So, as many of you may know, I am an avid crafter, and an avid Champ Spawner.  These two interests combined, it is only logical that I prefer Axes as my weapon of choice.  I heard a nasty little rumor today, that lumberjacking does not give the "chance damage increase".  I never really noticed the occasional monster hit that you would get from having high lumberjacking...so I thought I would do some testing.


I found that Lumberjacking appears to not be active, my test sample is small, with only a variation of 15 skill points, but that amount should be significant enough to atleast see some results.


Any confirmation on this would be great.  If it is disabled, is it possible to have it enabled?  That would breath some diversity into the dexxer's war chest (I'm looking at you, all you guys with your Sammi Kats )

Before becoming a staff member I too enjoyed using an axe.  The critical hit that people report from OSI was a pre-AoS thing.  After AoS came out and especially after SE the added "critical hit" was removed from the production servers.  I can confirm this as I used axes on the production OSI/EA/Bioware/Mythic servers.  After AoS I do not ever remember seeing critical hits.  I did some extensive testing after High seas came out on a sampire build on the production servers and also never saw a critical hit.


What does that mean on a RunUO server... Well I am glad you asked.


When the damage is calculated for a hit your base weapon damage (15-17 in the case of a double axe) is multiplied by str and skill modifiers first.  The numbers for how much each one adds should be on uo.stratics.com.  I do know for a fact lumberjacking adds a percent equal to 20% of your lumberjacking skill with an additional 10% if your skill is GM level or higher.  At GM lumberjacking this would add 30% damage to the weapon's base damage (so a double axe would go to 19.5-22.1 in the weapon damage window of the stats window).  This weapon damage is then pushed through the 300% damage increase (worn, buffs, slayer and honor).  So you can view the lumber jacking boost as a pre DI increase and one that only axes give.


This gives some build choices that I will let you work through on your own.  I was looking at doing a pretty serious regear here on evolution before becoming staff that was going to maximize damage while keeping survivabliity high.

Thanks for the response Keldon, your information is always welcomed.  I'll have to play with it more then, but to clerify, lumberjacking gives a base damage increase only, and not the old crit hit chance (having left OSI right at AoS I would'nt noticed the change), but DOES give a bonus in excess of the 300% DMI cap?  Lumberjacking has become a base damage modifyer, and not an overall damage increase precentage?

the bonus is before the 300 di cap.


Weapon damage calculation goes basically like this:


Base damage of weapon + str bonus + tactics bonus + anatomy bonus + lumber jack bonus (if its an axe weapon) = Your weapons base damage


Now it calculates your 300% (max) DI


Your weapons base damage * (1 + DI amount) = How hard you hit.


Here is a guide on uoguide that should be fairly close and will give a more in depth explanation then I gave here:
http://www.uoguide.com/Damage_Calculations

Got it!  Excellent explanation, and as always, thanks for your insight.