Elemental Damage/Resistance Oddness

[Tirkan]

I've noticed it before, but only recently sat down and did some testing.

It very much seems like Spell damage is affected by how much resistance you have up - ie, the more resistance you have, the more damage the spells do.

Soloing in the Temple Outpost: Captives of the Six, the warrior guys cast a low level scorching ray, theoretically doing 4d6 damage.


(Combat): Warrior of the Six's scorching ray hit you for a total of 10 points of fire damage after 4 were blocked by energy resistance.

(Combat): Warrior of the Six's scorching ray hit you for a total of 7 points of fire damage after 4 were blocked by energy resistance.

With only my base energy resistance, the warriors consistently hit me for between 7 and 10 points of damage - no more, no less.

I drank a pot of Resist Energy Fire, adding another ten, expecting to be effectively immune to the Scorching Rays they were firing.


(Combat): Warrior of the Six's scorching ray hit you for a total of 4 points of fire damage after 14 were blocked by energy resistance.

(Combat): Warrior of the Six's scorching ray hit you for a total of 2 points of fire damage after 14 were blocked by energy resistance.

For three minutes, while this guy shot Scorching rays at me, never once did he do more than 4 points, or less than 2 points of damage. After the pot wore off, he was right back to doing 7-10 damage.

In other words, the damage of his scorching ray -increased- as my resistance to it increased. He averaged 11 to 14 damage a hit, which is roughly in line with 4d6, though low on average, when I only had resistance of 4, but when I had resistance of 14, he averaged 16-18 damage.

I find this extremely odd.

[shagath]

Perhaps he switched maximize or empower on when he noticed your fire resistance by examining your character. :)

[kitsune_ko]

Certainly strange that damage seems to scale up somewhat to compensate for your resistances. I would suspect that this is intentional on the Devs part though, would be a very strange bug otherwise. I suspect it intentionally scales up to stop people from quaffing a resist and being able to just ignore damage.

Though damage sometimes is just plain wrong. I always get a laugh when running quests that have Chaos Orbs with my paladin. Occasionally when a orb hits, I take good damage as a random effect. One would suspect that being Lawful good would automatically negate this good-typed damage, but apperently not.

But, if yo uhave tested this, I would send a report in anyways, if it is reproducable and really is an error it should be brought to their attention.


Kit

[Junts]

dungeon scaling scales the actual damage you take, not the base damage of the effect, as it's applied after resistance, so what's happening is that dungeon scaling is scaling down the damage you take without resistance a lot more than the damage you take with it. Which i suppose is doing its job, since a lot of solo classes may not have resistance available, especially at low levels.

[fuzzy1guy]

I've noticed something similar for quite awhile..

Enemies know EXACTLY what buffs you have..


Buff yourself with all the elements and skip acid.... First thing you'll get shot with is acid. Or whichever one you missed the buff for.

Buff yourself with everything and you'll get hit with fatigue or something right off.


Monsters cheat. Alot.

[diamabel]

I've noticed it before, but only recently sat down and did some testing.

It very much seems like Spell damage is affected by how much resistance you have up - ie, the more resistance you have, the more damage the spells do.

Soloing in the Temple Outpost: Captives of the Six, the warrior guys cast a low level scorching ray, theoretically doing 4d6 damage.

With only my base energy resistance, the warriors consistently hit me for between 7 and 10 points of damage - no more, no less.

I drank a pot of Resist Energy Fire, adding another ten, expecting to be effectively immune to the Scorching Rays they were firing.


For three minutes, while this guy shot Scorching rays at me, never once did he do more than 4 points, or less than 2 points of damage. After the pot wore off, he was right back to doing 7-10 damage.

In other words, the damage of his scorching ray -increased- as my resistance to it increased. He averaged 11 to 14 damage a hit, which is roughly in line with 4d6, though low on average, when I only had resistance of 4, but when I had resistance of 14, he averaged 16-18 damage.

I find this extremely odd.


You might want to have another glance at the spell's description. Each scorching ray will do 4d6 (4-24) points of fire damage. The number of scorching rays will increase with the caster level. At 3rd level it's 1 scorching ray. At 7th level it's two rays and at 11th level it's 3 rays.


edited
The results for a scorching ray will be more often within 11-17 than the other results. You assume that dungeon scaling is reacting to you emplyoing energy resistance. You should gather more data as the numbers you listed are all withing the value range of scorching ray. Or try to prove your assumption some other way too.

[sirgog]

I've noticed something similar for quite awhile..

Enemies know EXACTLY what buffs you have..


Buff yourself with all the elements and skip acid.... First thing you'll get shot with is acid. Or whichever one you missed the buff for.

Buff yourself with everything and you'll get hit with fatigue or something right off.


Monsters cheat. Alot.


Players cheat too - it's been a while since I've seen a sorcerer try to hit Arraetrikos with a Delayed Blast Fireball, or to point a Lightning Bolt at Lailat.

[Sylorn]

I've noticed something similar for quite awhile..

Enemies know EXACTLY what buffs you have..

Yes I have noticed that too...

I was soloing coal chamber so I put on an acid resist cape to negate the acid damage from the arrows and the acid rain.

However the troglodyte mages noticed my cape so almost all of the spells they cast was lightning balls.

[fuzzy1guy]

Players cheat too - it's been a while since I've seen a sorcerer try to hit Arraetrikos with a Delayed Blast Fireball, or to point a Lightning Bolt at Lailat.

Pug more. :P

[dusty991]

its not just the mobs,ive noticed that when we do a ToD raid with a very good well rounded grp the dungeon itself cheats.in fact,once we had so much dps on the jailor he wouldve been dead in about 2 min,but b4 we got him to 50% 5 or 6 of the orthons that u fight on the way to nyro spawned with with 3 dogs and wiped us.
Ive also noticed that casters that never used to do anymore than throw fire at u now cast a very wide array of spells at u,even in lvl 1 to 4 quests.
And,at any given time in any given quest some or all the mobs may have epic ward on them,no matter if its casual,normal,hard,or elite.
The problems seem to be related to the unannounced artificial intelligence update that was diguised as maintenance 5 weeks ago.and it also seem to have triggered many bugs that will no doubt take many months to fix.BUT REMEMBER,if u dont complain regularly about the problems they wont bother to fix em.
I have a question i cant seem to find an answer to;in the description of the spell "cause fear",it say creatures of 6 hit dice or more are uneffected,so why does my lvl 13 ftr still get feared?are these mobs smarter than a wiz with a 32 int?

[Angelus_dead]

In other words, the damage of his scorching ray -increased- as my resistance to it increased. He averaged 11 to 14 damage a hit, which is roughly in line with 4d6, though low on average, when I only had resistance of 4, but when I had resistance of 14, he averaged 16-18 damage.

I find this extremely odd.
Yes, I discovered that a few days after it was added. What's happening is you have a Dungeon Scaling factor giving you a percentage reduction to incoming damage based on having a smaller group, but that bonus applies after resistance and DR is subtracted. This is working as intended, except possibly for the way that it confuses players.

PS. Monsters do not look at whether a player has acid resistance before deciding to cast acid spells. What they do look at is if you're already suffering an Acid Arrow DOT then they might not redundantly repeat it.

[Noctus]

I have a question i cant seem to find an answer to;in the description of the spell "cause fear",it say creatures of 6 hit dice or more are uneffected,so why does my lvl 13 ftr still get feared?are these mobs smarter than a wiz with a 32 int?


Level 4 spell: Fear.

[Tirkan]

You might want to have another glance at the spell's description. Each scorching ray will do 4d6 (4-24) points of fire damage. The number of scorching rays will increase with the caster level. At 3rd level it's 1 scorching ray. At 7th level it's two rays and at 11th level it's 3 rays.

edited
The results for a scorching ray will be more often within 11-17 than the other results. You assume that dungeon scaling is reacting to you emplyoing energy resistance. You should gather more data as the numbers you listed are all withing the value range of scorching ray. Or try to prove your assumption some other way too.

I have assumed nothing.

Other people have suggested that Dungeon Scaling is the cause behind this effect.

Damage from Scorching Ray is 4d6. Period. You get additional rays at level 7 and 11. These damages are applied -seperately.- That means you get three seperate 4d6 damage effects.

The -average- roll on 4d6 is 14. The normal results are between 9 and 19. The sheer consistency of this effect is the oddness behind it - I generally expect spikes both above and below average damage, but I'm seeing damage staying consistently inside of a 4 point range, on every single hit.

It's long been known that the damage dice for damaging spells are heavily weighted - 1d6 usually ends up more like 1d4+2, giving a much higher average damage result, or, in the case of Scorching ray, actual damage between 12 and 24(average being roughly 18), as opposed to 4 and 24(Average being 14)

The consistency in my, admittedly non-scientific, non-rigourous, testing has been the most startling thing - the damage curve of that spell from enemy casters seems to be very flat, and jumps a little bit upwards as more energy resistance is applied.

If you have an explanation for this perception, I would be glad to hear it. For me, it seems...shall we say, statistically unlikely, that damage could result like that from actual random rolls of the dice, -precisely- following the exact same pattern as energy resistances are applied and wear off.

Further testing on an equivalent level fighter in the same quest had results of 8 to 11 damage being done, with every single ray, against no elemental resistance of any kind. This is roughly inline with my expectations, though I was thinking it'd be 9-12.

After quaffing a Resist 10 pot, I was being hit for 3-5 damage per Ray. Again, this was extremely consistent.

I then quaffed a Resist 20 pot, and was being hit for 0-1 damage on every hit. Roughly 50/50, but I don't have any idea of the actual range because hits which are totally negated are not shown.

It does demonstrate that Enegy Resistances below 10 seem to be largely ineffective, at least while under dungeon scaling effects. My Monk with native fire resist 4, for example, had a average drop of -one damage- while soloing on normal as compared to a fighter with no fire resistance at all.

On the other hand, spells like Melf's Acid Arrow are handled relatively well even by that minor energy resistance - even with a full team, my monk usually only gets damage ticks of 0-2 damage.

[voodoogroves]

Pug more. :P
My keys for wall of fire, cone of cold and the higher level lightning (ball? chain? forget which) are all right beside each other on my hotbar. Every dozen or so runs I end up throwing a wall of fire on a group of efreeti...

[Vanshilar]

dungeon scaling scales the actual damage you take, not the base damage of the effect, as it's applied after resistance, so what's happening is that dungeon scaling is scaling down the damage you take without resistance a lot more than the damage you take with it. Which i suppose is doing its job, since a lot of solo classes may not have resistance available, especially at low levels.

Pretty much this.

Yes spells use loaded dice, so 1d6 really means 3 + 1d3, or 4 to 6 damage. Thus 4d6 really means 16 to 24 damage. In the first case, with 4 energy resistance, you take 12 to 20 damage. Then dungeon scaling in this case looks like it divides the damage in half meaning you'd take 6 to 10 damage. In the second case, with 14 resistance, you take 2 to 10 damage, which with dungeon scaling divides in half to be 1 to 5 damage. So it seems like in your case, dungeon scaling basically halves the damage, except that it halves the damage after resistances are accounted for.

Those ranges are slightly wider than yours, but remember that these are the theoretical ranges. For you to take 5 damage in the latter case for example would require that it rolled 3 on a d3 4 times in a row, which has a 1 in 81 chance of happening. If you did hundreds of trials then you probably would've seen them, but otherwise, they may have just not come up.