Affinity vs. Raw Damage
A common question I'm asked is over choosing attack up versus critical eye/reckless abandon. Before I get into the answer, it's important to discuss some basics of how the damage formula works in Monster Hunter.
If you're playing anything before Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, you're going to need to do a bit of math to peel behind the layers. The reason for this is that there is a useless layer called "weapon class." This serves as a way to make weapons like the hammer, great sword, and switch axe appear to be much more powerful than they actually are.
Every weapon has a “true” raw damage value that you can reach by canceling out the multiplier. Let's take two examples:
Bone Axe – Switch Axe: Raw Damage=540
Bone Kris+ – Sword and Shield: Raw Damage=140
At first glance, it looks as if the Bone Axe is almost 4 times as good as the Sword and Shield. If you took the normal distribution of weapon users in Tri, I would be certain that there are far more Switch Axe users over Sword and Shield users for that very reason. They would be mistaken though, as in reality, the Bone Axe and Bone Kris+ have the same adjusted raw damage.
Switch Axe multiplier=5.4
Adjusting for this: 540/5.4=100
Sword and Shield multiplier=1.4
Adjusting for this: 140/1.4=100
Wow, that's a pretty drastic comparison, especially considering that the Bone Axe is rarity 3, whereas the Bone Kris+ is rarity 1! Of course, this is still a little misleading, as the Bone Kris+ has very little yellow sharpness, and the Bone Axe has a power phial which greatly changes things when in sword mode. The point of explaining this is to try and encourage you to ignore whatever raw damage number you see, and compare weapons across classes with their adjusted multiplier.
What's more helpful in thinking about weapons is to consider how their individual attacks will stack up in a normal combo. There are a number of considerations:
1. How fast does the weapon attack? Faster weapons benefit more from elemental attacks, as all elemental damage is divided by 10 prior to P3. Larger weapons rarely benefit from being elemental, as they generally do slower, more raw damage intensive attacks.
2. If the weapon is fast, how often will I be able to combo before running out of sharpness? A Great Sword can benefit from 2 slivers of purple sharpness, as that still equals 10 level 3 great charges. A sword and shield would rip through those slivers in the equivalent of one combo.
3. Elemental damage receives less of a boost from sharpness than raw damage. Fast weapons don't need to be as sharp if they have good elemental damage, but it's something to factor in if the monster you're fighting just doesn't take much elemental damage in the spots you'll hit.
4. Armor skills can greatly change how effective a weapon is. Dual Swords stacked with elemental attack up and element specific attack up are crazy due to the speed of attack. Great swords stacked with focus and critical draw are similarly powerful because you get the guaranteed affinity boost with every first attack.
Enough musing on the damage formula. The difference between attack up and critical eye is a basic math concept. Consider what the armor skills actually do:
Attack up Small=Adds 10x class multiplier, or 10 adjusted raw damage
Attack up Medium=Adds 15x class multiplier, or 15 adjusted raw damage
Attack up Large=Adds 20x class multiplier, or 20 adjusted raw damage
Critical Eye+1/Reckless Abandon+1=+10% that an attack will do 1.25x damage
Critical Eye+2/Reckless Abandon+2=+20% that an attack will do 1.25x damage
Critical Eye+3/Reckless Abandon+3=+30% that an attack will do 1.25x damage
Comparing the two skills, we can note one crucial math component:
*Attack up has constant returns to scale
AUS=10 skill points=10 raw damage
AUM=15 skill points=15 raw damage
AUL=20 skill points=20 raw damage
For every point up to the skill break point, you get a 1:1 increase in adjusted raw damage.
*CE/RA has increasing returns to scale
CE+1/RA+1=10 skill points=+10%
CE+2/RA+2=15 skill points=+20%
CE+3/RA+3=20 skill points=+30%
For every point up to the skill break point, you get better proportional increase relative to the last break point. This is true for just the armor skill, but it holds true for the adjusted raw damage as the base damage increases as well.
Even if you were to understand the armor skill system and damage formula, it's likely that by the time you broke this all down, you were glossy eyed and bored. A simple rule of thumb for CE/RA is that for every 10% affinity you have, increase your adjusted raw damage by 2.5%.
Still, I know many of you still won't want to be bothered with the math of calculating that out. Because we have two variables, one constant and one variable, we can actually solve for certain raw damage “break points.” It is at these levels of adjusted raw power that it's worth switch from Attack Up to CE/RA.
For some of you, this will be a fun refresher on basic algebra. We're going to set AU and CE equal to each other at relative armor skills.
Attack Up Small = Critical Eye+1/Reckless Abandon+1
10=((x*.90*1.00)+(x*.10*1.25))-x
10=0.025x
x=400
Attack Up Medium = Critical Eye+2/Reckless Abandon+2
15=((x*.80*1.00)+(x*.20*1.25))-x
15=0.05x
x=300
Attack Up Large = Critical Eye+3/Reckless Abandon+3
20=((x*.70*1.00)+(x*.30*1.25))-x
20=0.075x
x=266.7
Going for the best case scenario of Critical Eye+3, we find that there are few and limited circumstances that really benefit from CE+3 over AUL. In almost all cases the top tier deviljho do relatively well so long as they have sharpness +1. Alatreon weapons receive about an equivalent boost from the damage at purple sharpness, and then drop down to white, which ends up being worse.
Example:
Fiendish Tower (P)=460 Raw Damage
Lance Multiplier=2.3
Adjusted Raw=460/2.3=200
Purple Sharpness Multiplier=1.5*200=300
White Sharpness Multiplier=1.32*200=264
Alatreon Gleam=414 Raw Damage
Lance Multiplier=2.3
Adjusted Raw=414/2.3=180
Purple Sharpness Multiplier=1.5*180=270
White Sharpness Multiplier=1.32*180=237.6
Of course, melee weapons are only one half (well, really about 2/3rds) of the equation. Bowguns are affected by the same basic formula. With enough grinding, it's relatively easy to put together a bowgun with higher than 267 adjusted raw damage. If you want to break even at critical eye+2 at 300 adjusted, then you're pretty much limited to a heavy bowgun (jhen/alatreon frame).
Of course, this only applies to shots that deal entirely raw damage, such as normal, pierce, and pellet. Normal and Pierce are benefited the most, as they can receive an additional 1.5x modifier to their damage based on range. Normal can receive an easy 1.1x modifier as well if you're lucky with felyne skills and get felyne sharpshooter.
Elemental shots benefit from Attack Up more than Critical Eye for two reasons.
1. Elemental shot damage is essentially 50% raw of the corresponding shot, and 50% elemental based on the attack power of the gun. This essentially cuts the benefits you'd receive from increasing raw damage in half in regards to the raw portion. Elemental damage is unaffected by critical hits, so there is no making up grounds there. Increasing the raw damage is helpful two times, in that it increases both the raw and elemental damage.
2. There is no range multiplier for elemental shots. They do the same damage from any range so long as they connect completely. Without a 1.5x multiplier, the gains critical eye have beyond adjusted raw power are not realized.
This is not to say that elemental shots aren't good to use. Agnaktor is completely ripped apart by water shots no matter what state he is in. Nonetheless, good aim and monster management can make up for resistant body parts with high raw power and affinity.
I hope this puts to rest a great deal of confusion over the damage formula, attack up vs. affinity, and weapon selection. At the end of the hunt, you should always stick with the weapon you have the most fun with. Even still, this should help hunters choose between attack up and affinity when the situation arises.
If you're playing anything before Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, you're going to need to do a bit of math to peel behind the layers. The reason for this is that there is a useless layer called "weapon class." This serves as a way to make weapons like the hammer, great sword, and switch axe appear to be much more powerful than they actually are.
Every weapon has a “true” raw damage value that you can reach by canceling out the multiplier. Let's take two examples:
Bone Axe – Switch Axe: Raw Damage=540
Bone Kris+ – Sword and Shield: Raw Damage=140
At first glance, it looks as if the Bone Axe is almost 4 times as good as the Sword and Shield. If you took the normal distribution of weapon users in Tri, I would be certain that there are far more Switch Axe users over Sword and Shield users for that very reason. They would be mistaken though, as in reality, the Bone Axe and Bone Kris+ have the same adjusted raw damage.
Switch Axe multiplier=5.4
Adjusting for this: 540/5.4=100
Sword and Shield multiplier=1.4
Adjusting for this: 140/1.4=100
Wow, that's a pretty drastic comparison, especially considering that the Bone Axe is rarity 3, whereas the Bone Kris+ is rarity 1! Of course, this is still a little misleading, as the Bone Kris+ has very little yellow sharpness, and the Bone Axe has a power phial which greatly changes things when in sword mode. The point of explaining this is to try and encourage you to ignore whatever raw damage number you see, and compare weapons across classes with their adjusted multiplier.
What's more helpful in thinking about weapons is to consider how their individual attacks will stack up in a normal combo. There are a number of considerations:
1. How fast does the weapon attack? Faster weapons benefit more from elemental attacks, as all elemental damage is divided by 10 prior to P3. Larger weapons rarely benefit from being elemental, as they generally do slower, more raw damage intensive attacks.
2. If the weapon is fast, how often will I be able to combo before running out of sharpness? A Great Sword can benefit from 2 slivers of purple sharpness, as that still equals 10 level 3 great charges. A sword and shield would rip through those slivers in the equivalent of one combo.
3. Elemental damage receives less of a boost from sharpness than raw damage. Fast weapons don't need to be as sharp if they have good elemental damage, but it's something to factor in if the monster you're fighting just doesn't take much elemental damage in the spots you'll hit.
4. Armor skills can greatly change how effective a weapon is. Dual Swords stacked with elemental attack up and element specific attack up are crazy due to the speed of attack. Great swords stacked with focus and critical draw are similarly powerful because you get the guaranteed affinity boost with every first attack.
Enough musing on the damage formula. The difference between attack up and critical eye is a basic math concept. Consider what the armor skills actually do:
Attack up Small=Adds 10x class multiplier, or 10 adjusted raw damage
Attack up Medium=Adds 15x class multiplier, or 15 adjusted raw damage
Attack up Large=Adds 20x class multiplier, or 20 adjusted raw damage
Critical Eye+1/Reckless Abandon+1=+10% that an attack will do 1.25x damage
Critical Eye+2/Reckless Abandon+2=+20% that an attack will do 1.25x damage
Critical Eye+3/Reckless Abandon+3=+30% that an attack will do 1.25x damage
Comparing the two skills, we can note one crucial math component:
*Attack up has constant returns to scale
AUS=10 skill points=10 raw damage
AUM=15 skill points=15 raw damage
AUL=20 skill points=20 raw damage
For every point up to the skill break point, you get a 1:1 increase in adjusted raw damage.
*CE/RA has increasing returns to scale
CE+1/RA+1=10 skill points=+10%
CE+2/RA+2=15 skill points=+20%
CE+3/RA+3=20 skill points=+30%
For every point up to the skill break point, you get better proportional increase relative to the last break point. This is true for just the armor skill, but it holds true for the adjusted raw damage as the base damage increases as well.
Even if you were to understand the armor skill system and damage formula, it's likely that by the time you broke this all down, you were glossy eyed and bored. A simple rule of thumb for CE/RA is that for every 10% affinity you have, increase your adjusted raw damage by 2.5%.
Still, I know many of you still won't want to be bothered with the math of calculating that out. Because we have two variables, one constant and one variable, we can actually solve for certain raw damage “break points.” It is at these levels of adjusted raw power that it's worth switch from Attack Up to CE/RA.
For some of you, this will be a fun refresher on basic algebra. We're going to set AU and CE equal to each other at relative armor skills.
Attack Up Small = Critical Eye+1/Reckless Abandon+1
10=((x*.90*1.00)+(x*.10*1.25))-x
10=0.025x
x=400
Attack Up Medium = Critical Eye+2/Reckless Abandon+2
15=((x*.80*1.00)+(x*.20*1.25))-x
15=0.05x
x=300
Attack Up Large = Critical Eye+3/Reckless Abandon+3
20=((x*.70*1.00)+(x*.30*1.25))-x
20=0.075x
x=266.7
Going for the best case scenario of Critical Eye+3, we find that there are few and limited circumstances that really benefit from CE+3 over AUL. In almost all cases the top tier deviljho do relatively well so long as they have sharpness +1. Alatreon weapons receive about an equivalent boost from the damage at purple sharpness, and then drop down to white, which ends up being worse.
Example:
Fiendish Tower (P)=460 Raw Damage
Lance Multiplier=2.3
Adjusted Raw=460/2.3=200
Purple Sharpness Multiplier=1.5*200=300
White Sharpness Multiplier=1.32*200=264
Alatreon Gleam=414 Raw Damage
Lance Multiplier=2.3
Adjusted Raw=414/2.3=180
Purple Sharpness Multiplier=1.5*180=270
White Sharpness Multiplier=1.32*180=237.6
Of course, melee weapons are only one half (well, really about 2/3rds) of the equation. Bowguns are affected by the same basic formula. With enough grinding, it's relatively easy to put together a bowgun with higher than 267 adjusted raw damage. If you want to break even at critical eye+2 at 300 adjusted, then you're pretty much limited to a heavy bowgun (jhen/alatreon frame).
Of course, this only applies to shots that deal entirely raw damage, such as normal, pierce, and pellet. Normal and Pierce are benefited the most, as they can receive an additional 1.5x modifier to their damage based on range. Normal can receive an easy 1.1x modifier as well if you're lucky with felyne skills and get felyne sharpshooter.
Elemental shots benefit from Attack Up more than Critical Eye for two reasons.
1. Elemental shot damage is essentially 50% raw of the corresponding shot, and 50% elemental based on the attack power of the gun. This essentially cuts the benefits you'd receive from increasing raw damage in half in regards to the raw portion. Elemental damage is unaffected by critical hits, so there is no making up grounds there. Increasing the raw damage is helpful two times, in that it increases both the raw and elemental damage.
2. There is no range multiplier for elemental shots. They do the same damage from any range so long as they connect completely. Without a 1.5x multiplier, the gains critical eye have beyond adjusted raw power are not realized.
This is not to say that elemental shots aren't good to use. Agnaktor is completely ripped apart by water shots no matter what state he is in. Nonetheless, good aim and monster management can make up for resistant body parts with high raw power and affinity.
I hope this puts to rest a great deal of confusion over the damage formula, attack up vs. affinity, and weapon selection. At the end of the hunt, you should always stick with the weapon you have the most fun with. Even still, this should help hunters choose between attack up and affinity when the situation arises.
Labels: Monster Hunter Damage Formula
posted by Social Dissonance at 12:36 PM
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