Bludgeon changes testing.

I got some information from @Antrax Artek about the new bludgeon changes and it wasn't really matching up to what he expected after tests on the QA server. While the changes to specific skills seemed to be performing well and this is a welcome change, the difference in damage from Axes(High strength bonus) vs. Maces and Hammers(Very High Strength Bonus) does not seem to be effecting much. I will post some numbers that I took from tooltips with different builds, bearing in mind that the weapons I used were identical unenchanted un-masterworked Meteoric Iron with Rock Maple Handle 2 Handers. Also of note, these numbers are from full dps gear and buffs, meaning that I have basically zero damage mitigation outside of parry, zero resist and -6 avoidance without glancing blow active. Plus a ring of brittle brawn to make me have less HP than any mage worth their sulfurous ash.

All of the setups were with this character
136 Bludgeon Combat
106 Crushing Blow (CB)
108 Knockback (KB)
101 Ground Pound (GP)
106 Crusher
90 Breaker
90 Bludgeon Specialization
100 Berserk (43.8% WD at 6 stack)

First Build - 286 STR +43.8% Weapon Damage (Berserk) +21.6% WD (Gear)
Mace Axe
CB 101-168 100-166
KB 109-181 107-179
GP 84-147 83-145

Same Build with +15 STR Potion (299STR +43.8%WD +21.6%WD)
Mace Axe
CB 104-173 103-171
KB 112-187 110-184
GP 87-151 85-149

Same build, potion, no Berserk (299STR +26.1% WD)
Mace Axe
CB 94-156 92-154
KB 101-168 99-166
GP 78-137 77-135

267 Strength, No Weapon Damage
Mace Axe
CB 85-142 84-139
KB 91-152 90-150
GP 71-125 70-123

267 Strength, +43.8% WD (Berserk)
Mace Axe
CB 95-159 94-156
KB 103-171 101-168
GP 79-139 78-137

The first thing I noticed was that weapon damage is pretty bad. I kind of knew this before and this is one of the main problems with berserk being the big damage buff for bludgeon. In addition to it not being very effective (12.7% damage increase at a 6 stacked 100 skill level) it has a very short up-time, and is a very slow cast, and on top of that you take a significant hit to your avoidance while using it. None of the other melee trees have either the micromanagement, downtime dpsing, or the debuff while using their tree specific boosts.

The second thing I noticed was that the difference between Maces and Axes was not very large. Yes, there was some difference, but the biggest difference was actually at a lower strength where you're getting 3 points of damage differential on the top end, and then you are visually losing some of your scaling as the strength goes up. This obviously could be due to how the numbers are being cut off, not really sure, but it does not seem like a very significant difference like @Chris seemed to expect (He said they should be scaling at about 3.75 vs. 4.0, I assume this is a number strength is divided by to get your bonus damage, or some derivative).

Just wondering if maybe some math is messed up, and hoping that @Chris or some of the other devs can take a look at what is going on here, or at least shed some light on it working as intended.

In addition to this, there was also some weird stuff going on with the dropped torcdawl weapons, where same stat hammers and axes were doing significantly more damage in the tooltips from the Axe than the Hammer, which was just weird. Not sure if this is related or not, but I thought I would give a heads up.

Also as a caveat, some testing on live targets seemed to point towards less damage being done by melee in pvp in general. @Antrax Artek worked on this more, and I wasn't around for this testing, but he seemed pretty unhappy with it(weird right?).

 

I checked at 170 str no buffs on a whim to see what the scaling was like and it's pretty surprising.

170 STR 0% WD
Mace Axe
CB 69-115 67-112
KB 74-124 73-121
GP 58 103 57-101

We see our biggest spread here on CB with an average damage increase of 2.5 for mace, like I said it could be due to number truncation, but it's still odd. One would assume that these numbers would diverge more with higher strength.

 

Ok, in support of the tooltip numbers I did a bunch of 5m interval dummy tests under different conditions. For all tests I used exact same gear only changing buffs from test to test. There is clearly room for error in shorter tests but if you add the averages it paints a clearer picture.

Autoattacks 178 str, no WD
5m intervals all basic meteoric/rock maple
Mace-291 attacks
*28.88 avg reg dmg
*56.19 avg crit dmg

Axe-292 atk
*29.57 avg reg dmg
*54.31 avg crit dmg

210 str no WD

Mace 5m-292 atk
*30.84 avg reg dmg
*59.70 avg crit dmg

Axe 5m-290 atk
*30.95 avg reg dmg
*60.90 avg crit dmg

210 str 43.8% berserk

Mace-287 atk
*35.97 avg reg dmg
*67.15 avg crit dmg

Axe-288atk
*35.43 avg reg dmg
*70.17 avg crit dmg


Glyph tests 5m same weapons all 1 unstacked Break weapon, break armor, knockdown
All same damage range
208 str

Mace-212 atks
*89.46 avg reg dmg
*179.76 avg crit dmg

Axe-210 atks
*88.81 avg reg dmg
*184.75 avg crit dmg

Same glyph test with 43.8% WD from Berserk
208 str

Mace-213 atks
*101.37 avg reg atk
*204.03 avg crit atk

Axe-207 atks
*102.55 avg reg atk
*214.14 avg crit atk

Like I said there is plenty of room for error here, but we dont see any significant damage increase from the mace, and again we see about a 10-15% increase in damage from berserk at 43.8% weapon damage.

 

too complex to understand, i will test out and feel for my self...lol

 

None of the other weapon skills have a boost do they?

As a swordsman i dont get near the strength a mace or wand user gets but i do notice a bit of increased dmg from 80 to 110 strength (from buffs)

A while back they changed stats to where they have a diminishing return after 100 didnt they? So being at 299 strength might be nuking the benifits of the new str bonus on hammers.

Try using closer to 100 strength and see what the diff is between hammers and axes @Black FjP that will tell you if its a result of diminishing rueturn and if it is, there might be a problem with that math that make the dmg of all weapons level out at around 300

IF that is a bug tho, you may see the dmg from axes swords polearms and bows get nerfed if you have insanely high strength

 

@Black FjP Thanks so much for doing all this testing on the bludgeon weapons. I used to be this obsessed with calculating DPS and HPS in other games. I gave that up years ago, now I just play the games and have fun.

 

Thanks, @jschoice , I just love figuring out how things work and I seem to never get bored of it =)
@EMPstrike I think it's quite possible that the diminishing returns are being calculated by the actual strength bonus someway or another rather than linearly with strength, and if that were the case and it was changed, it would be detrimental to things with a lower strength bonus which might be benefiting from the curve as it currently stands. This may be why many of the more savvy bow users are getting better results from stacking very high strength. However, I am confident that if this is a discrepancy with how the devs think math works when they make changes, and with how it's actually functioning, they can make it work as intended with the right information. =)