Damage Or %weakness + Damage

[fireforge124]

I've seen lots of enchanted items in oblivion that do elemental damage. Some, like goldbrand, just do the damage directly. Some, such as chillrend, inflict weakness and damage. So, which is better?

 

How much extra damage is done when you give weakness? Like if some body is 25% weak to fire and i hit them with fire, exactly how is my damage modified?

[10111010]

I would go with weakness and damage.

[Lukeass]

You can't necessarily say that one will be better than the other, because you would have to calculate the actual damage being done by each in the end. For example, a staff which has 40 frost damage + 50% weakness to frost would do 60 damage total (40 x 1.5), but it would still be worse than a staff which did 100 frost damage. To figure out the actual damage being done with additional weakness, multiply the base damage by 1 plus the decimal form of the percentage weakness (meaning 50% would be .50), which would give an equation like so:

 

base damage x (1 + percentage) = total damage

 

Hopefully that's not too complicated. :)

[fireforge124]

You can't necessarily say that one will be better than the other, because you would have to calculate the actual damage being done by each in the end. For example, a staff which has 40 frost damage + 50% weakness to frost would do 60 damage total (40 x 1.5), but it would still be worse than a staff which did 100 frost damage. To figure out the actual damage being done with additional weakness, multiply the base damage by 1 plus the decimal form of the percentage weakness (meaning 50% would be .50), which would give an equation like so:

 

base damage x (1 + percentage) = total damage

 

Hopefully that's not too complicated. :)

 

I understand what you're saying. I thought that is the way it happened but i wasn't completely sure. But one could be better than the other this way. Say i had a weapon doing 10 fire damage and another doing 25% weakness to fire and 8 fire damage. Which would have the lowest cost to use? In an enchanted weapon, the more uses the better, so the one with the lower cost would be the better deal.

Another thing is that the more damage you do, the more a weakness effect pays off. If you do 10 damage, 25% weakness gets you 2-3 extra damage(depending on rounding up or down), but doing 40 damage, 25% gets you 10 extra damage.

I guess the only way to find out may be to make test items in-game and see which ends up the best.

[Vagrant0]

You also have to remember that certain types of things have various resistances. Using an add weakness negates some of that resistance, allowing more of the effect to go through. With a 15 fire damage enchantment on a weapon, hitting something with 100 resistance to fire, none of that enchantment would register. If it was a 10 fire damage with a 10% weakness, atleast some of that fire damage would be added.

[Rhydderch Hael]

I wonder what you get if you set up a weapon that inflicts Weakness to Damage to last a little bit longer than the duration of the Damage itself.

 

That way, with each successive attack, you actually begin stacking Weakness on top of the previous attack, the Damage inflicted getting a boost from the increased Weakness to Damage.

 

Say 15% Weakness to Fire for 3 seconds, 10 Fire Damage for 1 second. On a sword, keep hitting the target. Second attack stacks up to 30% weakness, third attack ramps it up to 45% before the first attack wears off and you get more or less 30%-60% (depending on how fast you are) weakness to fire on a weapon that is enchanted to deliver "only" 15%.

[Vagrant0]

I wonder what you get if you set up a weapon that inflicts Weakness to Damage to last a little bit longer than the duration of the Damage itself.

 

That way, with each successive attack, you actually begin stacking Weakness on top of the previous attack, the Damage inflicted getting a boost from the increased Weakness to Damage.

 

Say 15% Weakness to Fire for 3 seconds, 10 Fire Damage for 1 second. On a sword, keep hitting the target. Second attack stacks up to 30% weakness, third attack ramps it up to 45% before the first attack wears off and you get more or less 30%-60% (depending on how fast you are) weakness to fire on a weapon that is enchanted to deliver "only" 15%.

 

Unfortunately it doesn't work like this. Enchanted effects are treated with their own ID, every time that same ID gets reapplied to an actor the effect is renewed, replacing the old one. Kinda like how you can't keep casting a fortify 10 spell on yourself to max out a skill or stat. It would however stack with another ID using the same effect, having two 10 fortify spells for the same attribute would allow you to get 20 in that attribute. I suppose you could just make 4-5 copies of the same weapon with a 10 fire damage and 15% weakness for 20 seconds, then after every hit change out weapons. But that could get rather silly. Even rotating spells like that to stack with eachother gets kinda silly.

[Rhydderch Hael]

Well, then, at the very least you could cast a Weakness spell on the target, then use a Weakness + Damage weapon to ramp up the carnage a bit, spreading out the cost of the attack between Magicka and Enchantment capacity.