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Haswell

How Assist Damage Works (or doesn't work)

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Note: this is only my own interpretation of how assist damage works. I could very well be wrong, and I would appreciate corrections.

 

Assist damage is possibly the most annoying statistic to farm IMO, not only because you are at the mercy of your teammates to actually shoot at targets that you want to be shot at, but because of the convoluted mechanics that will force you to intentionally go out of your way in order to get credit.

 

There are 3 types of assist damage: designated damage, de-tracking damage, and spotting damage. They are not all weighed equally however, each of these 3 types follow a hierarchy for the purpose of calculating assist damage. The hierarchy goes like this: designated damage > de-tracking damage > spotting damage. It is impossible to get credit for more than one type of assist damage at the same time. Fortunately, knowing the mechanics mean you can somewhat easily manipulate it into your favor.

As assist damage follows the strict hierarchy, it also means only 1 player can be credited with assist damage for any target. If a target is de-tracked by someone else after you have spotted it, then the assist damage will not be credited to you, but instead whoever de-tracked the target. Likewise, if you designate an already de-tracked target, you will be credited with all the assist damage until the designation wears off.

It's probably easier to explain this in point form:

  • Player A spots a target. Nothing else happens. Player A gets credit.
  • Player A spots a target. Player B de-tracks the same target. Player B gets credit.
  • Player A spots a target. Player B designates the same target. Player B gets credit.
  • Player A designates a target. Player B de-tracks the same target. Player A gets credit.

 

Regarding spotting damage, the game only considers EXCLUSIVE spotting damage to count towards your assist damage. That is, a target must be only spotted by you and nobody else (including infantry) in order for you to get credit. I shall summon the power of MS Paint to illustrate how this works.

vvfy8XD.png

In this horribly drawn diagram, you are the only one close enough to spot the target. Your ally can also see the target thanks to you, but he's not close enough to spot the target. All damage inflicted on the target by your allies will be credited to you as assist damage, as long the target isn't de-tracked or designated by someone else.

-----------------------------------------------


UeDVdDZ.png

In this equally horribly drawn diagram, both you and your ally are able to directly spot the target. Nobody will get any spotting damage, neither you nor your ally.

----------------------------------------

Note that the "eye" icon is irrelevant in all of this, it is simply an indicator of whether you are the first to spot (or re-spot) a target. If an ally starts spotting the same target as you do, nobody will get any spotting damage. Similarly, the assist stat is also irrelevant because it has nothing to do with assist damage.

 

From understanding these mechanics, assist damage can be farmed using several methods: a) making sure you're the only one spotting targets; b) de-tracking everything that your allies are or will be shooting at; c) designating everything your allies are or will be shooting at.

If you want to be extra cheeky, popping smoke in front of your allies (but behind you so you don't get blinded) will also allow you to rack up spotting damage as long as the smoke lasts, since your allies can still see the target thanks to you but they won't be able to spot it themselves through the smoke.

 

 

Now go be a cheeky sod and pad your assist damage stat. :nerdseal:

Edited by Haswell
Typos (see edit history)
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Great guide!

Never thought of that system in such detail. Would you mind if I adapt/translate this into german for AWtactics.com. (I'd give you credit of course)

Greetings,

TeyKey1

 

 


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fdassdaas.jpg.c709df3e98adc5265f232fe9458a3043.jpg

 

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Go right ahead! Everyone will benefit from knowing more about the game, hopefully it will also help people become better players!

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2 minutes ago, Haswell said:

Go right ahead! Everyone will benefit from knowing more about the game, hopefully it will also help people become better players!

Great thank you, much appreciated! 


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fdassdaas.jpg.c709df3e98adc5265f232fe9458a3043.jpg

 

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@TeyKey1 I read your article on AWtactics, you wrote it better than I did. :sealofapproval:

One small correction though: spotting damage from infantry don't count towards your own assist damage, so the sniper may not be too useful because she will take credit away from you. Her designate target ability however do count towards your assist damage, provided other people actually shoot at the designated enemy.


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On 3/11/2020 at 6:13 PM, Haswell said:
  • Player A on MBT spots a target. Nothing else happens. Player A on MBT gets credit.
  • Player A on MBT spots a target. Player B on WILK with PELE immobilizes the same target. Player B on WILK with PELE gets credit. Player A on MBT gets nothing.
  • Player A (1st line) on MBT spots a target. Player B (2nd line) on WILK with PELE immobilizes the same target. Player C (3rd line) on SPHINX designates the same static target. Player C on SPHINX gets credit. Players A on MBT and B on WILK gets nothing.

 

(fixed) - illustrated with in-game example

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I'm still not certain how Assists work.  (Not assist damage, Assists.)  There are various rumors floating around, but I just finished a game that blows the most prominent of those rumors out of the water.

The current belief seems to be that the person who does not get the kill and does at least 51% of the damage to a target gets an Assist.  This is a fairly recent change (earlier this year?) because I can show plenty of old screenshots where there are more assists than kills in a game, which isn't mathematically possible under the current belief.  Nowadays the total number of assists is always lower than the total number of kills, at least in PvE.

But then you see a game like the attached.

It's mathematically possible, but extremely unlikely that I could get 30 kills out of 36 tanks, do 60k of 95k total damage, and yet somehow there were 29 assists in the game.  If the current belief is to be... uh, believed... then that means that the other guys did at least 51% of the damage to 29 of the 36 tanks while only doing 35k total damage vs my 60k total damage.  I mean, I find it a little hard to believe (based on the way the game flowed) that they did more than half damage to any of the bots in that game.  Maybe a handful, but absolutely no way it was 29 of them.

So with this game as evidence, I think it's pretty clear that you don't need 51% of the damage to get an Assist.

What I would believe in this game is that an Assist goes to whoever does the most damage but doesn't get the kill.  Which means that a clean solo kill would not result in an Assist, and there being 7 clean solo kills in this game feels totally possible.

ScreenShot0574.jpg

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Assists (not assist damage) requires you to deal the most damage to a target out of everyone who shot at it, without destroying it. 51% of the target's total hitpoints is the highest you need, but not the lowest.

Ie. Players A, B and C all shot at a target. Player A dealt 40% of the target's hitpoints, B dealt 35%, C dealt 25% and killed it. Player A gets the assist credit.


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But if in your previous example A kills the bot do B get the assist? He is the one that dealt the most damage among the ones that did not got the kill, but did less damage of A, that was the killer. I am not sure if in that case B gets or not the assist.

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In that case yes, B does get the assist.

I knew I forgot an example.


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What happens with assist damage when smoke screen is placed between you and friendlies who spotted target as first, does it redirect income of spotting assist damage? I didn't have much opportunity to make a real test with this in training room.

To accomplish this, a tanker needs to direct smoke backward direction and it is not works well with tanks with radial smoke screen (CATTB, Revo, Falcon and few others)

 

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1 hour ago, dfnce said:

What happens with assist damage when smoke screen is placed between you and friendlies who spotted target as first, does it redirect income of spotting assist damage?

You mean like this?

YlGv0sF.png

Whoever is left spotting the target, as long as the target is being spotted only by them, gets credit for assist damage.


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3 minutes ago, Haswell said:

You mean like this?

YlGv0sF.png

Whoever is left spotting the target, as long as the target is being spotted only by them, gets credit for assist damage.

Thanks, looks like valid tactics to boost own XP/credit gain.

(In that pic "You" should doze some smoke in LoS between target and "Ally")

Edited by dfnce (see edit history)

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Would be better to just track the enemy, just becuz an ally is close to an enemy doesn't mean he's the one that spotted/spotting it.

 

If there is more than one enemy, then use smoke. I do that when I get the 5k assist damage per PVE game mission and some other MBT goes the same way I do and he gets the spots first.

Edited by TekNicTerror (see edit history)

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If I would have a .player dropping smoke in front of me like that I would probably open a ticket against him with the match recording and screenshots.

The game rules forbid to use tactics that prevent a player to play normally and if is true that as long as the player that drops the smoke spots the enemy continue to spot it also the other one sees it but doing so it at least annoying and prevents the player behind the not wanted smoke screen to spot other enemies, as maybe he can have a better spotting range.

To track the enemy or if possible to designate it are much more fair ways and if I am not wrong the damage done to enemies spotted by others is less rewarded then the one to enemies that you see, if so you don't only annoy that person, but you actually "steal" some of his damage as he is less rewarded while you get spotting damage from his shots.

You can "steal kills" as no enemy tank is private propriety of a player, but you can not prevent the player to play, placing your tank in his line of fire, dropping smoke in front of him (if not to defend him), ramming him away from his position to take it yourself and similar crap ways to play.

Edited by BumbaX (see edit history)

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That is not against the rules, it does not stop them from playing normally, I drop smoke in front of us both, I move forward and spot them all, and guess what, they start shooting at me instead of him while the guy continues to shoot from where they were or they go another way to spot for themselves (this is usually done on quarterback, so they usually go for the back way)

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On 4/29/2020 at 8:30 PM, Haswell said:

Assists (not assist damage) requires you to deal the most damage to a target out of everyone who shot at it, without destroying it. 51% of the target's total hitpoints is the highest you need, but not the lowest.

Ie. Players A, B and C all shot at a target. Player A dealt 40% of the target's hitpoints, B dealt 35%, C dealt 25% and killed it. Player A gets the assist credit.

So it's like I said - the Assist goes to whoever does the most damage without getting the kill.  If there's a solo kill then no one gets an assist.

Based on experience, though, I'm pretty positive that there's a minimum contribution required as well.  You can't just sneak in a single AC shot to get an assist even if there are only 2 of you left in a game, but I have no idea what that minimum amount of damage might be.

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On 5/2/2020 at 2:09 PM, TekNicTerror said:

That is not against the rules, it does not stop them from playing normally, I drop smoke in front of us both, I move forward and spot them all, and guess what, they start shooting at me instead of him while the guy continues to shoot from where they were or they go another way to spot for themselves (this is usually done on quarterback, so they usually go for the back way)

Agreed.

Considerable group of persons (with full respect i simply think of them as pvp school of thinking)  throw smoke once they perform shoot and go reload. That behavior seems to benefit own reload cycle, especially ones on high alpha / high burst / long reload vehicles. 

Also due totally weird interaction between allied smoke and ATGM guidance it is possible to distrupt work of friendly ATGM even without knowing it. Interesting though how AI ATGM totally ignores it.

On 4/30/2020 at 4:30 PM, BumbaX said:

If I would have a .player dropping smoke in front of me like that I would probably open a ticket against him with the match recording and screenshots.

The game rules forbid to use tactics that prevent a player to play normally and if is true that as long as the player that drops the smoke spots the enemy continue to spot it also the other one sees it but doing so it at least annoying and prevents the player behind the not wanted smoke screen to spot other enemies, as maybe he can have a better spotting range.

To track the enemy or if possible to designate it are much more fair ways and if I am not wrong the damage done to enemies spotted by others is less rewarded then the one to enemies that you see, if so you don't only annoy that person, but you actually "steal" some of his damage as he is less rewarded while you get spotting damage from his shots.

You can "steal kills" as no enemy tank is private propriety of a player, but you can not prevent the player to play, placing your tank in his line of fire, dropping smoke in front of him (if not to defend him), ramming him away from his position to take it yourself and similar crap ways to play.

 

I know it sounds like exploiting :) But it is easily explanable that throwing smoke to some static camping position is a way of protecting them from accidental spotting. Not everyone has Erin and some new players don't even have camo on their TD/AFV. You actually take care of them and focus aggro on you own. As a payment of gratitude (or side effect) you take that "help deal damage" stat to you. After all, what i see as totally unfair when MBT goes to front line (and get all shit on its head), while camper party liek some Wilk gets most of "help assist" because they immobilize tanks with one shot (PELE+Sabrina) - the ones which don't need immobilize, or AFV on second line which places a mark on target tank which is already spotted and going to die anyway. So even  if MBT would be smart enough to throw some smoke to negate better spotting capabilities of campers, it still can be overriden by mark or immobilization.

 

13 hours ago, knutliott said:

So it's like I said - the Assist goes to whoever does the most damage without getting the kill.  If there's a solo kill then no one gets an assist.

Based on experience, though, I'm pretty positive that there's a minimum contribution required as well.  You can't just sneak in a single AC shot to get an assist even if there are only 2 of you left in a game, but I have no idea what that minimum amount of damage might be

 

I probably stick to outdated concept of damage assist when one needs to deal at least 50% of damage to target without killing, and keep to this rate when i do some dailies or raid  tasks where there is a requirement for either kill or assist. This is easily verifable with appearing red hammer marks though.

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@dfnceto use smoke to protect yourself after shooting is perfectly fine, even when your smoke affects also other players. It can be sometimes annoying for other players, yesterday on SPEC OPS chap.4 I was in a T15 and right at the beginning after i did spot the very first enemies you find someone, i guess an MBT used the smoke after firing, preventing me to see the bots that was still blind shooting at me, so I took some damage that probably I would not have taken and the smoke did not had a real reason as blinded us all and the MBT had armor to deal with the bots. It can be annoying, but is fine, a player has the right to protect himself.

Also using your smoke to protect a squishy, or also a low health MBT that is taking too much shots, is perfectly fine.

But I was commenting about a different thing, to pop out the smoke in a way that prevents a person that is also spotting the target while you continue to spot the enemy, the image you posted is very clear about it. Here the reason to pop out the smoke is not your own protection as you are waiting to reload or protect a team mate at risk, is to affect negatively the playing of an other player, as not only you prevent him from maybe spotting further tanks (he can have better view range then you, maybe for the commander or the retros he uses), but to be surrounded by smoke for no reason is annoying in itself and can make his action less precise, ie for him is more difficult to judge if a weak spot of the enemy is or not is behind some hard cover a he sees only the red silhouette of the enemy in a white background.

About the fact that the support fire tanks can designate or track it is true, but also an MBT that is on the front line can track and so get the assist damage for the damage done by the tanks "on the hill" and if he can not designate has plenty of situations in PvE where he can push and spot while the good camo squishy tanks can not. In the match results I see a lot of MBT drivers getting a lot of spotting damage, often even not very good players judging their overall result, while to see a camo based tank getting a lot of spotting damage also happens, but imo less frequently, you actually need skill to do it and even with skill if the MBTs push too hard in some missions most of what you would have spotted has been already seen by them.

So I don't think that a front line tank, typically an MBT, but it can also be some Ramka or T15, has perform a tactic that can annoy other players only to farm more assist damage as there is not a bias in how the different classes can get assist damage and if there is some are the MBTs at an advantage given average the level of skill of the PvE player base and based on the average of the results i see. If a MBT driver wants more assist damage to push harder and spot more is all he needs to do, to annoy other people popping out smoke in front of them, but in a way that prevents only them to see and only for the purpose of preventing them to see is imho not the way to go. 

And even if I am not sure if reporting such behavior has consequences, as you don't get a real feedback when you report someone, I would probably report who does so, like I report those that ram other tanks out a position to take it themselves, maybe causing the death of that tank that is pushed out of cover in plain sight of the enemies and every not fair behavior. Even driving in front of an ally closing his line of fire is not allowed by the game rules, and those things are even worst imo.

Edited by BumbaX (see edit history)

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@BumbaX I think you are right, we all want to play in fair conditions and simply enjoy the game. The technique needs some practice and knowing correct moments in PvE spawn time points too. I assume that some people have issues with collecting "help others to deal damage" for their dailies, and they might accomplish such task in more controlled way.

1 hour ago, BumbaX said:

But I was commenting about a different thing, to pop out the smoke in a way that prevents a person that is also spotting the target while you continue to spot the enemy, the image you posted is very clear about it. Here the reason to pop out the smoke is not your own protection as you are waiting to reload or protect a team mate at risk, is to affect negatively the playing of an other player, as not only you prevent him from maybe spotting further tanks (he can have better view range then you, maybe for the commander or the retros he uses), but to be surrounded by smoke for no reason is annoying in itself and can make his action less precise, ie for him is more difficult to judge if a weak spot of the enemy is or not is behind some hard cover a he sees only the red silhouette of the enemy in a white background.

 

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Sadly most missions, both daily ones and Battle Path ones, at least in the last BP, promote selfish, not cooperative and not natural game play, so I understand if a player can think of using such tactics.

 

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On 3/11/2020 at 6:13 PM, Haswell said:

 

  • Player A spots a target. Player B de-tracks the same target. Player B gets credit.

Not always, just had a battle where I did exactly that and I did not get assist. Yes, I am 100% sure, I was permatracking do to assist mission.

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23 hours ago, Flavio93Zena said:

Not always, just had a battle where I did exactly that and I did not get assist. Yes, I am 100% sure, I was permatracking do to assist mission.

I've often wondered about this situation:

What if someone else tracked it first, maybe even just a split second before you perma-tracked it.  Could they have been getting the assist damage because they tracked it first, and then you kept it perma-tracked for them?

Or does the assist damage always go to the person who most recently tracked the vehicle?  Assuming no one designates it, of course.  (This seems like the correct way to do it, but this is AW we're discussing...)

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