Mechanics of Attack Skills

Overview

Discussion about the underlying mechanics of attack skills.

Introduction

This guide will mainly focus on discussing various aspects related to weapon skills.

The Costs, Stats, Attack distribution, Hidden Stats, and Damage Formula will be discussed.

Cost

In order to cast an attack skill, there are 2 costs involved.

First is the style cost. Styles are generated when landing basic attacks from the main character or from attacks done by followers. These styles are then accumulate in a queue on the left, to a max of 9 then the oldest one will be lost when a new style is generated.

The styles from the main character will be generated depending on the equipped weapon. In the example shown, the first attack will be a stab, then the second third and fourth will be hacks etc.
And in order to cast the listed skill, 3 Hacks will be consume from the queue.

Furthermore the equipped weapon needs to generate a style used by the skill otherwise you cannot cast the skill from the weapon. For example, you can cast spear, blade or sword skills from a spear blade or sword but you cannot cast a music skill from those weapons (not unless those weapons can generate a music style).

Next is the inhale/stance cost. Inhale and stance are represented by the 2 blue circles. Inhale is the inner one and stance the outer. Inhale will fill up first, then stance will fill up. Attack and defense skills consumes those and cannot be cast if the circles are not full.

Attack Stats

When an attacking skill is cast in combat, a window will pop up which shows the three attacking
categories and the three corresponding defenses.

Swift -> Evasion
Finesses -> Parry
Might -> Diversion

So long as the attacking type is greater than the defense, that attack will connect and deal a portion of the dmg.

However you will notice that there are actually 4 attacks; the first 3 attacks corresponds to those attacking types list above, the 4th attack is actually the sum of the three which will be discussed below.

Hovering over your weapon, and hold Alt key, you will see a section called skill efficiency.

The skill efficiency is different for each weapon, and it changes the actual accuracy of your skill when you cast it.

Attack Distribution

Take this skill for example.
The [Stats] section lists the values for the corresponding attack categories SWI – Swiftness, FIN – Finesse, MIG – Might. The diamonds/rhombus on the other hand correspond to what i dubbed as the attack distribution of the skill. Each of those diamonds represents 10% of skill power when the skill hits.

In our example we have 3 diamonds for SWI, this means that if SWI hits the opponent (SWI > EVA)
30% of the skill dmg will hit the opponent.

Suppose that our SWI and MIG connects, but our FIN missed (FIN < PAR). In the attack animation, we would see our first attack hits, our second missed, and our third and fourth attack hits the enemy.

Because the fourth attack is the sum of the first three, we would deal:
30%, 0% , 50%, 80% (30% + 0% + 50%)
If all of our attacks connect then it would be:
30%, 20%, 50%, 100%

Also, some skills can cause weak points and or acu points to appear if a certain percentage of the skill hits. The one shown in this example will cause a weak point to occur if at least 80% of the skill hits (not factoring the percentage from the fourth attack).

Furthermore those percentages also determine what type of wound gets generated.
10-50% causes light injury
60-90% causes heavy injury
and 100% causes critical injury
These will factor into the damage calculation that i will discuss later.

In conclusion, the attack distribution determines the power of the fourth attack. And dodging at least one attack will affect the final damage greatly since the fourth attack is the sum of the previous three (<100% avoids critical injury).

BodyPart Hit Ratio and Casting Speed

Another important yet hidden aspect of the game is the body part hit ratio of skills.
I have installed a mod: 更多信息 or ShowMeMore
which lists these hidden information in the skill tool tip.

Each skill has its own body part hit ratio, and will determine how likely each body part will get hit by the skill upon activation. Head is always listed as 1, and the numbers don’t all add up to 100.

Some skill has a gimmick where they only hit a certain body part, like the tier/grade 9 BloodHou Finger skill. This skill only targets the head. Likewise, there are certain stunts (or what i liked to translate as special technique) that have special interactions with certain body parts.

There are several advantages to doing concentrated dmg to a particular body part.

• When healing, it reduces the injury percentage on each wound. Thus dealing concentrated dmg will make enemy healing less effective.
• Furthermore you can have one skill which is used to create weak points for a body part, and another skill that is used to deal dmg to that same body part. This is because those weak points and acupoints causes the body part to receive more dmg.
• Concentrated dmg also works wonder with skills like KongSan Tier 7 Stunt, Visceral Anatomy (Heterodox) and Flower Valley Tier 6 Stunt, Mixed Needles (Heterodox). Both of those skills will turn light or heavy injuries into critical injuries when an attack hits the weak/acu points in those same body part. Critical injuries has a better dmg multiplier than light or heavy injury in the dmg calculation formula
• In addition, concentrated dmg is better for certain poison, Pyrotoxin/Cryotoxin (赤/寒). When they trigger, 3 random wounds gets amplified by a fixed percentage depending on the ratio:
  toxin applied/enemy toxin tolerance. By keeping the number of enemy wounds under 3, you can control which wound gets worsened, thus making the poison more effective.

The other hidden number for attack skill is the casting speed of the skill. This is the number right above the red box shown in the image. Again, each skill has its own casting speed. Some skills like XuanNu music skills cast fairly slowly (i think around 5.5) whereas others skills casts fairly quickly.

This is something to keep in mind, especially if enemies are fast enough to maneuver out of range for slow casting skills. Or they could also have enough time to cast defensive skills; likewise you could do the same as well.

Damage Calculation Mechanics

This is a slightly different variant of the damage mechanic posted on the english translation mod’s discord channel:
[link]

Final Damage is calculated based on the following categories listed below (numbers and/or formula might be subject to balance changes, use this a rough guide on how certain things interact with one another)

Dmg Value = (weapon dmg + skill dmg) * A * B * C * D * E * F
Or Dmg percentage = (weapon dmg + skill dmg) * A * B * C * D

The internal/external split happens here.

for skills (value range 0.25~3)
for normal attack (value range 0.25~2)

Furthermore this is modified by Pure Essence which changes PhP QiP PhD and QiD

Some skills can change the range of Penetration Coefficient
e.g.
Fulong Altar T5 Footwork
Wudang T6 Footwork
Ranshan T6 Talisman

Penetration efficiency
When penetration > defense, and 20%≤ external/internal proportion ≤80%
Penetration efficiency = 100% – 1.2 * |external/internal proportion – 50%|

When penetration > defense, and external/internal proportion <20% or >80%
Penetration efficiency = 40%

When penetration < defense
Penetration efficiency = 120%
Making dmg drop crazy fast.

If weapon destructiveness > enemy armor toughness

If weapon destructiveness < enemy armor toughness
External B = 0.5
Internal B = 0.75

Some skills changes the toughness or destructiveness of weapon and armor
e.g.
Sword Manor T7 stunt (Hetero), B is fixed to 1 regardless of DES/TOU
Lion Face T7 stunt (Ortho)

Ext/Int dmg bonus can be significant, people have been reporting up to 700% bonuses on this section.

Certain trait provide dmg bonus
Certain accessories provide ext/ini bonus

Some skills have dmg bonus as equipped effect, mostly:
Certain Inner art provides dmg bonus
Some Lion Face blades provide ext bonus
Some RanShan exotic provide ini bonus

This includes
1. Damage bonus from equip
Special weapon effects which give extra dmg against enemies wielding certain weapon type or weapon made of certain material.

2. Weak Spots/Inactivated Acupoints on hit part
10% external damage bonus of each WS
10% internal damage bonus of each IA

Chest, Waist =6
Head =10
Limbs =4
Mind, Toxin =4
Whole Body =8

The weight of where the skills hit, can be viewed via the mod “ShowMeMore”

Certain skills can fix the body part hit by the next skill
e.g.
Xuannyu T5 Finger (Hetero)
Lion Face T5 Fist (Hetero)

Light injury = 1
Heavy injury = 2
Critical injury = 3

Only skills can cause critical injury and the injury is base on the % of a skill hit (those diamonds describe earlier in attack distribution)

10%~50% causes light injury
60%~90% causes heavy injury
100% causes critical injury

Some skills can turn wounds into critical wounds
e.g.
Kongsong T7 Stunt (Hetero)
Flower Valley T6 Stunt (Hetero)
Lion Face T4 Blade

For a normal attack if the might,finesse,or swiftness reached 2x of enemy’s diversion,parry,or evasion, it causes heavy injury

Some skill effects increases dmg, where they go depends what it says on the skill description.

E.g. the following skills applies directly to skill damage
Inner arts (Ortho/Hetero) that says deal extra dmg/reduce dmg taken from a certain element. i.e.
Also a few other skills like

• WuDang T2 Stunt (Ortho)
• RanShan T4 Stunt
• Vajrayana T7 Stunt
• Five Immortals T7 Stunt

If the description does not specify whether it is skill or weapon, then it goes in D
E.g.
EMei T9 Stunt (Hetero)
Lion Face T6 Stunt
Blood Hou T6 Stunt

Other Skill Information

Refer to this guide that discuss general skills for info on power, skill efficiency etc.

[link]