Runes of Magic US / AU

Magical Damage is better. Always go for this above everything else. Best staff in the game is Puppet Queen now and with T10 +16 you can get 8K magical damage.

Well this has been an ongoing question for a long time but one of my guildies tested this out and spent a ton of gold and diamonds to do so. Magic damage is almost always going to be better then magic attack unless u dont cross the soft cap for magic attack. Basically saying if u dont have enough magic attack to do enough damage, having more magic damage wont matter. His test was to see if a m/r would do more damage then a m/w since the m/r can have 2 weapons tier to gain more mdam but the m/w has beserk and increase his magic attack by i think 36% or somthing close to that. the weapons he tiered were a puppet queen t10 and a GC hard mode dagger and one hand wand t10. The m/r had about 600 more mdam but a lot less magic attack. He tested this out for a few GC hard runs and found that the m/w did about 25-35% more damage during boss fights since he was breaking the magic attack barrier and this would be magnified in SC. So it all depends if ur breaking the magic attack soft cap which is in the neighborhood of around 75-85k which i think he gets up to about 90-100k ro some where close. Oh and he also quite frequently out dpses most of the party other then a few OP people.

You can stat mattk. You can't stat Mdam. Therefore you always want to take every chance you get to increase mdam.

Mattk is very simple: if you have less than the target has mdef you see a fairly significant redunction in damage. If you have more mattk than the target has mdef, then any more mattk is going to hit diminishing returns in damage output.

And... again, you can stat Mattk. So do that if you need it.

Utterly delicious that after years, people are still asking this question.

qft Suz.

Why is everyone in US forum always talking about that it is important to hit the here so called "softcap" ?

Actually when you break this "softcap" (where I guess you simply mean the defense of enemy), the only thing which happens is that the formula of the factor changes which is multiplied with the maximum possible damage.

More Attack is always better, no matter what happens, just the increase gets lower and lower.

The only real cap you need to break is 1/5 of enemy defense, cause if you are below, you do minimum damage (10% of maximum damage)

So factor is basicly:

0,1 if attack < 0,2*def
0,5*attack/def if 0,2*def < attack < def
1-0,5*def/attack if attack > def

So nothing really special happens at this "softcap". You will only notice that more attack is getting quite useless, when you are FAR above the def of enemy, but you will never have this situation on endgame instances

Quoted from "andreasels;474158"

Why is everyone in US forum always talking about that it is important to hit the here so called "softcap" ?

Actually when you break this "softcap" (where I guess you simply mean the defense of enemy), the only thing which happens is that the formula of the factor changes which is multiplied with the maximum possible damage.

More Attack is always better, no matter what happens, just the increase gets lower and lower.

The only real cap you need to break is 1/5 of enemy defense, cause if you are below, you do minimum damage (10% of maximum damage)

So factor is basicly:

0,1 if attack < 0,2*def
0,5*attack/def if 0,2*def < attack < def
1-0,5*def/attack if attack > def

So nothing really special happens at this "softcap". You will only notice that more attack is getting quite useless, when you are FAR above the def of enemy, but you will never have this situation on endgame instances

When we talk about the "soft-cap" we're not talking about the equation change point. We're talking about the point at which more mAtk gives less additional damage than more mDam. That's why it's a soft-cap. By contrast, a "hard-cap" would be a point at which more mAtk gives zero additional damage.

To illustrate: Say you have two bonuses, +20% mDam and +20% mAtk, which are mutually exclusive. For the sake of simplicity in the illustration, we'll disregard sDam. We'll use the [Flame] skill and assume a 60% Fire Mastery bonus and 15% Vahtos bonus. mDam = 5,000 and target's mDef = 10,000.

Basic formula sans sDam: 5,000 * 1.60 * 1.15 = 9200 base damage (before mAtk vs mDef).



Now, lets look at the mAtk vs mDam bonuses


The mathematical point at which they go from equal benefit to mDam winning out is when mAtk/mDef = 0.83333. If mAtk/mDef is less than that value, then a 20% bonus to either is the same. But if mAtk/mDef is greater than that value, the mDam bonus gives greater return. You'll note that the mAtk column still continues to grow, but at a lesser rate than the mDam column.

For the OP's question, it depends on the total mAtk and mDef. If total mAtk / total mDef <= 0.83... then either weapon is the same. But if mAtk /mDef > .83, then the weapon with greater mDam is going to be better.

Quoted from "midknight129;474228"

When we talk about the "soft-cap" we're not talking about the equation change point. We're talking about the point at which more mAtk gives less additional damage than more mDam. That's why it's a soft-cap. By contrast, a "hard-cap" would be a point at which more mAtk gives zero additional damage.

To illustrate: Say you have two bonuses, +20% mDam and +20% mAtk, which are mutually exclusive. For the sake of simplicity in the illustration, we'll disregard sDam. We'll use the [Flame] skill and assume a 60% Fire Mastery bonus and 15% Vahtos bonus. mDam = 5,000 and target's mDef = 10,000.

Basic formula sans sDam: 5,000 * 1.60 * 1.15 = 9200 base damage (before mAtk vs mDef).

	Source code
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12	mAtk mFact totalDam 5k 0.500 4600 6k 0.600 5520 7k 0.700 6440 8k 0.800 7360 9k 0.900 8280 10k 1.000 9200 11k 1.091 10037 12k 1.167 10736 13k 1.231 11325 14k 1.286 11831 15k 1.333 12263

Now, lets look at the mAtk vs mDam bonuses

	Source code
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12	totalDam mDam_Bonus mAtk_Bonus 4600 5520 5520 5520 6624 6624 6440 7728 7728 7360 8832 8832 8280 9936 9881 9200 11040 10733 10037 12043 11430 10736 12880 12011 11325 13587 12502 11831 14194 12923 12263 14720 13288

The mathematical point at which they go from equal benefit to mDam winning out is when mAtk/mDef = 0.83333. If mAtk/mDef is less than that value, then a 20% bonus to either is the same. But if mAtk/mDef is greater than that value, the mDam bonus gives greater return. You'll note that the mAtk column still continues to grow, but at a lesser rate than the mDam column.

For the OP's question, it depends on the total mAtk and mDef. If total mAtk / total mDef <= 0.83... then either weapon is the same. But if mAtk /mDef > .83, then the weapon with greater mDam is going to be better.

Hmm, ok but since the foods also got fix bonus, it depends much on how high is your base damage and attack, which one is better, so you can't say in general what is the "soft cap" of a specific instance, but only what is the cap for the specific player in this instance.
Also it depends, if you got others with you in party, which put Sapping Arrow or so on the Boss.

I would just always use damage food, unless you got really low attack