Latron Prime Vs Braton... Why?

[Silver_Fox75]

Increase LP damage to 60?

[Preanette]

hmm..perhaps give latron prime a charged attack. Weaker than bows but hitscan. hmm...

[taiiat]

I never really understood their logic with Accuracy, either. It mostly just feels like yet-another-dps-related-stat that gets thrown around willy-nilly regardless of weapon roles and categories (Though it isn't).

that's exactly what it is. there's weapons with an accuracy stat of like 15 or 16, that are 100% accurate. if throwing knives are 100, why are some weapons with 15 the same accuracy as them? idgi.

 

 

 

oh by the by, did you include Crits on that Latron Prime calculation? it can average a crit 1/5 shots. that's very fair, and the Crits add a lot of damage output. more than an elemental card usually will, anyways.

 

 

a major part of this is also that spammy weapons have 'Deeps'. they're not particularly good at anything really, other than just throwing a whole bunch of lead and hoping it works. 

 

but i'll tell you what, i've got countless stories of Marines that sling their M4 over their back and pick up the first AK or other superior firearm they find. because sure, shooting a whole lot of lead and praying can work.... but it's not as reliable as two shots, and you know he's done.

 

i'm not against buffing the Latron series, but they do perform well as it is. might be less 'Deeps' but it gets things dead a lot faster than a Braton does.

 

i'm okay with a Tiering system that splits players into racial groups

don't do it bro :( don't go to the dark side. 

Edited September 8, 2013 by taiiat

[Eyepop]

That sounds like a mechanic that should be saved for a sniper, which the Latron isn't officially (because if it were, then there would be 0 semi-auto rifles in the game).

 

The LP would require a buff to at least 54 base damage in order to make it on-par DPS-wise with the Braton, or 60 to make it on-par with the Braton Prime.

[Eyepop]

oh by the by, did you include Crits on that Latron Prime calculation? it can average a crit 1/5 shots. that's very fair, and the Crits add a lot of damage output. more than an elemental card usually will, anyways.

 

i'm not against buffing the Latron series, but they do perform well as it is. might be less 'Deeps' but it gets things dead a lot faster than a Braton does.

First: the LP has a 10% crit chance.  With full Point Strike (at 9 points), you get 25% crit chance, with a 150% crit damage still.  Don't know where you get 1/5 from.

 

Also, the fact that the Latrons have less DPS means that they literally kill things slower than the Bratons.  Not faster.  Don't know where you got that idea from.  If something can soak up 225 damage, the Braton will kill it in 1 second.  The LP will take 1.2 seconds, which is not "a lot faster".

 

Edit: Updated the first post with adjusted DPS taking crit into account.  As you can see, the Braton still definitely comes out on top.

Edited September 8, 2013 by Eyepop

[ChaoticVice777]

First: the LP has a 10% crit chance.  With full Point Strike (at 9 points), you get 25% crit chance, with a 150% crit damage still.  Don't know where you get 1/5 from.

 

Also, the fact that the Latrons have less DPS means that they literally kill things slower than the Bratons.  Not faster.  Don't know where you got that idea from.  If something can soak up 225 damage, the Braton will kill it in 1 second.  The LP will take 1.2 seconds, which is not "a lot faster".

 

Edit: Updated the first post with adjusted DPS taking crit into account.  As you can see, the Braton still definitely comes out on top.

 

I have no idea why you are calculating the DPS of critical weapons that focus on DPH (an example of a critical weapon that focuses on DPS is the Grakata) because calculating DPS normalizes the critical damage.

 

Let's take the damage per shot of the Latron Prime (maxed Point Strike, Vital Sense, and Hammer Shot:

 

45 [(1.5) (1 + 1.2 + 0.6)] = 189 damage (25% chance at proc'ing a critical)

 

Now let's take the Braton (with the same mods, even though it's obviously inefficient):

 

20 [(1.5) (1 + 1.2 + 0.6)] = 84 damage (6.25% chance at proc'ing a critical)

 

These calculations prove the Latron Prime's damage only important when determining damage per hit, while the Braton's damage is best shown through DPS.

Edited September 8, 2013 by ChaoticVice777

[Eyepop]

Why would you build like that?  For 27 mod points you're only getting

 

Latron Prime

Average DPH: (1 + (.25 * 3.2)) * 45 = 81

Average DPS: 337.77

 

And that's Bullet damage.

 

Or I could spend 9 points on Serration at 90%:

 

Latron Prime

Average DPH: (1 + (.1 * .5)) * (45 *1.9) = 89.775

Average DPS: 374

 

Still Bullet damage, but far more effective, as you can see.

 

All that to say that the increased crit percentage of the LP doesn't at all make up for the lack of base damage that it brings to the table.  It doesn't even make sense to mod for it, it's that useless.

[ChaoticVice777]

Why would you build like that?  For 27 mod points you're only getting

 

Latron Prime

Average DPH: (1 + (.25 * 3.2)) * 45 = 81

Average DPS: 337.77

 

And that's Bullet damage.

 

Or I could spend 9 points on Serration at 90%:

 

Latron Prime

Average DPH: (1 + (.1 * .5)) * (45 *1.9) = 89.775

Average DPS: 374

 

Still Bullet damage, but far more effective, as you can see.

 

All that to say that the increased crit percentage of the LP doesn't at all make up for the lack of base damage that it brings to the table.  It doesn't even make sense to mod for it, it's that useless.

 

I didn't add Serration because it's a mod included on every single flipping rifle. I didn't expect you to add the super-charged factor because an Orokin Catalyst and multiple Forma are items needed to unlock a weapon's full potential.

Okay, take my previous build and add Serration:

 

45 (1.65) [(1.5) (1 + 1.2 + 0.6)] = 311.85 damage (25% chance at proc'ing a critical)

 

NOTE: A Bane of X actually does more damage than a Hammer Shot with weapons that have 150% base critical damage. However, Hammer Shot is not specific to any faction.

 

EDIT: What the heck is average damage per hit?

Edited September 8, 2013 by ChaoticVice777

[Inquisitiors]

I have both weapons in Prime form, on higher level missions especially T3 defence, Latron Prime > Braton Prime easily due to ammo economy. Braton prime's lower damage does little to heavy gunners and you will often need 1 entire clip to bring one down. You will find that by wave 6 all your ammo will be gone.

 

On the other hand my Latron prime can last me from start to finish and I tend to do more overall damage with Latron Prime then with Braton Prime when the mission ends.

 

In mission runs of course you pick Braton Prime for faster runs.

 

TLDR: every weapon have different use, a Latron Prime would be better in almost every situation compared to normal braton and in some cases better then Braton Prime.

 

 

[HAYABU5A]

PREACH IT BROTHER ! THIS MAN SPEAKETH THE TRUTH 

[Tsak]

I have both weapons in Prime form, on higher level missions especially T3 defence, Latron Prime > Braton Prime easily due to ammo economy. Braton prime's lower damage does little to heavy gunners and you will often need 1 entire clip to bring one down. You will find that by wave 6 all your ammo will be gone.

 

On the other hand my Latron prime can last me from start to finish and I tend to do more overall damage with Latron Prime then with Braton Prime when the mission ends.

 

In mission runs of course you pick Braton Prime for faster runs.

 

TLDR: every weapon have different use, a Latron Prime would be better in almost every situation compared to normal braton and in some cases better then Braton Prime.

or you could just use neither because they are both don't match the dps of an acrid

hue hue ha hue hue

[Saenol]

No buffs or nerfs needed on either of these weapons

[Kinethia]

First, I just looked up all of my primary weapon stats. Out of all the shots I fired with the Braton, I hit with only half of them. Out of all the shots I fired with my Latron, I hit with 2/3 of them. 50% - 66% is roughly a 30% increase. Consider including that in damage calculations. Marksman weapons matter. A larger percentage of bullets fired from the Latron are headshots, too. Take that into account.

 

Latron can also be used for sniping more effectively, as only the first shot in each volley matters when sniping. Braton loses its rate of fire edge at long range.

 

I also run out of ammo with the Braton on a regular basis, and with ammo boxes soon to be no longer purchaseable for credits, that matters.

 

Also, the Latron's crit rate is high enough that dropping some elemental mods for the crit mods does incease its total damage, which is an option no Braton build can benefit from. This gives the Latron a further DPS advantage on the Braton once maxed.

 

Braton's more flexible, but in real combat, just as much damage will be dealt with a properly modded, maxed Latron as by a properly modded, maxed Braton, unless most of your fighting occurs at shotgun range, in which case, just bring a shotgun.

 

EDIT: Where the Braton really shines is mid-range crowd control. *grins* Good memories. Both have pretty well-balanced pros and cons, in my experience.

Edited September 9, 2013 by Kinethia

[MECT_HET]

First, I just looked up all of my primary weapon stats. Out of all the shots I fired with the Braton, I hit with only half of them. Out of all the shots I fired with my Latron, I hit with 2/3 of them. 50% - 66% is roughly a 30% increase. Consider including that in damage calculations. Marksman weapons matter. A larger percentage of bullets fired from the Latron are headshots, too. Take that into account.

 

Latron can also be used for sniping more effectively, as only the first shot in each volley matters when sniping. Braton loses its rate of fire edge at long range.

 

I also run out of ammo with the Braton on a regular basis, and with ammo boxes soon to be no longer purchaseable for credits, that matters.

 

Also, the Latron's crit rate is high enough that dropping some elemental mods for the crit mods does incease its total damage, which is an option no Braton build can benefit from. This gives the Latron a further DPS advantage on the Braton once maxed.

 

Braton's more flexible, but in real combat, just as much damage will be dealt with a properly modded, maxed Latron as by a properly modded, maxed Braton, unless most of your fighting occurs at shotgun range, in which case, just bring a shotgun.

 

EDIT: Where the Braton really shines is mid-range crowd control. *grins* Good memories. Both have pretty well-balanced pros and cons, in my experience.

Agreed. 50% braton's accuracy versus 78% latron's accuracy.

 

Adding our dps... 

Braton... 227.8125 norm.damage (crit included)

Latron Prime...197.0325 norm.damage (crit included)

 

In the end, we've got 113.9 verus 153.7 of effective dps. 

 

Who cares about dps if you're not hitting the target. 

[Eyepop]

I have 53% accuracy with the Braton and 68% on the LP (the recoil tends to screw me up, and it's not modded high-enough to one-shot things yet), so adjusted DPS would be:

 

LP: 134

Braton: 120.7

 

Huh, lookit that.  Well that's good to know!  Makes me feel a little bit better about my LP, honestly.  Not that I'm any more impressed by it, but the balancing seems a bit less depressing.

[Eirshy]

Firstly the ACC stat in-game is based on a combination of spread AND recoil. This is why sniper weapons have abject S#&$ ACC stats- they have very high recoil even though their spread is well under 1% (I would say it's 0% but I have no proof other than that I can absolutely reliably hit my target's head with my snidal at over 125m, and the only deviation the Lanka produces is projectile drift from over-the-shoulder camera). In practice, the Latron Prime is effectively as accurate as the snipers while having a decently high kick. The Braton on the other hand struggles to land every round (including multishot ones) onto the head of a target under 15m away even when fired in 3-4 round bursts. The Mk1 on the other hand can reliably hit that head at 20-30m away. The Braton Prime's spread is more akin to the Mk1's spread.

 

 

Secondly, you're comparing the Latron Prime (which is hunting rifle designed to be essencially a low-powered sniper rifle with a high target switch rate) to the Braton (which is a "multipurpose" Assault Rifle designed to be a mix between a DPS and a Support weapon)... in DPS.

 

And you're also doing that poorly, as crit mods scale multiplicatively with crit stats (meaning a crit build LP will out-scale a crit build Braton by 4x), and the fact that *that* will increase the AP damage provided by Piercing Hit to levels the Braton could only dream of (making comparing their dps against 900 armor (lv67+ Medium Grineer, lv49+ Ancients) skew VASTLY in favor of the Latron Prime simply because it's dealing massively more armor-ignoring damage). In addition to that, the Latron Prime is semi-auto, meaning its fire rate is actually highly inaccurate due to the framelock issue- while no sane person would put the Braton into full-auto at anything less than a full-scale zergrush or point blank (bursts are massively more accurate).

 

 

Next you're going to tell me that the Acrid (which has so much DPS that even its individual bullets have DPS) is always superior to the Lanka (which can even kill Exta Kril in one shot when built right and used by a Banshee (in solo)).

 

GG bro. Go learn how weapon roles work, and the underlying paradigms behind them, then realize you effectively just compared the taste of an orange to the chemical properties of linoleum.

[Eirshy]

Double-posting like a loser, sue me. This deserves two posts.

 

 

 

For a much more pointed understanding of their respective DPSes, I have given them each an "ideal" loadout:

 

This means the LP is rocking:

Serration, Split Chamber, Piercing Hit, Cryo Rounds,

Point Strike, Vital Sense, Hammer Shot, Speed Trigger

 

And the Braton is rocking:

Serration, Split Chamber, Piercing Hit, Cryo Rounds,

Hellfire, Wildfire, Stormbringer, Speed Trigger

 

A note, I have not added Shred to my dps calc.

 

And I then ran their numbers for firing at respective targets. A note on that Lanka, it is using a r9 Serration. The "Not" Lanka was me fiddling with crit chance and crit damage (if you notice it has a 14/200 crit, which got it to be roughly equal to the 20/150 the real one has).

Note: This image has been edited, the previous one had the reload time for the Braton lower than it is (2.00 vs 2.37) and had a rank 5 Hammer Shot on the Latron Prime (haha I wish). A link to this DPS calculator was also not included in this post originally; it can be found here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5569392/dpscompare.xlsx

 

 

 

As to "but if it has higher DPS it will kill faster" FALSE.

 

The Lanka can kill Kril on Exta Ceres in exactly one shot. That means a little over 1 second (the time it takes you to charge a non-speed-triggered Lanka (you need Primed Chamber for it)). The Acrid will take much longer as it has to both ramp up its DPS, and it, like all other dps weapons, require time to apply their damage output.

 

Hell, the Lanka or even the Snidal can easily one-shot Phroid with damage to spare, killing him in under 1 second even counting the Lanka's charge time (since Speed Trigger can be used for this build). A fully modded (Bane mod included) Acrid? Over 3 seconds.

 

 

You lot who only look at theoretical dps only ever look at the ending ratio as though it is Damage.

It is not Damage, that is only the first component.

It is also pS.

 

In order to actually deal your DPS you must be able to fire and hit 100% of the time. Accounting for reload helps this, but it still assumes that the target will be exposed for the entire duration until your reload, and that you're hitting 100% of the time.

 

The advantage to a burst or DPH weapon is that it requires very little time to actually achieve its DPS- because its DPS is often very close to its DPH (or Alpha/Spike, so as to not mislable weapons like the Twin Vipers). While in a head-to-head fight weapon with the higher DPS wins, in a hit-n-run skirmish, the weapon with the higher alpha will always win.

 

This is the age-old argument of Burst vs Sustained damage output.

They are both valid, and both have advantages and disadvantages.

 

But please, don't ever compare a weapon which follows the former to a weapon that follows the latter in the field the latter is actually designed for.

Edited September 11, 2013 by TheBlueJelly

[Eyepop]

Don't know where you generated that thing, but you really should look at the Braton numbers, a lot of them are really screwed up, and so of course the LP looks better than it in this case.

 

For instance, Norm damage for the Braton is 20.3, instead of 20*1.9 = 38.  Also, reload time is 3.00 instead of 2.37.

 

Also, I don't know how you got your crit damage multipliers.  Based on my calculations (120% + 60% = 180%), the "CD+" for the LP should be 180% instead of 210%, which multiplied by the base 150% gives one 420% CD, not 465%.

 

I concede your point that a Braton with a broken Split Barrel and a nerfed reload time will deal less damage than a LP with a magical extra 45% crit-damage mod.

 

 

 

Wait... this entire thing is severely messed up.  159% armor-piercing damage?  239% freeze damage?  Where the heck are you getting these numbers?

Edited September 10, 2013 by Eyepop

[Eirshy]

My bad thought I linked to my calculator.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5569392/dpscompare.xlsx

 

There we go.

 

 

I actually accidentally "buffed" the Braton's reload. TTR is "Time Til Reload", not "Time To Reload". Rel is reload, and I listed the Braton's base reload time as 2 seconds (the actual is 2.37 as you said). If I had actually listed the download link, you'd have had access to those little red triagles that explained what they did.

 

Next up, the "Norm" column is the normalized crit damage, which on the braton is 20.3 (what the screenshot says).... Another comment explains that, once again my bad for not giving you the link to down the sheet. These are two problems that I had forseen on the sheet itself but can't exactly show in a simple screenshot of it.

 

CD+ is max 180%, you're right. I accidentally put a r5 Hammer Shot (real max is r3) onto the thing. It was late at night, I was kinda rushing. Had to get up in like under 5 hours from posting of those lol

 

As to the "weird" percentages at the mod effects... Due to how my formulas worked out and where I applied Serration (and other base damage mods), I moved the calculation for applying base damage amps to the elemental mods into the report for how much of an element you have. This was because I categorized base damage but didn't want to apply serration to the Normalized, so this was the simplest way. Example, r5 Cryo is 90% Cold Damage, r10 Serration is +165% (or *265%), .9 * 2.65 = 2.385 which then gets rounded on that display to 239% (internally it's 238.5% still), and it takes the normalized damage as the "damage" it's applying the percentage to.

 

 

Correcting these issues...

 

It actually swung more in-favor of the Latron Prime, due to my giving the Braton 0.37 free seconds off of its reload time having more of an effect on DPS than the extra 45% damage applied on a crit.

 

 

 

Also not sure where Split Barrel is "broken". 90% chance to fire two rounds means a 90% increase in average damage. Bullet is the damage an individual round, Shot is the overall average after multishot is applied.

[Eyepop]

 

So that was an interesting exercise!  Thank you for convincing me to do that, BlueJelly, I actually learned a lot!

 

I switched out your Stormbringer for a Cleanse Infested, but other than that kept your builds the same.  Thanks for making me do the math to see just how much of the damage comes from AP, and therefore how effective Crit mods are!

[Eirshy]

Um..... I think you botched something on your sheet. your "Bullet" damage collumn seems to be adding some percentage twice- I'm honestly not sure which.

 

Should be getting 1089.1 ish for the LP and 1216.8 ish for the Braton (after swapping Stormbringer for that 30% Bane increase). Ignoring reload times, it gets you 2252 ish for the LP and 2178 ish for the Braton.

 

This is using a lv40 Ancient like you  did, btw.

 

 

 

Only reason I'd discourage using a bane enchant is because it does not work effectively in T3 (limited bonuses as not all enemies will take bonus damage because of a single mod), and usually when you actually need that extra oomph *is* on T3 runs (T3 Wav Def goes up to around lv120 iirc).

Edited September 10, 2013 by TheBlueJelly

[Cabadath5]

Why? Because DE is bad at balance, that's why.

[Eyepop]

Um..... I think you botched something on your sheet. your "Bullet" damage collumn seems to be adding some percentage twice- I'm honestly not sure which.

It's using the 1.5x bullet modifier for Ancient Infested headshots.

[xenapan]

sell your lantron prime. get lanka. problem solved. 

[Eirshy]

It's using the 1.5x bullet modifier for Ancient Infested headshots.

 

Need to add a generic x2 for headshot then (their heads take x2 AND an additional multiplicative x1.5 from bullet)... however you also should also check without either of those for a limbshot, as that'll ignore armor. It's the reason my calc's HOME (Headshot Only Mode Enable) tag only disables armor on Ancients rather than doing the headshot multipliers- as their heads aren't the armor-ignoring spot (though thinking about it now that's $&*&*#(%& as you could just say 0 armor instead lol). When a weapon primarily deals non-bypassing daamge (which both of those will), an unarmored shot will out-damage an armored shot with an x2. Sonar might be able to win with its (up to) x6.5 on the AP out-damaging all other sources combined, but that's more of an exception.

Edited September 11, 2013 by TheBlueJelly