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Acknowledgement

A special thank you to all addon developers that have both significantly improved the quality of my gaming life as well as allowing me the opportunity to reverse engineer game mechanics. In particular, Combat Log Statistics by @zeakfury and Combat Metrics by @decay have been instrumental for the majority of my testing. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to the community for the kind words, encouragement and valuable discussions.

Contents

• Introduction
• Damage Equations
  • Resource Pool
  • Spell Damage
  • Recovery
  • Spell Cost
  • Spell Critical
  • Critical Modifier
  • Damage Calculation
    • Base Ability Tooltip
    • Base Damage
    • Average Damage
    • Ability Metric
• Analytical Results
  • Champion Point System
    • Thief
    • Mage
  • Mundus: Apprentice, Mage, Thief and Shadow
  • Armour Traits: Divines and Infused
  • Weapon Traits:Nirnhoned, Precise and Sharpened
• Numerical Results
  • Introduction
  • Details of Simulation Algorithm
  • Simulation Interface
  • Simulation Accuracy
  • Simulation Results for Magicka Sorcerer

Introduction

This post is divided into three main sections: Damage Equations, Analytical Results and Numerical Results.

Damage Equations covers the majority of equations needed to accurate calculate damage. It is my impression that the majority of these are readily recognisable by the community so my exposition of it will be brief. In addition, the Unofficial Elder Scroll pages boast a comprehensive build editor that not only calculates statistics for virtually all gear combinations it also clearly and tidily demonstrates the underlying equations used.

Optimisation decisions based of the Damage Equations are covered in Analytical Results. These include champion point optimisation, mundus optimisation, armour trait optimisation and weapon trait optimisation.

While the Analytical Results provide some insight into damage optimisation, some optimisation questions are rather arduous to answer, in particular the impact of proc sets on damage. One approach is with a geometric distribution but this only models the average behaviour and leaves much to be desired. Numerical Results summarises some of my combat simulation findings.

While I will rely on magicka sorcerers for the bulk of my examples, most of the concepts apply equally to other classes.

• This topic was modified 5 months ago by  Asayre.