A typical skill description states that "damage is based on your level and receives a bonus from [attribute]".

I'm thinking of making a ranger, but can't see any use of pumping huntsman skill (+5% damage if on higher ground) beyond 5, as polymorph (+1 attribute) or warfare (+5% physical damage) seemingly are just flat-out better choices.

Am I missing something? Is this as poorly balanced as it seems? Thanks!

Damage formula is not that simple, % you get from attribute does not work the same way as something you get from Huntsman/Warfare. Attribute is weaker point for point there.

That only answers the huntsman vs polymorph part of the question though. Why take hutsman above lvl 5 (to be able to use all its skills) instead of warfare when both as a 5% increase and huntsman only works from highground?

Huntsman is sooooo powerful if you really set your ranger at higher ground, if you got good weapon with high huntsman its oneshooting/almost oneshooting enemies. (even at Tactican mode vs weaker targets its oneshot)

Here is the better question for you, why not take both? Because that's what you will be doing if you maximum damage.

I know rangers are strong, not that question asked.

What makes 1 point in huntsman (5% more damage from high ground) better than 1 point in warfare (5% more damage). Looking at it like this, warfare is obviously better, so OP and I is asking if you can even compare the two, or if their damage is caculated differently.

End game, sure. Have to get there first though, and would like to know what's optimal. It's not a big issue or anything, just a thought I, and OP, have had.

Warfare gives the most physical damage, no beating that because Warfare is a unique multiplier. You should always have it maxed because it adds 5% to your final weapon damage after both Stat and weapon talent are already added in.

So if you have 40 str and 10 weapon talent, treat it like 50 str.
and with +50% from warfare, that +200% damage gets another *1.5 on top of it so that 300% base damage now becomes 450%, not 350%.

And with high weapon damage, everything else deals more damage as well.

Highground bonus is added to crit multiplier. Let's say you have 50% crit damage. If you crit with +50% high ground, it becomes +100% damage, not *1.5 crit * 1.5 highground for a total of +125% damage. The good thing about it is that highground and crit are applied AFTER weapon damage so even at low level, it already adds as much damage as getting str/fin/int or weapon talent and as you have high base damage, the crit/highground becomes even stronger.

So to make it easier to see

Let's say you have 20 Fin, +50% damage with maxed Warfare, +50% physical damage. You choose between Polymorph, huntsman Or ranged. You base damage is 100. Your highground bonus is 20% (no huntsman)

If you get Poly-Fin or Ranged, you now deal +55% base damage (21 fin or 20 fin + 1 ranged) and your damage becomes 155. With warfare, it becomes 232.5. From highground, that becomes 232.5 * 1.2 = 279 damage per highground shot.

But let's say you put that point into huntsman.

You deal 150 damage. With warfare, it becomes 225. From highground, it becomes 225 * 1.25 = 281.25 damage.

You already deal 2 more damage from getting huntsman at an early level. Imagine how much more you get per point from huntsman instead of poly/ranged when you're dealing 1000 a hit especially with how easy it is to pump that Fin compared to Huntsman, making Stat-based bonus and weapon talent extremely easy to hit the diminishing return point with.

Before I started playing I read somewhere that the 5% you get per point in attribute (and maybe in skill lines) isn't linear and at some point becomes less than 5% per point. If this is true, does anyone have a graph that shows how it scales?

I did a quick test on level 20 caster and with 57 Int and 15 Aero, by removing a few points from each and comparing how it changed the damage of certain abilities. What I see is that, for him, 2 int = 1 Aero. Of course, this might not be true at 15 Int and 3 Aero if these bonuses aren't linear - or, even though both say they increase damage by 5%, perhaps they enter into the equation at different times, making one more powerful than the other. If someone has the answers please share them

I think you are talking about the old EA attribute system with diminishing return. The higher your level, they less you got out of your attributes so at about level 8-10 attributes had hardly any effect left. This system got luckily replaced, though I would not call the new system that much better.

Do we know the exact formula? I'd be happy to add a skill point calculator to my page that would suggest the best place to put points.

Base weapon/magic damage * (1 + 0.05*(Stat + Weapon talent)) * (1+0.05*warfarelevel/elemental level) * (1+critdamage if crit +highgroundbonus if highground)

That's the formula I use to always get the damage and tested in both GM mode and story mode. Apply resistance to final damage.

Thanks for breaking this down - extremely useful. Do you know if there is a calculator somewhere out there with dummy variables for those of us who are less mathematically inclined?

not really but the damage is quite easy to calculate as the game already does the base damage up to warfare/pyro element for you in a form of weapon/skill damage.

All you need to keep track of are resist, crit damage and highground bonus and just add those bonus to your number. If you see something like 2000 damage on your skill, just think it will do like 3000 from high ground/crit and 4000 if it crits + highground depending on your skill level.

I tend to rely less on the character screen because I run a physical damage two-man Lone Wolf party and would ideally like to exclude all magical damage because it is essentially redundant. Anyway, it is not really a major deal as I am not struggling, but I keep wondering whether I should put that additional point into Ranged, Huntsman or Warfare...

Wait what? I could have sworn that highground increases the base damage as well.

It does - he is simply referring to the order of the calculation. Have a look at #625194 above.

This doesn't seem to explain why (at least in my test with 57 int and 15 Aero), removing 2 Int was approximately the same damage reduction as removing 1 Aero.

Let's have your calculation then.

Are spells based on weapon damage as well?

Actually that formula explains that 100% perfectly.

I've been working on a calculator based on this formula. Here is a link to the alpha version.
www.irodemine.com/divinity2/damage.php

Why to put points into Huntsman? Because it increases any type of damage, not only physical damage like Warfare. Important if you intent to use weapons of mixed damage or elemental arrows (which I don't). I upped Warfare till 10 and then put points into Huntsman. There are higher areas available quite often.

Okay I ran the numbers that I had written down again and reverse engineered the spell damage. Running it through the formula matched up perfectly (with the averages of the low-high). I guess it's because they (int bonus and aero bonus) are multiplied and not added, increasing the lower number (Aero in my case) is always a more important contributor.

For anyone else who is bad at math like me, an example:
1 x 50 = 50
1 x 51 = 51
1.1 x 50 = 55