Damage calculation

Damage in Guild Wars results from actions taken by attackers that subtract a portion of a defender's health. This definition includes many attacks or skills (including spells) but does not include health degeneration, life stealing, sacrifice, or health reduction caused by skills such as Infuse Health or Illusion of Weakness.

When an attacker attempts to damage a target, the following is factored in:
 * The damage type, such as Fire or Blunt. The amount of damage done may vary due to the defender's armor and resistances to that specific damage type.
 * The attacker's ability to inflict the damage.
 * The target's ability to resist this damage.
 * Bonuses on both sides. An attacker may have bonuses that augment the damage and the target may have bonuses that reduce the damage.

A Simplified Damage Calculation
''Note: For simplicity, on this page the term attack describes any attempt to damage an opponent. However, whenever the word "attack" is used in skill descriptions, it refers to the attack action.''

There are many different factors to consider while calculating damage. To avoid confusion, this section presents a simplified damage calculation which only takes into consideration the more common factors.

The Approximate Damage (ApproxD) depends on the Raw Damage (RD) and the Armor Effect (AE).
 * '''ApproxD = RD &times; AE;

For damage that ignore armor, AE is set to 1.

Raw Damage
Skill-based offense (like Shock) have a specific raw damage (RD) value indicated in the skill description.

Weapons attacks select RD each time uniformly from the damage range of the weapon. For weapons that have an attribute requirement on their damage range, there is actually another hidden range used for when the attacker does not meet the requirement (see here for details).

Effective Damage
The Effective Damage (ED) considers all the Damage Modifiers that were dropped when calculating the Approximate Damage. The ED depends on the Raw Damage (RD), various Damage Modifiers (D*), and the Armor Effect (AE).


 * ED = [([RD &times; DScale&times; AE ] + DShift) &times; DMult] + DNeg

Again, for attacks that ignore armor, AE is set to 1, essentially removing it from the equation.

Damage Cap and Redirection
Certain enchantments will restrict the maximum damage the target can receive, or redirect some of the damage away from the target, thus making the received damage less than the Effective Damage. Redirection is always applied before the cap.

Attribute Effect
Listed weapon damage is done to a target with 60 armor when the attribute in the rank of the tied attribute equals the attribute requirement of the weapon (assuming both target and damage dealer are level 20), with any extra points in the attribute contributing to extra dealt damage. Also, as previously stated every 8 ranks in a physical damage attribute doubles the net damage caused by a noncaster weapon tied to that attribute (swords, axes, bows, spears, scythes, daggers, and hammers). Therefore, a max-damage scythe (9-41) with a requirement of 8 (very rare) should deal approximatly 18 to 82 damage with a rank of 16 in the approate attribute (in this case scythe mastery). Due to diminishing returns this is not the case, while it will do more than 9 -41, it will not be dealing double damage. Diminishing returns affect weapon attacks when the attribute rank exceeds the weapon's requirement such that double damage is never achieved, but damage is slightly increased by each rank above the requirement. Due to attribute ranks above the required dealing extra damage, a lower requirement weapon will do more damage than a higher requirement weapon at the same attribute.

Illustrative Examples
"Due to attribute ranks above the required dealing extra damage, a lower requirement weapon will do more damage than a higher requirement weapon at the same attribute"

This isn't true. As long as you meet the weapon requirement, the damage is the same at the same attribute level.

Related Articles

 * Spike damage
 * Damage over time
 * Point Blank Area of Effect
 * Area of Effect

Original References
The present article is built on the results of the research laid out in the original unannotated version of the following article, with additional original research conducted by users of the GuildWiki.
 * SonOfRah's damage article