Dumb AM ranger question 2

[grinrain]

How do you evaluate weapons? I know how to compute damage per effect delay (Damage per round) but how do you take into effect enchantment in doing the calculation? Is there a quick and dirty equation one could pop in or at least understand?

Any short cuts in understanding the effects of brands in doing weapon selection?

[petercordia]

*Very* roughly:

early-game, damage = (weapon base damage) * (bonus) + enchantment
where bonus = 1.25 for flaming/freezing weapons and 1.18 for vorperal weapons (and 1 for unbranded weapons)
elec is like a +7 enchantment
accuracy = skill + base accuracy + enchantment -> can be very important

late game, multiply the weapon base damage by 2, unless you're playing a mage

[grinrain]

Wow, so enchantment adds straight to the damage but without brand proc. And enchantment adds to the possibility of hitting? A 9/14 short bow, 14 skill level, 2 enchantment would act like am 11/7? so a better then a 15/17 long bow at the same skill level.

Read somewhere that you want high damage weapons to cut through armor effects. But if armor reduces a percentage of every hit, seems it should be you want a weapon with a high damage/turn ratio, not just a big weapon.

[petercordia]

No the way AC works is that the game picks a random number between 0 and maxdamage, and a number between 0 and AC, and then takes the difference. If the difference is positive, the defender takes that amount of damage. In pseudomaths this is written as

Damage = Min( 0 , D(maxdamage) - D(AC) )
(Actually this formula is wrong, but it is good enough for heuristics)
for the full mechanics, see http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Weapon_damage

this is why high AC will often result in no damage being taken. This is also why a AC-centred character can have trouble with monsters with a few very hard hits.

I agree, it is often better to have a weapon at mindelay rather than have a heavier weapon.

I might have been wrong about when the brand comes in. The bottom line is that flaming and freezing add 25% damage.

[Sprucery]

elec is like a +7 enchantment

What's your reasoning behind this?

[petercordia]

It adds 8-20 damage per 3 hits.
+7 to enchantment adds 0-7 every hit.
I think it averages out to be roughly the same.

[stormdragon]

In your simplified model, electrocution is actually even better than that. 7 + 1d13 damage on proc averages out to 14 damage per proc, and with a 1/3 proc rate, that's 4.67 average added damage per hit. Each additional point of slaying/enchantment only adds 0.5 damage per hit on average. So, damage-wise, electrocution is just over 9 points of slaying/enchantment.

That's a good rule of thumb comparison. If you want to needlessly see the complexity of small factors: it's also true that, compared to +9 enchantment, electrocution has the upside of never being negated by AC. Enchantment is added to adjusted base damage before AC is applied, so if your base roll was low and the AC roll was high, even a high enchantment roll can fail to do damage. However, electrocution has the downsides of not increasing accuracy, and being resisted by some enemies.