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    Bloodborne

    Game » consists of 5 releases. Released Mar 24, 2015

    An action role playing game by FromSoftware, marking the studio's debut on the PlayStation 4. It shares creative roots, as well as gameplay elements, with the Souls series.

    (Bloodborne) How does the damage stat work exactly?

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    Humanity

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    (I added the title of the game in case this doesn't end up in the Bloodborne forum)

    So while messing around recently I was wondering which other weapon I want to +10 in the game. I've been using skill based weapons all the time but I've played for so long now that I can start using strength ones as well.

    Always liked the axe, but Ludwigs seems to have better scaling and damage rating. Ok so let's take them out for a spin.

    My Ludwig is a +8 while the axe is a +7. Under my stats screen there is about a 100 damage difference between the two. Yet when I tested them out in theory both weapons dealt pretty much the same amount of damage, in same cases the "weaker" axe actually appearing stronger than the Ludwig Holy Blade. The only time Ludwig actually did more damage was in two handed single swing mode - literally in every other instance it was basically the same.

    So what does that stat actually mean? Does it only refer to two handing? Because both weapons did about the same damage in charged attacks with the axe actually doing more.

    It's even weirder since the axe has poor scaling and my STR isn't even that high while Ludwigs scales much higher with all my other stats.

    What am I not getting?

    Here is a video I put together in Sony's video editor thing, nothing fancy, but kinda shows what I mean.

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    TheBlue

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    To put it simply, every attack from every weapon has a different multiplier. The axe has a different multiplier for a regular R1, a charged R1, a dashing R1, a backstep R1, etc. Keep in mind that the charged R2 on the 2-handed axe is actually hitting twice as well. A regular R1 from the un-transformed ludwig's blade has a multiplier of 0.7 while the axe's basic R1 has a multiplier of 1. So obviously, only using the basic R1, the axe will win every time.

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    Humanity

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    @theblue: so what is the damage output in your stats actually referring to? Because if there are hidden multipliers then that number seems completely meaningless and actually misleading in way.

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    militantfreudian

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    #4  Edited By militantfreudian

    It's my understanding that every single attack animation has a different damage multiplier. For example, if the first R1 attack of the Axe had a 1.1x damage multiplier and the attack rating (from the stats menu) was 400, then an enemy with zero physical resistance should take 440 damage to their HP. According to the fextralife wiki, the charged attack of Ludwig's Blade has a 3.05x damage multiplier, while the Axe's has 2.28x and 1.21x respectively. On the Axe's charged attack, you didn't do 713 damage; both the first and second hits are aggregated, so you only did 459 damage in total. Also, bear in mind that Ludwig's charged attack does thrust damage, while the Axe's does... actually I don't know. In previous Souls games, there was slash damage, and I'm not sure if "physical" attack is its substitute. Anyway, my point is that each enemy has separate resistances for each type of damage.

    Edit: I guess I should've mentioned that the damage multipliers listed on the wiki pages are different from the ones in the game's official guide, at least at the time of writing.

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    TheBlue

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    #5  Edited By TheBlue

    @humanity: The number it's pulling from is your weapon atk stat. So your axe has an atk of 257, which is the total atk with scaling applied. The game uses that number and multiplies it by the hidden attack modifier and that is what determines how much damage the enemies takes before factoring in their defense.

    In a way it is a little misleading that there are hidden multipliers for each attack, but that's just how the game is designed. If every weapon just had flat attack power there would be no need for any sort of variation in moveset and everyone would just use the same weapon.

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    militantfreudian

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    #6  Edited By militantfreudian

    @humanitysaid:

    @theblue: so what is the damage output in your stats actually referring to? Because if there are hidden multipliers then that number seems completely meaningless and actually misleading in way.

    Yeah, pretty much (not meaningless, but potentially misleading). If I remember correctly, in LOLS, Vinny ditched his halberd for the seemingly more powerful Man-Serpant Greatsword, when in fact the Black Knight Halberd had unusually high damage multipliers, and possibly higher damage output.

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    SomeguyJohnson

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    The damage output in the stats is the baseline damage for that weapon after being modified by your stats. It is in fact super misleading if you use it for anything other than a guideline. I was using the same weapons you were, axe and ludwig's, and I noticed the same thing about the damage. Over time though, going through a level or chalice dungeon, the ludwig's blade outperformed the axe exactly like it's higher damage number implies. They tend to balance the multipliers of the whole attack spectrum pretty well so if you're using your combos the weapon with the higher damage number tends to perform better. You can absolutely make an axe do a better job by paying attention to the damage outputs of certain attacks and using those more though and thrust damage seems to be so much more useful in this game that blunt or just "physical" that the ludwig's definitely has an edge. That axe charged r2 is a beast though.

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    Humanity

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    #8  Edited By Humanity

    Then yah that kind of sucks because I always just based my weapon choice on that stat. There seem to be a ton of hidden things that amplify damage that the game isn't too clear on, like in the video alone I did two different amounts of damage with the same attack based on my position to the enemy.

    It really does seem like even with multipliers the damage shouldn't be SO similar when the stats on the weapons are so wildly different. It makes scaling seem irrelevant to a large degree.

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