Bounty Hunter Archive

Message Edited by Uthyr on 08-31-2005 11:40 PM

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Uthyr wrote:

I've been reading a lot of posts on this forum lately stating that a a damage PUP is better than a speed PUP. I've also seen a lot of posts insisting that alternating Ranged/Placed shots gives you better damage output over time compared with high-SAC specials like Adv Critical/Torso Shots. I decided to put these ideas to the test with some field trials, and found that the former is definitely not alwaystrue, and the latter is also very possibly false, at the very least for anybody with similar weapon and player stats to mine.I won't go into all the details of my field trials here since I've already posted them in this thread in the Rifleman forum, but my PvE results are as follows:

Using a damage-PUP'd rifle, I calculated an actual damage per second (this is not the same as the DPS stat listed on the weapon properties window!) of 656 when alternating Ranged/Placed Shots.

Using a speed-PUP'd rifle, I calculated an actual damage per second of 746 when alternating Ranged/Placed Shots

Using a SAC-PUP'd rifle, I calculated an actual damage per second of 759 when alternating Adv Critical / Imp Head Shots (both high-SAC, high-damage specials)

Obviously, the latter strategy appears to be the one that deals the highest damage over time. If you prefer to alternate ranged/placed shots, then a speed PUP appears to blow away a damage PUP for total damage output over time.

Using high-SAC specials with speed- or damage-PUP'd weapons for shorter-duration battles (where you are in little danger of running out of action), or for opening volleys before switching to a SAC-PUP'd weapon, is another matter, and one that I intend to do some field testing on next.

Message Edited by Uthyr on 08-31-2005 11:40 PM

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First off, Thank you for testing...

Now done to the gritty.

For you comparisons you forgot some very important details...

Youused a --ranged/placed combo to compare dmg and spd pups.

Now... this comparision is bogus... why ... because when your speed is low (from speed pups) you eat up your sac fast and have to use your low end shots.

Damage pup (on-the-other-hand) raise dmg and increase speed too... as such you can fire your specials in there... becuase you are not firing as fast... thus will have more time to regenerate your action.

I have tested the factors listed above many times...

Now if you use rifles... the best pupis damage... why?

1) Your damage is already high, so the % bonus the damage pups gives you is evenmore of a bounus.

2) Your sac is high (even if capped) so you donot want your pupbonus to be from faster speed.. this will screw your sac and make you useless.

Now for carbs, it is more complex. It depends on how your weapon was built

Most people do not look at min. damage (mistake for pvp) and get a cappedmax dmg, caped sac, weapon with new stuff.

If you have a sac caped, 50+ accuracy weapon with a minimum dmg under 420 ... then go with the speed pups.

Now if your sac is over 85 or your min damage is over 450 then go with the damage pup.

(the exception is the proton carb.. you want to slice full damge and use speed pups... becuase the 90 elem. is awesome and you want it to hit as fast as possible)

For pistols you need to get sac capped (or below 70) then go with speed pups.

As for how to macro... do not used placed at all!! this shot is worthless and while 10% seems low it is not with a 1.3 refresh speed, and the terrible damage it does.

The best way to do your shots and not kill you sac is the following

ranged --- special 1---- ranged ---- special 2---- ranged--- special 1.... etc.

This will allow you to deal good damage and conserve sac..

As for shot times... i have tested and found this to be about how the refresh rate works (bugged or not) :

Take you weapon speed then times it bythe shot youjust fired timer and that is how quick you next shot can be fired (the lowest you can go is 1)

For example torso has a 1.9 timer.. if you modified speed is 1.2 you cannot fire your next shot for 2.28 seconds.. now there is more in the equation then that.. but it is a constant.. as such not needed for the point.

As for the speed question on the fire faster it may be worth it...

I will use a dmg of 600 base (which is about avg)

Ranged: dmg x1 / time x1 500 / 1 or 500 dps 4% sac

Placed : dmg x1.1 / time x 1.3 550/1.3 or 423 dps 10% sac

A crit.:dmgx1.9/ time x 1.7 950/1.7 or 558 dps 16% sac

Torso: dmgx2 / time x 1.91000/1.9 or 526 dps 18% sac (note bleed is 8.4% of damage for 3 ticks so 84 here)

I leg: dmgx1.9/ time x 1.6 950/1.6 or 593dps 15% sac

I head: dmgx1.9 speed 1.8 950/1.8 or 528 dps 15% sac

Q draw: dmg x1.2 speed 1 600/1 or 600 dps 16 % sac

I only used theabove shots becuase they are the best specials when all is considerd (placed just there to see ... but sucks)

Message Edited by Anarchicgorilla on 09-01-2005 12:58 AM

Message Edited by Thassk on 08-31-2005 10:40 PM

I want to thank everybody for their thoughtful responses so far--this kind of discussion is very constructive. Let me start by posting the results of two more field trials that I ran this morning, and then I will address some of your comments one at a time. Again, if you want the details of these trials, see the link I posted in the first message in this thread...

Using a damage-PUP'd rifle, I calculated an actualdamage per second of727 when alternating Adv Critical / Imp Head Shots.
My averagefiring speed with the setup was 2.44 seconds per shot.

Using a speed-PUP'd rifle, I calculated an actual damage per second of 974 when alternating Adv. Critical / Imp Head Shots.
My average firing speed with this setup was 1.69 seconds per shot.

I first wanted to address the comment that I have read several times on this forum, as Iwent back and read through the archives this week, stating that 1.7 seconds is the innate cycle time for Adv Critical shots, and therefore there is no point in getting your modified speed much higher than 1.7 if you are firing high-end specials. I think this point was either misstated in a lot of posts, or else people (perhapsincluding me) misundertand what was being said. When my modified weapon speed was at 1.42, with a SAC PUP attached, I was firing at a rate of 2.22 seconds per shot. After adding a speed PUP and boosting my modified weapon speed to 0.94, I did indeed get a very big boost to my firing rate, up to 1.69 seconds per shot.

Second, it is very clear to me now that there was no advantage whatsoever for meto use a damage PUP over the other types, at least for the weapons and specials that I use and my own player mods. I'm getting far greater damage output over time using either a speed or a SAC PUP, no matter which startegy I use for alternating specials.

Now on to some of your comments:

Trenkor wrote:
Mmmmm, have you thought about how you can do ranged/placed shots faster than you can critical/headshot?I find the "reload" of my ranged shot to be faster than my criticals.

Yes, that was basically the point of my field trials. Although ranged/placed shots fire faster that critical/head shots, the increased speed isn't quite enough to compensate for the greatly increased damage that you get with the higher-level specials (though it comes close). As for running out of action, if you use a SAC PUP, you can spam high-end specials and not run out of action (I do this all the time with my SAC-capped rifles, and occasionally action foods), and still do more damage than if I had a speed or damage PUP ona weapon firing low-SAC specials.

Anarchicgorilla wrote:
Now... this comparision is bogus... why ... because when your speed is low (from speed pups) you eat up your sac fast and have to use your low end shots.

Damage pup (on-the-other-hand) raise dmg and increase speed too... as such you can fire your specials in there... becuase you are not firing as fast... thus will have more time to regenerate your action.

I've seen this argument posted here and on the rifleman forum before, and I think the logic behind that argument is very faulty. Yes, using a damage PUP forces you to shoot slower and therefore use up less action, but you are being forced to fire slower--you have no control over it. If I have an action PUP on my weapon, I can choose to fire a bit slower and still keep my action drain comparable to what I'm getting with a damage PUP if I choose to do so, but my firing speed is under my own control, not imposed by the restrictions of the PUP. So, when I need to hit a mob hard with a fast heavy burst of damage (e.g. right after I've KD'd him), I can lay down damage much more effectively than I can with a damage PUP. With a SAC PUP on the same weapon,I don't even need to worry about using up my action--I can spam my highest-damage specials and never have to worry about running out of action (I do this all the time with my rifles), and I will do a lot more damage than I would with a damage PUP on the same rifle, if I were forced to have to fire more slowly or to have to use lower-SAC specials (see results above).

Now, the fact that my action gets eaten up quickly when I am using high-SAC specials with a speed PUP does not mean that there are no situations where a speed PUP would be useful. Against a low/medium SAC target (like most CL 80-82 creatures and many CL 80-82 NPC BH marks that I have encountered, not counting the bosses), I can kill the target spamming high-SAC specials with my speed-PUP'd rifle without ever running out of action (though I do come close). Against such a target, I can guarantee you that I can kill such a target faster and more efficiently than I could with the same weapon with a damage-PUP. The field trials I posted here are not the first time I have tested this (see the Rifleman forum for some of my other trials), and the result is always the same--my action-PUP'd setup blows away my damage-PUP'd setup.

Now against higher-SAC mobs that cannot be killed without running out of action while spamming high-SAC specials, I would simply use my SAC PUP instead, and as my results showed above, I will still end up doing more damage over the long haul than the same weapon with a damage PUP on it, because even with the slower firing rate of a damage-PUP'd weapon, I am still going to run out of action before long and have to switch to lower-damage specials. At least that's the way it always works out with my high-end rifles.

Now if you use rifles... the best pupis damage...

That is most decidedly not true, with no question in my mind--at least for my toon and my weapons, and no matter what strategy I've tried with alternating specials. Again, see the results above.

The best way to do your shots and not kill you sac is the following

ranged --- special 1---- ranged ---- special 2---- ranged--- special 1.... etc.

This is actually something that I've payed very close attention to lately, because you are not the first person who I've heard make that recommendation. I haven't actually done experiments to measure my damage output over time (I didn't see the point because the pattern was clear to me), but I have been paying very careful attention to the weapon timers, and what I have found is that there is no point in substituting a ranged shot for a higher-damage shot. After the ranged shot is fired, there is still a delay before the next high-damage shot can be fired, and I have found that there is no difference in the delay if I fire a second high-damage special instead of the ranged shot. I still have to wait the same amount of time before I can fire the next high-damage special either way, so I might as well spend the time firing something that will do more damage. I have tried all of the following combinations, and I always come to the same conclusion:

/criticalShot --> rangedShot --> headShot --> rangedShot --> (repeat)

/criticalShot --> rangedShot --> /criticalShot --> rangedShot --> (repeat)

/criticalShot --> headShot--> /criticalShot --> /criticalShot --> (repeat)

All three of these combinations fire my specials at the same exact speed as far as I can see, but the latter one does a lot more damage. Maybe this is just something peculiar with the particular specials that I use (e.g., Imp Head Shot) or with my player speed mod, or something to do with rifles in general, I don't know.I also won't argue that some people apparently see a benefit to interspersing ranged shots between their high-damage shots as you described, but personally, I definitely see no difference in speed. The only way I am able to increase my speed is by alternating low-end specials and not using any high-end specials at all. Now, that being said, I think perhaps you were more arguing from a SAC-conservation viewpoint than a damage-maximizing viewpoint, but I say that you can do both simultaneously. Granted, you will use a lot less action interspersing the ranged shots, but you can also use less action by using a SAC PUP, and therefore not have to ever use low-damage specials.

For example torso has a 1.9 timer.. if you modified speed is 1.2 you cannot fire your next shot for 2.28 seconds

That's most definitely what I've been observing in my trials above. That may indeed be how it works if you are only firing one special repeatedly, or only focusing on a single special, but when I start alternating high-end specials, my refire speed is much faster, presumably due to overlapping timers, and the refire speed for any one special becomes meaningless. For calculating damage output over time, it's the averages over all shots firedthat's important. When I alternate Adv Critical and Imp Head Shots with a modified weapon speed of 0.94, I am firing a shot (on average) once every 1.69 seconds (sometimes considerably faster).

Your list of the speeds and SACs of the various specials was very informative, Anarchicgorilla. If you or anybody else has a link to a site where they are posted for other specials, I'd be grateful to see it.

Thassk wrote:
really depends on the weapon ...with some id use a sac PUP .. with others a speed PUP .. and yet others a damage pup

I am more than willing to concede that this may be the case. Let me just summarize what I am trying to conclude with my whole discussion... What I am absolutelyNOT trying to claim is that my results will apply to everyone. i.e., to everyone's player mods, to everyone's weapon stats, to everyone's choice of specials, and to PvE vs PvP. What I AMclaimingis that the argument that I repeatedly see posted that damage PUP's are innately better than speed or SAC PUPs isdecidely false.I also claim that the argument that has been widely circulating lately that alternating high-SAC specials is not the most efficient way to take down targets is not necessarily true. Finally, I want to make the point that theoretical arguments and formulas are all well and good, but they are no subsitute for actual field trials. Theories and formulas in this game cannot account for things like unknown bugs and unknown variables, and what really matters is how things actually work in the field, not just on paper. If anybody has their own comparative field trials data to post here, I would be very interested in seeing them--even if they contradict my own findings!

Thanks again for everyone's input. I am more than willing to discuss/argue/compare these ideas further.

Thanks very much for providing your data for PvP play, Anarchicgorilla. I can see that you have done your homework and given this a lot of thought. Your numbers will undoubtedly be of use to the PvP'ers out there (of whom I am not one). I had strictly PvE in mind when I was running these experiments, so that is all I was interested in testing.

On the topicof formulas/equations... I have in the past relied quite heavily on formulas that other people have posted on various forums to determine damage outputs, speeds, etc., but these days the main thing that concerns me is real observational performance. The data I presented was not made up (I'm not suggesting that you are implying that it was--just making a general comment )--I really and actually am getting not just somewhat better damage over time with speed and SAC PUPs compared with damage PUPs, and comparing the specials that I am firing, but massively better damage (enough of a difference that I am not in the slightest bit concerned that my sample sizes might be too small). We're talking up to 28% more damage using speed PUPs than damage PUPs in my trials, for example. I can't explain why my results might differ from what somebody's formulas may predict (I'm not much of a theoretical scientist), but as far as I am concerned, my results unequivocally show what I said they did, at least for my toon's stats and my weapon stats against the mob types that I was fighting.

I'll leave it to others to theorize as to the causes.

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Uthyr wrote:

Thanks very much for providing your data for PvP play, Anarchicgorilla. I can see that you have done your homework and given this a lot of thought. Your numbers will undoubtedly be of use to the PvP'ers out there (of whom I am not one). I had strictly PvE in mind when I was running these experiments, so that is all I was interested in testing.

On the topicof formulas/equations... I have in the past relied quite heavily on formulas that other people have posted on various forums to determine damage outputs, speeds, etc., but these days the main thing that concerns me is real observational performance. The data I presented was not made up (I'm not suggesting that you are implying that it was--just making a general comment )--I really and actually am getting not just somewhat better damage over time with speed and SAC PUPs compared with damage PUPs, and comparing the specials that I am firing, but massively better damage (enough of a difference that I am not in the slightest bit concerned that my sample sizes might be too small). We're talking up to 28% more damage using speed PUPs than damage PUPs in my trials, for example. I can't explain why my results might differ from what somebody's formulas may predict (I'm not much of a theoretical scientist), but as far as I am concerned, my results unequivocally show what I said they did, at least for my toon's stats and my weapon stats against the mob types that I was fighting.

I'll leave it to others to theorize as to the causes.

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I'll leave it to others to theorize as to the causes.

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Message Edited by Anarchicgorilla on 09-01-2005 04:04 PM

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Anarchicgorilla wrote:

The main reason why is how you are comparing..

When you did you spd vs dmg pup this is how you compared

speed doing placed / ranged vs damage doing placed/ ranged

This does not factor in being able to use specials from the saved sac when using a dmg pup.

a fair comparsion would be this:

speed: doing placed / ranged vs damage: doing critical / ranged

You may find with your weapon and pve that speed still works better.... however you should test the above and get the results. Using a placed / ranged combo with dmg pups is not fully taking advantage of what they are capable of.

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Thanks for that idea, AG. I may indeed test that one of these days, but if I do one more test right now I thinkI am going to go insane. I was so happy when I finished these trials and thought to myself that now I can just get back to playing the game. I don't in general like changing more than one variable at a time in an experiment, because it makes it too difficult to determine exactly what is causing any change in results. Based on the results I was seeing in the field though, my gut tells me (and I've developed a pretty good sense for how this all works with my weapon and toon) that alternating Critical/Ranged Shots with a damage PUPis not going to appreciablychange the results that I obtained for PvE. Who knows though. I'll be sure to post the results thoughif I end up testing it.

If for no other reason, I dislike the idea of using damage PUPs because it makesmy firing rate become maddeningly slow.It makes me feel like I am trying to shoot underwater, and I felt like I had time to get a a beer in between shots when I wasdoing the testing. I prefer a fast-paced battle, and the ability to react quickly to any presented oportunities (like a KD). I also always hated the whole concept that it's possible to do more damage with marksman specials than with my master elite specials, so I was happy to see the results that I did.

It occurred to me today that squeezing out a few extra points of damage per shot is of little consequence for my playing style with the weapons and tactics I use. I rarely have trouble killing my target, and I almost never get killed. So to tell you the truth,I don't even know why I am doing these experiments, except that I like a good analytical discussion.

Every trail I have done has been based off actual ingame experience...

The math however still applies.... whether you believe it or not the game is ran off of a cpu program...There is no mystery man toying with us behind the scenes.

I got my numbers from game play, then did the math with them.

The only factor that i did not mention is lag...

However I find that the cpu tryies to "make up for this" this is seen by players sometimes firing 2 shots in the same second..

This is becuase the cpu is getting a macro doing the damage... but having to adjust for you lag... so your screen will show two shots in the same second... even though in the game cpu the shots were spaced... it was just that you cpu lagged threw a responce so it put it on the next one.

Message Edited by Anarchicgorilla on 09-01-2005 03:11 PM