Last Monday, we asked our readers to answer a question in order to win the sweet, sweet, Fortress Reindoge skin.

Q: What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

A: 42.

It’s time to announce the winner!

The Winner

The response from all of you was overwhelming! Thank you to everyone who submitted an answer. We’ll be doing a separate post with the best, funniest, and geekiest answers!

But without further ado, the winner is….. <drum roll> ….. Dagudagr from the EU server. Congratulations! The skin will be delivered directly to your account.

As honorable mentions for those people who equally deserve bragging rights for their theorycrafting knowledge and math prowess: ammorelodedd (SEA), BuBuaH (EU), Daniir (EU), DragonOnVertigo (NA), fbzzz (EU), gpa (NA), Ketr (NA), kjsljdas (EU), LordElrond (SEA), Moalze (EU), MrMambo (EU), Ponzu (NA), Sammysamsam (NA), sfh (EU), SirYe (NA), SlowMoeJohnson (NA), SYNredstonepizza (NA), Vraha (SEA), Wassaby (EU), wavernot (NA), xinyi (EU).

The Answer

Kestrel is level 12 and has a Sorrowblade, a Tension Bow, and a Tyrant’s Monocle. She’s shooting a rank 5 Glimmershot at a Level 12 Ringo with a Coat of Plates. Assuming she has been out of combat for ten seconds, and gets a critical strike with her Glimmershot, how much damage does the single arrow do?

Answer: ~634 total damage (in-game rounds to the nearest integer for each damage type)

How do we get this answer? First, let’s consolidate all of the facts.

Bonus Weapon Power 245 150 (Sorrowblade) + 45 (T. Bow) + 50 (Monocle) Base Weapon Power 99 Level 12 Kestrel Total Weapon Power 344 245 + 99 Total Critical Damage 70% Base 50% + 20% (Monocle) Total Weapon Piercing 30% 20% (Rank 5 Glimmershot) + 10% (Tension Bow) Target’s Shield 116 86 (Level 12 Ringo) + 30 (Coat of Plates) Target’s Armor 161 86 (Level 12 Ringo) + 75 (Coat of Plates)

Next, we need to determine how much damage Glimmershot does. This is very tricky because the description of the ability is misleading. It states that there is a weapon ratio on Glimmershot, and that it applies a basic attack. However, what it really does is amplify your basic attack by 125%. If you were trying to calculate it based on a weapon ratio, the values you’d get don’t align with what happens in game. (Always verify your work!)

An excellent way to test how abilities / damage work is to attack the Vain in a practice game. It has 0 armor or shield, so your abilities / attacks will do full true damage against it. Quite handy for testing! Thank you to DrEvil and Moalze for their help on verifying Glimmershot’s damage calculation.

There are two components of Glimmershot’s damage. First, it does an armor piercing basic attack. Then it applies bonus weapon damage in the form of a basic attack modifier (125%). Lastly, Glimmershot deals an additional crystal damage in the form of splash damage, to the target and anyone behind that target. We can calculate these components individually.

Basic attack

We calculate weapon damage by the above equation. First, we calculate total weapon power and multiply it by the amount of pierce. The next component is the remainder of the damage that is mitigated by armor. We calculate this by dividing the damage by 1 + (Armor/100). Then we calculate the critical damage by multiplying by 1 + the critical damage total.

Plugging in values, we get:

Solving this, we get ~332.282. Then we multiply this by 1.25 because of Glimmershot’s modifier.

332.282 * 1.25 = ~415.353

But wait, there’s more! Kestrel has been out of combat for ten seconds, which means she has an available Tension Bow proc. We calculate this separately because it cannot critically strike. Important to note, is that the armor piercing bonus from Glimmershot applies to the Tension Bow proc, but the BONUS basic attack damage (125%) does NOT.



Plugging in values, we get:

Solving this, we get ~102.276. Adding both values, we get ~517.629.

Glimmershot Crystal Splash Damage

Lastly, we must calculate the crystal splash damage of Glimmershot. Luckily, this is the easiest. The base crystal damage of a rank five Glimmershot is 250.





Solving this, we get ~115.74.

Adding CP and WP values, we get ~518 + 116 = ~634 total damage!

If you’re still reading, congratulations! You’re a nerd! Just the kind we love here at BrokenMyth. Happy Holidays everyone!

Thank you to SlowMoeJohnson for verifying with me in-game!