The guy. with big club. Don’t get it. He has 2k hand damage but every time i try to facetank him with 15k lifepool character this guy eliminate more than a half of the healthbar (around 8k dmg i guess). Sometimes this guy just oneshot me especially when i decrease DA. How can I counter his attacks? Get me nervous everytime on HC runs as I don’t know what to expect with current build.
Also little stone golems inflict the same amount of huge unexpected damage with throwing boulders. I think it is physical damage the most ridiculous damage type in the game.
You’re not supposed to facetank everything in the game. Some bosses have strong attacks you need to avoid if your character isn’t built tough enough. These attacks are usually slow and highly telegraphed. You can move out of the way just by walking, use movement skills or evade with spacebar.
Voldrak’s strongest attacks such as his overhead slams are good examples. They have zero tracking so you can just move slightly and they miss.
Golem boulders are also slow, brightly glowing projectiles. Just avoid them
I am not complaining. I actually beat the game on Ultimate HC a couple of times and got steam achievements for AoM and FG HC runs. So I know how to play the game.
But I want to take insight in game mechanics that i don’t clearly understand to play more confidently and aggressively.
To my knowledge: Veteran, Elite and Ultimate apply a multiplier to monster dmg.
That isn’t reflected in the stats in GT.
I don’t have the exact values, but from what I have seen, the numbers seem to be sth like Vet: 150%, Elite 250%, Ultimate 500%.
Someone can probably find the exact values in one of the data tables and correct me.
So a boss with 2k sheet damage will hit for ~10k on Ultimate.
On top of that, some monsters use their MIs, which will add a bunch of damage, if they match the damage type.
I’ve seen Voldrak hit for nearly 10k, after armor and phys res, on the current patch.
But it gets more complicated, once Defensive Ability gets involved, as high DA can reduce the damage and low DA will result in crits.
And some of the more dangerous abilities include multiple projectiles, which can overlap and hit the player more than once, or leave ground effects, which stack up.
So it’s not always easy, to get a clear reading, on why some bosses slap so hard and others don’t.
3 Likes
It’s reflected on the character sheet but not on the stats of skills.
It’s a 65% (additive) damage gap between Normal and Ultimate - more for Aether/Chaos and slightly more for Pierce/Physical.
Values are shown 4x at each difficulty for multiplayer scaling purposes.
But this is not the whole picture either.
Probably don’t decrease your DA.
2 Likes
40% TDM doesn’t really explain the damage numbers. (even if phys is a “little” higher)
My test dummy is a Cthonian Vanguard
These are his stats, no skills, just default attack:
I recorded him attacking this character, who has 14% phys res and 19% absorb from Possession.
The lowest amount of damage is in the range of 1.3k to 1.4k HP loss. Typical hits are in the range of 2k HP loss.
Taking a low damage hit as an example:
1350 damage
+ 1450 armor = 2800
(Reverting phys res:)
2800 / 0.86 = 3255.8
(Reverting damage absorption:)
3255.8 / 0.81 = 4019.5 damage
Which means even a high damage roll of “650” would not be explained with just 40% TDM.
(And this mob can’t even have the MI, neither did he drop anything)
From my experiments with the Shambler and other physical hitters, the multiplier seems to be (fairly consistently) x6, but I can’t be absolutely certain all of that is due to difficulty and affects all damage types in that manner.
If I should err in the math, please correct me.
Common MIs do not drop, but weapon-wielding enemies still need to wield weapons. 
Dreadguards use the ‘Chthonian Warrior Common’ two-handed axe when they do not equip any other weapons.
This weapon has 318-491 base physical damage and 37-117 base Chaos damage. It also features a 95% Physical Damage modifier and 80% Attribute Scaling, though I am uncertain whether Attribute Scaling affects enemies; if it does, that 95% Physical Damage on the weapon can scale near to 200%, randomly. This of course sums with the Dreadguard’s passive 11% bonus to Physical Damage, and we mustn’t forget their 72% passive Chaos Damage either.
I’m not going to do all this math, but I have a sneaking suspicion that if you play with % Physical Damage on the weapon near to 200%, you’ll find total damage values comparable to the damage you’ve taken.
So assuming that 80% cunning scaling is in effect:
95% (weapon)
260% (cunning)
-29% (passive adjustments)
= +326% physical damage
weapon phys damage portion:
(318 to 491) * 4.26 * 0.86 * 0.81 * 1.4 = 1321 to 2039
After armor: Zero to 589 damage go through.
Vanguard passive bonus portion:
(495 to 650) * 4.26 * 0.86 * 0.81 * 1.4 = 2056 to 2700
After armor. 606 to 1250
Chaos damage (assuming it also benefits from spirit scaling):
(37 to 117) = ~26 to 83 chaos damage after resists
Which is still a little lower, but with another 20% TDM from some source it would pretty much match the observed results. Who knows, maybe some of the listed damage bonuses are not additive.
So the weapon stats put it into the same ballpark, at least. 
Edit: If the passive flat damage bonus on the Vanguard is affected by full cunning scaling it would put the that damage at 920 to 1662 after armor absorption.
For a total damage of ~950 to ~2300, which pretty closely matches the results I observed.
Sounds like nobody knows how it actually works. I understand only that you can’t calculate damage looking only on his stats in database. 
nobody knows how it actually works
The sane approach is certainly to just play the game, don’t look at the numbers and just figure out what works ingame. No math needed.
But after Ceno supplied additional info and the subsequent math nearly matches up with ingame results, I wouldn’t say “nobody knows” is a fair assessment either.
It’s just a lot of numbers adding and multiplying up to a bigger number. 
Or just take the 500% I gave initially and use it with a grain of salt, if an enemy says 3k phys damage, expect 15k. It works surprisingly well. (Until you get into shenanigans with flat absorption values)
That’s not what Attribute Scaling means.
Attribute Scaling defines the stat variance on items for those stats that can vary, like % Damage. So it doesn’t touch base Physical/Chaos damage, but it would touch the % Physical Damage. It has nothing to do with Cunning (unless an item grants variable flat/% Cunning).
Oh. 
So Cunning scaling is not in effect at all?
95% physical damage bonus plus the flat from the weapon alone would not be nearly enough to explain the discrepancy.
Even if they all get added up before applying against armor, it would at most amount to ~700 damage.
I think we’re misunderstanding each other. 
I most certainly misunderstood you. No, you’re correct that there would be a large % damage bonus from Cunning not reflected in the Dreadguard’s % Physical Damage display. (Although my math comes out to ~320%, not ~260%)
However you’re not factoring in my point of the Attribute Scaling on the Dreadguard’s weapon, which is 80%, and means that the 95% Physical Damage can vary, which results in stat variance like this
So you need to calculate damage considering not only monster’s stats but his weapons too?
Yes, Monsters use the weapons they have equipped.
Woe upon ye when a monster equips a Legendary!
3 Likes
Yeah alright, we’re on the same page now
The 260% was assuming it applies the cunning bonus at only 80% of the value (~330x0.8=260). 
At full value of cunning scaling, that means the actual damage range would be in the ballpark of roughly 1000 to 2700 physical damage, after 1450 armor, 14% phys res and 19% absorption is accounted for.
Considering there are 2 independent rolls, it would make sense that most hits I observed are in the 1300-2300 range.
Yes. If high-levelled Voldrak, for example, wields an MI weapon with “of ruin” mod (around +400% damage), he hits far harder, and you can easily notice that.
You can easily feel the % damage increase to the same damage type the monster uses when they are using two handed weapons. Shar’Zul hits far harder when his Obsidian Cleaver is juiced with % physical, Balegor gets ridiculous poison DoTs (i’m talking 1k+ poison ticks on a character with 80% and more poison res) when its mace just has basic poison affixes.
1 Like
good job guys, makes some sense.
Shieldbreaker, Level 100 (GD 1.2.1.2) - Grim Dawn Build Calculator on Hardcore - got a bit scary there 
pro tip, don’t be brave and eat his slam when you don’t have to
4 Likes