Boltor Vs. Soma

[Malora_Sidewinder]

I've been discussing this with my teammates recently, but last night this argument culminated in a controlled damage test.

 

His boltor outscored my soma 65-35% damage (it was against corpus and i didn't have stormbringer installed, nor am i as good a player as he is, so those are the two primary factors that lead me to believe this particular test is worthless) but after having used both all day, I can say that the soma, even at high levels, totally outperforms the boltor at basically everything. Again, even though the boltor has armor ignore, even at higher levels the soma still does far more damage for me.

 

If its relevant, I have both boltor and soma polarized twice and have maxed mods on each (minus serration)

 

my build for soma:

level 5 point strike, vital sense, hellfire, split chamber, cryo rounds, piercing hit, level 3 wildfire, and level 6 serration.

 

for boltor, my build is cryo rounds, split chamber, serration, stormbringer, piercing hit, wildfire, and serration.

 

Does anyone have any hard math that could definitively provide an answer for this? my experience and his experience don't line up, and having used both weapons on the same mission in a row, soma was better, if only bit a bit.

 

am i crazy and is my teammate right? or do i actually have the truth but don't have the math to back it up.

[ProjectKaeon]

Soma is better period.

 

If you were to make the mods as best as is to fit those specific guns then Soma would win.

Edited October 22, 2013 by NBlitZ

[N7Arthur]

Get Hammershot for Soma, I also use Shred, which helps against crowds, but Soma right now is insanely better than the Boltor, not even a competition.

[LukeAura]

I've been discussing this with my teammates recently, but last night this argument culminated in a controlled damage test.

 

His boltor outscored my soma 65-35% damage (it was against corpus and i didn't have stormbringer installed, nor am i as good a player as he is, so those are the two primary factors that lead me to believe this particular test is worthless) but after having used both all day, I can say that the soma, even at high levels, totally outperforms the boltor at basically everything. Again, even though the boltor has armor ignore, even at higher levels the soma still does far more damage for me.

 

If its relevant, I have both boltor and soma polarized twice and have maxed mods on each (minus serration)

 

my build for soma:

level 5 point strike, vital sense, hellfire, split chamber, cryo rounds, piercing hit, level 3 wildfire, and level 6 serration.

 

for boltor, my build is cryo rounds, split chamber, serration, stormbringer, piercing hit, wildfire, and serration.

 

Does anyone have any hard math that could definitively provide an answer for this? my experience and his experience don't line up, and having used both weapons on the same mission in a row, soma was better, if only bit a bit.

 

am i crazy and is my teammate right? or do i actually have the truth but don't have the math to back it up.

The Soma has been calculated before to outperform the Flux Rifle in terms of total armor ignoring dps. 

So it should also do the same to the boltor. 

And then when comparing everything else, the Soma takes most categories anyways. 

Accuracy, Magazine size, hitscan projectiles, better innate polarity. 

Boltor really only has a slightly better, but still below average, reload speed. 

[Malora_Sidewinder]

does anyone have the math to back that up?

[Kinperor]

This thread here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/89592-unofficial-weapon-benchmark/

 

Aims to compare every weapons against Lech Kril. Boltor loses badly to Soma. 

 

One could argue that the Boltor in that list only has a catalyst, but my friend with 3 or 4 Forma along the catalyst on Boltor didn't achieve much better. 

[ChaoticVice777]

does anyone have the math to back that up?

 

So stubborn. Let's avoid the direct damage mods (i.e. Serration, Heavy Caliber when it is fixed, and Split Chamber), as they'll be a constant factor in builds:

 

Soma (Piercing Hit, Point Strike, Vital Sense, Hammer Shot)

 

35% (1 + 1.5) = 87.5% critical chance

300% (1 + 1.2 + 0.6) = 840% critical damage

 

10 base damage (0.875) (8.4) = 73.5 average Bullet damage per shot , 44.1 average armor ignoring damage per shot

 

Total = 117.6 average damage per shot

 

Boltor (Piercing Hit, Cryo Rounds, H***fire, Stormbringer) <- ignore critical damage or chance, as they are negligible (i.e. no average needed)

 

90% ice, 90% fire, 90% electricity

 

18 base damage (0.9 * 3) = 48.6 non-armor ignoring elemental damage per shot, 18 base Bullet damage per shot, 10.8 armor ignoring damage per shot

 

Total = 77.4 damage per shot

 

Soma's winning by a long shot. Even more if you factor in armor. Did I forget to mention the better mag : reloading ratio, accuracy, lack of travel time, and fire rate? Yeah...

Edited October 22, 2013 by ChaoticVice777

[Malora_Sidewinder]

^^how even more if you factor in armor? wouldn't more armor favor the boltor because boltor is armor ignore rather than soma which isn't?

t

[Tenzek]

does anyone have the math to back that up?

 

 

Most likely what you saw in the experiment is the fact that lightning damage to the head on a corpus does 4x damage. You didn't have lightning, you said. You're also lacking hammer shot. You also didn't say what mods he used, such as how much higher his serration might have been and so on.

 

 

Let's look at a quick outline of the math assuming  all maxed mods. I will exclude Heavy Caliber since it's just too expensive to be viable for you now if you only have Serration to rank 6.

 

I would give the Soma:

 

(Serration, Split Chamber, Shred) - base build

 

( Vital Sense + Point Strike + Hammer Shot) - crit build essentials

 

And finally Stormbringer and Piercing Hit for damage.

 

This gives us 10 damage times 2.65 for serration = 26.5 bullet damage per shot

 

With 0.9 lightning and 0.6 AP, that's an additional 23.85 lightning and 15.9 AP damage per shot.

 

Now, with a max crit build, you crit 87.6% of the time for 8.4x damage.

 

So (8.4 * .875) + 0.125 = average crit multiplier per shot =  7.475

 

So you're doing on average per shot 7.475 (bullet + lightning + AP) =  198.1 + 178.3 + 118.9 respectively

 

That's at 15 shots/second times 1.9 split chamber * 1.3 shred. 28.5 shots per second times the average damage per shot above gives you your average damage per second.

 

[7340 + 6610 + 4410] respectively to 3 figs.

 

_____________________________

 

Let's give boltor this build:

 

Serration, Split Chamber, Speed Trigger, Bane of Whatever (+30% damage to a type of enemy)

 

Piercing Hit, Hellfire, Cryo Rounds, Storm Bringer

 

 

 

Boltor is 18 damage per shot base.

 

 

18 times 2.95 for serration with bane = 53.1 physics impact damage per shot.

 

This gets 0.9 x fire, cold and lightning, and 0.6 times AP. I will sum the fire, cold and lightning into one, and leave AP separate.

 

Elemental is then 53.1 * 2.7

 

53.1 PI + 143 Ele + 31.9 AP

 

We're not making a crit build, so its total crit modifier is

 

0.975 + ( 1.5 * .025) = 1.0125

 

Finally, we have 8.75 shots per second * 1.9 split chamber * 1.6 speed trigger.

 

Let's mix in the crit modifier to this calculation since it's too small a change to be worth showing on its own.

 

Boltor DPS is

 

[1430 PI + 3860 Ele + 858 AP]

 

That gives a total of 2290ish armor ignoring DPS against the 4410 of the Soma.

 

TL;DR

 

The Soma is in another class compared to the Boltor, doing far more damage overall, and doing nearly double the total AI damage.

Edited October 22, 2013 by Tenzek

[ChaoticVice777]

^^how even more if you factor in armor? wouldn't more armor favor the boltor because boltor is armor ignore rather than soma which isn't?

t

 

More armor wouldn't help because the Soma does far more armor-ignoring damage (Armor Piercing vs. Physics Impact) compared to the Boltor. Refer to the above calculations.

[Malora_Sidewinder]

^^my soma has been polarized twice and all of my mods are maxed with exception to serration. I can build a bit with soma, but my mods *currently* are as follows.

 

Maxed out mods: fast hands, stabilizer, stormbringer, shred, split chamber, point strike, vital sense, hellfire, split chamber, cry rounds, piercing hit, wildfire.

 

serration is level 6.

 

what build would you use for this? currently I run point strike, vital sense, split chamber, cryo rounds, piercing hit, wildfire, and if i'm facing corpus or infested i'll run either hellfire or strombringer.

[ChaoticVice777]

^^my soma has been polarized twice and all of my mods are maxed with exception to serration. I can build a bit with soma, but my mods *currently* are as follows.

 

Maxed out mods: fast hands, stabilizer, stormbringer, shred, split chamber, point strike, vital sense, hellfire, split chamber, cry rounds, piercing hit, wildfire.

 

serration is level 6.

 

what build would you use for this? currently I run point strike, vital sense, split chamber, cryo rounds, piercing hit, wildfire, and if i'm facing corpus or infested i'll run either hellfire or strombringer.

 

At the moment, the most effective build for the Soma is:

 

Serration, Split Chamber, Point Strike, Vital Sense, Hammer Shot, Armor Piercing, Shred, and Rifle Ammo Mutation

[Malora_Sidewinder]

More armor wouldn't help because the Soma does far more armor-ignoring damage (Armor Piercing vs. Physics Impact) compared to the Boltor. Refer to the above calculations.

I don't see that. I see the opposite, actually... the boltor isn't impeded by armor whereas soma is.

I'm not saying you're wrong... what's more likely is that im just missing a crucial piece somewhere along the line. where does soma get it's armor ignore from?

[DCypherThis13]

I think I get this... Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Boltor doesn't crit very well at all. It is armor ignoring, therefore you could skip Piercing Hit in the build. I wouldn't though, because armor piercing acts like another elemental damage form.

 

With a straight damage build, Boltor would simply dominate over Soma. But, when you build Soma for crits, with Piercing Hit you get the chance to crit on both the direct damage and the armor piercing. This is why Soma will out damage Boltor almost every time.

[ChaoticVice777]

I don't see that. I see the opposite, actually... the boltor isn't impeded by armor whereas soma is.

I'm not saying you're wrong... what's more likely is that im just missing a crucial piece somewhere along the line. where does soma get it's armor ignore from?

 

The Soma uses Piercing Hit to deals 60% Armor Piercing (an armor-ignoring type) damage. When you factor in the high critical stats and the fact that mods derive from the base stats (affected by critical stats), the Soma deals high amounts of armor-ignoring damage even with the low base damage. The Soma's armor-ignoring damage from Piercing Hit with the correct critical mods is enough to out-DPS even the combined damage of the Serrated Blade and Armor Piercing damage of the Flux Rifle (a general upgrade of the Boltor).

 

The Boltor just can't catch up. Even with its 18 initial Physics Impact damage (yet another armor-ignoring damage type), all elemental mods except for Armor Piercing (60% of 18 is far smaller than 60% of 73.5, even if the proportion is the same) will get resisted by enemy armor. Thus, at the high levels, you're going to be stuck with armor ignoring damage as the way to deal damage (ice to blow through shields and induce slowdown and the other elements to deal stuns).

Edited October 22, 2013 by ChaoticVice777

[DoomFruit]

I don't see that. I see the opposite, actually... the boltor isn't impeded by armor whereas soma is.

I'm not saying you're wrong... what's more likely is that im just missing a crucial piece somewhere along the line. where does soma get it's armor ignore from?

The armour piercing damage mod (Piercing Hit).

[Flackenstien]

They should totally buff Boltor a bit, then release a Boltor Prime with even more of a buff.

 

Yup yup.

[HackShield]

you know that boltor is a aussault rifle and soma is a gattling (beside you can use it all all art of rifle) so compare those are fail ._.

 

and you forget far 

 

that soma got more dmg boost mods cause soma us sarrotation (for base dmg ) and 160% more if you use vital and hammershot  cause soma is crit based 

 

boltor is NOT so it got only his base dmg boost

 

atm there is no rifle you can compare cause you would need a other crit based weapon 

Edited October 22, 2013 by HackShield

[Tenzek]

I don't see that. I see the opposite, actually... the boltor isn't impeded by armor whereas soma is.

I'm not saying you're wrong... what's more likely is that im just missing a crucial piece somewhere along the line. where does soma get it's armor ignore from?

 Well I wouldn't have bothered to give you the calculations you asked for if I knew you didn't plan to read them.