Ned_Reddavis
Honorable Pirate
Hello again pirates! For those of you who are as hungry as I am to find the optimal damaging weapons for farming, I am back with another damage guide, trying to discern which of your firearms do the most damage output over a given time interval. We'll discuss general perks, then a deep dive into the math behind calculating damage, and end with DPS comparisons.
The easiest and first step into this journey is looking at all of the skill abilities that each gun has the option of choosing. Below is an example skill tree.
Ammunition
Any gun will fire a currently equipped ammunition type, if you have the requisite ammo, and can be fired in two ways: shot instantly, or aim then shoot. First, looking at the ammo, the final shot, steel shot, deals far and away the most damage per skill point put into that shot, closely followed by silver. These two shots must be used on their relevant enemy types in order to do the damage that the shot says it will (Silver-Undead and Steel-Living), otherwise they suffer a minimum 90% damage penalty. When used correctly, however, these shots do so much damage that just 1 point in them will do at least as much damage as a lead shot with 8 skill points. So, under the assumption that ammo is never an issue, guns should always use silver and steel shot to do maximum bullet damage, with the only exception being if you are shooting an undead enemy with a gun with +3 lead shot, in which case you may use either lead or silver.
If you just want DPS comparisons, feel free to skip ahead there, otherwise let's talk raw damage. For non-blunderbusses, the very base damage of a rank 1 lead shot and shoot attack and reducing out the weapon attack bonus damage increase, we find that they deal a base 91/92 damage. The displayed damage of a rank 1 lead shot and shoot attack is 35 and 26, respectively. When added and multiplied by 1.5 that yields 91.5, as was the tested value. Inconveniently, however, guns work differently from swords in that even though the sum of the two attacks you use * 1.5 can net you your base damage, increasing the rank of either your ammunition of shooting ability will increase the total damage of the sum of attacks. This sounds odd, so here is an example of the issue. If my damage equation is to look like:
Dmg=constants * (shoot ability damage + ammo damage)
for the base, then by the distributive property I cannot also say that:
2*Dmg=constants * (shoot ability damage + 2*ammo damage),
Which is essentially what I am saying. So, the damage equation cannot have addition of basic shoot and ammo attacks beyond rank 1, and instead resolves them into a number and multiplies that by the relevant damage increase from rank 1 to the current rank of each ability. Each rank gives a unique damage increase and multiplying all of them gives the total increase from one rank to another:
Minimum Damage Equation: D=1.5*(26.5+R1A)*S1*S2*(1 + .005 * A)*C*P
Maximum Damage = 2*D
Where:
Where:
Now, we take the damage range that we can calculate and divide that by the time required to produce that damage and we get our DPS. We have thus far found the damage of the gun without invoking any special abilities. Many of the gun abilities do not do any significant changes to damage or animation time for them to be relevant. For this reason I will leave out gun special abilities, but it should be noted that the perks Rapid Fire, Quick Load, and Point Blank provide significant weapon boosts.
After a ton of boring math we finally have our table of the best guns per category and their DPS. There are a LOT of guns and a LOT of ammo types AND two aiming techniques. I have done calculations for all of these variations for famed and legendaries, but the most important are the sorted data by best aiming technique (i.e. take aim for all but repeaters) and for steel shot and silver shot. Also the "Blunder swap" is using 4 blunderbusses by shooting them and swapping until the last one; "no reload" implies the reload time is not added to the total time since this is a high amount of damage and most situations call for the enemy's death by then.
Pistols have the high class DPS, especially the legendary guns. Also, although Beckett's pistol has a +3 steel shot boost, by the nature of how the damage is calculated Mercer's Pistol with its +3 take aim boost will do the same damage increase, and on top of that Mercer's has a critical strike bonus thereby making Mercer's do more DPS than Beckett's. Unsurprising to me, muskets and bayonets are low on damage per second, but so are blunders (with the exception of 4 chained), although that isn't to say they don't pack a whopping one hit strike.
Curiously, repeaters take the top spots per category, and blunder swap strats are also up there; they are higher than even the coveted Mercer's Pistol. I know you're wondering "what crap gun does the least dps?", well let me tell ya it's Orangutan Repeater with lead shot and fully aiming at a whopping 111 DPS.
And that's all I have acquired thus far for finding gun DPS, for those of you that made it this far, and those that scrolled right to the bottom, I really hope that this was helpful in some way! If you're still interested in the other variations and their DPS, check out my google spreadsheet that I used to compile all this. That's all! Ned Reddavis out!
The easiest and first step into this journey is looking at all of the skill abilities that each gun has the option of choosing. Below is an example skill tree.
Ammunition
Passives
Very quickly we will look at the passive abilities: Sharpshooter, Dodge, and Eagle Eye. If you play on a pirate with maximum gun and notoriety level, your gun should never rarely if ever miss, unless de-buffed, therefore sharpshooter is not necessary for damage, but may be helpful. The Dodge and Eagle Eye passives do not directly alter the amount of damage that you can put out, but Dodge may indirectly increase damage by occasionally avoiding the few enemy attacks that will decrease player damage for a short few seconds.
Shots
Finally, the last two abilities for guns are Shoot/Scattershot and Take Aim. The in-game damage of these abilities will be the same for both skills at the same skill points, but the damage output calculation is different. After tests, it is my belief that the damage of Take Aim will always start at the damage potential of using the Shoot ability, and ramp up either linearly, or slightly logarithmically. The damage output of blunderbusses under the same exact conditions as other weapons do not match, so it is at this point that I will only discuss the other three gun variants and come back around to blunderbusses later. For those non-blunder weapons, and under the same skill point conditions, a full Take Aim meter will do 3x damage than the same gun using just the Shoot ability. When comparing the damage of the Shoot ability versus animation time of these weapons (shooting and reload) to the damage of Take Aim versus its animations (aim, shoot, reload), muskets and pistols will always deal more damage per second using a full take aim. When comparing a three shot attack versus three aimed and then shot attacks on repeaters, we find that repeaters will deal more damage simply using the shoot ability, which matches with its typical weapon ability bonuses.
Total Damage
If you just want DPS comparisons, feel free to skip ahead there, otherwise let's talk raw damage. For non-blunderbusses, the very base damage of a rank 1 lead shot and shoot attack and reducing out the weapon attack bonus damage increase, we find that they deal a base 91/92 damage. The displayed damage of a rank 1 lead shot and shoot attack is 35 and 26, respectively. When added and multiplied by 1.5 that yields 91.5, as was the tested value. Inconveniently, however, guns work differently from swords in that even though the sum of the two attacks you use * 1.5 can net you your base damage, increasing the rank of either your ammunition of shooting ability will increase the total damage of the sum of attacks. This sounds odd, so here is an example of the issue. If my damage equation is to look like:
Dmg=constants * (shoot ability damage + ammo damage)
for the base, then by the distributive property I cannot also say that:
2*Dmg=constants * (shoot ability damage + 2*ammo damage),
Which is essentially what I am saying. So, the damage equation cannot have addition of basic shoot and ammo attacks beyond rank 1, and instead resolves them into a number and multiplies that by the relevant damage increase from rank 1 to the current rank of each ability. Each rank gives a unique damage increase and multiplying all of them gives the total increase from one rank to another:
Minimum Damage Equation: D=1.5*(26.5+R1A)*S1*S2*(1 + .005 * A)*C*P
Maximum Damage = 2*D
Where:
- R1A = Rank 1 Damage of ammunition type used
- S1 = Net damage increase for shooting ability (3x for 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; gives 1.5% more damage per rank (i.e. 1.015, 1.03 etc)
Blunderbusses
Now, if that wasn't confusing enough, we move on to the more vague and confusing blunderbusses. The data collected by me on blunders varies from that of the other guns. To start, a blunder's shot abilities are higher than all other guns, just about twice as much. This just adjusts the number 26 in the equation to a 53. Next, the standardized minimum value for blunder damage with lead shot and scattershot rank 1 does not fit the first equation when using the value of 1.5, instead it requires 2.22-2.25. Finally, the take aim bonus does not provide 3x damage like the other guns, but instead charges faster and gives a bonus 1.8x damage. Real nasty numbers, but those are all the differences that I could find changing the damage. So, our new model just for blunders is:
Minimum Damage Equation: D=2.25*(52.5+R1A)*S1*S2(1 + .005 * A)*C*P
Maximum Damage = 2*D
Maximum Damage = 2*D
Where:
- R1A = Rank 1 Damage of ammunition type used
- S1 = Net damage increase for shooting ability (1.8x for take aim)
- S2 = Net damage increase for ammunition ability
- A = Weapon attack value
- C = Critical
- P = Powerful ability
Damage Per Second
Now, we take the damage range that we can calculate and divide that by the time required to produce that damage and we get our DPS. We have thus far found the damage of the gun without invoking any special abilities. Many of the gun abilities do not do any significant changes to damage or animation time for them to be relevant. For this reason I will leave out gun special abilities, but it should be noted that the perks Rapid Fire, Quick Load, and Point Blank provide significant weapon boosts.
After a ton of boring math we finally have our table of the best guns per category and their DPS. There are a LOT of guns and a LOT of ammo types AND two aiming techniques. I have done calculations for all of these variations for famed and legendaries, but the most important are the sorted data by best aiming technique (i.e. take aim for all but repeaters) and for steel shot and silver shot. Also the "Blunder swap" is using 4 blunderbusses by shooting them and swapping until the last one; "no reload" implies the reload time is not added to the total time since this is a high amount of damage and most situations call for the enemy's death by then.
Takeaways
Pistols have the high class DPS, especially the legendary guns. Also, although Beckett's pistol has a +3 steel shot boost, by the nature of how the damage is calculated Mercer's Pistol with its +3 take aim boost will do the same damage increase, and on top of that Mercer's has a critical strike bonus thereby making Mercer's do more DPS than Beckett's. Unsurprising to me, muskets and bayonets are low on damage per second, but so are blunders (with the exception of 4 chained), although that isn't to say they don't pack a whopping one hit strike.
Curiously, repeaters take the top spots per category, and blunder swap strats are also up there; they are higher than even the coveted Mercer's Pistol. I know you're wondering "what crap gun does the least dps?", well let me tell ya it's Orangutan Repeater with lead shot and fully aiming at a whopping 111 DPS.
And that's all I have acquired thus far for finding gun DPS, for those of you that made it this far, and those that scrolled right to the bottom, I really hope that this was helpful in some way! If you're still interested in the other variations and their DPS, check out my google spreadsheet that I used to compile all this. That's all! Ned Reddavis out!
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