGo]

What about *cough, cough* YSBMW! and Mssive Blow?

[helminthauge]

those are very simple math.