Brawler Archive
Thread: D'Tox' Guide to COMPARING WEAPONS
You forgot the fourth VERY important number - armor rating.
All weapons have an armor rating of 0 to 3. You can not see the armor rating by examining the weapon in-game, unfortunately, but you can find a list of them in the official hint book.
A weapon's armor rating significantly increases or decreases the damage done. For every point your weapon's rating beats the opponent's armor, you multiply your damage by 1.25. For every point your opponent's armor beats your weapon's rating, you divide your damage by 2. Therefore each point of armor rating for a weapon shifts your final damage by 25-100%!
Generally the higher tier skill you need to use the weapon, the better the armor rating. An E11 rifle has a higher rating than a DT20a, for instance. Also, all but one or two pistols are armor rating 0. Carbines are slightly more powerful, and rifles have the best armor ratings of the three. Most vibro weapons are armor rating 1, including vibroknuckles, but some big vibro weapons are armor rating 2.
Therefore if you don't know the armor rating of your weapon it makes it very hard to compare its final damage. I'd recommend browsing the hint book, find the weapon table and have a look at the armor ratings for weapons you're interested in.
Because bumping is specifically against the guidelines first, and secondly it's inaccurate.
1) weapon speed
weapon speed is not absolute. I don't know what it is, but the number isn't the delay. I think the number is the additional delay added to whatever base delay exists per weapontype
2) DPS
the old eq dps doesn't work here, period nohow. Your basis for comparison neglects the most important factor - special attacks. a 20-50 weapon with 9/15/9 HAM is 3-4 times better than a weapon that does 3x the damage but has prohibitive HAM costs. Don't understand this? look at some of the higher level specials...
This is why eventually ALL pistol users will use scoutblasters. The ham costs are unbeatable.
Did you completely skip the parts in my posts which read
"The first thing to realize when choosing a weapon is that all the numbers in a weapon's stat block mean absolutely nothing in and of themselves. Those numbers are all relative."
And
"So now that we have the ability to get DPS, and can calculate the percent difference between 2 weapons, we can focus on individual playing style, which is funny because there is no guide that I can write that can detail everything about all playing styles. What this guide provides is a method of comparing the damage between 2 weapons, so that you can choose the best damaging weapon that fits your playing style."
Yes, I acknowledged that the Damage and Attack Speed chracteristics were arbitrary and relative to skill, specials, etc.
Yes, I acknowledged that HAM costs, specials, and all sorts of other factors will play a factor when choosing a weapon.
What you failed to realize was that I'm trying to help people compare the damage between two weapons, so that they're not absolutely clueless as to which weapon is better than another. What I'm trying to do is provide players who think that 13-260 damage, at 8.0 speed is better than 20-90 damage at 3.0 speed. Moreso, I'm trying to stop players from paying 30K for said 13-260 damage, 8.0 speed weapon, when they can pick up the 20-90, 3.0 speed weapon for 3K at the Bazaar.
Heh, next time, apply some comprehension to what you're reading...else, I know a 3rd grader who could give you a few pointers. 
BTW, EQ DPS calculation was arbitrary at best. It was done by a handful of idjits who used a parser, and some "high level math" that they didn't even know. The best way of comparing weapons in EQ was to take a ratio of Damage/Delay. 40 damage/50 delay = 0.8, and 60 damage/70 delay = 0.86 Even those numbers were arbitrary, yet they had a method of being compared.
Regardles of specials, a 30 DPS weapon will outdamage a 20 DPS weapon. The player will ultimately choose a certain weapon over another due to other factors, but damage is damage, and I've provided a way of comparing it (not that I've done anything magical, mind you...I'm just trying to help others with their thinking). If you want to use a 20 DPS weapon with ultra-low HAM costs, over the 30 DPS weapon, that's your choice...maybe you have specials that would boost the damage output up even more, or require certain specials to get a job done (like Carbineers who use their specials to "park" mobs, or Riflemen who use their specials to get bleeding Mind wounds on a mob). In the end, that choice is not quantifiable, and a player will have to go with their own instincts.
One thing yo both point out is that the range of abilites and stats of the weapons are very wide. This allows for many player styles to be catereed too.
One tatic you might have missed is a person in a group with the fastest weapon he can get his hands on shooting off confusions/threatens/stuns. Damage dosen't matter (i think). Kinda cool i think,
> Regardles of specials, a 30 DPS weapon will outdamage a 20 DPS weapon.
This is flatly and grossly incorrect. The base damage is a far secondary consideration to the HAM costs, period. If you don't know that you don't know the game.
Ok, are you just trying to show me up, or something? Be the best Weaponsmith out there? If that's the case, I don't really care, I'm just trying to provide a little info to the people who have no clue on how to compare 2 weapons.
DPS is a normalized metric...it's a very basic number that takes into consideration the attack speed and average damage of a weapon. Yes, we know that all those numbers on a weapon's stat block are all relative, and rather irrelevant...but the fact of the matter is that those numbers are there to represent different qualities of a weapon.
I've never discounted HAM costs BECAUSE I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT HAM COSTS! I've purposefully left HAM costs OUT of the equations and give them no consideration because the need and desire for lower HAM costs are left up to individual playing style. A guy who never uses his specials doesn't care for HAM costs. A guy who spams them will definitely care about HAM costs.
Even if you're interested in HAM costs, you will still want to know how you can compare two weapons by the most basic factor availabe...Damage....and since Damage without Speed means nothing...Damage Per Second...which is what I'm trying to show people how to derive.
When you're looking at 2 weapons, with the same HAM costs, you're going to want to figure out which one of those isa better choice, and using DPS is how you derive that. Conversely, if you have two weapons with identical DPS, you'd look at HAM costs to see which was more convenient for you. In the end, it's a matter of play style, but I don't want to see people fooled into thinking that they'll do more damage with a 1-200, 6.0 second weapon, over a 50-100, 3.0 second weapon.
Are we in understanding? And yes, I'm a VERY SUCKY Weaponsmith, and NOX_SWG is the fosheezle!
You should use your specials -constantly-.
A scoutblaster with whatever .. 11/22/11 ham that you chain-shoot say bodyshot 3 will do something like 3+ times more damage than a weapon with twice the 'dps'.
I am not trying to show anyone up, but I want people to understand the game mechanics.
- nox
Just wondering, but in light of coming up with a method of comparing, why not take DPS and divide by HAM.
A weapon with a high DPS and a low HAM is what folks are talking about right?
Also wondering, shouldnt this topic be in the game guide board so the folks using the weapons understand it. Just think that the real desired audiance may miss the info here.
Thanks for the explanation D'Tox'.
I've never discounted HAM costs BECAUSE I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT HAM COSTS! I've purposefully left HAM costs OUT of the equations and give them no consideration because the need and desire for lower HAM costs are left up to individual playing style. A guy who never uses his specials doesn't care for HAM costs. A guy who spams them will definitely care about HAM costs.
The guy not using specials is doing probably 1/5th of the damage he could be doing- and hitting random pools on the target to boot. If someone is playing the game so carelessly why are they worrying about dps in the first place.
My objection to your post, is that you titled it "Guide to COMPARING WEAPONS", however as I've said - the main comparison is HAM costs, period.
Yes I know people are new, they don't understand the game yet, they came from other games, and they have lots of bad things to un-learn. Until they do unlearn things, they'll probably end up buying the high dps weapons over the low ham weapons because they don't know how to play the game. Oh well.