Nikana Prime vs Fragor Prime

[xXx_mtv_xXx]

So why is Nikana Prime valued much higher than Fragor Prime? 

Fragor P seems to be a much better crit weapon. Is it the Nikana's speed and slash damage which makes it more valuable?

 

[ShortCat]

39 minutes ago, Varacal said:

even with the appropriate elemental combos, slash would do 25% more damage to flesh while impact will do 25% less to flesh, so it would still deal more damage

Ninana Prime:

• 4.75 Impact (-25%)
• 4.75 Puncture (+/- 0%)
• 85.5 Slash (+25%)
• +180% - 171 Viral (+75%)

One normal hit (not crit) on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 4.75*0.75+4.75+85.5*1.25 = 115.19 damage

One normal hit (not crit), enhanced with Viral damage, on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 115.19+171*1.75 = 299.25 damage

Fragor Prime:

• 91 Impact (-25%)
• 19.5 Punkture (+/- 0%)
• 19.5 Slash (+25%)
• +180% - 234 Viral (+75%)

One normal hit (not crit) on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 91*0.75+19.5+19.5*1.25 = 112.13 damage

One normal hit (not crit), enhanced with Viral damage, on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 112.13+234*1.75 = 409.5 damage

Even though Fragor Prime is mostly Impact based, without any mods both weapons do almost the same damage. IPS damage types have such low negativ/positiv damage multipliers, that you can often ignore them. Elemental damage types often enough provide +75% more damage. Furthermore, only 2 elemental mods will add almost twice as much elemental damage as the weapon already has. Thus damage per swing is much higher for Fragor Prime after adding some elements.

This is the reason Boltor P will decimate Corpus, if you mod it for Toxic/Magnetic although it has 0 Impact; this is the reason War performs so well, despite being an impact weapon; this is the reason right elemental combos are so important and and mods like Buzzkill or even Primed Heavy Trauma are so bad.

Edited August 11, 2016 by ShortCat

[DatDarkOne]

Nikana Prime hits about twice for every one swing of the Fragor Prime.  Faster stealth finisher.  Not MR locked (this might apply to both).  Because of the Nikana P's speed, you don't have to sacrifice a mod slot for a speed mod.  All this while doing roughly the same about of damage per swing or even having more DPS overall.  

[_Iye]

13 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

Ninana Prime:

• 4.75 Impact (-25%)
• 4.75 Puncture (+/- 0%)
• 85.5 Slash (+25%)
• +180% - 171 Viral (+75%)

One normal hit (not crit) on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 4.75*0.75+4.75+85.5*1.25 = 115.19 damage

One normal hit (not crit), enhanced with Viral damage, on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 115.19+171*1.75 = 299.25 damage

Fragor Prime:

• 91 Impact (-25%)
• 19.5 Punkture (+/- 0%)
• 19.5 Slash (+25%)
• +180% - 234 Viral (+75%)

One normal hit (not crit) on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 91*0.75+19.5+19.5*1.25 = 112.13 damage

One normal hit (not crit), enhanced with Viral damage, on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 112.13+234*1.75 = 409.5 damage

Even though Fragor Prime is mostly Impact based, without any mods both weapons do almost the same damage. IPS damage types have such low negativ/positiv damage multipliers, that you can often ignore them. Elemental damage types often enough provide +75% more damage. Furthermore, only 2 elemental mods will add almost twice as much elemental damage as the weapon already has. Thus damage per swing is much higher for Fragor Prime after adding some elements.

This is the reason Boltor P will decimate Corpus, if you mod it for Toxic/Magnetic although it has 0 Impact; this is the reason War performs so well, despite being an impact weapon; this is the reason right elemental combos are so important and and mods like Buzzkill or even Primed Heavy Trauma are so bad.

Understood everything as I know the fact you are explaining here but 2 things

1. Attack Speed & 2. Bleed Proc. which are not available with Fragor

[Airwolfen]

6 minutes ago, AhmadIYE said:

Understood everything as I know the fact you are explaining here but 2 things

1. Attack Speed & 2. Bleed Proc. which are not available with Fragor

Bleed is VERY annoying to calculate. So have fun if you want that part of the whole thing. Damage of the bleed, Status chance, chance for bleed to proc over other status types, Crit chance and Crit damage.

It is unreliable to say the least when calculating this stuff. Especially that if you ARE going to take bleed as part of it all you would also need to compare all other status chances and the effects they have on DPS.

And As will only bring you as far as quick melee as combos affect attack speed.

Lets just not go that far.

[ShortCat]

20 minutes ago, AhmadIYE said:

Understood everything as I know the fact you are explaining here but 2 things

1. Attack Speed & 2. Bleed Proc. which are not available with Fragor

I mentioned attack speed in my first post. Furthermore this calculation is not really about Fragor vs. Nikana, they are just examples. I started this because some people posted Slash is better than Impact, and I say total base damage number is important, not IPS distribution.

EDIT: Well this also shows how shallow all damage types are.

Edited August 11, 2016 by ShortCat

[.--Seiryu--.]

Actually, it really depends on which one you are more comfortable. 

For me, I like nikana because it has better attack speed, quicker reaction time to dodge or change my weapon. 

I also like fragor prime because it's shiny xD, but because it has lower attack speed, i use arcane strike on my syandana and helmet, while having berserker, corrupt charge and fury on it, so it really balance out. 

[_Iye]

16 minutes ago, Airwolfen said:

Bleed is VERY annoying to calculate. So have fun if you want that part of the whole thing. Damage of the bleed, Status chance, chance for bleed to proc over other status types, Crit chance and Crit damage.

It is unreliable to say the least when calculating this stuff. Especially that if you ARE going to take bleed as part of it all you would also need to compare all other status chances and the effects they have on DPS.

And As will only bring you as far as quick melee as combos affect attack speed.

Lets just not go that far.

The OP needed to know was simply one weapon over another and overall Nikana Prime with its attack speed and Bleed Proc is of course superior to Fragor Prime. Even if you dont wanna complicatedly calculate the bleed/status/crit then leave it but just so basic thing is a Nikana will hit 2-3 times against a single hit timing of Fragor Prime so according to your @ShortCat's calculation :p

One normal hit (not crit) on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 4.75*0.75+4.75+85.5*1.25 = 115.19 X 3 = 345.57 damage

One normal hit (not crit), enhanced with Viral damage, on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 115.19+171*1.75 = 299.25 X 3 =  897.75 damage

------------

One normal hit (not crit) on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 91*0.75+19.5+19.5*1.25 = 112.13 damage

One normal hit (not crit), enhanced with Viral damage, on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 112.13+234*1.75 = 409.5 damage

Edit: Apologies for the mix up here :P

Edited August 11, 2016 by AhmadIYE

[_Iye]

13 minutes ago, ShortCat said:

some people posted Slash is better than Impact, and I say total base damage number is important, not IPS distribution.

A little misunderstanding here may be but it cant be concluded by saying that slash is better than impact, in that case I will bring up my WAR to have a comparison or though off the line but Rakta where both of them are Impact and to me in most cases Rakta overshadows Dread. So, damage types are factional and pf course varies on user to user.

Edited August 11, 2016 by AhmadIYE

[Airwolfen]

3 minutes ago, AhmadIYE said:

To be frank dear, while discussing on the base damage comparison you went much deeper than expected but were on the point, so cheers.

But as the OP needed to know was simply one weapon over another and overall Nikana Prime with its attack speed and Bleed Proc is of course superior to Fragor Prime. Even if you dont wanna complicatedly calculate the bleed/status/crit then leave it but just so basic thing is a Nikana will hit 2-3 times against a single hit timing of Fragor Prime so according to your calculation:

One normal hit (not crit) on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 4.75*0.75+4.75+85.5*1.25 = 115.19 X 3 = 345.57 damage

One normal hit (not crit), enhanced with Viral damage, on a Grineer Lancer with no armor will do: 115.19+171*1.75 = 299.25 X 3 =  897.75 damage

Not my calculations btw :| just stating the part about bleed procs being annoying as hell to calculate :|

[_Iye]

1 minute ago, Airwolfen said:

Not my calculations btw :| just stating the part about bleed procs being annoying as hell to calculate :|

Yeah, I figured late and was editing my post but you already replied so sorry there.

[Airwolfen]

In the end it comes down to how you want your damage to ramp up. Nikana P has no real startup time as berserker stacks are nice but the AS is manageable at the start. Fragor has a low starting attack speed (though primed fury helps a lot) but ramps up a lot better because of the higher base crit stats.

So my advice if both of these suit your fancy.
Nikana excels in missions where you will be moving a lot from place to place and keeping combo counters going is not a given.
Fragor excels in more crowded missions where keeping combo counter momentum going is easier to do. at that point the stronger scaling criticals will start to outperform the nikana

[xXx_mtv_xXx]

42 minutes ago, Airwolfen said:

In the end it comes down to how you want your damage to ramp up. Nikana P has no real startup time as berserker stacks are nice but the AS is manageable at the start. Fragor has a low starting attack speed (though primed fury helps a lot) but ramps up a lot better because of the higher base crit stats.

So my advice if both of these suit your fancy.
Nikana excels in missions where you will be moving a lot from place to place and keeping combo counters going is not a given.
Fragor excels in more crowded missions where keeping combo counter momentum going is easier to do. at that point the stronger scaling criticals will start to outperform the nikana

Yeah I guess you pretty much nailed it. I get red crits all the time when bashing a swarm of infested with Fragor P, but obviously I won't be able to do that when bots are far apart - that's where speed is better. 

My Fragor P build (no Forma, no primed mods) ramps up to 148% crit chance with 4.8x: 

http://warframe-builder.com/Melee_Weapons/Builder/Fragor_Prime/t_30_200000002_224-7-5-226-4-5-238-3-3-239-6-5-244-5-5-247-1-5-251-2-5-305-8-3-637-0-10_637-7-247-9-251-11-238-7-226-9-244-9-239-9-224-9-305-10/en/4-0-103/103669/0

Not sure I can build anything that strong with the same resources on Nikana.

Edited August 11, 2016 by xXx_mtv_xXx

[(PSN)lhbuch]

6 hours ago, AhmadIYE said:

Cant find many people present the facts here but I'd like to point out something here.

Its a master of slash damage which will cause the bleed proc and damage overtime

Speed and crit chance with berserker (blood rush if you wanna build crit based build) and in hands of Excalibur Buddy (passive) its more like uncatchable with bare eyes and deadly as a viper.

Damage fall off is not that much effective as slash arguably works for all factions more or less but impact has certain faction limitations which makes the fragor optional.

The current lore and thematic perspective gave Nikana a higher place in the world of Warframe for which its more demanded than any other sword.

Note: My current standard build executes 3.5K damage without any buff/proc/crit.

 

Slash Procs amplified by some mechanics or powers like Silence cannot be compared to anything that other melee can do. 

 

[gluih]

On 11.8.2016 at 2:20 PM, xXx_mtv_xXx said:

Yeah I guess you pretty much nailed it. I get red crits all the time when bashing a swarm of infested with Fragor P, but obviously I won't be able to do that when bots are far apart - that's where speed is better. 

My Fragor P build (no Forma, no primed mods) ramps up to 148% crit chance with 4.8x: 

http://warframe-builder.com/Melee_Weapons/Builder/Fragor_Prime/t_30_200000002_224-7-5-226-4-5-238-3-3-239-6-5-244-5-5-247-1-5-251-2-5-305-8-3-637-0-10_637-7-247-9-251-11-238-7-226-9-244-9-239-9-224-9-305-10/en/4-0-103/103669/0

Not sure I can build anything that strong with the same resources on Nikana.

I would never use blood rush without body count. Dropping true steel works just fine, you already get red crits at 2x multiplier without it.
And then you also don't have life strike in there. It's personal preference ofc, but I really want it on my melee weapons, because you can heal back to full with a single channeled hit on most warframes. That's much better than using a pizza. On valkyr and volt you can just drop fury or if you have an arcane to get more attack speed. On other frames this simply means that the nikana build just works better in the end.

I've seen a lot of confusion about how much damage bleed procs actually add, so here are a few numbers:

Afaik the chance, that anything procs, = your status chance. The chance of it being a slash proc depends on how much of the total damage is slash damage. So if you have a 50% status chance, your weapon has 100 damage in total and 80 of that is slash damage, you get a 40% chance at a status proc. That's without elemental mods. The chance to get a slash proc based on how much slash damage you have is 4x higher than your chance at an elemental proc.
The damage of the proc is 245% (35%*7) of your base damage (slash + impact + puncture) and is only increased by effects that increase your total damage. Pressure point and point strike affect this damage, but buzzkill and elemental mods do not. The melee combo multiplier and crits do affect the damage.

Let's take 3 situations and look at how much your bleed procs will increase your damage (numbers are for the nikana prime).

1. You are using 2 90% elemental mods and I am going to ignore armor and damage modifiers (like puncture damage dealing extra damage against armor). Overall you would expect less damage increase from your bleed procs(because you would use a good elemental combo), but I am ignoring armor, so most of the time the expected increase in damage would actually be higher.
   ~35.7% of your damage is going be the basic weapon damage.
   35%*7 of this damage will be dealt as bleeding damage.
   You have a 20% status chance.
   The chance of one of the procs being a bleeding proc is ~62.0%
   0.357*0.35*7*0.2*0.62, so ~10.8% is going to be bleeding damage. At lower level you probably kill everything with 1 hit anyway and overall this doesn't seem to be very impressive.
2. You are using a status build and are attacking a lvl 80 corrupted bombard. Because you are going against the corrupted, you are using corrosive damage for our elementals.
   ~45.5% of your damage is going to be the basic weapon damage.
   again 35%*7 of this damage will be dealt as bleeding damage.
   You have a 44% status chance.
   The chance of one of the procs being a bleeding proc is 69.2%
   0.455*0.35*7*0.44*0.692, so ~33.9% which is quite a lot, but we didn't even factor in the armor.
   The bombard has ~5390 alloy armor. So your slash damage will be reduced to ~3,6% of what it usually is and the rest of your damage will be reduced to ~5% of what it usually is. So as you can see, your bleeding damage will be ~14x higher than the rest of your damage. In practice, you would have some armor reduction, because of corrosive projection, but you can also go higher than lvl 80.
3. So let's move on to a level 9999 bombard. At this point you either actually remove the armor from your enemies, by using corrosive procs, warframe abilities and corrosive projection or you basically don't deal damage outside of bleed procs.

Of course most of this irrelevant when running regular missions, that don't really go higher than lvl 30-40. Usually I don't bother changing my builds and just run around with corrosive damage on my melee and primary, because it is either the best choice or it doesn't really make a difference. However the bleed procs are quite relevant, when you are dealing with mods like buzzkill. Status builds can be a lot more than some fun, because the enemies are kocked down half the time.

Edited August 12, 2016 by gluih

[Aglethe]

That's a really good post by gluih, though there's maybe a couple of things to add to that:

On 8/11/2016 at 0:30 PM, gluih said:

I would never use blood rush without body count. Dropping true steel works just fine, you already get red crits at 2x multiplier without it.

There are additional levels of crit beyond the first level of red crits (the wiki article on crits covers it under the red crit section) so there's still a benefit to True Steel beyond just hitting guaranteed red crits. Though in most cases, yes, True Steel is usually the most expendable mod in the standard Blood Rush build.

On 8/11/2016 at 0:30 PM, gluih said:

Afaik the chance, that anything procs, = your status chance. The chance of it being a slash proc depends on how much of the total damage is slash damage. So if you have a 50% status chance, your weapon has 100 damage in total and 80 of that is slash damage, you get a 40% chance at a status proc. That's without elemental mods. The chance to get a slash proc based on how much slash damage you have is 3x higher than your chance at an elemental proc.
The damage of the proc is 35% of your base damage (slash + impact + puncture) and is only increased by effects that increase your total damage. Pressure point and point strike affect this damage, but buzzkill and elemental mods do not. The melee combo multiplier and crits do affect the damage.

From what I understand, (and what's listed on the wiki's status chance section) physical damage is weighted 4 times over elemental, rather than 3. Which can make it very difficult for an IPS melee weapon to be very effective with corrosive procs, at least in a Blood Rush build (if you're using two 60% hybrids as your elemental mods, there's only ~22% chance iirc that a status proc will be elemental).

Also bleed procs deal 7 ticks of 35% base damage over six seconds (one when the proc occurs, and one every second), so potentially up to 245% of base damage per proc, in the unlikely event than an enemy survives that long. Additionally, you can increase bleed damage with Ash's passive (+25% bleed proc damage and +50% bleed proc duration) and add ticks with effects that slow enemies like a Slowva's MPrime or a cold damage status proc. So there's various ways to really push bleed damage if you want to, but as you said, unless you really have a need to bypass armour or shields, it's not really the most effective way to go.

 

I'm not really sure if this is the right place for this or not, but I suppose it has some relevance here. I've been working on updating Dunking Machine's melee DPS charts (Reddit post and Youtube video) with some of the newer weapons and Primed Pressure Point (I also replaced his crit damage formula with the one from the wiki, since it didn't look quite right, though I may well have added errors of my own in data entry). I've just been doing it in my spare time in Notepad and Calcutor (the curse of the modern paper penless (home) office ;) ) so I only have some of the top weapons done so far, and only for the 4x combo multiplier with Naramon bracket. Which I'll concede isn't probably the most relevant in a post SoTR Warframe, but big numbers are fun and Dunking Machine did his work well before then, so here we are.

It's also worth pointing out that these are just maximal paper dps numbers (without factoring status procs) and aren't intended to serve as a real ranking of weapon effectiveness or be builds you should necessarily follow perse. But rather it's meant as a fun and (hopefully) accurate(ish) piece of food for thought.

Melee Weapon damage table for 4x combo multiplier with Naramon Deadly Intent active:

Weapon- Stance: Combo- DPS

War- Cleaving Whirlwind: Broken Bull- 307,263

Dark Split Sword- Swirling Tiger: Winding Claws- 263,143

Fragor Prime- Crushing Ruin: Shattered Village- 228,376

Nikana Prime- Blind Justice: Heeding Call- 206,499

War- Tempo Royale: August Mesto- 197,090

Dual Ichor- Swirling Tiger: Winding Claws- 161,832

Dual Kamas Prime- Swirling Tiger: Winding Claws- 136,844

Karyst- Pointed Wind: Parting Edge- 116,636

 

Edited August 13, 2016 by Aglethe
found some errors in my own crit math, DM was right to begin with, my bad, table updated

[gluih]

2 hours ago, Aglethe said:

That's a really good post by gluih, though there's maybe a couple of things to add to that:

There are additional levels of crit beyond the first level of red crits (the wiki article on crits covers it under the red crit section) so there's still a benefit to True Steel beyond just hitting guaranteed red crits. Though in most cases, yes, True Steel is usually the most expendable mod in the standard Blood Rush build.

From what I understand, (and what's listed on the wiki's status chance section) physical damage is weighted 4 times over elemental, rather than 3. Which can make it very difficult for an IPS melee weapon to be very effective with corrosive procs, at least in a Blood Rush build (if you're using two 60% hybrids as your elemental mods, there's only ~22% chance iirc that a status proc will be elemental).

Also bleed procs deal 7 ticks of 35% base damage over six seconds (one when the proc occurs, and one every second), so potentially up to 245% of base damage per proc, in the unlikely event than an enemy survives that long. Additionally, you can increase bleed damage with Ash's passive (+25% bleed proc damage and +50% bleed proc duration) and add ticks with effects that slow enemies like a Slowva's MPrime or a cold damage status proc. So there's various ways to really push bleed damage if you want to, but as you said, unless you really have a need to bypass armour or shields, it's not really the most effective way to go.

Thank you for pointing this out. I am going to update the post.