In this post I’ll be presenting the canonical way to calculate AR (along with giving you all of the scaling data you need). In a subsequent post I’ll go over how the scaling and saturation values can be extracted from the game’s files.
Home; Dark Souls. Character Planner; Browse Builds; Top Builds; Calculators; Dark Souls 2. Character Planner; Browse Builds; Top Builds; Dark Souls 3. Character Planner. 10 Apr 2018 21:32. Enlighten me anons, because while everyone is whining about split damage, as far as I know, it often can be a good thing. If every damage type you deal goes through it's respective absorption meter of opponent's armour, then when you're using, let's say, 100 physical dmg and 100 lightning dmg dealing weapon, and enemy in metal trash can on his head absorbs more phys than.
Credit: a lot of this post expands on info originally posted by rbfrosty on Reddit. The ability to mine the scaling data found in the spreadsheet listed in this post is thanks in large part to the work done by monrandia and pireax.
Attack Rating
First off, a quick definition of AR. AR stands for “Attack Rating” and it’s what the Soulsborne community has taken to calling your weapon’s total damage. It’s just the value that gets displayed on your stats screen, as shown below:
The Formula
Note: this formula only calculates AR for fully upgrade weapons. Calculating for different upgrade levels is outside of the scope of this post.
In order to scare you as much as possible I’m going to start with the final horrifying formula:
Before you run off screaming just know that once we break it down it won’t seem quite so bad.
A simplified version of the formula is as follows:
The basic formula for the scaling bonus for a particular damage type is:
Now things start to get fun. The weapon coefficient is the multiplier that is determined by your weapon’s scaling and your level in the corresponding stat. Keep in mind that the scaling letters don’t have consistent scaling values. i.e., two weapons that have a strength scaling of “C” do not necessarily have the same scaling multipliers.
Weapon coefficients are calculated as:
These are set values for each weapon and stat type. They can be found on this spreadsheet that will be discussed in more depth below. Keep in mind that those values are percentages while this formula expects the decimal value – thus, you’ll need to divide them by 100.
These can sort of be thought of as the “percentage” of the total potential AR of a weapon. These are set values for each level in the corresponding stat. This is where the increase in AR from leveling up actually comes from (and also how the “diminishing returns” are calculated.)
The fun part, however, is there isn’t just one set of saturation values – there are actually 11. Which one you use is determined by the weapon, infusion, and damage type. These are all included in the spreadsheet mentioned above (and we’ll go more in depth in the example section). Keep in mind that those values are percentages while this formula expects the decimal value – thus, you’ll need to divide them by 100.
Some damage types are affected by more than one stat, physical damage being one of them. This means we actually have to factor in the bonus damage received from each relevant stat. Physical damage is normally modified by strength, dex, and luck (for weapons with luck scaling). The formula is:
Blessed Weapons, Anri’s Straight Sword, Saint Bident, Lothric’s Holy Sword, Wolnir’s Holy Blade, and Morne’s Great Hammer also receive physical damage from Faith scaling:
Magic is only affected by Intelligence:
The one exception is the Golden Ritual Spear which receives Magic Damage from Faith Scaling:
Fire is affected by Intelligence and Faith:
Lightning is affected by Faith:
Dark is affected by Intelligence and Faith:
I realize this all feels like quite a mess by now, so an example should help clear things up a bit.
Let’s calculate the AR for a +10 Dark Falchion with the following stats: 15 str, 17 dex, 40 int, 35 faith.
First off, let’s pop open the scaling data spreadsheet to get our base damages:
Damage Type | Damage |
---|---|
Physical | 112 |
Magic | 0 |
Fire | 0 |
Lightning | 0 |
Dark | 145.6 |
This means our total base damage is:
Our Physical bonus would be:
To get our strength coefficient, we need to find the “strength scaling coefficient” and the “physical saturation”. Going back to the spreadsheet we’ll find that the strength coefficient for the Dark Falchion is
30
.For the saturation value, we look at the
Physical
column in the Saturation Curves
section. We’ll see that we want curve 0
. So, we open the “Saturation Curves” tab. From there, we find the Level 15
(15 is our current strength) column for the Curve Index - 0
row – this gives us 19.80409249
.We follow a similar pattern for the dex coefficient, this time getting
54
for our scaling coefficient and 23.24584203
for our saturation (this was the value in the Level 17
column in the Curve Index - 0
row):The weapon does not have any Luck or Faith Scaling, so we skip them (but if it did, the pattern would be the same).
Given that the Dark Falchion has no Magic, Fire, or Lightning damages, we can skip those (but if it did, we’d just follow the same pattern above, but for the correct stat and damage types).
The Dark bonus would be:
Our int scaling coefficient is
77
and the saturation value is 75
(the “Level 40” column for stat curve 0):The faith coefficient is
77
and the saturation value for level 35 in curve 0 is 66.55058206
:This gives us:
Now we can calculate our total AR:
Since Dark Souls rounds down, our final AR is
437
! This matches up with the value Mugenmonkey displays. Keep in mind that there’s potential room for rounding or floating point precision errors, so there’s always the small possibility that your final value may be 1 off from the in game value.AR isn’t too complex once you have all the necessary data. All of this information is out there, but I wasn’t aware of any single location that had all of the neccessary formulas AND data. Hopefully this will help somebody, or at the very least be interesting!
There are many different weapons to be found in Dark Souls III. Each weapon can be categorized into a weapon category, grouping weapons with similar attack styles.
Axes
Battle Axe
Brigand Axe
Butcher Knife
Dragonslayer's Axe
Eleonora
Hand Axe
Man Serpent Hatchet
Millwood Battle Axe
Thrall Axe
Winged Knight Twinaxes
Brigand Axe
Butcher Knife
Dragonslayer's Axe
Eleonora
Hand Axe
Man Serpent Hatchet
Millwood Battle Axe
Thrall Axe
Winged Knight Twinaxes
Bows
Black Bow of Pharis
Composite Bow
Darkmoon Longbow
Dragonrider Bow
Longbow
Short Bow
White Birch Bow
Composite Bow
Darkmoon Longbow
Dragonrider Bow
Longbow
Short Bow
White Birch Bow
Claws and Fists
Caestus
Dark Hand
Demon's Fist
Dark Hand
Demon's Fist
Crossbows
Arbalest
Avelyn
Heavy Crossbow
Knight's Crossbow
Light Crossbow
Repeating Crossbow
Sniper Crossbow
Avelyn
Heavy Crossbow
Knight's Crossbow
Light Crossbow
Repeating Crossbow
Sniper Crossbow
Curved Swords
Carthus Curved Sword
Carthus Shotel
Crescent Moon Sword
Dancer's Enchanted Swords
Demon's Scar
Falchion
Follower Sabre
Painting Guardian's Curved Sword
Pontiff Knight Curved Sword
Rotten Ghru Curved Sword
Scimitar
Sellsword Twinblades
Shotel
Storm Curved Sword
Warden Twinblades
Carthus Shotel
Crescent Moon Sword
Dancer's Enchanted Swords
Demon's Scar
Falchion
Follower Sabre
Painting Guardian's Curved Sword
Pontiff Knight Curved Sword
Rotten Ghru Curved Sword
Scimitar
Sellsword Twinblades
Shotel
Storm Curved Sword
Warden Twinblades
Curved Greatswords
Carthus Curved Greatsword
Exile Greatsword
Harald Curved Greatsword
Murakumo
Old Wolf Curved Sword
Exile Greatsword
Harald Curved Greatsword
Murakumo
Old Wolf Curved Sword
Daggers
Aquamarine Dagger
Bandit's Knife
Brigand Twindaggers
Corvian Greatknife
Dagger
Handmaid's Dagger
Harpe
Mail Breaker
Murky Hand Scythe
Parrying Dagger
Rotten Ghru Dagger
Scholar's Candlestick
Tailbone Short Sword
Bandit's Knife
Brigand Twindaggers
Corvian Greatknife
Dagger
Handmaid's Dagger
Harpe
Mail Breaker
Murky Hand Scythe
Parrying Dagger
Rotten Ghru Dagger
Scholar's Candlestick
Tailbone Short Sword
Greataxes
Black Knight Greataxe
Demon's Great Axe
Dragonslayer Greataxe
Earth Seeker
Great Machete
Greataxe
Yhorm's Great Machete
Demon's Great Axe
Dragonslayer Greataxe
Earth Seeker
Great Machete
Greataxe
Yhorm's Great Machete
Greatbows
Dragonslayer Greatbow
Millwood Greatbow
Onislayer Greatbow
Millwood Greatbow
Onislayer Greatbow
Great Hammers
Dragon Tooth
Gargoyle Flame Hammer
Great Club
Great Mace
Great Wooden Hammer
Large Club
Ledo's Great Hammer
Morne's Great Hammer
Old King's Great Hammer
Pickaxe
Quakestone Hammer
Smough's Great Hammer
Spiked Mace
Vordt's Great Hammer
Gargoyle Flame Hammer
Great Club
Great Mace
Great Wooden Hammer
Large Club
Ledo's Great Hammer
Morne's Great Hammer
Old King's Great Hammer
Pickaxe
Quakestone Hammer
Smough's Great Hammer
Spiked Mace
Vordt's Great Hammer
Greatswords
Bastard Sword
Black Knight Sword
Claymore
Drakeblood Greatsword
Executioner's Greatsword
Firelink Greatsword
Flamberge
Gael's Greatsword
Greatsword of Judgment
Hollowslayer Greatsword
Moonlight Greatsword
Onyx Blade
Storm Ruler
Twin Princes' Greatsword
Wolf Knight's Greatsword
Wolnir's Holy Sword
Black Knight Sword
Claymore
Drakeblood Greatsword
Executioner's Greatsword
Firelink Greatsword
Flamberge
Gael's Greatsword
Greatsword of Judgment
Hollowslayer Greatsword
Moonlight Greatsword
Onyx Blade
Storm Ruler
Twin Princes' Greatsword
Wolf Knight's Greatsword
Wolnir's Holy Sword
Halberds
Black Knight Glaive
Crescent Axe
Crucifix of the Mad King
Glaive
Gundyr's Halberd
Halberd
Immolation Tinder
Lucerne
Red Hilted Halberd
Splitleaf Greatsword
Winged Knight Halberd
Crescent Axe
Crucifix of the Mad King
Glaive
Gundyr's Halberd
Halberd
Immolation Tinder
Lucerne
Red Hilted Halberd
Splitleaf Greatsword
Winged Knight Halberd
Hammers
Blacksmith Hammer
Club
Drang Hammers
Heysel Pick
Mace
Morning Star
Reinforced Club
Warpick
Club
Drang Hammers
Heysel Pick
Mace
Morning Star
Reinforced Club
Warpick
Katanas
Black Blade
Bloodlust
Chaos Blade
Darkdrift
Frayed Blade
Onikiri and Ubadachi
Uchigatana
Washing Pole
Bloodlust
Chaos Blade
Darkdrift
Frayed Blade
Onikiri and Ubadachi
Uchigatana
Washing Pole
Reapers
Friede's Great Scythe
Great Corvian Scythe
Great Scythe
Pontiff Knight Great Scythe
Great Corvian Scythe
Great Scythe
Pontiff Knight Great Scythe
Spears and Pikes
Arstor's Spear
Dragonslayer Spear
Dragonslayer Swordspear
Drang Twinspears
Follower Javelin
Four-Pronged Plow
Gargoyle Flame Spear
Golden Ritual Spear
Partizan
Rotten Ghru Spear
Saint Bident
Soldering Iron
Spear
Tailbone Spear
Winged Spear
Yorshka's Spear
Dragonslayer Spear
Dragonslayer Swordspear
Drang Twinspears
Follower Javelin
Four-Pronged Plow
Gargoyle Flame Spear
Golden Ritual Spear
Partizan
Rotten Ghru Spear
Saint Bident
Soldering Iron
Spear
Tailbone Spear
Winged Spear
Yorshka's Spear
Greatlance
Lothric Knight Long Spear
Lothric War Banner
Pike
Ringed Knight Spear
Lothric Knight Long Spear
Lothric War Banner
Pike
Ringed Knight Spear
Straight Swords
Anri's Straight Sword
Astora Straight Sword
Barbed Straight Sword
Broadsword
Broken Straight Sword
Cleric's Candlestick
Dark Sword
Gotthard Twinswords
Irithyll Straight Sword
Long Sword
Lothric Knight Sword
Lothric's Holy Sword
Morion Blade
Ringed Knight Straight Sword
Shortsword
Sunlight Straight Sword
Valorheart
Astora Straight Sword
Barbed Straight Sword
Broadsword
Broken Straight Sword
Cleric's Candlestick
Dark Sword
Gotthard Twinswords
Irithyll Straight Sword
Long Sword
Lothric Knight Sword
Lothric's Holy Sword
Morion Blade
Ringed Knight Straight Sword
Shortsword
Sunlight Straight Sword
Valorheart
Thrusting Swords
Crow Quills
Crystal Sage's Rapier
Estoc
Irithyll Rapier
Rapier
Ricard's Rapier
Crystal Sage's Rapier
Estoc
Irithyll Rapier
Rapier
Ricard's Rapier
Ultra Greatswords
Astora Greatsword
Black Knight Greatsword
Cathedral Knight Greatsword
Farron Greatsword
Fume Ultra Greatsword
Greatsword
Lorian's Greatsword
Lothric Greatsword
Profaned Greatsword
Ringed Knight Paired Greatswords
Zweihander
Black Knight Greatsword
Cathedral Knight Greatsword
Farron Greatsword
Fume Ultra Greatsword
Greatsword
Lorian's Greatsword
Lothric Greatsword
Profaned Greatsword
Ringed Knight Paired Greatswords
Zweihander
Whips
Notched Whip
Rose of Ariandel
Spotted Whip
Whip
Witch's Locks
Rose of Ariandel
Spotted Whip
Whip
Witch's Locks