Spell Stats for Dummies

submitted by notleh on Nov 17th, 2007

Spell Stats for Dummies - Version 1.0
By Notleh the Necromancer

Purpose: The purpose of this guide is to educate people on the different components to spells.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on this stuff. The reason I started this post was to educate myself on all of the spell components of my character. Unfortunately, the more I read, the more questions I had. I soon learned that there is no one “expert” on Vanguard spell components. We have gone through a couple companies, many devs, and quite a few code monkies since it all started and the result is a system that was not clearly defined.

Luckily, there are some people who have taken the time to test, ask questions, and bug devs. Most of what I have written here was taken from other sites, such as Graffe’s, Silky Venom, and VGnecro.com. I want to give special thanks to Illusive, Code2501, Acebreus and EmiliaSEB.

1. Basic
For caster classes in Vanguard, the two primary spell components are INT and WIS. The importance of each varies by class.

Intelligence (INT) – This stat affects how much damage your spell will do. It also affects your ability to counter a spell of your opponent as well as your opponent’s ability to counter your spell.

Wisdom (WIS) - This stat affects how much energy you have to cast spells, and the chance they have to do more damage by being critical hits (crit). It also affects your ability to counter a spell of your opponent as well as your opponent’s ability to counter your spell.

Vitality (VIT) – This stat primarily determines energy and health regeneration rates (regen).

Constitution (CON) – This stat primarily determines your number of hit points and your resistances to incoming damage (resists).

Evo, Conj, Abj
These skills appear on various items, but based on Developer posts have no real affect beyond your level cap. Avoid wasting any points on these, the most you will ever need is 10.

2. Intermediate
Int > Wis > Vit > Other
This is supported by the DPS returns of each stat on a point by point basis, and the subsequent requirements on Energy to maintain that DPS.

WIS – Wisdom caps out at 900 points (18 X your level), meaning you cannot have anymore than 900. At the cap you will get 20% additional chance to have a critical hit. You can also have XXXX energy (what’s the formula for energy?). At level 50, 45 WIS is = 1% crit chance. 1 WIS is = XX energy.

It is important to understand that on an item 1 Wis cost the same amount of an items stat bugdet as 8 Energy, however for us Arcane casters 1 Wis = 15 Energy + a miniscule crit chance boost. Wisdom is always better on an item than straight energy.

so WIS > Energy

INT – Intelligence caps out at 900 points (18 X your level). At the cap you will do 160.3% damage. The actual formula for this is listed in the advanced section. This is reflected immediately in the Tooltip for any spell.

Critical Spell Hit Rating - According to Cylus (who looked at the code and had another dev look at the code, there is NO cap to % chance you have to hit (that he could find).

30% crit chance and you should hit about 1 in 3 times. EmiliaSEB says, "Well as someone that went up to 43% Critic and did a few tests i ended up with : 45.5% 41% 38.2% for a global 41.65% in 500 casts (seems to be working fine)." In a long test, 43% Critic, 8 Critics in a row, 9 Critic in 10 Cast, so 50% getting 1 in 2 will probably be right after a thousand casts or so."

Additionally, although we should be hitting 100% crits on lower level mobs, this does not happen so there are some sort of unknown caps or modifiers there. 37 points = 1% at lvl 50.

Critical Spell Damage Amount - When you crit it does ABOUT 50% more damage. Now there are many different factors (I do not know them all), but this is the baseline. Cylus said that the crit cap bonus (additional crit damage) for mobs lower than your level is 10% (1% per level difference up to 10%).

In reference to Critical Spell hits;
* Crit does exactly +50% modified dmg
* Epic crit does exactly +200% modified dmg
* Legendary crit does +500% modified dmg (some report a range of up to 2000%?)

For example you have a dd that does is described as doing 1k dmg.
If you crit you'll get an extra 500 dmg or 1500. If you have a dmg modifier via int and/or sdr, say +50% total you will do 1500 dmg w/out a crit. If you crit with that modifier you'll do 750 extra dmg or 2250

Spell Damage Focus (SDF) – You may wear items that have SDF, but the cap is 500 (10X the max level of 50). At 500 you will max out at 20% ADDITIONAL damage.

Spell Damage Rating (SDR) – Some items will add additional spell damage. This percentage will add on the 160% from max INT and 20% from max SDF. 37 points = 1% at lvl 50. There is no known cap, and gear with this stat is not widespread.

(needs confirmation) Some items have a continental style of +8 of X, or +8 of Y. These stats are added to the base damage of the spell, so they will be further modified by INT, SDF, WIS and SDR.

Spell Accuracy – Cylus says accuracy contributes to your “to hit” roll; that is, if you have an item with +4% accuracy, you’re gaining “4” on a roll out of 100. Here is the chart on your chance to hit:

6 = 57 base roll out of 100
5 = 68 base roll out of 100
4 = 77 base roll out of 100
3 = 85 base roll out of 100
2 = 90 base roll out of 100
1 = 93 base roll out of 100
Equal level = 94 base roll out of 100

So, at level 50 you will have an 85% chance to hit the lvl53 healer/caster. Light/heavy fighters are less resistant to spells and should hit more. This means that for raiding in APW (where the mobs are lvl 53, you would need +15% accuracy to hit 95% of the time (max cap at 95%). 37 points = 1% at lvl 50.

It is possible to reach 100% accuracy if you have enough + accuracy gear. The cap from SKILLS is supposed to be 95% base chance, but from Cylus’ testing it showed about 94% chance base vs even level opponent.

Spell Haste – This is how much faster you may cast. For example, if you have 10% worth of haste gear a spell that would normally take 10 seconds to cast would only take 9 seconds. Or a spell that normally takes 2 seconds would only take 1.8 seconds. The cap is 30% from buffs and 20% from gear (50% max). Spell haste removes from the cast time of the spell, not the refresh of it afterwards

Spell Attack Rating (SAR) - This shows up on your character sheet if you use a custom interface like Core or Drox. I do not know what it means.

The table below shows the number of points needed on an item to get 1% (at level 50),

40 18.56
41 19.89
42 21.31
43 22.83
44 24.46
45 26.21
46 28.08
47 30.08
48 32.23
49 34.53
50 37.00
51 39.64
52 42.47
53 45.51
54 48.76
55 52.24
56 55.97
57 59.97
58 64.26
59 68.84

In conclusion, there is much that goes into understanding what exactly our spells do and how the various factors impact our spell performance basiically. This is a work in progress so I will update it as needed when more information becomes known.

Notleh the Necromancer
VGNecro.com Contributor

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