Rifleman Archive

I have started grinding up the rifleman tree. /salute to the veterans as their nuggets of knowledge have helped tremendously.

I was previously a MBH (with additional carbine skills) and have switched to Doc/Rifleman to help my guild. I hang in the back healing poison and disease and don't move forward much so rifleman seemed the best choice for whentargets got in range. One thing that I have noticed is that I need to worry more about damage dealt when I do open fire on an opponent. As a MBH, I stuck to NPC's and the most important thing was making sure state changes stuck and then pounding the target with whatever I got. If they're down, they aren't fighting back. As rifleman I don't have the luxury of dropping the target first so I focus on damage done.

When I shoot at things, the number above the target's head doesn't always match the one displayed in the combat channel. As MBH, I never paid attention. If they were down, I just hit with everything I had. With rifleman I took note and tried to determine what was actual damage dealt. Using left over scout skills I would check everything that I shot at. I got a T21 and tried to calculate the AP (25% for each level over the target...right?) bonus, minus any effectivness and protection and came up with the overhead numbers showing the true damage. Everything seemed to mesh.

Now, as I have been grinding on Dant, I needed more currency than xp so I took some Voritor missions. I checked out a voritor dasher and found that they have no armor and are vulnerable to energy. I opened up with my T21 and found that the damage notice over it's head showed the same as in the combat channel. Now I'm starting to wonder if my observations were right. I noticed that they have more HAM than other voritors so the damage showing on the bars weren't where I was looking.

I know it's a wordy way to get to the question, but I wanted to let you guys know where I'm comming from. Being my first post in the rifleman forum...I also wanted to say hello as I believe in becoming a part of the community (profession and server.) So hello...and what is going on with the damage information.

---

Waste93 wrote:

The floaty damage is the actual damage done. It is the damage done after calculating for armor, resists, etc. The combat spam is just the base number times the multiplier for the special.

The reason the voritor damage was the same is because they are vulnerable. Since they are vulnerable you do not get an AP bonus. So your T21 you are shooting them with counts as AP0. So you are only doing base damage multiplied by whatever special. Hence the floaty and combat spam being the same.

---

Waste is correct. You obviously understand something of AP vs. AR and there are detailed writeups in the FAQ section at the start of the thead, so I will not go into details on how damage is calculated. Suffice it to say that the combat log basically represents the potential damage your weapon will cause to any target you shoot. It is made up of the damage roll for that shot (i.e., some random number between your weapon's minimum damage and its maximum damage, inclusive), multiplied by a standard 1.5x damage multiplier, multiplied by the damage multiplier of any special you are using. If you are using autofire, it is just the first two numbers. So the combat log is not the actual damage applied to the target.

After this, the weapon's damage type and armor piercing (AP) value and the target's resistances and Armor Rating (AR) are taken into account. If the target is vulnerable (i.e., has no resists to the weapon's damage type), then the armor and resists calculations are bypassed and just the raw damage above (combat log damage) is applied. Orherwise, the resists act as a reduction in damage, so a 15% resist would result in a reduction of damage by 15%. Then the AP vs. AR is considered. If AP = AR, no bonus or penalty is applied. If AP exceeds AR, then a damage bonus is applied. If AR exceeds AP, then damage penalty is applied. (See the FAQ for details on how this works). Once the armor and resistance factors are taken into account, this creates a number that is then applied as actual damage against the target. This is also the number that appears as a floaty over the target's head.

Therefore, the only time the combat window damage and the floaty number over the target's head will match is when the target is vulnerable to the damage type of your weapon, because in that case, the armor and resistances calculations are bypassed and the raw damage is used unmodified.

Yep to the above. I would also add that the floaty you see is generated by the reduction of the targets HAM. This is why you see floaty "damage" when a buff wears off. It might be client generated after the server updates the client as to what the new resultant value is. This also explains why my friends see me hit 10k damage sometimes, when I see 4 seperate 2500s. I think server load will cause this updating to be done at a longer interval and when it catches up.... BOOM.

Frederick Skinner
Antarian Ranger, Ranger(0030), Master Rifleman, CH(4214)
Ranger is not a profession. It's a lifestyle.