The Combat Rebalance

Every weapon a real choice. Every piece of armor a real trade-off. One transparent damage system — same rules for players and monsters, with every number on this page taken straight from the design tables.

The Pillars of the Rebalance

Weapon damage on Sagas has drifted for years: some weapons dealt more than twice the damage per minute of others, and armor math had corner cases that made characters nearly unkillable. This rebalance rebuilds the foundation — pillar by pillar.

⚔ Equal Damage per Minute

555 / 600 / 530

Every one-handed weapon lands at 555 DPM, every two-hander at 600, every bow and crossbow at 530 (at 100 stamina, before skills). Fast weapons hit often and light, slow weapons hit rarely and hard — but over a minute, your choice of weapon is style, not a math trap. Previously the spread was 360–946.

🛡 Percent with Breakthrough

min( AR%, AR pts )

Armor blocks a percentage of every hit — but a single blow can only ever be stopped by as many points as the armor is worth. Ordinary hits behave exactly like before; massive hits punch through. A hard cap of 90% means nothing in the game is immune anymore.

⚡ A New Pace for Every Weapon

Speed is identity

The speed ladder was rebuilt between the classic heritage values and modern tuning: light one-handers finally feel quick (Katana 50→54, Mace 30→46), the overperforming spear line slows into its burst role (Spear 43→40), the heavy two-handers keep their weight. Fast or slow — the damage per minute stays on target either way.

🔨 Skill and Craft Pay Off

Anatomy +30% · Exceptional +10%

We rebalanced how much your skills and exceptional weapon quality add to damage. Anatomy now grants up to +30% at grandmaster (the classic era value) and exceptional crafting a true +10%. The weapon dice were rescaled alongside so overall pacing stays exactly where it was — what changed is that skill investment and grandmaster smithing carry far more of your damage.

✨ Magic That Pulls Its Weight

Vanq +50% · Protection +10

Magic weapon levels are percentages now — Ruin +10% up to Vanquishing +50%, worth the same on every weapon and halved in PvP so burst stays survivable. And the Protection spell finally grants real armor: up to +10 at GM Magery — a true defensive choice against Reactive Armor.

⚕ Healing Under Pressure

Pressure beats bandages

Bandaging under fire finally costs something: every hit that slips your fingers now removes 10% of the heal (was a token −4). Heavy top-end hits tear a Deep Wound — incoming healing −25% for 10s, stacking twice. In drawn-out PvP fights, chained self-bandages build healing fatigue (a short pause between applications), and running while finishing a bandage slips it with every tile. Heal in peace, or fight — not both.

The Armor Model

One formula for players and monsters. Worn armor, creature armor and spell buffs are added into a single total — no more special cases.

totalArmor = wornArmor + virtualArmor + armorBuffs absorbed = min( damage × totalArmor / 100 , ← percentage part (normal hits) totalArmor ) ← breakthrough cap (huge hits) absorbed = absorbed × random(0.90 … 1.10) ← gentle per-hit variance absorbed = min( absorbed, damage × 0.90 ) ← 90% ceiling: immunity is dead

What that feels like — plate suit (AR 30):

AttackerRaw hitBlockedYou takeWhy
A rat nibbles10~3~7percentage part: 30%
An orc swings30~9~21percentage part: 30%
A dragon crushes120~30 (not 36)~90breakthrough: 30 points is all the steel you have

Weapon Stats — Old vs New

Damage now rolls as Base + N dice (e.g. 15+3d10 = 15 plus three ten-sided dice). More dice mean steadier hits; few big dice mean swingy hits. DPM = 0.8 × average × speed, at 100 stamina.

Damage per Minute — before and after

Gray = live values today, gold = rebalanced. The three lines players will feel: one-handers 555, two-handers 600, ranged 530 — raw dice values, before your skills multiply them. On top of these targets, the Arms Lore skill passively speeds up your swings: −5% swing delay at GM, −6% at 120 (≈ +5–6% DPM) — in PvM and PvP alike, equal for every weapon.

These weapons did not get weaker

Where a gold bar sits below its gray one, that is not a damage cut. These are raw dice only — the numbers before your character touches them. Because Anatomy and exceptional quality now add far more, a trained warrior multiplies them by ×1.80 where the same character used to reach only ×1.53. The dice were scaled down by exactly that difference, so your actual damage per minute stays the same — it simply comes from your skills now instead of the weapon.

Weapon Damage Simulator

Rolls 1,000 swings with the exact dice formula and shows the resulting distribution.

Damage modifier from these settings: ×1.80
Formulas as in the live code: Tactics (skill−50)×0.6% · Strength ×0.1% · Anatomy ×0.2% (+10% at GM) · secondary skill ×0.2% PvM / ×0.1% PvP · exceptional quality +10%.

Min
Average
Max
Swings/min
DPM

Armor — Old vs New

The ladder is compressed: light armor gets a floor, the top end loses its runaway values, and two new dimensions define every tier — the meditation penalty (how much of your armor blocks mana regeneration) and the dexterity penalty (heavy suits slow your swings and bandages).

Armor lineAR old → newMitigationMeditation penaltyDex penalty (suit)Swing speed cost

Bone armor is reinvented: from a mana-dead budget plate (AR 30) into the battle-mage tier — Ring-level protection with meditation still possible. Standalone helmets are mapped onto the same scale (e.g. Circlets 30 → 15).

What the wearer feels

Fight Simulator

Pick a weapon and a target. The simulator runs the full pipeline — dice, PvP scaling, magic bonus, per-skill modifiers, armor with breakthrough and ceiling — over 2,000 simulated hits, plus the classic hit-chance formula (attacker skill + 50) / ((defender skill + 50) × 2). The distribution shows landed hits; misses stretch the time to kill. Weapon Accuracy levels and parry are not modeled.

Attacker

Damage modifier from these settings: ×1.80

Defender

Total armor
Dmg/hit avg
Dmg/hit range
Hit chance
Swings/min
Hits to kill
Time to kill

Spell Changes — Protection Becomes Real Armor

Mages asked a fair question: “why does a warrior's steel count, but my magic doesn't?” Now it does.

Protection — 2nd Circle

Only reduces casting interruption
Additionally grants armor while active

Bonus scales with Magery: up to +10 armor at Grandmaster. Duration scales with Inscription (up to ×1.5). The interruption protection is unchanged.

Like all defensive spells on Sagas it has two faces: against monsters the armor lasts the full duration — against players it protects for 60 seconds after casting, the same window Reactive Armor and Magic Reflect use in PvP.

Leather mage: 15 +10 = 25% mitigation while protected Bone battle-mage: 20 +10 = 30% — plate-level, paid for with mana & a spell slot

The Exclusive Choice

Protection, Reactive Armor and Magic Reflect still share one defensive slot — you carry exactly one:

Protection · steady +10 armor for minutes
Reactive Armor · absorbs hits completely until its pool breaks
Magic Reflect · bounces a spell

Reading the fight and picking the right shield is the mage's skill expression. Reactive Armor itself is unchanged.

Arch Protection — 4th Circle

Stays a group utility spell: interruption protection only, no armor bonus for the area. Handing every plate warrior in the party +10 armor through a mage buff would undo the ladder — so it doesn't.

Healing Under Pressure

The math was broken: a bandaging defender out-healed every attacker (~6.2 healing per second vs ~3.8 incoming), so dexxer duels never ended. Four rules fix that — healing in peace is untouched, healing under fire finally costs something. And "under fire" means real pressure: player hits always slip your bandage, monsters only with a solid blow of ~10+ damage through armor — chip damage from weak mobs never ruins a bandage.

These values are tuned live

Every number on this page — slip percentage and cap, the fatigue threshold and pause, the running window, and all of Deep Wound's settings — is adjustable on the running server, without a patch or downtime. Consider the values below a starting point: play with them, tell us how the fights feel, and we will adjust.

🩸 Slips That Matter

−10% per slip

Every landed player hit while you bandage slips your fingers, and each slip now removes 10% of the heal (up to 70%) instead of the old token −4 hp — sustained pressure on a healer is finally a real strategy. Monsters need a real blow (~10+ damage through armor) to slip you, so chip damage from weak mobs stays harmless.

🗡 Deep Wound Ability

−25% healing per stack

A blow must clear two gates to tear a wound in PvP: the raw dice roll has to land in the top 20% of that weapon's range, and reach a hard floor of 22 damage. Then all incoming healing — bandages, spells, potions — drops 25% for 10 seconds, stacking twice to −50%.

That 22-damage floor is the point: light fast one-handers cannot reach it on their best roll — kryss, katana, cutlass, scimitar, mace and war fork never proc at all. It is the two-hander's answer to the fast weapon: quick blades already win the pressure game by slipping a bandage far more often, so the heavy weapons get the one thing they could not buy with speed — the ability to shut healing down. A spear tears a wound on roughly one in eight landed hits (about 25% uptime), the big axes one in eleven, heavy one-handed blades rarely.

😮‍💨 Healing Fatigue

Chained bandages pause

After about two minutes of continuous PvP combat, back-to-back self-bandages exhaust you: each one forces a short breather (~3s, shown as a debuff) before the next. Take a moment out of the chain and the fatigue fades. Healing others is never affected.

🏃 No Sprint-Healing

Running slips the wrap

Running during the final moments of a bandage slips it with every tile — walking is free. Reposition deliberately, or sprint and pay for it.

Magic Weapon Bonuses — Flat is Dead, Long Live Percent

The old bonus added flat points per hit — which quietly made magic daggers better than magic halberds. A fast weapon collected the bonus 43 times a minute, a slow one 19 times. The new bonus is a percentage, identical for every weapon.

LevelOld (flat per hit)New PvMNew PvP
Ruin+2+10%+5%
Might+4+20%+10%
Force+6+30%+15%
Power+8+40%+20%
Vanquishing+10+50%+25%