Guide How Damage Is Calculated - Rekindled Edition

How Damage is Calculated - Rekindled Edition
A spiritual successor to the guide thread by motoki1​

whats up gang. I feel like there’s been a lack of good class building resources recently besides build repositories. Many of the older players will remember motoki1’s incredible thread from 2018 which brought a lot of insight to an otherwise opaque process. I’ve noticed there’s no modern counterpart to this thread, which is kind of wild considering many things have changed since then, including the addition of the Ability Tree as well as more fundamental changes to the damage calculation formula.

This thread is going to be a pretty comprehensive guide to the damage calculation process. It’s by no means required to make builds, but can definitely help a lot and show why some abilities/items are more powerful than others in certain cases.

Before continuing, it's important to note that this is not a comprehensive building guide! This specifically delves into damage calculation, which is an important part of building, but also isn’t necessarily required for good builds, just useful when optimizing or seeing why some items are better or worse than others. In actuality, builds are a little more complicated, with much of the power lodged into the Ability Tree and where items also have to contribute mana, walkspeed, etc.

IMPORTANT: I am a CT now, but this guide is NOT an official guide! I’ve had this idea even before joining CT, and all information in this guide is publicly available. You can see more in the Resources section. tl;dr I’m not leaking or revealing anything internally which was not already known.

Table of Contents​

1. Foundations
   1. Vocabulary
   2. Weapons and Base Damage
   3. Skill Points
   4. Powders and Powder Specials
   5. Ability Tree
   6. Major IDs
   7. Elemental Defenses
2. Damage Calculation
   1. Overview
   2. Base Damage and Base DPS
   3. Conversions
   4. Elemental Additives
   5. Base Modifiers
   6. Master and Defense Modifiers
   7. Elemental Defenses
3. Damage Calculation Examples
   1. Case Study: Botched Experiment
   2. Case Study: Fierce Thunder
4. Other/Environmental Damage
5. Conclusion
   
6. Resources

Part 1: Foundations​

Before I dive into the actual damage formula itself, I think it’s important that we’re all on the same page. This part is going to be the most useful if you are a relatively newer player, although older players may also find these sections useful to get a refresher on game mechanics.

Vocabulary​

Main attacks are often colloquially referred to as “melee” in the community. This is done for two reasons; firstly, it's done for brevity, and secondly, it’s an artifact of when the Main Attack used to be called the Melee attack ingame. Note that this does not mean the attacks themselves are “melee” attacks! For example, Archer’s Main Attack (or “melee attack”) is a ranged arrow. For the purposes of this guide, we will use Melee, since it’s easier to say and also the commonly used term in the community.

Another important piece of vocab used across this guide is additive and multiplicative. In the context of this guide, additive and multiplicative refer to the way boosts interact with each other. Additive boosts will add to each other. i.e. +10% and +30% becomes +40% (1.0 + 0.1 + 0.3 = 1.4). Multiplicative boosts will compound to each other, i.e. +10% and + 30% becomes +43% (1.1 * 1.3 = 1.43).

In this guide, I will use items as an umbrella term for anything that offers IDs (the boosts you see on the tooltips). These include:

• Weapons
• Armors
• Accessories
• Tomes (raid rewards after Lv. 54)
• Consumables

For the rest of the guide, if I say “item” or “items”, assume that I am referring to all of the above.

Weapons and Base Damage​

Out of all items, weapons are the most important for the purposes of this guide.

In this guide, we will focus on five main parts of the weapon: the Attack Speed, the Base Damage, the Base DPS, the Identifications (IDs), and the Powder Slots.

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Attack Speed dictates the rate at which you can melee. These numbers are:

• Super Fast: 4.3 hits per second
• Very Fast: 3.1 hits per second
• Fast: 2.5 hits per second
• Normal: 2.05 hits per second
• Slow: 1.5 hits per second
• Very Slow: 0.83 hits per second
• Super Slow: 0.51 hits per second

For example, Voidstone Lersing has a Very Slow attack speed, meaning it will only be able to use its melee 0.83 times a second.

These numbers are very important, and will tend to pop up everywhere, from calculating both Main Attack and Spell Damage to specific Mana and Life Steal values! If there’s any few numbers you should take away from this thread, it’s these.

Spoiler: ASIDE: The accuracy of these numbers in practice

The specific hits per second for attack speeds above normal have been observed to be slightly lower than the actual theoretical amount. In addition, the attack speeds for Shaman and Archer appear to be slower than the other 3 classes. Lastly, it is nearly impossible to maximize the hits per second for high attack speeds, unless you click with perfect precision (these observations are detailed in section V of this thread). Therefore, when calculating melee damage, be cautious and aware that the practical DPS will likely fall a little short of the theoretical DPS.

Base Damage indicates the damage of one melee without any damage boosts. For example, in the example, Voidstone Lersing deals 130-200 Neutral Damage, 300-360 Earth Damage, and 300-360 Air Damage on one melee with no other boosts. Note that adding powders can change these numbers, as we’ll cover later.

Base DPS is effectively the fusion of Base Damage and Attack Speed. On the weapon, it shows as the “Average DPS” part below the Base Damage. For example, for an unpowdered Voidstone Lensing, this is 685. To calculate Base DPS, simply multiply the Base Damage by the hits per second of the attack speed. In this case, 130-200 Neutral, 300-360 Earth, 300-360 Air * 0.83 hits/s = 108-166 Neutral, 249-299 Earth, 249-299 Air = 684.75. Why would we ever need this number? Read on!

Identifications are the bonuses or downsides on items that can change your damage or your gameplay in different ways. For our purposes, we will focus primarily on damage IDs (i.e. +20% Spell Damage on Voidstone Lersing), but note that many IDs can do important things for builds!

Powder Slots allow you to powder the weapon, changing its Base Damage. This is covered a bit more in the next section, which is about…

Powders and Powder Specials​

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Powders are important since they can change the base damage of your weapon! Powders can also be applied on armors, where they change the elemental defenses. This is generally uncommon, and powders on armor are generally only used for Armor Powder Specials, which are described later. In general for weapons, powders add some base damage in that element, while also converting some of the neutral Damage on the weapon (if any) to that element. For example, say we apply a Thunder powder and then two Water powders onto a weapon that does both Neutral and Water damage. First, we would convert some of the Neutral damage to Thunder, then add Thunder damage (note that the weapon does not need to have Thunder damage beforehand!) Then, we convert some of the remaining damage to Water, then add Water damage. The order powders of different elements are applied onto a weapon are important, as it determines what elements the neutral damage will convert to.

Spoiler: ASIDE: Potency of powders on faster attack speeds

You might’ve noticed that powders add the same damage to the base damage regardless of attack speed. In other words, the Base Damage will increase by the same number for a Super Fast, Normal, and Super Slow item. This means that weapons with faster attack speeds will benefit more from powdering. For example, if we apply an Earth Powder III (adds 6-10) onto a Super Fast weapon (4.3 hits per second), it has a base DPS increase of 26-43, while if we apply it onto a Super Slow weapon (0.51 hits per second), it has a base DPS increase of only 3-5.

The general format we use to describe powdering is by using the first letter of the element paired with the tier of that powder. This way, we can express powdering sequences easily. For example, applying a Water powder, two Thunder powders, and then another Water powder would be expressed as w6t6t6w6.

When we have multiple different powders of different elements in a sequence, the powdering process becomes a little more complex. The main concept is that powders are first “condensed” based on element, and then are evaluated in order. Thus, it follows that the most important part of powdering is the order that the first elemental type of each powder is applied, as the effects of each elemental powder will be combined in each step. To illustrate this, a powder order such as e6e6t6w6w6 is equivalent to e6t6w6e6w6, as the first Earth powder comes before the first Thunder powder, which comes before the first Water powder. For example, see the following diagram on how different powders differ for the wand Bonder:

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Spoiler: ASIDE: Ingame powder display inaccuracies

As a general warning, the base damage displayed ingame after powdering is NOT correct. It instead converts the original neutral from each step as opposed to the remaining neutral. Note that the Base DPS (written as Average DPS ingame) is still correct, and the damage you do will still be correct, but the specific composition of the weapon’s base damage on the tooltip will be incorrect.

When two or more Tier IV+ powders of the same element are added to either, they will give that item a Powder Special. If there is more than one pair of powders with the same element, then the game chooses the element of the first valid powder added to the weapon (for example, both e6e6t6t6 and e6t6t6e6 yield quake, since the Earth powder appears first in the series, regardless of when the second one appears). The tier of the powder special depends on the tiers of the powders added:

• Tier I - Two IV powders
• Tier II - One IV powder, one V powder
• Tier III - Two V powders (or one IV powder, one VI powder)
• Tier IV - One V powder, one VI powder
• Tier V - Two VI powders

Generally, Tier I and Tier V specials will be the most common, as players will likely either be powdering with only Tier IVs or only Tier VIs.

The effects of weapon powder specials vary depending on the element. As a quick overview, Quake and Chain Lightning are powerful hits that base their damage off of melee damage and can trigger mana/life steal. Curse and Courage reduce the resistance of the enemy and buff the damage of players respectively, while Courage also gives a damage hit around the player similarly to Quake/Chain Lightning. Wind Prison gives a high damage boost to the next hit dealt to a mob.

Armor powder specials are different in that they give damage passively. Therefore, there is no “ability” or “control” for armor powder specials, rather they benefit you given a certain metric. Rage depends on health missing, Kill Streak depends on mobs killed, Concentration depends on mana used, Endurance depends on hits taken, and Dodge depends on time being near mobs.

Skill Points​

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Skill Points are a system that allows you to level up specific “skills”, each slightly increasing a player’s stats. There are five skill points: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Defence, and Agility.

Skill points functionally range from 0 to 150. The maximum number of skill points that can be manually put into a specific skill is 100, although it can be increased past this value with skill point bonuses on items. An overflow in skill point bonuses has no effect (for example, negative skill points have the same effect as 0 in that skill, and skill points past 150 have the same effect as 150 in that skill).

Two of the skill points are damage-based (Strength, Dexterity), one is mana-based (Intelligence), and two are defense-based (Defense, Agility). On a similar note, two are flat increases to damage/defense (Strength, Defense) while two are chance based (Dexterity, Agility). In addition, all skill points boost the elemental damage of the related element, albeit in slightly different amounts. Unlike the actual effects of the skills themselves, which are multiplicative with other boosts, the elemental damage added is equivalent to the elemental damage ID and is therefore additive with other IDs on items. Specifically, the effects of the skill points are as follows:

• Strength: Increases damage multiplicatively and increases Earth damage up to 80.8%.
• Dexterity: Increases chance to deal +100% damage (critical hit) and increases Thunder damage up to 80.8%. The +100% critical hit damage bonus is additive with the damage bonus from Strength. A crit is shown by sparkles around the enemy after an attack.
• Intelligence: Increases maximum mana and increases Water damage up to 80.8%. Reduces spell costs up to 50%.
• Defense: Reduces damage taken and increases Fire damage up to 70%.
• Agility: Increases chance to dodge attacks and increases Air damage up to 76.8%. A dodge reduces an attack’s damage by 90% and is shown with white text around the player.

The amount added per skill point is not linear. All skill points have diminishing returns, such that points are less effective the more points exist in the skill. For most skill points, each point initially adds approximately 0.9-1% per point, then tapers off to just 0.2-0.3% per point.

For the purposes of this guide, we will focus primarily on Strength/Dexterity, but we will also account for the elemental damage bonus from the skill points.

Spoiler: ASIDE: Potency of Elemental Damage from Skill Points

Due to weapons usually having reqs that match up with their damage types, the additive nature of the elemental damage bonus compared to the multiplicative nature of Strength and Dexterity, and the diminishing returns of skill points, the elemental damage bonuses from skill points are often not too important in the long run. Practically, when creating builds, they can pretty safely be ignored.

Ability Tree

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The Ability Tree is a skill tree where you can unlock new abilities, upgrades, and general skills that will change gameplay. For this guide, the parts of the Ability Tree that are important to us are the abilities that have conversions (the Total Damage section of some abilities) and damage bonuses. An example of an ability is Phantom Ray, shown below, which offers 30% (25% Neutral, 5% Water) of your DPS per hit, with the spell itself damaging enemies 10 times a second and lasting 1.2s. For now, just be familiar with the layout of abilities: the specifics on how they affect damage will be covered later.

Major IDs​

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Major IDs are special qualities on items of at least Legendary rarity or above which give special abilities or alter existing abilities. Similarly to abilities, they may change conversions or offer damage boosts. For now, just know that they exist.

Elemental Defenses​

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Many mobs have elemental defenses and weaknesses, which is indicated by the symbols under their nametag in the overworld. For example, in this case the Shrine Guardian has elemental resistance to Earth and elemental weakness to Air. The specifics of how this factors into the damage calc will be discussed later, but for now just know that they exist.

Damage Calculation​

Overview​

We’ve finally reached the time to show the damage calculation formula! Before we get into it, it's important to emphasize that damage in Wynncraft is calculated per hit. This means that this process occurs for each hit of a multihit, each arrow of an arrow storm, or each hit of a bash. The damage calculation process is as follows:

1. Base Damage including Powders
2. If Spell Damage, Multiply by Attack Speed Bonus to get Base DPS
3. Apply Conversions
4. Add/Subtract Elemental Additives
5. Apply Base Modifiers (Additive IDs)
6. Apply Master and Defense Modifiers (Multiplicative Boosts)
7. Add/Subtract Elemental Defenses

If many of these words made no sense, that’s ok! Hopefully we can clear it up in the next few sections.

Spoiler: ASIDE: Final Modifiers

Internally, we know that after elemental defenses, damage goes through a final step of Final Modifiers, as described in Zeer’s Damage Bible in the resource section. These are effectively multipliers such as Master or Defense Modifiers that occur after elemental defenses. For our purposes, we can safely ignore them, as they seem to potentially only be used for things like Raid Scaling.

Powders, Base Damage, and Base DPS​

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Steps 1 and 2 involve getting the base number for the rest of our damage calculation.

Assuming we have our weapon either unpowdered or powdered, we have our Base Damage. At this step, the melee damage calculation and spell damage calculation differ:

• Melee damage and powder special hits act on per hit base damage. This means that we will not use the Base DPS, and instead just use the Base Damage itself
• Spell damage acts on Base DPS. This is to allow weapons of varying attack speed to be on the same playing field in terms of spell damage, otherwise slower attack speed weapons would be far far better for spell than faster attack speed weapons.

With this in mind, keep in mind this base number (Base Damage for melee, Base DPS for spell) as we go forward!

Conversions​

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Step 3 involves conversions. These can appear in a lot of places, but are most common in the Damage percentages you see on the Ability Tree. These effectively multiply the base number in the previous step to get attacks that do different amounts of damage.

Notice that oftentimes, conversion is split into Neutral damage and Elemental damages. Neutral conversion in a conversion means to take that percentage of the damage and directly add it to the total damage, regardless of the element. In contrast, elemental conversion in a spell conversion means to take that percentage of the damage, convert it entirely to that element, and then add it to the total damage. For example, Assassin’s Spin Attack has a conversion of 120% Neutral, 30% Thunder. This effectively means to take 120% of your base damage, add it to the total damage, and then take another 30% of your base damage, convert it completely to thunder, and then add it to the total damage. All other conversions follow a similar pattern.

Importantly, conversions are NOT exclusive to spell! Some abilities affect melee conversions, such as the Weapon Proficiency nodes and special melee nodes such as Double/Triple Shots or Pyrokinesis. If an ability affects melee conversions, it will be specified in the description, otherwise it is a spell conversion.

Conversions can also be found in Powder Specials! For example, a T5 Quake has a 400% Earth conversion, a T5 Chain Lightning has 300% Thunder conversion, and a T5 Courage hit has a 100% Fire conversion. Importantly, notice how there is NO neutral conversion for powder special hits! This means that all damage is converted to the respective element before the next steps, which could mess with certain IDs.

With the base number from Step 2, multiply it by the desired conversion in this step. If you’re calculating melee/powder special damage, that’s the respective melee conversion (usually 105% N to represent base 100% melee and the 5% melee proficiency node) or powder special conversion, and if you’re calculating spell damage, that’s the spell damage conversion you want to calculate. Once you’ve multiplied them, move onto the next step (but don’t forget about your conversion just yet!)

Elemental Additives​

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Step 4 involves Elemental Additives. These are damage values that are added per hit. As time has gone on, the only thing that fits in this category are elemental masteries, which appear in the third page of the ability tree. Given its position in the damage formula, the raw damage bonus from these nodes are added to the hit but affected by damage boosts further along the road.

Importantly, the damage is ONLY added if it is present in the base damage! For example, if you are dealing Earth and Water damage, Water Mastery will add its raw damage, but Air Mastery will not. Note that since it’s only elemental additives and that the bonus offered by elemental additives is generally small, this step can often be ignored in practice, but we include it here for completeness.

Given the damage from Step 3, add any raw damage from the Elemental Mastery nodes. That’s all you need to do for this step!

Base Modifiers​

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Now it's time for the big guns. Step 5’s base modifiers is basically a fancy name for damage boosts that are additive with each other. These are where IDs on items go, as well as the elemental damage bonuses from Armor Powder Specials and Skill Points. Some Ability Tree node bonuses also fall in this bucket, such as Bak’al’s Grasp. For example, +15% Spell Damage on a weapon and +30% Spell Damage on a helmet will not multiply with each other: since they are base modifiers, they will add into +45% Spell Damage total.

Damage IDs can come in various forms. However, the sheer variety of different damage IDs can initially be pretty confusing. However, think of every damage ID as including the following information:

• What type of damage does the ID affect? Spell, Melee, or Both?
• What elements of damage does the ID affect? Neutral, Elemental, Earth, Thunder, Water, Fire, Air, or Everything?
• What type of damage bonus is the ID? % or Raw?

All damage IDs can be described with these three qualities. For example, Earth Melee Damage % affects only Earth damage used for melees, and is % damage. Similarly, Elemental Damage Raw affects elemental damage for both spell and melee, and is raw damage.

For our purposes, we will split base modifiers into two buckets: %-based modifiers and raw-based modifiers. The former multiplies the damage from the previous steps, while the latter adds damage independent of the damage of previous steps. Importantly, raw-based modifiers have the extra stipulation that

% Damage IDs are pretty simple in that they just multiply with the damage from the previous step. For example, +25% Earth Damage will multiply the Earth damage in the damage by 1.25. If we equip another item that gives +20% Earth Spell Damage, then we multiply the Earth damage in the damage by 1.45 (1 + 0.25 + 0.20) if we are calculating spell damage.

Raw Damage IDs are independent of the damage from the previous step. An important quality of Raw Damage IDs are that they only apply if that damage type is present! For example, if we have Earth Damage Raw and Water Damage Raw, and our weapon is a water damage weapon, then the Water Damage Raw will be added to the damage, but the Earth Damage Raw will not, UNLESS the conversion in the previous step has some Earth conversion.

Raw Damages also have to be multiplied by the conversion, which keeps them consistent with existing damage. For example, if we had a 160% total spell conversion in the previous step, and we had another +100 Spell Damage Raw, we would have to multiply the raw damage by that conversion as well, leading to +160 Spell Damage.

Generic Damage Raw and Elemental Damage Raw IDs also add damage proportionally to the existing elements. For example, if our damage from previous steps is 70% Neutral damage, 15% Earth damage, and 15% Fire damage with a theoretical 100% Neutral conversion, adding +200 Raw Damage will add +140 Neutral Damage, +30 Earth Damage, and +30 Fire Damage. Similarly, in this case, adding +200 Elemental Raw Damage will add +100 Earth Damage and +100 Fire Damage, since we are ignoring the neutral.

To factor in this step, add the % base modifiers you have together, and then multiply it by the damage from Step 3. If you have damage of different elements, be wary of elemental damage IDs! It’s often helpful to split up your damage into its constituent elements and apply the base modifiers to each damage type individually. Then, add the raw base modifiers together (multiplied by the conversion in the previous step) and add those to the final damage. After you’ve done all that, you’re ready to move onto the next step.

Master and Defense Modifiers​

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In Step 6 and 7, we introduce master and defense modifiers. These are similar to Base Modifiers, with one EXTREMELY important distinction: they are multiplicative with each other. This one difference makes them much more potent, and often incredibly important for the damage of a build. There are three main sources for these: the first is the effects of Strength/Dexterity, the second is nodes from the Ability Tree, and the third are Powder Specials, specifically Curse/Courage/Wind Prison.

Spoiler: ASIDE: Master vs. Defense Modifiers

Notice how we combined Steps 6 and 7 here. This is because master and defense modifiers, for our purposes, are functionally identical. You can tell between the two since master modifiers affect the damage of you and other players, while defense modifiers reduce the defense of the mob(s) you are attacking. The latter is technically different, but functionally does the same thing: serve as a multiplicative boost to your damage.

Below, I’ve included a table containing all known master and defense modifiers that the player can control. Note that this is partially separated into class because of ability tree differences.

Spoiler: Index of Master/Defense Modifiers

General

• Strength: +XX% damage for non-crit, +100% + XX% for crit
• Critical Damage Bonus ID: -XX% damage for crit
• Courage: +10%/12.5%/15%/17.5%/20% damage
• Curse: +10%/12.5%/15%/17.5%/20% damage on cursed enemies
• Wind Prison: +100%/125%/150%/175%/200% damage on wind prisoned(?) enemies
• Punishment: +10% damage on reflection damaged enemies
  Saviour’s Sacrifice: +15% damage when below 50% health

Archer

• Patient Hunter/Swift Primer: +20%/+30%/+40%/+45% damage per second active on Traps and threads, max +100%/+200%
  
• Focus: +15% damage per focus, max 3/5/7/8 focus
• Initiator: +60% damage on next hit after not damaging for 4s
• Decimator: +10% damage per successful Phantom Ray on Phantom Ray, max 70%
• Coursing Restraints: -15% enemy resistance

Warrior

• Blood Pact: +15%/+25%/+30% damage on blood pact spells
• Enraged Blow: +1.5% damage per 1% health lost, max +80%/+140%
• Armour Breaker: -20% enemy resistance
• Emboldening Cry: +8% damage

Mage

• Fortitude: +50%

Assassin

• Backstab: x2 damage on Backstab when hitting enemy from behind
  
• Surprise Strike: +80%/+120% damage on first hit after Vanish
• Marked: +7%/+11%/9.5% damage per mark, max 4/6/9 marks
  
• Satsujin: +100% damage on Multihit or Powder Special with 4+ marks
  
• Delirious Gas: +25% damage when inside Smoke Bomb
  
• Echo/Deadly Decoys/Forbidden Art/Lethal Images: -20%/-15%/-10% damage per clone alive, max -65%/-60%/-55%/-50%
• Stomp: +12% damage per block fallen on Stomp, max 10 blocks
• Swan Dive: +25% damage per momentum on Stomp
• Aerial Ace: +35% damage on Swan Dive hit

Shaman

• Bullwhip: +20% damage on summons
  
• Crimson Effigy: 0.8x damage on Crimson Effigy per additional effigy summoned
• Double Totem: -40% on Totem/Aura
• Triple Totem: -50% on Totem/Aura
• Mask of the Lunatic: +35% damage when equipped
• Mask of the Heretic: -10% damage when equipped
  
• Haunting Memory: -15% enemy resistance when Fanatic Mask is attached
  
• Chant of the Lunatic: -15% enemy resistance
  
• Sacrificial Shrine: +35% damage on Blood Pool Aura
• Vengeful Spirit: +20% damage when inside Totem range
• Eldritch Call: x2 on Eldritch Call tentacles when enemy is bleeding

Spoiler: ASIDE: Wait, but what about Winded? What about Commander?

It’s important to note that there are many damage boosters that don’t actually count as master/defense modifiers. For example, Winded and accompanying nodes such as Breathless are not master modifiers, they’re actually a separate conversion. If you check the node, you’ll see that they actually add conversion damage, rather than being a multiplicative damage bonus.

Commander is a different situation that’s also important to acknowledge. Remember that damage in Wynncraft is calculated per hit. Commander (and other buffs such as Invigorating Wave, etc.) do not increase the damage per hit, but increase the rate of hits. This means that although it’s a DPS increase, it is not actually factored into the damage formula. This is also true of other things, such as the Sorcery Major ID or the Attack Speed Bonus ID on items.

Spoiler: ASIDE: Compounding Effect of Str/Dex

Why are Strength and Dexterity so powerful when used together? On critical hit, the damage of the critical hit with no strength is +100%. However, if Strength is present, this number is +100% added to the strength bonus, up to +180.8% crit damage. Since Dexterity affects the frequency of these hits, they are effectively multiplicative with each other, which causes lower amounts of both Strength/Dexterity to be more potent than high Strength alone or high Dexterity alone.

Compare this to Defense and Agility, which function off of a different system. When you dodge something with agility, the resulting hit is NOT affected by Defense. This effectively leads the two into a different situation, where mixed Defense/Agility is not necessarily better (and could even potentially be worse) than high Defense alone or high Agility alone.

The presence of multiple master multipliers that affect other players (i.e. Emboldening Cry, Vengeful Spirit, Fortitude) are NOT multiplicative in parties. Instead, the highest number out of the multipliers available is chosen. For example, if Vengeful Spirit (+20%) and Fortitude (+50%) are both active in a party, the game will prioritize Fortitude, leading to an overall 50% damage boost.

To factor in master and defense multipliers, take your damage from the last step, and multiply it by each master/defense multiplier you have in order. This gets your damage ready for the last step!

At this point, you might have noticed that a lot of these steps involve stuff from the Ability Tree! Since spell conversions and master modifiers are so essential to the damage of a build, and both are primarily supplied from the ability tree, it follows that generally, the most important part of a build is the ability tree, with items after. For any veterans or returning players reading this guide, this is, I would say, the single largest difference in damage calculation and class building between pre-Spellbound and now.

Elemental Defenses​

And finally, the last step, elemental defenses. Elemental defenses are applied at (for our purposes) the very end of the damage calculation, and simply add or subtract to your existing damage for an elemental weakness and defense, respectively.

Remember that damage calculation is per hit. This means that the effects of elemental defenses are more potent for playstyles with many hits as opposed to less hits. For example, Boltslinger and Summoner are more easily walled, but can also more easily exploit elemental weaknesses. In contrast, playstyles such as Heavy Melee effectively do not have to worry about elemental defenses, since the damage added or subtracted is so minimal compared to the damage of the entire hit.

With the damage from the last step, simply add or remove damage (if known) corresponding to the target’s elemental defenses/weaknesses. With that, you have now finished the damage calculation process!

Of course, my descriptions can’t really explain everything perfectly, and it’s probably still a bit confusing, so it’s only fitting to walk through a few examples.

Damage Calculation Examples

Case Study: Botched Experiment​

For our first example, we look at a Botched Experiment with two T4 Earth powders. As context, assume that we have the following Ability Tree nodes: Wand Proficiency, Earth Mastery, Fire Mastery, and Pyrokinesis (a Mage melee-focused node). Our goal is to calculate the DPS of the weapon, assuming we have Pyrokinesis active and are hitting all of them. We're also going to assume that our skill points are distributed to exactly meet the reqs: 37 Strength, 29 Defense, and 23 Agility.

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We start with the Base Damage, which we can see is 141-147 Earth, 97-113 Fire, and 89-101 Air.

We then apply conversions. In this case, since we're using Pyrokinesis, we have 150% Neutral conversion. However, the item also has the major ID Perilous Flare: this adds an extra +50% Neutral damage to Pyrokinesis, leaving us with a 200% Neutral conversion. Lastly, we need to remember Wand Proficiency, which adds another +5% Melee Damage on top of this, leading to a final conversion of 205% Neutral. Factoring this in with the Base Damage, we get:

141-147 Earth * 2.05 = 289.1-301.4 Earth
97-113 Fire * 2.05 = 198.9-231.7 Fire
89-101 Air * 2.05 = 182.5-207.1 Air
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Then, since we have Earth and Fire Mastery, we have to account for the elemental additives. This is +2-4 Earth Damage from Earth Mastery and +3-5 Fire Damage from Fire Mastery (the +20% Earth and +15% Fire are ID boosts, so we hold onto them for the next step). Adding the elemental additives, we have:

289.1-301.4 Earth + 2-4 Earth = 291.1-305.4 Earth
198.9-231.7 Fire + 3-5 Fire = 201.9-236.7 Fire
182.5-207.1 Air stays the same
​

Notice how the added damage is negligible to the damage we have already! This is in part due to the raw damages from Masteries being weak at higher levels and also because we have very slow Base Damage.

Now we apply the Base Modifiers! Looking at the IDs on Botched Experiment, we have max +30% Earth Melee Damage and +225 Fire Melee Damage. We also need to remember the +20% Earth Damage and +15% Fire Damage from the masteries in the previous step! Lastly, we need to remember the skill point elemental damage bonuses: in this case, 37 Strength is 31.2% Earth Damage, 29 Defense is 22.0% Fire Damage, and 23 Agility is 19.6% Air Damage. Applying these to the damage from the previous step, we get:

291.1-305.4 Earth * (1 + 0.30 + 0.20 + 0.312) = 527.5-553.4 Earth
201.9-236.7 Fire * (1 + 0.15 + 0.220) + (2.05 * 225) = 276.6-324.3+ 461.25 = 737.9-785.6 Fire
182.5-207.1 Air * (1 + 0.196) = 218.3-247.7 Air​

Note how we deal with the Raw Fire Melee Damage! Since fire damage is present, we add the damage multiplied by the conversion from the previous step (205%) as Fire Damage.

​

Lastly, we apply master and defense modifiers. In this case, there's only one, which is the damage bonus from strength. 37 Strength is equal to a +31.2% damage bonus, so we multiply the damage from the previous step by this.

527.5-553.4 Earth * 1.312 = 692.1-726.1 Earth
737.9-785.6 Fire * 1.312 = 968.1-1030.7 Fire
218.3-247.7 Air * 1.312 = 286.4-325.0 Air​

692.1-726.1 Earth + 968.1-1030.7 Fire + 286.4-325.0 Air
= 2014.2 Avg. Damage per hit
​

As an aside, it's important to acknowledge that if a mob has a weakness to Earth, Fire, or Air Damage of 100, then we would add 100 to this number. On the flipside, if a mob has Earth, Fire, or Air Defense of 100, then we would subtract 100 from this number.

This gives us our damage per hit! Our damage calculation is now finished, but we want to find the DPS, not the damage of one hit. To do this, we multiply this number by the number of hits per second of the attack speed, which is 0.83 hits per second (see the Foundations section).

2014.2 Avg. Damage * 0.83 = 1672 Avg. DPS​

As another situation, let's say that theoretically, for some random reason, this is our build and we're running without armor, accessories, tomes, ... for some reason. Let's say that we're in a party with a Lightbender, who gives us fortitude. How would our damage increase?

Let's go back to our damage per hit. If we have fortitude active, this adds another master modifier, which multiplies our damage by 1.50 (since Fortitude is a +50% damage buff). Recalculating for this, we get:

527.5-553.4 Earth * 1.312 * 1.50 = 1038.1-1089.1 Earth
737.9-785.6 Fire * 1.312 * 1.50 = 1452.2-1546.1 Fire
218.3-247.7 Air * 1.312 * 1.50 = 429.6-487.5 Air​

1038.1-1089.1 Earth + 1452.2-1546.1 Fire + 429.6-487.5 Air
= 3021.3 Avg. Damage per hit
3021.3 Avg. Damage * 0.83 = 2507.7 Avg. DPS​

Importantly, note how in the above process, we MULTIPLY the two master modifiers, instead of adding them like we did for base modifiers! It's also worth noting that you could've just multiplied the damage per hit and DPS we got above by 1.50, however this makes it clear that master modifiers compound with each other instead of just adding to each other.

Now that we have the average DPS, what else can we do? We did powder it with two Earth powders. Why not see what the damage of a quake is? We go through the same process with the same skill points and ability tree, and start with the Base Damage. We then apply conversions, which in this case is 240% Earth.

141-147 Earth * 2.40 = 338.4-352.8 Earth
97-113 Fire * 2.40 = 232.8-271.2 Earth (converted to Earth due to conversion)
89-101 Air * 2.40 = 213.6-242.4 Earth (converted to Earth due to conversion)
338.4-352.8 Earth + 232.8-271.2 Earth + 213.6-242.4 Earth = 784.8-866.4 Earth
​

Then, we account for the elemental additive from Earth Mastery:

784.8-866.4 Earth + 2-4 Earth = 786.8-870.4 Earth (lol)
​

Now we apply the Base Modifiers! We have max +30% Earth Melee Damage, +20% Earth Damage from Earth Mastery, and 31.2% Earth Damage from the Strength.

786.8-870.4 Earth * (1 + 0.30 + 0.20 + 0.312) = 1425.7-1577.2 Earth
​

Lastly, we apply master and defense modifiers, which is in this case, just the +31.2% damage bonus from Strength:

1425.7-1577.2 Earth * 1.312 = 1870.5-2069.3 Damage = 1970 Avg. Damage

Case Study: Fierce Thunder
​

For this example, we look at an unpowdered Fierce Thunder. As context, assume that we have the following Ability Tree nodes: Water Mastery, Half-Moon Swipe, Whirlwind Strike. Our goal is to calculate the damage of a Whirlwind Strike. We're also going to assume that our skill points are distributed to exactly meet the reqs, which is just 25 Dexterity in this case.

​

We start with our base damage, which is 17-38 Neutral Damage and 10-57 Thunder Damage. Since we want to calculate spell damage, we multiply this by the attack speed multiplier, which in this case is 2.5 hits/s. Note that if we were doing this practically, it's faster to just use the Base DPS value given. However, since I want to be pretty precise in these sections and show exactly how damage is calculated, I will calculate our Base DPS values manually.

17-38 Neutral * 2.5 = 42.5-95.0 Neutral
10-57 Thunder * 2.5 = 25-142.5 Thunder​

After getting the Base DPS, we move to the next step, which is applying the right conversion. Since we want to find the damage of a Whirlwind Strike, we consider the conversions involved: we start with base Uppercut, which is 260% Neutral, 40% Earth, and 40% Thunder. Half-Moon Swipe changes the conversions with -60% Neutral and +30% Water and Whirlwind Strike changes the conversions again with -30% Neutral Damage, +30% Air Damage. Applying these changes, we get 170% Neutral, 40% Earth, 40% Thunder, 30% Water, and 30% Air. That's a lot of elements and conversions! Multiplying these values by the numbers we have from the previous step, we have:

42.5-95.0 Neutral * 1.70 (Neutral) = 72.3-161.5 Neutral
25-142.5 Thunder * 1.70 (Neutral) = 42.5-242.3 Thunder

42.5-95.0 Neutral * 0.40 (Earth) = 17.0-38.0 Earth
25-142.5 Thunder * 0.40 (Earth) = 10.0-57.0 Earth

42.5-95.0 Neutral * 0.40 (Thunder) = 17.0-38.0 Thunder
25-142.5 Thunder * 0.40 (Thunder) = 10.0-57.0 Thunder

42.5-95.0 Neutral * 0.30 (Water) = 12.8-28.5 Water
25-142.5 Thunder * 0.30 (Water) = 7.5-42.8 Water

42.5-95.0 Neutral * 0.30 (Air) = 12.8-28.5 Air
25-142.5 Thunder * 0.30 (Air) = 7.5-42.8 Air

72.3-161.5 Neutral
17.0-38.0 Earth + 10.0-57.0 Earth = 27.0-95.0 Earth
42.5-242.3 Thunder + 17.0-38.0 Thunder + 10.0-57.0 Thunder = 69.5-337.3 Thunder
12.8-28.5 Water + 7.5-42.8 Water = 20.3-71.3 Water
12.8-28.5 Air + 7.5-42.8 Air = 20.3-71.3 Air​

That's a mouthful. In practice, most spells won't have this many conversions, and you won't be doing this calculation manually (I hope), but this hopefully shows how spell conversions work.

Next, we have elemental additives! In this case, we only have Water Mastery, so we add 2-4 Water Damage and keep in mind 15% Water Damage for the next step.

72.3-161.5 Neutral stays the same
27.0-95.0 Earth stays the same
69.5-337.3 Thunder stays the same
20.3-71.3 Water + 2-4 Water = 22.3-75.3 Water
20.3-71.3 Air stays the same
​

An important thing to note here is that Fierce Thunder did not have water damage originally! However, since the conversion led to water damage appearing, the mastery is applying its effects.

Time for Base Modifiers! On Fierce Thunder, we see that we have max 60 Thunder Damage Raw and 30% Water Damage. We also have +15% Water Damage from Water Mastery, as well as an extra +22.2% Thunder Damage from the 25 Dex we have invested. Applying these boosts to the damages, we get:

72.3-161.5 Neutral stays the same
27.0-95.0 Earth stays the same
69.5-337.3 Thunder * (1 + 0.222) + (3.10 * 60) = 84.9-412.2 + 186 = 270.9-598.2 Thunder
22.3-75.3 Water * (1 + 0.15 + 0.30) = 32.3-109.2 Water
20.3-71.3 Air stays the same​

Note how we multiply the Thunder Damage Raw by 3.10 instead of 1.70. 3.10 is the summation of the conversions for Whirlwind Strike (170% + 40% + 40% + 30% + 30% = 310%), and we do not convert the damage of Raw IDs into elements.

Lastly, we apply master/defense modifiers. However, you'll notice that we technically have none if we're calculating non-crit damage! Therefore, we can get the average damage of a non-crit Whirlwind Strike:

72.3-161.5 Neutral + 27.0-95.0 Earth + 270.9-598.2 Thunder + 32.3-109.2 Water + 20.3-71.3 Air
= 729 Avg. Damage (non-crit)
​

However, in practice, we want to see how much crits increase our damage. Recall that Dexterity increases crit chance, and crits do +100% damage on crit. We can calculate the damage of a crit by just multiplying by +100%. Internally, each damage range would probably be multiplied by +100% instead, but we can do this shortcut instead since I think we've done enough math already!

729 Avg. Damage * 2.0
= 1458 Avg. Damage (crit)​

With these two numbers, and knowing that 25 Dexterity means a 22.2% crit chance, we can calculate our definitive average Whirlwind Strike damage:

729 (1 - 0.222) + 1458 (0.222)
= 567.2 + 323.7
= 891 Avg. Damage
​

With these examples, I think we've covered damage calculation pretty in-depth!

Other/Environmental Damage​

There is some damage that does not come from base attacks or the ability tree. This damage is classified as environmental damage. The main difference between environmental damage and normal damage is that environmental damage is not affected by master modifiers. As you’ve likely noticed by now, the effects of master modifiers are very important for high damage, so this usually leads to environmental damage being worse damage-wise compared to normal damage, and unreliable as a primary damage source.

For the sake of brevity (and also because erm. I don't actually know how a lot of these are calculated), I'm going to give a quick overview of environmental damage but avoid going in-depth. Thorns/Reflection effectively deals damage to mobs that damage you with melee/spells or ranged attacks, respectively. Exploding is a chance for mobs to explode and deal melee damage (excluding master modifiers, remember!) to mobs around it on death. For more information on exploding damage calculation, there's a cool thread by JuicedUpOstrich that I've linked in the resources in the bottom of the guide.

Lastly, and likely most relevant, is poison. The damage it shows on the ID is the damage you're getting: for example, +12000/3s Poison deals 4000 damage per poison tick. This number is not affected by anything, so poison damage calculation is pretty simple.

Conclusion​

Thanks for reading this whole slog! I'm hoping this helps clear up a lot of stuff about modern damage calculation, as well as how it might factor into different types of builds, how it could influence the meta, etc.

If there's anything that looks wrong with this guide, from a small typo to a big inaccuracy that invalidates a whole section of the guide, please let me know!! Also keep in mind that this is an evolving guide that I intend to update. If there are any improvements you can think of, please also holler at me about them in the replies.

shoutout to crust crusher. shoutout to melon cutter. have a great day gang

Resources​

motoki1’s original damage calculation thread: https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/how-damage-is-calculated.176082/
The HeyZeer0 damage bible: https:// docs.google.com/document/d/1BXdLrMWj-BakPcAWnuqvSFbwiz7oGTOMcEEdC5vCWs4/edit?tab=t.0 (there's a space there because otherwise forums adds that weird embed. sorry)
Exploding damage calculation thread: https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/exploding-damange-explained.320533/
WynnBuilder: https://wynnbuilder.github.io/builder/?v=7

 

omg no way goated euoauaoue post

 

This is really cool but 2 things
first please make it Light Mode friendly with the powder abbreviaitons
second i have no attention span and got bored halfway through please add a subway surfers gif every few pages or i will report you to my uncle satled.

no but /srs this is AMAZING, im not gonna use it because I think I will just stick to my t6 powdered morph fantasia, but it's very useful for people who want to get into class building!

 

How long did this take???

 

Very useful thread :)

 

thank you breastie! :halo

________________________________

thank you breastie! :halo emoticon:

 

yay i finally know how damage works