Re: Best Tank Mage Weapon in-game test.
Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2010 11:30 am
Actually, I'll add one thing. My calculations all assume these weapons do their average damage every swing. Which is a fine assumption to make when dealing with a 0 AR target.
But, for a target with some measure of armor, it's not as good of an assumption.
Assume you have one weapon that does the exact same damage every time. Like, 20 damage per hit. Every time. And assume another weapon does between 15 and 25, with equal likelihood of each. And assume the target's armor will block 18 damage per hit.
The first weapon will take 11 swings, and the results will look like this:
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
So the result is, in 11 swings, it does 2 damage every time for a total of 22 damage punching through.
Now the second weapon does 11 swings, and its result looks like this:
15-18=0
16-18=0
17-18=0
18-18=0
19-18=1
20-18=2
21-18=3
22-18=4
23-18=5
24-18=6
25-18=7
So over 11 swings, it hits on average equally as hard (average of 20 damage), but after the armor modifications, it ends up doing 1+2+3+4+5+6+7= 28 damage.
Since there is a cap on the down side of hits (if you hit for less than 0, you don't "heal" your target, you just do 0), higher variance actually works in favor of the weapons that have high-variance damage possibilities.
A true measure of damage over time that involves AR would take into account all possible weapon damages for each weapon, and figure out the likelihood of each damage number happening, and then weight the results accordingly.
I take the shortcut of simply using the average, which is probably good enough for this analysis. If we were building bridges or airplanes with these numbers, we'd want exact numbers. But for UO, my calculations are close enough
But, for a target with some measure of armor, it's not as good of an assumption.
Assume you have one weapon that does the exact same damage every time. Like, 20 damage per hit. Every time. And assume another weapon does between 15 and 25, with equal likelihood of each. And assume the target's armor will block 18 damage per hit.
The first weapon will take 11 swings, and the results will look like this:
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
20-18=2
So the result is, in 11 swings, it does 2 damage every time for a total of 22 damage punching through.
Now the second weapon does 11 swings, and its result looks like this:
15-18=0
16-18=0
17-18=0
18-18=0
19-18=1
20-18=2
21-18=3
22-18=4
23-18=5
24-18=6
25-18=7
So over 11 swings, it hits on average equally as hard (average of 20 damage), but after the armor modifications, it ends up doing 1+2+3+4+5+6+7= 28 damage.
Since there is a cap on the down side of hits (if you hit for less than 0, you don't "heal" your target, you just do 0), higher variance actually works in favor of the weapons that have high-variance damage possibilities.
A true measure of damage over time that involves AR would take into account all possible weapon damages for each weapon, and figure out the likelihood of each damage number happening, and then weight the results accordingly.
I take the shortcut of simply using the average, which is probably good enough for this analysis. If we were building bridges or airplanes with these numbers, we'd want exact numbers. But for UO, my calculations are close enough