Damage Balance Analysis
Posted: November 25th, 2013, 7:35 pm
Preface:
- There was a lot of data entry involved so there's a reasonable chance some of the numbers are wrong, or even that formulas are wrong, so don't be afraid to call me out if something's off
- These are all raw numbers assuming a normal perfect hit - nothing except standard hero reduction, AoE's that diminish based on range assume its dead center, if its over time it assumes the full thing hits, etc.
- There's also some left out assumptions where damage increases over time, for example Incinerate calculates only its first cast even though its damage goes up and mana cost goes down on consecutive hits
- I tried to stick with mostly instant or "guaranteed" damage, but there's a few exceptions I threw in just for comparison (example: frost spire)
- Ultimates are left out entirely
- My goal is not to homogenize all damage skills, that would be bland and completely disregard factors such as range (and lack of it and associated risks), chance of missing, the hero's other skills, side effects from hitting, etc.
- If you have an observation that hasn't been said already, please don't be afraid to voice it. I might not have seen it or it might otherwise provide interesting insight. Similarly, if there's some additional data you're interested in seeing I'll consider providing it based on the time/difficulty to put it together.
This batch of charts represents rank 6 skills on a level 30 hero.
One number I use is something I'm calling a "Balance Ratio" for lack of a better term. It's quite simply just { Average Hero Health / Hero's Health }. This number is relevant because for equilibrium a skill's damage should be multiplied by this value. For instance, Average health is 1000, Caster has 800 (BR=1.25), Tank has 1250 (BR=0.8 ). Using a base damage of 100, and all other stats equal, the two heroes will kill each other at the exact same time if their personal version of the spell's damage is multiplied by the BR, so caster's would do 125 damage and Tank's would do 80 damage, killing each other off in 10 hits.
Alright, the charts: (Same as the other thread)
Single Target Damage = The total damage from a perfect hit from one cast of the spell
- Nice to see that single target effects are generally above AoE types.
Maximum damage per second {Damage / Cooldown} = Assumes recasting on cooldown
- Top of this list is pretty dominated by 8s cooldown spells
- Pheonix Strike and Incinerate are pretty close for the top AoE spells, Frost Spire is actually fairly low for DPS despite being the top damage per cast aoe's
Damage per mana {Damage / Mana Cost} = Damage done per point of mana spent
- Best and worst spell here on the same hero
- Again, generally single target skills on top, partly due to better damage
Time to regenerate mana { Mana cost / Mana regeneration }
- Mana regen is actually pretty similar across all heroes (1.6 to 2.1 mana/s), so this is pretty much just a reflection of mana costs
Scaling per cast { Rank 6 Damage / Rank 1 Damage } = Reflects how much investing skill points benefits burst
Scaling per cast { Rank 6 DPS / Rank 1 DPS } = Reflects how much investing skill points benefits potential dps
- DPS chart is almost identical to the damage chart, unsurprisingly the only differences are the few spells with cooldowns that change
Glass cannon { Damage / Hero's Health } = How much of their own life a hero would take by nuking themself
- Doesn't really say much, just a vaguely interesting number
Factored cast { Damage / Balance Ratio } = Scales the actual damage to try to derive what the equilibrium base damage would be
- No cooldowns factored in here, so don't read too much into it
- Soulstrike pulls even further ahead!
- In general, its all the melee single target fatty attacks on top
- Average total health is ~1300, so ~325 damage would be 25% of health per hit
Factored DPS { DPS / Balance Ratio } = Scales the DPS to try to derive what the equilibrium base DPS would be
- Probably the most overall significant number for pure balancing
- Fatty nukes clearly reign here
- Higher numbers here should represent the winner of a sustained fight if this is all that's involved Ignore the Crimson Squall damage numbers, it adds in the 3 variants of his nuke as if they were 3 separate spells
Starting Stats {Starting Str + Agi + Int}
Growth {Str + Agi + Int Gain per level}
Burst Potential {Sum of Damage belonging to this hero} = This number's relatively flakey but it tries to represent getting all of a hero's damage spells off on a target back to back
- The top 5 can be pretty safely disregarded since they involve channeled or delayed spells, hence not that bursty
- IS could almost kill himself with one round of casts!
Factored Burst Potential {Burst Potential / Balance Ratio} = Tries to put tankiness relative to burst potential into some perspective
- Grav can really smash
- 'of Average Health' column is broken, its not important anyway
- 'Of self' column is broken, and I'm not sure what it means anyway since it factors in the hero's health twice (one in the ratio, then one for self targeting)
-- Actually, it comes out identical to the unfactored damage % of average health, so it doesn't mean anything!
DPS Potential {Sum of DPS belonging to this hero} = Similarly flakey to above, assumes being able to chain cast all the dps spells disregarding channeling and whatnot
Factored DPS Potential {DPS Potential / Balance Ratio}
- Probably the second most important number in all these charts (only second because its a bit unreliable)
- Heroes with higher numbers ought to win in even contests
This is really only the first step in a proper analysis, since an arguably bigger factor is comparing heroes with their different item builds. For today, however, this is all I'm going to be doing.
The excel sheet is attached, here's a brief explanation of it:
Sheet1: Has the basic stats to play with, messing with these numbers shouldn't break anything and will propagate throughout the spreadsheet
Sheet2: Raw hero data (leave alone)
Sheet3: Raw ability data (leave alone)
Sheet4: Something about healing that's outdated (this was originally the healing data excel file)
Sheet5: A lot of intermediate data (don't touch)
Sheet6: Some charts I was toying with until I realized they really didn't show anything
Sheet7: The results, you'll need to manually resort columns if you change anything
DarnYak
- There was a lot of data entry involved so there's a reasonable chance some of the numbers are wrong, or even that formulas are wrong, so don't be afraid to call me out if something's off
- These are all raw numbers assuming a normal perfect hit - nothing except standard hero reduction, AoE's that diminish based on range assume its dead center, if its over time it assumes the full thing hits, etc.
- There's also some left out assumptions where damage increases over time, for example Incinerate calculates only its first cast even though its damage goes up and mana cost goes down on consecutive hits
- I tried to stick with mostly instant or "guaranteed" damage, but there's a few exceptions I threw in just for comparison (example: frost spire)
- Ultimates are left out entirely
- My goal is not to homogenize all damage skills, that would be bland and completely disregard factors such as range (and lack of it and associated risks), chance of missing, the hero's other skills, side effects from hitting, etc.
- If you have an observation that hasn't been said already, please don't be afraid to voice it. I might not have seen it or it might otherwise provide interesting insight. Similarly, if there's some additional data you're interested in seeing I'll consider providing it based on the time/difficulty to put it together.
This batch of charts represents rank 6 skills on a level 30 hero.
One number I use is something I'm calling a "Balance Ratio" for lack of a better term. It's quite simply just { Average Hero Health / Hero's Health }. This number is relevant because for equilibrium a skill's damage should be multiplied by this value. For instance, Average health is 1000, Caster has 800 (BR=1.25), Tank has 1250 (BR=0.8 ). Using a base damage of 100, and all other stats equal, the two heroes will kill each other at the exact same time if their personal version of the spell's damage is multiplied by the BR, so caster's would do 125 damage and Tank's would do 80 damage, killing each other off in 10 hits.
Alright, the charts: (Same as the other thread)
Single Target Damage = The total damage from a perfect hit from one cast of the spell
- Nice to see that single target effects are generally above AoE types.
Maximum damage per second {Damage / Cooldown} = Assumes recasting on cooldown
- Top of this list is pretty dominated by 8s cooldown spells
- Pheonix Strike and Incinerate are pretty close for the top AoE spells, Frost Spire is actually fairly low for DPS despite being the top damage per cast aoe's
Damage per mana {Damage / Mana Cost} = Damage done per point of mana spent
- Best and worst spell here on the same hero
- Again, generally single target skills on top, partly due to better damage
Time to regenerate mana { Mana cost / Mana regeneration }
- Mana regen is actually pretty similar across all heroes (1.6 to 2.1 mana/s), so this is pretty much just a reflection of mana costs
Scaling per cast { Rank 6 Damage / Rank 1 Damage } = Reflects how much investing skill points benefits burst
Scaling per cast { Rank 6 DPS / Rank 1 DPS } = Reflects how much investing skill points benefits potential dps
- DPS chart is almost identical to the damage chart, unsurprisingly the only differences are the few spells with cooldowns that change
Glass cannon { Damage / Hero's Health } = How much of their own life a hero would take by nuking themself
- Doesn't really say much, just a vaguely interesting number
Factored cast { Damage / Balance Ratio } = Scales the actual damage to try to derive what the equilibrium base damage would be
- No cooldowns factored in here, so don't read too much into it
- Soulstrike pulls even further ahead!
- In general, its all the melee single target fatty attacks on top
- Average total health is ~1300, so ~325 damage would be 25% of health per hit
Factored DPS { DPS / Balance Ratio } = Scales the DPS to try to derive what the equilibrium base DPS would be
- Probably the most overall significant number for pure balancing
- Fatty nukes clearly reign here
- Higher numbers here should represent the winner of a sustained fight if this is all that's involved Ignore the Crimson Squall damage numbers, it adds in the 3 variants of his nuke as if they were 3 separate spells
Starting Stats {Starting Str + Agi + Int}
Growth {Str + Agi + Int Gain per level}
Burst Potential {Sum of Damage belonging to this hero} = This number's relatively flakey but it tries to represent getting all of a hero's damage spells off on a target back to back
- The top 5 can be pretty safely disregarded since they involve channeled or delayed spells, hence not that bursty
- IS could almost kill himself with one round of casts!
Factored Burst Potential {Burst Potential / Balance Ratio} = Tries to put tankiness relative to burst potential into some perspective
- Grav can really smash
- 'of Average Health' column is broken, its not important anyway
- 'Of self' column is broken, and I'm not sure what it means anyway since it factors in the hero's health twice (one in the ratio, then one for self targeting)
-- Actually, it comes out identical to the unfactored damage % of average health, so it doesn't mean anything!
DPS Potential {Sum of DPS belonging to this hero} = Similarly flakey to above, assumes being able to chain cast all the dps spells disregarding channeling and whatnot
Factored DPS Potential {DPS Potential / Balance Ratio}
- Probably the second most important number in all these charts (only second because its a bit unreliable)
- Heroes with higher numbers ought to win in even contests
This is really only the first step in a proper analysis, since an arguably bigger factor is comparing heroes with their different item builds. For today, however, this is all I'm going to be doing.
The excel sheet is attached, here's a brief explanation of it:
Sheet1: Has the basic stats to play with, messing with these numbers shouldn't break anything and will propagate throughout the spreadsheet
Sheet2: Raw hero data (leave alone)
Sheet3: Raw ability data (leave alone)
Sheet4: Something about healing that's outdated (this was originally the healing data excel file)
Sheet5: A lot of intermediate data (don't touch)
Sheet6: Some charts I was toying with until I realized they really didn't show anything
Sheet7: The results, you'll need to manually resort columns if you change anything
DarnYak