Gauss: misconceptions about Kinetic Plating in relation to battery level and modded power strength. Tests and results included.

[Xhobract]

Introduction:

This post is about the relations of Gauss' battery level, his ability Kinetic Plating and the modded power strength (pwr. str. henceforth). Gauss is a complex frame whose ingame ability descriptions don't do him justice (as usual) so if you want to understand how stuff actually works you read the wiki or test yourself. There are 3 things I wanted to verify that some forum/reddit users or the wiki claimed:

1. Gauss has access to 80% of his battery capacity without redline. I couldn't find this stated in the game itself; not in ability descriptions nor in tips or HUD elements
2. Kinetic Plating reduces dmg. by the minimum amount (20% with 100% str.) with an empty battery
3. When modding for pwr. str. you reach 100% damage reduction sooner, even without a redlined full battery (which is not a queer thought when the game states it to be 50-100% when modded for 299% str. instead of the base 20-100%)

Following now are my testing methods, so you can better follow along and replicate them if you want to, and results which will show statement 1. to be correct but 2. and 3. false.

Test setup:

In the simulacrum a lvl. 28 Bombard shoots a rocket (only does Blast dmg.) at me and I record the dmg. taken every time. The only mods equipped were Primed Flow for convenience of not having to visit the energy pads more frequently and in Test 3 I added Blind Rage+Intensify+Transient Fortitude+Power Drift+Streamline to reach 299% pwr. str.

Gauss has 450 base shields and 1 rocket brings that down to 251 which is 199 dmg taken.

Test 1:

Activate Redline and Kinetic Plating, spawn Bombard, move in position (which charges the battery a bit) and deactivate Redline to drain the battery completely. We still end up at 251 shields after getting hit once. No dmg. reduction.

Repeat same as above but move a bit forward until you see the battery fill up by a tiny amount before getting hit. We end up with 291 shields which equals 159 dmg. taken:

1 - 1 / (199/159) = 0.201

From this we can see that, keeping measurement errors on my part and decimal rounding the game does in mind, the dmg. got reduced by 20.1% with the minimum amount stated being 20%. With this claim 2 is disproven; you need at least the minimum amount of battery charge possible to get dmg. reduction from Kinetic Plating.

Test 2:

Charge battery to full (without redline active unless specified otherwise), activate Kinetic Plating and move forward until you get hit by the rocket . We move forward to counteract the slight battery drain of active Kinetic Plating. 418 shields remain which equals 32 dmg. taken.

1 - 1 / (199/32) = 0.839

So, we took 83.9% less damage. But how does that add up when indeed we have access to 80% of the battery without redline and the results we saw in test 1? Well, if the minimum battery charge amount equals 20% reduction the remaining 80% reduction have to get evenly distributed over the remaining battery charge. We can represent that with

min dmg. reduction + (max - min dmg. reduciton) * battery charge = effective dmg. reduction

Assuming full battery without redline means 80% full we have (at 100% pwr. str.)

0.2 + 0.8 * 0.8 = 0.84

which is only 0.001 of from what we saw in the test previously.

Test 3:

To confirm if the formula is indeed the one DE used, or at least a close approximation, I repeated Test 1 and 2 with 299% pwr. str.

Empty battery again reduces no damage. Barely charging left me at 353 shields which equals 97 dmg. taken

1 - 1 / (199/97) = 0.513

I attribute this to a measurment error on my part but think it's close enough to confirm the ingame listed minimum dmg. reduction of 50% with 299% pwr. str.

At full without redline (assumed to be 80% battery charge) 430 shields remained which equals 20 damage taken

1 - 1 / (199/20) = 0.899

Now, while the minimum dmg. reduction is higher with more pwr. str., 50% in this case, we also gain less dmg. reduction for every bit of charge we gain above the minimum amount. With my formula

min dmg. reduction + (max - min dmg. reduciton) * battery charge = effective dmg. reduction

we should gain

0.5 + 0.5 * 0.8 = 0.9

Again, the results are only of by 0.001 between the formula and my test results. To further confirm, we can take my test results and scale them up to 100% battery charge with redline to see if we'd get 100% dmg. reduction:

0.2 + 0.639 / 4 * 5 = 0.99875

0.5 + 0.399 / 4 * 5 = 0.99875

Close enough in my book.

TL;DR:

• Maximum battery charge of Gauss is 80% without redline active
• Kinetic Plating needs at least some battery charge to provide the minimum amount of dmg. reduction; empty battery and Kinetic Plating active is not enough EDIT: "Fixed Gauss Kinetic Plating not giving the minimum damage protection when his meter is completely empty" as of patch 25.7.3.1.
• Due to how the Kinetic Plating reduction value at any given battery level is likely calculated, modding for pwr. str. is questionable. Yes, the minimum reduction amount is higher to start with and at say 80% charge the value gets higher the more strength you have, but you don't get to have 100% reduction without a full redline battery active and there are diminishing returns in how much reduction additional charge provides.
• To calculate how much dmg. reduction you have with your build at any given battery charge value (not that we can accurately see that beside it being empty = 0%, below the redline = 80% and full with redline active = 100%) use this with the listed values in your ability screen:

                                                                     min dmg. reduction + (max - min dmg. reduciton) * battery charge = effective dmg. reduction

An example with unmodded values with battery charged just below the redline:

0.2 + (1 - 0.2) * 0.8 = 0.84 -> 84% dmg. reduction

For anyone who actually followed along, thanks :) I hope I managed to articulate myself clear enough. If someone finds any errors or has further information, you're welcome to share. After all, I only did all this because I wanted to better understand how Gauss actually works.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Xhobract
hotfix 25.7.3.1 change

[(PSN)CommanderC2121]

Its math stuff like this that reminds me how stupid I true am 😕 

[Toppien]

i just like to go fast....and do slash damage when the shield is on while bumping into everything on tilesets...

 

but yeah, personally i find it kinda bs that you dont actually get the 100%damage reduction, but having high power strength benefits all of his abilities, right now im going with a power efficient build (60%) with 200% power strength so i can spam his 3 everywhere i go XD also never ending out of juice for running, the shield is not reliable i agree, nor for protection or for getting energy back

Edited September 3, 2019 by Toppien

[JackHargreav]

Even if it had 100% DR this ability is very flawed. It only has Dr against certain dmg types which doesn't make much sense to me. Especially while we have full Dr with other frames.

On paper it sounds good, in practice it's useless for about 60-70% of the content we have.

[Xhobract]

vor 8 Minuten schrieb JackHargreav:

Even if it had 100% DR this ability is very flawed. It only has Dr against certain dmg types which doesn't make much sense to me. Especially while we have full Dr with other frames.

On paper it sounds good, in practice it's useless for about 60-70% of the content we have.

Could it be better? Sure. But if you don't try to facetank everything or do multi hour long survival runs I think it protects well enough.

Personally I use Adaptation with him: If you get hit the battery gives you less and less dmg. reduction, but in return you build up Adaptation stacks. Mach Rush out of danger to refill battery and knockdown enemies and keep going. CC with 3.

I imagine this is more the playstyle DE had in mind with him, rather than just facetank like Rhino etc.

[JackHargreav]

7 minutes ago, Xhobract said:

Could it be better? Sure. But if you don't try to facetank everything or do multi hour long survival runs I think it protects well enough.

Personally I use Adaptation with him: If you get hit the battery gives you less and less dmg. reduction, but in return you build up Adaptation stacks. Mach Rush out of danger to refill battery and knockdown enemies and keep going. CC with 3.

I imagine this is more the playstyle DE had in mind with him, rather than just facetank like Rhino etc.

That wouldn't be much of a problem. Because I absolutely love doing that. But once you go and try to do bounties for example. Oh boy. The tusk shield lancers and tusk gun ships will tear you to shreds in a moment. And Fortuna enemies just shoot through the ability. I died many times because there was some unit sniping from far away. Once I stopped for a split second to aim I lost either 90% of my health or got oneshoted or a slash proc ate most of my health.

I absolutely love this frame but It's just impossible for me to do high end content with him no matter how hard I try. And probably this ability will stay the same. And I will never use him probably ever again simply because he can barely take a hit. 😕

[YazMatazO]

28 minutes ago, Xhobract said:

...

Nicely done, man. I don't like how fiddly it is to maintain shield efficiency with Gauss. It's generally subpar. Which is a bit of a shame, because having shields that can absorb only some of the damage types seems like a good idea, but it's coming a little to late. Mesa/Rhino and Volt are all having a laugh about this.  

[Xhobract]

vor 25 Minuten schrieb JackHargreav:

That wouldn't be much of a problem. Because I absolutely love doing that. But once you go and try to do bounties for example. Oh boy. The tusk shield lancers and tusk gun ships will tear you to shreds in a moment. And Fortuna enemies just shoot through the ability. I died many times because there was some unit sniping from far away. Once I stopped for a split second to aim I lost either 90% of my health or got oneshoted or a slash proc ate most of my health.

I absolutely love this frame but It's just impossible for me to do high end content with him no matter how hard I try. And probably this ability will stay the same. And I will never use him probably ever again simply because he can barely take a hit. 😕

Hmm... beside Kuva Floods and Sorties the highest I've gone with him is Mot till the enemies were around lvl. 90 I think? Haven't taken him to do Bounties in either Vallis or the Plains. But thinking about it, the enemies there are thougher than you'd think when looking at their level and you can't get out of line of sight as well in those open places compared to the corridors in the rest of the game. So I believe you when you say it's tough for him there.

 

vor 17 Minuten schrieb YazMatazO:

Nicely done, man. I don't like how fiddly it is to maintain shield efficiency with Gauss. It's generally subpar. Which is a bit of a shame, because having shields that can absorb only some of the damage types seems like a good idea, but it's coming a little to late. Mesa/Rhino and Volt are all having a laugh about this.  

I can see why you'd see it as subpar. I'm generally content with battery management below the redline, but when going above the constant drain it has is a bit much imo... It would be nice if DE gave him another way to refill the battery over time (besides running) to counteract more constant drain from Redline or Kinetic Plating. Besides traveling distance, you can only gain battery in bursts. Maybe fire version of Thermal Sunder could charge over time and ice version in bursts? IDK 😕, they'll propably not change something so substantiall anyway...

[CoolDudeMcCool]

Nice

[kyori]

On 2019-09-04 at 12:19 AM, Xhobract said:

whose ingame ability descriptions don't do him justice

It only says certain dmg will be converted to 5% energy but it didn’t actually say the ability only DR from those few dmg type and not all dmg type. 

Did any test to prove this?