62 réponses à ce sujet

[Scyley]

Eric, since you have clarified how Armor works, Can you now clarify how shields and barriers work? Is there any difference between the two? Why do rapid fire weapons not seem to do any more damage to shields than single fire weapons, despite their descriptions and mechanics in prior games (I.E. Mass Effect 2)

Modifié par Scyley, 20 mars 2012 - 05:11 .

[Poekel]

So basically Armor Penetration Mods and Armor Pierce Ammo is more or less useless on high damage snipers except for the larger penetration of objects, but should shine on fast firing weapons like the geth assault rifle which would basically do no damage at all while the high dam sniper weapons would only get a dam increase like 15-20.

[BraveLToaster]

Poekel wrote...

So basically Armor Penetration Mods and Armor Pierce Ammo is more or less useless on high damage snipers except for the larger penetration of objects, but should shine on fast firing weapons like the geth assault rifle which would basically do no damage at all while the high dam sniper weapons would only get a dam increase like 15-20.

AP has four effects, take level on of the single player power:

• Health Damage Bonus: 10%
• Armor Damage Bonus: 10%
• Armor Effectiveness: -50%
• Penetration: 0.50 m

What was mentioned in this thread was the Armor Effectiveness stat, it still increases damage to health and armor in addiiton to that.

Modifié par BraveLToaster, 20 mars 2012 - 05:17 .

[nicodeemus327]

Poekel wrote...

So basically Armor Penetration Mods and Armor Pierce Ammo is more or less useless on high damage snipers except for the larger penetration of objects, but should shine on fast firing weapons like the geth assault rifle which would basically do no damage at all while the high dam sniper weapons would only get a dam increase like 15-20.

Nah, its still good for sniper rifles. Those mods/ammo have the piercing stat which reduces the amount of damage that armored targets negate (ie overall damage increases).

[Poekel]

BraveLToaster wrote...

Poekel wrote...

So basically Armor Penetration Mods and Armor Pierce Ammo is more or less useless on high damage snipers except for the larger penetration of objects, but should shine on fast firing weapons like the geth assault rifle which would basically do no damage at all while the high dam sniper weapons would only get a dam increase like 15-20.

AP has four effects, take level on of the single player power:

• Health Damage Bonus: 10%
• Armor Damage Bonus: 10%
• Armor Effectiveness: -50%
• Penetration: 0.50 m

What was mentioned in this thread was the Armor Effectiveness stat, it still increases damage to health and armor in addiiton to that.

[*]Of course it does, but compared to especially Warp Ammo, Warp Ammo definitely will be the better choice when running around with sniper, while Armor Piercing Ammo will be the better choice if you plan to fight armored enemies with something like a Geth Pulse Rifle.

[MartialArtsSurfer]

Thanks Eric for the explainations! Very much appreciated

[Poekel]

nicodeemus327 wrote...

Poekel wrote...

So basically Armor Penetration Mods and Armor Pierce Ammo is more or less useless on high damage snipers except for the larger penetration of objects, but should shine on fast firing weapons like the geth assault rifle which would basically do no damage at all while the high dam sniper weapons would only get a dam increase like 15-20.

Nah, its still good for sniper rifles. Those mods/ammo have the piercing stat which reduces the amount of damage that armored targets negate (ie overall damage increases).

Yes it does reduce the amount, but this should be completely neglectable. A Geth Pulse Rifle does something like 21 damage per shot. For it to make any damage at alle the damage reduction would not be more like 20 points at all. If you're doing 1000 damage per shot, you would do 990 instead of 980 with armor piercing ammo (not counting percentage increases) or around 1% more damage. The Get Pulse Rife instead would do 11 damage instead of 1 per shot (at 90% pierce even about 19 per shot).

€: With this in mind, Cryo Ammo gets even more interesting depending on how the Armor Weakening works. If it works as a debuff of the fixed damage reduction amount it won't be that good, especially if someone has penetration mods and Armor Piercing Ammo. But if it works as general buff on the damage done to armored targets, having someone with cryo ammo and others with fast firing weapons and ammo piercing stuff would allow them do to a lot of damage to armored targets.

Modifié par Poekel, 20 mars 2012 - 05:37 .

[Eric Fagnan]

Scyley wrote...

Eric, since you have clarified how Armor works, Can you now clarify how shields and barriers work? Is there any difference between the two? Why do rapid fire weapons not seem to do any more damage to shields than single fire weapons, despite their descriptions and mechanics in prior games (I.E. Mass Effect 2)

Shields/Barriers are no longer stronger/weaker versus certain weapons in ME3 like they were in ME2.

There is a new mechanic for shields and barriers in ME3, which we call the shield gate. Whenever an enemy shield/barrier is destroyed (last point taken off), the rest of the damage that passes through to the health/armor is cut by X%, where X is:

50% on Normal/Bronze
75% on Hardcore/Silver
100% on Insanity/Gold

This means that if an enemy has a single sliver of shields on Insanity/Gold, any weapon bullet will only take the remaining point off, and then a second bullet is required to start damaging the health/armor. This means that even the most powerful sniper rifle will take 2 shots to kill any shielded enemy on Insanity/Gold. For shotguns, keep in mind that most fire multiple pellets, so even if some of the damage gets cut off on one of the pellets, the remaining pellets should pass through to the health/armor.

[Eric Fagnan]

For armor, I forgot to mention that there is a minimum damage value, so the armor can never reduce weapon damage to zero.

[golyoscsapagy]

Eric Fagnan wrote...

Scyley wrote...

Eric, since you have clarified how Armor works, Can you now clarify how shields and barriers work? Is there any difference between the two? Why do rapid fire weapons not seem to do any more damage to shields than single fire weapons, despite their descriptions and mechanics in prior games (I.E. Mass Effect 2)

Shields/Barriers are no longer stronger/weaker versus certain weapons in ME3 like they were in ME2.

There is a new mechanic for shields and barriers in ME3, which we call the shield gate. Whenever an enemy shield/barrier is destroyed (last point taken off), the rest of the damage that passes through to the health/armor is cut by X%, where X is:

50% on Normal/Bronze
75% on Hardcore/Silver
100% on Insanity/Gold

This means that if an enemy has a single sliver of shields on Insanity/Gold, any weapon bullet will only take the remaining point off, and then a second bullet is required to start damaging the health/armor. This means that even the most powerful sniper rifle will take 2 shots to kill any shielded enemy on Insanity/Gold. For shotguns, keep in mind that most fire multiple pellets, so even if some of the damage gets cut off on one of the pellets, the remaining pellets should pass through to the health/armor.

Thank you Eric for the clarification!

Regarding the barrier mechanics: so shotguns generally are much more effective against shielded opponents on all difficulties. I mean that when an enemy has 1 shield left for example, and the shotgun fires 8 pellets, the first pellet will take that 1 shield off, suffer the 50-100% damage penalty and all the remaining pellets would do normal damage?

So a normal weapon would do 50%/25%/0% hp damage whereas a 8-pellet shotgun would do 93,25%/90,625%/87,5% damage?

Modifié par golyoscsapagy, 20 mars 2012 - 05:54 .

[nicodeemus327]

Poekel wrote...

nicodeemus327 wrote...

Poekel wrote...

So basically Armor Penetration Mods and Armor Pierce Ammo is more or less useless on high damage snipers except for the larger penetration of objects, but should shine on fast firing weapons like the geth assault rifle which would basically do no damage at all while the high dam sniper weapons would only get a dam increase like 15-20.

Nah, its still good for sniper rifles. Those mods/ammo have the piercing stat which reduces the amount of damage that armored targets negate (ie overall damage increases).

Yes it does reduce the amount, but this should be completely neglectable. A Geth Pulse Rifle does something like 21 damage per shot. For it to make any damage at alle the damage reduction would not be more like 20 points at all. If you're doing 1000 damage per shot, you would do 990 instead of 980 with armor piercing ammo (not counting percentage increases) or around 1% more damage. The Get Pulse Rife instead would do 11 damage instead of 1 per shot (at 90% pierce even about 19 per shot).

Piercing scales with the damage reduction of armored creatures. While we don't have the exact numbers I'm willing to bet that armored creatures have more damage reduction on silver and gold. Reducing those values by 50% or more is huge. In fact, sniper rifles are probably the only weapons that do enough damage to take full advantage of piercing. Ie ever point of damage reduction negated is one point of actual damage done to the target.

For example, say a brute on silver has 50 damage reduction from armor. You reduce that to 25 using a mod/ammo. Your Geth Pulse rifle still won't do much. However, the sniper rifle gets an extra 25 points to damage.

Modifié par nicodeemus327, 20 mars 2012 - 05:51 .

[BraveLToaster]

The clarifications are much appreciated.

Is the base damage reduction on penetrated shots on Black Widow, Widow, and Javelin 50% (like a level 1 piercing mod) or does that vary from weapon to weapon. I've noticed a lot of people claiming the Javelin is not reduced, but my shots clearly do less damage when firing through cover.

[Kenaras]

Eric Fagnan wrote...

Shields/Barriers are no longer stronger/weaker versus certain weapons in ME3 like they were in ME2.

There is a new mechanic for shields and barriers in ME3, which we call the shield gate. Whenever an enemy shield/barrier is destroyed (last point taken off), the rest of the damage that passes through to the health/armor is cut by X%, where X is:

50% on Normal/Bronze
75% on Hardcore/Silver
100% on Insanity/Gold

This means that if an enemy has a single sliver of shields on Insanity/Gold, any weapon bullet will only take the remaining point off, and then a second bullet is required to start damaging the health/armor. This means that even the most powerful sniper rifle will take 2 shots to kill any shielded enemy on Insanity/Gold. For shotguns, keep in mind that most fire multiple pellets, so even if some of the damage gets cut off on one of the pellets, the remaining pellets should pass through to the health/armor.

This goes a long way towards explaining why heavy pistols and sniper rifles have become so popular.  Armor massively hurts rapid-fire weapons, but the shield gate only really penalizes one-round-per-clip weapons.

Can you explain the differences between "weakens armor" (i.e., cryo blast) and "decreases armor effectiveness" (i.e., armor-piercing ammo)?  I'm guessing that "weakens armor" essentially works for everyone hitting the target for some duration, while "decreases armor effectiveness" only applies to your attack.  What about "armor damage bonus"?  Most bonuses stack additively; are bonuses like this an exception?  In other words, say you have +100% damage, and a +50% armor damage bonus.  Would your total damage vs. armor be +150% (+100% plus +50%) or +200% (+100% times +50%, or 2*1.5 = 3 = +200%)?

[EvilDeity]

Eric, could you explain the "Weaken armored targets" aspect of certain powers, is it just the same as the penetration mod?

How does armour and shielding interact with biotics/combos across difficulties?

Modifié par EvilDeity, 20 mars 2012 - 06:16 .

[Kenaras]

Edit: Never mind.

Modifié par Kenaras, 20 mars 2012 - 06:21 .

[Poekel]

Piercing scales with the damage reduction of armored creatures. While we don't have the exact numbers I'm willing to bet that armored creatures have more damage reduction on silver and gold. Reducing those values by 50% or more is huge. In fact, sniper rifles are probably the only weapons that do enough damage to take full advantage of piercing. Ie ever point of damage reduction negated is one point of actual damage done to the target.

For example, say a brute on silver has 50 damage reduction from armor. You reduce that to 25 using a mod/ammo. Your Geth Pulse rifle still won't do much. However, the sniper rifle gets an extra 25 points to damage.

Well if the amount scales with difficulty or even with enemy type (which I would doubt) should be relatively easy to test: Just shoot an enemy with each lvl 1 weapon each and take a screenshot of the armor bar. This way someone should be able to even get the amount of damage reduced.

But lets assume the damage reduction would be 50 points. An assault rifle with 100 damage per shot would do 50 damage per point with no pierce. With 100% pierce and the 14% damage bonus (assuming damage bonus is applied before pierce) it would do 114 damage per shot. A sniper rifle with 1000 damage would do 950 without any piercing while doing 1140 damage with mods.

100% pierce, 14% damage bonus (armor piercing ammo 3 + penetration mod 5):
Assault Rifle: 114 damage, Sniper rifle: 1140 damage
65% pierce, 20% damage bonus (penetration mod 5 + warp ammo 3)
Assault Rifle: 102,5 damage, Sniper Rifle: 1182,5 damage
0% pierce, 45% damage bonus (warp ammo 3 + damage mod 5)
Assault Rifle: 95 damage, Snipe Rifle: 1400
65% pierce, 45% damage bonus (warp ammo 3, damage mod 5, +penetration mod 5):
Assault Rifle: 127,5 damage, Sniper Rifle: 1432,5
100% pierce, 39% damage bonus (armor piercing ammo 3, damage mod 5, penetration mod 5)
Assault Rifle: 139 damage, Sniper Rifle: 1390 Damage

Assuming that the damage percentage are just added not (not multiplied, this should make it even more obvious) the assault rifle (when fighting armored targets) would always gain more by getting armor piercing ammo while the sniper rifle would always get more out of warp ammo against armored as well as non armored targets.

€: This would of course only be true for the very high damage sniper weapons, The lower the damage gets the better armor piercing ammo gets especially when combined with penetration and damage mods. So a Viper or even a Black Widow might be better of with AP Ammo (depending on how all the other damage boni are calculated).

Modifié par Poekel, 20 mars 2012 - 06:49 .

[Scyley]

So Eric,

If all weapons do 100% damage to Health,
and all weapons do 100% damage to shield (minus the very small inconvience of shield gating),
and single shot weapons have a large advantage over rapid fire weapons against armor,
then.....

There is absolutely no reason to ever choose a rapid-fire weapon over a single shot weapon, ever. They hold absolutely no advantage. This is on top of the fact that single shot weapons seem to have a higher DPS rating over rapid fire weapons in the first place. Can you please clarify why an entire category of weapons (SMGs) and a large sub-set of another (assault rifles) is severely gimped?

[UK Wildcat]

Eric, thank you for answering.  I created a thread with other mechanics questions so as not to derail this one.  Appreciate the clarification for AP stats.

Modifié par UK Wildcat, 20 mars 2012 - 06:55 .

[RamsenC]

This may be asking for too much, but the health values for every enemy on every difficulty would be awesome...

[kieran.me]

RamsenC wrote...

This may be asking for too much, but the health values for every enemy on every difficulty would be awesome...

the few i know are in the updates section from when the geth bot buffed but that's it

[Athenau]

For example, say a brute on silver has 50 damage reduction from armor. You reduce that to 25 using a mod/ammo. Your Geth Pulse rifle still won't do much. However, the sniper rifle gets an extra 25 points to damage.

What?  You have it backwards.  25 extra damage to weapons that typically do 600 to 1000 damage per shot is negligible.  25 extra points of damage to a weapon that's probably doing 5 or 10 damage per shot (without the AP mod) is huge.  The only time this isn't the case is if you're using a weapon with low enough damage that the damage reduction takes it to the minimum regardless of the AP mod. 

Modifié par Athenau, 20 mars 2012 - 08:18 .

[Kenaras]

Athenau wrote...

For example, say a brute on silver has 50 damage reduction from armor. You reduce that to 25 using a mod/ammo. Your Geth Pulse rifle still won't do much. However, the sniper rifle gets an extra 25 points to damage.

What?  You have it backwards.  25 extra damage to weapons that typically do 600 to 1000 damage per shot is negligible.  25 extra points of damage to a weapon that's probably doing 5 or 10 damage per shot (without the AP mod) is huge.  The only time this isn't the case is if you're using a weapon with low enough damage that the damage reduction takes it to the minimum regardless of the AP mod. 

A Geth Pulse Rifle I only does 21 damage per shot.  So in the hypothetical example he gave, the damage actually is low enough that the GPR would do the minimum damage regardless of the AP mod.  Of course, since we don't have real numbers it's impossible to know if this is really the case.

Modifié par Kenaras, 20 mars 2012 - 09:10 .

[nicodeemus327]

Athenau wrote...

For example, say a brute on silver has 50 damage reduction from armor. You reduce that to 25 using a mod/ammo. Your Geth Pulse rifle still won't do much. However, the sniper rifle gets an extra 25 points to damage.

What?  You have it backwards.  25 extra damage to weapons that typically do 600 to 1000 damage per shot is negligible.  25 extra points of damage to a weapon that's probably doing 5 or 10 damage per shot (without the AP mod) is huge.  The only time this isn't the case is if you're using a weapon with low enough damage that the damage reduction takes it to the minimum regardless of the AP mod. 

I totally understand what’s being said and I don’t disagree. My point was that a high damage weapon like a sniper rifle will see an immediate benefit from armor piercing. While a fast firing weapon won’t see any benefit until armor piercing reaches a certain amount.

Modifié par nicodeemus327, 20 mars 2012 - 09:23 .

[Poekel]

Hmm after some testing on SP (shooting range) the fixed amount of Armor DR seems to be between 45 and 50 damage on insane difficulty (lower on the other difficulties), chances are that the numbers for gold difficulty are similar. Mimum damage on armored targets ssems to be 5 per shot. I do get some quite funny results for the GPR though that are not in line with that but for the other weapons I tried out a DR of 50 seems to be quite correct.

My point was that a high damage weapon like a sniper rifle will see an immediate benefit for every increase in armor piercing you get. While a fast firing weapon won’t see any benefit until armor piercing reaches a certain amount.

That's not true. With high powered sniper riflers you probably would not notice much of an effect. On the contrary with assault rifles you would notice the effect directly. If my calculations are correct, at a DR of 50, depending on other loadout, Warp Ammo should outdamage AP Ammo at either around 160 damage or around 290 damage, which is basically the case for almost every sniper rifle.

Modifié par Poekel, 20 mars 2012 - 09:31 .

[ForTuchanka]

So how do the three types of anti-armor buffs interact in the game? (namely intrinsic weapon characteristics like with the widow, armor pen mods, and armor pen ammo) Do they overlap, stack, or a mix of both? Is there a point to taking all three when you're using something like a Widow or is that simply doing the same thing three times instead of three times better?