Stealth nerf to Opticor Vandal?

[Oldskinzz]

And to normal Opticor too.

Each attack of the Opticor/Vandal used to deal 400/200 Magnetic damage in a 5m radial blast around point of impact. Now it has been changed to 200/100 damage, radius 4.6m. So far as I could tell, no mention of this was in the update notes.

And what's worse, most weapon mods on my Opticor Vandal do not appear to affect this radial blast at all... only Multishot seems to be changing the damage numbers. With a full set of serration, heavy cal, split chamber, point strike/vital sense, vile acceleration, 90% elemental and riven, sheet damage increases from 100 to 273.3 (my riven adds 83.3% multishot, with split chamber total 173.3%, so it adds up). I'm unable to test the normal Opticor as I've sold my old one.

The mods not affecting radial blast damage may be a bug which I hope gets fixed soon (no other weapon with radial attack has this problem), but the damage reduction does not seem unintentional as both normal and Vandal Opticors are similarly affected. One would ask why, as both Opticors were good weapons but hardly OP in any way. First the self stagger, then the AOE falloff, now this.

 

 

[SneakyErvin]

Weapon mods aside from multishot have never had any impact on it since multishot is the only stat that alters how many magnetic AoEs will happen, that is why the damage number increases because it takes the probablity of multishot into account when adding up potential damage. That is more or less a side result of MS buffing the probability of main shots, since with each main shot a low magnetic AoE will happen along the line of the shot when coming into contact with a target or surface.

The reduced magnetic damage from 400/200 to 200/100 will have nearly no noticable effect on the damage since it was pretty insignificant before aswell. Atleast it is a chance for a magnetic proc, if the Aoe can proc things at all (cant remember).

[Robolaser]

I can confirm that for both Opticors, base AoE damage has been halved. and can only be increased with ms. AoE element can't be modded.

Range of the Vandal has been reduced. Firestorm can be equipped, but does not work at all.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Robolaser

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_]

=/ If they are going to F over AoE weapons so badly just give us back self damage wtf.  Cuz I would rather literally kill myself than have gimped weapons that cause stupid interrupts. 

[Oldskinzz]

56 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Weapon mods aside from multishot have never had any impact on it since multishot is the only stat that alters how many magnetic AoEs will happen, that is why the damage number increases because it takes the probablity of multishot into account when adding up potential damage. That is more or less a side result of MS buffing the probability of main shots, since with each main shot a low magnetic AoE will happen along the line of the shot when coming into contact with a target or surface.

The reduced magnetic damage from 400/200 to 200/100 will have nearly no noticable effect on the damage since it was pretty insignificant before aswell. Atleast it is a chance for a magnetic proc, if the Aoe can proc things at all (cant remember).

 

I'm unable to find much info on the modding of the AOE, but my gut feeling after today's sortie, which is the first time I've used it post-27.2, was that the weapon is quite a bit weaker than before. Can you point me towards any source that says the magnetic AOE can't be modded? I did a quick check on Semlar's weapon builder which still has all the old numbers, and it clearly showed the AOE magnetic explosion being treated as base weapon damage, i.e. affected by Serration, Heavy Cal, elementals and crit mods.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Oldskinzz

[Oldskinzz]

Here's the picture... sorry it's a lousy pic, I'm a novice at this.

 

 

[SneakyErvin]

42 minutes ago, Oldskinzz said:

 

I'm unable to find much info on the modding of the AOE, but my gut feeling after today's sortie, which is the first time I've used it post-27.2, was that the weapon is quite a bit weaker than before. Can you point me towards any source that says the magnetic AOE can't be modded? I did a quick check on Semlar's weapon builder which still has all the old numbers, and it clearly showed the AOE magnetic explosion being treated as base weapon damage, i.e. affected by Serration, Heavy Cal, elementals and crit mods.

I can only remember the old vandal meta which was about getting 100% crit chance, 100% status, gas, hunter munitions and multishot, all with a riven that had negative puncture.

This would lead to 4 guarateed crits atleast (2 from the main shot, 2 from the magnetic AoE) followed by the chance for either up to 2 slash procs from the gun itself or up to two auto crit gas procs giving 2 additional rolls on hunter munitions. Elemental mods have never had any effect on the magnetic AoE since more instances of Gas have never been present. If elemental mods did effect the magnetic proc you'd have two possible auto crit gas procs more, which never was the case. With 100% status your magnetic aoe would always proc the magnetic effect, nothing else.

Base damage mods may have effected the magnetic proc, but it has never been of much focus in any build if it did or didnt.

edit: We've also never been able to see the magnetic stat on the gun until the latest patch, it has been a hidden thing prior to that.

 

Edited March 9, 2020 by SneakyErvin

[Robolaser]

Ok these Arsenal UI numbers seemed off so i did few quick simulacrum tests, and found that:

- 4.6m radius seems correct, hard to measure exactly but definitely 4-5m
- AoE radius CAN be increased with Firestorm. Not reflected in AUI.
- Base AoE damage is very close to 200, not 100. Again hard to tell exactly with the falloff (max i got was 191).
- AoE damage falloff seems to be around 80% (191->40), not 60%.
- AoE damage CAN be increased with damage mods, and elemental mods. Not reflected in AUI.
- AoE CAN proc status. Innate magnetic, and modded additional elements as well.
- AoE additional elements are not shown in AUI.
- AoE can crit and proc hunter munitions.

These are for the Vandal version, sorry too lazy to also test vanilla Opticor.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Robolaser

[VieuxPappy]

Il y a 7 heures, Robolaser a dit :

Ok these Arsenal UI numbers seemed off so i did few quick simulacrum tests, and found that:

- 4.6m radius seems correct, hard to measure exactly but definitely 4-5m
- AoE radius CAN be increased with Firestorm. Not reflected in AUI.
- Base AoE damage is very close to 200, not 100. Again hard to tell exactly with the falloff (max i got was 191).
- AoE damage falloff seems to be around 80% (191->40), not 60%.
- AoE damage CAN be increased with damage mods, and elemental mods. Not reflected in AUI.
- AoE CAN proc status. Innate magnetic, and modded additional elements as well.
- AoE additional elements are not shown in AUI.
- AoE can crit and proc hunter munitions.

These are for the Vandal version, sorry too lazy to also test vanilla Opticor.

Nice finds! I'v been using the Opt vandal since I acquired it (first time it was released) and I loved it ever since... was bummed out at the idea of a stealth nerf but I am now happy to know it's totally fine 🙂

[Oldskinzz]

7 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

I can only remember the old vandal meta which was about getting 100% crit chance, 100% status, gas, hunter munitions and multishot, all with a riven that had negative puncture.

This would lead to 4 guarateed crits atleast (2 from the main shot, 2 from the magnetic AoE) followed by the chance for either up to 2 slash procs from the gun itself or up to two auto crit gas procs giving 2 additional rolls on hunter munitions. Elemental mods have never had any effect on the magnetic AoE since more instances of Gas have never been present. If elemental mods did effect the magnetic proc you'd have two possible auto crit gas procs more, which never was the case. With 100% status your magnetic aoe would always proc the magnetic effect, nothing else.

Base damage mods may have effected the magnetic proc, but it has never been of much focus in any build if it did or didnt.

edit: We've also never been able to see the magnetic stat on the gun until the latest patch, it has been a hidden thing prior to that.

 

I see where you got your conclusion from, thanks. Yes the magnetic stat showing up is a new thing, good to have but looks like it's still rather inaccurate.

 

6 hours ago, Robolaser said:

Ok these Arsenal UI numbers seemed off so i did few quick simulacrum tests, and found that:

- 4.6m radius seems correct, hard to measure exactly but definitely 4-5m
- AoE radius CAN be increased with Firestorm. Not reflected in AUI.
- Base AoE damage is very close to 200, not 100. Again hard to tell exactly with the falloff (max i got was 191).
- AoE damage falloff seems to be around 80% (191->40), not 60%.
- AoE damage CAN be increased with damage mods, and elemental mods. Not reflected in AUI.
- AoE CAN proc status. Innate magnetic, and modded additional elements as well.
- AoE additional elements are not shown in AUI.
- AoE can crit and proc hunter munitions.

These are for the Vandal version, sorry too lazy to also test vanilla Opticor.

Thanks for taking the effort to test! I did a bit of Simulacrum testing as well, and got similar results for the base AOE damage... tried a direct hit i.e. no falloff it was 193. Weirdly AOE crits from direct hits dealt 478 damage, rather shy of the expected 502 damage. Close enough to the original but still off.

So my take from this is:

1. AOE damage was not nerfed, only seems to be slightly off expected values.

2. Falloff damage displayed is off

3. UI is extremely off

Would be good if the devs could take a closer look at this.

 

Anyone with more info to share e.g. on vanilla Opticor would be most welcome.