Clarification on damage multipliers

[Jaycub]

I read that critical damage, things like flanking, or mutated aggressor, infernal gift, slayer/choppa mechanic all count as multipliers on base damage.

So lets say you deal 100 damage as a marauder with an ability. Let's also say you are using 50% increased critical damage tactic, and pop mutated aggressor.

As far as I understand you would deal 100 damage times 2.25 (base crit + tactic giving you 200% damage, and mutated aggressor giving an additional 25%), which would be 225 damage. Meaning any damage percent multipliers after 200% increased damage are halved in effectiveness. So mutated aggressor and the like for mara would only give 12.5% increased damage overall on critical strikes?

Is there any abilities/tactics/mechanics in the game where this is not the case?

[Annaise16]

The percentage modifiers should be multiplicative.

For the example above,

total damage = damage x 2 x 1.25 = damage x 2.5

[Bozzax]

all bonuses to damage (base or critical) are additive.

all reduction to damage (base or critical) is multiplicative.

on Live ...

[Xvim]

I read that critical damage, things like flanking, or mutated aggressor, infernal gift, slayer/choppa mechanic all count as multipliers on base damage.

So lets say you deal 100 damage as a marauder with an ability. Let's also say you are using 50% increased critical damage tactic, and pop mutated aggressor.

As far as I understand you would deal 100 damage times 2.25 (base crit + tactic giving you 200% damage, and mutated aggressor giving an additional 25%), which would be 225 damage. Meaning any damage percent multipliers after 200% increased damage are halved in effectiveness. So mutated aggressor and the like for mara would only give 12.5% increased damage overall on critical strikes?

Is there any abilities/tactics/mechanics in the game where this is not the case?

Going with what I recall from live...damage multipliers are additive, however NOT critical damage. Critical effects are multiplied to damage at the end, however the critical damage bonuses are added. Using your example...

(100 damage * (1 base + 0.25 from Mutated Aggressor) * (1.5 base crit damage + 0.5 Growing Instability) = (125) * (2) = 250
Now if you add in Flanking....
(100 damage * (1 base + 0.25 from Mutated Aggressor + 0.15 from Flanking)) * (1.5 base crit damage + 0.5 Growing Instability) = (100 * (1 + 0.4)) * (2) = (140) * (2) = 280
Being additive means the bonuses only get counted once, however they are fully counted.

Were that multiplicative, it would be as follows:
(100 * (1.25 * 1.15)) * (1.5 * 1.5) = (100 * (1.4375)) * (2.25) = (143.75) * (2.25) = 323.4375 giving a bonus of 43.4375 extra damage.

all bonuses to damage (base or critical) are additive.

all reduction to damage (base or critical) is multiplicative.

on Live ...

I'm fairly certain that is also the case now as additive defensive bonuses means you would always take only 1 damage when hit during M4.

This is also the case with heal debuffs (incoming 50% + outgoing 50% = 25% goes through).
**Note, self inflicted heal debuffs (ie Divine Fury + Murderous Intent) are added to each other, though I am unsure if that counts as adding to the Outgoing stack or is its own stack.

[Annaise16]

all bonuses to damage (base or critical) are additive.

all reduction to damage (base or critical) is multiplicative.

on Live ...

Edit: I just read Xvim's post. I checked what he wrote against some video from the live game and it looks correct. So I've edited this post to reflect that.

The following video shows an example of what Xvim described between the 2:01-2:07 marks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LtX836lUVE

The vid is for a rr70 WE and was made in early 2010.

The WE is benefitting from 3 percentage modifiers - Flanking tactic (15%), Masterful Treachery tactic (15%), and crit (90%-110%).

If the modifiers are purely additive, the maximum final damage would be about (2.1 + 0.15 + 0.15) x initial damage = 2.4 x initial damage.

If the modifiers are a mix of additive and multiplicative, the maximum final damage = 2.1 x (1+ 0.15 + 0.15) x initial damage = 2.73 x initial damage

I'm going to compare 2 Agonising Wound hits. Both hits occur between the 2:01 and 2:07 marks in the vid.

The first AW is a non-crit and hits for 906 damage with 71 mitigated. The second AW crits for 1848 damage with 144 mitigated.

The first hit benefits from both Flanking and MT, so:

If the modifiers add

the unmodified hit would have done 906/1.3 = 697 damage.

if the unmodified hit was 697, then the crit should have had a maximum value of 697 x 2.4 = 1673. But the crit did 1848 damage, which is much more than 1673.

If we divide 1848 by 697, 1848/697 = 2.65, we can see that the multiplier would be 2.65, which is well above the maximum allowable value of 2.4.


If the modifiers multiply:

The unmodified hit would have been 906 / (1.3) = 697.

and the multiplier used to give the crit would be

1848/697 = 2.65.

The is in the range we would expect if the modifiers multiply: 2.65 = 2.04 x (1 + 0.15 + 0.15)


So to me, it looks like the percentage damage modifiers were both additive and multiplicative in the way that Xvim described in the previous post.


PS. The non-crit percentage modifiers and crit percentage modifier were applied at a different stages of the calculations in the live game. The non-crit modifiers (tactics like Flanking and Taste of Blood, abilities like MLutated Agressor, as well as the slayer/choppa mechanic) were applied to the damage remaining after mit by toughness was calculated. The crit damage bonus appeared to be applied somewhere after this.