Looking at Destiny's damage system through weapon comparison (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Saturday, December 20, 2014, 19:02 (3867 days ago)
edited by General Vagueness, Saturday, December 20, 2014, 19:11

Or, Should I Use This Gun?

It's a Small Summary After All

For damage dealt per shot, in PvE, impact matters much more than attack, unless you're fighting high-level enemies, then attack matters slightly more than impact. If you're not sure, maximum impact is the safe bet. Weapon tier (rare, legendary, etc.), origin (reward, engram, loot chest, etc.), and required level don't seem to matter to damage dealt at all. Precision hits usually do three times the damage of normal hits, but not always.

There's not much of real importance to tell here beyond that and the data, except maybe some things in the notes section. You can read why and how I got the data, or you can skip down to the table, or you can even just take the summary at face value.

Why do this?

I started doing this because I wanted to know which of three or so hand cannons that I liked did the most damage. I've heard different things about which stats matter where and when, and I was wondering what the case actually is and how much different stats matter, mainly how they affect damage dealt, so I expanded the test to get some broader, concrete insight. I started a few weeks ago and had stuff get in the way, and then decided to wait until after the then-upcoming update, and then the next, bigger one.

I know other people have done this, the most notable around here being someotherguy (can't seem to find the PvE thread), and I trust and appreciate the research done, but I really wanted to get down to the nitty gritty and see how much impact and attack affect damage, and how enemy level affects it, which I haven't seen much information on. More than that, I really wanted to know how much each of those affects damage dealt. I wanted to get a feel for it if I could, and have numbers to back that up and to look to in case I couldn't tell a difference.

I tested this with hand cannons because of what I just mentioned, but I kept it to hand cannons
for the following reasons:

• I've accumulated a good few of them over the course of the game (including several over the course of testing this and waiting for updates to take effect), making for a broad but consistent test base
  
• it seems like they only show up in four, maybe five different impact values, where other weapon types seem to vary more (and shotguns possibly less), making it easier to be sure what has more of an effect
  
• they're less unwieldy than snipers
  
• they're much less susceptible to damage drop-off over distance than shotguns, the only other thing I had a lot of, and they seem less susceptible to it than auto rifles
  
• I like hand cannons

Methodology

The attack numbers listed are the ones that show up in the game.

The impact numbers are taken from bungie.net via the method described in this thread.

The damage numbers listed are the ones that appeared when I hit the indicated enemies with the indicated weapon.

All data is current as of the week this is being posted.

I only tested PvE, not PvP, because PvP is more hectic, players vary more than AI enemies, different damage modifiers are applied to it, including different ones for "standard" Crucible and the Iron Banner, and there may be other different PvP damage systems introduced with new playlists. I also limited the testing to patrols, because they reliably spawn an infinite number of enemies at a given level. If the damage is skewed for story missions and strikes (and I think there's a very real chance it is), that won't be reflected here, nor will the effects of any skulls/damage modifiers.

All testing was done with my Hunter at level 27 or 28, using a maxed out Gunslinger subclass, with most of the same abilities and armor active each time.

The level 2 enemies tested are the Fallen in The Steppes in Old Russia on Earth, where you spawn for patrols. The level 4 enemies are the Fallen in the Forgotten Shore area of Russia. The level 10 enemies are the Fallen in The Shattered Coast in the Ishtar Sink on Venus. The level 15 enemies are the Cabal and Vex in The Barrens at Meridian Bay on Mars. In this area, unlike in The Grottos, I saw different precision damage dealt to different species. Precision damage values for these enemies are marked with "C" for Cabal and "V" for Vex. The level 18 enemies are the Hive in the small tunnel in the Steppes. These are indicated with "18Y" because they have yellow health bars, known to go down more slowly than standard white ones. The level 20 enemies are the Hive (and two Fallen Dregs) in The Grottos on Earth, mostly in the outdoor entrance area coming from the Forgotten Shore.

For each group I killed a minimum of five enemies (and usually a dozen or more) with only the indicated weapon doing damage, with this rule only being relaxed for the level 15 enemies as they damage each other.

Any upgrades that change how damage is dealt that I unlocked during testing were left un-activated to ensure consistency.

All of the guns used will be in my vault or on one of my characters for at least a month in case anyone wants to look at their stats themselves. My gamertag is "Gnrl Vagueness". I may unlock and activate more upgrades to them, though.

I did limited testing of player level, specifically the same weapon (NIFTY_BISCUIT) on the same enemies (the level 2 enemies from the standard tests) at levels 20 through 28, and the same treatment for another weapon (Bandit Mk. 36) on another group of enemies (group 15) at levels 25 through 28, and a variety of weapons (Duke Mk. 21, Mos Gannon III, Searcher Mk. 20, The Devil You Know) on the same enemies (the level 20 enemies) at levels 27 and 28, and found no differences in damage dealt, supporting what I've heard: it doesn't matter what your level is as long as it's as high as or higher than the enemies you're fighting. Based on this, I included damage values seen at levels 27 and 28.

Concerns, Notes, and Thoughts

Other than the fact this is not an exhaustive comparison, possible flaws in this research are all down to the reason I did it in the first place: I don't know how the damage system works. I don't know what things may have affected the outcomes besides what I controlled for (character level, class, subclass, weapon type, distance) and what I specifically varied (attack, impact, enemy level, weapon rarity tier, origin/source, shooting at the body versus the head or the white thing on Vex).

You probably noticed this doesn't address anything beyond damage per shot. This is by design. I don't have the equipment or expertise I would want to have to judge the other stats and their effects that well, and to be frank I don't care enough to look into them in detail anyway, except maybe rate of fire. Suffice it to say, though, raw damage is not the be-all end-all, for example the highest-impact hand cannons I've had have all had a painfully slow reload, not to mention the trade-offs of various types of auto rifles or just using different types of weapons.

I have a feeling impact and all of the bar-based stats don't natively work on a scale out of 100 and bungie.net is just generating percentages server-side from whatever scale they use because it's easy to code the length of a bar that way and have it work and look presentable on different displays and browsers. The fact that hand cannons only seem to come in a few different impact values implies to me the scale may vary by weapon type.

I feel iffy about including the group 18Y enemies because I don't have data on other yellow-bar enemies and they feel like they take less damage than the yellow-bar 18s in the Forgotten Shore, but I already went to the trouble of testing everything against them, and the data does seem to demonstrate how yellow-bar enemies are different from standard ones, so I left it in.

The presence of shields seemed to have no affect on damage dealt (other than preventing precision damage, obviously).

I noticed at long range the damage numbers were lower, so any time I saw that happen I got closer and disregarded the lower numbers.

I had a few instances up close, maybe ten shots out of many enemies killed, where the damage numbers seemed to momentarily be lower for no obvious reason. I suspect this was due to near-misses causing a grazing shot of some kind. Since they were inconsistent, rare, and only showed up for a second, I haven't included those anomalous low numbers here. I also encountered at least one instance of a damage number higher than normal, seemingly twice as high as it should have been. I have no theory on that other than networking flaws.

The Hive Shrieker in the Grottos is worth noting because it was the only enemy to visibly regain health, but it seemed to take damage the same as other level 20 enemies (aside from not being able to take precision damage), plus it's very easy to avoid its shots, so it's potentially a good candidate for further focused tests.

The way the damage numbers tend to go up as the enemy level goes up was very interesting to me.
The way certain damage numbers stop going up as the enemy levels go up at various points suggests to me either enemies are sort of bracketed together in some way or there's a multiplier being applied at some point that works out to 1 or cancels out for anything above a certain point.

Given that the other figures that were compared came out to almost exactly a 3:1 precision:base damage ratio and given that the damage values for group 15 and group 20 mostly being the same, I'd say the Vex, or at least Vex on Mars, or at least Vex in The Barrens, take less precision damage than normal.

The last but probably most important thing to note: Every time I had a gap in my testing and every time an update was applied I would check some of my numbers again to make sure they were still accurate, and after the gap I mentioned before I double(C)hecked all the numbers I had up to that point (roughly half the weapons used on the various enemies in Old Russia) and the damage numbers were all the same-- except for The Last Word. At some point when I wasn't testing something caused The Last Word, or at least my copy of it, to do more damage under certain circumstances. Specifically, two weeks ago, it did 305 points of damage on body shots to the 18Y enemies and 458 on precision shots to the 18Y enemies, and it did 366 base damage and 1098 precision damage on the level 20 enemies, and now it does noticeably more, as shown below. Damage to weaker enemies was unaffected.

I didn't upgrade or change it, the attack and impact numbers are the same as before, and there has been no announced change to The Last Word that I'm aware of in the last several weeks, or any change I can remember that made every exotic or every hand cannon more powerful, whether announced or found by players. It could be that I missed some announcement, or there has been an unannounced change, or some announced change affected it unintentionally.

Given that it went from being marginally worse than the best hand cannon I had that was one notch higher in impact (NIFTY_BISCUIT) to being marginally better, and The Devil You Know is the same way for guns just above its impact bracket (although I don't know if it changed since I didn't get it until near the end of the gap in testing), I suspect Bungie changed legendary and exotic weapons, or just legendary and exotic weapons bought from vendors, like mine were, to make them more worth using in harder encounters.

(After the most recent update, I thought the damage for it changed again. For the level 2 enemies it changed to 127 for base damage and 379 for precision. After much testing I remembered I had changed the sight on it, which I had thought nothing of since it didn't show any change to impact. After changing it back I got the previous damage values, and checking the description, the sight I had changed to mentioned a penalty to impact, even though it didn't display any on the stat bar. The lesson here is that a sight or perk or upgrade displaying no stat change doesn't mean it doesn't do what it says it does, and that in testing, unless you're comparing sights or perks, you have to keep them the same.)

The fact this was changed without affecting other weapons, as with the announced changes to exotic (and legendary?) weapons that have happened before, and the fact that the damage dealt to differently-leveled enemies changed independently, and the fact different enemies of the same level took different precision damage, but the same precision damage as other higher-level enemies, all make me concerned that maybe a precise model of the damage system can't be constructed using only player-facing data, because these changes imply damage for any given weapon and/or any given enemy is more or less arbitrary rather than being part of a coherent system.
Before every test I thought I was getting a handle on it, and after every test, comparing the numbers, it would throw me another curveball.

I suspect, though, that common, uncommon, and rare weapons, along with unaltered legendaries and any unaltered exotics that might still exist, all follow the same algorithm to determine damage dealt for a given species, and this might be figured out to a good degree of precision with what we're given.

Regardless of how it's set up, I would want to see data on more enemy types and more weapons and weapon types before I place any trust in any calculations done on damage values by myself or anyone else in the community.

The Guns

Meet the wolf pack:

Duke Mk. 21 (D21): common, 43 attack, 81% impact, requires level 5, origin uncertain, likely gunsmith
Mos Gannon III (MG3): uncommon, 130 attack, 68% impact, requires level 13, origin uncertain
Searcher Mk. 20 (S20): common, 132 attack, 94% impact, requires level 15, origin uncertain, either gunsmith or random drop
Bandit Mk. 36 (B36): uncommon, 186 attack, 81% impact, requires level 18, origin uncertain
Regulator Mk. 56 (R56): rare, 213 attack, 94% impact, requires level 19, strike reward
Painted Big Chief Mk. 45 (PBC45): rare, 224 attack, 94% impact, requires level 20, Crucible reward
Silvered Maverick Mk. 41 (SM41): rare, 230 attack, 81% impact, requires level 19, Crucible reward
NIFTY_BISCUIT (NB): rare, 242 attack, 81% impact, requires level 20, origin uncertain, possibly Crucible reward or engram
The Devil You Know (TDYK): legendary, 248 attack, 81% impact, requires level 20, bought from the Vanguard
The Last Word (TLW): exotic, 260 attack, 68% impact, requires level 20, bought from Xur

Damage Table

Gun:        Enemies:    Attack/Impact:    Base damage/precision damage:

D21         2           43/81%            96/287
MG3         2           130/68%           133/398
S20         2           132/94%           165/493
B36         2           186/81%           149/446
R56         2           213/94%           165/493
PBC45       2           224/94%           165/493
SM41        2           230/81%           149/446
NB          2           242/81%           149/446
TDYK        2           248/81%           149/446
TLW         2           260/68%           133/398

D21         4           43/81%            96/287
MG3         4           130/68%           152/456
S20         4           132/94%           188/564
B36         4           186/81%           170/510
R56         4           213/94%           188/564
PBC45       4           224/94%           188/564
SM41        4           230/81%           170/510
NB          4           242/81%           170/510
TDYK        4           248/81%           170/510
TLW         4           260/68%           152/456

D21         10          43/81%            96/287
MG3         10          130/68%           166/497
S20         10          132/94%           208/623
B36         10          186/81%           255/765
R56         10          213/94%           283/847
PBC45       10          224/94%           283/847
SM41        10          230/81%           255/765
NB          10          242/81%           255/765
TDYK        10          248/81%           255/765
TLW         10          260/68%           228/684

D21         15          43/81%            96/205(C),287(V)
MG3         15          130/68%           166/355(C),497(V)
S20         15          132/94%           208/445(C),623(V)
B36         15          186/81%           259/555(C),777(V)
R56         15          213/94%           346/741(C),1037(V)
PBC45       15          224/94%           370/793(C),1110(V)
SM41        15          230/81%           347/744(C),1041(V)
NB          15          242/81%           358/767(C),1073(V)
TDYK        15          248/81%           358/767(C),1073(V)
TLW         15          260/68%           320/685(C),959(V)

D21         18Y         43/81%            80/120
MG3         18Y         130/68%           138/207
S20         18Y         132/94%           173/260
B36         18Y         186/81%           216/324
R56         18Y         213/94%           288/432
PBC45       18Y         224/94%           309/463
SM41        18Y         230/81%           290/434
NB          18Y         242/81%           310/464
TDYK        18Y         248/81%           319/479
TLW         18Y         260/68%           327/490

D21         20          43/81%            96/287
MG3         20          130/68%           166/497
S20         20          132/94%           208/623
B36         20          186/81%           259/777
R56         20          213/94%           346/1037
PBC45       20          224/94%           370/1110
SM41        20          230/81%           347/1041
NB          20          242/81%           372/1114
TDYK        20          248/81%           383/1148
TLW         20          260/68%           396/1187