[Question] Total Damage VS Damage + DR Reduction Question

[Samuel2123]

Hello there, first topic in the forum, so im not sure if this is the correct area.

 

I would like to know the difference between "damage" vs "damage + dr reduction ", let me explain:

 

Lets say that i have a weapon with 20 damage ( usually is something like 13-20, but lets say just 20 to make the question clear) , and i have another one with 17 damage plus a DR reduction of 3 ( bypass) , ok?

 

The way i understood the game mechanics , against a , lets say, 15 DR target, both weapons would hit 5, is that right?

 

So why do we have dr reduction status in weapons?

What's the difference between those 2 weapons( the ones i've invented in this topic)?

Whats the point in having the "dr reduction" characteristic in the game?

Am I missing something?

[Tigranes]

Some weapon types always come with DR reduction; others always come with accuracy bonus (dagger); and so on. The benefits are always situational.

 

Some enemies have 0 DR, or at least, you can reduce their DR through other means like spells, and you might also have even more DR bypass yourself through talents like Vulnerable Attack. In those cases, the 20 damage weapon would actually win out. But in cases where you're facing an enemy with a rather overwhelming DR, you'd want to go with the DR reduction. 

 

In your specific situation, yes, the result would be the same. But that's not really how it pans out in the game. 

[KDubya]

The difference would be how damage increases would be applied.

 

For example:

 

10 damage weapon with -3 DR, with +30% might, +25% weapon spec, +20% savage attack does 10 x (1+0.3 + 0.25 + 0.20) = 17.5 damage with -3DR

 

Against DR 15 you'd do 17.5 - (15-3) = 5.5 damage

 

13 damage weapon with same abilities gets 22.75 damage, against 15 DR you'd have 22.75 - 15 = 7.75 damage

[Achilles]

I think the second weapon in your example is supposed to hit for 18, correct?

 

Your example is exactly correct...if you assume that the weapon is always going to hit for the maximum amount of damage. If it hits for the mid-range (which is what you should expect) then your "20" weapon is only going to do minimum damage on most hits.

 

Let's look at a different example: mace or sword vs plate. Plate has 12 DR vs Crush and Pierce and 18 DR vs Slash. Mace and sword both do 11-16 damage, but mace does Crush damge and the sword does Slash and Pierce. Suppose the sword hits for 16. The result is 4 Pierce damage (16-12=4). Now suppose the mace hits for 16. The result is 7 Crush damage (16-(12-3)=7).

 

To understand the mechanics of a thing, it's best to compare apples to apples, rather than apples to oranges

[player1]

And lets not forget grazes. It halves weapon damage making DR much more punishing and DR reduction much more valuable.

[Samuel2123]

Thanks, now i think i got it.

It's actually very different

[perilisk]

There's also minimum damage to consider. DR can't reduce that 20 damage to less than 4, so DR level above 16 doesn't matter anymore. For the 17+3DR example, it can't reduce it to less than 3.4, so the cutoff is 16.6

[peddroelm]

if you want to learn more about weapon and other abilities damage mechanics in PoE http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/78239-abilities-various-other-damage-related-mechanics-revealed/

[Zwiebelchen]

If you don't want to run extensive numbercrunching calculations, there's a rule of thumb:

 

 

1 point of DR reduction is always equal or better than 1 point of damage*

 

*This is true only for enemies that have higher DR than you have DR reduction. However, almost no enemy has a DR lower than 6 and I haven't found any weapons in the game with more than 6 DR penetration yet.

There is one more exception, though: if the damage displayed in the character sheet plus your DR penetration is lower than the total DR of the enemy, DR penetration practically does nothing for you, as you will deal minimum damage only. However, even with the fastest weapons this almost only applies to enemies with a DR of 18 or higher, so rarely happens.

 

Most enemies in the game have a DR in the range of 6-16. For this range, the above rule of thumb is always true.

Edited May 12, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[nipsen]

Not that it really pays off with the rules in the game now. But another thing was that if you had a weapon with broader damage range (huge sword) vs a weapon with a narrower and lower damage range but with dr or accuracy+ (a dagger, or something like that), a character with high accuracy might end up with beating the damage reduction fairly often with the dagger (the critical hits). While a character with high might could end up beating the DR without needing critical hits, given that the dodge of the target was low enough.

 

And since the heavy DR enemies (heavy armor, monster troll, etc) often have low dodge, the high might type build might end up hitting the troll often. So if you buffed that attack, or added fire to it, this would be doing steady and very high damage.

 

But on the other hand, since the high accuracy character would beat the dodge with a good margin, you could be looking at converting normal hits to critical hits fairly often, and converting grazes to normal hits. So you could gamble on that striking home while engaging the troll, if you could buff that character's defense high enough to avoid critical damage, for example. So you would more or less decide whether to go for wounding and crippling strikes, to trigger more abilities and nearby spells and so on. Or run for overpowering one particular enemy with raw force. Or for example weaken one character's dodge for a short time to let a matched high dodge duel suddenly be decided.

 

While in the game now, it seems you should basically give your fighter the weapon with high accuracy bonus and dr bypass, no matter how puny the weapon is. While the low accuracy classes should probably get the biggest weapons they can get their hands on, unless they have status or spell effects on the side. Since dr bypass always beats raw damage, and accuracy is a class variable. My guess is the most dangerous fighters in the game now are high-level rogues with broadswords.

 

*shrug*

[JONNIN]

don't forget crits as well -- crits are a high % of hits in this game (not 1/20 like vanilla d&d, its more like 50% for some builds..).  DR is flat -- you subtract it.  Bypass is flat too.  So a weapon that does 20 damage and crits for 30 and the other does 17 and crits for 25 is going to favor the harder hitting weapon after all the DR is computed.   These numbers are too close to see it, but as the gap widens (enchanted, higher quality weapons and more piled on)  later in the game that 3 DR will remain flat but the damage difference will grow by leaps and bounds until the harder hitting weapon is significantly superior.