[Gift]

Disclaimer: I take no credit for this guide. All credit goes to Shippuu.

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Player Stats Pt.1

Before we get into more complex situations, let's first cover the stats themselves individually. Some of these will potentially be getting quite confusing later in, so let's start slow and work our way there gradually.

ATT/M.ATT

This is one stat with two names, really. When you look at your stat screen, if it shows ATT, you are a STR-type character; if it shows M.ATT, you are an INT-type character. There is no gameplay difference between the two types, but it is relevant for calculating them.

Despite what normal RPG intuition may tell you, just stacking on more Att/M.Att won't necessarily make you do more damage. In Vindictus, each battle you run has an Att Cap. When running battles, you are not able to use more Att/M.Att than the Att Cap allows. All Att/M.Att above this amount does nothing for you.

STR-type chars gain a bonus chunk of Att from Str, calculated at a ratio of 2.7 Att per 1 Str. EX: If you have 3000 Str, you will gain 8,100 Att from it. This value rounds down to the nearest whole number.

INT-type characters gain a bonus chunk of M.Att from Int, calculated at a ratio of 2 M.Att per 1 Int. EX: If you have 3000 Int, you will gain 6000 M.Att from it.

Att/M.Att is one of the most abundant stats, and can be obtained from a wide range of sources. Those are: almost all equipment, outfits (up to +500), weapon enhancement, accessory enhancement, power infusion, higher quality ratings, enchant scrolls, and buffs. Att chars start with 486 Att, and M.Att chars start with 700 M.Att.

Balance

Balance dictates the variance in your attack damage. It is easy to make this stat sound more complicated than it is, so I will just immediately present an example: Character A has 80 Balance. Every attack Character A does will deal between 80% and 100% of the damage the game calculates it can do. At 85 Balance, this range becomes 85-100%. Your average damage, then, can be calculated as (100 + your Balance) / 2. EX: (100 + 80) / 2 = 90%.

The Balance stat has a soft cap at 90. After 90 Balance, it becomes a 3:1 ratio to increase critical damage* (Windictus exclusive). 
EX: If you have 98 Balance, it would show as 90 and give you 2 Crit Damage. The leftover 2 Balance is wasted. At 90 Balance, your attacks will deal an average of 95% of normal damage.

Balance is primarily decided by your weapon, but can also be found on enchant scrolls, some accessories, and from power infusing equipment. Passive Balance is present regardless of which gear you are or aren't wearing.

Critical

Critical hits are attacks that deal higher damage based on your Critical Damage stat (explained in the next section). Only some of your attacks will be critical hits. The chance of an individual hit being a critical hit is determined by your critical hit rate. You can find this rate by taking your Critical value and subtracting the target's Critical Resistance from it. The maximum critical hit rate you can have is 50% except for Lann, as he has a skill that increases it to up to 65%. The minimum critical hit rate you can have is 3%, in any circumstance.

Your weapon provides the majority of your Critical stat, but you can also gather it from a variety of other sources such as: some accessories, power infusion, enchant scrolls, and a bonus chunk based on your WIL. Every 133 WIL gives 1 Critical up until this bonus caps and ends at 2000 WIL, to a max of 15 Critical. Aside from gear and WIL, every character starts with 3 Critical, which can be increased further through the Critical Hit skill

Critical Damage

Critical Damage is a multiplier for how much damage your critical hits will do. This one is pretty straightforward.

The majority of Critical Damage comes from your Critical Hits skill. At Rank 3, it grants +65% Critical Damage. The remaining portion comes from STR or INT, depending on your character's stat type, up to 2000. Whichever it is, you can calculate it as 0.3 * ([Stat] / 2000). As this caps at 2000, the highest bonus you can get from it is 0.3 (+30%). This caps Critical Damage at 195% except for Sword Lann, whom has a skill that adds a further +30% and raises the max to 225%.

Additional Damage

Additional Damage is the most challenging of the stats to explain. A later post has the full details on its workings, but I will provide as simple an explanation as I can think up here. If you are interested in the fine details, check out the deep dive post below.

Additional Damage is not a flat damage increase to your attacks, or anything like that. It is an extra source of Att/M.Att that is not subject to the Att Cap, but it is not a 1:1 ratio. There is quite a bit of number work involved in determining the exact ratio, but there is a convenient reference point to use. When you are Att capped for a battle, this ratio is 1:6.25. What this means is that if you have 4000 Additional Damage, you are not getting +4000 Att/M.Att, you are getting +25000 Att/M.Att. Shockingly big, isn't it? If you are not Att capped, this ratio will slowly decay to 1:1.875 at minimum, when your Att is barely better than the enemies Def.

Additional Damage almost exclusively comes from enhancing weapons and armor. The Superior Campfire buff and Goddess Guidance buff are both able to temporarily increase Additional Damage.

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Enemy Stats

ATT

This value is never shown to the player, for whatever reason, despite being one of the main factors that dictates the damage you receive from enemy attacks.

While I haven't fully cracked the enemy damage formula yet, I have been able to determine that once your Def matches the enemies Att, the next 500 Def past it reduce your damage taken somewhat substantially compared to the otherwise gradual effect before that point.

This stat has an exception though. All red unblockable attacks, and some unblockable attacks otherwise, don't deal damage based on stats at all. In these cases, they deal the same amount of damage nomatter what. If a red attack does 3000 damage when you have 20k Def, it will still do 3000 damage when you have 29k Def.

Balance

Enemies do not have Balance. While each unique attack animation has its own damage value, the same attack will always deal the same damage to you unless the boss lands a critical hit on you or your Def stat changes.

Critical

Enemies can land critical hits too. Most enemy critical hits do 150% damage, but some enemies go low as 110%. Like with your own critical hits, Critical Resistance can reduce the chance of them happening.

When your Critical Resistance matches the enemies Critical, their chance to critical hit you does not become 0, but it is minimized. This minimum rate is believed to be either 3% or 6%, but isn't known for sure yet.

You can see an enemy's Critical stat by hovering on "View monster info" in the Battle Info.

DEF

Much like your own DEF, this reduces damage taken for the enemy. To deal full damage, your Att needs to be 10,000 over the enemies DEF. With ATT Surplus, you can increase damage dealt even further.

While you cannot directly see the DEF of a boss, you can infer it by viewing the Att Cap for the battle in the battle info, and subtracting 10,000 from it.

HP

Hit the enemy until it dies. The number of HP bars a boss has, has nothing to do with how much HP it has, so don't panic when you see bosses with 30 HP bars or 100 HP bars.

You cannot check this value in the game anywhere. Trust the wizards that we've got it right.

Stamina

Bosses don't have Stamina like players do. It's all nonstop action until one side dies. Probably them.

Critical Resistance

Much like your own, this reduces the chance of you landing a critical hit on the enemy.

To have a maxed critical hit chance, your Critical needs to be at least as much as the enemies Critical Resistance + your max crit chance. EX: If the enemy has 130 Crit Resist and your max critical hit chance is 50%, you need at least 180 Critical to max out your critical hit chance.

You can see an enemies Crit Resist by hovering on "View Enemy Info" in the battle info.

[Gift]

Additional Damage

As mentioned in the smaller section on Additional Damage, this stat is heavily influenced by Att/M.Att. The further away from the Att Cap you are, the lower this stat's multiplier will be. The opposite of this is actually true. Just reaching the standard cap will give you a 6.25:1 ratio on Additional Damage, but surpassing the cap can increase it past that value, reaching past 8:1. The rest of this post will be covering the mechanics of this scaling.

General Knowledge

Additional Damage also uses the Att Cap for each battle, so extra Att/M.Att won't raise your multiplier any unless you have enough ATT Surplus to make use of it.

Additional Damage is affected by Balance, as of a change with RISE several years ago.

Multiplier scaling with poor Att/M.Att

When your Att/M.Att is 7000 short of capping (or more), the multiplier for Additional Damage is 1.875:1. This is the lowest it can be.

Multiplier scaling in general

If your Att/M.Att is within 7000 of capping, or you do not have the Att/M.Att to make use of it, then you can calculate your multiplier like so:

Multiplier = (Att/M.Att - Enemy Def) / 1600

(Att/M.Att - Enemy Def) is going to give you a value between 3000 and 10000 here, with exception to Bathed in Red and Ainle at Stake, since those battles are weird. This means the multiplier you should get as a result will be between 1.875 and 6.25. Or to put it another way, every 100 Att/M.Att you gain will increase the multiplier by 0.0625.

[Gift]

Final Notes

Doing good damage has a lot of stats involved, but it isn't as overwhelming a goal as it can initially seem if you are just starting out. Picking up a higher level weapon will usually fill in the majority of your stat needs, and leave you a path that is mostly clear for how to fill in the remainder. 

Stat Value

In this section I will provide very simplified guideline numbers for the influence of each stat on DPS. The specifics of each are more complex than this, but are not relevant to just figuring out stat focus.

Att/M.Att - This stat decides the value of every other, so rather than a number, just know it is the most important to actually have.

Balance - Each Balance up until 90 will increase your dps by 0.5%. Past 90, every 3 Balance will increase your dps by 0.5%.

Critical - Each Critical you gain up until the cap will increase your dps by 0.95%. This is 1.3% for Sword Lann due to a specific skill he has.

Attack Speed - Mathematically each +1 Attack Speed increases dps by 0.5%, but math alone won't pin this one down. Make your own judgments about whether you want to be faster over other stats or not.

Additional Damage - This stat provides the majority of your damage once your Att/M.Att is capped. Prioritize it most in gearing, as enhancing your weapon also raises your Att/M.Att.

Stat Priority

In theory, by the numbers you should prioritize your stats in the order of Additional Damage, Critical, Att/M.Att, Attack Speed, Balance. In practice, some of those cost profoundly more than the others. Generally you should prioritize Additional Damage via enhancement, and work on Att/M.Att and Critical in parallel with it.

Balance and Attack Speed are important, but not to the degree that Additional Damage, Att/M.Att, and Critical are. Attack Speed's value is more subjective though, as it directly changes the feel of gameplay.

[Slucker]

Great guide!

>>Additional Damage is affected by Balance, as of a change with RISE several years ago.<<
-This isn't true anymore (2024 patch), balance(damage randomness) doesn't affect additional damage at all (except for the crit damage from balance surplus)

also our Additional damage scaling(while ATT capped) is a bit lower than 6,25 - it is something like ~ 5,864098448
it is 6,25 if you add 900 to the ATK (10900 when capped)