GGACR/Damage

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Damage Scaling

There are 3 standard factors when assigning damage: Defense Modifier, Guts Rating, and Guard Gauge. When combined, they determine how much damage your character will take at every point in the health meter and Guard Gauge. It's important to learn how strong/weak/effective your attacks will be at different points of the battle.

Both the Guts scaling and Guard Gauge scaling can take place at the same time. For example. Sol (Guts 1, Defense ×1.00) is at 15% life remaining. According to the chart, if Sol gets hit by a 100 damage move, it will inflict 58 damage. However, if the Guard Gauge is lower than half full, then the damage scaling will also be taken into account. For example, if the Guard Gauge is at -64 (1/4 full), Sol will only take 31% of whatever the move would have done at the default Guard Gauge setting. So, in this case, 100 damage move set to inflict 58 damage (because of his Guts), only inflicts 31% of that because of the Guard Gauge (about 17 damage).

The formula for an attack's damage is Base Damage × Defense × Guts × Guard Gauge Scaling × Proration = Damage inflicted

Read each individual section below to completely understand how they work.

Guard Gauge

GGAC Guard Gauge.png

The Guard Gauge is located directly underneath your character's health meter and it directly affects damage scaling.
Despite the name, there are no Guard Crushes/Guard Breaks in Guilty Gear.

The Guard Gauge will rise each time an attack is blocked using basic block or Instant Block. Using Faultless Defense or Slashback will prevent the Guard Gauge from increasing.

Getting hit will lower the Guard Gauge. The lower it gets, the less damage each attack will do. When the gauge is completely empty, the majority of hits will do one point of damage.

If over half full, the Guard Gauge will gradually return back to the halfway point when you are not in blockstun (starting a few seconds after blockstun ends).

When Over Half Full

Normal Damage scaling does not come into effect. The Guard Gauge will slowly fall back to the midpoint while the character is in a neutral state. Forced Proration and Initial Proration are still applied.

When Over 75% Full (Flashing)

Damage scaling does not come into effect and all hits will be considered Counter Hits - even throws and mid-combo attacks! The Guard Gauge will slowly fall back to the midpoint while the character is in a neutral state. Forced Proration and Initial Proration are still applied.

When Below Half Full

Damage scaling starts to take effect as shown in the table below. The Guard Gauge will instantly reset back to the midpoint when the character returns neutral state (aka after air teching or on wakeup). Forced Proration and Initial Proration are still applied.

Guard Bar Damage Scaling

Guard Gauge Scaling Table
Guard Gauge 128 to -1 -16 -32 -48 -64 -80 -96 -112 -128
Normal + Special 100% 78% 59% 44% 31% 18% 12% 6% 3%
Overdrive 100% 69% 50% 38% 31% 18% 12% 6% 3%

The Guard Gauge is 256+1 units (128+, 128-, and 0). The Guard Gauge default is 0. For scaling, the numbers indicate that if the Guard Gauge is at the specified level, the move will do the indicated percentage (approximately). In actuality, the damage scales a little at almost every unit of the Guard Gauge, however, there's no reason to list every single percentage. The chart above is to give a general idea.

The Frame Data lists each attack's GB+ and GB-. On a basic level, GB+ is the amount the Guard Gauge increases when the attack is blocked, while GB- is the amount the Guard Gauge decreases when the attack hits the opponent. We will discuss this in more detail below.

The Guard Gauge in More Detail

Guard Balance

Each character has a Guard Balance rating that affects how much their Guard Bar rises from blocking attacks.
(Base GB+) × (Guard Balance of defender) = Final GB+
If defender is already in blockstun then Final GB+ is halved
Each character's Guard Balance rating is listed in the System Data section of the GGAC+R wiki, but we will list it here for convenience:
Guard Balance Table
Guard Balance Character(s)
×1.25  Anji,  Millia,  Robo-Ky
×1.125  Chipp
×1.00  A.B.A,  Axl,  Baiken,  Bridget,  Eddie,  I-No,  Jam,  Kliff,  Ky,  May,  Order-Sol,  Potemkin,  Sol,  Testament,  Venom,  Zappa
×0.875  Dizzy,  Johnny,  Slayer
×0.85  Justice
×0.8125  Faust
For example Sol blocking a GB+ 10 attack would raise his guard bar by 10, but Anji blocking the same attack would raise his guard bar by 12, and Dizzy blocking the same attack would raise her's by 8!

GB+ when Air Blocking

When air normal blocking, the Base GB+ of each attack is raised even higher according to the attack's Attack Level:
GB+ when Air Blocking
Attack Level Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5
Base GB+ (Air) +0 +1 +2 +3 +5
  • Note: air Specials, Overdrives, and attacks that have GB+ 0 do not gain the additional GB+ mentioned above.

GB- when Guard Bar is Flashing

When the guard bar is flashing, each attack that hit is automatically counter hit and does an additional GB-10.
This means that you will generally be able to score a maximum of 4 counter hits when the Guard Bar is full.
The one exception to this is throws that cannot counter hit (such as Sol's Wild Throw or Ky's air normal throw).
Other throws which can counter hit state will do so only when the Guard Bar is flashing.

Initial Proration and Forced Proration

Initial proration and forced proration are another part of Guilty Gear's engine to reduce the damage of certain combos for the sake of game balance. Some moves have a proration of above 100%, which means that all attacks that combo afterwards will do more damage than usual.

Initial Proration is factored in only if your first attack of a combo is done with a prorated move. For example, Dizzy's 2K has initial proration 70%, so if Dizzy starts a combo with 2K, all the subsequent attacks in the combo only 70% of their normal damage.

Forced Proration is a harsher version of initial proration: it prorates subsequent attacks in a combo no matter what! For example, Bridget's Roger Get has forced proration 85%, so if Bridget uses Roger Get anywhere in his combo, all subsequent attacks will only do 85% of their normal damage.


Further Reading: Forced Proration (hereon abbreviated as f.prorate) only applies the first time it occurs, unless a stronger f.prorate comes into effect later. For example, Slayer's 2H has an 80% f.prorate, and Crosswise Hell has an 85% f.prorate. Slayer starts a combo with 2H, applying the 80% f.prorate. He then combos into Crosswise Heel, but the 85% f.prorate is ignored as the 80% is still applied. He further combos into another 2H, but 80% f.prorate from before remains unchanged: no new f.prorate is added.

However, if Slayer were to start a combo with Crosswise and then combo into 2H, the 85% f.prorate would apply to the 2H, and then every following hit would apply the 80% f.prorate.
Summary: Forced Proration does not stack. Any stronger forced prorate will simply override any previous forced prorates applied to the combo.

Guts

All characters have 460 health. Depending on how much health a character has left, there are different levels of damage scaling. This damage scaling is different than the type given by the Guard Gauge; both affect damage scaling at the same time.

Each character has a Guts rating. As you can see, the lower the Guts rating, the less damage scaling a character will gain during the match.

Guts Table
Health > 56% > 41% > 31% > 21% > 16% > 11% > 6% > 0% Characters
Guts Rating 0 × 1.00 × 1.00 × 1.00 × 0.92 × 0.76 × 0.60 × 0.50 × 0.40  A.B.A,  Bridget, Eddie,  Faust,  Kliff,  Robo-Ky,  Testament
Guts Rating 1 × 1.00 × 1.00 × 0.98 × 0.89 × 0.72 × 0.58 × 0.48 × 0.40  Axl,  Dizzy,  I-No,  Sol,  Venom
Guts Rating 2 × 1.00 × 1.00 × 0.94 × 0.85 × 0.68 × 0.56 × 0.46 × 0.38  Ky,  Order-Sol,  Slayer,  Zappa
Guts Rating 3 × 1.00 × 0.98 × 0.91 × 0.82 × 0.66 × 0.54 × 0.44 × 0.38  Jam,  May,  Millia
Guts Rating 4 × 1.00 × 0.96 × 0.88 × 0.78 × 0.64 × 0.50 × 0.42 × 0.38  Chipp,  Johnny,  Potemkin
Guts Rating 5 × 1.00 × 0.94 × 0.85 × 0.75 × 0.60 × 0.48 × 0.40 × 0.36  Anji,  Baiken,  Justice

Character Defense

Since Guilty Gear XX features a very complex damage system, it's no surprise they have implemented various character specific defense ratings. The chart below shows each characters defense modifier.

As you can see, Chipp's defense modifier is the largest, and Potemkin's is the smallest. This means, an attack that inflicts 100 damage on Sol (x 1.00), would inflict 130 on Chipp (x 1.30) and only 87 on Potemkin (x 0.87).

Character Defense Modifier Guts Rating Stun Resistance
GGACR Potemkin Icon.png Potemkin 0.87 4 80
GGACR A.B.A Icon.png A.B.A 0.89 0 80
GGACR Robo-Ky Icon.png Robo-Ky 0.89 0 80
GGACR Order-Sol Icon.png Order-Sol 0.96 2 60
GGACR Slayer Icon.png Slayer 0.96 2 70
GGACR Faust Icon.png Faust 1.0 0 65
GGACR Sol Badguy Icon.png Sol Badguy 1.0 1 60
GGACR Zappa Icon.png Zappa 1.0 2 60
GGACR Johnny Icon.png Johnny 1.0 4 70
GGACR Testament Icon.png Testament 1.0 0 65
GGACR Justice Icon.png Justice 1.03 5 70
GGACR Ky Kiske Icon.png Ky Kiske 1.03 2 60
GGACR I-No Icon.png I-No 1.06 1 55
GGACR Axl Low Icon.png Axl Low 1.06 1 60
GGACR Kliff Undersn Icon.png Kliff Undersn 1.06 0 50
GGACR Eddie Icon.png Eddie 1.06 0 60
GGACR Anji Mito Icon.png Anji Mito 1.06 5 65
GGACR Venom Icon.png Venom 1.06 1 60
GGACR Jam Kuradoberi Icon.png Jam Kuradoberi 1.06 3 65
GGACR May Icon.png May 1.06 3 70
GGACR Bridget Icon.png Bridget 1.07 0 55
GGACR Dizzy Icon.png Dizzy 1.15 1 50
GGACR Baiken Icon.png Baiken 1.18 5 55
GGACR Millia Rage Icon.png Millia Rage 1.21 3 55
GGACR Chipp Zanuff Icon.png Chipp Zanuff 1.3 4 50


Stun

Every time a move hits an opponent, a stun value determined by the formula below is added to a total. If this total goes above the opponent's Stun Resistance value, the character becomes stunned.

(((Move Damage × Combo Hit Modifier × Character State Modifier) - 5) × IK Modifier) 15 × (random value between 1.0~1.31)

Note that how much stun someone can withstand is their stun resistance × 100, so for example someone with 60 stun resistance will get stunned when they hit 6000 stun.
The random value added at the end of the formula works in increments in 0.01

  • Move Damage: is raw damage value of the move unaffected by scaling, including proration.
  • Combo Hit Modifier: is the way the stun damage is scaled in combos, going purely by the number of hits it will scale the stun according to the stun table below.
  • Character State Modifier: state the opponent is in while struck. All of these stacks multiplicative together
    • Normal Hit = 100%, Counterhit = 200%, OTG = 25%, Hit absorbed by armor = 0%
  • IK Modifier is a penalty modifier to how much stun someone in IK mode builds. 50% if the attacker is in IK mode otherwise 100%


Stun Combo Modifier Table
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12+
*100% 75% 69% 63% 56% 50% 44% 38% 31% 25% 19% 13%
  • Because of a bug throws done outside of combos will get scaled by 82% instead of 100%


Stun Healing Rate

When you're not in hitstun or in OTG state, the amount of stun you have received will gradually heal (be subtracted). the healing rate is as follows:

  • 0.04 per frame (normal state)
  • 0.08 per frame (while opponent is in IK Mode)
  • 0.10 per frame (while your character is downed or in OTG state)

If you've read the chart carefully, you can see that the system has been designed so it is harder to activate IK Mode and then dizzy the opponent for the Instant Kill. While you are in IK Mode, you will only be inflicting 50% stun, and your opponent's stun will be healing at a rate of 0.08 units per second.

A different thing to note is that you will regenerate stun if you're in OTG no matter what else is happening. This means you actually recovery a tiny bit of stun for the few frames where you're considered in OTG state during things like ground bounces.

A character's stun resistance is increased by 25% (with a max value of 120) after a dizzy ends, in order to prevent a character from getting dizzied again afterwards. This only lasts for the current round. Negative Penalty reduces your "stun ceiling" by 12.5% (with a minimum of 40 points) and sets your current stun value to a minimum of 90% of your stun ceiling.

Hitstun/Untechable Time Scaling and Gravity

Guilty Gear combos come in all shapes and sizes. To prevent infinite combos, the designers created various ways that make longer combos much more difficult to do and prevent loops. This requires players to gain a deeper understanding of the combo system in order to maximize their damage.

Untechable Time Scaling

The untechable time of attacks decreases as the amount of time spent in hitstun increases, including during hitstop. This prevents infinite combos on airborne opponents.

Untechable Time Scaling
Combo Length Untechable Time Modifier
0 seconds 100%
+3 seconds 95%
+5 seconds 90%
+7 seconds 80%
+10 seconds 70%
+14 seconds 60%


While untechable time scaling for hits on airborne opponents is present, there is no hitstun scaling for hits on grounded opponents. As such, hitting a standing/crouching opponent will not reduce the time they spend in hitstun.

Gravity

Another interesting feature of the combo system is gravity effects. The more hits a character takes, the lower the character will be launched. This can prove to be helpful or detrimental to a combo depending on which way you look at it. Some combos may only be possible if the launcher sends the opponent high into the air, while other combos benefit more from a lower launch.

Because gravity increases with the number of hits, this greatly curbs the ability to perform the dreaded infinite combos. Since combos constantly add hits, any relaunches will float the opponent less and less until certain combinations become impossible.
All that's currently known is that the gravity during combos starts to scale at 6 hits and caps out at 35 hits where it reduces the launch height by 50% this also applies to things that launch downwards, reducing how much they send the opponent downwards.

Character Weight Table (Higher = Lighter)
Weight Character(s)
×1.10  Baiken,  Bridget,  Jam,  Kliff,  May
×1.05  Dizzy,  I-No,  Justice,  Millia
×1.00  Anji,  Axl,  Chipp,  Eddie,  Faust,  Ky,  Slayer,  Sol,  Testament,  Venom,  Zappa
×0.98  A.B.A,  Johnny,  Order-Sol
×0.95  Robo-Ky
×0.94  Potemkin

Pushback Increase

Similar to Untechable Time, the amount of pushback the attacker receives in the corner scales with how long the combo has been going for, in order to try and prevent infinites.
The way it works is that the game applies the same amount of pushback to both players when an attack lands, the difference however is that the attacker's pushback gets scaled with how long the combo has been going and it also only gets applied if the opponent is in the corner.

Corner pushback
Combo Length Corner pushback modifier
0 seconds 100%
+1 seconds 106%
+2 seconds 114%
+3 seconds 124%
+4 seconds 136%
+5 seconds 150%
+6 seconds 166%
+7 seconds 184%
+8 seconds 200%

Valid vs. Invalid Combos

a valid 2 hit combo (left) and an invalid 2 hit combo (rlght)

Because players can choose to delay their techs while airborne, this leads to combos that only worked because the opponent did not tech (often to avoid resets). These are called invalid combos (or Black Beat combos).

The combo counter will turn dark and the invalid hit will appear in small numbers below the word BEAT.

Chip Damage

Special attacks without explicit unique chip-damage tweaks probably deal ~12.5% (barring integer truncation and such) on normal guard (damage × 16 / 128). The resulting number is not rounded, look below to check how much chip damage any given amount of base damage causes (provided that attack can cause chip damage and has no chip modifiers).
Base Damage : Chip Amount
8~15 : 1
16~23: 2
24~31: 3
32~39: 4
40~47: 5
48~55: 6
56~63: 7
64~71: 8
72~79: 9
80~87: 10
88~95: 11
96~103: 12

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