🛈 Announcement
Greetings! The Division forums are now archived and accessible in read-only mode, please go to the new platform to discuss the game
  1. #1
    dagrommit's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    Pedestal of truth
    Posts
    5,099

    War hounds - go for the legs Boo

    Someone spent a lot of time experimenting with how best to damage war hounds:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision...roy_warhounds/

    Originally Posted by u/Division_Delta_003
    Firearm DPS Agent with a critical strike probability attribute of 50-60% is better to shoot legs than to shoot the armor plate of Warhound.
    Like if you get the reference in the title
     1 people found this helpful
    Share this post

  2. #2
    N3mB0t's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2016
    Posts
    2,911
    shooting the legs has always been the norm , at least for me , damage goes straight to health.
    Share this post

  3. #3
    It's the RED joints on the legs, it's not rocket science
    Share this post

  4. #4
    dagrommit's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    Pedestal of truth
    Posts
    5,099
    Originally Posted by eskimosound Go to original post
    It's the RED joints on the legs, it's not rocket science
    Read the link - it doesn't matter where on the legs you shoot.
    Share this post

  5. #5
    Sircowdog1's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2016
    Posts
    3,953
    I just use an AR and burn the damn things down regardless of their stupid legs. It's lazy and inefficient, but it works.
    Share this post

  6. #6
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2015
    Location
    Tokyo, Japan
    Posts
    675
    Well, the summary is not exactly "go for the legs," but "go for the legs if your critical chance vs. critical damge is high enough." From the final slide, you go for the legs in the following cases:

    • CHC = 60%, CHD ≥ 58%
    • CHC ≥ 50%, CHD ≥ 72%
    • CHC ≥ 40%, CHD ≥ 85%
    • CHC ≥ 30%, CHD ≥ 120%
    • CHC ≥ 20%, CHD ≥ 169%

    In all other cases (CHC 10% or less, or not enough CHD) you should shoot at the armoured body instead, since that will kill it faster.

    This makes me wonder how total weapon damage (which is a separate multiplier from weapon damage and CHD) is affected. I tend to run a relatively low CHC in my crit builds because I spend resources on Spotter and pulse to increase TWD, which I find gives me more damage overall per hit than replacing that with more CHD. If TWD is modified the way non-critical damage is modified, this could be an edge case where greater total damage is not worth as much as lesser total damage with more of it being CHD. (Why it's generally better to aim to increase total damage rather than CHD is discussed in detail in this thread.)
     1 people found this helpful
    Share this post

  7. #7
    BT3241's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
    Posts
    800
    I bring the pulse grenade on Black tuck missions and it takes care of the dogs. Immobilizing the dog and then destroy it is the best tactic.
    Share this post

  8. #8
    Sounds like a meta in a russian game known as EFT...
    Share this post

  9. #9
    Originally Posted by CategoryTheory Go to original post
    Well, the summary is not exactly "go for the legs," but "go for the legs if your critical chance vs. critical damge is high enough." From the final slide, you go for the legs in the following cases:

    • CHC = 60%, CHD ≥ 58%
    • CHC ≥ 50%, CHD ≥ 72%
    • CHC ≥ 40%, CHD ≥ 85%
    • CHC ≥ 30%, CHD ≥ 120%
    • CHC ≥ 20%, CHD ≥ 169%

    In all other cases (CHC 10% or less, or not enough CHD) you should shoot at the armoured body instead, since that will kill it faster.

    This makes me wonder how total weapon damage (which is a separate multiplier from weapon damage and CHD) is affected. I tend to run a relatively low CHC in my crit builds because I spend resources on Spotter and pulse to increase TWD, which I find gives me more damage overall per hit than replacing that with more CHD. If TWD is modified the way non-critical damage is modified, this could be an edge case where greater total damage is not worth as much as lesser total damage with more of it being CHD. (Why it's generally better to aim to increase total damage rather than CHD is discussed in detail in this thread.)
    Crit is Multiplicative damage. It is better to have a combination of everything, but some multipliers like TWD have a point where all you are doing is adding damage to a large multiplier.

    Think of the equation like this:

    (Weapon Damage Bonus% +1) x (Damage to Health% + 1) x (Damage to armor% + 1) x (Damage to Targets out of cover% + 1) x (Headshot Damage% +1) x ((Crit Chance x (Crit Damage%)+1) x (Amp Damage multipliers% + 1)

    The Plus 1 is to change the percentages into accurate damage increase multipliers. If you increase damage by 20%, then you are multiplying the damage by 1.20 or (0.2 + 1).

    Glass cannon, striker, and other talents that Amplify Damage fall into the last multiplier.
    Share this post

  10. #10
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2015
    Location
    Tokyo, Japan
    Posts
    675
    Originally Posted by TimesLostArc Go to original post
    (Weapon Damage Bonus% +1) x (Damage to Armor% + 1) x (Damage to armor% + 1) x (Damage to Targets out of cover% + 1) x (Headshot Damage% +1) x ((Crit Chance x (Crit Damage%)+1) x (Amp Damage multipliers% + 1)

    ...Glass cannon, striker, and other talents that Amplify Damage fall into the last multiplier.
    Thanks for the complete list there, I'd not yet sat down to work it out. (Though of course you meant the second or third one to be "damage to health," I'm sure, and it would be more clear I think if you left CHC out, since for the four other multipliers that trigger on only certain types of hits, such as headshot damage and so on, you—correctly in my view—don't include any probability for those in this particular equation.) Just out of curiosity, is this an educated guess, or have you learned it through experimentation, digging into game data, or some other means?

    Crit is Multiplicative damage. It is better to have a combination of everything, but some multipliers like TWD have a point where all you are doing is adding damage to a large multiplier.
    I'm not really clear on what you're trying to say with that. If you mean that you should generally add to your currently smaller multipliers before the larger ones, yes (though in high-damage-buff builds, TWD seems rarely one of the highest). I don't know if I've ever come right out and said it, but implicitly stated here and in the other thread is the mathematical trueism that (roughly) you're best off balancing all your multipliers, rather than pushing one significantly further than the others. I.e., if you have 60% in buffs to distribute, 20% on each of three multiplicative buffs (1.2 * 1.2 * 1.2 = 1.728) is better 40% on one and 10% each on the other two (1.4 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 1.694), which in turn is better than 30% on each of two (1.3 * 1.3 * 1.0 = 1.690). In other words, aim to increase the lowest buff for whatever particular type of hit you're making. (There's actually a mathematical proof for this, which I will leave as an exercise for the reader.)

    The complexity with the dogs, and the reason for my question, is because the game appears to be changing the equation quite drastically from yours above when you shoot the legs. The damage is no longer one figure, but is divided into two parts that are added together: (0.1 * "non-crit" damage) + ((1+CHD) * base damage), all done against health and ignoring armor. The question is, is what I've stated just there really correct, or are there any other multipliers on the right-hand side besides CHD? For example, does damage to health go on the left side and get multiplied by 0.1, or does it go on the right side for full effect, adding an additional multiplier for CHD? If the former, 10% more CHD in this case is worth more than 30% damage to health in all circumstances; if the latter, bringing your DTH from 0% to 10% will be worth as much as much as adding 15% to 50% CHD, or 20% to 100% CHD.
    Share this post