Pistoleer Archive
Thread: Special Attack Blasphemy??
Here's what I'm seeing. Seething Bol Crushers, Huurton types, Quenkers, whatever else from Dantooine die faster (not stopwatch measured, but the effect on my pet stim usage is obvious) when I spam body shot 3 than when I spam fan shot. What I think is going on here is a mistake in our thinking about DPS. Jaegen88 has shown that fan shot does 62.3 DPS with a CDEF (we can assume that these DPS scale with better weapons), but fan shot is hitting a random pool. In my experience the ratio of "random" seems to be about 45% health pool, 45% action pool, 10% mind pool with individual fights able to get run of one or the other pool that can shift the ratio basically 30-40% in any direction. Overall though the ratio is probably close to real (within 5% or so).
With that ratio, Fan Shot is only doing 28 DPS to Health and Action pools and only 6.2 DPS to the mind pool. Since you have to get a pool down to zero to kill something (duh) all that matters is how the 28 DPS stack up against BS3. BS3 was parsed by Jaegen88 at 39.0 all on the health pool.
Therefore for killing something quick, your best bet is spamming BS3 not fanshot.
Now there's two problems with my math. Looking at it my way BS2 should outperform BS3, but in my acedotal evidence, it doesn't. Maybe this has to do with it's damage scaling on better weapons or it's accuracy, but either way it's seems slower (I have to heal my pets more) than BS3.
Second is that as you can see in my sig, I'm also an accomplished CH. Having a pair of pets banging on something may make it preferential to hit the health pool since most pets bias their hits to the health pool (fliers are an exception, they hit the head alot).
Also in a big group it may be better to spam a random pool than concentrate, since many of the group members will not be health pool targetting pistoleers. Still though for solo or pistoleer groups it seems to me that BS3 is our most efficient killer.
I don't think that Jaegen ever said that Fan Shot was better then BS3. Or even tried to argue that you could kill something faster with Fan Shot over BS3. What he has said and tested and proved is that BS2, in the long fights (DPS), outdamages BS3 and it cost's less HAM also. BS3 hits for a bit harder, not by much, but unless your speed is capped with the BH line, you'll be able to do more damage with BS2. If your speed was capped then I can see you saying that BS3 will cause more damage since you'll be shooting in 1 second no matter which special you use.
Personally, Every profession that uses a pistol and aren't elite pistoleer's, like BH, Smuggler, Commando, Either have a better weapon then us, or have better special's then us that work and also do stat effects unlike us. And in the BH case, not only do they get a better gun then us, but they have a targeted pool special better then ours and does more damage then our BS3 from what I have been told. Also, from what I have read here, Smuggler and BH specials do more damage then our highest damage special, stopping shot, and they do that with a pistol. Which goes to show that we're not an Elite profession, the Pistoleer tree is a dabbler's Tree for BH, Smuggler's, and Commando's to hone their pistol skills.
You're pretty much right on with your assessment.
Body Shot 2 should out-kill Fan Shot in every case but a very efficient PC healer. Based on our assumption that 50% of the shots (testing suggests its closer to 55%) of the shots hit health, that is the way any high HAM creature will go down. And because Fan Shot does not exceed twice the raw DPS of BS2 or BS3, Fan Shot will always be a less effective killer. You may also find it funny that BS1 is actually higher in DPS than either BS2 or BS3, but its so fast that it caps much earlier. But if you want to see rapid fire destruction through Novice Pistoleer on up the Stances tree, try spamming BS1 for as much as your Action can stand.
I wouldn't expect that you would be at the point where BS3 would be more effective for you, however. Even my 1.2 Scout with Stances IV doesn't cross the threshold to make BS3 worth it for me.
BS2 outputs slightly more damage than BS3 for most pistoleers, until you hit mastery and get a fast pistol.
We've posted the speed and damage/delay modifers, it's all straightfoward to calculate. The trick is, if you go straight up to body shot 3, (like I did, and like many probably do), you find it's no better than BS2, actaully slightly worse. If you are dabbling and never intend to get very high speed, it will remain a poor choice (unless you get a pistol 1.0 speed or something outrageous). For example, even at mastery, with a 2.1 speed weapon, BS2 still outperforms BS3. Until you hit 2.0 speed, when BS3 starts to pull ahead, and continues to increase in DPS until it too hits cap. So yes, BS2 is still better for the larger part of a pistoleers career in leveling, and it just does not make sense, nor does it need to be that way. They can easily tweak the specials to do more damage at all speeds. No-brainer. Otherwise, why do they give out BS3 when it's garbage until mastery? Never made sense.
Fan shot is oftena goodchoice for PVP, and IMO pistoleers have to have both a good targeted pool shot and a good random HAM shot, and fan shot seems to be the best overall random HAM attack.
At 4.0 damage it's really doing on average, only 2.0 to health, which is below the 2.5 from body shot 3. So no, fan shot does not take a target down quicker in PvE. In PvP, it's a gamble, but I find I use both. If a target is low in action or mind, using random HAM provides the alternative to the health targeted shot. I've certainly never said that fan shot takes a target down faster than body shot, at least not in PvE.
Stopping shot doing 5.0 damage modifer, if fired every second, is better than BS3 in my opinion, since it hammers out 2.5 health on average in addition to the action/mind damage. Last Ditch of course is superior even to that. Torso Shot and Eyeshot both output 3x to a targeted pool, making them faster at dropping a single pool than fan, BS3, AND stopping shot, and equivalent (or slightly lower if last ditch is 6.4 and not 6.0) to last ditch.
Not sure what's surprising about all that, the numbers/speed are there to do any calculation you want. Hope that clears it up for you. If BS3 is outdamaging BS2, check your pistol speed modifer and the delay on the actual pistol, and run the #s, or let us, and we'll solve your question for you.
Fair enough explanation and makes sense. I guess my surprise was finding out this was the case after hearing for most of my career than BS3 stunk and that the tactics line was inferior to grips and stances. I've only dabbled with BS2, I'll give it a real run tonight and see what happens (47k combat xp till master!). Sounds like it should be slightly better than what I'm doing with BS3 (FWG5 is about 40-300, 2.1 and I usually use 15ish min 30ish max damage powerups).
Thanks for the detailed info!
Novice CH (3,4,3,4), Novice Pistoleer (4,4,4,3)
No man, you're not NOVICE in thos, you're much more skilled than many guys that call themselves CH and Pistoleers. For what I see, you're very close to be Master in both and you already deserve many titles, like Creature Tamer, Pack Master and 3 of 4 gunfighters title like the so beloved "Dead-Eye".
No much to do with the thread but you're not novice anymore. Your points are more than welcome since you have a faire experience in both.