What happened to Heavy Caliber?

[OriVerda]

Browsing builds online or looking at shared builds in region chat (horror) seems to indicate to me practically no one uses it anymore while in the past Serration and Heavy Caliber used to be staples on all builds.

What changed and why?

[Kaotyke]

People likely figured that stacking Elementals has a better payoff.

[(PSN)Eluminary]

well accuracy matters on some things, I swap it out for a primed bane mod occasionally,  if you do that the dmg is only slightly less to the corresponding faction without the accuracy loss,  I still use HC on most stuff... Like the kuva Ogris is a good example of a weapon hc is kinda bad on but if you put on the bane of the faction your fighting you get 95% of the dmg of hc without the loss of the accuracy.

 

I would be quite suprised if the majority of builds are droping hc, likly you just had an unusal sample set.

[KnossosTNC]

Heavy Caliber was always a bit of a niche mod, at least for me. The accuracy penalty is horrific on most weapons; you'd have to sacrifice a goat to the altar of RNGesus for them to hit the side of a barn. I really only use Heavy Caliber on weapons with very high base accuracy, like the Synapse and the Baza.

[Drachnyn]

Heavy Cal really is not that good of a mod.

[8faiNt]

Quote

 

People likely figured that stacking Elementals has a better payoff.

this^

[Dreadwire]

Well now you got riven.

I probably change HC for riven

[XaoGarrent]

Don't forget that Vigilante Armaments is also a thing. The numbers might not be as big on it, but it's competing with less in the buff stack, has no penalty and multishot adds more chances for status procs in addition to damage.

Heavy Caliber has just kinda lost its niche.

[Wyrmius_Prime]

Because additive stacking has diminishing returns. Crit and/or status along with elementals simply scale better. Equipping either Heavy Cal or Serration increases your total damage by 165%, which is obviously expected. Equipping the second mod on top of the previous one only further increases your total damage by about 60% ((100%+165%)/165%-1 = ,606060...). Already at this point equipping a 90% elemental mod without even considering the bonuses from matching elements is by far a better option.

Heavy Caliber would need its damage stats considerably buffed to be relevant again. Nobody will pick it over Serration because the lowered accuracy, and there isn't a lot of cases when you would want both of them equipped because other mods increase your damage more. Also Rivens for some weapons can roll 200%+ damage (I don't know what the max roll is for dispo 5 weapons), which makes Heavy Caliber even more lackluster.

Magnum Force suffers from the same problem, however that is more obvious because the damage stat on that mod is even smaller than Hornet Strike's, so nobody even stops to ask about it. People have just accepted it as a bad mod since its release.

[-Kittens-]

Because people are too dumb to figure out that synthetic number padding doesn't apply to damage extension capped enemies and bosses. They just watch tacticool potata and see big numbar versus generic enemies and then copy the build thereof, blissfully unaware that a large chunk of the game depends on having a decent base damage versus DR to begin with.

When you're in the simulacrum and hunter munitions does that sweet six tics, you begin to think "hey one third proc rate ain't so bad, look how much ammo I save" versus boosting your TTK in a situation where you'd actually need it, which WF doesn't have very much of for fully modded and forma'd weapon unless it's just a bad gun to begin with.

the legit reasons are weapons with falloff vs accuracy issues (braton, burst weapons, certain snipes), or a case where 165% cold is far more valuable ala synapse (weighting the viral higher than corrosion versus the low proc rate compared to most continuals) or case like the ogris where the multishot/accuracy ratio will actually send projectiles at almost 90 degree angles, virtually guaranteeing you're going to obliterate yourself, especially with boosted base damage.

If rifles had 165 anything but cold, you'd never see HC used ever.

[chofranc]

 

hace 43 minutos, XaoGarrent dijo:

Don't forget that Vigilante Armaments is also a thing. The numbers might not be as big on it, but it's competing with less in the buff stack, has no penalty and multishot adds more chances for status procs in addition to damage.

Heavy Caliber has just kinda lost its niche.

Also, it adds a 5% chance to increase the crit chance by 100% that is additive and that chance can be increased further with a sentinel weapon.

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

Raw damage stopped being the best build.

[Furybone]

10 hours ago, OriVerda said:

Browsing builds online or looking at shared builds in region chat (horror) seems to indicate to me practically no one uses it anymore while in the past Serration and Heavy Caliber used to be staples on all builds.

What changed and why?

ignore horror chat. most of them don't understand elemental eximus auras.

its still a great option for boosting single elemental damage types like toxin when there are only so many toxin mods otherwise. Combine with bane mods and corpus fall over dead to nearly any weapon in one hit. Other than that some elemental builds work better without it, or "can" work better without it but it depends on the eximus types that spawn and the elemental mods that have prime options.

[(XBOX)COA Altair]

Bane mods are vastly superior and just flat 90 elemental mods after serration increase your damage more.  Riven mods also take a slot.  Heavy caliber hasn't been good for a long, long time.