by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Hello, everyone! My Name is Dannie “Interaction” Ray, and I’ll be here every Saturday explaining all things theorycrafting in an effort to allow everyone to better understand the finer aspects of Diablo 3. Lets hope you haven’t forgotten all the math you learned in school because we will finally have a chance to put it to good use.

Today we are going to take another look at damage in Diablo 3, where does it come from? How is it calculated? How can we maximize our damage output? How can I figure out what the best possible build for me is?

All of those questions have one thing in common, and that is that they are a lot easier to answer once you know how damage calculations Work, so let’s get into it.

Last week, I promised a spreadsheet. So today I’ve come to deliver.

Two weeks ago, we looked at the story of Mr.Fistalot. Our hardcore and brave friend might have died at the feet of the hordes of hell, but at least he gave us a good lesson. More importantly, he was survived by his younger brother, Kid Kickalot.

Kid Kickalot employs a different, and maybe safer, strategy than his older brother. Our young friend uses Lashing Tail Kick with the Hand of Ytar rune, that provides him with the ability to kite his opponents when the going gets tough. He has also been paying close atention to my thoughts on Attack Speed, and he decided to roll with a Two-Handed Weapon.

He looks a bit like this:

Sir Kickalot – Level 70 Hardcore Monk

Actives:

• Crippling Wave – Tsunami
• Lashing Tail Kick – Hand of Ytar
• Mystic Ally – Air Ally
• Mantra of Healing – Time of Need
• Serenity – Tranquility
• Breath of Heaven – Zephyr

Passives: Chant of Resonance, One With Everything, Combination Strike, Near Death Experience

Sir Kickalot here has 35% Critical Hit Chance, 235% Critical Hit Damage, 45% Cold Damage, 30% Lashing Tail Kick Damage.

He has 33% CDR to make the CD on his Mystic Ally 20 seconds, 100 Spirit every 20 seconds is 5 spirit per second.

We’ve already learned how to use our Damage Formula to calculate the value of our Damage rotation, but now we can let our Spreadsheet do the math for us.

Go to File -> Make a Copy and toy with the values your own character has. Since I don’t want to complicate things too much, This spreadsheet is just a beta that covers simple rotations like the “Crippling Wave -> Lashing Tail Kick” one that Kickalot The Young sports here.

Next week, we will start adding some more complexity to our spreadsheet so you can use it for a wider variety of builds. But you don’t have to wait an entire week for your Diablo 3 content, comeback to BlizzPro for daily coverage of your favorite game.