Weapons

Weapon Types

Calculating Weapon DPS

Baseline DPS and Level Scaling

All weapons start with the same baseline DPS, scaled by player level, before making adjustments based on attributes of each weapon type. For a common MMO DPS power curve, we'll use:

• 2.5 DPS as the baseline DPS for ALL weapons
• 1.05 as a Scaling Factor (5% increase per level)

Weapon DPS Multipliers

Quality Multiplier

Players typically earn higher quality weapons through increasingly difficult fights. The greater the quality, the higher the damage. The weapon quality multiplier is chosen based on its quality tier: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic (see reference below).

Handedness Multiplier

If a weapon is two handed, like a Greatsword or Warhammer, increase the damage output by 1.3×, offsetting the additional swing time that larger weapons require. A one handed weapon is default, a 1.0× multiplier, no adjustment.

Speed

Weapon speed, also known as the attack interval, is how many seconds between each swing. Multiplying your Weapon DPS (damage per second) by speed (swing interval in seconds) you determine your average swing damage.

Variance

Variance introduces an RNG element into each swing. It is a percentage of adjustment in the positive and negative from the average swing damage which establishes a min and max damage. That variance is also indicative of the size of the weapon. Small weapons have very low variance, usually doing a consistent amount of damage. Larger weapons, like a sword or an axe, have greater variance, the damage is not always consistent and can be "spiky".

Dual Wielding

Dual Wielding is technically a pre-fight condition, but the adjustment for dual wielding only occurs in active combat after the weapon's swing damage is calculated. Swing damage is reduced by 50% for an offhand swing penalty. See how it's applied in White Damage.

Weapon Calculation Summary

White Damage

Now that we have a complete weapon profile scaled to the player's level and adjusted by type and quality, we can apply this in an active combat calculation. The final weapon damage done by each swing is referred to as white damage.

White Damage Attack Roll Table

The first step in determining the swing outcome is essentially a 100-sided dice roll. The ranges are variable based on position, player and boss stats, and level difference as follows:

¹ Glancing blows apply to melee auto-attacks only. Ranged physical attacks (bow, crossbow) do not glance. Spell damage has its own friction mechanic (spell resist) handled separately.

White Damage Attack Sample Reference

Level 60 Dungeon Ready Tank with a Dungeon Ready (15%) Shield fighting a Level +3 Boss

White Damage Calculation Sequence

If the roll succeeds with a Glance, Crit, or Standard strike, we move forward to the damage calculation sequence.

White Damage Example Calculation

Yellow Damage

The Tank/DPS players also actively spam buttons to trigger abilities, typically several on a rotation. We'll call this active ability throughput yellow damage. Because these are "manual" actions, we'll rely on the Gambit system to define the conditions of triggering the ability, most commonly the GCD:

Rather than track and calculate hundreds of different abilities and stats, we'll apply throughput abstraction to account for yellow damage via a rotation modifier, a single value representing how much ability damage a class generates relative to a standard main-hand swing.

See Ability Damage Rotation Modifier.

Key differences from white damage:

• Abilities only fire from the main hand — no offhand contribution
• The attack table has no Glancing Blow — abilities either land or they don't, similar to Spells (remember that Spells are also a type of yellow damage)
• Abilities fire on the GCD timer (1.5s base), not the weapon speed timer
• White and yellow timers are completely independent — abilities never delay auto-attacks

Yellow Damage Attack Table

Yellow Damage Attack Sample Reference

Level 60 Dungeon Ready Tank with a Dungeon Ready (15%) Shield fighting a Level +3 Boss

Yellow Damage Example Calculation

White and Yellow Damage Intervals

White and yellow damage run on completely independent timers. Neither interrupts nor delays the other:

• White damage fires automatically when the weapon speed timer reaches zero (every 2.16s at 90% Tempo). It cannot be stopped by player actions.
• Yellow damage fires when the GCD timer reaches zero (every 1.35s at 90% Tempo). The player chooses which ability to use, but in our abstraction the Rotation Modifier handles this automatically.

At any given moment in a fight both timers are counting down simultaneously, firing whenever they expire. A busy second might see a white swing at t=0.5s and an ability at t=0.8s — these are completely independent events.