Ever wondered whether it’s better to take Big Attack Up or Big Attack Speed Up? Or whether you are better off upgrading your gun, your gear, or your hero? Or whether those All-Hero bonuses make a big difference?
The Damage Simulator (click here) can help answer those questions.
How to use the Simulator:
- Most of the fields are either self-evident, or are linked to wiki entries that explain them
- For the Big Attack Up field
- Count each Big Attack Up perk as 1
- Count each Small Attack Up perk as 0.5
- Count Fast Shots as 0.5, Gun Heart as 0.5, Power Tripper as 1.5 and Improved Power Tripper as 2.5
- The Big Attack Speed Up field is similar (Big is 1, Small is 0.5)
Limitations
At the moment the Simulator ignores all of the following; I might try to add them in for future revisions (some of them will require some kind of modelling), but for now I’ve included some hints
- Hero Passive Skills - Blazia’s wrath adds about 17% damage on average. Others are trickier to model
- Ice - works well with fast guns, especially when you have piercing and chain
- Indirect Hits, Spread Shots (Spread / Vertical / Back),
- Collateral damage - currently lists Plasma Cannon’s Blast and Devastator’s Trail; Gemini’s Laser Link and Nuclear’s lasso is not included yet
- The chance of the shot hitting - the slower the bullets and the faster the enemy, the more likely you are to miss at least some of the time (and the more useful Fast Shots will be); the simulator just assumes that every bullet hits; in a similar vein Fire calculation assumes you hit at least once every 2 seconds
- Death Effects - comparing between them, Death Ice / Death Zap are good to slow down the mobs; Death Shrapnel is good if you have Piercing Shrapnel (or at least have Shrapnel Shots so might get it); between the rest my ranking would be (considering Damage done, not sure if the zone is the same) Death Fire, Death Blast, and Death Poison.
- Critical Chance - as a ball-park, it will increase your shot damage/second by ~20% (excluding Elemental Damage and Death Effects), slightly less useful if you have the Sniper Shots skill or Hit Mark
- Chain Shots - will approximately double your shot damage when there are mobs, also good for spreading Fire, Poison, Ice and Zap; pairs with Shrapnel shots to give unto 8 shrapnel pieces
- Focus Shots - good for fast guns (SMG, Auto, Looper), much less useful if you have Indirect damage going on (but still useful for single Bosses); also Chain shots pretty much ruins it (except for single Bosses)
- Shrapnel (Shrapnel shots, Sidewinder, Death Shrapnel, Frag Bullets)
- Buckshot (adds 40% of Weapon Specific base damage if you are close)
- Distant Shots (adds 40% of Weapon Specific base damage if you are far away)
- Revenge - only really worth taking with slow guns (e.g. Rifle, Devastator)
- Headshot - good for fast guns (SMG / Auto / Looper) because you could save more shots, especially with a lot of Indirect Hits; much less useful if you have any Shrapnel perks or any Death perks (an enemy damaged by those can’t be headshot)
While you could use this to compare Guns, be aware that the numbers for Gemini Laser are under-reported (because it only calculates for 1 projectile and the laser link isn’t modelled) and that the Laser Rifle and the Looper have a head start on Indirect damage, which is also not listed. See also Gun Comparison
Important Note
I haven’t coded in about 2 decades, and have never coded in JavaScript before - so this might not be the most elegant way to do this, but it was the fastest way to get it out and hopefully there are no major bugs 