I had a lot of fun talking with the dataminers and testing out the math with them! This was a really fun video to make hope you all learned something! 😊

I think the developers were meaning to do this to give you a general "dps" number vs damage per hit. Spears hit fast so they are nerfed, two handed are slow so they are buffed, and one handed are base.

Cliff notes: One handed: Shown correctly Two handed: +5% Spears: -25% That’s close enough for 99.9% of players.

I love this information! I appreciate that you gave us exactly how the game calculates it instead of only giving quick approximation formulas. But, long story short, two handed weapons do about 5% more damage than shown, and spears do about 3/4 of the damage shown. Nice to know!

Thanks for this, I thought my beloved spears were a bit weak compared to 1 handed weapons this time around but didn’t know why. Won’t stop using them, but at least I know what to expect now!

Despite struggling understanding everything at first, it was really funny to experiment with all these hidden multipliers ! The first thing that made me doubt was the fact that Gloom Sword was only 1 damage higher than Gloom Spear. Then, I started doing tests... Dozens hours wasted until we could find all the formulas ! Glad you made a video on the subject, was really great and explains everything clearly. I may or may not have other cool data to share later... 👀👀

This would explain why the game developers didn't provide a way to see how many hit points an enemy has.

philly idk if u know this but if u attach a gleeok horn of any kind to an eightfold long blade it combines the element of the gleeok horn to air slash thing making it elemental

They got away with this cuz the blu shirts no longers show the HP of enemies. So without datamining, this would've probably gone unnoticed for a little while

1last factor that i didnt see calculated, is the actual rate of damage per hit over time. Essentially is it faster and more damaging to get quick multiple hits in with spears vs foregoing speed for the extra damage output. Ig this would also come down to an enemy by enemy case, but i think its still pretty important to keep im mind to help keep the load light and not overstock on any unwanted weapons even further than already possible.

This is so dumb. This, and hiding the Master Sword's damage, both fall into the same category of "obscuring useful information for no reason." Like... what possible justification could the programmers have for this? It's so stupid

Rather then all the bone proficiency trouble you have to go through, it's better to have a Zora spear with a white lynel fuse and just through a chu chu water or other water item at your feet or use Zora sage and deal around 150 per hit. Since it's a spear you get the most hits per minute and do massive damage much easier.

Makes you wonder if damage shown was meant to be the intended dps instead of damage per hit

in all fairness, spears have crazy high attack speed which the damage nerf compensates for. I’m glad to learn that 2 handed weapons get that little bump though since i didn’t see a point in running them when my one handed weapons had slightly higher attack

Spears are still better when we calculate dps. The long swords are so slow

Spears are by far and away the best for mobs that flinch. You can time attacks to where link will never finish his combo and you will stun lock the enemy. Much like the jabbing exploit in Wind waker where you can chain an infinite amount of stabs

I feel like the spears hit fast enough to make them still worthy contenders for highest DPS. Especially when they can squeeze in an extra hit. Even only one extra hit at 221 damage vs something hitting only once for 400 is still more damage overall. And that's a very extreme condition on both ends, rarely are you going to see double the damage per hit against a legendary weapon, but you're also rarely going to see double the hits. I don't know the numbers on how much faster they hit but my guess is they hit roughly 32.68% faster? (I wonder where I got that number)

If school math used Tears of the Kingdom as reference, I would ace my final🤣

I just run 2 giant boomerangs for mobs. 1 with naydra horn (freeze), 1 with silver lynel saber horn. You get 1.5x from throwing it, 3x from freeze, 1.5x from attack up +3. You could increase this more with bone prof & molduga jaw, but aesthetically it looks pretty terrible. Clears an entire mob in 1-2 throws from each lol

That kinda make sense tho. Spears hit very fast so they need to balance it by lowering the true damage per hit. However, if we talk about the dps, I believe spears is the best weapon.

Iiiiin other words, Knight Weapons turned into the One Hit Obliterator.

Kinda weird that you round down for 2 handers and add 1 and round up for spears and subtract 1. Could get the same results by simply rounding up 2 handers and rounding down spears, no adding or subtracting.

Spear hits cause enemies to flinch, and are very fast. Their reduced damage doesn’t make them any less the best weapon type for fighting basic enemies. No, I’m not being biased because spears are my favorite weapon type.

"Spears are nerfed" Ya, But they have by far the fastest attack, so you'd have to do some math to see if the attack speed makes the damage output equal to the slower weapons, and they also have the furthest reach. So there's a trade off.

The numbers in-game are a more accurate assessment of a weapon's battle potential than correcting them. It's still good to know how much true damage a weapon deals on a hit, but this doesn't result in any huge revelations ultimately. A Spear with the same power as a big weapon will generally kill an enemy faster *despite the true damage deficit* because it hits 3 times as fast. This is true for all except sneak attacks or weapon break hits. Still useful info but don't take it as Spears are suddenly very weak or something lol

Your dedication and detail is appreciated. Thanks for all your hard work!

Dangit Nintendo spears were so good. You're gonna have to borrow Austin's "time for a spreadsheet" mug now.

This is fascinating. I guess it makes a lot of sense since the generally lower base damages across the board coupled with fuse damage being a flat linear increase would otherwise close the gap between spears and claymores significantly, while the spears still retain the significant range and mobility advantage.

Seems like a typical Nintendo move. Look at how GF and Nintendo hid IVs/EVs from us for so long in the starting gens.

No wonder there isnt an armor that lets us see enemy health :I

one question for dataminers, does bone proficiency applied on only bone itself or the whole weapon after fusion.

So while this shows and explains weapon damage, the weapons each have a unique attack speed. Spears by far have the fastest attack speed so for them to actually have a lower true damage would make sense. So I’d say they damage you see in the weapons window is actually the dps instead of the true damage.

Thanks for this info! The Lightscale Trident, while showing weaker, is super durable and this is a plus for me. In addition, when doing a flurry rush, you can get more hits per flurry rush with a spear compared to other weapons. I was able to get 11 hits on a White Maned Lynel in one flurry rush - 221 per hit like in your example does 2431 damage. Compared to using a pristine Zora Sword at 237 per hit, I can only hit the lynel 7 times for a total of 1659 damage during one flurry rush. The Scimitar of the Seven is another awesomely durable weapon, but even fusing a Molduga jaw to that only does 1736 for a flurry rush.

I don't think it would have changed anything if they just showed the true numbers because we know spears are fast and weak and botw showed the true damage and that showed much greater inequality in damage but people still used spears anyway.

Took my Switch offline after 1.1.1 and before they nerfed duplication glitches or anything else. It's glorious. Not coming back online until inventory is full of the best of everything, game is 100% done, and I've moved a few game saves and system update game save to a safe place for future use.

the spears doing less damage than shown, i hope isn't gonna deter people from using them, they are much, much more stronger than they were in botw. they can get to some crazy high damage numbers and the attack speed is nuts, should honestly make up for the loss in base dmg imo. lightscale trident with an ice gleeok's horn is actually pretty busted seeing as spears dish out a lot of attacks before ragdolling a monster and sidon can get you the water warrior buff on command, plus the wave on it's own does decent damage, a pristine royal halberd with durability is one of my go to for mobbing one flurry rush with an high lvl ice fuse and silver enemies are dead or mostly dead in one flurry rush...also can someone please cover flurry rush power up. damage isnt an issue in this game you can take anything and wreck with it and i love it, also soldier's broadsword with and ice lizalfos tail in pretty fun....

the thing about the spear is that despite the decreased damage, you are dealing WAY more dps on a regular enemy(except lynels cuz all you want is that backhit) even if it is .95% lower, the speed makes up for it

The same way botw gave hints on the zoni. Totk is giving hints on the mirror dimension in the depths its such a good play. Og zelda players know what the mirror dimension is but know one has caught on to it yet 😅

Biggest flaw in these calculations: your focus is on damage output not damage per second. In every game, DPS is more important than just pure damage.

The FETH ost ine the background brought back some memories

In BOTW and TOTK, freezing enemies and/or Sneak striking them will override any critical hits like using us the last of a weapon’s durability or headshots

Good stuff thx. On the first one I think u can just round up instead of adding one and rounding down.

I kind of like how they balanced it, and I feel the shown damage is meant to be more of a rough estimate of dps than the exact damage per swing. I think that's cool, but it would definitely be better to see both.

We should have the xenoblade "attack stability" mechanic (like a damage roll) but like xenoblade some or all weapons have unique damage roll values (and give story/amiibo weapons perfect stability)

Formulas: Two Handed - Divide by 0.95 Spears - Divide by 1.3268 One Handed - Normal

It's actually pretty simple. The increase for 2 handed greatswords is about 5% & the decrease for Spears is about 30%. Simple as that. Swords are spot on & need no adjustment.

I think the shown damage is adjusted for the weapon's attack speed, to give the player an idea of the dps of the weapon.

They could've just given us some floating dmg text :3

You're telling me that the Tunic of Memories (the old Champions Tunic) doesn't show the enemies health because of the true damage thing?

Ain't there no way that there's actually a math video on the internet which I enjoyed.

Do temporary hearts count against the knight weapon bonus or can you use gloom and temporary hearts to get the buff?

Spears, halberds or tridents may be nerfed by a quarter of the total damage, but I still favour them because of the damage per second and long range, as well as staggering effect done to enemies. You keep enemies at distance with them and get the first strike in earlier than with other melee weapons. Plus as some have pointed out, you're getting quite a few more hits in with them during a flurry rush. If they hadn't nerfed them, those fast hitting and ranged weapons would totally outclass the other two variants (One/Two-handlers). Therefore, the handicap is quite necessary. It's better to think that 2 spear hits count as 1 broadsword attack, because they roughly require the same amount of time to be dealt to an enemy. As a result, the damage done is actually higher than with one handed weapons. Naturally that also means it takes a higher toll on the durability of the spears, as well making them quite less effective for sneak attacks or icebreakers for frozen enemies.

Edit: So you said you talked to the people who made the spreadsheet, I don't suppose you could ask them to confirm if this modifier is actually just a flat modifier across base and material? As it was explained it seemed like only total damage was modified which potentially hide the materials contribution, it would just have the really high modified base number plus the tiny material addition, or increasing both depending how it's done, did they check for material differences? Because that makes say Silver Lynel Reaper 42 on a spear and not 55, and 58 on Two handers. As it stands Lightscale with Silver Lynel saber wet buffed is doing 38 damage less than stated according to spreadsheet. That means it's more involved than simply fudging numbers, it's actively changing material strength too. So they did the same thing some Monster Hunter games do and fudge the numbers to more accurately represent the DPS of the weapon. Spears attacking much faster means they have an effective higher damage (with the one major exception down below). Helps the player to visual the DPS difference. Where this truly matters is riding Lynels, that's 6 hits that don't use durability regardless of weapon speed, so the damage fudging isn't applicable, this means spears are more than likely worse over two handed weapons on account of the 25% increase in their number and 5% reduction of Two handers.

I have never seen a modifier be used with division to get the number. Usually when you’re doing a calculation of % it’s X not /

TL;DW summary: One handed weapons are as they appear. Spears do about 25% less damage than the game shows. Two-handed weapons (e.g. claymores) do about 5% more damage than the game shows.

Me, a Monster Hunter player: Uhh, yeah, Motion Values brah. A charge speed up spear still shreds ANYTHING, unless you're on the back of a Lynel.

Might be showing damage per second(DPS) and not damage per hit. That would make sense since spears are so fast and two handed weapons are so slow.

The formula for Spears is so necessary. After you divide by 1.3268 why not just round down to the nearest who number. instead of subtracting 1 and then rounding up, it's just such an unnecessary step.

So my takeaway it use an incredibly powerful one-handed weapon with attack up 3, bone proficiency, and a molduga jaw to sneakstrike bosses or big enemies

When croton isn't around this guy steals the show.

developers are meaning dps. As claymore are slow which takes more then 1s, they does more damage per hit. but spears are fast and can hit more then 1 time per second. so they do less damage per hit

Just got the glitched master sword 😆

Thanks for this video. Weapon damage values get kinda confusing so I needed this.

Instead of subtracting one and rounding up, u can just round down. Skips a step and is a lil less confusing imo

Always a good day when he uploads with more info

Nintendo really has some of the worst UI developers in the industry and BotW/TotK clearly demonstrates that. From vague figures given for essential specifics, misinformation and unwieldy menus like the bow fusion hotbar things just become worse as the games become more complex.

Spear case: they nerf because you can hit faster than other weapons, and you have more range too.

Spears are still op, there attack speed and range to damage is still the best in game. In BOTW, typically weapons were S:0.5 1H:1 and 2H: 1.5.

What’s the point of a fake number system if you can literally write whatever number you want on a weapon?

Why would the devs have the shown damage be different, though?

Spears are actually the best if you look at dps. For example if you take a 20 dmg spear, sword, and claymore with the true damage it would end up like this. Sword 20 Spear 15 Claymore 21 This would make it look like the claymore is the best weapon, however if you throw in dps into the mix that's different for example the dps "by which I mean the number of attacks each weapon can launch at one time" for each weapon is Sword 4 Spear 6 Claymore 2 Combining the true damage of weapons with the dps you get 20×4=80 sword 15×6=90 Spear 21×2=41 claymore. As you can see including dps swords do nearly twice what claymores do while Spears do 10 more than swords, and it gets even worse if you add materials and weapon multipliers for example a gibdo bone which has a plus 4 modifier and a plus 10 weapon modifier would make them Sword 70 Spear 53 Claymore 74 Add in max modifiers excluding sneak strike ×1.5, ×1.8, ×2, and ×3 you'll get Sword 1134 Spear 859 Claymore 1199 Then finally add in the dps for each weapon and that's Sword 4536 Spear 5154 Claymore 2398 As you can see adding everything together means Spears greatly outmatch the other weapon types. The only time swords and claymores would out preform a spear is in a sneak strike which as it's just one attack means the dps wouldn't actually apply for it.

I wish there was a setting to turn on automath or something

Great. This guy just proved all the math teachers right. I really did need to learn all that stuff in high school. Great video.

Everything said in the video, in one comment: Damage multipliers stack multiplicatively, so you can do big numbers! How cool, but that's not the point of the video. With some "math" AKA two singular equations, I found that: +Two handed weapons deal 5.2% *more* damage than what's shown. -Spears do 24.6% *less* damage than what's shown.

I still decided to make my entire playthrough with only spears and a couple 2h for breaking rocks. Spears just have that edge over 1h swords which are annoying at short range against bigger enemies, even a dodge doesn't put you out of harms way

i think "round up to nearest whole number means .5 or more goes to higher number and .4 or less goes to lower number

Would be cool if you could dual wield single handed weapons

Yeah, unrelated but they buffed bokoblins by giving them PACK TACTICS, kupo.

So spears are kinda like one handed weapons in dps, since their attack speed is so high

@1:25 If 3 attack up icons is 1.5, what's just having 1 attack up icon - x 0.5?? Multiplying by 0.5 will halve the value. 2 attack up icon would be x1.0 - the same as the supposed value. Wouldn't it make more sense if it's an added value of 50% per icon and not the multiplied value as explained in the video? 1 attack up icon adds 50%, 2 icons adds 100%, etc. 60 with 3 icons adds 150% of the value - 60 + (60*150%) = 60 + 90 = 150

Can anyone tell me what the multiplier for royal weapons during a Flurry Rush is? Since they are described to do extra damage during a flurry rush.

Wasn't SneakStrike nerfed to a 4x Modifier so that the Eightfold Blade could have the original 8x Mod as its Special Effect? Just means it has its own best weapon...

I recently found all the weather attack up armor (like hot weather attack up etc) and was wondering if you wore the full set of that armor (in the specific weather of course) and eat an attack up 3 food would it get multiplied twice? Also does anyone know how much the weather attack up armor buffs your damage? I would assume its more than 1.5 because its more situational

so according to my calculations the most powerfull strike the final hit of a pristine royal guards claymore with attack up ten modifier plus a gibdo bone plus bone proficency plus attack up times 3 plus a sneak strike deals 8112 dammage

I'm confused. Why are we adding 1 then round down? Why dont we just round up skipping a step.

Thanks, Imma use the spreadsheet and figure out some super high damage combos. (I have a full 2 upgrade set of radiant armor, so I got bone Proficiency, Plus 4 mighty Banana and a golden apple, 9:10 minute duration attack 3.)

Bro I appreciate you so much thanks for telling us this Stuff.

i mean it makes sense, Spears are the fastest attackers in the game.

So basically the devs swapped out the damage per hit on weapons to instead displaying a weighted value of how good the weapon is for its type.

Imagine the boulder splitter would still do 70 damage by default plus the abillity to fuse

Can you make a video about all modifiers? Especially the critical hit modifier, since I don't understand what the heck it does... Is it any good or better than the +10 modifier?

I didn’t know I was geting a whole math lesson

So the damage of spears is much more in line with what they had in BotW than we first thought, lower damage but high atk speed and range. Seems to me the real loser in Totk is still the big two-handers, that extra 5% doesn't make up for the much higher atk speed of the one-handed swords.

Hey man, can you do a video on the difference between attack up on all the amiibo sets and attack up on FD and barbarian set etc

If my son were to ask why is it so important for him to learn math in school, I will show him this video.

So simple put is that for attack power 2 hand sword is the best, 1 hand sword in the middle & spear is the worst

Spears are nerfed because they hit so fast. So think of that value as damage per second.

Noties came in clutch!

The two spreadsheets give a ton of info the game does not tell you. I learned a ton from them. I wanted to know weapon durability. Very different from BoTW. Lightscale Trident and Biggoron Sword still rule on durability.

Why did I just get a math lesson today lol 😂