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  1. #131
    Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
    Sawyers at 30 stacks? How many W&H pieces?

    Sorry, I probably missed the initial post where you listed the gear. I just want to be clear about what's being tested. Because it sounds like for a run'n'gun build W&H would be the way for non-rifle builds.
    Yeah, Sawyers at 30 for that one video, but I dropped them from the test group for the next three. I play it as a run and gun style but it can't take that much damage (hence the decoy) and the Pyro and Fire sticky is just for heavies and armoured elites/purples. It's two piece W&H -- backpack Vigalance with WD/WH/CHD and knees with CHC/CHD. I don't use Fox's in my M1A build either, as I dropped Ninja Bike Knees last night they just replaced Fox's in the only build I do use them in which was a TP/Pesty/Healer drone/Healer Seeker, as I also play that guy quite mobile those knees will work a treat on reloading that Pesty and an M870. So as someone once said in this thread, the thing we should really do is calculate on a per build basis for the intended goals of the build.
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  2. #132
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by RichardOshea Go to original post
    ....make a much more convincing argument than the whataboutery you've used so far.... As it stands right now, I can only be suspicious of your unwillingness to do what you ask of others.
    It's not "whataboutery" when I ask you to explain mysterious variations in the evidence you show, ask you to explain why you're getting what you're getting in your build, or even just ask you to clearly describe your entire build (which you never have done). Nor is it "whataboutery" when there's weird stuff going on in your videos affecting your damage that you've never addressed. And your unwillingness to run your build numbers through the calculations seems to indicate an unwillingness to find out what's really going on in your builds.

    At any rate, here as you requested are the experimental results of a build (fully described!) with and without Fox's prayer that I tested in the firing range in the same way you did in the one video you posted. (The abbreviations should be fairly obvious excepting perhaps Ldmg as health damage, since Hdmg is headshot damage. If any are not clear, check them against the list of attributes at the recalibration desk to look for an obvious match; if that fails just ask.) If you're running the numbers, my watch is providing +10% CHC and +5.6% Wdmg in addition to what's below, the AR's base damage is 47.0k from the game, 47,012 from the spreadsheet, and the AR has no mods.

    Code:
        M  Walker   ₁ 5 Wdmg     14.9 Wdmg    8.0 hand  ●4925 REGEN  19.7 Srepair
        P  Petrov    10 LMG      14.9 Wdmg    9.9 Hdmg   12.0 haste  19.4 Srepair
        C  Grupo     15 Cdmg     15.0 Wdmg   12.0 Cdmg    6.5 hand   18.8 Srepair
        G  Walker   ₂ 5 Admg     15.0 Wdmg   10.0 explR ●4295 REGEN
        H  Walker   ₃ 5 Ldmg    ●15.0 Wdmg   11.3 Cdmg   4295 REGEN
        K  Fox's Pr  10 RR       15.0 Wdmg    8.0 DOOC  ●4295 REGEN
        K  Fenris    10 AR       13.5 Wdmg    6.0 CHC    10.0 expl-res
    
        P,C      Composure cover → 15 Wdmg       P.Spark Sdmg → 20s 15 Wdmg
        Spec     Gunner: +RR +LMG +PP
    
        AR Carbine 7             10.9    10.5 Ldmg    7.0 Cdmg   Overflowing
    
    - Gear:   94.8 Wdmg   0.0 CHC   63.3 Cdmg   8.0 DOOC   5.0 Ldmg   5.0 Admg
    The Fenris kneepads have only +13.5% Wdmg as compared to +15.0% Wdmg on Fox's, but since the Fenris also adds +10% assault rifle damage and I'm using an AR, that still puts it +8.5% Wdmg ahead of Fox's.

    Doing body shots against a regular red target, with Fenris kneepads I get 119,865 non-crit and 204,130 crit damage. With Fox's I get 124,448 non-crit and 211,935 crit damage, a 3.8% improvement even as I lose a +8.5% weapon damage buff (10% AR damage buff minus 1.5% buff from weapon damage attributes).

    We can compare the game's calculations to mine:

    • The base weapon damage multiplied by the weapon damage buff (including watch, gear and AR weapon damage modifiers) by my calculations is 47012*(1+.056+.948+.109) = 99336.4 which is exactly what the game says on the stats tab: 99,336. (If you don't understand why 99336.4 is "exactly" 99336, learn about significant digits.)
    • The health damage multiplier I calculate is Walker plus AR: 10.5 + 5.0 = 15.5. In the stats tab the game claims 16.0% and doesn't mention Walker as a source, only Carbine 7. Perhaps the game rounds this up to the nearest percentage point, which would make Fox's Prayer very slightly better than by my calculations (since this is multiplied by DOOC).
    • The stats page doesn't give DOOC, so in this case I just use the 8.0% from Fox's Prayer, the only thing providing it.
    • Multiplying all these, we get 99336*1.08*1.16 =124448.1, exactly the 124,448 we get experimentally.


    I picked a build with less-than-best weapon damage buff (note no +15% from specialization) and low expected crit damage, together giving a relatively low (for a high-red build) expected weapon damage buff. This puts the build at the less advantageous end of Fox's Prayer use because it's clear from the way these numbers work together that raising expected weapon damage can only make Fox's Prayer more advantageous. (That's how multiplicative buffs work.)

    To address the usual objections you keep bringing up and I keep shooting down:

    • Yes, there are builds where Fox's Prayer will not be better. I'm specifically addressing builds with certain parameters (this is why I keep qualifying builds with "high-red" and so on); finding builds that do not meet these qualifications does not invalidate the calculations for those that do meet them. Part of the point of this exercise is to better determine where the line between these is. But I claim that the majority of high-red builds that do not have some other very particular factor involved (e.g., Boomerang) do meet these criteria. Showing one that doesn't does not disprove the general case, because the general case does not claim all.
    • Yes, in many cases play style does make a difference, which is exactly why I introduce concepts such as "fraction of hits to targets out of cover"; this enables you include in your calculations estimates of things that vary with your play style.
    • You often seem to imply a belief that you can never trust any calculations done on paper because the game may do them differently. This is not true: as we've seen above one can replicate with a great deal of accuracy at least some of the calculations the game does. That is in itself quite helpful, and even when there is some uncertainty left in the calculations we can know where it is, compensate for it, and even design experiments to gather data that improve the model and further reduce the uncertainty.
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  3. #133
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Riflemania Go to original post
    I doubt that eveyrthing it says is not 100% correct, which i expect from a game that is highly based on stats....the game makers are human afterall.
    Your (somewhat contorted) grammar here says that you do not doubt that everything it says is 100% correct, once you take out the double negatives. I assume from your previous comments you mean the opposite.

    But you avoided answering my question. For the things in the caculations I provided, what do you believe to be incorrect? Feel free to use my post just above, where I do some more explicit calculations, to identify things.

    ...if you look at the bakers dozen talent it says "Missed shots from cover have a 100% chance to return to the magazine" well there is been times where i have point blank shot an enemy and the bullet has done no damage and a bullet is missing from my magazine....hit reg?...who knows....
    Well, it appears that you don't. But we know from plenty of examples in these forums that, especially in the heat of battle, players often misunderstand what was going on. So at the moment we've got no evidence that the game wasn't working as described and that you didn't misinterpret something. If you want to show that it's not likely you're misinterpreting things you need to find a case that can be replicated or show a video that can be analyzed in detail. (I've found plenty of times that going through a video at slow speed shows that I was misinterpreting what I saw, or thought I saw, rather than there being any problem with the game. Not that the game doesn't have its problems of course, but I've found it mostly works as designed, once you figure out what the design is.)

    How did you determine that [you got more kills] because of your build and not just because, say, you were more aggressive and shooting more enemies?
    I was using Blinder Firefly 95% of the time, it does zero damage.
    That just makes no sense at all. "I was using Blinder Firefly" ("95% of the time," whatever that means) does not in any way show that you were shooting less or more than your teammates, much less say anything at all about differences between the calculated and actual results of your build.

    "I don't bother with theories, hypotheses or well-designed experiments and just go with my feelings and anecdotal evidence" is exactly how we get ideas like "a fire in a closed container burns out because the air absorbed all the phlogiston."
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  4. #134
    Sircowdog1's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by RichardOshea Go to original post
    Yeah, Sawyers at 30 for that one video, but I dropped them from the test group for the next three. I play it as a run and gun style but it can't take that much damage (hence the decoy) and the Pyro and Fire sticky is just for heavies and armoured elites/purples. It's two piece W&H -- backpack Vigalance with WD/WH/CHD and knees with CHC/CHD. I don't use Fox's in my M1A build either, as I dropped Ninja Bike Knees last night they just replaced Fox's in the only build I do use them in which was a TP/Pesty/Healer drone/Healer Seeker, as I also play that guy quite mobile those knees will work a treat on reloading that Pesty and an M870. So as someone once said in this thread, the thing we should really do is calculate on a per build basis for the intended goals of the build.
    I went back as far as page 9 of the thread. Are you taking about the Deadeyefu vid? Or did I miss the one you're referring to?
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  5. #135
    Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
    I went back as far as page 9 of the thread. Are you taking about the Deadeyefu vid? Or did I miss the one you're referring to?
    My own vid is on page 10 I have three others too but I'm not bothering to post them without quid pro quo occuring. Deadefefu vid has the same lines of reasoning as I would use but I can't speak for them so just linked to their vid before doing my own. It's one of many vids looking at this question that are out there.
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  6. #136
    Originally Posted by CategoryTheory Go to original post
    It's not "whataboutery" when I ask you to explain mysterious variations in the evidence you show, ask you to explain why you're getting what you're getting in your build, or even just ask you to clearly describe your entire build (which you never have done). Nor is it "whataboutery" when there's weird stuff going on in your videos affecting your damage that you've never addressed. And your unwillingness to run your build numbers through the calculations seems to indicate an unwillingness to find out what's really going on in your builds.

    At any rate, here as you requested are the experimental results of a build (fully described!) with and without Fox's prayer that I tested in the firing range in the same way you did in the one video you posted. (The abbreviations should be fairly obvious excepting perhaps Ldmg as health damage, since Hdmg is headshot damage. If any are not clear, check them against the list of attributes at the recalibration desk to look for an obvious match; if that fails just ask.) If you're running the numbers, my watch is providing +10% CHC and +5.6% Wdmg in addition to what's below, the AR's base damage is 47.0k from the game, 47,012 from the spreadsheet, and the AR has no mods.

    Code:
        M  Walker   ₁ 5 Wdmg     14.9 Wdmg    8.0 hand  ●4925 REGEN  19.7 Srepair
        P  Petrov    10 LMG      14.9 Wdmg    9.9 Hdmg   12.0 haste  19.4 Srepair
        C  Grupo     15 Cdmg     15.0 Wdmg   12.0 Cdmg    6.5 hand   18.8 Srepair
        G  Walker   ₂ 5 Admg     15.0 Wdmg   10.0 explR ●4295 REGEN
        H  Walker   ₃ 5 Ldmg    ●15.0 Wdmg   11.3 Cdmg   4295 REGEN
        K  Fox's Pr  10 RR       15.0 Wdmg    8.0 DOOC  ●4295 REGEN
        K  Fenris    10 AR       13.5 Wdmg    6.0 CHC    10.0 expl-res
    
        P,C      Composure cover → 15 Wdmg       P.Spark Sdmg → 20s 15 Wdmg
        Spec     Gunner: +RR +LMG +PP
    
        AR Carbine 7             10.9    10.5 Ldmg    7.0 Cdmg   Overflowing
    
    - Gear:   94.8 Wdmg   0.0 CHC   63.3 Cdmg   8.0 DOOC   5.0 Ldmg   5.0 Admg
    The Fenris kneepads have only +13.5% Wdmg as compared to +15.0% Wdmg on Fox's, but since the Fenris also adds +10% assault rifle damage and I'm using an AR, that still puts it +8.5% Wdmg ahead of Fox's.

    Doing body shots against a regular red target, with Fenris kneepads I get 119,865 non-crit and 204,130 crit damage. With Fox's I get 124,448 non-crit and 211,935 crit damage, a 3.8% improvement even as I lose a +8.5% weapon damage buff (10% AR damage buff minus 1.5% buff from weapon damage attributes).

    We can compare the game's calculations to mine:

    • The base weapon damage multiplied by the weapon damage buff (including watch, gear and AR weapon damage modifiers) by my calculations is 47012*(1+.056+.948+.109) = 99336.4 which is exactly what the game says on the stats tab: 99,336. (If you don't understand why 99336.4 is "exactly" 99336, learn about significant digits.)
    • The health damage multiplier I calculate is Walker plus AR: 10.5 + 5.0 = 15.5. In the stats tab the game claims 16.0% and doesn't mention Walker as a source, only Carbine 7. Perhaps the game rounds this up to the nearest percentage point, which would make Fox's Prayer very slightly better than by my calculations (since this is multiplied by DOOC).
    • The stats page doesn't give DOOC, so in this case I just use the 8.0% from Fox's Prayer, the only thing providing it.
    • Multiplying all these, we get 99336*1.08*1.16 =124448.1, exactly the 124,448 we get experimentally.


    I picked a build with less-than-best weapon damage buff (note no +15% from specialization) and low expected crit damage, together giving a relatively low (for a high-red build) expected weapon damage buff. This puts the build at the less advantageous end of Fox's Prayer use because it's clear from the way these numbers work together that raising expected weapon damage can only make Fox's Prayer more advantageous. (That's how multiplicative buffs work.)

    To address the usual objections you keep bringing up and I keep shooting down:

    • Yes, there are builds where Fox's Prayer will not be better. I'm specifically addressing builds with certain parameters (this is why I keep qualifying builds with "high-red" and so on); finding builds that do not meet these qualifications does not invalidate the calculations for those that do meet them. Part of the point of this exercise is to better determine where the line between these is. But I claim that the majority of high-red builds that do not have some other very particular factor involved (e.g., Boomerang) do meet these criteria. Showing one that doesn't does not disprove the general case, because the general case does not claim all.
    • Yes, in many cases play style does make a difference, which is exactly why I introduce concepts such as "fraction of hits to targets out of cover"; this enables you include in your calculations estimates of things that vary with your play style.
    • You often seem to imply a belief that you can never trust any calculations done on paper because the game may do them differently. This is not true: as we've seen above one can replicate with a great deal of accuracy at least some of the calculations the game does. That is in itself quite helpful, and even when there is some uncertainty left in the calculations we can know where it is, compensate for it, and even design experiments to gather data that improve the model and further reduce the uncertainty.

    OK, I would have preferred a vid but I'll accept what you have given. So what this tells us is that you have created a build wherein Fox's affords a better advantage and I have created a build wherein they do not. Both builds are full red and at varying degrees of optimisation (I think mine is a lot closer to max than yours but it doesn't alter the outcome) and both followed the same methodology. The conclusion is that Fox's is not universally best in slot which is what I have been saying from the beggining. If you then narrow the claim down to them being superior under a specific configuration then that is to say little more than builds are different.

    I trust math to the extent that it is good math. Not so much people as they are fallible and given that math is a human construct and its history is replete with error I'm not so sure blind faith in science of any kind is sensible.

    Enjoy your build though, I do hope it provides enjoyment for you.
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  7. #137
    Sircowdog1's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by RichardOshea Go to original post
    My own vid is on page 10 I have three others too but I'm not bothering to post them without quid pro quo occuring. Deadefefu vid has the same lines of reasoning as I would use but I can't speak for them so just linked to their vid before doing my own. It's one of many vids looking at this question that are out there.
    I'll look again. And sorry for continuously asking. I just want to make sure there's no confusion, since it seems like there's already enough going on in the thread. .
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  8. #138
    Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
    I'll look again. And sorry for continuously asking. I just want to make sure there's no confusion, since it seems like there's already enough going on in the thread. .
    No problem. It's not all that important anyway. Just a video game we each enjoy to varying degrees at the end of the day. I know many of the threads contributors are long time vets so I know we love the game itself.
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  9. #139
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by RichardOshea Go to original post
    ...both followed the same methodology.
    Nope. There's something very different about your build (from a "standard all-red" build) or in how you're doing the testing that you've not shown. It's obvious from the moment you get two different damage values from non-crit hits that are ostensibly from the same weapon.

    I've provided the model that describes how "regular" high-red build work with Fox's Knees. Yours is clearly doing something quite different; if you won't give us a complete description of the build and you don't know what the difference is, much less why it's happening, nobody can use your information to figure out whether they're in your situation that Fox's is oddly not performing as well as it should be.

    I trust math to the extent that it is good math.
    Well, my calculations are all out there; you're free to examine them and point out any flaws you find. If you're going to completely ignore these kinds of calculations you'll continue to be stuck with "X works better here but not there, but I have no idea why that is or how X would work in another configuration (except by building it and testing it)."

    It's fair enough not to care about analysing your builds, but if you don't, you shouldn't be in threads like this one.
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  10. #140
    Originally Posted by CategoryTheory Go to original post
    Nope. There's something very different about your build (from a "standard all-red" build) or in how you're doing the testing that you've not shown. It's obvious from the moment you get two different damage values from non-crit hits that are ostensibly from the same weapon.

    I've provided the model that describes how "regular" high-red build work with Fox's Knees. Yours is clearly doing something quite different; if you won't give us a complete description of the build and you don't know what the difference is, much less why it's happening, nobody can use your information to figure out whether they're in your situation that Fox's is oddly not performing as well as it should be.



    Well, my calculations are all out there; you're free to examine them and point out any flaws you find. If you're going to completely ignore these kinds of calculations you'll continue to be stuck with "X works better here but not there, but I have no idea why that is or how X would work in another configuration (except by building it and testing it)."

    It's fair enough not to care about analysing your builds, but if you don't, you shouldn't be in threads like this one.
    In that video you are correct in pointing out that strained procced and that is the source of different crit values for the same weapon in that video, but I have already repeated this experiment and gone further than single shot without strained proccing, including a full mag burst and three mag changes using both weapons. I have those videos too. So again, you have data showing them best in your build and I have data showing them as not being the best in that build, so they are not universally best in slot. Which you seem to have agreed with(?). So that just leaves us with the builds where they are the best choice but that is just a different build at that point.

    I've done a sizeable amount of analysing this. Several hours worth of recording data and videos etc etc and I'm as entitled to be in this thread as anyone else. If you want a private conversation take it to a private place.
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