Weapons Legendary Weapon Tier List

[Beggar]

How come Mercer's is at a rank below Beckett's on the tier list? It's my understanding that Mercer's does more damage. Additionally, now that I'm looking, I would consider ranking those two pistols higher due to their much higher damage output to non-human single targets compared to swords.

These data compare Mercer's and Beckett's pistols' effectiveness against Molusks/Seabeards and Cicatriz. The first two columns each represent 50 fully charged shots on random molusks or seabeards. 1 denotes a kill, 0 is no kill. The last two columns represent times-to-kill on Cicatriz, measured in seconds. The bottom rows represent % of shots that OHKO'd the Tormenta enemies and average TTK on cicatriz, respectively.

It seems pretty obvious to me that Beckett's is either as good as or even a better choice than Mercer's in virtually all situations.

I agree that both pistols do better damage than any sword, but I prefer to rank the weapons with respect to how well they excel at their niche. Thunderspine ranks especially high because of its unrivaled power in PVP, despite having poor defense and AOE attacks. Similarly, WEB is ranked high because of the incredible sustainability its passive skills grant to the weapon's user, despite the broadsword's poor DPS. Comparing pistols to swords is kind of like comparing apples to oranges.

 

[Ned_Reddavis]

Comparing pistols to swords is kind of like comparing apples to oranges.

Fair enough.

It seems pretty obvious to me that Beckett's is either as good as or even a better choice than Mercer's in virtually all situations.

I completely respect the data and results that you got that led you to this conclusion, but I'm going to still disagree and explain why. Also, I don't want to sound like I'm nitpicking your methods, but I'm gonna nitpick your methods.

• The first two columns each represent 50 fully charged shots on random molusks or seabeards.

  • I actually really like this test because it can effectively show which gun can create more one shot capabilities, but I see some faults that can muck with your data. For one, 50 kills is a good start, but I don't think it gives mercer's the opportunity to show that it can create large critical hit shots for more consistent one shots and so I can see more kills changing your data significantly. Second, I take issue with you shooting molusks/seabeards at random because their levels rang from 38-45. Assuming you're a level 50 pirate this means that you will be attacking enemies with between a 10% (lvl 38) and 33% (lvl 45) damage reduction. Now this could balance itself out in the long run, but in 50 kills Mercer's could have killed way more (or less) higher level enemies making it harder (or easier) for it to one shot those 50 random enemies as compared to those kills with Beckett's.

• The last two columns represent times-to-kill on Cicatriz, measured in seconds

  • Second non-nitpick nitpick is similar. I don't really think that 7 data points is enough to say the average TTK for one gun is better than the other, even though I do like that the data for this is on my side that Mercer's does more DPS. Also, you could be clicking differently in the data sets, but I doubt it would ever be enough to create a lot of error.

Now, those are some minor points why I disagree, but the main reason is because of the work that I have done to analyze the damage of weapons. I'll just quickly pull up the damage equation:

Minimum Damage Equation: D=1.5*(26+R1A)*S1*S2*(1 + .005 * A)
Maximum Damage = 2*D

Where:
R1A= Rank 1 Damage of ammunition type used
S1=Net damage increase for shooting ability (3x for full take aim)
S2=Net damage increase for ammunition ability
A=Weapon attack value

I've looked into Mercer's and Beckett's pistols for when I did my gun guide, and based on how I've found guns to be working I find my damage equation to be quite accurate. What's interesting about the equation is that it has no discrimination between boosts to a take aim/shoot skill and boosts to an ammunition. So a +3 boost to take aim on a gun using take aim and steel shot will be the same damage if the gun is used the same way but instead has a +3 boost to steel shot. This is the exact case for comparing Mercer's and Beckett's (if you ignore the critical strike chance on Mercer's). So, with no criticals, the two guns have effectively the same stats when using steel shot and it is testable to find this. Since Beckett's has no silver shot boost, but Mercer's still has a damage increase from take aim, Mercer's is expected to do more damage than Beckett's when both use silver shot (again ignoring criticals).

So, if you have both guns, which it seems like you do, I would recommend finding the full damage range that you can get using take aim and steel shot for both guns on green and gray bar enemies (so there is a consistent 0% damage reduction) on Isla Tormenta. I would expect that they would get the same damage, and therefore Mercer's having critical strike will make it do more damage with steel shot and more in general with silver shot. And that's my long winded explanation of why I think Mercer's is higher tier than Beckett's

 

[Beggar]

For one, 50 kills is a good start, but I don't think it gives mercer's the opportunity to show that it can create large critical hit shots for more consistent one shots and so I can see more kills changing your data significantly.

I'm not going to pretend as if 50 kills is an ideal sample size for a statistically robust analysis, but it is enough for a casual observer to pick up on general, cursory trends in the data. Indeed, there is potential for Mercer's pistol to land many successive critical hits - and therefore more successive one-hit kills - but with the time-to-kill tests on Cicatriz taken into consideration, it doesn't appear that the random variation in damage on either Beckett's or Mercer's is large enough to make the possibility of successive strings of critical hits concerning for this analysis. No matter how many tests we run, Mercer's Pistol will never "consistently" one-shot enemies since - by definition - Critical Strike Rank 3 will only yield critical hits 30% of the time (I believe this to be the set crit probability) as our sample size approaches infinity.

Assuming you're a level 50 pirate this means that you will be attacking enemies with between a 10% (lvl 38) and 33% (lvl 45) damage reduction. Now this could balance itself out in the long run, but in 50 kills Mercer's could have killed way more (or less) higher level enemies making it harder (or easier) for it to one shot those 50 random enemies as compared to those kills with Beckett's.

This is a legitimate criticism, of course, and I admit that there is a possible (albeit pretty unlikely) chance that I happened to get way more high level enemies when I started running tests for Mercer's Pistol (or inversely, I got more big enemies with Beckett's). It's important to note, however, that I only ran these tests so I could either verify or disprove what I had already observed over thousands of kills on these level 38-45 enemies. The ~20% difference in quantity of OHKOs suits my own observations quite nicely, and is also corroborated by the TTK tests I ran on Cicatriz. The alignment between these three sources of verification could be a coincidence, of course, but I kinda doubt it.

Another self-criticism which I would add to yours is that someone who prefers killing Thrall Captains, Urchinfists, and Spouts to other Tormenta enemies may receive more relative benefit from Mercer's Pistol than these tests would suggest if taken on their face. I suspect that Beckett's would still outperform Mercer's against these enemies - although by a smaller margin.

Second non-nitpick nitpick is similar. I don't really think that 7 data points is enough to say the average TTK for one gun is better than the other, even though I do like that the data for this is on my side that Mercer's does more DPS. Also, you could be clicking differently in the data sets, but I doubt it would ever be enough to create a lot of error.

I used to kill Cicatriz many more times than I did for this test when evaluating other weapons, but the exercise eventually revealed itself to be unnecessary as it became obvious that the variation between a single weapon's TTKs on powerful bosses is almost negligible. As seen in my data, the variation widens a bit with Critical Strike weapons, but given that there's hardly any overlap at all between the two weapons' ranges of TTK, I didn't see it necessary to continue testing when these data already matched what I'd observed while killing Seabeards. Furthermore, it's very unlikely that further tests would have shifted the averages dramatically enough to warrant a rearrangement of these weapons on this tier list.

You'll have to take my word for it that I took extra effort to make sure my click intervals were very consistent.

Now, those are some minor points why I disagree, but the main reason is because of the work that I have done to analyze the damage of weapons. I'll just quickly pull up the damage equation:

Minimum Damage Equation: D=1.5*(26+R1A)*S1*S2*(1 + .005 * A)
Maximum Damage = 2*D

Where:
R1A= Rank 1 Damage of ammunition type used
S1=Net damage increase for shooting ability (3x for full take aim)
S2=Net damage increase for ammunition ability
A=Weapon attack value

I've looked into Mercer's and Beckett's pistols for when I did my gun guide, and based on how I've found guns to be working I find my damage equation to be quite accurate. What's interesting about the equation is that it has no discrimination between boosts to a take aim/shoot skill and boosts to an ammunition. So a +3 boost to take aim on a gun using take aim and steel shot will be the same damage if the gun is used the same way but instead has a +3 boost to steel shot. This is the exact case for comparing Mercer's and Beckett's (if you ignore the critical strike chance on Mercer's). So, with no criticals, the two guns have effectively the same stats when using steel shot and it is testable to find this. Since Beckett's has no silver shot boost, but Mercer's still has a damage increase from take aim, Mercer's is expected to do more damage than Beckett's when both use silver shot (again ignoring criticals).

So, if you have both guns, which it seems like you do, I would recommend finding the full damage range that you can get using take aim and steel shot for both guns on green and gray bar enemies (so there is a consistent 0% damage reduction) on Isla Tormenta. I would expect that they would get the same damage, and therefore Mercer's having critical strike will make it do more damage with steel shot and more in general with silver shot. And that's my long winded explanation of why I think Mercer's is higher tier than Beckett's

You've probably picked up on my deep skepticism of numerical damage (either from the K skill menu or as it's displayed when hitting enemies) from reading other things I've posted on forums. It's also implied by my preference for measuring time-to-kill over just looking at how much damage the guns are doing and sumavg-ing it.

I do not think that the ranges of displayed damage are accurate, either. Just give Dutchman’s Pestilence a whirl for a few minutes and you’ll see what I mean. Better yet, get an alt to attune a boss and then attack it with a weapon, and record both the displayed and real damage to see if the average values of each are anywhere near each other.

I think your damage functions may very well be accurate representations of how both real and displayed damage should be calculated, but it’s pretty obvious to me that something is failing to be accurately factored into either one or both of these values in the actual game. Until the TLOPO team susses out what that is and gets damage into working order, I prefer to exclusively pay attention to damage only insofar as it affects my ability to kill fish people. The only way to do that is to look at TTK.

 

[Ned_Reddavis]

Wow, ok, this is an amazing response and has taken me some time to address everything.

I think your damage functions may very well be accurate representations of how both real and displayed damage should be calculated, but it’s pretty obvious to me that something is failing to be accurately factored into either one or both of these values in the actual game. Until the TLOPO team susses out what that is and gets damage into working order, I prefer to exclusively pay attention to damage only insofar as it affects my ability to kill fish people. The only way to do that is to look at TTK.

I appreciate that you consider my equations to have potential accuracy and I agree that there are outstanding inconsistencies between the displayed damage numbers and the effect damage done to an enemies actual health. My equations can only predict how the red text numbers will range from, but they can't account for the odd difference in damage that usually occurs. I've done some tests in the past on gray enemies to record the changes in damage that occur and measure the deviation from what the red text damage displays. Quoting from a previous post of mine:

It is true that some damage gets applied to the health bar of the enemy, but this is very often not the exact number of the red text that you see show up. It is more often to be above or below the red number, which creates problems with discerning the real damage that is being dealt to the enemy. The total damage for red after 130 tests was 157371 and the total for enemy health was 156672. The relative difference is a measly .444%, meaning that the damage dealt to health is 99.55% of the red damage numbers. This is so close to 100% that it can be assumed that the red damage numbers provide an accurate detail of how much damage you will do on average.

So, in an environment where a lot of hits are being done, I think that the use of my red text damage equation is still accurate because the health loss deviations balance out to line up with the red text damage. This is why I consider looking at the damage ranges alone to be an accurate representation of damage which can then be merged into understanding OH potential (average damage) and TTK (animation timing and HP)

Furthermore, if we consider two weapons, say two swords, that are different but have identical damage, then both swords using the same attacks on the same enemy will be able to produce the same range of red text damage numbers. Now, these swords will also be producing those weird shifts in damage to the actual health of the enemy compared to what the red text says, but shouldn't the two swords experience the same shifts in the long term? My answer to that question is yes. Weapons experience these damage deviations, but they don't appear to be so radical that a rusty sword could ever deviate and do a mercer's critical hit amount of damage; they consistently deviate a short distance around what the red text damage is. So, with my equations saying that mercer's and beckett's have identical red text damage (ignoring crits) when using take aim and steel shot, shouldn't my sword example apply and the damage deviations from these guns be the same? Therefore when killing the same enemy over and over, shouldn't they display the same consistency (or rather inconsistency) in their OH potential?

it doesn't appear that the random variation in damage on either Beckett's or Mercer's is large enough to make the possibility of successive strings of critical hits concerning for this analysis. No matter how many tests we run, Mercer's Pistol will never "consistently" one-shot enemies since - by definition - Critical Strike Rank 3 will only yield critical hits 30% of the time (I believe this to be the set crit probability) as our sample size approaches infinity.

Now, if we can say that because the red text damage range of the two guns is identical, and that therefore the deviations in damage health damage are too, then we can conclude that, on any given enemy, these guns should have equal chance to kill the enemy in one hit or not. So, outside of critical strike these guns should have equal 'consistency' in OH kills. However, taking into account Mercer's critical strike 3 (which I take as a nice even 10% crit chance after 2000 tests), Mercer's should have shots that will do more damage than beckett's on the same enemy, therefore allowing Mercer's to OH more targets. While critical strikes are, as you say, inconsistent, it is the integral aspect of mercer's that makes it more deadly than beckett's and it should not be ignored.
I recognize that your data did not find mercer's to OH more than beckett's and that's why I implore you to kill a consistently leveled enemy more than 50 times for each gun. With only a 10% chance at criticals, this means that on average only 5 enemies (but possibly more or less) would have gotten a critical hit, and even then it's possible for it to be a low crit or be adjusted lower on the enemies actual health resulting in no OH kill. Due to damage variance we likely won't see exactly 10% more OH with mercer's than beckett's, but in a very large sample size I think it will show that beckett's and mercer's tend to be exactly similar except on the occasion that mercer's gets a favorable crit that translates to health damage for a OH when beckett's could not, translating to slightly more OH kills with mercer's.

Here's the reference data to my claim of a 10% at critical strike rank 3, which is that third column. The first and second column were similar tests with rank 1 and rank 2 critical strike, respectively. All tests were done with swords on Timothy Dartan.

 

[Beggar]

Wow, ok, this is an amazing response and has taken me some time to address everything.



I appreciate that you consider my equations to have potential accuracy and I agree that there are outstanding inconsistencies between the displayed damage numbers and the effect damage done to an enemies actual health. My equations can only predict how the red text numbers will range from, but they can't account for the odd difference in damage that usually occurs. I've done some tests in the past on gray enemies to record the changes in damage that occur and measure the deviation from what the red text damage displays. Quoting from a previous post of mine:

So, in an environment where a lot of hits are being done, I think that the use of my red text damage equation is still accurate because the health loss deviations balance out to line up with the red text damage. This is why I consider looking at the damage ranges alone to be an accurate representation of damage which can then be merged into understanding OH potential (average damage) and TTK (animation timing and HP)

Furthermore, if we consider two weapons, say two swords, that are different but have identical damage, then both swords using the same attacks on the same enemy will be able to produce the same range of red text damage numbers. Now, these swords will also be producing those weird shifts in damage to the actual health of the enemy compared to what the red text says, but shouldn't the two swords experience the same shifts in the long term? My answer to that question is yes. Weapons experience these damage deviations, but they don't appear to be so radical that a rusty sword could ever deviate and do a mercer's critical hit amount of damage; they consistently deviate a short distance around what the red text damage is. So, with my equations saying that mercer's and beckett's have identical red text damage (ignoring crits) when using take aim and steel shot, shouldn't my sword example apply and the damage deviations from these guns be the same? Therefore when killing the same enemy over and over, shouldn't they display the same consistency (or rather inconsistency) in their OH potential?



Now, if we can say that because the red text damage range of the two guns is identical, and that therefore the deviations in damage health damage are too, then we can conclude that, on any given enemy, these guns should have equal chance to kill the enemy in one hit or not. So, outside of critical strike these guns should have equal 'consistency' in OH kills. However, taking into account Mercer's critical strike 3 (which I take as a nice even 10% crit chance after 2000 tests), Mercer's should have shots that will do more damage than beckett's on the same enemy, therefore allowing Mercer's to OH more targets. While critical strikes are, as you say, inconsistent, it is the integral aspect of mercer's that makes it more deadly than beckett's and it should not be ignored.
I recognize that your data did not find mercer's to OH more than beckett's and that's why I implore you to kill a consistently leveled enemy more than 50 times for each gun. With only a 10% chance at criticals, this means that on average only 5 enemies (but possibly more or less) would have gotten a critical hit, and even then it's possible for it to be a low crit or be adjusted lower on the enemies actual health resulting in no OH kill. Due to damage variance we likely won't see exactly 10% more OH with mercer's than beckett's, but in a very large sample size I think it will show that beckett's and mercer's tend to be exactly similar except on the occasion that mercer's gets a favorable crit that translates to health damage for a OH when beckett's could not, translating to slightly more OH kills with mercer's.

View attachment 115110

Here's the reference data to my claim of a 10% at critical strike rank 3, which is that third column. The first and second column were similar tests with rank 1 and rank 2 critical strike, respectively. All tests were done with swords on Timothy Dartan.

I just spend a couple (miserable) hours doing about 60 more Cicatriz kills and avg TTK favored Mercer's this time by about 1.5 seconds. Not a huge difference against a giant boss, but I think that might actually be pretty critical against smaller bosses like Jimmy Legs or Crash. It's also not quite a (as you correctly determined) 10% difference, but of course we wouldn't expect to see a perfectly proportional transition between DMG and TTK since TTK is partially a function of the amount of individual shots it takes to kill Cicatriz, which is a discrete variable.

In light of that, I'll put Mercer's and Beckett's in the same tier. I'll kill a few thousand torm enemies some other time to see if the OHKO thing slightly favors Mercer's, as you suspect. I don't think there's a spot where i can get level 40+ normal enemies which consistently stand at the same HP as each other, so I'll have to even it out by just killing a boatload of them.

Would you mind walking me through how you determined that boosts to Take Aim and Steel Shot have an equivalent effect on damage? Is this also true for other ammunition types?

 

[Tobias Singedrose]

If you want accurate numbers for damage you have to create a second account and record the damage from this accounts perspective. I know this because I regularly play on 3 accounts simultaneously and can attest that the two accounts witnessing the damage match while the damage deliverers number is almost always skewed.

 

[Ned_Reddavis]

Would you mind walking me through how you determined that boosts to Take Aim and Steel Shot have an equivalent effect on damage? Is this also true for other ammunition types?

Absolutely. As with all the weapons that I test, I start with a baseline weapon that has the bare minimum requirements to be used; for guns that is a single rank in ammunition and a single rank in the shoot skill and/or take aim skill if you want to use that. I tested a few guns in each category keeping some at the minimum and upgrading particular skills that could affect damage. Then with all those guns I attacked gray bar enemies until I found the full red text damage range. From those numbers I can start pulling out factors that I know affect the gun based on what I had measured previously from my extensive research with swords.

To give an example: Testing the Divine Pistol with lead shot 1 and shoot 1 produced a damage range 127-255. Now I already know that the Divine Pistol gains damage from it's attack rating of 78 and that can be divided out. The Divine Pistol will gain a damage multiplier of (1+0.005*78)=1.39 so I divide the damage range by 1.39 to remove the bonus from attack. This gives 91-183 and at this point there are no more skill boosts that increase damage. I know previously from working with swords that their damage equations required a modifier of 1.5 universally, so I can assume guns are the same and divide out the 1.5 factor to get a barebones damage range of 61-122. Now, the attack that was done in this case was using a rank 1 shoot ability and a rank 1 lead shot ammunition so the damage has to relate to those. And it just so happens that the damage of the rank 1 shoot ability is 26-52 and rank 1 lead shot is 35-70; 35+26=61, 70+52=122 and badda bing badda boom that's everything that went into calculating that damage!

So reverse engineering from this example, we know that we must first sum the damage of the ammunition and the shoot ability and then apply all of the damage multipliers to that sum. Then with other tests we can see a clear trend with increasing the ranks on abilities. For example with the seven seas repeater using shoot 4 and lead shot 4 with an attack rating of 39 it gets a range of 336-672 and without attack bonus modifiers it is 281-562. Now at this point it is not quite clear what effects increasing the lead shot and shoot ranks did, but if assume that the summation part is the same then we have to have a sum of the base rank 1 ammunition damage and base shot damage (finding this part was a head ache and lots of trial and error). Now, using lead and shoot we start with the sum of 61 as before and have to get to 281. We still haven't added in the universal 1.5 modifier rule so we employ that and get 91.50. Also pulling from knowledge of how increasing skill points works, from rank 1 to rank 4 each increase gives an extra 25% damage so we get a modifier from each rank 4 ability of 1.75. So, saying that each ability gives 1.75 times damage we take 1.75*1.75*91.5 to be our calculated minimum damage for that gun which comes out to 280.2, real darn close to the experimental 281 and the small error can be accounted for by simple rounding as the code calculates damage.

D=1.5*(26+ShotBaseDmg)*Skill1mod*Skill2mod*(1 + .005 * Attack)

So that's effectively my process in finding out the wonky nature of gun damage calculating and now that that is established I'll talk mercer's and beckett's. To compare damage we can just look at how the are similar and dissimilar. Right off the bat they have the same attack of 85 so that can be ignored. If they are to both be using take aim (which is more dps for pistols so they should) and steel shot then we have the same baseline sum of (26+96) for the minimum damage and then that can be ignored. Also the 1.5 modifier can be safely taken out. So we are just left with the modifiers from their skills. Assuming the user has started out with rank 5 take aim and rank 5 steel shot, then with mercer's we will have take aim 8 and steel shot 5, and with beckett's we have take aim 5 and steel shot 8. Referencing a handy chart I made from testing we see that from rank 1 to rank 5 we get a total modifier of 2 and for rank 8 a modifier of 2.50. That means for mercer's and beckett's we get 2.5*2 and 2*2.5, respectively, which are clearly identical so that means that every aspect of the equation is the same and therefore mercer's and beckett's should have the same red text damage. Important for guns in general but not in this direct comparison, drawing a full take aim boosts damage by 3 times. Now, I cannot say for beckett's, but I have tested out mercer's with full take aim and steel shot and gotten a damage range (without crits of course) of 3911-7823. Using the equation for the minimum damage it is Dmin=1.5*(26+96)*2.5*2*(1+0.005*85)*3(take aim bonus)==3911.625, almost identical to the 3911 we found in testing!!

The comparison does not hold when using something like silver shot because mercer's retains the 2.5*2 damage modifier from it's shot skill and ammunition skill but beckett's loses out and only has rank 5 skills to have 2*2 damage modifier from its skills. Therefore it is predicted that beckett's does less damage than mercer's with silver shot, or any shot other than steel for that matter.

 

[Beggar]

Thanks to the insight of @Ned_Reddavis , further testing of Beckett's and Mercer's pistols has revealed that a fully charged shot from Beckett's Pistol does not deal more average damage than a non-critical, fully charged shot from Mercer's Pistol.

The only remaining advantage that Beckett's pistol appears to have over Mercer's Pistol is a potentially more powerful "shoot" attack on enemies vulnerable to steel shot. The situations where this is advantageous are infrequent compared to those where critical hit potential is advantageous. Therefore, Beckett's Pistol has been lowered one tier to emphasize the overall greater combat and looting utility which Mercer's Pistol offers.

 

[Beggar]

This year's new Hollowed Woods legendary - The Storm Sphere - is being placed at tier C.

Informal testing from @Bort Greasegorb and @theWizter has revealed that the weapon's average damage output from either Siege Charge or Maelstrom Charge is substantially lower than that of its competing substitute: Green Ornament Grenades. The Storm Sphere is not able to match GOG's ability to consistently clear a gold room in one blast with a Siege Charge thrown with Long Volley, and it does not output more sustained damage against high HP bosses.

The weapon's boost to Demolitions may give it the advantage over competing grenades in some situations. For instance, areas with widely scattered enemies such as Cicatriz's spot in El Patron's mine or the lower floor of Forsaken Shallows have enemies that are difficult to hit simultaneously using most grenades. A pvper may also have an easier time hitting groups of opponents with it. However, these situations are rare, and I suspect most players would still prefer the extra damage from GOG.

Despite the weapon's extremely high resale value, fancy weapon model, and the high barriers to its finding, this doesn't appear to have the sort of ultimate treasure status that we associate with weapons like Leviathan or Thunderspine. This weapon is more like Calypso's Radiance or The Ruby Curse. It's cool and all, but you don't have much of a reason to use it.

As always, this placement is pending further testing. I'm looking forward to getting to try it out myself

 

[Bort Greasegorb]

This year's now Hollowed Woods legendary - The Storm Sphere - is being placed at tier C.

Informal testing from @Bort Greasegorb and @theWizter has revealed that the weapon's average damage output from either Siege Charge or Maelstrom Charge is substantially lower than that of its competing substitute: Green Ornament Grenades. The Storm Sphere is not able to match GOG's ability to consistently clear a gold room in one blast with a Siege Charge thrown with Long Volley, and it does not output more sustained damage against high HP bosses.

The weapon's boost to Demolitions may give it the advantage over competing grenades in some situations. For instance, areas with widely scattered enemies such as Cicatriz's spot in El Patron's mine or the lower floor of Forsaken Shallows have enemies that are difficult to hit simultaneously using most grenades. A pvper may also have an easier time hitting groups of opponents with it. However, these situations are rare, and I suspect most players would still prefer the extra damage from GOG.

Despite the weapon's extremely high resale value, fancy weapon model, and the high barriers to its finding, this doesn't appear to have the sort of ultimate treasure status that we associate with weapons like Leviathan or Thunderspine. This weapon is more like Calypso's Radiance or The Ruby Curse. It's cool and all, but you don't have much of a reason to use it.

As always, this placement is pending further testing. I'm looking forward to getting to try it out myself

I would raise it to B- as at its core, a grenade is far more useful and stronger than Calypso's Radiance, a doll. Otherwise, seems like the best placement. I'm kind of hoping for a small buff to The Storm Sphere, as I even heard talk of suggestions of one before I even found it.

 

[Stephen Teague]

This year's now Hollowed Woods legendary - The Storm Sphere - is being placed at tier C.

Informal testing from @Bort Greasegorb and @theWizter has revealed that the weapon's average damage output from either Siege Charge or Maelstrom Charge is substantially lower than that of its competing substitute: Green Ornament Grenades. The Storm Sphere is not able to match GOG's ability to consistently clear a gold room in one blast with a Siege Charge thrown with Long Volley, and it does not output more sustained damage against high HP bosses.

The weapon's boost to Demolitions may give it the advantage over competing grenades in some situations. For instance, areas with widely scattered enemies such as Cicatriz's spot in El Patron's mine or the lower floor of Forsaken Shallows have enemies that are difficult to hit simultaneously using most grenades. A pvper may also have an easier time hitting groups of opponents with it. However, these situations are rare, and I suspect most players would still prefer the extra damage from GOG.

Despite the weapon's extremely high resale value, fancy weapon model, and the high barriers to its finding, this doesn't appear to have the sort of ultimate treasure status that we associate with weapons like Leviathan or Thunderspine. This weapon is more like Calypso's Radiance or The Ruby Curse. It's cool and all, but you don't have much of a reason to use it.

As always, this placement is pending further testing. I'm looking forward to getting to try it out myself

This is really valuable analysis, a lot more informative than other threads that I've seen floating around. Thank you for this!

 

[Kris]

1st time ive seen this thread. Nice thread

 

[Eric Sailcutter]

Thanks to the insight of @Ned_Reddavis , further testing of Beckett's and Mercer's pistols has revealed that a fully charged shot from Beckett's Pistol does not deal more average damage than a non-critical, fully charged shot from Mercer's Pistol.

The only remaining advantage that Beckett's pistol appears to have over Mercer's Pistol is a potentially more powerful "shoot" attack on enemies vulnerable to steel shot. The situations where this is advantageous are infrequent compared to those where critical hit potential is advantageous. Therefore, Beckett's Pistol has been lowered one tier to emphasize the overall greater combat and looting utility which Mercer's Pistol offers.

As I see it, Mercer’s has advantages in that you can use any shot type and in it’s crits, the one advantage I see in Beckett’s is that you still get appreciable steel shot boost without the full take aim required with Mercer’s so you can shoot Beckett’s faster with pretty good effect as compared with Mercer’s when using steel shot.

 

[Ned_Reddavis]

As I see it, Mercer’s has advantages in that you can use any shot type and in it’s crits, the one advantage I see in Beckett’s is that you still get appreciable steel shot boost without the full take aim required with Mercer’s so you can shoot Beckett’s faster with pretty good effect as compared with Mercer’s when using steel shot.

I believe they should actually still do the same steel shot + take aim damage regardless of how long the aiming is held; so long as they are both aimed the same amount they will have the same base damage and modifiers, so mercer's should be able to do the same quick take aim damage as beckett's. Mercer's definitely loses out in the steel shot + shoot attack but that's a pretty poor way to use pistols imo.

 

[Eric Sailcutter]

I believe they should actually still do the same steel shot + take aim damage regardless of how long the aiming is held; so long as they are both aimed the same amount they will have the same base damage and modifiers, so mercer's should be able to do the same quick take aim damage as beckett's. Mercer's definitely loses out in the steel shot + shoot attack but that's a pretty poor way to use pistols imo.

That doesn't sound right, since with rank 5 steel Beckett's has 8 steel with no take aim and Mercer's has 5. Mercer's should only make up the difference once full take aim is reached.

 

[Ned_Reddavis]

That doesn't sound right, since with rank 5 steel Beckett's has 8 steel with no take aim and Mercer's has 5. Mercer's should only make up the difference once full take aim is reached.

Minimum Damage Equation: D=1.5*(26.5+R1A + 0.5*P)*S1*S2*(1 + .005 * A)*C
Maximum Damage = 2*D

Where:
R1A= Rank 1 Damage of ammunition type used
S1=Net damage increase for shooting ability (3x for full take aim)
S2=Net damage increase for ammunition ability
A=Weapon attack value
C=Critical rank boost, 1.05, 1.066, 1.1
P = Powerful ability rank, 1, 2, 3, 4

Assuming we are using rank 5 take aim and rank 5 steel shot as a base and mercer's will not be critting:
R1A = 96.25 for steel
A = 85 both guns
C, P = 0 since no critical hits nor powerful ability ranks for either gun
Mercer's Pistol: Rank 8 Take Aim and Rank 5 Steel Shot gives S1=2.5 and S2=2
Beckett's Pistol: Rank 5 Take Aim and Rank 8 Steel Shot gives S1=2 and S2=2.5

Minimum damage when using a full take aim meter (hence the times 3):

Mercer's Damage: D=1.5*(26.5+96 + 0.5*0)*2.5*2*(1 + .005 * 85)*3 = 3927.65
Beckett's Damage: D=1.5*(26.5+96 + 0.5*0)*2*2.5*(1 + .005 * 85)*3 = 3927.65

Perhaps @Beggar can confirm this since he has both weapons, but clearly one can see that they do the same damage in this case; but the specific question is if they don't use full take aim. The full story with the take aim ability is that it is a multiplier from 1 to 3 depending on how long you hold the aim, maxing out at 3 when full. The increase of the multiplier as the aiming technique is used is approximately linear, meaning that you will get the same proportion of multiplier increase relative to how filled the meter is. So, a half filled meter half the bonus damage which would be a multiplier of 2.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter how full the take aim ability because both guns (when using steel shot) will deal the exact same damage when both aimed the same amount because they will both deal the same base damage * whatever the particular take aim multiplier is in the test. So no, Mercer's does not need to be aimed longer in order to do the same damage as Beckett's in this scenario.

 

[RedDeveloper]

Thanks for making this, I think it's extremely helpful to new looters who have no clue what legendary they should try getting first

 

[Jeffrey Plundersmythe]

Confused as to how Heart of Padres is S rank and Yore is A- ?

 

[Beggar]

Confused as to how Heart of Padres is S rank and Yore is A- ?

bloodfire

 

[Jeffrey Plundersmythe]

bloodfire

I'm not sure about that one chief