Damage Calculation Bloodborne Wiki » Game Mechanics » Damage Calculation

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Basic Information

Damage Types The damage type of your attack determines which enemy defense value is used to reduce its damage and which gems can increase it. There are five main types: physical, blood, arcane, fire, and bolt. For example, if you attack with only fire, just the enemy's fire defense will reduce it. All other defenses are ignored. Physical is a bit special in that it has two special subtypes: blunt and thrust. Each physical attack is either normal physical, blunt, or thrust. The enemy will use the appropriate defense type depending on your attack. In other words, the enemy really has seven defense types: physical, blunt, thrust, blood, arcane, fire, and bolt. Gems that increase physical attack, however, also increase blunt and thrust damage. On the other hand, a gem that increases thrust won't raise normal physical or blunt damage. "Physical ATK UP" raises the power of physical, blunt, and thrust attacks. "Thrust ATK UP" raises the power of thrust attacks only. "Blunt ATK UP" raises the power of blunt attacks only. The next important point to understand is that damage type is determined by your individual attack, not the weapon overall. Ludwig's Holy Blade does normal physical damage, but it also has separate blunt and thrust attacks. A "physical attack up" gem would raise the damage of all of the attacks, but a "thrust attack up" gem would only benefit the thrusts. Finally, know that attacks can have more than one type. For example, an attack can be physical and arcane. In this case, the physical portion of the attack will benefit from physical gems and be reduced by the enemy's physical defense, while the arcane portion will be increased by arcane gems and reduced by arcane defense. Remember that blunt and thrust are subtypes of physical damage. If you convert your weapon's physical damage into an element like fire, it no longer matters if an attack is thrust or blunt; the damage will be fire elemental. Attack Power So how do you know how strong your weapon is? Open your Inventory and scroll to the Right Hand Weapons section Select your weapon and press square to pull up the details pane. On the left side of the details pane, you'll see the attack values for your weapon. From top to bottom, you can see: physical attack, blunt attack, thrust attack, blood attack, arcane attack, fire attack, and bolt attack. The number on the left of each entry is the "base attack" of your weapon. The number on the right is the amount that the damage is increased by your stats; this is called "attack from scaling." "Physical ATK UP" benefits physical, thrust, and blunt damage types but "Thrust ATK UP" and "Blunt ATK UP" only benefit their own subtype. Attack Damage Multipliers In fact, each and every attack that you can do has a hidden "attack damage multiplier." The damage multipliers (marked as Dmg x in the tables) are applied to your total attack power for each type. Basic Formulas Base Attack + Attack from Scaling = Total Attack Total Attack x "Dmg x" = Total Damage Total Damage - Enemy Defense = Actual Damage Remember that this is calculated separately for each damage type and then added together.

Attacks versus Open Foes If your enemy is "open," it means they have missed an attack, rolled, performed a backstep, or otherwise left themselves open for an attack [Testing Data]. In this situation, you can perform a counter hit for extra damage! The amount of bonus damage is determined by how open the enemy is. For example, after it misses with a normal swing, you may hit a foe for an extra 20% damage. If the enemy misses a really big, slow attack, you might do an extra 40% damage. It doesn't stop there, either; it's pretty common to hit a cutlass-wielding Huntsman for a roughly 68% bonus. Timing is very critical in performing these counter hits. If you are too early or too late, you'll do less damage. You want to hit the enemy just after the attack ends but before it begins to recover. There is some margin for error; 40% bonus hits can become 20% bonus hits if your timing is only off by a little bit. If you miss the timing too much, though, you'll just hit for normal damage. Spacing is key if you want to use counter hits. You need to stand in a position that baits an enemy into using a big attack but still lets you step out of range. Then, as the enemy attempts to recover, you can attack for a counter hit. Another method is to roll or frontstep behind the enemy; you'll often pass through their attack with your invincibility frames and recover just in time to counter. A more advanced technique is to backstep to dodge the enemy attack and then counter with a backstep attack. If your normal backstep doesn't move far enough to dodge the attack or its attack doesn't reach the enemy. If an enemy misses an attack it will be "open." You can hit it for a big damage bonus. The Finestrike gem effect can increase the amount of damage you deal against open foes. This will further increase the damage bonus of counter hits. When fighting normally, you may want to rely on other effects, but if you use certain long-range weapons, such as the Rifle Spear or Hunter Axe, you may find this to be very useful indeed. The Rifle Spear in particular is extremely well-suited for attacking open foes. Lead Elixirs can be used to perform counter hits more easily. Light enemy attacks will rebound off of you while you are under the effects of a Lead Elixir, and you receive a bonus while the enemy is in the rebound state. Attacks that don't rebound won't stagger you unless they are very heavy, which means you can perform a counter normally. When combined with the Regain system and good defense, you can use this to deal a large amount of damage to the enemy while completely negating their attacks via Regain. Enemy Weak Points Many enemies have specific weak points that can be struck for bonus damage. For example, striking the Cleric Beast in his head will deal additional damage and can even temporarily stagger it. Hitting enemy weak points combines with other damage multipliers, so study each enemy and strike their vulnerable points. This system existed in previous Fromsoft titles, but it is greatly expanded in Bloodborne. It rewards you for understanding your enemy and knowing your weapon's moveset perfectly

Serrated Weapons and Righteous Weapons

Some enemies are weak against "serrated" weapons, and some are weak against "righteous" weapons. The bonus multipliers that they give stack with your attack damage multiplier, open foe bonus damage, gem effects, etc., leading to some very big damage hits. While enemies like the Cleric Beast and Scourge Beasts will be affected by both gems modifying beast damage and serration, other enemies such as the the Rabid Dog and Maneater Boar will be affected by gems modifying beast damage but will not take bonus damage from serrated weapons. Thus an informal distinction can be made between “true” beasts affected by both factors and “animal-type” beasts affected only by gem modifiers. Righteous weapons deal additional damage to unholy enemies, such as Bloodlickers and Lost Children of Antiquity. Generally, many of the enemies that fall under this category can be found in Forsaken Cainhurst Castle and occasionally in Chalice Dungeons. Note: If player equips the Beast's Embrace oath rune in order to take ghastly beast form, the serration bonus does not affect them.

Serrated Weapons Serrated weapons include the Saw Cleaver's normal mode, both modes of the Saw Spear, the transformed mode of the Threaded Cane, both modes of the Beast Cutter, the transformed mode of the Whirligig Saw. Attacks from those deal an additional 20% damage to specific enemies. Enemies Weak to Serrated Weapons Abhorrent Beast Beast-possessed Soul Bloodletting Beast Blood-starved Beast Cleric Beast Darkbeast Paarl Father Gascoigne (Beast) Laurence, the First Vicar Loran Darkbeast Loran Silverbeast Ludwig, the Accursed (first phase) Scourge Beast Vicar Amelia Watchdog of the Old Lords

Righteous Weapons Righteous weapons include the normal mode of the Kirkhammer (50% bonus), both modes of Ludwig's Holy Blade (50% bonus), both modes of Logarius' Wheel (30% bonus), the normal mode of the Threaded Cane (20% bonus), thrust attacks of the Church Pick (20% bonus), and both modes of the Holy Moonlight Sword (50% bonus). Enemies Weak to Righteous Weapons Bloodlicker Evil Labyrinth Spirit Forsaken Castle Spirit (Head) Forsaken Castle Spirit (Knife) Lost Child of Antiquity

Beasts and Kin

There are two types of "racial bonus" in Bloodborne - one versus beasts, and one versus kin. You can view your weapon's damage bonus (or penalty) by looking at your weapon info screen. This is tied directly to the Blood Gem system; specifically Beasthunter and Kinhunter gems. For more information visit the Beasts & Kin page.

Beast Damage | Percent of normal damage against beasts Kin Damage | Percent of normal damage against kin

Notes

[reddit] Progress on Damage Calculations for Bloodborne, more of the damage calculation, including players Phys. DEF stat, formula info from in-game testing.