Timestrike =
0.025 (0-59s)
0.03-0.10 (60-79s)
0.1-0.2 (80-99s)
0.2-0.5 (100-149s)
0.50 + 0.005*[s-150] (150s+)
Timestrike scaling is a complicated one. I studied it very carefully and the above is what I found out. Please note this testing was done with Delugazar. Put simply, it scales at a very steady rate from 60s upwards with 100-149s being a little bit faster (+0.3 rather than +0.25).
For reference, a “hit all” attack is roughly 0.16, a chrono killer is 0.7, a weak critical move is usually 0.5-0.65 while a strong critical move is 0.8-1. Monsters with high attack can one-shot with the weaker criticals against non-tanky monsters. The stronger critical moves are one-shots from most monsters.
So timestrike is not really “critical” below 150s but can do some reasonable damage as it approaches that. As it approaches 200s it starts one-shotting, but the monster must be high attack if it’s not a squishy enemy. Beyond 200s (0.75+) is where it becomes very reliable for high attack monsters and if it’s roughly 250s or beyond you can expect a one-shot from almost anything.
Looking at the exact numbers for how the game was originally designed, they make a lot of sense. They’re really nicely balance I think and stun pulse → timestrike often meant the enemy was in the upper range of 150-200s, letting you kill most things but not if the monster is tanky and your monster has low attack.
Where it’s gone wrong is with the introduction of mythics and also HP boost.
Now attacks need to do a lot more damage and it’s so carefully scaled to be perfect for the original numbers. Legendaries not easily one-shotting mythics is kind of fine, but even with full attack stats it’s not a move that can deal with mythics properly so I think that probably needs addressing. Also, it’s probably better to increase the damage rather than increase how much things can stun by, because stun is already controlling enough.
I think the way I’d probably change the scaling is make the 100-149s range go from 0.2-0.7, rather than the current 0.2-0.5. Then above 150s it keeps the same linear scaling of +0.25 every 50s.
This means you still need an enemy over 100s to do any proper damage and it’s from about 125s that the damage gets good, with it being a reasonable critical at 150s. In the 150-200s range it will go from being good to being extremely effective.
As an example, Icefang attacking Sakuralisk at 200s would deal 4730 damage (good but not one-shot). Nightlord attacking Sakuralisk at 200s would deal 5900 damage (one-shot, unless HP boosted).
Two extra notes:
Novadrake has a damage scaling of 1.65x to its timestrike damage.
Timestrike double uses this exact same scaling but it does it for each target then sums the two damage modifiers to get the one it will use for calculating damage. Hence, whether the second target is at 5s or 59s it makes no difference to the total, but it they’re above 60s then they the higher they are the more they will contribute to the damage you deal.
