Weapon durability and its effectiveness.

I understand that the worse a weapon becomes in durability that the less effective it is in use.

I want to understand at what point does the weapon become so bad that I need to go repair.

As It stands right now I have a decent selection of weapons that are used primarily for PvM. I understand that a faster hitting weapon by design would require more frequent repairs, it makes sense. However, if I fort powder a weapon to max durability I don't understand why I see effectiveness drop significantly after, what I would consider, minor use.

For example: Kryss at max durability has a significant drop in it's effectiveness after approximately 20 Lich Lords. Going from an average of 45+ a hit to an average of 30+ a hit is what I consider significant.

I don't pay much attention to where the kryss starts to suck in comparison to it's durability, I just take note of how much crap I've killed and how much damage it's no longer doing.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is where along the 255/255 durability does it really need a repair? 200/255? 155/255? etc...

Right now I find myself requiring to repair after approximately 20 killed mobs.

I believe it's based on % of HPs of its max. So 5/10 HP is the same as 127/255 HPs. And I think it does between 50% and 100% of its damage between the "falling apart/about to break" and "completely new" stages of Arms Lore. Each increment of Arms Lore is an equal increment in damage effectiveness loss. So if there's 10 Arms Lore responses (I forget), each one might be 5% between 50% and 100%.

See, this doesn't seem fair to me. At 127/255 the weapon is far from broken, it's far from even worn.

I think it would be better if at 0/255 the weapon began to "decay". It's at this marker when the weapon begins to lose it's maximum durability thus this is when it should begin losing it's maximum effectiveness, at least this is what makes the most sense to me.

I mean, it's bad enough that the weapon hits for 1 dmg five times in a row at times too. I'm not asking for a change to the dmg randomizer (or whatever you devs call it), just less trips to the blacksmith.

Also, keep in mind weapons that cannot be currently repaired, like bows or Q-staves. Fort powder isn't cheap to use as a repair and you have to do it frequently with weapons like Q-staves because effectiveness is crap after a short farming session.

I'm sure the decay rate could be adjusted, but... remember that repairing a weapon only takes 1 HP off of its max. So let's say you spend 5k on fortification powders at current rates (1k per charge?), giving your weapon +50 more HP. That's 50 more repairs before it just get down to its freshly spawned HPs.

And, let's say it originally spawned with 50 (this is on the low end for most weapons). So for 5k, you're able to cut in half the number of trips to the blacksmith you need, because you're going from 50 to 100 HPs.

I appreciate the use and purpose of fort powder.

If I could apply a million doses of fort powder to a weapon, I would. However, that's not the case and I have to accept a max durability of 255 where I would need to repair after a short time farming.

This really isn't a huge issue but it's just something I can't wrap my head around. I shouldn't spend 30 minutes farming and then have to repair.

I appreciate the use and purpose of fort powder.

If I could apply a million doses of fort powder to a weapon, I would. However, that's not the case and I have to accept a max durability of 255 where I would need to repair after a short time farming.

This really isn't a huge issue but it's just something I can't wrap my head around. I shouldn't spend 30 minutes farming and then have to repair.

Try it, then report back. 255 Durability should probably let you go about 4-5x as much without needing a repair as a regular weapon. Two hours doesn't seem terribly bad, to be constantly whacking stuff without needing a repair (neither does 30 minutes, IMO, if you're hitting stuff nonstop).

You could also move to a harder-hitting, slower weapon. They actually tend to have better DPS against monsters with decent armor anyways, and less swings per second means less needing to repair.

The specific weapon I am talking about has 255 already. I repair after 30 minutes of use.

Granted it hits often.

My .02 would be to Arms Lore it (or perhaps better yet just check the website on your paperdoll) after 30 minutes of use. I'm sure the damage rate on these things could be slowed down, but who knows if it should be or not. It would be helpful to know precisely how much damage it is taking.

Also do remember that you have an era-inaccurate increased hit rate here on monsters, I think 75% at GM (should be 50%). So your weapon is wearing out 50% faster than it would historically or on other shards. I think in general that's a pretty worthwhile change that's been made for warriors; you more than save the time and money in repairing by killing stuff 50% faster...

I think you're applying double the durability penalty that existed in era. I thought the durability adjustment range was 50% to 100% in era but sounds like you're doing 1% to 100%. Changing the formula to reflect this would likely resolve this issue:

FinalDamage * (.5 + ((hits/hitsmax)/2)) = ModifiedDamage

Correct. Under your approach, though, a weapon would just give an endless string of 1-damage hits at the end of its durability, before finally, mercifully, breaking. Do you remember such behavior on OSI? I broke plenty of weapons back then and do not ever remember that.

Has this been looked into further?

I am getting extremely frustrated and feel I'm being forced into farming with my Mage. I like using my Warriors to farm and it just isn't working how it did on OSI. I heard about the fortifying powder and have yet to use it, but I NEVER had to use it on OSI and I did not have to repair my weapon after every single run to a dungeon. I've even used indesructible weapons and I am having to repair them far too often. There is something wrong with how this works along with the random weapon damage.

On top of the durability getting low and you doing much less damage I'm hitting Rat Men (REGULAR RAT MEN) for 3-5 damage Crushing Blows with a Massive Eminently Accurate Power Hammer. Something is not right here. When new people to the server (I'm pretty new myself, but that's irrelevant) are talking to me and dropping their weapon skills to GM Magery because the weapons aren't how they are supposed to be, there is an issue.

I've read a lot of post here regarding weapons and I know the long timers have just learned to deal with it. But something needs to be done with it, I want to stay here for the long haul, but when it is so far off from the way it was, it's kind of hard to look past it.

Per Chris' request, I looked into this but was not able to find any evidence.

That said, the formula above matches my memory and would, IMO, both keep the spirit of weapons needing repairs, and also let players go a more reasonable amount of time without needing to stop for repairs. There is the potential for more elegant solutions, but I assume something like the above would be a simple fix in the code.

I noticed the damage degradation is pretty steep when the weapon is new. In fact some weapons are downright disappointing (me demon dismissal force mace for instance) at first. 10k or so worth of fort powder however works wonders. Now I fort all my farming weapons to 255 right out of the gate. Yeah its a bit to spend but any slayer worth its weight will make that cost back for you in no time if you manage to hang onto it. I usually head to town and repair every 40-50k or so worth of critters and it seems to work just fine and isn't too much of an imposition on my time. And really, at 100g for a repair deed, not gonna break anyones bank.

I am searching for some concrete data which is not as easy to find as you'd think.

I'd have to agree that 1 point of fixed damage at 0 durability seems off. 'can't recall the exact values from back in the day, but I like your suggestion, Dalavar.
A 50% drop in damage is already fairly steep, and if you keep using the weapon, you get punished further because it loses max.HP like nobody's business.

If the coding portion is really as easy as changing that one formula, though, one could always start with 75% damage reduction at 0 durability, and see how that goes.
That would still be a severe penalty, yet feels more era accurate and makes life a little easier for warrior types (compared to the current situation). Seems like a good middle-ground to me, and gives an additional data point in case further tweaking is required.