Riven: Damage vs Multishot

[--Aegis--MR9]

Is there a case when Damage is better than Multishot? I know Multishot is generally better because it increases status chance. 
but lets say, I am building a crit base Catchmoon, then whats more beneficial, CC CD Damage or CC CD MS? 

If MS is usually better, how better compared to DMG? 

Edited July 2, 2019 by MR9BCI

[AlphaPHENIX]

More bullets which can proc crit = more crit = probably more damage.

In my unprofesional opinion.

[shut]

Assuming you've got HS+BS+LT equipped already, a quick napkin calculation (using "ideal" ++Damage, ++Multi values for Catchmoon rivens from Semlar's site) is telling me that ++Damage (+239% DMG at best for Catchmoon) yields noticeably more raw damage than ++Multishot (+130% Multi at best for Catchmoon) will. Specifically, the ++Damage alone would increase the weapon's final damage output by ~70%, whereas the ++Multishot would increase its final damage output by only ~46%.

This tends to be pretty consistent for most secondaries, since BS+LT already give an abundance of multishot to the point that a multishot riven is less helpful by comparison. Just be aware that the opposite may be true if your build includes more +Damage sources, like Magnum Force / Augur Pact / Chroma.

 

However, it's worth noting that the ++Multishot improves status chance and overall consistency of crit weapons by sheer virtue of landing more hits with every trigger pull, so it's not as if it's a straight downgrade. AND it scales nicely with external +Damage sources that may be introduced (e.g. Arbitration buffs, teammate auras, Chroma).

Edited July 2, 2019 by SortaRandom

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

multishot is usually the better stat for function as it duplicates damage into another projectile

[Dreddeth]

I think maybe +Damage is better than +Multishot on weapons that can deal self-damage, because then you're just over-killing yourself if you click wrong instead of potentially increasing the blast radius, and therefore danger, of a weapon that can already 1-shot you if you misfire.

But honestly you should probably crunch the numbers, because if you aren't focusing on status procs, then whether +Damage or +Multishot is better would depend on how high either bonus can get with the weapon's disposition, and on how the Riven's bonuses compare to those of existing mods. Some Rivens are just objectively bad compared to stock mods if you want a functional build as opposed to just seeing how high your numbers can get.

[Lazarow]

Both are good to have, damage comes in higher values than multishot, those re seperate multipliers to dps both are good to have an an ideal riven should contain positive damage and multishot

[Xzorn]

Yes there are cases when +%Damage is a better roll than +%Multishot. It's weapon dependent and usually involves low status weapons.

Catchmoon is actually a good example of this.

A standard build with +CC +CD +Multi -X would do 138.7k Damage per shot and 259.7 Burst.

A standard build with +CC + CD +Damage -X would do 160k Damage per shot and 301k Burst.

You can take this further by replacing Lethal Torrent if you wanted slower but harder hitting shots and throw on Primed Expel for 196k Damage per shot. The Primed Faction mods work esp well with +%Damage rolls in conjunction with the standard Hornet Strike / Serration. Things would get more complicated for a Primary weapon however since they have access to Hunter's Munitions at which point you'd have to weigh .Multi + Damage and Faction mod double dips for Bleeds when replacing Heavy Cal.

If the weapon is capable of reasonable status then Multishot usually wins as it's a multiplier for both damage output and status output.

Nothing is ever really staple though if you really min/max hard. For future comparisons I'd suggest the blank weapon option on Warframe builder though be careful on weapons with base elemental and IPS like Catchmoon. It gets confused. Best to just sub with IPS for weapons like that.

[Unagi604]

The ranges are different between damage and multishot. Use warframe builder or something to calculate the DPS on your specific roll if thats what you're after, but from experience, I prefer multishot. Multishot helps stabilize a lot of things like average damage (especially low rate of fire weapons), status chance, and helps out with stuff like on crit effects for lower crit weapons since more shots increases the chance of at least 1 crit hit.

Edited July 2, 2019 by Unagi604

[taiiat]

there's no clear cut answer. it highly matters what values you can get, and the exact Weapon.
how the Crit and Status Stats/performance looks for such a Weapon, will determine if getting less Damage on paper is worth it for getting more Crit/Status consistency(as, on paper Base Damage almost always wins vs Multi-Shot. but it's just not that simple in reality).

SortaRandom and Xzorn already covered the basics for how to think about it / basic math so that already covers basically anything we could say as a general statement rather than for a specific Weapon.

Edited July 2, 2019 by taiiat

[Lutesque]

Uhm.... Multishot doesn't increase Status Chance.... 

Multishot increases the probability of firing another projectile with all the same stats as the first Projectile.... if those Stats are consistent then you are literally doubling your damage.....

Damage Increases you're weapon's  base damage..... usually not useful because you rarely ever get a high enough percentage to compete with the probability of getting another Projectile.... also most arcanes arent guaranteed procs so having more multishot helps with Consistency. 

[Oldskinzz]

 

4 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Uhm.... Multishot doesn't increase Status Chance.... 

 

Multi does affect effective status chance even though it doesn't affect base status chance. Say a weapon with 20% status chance and no multi, effective status chance is 20%. Slap a 120% multishot mod on and you get more shots with the same status chance so the probability of a status proc for every trigger pull becomes 1-(0.8^2.2)=39%

[taiiat]

4 hours ago, Lutesque said:

usually not useful because you rarely ever get a high enough percentage to compete with the probability of getting another Projectile

that is completely incorrect. generally your best case scenario for a Riven adding Multi-Shot is a 50% increase in Damage per Shot. at the same Riven Multiplier, and hitting the equivalent value in Base Damage as Multi-Shot.... you're getting an almost 80% increase in Damage per Shot.

then if we consider the strongest in the stat ranges you could get, Multi-Shot barely gives anything more than the one extra Projectile it gave at a low-mid roll on the stat range, while the Base Damage has linearly increased up to almost double Damage now. simply because the extra like 25% Multi-Shot or so that you might get on top of a normal roll doesn't make much of a difference, but every percent of Base Damage makes an impact.

and that's why the decision is complicated in the first place. because both Stats offer some compelling benefits.

Edited July 3, 2019 by taiiat

[Lutesque]

5 hours ago, Oldskinzz said:

 

 

Multi does affect effective status chance even though it doesn't affect base status chance. Say a weapon with 20% status chance and no multi, effective status chance is 20%. Slap a 120% multishot mod on and you get more shots with the same status chance so the probability of a status proc for every trigger pull becomes 1-(0.8^2.2)=39%

Technically true but Highly Impractical. 

5 hours ago, taiiat said:

that is completely incorrect. generally your best case scenario for a Riven adding Multi-Shot is a 50% increase in Damage per Shot. at the same Riven Multiplier, and hitting the equivalent value in Base Damage as Multi-Shot.... you're getting an almost 80% increase in Damage per Shot.

You might to reword this....its genuinely confusing when you use Damage Per Shot in regards to Multishot since thats not a per shot situation anymore....

 

[shut]

3 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Technically true but Highly Impractical. 

loooool what
You're literally increasing status chance per shot by sheer virtue of firing more bullets in the first place. All without having any downsides in regards to ammo economy or weapon handling (unlike fire rate). There's nothing "impractical" about that.

3 hours ago, Lutesque said:

You might to reword this....its genuinely confusing when you use Damage Per Shot in regards to Multishot since thats not a per shot situation anymore....

taiiat's wording was correct. A "shot" refers to a click, or a trigger pull, or a muzzle flash, etc-- basically, a single instantaneous action that launches one or more bullets.
Multishot increases the number of bullets per shot, thereby increasing the damage per shot.

[Lutesque]

6 minutes ago, SortaRandom said:

loooool what
You're literally increasing status chance per shot by sheer virtue of firing more bullets in the first place. All without having any downsides in regards to ammo economy or weapon handling (unlike fire rate). There's nothing "impractical" about that.

Thats how it works in Theory.... in practice its a different story....

7 minutes ago, SortaRandom said:

taiiat's wording was correct. A "shot" refers to a click, or a trigger pull, or a muzzle flash, etc--

Then Say "Click/Trigger/Muzzle Flash".... 

 

[CephalonDizzy]

8 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

Thats how it works in Theory.... in practice its a different story....

Then Say "Click/Trigger/Muzzle Flash".... 

 

There you go again with the semantics.

I can kill a bombard with my tigris prime in one shot.

Vs.

I can kill a bombard with my tigris prime in one "Click/Trigger/Muzzle Flash/group of pellets that come out of the barrel simultaneously and travel towards the same enemy that hit roughly at the same time and thus doing a large amount of combined damage."

Ok. Sure.

Edited July 3, 2019 by CephalonDizzy

[Lutesque]

15 minutes ago, CephalonDizzy said:

There you go again with the semantics.

I can kill a bombard with my tigris prime in one shot.

Vs.

I can kill a bombard with my tigris prime in one "Click/Trigger/Muzzle Flash/group of pellets that come out of the barrel simultaneously and travel towards the same enemy that hit roughly at the same time and thus doing a large amount of combined damage."

Ok. Sure.

Again.... I never said the wording was incorrect....I said it was confusing. And it is....

I honest hadve no clue what he meant just because hes using the same word to describe two different things. 

[CephalonDizzy]

20 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

Again.... I never said the wording was incorrect....I said it was confusing. And it is....

I honest hadve no clue what he meant just because hes using the same word to describe two different things. 

But taiiat explains it in the next paragraph the mechanics of Multishot. You can't just get caught up on some semantics and without the rest of the context. And then dismiss the post altogether.

I'm really not trying to be rude, but just illustrating why debating semantics is exhausting.

 

At any rate MS vs damage is generally not in an all-or-nothing thing. That is, I don't put multishot until after installing some form of damage mod like serration (assuming I am not Chroma, in which never put serration).

In the case of non-rapid fire secondaries unless if I am trying to use the riven to replace one of the standard MS mods, or bump MS past the 100%/200%/etc threshold I generally go for damage.

In specific case of catchmoon, ehhh I foresee the riven disposition getting nuked so proceed at your own risk.

Edited July 3, 2019 by CephalonDizzy

[Lutesque]

2 minutes ago, CephalonDizzy said:

But taiiat explains it in the next paragraph the mechanics of Multishot. You can't just get caught up on some semantics and without the rest of the context. And then dismiss the post altogether.

I'm really not trying to be rude, but just illustrating why debating semantics is exhausting.

I wasn't debating semantics I was asking for Clarification. Or is this how you react when ever someone tells you something you said confused them ? 

 

[CephalonDizzy]

41 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

I wasn't debating semantics I was asking for Clarification. Or is this how you react when ever someone tells you something you said confused them ? 

 

Well, this is how I react to someone who I perceive to show a consistent pattern of purposefully pointing out irrelevant things to derail threads and mislead new players.

But I guess you're too busy getting one-shot and dying to literally every enemy in the game to read taiiat's actual explanation so...

*shrugs*

Edited July 3, 2019 by CephalonDizzy

[Sloan441]

It depends on the weapon and your luck with rerolls. Ideally you want both.

Coming from a practical user standpoint, if you're a dozen rolls in and you get a good MS roll with some other useful stuff, then I'll take it. It'd be nice to have more, but sometimes you're just a few vials of red juice too far and you take what you can get. 

If you're buying, then wait for what you want: both. You'll pay, but you'll get what you really need to make a weapon sing. 

[Oldskinzz]

5 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Technically true but Highly Impractical. 

 

It's obvious you have no worthwhile response to these points and hence resort to meaningless comments such as "highly impractical". It's simple mathematics, deal with it. 

5 hours ago, Lutesque said:

You might to reword this....its genuinely confusing when you use Damage Per Shot in regards to Multishot since thats not a per shot situation anymore....

 

You're the only one getting confused here. What he said was totally straightforward. By shot he means a trigger pull. Damage per shot means the damage you deal when pulling the trigger once. Multishot is an ingame term but obviously means multiple bullets per trigger pull, or per SHOT. There's no ambiguity about the usage of the word shot at all. He further elaborates on the mechanics using the term "projectile". How can you even get confused by that. Again with the meaningless comments when you have nothing worthwhile to post in response. 

[taiiat]

5 hours ago, Lutesque said:

Then Say "Click/Trigger/Muzzle Flash".... 

 

4 hours ago, Lutesque said:

I honest hadve no clue what he meant just because hes using the same word to describe two different things. 

actually, i did not. i clearly refer to Multi-Shot as adding additional Projectiles, not changing how many Shots you fire.
as, this is the correct way for me to describe things.

so i refer to everything other than Multi-Shot as to the Shot from said Weapon it will be referring to, and Multi-Shot as adding additional Projectiles and/or increasing Damage per Shot.

 

if you'd prefer, i guess i could refer to Multi-Shot as 'Projectile bifurcation' or 'Projectile duplication' in the future - though since that then doesn't reference anything ingame, means that people are probably going to get confused without me anchoring it to the word on the type of Mod i'm referencing.

Edited July 3, 2019 by taiiat

[(XBOX)COA Altair]

Depends on disposition and weapon in question.  Does the weapon have a decent status chance and a higher disposition and you want to get status procs with the weapon?  Multishot is better in that case.  Multishot is probably the single greatest stat in the game for weapons, however, if your riven is a .5 disposition rifle riven multishot is garbage because you're not getting anywhere close to the 110% multishot number you want to make for a guaranteed 3 bullets per round in combination with split chamber.  Same can be said of pistol rivens, because you run lethal torrent and barrel diffusion on almost every pistol in the game you want 120 MS or at least very close to that number to consistently fire 4 bullets per round.  Take catchmoon for example, it got nerfed and is likely to get nerfed again so multishot on 3 stat rolls is likely too low a number to get consistent 4 shots per pull of the trigger/you lose out on damage whereas a flat damage increase instead will always deal additional damage no matter what.  If you want your riven to be safe from nerfing though damage is the better stat because of multishot inconsistency if you don't have that 110 number for rifles and 120 for pistols.  

[--Aegis--MR9]

38 minutes ago, (XB1)COA Altair said:

Depends on disposition and weapon in question.  Does the weapon have a decent status chance and a higher disposition and you want to get status procs with the weapon?  Multishot is better in that case.  Multishot is probably the single greatest stat in the game for weapons, however, if your riven is a .5 disposition rifle riven multishot is garbage because you're not getting anywhere close to the 110% multishot number you want to make for a guaranteed 3 bullets per round in combination with split chamber.  Same can be said of pistol rivens, because you run lethal torrent and barrel diffusion on almost every pistol in the game you want 120 MS or at least very close to that number to consistently fire 4 bullets per round.  Take catchmoon for example, it got nerfed and is likely to get nerfed again so multishot on 3 stat rolls is likely too low a number to get consistent 4 shots per pull of the trigger/you lose out on damage whereas a flat damage increase instead will always deal additional damage no matter what.  If you want your riven to be safe from nerfing though damage is the better stat because of multishot inconsistency if you don't have that 110 number for rifles and 120 for pistols.  

How do you check the said ms number? Barrel Diffusion alone is 120% ms. 

[(XBOX)COA Altair]

2 minutes ago, MR9BCI said:

How do you check the said ms number? Barrel Diffusion alone is 120% ms. 

https://semlar.com/rivencalc

Even if a weapon isn't listed on there, you can know what numbers it gets by clicking another weapon in the same class with the same disposition like fulmin isn't up there for example, but we know all new weapons have a disposition of 1.0 so if you click on baza for example you'll see what numbers fulmin and komorex can get as they are the exact same disposition.