Understanding Genshin Impact Damage Calculation

Genshin Impact's damage calculation can seem complex, but understanding its core components is key to optimizing your character builds and team compositions. This page breaks down the essential elements that determine how much damage your characters deal.

Key Components of Damage Calculation

Damage in Genshin Impact is primarily determined by a combination of factors, each contributing multiplicatively or additively to the final output:

• Base Damage: The foundational damage before any modifiers.

This is calculated from your character's Total ATK (Base ATK + Flat ATK from artifacts/weapons) multiplied by the Talent Multiplier (a percentage based on the talent's level).

• Damage Bonuses: Various percentage increases applied to your damage.

These include Elemental DMG Bonus (e.g., Pyro DMG Bonus), Physical DMG Bonus, and other specific DMG bonuses from artifact sets (e.g., Noblesse Oblige), character abilities, or weapon passive effects. These are typically additive with each other.

• Critical Hits: The chance and magnitude of dealing extra damage.

Determined by your Crit Rate (chance to crit) and Crit DMG (multiplier when you crit). If a hit is critical, the damage is multiplied by 1 + Crit DMG %.

• Enemy Defenses: How much damage the enemy mitigates.

Enemies have a DEF stat that reduces incoming damage. This reduction is influenced by the level difference between your character and the enemy. Effects like DEF Shred (e.g., from Raiden Shogun's C2) reduce this stat.

• Elemental Resistances: Enemy's resistance to specific damage types.

Enemies have varying Elemental RES and Physical RES. If an enemy has 10% Pyro RES, they take 10% less Pyro damage. RES Shred effects (e.g., Viridescent Venerer, Zhongli's shield) can reduce these resistances, increasing damage taken.

Elemental Reactions

Elemental Reactions are powerful interactions between different elements that can significantly boost or alter damage. They fall into several categories:

• Amplifying Reactions (Vaporize, Melt): These reactions multiply the damage of the triggering hit. Their damage scales with ATK, DMG Bonuses, Crit, and Elemental Mastery.

• Transformative Reactions (Electro-Charged, Overload, Superconduct, Swirl, Shatter, Burning, Bloom, Hyperbloom, Burgeon): These reactions deal a fixed amount of damage independent of the triggering hit's damage. Their damage scales primarily with Elemental Mastery and character level, and is affected by enemy Elemental RES.

• Quicken Reactions (Spread, Aggravate): These Dendro-based reactions add a flat damage bonus to the triggering hit. This bonus scales with Elemental Mastery, Crit, and DMG Bonuses.

• Crystallize: Creates elemental shields based on the element reacted with Geo. Does not deal direct damage.

• Freeze: Applies the Frozen status, immobilizing enemies. Does not deal direct damage, but can be shattered by heavy attacks.

Simplified Damage Calculation Example

While the full formula is extensive, a simplified version for a non-reaction hit looks like this:

Final Damage = (Total ATK * Talent Multiplier) * (1 + DMG Bonus %) * (1 + Crit DMG %) * DEF Multiplier * RES Multiplier

Let's use an example:

Character Stats: Total ATK = 2000, Talent Multiplier = 200% (2.0), Pyro DMG Bonus = 46.6%, Crit DMG = 120% (1.2)

Enemy Stats: DEF Multiplier = 0.5 (50% damage taken), Pyro RES Multiplier = 0.9 (90% damage taken)

Step 1: Calculate Base Damage
2000 ATK * 2.0 (Talent) = 4000

Step 2: Apply DMG Bonus
4000 * (1 + 0.466) = 4000 * 1.466 = 5864

Step 3: Apply Crit DMG (if critical hit)
5864 * (1 + 1.20) = 5864 * 2.20 = 12900.8

Step 4: Apply Enemy DEF Multiplier
12900.8 * 0.5 = 6450.4

Step 5: Apply Enemy RES Multiplier
6450.4 * 0.9 = 5805.36

Final Damage: 5805.36

This simplified example demonstrates how each component contributes to the final damage number. Real calculations can involve more buffs, debuffs, and elemental reactions, making the full formula more intricate.