[on site] The Complete Damage Formula for Diamond & Pearl

[david stone]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but how I'm reading it is you do all the multiplication and addition and such until you get to mod 2. You multiply that number by 1.3 for Life Orb, round down. Multiply by whatever's next, round down.

[Peterko]

no he meant that the actual ingame formula uses
3/2 (x 3 / 2) instead of x 1.5, or
3/4 (x 3 / 4) instead of x 0.75, or
1/2 (x 1 / 2 ) instead of x 0.5
etc.

but it doesn´t make a difference, the result is the same

[.River]

So you do Critical hit which will normaly be one, then you times that by Mod 2.

Which means that you are multiplying 1 by 1.3 then rounding down so Life Orb won't have any effect?

[david stone]

I don't know if you're trying to troll, but if you are, it's not going to work.

If you are not, there is an entire formula behind the CH. That will usually give a number that isn't 1, as it includes base power, Attack, Defense, and the like.

[Peterko]

are you serious?

let´s say you are calculating and have 100 before coming to the CH part
normal hit with life orb: 100 x 1 x 1.3 = 130
critical hit with life orb: 100 x 2 x 1.3 = 260

you DON´T round down the individual modifiers, you round down the numbers after you apply the modifiers = AFTER EACH STEP...the formula would´ve been too long if we would write all possible modifiers into it, that´s why all modifiers affecting a particular part of the formula were listed in groups

I understand what you mean, but YOU DON´T ROUND DOWN MODIFIERS, YOU ROUND DOWN THE RESULTS YOU GET AFTER YOU APPLY A MODIFIER, do you understand that?

example:
Mod1 = BRN × RL × TVT × SR × FF

instead of doing (0.5 x 0.5 x 1 x 1 x 1) = x 0.25, rounded down = 0 (this is what you mean)
you do number that you´ve gotten in the previous steps x 0.5, rounded down, x 0.5, rounded down, x 1, rounded down, x 1 rounded down, x 1, rounded down

[.River]

So, only for Modifiers 1-3, you multiply what's before it with everything in that modifier, and then round down? What is trolling?

EDIT:

I am sorry for causing you guys the trouble.

From the Formula:

CH * Mod 2

Does this mean:

CH * ITM * TT * MF and then round down after that?

Or

CH * (ITM * TT * MF) and then round down after that?

[X-Act]

I think I made it absolutely clear in the guide that the order of multiplication is from left to right, otherwise the answer is incorrect. I even provided an example of one such calculation. Read the guide thoroughly, .River.

[Arseus]

I noticed you have forgotten our good old friend Regigigas, and its Ability, Slow Start which is not mentioned as an Ability Modifier. It halves its Attack stat (giving an AM of 0.5) for 5 turns, renewing every time it switches in (it halves Speed as well, but that doesn't affect the Damage Formula). This cannot be removed via Skill Swap in the Japanese versions.

[X-Act]

Made a lot of updates and fixes to the guide.

[david stone]

OHKOs don't bring HP to 0, they actually do damage. They do damage equal to the target's max HP (which matters for purposes of passing Substitute). I think Endeavor also does something like damage = their HP - your HP.

I hear about these multi-billion damage reports, but I don't know how that works out. I can't get anything above 142,597,368. This is what I did:

(((((((100 × 2 ÷ 5) + 2) × 1440 × 4912 ÷ 50) ÷ 1) × 1) + 2) × 2 × 2 × 100 ÷ 100) × 1.5 × 2 × 2 × 1

Level 100, 1440 power (Defense Curl, Helping Hand, and 5th turn Rollout), 4912 Attack (614 Attack Shuckle from Power Trick, Pure Power, +6 Attack), nothing in mod 1, CH, Metronome to give x2, max damage in the random number, STAB, 4x weakness, nothing in mod 1. Am I leaving out a way to increase this damage, or did I calculate anything wrong?

[X-Act]

You're right about the OHKO moves dealing damage. I'll change that.

I don't know about Endeavor, though.

[.River]

Instead of Metronome, you are supposed to use Trick or something to obtain Choice Band, then Rollout.

Also, Lvl1 -Defense Combee is a good opponent.

[david stone]

Metronome essentially gives you x2, Choice Band is x1.5. Also forgot to mention my opponent in there, it is a Combee / Ledyba / whatever that's 4x weak and gets down to 4 Defense which is a lot of stuff.

[.River]

Originally Posted by Fat Obi

OHKOs don't bring HP to 0, they actually do damage. They do damage equal to the target's max HP (which matters for purposes of passing Substitute). I think Endeavor also does something like damage = their HP - your HP.

I hear about these multi-billion damage reports, but I don't know how that works out. I can't get anything above 142,597,368. This is what I did:

(((((((100 × 2 ÷ 5) + 2) × 1440 × 4912 ÷ 50) ÷ 1) × 1) + 2) × 2 × 2 × 100 ÷ 100) × 1.5 × 2 × 2 × 1

Level 100, 1440 power (Defense Curl, Helping Hand, and 5th turn Rollout), 4912 Attack (614 Attack Shuckle from Power Trick, Pure Power, +6 Attack), nothing in mod 1, CH, Metronome to give x2, max damage in the random number, STAB, 4x weakness, nothing in mod 1. Am I leaving out a way to increase this damage, or did I calculate anything wrong?

You didn't mention Defense -6, so you might have left that out.

[david stone]

Well, that's why I divide by 1. 4 Defense, -6 Defense stages means it's divided by 4, meaning it's brought down to 1, the lowest possible Defense.

[X-Act]

I have read somewhere that a Pokemon with Guts that uses Sleep Talk while asleep will not have Guts activated. Is this true?

[david stone]

No, that's only Facade.

[odnamrataizem]

I haven't seen it anywhere yet, so I've whipped up a little JavaScript damage calculator based on the formula. There might be a few mistakes left to iron out, and yes, the coding style is rather meh. Anyway, it will work on all four "major browsers" (Firefox, Opera, IE, Safari), and is also OS-independent depending on the browser.

[david stone]

AMF, your calculator is the closest to accurate I have found so far (at least for this one calculation), but it appears to be slightly off. In the massive damage calculation I did above, I get:

142,597,368

Your calculator returns:

142,597,416

So one of us is slightly off.



Also in the first post, it says,

Fissure, Guillotine, Horn Drill and Sheer Cold - Damage is equal to the foe's remaining HP, or to the substitute's HP if the foe is behind a substitute.

It does damage equal to the target's maximum HP, so if they are Baton Passed a Substitute with HP greater than their max HP, it will not break.

[X-Act]

I thought I saw something in the research thread that suggested that they do the foe's remaining HP as damage, and not the foe's max HP. Searching through the research thread again, I realised that I had misunderstood how they work. Sorry about that.

[0n1l1nk.]

sorry to bother you but actually in the game the rand number is coded as a multiplication by a rand number between 217 and 255 inclusive followed by another multiplication by 100 then divided by 255 (i know it changes very little)

[X-Act]

That is very useful information. If it is true, that makes the numbers between 85 and 100 not being chosen with uniform probability.

85, 87, 89, 90, 92, 94, 96 and 98 have probability 3/39 of being chosen.
86, 88, 91, 93, 95, 97 and 99 have probability 2/39 of being chosen.
100 has probability 1/39 of being chosen.

Which means that it's not very likely that you'll actually deal maximum damage.

[Toothache]

ok, so how do I use these formulae with 2 v 2? What is the reduction in base power for moves that hit more than one target (Rock Slide), or those that hit all but the user (Earthquake)? What is the reduction, and at what point does this come into the formulae?

[david stone]

Mod1.

"TVT is 0.75 if the game is 2vs2 and the move used hits more than one Pokemon, and 1 otherwise. Note: These moves don't always hit for 75% damage. Research on what conditions trigger the 75% damage are being carried out."

[chaos**]

SCMS crew: Could we get an HTML version of this up on the site? Diamond & Pearl -> Articles -> damage_formula please