Piercing Weapons?

I think something might be off with the dmg the piercing weps do. Maybe I'm imagining it...

Today I had a piercing avril +6, which if I understand correctly, should do 112% dmg of a normal avril. With my stats, one shot from a plain avril will either kill a brute or take it down to the red level (I have awareness. For those that don't know - green = healthy, yellow = hurting, red = almost dead).

This +6 piercing avril was only getting the brutes into the yellow, which I've never seen before. Likewise for the snakies, which have always taken just a single shot from the avril. I tested a few different scenarios and checked what levels the players were, etc. to see if that was a factor. Also, piercing avril + triple on the titans only got them to yellow. A couple rounds later, I got a lucky avril and all was back to normal.

Anyone else noticed this? I'll try to test a little more.

The piercing weapons ignore your Damage Bonus stat, so the fact that you can normally kill something with 'x' number of shots is irrelavent.
The gun then functions exactly as it would if you played Invasion without the RPG mutator at all. Except yes, the +6 should add to the basic damage of the gun while it ignores your damage bonus stats.

Piercing weapons are good when your Damage Bonus is insufficient to counteract a monster's Damage Reduction. Otherwise you are better off using just about any other weapon.

Ah... thanks for the info. Seems odd that an exception would be made for this particular weapon.

Do any other weapon types behave in this manner?

Well Piercing was fully intended to work this way.

Druid wanted to make a gun for those situations where the monsters are high enough levels to make a person's Damage Bonus or a monster's Damage Reduction insufficient to damage them much.

When the server is on wave 15, the monsters are over level 30. (2x wave number is the minimum level for monsters) So if a player who is level 15 or so is still alive they are in need of a piercing weapon.

Alternately, when someone like Dirty Deeds is the last one alive, he is many levels above the point where he filled his stats to the limits and can put no more points into Damage Bonus. Since the monsters are adjusted according to his level, they have a high Damage Reduction stat. He might be interested in using a piercing weapon at that point also.

So this weapon allows you to deal damage strictly based on the weapon's base damage and the monsters health. (Affected slightly by the modifier of the weapon)

No other magic types ignore RPG stats like this.

I understand that the Piercing can be usefull.

But like 320 mentionned, why is the tripple not working with it. This may be a bug.

v0rTeX wrote:

Well Piercing was fully intended to work this way.

Druid wanted to make a gun for those situations where the monsters are high enough levels to make a person's Damage Bonus or a monster's Damage Reduction insufficient to damage them much.

When the server is on wave 15, the monsters are over level 30. (2x wave number is the minimum level for monsters) So if a player who is level 15 or so is still alive they are in need of a piercing weapon.

Alternately, when someone like Dirty Deeds is the last one alive, he is many levels above the point where he filled his stats to the limits and can put no more points into Damage Bonus. Since the monsters are adjusted according to his level, they have a high Damage Reduction stat. He might be interested in using a piercing weapon at that point also.

So this weapon allows you to deal damage strictly based on the weapon's base damage and the monsters health. (Affected slightly by the modifier of the weapon)

No other magic types ignore RPG stats like this.

Wow. You're like an encyclopedia. So based on what you've said, can it also be said that the monsters' health either doesn't change based on level or has a max limit, and the rest of it is damage reduction?

320 wrote:

Wow. You're like an encyclopedia.

Months of forum diving and talking to the guys behind RPG and addons for it have taught me alot. Learning how to peek at the source code and understand some of it had helped alot too.

320 wrote:

So based on what you've said, can it also be said that the monsters' health either doesn't change based on level or has a max limit, and the rest of it is damage reduction?

Right. Monsters health is not affected by the RPG mutator at all. That is set up in the monster/invasion configurations file.

RPG grants monsters levels based on things like the monster adjust factor and the lowest living player's level. Monsters get stat points to "spend" just like everyone else. The difference is that monsters will "spend" stat points only on Damage Bonus and Damage Reduction. Half the points in each. A monsters damage reduction and a players damage bonus are primarily what determins how hard it is to kill.

[KitFox wrote:

]But like 320 mentionned, why is the tripple not working with it. This may be a bug.

I must have missed where he mentioned that. I would think that Triple Damage should enhance a Piercing weapon further, but I would have to look at the source code again to see if Druid purposely made it immune to Triple Damage.

If it's not working then I would say its a bug OR a clever bit of coding to keep the idea of how it works to be true. (That it would ignore damage enhancers that is)

v0rTeX wrote:

[KitFox wrote:

]But like 320 mentionned, why is the tripple not working with it. This may be a bug.

I must have missed where he mentioned that. I would think that Triple Damage should enhance a Piercing weapon further, but I would have to look at the source code again to see if Druid purposely made it immune to Triple Damage.

If it's not working then I would say its a bug OR a clever bit of coding to keep the idea of how it works to be true. (That it would ignore damage enhancers that is)

It does seem to work, but I was just pointing it out as another piece of evidence that implied the piercing weps were doing less damage.

It's an interesting twist. I take stock of any non-main weps I use that happen to be piercing, in case I'm the last one in.

320 wrote:

It's an interesting twist. I take stock of any non-main weps I use that happen to be piercing, in case I'm the last one in.

And give a copy to anyone else over 100

If I find a peircing weapon, I usually save it(behind any other weapons in inventory) and then switch to it on the final wave.

example
Pick up a peircing flak, toss it and pick up a flak +5. Use the +5 flak until wave 16, then toss that and run over the flak to get my peircing flak.