Found this on Reddit, figured you guys would like it.
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http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2rhgrm/weapon_damage_explained_with_science/
Hello again fellow Guardians!
I originally posted this on the Bungie forums but there, they seem to care more about flaming each other than actual Destiny information. So here we go! My first Reddit post EVER!
Also, check out my second Reddit post ever about super energy modifiers here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2rhijl/increased_super_energy_modifiers_explained_with/[1]
There appears to be some misinformation out there regarding weapon attack/impact & how it relates to damage, especially on higher level enemies. The following data was collected to shed some light on the highly arbitrary damage mechanics hidden within Destiny.
There is a spreadsheet here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ieXn_u1nnY42x-_8V1JDk_XkkW1nviUEWgOXnbzrLEM/edit#gid=1609525585[2]
with all the data I collected and I HIGHLY recommend you take a look at it both before & after you read the rest of this post.
All damage was originally recorded against level 28 or 30 red-bar Hive Acolytes & Knights, but expanded to red-bar Dregs & Vandals once I determined that all take exactly the same body/crit damage. For damage against yellow-bar enemies, level 28/30 Vandal & Knight majors were used.
THE RESULTS:
The damage output of your character does NOT increase as your level surpasses that of your enemy. Example: facing a level 30 enemy, you will dish out the exact same damage per shot as a level 30, 31, or 32.
Your damage per shot decreases as your level drops below that of your enemy's in the following manner: (% of max damage)
Equal/Above: 100%
Minus 1 Level: 68%
Minus 2 Levels: 55%
Minus 3 Levels: 48%
Compared to a guardian of equal or greater level to a given enemy, your damage decreases as follows: (% less damage)
Equal/Above: 0%
Minus 1 Level: 32%
Minus 2 Levels: 45%
Minus 3 Levels: 52%
So if you have a level 29 or 30 on your team fighting Crota, they're going to be dishing out about half the damage than that of a level 32.
Attack DOES increase weapon damage in a linear fashion against enemies at or around your own level*. As a level 28+ facing a level 30 enemy, a 331 attack weapon will do ~15% more damage than an identical 300 attack version.
*Against low-level mobs using high-tier weapons, damage seems to be calculated purely from impact. In addition, weapon damage is scaled down significantly to prevent us all from running around with low-impact, high-RoF assault rifles and one-shotting everything in patrol.
EDIT: Here is some freaking AWESOME info about weapon damage from /u/Ketchary [3] :
"Saying this to spread the word in a related topic, and because there's very common misinformation about it. Note that I have personally extensively experimented alongside another person and used calculations to find the following conclusions, using a crazy large number of weapons between 90 and 331 attack.
Damage difference due to Attack can easily be calculated. For a weapon doing damage against an enemy that doesn't cap its attack, (Attack of weapon - Rarity modifier) / Damage dealt = constant. This rarity modifier is 80 for exotics, 60 for legendaries, 40 for rares, and 20 for uncommons. For some reason these rarity modifiers are only correct for Lv20 weapons, though.
This means that, for example, a 331 attack exotic weapon compared to a 300 exotic of the same name will have its damaged scaled precisely according to: (300 - 80) / weaker damage dealt = (331 - 80) / stronger damage dealt
This means the 331 will do 14.09% more damage than the 300. Interestingly, a 331 legendary will actually just do 12.92% more damage than a 300 of the same name. This means it is slightly more significant to get a 331 exotic than a 331 legendary.
Also, there is misinformation about attack cap on enemies. The attack cap of enemies is not as simple as Level * 15. Actually, that formula is only applicable on enemies of level 16 to 20 (240 attack to 300).
The attack cap increases in increasing increments. Against Lv1 enemies it is roughly 98, and increases by 8 per level up to 138 on Lv6 enemies. 138 attack is conveniently the attack of Husk of the Pit and the lowest level of Hive on the Moon is 6. I had forgotten how it increments between Lv6 and Lv16, so I'll edit that in this post once I find my old document."
Thank you Ketchary!!!
Critical hit multipliers for the following weapons are as follows:
Assault Rifles: 2.5x
Pulse Rifles: 3x
Hand Cannons: 3x
Scout Rifles: 3x
Sniper Rifles: 5x
Fusion Rifles: 2x (Shows white even though it's a crit. Credit to user /u/tenyardington [4] for this info! Thank you!)
Shotguns: 2x? (still iffy about this, it's pretty damn hard to get just a single pellet to score a crit)
Machine Guns: 2.5x
Credit to SXII Psifour (thank you!) for the following info about critical hits: "technicality the crit multiplier is actually calculated as a bonus which is then added. Mathematically it comes out the same in most cases, but it matters for a few perks and may play a bigger role in the future." This means that critical hit damage isn't calculated as (base damage * X), but instead (base damage + (base damage * [X-1])), with X being the crit multiplier listed above. This has implications in weapons with perks modify critical hit bonuses, such as the one found on No Land Beyond (even though it's currently bugged...).
Enemy majors (yellow-bar) take 10% less normal damage and only 50% crit damage. Since crit damage is calculated from normal damage, they actually take less than 50% of your weapon's regular crit damage. i.e. A scout rifle that deals 100/300 normal/crit damage to red-bar enemies will do 90 normal and (90 * (3/2))=145 crit damage to a major
The Hive Disruptor perk found on CE weapons increases damage against Hive majors in the following manner (and no, I sadly do not have Black Hammer yet)
Swordbreaker: +399 damage when ~10 or more pellets land on target and is not affected by the 10% damage drop to majors
Light of the Abyss: +399 damage when 6 beams land on target (or is it on a cooldown?) and is not affected by the 10% damage drop to majors
Song of Ir Yut: +399 damage on a 1 to 2 second cooldown & IS affected by the 10% damage drop to majors. All the numbers spewing out of the enemy with this thing make it difficult to pin down what the hell is going on
The Nightfall burn modifier increase a particular weapon's elemental damage 3-fold
Weapons of Light increases all weapon damage by 25%, and 35% with the Illuminated buff
(Thank you /u/Mad-Slick [5] and /u/McRon_I [6] for this information!)
The Focused Fire perk on Suros Regime increases damage by 33%. The SUROS perk damage increase is inversely proportional to the number of rounds left in the magazine and increases exponentially. Check out the linked spreadsheet and you'll see what I mean
Enemies in Destiny are horrible test subjects and frequently kill you while you're trying to record data
I was also planning on doing an analysis of the "oracle disrupter" perk found on the old (but still amazing) VoG weapons, specifically how much extra damage it does compared to similar weapons without the perk. Alas, I became frustrated with the bizarre findings... UNTIL along came chrisw41g with a link to a Reddit post explaining everything! Here's the link: (Turns out it's very similar to the Hive Disruptor perk)
http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2lenpw/oracle_disruptor_and_what_it_means/[7]
And here's another link by the same Reddit user with some additional VoG weapon data:
http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2lfu7v/math_atheons_epilogue_is_handsdown_the_best/[8]
Thanks again chrisw41g!
Thank you all for reading!
-CaptainKev91
EDIT: Thank you all for the support! I'm loving all the ideas for future studies, keep 'em coming! So far, I'm thinking:
Damage received from enemies at varying levels & defense (this is REALLY tricky, since it would be nigh impossible to control for either level or defense throughout the tests since they're so closely tied... any ideas?)
Does increased melee attack speed mean a faster sword attack?
Taking into account RoF & reload speed for the total damage output of various weapons (I have a feeling that this value will be constant throughout a specific weapon type)
I'm on vacation (huzzah!) until next Monday so I've got some time to burn on more experiments. Let me know what you want to see!
