PvP Damage Mechanics (PRE-0.8.4 NO LONGER APPLICABLE)

As a follow up to my article on PvE Damage Mechanics, I set out with the same goal of providing an accurate formula that would be able to be used to recalculate damage in PvP for any weapon. After much testing and re-testing, the amount of work it would take to do that is staggering for reasons that will become apparent in this article. I can, however, lay out the basics of the variables that determine damage dealt in PvP. 

Key takeaways 

For those of you that want the condensed version of the article, here are the recommendations for what to do with all of the information to follow about how the mechanics work to make decisions about what guns to use and what armor to equip. 

Because the hidden bonuses tied to armor and weapon rarity are calculated as a net value between damage dealer and opponent, it is most important to equip the rarest items you have (to a certain extent) so as not to give your opponent the advantage. This means that because legendary weapons are so prevalent, most of your opponents will be using them, so you are already starting off at a disadvantage if you equip any unique epics or non-unique epics in your weapon slots. Only the best of unique epic weapons are even usable in skilled hands and severe compensating measures must be taken with the rest of your loadout to offset the decision to not equip a legendary weapon. 

Without considering buffs and using a Faraday Accelerator against an opponent with all legendary weapons and full unique epic armor, 1 piece of legendary armor will have no impact to either resistance or damage, 2 pieces of legendary armor gives you 1 point of damage boost, 3-4 pieces of legendary armor will give you 1 point of damage boost and 1 point of resistance, and 5 legendary will give you 2 points of damage boost and 1 point of resistance.  

This shows that obviously it is best to equip full legendary armor and weapons if possible, but most often, the perks on players’ legendary gear is inferior to some of the epic pieces that he or she has. Therefore, I looked more closely at the difference between the time to kill using 3 pieces of legendary gear versus 5 pieces and found that moving up to 5 pieces of legendary gear only accounted for a difference of 0.15 seconds in time to kill. This is incredibly miniscule, and leads me to conclude that it will likely be optimal for most everyone to equip 3 of their best pieces of legendary gear with the remaining two pieces preferably being unique epic gear like Phantasm or Fertilizator. When making the decision on what perks to sacrifice in selecting your legendary armor pieces, know that HP and Base Weapon Damage are the most important, while crit is the easiest to sacrifice. 

It is important for me to make the distinction that the concept of there being a minimum number of legendary armor pieces you must equip to capture the damage and resistance bonuses is NOT an accurate concept. Remember, it is all determined by the NET difference in number of rare items between two opponents, so for any of the numbers quoted above, you would need to have X number of pieces MORE than your opponent to see those bonuses. It is for this reason that I suggest equipping 3 pieces of legendary armor (in addition to all legendary weapons) because the highest advantage your opponent can have on you is 2 pieces of legendary armor, which MAYBE only gives the opponent an extra point of damage on their primary over you (depending on the base damage of the gun of course). I would be willing to guess that the opponent with 5 legendary pieces has had to make a few perk sacrifices to use that loadout, so his or her advantage is likely minimal.

How I got there 

As for the supporting information behind all these key takeaways, first and foremost is the concept of hidden bonuses from the armor and weapon loadout that you have equipped for your character. It has been known for a while that equipping legendary armor will increase your resistance to damage from your opponent, but what is a lesser known fact is that the rarity of all items equipped (except cosmetics, of course) impacts both the damage dealt to your opponent and the damage taken from your opponent. This is readily apparent if you use a True Patriot or other high damage weapon in PvP. Simply by changing the rarity of any of the weapons you have (say from changing from an Ostrich to a Mother’s Promise) or the rarity of your armor (from epic to legendary), you will see that the damage dealt with your True Patriot will increase (assuming the opponent’s weapon and armor loadout has remained the same). The final nuance that must be considered is that there are slight differences in these hidden bonuses even among epic rarity items, namely between unique epics and non-unique epics. Unique epics include weapons like Shadow, Fire Fist Spewer, and the like, while non-unique epics include the Yutani II, PZ-36D5 Despair, and AT Zizka II. Examples of Unique epic armor include the sets available for purchase at Nitro’s shop, as well as event armor, such as Phantasm, Fertilizator, Solar Storm, and Chimera. Non-unique epic armor includes the Ronin, Butterfly, Wasp, Pteradon, and other such sets.   

Because of this mechanic of hidden bonuses due to rarity, the amount of potential combinations of gear loadouts between two opponents is staggering. As the hidden bonuses are not linked to specific pieces, but rather the number of items per rarity, there are 9 unique combinations of weapons that can be equipped and 15 unique combinations of armor (this excludes uncommon and rare gear from consideration). This means that there are 135 possible unique combinations of weapons and armor by rarity. If I were to try to create a matrix of the hidden bonus that is applicable in each scenario between two opponents, that would mean displaying 18,225 unique values. Let’s face it. Even I don’t have the appetite for consuming that much data.   

For those of you that have watched the video that I recorded to set MFG straight on the fact that these hidden bonuses do indeed exist, I introduced the concept of net differences in item rarity between two opponents. What this means is that because there are hidden bonuses from the type of armor you choose to equip, if you were to face an opponent with the exact same loadout (from an item rarity standpoint) then the hidden bonuses would offset one another. Any damage boost for the damage dealer is perfectly offset by the resistance boost on the opponent. I’ve proven this out in my video, and from there I also proved that when there were differences in the loadout, obviously the character with a rarer loadout did more damage and took less damage, but it also worked from a net piece count perspective. In other words, if the damage dealer has 3 legendary weapons, 3 pieces of legendary armor, and 2 pieces of unique epic armor and the opponent has 3 legendary weapons, 0 pieces of legendary armor, and 5 pieces of unique epic armor, the damage and resistance in this scenario will remain the same if both the damage dealer and opponent change their loadout to increase their number of legendary armor pieces by 1. That way, the net advantage of one character is still 3 pieces of legendary armor, so the same hidden bonus applies.   

Once I figured this out, that helped me to determine once and for all what the true base damage of a gun is in PvP before any other bonuses from armor, perks, skills, or buffs. All I had to do was make sure that my skill trees were reset on both the damage dealer and opponent and have them equip the same rarity of loadout to make the hidden armor bonus be zero. This allowed me to finally determine the accurate %’s to be applied to the base damage of the weapon that you see on its information card in the game to determine what the true base damage is. For legendary weapons, I found that 11.764% is the appropriate multiplier to apply to the base weapon damage, while for unique epics, 10.13% is the multiplier that works for all but two high damage snipers (Vampire’s Kiss and Meltdown came in at one hit point lower than 10.13% of their stated base damage in PvE). It should be noted that you cannot just multiply the base damage of shotguns and multi-launchers by the stated percentages, the game calculates the damage per pellet/rocket rather than as a collective hit. What this means is that in order to calculate the damage of shotguns and multi-launchers, you have to divide the base damage stated on the weapon card by 8 for shotguns and 3 for multi-launchers. Then round that number down to get rid of the decimal point and multiply it by the respective 11.764% or 10.13% depending on the rarity of the weapon. This will give you the damage per pellet/rocket that can then be multiplied by 8 or 3 again to determine the actual base damage in PvP.   

Now, from the testing that I have performed, the amount of the incremental bonuses as you equip rarer items typically ranges from 1-2% of base damage per item (particularly as you move from unique epic to legendary). With bonuses that are this small, you can only really observe them when testing with a high damage weapon (I used the True Patriot). When it comes to primary weapons, you are dealing with base damage numbers in the teens, so you’ll need a couple of pieces to actually notice a difference in damage or resistance. What all this boils down to is that when PvP damage is determined in game, it follows a specific order that is not unlike how damage to an enemy carrying damage resistance works in PvE. First, a net bonus/reduction to weapon damage will be determined based on the rarity of items equipped by the damage dealer and opponent. Think of this as the net resistance factor of your target like how the Blade Dancer automatically reduces your base weapon damage by 15%. This new number once the hidden bonuses are factored in becomes your adjusted base damage in PvP. The rest of the damage calculation works the exact same as in PvE. Projectile Resistance skill/buff comes first, Sneak Attack and Lord of War next, then any damage boosts from armor and buffs next, and finally any crit boost from your gear is added to the base 1.5 multiplier to determine the critical hit value. I should note that it is unclear to me whether the hidden bonuses from armor rarity carry specific bonuses to crit because there were instances where as I was equipping more items of increasing rarity, the base damage did not change while the crit did increase, but I did not have time to test this in further detail. However, because of the fact that there are small bonuses in the background that sometimes round down from a base damage perspective, these fractions of a point can make a difference when multiplying by the crit multiplier to add an extra point or so. I strongly suspect that this is the case when it comes to crit damage rather than the armor carrying a hidden bonus specific to crit damage.        

Making specific decisions   

To take what I’ve learned even further, here are some remaining questions that I get asked repeatedly when it comes to making the proper decisions when selecting a PvP loadout.   

1)      What amount of damage boost do I need on gloves to boost my primary damage by 1 point?

2)      What amount of crit boost do I need to boost my crit by 1 point?

3)      What amount of HP should I be looking for on a legendary chest that would yield similar time to kill performance as an epic chest piece that has higher HP perks?

4)      What build is best for PvP?   

With regards to how much damage boost is needed, the answer to this question depends on the adjusted base damage of the gun once the hidden armor and weapon bonuses have been factored in. The higher the base damage, the lower the % damage boost required to boost the damage. While a gun like the Faraday could get away with 6% damage gloves, a lower damage rifle like Niko needs 7% in most scenarios to have its damage boosted by a point; therefore, for ARs, I recommend gloves that have a minimum of 7% damage on them. Any less is ineffectual and any more is overkill. For SMGs, between 8% and 10% boost is typically required to cover all legendary SMGs. For shotguns, because the damage boost is applied per pellet rather than on the overall damage, 10% gloves are needed to boost the damage of a select few shotguns, namely Fearargini, Nebula, and Fire Fist Roarer. The damage per pellet is too low for other shotguns to be impacted by base damage boost on gloves without further assistance from buffs.   

We all know that everyone goes crazy for even the most miniscule of crit improvements, but the impact of a few additional points of crit can actually be negligible. Like the previous answer, the amount of crit % needed to boost crit by a single point depends on the base damage of the gun. Higher damage weapons like Faraday need only about 5-6 points of crit per additional point of crit damage, but this number increases by a couple points for weapons with lower base damage. If you’re like me and only have 20% crit on your legendary shoulders, don’t fret too much over not equipping your 26, 27, 28, or 29% shoulders. It is also important to remember that any increase in base damage should be multiplied by 1.5 to determine the impact on crit damage, so a 10% increase to base damage inherently yields 15 additional crit % points.   

For the question of the amount of HP that should be sought after for a legendary chest piece, the obvious answer is as high as possible, but this is an inappropriately phrased question as the concept of the net difference in item rarity is what gives you extra resistance, not simply equipping a legendary chest piece. In the past 6 months or so, events have offered max level players the opportunities to grab a 40% chest (Adjudicator) and two 42% chests (Phantasm and Fertilizator), so it is increasingly common for players to want to equip these chest pieces when entering PvP games. While these are all unique epic pieces of armor, they are still great choices for use in PvP. If you are going to use the legendary chest to complete your 3 pieces of legendary armor benchmark that I stated earlier, then I would say 30% is an absolute minimum, but 35% is acceptable and wouldn’t result in a significantly lower time to kill than your opponent.   

And now to the incredibly personal debate of the best build to choose. I won’t go into too much detail here as I have already written another piece on PvP builds that I like and my approach to trying different ones out. Personally, I really like 9-point Survival builds for PvP because when I combine the 5% projectile resistance from skills with the 15% projectile resistance bar buff, this can act like additional pieces of legendary armor so that I can be freed up to run with even fewer pieces of legendary armor. Prior to dropping better legendary armor pieces, I consistently would grab the 9% damage and 15% projectile resistance bar buffs and run with only 2 pieces of legendary armor, which yielded results consistent with running 3-4 pieces of legendary armor. Although some will opt for higher crit builds in the Agility tree, the damage difference that 20% resistance can make in a battle can create an enormous advantage for me that an opponent must overcome with superior skill or cunning.  Two builds that I’ve come to love are 8A-3C-9S and 5A-6C-9S. The latter of these two builds is what I would run with when I used Faraday most often. However, it is not a very PvE-friendly build without AM Bomb or Sprint Reload available, and with Wintermute now out there, which does similar DPS to Faraday, 8A-3C-9S has been my build of choice for quite a while now.   

Best guns to use   

Based on the data that I collected, I gathered the base damage amounts for some 80 different weapons, including many event weapons, all unique epics, and legendary weapons. Here are the best guns in each category based on looking at the highest DPS and, conversely, the lowest time to kill an opponent with 160 HP, as well as % accuracy required to kill an enemy with a single clip (body shots only).   

Auto Rifles: Faraday Accelerator and Niko’s Stopper   

Reasons: Faraday does the highest DPS in PvP of any primary weapon in the game; however clip size management and accuracy can make it a difficult weapon to handle. The Niko’s Stopper is the most well-balanced gun in the game and manages to put out respectable DPS in PvP.   

SMGs: Wintermute   

Reasons: I’ve been an SMG fan ever since I picked up SGL, and the Pazuzu had its brief moment in the sun in PvP before normalization took over. This gun brings the previous performance of the Pazuzu back to life. Its DPS is almost on par with Faraday and it has a great big clip and controllable bullet spread to make it an easy to control killing machine. Another thing to consider is that due to the high fire rate of the gun, you’ll land a lot more body shots even when the target is moving around so much as compared to something like Faraday, which fires 3 fewer bullets per second.   

Shotguns: Fearargini, Singh’s Song, and Nebula   

Reasons: Surprisingly enough, Fearargini has the highest DPS and lowest time to kill of all legendary shotguns, but all three of these shotguns are fairly close to each other in the stat categories, so it’s really a matter of preference. I personally go with the Nebula on the off times I do roll with a shotgun just because it does the highest damage per pellet of the three.   

Burst Rifles: Ok so this is basically a category of 1 given Megalodon being the only legendary. The recent event burst rifle Raven does the same damage per burst (lower per bullet damage), but we’ve already discussed this not being the best idea since it’s an epic rarity weapon.   

Machine Gun: Pile Driver and Revenant   

Reasons: Pile Driver does the higher DPS, but with ammo being so limited in PvP, Revenant is a safer choice due to its only needing 10% of its clip to kill the enemy vs the Pile Driver’s 15%.   

Sniper Rifles: True Patriot, OG Money Maker, and Cryonic Scream   

Reasons: The True Patriot has the highest chance for a one-shot kill, though it is not as guaranteed as it once was. The very high accuracy of Cryonic Scream makes it a very user-friendly Sniper, and there are those that can use the OG effectively either to pop off a quick two body shots or finish an enemy off by quickly switching to a pistol or primary after a body shot. 

Rocket Launchers: Slade's Shitstorm, Bestie 

Reasons: Yes, I know Bestie has better accuracy and range stats, but for rocket launchers, I haven't seen that that means a damn thing. They both do the same damage in PvP, so take your pick.   

Pistol: Spectrum, Last Stand   

Reasons: I can’t remember the last time I pulled out a pistol in a PvP match except to shame a nub in losing 5-0 to an opponent with a pistol, but Spectrum is the winner based on pure stats; however, the recent addition of the Last Stand pistol gives it a run for its money. Not only do you get higher range and accuracy without sacrificing any magazine capacity, but you get a time to kill that is only about a tenth of a second longer than Spectrum.   

Conclusion 

Well there it is, folks. This is just about everything there is to know about the mechanics and math behind PvP although there is far more to learn and be discussed when it comes to actually playing PvP. I’d like to wrap up the article by giving shout outs to the people that were instrumental in my completing this work. First and foremost, many thanks again go to NateGoregasm and Halide for both assisting with testing and offering their fantastic guidance as I continued to revise my testing approach while learning more and more about the mechanics. I’ve also got to give it up to Sagrawa for reframing the suggestion of 3 pieces of legendary armor so that the biggest advantage your opponent has is limited to 2 pieces. Finally, I want to give a shout out to my guild mates that lent a hand with testing as well, namely ratpaws and GUNNER. I hope this article helps you to make well informed decisions on how to gear up for PvP so that you can continue to improve and we as a community can build a highly competitive and vibrant PvP experience for everyone. 

Cheers! 

--[APx] InsulinMaze