A smattering of thoughts (Destiny)

by someotherguy, Hertfordshire, England, Monday, December 29, 2014, 03:16 (3859 days ago) @ General Vagueness

As far as I've been able to tell, the Impact increase you see from Armour-piercing/High-calibre rounds doesn't actually translate to more damage. Not sure if that's because it only increases the Impact by 1, or if it doesn't actually increase the Impact (It's possible the weapon "cards" are not accurately linked to the weapons as much as they are just an easy visual representation. You see this most obviously with incorrect ammo counts - for some reason that stat is not accurate on a number of weapons.)

As for tiny reload increases, my frame-counting showed that 2 points of Reload Speed equate to just a single frame of reliad animation. An increase of 10 looks impressive, being 10% of the bar, but only speeds you up by 5 frames, or 0.166 seconds. Almost never worth it; a larger magazine is far more useful.

Similarly, Reactive Reload and Final Round only give +33% damage. In the case of Final Round, it seems tempting to keep a gun with a small magazine because it means that extra damage will proc more often, but you'd really just be better off with more bullets. Reactive Reload is not especially useful on Handcannons either. If you can pull off 3 shots at +33% it's the equivalent of firing an extra round, but you could have fired even more in the 3+ seconds it can take to reload some handcannons.

The best Handcannon build you can find is one with a low wmmo count and Field Scout. The low base ammo gives it a semi-decent (or less unvearable) Reload Speed and Field Scout gives you siginificantly higher damage output. Add Outlaw or Spray and Play an you're sorted.

Check out Future War Cult's The Chance, if you can bear to grind out the rep/marks.