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  1. #11
    Cadillac-Jack's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Riflemania Go to original post
    Sawyers Kneepads are nice especially in a group where you are not the only one being shot at, makes keeping the buff a lot easier.....Solo not so great as every bullet/nade etc etc is aimed at you so there is a lot more movement.

    All very situational.....all depending if in group or not and depending on what you are doing.
    I'd say Sawyers are also better at med to long distance fighting than CQB, and most of the time the NPC's are dead before they get a chance of getting up close and personal. I don't have a problem even as a 100% solo player.
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  2. #12
    Cadillac-Jack's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
    It's just too bad you can't recalibrate exotics. I'd put a red core on Sawyers faster than an NPC sprinting for cover.
    Ha ha ha yeah iv'e thought the same thing, but then imagine how OP they would really be
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  3. #13
    Oatiecrumble's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Cadillac-Jack Go to original post
    I'd say Sawyers are also better at med to long distance fighting than CQB, and most of the time the NPC's are dead before they get a chance of getting up close and personal. I don't have a problem even as a 100% solo player.
    Yep, that's why i said situational, they are great in open world but useless in lets say The Summit solo.....or any close quarter missions solo.....but decent in RI/CB/CWO/MNZ etc etc.

    But overall out of pure lazyness i stick with the Fox's kneepads, does not matter what you are doing in the game they just work.
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  4. #14
    Cadillac-Jack's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Riflemania Go to original post
    Yep, that's why i said situational, they are great in open world but useless in lets say The Summit solo.....or any close quarter missions solo.....but decent in RI/CB/CWO/MNZ etc etc.
    Yeah i'm with you on the CQB, but then again there is no way in hell i'm using my rifle build in close quarters (not with the 1886) the Pestilence though maybe. because of the poison tick spread.
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  5. #15
    Oatiecrumble's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Cadillac-Jack Go to original post
    Yeah i'm with you on the CQB, but then again there is no way in hell i'm using my rifle build in close quarters (not with the 1886) the Pestilence though maybe. because of the poison tick spread.
    I'm just a lazy bugger, M1A & Police M4 for when things get close or some hidden straggler...works a treat in open area and CQB.
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  6. #16
    Cadillac-Jack's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Riflemania Go to original post
    I'm just a lazy bugger, M1A & Police M4 for when things get close or some hidden straggler...works a treat in open area and CQB.
    I have 2 rifle builds

    Classic M1A and ACR SS (3 piece striker) ACR does 483 RPM for close quarters

    Then i have my Sherriff/ Western Cowboy rifle build. for Open World.

    1886/Double barrel and 6 shot revolver with Sawyers (and it works a treat)

    This build is the numbers i put up testing foxs/sawyers, either way i get almost 5 million a headshot.
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  7. #17
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
    ...look at a comparison between a Groupo Sombra knee vs Fox's prayer. Assuming both knees has exactle the same weapon damage and first attributes, the comparison is direct: 27% CHD vs 8% DtoC.
    Ah, that's exactly the sort of idea I was looking for! Now I can do some calculations to compare the two.

    The expected buff from +8% out-of-cover damage is obviously going to be less than 8%, since some damage is done to enemies in cover. So I'll give calculations for 3% (more damage done to in-cover enemies), 5% (more done to out-of-cover enemies) and the full 8%. I include the last because you may be more concerned about maxing out damage to rushers than worrying about how much you're doing to enemies that are busy hiding from you.

    If we take full weapon damage buff from specialization, six red cores and the weapon itself we get a weapon damage buff of 8 × 15% = 120%. (That's pretty close to the max, I think.) The additional expected weapon damage buff from 27% CHD × 60% CHC is 16%. So looking at the situations where the expected damage from the rest of the CHD is 0 and 72% (equivalent to 120% CHD) we have:

    Code:
                              Groupo   Fox
                 Wdmg   eCHD   eCHD    DOOC
    
    Fox's       (2.20 + 0.00       ) × 1.08 = 2.37
    Groupo      (2.20 + 0.00 + 0.16)        = 2.36
    Fox's       (2.20 + 0.00       ) × 1.05 = 2.31
    Fox's       (2.20 + 0.00       ) × 1.03 = 2.26
    
    Fox's       (2.20 + 0.72       ) × 1.08 = 3.15
    Groupo      (2.20 + 0.72 + 0.16)        = 3.08
    Fox's       (2.20 + 0.72       ) × 1.05 = 3.06
    Fox's       (2.20 + 0.72       ) × 1.03 = 3.00
    (Note that I don't include other multipliers here, such as armor or total weapon damage, but these will simply slightly magnify the differences seen above.)

    So it seems that as far as taking out rushers (and chungas and dogs) goes, Fox's prayer starts out slightly ahead (if you have no CHD) and pulls further head as you add CHD, at 120% CHD giving you the equivalent of +7% weapon damage.

    For overall rate of damage on all enemies, though, the Groupo is ahead by at least a bit. (By a lot at lower CHD values, but who would be using a Groupo but otherwise have low CHD?)

    For me the first situation is much more attractive (rushers and dogs are my bane, and I seem to see a lot of enemies in the open these days anyway), but of course others will have their own opinions. The important thing is that this now provides a better base from which to make one's personal decision.

    As far as replacing Fox's with a brand that provides weapon-specific damage, that's just going to come out worse than Groupo did above since we're now looking at 10% more weapon damage rather than 16% more (expected average) weapon damage going to come out just slightly better because the 10% specific weapon damage is a wee bit better than the 9% expected weapon damage from Grupo's +15% CHC.

    So has anybody got any other thoughts about what one might put in there? (I'll deal with Sawyer's Kneepads in a separate post, since it has a bunch of other special considerations.)
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  8. #18
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
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    Oh, I should mention that I'm using the following formula for calculating damage from all buffs:

    • base dmg × (weapon damage buff + CHD + headshot dmg) × total weapon damage × health dmg × armor dmg × out of cover dmg


    This is what others in this forum have said it is (anybody got a link to those posts?) and agrees with the experimentation that I've done.
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  9. #19
    Or to simplify things, look at a comparison between a Groupo Sombra knee vs Fox's prayer. Assuming both knees has exactle the same weapon damage and first attributes, the comparison is direct: 27% CHD vs 8% DtoC.
    That's not quite right. It's 27% CHD vs (8% DtoC+12%CHD). Also, it's usually not either Grupo or Fox's as a Red build should be running both. What usually comes up, is whether Contractor's is worth it vs another piece or exotic.
     2 people found this helpful
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  10. #20
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Cadillac-Jack Go to original post
    Sawyers knee pads +30% weapon damage + immunity from explosive stagger..
    Again, Sawyer's is not weapon damage, but total weapon damage. But that's still not as good as it sounds.

    First, remember that you've lost a red core when you use these, so you're down 15% weapon damage from where you would be otherwise, plus another 12% CHD that you could also have had on the kneepads. Call it a total of 15% + (60% × 12%) = 22% expected weapon damage buff.

    In an otherwise red build you're still going to be above 200% weapon damage buff, so that needs only 5-11% TWD to compensate, but that still means that you're doing less damage until you stay still for two to four seconds.

    And of course you don't get the full buff until 10 seconds after you stop moving. It's a nice combination with Overwatch, since that also takes ten seconds in cover before it procs (and Sawyer's keeps it from unproc'ing when hit by an explosion), but I have tried both of these and for me personally I found that—even though I am a long-range camping kind of guy!—having that much restriction on my movement hurts too much. It might work better for me if I swapped out some weapon damage for armour, but with minimal armour eating a grenade (or worse yet, three from a launcher) is pretty dangerous. Immunity to stagger is not immunity to death. :-)

    Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
    I dont necessarily agree with the comparison between Fox's Prayer and Sawyers. It's a blue item vs an all red item. There's no way Sawyers does more damage than FP. Unless sawyers is multiplicative? Even then I'd be highly skeptical.
    Per above, it is multiplicative, since Sawyer's buffs total weapon damage. My guess was that when fully proc'd it would do more damage, though only somewhere in the range of 10% more.

    Cadillac-Jack's testing shows much less than this, though, with Saywer's just 1-2% better for everything but the Pestilence tick, which was 7% better. I'm suspecting that his numbers may be low due to not having enough red in his build for the TWD really to be much better than plain old weapon damage. (At 200% weapon damage, 30% TWD gives you the same as another 60% weapon damage, but at just 100% weapon damage, 30% TWD is equivalent to just another 30% weapon damage.)

    Originally Posted by Cadillac-Jack Go to original post
    Sawyers may not be branded...
    Worse yet, they're exotic. This precludes you from using Memento, for example. It's another personal trade-off, obviously.

    PS: Alot of builds are a personal choice.
    Indeed. I'm not trying to tell people what they should choose, but simply make sure that the facts are available to make an informed personal decision.

    ────────────────────────────────────────

    In case you're wondering what I prefer, I go for TWD boosts as well, but with Composure (+15% TWD instantly when in cover) and either Spotter (+15% TWD on pulsed enemies, if I'm using Technician and its Linked Laser Pointer), or Spark (skill damage procs 20s of +15% TWD—I carry around a turret just to plink enemies for this). I've also tried Obliterate, but I find it too hard to maintain the stack, especially when using Pestilence which has almost a 5 second reload time.

    (BTW, all of the above procs for the Pestilence debuff even if you didn't meet the conditions at the time you hit the enemy. So if you, e.g., shoot an enemy and then enter cover, the debuff will immediately increase by 15% from Composure.)
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