How Soul Annihilation’s Damage is Actually Calculated

[grasida]

I hope this isn’t something a bunch of people already know. I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned here yet. Soul Annihilation’s tool tip description is completely wrong. If you work backwards from the number it gives you, it describes damage dealt as (10 + focus/4) * might bonus * PL Bonus + miscellaneous bonuses (sworn enemy shows up in the description if you have it).

 

That’s not how it works. The actual raw damage dealt by soul annihilation is (10*weapon damage modifier + (((focus-10)/4)*weapon damage modifier)*PL bonus (whoops, I forgot to actually test PL bonuses, so if it’s totally inconsistent with every other ability in the game, that part might be wrong). Weapon damage modifier means anything that multiplies your weapon’s base damage like sneak attack, might or even soul whip. Yes, that means you’ll do more damage with soul annihilation at one point less than max focus than if your focus is totally maxed. “Lash” damage doesn’t affect SA’s raw damage and even though SA is a spell, +% spell damage doesn’t either. The raw damage can’t crit or graze.

 

tl;dr:

1. The Soul Annihilation description is totally wrong, it will typically do a lot more damage than it says it does.

2. Soul Annihilation is way better than it looks according to the description, especially if you go for a streetfigher/ soul blade, which on paper is probably the highest single target melee damage character in the game.

 

Edit: wrote down the wrong formula, focus is subtracted by 10 before being divided and multiplied by all the other stuff.

Edited July 29, 2018 by grasida

[mant2si]

Yes you get +damage from might, potion of last stand, etc ... same as any damage skill, so with 10 focus I will usually do 27DM + highest hit roll, but I'm not sure about street-fighter bonus because for example barbarian/soul-blade didn't get bonus from One Stands Alone, maybe something changed... But the most important bonus is PL as you wrote it multiplicative and has +7PL make you do much more DM. I assume each PL give you +10%

So if you has 10 focus you will do:

12.5 * 1.7  ~= 21 * any other base damage modifiers
21 * 1.3 (+10 might) ~= 27

Edited July 29, 2018 by mant2si

[gkathellar]

Weapon damage modifier means anything that multiplies your weapon’s base damage like sneak attack, might or even soul whip. Yes, that means you’ll do more damage with soul annihilation at one point less than max focus than if your focus is totally maxed.

 

Obsidiaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

 

*shakes fist*

[grasida]

Yes you get +damage from might, potion of last stand, etc ... same as any damage skill, so with 10 focus I will usually do 27DM + highest hit roll, but I'm not sure about street-fighter bonus because for example barbarian/soul-blade didn't get bonus from One Stands Alone, maybe something changed... But the most important bonus is PL as you wrote it multiplicative and has +7PL make you do much more DM. I assume each PL give you +10%

 

So if you has 10 focus you will do:

 

12.5 * 1.7 ~= 21 * any other base damage modifiers

I don’t think that’s how it works. I was testing everything in the 2.0 beta. For me, for example, with 10 focus at 10 might, a plain weapon and no bonuses other than soul whip, I had 12 damage. I had 13.8 damage at 25 focus and 16.2 damage at 24 focus (soul whip) turns off at max focus). With a street fighter using a legendary weapon, I had 34 point something raw damage at 25 focus. Stalker’s patience also noticeably increases damage compared to other legendary weapons against flanked targets.

 

But it’s bed time for me, so if you meant something else, I’ll have to formulate a better answer in the morning.

Edited July 29, 2018 by grasida

[dunehunter]

I’m always confused how SA damage is calculated, thanks for post. Btw what’s the highest damage you are able to get with SA?

[M4xw0lf]

I must play a Soul Blade again.

 

Regarding damage, my Witch from first playthrough had highest single target damage around 400 - but that was on Patch 1.1 or even before that.

Edited July 29, 2018 by M4xw0lf

[grayrest]

I’m always confused how SA damage is calculated, thanks for post. Btw what’s the highest damage you are able to get with SA?

 

I was curious about the highest melee damage thing because I thought the highest melee damage is monk so I consoled myself a level 20 streetfighter/soulblade with grave calling / aldris, bone setter's, fair favor, etc, set my hp to near death, and went about slaughtering CRE_dummy on the starting beach. The highest SA I got was 290 damage. The damage between this setup and a PL12 monk is fairly close but without measuring I do think this is higher damage. In practice I'd rather just hit Whispers and win instead of fiddling around with flanked/bloodied but the damage output is there.

[mant2si]

 

I’m always confused how SA damage is calculated, thanks for post. Btw what’s the highest damage you are able to get with SA?

 

I was curious about the highest melee damage thing because I thought the highest melee damage is monk so I consoled myself a level 20 streetfighter/soulblade with grave calling / aldris, bone setter's, fair favor, etc, set my hp to near death, and went about slaughtering CRE_dummy on the starting beach. The highest SA I got was 290 damage. The damage between this setup and a PL12 monk is fairly close but without measuring I do think this is higher damage. In practice I'd rather just hit Whispers and win instead of fiddling around with flanked/bloodied but the damage output is there.

 

You can achieve the highest melee damage with Death Godlike + Priest + Helwalker (10 Wounds) + Debuff from Red Hand + Deltro's Cage Helm + BDD + Scroll from Chain Lightning, with this setup you can get +200 - 300% electric lash for 30 sec, which mean each full attack will cause 8x damage :D But not only that you will get wounds so fast that Rooting Pain will also cause stupid amount of damage

[Kaylon]

The damage is (10+focus/4)*(1+%PL bonus)*(1+%dmg bonuses). Before the nerf it was (10+focus/2)*(1+%PL bonus)*(1+%dmg bonuses). The street fighter/soul blade has the highest annihilation damage potential.

[Verde]

 

Weapon damage modifier means anything that multiplies your weapon’s base damage like sneak attack, might or even soul whip. Yes, that means you’ll do more damage with soul annihilation at one point less than max focus than if your focus is totally maxed.

Obsidiaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

 

*shakes fist*

These are people who put out a game where you may not fight the final boss due to a bug

[dunehunter]

Hmmm, another case where multiclass is better?

[Clerith]

Hmmm, another case where multiclass is better?

With Soulblade, that was always the extremely clear case, even straight out of the box.

[grasida]

 

The damage is (10+focus/4)*(1+%PL bonus)*(1+%dmg bonuses). Before the nerf it was (10+focus/2)*(1+%PL bonus)*(1+%dmg bonuses). The street fighter/soul blade has the highest annihilation damage potential.

One minor correction to that. It’s (10+(focus-10)/4)*stuff. At 25 focus a level 1 soul blade with no damage bonuses whatsoever does 13.8 raw damage, not 16.3 raw damage. So it’s 10 + 15/4, not 10 + 25/4. Along with not including weapon damage bonuses, this is another place where the description is wrong.

 

 

Hmmm, another case where multiclass is better?

With Soulblade, that was always the extremely clear case, even straight out of the box.

Even without knowing that weapon damage bonuses apply to soul annihilation’s damage, could single class soul blade deal more single target dps with soul annihilation than it could with death of 1000 cuts plus multi hit powers like antipathetic field and mind blades? If it can’t, its main gimmick gets obviated by its own class powers at high level.

[omgFIREBALLS]

So, uh...

 

I was soul blading it up but it seemed to me that Soul Annihilation couldn't compete with Disintegration barring cases like low deflection + high fortitude or just wanting to dump more focus into damage. Y'all saying it stands a chance?

[dunehunter]

So in summary, SA is a weapon like ability, it’s base damage is tied to how much focus you have instead of weapon base damage, plus it doesn’t benefit from lash?(or it does?).

[grasida]

SA’s raw damage doesn’t benefit from lashes, but does grow with weapon enchantment, might, sneak attack, etc. but lashes are still good since 1) they still apply to the regular damage part of SA and 2) they make you deal more damage on “off” attacks, which also generates more focus.

 

Regarding SA vs. disintegration, even if disintegration is more focus efficient, SA will almost certainly be better damage per second. If you want to kill stuff as fast as possible, SA is still probably your best choice.

 

I do think the discount on shred spells is weird with soul blade, since that will never make them better at dps casting than ascendant, but maybe the idea is sometimes you choose to spam low level aoe spells instead of doing single target damage. If mind wave were good, that might be worth it, but as it is, I’d prefer to take a few core buffs and debuffs and mostly focus on passives and off class powers on a soul blade, rather than choosing shred spells.

[jww]

So, uh...

 

I was soul blading it up but it seemed to me that Soul Annihilation couldn't compete with Disintegration barring cases like low deflection + high fortitude or just wanting to dump more focus into damage. Y'all saying it stands a chance?

 

Every enemy that I want to use Disintegration on ends up having really high Fortitude defense. It's annoying to miss so often. That said, my single-class Ascendant playthrough has been far out-damaging my Fighter/Soulblade playthrough, more due to Amplified Wave and Mind Blades than from Disintegration (if I had gone dual-wield for the Soulblade, it might be a different story, though, due to faster focus build-up).

[Boeroer]

Try Wizard/Soulblade with Citzal's Spirit Lance. One attack = full focus, Soul Annihilation with the lance (raw damage in an AoE with weird numbers) is still superpowerful.