The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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According to the minecraft wiki a bow does 9-10 damage when fully drawn and the power enchantment adds 25% per level+1 to damage. In survival this would mean that a fully drawn power V bow will do 22.5- 25 damage. Here's where I'm confused: I can't one shot Zombie Pigmen with my Power V bow. They only have 20 health so why will this not work. Are there any variable to bow damage that I'm missing?
The Wiki does not account for the fact that critical arrow damage is randomized and arrow damage also depends on the velocity, which decreases with distance (unless fired downwards); the average damage dealt by a Power V bow is less than 20 and sometimes not even enough to kill spiders (16 HP) in one shot from a medium distance (10 blocks or so), and zombie pigmen also have 2 armor points (though armor penetration does affect this so it has little effect when more than a few points of damage are dealt at once).
In fact, a regular (unenchanted) arrow deals as little as 6 damage at full charge since the critical bonus is as little as 0 (nextInt(6 / 2 + 2) returns a number between 0 and 4):
This is also nothing new; the code above came from 1.6.4 and as far as I can tell it has been unchanged for much longer (arrows used to deal different damage in very old versions). Also, I modified the code to print out the damage and got the following results for an unenchanted and a Power V bow, all critical shots from 1 block away:
The average for unenchanted was 8.5 (6-10, or 8 with a uniform distribution) and Power V was 19.88 (15-25 or 20) - certainly not even close to what the WIki claims; they should say the damage ranges from 6-10 (there is a 1/5 chance of 10 damage but the same goes for 6,7,8,9):
At full charge (1 second), the arrow travels up to 64 blocks upwards, flies with a speed of roughly 53 m/s, and consistently deals 9 damage, with a 1/5 of chance of dealing 10
Likewise, Power V ranges from 15-25 damage, or 6-10 * (1 + 150%), while this table on the WIki suggests it is always 25 ("full charge" damage is also completely wrong - it is simply the "medium charge" damage given, not to mention there is no such thing as "medium charge" - a bow charges in 1 second or 20 ticks and the first 10 will not fire the arrow so there are 10 different charge levels, with "full charge" always being critical).
Also, these are the results for firing a Power V bow straight down from 236 blocks in the air and straight up from the surface, allowing the arrows to fall down:
The average for down was 27.9 (25-30) and up was 13.7 (12-16); damage in the latter case would be much less if you hit a mob just before the arrow started falling since its velocity would be near zero , and would likely be the same as when fired straight down if fired from high enough up (the terminal velocity of an arrow is 100 m/s, nearly double the initial velocity of 53, suggesting that a Power V bow can deal up to nearly 50 damage). I did not find a (noticeable) decrease in damage when fired from a distance horizontally but horizontal velocity does slowly decrease with time (the game uses doubles in the calculations but rounds the result up to a whole number for the final damage, helping to mask differences).
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
2/20/2017
Posts:
51
Member Details
Thanks for explaining that. Do you know what horizontal distance will give me the best damage with my bow? Should I just be as close as possible without the distance being zero?
According to the minecraft wiki a bow does 9-10 damage when fully drawn and the power enchantment adds 25% per level+1 to damage. In survival this would mean that a fully drawn power V bow will do 22.5- 25 damage. Here's where I'm confused: I can't one shot Zombie Pigmen with my Power V bow. They only have 20 health so why will this not work. Are there any variable to bow damage that I'm missing?
The Wiki does not account for the fact that critical arrow damage is randomized and arrow damage also depends on the velocity, which decreases with distance (unless fired downwards); the average damage dealt by a Power V bow is less than 20 and sometimes not even enough to kill spiders (16 HP) in one shot from a medium distance (10 blocks or so), and zombie pigmen also have 2 armor points (though armor penetration does affect this so it has little effect when more than a few points of damage are dealt at once).
In fact, a regular (unenchanted) arrow deals as little as 6 damage at full charge since the critical bonus is as little as 0 (nextInt(6 / 2 + 2) returns a number between 0 and 4):
This is also nothing new; the code above came from 1.6.4 and as far as I can tell it has been unchanged for much longer (arrows used to deal different damage in very old versions). Also, I modified the code to print out the damage and got the following results for an unenchanted and a Power V bow, all critical shots from 1 block away:
Dealt 10 damage
Dealt 10 damage
Dealt 6 damage
Dealt 9 damage
Dealt 7 damage
Dealt 7 damage
Dealt 9 damage
Dealt 8 damage
Dealt 9 damage
Dealt 9 damage
Dealt 10 damage
Dealt 10 damage
Dealt 8 damage
Dealt 9 damage
Dealt 9 damage
Dealt 6 damage
Power V:
Dealt 18 damage
Dealt 17 damage
Dealt 23 damage
Dealt 22 damage
Dealt 19 damage
Dealt 23 damage
Dealt 19 damage
Dealt 22 damage
Dealt 20 damage
Dealt 18 damage
Dealt 22 damage
Dealt 15 damage
Dealt 18 damage
Dealt 17 damage
Dealt 18 damage
Dealt 25 damage
Dealt 22 damage
The average for unenchanted was 8.5 (6-10, or 8 with a uniform distribution) and Power V was 19.88 (15-25 or 20) - certainly not even close to what the WIki claims; they should say the damage ranges from 6-10 (there is a 1/5 chance of 10 damage but the same goes for 6,7,8,9):
Likewise, Power V ranges from 15-25 damage, or 6-10 * (1 + 150%), while this table on the WIki suggests it is always 25 ("full charge" damage is also completely wrong - it is simply the "medium charge" damage given, not to mention there is no such thing as "medium charge" - a bow charges in 1 second or 20 ticks and the first 10 will not fire the arrow so there are 10 different charge levels, with "full charge" always being critical).
Also, these are the results for firing a Power V bow straight down from 236 blocks in the air and straight up from the surface, allowing the arrows to fall down:
Dealt 29 damage
Dealt 28 damage
Dealt 27 damage
Dealt 27 damage
Dealt 28 damage
Dealt 25 damage
Dealt 30 damage
Dealt 30 damage
Dealt 27 damage
Dealt 29 damage
Dealt 25 damage
Dealt 30 damage
Straight up:
Dealt 15 damage
Dealt 12 damage
Dealt 13 damage
Dealt 14 damage
Dealt 16 damage
Dealt 15 damage
Dealt 12 damage
Dealt 14 damage
Dealt 14 damage
Dealt 12 damage
The average for down was 27.9 (25-30) and up was 13.7 (12-16); damage in the latter case would be much less if you hit a mob just before the arrow started falling since its velocity would be near zero , and would likely be the same as when fired straight down if fired from high enough up (the terminal velocity of an arrow is 100 m/s, nearly double the initial velocity of 53, suggesting that a Power V bow can deal up to nearly 50 damage). I did not find a (noticeable) decrease in damage when fired from a distance horizontally but horizontal velocity does slowly decrease with time (the game uses doubles in the calculations but rounds the result up to a whole number for the final damage, helping to mask differences).
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Thanks for explaining that. Do you know what horizontal distance will give me the best damage with my bow? Should I just be as close as possible without the distance being zero?