Damage calculations... seem wrong? (Barb vs rogue)

[Kontossis]

Regardless of the names, what you use for the base damage is obviously important. Your 2nd to last post showed three totals each for a barbarian and rogue, and for two of the three, you're using weapons that suck at that level, meaning that you're not including much of a penalty for dual wielding (which benefits the barbarian), and you are including the strength bonus (which again benefits the barbarian).

A difference of 15-42 does not "suck badly" compared to 18-45 when you have more special attacks. That's a 9% difference with close to twice the energy. In practice, the percentage difference is even less if you will gain strength from other sources.

Hm, that is a fair point. After seeing the 8-9% damage difference I agree that both classes have their own advantages and disadvantages as dual wielders.

Still, I'm not sure who makes the best frontliner DWer: A minotaur barbarian with Head Hunter & STR light weapons or a ratling/lizardman rogue with DEX light weapons. I'm almost sure that the barbarian can do just fine, but I have no idea of how well the rogue can handle it while depending on evasion and a lower HP pool (I'm talking about Hard difficulty).

These two characters are not dual wielding. You need to have 3 points in Light Weapons before the dual wielding feature unlocks. Prior to that you can equip weapons in both hands but they don't count as dual wielded and the two hands to not receive separate cooldowns.

You are right. That being said, the damage calculations are still "semi ok". They are not totally correct because I don't know if the damage from weapon skills are added to the base weapon damage or the bonus damage, so I left them out.

From your calculations, are you taking rogue as a str build for damage calculations? A str build rogue seems pretty much strictly inferior as he doesn't get the accuracy/evasion bonuses from dex, leading him to be way less tanky for similar or less damage than the barbarian. If you want to go str, go barb when dual wielding, otherwise, if you're going dex, you go rogue.

Whether or not a dex rogue can have a similar amount of tankiness/damage than a str barb is the question that needs to be asked. Because is not clear exactly how much each point of evasion/accuracy does, it'll be up to experience/testing.

[Fred1]

From your calculations, are you taking rogue as a str build for damage calculations? A str build rogue seems pretty much strictly inferior as he doesn't get the accuracy/evasion bonuses from dex, leading him to be way less tanky for similar or less damage than the barbarian. If you want to go str, go barb when dual wielding, otherwise, if you're going dex, you go rogue.

Whether or not a dex rogue can have a similar amount of tankiness/damage than a str barb is the question that needs to be asked. Because is not clear exactly how much each point of evasion/accuracy does, it'll be up to experience/testing.

I might be wrong, but from what I've seen melee DEX weapons tend to have lower damage than melee STR weapons. So, in order to make the damage comparison fair for the rogue, I gave him points in STR instead of DEX. Of course the DEX rogue has some extra benefits like accuracy and evasion, but the STR barbarian also has more hit points and can carry more items.

What I'm saying here is that instead of comparing a rapier (4-13 damage) to a dagger (3-10 damage), I used STR weapons to see how the barb's STR bonus does vs the rogue's lower DW penalty. If I used STR and DEX weapons for the comparison, the raw damage per swing of the rogue probably would be lower (in the case of the rapier vs dagger it would be obviously lower).

There is also more things to take into consideration before calculating the true damage to your oponnent, like accuracy (as you mentioned), criticals, and enemy's armor. These extra factors were taken out of the equation for the sake of simplicity (and because I can't calculate some. Like how am I going to calculate the true damage to my enemies if I don't know their armor value?).

I just did some basic math to see what can be good and what can't be. So, take most of the information provided with a grain of salt.

[Vardis]

The damage calculations are still "semi ok". They are not totally correct because I don't know if the damage from weapon skills are added to the base weapon damage or the bonus damage, so I left them out.

I don't know what's going on with these numbers... I'd expect the calculations to be one of:

1) (base + dex) * (skill) * (dual wield penalty)
2) (base * skill * penalty) + dex
3) ((base * skill) + dex) * penalty
4) ((base * penalty) + dex) * skill
or I suppose
5) (base * (1 + skill - penalty)) + bonus is an option. So +60% and -25% gives +35%

From what I've read, it sounded like it should be #2 or #4 (penalty only applies to base). But the actual numbers I'm seeing don't quite match up.

So the fist dagger is 9-27 + dex. My level 4 rogue has 19 dex, so that should be 9-27 + 4-9 = 13-36. Checking my other no-skill characters, that formula worked fine. However, my rogue has 3 skill and is seeing a value of 18-51 when not dual wielding and 14-40 with another weapon.

Maybe my math is off somewhere, but I couldn't figure out how it even got a value of 18-51 without the dual wield penalty, let alone the number with the penalty...

[Fred1]

The damage calculations are still "semi ok". They are not totally correct because I don't know if the damage from weapon skills are added to the base weapon damage or the bonus damage, so I left them out.

I don't know what's going on with these numbers... I'd expect the calculations to be one of:

1) (base + dex) * (skill) * (dual wield penalty)
2) (base * skill * penalty) + dex
3) ((base * skill) + dex) * penalty
4) ((base * penalty) + dex) * skill
or I suppose
5) (base * (1 + skill - penalty)) + bonus is an option. So +60% and -25% gives +35%

From what I've read, it sounded like it should be #2 or #4 (penalty only applies to base). But the actual numbers I'm seeing don't quite match up.

So the fist dagger is 9-27 + dex. My level 4 rogue has 19 dex, so that should be 9-27 + 4-9 = 13-36. Checking my other no-skill characters, that formula worked fine. However, my rogue has 3 skill and is seeing a value of 18-51 when not dual wielding and 14-40 with another weapon.

Maybe my math is off somewhere, but I couldn't figure out how it even got a value of 18-51 without the dual wield penalty, let alone the number with the penalty...

Class: Rogue
Level: 4
Dual wield penalty: 25%
Damage bonus from 3 points in light weapons: 60%
Damage bonus from Dexterity: +9 (+4-9)
Weapon base damage: 9-27

# Single wield
9*1,6 = 14,4 = 14
27*1,6 = 43,2 = 43
Damage: 14-43
Damage with DEX bonus: 18-52

# Dual wield
14*0,75 = 10,5 = 10
43*0,75 = 32,2 = 32
Damage: 10-32
Damage with DEX bonus: 14-41

It isn't 18-51 or 14-40, but it's close. We can assume that the DEX bonus is giving +4-8 instead of +4-9. You can redo the calculations when you have 20 DEX and they are probably going to be right.

EDIT: At least now we know that the skill points affect the base damage of the weapons. This means that 2 points in light weapons (+40% damage) essentially negate the standard penalties of dual wielding (-40% damage), as both affect only the base damage. Of course the rogue only needs about 1 point in light weapons to negate this effect (+20% damage vs -25% damage penalty)

[Vardis]

I just read elsewhere that there are no fractional numbers being stored, so anything off by 1 might be some odd rounding issue.

With 20 dex, all min/max damage numbers increased by 1.

[Vardis]

I might be wrong, but from what I've seen melee DEX weapons tend to have lower damage than melee STR weapons.

The dex weapons have lower cooldowns, which end up being even better for whatever flat bonus is applied. My ~60ish strength barbarian with Bane is doing less DPS than my ~30dex rogue with two non-epic daggers.