Explaining Elden Ring's Misleading Damage Calculation System

📜 - - - DESCRIPTION - - - 📜
A somewhat deep dive into Elden Ring's damage calculation system and how it misleads certain builds into investing in the wrong stats. Also some general speculation about how NG+ cycles affect damage and defenses.
You ever wondered why weapons like Loretta’s War Sickle and the Crystal Knife hand out paper-cut adjacent damage all the way up to the endgame, but suddenly start performing miles above most other options a couple new game plus iterations later? Have you ever asked someone online why you can’t get any power out of your holy paladin build and they just belch out words like “split damage” and “flat defense” at you without any further elaboration because they heard a youtuber say it once?
Subscribe to my editor: @AuramAlexander
⚙️ - - - ARMOR MODS - - - ⚙️
→ TES: IV Iron Maiden by Tchjay92: www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/m...
→ Bloodborne Fem Knight Set by Ifrit: / ifrit_1511
→ Bloodborne Lady Maria Set by ICathal: www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/m...
✅ - - - ADDITIONAL RESOURCES - - - ✅
→ DSMapStudio 1.10: github.com/soulsmods/DSMapStu...
⏱️ - - - TIMESTAMPS - - - ⏱️
00:00 - Intro
01:00 - Damage Types
02:26 - Flat Defenses & You
08:28 - Motion Values
17:14 - NG+ F***s Up Everything
22:17 - Area Scaling
27:25 - Damage Negation
30:03 - Outro
elden ring build guide, elden ring top builds, elden ring build calculator, elden ring damage explained, damage types, damage negation, elden ring scaling explained, highest damage possible, elden ring damage guide

[@Rusty._]

*_VIDEO PATCH NOTES 1.01 (script & phrasing adjustments):_* 1:50 → The Warpick does deal pierce damage. The in-game menu saying that it deals strike damage is actually a bug. The Lucerne also deals pierce damage. This was a bug in the video's script. It was meant to point out that a weapon's damage type may not always be congruent with its visual design. I've rewritten as follows: _There are also some less obvious examples such as the Lucerne and Warpick only inflicting pierce damage despite their visual design suggesting they are able to deal multiple types of damage._ 18:20 → The footage comparison shown in this example is not congruent with what I'm explaining, as the left side is actually representing values at NG+5, which shows a damage disparity of 16. The sentence I'm saying in the script is correct. The footage is not. 29:35 → Damage negation from armors also stack multiplicatively, just like any other instance of damage negation. They are not additive. Therefore, this set gives you a total of 30.3% magic negation, not 34%. This armor combination still gives you the highest magic defense in the game. 0:02 → Erroneous statement involving the current month being January. As you can see by the date of upload, it is clearly not.

[@holschermarc]

Take a rest man, u done enough. Dont work urself to death. Would be a shame

[@jackdague1792]

I would also like to point out something you didn't cover, likely because there doesn't seem to be any effort to document it. In Dark Souls 3, defense worked in brackets. The calculation for how "flat" defense affects your damage changed depending on how much damage you actually dealt compared to your target's defense stats. This seems to be back in Elden Ring, I haven't tested it extensively but adding fire damage to a fire-infused weapon via Flaming Strike resulted in over 100 more damage on a backstab, but adding even more fire damage to a different weapon without the fire infusion via drawstring grease resulted in less than 50 extra damage against the exact same Godrick soldier.

[@samgraffen9212]

@@jackdague1792 There are some reddit posts covering this in more detail. Basically lower damage hits are more impacted by defense than stronger ones, which is why multi hit weapons/spells are so weak early. The main breakpoint occurring when damage>defense, so hits less than 100ish dmg early on are going to feel really bad. This is also why early game enemies do much less damage later on, but not NO damage as a "flat" reduction would cause.

[@porkins1802]

could we have graphs for the scalings please...🤣

[@braydoxastora5584]

Have you ranked the OST's yet?

[@Anxomaxo]

"Hi. Well It's January..." ~Rusty, February 4th

[@scarameowSucksAtGaming]

He recorded this in January, like i have videos yet to be uploaded that were recorded in January

[@Rusty._]

lmfao

[@scarameowSucksAtGaming]

@@Rusty._ i don't know what that means even though im 6000

[@Anxomaxo]

@@scarameowSucksAtGaming I know, its just amusing thats all

[@Granad784]

Laughing My Freaking Ass Off​@@scarameowSucksAtGaming

[@alpersoylu00]

Ah yes, 4th of February, my favourite day in January

[@catodes1295]

5th for me, lol

[@alpha00zero]

Yes. January 35th for that matter.

[@MightGuy15]

😂😂😂

[@jhonyn7197]

30t of February is mine of March.

[@reinnfrux]

Posted on January 35th.

[@strider3438]

lmao

[@grosslyincandescent3833]

Very good, now do a ranking video of every weapon based on how much their scaling upsets you.

[@antx_soulsborne_meat_rider]

Perfect idea

[@blackflashh]

Axe of Godfrey has to be at least in top 10 for me. I mean, look at Godfrey, look at his weapon, look at his moveset, read his lore. And try to tell me that "C scaling in strength" is not absolutely batshit insane

[@antx_soulsborne_meat_rider]

@@blackflashh i made a dedicated godfrey build and that "C" almost sent me to an asylum

[@carljohan9265]

How about area scaling? I'm personally very upset to find out that Dragonbarrow has hihger scaling than FARUM AZULA despite being impossible to tell apart from the rest of Caelid and also allowing you to just walk into it unopposed and with no indication that it's scaling will be different from the rest of Caelid.

[@christopherjackson2685]

@@blackflashhAxe of Godfrey is #1 for most upsetting weapon scaling in all of FromSoft games.

[@thomasdevlin5825]

Elden ring already shows you so many numbers when you open your inventory that it can scare you as a new player, but seeing just how convoluted some of the scaling gets makes me wish we could see even more of them

[@Spobbles]

Contrast that wall of numbers with item descriptions that amount to "This talisman increases damage resistance. How much? Idk, trust me bro."

[@gregbrown3082]

@@Spobblesseriously pisses me off. Dear devs, stop making me google shit.

[@MaxPwnzer]

It's why I just do the funny thing called not worry about armour and just wear whatever I like the look of most. If I die, I just wasn't good enough.

[@AgentLouisiana]

Kinda why I liked armored core 6 they showed some more of the numbers even if they didn't show everything

[@Dragosmom.]

​@@gregbrown3082it's to discourage minmaxing. Frankly i feel it's entirely normal to have to look up exact percentages. It's not like they don't differentiate between increases and greatly increases.

[@Grodon-mf3ho]

I'm going 99 strength and this nerd with numbers can't stop me 🤷‍♂

[@reedschadegg9023]

Can't hit enemy with numbers.

[@Sognafar]

Just gotta hit em once​@@reedschadegg9023

[@manusan1014]

WTF IS A SOFTCAP??????

[@Gwenyvier]

​@@manusan1014soft cap is where the gains from increasing a stat becomes lower, or minimal. Or in other words the law of diminishing returns. For example, a raising your vigor from 20 to 21 will net you +28 HP Raising it from 39 to 40 will net you +48 HP. There are multiple soft caps for stats. The ones for vigor are 40 and 60. From 59 to 60 you will get +13 HP, from 60 to 61 will get you +6 HP, and the HP gain will never hit double digits again.

[@manusan1014]

@@Gwenyvier ☝️🤓

[@due2625]

At last, we get to understand half the tier lists he makes

[@calibula95]

Yes. He has suffered through ng+7 when many people prefer to do multiple characters and just enjoy certain builds without even beating Radagon with said character. It's a shame there is no incentive to do ng+ other than maybe get 2 of a unique weapon (o get rotten sword insignia and milicent prostesis)

[@benmauler1279]

@@calibula95there’s the incentive of self inflicted suffering!

[@aYiN_N0N3xTeNc3]

​@@calibula95i missed Alexander questline because i did not know i needed to proceed with sellen quest for him to relocate from that cave where you get moonveil to redmane castle also i accidentally started festival without getting that one gesture,its unfortunate he does not move there or left his weaker talisman like in Bloodborne where you can ignore bowblade questline and still get that one key that is needed to trigger npc invasions

[@due2625]

@@yarro7428 thanks man

[@MsJohnnyMetal]

​@@calibula95 since I got almost every item in the game with one character at NG+10, I just upload the save file and drop what I need to my friend then he returns to me on the new characters I make. I hardly get into NG+ now, just enjoying co-op and pvp. The best decision I made, without any regrets.

[@ethanpadwick6943]

I love learning all about the different types and values of damage! *goes back to ignoring them with blackflame*

[@MamaTrixxieAsmr]

Goes back to laughing at healthbars with _Destined Death_

[@NoahCallenberg]

@@MamaTrixxieAsmrmaliketh‘s black blade goes brrrrrr

[@SinHurr]

Darth Kermit meme: "Put bleed on a Destined Death weapon, cowards"

[@IdToaster]

There is one massive exception to the status MVs not going over 100 thing: charged R2s from War Cry or Braggart's Roar hit *_300_* status MV. You can flat-out bleed some enemies with a single hit from Colossals this way.

[@cheftroyardee7982]

I just got a build idea...

[@OrisMador]

Is it the poison zweihander?@@cheftroyardee7982

[@NecroticNeko]

found this out on a like no views yt vid and was playing a braggarts roar build cause i love that ash of war so had to test it and ya its weird nothing really talks about it and it seems different for weapon types

[@sosa0]

Finally someone talks about how misleading the scaling grades are. FromSoft really should've used numbers instead of letters.

[@JustinSimoneau]

Look a bit like dead by daylight as done it at first everything was like moderately increase X things before they replaced everything by the real numbers witch is so much better

[@greatswordofvictory1271]

It's really two issues that blend together: Weapons with abilities/effects that scale with stats the weapon shows aren't important (I.E. the example given in the video with death's poker), and not knowing what the actual scaling is (I.E. low A scaling vs high A scaling). Fixing the first issue is just straight up a game design issue. Either make the weapon line up with what you made the stat scaling show, or have some other way of communicating that extra bit of information to the player. Add more to the stat screen, put something in the weapon description, I don't know - just do something instead of having random weapons misleading players. The second problem is so easy to fix I genuinely don't know why they haven't done it. Keep the letter scaling as an at-a-glance method of generally seeing what a weapon best works with, but also just...let us see the numbers? Like FromSoft please just add a toggle or something so we can switch between the letter scaling and the number scaling it can't be that hard.

[@JustinSimoneau]

@greatswordofvictory1271 with enough demand they might just like dbd did but i don't have a lot of hope

[@hi-i-am-atan]

@@greatswordofvictory1271 i think a big part of why the scaling numbers aren't shown is the fact that they don't ... really mean anything like, if the weapon screen said a sword had a str scaling of, say, 1.1, anyone's gut instinct would be that that means that every 10 points of str would increase the damage by 11. except, of course, the stat system inherited from dark souls has major diminishing returns, and each weapon with each affinity can have completely different scaling graphs for those returns, so it's really more complicated. except except ... even after you figure out the _actual_ amount of your stat that's going into the scaling, you can still end up with an a scaling weapon that gets massively outscaled by a c scaling one, because turns out the scaling multiplier you're feeding your stats into is _itself_ being fed into a multiplier. so you could see an incredible scaling factor on a weapon with shit base damage and make the assumption that it's a weapon that starts out pathetic but will absolutely destroy everything once you've got huge stats, and you'd end up wrong and and stupid and disappointed when you put all that effort into it and its damage is exceedingly mediocre in the best case. i'm pretty sure your default fists actually have _absurd_ str and dex scaling that would make anyone who makes one-shot vids drool ... but, of course, their base damage is entirely emotional, so that absurd scaling means absolute jack shit the formula for ar just ain't all that intuitive and it's hard to cobble together a weapon's performance just by glancing at all the factors. ar calculators exist for a reason, even in a world were anyone can just look up the scaling numbers with a quick google search, after all. if anything, what would be most useful is being able to see how much scaling damage is being contributed by each stat, because it's actually pretty easy to compare the actual weight pulled by a weapon's scaling to one another when both are heavy affinity and only have one stat to worry about

[@roax206]

It's like the pokemen system. They try to make it seem less overwhelming, but it just gets confusing if you try to do anything with it.

[@hi-i-am-atan]

bit of a correction: the warpick and lucerne _do_ deal pierce damage, with the warpick's displayed damage type on the equipment screen being a ui error. when it comes to its attack data, it's all pierce like the description says. i'm not really sure where the idea that the lucerne doesn't do pierce comes from since it says its does pierce and the attack data matches it. some wires getting crossed with how it should probably have access to strike instead of being a pure pierce weapon, i guess?

[@asdergold1]

It didn't always do piercing. That was patched later.

[@jstar3382]

​@@asdergold1this

[@shinokijorainokage]

Probably the easiest way to find this out, and incidentally the way I found this out at all, was when during a Randomizer playthrough one of the earlier bosses involved Rotten Crystalians and I had no hammers at all yet besides the Warpick. I thought, "well given that we know it's bugged and says it deals Strike damage, it'll work here erroneously right?". Turns out it didn't, since as it is known, Crystalians take immensely reduced damage from literally anything *but* Strike damage, and as unexpected my Warpick was about as useful as a toothpick against them. As for the Lucerne I kind of wish it had something like alternate attacks to use both Pierce and Strike damage since, y'know, that's why it has a blunt hammer head and a piercing beak head on opposite sides, and the technology isn't absent since plenty other weapons e.g. alternate depending on their moves but alas.

[@NeutralDrow]

@@shinokijorainokage I found out when I ground out a warpick super-early game, then realized I was only 4-shotting skeletons rather than the expected 2-shotting.

[@jamesruth100]

@@shinokijorainokage Fun fact: the lucerne doesn't actually have a _blunt_ hammer; it's hammer is made of 4 sharp points that are arranged in a 2x2 pattern.

[@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz]

I love fromsoft, but holy crap they are resolute to use the most overdesigned convoluted damage system they can conceive.

[@NisseDood]

They like to give a simple problem a convoluted solution. And then it shits itself. Its like Limit breaker's Ds3 video is it possible to live in lava. So much didnt make sense.

[@Graysett]

It's honestly not overdesigned at all. It's convoluted because of how it's conveyed (aka barely, if at all), but everything is there for a good reason. The only reason any of it is opaque is because there's nowhere in game to actually SEE most of this. There's no training dummy, nowhere to see enemy stats, no moveset overview that gives you the MVs, etc. For whatever reason games in this genre absolutely despise giving you access to the raw numbers of how things work. I've been playing a ton of Nioh 2 recently and it's a constant, you want to talk about overdesigned and convoluted, holy crap man, and barely any of it is explained. For example, there's a bonus there called "Melee damage vs unscathed enemy". You read the description, it says exactly what you'd think. But when you actually USE it guess what, it improves ALL damage dealt to a full HP target, ranged, melee, magic, yokai ability, whatever. Or how that game gives you letter grades for effects like "Life drain (water)". But it doesn't say what happens when you stack those grades. Does wearing the set that has that on every piece give you more life back when you do water damage? If it does, how much is the increase? And what's the actual % it heals in the first place? There's no answer in game, you've gotta test it yourself. I could go on but this is a ER vid and not a Nioh 2 one lol.

[@themanwiththeplan3793]

@@Graysettmy biggest want out of elden ring is a training dummy to test weapons on in the roundtable hold

[@JinFreeks]

@@GraysettOh Learning Nioh (and even worse, learning Nioh 2). Have fun reading weird forum posts. Actual, genuine calculus lessons. With in between test and everything. It's great. I mean what the community build around it. The actual thing is a total nightmare. Takes like 500 hours of gameplay to reach the point where you have all the tools *and* understand how they work. Imo quite fun but yeah, to each their own. I agree tho, Nioh (2) is actually overengineered for no good reason other than the smug satisfaction of finally understanding what you're doing.

[@gregbrown3082]

@@themanwiththeplan3793it’s a bad idea! (One man’s opinion), but only because of the studio. They would implement it, and forget to properly code .0001% of it, and its data would be scrap. I too just want a better system of info delivery. Think of all the faith builds that specced into holy damage, only to reach the endgame disappointed. Is this our lot, now? We can’t finish your game without YT and reddit!? Sorry for the rant, my dude. Cheers-

[@grfrjiglstan]

I never thought they'd have specific area scaling of the enemies, but I guess that's easier than setting each individual enemy class's stats every time they pop up. Randomizers probably appreciate that they did that, too.

[@purplehaze2358]

"So now, let's look at something a little more confusing" As someone who isn't a math guy, and doesn't play this game, it's already confusing enough.

[@kadin9897]

as someone who's best class in school was math and who plays this game im already confused

[@dNIGHTCROWLERb]

As a doctorate student in engineering i can state that this is unnecessarily complicated

[@Lemontarts01]

Bro i play this game. Have played all games. Gameplay aspects are what i understand and have knowledge on most. This shit fucking ruined my brain bro - dont sweat it

[@lojk2]

There was a thread posted on the Dark Souls 3 subreddit from years ago titled "How Defense and Absorption Really Work." It's still up if anyone wants to read it. To summarize the post: defense isn't a linear, flat reduction against attack. Rather, attack is compared to defense and then the result of that comparison is used to choose which formula is to be used from a set of damage formulas. So for example, from the reddit thread, if the ratio of Attack/Defense equals .125 (1/8) or less, the attack will always be multiplied by a flat 0.10 (10% damage) before absorption; at the other extreme end, if Attack/Defense equals 8 or more, the attack will always deal 90% of its damage before absorption; and in the middle, there were 3 other formulas that are more complex but the jist of it is that the formulas are more favorable to the attacker as the ratio of attack/defense increases. For the people less unskilled at math, the damage formula is a piecewise function where each piece of the function has domain boundaries determined by Attack/Defense. As the Attack/Defense ratio increases, you graduate to the next piece of the function which has a higher maximum range than the previous piece. IDK if Elden Ring uses the same system, or if it does then the exact values and breakpoints might not be the same. I wish it were the case, but sadly we can't see the precise damage formula in the param tables for any of the games so I guess that means it's all hard coded into the game's engine.

[@Brown95P]

l can definitely tell you for a fact that Elden Ring uses the same flat defense system; perhaps not the exact values as l myself don't remember the specfics, but it's definitely the same system.

[@michaelcreel6522]

This is part of the reason the split damage types are not penalized nearly as much if both damage types have large outputs, like using the Chaos infused dagger for riposte in DS3. If the numbers are individually big enough, nothing is severely affected. This is also why the Greatsword of Judgement getting a flat 80 magic damage bonus on the existing magic damage in DS3 was a lot better than adding 80 to 100 magic damage to some regular greatsword. If it were purely flat, they would be affected the same.

[@michaelbowman6684]

From my experimentation, it seems that is uses _basically_ the exact same system, numbers only don't line up because Elden Ring has a different standard compared to DS3. DS3 was balanced around 40 Vigor, Elden Ring is balanced around 60 Vigor. Your weapons don't have 2 hit combos anymore, so all the damage of all weapons in the game is notably higher as a baseline. Enemies also deal more damage and have more health, and I think they balanced Defense to accommodate the fact that weapons deal more damage than their DS3 equivalents, so enemies have higher average Defense than DS3. For some reason people haven't ripped the formulas from the game so we have to rely on DS3 formulas instead, but I haven't encountered any errors myself from my testing, it looks as though they behave the exact same way, with the only attributable differences being that the games are balanced differently, and not because they changed the formulas. If you had a weapon that dealt 500 Physical damage exactly and struck an enemy with exactly 100 Defense and 20% Physical Negation in both games, the outputs would be the same.

[@griglog1309]

The formula is exactly the same in Elden RIng, DS3 and even DS1. But DS2 is a different story...

[@hw_yozoraVODS]

we dont talk about this one....​@@michaelbowman6684

[@sebastianmoscoso9404]

Me testing dmg solely on the mohg albinaurics and then watching this vid: 👁👄👁

[@asdergold1]

I test one the Shack Leyndell Knight and the Godrick Troll among other things. The fodder farm is only good for fire testing. Maybe magic also. And Strike since they are resilient to it.

[@generaloverlord2988]

​@@asdergold1 ah yes, i always use the godrick troll for testing, is one of the enemies in the game that sits still

[@sebastianmoscoso9404]

@@asdergold1 thank you i need to tune all my builds with this new information bc logically a build should be tailored against enemies weak to that build, this is not considering pvp of course

[@KassFireborn]

I test based on who has a drop I might want, so at the moment I'm smacking the Dectus Lift Archer Golem a lot. I don't actually even really need that bow, I just want it... to test, funnily enough.

[@sebastianmoscoso9404]

@@KassFireborn its like that feeling of needing to 1000 percent the game 🤣

[@ZeroHero3d]

Even though you did a good job of explaining how damage is calculated across the board in Elden Ring as though I were a developmentally challenged 5 year old, I still barely understand anything I just watched for the last 30+ minutes. So thanks Rusty, I liked the video. Looking forward to when you rank all the particle effects 👍

[@sillkthashocker]

I'm glad I'm not alone here 😅

[@CaptainWoggy]

I've been trying to understand why multi-hit attacks are better than single-hit attacks at high NG+ cycles since this video came out and I feel like I've made negative progress. Like I just understand less now. Good thing I'm a Strength player.

[@TheMattia55]

Me waiting for the DLC: see up to EIGHT Unused Tiers of Area Scaling. Also Me, but few moments of realization later: start to breathe heavily.

[@Foogi9000]

Bro is about to ascend 💀

[@smalltrashman4227]

Most unnecessarily structured comment ever.

[@glorytoukraine5524]

This type of content is probably my favorite from you. There's something about nerding out over numbers in a game that I absolutely love. Oh, you also did an outro wtf.

[@nicolascornejo7753]

Finally, thank you. So that is why the powerspike between Liurnia and Caelid is so obscene. For me the natural progression was Lim->Liurnia->Caelid (I know you can go to Ley with the tunnel next to the lift but I thought that was more for speedrunners), but when you arrive to Caelid and everything starts to twoshot you to death (even with 30-40 vig) thats the reason, you weren't mean to be there yet...

[@ryrin6091]

No Caelid after Liurina is basically the intended progression. It's not a huge power jump. You shouldn't be getting twoshotted with 40 vigor. Dragonbarrow on the other hand is a massive jump.

[@fedweezy4976]

​@@ryrin6091yeah, the difference is northern vs southern caelid aka north and south of sellia. If you can beat the commander in the lake of aeonia then you're good enough to start northern caelid

[@tuckerbird7514]

Amazing that this man still has juice after ranking ALL WEAPONS!

[@Fixti0n]

You left out the fashion bonus for the armor sets, where as if you look good you will play better, and the bonus is quite significant. Wearing the Prelate armor may give that nice 19 physical negation, but the blue cape of the Beast master gives you a nice 21 bonus to skill, which make it so much easier to dodge those attacks.

[@Imyourjoker]

What people rarely mention about split damage is that the math formula for flat defense is more effective against small damage numbers. At NG+7 large physical damage weapons are usually a lot more effective that way.

[@KodFrostwrath]

True. And even considering all the downsides, split damage ends up not being that bad since it is incredibly easy to buff elemental damage. So I guess it is somewhat balanced? at least for someone who knows how to build around it. And I say this thinking of PvE.

[@samgraffen9212]

@@KodFrostwrath This is also the case in ds1/3 (not sure about 2) Split damage isn't bad in pvp either, player defense stats are pretty much set in stone at any given level, so with enough damage of each type you can make a pretty efficient split damage weapon.

[@JinFreeks]

@@samgraffen9212 I think something that got "lost in translation" from "split damage gets negated twice, that's why it's a lot higher when you look at raw attack damage" is the second part of that sentence. The overall community around the DS games started to equate "split damage = bad, because more negation" and forget the part where there's a lot more of it to compensate. Game is honestly very well balanced. At least in PvE. As long as you don't use bad weapons (which, sadly, you kinda have to use to know that they're bad so that's not the best) it genuinely doesn't matter to much if you have split or pure damage. Unless you hit a burning lava rockmonster with a firesword but that's on you.

[@Invus1]

​@@JinFreeks I would argue that Elden Ring is not well balanced in a PvE context. Especially with the presentation of open world and much greater verticality, where issues with the tried-and-true formulas crop up.

[@JinFreeks]

@@Invus1 Only talking about the viability of weapons and damage types / infusions. Should have clarified that I guess. And by "well balanced" I mean you can play with any of them and be just fine. It genuinely doesn't matter of you have the biggest Bonk stick since the invention of Greatclubs fully geared towards Bonking, or the most split damage weapon you've ever seen that even deals unholy-devilsfire as a secret, 7th element. They all perform well enough that you can beat the game with them just fine. It's not like the olden times where game would go like "oh, you're dealing terrible, insane, worldending fire damage? Good for you. Here, have a level filled with demons from hell that get healed by fire. Have fuuuuun."

[@adognamedcat13]

Rusty, my guy, I don't know why you deride your Elden Ring analytical videos so much. Sure, you can't swing a bat on KZbin without hitting a video doing the same thing. But, have you considered that maybe I (we) just like hearing *you* in particular talk about this? Keep up the good work man, I'll always be here 👍

[@alyssadoubrovsky1465]

At 29:35 you sum up the absorption percentages, however absorption modifiers stack multiplicatively meaning the total absorption for all that armor is only 30.3%

[@qwormuli77]

Yup, that's why you can't just add up physical damage resistances to become unkillable with phys damage, for example. Not that adding negation on top of negation doesn't help, but that you get an even increase, instead of a constantly increasing increase (log stuff), which would be utterly broken.

[@RandomMagus]

Constantly converting everything to a percentage was bothering me the entire video. It's literally just multiplying every multiplier together. You do .9 * 0.8 * 0.7 etc and you get your final damage taken number. Doing percents before the final result just complicates everything, and the status screen value IS accurate for your final number.

[@Llortnerof]

@@RandomMagus It changes nothing at all. The error is in adding them together instead of multiplying. Whether you use percentages or decimal fractions is irrelevant since the value is the same either way.

[@holschermarc]

When i asked a Buddy what Motion values are years ago he just answered "Its Ad and Ap scaling from LoL - just for every single attack different" and thats all the explanation i needed

[@monhi64]

As is way too typical of FromSoft it’s not the concept that’s complicated but how they approached it and named it. Had they just called it attack multiplier or damage modifiers or combo bonus, I could go on, anything along those lines it’d be totally clear. Sometimes I think they’re intentionally making the games basic mechanics confusing to create the difficulty

[@holschermarc]

@@monhi64 I mean motion value isnt created for the player to work around same as EV and IV in Pokemon arent meant to work around. Its supposed to be a invisible mechanic that works in the background. People just found out over the years and now they just roll with it because everybody knows. And since everybody knows there is no need to change it.

[@hi-i-am-atan]

@@monhi64 motion value is not a fromsoft term, it's a monster hunter one not, like, one that capcom necessarily uses. it's what monster hunter _players_ have used for the concept, and since there's an overlap in appeal between the two series it was just kinda natural for it to carry over to the souls community the actual fromsoft term is atkCorrection, which is to say that's the term they use _internally_ in the code. i feel it does not really need to be said why it's stayed as a code term and not a community one

[@sandisliker]

i swear to christ i spent like 3 hours yesterday trying to understand this exact topic THANK YOU RUSTY

[@jankbunky4279]

2:14 Not sure Rusty goes into it more later in the video, but this is an oversimplification. A pretty massive one. By and large, the raw damage dealt by a sorcery scales with the particular staff's sorcery buff, no matter the damage type, and each staff scales its sorcery buff a little differently. Almost all scale it with intelligence, but a couple scale it with arcane as well, faith as well, or even *only* faith. The system for incantations and seals works the same, except for the most part they'll usually scale their incantation power with faith. The AR scaling of weapons is pretty much its own thing. With weapons that only have physical attack power it's simple, as they scale that power with whatever stat has a letter grading. Among current weapons, Physical AR can scale with strength, dexterity, arcane, or faith. All weapons that scale with arcane get their standard damage AR scaled with arcane. The only weapon which scales its standard damage AR with faith is the erdsteel dagger. Fire damage AR will scale with *nothing* on any weapon that is not on the fire affinity and also lacks faith scaling. Fire damage AR will scale with strength on fire affinity weapons. Fire damage AR will scale with faith on weapons with the flame art affinity, and on weapons that have no affinity, but do have faith scaling. Weapons that have fire AR and also have arcane scaling, will scale their fire damage AR with arcane. Iightning damage AR only ever scales with dexterity. Simple. Magic damage AR scales with intelligence, except for the Marais Exectutioner's sword, Regalia of Eochaid and the clinging bone weapon. On those weapons it scales with arcane. Holy AR only scales with faith. That's all there is to it.

[@jankbunky4279]

@_alaskanBullWorm common knowledge among the core audience of Rusty's videos perhaps, but not really among casual players I'd think. It definitely is a little convoluted in some places.

[@monhi64]

…damn so every single staff doesn’t scale with strength after all. I thought it was weird but it was what the description says. It must mean it would scale with strength if you’re bonking people with the staff but who would do that. FromSoft just makes me feel dumb

[@completelypointlesstv]

I tried understanding, but my brain leaked out of my ears. I think I'll just keep hitting things with my big sword like the neanderthal I am.

[@switch4964]

I honestly learned so much from this. I learned so much that I'm starting up a new game just to test this stuff out and experiment with damage types more. Thanks!

[@valkyriedarkwar3505]

This was incredibly informative and helpful! I love stat breakdowns like this! Your rankings are really fun, but I love video game math, despite not liking it elsewhere.

[@SoldierSurplus]

I am a big fan of information, and this video along with your other videos made me want to jump into Elden Ring on PC. Keep up the great work, Rusty!

[@Tetradugenica1]

A big fan of information huh? Good to see.

[@lanterns_glow]

Thanks, I actually needed this

[@LordOfTheDeer]

this is putting so many things into context, what a lifesaver of a video. great job!

[@PerpetualNoob]

This video was wicked informative. Thanks Rusty! 😃

[@OFSheep]

Was holy damage listed as AtkDark? This game really is a dark souls 3 mod.

[@MamaTrixxieAsmr]

Because they used the same engine as ds3, even ashes of war are in the “weapon art” params

[@randommixedletters]

You explaining the normal damage increase explains so many things to me it's unreal. Like, I run around on NG+7 just cause I like sitting on 1 character and just maxing them out, and this game gives you to the tools to do that and not get bored like in previous titles. But holy hell literally every encounter that has any bit of a challenging enemy you gotta slap on Black Flame's protection and the Physical damage negation Talisman with the bull goat armor just to not get utterly mollywhopped and I always was like 'why do I only need a spell to become a god against any elemental damage type but physical just uttery raw dogs me'. And Now it makes total sense, and that's VERY good to know XD (also neat to know why I in my stupidly high stats land like a lot of things you tend to rank lower on lists, because 'Ancient Death's Rancor' is my lifes blood but it's cause it gets effected by resistances a decent bit less in new games verses the single big hit stuff).

[@Lilith_TheDireGay]

Love videos like this, I'd figured out a lot of it by playing Elden Ring , but you brought up a lot of things to think about when designing my games damage calculations system

[@kanin-3794]

This was immensely helpful Rusty, amazing work!

[@NickCombs]

Strike, slash and pierce make sense, even from what little I know from our HEMA bros. But standard damage is just phoning it in.

[@frazfrazfrazfraz]

I used to think standard damage made no sense until i watched a video of "longsword vs chainmail" where it was shown that a longsword is surprisingly decent at blunt force trauma, at least compared to what i expected I think standard is supposed to be a combination of slash and strike damage. It's capable of some of both, but isn't crazy at either

[@ChishioAme]

@@frazfrazfrazfraz That's mainly because chain is actually pretty shit at dealing with blunt force trauma; even a dagger could deal solid impact damage to someone in chain. It's the gambeson underneath that absorbs that impact and why you'd end up with bruises instead of fractures. If standard _is_ supposed to be a combination of slash and strike, it should probably be renamed to something like chop, hack, or cleave, since those words really describe an axe and that combination is exactly what an axe does.

[@frazfrazfrazfraz]

@@ChishioAme that's not a bad idea actually, "cleave" sounds like a cool damage type I'm sure they call it "standard" to reduce confusion. Dark souls 2 actually removed standard damage and made all swords slash, and that was a whole affair in its own right. I think they just want it to be clear that "this physical damage type will cover most scenarios", especially since Elden Ring is far less ambiguous about its mechanics than the souls games were

[@hi-i-am-atan]

@@ChishioAme that'd get kinda weird, though, because why would stuff like big ol' boulders do cleaving damage? really, what the physical damage types are describing is the attack's relationship with armor. slash is especially effective against flesh but can't do much damage against armor or bone or stone, piercing mostly just does consistent damage regardless of armor but can struggle against foes that don't have any armor to penetrate and are just hard all the way through, and strike shatters inflexible minerals but doesn't do well against the malleable and the padded. standard serves as the, well, _standard_ that all of these derive from, and consequently acts as a catch-all for any physical damage that lacks these special traits it'd be more accurate to describe the damage types as, like, standard, anti-flesh, anti-armor, and anti-stone, but that just sounds sillier and comes with its own unique issues ( i.e. it being a lot harder to intuit that the straight sword r2 does anti-armor damage, whereas it's pretty easy to make the connection that stabbing with a sword would do piercing damage )

[@CAMSLAYER13]

​@frazfrazfrazfraz ultimately even a blunt sword is a large piece of metal with a handle

[@Verbose_Mode]

I had a thought to "fix" the damage scaling of the multi-hit spells in the early game, because I always felt that they took an entire FP bar to tickle a standard soldier. Clearly, the early-game flat damage was beating these spells into the ground, and then late-game there are better options, so they never see use. My thought was to cause any given hit to apply a very brief Magic Defense Down debuff, reducing the flat defense by a fixed, non-stacking amount, so that the follow-up hits of the barrage would be more effective as they "pierce" the defenses. Hypothetically, say, a Soldier of Godrick has 10 magic defense and each hit of Crystal barrage at minimum casting requirements does 12 damage, that means each dart is only doing two damage, for like 20 damage over the ten or so hits. But if it applies a flat -5 Magic Defense, then the first hit does 2 followed by nine hits of 7. The debuff would have to be very short to prevent cheese with other sources, and it would also fall off late-game as the magic defenses get higher but the sheer scaling of the spell outstrip the need.

[@monhi64]

Yeah that’s a solid solution, there have to be a few ways to work around this but it’s almost like fromsoft wants them to be bad. But btw I’ve heard that the multi hit spells don’t get outclassed by later spells like most would assume. And that it’s totally worth going back to them late game. Have you tried? I haven’t had a chance yet

[@Jaevwyn]

Damn, lot more goes into it than i realised, thanks for the comprehensive breakdown!

[@servomst3k]

Thank you for the content man, your info is definitely helping me get back into Elden Ring 😊

[@allengordon6929]

Notice how holy is named dark in the game's code...

[@dabbytoast6199]

all these numbers n what not wont stop me from using a torch

[@oygemprime3864]

oooooo! a technical video! awesome! love to see how games and things are made! we give *many* damns about this, Rusty!

[@jacobfoxfires9647]

I thank thee Rusty for this video as it's probably one of the few times I go this deep into a games mechanics without even playing the damn game. The only game that had me like this was Monster Hunter and it's one of my favorite series now. So going off that track record, I can only imagine what I'll do when I finally get Elden Ring for myself.

[@preslim84]

this is cool and all, but is there some online calculator to figure the best scaling/affinity for each weapon?

[@quantumravage7132]

Is it possible to do best strength weapons without any buffs/ash of war? Also, love your vids ❤

[@mushroomduck1345]

Giant crusher is the best pure strength weapon. It can be found in the Altus plateau, near the Golden order church, guarded by an ulcerated tree spirit.

[@lharsay]

If you don't want ANY buffs, ashes or even talismans then I think dual greataxes are really strong in the game right now and worth to check out, they are about as fast as two handed colossals but they do lot more damage since you are hitting with two weapons. Dual colossals are also an option but they are even slower than two handed ones and take a ton of stamina. If you allow talismans and the physic flask buff then dual curved swords f*ck shit up faster than anything else on a strength build since you can get over 40% combined damage boost from the consecutive attack talismans and physic.

[@iyer9496]

This was by far the most informative video I have ever seen on the topic. Thanks

[@Reason7322]

Thank you, this video explained everything ive ever wanted to know about area scaling and motion values.

[@beasty_076]

Never clicked on a video so fast

[@KabuVG]

Remember when this was a hollow knight channel?

[@minerman60101]

He's just biding his time, roping in as many From Soft fans as possible into his channel, until he can convert all of them into Silksong fans. Just you wait, his master plan will be enacted flawlessly and Silksong will take over this side of gaming

[@mariuszel759]

Off to watch the video! Hopefully you'll explain which rating applies to the aow and which one to attack rating.

[@chez7528]

Great video bro, helped me a lot

[@diego42297]

What do the numbers mean Mason??

[@andymcmillan9260]

Wake up babe fresh Rusty just dropped....

[@matthewmorgan1715]

Thanks for making this. I feel like it clears up alot I wasn't understanding.

[@ivanigartuburu6115]

Great video mate!! I just wish there exists one list that specify how better a weapon scales...

[@astralknightmage1342]

Well it is January my dude

[@enigmasshadow9435]

Chipi chipi chapa chapa Dubi dubi daba daba Mágico mi dubi dubi Bum, bum, bum, bum Chipi chipi chapa chapa Dubi dubi daba daba Mágico mi dubi dubi Bum

[@tako-sensei6072]

I Love these sorts of things. Iv'e been stuck working for the past year, so it's nice that I have so much to catch up on.

[@Cibohos]

hi Rusty, just wanna say thanks for very cool vids, they truly are incredible. With that said, would you please do a video on spells damage scaling? (I haven't seen the entire video yet, so if you've addressed it here, amazing)

[@wyskonry]

I haven't seen the title of the video I see rusty and elden ring and is a click for me Also, Vykes war spear is the best weapon, fight me

[@johnbryan3846]

Now rank your videos

[@andrewkoblas5396]

Even though I'm on console, I've been on a total Elden Ring binge for the past month or two, having 5 characters EACH with about 90% total items collected and working on my 6th. Videos like these are super interesting to me since I routinely love messing around with different weapons and item combinations to see how stuff interacts; getting something so extremely detailed and well-explained is awesome for folks that like to min-max. For as much as we meme about your tier lists and ranking videos, the effort and love you give to this game is absolutely unreal. I eventually want to get Elden Ring on my PC just so I can try out your 101 Sorceries mod, partly because seeing it made me want to dabble in modding Elden Ring myself. Awesome vid and keep up the fantastic work!

[@solomonreinman7452]

This was great, thank you very much for going through this.

[@Ontaro]

Amazing video! I loved it! I'd love to see how it affects progression empirically. Like starting with flat hit does X at the beginning vs the end and showing up those graphs, comparing builds etc. I love builds an all that, but it feels like a lot of times they're done in a vacuum, these kind of videos shows me how much we know and how useless some guides are.

[@lf1514]

i enjoyed this quite a bit your very smart and is really helping me with build acquisition in my ng+ runs

[@ChevalierdeJohnstone]

This is all old news in Souls games but your video on it is the best overall explanation I’ve seen.

[@KingTigerGuy]

It is nice to have someone go over the motion values fairly simply, with examples. The rest of this was known to me pretty well personally as it seems to all be lifted from DS3, even the area scaling seems like it was. Its just the motion values, which were limited to the weapon arts, parries and other special attacks that were mentioned but never really fully clear. If you enjoy going over this stuff, i would be very happy to see one going over how scaling more directly is affected by stats, mostly to see how big they differ, and to help other people understand soft cap breakpoints (like how dex and arcane have 3 big ones and such).

[@valeriozaru9862]

Rusty, I'm currently sick (too cool) but your videos always make me smile, thank you.

[@zykis999]

Man, your sense of humor is just on another level Got me cracked HARD on 1:02))) I have 1 question though: Ashes of War. Which of them are flat damage and which are motion values? Also, it would be nice to see some mathematically broken build in outro

[@SpaceBrotha]

This is an amazing video with the showcases and testing of how various modifiers affect enemy defenses. One thing I'd love for you to make a video about is player defenses and how armor and various talismans and consumables actually affect it. The reason why I'd love to see that vid, is because there's an unintuitive part about it: Multiplicative less damage taken and it's correlation with hits to death. So basically, I've heard a lot about how stacking defenses is not great because of diminishing returns, where you get smaller and smaller increases to damage negation for each additional item that boosts that damage negation. The problem is that if you look at it from the perspective of "how many of specific hits you can take until you die", it's not actually diminishing returns. Sure you get less absolute negation for each item, but the amount of damage you take does lower by the amount it says it will, and the amount of hits to kill you goes up by even more. Like a talisman that lowers phys damage taken by 20% will actually increase the amount of specific physical hits it takes to kill you by 25%, not 20%, because math is weird like that. A vid showcasing that, and possibly going over how the Defense -stat affects incoming damage, would be amazing.

[@wuy4]

Thanks for doing the legwork to figure this out and collate it into an understandable form Rusty :D

[@itsyourimp]

i always find it funky how games work on the inside, and this satisfies my curiosity immensely! funny enough i got the vibe that the poker was a bit off from the beginning, but i couldnt pinpoint as to why, well, now i have you to thank for the understanding

[@ardequerade3155]

this video is so cool, i love when people dive into game mechanics like this

[@brianhopple2630]

Glorious video. Thanks!!!

[@KoyFoster]

I really appreciate the part that break down area scaling. I long while a go, I wanted a mod that scales all areas to that of the end game. Glad to see that it's possible.

[@blakebeaupain]

Awesome video dude, thanks for the detailed info. I just wanted to say "param" is a software term that's short for "parameter" and rhymes with "a ram"

[@gravityhorse4781]

Great coverage, thanks!

[@-_-Matt-_-]

FINALLY. I’ve been waiting for someone, ANYONE, to speak about these exact problems. There’s so much that haven’t made sense to me, and I was never able to find anything about the damage system.

[@AverageDoctor345]

I love deep dives like this, numbers are so cool.

[@gaziasker7683]

this made me understand about the whole damage system in the game thanks

[@hw_yozoraVODS]

good researching dude! hats off

[@austinestep8461]

As someone getting into ER modding (I blame your bullet emitter video Rusty) this is just as helpful, thanks again. Also I was wondering if you’d be willing to do a video like your bullet emitter video on animation editing?

[@calvinzubaly3712]

I love the deep dive math stuff. It's genuinely so interesting to get into details about how the game functions!

[@Dracoboss98]

Thank you, this actually explains why lightning is so good in PvP, but basically deals the same or less than keen on higher NG cycles. The split damage calcs make sense against another player’s absorption, but I never really understood how flat damage calcs worked in PvE.

[@KeenEyeVP]

Dude, this is so good. Watched it back to back and I know I'll watch again.. 😂

[@Wickedalice]

Bro thanks for making this actually understandable and entertaining

[@Xornicus]

I love your scripting, definitely inspiration!

[@voidwilliakin923]

Actually useful video, thank you!

[@ianchandler3282]

Honestly I was always curious about the exact values that were being applied and why certain areas hit like a truck all of a sudden. Cool to have it explained in a concise way!

[@aelthirgray4435]

Dude, mad respect for the sheer amount of work you had to put into it.

[@thewafflecat4810]

We all needed this thx rusty

[@minespatch]

Thanks for posting Area scaling. Interesting stuff.

[@KONTAGION705]

wonderful info! side note question... what bit rate do you record at? this is SO clear

[@JERRYjealously]

I wasn't really that much invested in this video and needed something to make queue times in ffxiv not so boring. Was surprised at the funny moments and the very good script. This was a smooth video ma dude.

[@millerturq4418]

I didn’t know everything about the elemental damage scaling but that transition was hilarious