Thanks, as always, to everyone for your questions! You can submit any questions relating to current development plans, to request clarification on basic game mechanic questions, or questions on community issues through the Grab Bag Submission form. For any other feedback or suggestions please use our feedback form.

Onto the wall of text!

For chances to parry/evade/block, is it rolled against weaponskill? Does sequence of attack reduce this chance ? (I.E. the same attacker swing twice in a round, the second attack can be blocked/parried/evaded ? With the same chances as the first?)

Chances to evade, parry, block, miss, or fumble are calculated by a myriad of different factors including class, specialization, character stats, styles used, and much more. Weaponskill is a derived stat that shows a rough estimate of your character’s effectiveness. It can be used to roughly gauge your chance to land attacks or defend against them but weaponskill is not directly used anywhere in the combat code.

For multiple attacks in the same round (such as by a dual wielder), each weapon’s swing is counted like another attacker. A dual wielder that has both attacks blocked would count as 2 attackers in that defender’s combat round.

As for multiple attackers, this was recently answered in our October 2020 Grab Bag: 

For example, if 5 attackers are swinging in the frontal arc of a target wielding a large shield, each attacker will calculate through those combat checks separately at the time of their melee swing. 3 of the 5 attackers will have a chance to be blocked while 2 of the 5 will never be blocked. Which 3 attackers are blocked and which 2 are not is not always the same, but if a target wielding a large shield blocks 3 attackers in the same combat round (defined by the defender’s swing speed), subsequent attackers will not be blocked in that same combat round.

Regarding Combat style bonuses…

My understanding is that there are 4 tiers of modifier (none/low/medium/high)worth (0/5/10/15) % respectively for damage/to hit/defense.

Do these bonuses stay online until another combat style is selected (I.E. you "style", and keep the bonus for any number of unstyled normal attacks that follows) or are they tied to that styled attack only?

In the second case (which I think is more likely, just dismissing doubts), do "defense bonues/penalties" persists until the next attack of the defender or only apply to the next attack? Or to put it differently : does an attack "consume" that bonus or would multiple opponent be suffering that defense bonus until the next swing of the defender?

The bonuses from styles are only valid for the next combat round of the character that performed the style. This includes defensive based bonuses.

Style bonuses are given on a combat-round basis not an attack or melee swing-basis. Combat round durations are determined by a character’s swing speed (which is based on several factors like the quickness stat, haste stats and buffs, celerity, and the weapon’s speed) but combat rounds still count down if a character swings and then sheathes their weapon. This is why characters can’t sheathe and re-style immediately, they must still wait until their next combat round is ready before they can swing again.

For example, if a character performs a style that gives them +15% defensive bonus chance and their bonuses + equipped weapons result in a swing speed of 1.5 seconds, that defensive bonus will only last the 1.5 seconds of that character’s combat round, even if they never swing again.

Additionally, that bonus will apply against multiple attackers for that full combat round (1.5 seconds in this example).

How do magic resist and armor factor debuffs affect bolts?
 

Bolts are treated in a lot of ways like melee attacks that deal a magic damage type (similar to legendary weapon melee attacks). This is why bolts hit for less against higher armor factor (AF) and absorb% (ABS) targets, just like melee attacks do, and why bolts can miss or be blocked.

However, there is one crucial difference with bolts versus melee attacks: magic resists are half as effective against bolt damage.

For example, a target with 50% magic resists to the bolt’s damage type would see damage like 751 (-251). 751+251 = 1,002. 1,002/251 = 25% effective magic resist (or 50%/2). The same target would still have 50% magic resists against a normal direct damage spell. The previous example assumes no spell piercing bonus on the bolt caster.

Spell piercing’s effectiveness is also halved when bolting. With 10% spell piercing against a 50% resistant target, damage would be something like 801(-201) which works out to a 20% resist total (50%/2 = 25% with an additional 5% (10%/2) removed due to spell piercing).

Continuing the example with magic resist debuffs, a 30% magic resist debuff against a 50% resistant target will reduce their resistances to a 20% starting value. A bolt would then be hitting the target as though they have 10% effective resistance. So a bolt that hits for 901 (-100) without spell piercing has 10% effective resistance or 952 (-50) with 10% spell piercing, which removes a further 5% (10%/2) resists has 5% overall effective resistance.

The calculations for damage mitigation of Armor Factor (AF) and Absorb (ABS) are a bit more complex and work almost identically as they do for melee attacks except that there is potentially no damage variance involved with bolts if the bolt caster has 50 composite specialization in their bolt’s line. An explanation on how AF and ABS factor into damage reduction is discussed in our July 2018 grab bag: 

AF debuffs directly subtract the character’s AF, so a 250 delve AF debuff is going to remove 250 *1.25 = 312 AF from the target’s AF total (the 25% delve bonus comes from the AF debuffer’s 50 composite specialization) and the less AF a target has the harder a bolt will hit them.

The amount of AF removed by an AF debuff is not affected by the target’s magic resist to the AF debuff spell. In other words, magic resist debuffs don’t directly increase/compound the effectiveness of an AF debuff.

In conclusion, using both an AF debuff and magic resist debuff will cause a bolt to hit harder than when using none or only 1 of these debuff types!

I've read in a previous grab bag that "dual wield halve the chances to be evaded". So I wonder: Does it halve the chance to be parried? Does two-handed halve the chances to parry? Does something halve the chances to block?

Dual-wielders receive an extra 25% penetration bonus versus evade and block, not a 50% bonus. There is no such penetration bonus versus parry for any weapon type.

Can we get clarification if merc rr5+ banespike stack please? And also clarification on vendo + banespike and trip wield + banespike?

The Mercenary Dissolute Swings (Realm Rank 5) ability and the Blademaster Triple Wield ability do not stack with Banespike because each of these abilities already directly increase the Mercenary’s and Blademaster’s damage.

Berserk (“vendo”) guarantees a Berserkers chance to critically hit on their melee attacks and allows them to critically hit above the 50% critical damage cap, it does *not* increase the berserker’s damage directly. The delve stating that Berserk increases their damage by a % is a bit misleading but it’s taking an average damage increase from all of the additional critical hits that the form grants and is displaying that as an overall damage increase in the delve. We’ll look at adjusting this hard-coded delve to be more clear in the future.

Regardless, because Berserk does not directly increase a Berserker’s damage, it does stack with Banespike.

Phew, that's a lot of info!

Thanks everyone, and enjoy the weekend! :)