Heavy Caliber or not Heavy Caliber?

[Ramlethal_SigN]

I was wondering why a friend of mine won't use heavy caliber on all of his rifles, like Stradavar, Dera, Soma. Then I decided to try it myself.

I've made a test with the Dera Vandal, the performance against a high armor enemy (lvl 125 heavy gunner), with heavy caliber, and one, replacing heavy caliber with a 90% elemental mod:

 

What do you guys think about these performances?

[SolaireTheSunWalker]

Some weapons should never use heavy cal like the javlok, snipers,glaxion if you only want headshots etc. The Dera gets kinda bad accuracy but I still use it on every rifle because it increases the damage but that much more. It's up to the person if they want accuracy or if they want more damage 

[AreeSoothsayer]

The vandel doesn't lose too much in the way of accuracy with the heavy, you should use a weapon where the shots are highly visible. Then you can see the difference between the two mods. 

You should do it at longer range as well, you didn't give much drift time for the weapon.

[Ramlethal_SigN]

1 minute ago, AreeSoothsayer said:

The vandel doesn't lose too much in the way of accuracy with the heavy, you should use a weapon where the shots are highly visible. Then you can see the difference between the two mods. 

You should do it at longer range as well, you didn't give much drift time for the weapon.

yes you're right! the accuracy difference is huge on longer distances, and the weapon seems to miss a lot of dmg with a longer distance.

[kaliazane]

Only use it on weapons where it doesn't matter, like Ignis or Amprex. 

[Echorion]

Put it on a vectis or a bow and then try and actually hit something xD

[ComCray]

It's a simple tradeoff tbh. Say, for simplicity's sake, my gun shoots three bullets, do I want:

- all three 50 damage bullets to hit their target
- on of three 150 damage bullets to hit the target.

I know it's not THAT simple but for many a weapon it does come down to something like this.

The Dera Vandal is a highly accurate weapon, like - extremely accurate, coupled with it's high fire rate it's a great weapon for mid to long range assault techniques. It'd be a real shame to put on HC as you really want all those bullets hitting their target, preferably the heads, with short controlled bursts.

The Gorgon is less of an accurate weapon but has great suppressing potential, it's a bullet hose for close to mid range combat. As such the drop in accuracy is a small price to pay considering the increase in damage for each bullet that DOES land.

So, accurate assault type weapons: Nope. Spray and pray heavy machine gun type weapons: Yup.

Oh as for bows and snipers: Hell no!

[Ramlethal_SigN]

7 minutes ago, Echorion said:

Put it on a vectis or a bow and then try and actually hit something xD

I actually use it on my Vulkar xD...and sometimes is annoying to miss a hit, but when it actually hit, i get all those oneshots on LoR

[Ramlethal_SigN]

7 minutes ago, ComCray said:

It's a simple tradeoff tbh. Say, for simplicity's sake, my gun shoots three bullets, do I want:

- all three 50 damage bullets to hit their target
- on of three 150 damage bullets to hit the target.

I know it's not THAT simple but for many a weapon it does come down to something like this.

The Dera Vandal is a highly accurate weapon, like - extremely accurate, coupled with it's high fire rate it's a great weapon for mid to long range assault techniques. It'd be a real shame to put on HC as you really want all those bullets hitting their target, preferably the heads, with short controlled bursts.

The Gorgon is less of an accurate weapon but has great suppressing potential, it's a bullet hose for close to mid range combat. As such the drop in accuracy is a small price to pay considering the increase in damage for each bullet that DOES land.

So, accurate assault type weapons: Nope. Spray and pray heavy machine gun type weapons: Yup.

Oh as for bows and snipers: Hell no!

Oh i see, thank you for your reply. I haven't thought of the differences in weapon accuracy, But still not convinced about how +165% base damage upgrade can pair up with 90% elem mod. I might be missing something, but i thing math is not being coherent this time...

[ashrah]

depends from wepon.. i can give u couple examples... on soma is pretty good on lanka also... but on dera.vectis... totaly ruin that wepons

[Ramlethal_SigN]

1 minute ago, ashrah said:

depends from wepon.. i can give u couple examples... on soma is pretty good on lanka also... but on dera.vectis... totaly ruin that wepons

and what do you think is better? 90% elem damage or 120% physical damage, like piercing caliber?

[Aesthetic_Dialectic]

If you pay attention the accuracy is at all the deciding factor here. The elemental mod killed the targets faster. This for two reasons, one the elemental mod adds it's multiplier AFTER base damage is calculated, which is why elemental mods always add more damage. The second reason is that elemental damages like corrosive have an additional multiplier on certain enemies types that exceeds IPS multipliers. In this case he increased the corrosive damage, which net an additional +75% damage to the ferrite armor Gunners.

[ComCray]

 

12 minutes ago, Ramlethal_SigN said:

Oh i see, thank you for your reply. I haven't thought of the differences in weapon accuracy, But still not convinced about how +165% base damage upgrade can pair up with 90% elem mod. I might be missing something, but i thing math is not being coherent this time...

From the HC Wiki:
Damage increase of Heavy Caliber stacks additively with that of Serration. With Serration and Heavy Caliber both maxed, you can reach +330% base damage in total, before adding Elemental and Faction based damage mods.
Since the two stack additively, combining the two can be cost ineffective when weighed against mod point drain. Adding a maxed Heavy Caliber onto a maxed Serration yields only an additional 62% to your base shot damage. This is because the relative increase from 265% damage to 430% damage is not as significant as the increase from 100% to 265%.
However, this is still a base damage increase, so elemental mods multiply with, rather than add to, Heavy Caliber's effect.

 

Just now, silkygoodness said:

If you pay attention the accuracy is at all the deciding factor here. The elemental mod killed the targets faster. This for two reasons, one the elemental mod adds it's multiplier AFTER base damage is calculated, which is why elemental mods always add more damage. The second reason is that elemental damages like corrosive have an additional multiplier on certain enemies types that exceeds IPS multipliers. In this case he increased the corrosive damage, which net an additional +75% damage to the ferrite armor Gunners.

What he said. The whole thing about adding elemental damage is that it changes the way certain enemies react to the damage that is send their way. They have weaknesses and resistances to specific elemental damage types. Hence it's not as straightforward as our loadout screen leads us to believe.

My suggestion would be to read up on Damage 2.0 on the Wiki*. Even if the whole thing doesn't actually make much sense to you at first, just read it so it's in your head. Then go to Warframe Builder** and fark around a bit with different combinations of Serration, HC and the various 90% elemental mods. Be sure to click the "Details" link for each combination you try. I promise you that after three or four combos it starts to make sense and you'll end up far better equipped to make judgments on which combo to use where on what weapon and why.

 

* http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/Damage_2.0

* http://warframe-builder.com/Primary_Weapons/Builder/Dera_Vandal

[ComCray]

38 minutes ago, Ramlethal_SigN said:

I actually use it on my Vulkar xD...and sometimes is annoying to miss a hit, but when it actually hit, i get all those oneshots on LoR

Actually, and this is "science", at max rank you will miss roughly two shots out of three (aiming for the head and landing on the torso I count as a miss). Though the hits you get will indeed be devastating, this is mainly down to the high status effect of the weapon more then the added damage. Can I suggest you try a pure status build without the HC? Just try it for feces and giggles. You might actually like what happens...

Edited March 9, 2017 by ComCray

[Ramlethal_SigN]

3 minutes ago, ComCray said:

Actually, and this is "science", at max rank you will miss roughly two shots out of three. Though the one hit you get will indeed be devastating, this is mainly down to the high status effect of the weapon more then the added damage. Can I suggest you try a pure status build without the HC? Just try it for S#&$s and giggles. You might actually like what happens...

i will try, i think if i use the base dmg build with HC, its more like, 1 build that will work with all the factions, barely. but to be more efficient i should make focus on elemental dmg based on the focus im against, right?

[ComCray]

Just now, Ramlethal_SigN said:

i will try, i think if i use the base dmg build with HC, its more like, 1 build that will work with all the factions, barely. but to be more efficient i should make focus on elemental dmg based on the focus im against, right?

Yes. What you gain in understanding we will call "True Mastery", which is a whole lot more interesting then "Mastery Rank" :D

[ashrah]

37 minutes ago, Ramlethal_SigN said:

and what do you think is better? 90% elem damage or 120% physical damage, like piercing caliber?

element dmg is alwayes better... u get overall more dmg

[Aesthetic_Dialectic]

2 hours ago, Ramlethal_SigN said:

and what do you think is better? 90% elem damage or 120% physical damage, like piercing caliber?

Only under some very specific circumstances will those be better. The math looks something like this

Say you have a weapon with equal parts impact, slash and puncture. 100 in each totally to 300 damage.

If you add a 120% slash damage it will multiply your 100 slash damage by 2.2, or 120%. This give you 100 impact, 100 puncture and 220 slash damage.

Now if you add a 90% shock damage mod it will add 90% of that base damage as shock. This will multiply the entire 300  base damage by 1.9 So then you get

100 impact

100 slash

100 puncture

270 Shock damage

Do you see how that works? Now in the case of add serration and a 90% mod or heavy caliber it works like this.

Serration boosts the base damage by 165%, this multiplies your 300 by 2.65 this gets you 795 damage. Adding heavy caliber for an additional 165% changes the base damage multiplier to 330, or multiplying it by 4.3 this gets you 1290 base damage.

Now this is where it gets interesting, elemental damage mods do not combine with the base damage multiplier, it multiplies after that so you have (base damage*serration/heavy caliber)elemental. So if you add a 90% mod you're adding 90% to the 795, NOT the 300. This gets you 1510.5 damage instead. 715.5 of that being elemental.

For this reason Bane mods actually add the most damage because they multiply even after the elemental mods. That 30% is nothing to take lightly.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

personally I value Accuracy too much to use  Heavy Caliber. it's no good having the extra damage if you can't even hit your target, and getting up close isn't always an option with some frames. long-range accuracy shouldn't be a luxury, it should be essential, there's no excuse for an imprecise rifle.

now with Shotguns and certain Secondaries, it's definitely worth it, because 8 or so projectiles spreading out greatly increases your chance of hitting the target compared to a rifle, so it more or less cancels out the accuracy penalty. there are some exceptions to the rule though: Vaykor Hek for example is way better with narrow spread for concentrated crit damage, and you can pretty much snipe with it then. that said, I wouldn't want Heavy Cal removed or nerfed or anything, because it does have a niche role, and you never know when a weapon might come along that truly gains an advantage from it (such as an LMG with hideous base accuracy and high damage).