Thread: Tactical Damage mechanics in SoM

This reply is after F2P update

My very basic question for a long time, that I have not found addressed elsewhere (my apologies if it has been), is:

There are Legendary legacies for LMs that seem counter-intuitive &/or confusing. Especially *Tactical Skills Damage Resist* and *Fire Damage Skills Resist*...

Fire skills ARE tactical skills. Do these stack (doubtful), or does Fire not apply to the rest of the generally Tactical.

Similarly, does *Tactical Skills Direct Damage* NOT apply to Fire skills? What about Lightning skills? And now the Frost skill?

Originally Posted by EtherEel

This reply is after F2P update

My very basic question for a long time, that I have not found addressed elsewhere (my apologies if it has been), is:

There are Legendary legacies for LMs that seem counter-intuitive &/or confusing. Especially *Tactical Skills Damage Resist* and *Fire Damage Skills Resist*...

Fire skills ARE tactical skills. Do these stack (doubtful), or does Fire not apply to the rest of the generally Tactical.

I don't think it's possible to give a conclusive answer here. There is no way to check what the total resistance modifier is for a skill, apart from tabulating a statistically significant sample (tens of thousands of casts), which nobody is going to do. The bonuses are small enough (few percent) that anyone who thinks they can see it by eye is kidding themself.

My opinion (and it is only an opinion) is that the tactical fire skills are affected by both legacies. The reason I think that is that +Tactical damage and +Fire damage bonuses stack (Fire skills get the benefit of both). So I would guess that resist bonuses work the same way.

Originally Posted by EtherEel

Similarly, does *Tactical Skills Direct Damage* NOT apply to Fire skills? What about Lightning skills? And now the Frost skill?

Tactical Skills Direct Damage applies to any direct-damage skill which says "Resistance: Tactical" in the tooltip. This includes most fire skills. The only direct-damage skills which it does *not* affect are Sticky Gourd, Improved Sticky Gourd, and Storm-Lore - these have "Resistance: Physical" in the tooltip.

Damage bonuses are easier to sort out, since their effects are clearly visible in the damage values shown in the skill tooltip.

So, to go back to your first question, my opinion is:

1) Tactical Damage Skills Resist affects any damage skill with "Resistance: Tactical" in the tooltip.

2) Fire Damage Skills Resist affects any skill which does Fire damage.

3) Skills which meet both criteria (e.g. Burning Embers, Ents, Cracked Earth) should be affected by both legacies.

The real question is outin the moors a target has 3 LMs targetting him with maxed out resists reduction on their books, do those also stack to where his resist is at 1 (lowest you can get), or do they just go together and he gets the highest (if they arent all the same) reduced?

The regular stuff is easy enough to figure out, although the diminishing returns arent nearly as bas as were first thought in this thread. I assume people figured that out as well.

Originally Posted by rodarin

The real question is outin the moors a target has 3 LMs targetting him with maxed out resists reduction on their books, do those also stack to where his resist is at 1 (lowest you can get), or do they just go together and he gets the highest (if they arent all the same) reduced?

It seems obvious to me that any -resist buff is attached to the skills of the LM that uses it, only. Merely targeting something won't affect its resistance to anything.

In the case you cite, each LM gets the -resist buff from his own book. A fourth LM attacking the same target, but without any -resist legacy, would not have any reduction in resist chance.

I thought I'd post the tactical healing rank numbers for the skills while I've actually got the data around.

Tactical healing = (C * (THR) + D) * (1 + M), where M is the sum of the modifiers (outgoing healing, trait bonuses, legacy bonuses, etc.)

Code:

Skill	C	D	D/C
IF	1	5.6	5.6
BoH	15	23	1.53
StP	13	18	1.38
WotC	30	47	1.57

Couple things to note - the D/C ratio is where the entire add 1.5 to your tactical healing rank rule of thumb comes from. Inner Flame used to have a C of 0.5 (estimated - the old estimate was lousy, due to a lack of precision). Beacon of Hope and Wisdom of the Council are both accurate from level one on up, Share the Power and Inner Flame are not. (Share the Power appears to alternate between getting +12 and +13 on each level at the lower levels.)

Ok now that im tatally confused & tired of trying to figure out what im reading can someone tell me what im reading in simple terms?I know its something on the lines of L.M. legacys and damage after that when math got involved you lost me very fast.

I've just returned to the game after a two year absence, and all the changes have me pretty well confused. This thread was very helpful though in understanding some of the changes. Simply put, it looks like you'd want to rank up your Tactical Damage Ranking on your staff first, or at least more quickly, as it affects the damage output of all your tactical skills. Any legacies you can find that also add to your Tactical Offense Ranking are a bonus, as that increases all your tactical damage as well. As I'm sure you already know, most of your LM skills are tactical.