I've been trying to figure this out for a while now, and unfortunately all of the advice out there focuses on newbies and early-game, so there's something I'm missing.
I've watched YouTube videos and joined raids so I've seen high-level player damage numbers. I know most late-game players deal in the range of 5000-7000 damage per hit in veteran dungeons with the occasional 30-35k crit, and some players get up to 80k crits with certain skills. Meanwhile in a veteran dungeon I hit in the 1000-2000 damage range and crit for 5000. I can't figure out how to overcome this damage hurdle.
When I've tried Googling this, reading the forums, reading Reddit posts, watching YouTube videos, and asking in-game I always get one of three answers:
- Rank up your skills (I'm already rank 1 or dan in all relevant combat skills, masteries, and unrelated skills which grant the appropriate stat buff)
- Improve your stats (I have over 1000 in every stat except luck)
- Enchant your gear (I have a handful of enchants but could admittedly improve in this regard, but I can show the math that this isn't my issue)
Here's an example damage calculation for Smash:
- Start with a fully upgraded r6 Dustin Silver Knight Sword: 34-100 damage. With 80% balance from 1000+ DEX, I average 86.8 damage
- I have 974 STR. At one max damage every 2.5 STR and one min damage every 3 STR, that adds 324.67 - 389.6
- My enchants currently grant +18 max damage
- I have a +13 max damage totem
- Rank 1 Sword Mastery adds 10 - 20 damage
- Rank 1 Combat Mastery adds 14 - 24 damage
- Using "The Guardian of the Gate" title and "Professor J" second title gives +10 and +20 max damage, respectively
- So far that totals 382.67 - 594.6
- I'm currently doing the Grandmaster quests, so I can't add in the +30 damage for Grandmaster, but 30 isn't much compared to my current
- With 80% balance, that's a net average damage of 552
- Now I use Dan 2 Smash. This skill has a 580% multiplier, plus another 1.2x multiplier for using a Two-Handed weapon
- 552 * 5.8 * 1.2 = 3842 damage per hit
- 30% of the time I get a critical hit for +150% + 42% (r6) damage
- 4085 * 2.92 = 11219 critical hit
- I assume veteran dungeon monsters (e.g. Rabbie skeletons) possess something like 200 defense and 50 protection, because in practice I see half these numbers
I then hop over to YouTube and watch someone perform a Smash, get a critical hit, and deal 37000 damage! Even if I added 100 damage with enchants (which would cost several hundred mil) I'd only add 700 damage after multipliers (2100 on crits) -- this doesn't nearly explain the 30000 gap in damage between myself and high levels.
So what am I missing? There must be some multipliers I'm not taking advantage of. Some trick to double your damage that no one seems to discuss on the forums since they're overly concerned with advising newbies to rank their skills and buy enchants.
I assume some of the difference in damage comes from defense shearing (Bone Dragon, Scooter Imp, Piercing, etc) but if I could remove 100% of the enemy's defense and protection I'd STILL be doing only 1/3rd of the damage I see people do online.
I also assume some of the difference comes from buffs. Battlefield Overture can add 30% or so, Death Mark adds another 20% or so, but I don't know which other skills I should be looking into?
I also think Techniques may have something to do with it. I haven't done G22 yet (I spend a lot of time grinding skills and playing with friends instead of focusing the story) so I don't know what powers these offer yet.
But 30% here or 20% there doesn't add up to the 200-400% bonus damage I need to keep pace with end-game. There's SOMETHING I'm missing.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<sniP>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Cautious Hero. Yes, the «clear-time» might not be as fast as it would be if I'd just wrecklessly charge into the middle, but, why would I want to do that, when I can «show-case» to everyone what «old-school tactics/strategy» was all about ? We already see plenty of everyone rushing to charge in and one-shot AoE-OHKO everything these days anyway. Time to re-live a few memories of when you actually had to think to survive and yet still be able to clear the mission before the time ran out. Does this all sound satisfactory to you ?
I'm wondering what is the endgame content of this game.
The game itself seems so nice, full of possibilities, but after you managed to rank up all the skills, what do you have to do? I see everyone just do fashionogi so it's hard to play with a guild.
So what can you do in endgame?