Guide 1.6's Damage mechanics, the stuff you probably didn't know. (and a calculator!)

Warning: Words. Lots of boring words! If you don't like words skip to the bottom for a calculator.

This guide is aimed at Annihilation. But, it can also be applied to everywhere else.

Many people have been confused about the way armor and damage has worked since 1.6, as well as enchantments and some potion effects. 1.6 changed a lot of combat related stuff, confusion is normal, but there's still the occasional debate about what does what and sometimes the outdated 1.5 mechanics are what comes up. This guide should help you to understand the mechanics better.
If you already know this stuff... Then just skip to the bottom.

Just to note: The way I'm presenting this, it does not account for 'PvP skill.' It is more along the lines of one person hitting another until they die.

Contents
Introduction
Weapons
Armor
Calculator
Frequently Asked Questions


Introduction - What changed in 1.6
Lets start off with some basics, and 1.5 mechanics.
Every player has 20 health, aka, 10 hearts. 1 health = half a heart.
This is true for both versions, so if I say 1 damage, that means half a heart.

In 1.5, your health was always an integer. It could be either 15 or 16, but never 15.5. So when damage dealt was supposed to be say, 2.8, the game had to round it in either direction before applying the damage. This rounding was random, the higher the number after the decimal the higher chance to do an extra 1 damage.
Take 2.8 again. Since it is .8, the game had an 80% chance to do 3 damage, and a 20% chance to do 2. If the damage was 2.75, the chances would be 75% and 25%.
This lead to PvP relying a lot on luck.

1.6 changed all that. Now health is a float (meaning it can have a fraction of a number in it)
What does this mean? That same 2.8 damage you saw earlier would deal 2.8 damage, no rounding. Getting hit with the same attack again would make it a total of 5.6 damage, see? Damage is consistent now, a large luck factor was removed from combat.
1.6 didn't 'ruin' PvP, this is the average damage you should get in the first place.

Lets compare 4 hits in either version. The damage is 2.8. (2.8 damage happens to be what an iron sword does to iron armor)
In 1.5, those 4 hits could cause anywhere between 8 damage (less likely) and 12 damage (more likely)
In 1.6, that damage comes out to 11.2.
In the long run, you should expect to see damage from either version come out almost the same. 1.6, again, just removed that luck factor.

Now that that is out of the way, everything from here on out is 1.6+ stuff only. no old mechanics will be discussed.

Weapons
Everyone knows weapons. They're the things you clobber others with. Your fists alone do 1 damage, and any item that adds damage will say +# attack damage. The important part is that PLUS sign, it ADDS the listed damage to your base damage, which in this case is the 1 from your fist. So all weapons by default do 1 more damage than you see on it. This is important to remember if you're making some kind of custom weapon, make the +damage on it 1 less than you want it to be.

• Since people use swords, swords can get the sharpness enchant which adds +1.25 damage to your attacks. However, this damage is calculated after strength and crits, so it always adds 1.25 damage.
• There's also the strength effect, which adds +130% more damage with each level. Strength 2, the strongest in survival, adds +260% damage. Which means your attack damage is multiplied by 3.6!
• There's also the critical hit, which adds +50% to your damage. You must hit something while falling in the air to do this of course, you can't be in the water or on a ladder, but you can do it from a cobweb. One important thing to note is that the critical hit's +50% stacks multiplicatively with strength, meaning with str 2 your damage is multiplied first by 3.6, then that damage by 1.5, dealing a LOT of damage.
• Lastly, the weakness effect will reduce your damage by 0.5 per level. This acts before strength and criticals can multiply the damage.

The order the game calculates is as follows:
(Base Damage - Weakness) * Strength * Criticals + Enchantment.


But that's just for melee. We also have bows! Bows do 6 - 10 damage, when it is fully drawn. The only way in survival to modify this is with the Power enchantment.
The power enchant adds 25% more damage, +25% for each level it is. So a power 1 bow gets +50% more damage, and power 4 bows get +125% more damage!
With power 4 (lets assume no 5 from anvils) you can expect your bow to do 13.5 - 22.5 damage.


Since this is a guide aimed at Annihilation players, there's more forms of damage too.

• There's +Damage, like you'd get from Warrior (+1) This damage is not affected by strength, crits or any of that. Just a straight up +1 damage that gets reduced by armor. This also works with bows in the case of archer (+1 bow damage)
• There's also what is called True Damage. True Damage ignores any form of damage reduction, like armor. Similar to what a potion of instant damage does. True Damage cannot be modified by any effects.
• Last, but not least, there's +% damage. Like you would get with Spy for hitting in the back (+25% damage) I personally haven't checked, but I believe this damage would stack with criticals or strength too.

Armor
Lets move on to reducing the damage you get.
Every piece of armor you wear adds a certain number of 'armor points,' each armor point reduces damage by 4%. The strongest armor you can get is 20 (full diamond) which is an 80% damage reduction.
A full set of iron is 15 points (60%) and leather is 7 points (28%)

Here is a table (in image form) of full sets of armor VS normal everyday weapons in Anni. Damage done with Bloodmage + sacrifice (1 true damage) is also shown.
The number in parentheses it how many hits (without regen) it would take to kill a person.


To further reduce damage, you also have enchantments for armor. The most used one being the Protection enchant.

Each level of the Protection enchant will add a certain number of Enchantment Protection Factor (EPF) points. Prot 1 adds 1 point, level 2 adds 2, 3 adds 3, and 4 adds 5 points. Therefor the highest you can get without using an anvil is 4 pieces of Prot 4, for 20 points. If you get any higher pieces, EPF caps out at 25 and will not go higher.

When it comes to damage reduction, the game will take 50% - 100% of your current EPF, rounded up and capped again at 20. So the DR you get from enchantments has a random factor.
EPF after this works like armor points. Each point of EPF reduces damage by 4%. One thing to note is that EPF works AFTER Armor, so having maxed out armor and EPF (80%, followed by 80%) results in a 96% DR, NOT 160%.

To illustrate the random value - Full diamond with prot 4 on each piece. DR will range from 88% to 96%.


Projectile Protection, another sorta important enchant, works like Protection. Except, it only works on Projectiles, like arrows. Why would you use this over Protection? Well, Projectile Protection levels add more EPF than Protection does, but the EPF it adds only applies to arrows and such. This makes it more useful when you'd be taking bow damage rather than sword damage.


And there's the Resistance potion effect. Each level of resistance will add 20% damage reduction, AFTER Armor and EPF (not that the order matters, really) The highest you can get to and still take damage is level 4 - 80%.

Lastly, there's blocking. Blocking with a sword will slow you down considerably, but will also reduce damage by 50%.


So remember, armor and such works like this: Armor reduces damage, then EPF reduces it further, then resistance will reduce it even further. Without resistance 5, your total damage reduction will never actually reach 100%.


Handy Dandy Calculator
There's a lot of different things to add up here. Different weapons with different stats, different armor. I tried to cover some basics in the guide, and teach you what to expect. But, there's too many combinations to cover here, so I made a javascript calculator so you can do it yourself! This is likely what most of you would come here for anyways.
You can find it here. (Any recommendations on an alternative site? I don't really like weebly)

Right now, the calculator does one thing: It shows what damage certain weapons do to certain sets of armor. I'll run you through the inputs.

First off, we have the armor section. This is the person that will be taking a hit, or player 1.

• On the first 4 dropdowns, you'll see armor pieces. Simply mix and match pieces to get your desired combo.
• The next set of dropdowns are for enchantments. if you want it enchanted (it only covers Prot and Proj prot for now) just select one and choose the level in the next box.
• After this, it shows you the armor stats. It'll tell you how much that armor will reduce damage, nothing to change here.
• After that, you can set the health of the person as well. This affects how many hits the table to the right will tell you it will take to kill them. 20 is the default.
• Last, you can add a resistance effect.

The next section will modify the weapons. Assume this section is for player 2, the one hitting player 1.

• Strength effect - Self explanatory, adds the strength effect in the calculation.
• Criticals - If you want to add critical hits, set this to TRUE. Just note it assumes every hit will be critical.
• Custom Damage - If you're using another weapon that deals more or less damage than the swords listed, you can use this to calculate with. This damage works just like the others, it will be affected by all the other weapon inputs.

There are two sub-sections after this. One for melee weapons, and one for the bow.

• Sharpness/Power - Adds the Sharpness/Power enchant to the weapons in the table.
• +Damage - Adds Warrior-like +damage to the weapons. Not affected by strength, or crits or +% damage.
• +Damage% - Adds a percentage damage increase. Putting say, 25 here would add 25% more damage to the weapons. This stacks multiplicatively with Strength and Crits.
• +True Damage - Adds True Damage to the weapons. This pierces armor and is not reduced, nor is it increased by anything else.

That's it! Once you're done hit the Calculate! button and the tool will show you how much damage each level of sword will do, and how much damage you'll take after the armor calculation. If you're not using any enchantments, simply look at the average row. If you've used any protection enchants, the Min and Max rows will tell you how much damage you'll take on the low and high ends.
You might have to play with it for a bit to fully understand it, but as far as I know it is completely accurate. However, any form of regeneration is NOT accounted for, so the Hits to Kill rows may be off a bit.


Other things that aren't covered in the guide or the calculator:
Fire aspect/Flame enchants - I can't reliably tell you how much damage this will do along with your weapon.
Fire/Blast Protection or Feather Falling - Sorta useful enchants, but probably not used in PvP.
Thorns enchant - Useful, also random and thus hard to calculate. I haven't even looked into this one myself too much.
Any form of health regeneration - Obviously, I can't tell you how long a PvP fight will last. In order to calculate this both players would have to be constantly hitting each other and lots of other factors have to be included.
A 2v1 - For obvious reasons.


Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does Haste/Fatigue affect my attack speed?
A: No. This is one of the most commonly confused things because those affect your swinging speed. In fact, your swing doesn't dictate attack, your attack happens every time you left-click regardless if you're already swinging!

Q: What is better, Iron prot 2 or unenchanted diamond?
A: Unenchanted diamond, thanks to the way Protection works. To shorten this, iron Prot 4 is basically equivalent to diamond. (A little better, actually, but still more random than diamond is)



I hope you learned something from this guide.
There's info to be found on the minecraft wiki that I didn't cover. Some of the info here came from there of course, some of it came from the 1.7.2 source code itself.
Don't rely on the guide to tell you whether or not you'll win a fight. That also comes down to how well either player can outmaneuver each other in PvP. This is mainly to educate you so you know what you're talking about the next time an armor debate comes up.



Confusion? Questions? Mistakes? Suggestions? Go ahead and let me know here in this thread.

Awesome guide, I'll make sure to finish reading this tonight when I have more time!

Great guide! Thanks.

Wait gold and wood swords are same in damage

Thats why you have that profile pic

Very advanced stuff. Took me over fifteen minutes to get this...
Thanks for sharing!

Thats how einstein once stated that Str2 was an OP potion.

If this helps
Spy Class Damage:

Back stab damage

But thank you for the thread this really helps out

Almost noone calculates damage even though it is damn helpful in anni, every time i fight someone with better gear than me i count the hits it takes him to get me down and the hits it takes me to get him down.

I made this a PDF, if anyone wants to download it or the website goes down. I changed a little bit with the sections/formatting to make it more readable, hope you don't mind .

I vote to sticky this

Edit: I do, claymore

Stick please

Holy...

Cool always wondered what protection actually did this is realy helpful and thanks for this

Eh, all they had to do was change:
int = ;
to
double = ;

in Java aspects, it's quite simple don't know why it wasn't like that in the first place.

Doesn't work for me

Edit: Now it does

VERY helpful thread, you should add a pole to get it sticky'd

Just wanted to bump this for people whom may have missed it before!

Super helpful, thanks a lot Andrew!

(Also, maybe add this to the Annihilation wiki page? )

Probably one of the only threads that are helpful. Excellent page. Thanks guys. Gg and thx.

Thanks for this! I had a calculator on Excel but it didn't cover enchantments and this one is way better I don't really get what the custome damage means though:/

Umm... Why?