1. Introduction
As an Age of Wushu player, you know how customizable your character is. Your character’s skillsets, internal skills, and meridians all influence your damage output and survivability, and with new content being added regularly, the possibilities are endless.
In this new update of the website, I'm excited to give you the ability to take a deeper look into how these mechanics work and their impact on your damage output. I'm sure you'll have a great time exploring all the possibilities.
Read further to find out how the formula system works!
2. Formulas
Every skill that deals damage, has a formula associated with it, to calculate its damage output. These formulas use various parameters from various sources depending on the skill. The most basic parameters everyone already knows about: The red, blue and the lesser-known green damage bonuses in the skill description.
This is how the formula looks for a given skill.
In this example, the skill uses the melee and internal power of the caster.
3. Calculation details
The skill-specific formula is missing the basic character setup, such as % damage from equipment, inner attribute, and so on. That's because the skill-specific formula is just that; skill-specific. This is why the formula's damage is lower than the ingame description.
Once the output (damage per hit) of that formula is determined, the next step is to apply your character's attributes to that damage. That way, your final damage output is calculated. After an hour or two of careful experimenting on mobs, I determined that the formula is as follows:
You might notice that as you play around with the inputs, that the equipment, annotation and other damage boost inputs all modify the same number inside the formula. That's because this game doesn't have compounding damage boosts. They're just added together, just like how critical damage from various sources are added together. Sorry folks, a 40% equipment setup for a 5-stack Nihilty (100%) doesn't compound to a 180% damage boost; It's just 140%.
Another thing to note is that treasure damage boosts aren't affected by equipment, annotation and other damage boosts. They are only affected by the inner attribute, inner effect and critical damage boosts.
Finally, math operations that produces numbers with decimals, are always rounded down in the game. For example, if you have 240 doll damage divided over 7 hits, it'll be 34 damage per hit. 34 multiplied by 7 results in 238, so 2 damage is lost.
4. Notable Exceptions
There are skills in the game that have more parameters that might affect the skill's damage output, sometimes coming from the target, such as their distance from the caster. This is not shown in the game's tooltips, so you'd have to find out by experimenting or reading the skill description.
Here are some notable examples of skills deviating from the usual melee/internal power calculation.
Skill | Unique properties |
|---|---|
Stacks of Sudden Snow on the target increase rage damage by 10% per stack, capped at 30% with 3 stacks | |
The further away the targets are from the center, the less damage they receive | |
The less HP the caster has, the more damage the skill deals. 1% lost HP equals to 1% damage boost, up to 99%* | |
The less HP the caster has, the more damage the skill deals. 1% lost HP equals to 1% damage boost, up to 99%* | |
The less HP the target has, the more damage the skill deals. 1% lost HP equals to 1% damage boost, up to 99%* | |
All offensive skills scale off of movement speed, capped at 35% damage boost from 35% movement speed** | |
The further away the target is, the more damage the skill deals, capped at a theoretical maximum of 20% damage boost for 25 meters | |
All offensive skills scale off of Medicine Points, capped at 10% damage boost at 10000 Medicine Points | |
The more the caster charges the bar, the more damage the skill deals, capped at a 25% damage boost for a full bar |
* At 100% HP loss, the player dies
** Damage calculation based on movement speed isn't verified yet, and is subject to change
5. It's not just skillsets using formulas
Meridians, buffs, and inner passives (which are, technically speaking, also buffs) also have their own internal formulas. If you ever wondered how these meridians and buffs worked, now is your chance to find out.
Buff or meridian | Calculated properties |
|---|---|
The more melee + internal power the caster has, the better the healing effect | |
The more melee power the caster has, the better the additional damage | |
The more inner points the caster has, the stronger the meridian |
In a future release of the website, you can view their internal formulas as well for their exact calculation.
6. Not everything is client-side
There are many more formulas in the game, but the website can't cover all of them because not everything is calculated client-side. For example:
All additional and bleed damage: Damage from Tangmen 2nd inner, Ancient Tomb 2nd inner, Full Moon Scimitar parry buff and so on, scale off of certain stats, but there's nothing linking those effects with formulas.
Other hidden effects: For example, Scholar's Leisure Kick skillset multiplies the crit damage randomly, but the formulas for that aren't in the client.
7. Randomness
The game also makes use of Random Number Generation (RNG) to calculate damage outputs. I have added an option to change the calculation of those random numbers. The options are self-explanatory.
8. A little quirk about the Chinese client
The Chinese client has updated their game tooltips to include damage boosts from equipment, annotation and non-inner damage boosts. The Chinese client also accounts for damage from treasures and dolls. Because of this, the numbers between NA and CN might differ.
In above example, the parameters are 2000 melee power & internal power, with a 10% + 30% equipment setup. The Chinese tooltip will display higher numbers for the yellow, blue and red numbers, while the North American client has unchanged numbers. Yet, the Chinese tooltip still is not accurate, as it misses damage bonuses from the inner attribute and inner effect.
9. Summary
The website supports formulas and customizing the parameters to one's needs. With this addition, people can finally use this website to actually theorycraft all sorts of builds.
With the addition of formulas, the website finally fits the vision I had - it being a (superior) replacement of that one Chinese website.