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Strange BFG behavior and buffs in general


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Hi,

Did some testing and I just noticed the following when looking at the damage numbers for BFG on my Seraphim. If I activate it while holding a non-bow weapon during the casting, the damage becomes 6307-6857 (5360-5545 Physical, 947-1312 Ice). When I cast BFG when holding a bow (not even all ranged weapons but only bows), the damage becomes 6346-6896 (5399-5584 Physical and 947-1312 Ice). And when I cast BFG bare-handed, the damage becomes 6883-7432 (5936-6120 Physical and 947-1312 Ice).

So I just found out at the end of Platinum that I've been missing out on a decent amount of damage because:

  • Another thing I just found out is that pre-buffing using buff suits (stuff with -Regeneration Penalty from Buffs) doesn't work as I had previously thought because the cooldown and tooltip of a Combat Art change back to the non-reduced values after the first cast of any Combat Art after removing the -RPfB stuff. I've been casting my buffs exactly that way and for no reason it seems... 

So 2 questions and observations

  1. Any idea why does the damage of the BFG change depending on what I'm holding while casting it? The damage jump especially when bare-handed is quite big and it affects only the physical portion of the damage (Ice always stays the same). It is a pretty big deal since my damage when fully buffed went from 9113-9887 (7779-8040 Physical, 1334-1847 Ice) to 9689-10462 (8355-8615 Physical, 1334-1847 Ice), And the bows being the only weapons which have different value is interesting too.
  2. Since when does the pre-buffing with -RPfB not persist? I'm pretty sure it was possible and worked in Fallen Angel when I played back in the day. I was confused by the tooltip showing the reduced cooldown so I thought it worked but it goes back to the normal regen times after the first casting of any Combat Art.

EDIT

More observations. When casting BFG bare-handed, the weapon itself shows 1343-1450 damage in a ~80% physical, 20% Ice damage split. If I cast BFG while holding a weapon, it shows 277-384 damage in a ~70% Ice, 30% Physical damage split. Even though my damage on character sheet goes up by about 500-600, the actual damage is much bigger. Where I was critting before for 13-14k (with mostly Ice damage BFG), I now regularly see 17,18 or even 19k crits (with the mostly Physical damage BFG). I'm guessing that massive damage increase to the weapon now doing much larger portion of Physical damage and thus is much more efficiently punching through armor. But I'm not sure if that would increase the damage by almost 30%:) And why does it show so drastically different values? I'm seriously confused now....

Here is the comparison, the only difference being the first one is cast while holding a weapon, the second one is when bare-handed. The effect on damage numbers is described earlier in the post.

1086290114_weaponBFG.png.c71197db105ba4ef86564494698895ef.png2069583213_bare-handedBFG.png.b898909226e643f122d5a6d176f49424.png

Edited by idbeholdME
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No ideas, comments or thoughts?

Just to be sure, I checked both in Vanilla and with the CM Patch installed and the same behavior occurs in both. The numbers are not exactly the same with the CM Patch as in Vanilla but the same behavior still occurs (BFG damage being a lot higher and majority of the damage being physical when cast bare-handed as opposed to when cast with a weapon previously equipped). I find it strange nobody ever noticed this before since it seems like a big deal AND it is present even in the CM Patch. The numbers difference might not seem relevant at first but as I said, my crits went up several k when I started using the bare-handed version of the BFG.

I bring this up mainly because I'm concerned with which damage is the correct one and if anyone can explain this behavior. I barely played my char since I found this out because I'm trying to find out what exactly is going on and don't want to accidentally play with artificially boosted damage.

 

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Thanks for the much needed input.

The RPfB thing is just confusing due to the tooltips as I and Flix attested. But determining what exactly is the "correct" behavior might be difficult . On one hand, it makes sense that you lose the bonuses once you remove the gear with RPfB but on the other hand, if you boost the buff CA level by gear, cast it and then remove the gear, it persists in its buffed form. I would have no problem with keeping it as it is, maybe just somehow make the tooltip update immediately after removing the RPfB gear.

But that issue is secondary to the BFG thing. That has MUCH bigger impact on gameplay than the RPfB as it creates more than 30% increase in my damage based only on the conditions of how the BFG is cast.

Edited by idbeholdME
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