4 réponses à ce sujet

[lessthanjake9]

I was thinking about the strength of the Explosive Drone in doing damage today, and I started to realize that it might actually be better than Overload against shields.

Let me explain.

The Explosive Drone does 100 base damage when it detonates. Furthermore, its normal attack does damage to shields. The game says that the Drone Damage for an Assault Drone is 40. I believe, then, that that is the base damage of normal drone attacks as well; they just don't do any damage to armor, health, or barriers.

However, tech powers get a 1.5x bonus against shields. Thus, I believe the Explosive Drone will do 150 damage to shields when it explodes. I also believe that the drone's attack actually does 60 damage against shields.

The drone attacks right away when summoned. Thus, you get a quick 60 damage. It will then attack again in 3 seconds. It might still be alive then, it might not. However, the drone typically will live that long, but not much longer. Thus, you will likely get a second attack. It will then die and blow up. Thus, with one drone, I believe you will probably get about 270 damage against shields. And it will typically blow up and allow you to summon a new one after maybe 4-5 seconds.

That happens to be about the cooldown time of Overload for most of the game. Heavy Overload says it does 200 Shield Damage. Now, I am a bit confused about this. I also know that Overload does 2x damage to shields. However, it is already listed as SHIELD damage, so this leads me to believe that Overload does 100 damage to everything else, and 200 to shields, rather than 200 damage to everything else and 400 to shields. This makes sense to me as I have noticed that Overload destroys shields significantly slower than Warp destroys armor (and heavy warp definitely does 400 damage to armor).

If this is true, then Explosive Drone will outdamage Overload against shields (~270 base damage in the same basic timeframe that Overload would do 200 base damage).

Even if Overload DOES do 400 damage to shields, though, it still can be close if the Drone is killed quickly. If the drone dies just past 3 seconds, suddenly you are doing 270 damage every 3 seconds, which is equivalent to 405 damage every 4.5 seconds. That is not far off from the type of damage Overload would be doing. This is especially true if one chooses to take Area Overload. In that case, the shield damage to the main target would be quite similar, even if the drone doesnt always go down so quickly. On top of that, the higher radius of the drone's explosion would mean that you would be doing consistently more shield damge (or normal damage obviously) to other enemies as well.

If this is all the case, then I see no reason why an Engineer should bother putting a lot of points into Overload. Just get to Explosive Drone ASAP and use it against shielded enemies. You wont get Overload's stun against synthetics, but your drone stuns anyways and its distraction is worth more than the weapon overheat IMO.


There are some possible snags with this argument though, involving game mechanics that I am not sure about. I hope a dev will chime in on this and make things clear:

1. Does the explosive damage from the Exploding Drone get the 1.5x multiplier to shields for being a tech power?
2. How much damage does a normal or exploding drone's attack do to shields? Is it 40, 60, or something else?
3. What aspects of the combat drone's damage is affected by Demolisher's power damage bonus? Is the explosion affected? Is the normal attack damage affected? If it isn't then the explosive drone loses relative to Overload if an Engineer goes Demolisher.
4. How much damage does Overload do to shields? Does Heavy Overload do 200 or 400?

[GCreature]

"We have many factors that go into our damage formula, but here is how it works for the simplest case.

All upgrades and other bonuses, like the one from Power Armor, are added together first.

50% + 15% + 15% = +80% damage

Base damage becomes 1.8 * 200 = 360

Resistance bonuses are done last, and Overload gets x2 to shields.

360 * 2 = 720"



-Eric ****nan



Basically the 200 damage would be x2 against shields.

[lessthanjake9]

Yeah I just saw that.



That makes sense, but I still think that Explosive Drone can rival Overload for shield damage, especially if one decides to go for Area Overload (and that is arguably the more useful version of the power anyways). In that case, the base damage to the target would be 320, which Exploding Drone could really start to rival if the enemies destroyed it quickly. And that isn't even mentioning that the explosion has twice the radius and thus will likely do more damage to non-targets' shields than Area Overload will.



Of course, upgrades and research probably kill my argument a little bit, in that all bonuses are multiplied by 2 for Overload and only 1.5 for Exploding Drone. The damage ratio of the two powers would remain the same, but the difference in damage would increase. And that is even assuming that all Exploding Drone damage is affected by damage bonuses, which I am not even sure of.

[Jaekahn]

Well given the fact that the drone can be resummoned every three seconds, it may be better to use that consistently vs strong opponents (IE Krogan, Heavy tech, Geth destroyers, Harbinger etc.). Not only does it distract them, but it wears down their armor in the process. However, when there are multiple targets, it's wiser to use overload mainly because it can focus on multiple targets. Also, max overload tends to strip away armor completely on the targets (from my experience) where as the explosive drone needs two explosions to do so.

[lessthanjake9]

Hmmm, yes, I mean, I really think that Explosive Drone is not much worse at stripping shields than Area Overload. Area Overload does a base 320 damage, while Explosive Drone will probably get in two attacks that I believe do 60 damage each, and then have a 150 damage explosion in about the same time that it will take Overload to cool down. Thats 270 damage compared to 320. And against an enemy that will kill it quickly like a YMIR Mech, you will probably do about equal damage using Explosive Drones because a faster drone death means more explosions, and thus more damage per second.

And if we are comparing it to Area Overload, the Area Overload will do its 320 damage to enemies within a 3m radius. However, the Explosive Drone will do 150 shield damage to enemies within a 6m radius. So you get more punch with the Area Overload, but the Explosive Drone's damage will hit nearby enemies a lot more. It will pretty much even out IMO. And that's not even mentioning that Explosive Drone's AOE damage will hurt non-shields as well.

So here's what I think. It seems to me that Area Overload will generally do a little bit more damage per second to shields than Explosive Drone, but the difference will be pretty small and it won't always be there. In the end, their AOE shield damage to other enemies will be about even. With that said, I see no reason to use up 10 talent points on Overload as an Engineer. Think about it. In a battle, why waste the cooldown on Overload when the Explosive Drone will likely be virtually just as effective at taking down shields AND will be so useful at distracting/stunning/taking enemies out of cover on top of that? It doesn't seem worth using instead IMO. 

And then, if it isn't worth using generally, then why spend 10 talent points on it? The only true use I can see is in fighting synthetics. In that case, it will do heavy damage to synthetics' health that the Drone won't match. However, you're an engineer. If a synthetic is down to health, you'd generally be better off using your cooldown to AI Hack anyways.

CONCLUSION:
I think that an engineer with Explosive Drone and AI Hacking has no real use for Overload. Shield Damage can be done almost as effectively by Explosive Drone, and the drone's other uses mean you will want to use your cooldown on the drone anyways. Overload stuns and overheats, but the Drone is a more effective crowd controller. And Overload tears apart synthetics, but AI Hacking is going to be more effective at that.

Modifié par lessthanjake9, 13 février 2010 - 09:40 .