Arreat Summit Skill Statistics

[Jake the Quinceeater]

I was suprised to find out that the Arreat Summit lists the effects of skills at different levels with the assumption that you already have 1 point in each prerequisite. For example, the in-game damage blizzard at level 9 before any synergy bonus is 180-218 (here (http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/541/screenshot805x.jpg) is a screenshot), whilst here (http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/sorceress-cold.shtml#blizzard) it is listed as 207-250, 15% higher, as you would expect with 1 point in each prerequisite. As far as I can tell most skill effects are given in this way.

I was concerned that many people had misinterpreted the information at the Arreat Summit until I realised that several skill calculators did in fact work correctly, suggesting that people where already aware of this issue (though I couldn't find the information anywhere on this website and I apologise if this thread is unnecessary). My questions are:


Do you agree that the information listed is misleading?
Is it listed in this way deliberately?
Has anyone contacted the Arreat Summit about this, and, if so, what was the response?

[CCCenturion]

All information is misleading if you don't know how to interpret it correctly.

You could say that the information on the Arreat Summit is misleading because when you're playing Diablo, the damage you do with every attack is determined by complicated calculations with variables that include skill levels, synergies, base weapon damage, weapon damage modifiers, enemy defense or resistances, and on and on.

The equations that determine everything that happens in the game are complicated enough that there's no way to really know what's going on unless you look at all of the variables involved.

So in other words, the information listed isn't actually misleading; it's just out of context. If you want to know how much damage you're doing with a particular attack, you do have to know what the relevant equation is, and then dig through the Arreat Summit to find all the variables you need to plug in.


Here's just one example:

Final Damage = (((Normal Damagex 1.5) (only if ethereal)x (1 + Enhanced Damage on Weapon / 100) + Bonuses to Minimum/Maximum Damage)x (1 + Strength or Dexterity / 100 + Off-Weapon Enhanced Damage / 100 + Skill Damage Bonus % / 100) + Elemental Damage)x (1 - Skill Damage Penalty / 100)x 2 (only if a critical or deadly strike is scored)

That's the equation the game uses to calculate the damage from any weapon attack. Obviously, if you just look at the weapon damage on Arreat Summit, you still won't have any idea what the actual damage will be when you're using that weapon. You'd have to start with this equation, enter in the weapon damage, add up all the mods you have from your gear, figure out all the bonuses you're getting from skills (including auras) and their synergies, factor in your character's strength and dexterity, and then figure out what the damage is when you attack.

[Jake the Quinceeater]

To clarify: by "misleading" I don't mean "complicated" or "difficult to interpret/apply"; I mean that the information interpreted in the most obvious way is actually wrong.

Yes, some of the information on the Arreat Summit is complicated, but, as you say, you can work out what will happen in-game if you know everything that is involved. In this case, however, I think that if you tried to calculate your blizzard damage, for example, using the information at the Arreat Summit, you would actually get it wrong (have another look at the links I posted and try it). At best the information is ambiguous, since I can't find an explanation anywhere on the website that the listed statistics assume 1 point in each prerequisite.

Under "Blizzard" at the Arreat Summit:
Level: 9
Damage per Second: 207-250

From an up-to-date Diablo II screenshot:

Current Skill Level: 9 [item]
Cold Damage: 180-218


Doesn't anyone else think this is a mistake?

[lionheartthebrave]

Look at the skill calc http://diablo3.ingame.de/spiel/skills/calc/index.php?char=sor&lang=en

Here it says 206-250, as each of the synergies are also pre-reqs

180*1.15 = 207
218*1.15 = 250.7

So the AS assumes you have a point in each of the pre-reqs

For the blizzard granted by an item, there are no pre-reqs, and so no synergy bonus from them, and so you get 180-218

[Nimbostratus]

The problem with including the synergy bonuses in the listed value there is if somebody wants to calculate the damage with synergies- they'll end up with values a lot bigger than the actual numbers.

[In the name of Zod]

*deleted a convoluted explanation* by me. People need to know the base damage.

[krischan]

The point is minimizing complaints about wrong numbers. If the prereqs were not included, a lot of people with little knowledge about game mechanics would ask why their skills deal more damage. Those who know a bit about it are more likely to notice that 1 point synergies from prereqs are included and feel more clever about knowing, but not asking it, or if they don't notice it, for believing AS to be seemingly wrong :smug:

[Jake the Quinceeater]

This may well be why they wouldn't want to change the statistics (see below), but it doesn't mean it wouldn't be beneficial to the users of the website for them to change them; after all, the values are only really needed for calculations.

However, it seems the Arreat Summit is already aware of this issue.

From http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/faq/d2guide.shtml:
Problems with skill statistics
Diablo II 1.10 introduced synergies. Because of this, it's somewhat difficult to find the true "untainted" values for skills. Therefore the numbers shown in the guide might be off from what we show since we may not share the same synergy info (some list 0 synergies using test versions of the game).

Given that people agree with me that it would be better for them to show the base damage, I am now interested in the question: what can we do to improve the situation?

To address this it is first necessary to address the question: why doesn't the Arreat Summit change the statistics since they are already aware of the issue? There are a few possible answers I can think of:

They think that it is most useful for players to list the values as they are.
Correcting the statistics would increase the number of complaints about wrong numbers.
They are too lazy to correct them, perhaps because they can't think of an easy way to get hold of the values for base damage.

Given the discussion so far I think reason 1 is unlikely. Reason 2 was suggested by krischan, and is perhaps a contributing factor. But I think the quote above suggests that reason 3 is the most important factor.

If reason 3 is indeed the most important reason, then the answer to my original question, "what can we do to improve the situation?", is that we can make it easier for them to correct the statistics by giving them lists of values for base damage, or even lists which are correctly formatted for copying and pasting into the webpages, and if they are not persuaded we can suggest that they put a note which you would see before you could see the values which explains what the values are more clearly.

[stephan]

The real problem is that a table is one of the worst ways to show this kind of data. Some parts of the AS simply need to be reworked completely to be anywhere near useful and I'm not under the impression that talking about it here will change anything.

As a cube recipe and unique/set item data base the AS is quite useful though.

[In the name of Zod]

You can't beat indiabloii.de for calculating this stuff anyhoo. I agree with stephan about the uniques stuff only because I've got enough crapolla printed out about this game already. There is one other way and that is to do it yourself :) since we are talking about lazy.

[Jake the Quinceeater]

The real problem is that a table is one of the worst ways to show this kind of data. Some parts of the AS simply need to be reworked completely to be anywhere near useful and I'm not under the impression that talking about it here will change anything.

I suppose the argument that the Arreat Summit skill statistics are useless is a strong one, and it means that people are unlikely to use them for calculations anyway and therefore that getting them changed is not worth the effort. I think the strongest argument for this point of view are that statistics for levels beyond level 20 are not given at all, making them completely useless in most cases when people want to know the precise effects of their main skills.

Just to clarify, by "giving the Arreat Summit information" I meant via email (I agree that discussion here will probably not change anything).