Analysis on engineer weapons and skills in practice

**Hullukko** · 09-23-2011, 06:45 AM

Here's what I did. I took my toon SoiledPants to Sloucho Wasted. Hammered through the first few mobs to the room on the right with two tv-headed enemies that can heal themselves and started writing down numbers.

SoiledPants is a level 30 pure int engineer with full custom atomite armor and eagle-eye implant.

Hypothesis: Rifles rule and nerf guns are for the death count minimizers

I recorded 100 hits made by me to an enemy, more than 50 emapthy ticks and 120 hits made by an enemy to me with the purple weapons available for an engineer.

Atomic Dispenser:
4051 non-crit damage
54.013 average non-crit hit
67.52 average non-crit dps
42 minimum
68 maximum
75 con-crit hits
1009 crit damage
84.08 average crit hit
69 minimum
103 maximum
13 crits
12 dodged by enemy
84.44 average empathy tick (out of 50+)
4076 non-crit damage taken from 120 enemy hit attempts (ignoring misses)
106 cirt damage taken from 120 enemy hit attempts (ignoring misses)
38.45 average damage taken from enemy non-crit hits
41.73 average damage taken from enemy crit hits
4535 taken in total with 3 dodges

Bionic Crushers:
3500 non-crit damage
47.3 average non-crit hit
78.82 average non-crit dps
37 minimum
59 maximum
74 con-crit hits
713 crit damage
59.41 average crit hit
49 minimum
75 maximum
13 crits
13 dodged by enemy
80.17 average empathy tick (out of 50+)
-- didn't bother to do the enemy damage

Black Widow + 28 limited shield:
3998 non-crit damage
52.61 average non-crit hit
75.15 average non-crit dps
39 minimum
63 maximum
76 con-crit hits
850 crit damage
77.27 average crit hit
60 minimum
94 maximum
12 crits
12 dodged by enemy
83.26 average empathy tick (out of 50+)
3772 non-crit damage taken from 120 enemy hit attempts (ignoring misses)
380 cirt damage taken from 120 enemy hit attempts (ignoring misses)
34.61 average damage taken from enemy non-crit hits
38 average damage taken from enemy crit hits
4152 taken in total with 1 dodge

Incinerator + 28 limited shield:
3602 non-crit damage
46.18 average non-crit hit
76.97 average non-crit dps
37 minimum
55 maximum
78 con-crit hits
411 crit damage
58.71 average crit hit
49 minimum
67 maximum
8 crits
14 dodged by enemy
80.5 average empathy tick (out of 50+)
-- didn't bother to do the enemy hit

for comparison I took damage from the enemy with my max-defense gear, i.e.
plat armor plus dodge implant with the widow and 28 limited shield:

1936 non-crit damage taken from 120 enemy hit attempts (ignoring misses)
457 cirt damage taken from 120 enemy hit attempts (ignoring misses)
33.96 average damage taken from enemy non-crit hits
38.1 average damage taken from enemy crit hits
2393 taken in total with 51 dodges

**Hullukko** · 09-23-2011, 06:45 AM

What to make of it?

My hypothesis was torn to pieces. Similar study with 25 cap gear proved that the plat repulsor was far superior to all alternatives at the time and I've run this far (50% to 31) with nothing but rifles, but first glance at these results and I've been running the Black Widow ever since.

Also, the shield (+134 armor) did cut down on the damage intake formidably, enough in my opinion to warrant the small loss in skill damage, especially so because the per-hit damage difference between the Widow and Dispenser was so small that the speed of the Widow helps alleviate that decrease in skill damage (against lesser armored enemies anyway).

Now, I could augment the data by collecting the other skill damages, too, so that a fuller picture could be obtained, but to me the question "what to wear?" has already been answered. And a working father of two with the other 50% remaining for 31 I doubt I'll find the time in the near future.

**Hullukko** · 09-23-2011, 06:46 AM

I also determined that wither when cast after decay did more damage to the enemy than it did when cast without decay in between, small delta but significant. I earlier noticed the same thing in simpler study with surplus gloves (link) and it was also independently confirmed by kamikazees (link), too, in the engineer section. That is a very strong indication that the decay causes enemy armor debuff (-60) rather than buff(+60) like the skill description claims. Hence the decay skill description, which was initially correct, was actually messed up when it was updated as opposed to having gotten fixed like the update description claimed.

**bronislav84** · 09-23-2011, 08:33 AM

I find it interesting that a Dex gun outperformed a Int gun on heals. Must be the slightly higher damage on it that does it. Does this mean that Incinerator is worthless after all?

**sickside** · 09-23-2011, 09:16 AM

Originally Posted by bronislav84

I find it interesting that a Dex gun outperformed a Int gun on heals. Must be the slightly higher damage on it that does it. Does this mean that Incinerator is worthless after all?

i would assume that amount of dex the gun provides puts people with hullukkos exact setup into the next damage threshold vs what int would provide

**Kraze** · 09-23-2011, 09:38 AM

First very well done and thank you for your work. However there is a variable that wasn't looked at. Weapon speed! When you look at the gloves versus the rifle for example the .2 difference in speed really adds up over the course of 100 attacks and would adjust tue 3600 damage that the crushers did to aprox 4200 in the time it took the rifle to do just over 4k. Just my two plat

**bronislav84** · 09-23-2011, 09:39 AM

Buy it only adds 5 dex. Seems odd that a Engineer would be more affected by having 10 Dex or so, versus like close to 200 Int. And I bought Incinerator for the Int. I'm gonna have a hard time selling it now....

**sickside** · 09-23-2011, 09:52 AM

5 dex and 1 hit and .1 faster speed though

**Kraze** · 09-23-2011, 10:03 AM

Originally Posted by sickside

5 dex and 1 hit and .1 faster speed though

and that speed difference is huge. It means for every 10 shots with the slower weapon you get 11 or 100=110 in the same time frame. Proves the old saying speed kills.

**Hullukko** · 09-23-2011, 04:30 PM

Originally Posted by Kraze

First very well done and thank you for your work. However there is a variable that wasn't looked at. Weapon speed! When you look at the gloves versus the rifle for example the .2 difference in speed really adds up over the course of 100 attacks and would adjust tue 3600 damage that the crushers did to aprox 4200 in the time it took the rifle to do just over 4k. Just my two plat

It is there. I should've explained the data.

The number above the bolded "average non-crit dps" is the exact recorded "average non-crit hit". The bolded "average non-crit dps" was that very recorded data divided by the weapon speed, i.e. damage per second, and it was done for the very purpose of making them comparable and hence the highlight.

**Hullukko** · 09-23-2011, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by sickside

i would assume that amount of dex the gun provides puts people with hullukkos exact setup into the next damage threshold vs what int would provide

There are no thresholds outside of numbers shown to us, i.e. they are truncated when displayed to us, but internally they're all floating point numbers. E.g. if you put one int on an engineer you'll get roughly 1/15 damage out of it to both weapon and skills. And when you hit fifteen times, you'll do that one point in total, not zero. You don't need to cross that threshold of 15 to make one point on every hit. You'll do pretty well with 14, too.

Besides dex gives about 1/100 damage to an engineer as opposed to the roughly 1/15 for int.

The widow performed well, because it has a decent base damage, better than the incinerator for example (by several damage points, as opposed to comparably minor effects caused by int or dex stat changes), and reasonable speed.

Another thing is that the tv-guy isn't the most armored enemy out there. Against tougher enemies it might fall behind the Disruptor. ((If you look back, the sunwalker gloves did hefty amount of damage against them dogs in numa, but precious nothing against them big black vulars.)) However, the biggest yield in this case to me was that the Widow gave skill damage close enough to Disruptor and the off-hand shield did take away damage rather well. The weapon damage alone wasn't the most important point by far, to me anyway.

**Ephemeris** · 09-23-2011, 06:45 PM

Very nice job, Hullukko. I'm loving the studies that you (et al) have been putting together lately -- it certainly gets folks (myself included) thinking. Keep up the good work!

**Raulur** · 09-24-2011, 02:23 AM

Thanks for taking the time to collect the data and post the results. By any chance did you collect damage output data with the plat set? If so, how much damage and healing was lost?

My thinking behind the dex weapons giving better heals is simply the increased base damage they provide. I'm sure a math lover could deconstruct the data and find out the specific skill modifiers for each weapon type. Then we would know for sure.

**Hullukko** · 09-24-2011, 08:37 AM

Originally Posted by Raulur

Thanks for taking the time to collect the data and post the results. By any chance did you collect damage output data with the plat set? If so, how much damage and healing was lost?

I didn't, as I was only looking into weapon selection there, but now that that's been taken care of I should probably do that, too. But basically there shouldn't be anything special there. The only effect there come from stat changes and they're linear. So you can calculate the int difference and then multiply that with roughly 1/15.6 (iirc) and you'll get the weapon and skill damage (*) change, too.

(*) for empathy at least, as far as I'm concerned the stat based base damage to skill damage coefficient has been confirmed for empathy only. The others are high on my work list, so stay tuned.

My thinking behind the dex weapons giving better heals is simply the increased base damage they provide. I'm sure a math lover could deconstruct the data and find out the specific skill modifiers for each weapon type. Then we would know for sure.

It's not about love for maths, trust me, I am a physicist. It's just that the data collection is rather strenuous task. And I gave a somewhat solid go at balefort sewers time in PL, but the results were inconclusive because the weapon-type/weapon-speed had a really anomalous impact on the models with the data that I had. A lot more data would've been necessary.

Determining the invidiual skill modifiers, however, will be trivial. I've done that for PL a long time ago. It's the weapons damage -> extra skill damage equation that has been difficult in both games.