Bloodlust Mechanics

Over the years, I've seen countless number of people who don't know the truth behind the inner-workings of bloodlust. Hopefully this page will clarify some of the misconceptions that are out there.

2x the Damage
When you cast bloodlust on any unit in the game, it will double that units basic damage and their piercing damage. This makes it sound like the unit will be 4 times as strong now, but this isn't the case. Many people believe bloodlust makes a unit 3 times as strong. So what the heck does it really do?

Note: Make sure you've read the page on Combat Equations before moving on here.

Bloodlust Equations
The following is a bunch of equations demonstrating how much damage an ogre can dish out.

Level 1 ogre attacks a level 5 knight: ((8 - 8) + 4 = 4. The ogre will do 2-4 damage per hit.

Level 1 ogre with bloodlust attacks a level 5 knight: ((16 - 8) + 8 = 16. The ogre will do 8-16 damage per hit. That's 4.0 times as strong as the ogre without bloodlust! Don't be fooled. It's only 4 times as strong because the damage done with no bloodlust is so small.

Level 5 ogre attacks a level 5 knight: ((12 - 8) + 4 = 8. The ogre will do 4-8 damage per hit.

Level 5 ogre with bloodlust attacks a level 5 knight: ((24 - 8) + 8 = 24. The ogre will do 12-24 damage per hit. That's 3.0 times as strong as the ogre without bloodlust.

The 2 previous examples demonstrate how important the weapon upgrades are to a unit with bloodlust. Because the basic damage gets doubled, each weapon upgrade becomes 2 times as strong when bloodlust is cast on that unit.

A death knight attacks anything : ((0 - armor rating) + 9 = 9. The death knight will do 5-10 damage every attack to ANY unit or building.

A death knight with bloodlust attacks anything : ((0 - armor rating) + 18 = 18. The death will do 9-18 damage every attack to ANY unit or building. This isn't even 2 times as much as the death knight without bloodlust.

So...
You can see how strange bloodlust actually is. There are so many factors that different units attacking different things, causes damages to be very strange. We've seen a unit with bloodlust that does 3.5 times the amount of damage, and a unit that doesn't even double it's attack power. Generally, it depends alot on the basic damage and the defenders armor rating. Any unit that only attacks with piercing damage (dragons, griffons, mages, death knights) will never do any better than doubling their attack power with bloodlust. While other situations will cause a unit to do 4 times as much damage. I can tell you that bloodlust will ALWAYS be within the range of 1.8 - 4.0 times as strong per attack.

Why doesn't my Lusted Ogre take out 3x as many Knights?
A lusted ogre would actually take out 3x as many knights if he could fight them individually. But think about it this way. If 3 knights attack a bloodlusted ogre, they are hitting 3x as much as the ogre can. That means the 3 knights are doing the same amount of damage as the ogre is, but they only have the 1 unit to kill. The ogre has to work his way through all 3 knights (270hp). The ogre might kill off 1 of the knights before he dies because his lusted attack is concentrated (whereas the 3 knights have will have to move an extra step or 2 to get into position), but the constant attack of 3 knights will easily take down one ogre before it is even close to killing all 3 knights.

Remember
Bloodlust doubles your basic and piercing damage ratings. This means that sword upgrades are more important to units that have bloodlust cast on them. Try to have both of your sword upgrades complete by the time you get lust. On the other side, the only thing that will cause lusted units to do less damage are your shield upgrades. Increasing your armor rating will bring down the total amount of damage bloodlust will do. Unit with no armor (archers for example) will always take 3.5 - 4.0 as much damage!

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