Talk:Attack (attribute)

I'm putting this here because it's the most relevant... Because attack is directly correlated to damage, should we put skills/traits/whatevers that increase damage here or on some "damage (player statistic)" page? Aqua (T|C) 16:38, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

The only things listed here should be the skills, traits and whatnot that directly affect the attack stat. Damage is something independent. - Infinite - talk 20:58, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure I understand this. It seems like all classes will want to max out there Power for the Attack statistic otherwise you would be doing rather Gimpy damage I imagine. Doesn't that limit your character variation? for example I see the elementalist power attribute is associated with fire. So all ele's will need to be strong in fire in order to do meaningful damage? I hope I'm missing something. 108.92.176.211 03:33, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

This probably isn't the best place to discuss this, but in brief you shouldn't be worried about this for 3 reasons. 1) Traits can only increase your stats in a particular attribute by, at maximum, 300 points. I forget exactly how many points a lvl80 character is going to have in each of these stats as a base value, but it's far more than 300, at least 800 or 1000, so attribute points from traits aren't going to be the deciding factor in your damage potential (in other words, you won't be dealing "gimpy" damage if you don't max Fire). 2) You have 70 trait points available, which means that even if you feel like you must max out Fire to max your Power, you'll still have 40 trait points left to distribute between 1-4 other trait lines. There will be plenty of build variation, even with the same stat distributions. 3) Who says maximum damage is the goal of every build? Sacrificing a bit of damage for more critical hits, or condition damage/duration, or more survivability, is a well-known and accepted trade-off. Skyy High 00:13, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Power, Attack and damage

I believe that Attack displays the damage dealt before any other effects like additional skill damage or opponent Defense? If so, then the article should reflect this. Mediggo 09:02, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Actually I'm making tests in the Heart of the Mists and Attack doesn't seem to be affecting anything directly. EG:

- 916 Power and 1205 Weapon Power equals 2121 Attack. Tooltip damage on Hip Shot shows 251 damage.

- 2075 Power and 125 Weapon Power equals 2075 Attack. Tooltip damage on Hip Shot shows 61 damage.

Both of these values are consistent with the damage I deal on heavy target golems. 77.237.14.251 18:32, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Attack statistic basically useless

I've edited the page slightly to reflect this, but basically the Attack stat means nothing. Attack is Max Weapon Damage + Power, and the damage for a skill is given by the formula Damage = (Weapon Damage * Power * Skill Coefficient)/Armor and the number generated by Power + Weapon Damage doesn't actually get used. Foofad 02:27, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

"Attack statistic basically useless" Rebuttal

I've edited the page to remove opinion. This is not the place for opinion. If you think it's useless, you need a better argument than simply "it's not used in damage calculation". Well, guess what? Walks aren't used in the baseball score, but guess what correlates VERY WELL with batting efficiency? Walks. And this fact wasn't really well known until the book Moneyball was recently published. So just because a statistic isn't "obviously useful' TO YOU doesn't mean ANET put it there for no reason. Surely we can agree that the team of developers and staff at ANET knows more about game design than you or I. Again, this is no place for opinion, all opinion as been removed. Yet, in my opinion, you're not smarter than everyone else because you read reddit, people! (assuming that's where you got this strange notion from since it's a popular idea on r/guildwars2) More on this below, where I elaborate on how you guys are jumping to conclusions here and being foolish by perpetuating a myth.

• Bases on Balls aka Walks are not directly used in the batting average (measure of the "damage" of your hits) - yet On-base plus slugging, which uses walks, is considered one of the best measures of a hitter's effectiveness. And for years, even after the Oakland A's were using their sabermetrics (like "attack") to properly compare players (analogous to "builds"), there were ignorant talking heads, coaches, and managers who refused to believe that statistical measures might not be so straightforward to understand.

http://www.thesportjournal.org/article/examination-moneyball-theory-baseball-statistical-analysis

Here's a quote from that link:

James' idea on hitters differs from the draft process of Billy Beane, but Beane adopted his views from James' ideology. When putting together a lineup, managers must decide the best order in which the team has the best chance of winning. To win the game one must score more runs than the opposing team. This thought provokes the question as to why such great importance is placed on batting averages? "People are in the habit of listing their teams offensive statistics according to batting averages rather than in order of runs scored" (James, 1984 p.10). James believes that "a hitter's job is not to compile a high batting average, maintain a high on-base percentage, create a high slugging percentage, get 200 hits, or hit home runs" (James, 2001 p. 329). However, part of a hitter's job from a coach's perspective, is to hit homeruns, singles, doubles, get on base, drive in runs, and steal bases (James, 2001). James believes the job of a hitter is to create runs. "The essential measure of a hitter's success is how many runs he has created" (James, 2001 p. 330). James then developed a formula that allows one to establish created runs:

(Hits + Walks) x Total Bases At-bats + Walks This formula works 90 % of the time and gives a total of the team's actual scored runs within 5 % (James, 2001). From this philosophy, Beane developed his theory. The only way to score runs is to get on base and since walks are such a vital part of the created runs formula, on-base percentage should be closely monitored. Even though this formula is very accurate, additional steps can be taken to improve the accuracy. This new formula accounts for the more minute aspects of meaningful baseball statistics. It works off the simple formula:

(A x B)/ C

• • • FYI - This is just an example of how stats beyond "direct score" might be useful; it is by no means a direct 1:1 meaning between the baseball example and GW2. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 173.88.186.161 (talk • contribs).

This page is similarly not the place for you to post your "recommendations" for what the player base ought to do. I've edited the page to try to reflect our current knowledge without undue commentary.

I also think that your long rant about walks is entirely missing beside the point for several reasons. For one, "walks" may not be used directly in calculating score, but they are obviously used indirectly—they directly affect a game mechanic (advancing runners through the bases) that directly affects the score.

For another, "walks" is actually measuring something that other statistics do not capture, and therefore is providing some kind of new information—it could hypothetically turn out to be information that we don't care about, but it has a Shannon entropy above zero. The attack statistic, on the other hand, is purely mathematically derived from other statistics, and therefore contains no actual new information. It's always possible that this statistic is used in some way that we don't understand, but that would necessarily entail that power and weapon strength are also used in some way that we don't understand, and I don't see you complaining on the power page that the community needs to investigate it further.

It's always possible that anything in the game has a hidden meaning that we're not aware of. But unless you have some actual evidence that this particular statistic does something that we haven't thought of, that's pure speculation on your part, and it doesn't belong in the main article. --Felbryn 18:30, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Felbryn, that makes sense. To the unsigned: You're cute, but no. Foofad 20:07, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Why would ANET include attack if it was useless?

The baseball analogy shouldn't be interpreted as a direct comparison. It was written to convey a metaphor for looking deeper into the numbers. It's the difference between finding a predictor for performance and calculating actual performance. There's a subtle difference between those two items.

The shannon entropy name-dropping is cute but completely misleading. First, let me address what he said: "The attack statistic, on the other hand, is purely mathematically derived from other statistics, and therefore contains no actual new information."."

There's so much wrong with that quote. It does contain new information, first of all. Certainly A+B is not derived from A*B. They are simply two different expressions. Consider this:

2x + y = 10 and 2*x*y = 89

Even though both equations are composed of x and y, they're clearly two different equations. You are confusing expressions with equations, first of all. He went on to write "It's always possible that this statistic is used in some way that we don't understand, but that would necessarily entail that power and weapon strength are also used in some way that we don't understand" but that's simply a non-sequitor. No, it would not imply that. This is completely missing the point.

So what was I talking about with the baseball analogy? Well, I was trying to say that "attack" is a useful figure of merit. Now let me attempt to prove this.

d = damage or change in health pool w = weapon strength p = power c = skill coefficient m = armor

By the basic definition,

d = (c*w*p)/m

Now let's multiply the right hand side by 1. But I'm going to write 1 in a clever way: 1 = (w+p)/(w+p)

d = c*[(w*p)/(w+p)][(w+p)/m]

Now let's call d = delta HP or HP2 - HP1 since it's really the change in health pool of the target. Let's call R = (w*p)/(w+p) because that functions as a resistance to the flow of health pool with power and weapon damage being in parallel (simple formula, if you know shannon entropy you should be able to derive this)

then we have

delta HP / R = c*(w+p)/m

Or the rate of change of health pool is proportional to the ratio of the attack and the armor. QED (it has been shown)

So what this is telling you is that an easy way to compare the rate of direct damage (neglecting crits) between two builds is to look at the ratio between the attack and armor. Of course, little things like crits and skill coefficients are not accounted for with that simple ratio. You could throw in the skill coefficients though, if you knew them. If not, it's still a decent "rule of thumb" kind of figure of merit that allows one to get a feel for how rapidly a certain power/weapon/target armor combination will lose health pool. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 173.88.186.161 (talk • contribs).