Propa vs Shraksun, How should I use propa?

[Crimson_Ruby_313]

I recently got propa and went to 5x3 and well it wasn't good. Is propa really the best? Is there a way to use it right that I dunno? I mean I prefer shraksun but squads won't let me in unless I use propa! Why is that? With right vs charge and shadow+ uw I can easily 1 shot with shraksun. With propa I cannot even aim well or match the timing and at least I waste 2 shots. I know it is stronger for solo but in a squad too? Any advice on how to use propa?  

Edit: I'm learning the timing and well I still waste shots, but less than before. Well it is fun to use new stuff and propa is pretty strong and funny. 

Edited August 21, 2019 by Crimson_Ruby_313

[Symbiont]

there is a window between the first step and second step the eidolon makes when he stands up. you want to time inbetween these steps.

personally i prefer 2 propa, 1 skraksun.

and if your squad insist you to use propa, then take into account that you get the timing right first before you juggle with proccing shadow, grabbing wisp and shoot behind the shield. you want to make sure you shoot behind a shield and get your timing right first before anything else.

Edited August 18, 2019 by symisz

[Crimson_Ruby_313]

23 hours ago, symisz said:

there is a window between the first step and second step the eidolon makes when he stands up. you want to time inbetween these steps.

personally i prefer 2 propa, 1 skraksun.

and if your squad insist you to use propa, then take into account that you get the timing right first before you juggle with proccing shadow, grabbing wisp and shoot behind the shield. you want to make sure you shoot behind a shield and get your timing right first before anything else.

Yeah I'm kinda getting it. Thanks

[Lutesque]

I've never used Propa Scaffold for hunting... its highly impractical....

And seriously ? People demand Propa Now ? Since When ? 

[MPonder]

I play with propa in two ways. 1 with a good squad and the other if I have to solo the shield all by myself.

With a good squad -> 3 shots first shield on second and third eidolon, then just one (time correct like someone said above)

 

Now if I have to solo the shield because people with bad amps/no shadow -> 3 shots first shield, 2 shots, 2 shots, 3 shots ... (this only works if you can have both volt and wisp buffs)

[Lolacrayola]

I have never encountered anyone who dictated what scaffold I should use and I pug a lot. Most pugs I've played with are pretty chill. In any event, Propa isn't inherently better than Shraksun. It has some advantages over it and it has some disadvantages.

Propa's explosion crits for almost twice as much damage as Shraksun's explosion. You can one shot Hydrolyst's half shield by yourself if you shoot through an electric shield with approximately x6 void strike and a void wisp. For Shraksun you need somewhere in the region of x10 void strike. This is a theoretical worst case scenario in groups since you will have 3x void strike players and with the exception of pre-charged runs, all VS players will shoot together on every shield. There is never really a situation where you need to one shot the half shield by yourself. Certainly not in 5x3 pugs.

So onto the disadvantages of Propa. It hits once per shot and the projectile detonates early if it collides with anything. Clear line of sight is required. It will detonate on lures, your own warframe, tree branches etc. The absolute maximum distance it can hit is 15m, with hit detection at 15m being super sketchy because its hard to visualise precise distance with an invisible, spherical aoe. Shraksun on the other hand multi hits and has innate punch through, so you can shoot through lures. A trinity drive by is not going to ruin your shot.

Each impact from Shraksun can crit and its pretty common to get 4 or 5 impacts if you shoot through the heel up into the knee. By virtue of the aforementioned, it is significantly more likely that Shraksun will crit each time you consume a void strike stack compared to Propa. Assuming you have Virtuos Shadow's crit chance buff, Propa has approximately 1 in 5 chance to not crit whereas Shraksun is pretty close to guaranteed crit. Both scaffolds do really terrible damage if you don't crit.

Shraksun is more energy efficient than Propa. You can fire Shraksun 14 times with 140 energy. You can only fire Propa 3 times with the same energy. If you have to shoot twice, Shraksun is much faster at recovering a bad shield. If you are planning some next level stuff, I guess you can deliberately detonate Propa early by shooting your own warframe, but your positioning has to be very precise, the collision detection is funky and you'll probably kill yourself trying it. 

In solo runs Shraksun benefits from other amp arcanes in a way that Propa can't because Shraksun can shoot more frequently and crit more reliably. You can therefore take an arcane like Virtuos Strike and get good buff uptime by shooting as fast and often as you can. This buff is normally too short to take advantage of in group play but it can work well in solo.

Propa is also pretty lag/desync sensitive. You have to pre-fire to break the shield as soon as its up. The visual cue is between the right and left footfall as the eidolon stands up after an energy spike. This timing varies depending on your ping. If you host, you can leave it pretty late to shoot. If your ping is like 250ms, you have to pre-fire early. So every time you join a group, you need to get a feel for how much latency there is and how early you have to pre-fire.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Lolacrayola

[Yuri_Doujinshi]

^See above post, this is a fantastic explanation of the pros and cons of each scaffold. They both have trade-offs, and both work fine for 5x3s, so it is entirely personal preference as to what you use. Personally I prefer propa, but any squad that demands you use one specifically isn't a squad you should play with. That being said, you should always let your Volt know if you are using propa so they can set up front shields for you.

[MPonder]

Don't think there is any need for the 2 buffs to be up to break a half-shield from eidolon with propa. If you have one buff and stacked madurai correct between eidolons, breaking one half-shield is about critting or not, well, maybe a Trinity on second eidolon will need. There is also a 6x3 with a Rhino + Oberon on Youtube, that means, no Volt Shields, just wisps.
 

I see people using the tier 1 prism, raplak in case of a fail in breaking the shield with propa, because the prisma is like 92% crit chance, instant dmg. So 177 Amp.

 

[taiiat]

Propa is tricky to use(well, not that Shraksun isn't, if we're talking about getting things to work perfectly), but since the Explosion is delayed, it can be useful for being able to cover both Health and Shields yourself faster if the cards play out.

the weirdness with Propa that you'll have to get used to is putting it in a position that when it detonates that the Eidolon will be right on top of it. gotta keep that 3 second timer in mind.

with that higher Crit Chance, if you dump your entire Energy Pool every Shield Phase, you're effectively guaranteed to break the Shields even with some buffs missing. but that does mean that you're spending 3 Void Strike charges each Phase, which is very much not ideal but can be mitigated if you have 2+ people dedicated to breaking Shields rather than just 1.

on another side, is that in such a situation where several Players are dumping Energy at once, it's easier to use since it just has to be near the Eidolon rather than having to thread the needle from specific angles and Range through the Eidolon. which is helpful when there are several people shooting, as otherwise everyone can kinda get in the way of each other and make it hard to shoot.

 

ultimately, the two schools of thought can be seen as: Shraksun deals the highest Damage per Shot on average, no contest. those Multi-Hits make it Crit more consistently and more than makes up for lower Base Damage. but, if you aren't concerned about Damage per Shot, you can just magdump Propa for consistency that way.

maximum Damage vs maximum DPS, i guess one could say. whether every single Shot needs to do the most work possible, or they do not.

 

9 hours ago, Lolacrayola said:

Propa's explosion crits for almost twice as much damage as Shraksun's explosion. You can one shot Hydrolyst's half shield by yourself if you shoot through an electric shield with approximately x6 void strike and a void wisp. For Shraksun you need somewhere in the region of x10 void strike.

though ofcourse, the impact Damage of Shraksuns' Projectile makes up for that and then some. even with it obviously not getting the Void Strike Multiplier, it still compensates for that Base Damage difference. and smoothing out that Crit consistency, heh.

9 hours ago, Lolacrayola said:

Propa is also pretty lag/desync sensitive.

Shraksun can be sensitive too, you can get dud Shots in laggy Sessions(hell, even in not laggy Sessions it can still happen from time to time) - but Propa is generally more sensitive, yes.

Edited August 20, 2019 by taiiat

[Lolacrayola]

4 hours ago, MPonder said:

There is also a 6x3 with a Rhino + Oberon on Youtube, that means, no Volt Shields, just wisps.

I really need to see that Oberon PoV. What hes doing at first glance doesn't even seem possible.

Hydrolyst shield is 68k hp approx. With a lure tethered it regens to half so 34k hp approx.

With no buffs, Propa does 359 damage on a non-crit and 1459 damage on a crit.

We have unairu wisp but no electric shield, so we can work out how much void strike we need to stack to one shot the half shield.

34,000 / 2918 = 11.6x void strike

If we have wisp and electric shield, its:

34,000 / 5836 = 5.8x void strike

So I'm either missing something big or calculating something wrong or theres some Rhino/Oberon interaction I'm not aware of that buffs operator damage but I can't make the numbers work.

Void strike charges at a rate of 0.12 per second. Upon breaking the last Teralyst limb, it goes down for 45 seconds, there is a maybe 15 second standing up animation, archwing transit to shrine and maybe 10 to 15 seconds before you have to shoot Gantulyst lake shield. Lets be generous and assume 75 seconds of void strike charge. Thats a x10 void strike multiplier.

Assuming this is the case for a solo shield break on Gantulyst and Hydrolyst, you shoot twice with a wisp and you need both to crit at x11 void strike to make the numbers work. If you don't crit you need to fire a 3rd time and hope that crits. If you are unlucky, your Gantulyst time is ruined because you need 5 pellets for each of the 5 limbs remaining, but you only have 4 shots remaining.

Edited August 20, 2019 by Lolacrayola

[Symbiont]

 

20 hours ago, Crimson_Ruby_313 said:

Yeah I'm kinda getting it. Thanks

 

Apart from the visual cue, as Lolacrayola in great detail explains in her post, you can also play by ear.

11 hours ago, Lolacrayola said:

The visual cue is between the right and left footfall as the eidolon stands up after an energy spike.

To play by ear, you can pickup the stomping sounds the eidolon makes with its two legs, when it stand up.
And you can use the sound cue to rhythm your propa timing.
(1) right leg stomp (2) shoot (3) left leg stomp

 

4 hours ago, MPonder said:

I see people using the tier 1 prism, raplak in case of a fail in breaking the shield with propa, because the prisma is like 92% crit chance, instant dmg. So 177 Amp.

I've also heard that one before, time to try it out myself. BTW nice oberon + rhino 6x3!

[MPonder]

@Lolacrayola

I didn't do any maths, but that propa is just like the rubico of amps.

Plus the math with amps dmg is a little different, there is a constant that doesn't change with buffs.

That strategy of mine to break the shields solo seems  pretty dumb because you are wasting too much VS. But it works, NA you can find good random groups, SA is different, less people, less quality. And even after wasting all VS, the 3 shots almost always break the shield with Volt Shield and Wisp. It is not instantaneous like in a good squad, but it is less than a second if timed correct and it is too much consistent, hardly fails.

Also, dunno how oberon was been consistent, with one shot-one buff I can understand, but always breaks, no fails, there is a thing that sometimes happens that aft3er you waste your last VS, you don't start with 0, you start with something like 2.6x VS or more, it happens sometimes, dunno how to replicate, maybe something like this is happening.

Edited August 20, 2019 by MPonder

[Lolacrayola]

1 hour ago, MPonder said:

Plus the math with amps dmg is a little different, there is a constant that doesn't change with buffs.

That strategy of mine to break the shields solo seems  pretty dumb because you are wasting too much VS. But it works, NA you can find good random groups, SA is different, less people, less quality. And even after wasting all VS, the 3 shots almost always break the shield with Volt Shield and Wisp. It is not instantaneous like in a good squad, but it is less than a second if timed correct and it is too much consistent, hardly fails.

Also, dunno how oberon was been consistent, with one shot-one buff I can understand, but always breaks, no fails, there is a thing that sometimes happens that aft3er you waste your last VS, you don't start with 0, you start with something like 2.6x VS or more, it happens sometimes, dunno how to replicate, maybe something like this is happening.

Yeah I'm aware amp damage calculation vs eidolon shields is funky, but I'm using the numbers that pop when I shoot the eidolon, not the base void damage and crit stats in operator arsenal. Those stats don't match up with what you see when hunting. for example, Propa crit multiplier is 2.0x according to the stats sheet in the arsenal, but when hunting, Propa crits are more than 4 times bigger than non-crits. The game says Propa does 9000 base damage in arsenal which doesn't match up to anything I've seen vs eidolon shields. As mentioned above, I always non-crit for 359 damage and crit for 1459 damage with no buffs.

I really want to know how that Oberon did all solo shields at 6x3 pace without electric shield. I checked his youtube channel and he hasn't uploaded a PoV video from the Rhino/Oberon run. From watching the Rhino PoV all the way through, there is a suggestion that only the Rhino was recording (he jokes at the end about saying he forgot to start recording). The Oberon player has a 2 man Volt PoV video but that uses both wisp and electric shield and I can see how the math works out.

In the Volt video below:

he shoots Propa twice until he is over 6.0x VS. Then he shoots once. That makes sense if you crunch the numbers because 1459 x 6 x 2 x 2 = 35,016 damage. That is Propa crit x void strike multiplier x void wisp multiplier x electric shield crit multiplier. This is enough to one shot all half shields guaranteed. So for Propa scaffold 6.0x VS is something of a magic number. He also does things like not put electric shield down if his VS is high enough. I'm guessing this is to save time. On the first Gantulyst lake shield at 2 minutes 50 seconds, he shoots 3 times with wisp only because he is over 8.0x VS.

So lets now imagine Oberon, wisp only, no electric shield. At the same stage he needs twice as much VS stacked as his Volt to do the same damage. Doesn't seem possible right?

Edited August 20, 2019 by Lolacrayola

[Crimson_Ruby_313]

On 2019-08-20 at 2:33 AM, Lolacrayola said:

 

Propa is also pretty lag/desync sensitive. You have to pre-fire to break the shield as soon as its up. The visual cue is between the right and left footfall as the eidolon stands up after an energy spike. This timing varies depending on your ping. If you host, you can leave it pretty late to shoot. If your ping is like 250ms, you have to pre-fire early. So every time you join a group, you need to get a feel for how much latency there is and how early you have to pre-fire.

Yeah ping really affects it. Practice makes perfect I guess. Thanks a lot for the explanation.