P4AU/Damage

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Health

The big green bar at the top of the HUD shows each character's health. There are two types of health in this game: Regular Health, and Blue Health (recoverable health).

Once health is reduced to 0, that player loses the round. If a Normal Type character's health is reduced to approximately 35%, the character enters Awakening. Shadow Type characters do not have access to Awakening but instead have 2000 more health than their normal counterparts.

Blue Health

The Blue portion will recover over time if you don't get hit.

Blue Health is health that is temporarily lost and will regenerate over time, provided the character with Blue Health does not enter hitstun. If an attack hits a character who has Blue Health, then the character's remaining Blue Health is lost and the character will lose normal health equal to the attack's damage. If a character were to have 2000 HP of Blue Health when hit by an attack that does 200 damage, they would lose the 2000 HP of Blue Health as well as 200 HP of regular health!

There are a variety of ways to transform regular health into blue health:

  • Blocking special and super attacks, which deal a fixed percentage of base damage as Blue Health when blocked.
  • Perform a Furious Action.
  • Perform a Super Cancel, which transforms a fixed percentage of regular health into Blue Health.

Super Cancels and Furious Actions are still usable at low life, since they do not cost a fixed health value; instead, they transform a percentage of a character's health into Blue Health. When a character is at low health, these actions essentially become "free," as Blue Health is no longer a risk -- regardless of whether or not a character has Blue Health, they will almost certainly lose the round if the opponent is able to hit them even once. Players should take note of this fact and prepare to see Furious Actions when the opponent is near death.

Note that a character cannot die from having only Blue Health. Unlike in most other games, blocking special and super attacks will never kill. However, Blue Health is not counted when determining winner by time out: only the yellow section counts! An opponent may not be able to kill a player by forcing them to incur Blue Health, but they can place them in blockstrings that cause significant Blue Health on block in order to guarantee a win during a time-out situation.

There is approximately 5 second startup before Blue Health starts to recover. The startup is reset if you receive more blue damage or if you block anything. However, this delay is not affected by jumping or any offensive actions. Being hit by attacks that do zero damage (such as Bursts and throw breaks) will not remove your Blue Health.

Awakening

Only Normal Type characters can use Awakening

When a Normal Type character's health reduced to approximately 35% or lower and the character is not in hitstun, then the character will enter Awakening. Awakening has a visual effect when it occurs: the character will flash orange, his/her portrait will appear briefly in the background, and the character's life bar will turn from green to yellow.

While in Awakening, the character will receive the following bonuses:

  • A defensive boost: all damage is reduced to 62.5%. Hitting the opponent with a 1000 damage attack will only inflict 625 damage when the opponent is in Awakening.
    • This even applies to minimum damage! An attack that does 1000 minimum damage will only deal 625 minimum damage when the opponent is in Awakening.
  • SP gauge max becomes 150 instead of 100.
  • Automatically receive 50 SP.
  • Unlock new super attack(s), which vary among characters.


Because a character will not go into Awakening until they are low on life AND are not in hitstun, a common tactic is to do a high damage combo when the opponent is near Awakening so the opponent will have as little life as possible with Awakening's defense boost. You can even stop the opponent from going into Awakening by doing a combo that outright kills the opponent before the health condition is met!

You can also force yourself into Awakening by performing a Super Cancel or Furious Action if it puts your regular life below the Awakening threshold, then recover the Blue Life while receiving Awakening's defense boost! Elizabeth is a prime candidate to do this with Mind Charge and Diarahan.

Damage System

Damage Scaling

As you combo an opponent you will notice that each attack's damage tends to go down over the course of a combo. This property is known as damage scaling and is used to make it so that combos are not too damaging, and to balance out certain attacks by reducing the amount of damage possible off said attack.

Combo Rate

For every move in your combo after the first, a character-specific modifier is applied to scale down the damage more than it otherwise would be. Combo Rate varies between 0.60 (Shadow Labrys) and 0.80 (Akihiko). In the case of Shadow Labrys, every move after the first does 0.6 times its normal damage, in addition to scaling from proration.

Proration

Each attack has three values, P1, P2, and SMP, meaning Proration 1, Proration 2, and Same Move Proration. These modify the damage of every move used after them in a combo. During a combo, a Proration Tally (PT) is kept. After a move hits, its proration is added to PT as such:

  • If it was the first move in the combo, add P1 and P2; otherwise, only add P2.
  • Add SMP as well if the move had previously been used in the combo.

For every 100 PT, damage is reduced by 4%, up to 1200. Starting at 1300, damage is reduced by 2% per 100 PT. Intermediate numbers are not counted; there is no difference between 400 PT and 450 PT, for instance, but adding another 50 would make it 500, which would add to scaling.

  • Example 1: Say you use a move with 200/100/50 as the starter and the second attack in a combo. So for the third attack, you have (200 + 100) + (100 + 50) = 450 PT. Counting only the hundreds, damage is reduced by 4 * 4% = 16%.

This value is subtracted from 100%, and the resulting number is multiplied by base damage and, for all moves beyond the first in a combo, Combo Rate.

100% - this value can also be called Effective Proration; EP for short. EP is bound by 0% and 100%, meaning you'll never do negative damage or do more damage than normal. Some attacks do have negative proration; for instance, a One More! Burst has a P2 of -200, but if your PT is below 0, your EP will still only be 100%.

The damage formula, in total: Base Damage * Combo Rate (or 1 for first move) * Effective Proration

  • Example 2: You've done some combination of moves so that PT is 1550 and want to see how this affects the next move you do. Divided by 100 = 15. Multiply the first 12 by 4% = 48%, leaving 3; 3 * 2% = 6%. EP = 100% - 48% - 6% = 46%.

If the next move you want to do has 800 base damage and your character has a 60% combo rate, your attack will do 800 * 60% * 46% = 220 damage.

Minimum Damage

Similar to BlazBlue, some special attacks and all supers deal a minimum amount of damage in a combo. This means that past a certain point, some attacks will ignore damage scaling and deal at least a certain percentage of their base damage; for example, a super with 2000 base damage will always increase the combo's damage by a fixed amount (minimum damage) that is greater than the damage the super would add if calculated by proration alone (damage scaling). Most supers deal 30% of their base damage as minimum damage, but there are exceptions. This means that super attacks are great as combo finishers since they will ignore some of the damage scaling and deal damage that otherwise would not be available.

Power-up supers such as Yosuke's Sukukaja and Chie's Power Charge do not receive the benefits of minimum damage.

Minimum damage is still affected by Awakening. If an attack would normally do 1000 minimum damage, it will only do 625 minimum damage when the opponent is in Awakening.

Additional Damage From Counter Hits

Getting a Counter Hit increases the base damage of normals and specials by 10%, and of supers by 20%! Getting a Fatal Counter increases the base damage of normals and specials by 20% and of supers by 30%. The rules are described in more details here.

Base Damage Reduced for Shadows

All Shadow Type characters have a 20% reduction on the base damage of their attacks. Meaning if an attack for a Normal character would do 100 damage, then the shadow version's attack would do only 80 damage. In exchange for this reduction, Shadow Type characters get access to Shadow Fury, which allows for devastating combos.

All damage values listed in the wiki are for Normal Type characters.

Combo System

Hitstun Scaling

Similar to damage scaling, the amount of hitstun and untechable time each attack deals will scale down with damage scaling. This is meant to act as a means to prevent infinite combos, but also to require that players develop a deeper understanding of their character's combo theory due to the fact that combos that worked earlier may not any longer due to hitstun decay.

Hitstun and untechable time scaling is based on damage proration. As proration passes certain thresholds, hitstun and untechable time go down by a specific amount of frames. For untechable time, it works like this:

Prior to 52% proration, untechable time is not reduced.


Proration Tally Effective Proration Hitstun Untechable Time
1200 52% -0F -2F
1600 44% -2F -3F
1800 40% -3F -4F
1900 38% -4F -5F
2000 36% -5F -6F
2100 34% -6F -7F
2200 32% -7F -8F
2300 30% -9F -10F
2400 28% -11F -12F
2500 26% -13F -14F
2600 24% -15F -16F
2700 22% -17F -18F
2800 20% -19F -20F
2900 18% -21F -22F
3000 16% -23F -24F
3100 14% -25F -26F
3200 12% -27F -28F
3300 10% -29F -30F
3400 8% -9999F -9999F

Moves cannot have their untechable time reduced below 1F. At any point if a move should have 0F untechable time, it is untechable for 1 frame. Throws and some rare other moves also have fixed hitstun/untechable time that isn't reduced in this way.

Also note: hitstop is not reduced by hitstun scaling, so there may be other ways to perform combos even after you reach the maximum reduction (for example, using the hitstop from projectiles which only gets applied to the opponent and not the attacker, utilizing hit effects such as wallbounce to extend untechable time, etc.).


Increasing Hitstun

Crouching Opponent
Hitting a crouching opponent give an additional 2 frames of hitstun. This means that there are combos that only work on crouching characters, commonly called crouch confirms. Narukami can combo 5C > 2C on crouching characters but not on standing characters.
Fatal Counter
Fatal Counters adds 5 frames of hitstun/untechable time to all subsequent attacks in that combo. This allows for combos that would otherwise not work. For example, Yosuke can not usually combo after Mirage Slash, but with a Fatal Counter beforehand, he can combo from Mirage Slash into a 2A!
Fatal Counter does not stack, so doing two Fatals in one combo still only adds 5 frames instead of 10.

Valid vs. Invalid Combo

Because characters can choose to delay their ukemi, this leads to the possibility of combos that work only because the opponent decided not to ukemi. This means that some combos are not "true" combos; the game's HUD differentiates between the two classes of combos by showing the hit counter as red for a valid combo and yellow for an invalid combo. The invalid combo HUD also show which hit was invalid.

There are some situations on defense where you intentionally delay an ukemi to avoid a mixup. For example, some characters often create mixups assuming you will ukemi right away. Delaying your ukemi will mess up their timing and allow you the chance to escape.

A valid combo versus an invalid combo. The small yellow number at the bottom shows which hit was invalid.

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