ATK=Higher "Sneak+Trick" Damage?

[MCfuzz]

this is how i see it. atk must affect sneak, it doesnt make much sense for it not to. your weapon's damage is figured into your attack and ONLY attack. attack is how the computer can calculate the damage you do. and if attack did not affect sneak then you would be able to equip a level 1 dagger and do the same amount of sneak damage that level 30 dagger would do. that just doesnt make any sense.

[Derez]

I thought this was cleared up pretty well in this thread.

The way I understand it, you guys are 1/2 right, sneak attack + trick attack max damage isn't determined by attack (or STR), but by DEX and AGI, and those formulas were posted in that thread:

Originally posted by bside

sneak attack
(D+8+(D/9)+DEX)*3

trick attack (if critical hit)
(D+8+(D/9)+AGI)*3

therefore, fuidama
(D+8+(D/9)+DEX+AGI)*3

D=weapon dmg I think...

But sneak and trick attack don't ignore defense, so the higher your attack is, the more likely you are to hit for that max damage. So if you're fighting an IT with high evasion and defense, you'd probably hit for less than that equation a fair amount of the time, but if you boosted your attack (with food or bard or whatever) so that IT now checks as low defense, you'd most likely hit for the full damage of those formulas most of the time.

Originally posted by KillerQueen
but i know when I solo...i use Sneak Attack and with or without Berserk the damage is the same range

Probably because when you solo, you don't fight things that check as having high defense? so berserk won't make much of a change for your sneak attack there, since you'll be hitting close to or at max SA dmg anyway...

[KambuL]

25thf/mnk here.

Ill put it this way. Simply, yes. Attack does affect sneak damage.

I test it everyday when I just play the game, and thats the main reason ive subbed monk.

In qufim, at around level 23, Normal sneak attacks damaged clippers at around 60. Stacked with 5-6 boosts (doubles attack), I get numbers around 120. Stacked with a weapon skill and well... Dead mob

After sneaking with Boost / without Boost, I can honestly say that if you double your attack with boost, you will see double the damage (depending on the mob). You will see even more if you have a bard song or a food activated (meat mithkabob). One thing though, you need several boosts to even notice a difference. I prefer about 6. When pulling mobs over and over, you wont be able to do those huge attacks, but vs higher xp mobs, you can do some really great damage. Just need time to prepare your sneak right.

[Weezingpipes]

In my experience ATK doesn't increase max damage possible. However it increases the rate of doing max damage per hit - its your atk vs monsters def calculation, nothing more. It is fairly evident when you fight a monster with a High Defense message. When I use Berserk + Mithkabobs usually there is either no high defense message or low defense message instead. All my ws always do higher damage with higher ATK, everything does higher damage with higher ATK due to the difference between your ATK and monsters DEF. So for THF at least, DEX/AGI will determine your maximum damage with Sneak/Trick, ATK will help you get that max damage more often.

I wish I had the exact formulas to determine how this is factored but it would be interesting to find out what they are.

[Weezingpipes]

Damn double posts ^^

[Starcrossed]

Fuidama Damage

Here's my take on how damage calculation goes, and I don't believe it contradicts anything anyone has said.

A) Trick Attack: A normal attack with boosted damage determined by agility. (2-3 times from experience)

B) Sneak Attack: Changes next attack into a critical with a multiplier determined by dexterity. (4-10 times)

C) Weapon skill:
Viper Bite: Two normal attacks combined into one strike.
Fast Blade: Two to Four attacks combined into one strike.

Those things are combined in that order. Base damage is determined mostly by strength, and by your attack rating compared to the monsters defense rating. So in a fairly reasonable scale, say you do 15 damage. Let's try and see how this works out.

A) If your agility is enough, say you triple your base damage and do 45 damage from trick attack alone.

B) If your dexterity if enough, say your damage is maxed at eight times. If you had done a trick beforehand, you would be at 360 damage now. If you had not done trick, you could have done 120 damage. According to my exp runs last night, both these numbers seem right on.

C) If you include viper bite, it has been stated repeatedly that sneak attack applies only to the first hit of a multi hit weapon skill... So your second hit will add only the base damage of an additional 45 if you trick attacked. Final result, around 405 damage. Also in accordance with my level runs last night.

This is slightly off topic, I was ALWAYS sure that daggers were better for thieves at higher levels, but I'm level 40 now and I've seen more thieves with swords than daggers, even AFTER viper bite comes into play. I laughed and thought they were crazy but we partied anyways, and the level 50 thief in my linkshell also demonstrated for us that swords are actually better than daggers. How does that work? Swords have a much higher damage rating than daggers for the same level and the gaps wider and wider as you go up in levels.

eg Dagger in the 20s does has attack of 11.
AF Dagger for level 40 still only has an attack of 15.

eg Sword at level 13 has an attack of 13.
Sword at level 40 has an attack of 22 or more.

Then there's the skill cap difference to consider... but so far I've seen that a base damage difference of 7 on the weapon makes up for the lower skill cap and often still hits harder. I was embarassed when the level 38 thief did sneak/trick/fast and did 368 damage, I followed up with my sneak/trick/viper and only did 296 damage. And this didn't happen once... this happened more than half the time he would out damage me. I also had WAY high dexterity than him, but he had higher agility.

The main advantage that dagger offers at higher levels may not be viper bite after all... after all fast blade is also a two strike attack and in fact deals more than double damage if you keep saving TP whereas viper bite is stuck at double damage. The main advantage to sticking with daggers is in terms of accuracy... higher skill cap means better chance to hit, and much faster attacks, and as a result, I gained TP around 25% faster than the thief using dual swords while I used dual daggers.

My gear for reference:
Full Mercenary Captains Set
Beetle earrings +1 (+3 attack each)
Balance Rings (+2 dex each)
Dual Wielding Merc Captain's Kukri (attack 13, +3 acc)

153 attack, 63 dexterity, 48 agility. (level 40)

Streak

[Korendil]

Wow... um, that sort of sucks. All I can think of (in addition to what you mentioned about TP gain) is that Dancing Edge is a 5-hit WS, and you're expected keep Dagger maxed for /that/? I really don't know how high-level sword WSs would compare to that (guessing they're better), so maybe not.