https://ko-fi.com/mossymax

Destiny 2 Damage Scaling Spreadsheet - by MossyMax

Copy this sheet to change the activity in any of the damage sheets

Completed Activity Rework, all weapons updated except swords

Here's my reddit post explaining every mechanic I talk about here

Tentative updates for activities, weapon and ability changes still in-progress

Lots of updates, I'm terrible with patch notes

If you notice any errors, or want to help, please contact me at:

Season of the Wish combatant updates, rocket sidearm, more legendary and exotic perks

Updated combatant bonuses, Deep activities, and added new tab for perks like dragonfly

Start of refactoring, added all Lightfall activities and moved calculator to top of each page

Arc 3.0, reorganized activity list

Solstice Sandbox updates - Foetracer enemy health stuff - Start of adding reload calculations into DPS chart

For this guide, I use the term Power level (PL) (bungie term), which is the same as the commonly used Light Level (LL) (community term)

Updated for Season of the Haunted: added scorch calculator, weird new leviathan scaling, and some of the updated weapons/grenades/abilities (not all)

the average power level of all your weapons and armour

Reorganized Weapon and Combatant Sheets, added much more accurate delta values, started tracking edit date

the extra additive PL you get from levelling your seasonal artifact

renamed a bunch of stuff for clarity, added abilities

your gear PL plus your artifact bonus. The big number you see on the character screen.

Version 0.95 - added a bunch of weapons to combatant scaling, started basic DPS calculations

the displayed power level of an individual weapon

Version 0.91 - simplified guardian scaling by difficulty, improved conversion calculator

5. Weapon effective power level (ePL)

your weapon PL plus your artifact bonus. This isn't displayed anywhere, but is what the game uses to calculate damage

Version 0.9 - WQ activity updates, enclave-based PvP damage and PvE boosts

the PL of the activity you’re in. Older activities will retain their original recommended PL, but display as the current floor (1350)

Version 0.8 - new intro and all basic charts

your gear ePL minus the recommended PL of the activity

your weapon ePL minus the recommended PL of the activity

abbreviation for Raids And Dungeons

Outgoing damage in PvE is scaled based on 3 buckets of scalars:

multiplies from baseline (gambit) damage to an activity based on recommended PL and activity type, and sets up caps and multipliers for delta scaling

scales your damage based on your gear ePL AND your weapon ePL, relative to the recommended PL

scales damage to minors, elites, minibosses, bosses and vehicles. PvE damage bonus applies across all damage in PvE

scales from gambit damage to an activity based on recommended power and activity type, and sets up caps and scalars for delta scaling

Recommended PL scales as such: There's a theoretical base damage value at 0 PL. This number goes up by 1/30th of the base for each Power level up. Gambit's recommended level is 10, which puts it at a 1+10*1/30 = 1.33x multiplier. For the sheet's purpose, I use gambit as the 1x scale

In equation form: Recommended PL Multiplier = (1+ ((1/30)*[Recommended PL])/1.3333

to simplify further: Recommended PL Multiplier = [Recommended PL]/40 + 0.75 (thanks SamMath)

e.g. unpowered melee does 100 damage to a gambit boss; if you're in "The Ghosts" campaign mission, a 1370 activity AT 1370 Gear ePL, you will do 100 * [1370/40 + 0.75]= 3500 damage

This scaling goes below the current minimum PL (1350) for older activities. For example, Kalli is 560 PL, Zulmak is 960 PL. However, if you put your own Gear ePL below the floor (with e.g. FoTL mask), the game will set you to exactly 160 ePL, making any enemy immune

If you're using the same weapon on the same combatant type, you can directly convert from one activity to another with the handy conversion calculator

Different activities will have different caps to how over-levelled your weapon can be before it stops doing more damage.

Gear ePL scaling generally caps at +0 outside of contest modifiers, but the difficulty will dictate how much damage you do at +0. Raids and Dungeons cap at 0.925x, while Master activities cap at 0.85x

scales your damage based on your gear ePL AND your weapon ePL, relative to the recommended power level

delta in this case is defined by [ePL] - [Recommended PL]

there are two separate multipliers that get multiplied together, gear ePL delta and weapon ePL delta. In both cases, each point of ePL makes a difference. i.e. there's no sudden jump between -9 and -10 delta

For abilities, you still use both scalars, just using your gear ePL in place of the weapon ePL

Gear ePL is the big number you see on the character screen - it's your gear PL (the average of your weapons and armour) plus your artifact bonus

Your damage scales based on how much lower your Gear ePL is compared to the activity's Recommended PL. This scaling is limited to the recommended PL (+0 delta), and you get no bonus for going over. It scales down to -99. At -100, enemies are immune.

There are different versions of this multiplier for the three difficulty levels, starting at 1.0x for normal, and 0.85x for Master, with RAD following exactly between them at 0.925x

All three difficulties line up at - 60 delta, giving you a 0.475x multiplier to your damage

The scaling is a piecewise linear equation that gets less steep every 10 PL downwards. i.e. there are specific values at each 10 LL, and it follows a straight line between them.

e.g. for normal activities, between +0 and -10, each level lower drops your damage by 2.2 percentage points, but between -70 and -99, each level drops your damage by 0.2 percentage points

Unlike gear ePL delta scaling, there's only one scaling formula for weapons, and there's no lower bound to how low your damage can go. The lowest I've measured is 0.2073x at -234 weapon ePL delta

There is however, a variable upper cap. +50 for most lower end activities, and +20 for most endgame activities, with a few exception for contest modes

Artifact bonus affects every piece of gear individually, so make sure you manually add it to your weapon's power level for these calculations

The scaling follows an exponential curve roughly equal to [scalar] = e^([weapon ePL delta]*0.00672) . However, it's not a perfect match, so use my exact measurements in the delta scaling tab