NOTE: This is version 2 of my original thread [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/88968709/0/0]HERE[/url]. It contains a ton of new stuff, a spreadsheet (finally!), and EVEN MORE SCIENCE! Instead of editing my original post (and running into the character limit of these forums...which happened...) I decided to break it up into 2 separate threads. Check out how much super energy you gain using Bad JuJu & gear with increased super energy perks [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/89892175]HERE[/url] Hello again fellow Guardians! 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 linked to this thread 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% -1 Level: 68% -2 Levels: 55% -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% -1 Level: 32% -2 Levels: 45% -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, 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. - 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: N/A 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) [b]Swordbreaker:[/b] +399 damage when ~10 or more pellets land on target and is not affected by the 10% damage drop to majors [b]Light of the Abyss:[/b] +399 damage when all 6 beams land on target and is not affected by the 10% damage drop to majors [b]Song of Ir Yut:[/b] Every 3rd round on target deals bonus damage (108/108/373 for me) & IS affected by the 10% damage drop to majors. - The Nightfall burn modifier increase a particular weapon's elemental damage 3-fold - Weapons of Light increases all weapon damage by 35% - 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) [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2lenpw/oracle_disruptor_and_what_it_means/[/url] And here's another link by the same Reddit user with some additional VoG weapon data: [url]http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2lfu7v/math_atheons_epilogue_is_handsdown_the_best/[/url] Thanks again chrisw41g! Thank you all for reading! -CaptainKev91