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  1. #1
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    Default Maximum Possible Damage

    So I was bored today and decided to try to do some calculations on the maximum possible damage one could deal in a single hit. So follow me on my journey to discover this interesting fact.

    The first question of course was what weapon should be used. Now spells were out of the question due to infinate damage potential due to spell efficiency giving a rather boring answer to this interesting question, as well as skills that give you a chance to instantly kill a monster. Now many people consider the Axe of the Minotaur Emperor to be the hardest hitting weapon, with 4d20+18 giving a max damage of 96. However, if you somehow got a wicked eternium longspear of devastation (the odds of that occuring are so low I'm not sure if ANYONE has ever gotten one), that would give you 9d12+13 damage for a max damage of 121. Still though, it definately appears that the axe needs a buff if there is a 1/infinity chance that another weapon can beat it in terms of damage . I'll keep the axe in the calculations to provide a point of reference to how much damage you could do without having to be incredibly lucky. Anyways, now some people may ask "well what about the missile weapons". The best combination is Thunderstroke with 20d4+8 for 88 damage combined with The Far Slayer with +18 dmg for 106 damage. Now lets start adding in various modifiers to determine which weapon wins in this three-way race to deal the most damage.

    The weapon affinity talents add +2 damage and the weapon master talents add +6 damage for both melee and ranged weapons, for a score of 129v104v114(longsword vs axe vs farslayer). The axe finally gets to catch up a bit with the basher line giving it +6 damage, but still very far behind at 129v110v114. The good shot line adds +6 to ranged, and the natural berserker talent adds +2 damage while berserking for a score off 131v112v122. Now onto the armor section. I was suprised to find that no type of armor adds any damage to either type of weapons, so the only item that adds any damage are rings. Rings of slaying can have a bonus of up to +12 for melee, and a constant +6 for ranged. This also allows us to become a natural berserker, adding +6 damage to both weapons (161v142v140). For the weapon skills the longspear got +12 damage at grand mastery rank, the axe got +30, and the bow got +22, leading to a score of 173v172v162. It appears that the axe is going to barely edged out in terms of damage by the longspear by one point. But appearances can be deceiving. Now to consider the character attributes.

    With strength melee weapons get +2 damage per 2 points of strength, leading to a maximum of +43 damage at 99 strength. Two-handed weapons, or rather weapons that are in the two-handed weapon class, get their weapon skill x 2 extra damage if you have a lot of strength, adding an extra +30 to the axe, for a score of 216v245v162. Dexterity gives +1 damage per 4 points, giving +24 to the ranged weapons, and perception also gives +1 damage per 4 points, adding up to a neat little +48 for the farslayer. This comes out to 216v245v210. And to think that I almost didn't consider the axe because of a measly 25 damage difference in the initial values.

    The last thing that I considered before the damage multipliers(and there are a lot of those) were class powers and berserking. The barbarian level 40 class power adds 10 damage while true berserking, and one of the archer intrinsics is that archery gives you more +dmg, with an archery skill of 100 giving you 10 damage. Berserking gives you a base +3 damage (and a damage multiplier). All this adds up to a final base damage of 229 for the longspear, 258 for the axe, and 213 for the bow. But as someone wise once said "but wait, there's more". Time for the multipliers.

    Multipliers are a dangerous thing, that can make even the mightiest kings weep. They say you can go mad if you consider how large of numbers they can create. Let us rush through these multipliers, for the sake of your sanity. Missiles can critically hit for x5 damage, while melee crits are always x2 damage. The barbarian lv 18 class power tremendous blow deals x3 damage. Blessed weapons vs demons deal x1.5 damage. Backstabs deal x2 damage. Berserking deals x1.44 damage with tactics and the dragon star sign. Rooms that are filled with deadly and chilling silence have x10 melee damage.

    Now that we're done with all those dangerous multiplier nonsense, lets consider the results. For the ranged weapons, these multipliers creates a respectable modifier of x21.6 for ranged weapons. For the melee weapons there was a truly astonishing modifier of x259.2. Let me repeat that again. With the best possible situational modifiers, you can create a x259.2 damage modifier. Well, I guess that solves the debate of whether ranged or melee weapons are better.

    Now its time to reveal the answer that we've been creating all this time, as to the maximum possible damage dealt. Ranged weapons are able to deal 213x21.6 damage for a nice round 4600 damage in a single hit. And for melee weapons, with a blessed wicked eternium longspear of devastation in a room filled with deadly and chilling silence, with all the other prerequisites listed above, you are able to deal a total of 229x259.2 damge, or 59356 damage in a single hit. And with the Axe of the Minotaur Emperor, which has a base damage of 258 in this situation and a multiplier of 259.2, you are able to deal 66873 damage in a single hit.

    Well, it was a fun journey finding the maximum possible damage. Let me know if I missed anything.

  2. #2
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    I have no idea if the calculations and stuff are all correct, but one important thing to consider is how many bits are used to store damage. I'm not sure if there's a way to know for sure without testing it. If it's 16 bits, then 66873 would actually overflow back to 1338 damage. If it's 32 or more bits, then its fine.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wizardme View Post
    Let me know if I missed anything.
    Now spells were out of the question due to infinate damage potential due to spell efficiency
    Spell efficiency is capped at 2x Le for a theoretical maximum of +198. The best bet for damage from a single cast would be Lightning Bolt. My rough calculation is 11 (bounces) x 4 (lightning-vulnerable monster) x 82 x 6 (dice damage) = 21648.

    Now many people consider the Axe of the Minotaur Emperor to be the hardest hitting weapon, with 4d20+18 giving a max damage of 96.
    Wicked eternium two-handed sword of devastation is better damage (even accounting for the heavy weapon bonus). Plus there's the possibility of increasing non-artifact weapon damage with scrolls of increase melee damage (which somewhat ruins the party, as melee weapons might have limitless damage potential).

    The best combination is Thunderstroke with 20d4+8 for 88 damage combined with The Far Slayer with +18 dmg for 106 damage.
    Sun's Messenger + True Aim might be better. Crits from slaying missiles have one higher multiplier (no idea if this would apply to missiles fired from Sun's Messenger, however).

    The barbarian lv 18 class power tremendous blow deals x3 damage.
    Also worth considering would be thief/assassin backstabbing powers with daggers. Supposedly this gives a backstab multiplier of x7 (which would edge out the 2 x 3 from backstab + tremendous blow). The backstab could be delivered with a paired Needle or Sting.

    Berserking deals x1.44 damage with tactics and the dragon star sign.
    Not how the tactics bonus works. The multiplier is effectively only applied to the +damage (for a weapon with total damage XdY+Z in normal tactics, the +damage is Z [or Z+6 if true berserking or Z + 16 if true berserking as level 40+ barbarian]). The Dragon bonus is applied to the bonus damage from tactics (e.g. a weapon that does 1d1+100 damage in normal would get +44 extra damage in berserk w/o Dragon, and something like +48 extra damage with). Also note that the tactics bonuses for missile combat are worse than for melee.

    Quote Originally Posted by hapro View Post
    I have no idea if the calculations and stuff are all correct, but one important thing to consider is how many bits are used to store damage. I'm not sure if there's a way to know for sure without testing it. If it's 16 bits, then 66873 would actually overflow back to 1338 damage. If it's 32 or more bits, then its fine.
    It's more than 16 bits. I was able to do over a million damage with the help of some memory editing.



    EDIT: Staff of undead slaying might be worth looking into, as it can get another x2 damage against undead, and it can be generated with affixes.
    Last edited by Grond; 07-05-2018 at 09:05 AM.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grond View Post
    Staff of undead slaying might be worth looking into, as it can get another x2 damage against undead, and it can be generated with affixes.
    Didn't know about this item yet. Can you have it generated as 'of the sun' for a 4x modifier against undead, 6x blessed?

    If that is possible, it might be one of the weapons with the highest damage potentials. Combine with a critical tremendous blow that also counts as a backstab.. (yes, a tremendous blow can count as a backstab; my personal damage record was one-shot killing Kherab with a tremendous blow backstab with the AotME).*

    IIRC there used to be a bug with phase daggers, where PV was substracted in a counterintuitive way.. you could have bonus damage on high PV monsters. However I don't remember how it works exactly, and not sure if it has been fixed or not.


    * insert "I backstab him with a ballista" meme here
    Last edited by grobblewobble; 07-05-2018 at 11:57 AM.
    You steal a scroll labelled HITME. The orc hits you.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by grobblewobble View Post
    Didn't know about this item yet. Can you have it generated as 'of the sun' for a 4x modifier against undead, 6x blessed?

    If that is possible, it might be one of the weapons with the highest damage potentials.
    Good idea! I didn't think of that suffix. It is possible to generate a 'staff of undead slaying and the sun', and the multipliers do stack with each other.

    I think the best prefix would be hateful (2d6 damage in berserk). I managed to get a staff up to 1d10+20 damage with scrolls. +damage ends up being 20 (weapon) + 43 (strength) + 18 (true berserk + barbarian + natural berserker) + 2 (staff affinity) + 10 (staff skill) + 6 (melee weapon master) + 24 (2x ring of slaying) = 123. 100 Tactics and berserk takes this up to 177, and Dragon takes it up to 182. Add in the die rolls and berserk bonus and you get 182 + 10 + 12 + 3 = 207. Multiplier ends up being 1.5 (blessed vs undead) x 2 (staff active effect) x 2 (of the sun effect) x 3 (tremendous blow) x 2 (backstab) x 2 (crit) x 10 (chilling silence) = 720. Total damage 207 x 720 = 149040. EDIT: It seems like it's not possible to backstab undead, so only 74520 damage.

    IIRC there used to be a bug with phase daggers, where PV was substracted in a counterintuitive way.. you could have bonus damage on high PV monsters. However I don't remember how it works exactly, and not sure if it has been fixed or not.
    This was fixed. In the past it added PV to damage instead of just ignoring PV, which resulted in lots of extra damage when damage multipliers were involved.
    Last edited by Grond; 07-05-2018 at 08:32 PM.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grond View Post
    It seems like it's not possible to backstab undead, so only 74520 damage.
    Too bad, but at least it means that it's safe to rule out the "extra deadly" assassin stabs for this calculation.

    Of course this is pure theory, you'd have to be mad to melee a ghoul in true berserk mode in a chilling silence room. But I'd love to see a real staff of undead slaying and the sun in action.
    You steal a scroll labelled HITME. The orc hits you.

  7. #7
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    Now what about wand of far slaying? Since the bonus PP you can get from power wishes/mushrooms/mana orb is capped, there is actually a maximum. With a salamander mist elf mindcrafter wearing elven chain mail of power, I was able to get a 17263 PP total. Wand of far slaying range would be 30 (base) + 50 (level) + 17263*4 (blessed PP range bonus) = 69132. A self-damaging zap in a hallway gets one hit per 2 range, so the maximum damage would be 34566 * 6 = 207396.

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