Rifleman Archive
Thread: PvE Riflemen survey now discussing PUP's and slicing
Uthyr wrote:
as far as your playstyle goes... it's flawed, there's no reason not to use the specials you have
I do use quite a few of the other specials, for the record, just not as my main damage dealers. The more of these responses I read, the more it's beginning to seem to me like I'm the only one who has seen the test results posted in this forum recently showing that alternating Ranged and Placed shots deals more damage over time than alternating higher-level specials. Is it just me, or does anybody else know what I am talking about? I mean that as a serious question, not sarcasm.
I suppose I should really go out there and test it for myself rather than relying on what I have read.
I appreciate the continuing discussion, everybody... it is really helping me organize my thoughts and think about what needs further testing.
ok, in fairness i just browsed the thread, so i may not have picked up on what you meant by DPS, or fully understood the testing you did.. as far as placed shot and ranged shot doing more damage, this is only true under certain circumstances..i'd actually be very interested in a link to the thread where this test was done, as i've heard a lot about it but not seen it myself. First, with a speed buff, it's no contest, alternating headshot and critical shot does far more damage over time, secondly, without a speed buff i find my DPS to be chaining the following Headshot>Rangedshot>Ciriticalshot>Rangedshot>repeat.
the rangedshot cooldown is what'sbumping up the DPS, the placed shots cooldown isn't all that spectacular..
*edit* after taking a better look at the entire thread i want to point out two things. First, the ideal powerup for PvE w/o speed buff is a speed pup. the ideal powerup with a speed buff is a damage powerup. This is why you're being told SAC is so important, because on the best rifles you *don't* SAC pup them, and are therefore able to increase your DPS drastically with the other pups.
Second. your tests were largely inaccurate because you tested them against different mobs.. unless i read it wrong you used the three rifles on different marks, who were likely to have different defensive stats even if they were the same level.. and the difference between a level 80 MOB and a level 82 MOB's defense can be extreme, to test effectively i suggest dueling a master TK shooting him once with your attack series with each rifle without CoB activated and once with each with CoB activated, this will give you a good idea of the rifles effectiveness against high level MoB's, TK with CoB activated being about as tough as a Krayt, if not tougher.
Message Edited by AxilX on 08-18-2005 10:16 PM
Okay, I just completed some extensive field testing with these three rifles. Before I present my findings, let me just add my own opinion as to which rifle I thought was best based on the stats alone: Rifle #2. My reasoning was that by taking the weapon's maximum damage stat and dividing it by my modified speed, that should give a rough index to the actual DPS that I could expect for that rifle. I say "rough" because I am not clear how my modified speed calculation correlates with the actual speed that the weapon fires (due to the diminishing returns formulas and the specials delays). For the three rifles, respectively, my DPS calculation (note that I am not referring to the DPS stat that shows up on the weapon properties window)worked out to 801 vs. 859 vs. 748, with that second rifle being the clear theoretical winner. I also thought that the +64 accuracy bonus would give me even more damage on top of this calculation.
Now on to the field testing... I tested these rifles against mobs of the following types: CL 80-82 bounty hunter marks (NPC's), CL 81 banthas, and CL 82 rontos. For the bounty hunter marks (which had high fairly high HAM and lasted for many shots), I was careful to alternate all three rifles on the same mob, for every mob, so that I could control for any defensive differences between different mobs. For the creatures (which didn't live as long as the NPC's), I would insteaduse one rifle against one creature until it was dead, then switch rifles and kill the next creature from the same lair, and so on, being careful to only collect data on the same type of creature among trials(i.e., only banthas, not a mixture of banthas and bantha matriarchs). I only recorded data for mob types that could not lay states on me, because I didn't want blinding, knockdowns, stuns, etc to delay my weapon firing or affect my accuracy. The only special that I fired was Ranged Shot, and I spammed it continuously so it would be fired at the maximum possible rate. I set my combat spam to time stamp, so I could count the exact number of seconds fired over the span that the weapon was used. I added up the total damage output by the weapon as the shots left the rifle(not the actual damage that the mob took after armor absorptions), to eliminate the effects of armor from the calculations. I did count misses in the calculations, so the rifle's accuracy gets factored in. All rifles had -25 or -28 SAC / -13 accuracy powerups on them.
Here's what I found:
Rifles are color-coded as follows, for ease of comparison:
#1) Advanced Laser Rifle
#2) Trando Rifle with +64 accuracy bonus
#3) Trando Rifle with +17 accuracy bonus
Against bounty hunter marks (I think all of them were level 82, but definitely at least level 80--I neglected to record it), each of the threerifles was the winner in different trials (i.e, Rifle #1 ended up in first, second, and third place in different trials). If I add up the total damage across all trials and divide by the total time, Rifle #1 (the ALR) was the clear overall winner for this type of mob (315 vs.180 vs.176 DPS for the three rifles, respectively). Against creatures, Rifle #2 was the overall winner, but not by as large a margin (331 vs. 358 vs. 319 DPS). Combining the result from all the mobs (NPC's plus creatures), Rifle #1 came out the clear overall winner (325 vs. 243 vs. 230 DPS). So, the ALR (Rifle #1) did 122 DPS more damage than the rifle that most people seem to have thought was the best one (Rifle #3)! Rifle #3 wasunequivocally the worst rifle of the group.
I'd be curious to hear people's explanations for these results, and to hear whether people think the results will apply to even higher-level PvE mobs, or even to PvP targets. My own explanation is that rifles #1 and 2 were perhaps better than #3 because the first two have critical chance slices, and I did get a very few critical hits during these trials that could have affected the overall totals significantly. I have no explanation for why Rifle #2 didn't come out ahead of #1 though overall--I can see absolutely nothing about its stats that would account for that.
One final note:A predominant trend that I have noticed on this forum, when people are trying to compare rifles, is to state that the weapon with the lowest SAC cost is the best, or the most important factor. I largely disagree with this idea, and think that people often tend to put too much emphasis at SAC at the expense of other factors that will increase the DPS of the weapon. Granted, for some PvPduels that tend to last a very long time, a low-SAC weapon may keep you in the fight longer if you are using a lot of high-SAC specials (and the longer you are in the fight, the more overall damage you deal), but if you are alternating Ranged and Placed Shots (which have been shown on this forum by more than one person's test results to give higher DPS than alternating higher-level specials), you are not likely to run out of action in a typical battle with any weapon with a reasonable SAC (say, under 100 just to throw a number out there), especially if you use SAC powerups or buffs. My action bar was at or just below 100% during all of my trials,and I think I could have done just as much overall damage in these trials with a 110 SAC rifle. Granted, with my SAC powerups on the rifles, none of my rifles had a SAC greater than 71, though I suspect I could have taken down all these particular mobs with no PuP at all on my weapons. There are definitely situations where a low-SAC rifle is going to be a huge asset, but it really depends on your playing style and what you are fighting.
Message Edited by Uthyr on 08-18-2005 03:47 PM
Uthyr wrote:
Okay, I just completed some extensive field testing with these three rifles. Before I present my findings, let me just add my own opinion as to which rifle I thought was best based on the stats alone: Rifle #2. My reasoning was that by taking the weapon's maximum damage stat and dividing it by my modified speed, that should give a rough index to the actual DPS that I could expect for that rifle. I say "rough" because I am not clear how my modified speed calculation correlates with the actual speed that the weapon fires (due to the diminishing returns formulas and the specials delays). For the three rifles, respectively, my DPS calculation (note that I am not referring to the DPS stat that shows up on the weapon properties window)worked out to 801 vs. 859 vs. 748, with that second rifle being the clear theoretical winner. I also thought that the +64 accuracy bonus would give me even more damage on top of this calculation.
Now on to the field testing... I tested these rifles against mobs of the following types: CL 80-82 bounty hunter marks (NPC's), CL 81 banthas, and CL 82 rontos. For the bounty hunter marks (which had high fairly high HAM and lasted for many shots), I was careful to alternate all three rifles on the same mob, for every mob, so that I could control for any defensive differences between different mobs. For the creatures (which didn't live as long as the NPC's), I would insteaduse one rifle against one creature until it was dead, then switch rifles and kill the next creature from the same lair, and so on, being careful to only collect data on the same type of creature among trials(i.e., only banthas, not a mixture of banthas and bantha matriarchs). I only recorded data for mob types that could not lay states on me, because I didn't want blinding, knockdowns, stuns, etc to delay my weapon firing or affect my accuracy. The only special that I fired was Ranged Shot, and I spammed it continuously so it would be fired at the maximum possible rate. I set my combat spam to time stamp, so I could count the exact number of seconds fired over the span that the weapon was used. I added up the total damage output by the weapon as the shots left the rifle(not the actual damage that the mob took after armor absorptions), to eliminate the effects of armor from the calculations. I did count misses in the calculations, so the rifle's accuracy gets factored in. All rifles had -25 or -28 SAC / -13 accuracy powerups on them.
Here's what I found:
Rifles are color-coded as follows, for ease of comparison:
#1) Advanced Laser Rifle
#2) Trando Rifle with +64 accuracy bonus
#3) Trando Rifle with +17 accuracy bonus
Against bounty hunter marks (I think all of them were level 82, but definitely at least level 80--I neglected to record it), each of the threerifles was the winner in different trials (i.e, Rifle #1 ended up in first, second, and third place in different trials). If I add up the total damage across all trials and divide by the total time, Rifle #1 (the ALR) was the clear overall winner for this type of mob (315 vs.180 vs.176 DPS for the three rifles, respectively). Against creatures, Rifle #2 was the overall winner, but not by as large a margin (331 vs. 358 vs. 319 DPS). Combining the result from all the mobs (NPC's plus creatures), Rifle #1 came out the clear overall winner (325 vs. 243 vs. 230 DPS). So, the ALR (Rifle #1) did 122 DPS more damage than the rifle that most people seem to have thought was the best one (Rifle #3)! Rifle #3 wasunequivocally the worst rifle of the group.
I'd be curious to hear people's explanations for these results, and to hear whether people think the results will apply to even higher-level PvE mobs, or even to PvP targets. My own explanation is that rifles #1 and 2 were perhaps better than #3 because the first two have critical chance slices, and I did get a very few critical hits during these trials that could have affected the overall totals significantly. I have no explanation for why Rifle #2 didn't come out ahead of #1 though overall--I can see absolutely nothing about its stats that would account for that.
One final note:A predominant trend that I have noticed on this forum, when people are trying to compare rifles, is to state that the weapon with the lowest SAC cost is the best, or the most important factor. I largely disagree with this idea, and think that people often tend to put too much emphasis at SAC at the expense of other factors that will increase the DPS of the weapon. Granted, for some PvPduels that tend to last a very long time, a low-SAC weapon may keep you in the fight longer if you are using a lot of high-SAC specials (and the longer you are in the fight, the more overall damage you deal), but if you are alternating Ranged and Placed Shots (which have been shown on this forum by more than one person's test results to give higher DPS than alternating higher-level specials), you are not likely to run out of action in a typical battle with any weapon with a reasonable SAC (say, under 100 just to throw a number out there), especially if you use SAC powerups or buffs. My action bar was at or just below 100% during all of my trials,and I think I could have done just as much overall damage in these trials with a 110 SAC rifle. Granted, with my SAC powerups on the rifles, none of my rifles had a SAC greater than 71, though I suspect I could have taken down all these particular mobs with no PuP at all on my weapons. There are definitely situations where a low-SAC rifle is going to be a huge asset, but it really depends on your playing style and what you are fighting.
Message Edited by Uthyr on 08-18-2005 03:47 PM
Wow- you definitly did some research here. I say throw the ADK on #2 or #3. Then, since my advice is so money, why not giveme a great deal on the left over rifles?
Message Edited by dalessit on 08-19-2005 08:24 AM
Thanks for the continued discussion, axilX--you continue to give me food for further thought. Let me address a few of your comments (yours in yellow):
as far as placed shot and ranged shot doing more damage, this is only true under certain circumstances
I'd be very interested in seeing any data showing that alternating more advanced specials does more damage than alternating ranged and placed shots, and what circumstances cause this to happen. Speed slices/buffs would intuitively speed up ranged and placed shots to the same degree that they would for the advanced specials, so I can't see how overall speed increases would reverse the trend of the lower-end specials doing more damage over time. I admit that the speed formulas are still a bit of a mystery to me though.
I'd actually be very interested in a link to the thread where this test was done, as i've heard a lot about it but not seen it myself.
Happy to oblige...Click
here for the main one that I had saved. There was another post in the past week or so that showed the same results, but I can't for the life of me find it now. If whoever posted it is reading this, please post a link to that thread. There may be more of them if you do a forum search (maybe in other forums).
the rangedshot cooldown is what'sbumping up the DPS, the placed shots cooldown isn't all that spectacular..
Yes, I've noticed that and agree with you. The fact that they are on different timers is what makes alternating them useful, but I wonder if substituting, say, critical shot (or head shot) for the placed shot would lead to as much damage over time as alternating ranged and placed shots.I can't remember if anybody's field testing addressed that. Placed Shot seems to use less SAC than higher-level specials though (I could be wrong), and it is a bit faster as far as I can tell, so I find it useful.
the ideal powerup for PvE w/o speed buff is a speed pup
I never get speed buffs, so I will have to do some testing with speed PuPs and see how well I can make them work with these rifles. Thanks for that tip. It seems that the lowest-possible-SAC crowd seems to gravitate toward damage powerups, not speed, from what I have been reading on this forum.
your tests were largely inaccurate because you tested them against different mobs.. unless i read it wrong you used the three rifles on different marks, who were likely to have different defensive stats even if they were the same level.. and the difference between a level 80 MOB and a level 82 MOB's defense can be extreme
I was trying to be careful to control for that variable, in two ways: First, I was careful to use all three rifles on every one of the NPC mobs (the bounty hunter marks). I would attack a mob with one rifle until it reached about 2/3 health remaining, then switch to the next rifle, and finally to the third rifle when there was 1/3 health remaining. On the creatures, I was careful to attack only the exact same mob types from any given lair (i.e., only banthas, not matriarchs), and they all had the same combat level within a given lair, so I assumed that they all had the same defenses. So, I would kill one CL 81 bantha with one rifle, then swtich to the next rifle to kill the next CL 81 bantha from the same lair. Second, I tried to add up my results from enough different trials that any differences among mobs would be averaged out. Granted, a larger sample size would have provided more statistically valid results, but the trend was pretty apparent of the ALR rifle being the clear overall winner. The larger the difference in results, the lower the sample size needed to demonstrate significance.
I like your idea of testing my attacks against a TK. If I find any who are willing to experiment, I will do that.
dalessit wrote:
I agree, great post.
It is very interesting that the ALR came up with higher DPS than the other 2. Rifle 3 stats are better than rifle 1 in every way, so it should do more overall damage.
Is the type of damage the same on the weapons, both energy right?
If the damage type is the same on both then there is something very fishy going on with the rifles (dare I say a bug....)
..... Had to come back and edit my post as I re-looked at the original stats.
The ALR is faster than the others, maybe the speed makes up for it. If you are looking at DPS Speed becomes very important. Rifle 3 probably hits harder than Rifle 1 but the speed difference might make up the difference and then some.
Also, I forget do those numbers include the slice or is the slice added afterwards.
Thanks for the comments, Dalessit and Akimo. To address your comments, Dalessit...
This has been an extremly interesting read thank you.
I have just started the rifleman proffesion so i cannot comment on which of your rifles i think would be the best.
A previouse comment about speed being important is something i have personally seen,i am also traning in pistols. Using the same specials i compared a genosian sonic blaster and an e11 rifle on a capper spineflap cl28 (im only at cl30), even though the e11 does more damage per shot the speed of the blaster made a big diiference ,1/4 health left with e11 and 1/2 health left with the blaster.Though i do believe that rifles will eventualy be more effective due to the other specials and range differences.
I dont know if my observations in any way reflect your own findings (and until i master rifles iknow im not qualified to compare) but until my survivabilty improves with rifles the blaster will help to keep me from the cloner a bit longer.
Ill keep an eye on this and see what develops.
Special thanks go to Dy-nod (who crafted this rifle) and Sultree, for helping me organize my thoughts during our brief chats today.I retract whatI said earlier citing other people's field trials showing that alternating Ranged and Placed Shots deals more damage over time than alternating Advanced Critical and Improved Head Shots. I did my own field trials today to try to confirm that (see this
thread) and discovered that this is not always the case.
So now I am left wondering if a speed PUP is the best thing to use if I will be alternating higher-SAC specials, because I will be firing too fast for my action regen to keep up with my firing rate (even with a SAC 83 rifle). It seems to me that the only way I can sustain firing of alternating high-SAC specials is if I am using a SAC PUP. So the question becomes, for protracted battles against high-level mobs, is it more effective to alternate low-SAC specials using a speed PUP, or to alternate high-SAC specials using a SAC PUP? During some field tests today with my SAC 83 rifle, I found that I could not sustain my attacks for very long with a speed PUP attached, before running out of action.