The Known Issue of Heavy Hitter

[Geadly]

I think it’s no news for anybody, but yeah, Damage Buffs stack weirdly

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TL;DR
Heavy Hitter’s buff is not 25% because of how Damage stacks, and it doesn’t work on anything but melee
While Payback Time works on everything, increases Base Damage

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Today I got enough of people getting it wrong all the time

it’s not 25% Damage increase! (Kinda)

It doesn’t work on Ranged!

It doesn’t work on Bleed!

The damage increase is not 25% because of how Damage Buffs stack

The more Damage buffs you have, the less is the increase:

• With the least amount of passive buffs (5 stacks) - (L)24% (H)23%
• With the most amount of passive buffs (5 stacks) - (L)18,5% (H)15,6%

(L) - Light Attack, (H) - Heavy Attack

(Sorry Reginald, for lying in my comment )

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Testing

Weapon:

Talent Tree(For the most amount of passive buffs):

Test Subject:

(I hit the body of this Ugly Bastard )

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Heavy Hitter Damage for Most amount of Passive Buffs:

Heavy Hitter Stacks	Light Attack	Heavy Attack
0	313	634
1	325	654
2	336	674
3	348	693
4	359	713
5	371	733

371 / 313 = 1,185
733 / 634 = 1,156

Demostration:

For Least Amount of Passive Damage Buffs

Talent Tree:

Heavy Hitter Stacks	Light Attack	Heavy Attack
0	231	413
1	242	432
2	253	451
3	264	469
4	275	488
5	286	507

286 / 231 = 1,238
507 / 413 = 1,228

Demostration:

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It’s so over

Now we know that the Damage buff is not really 25% because of how damage stacks and rounds, it’s ~18% if you are running typical Ogryn build

Payback Time

It stacks exactly the same way as Heavy Hitter does
4 stacks of Heavy Hitter = Payback Time
Demostration:

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It only works on Melee Damage!

Yes, it doesn’t work on Bleed nor Ranged Damage

Ranged Demonstration:

Bleed Demonstration:

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Conclusion

Sorry for wasting time of anybody who already knew about how Damage stacks and that Heavy Hitter doesn’t work on anything but Melee

So yeah, Heavy Hitter (and any damage buff really) does not give all of its Damage because of how it stacks, Heavy Hitter has a typo so it is really +5% Melee Damage and not just Damage.

And thank you for reading!
I did all that for knowledge and that I found it frustrating hearing people get it wrong all the time

PS:
Also, Heavy Hitter’s buff works for Light Attacks too, it’s actually just Melee Damage buff that stacks when you hit an enemy with anything that counts as Heavy Attack

PPS:
Oh, and forgot to say that Payback Time works on Ranged Damage, Melee Damage, Bleed Damage and Fire Damage, even tho it says the same thing as Heavy Hitter

Ranged:

Melee:

Bleed:

[Geadly]

Hey, I have a question for you all.

Does Damage not being 25% counts as a bug?
Consider that it’s like this for every other Damage Buff

Oh, and the typo is totally wrong so I gotta make some bug reports

[Elodie]

Always love seeing others too delve into the world of discovery & testing.

I haven’t tested Heavy Hitter itself since I quite rarely play my oggy. But last when I tested it for ranged, the dmg formula was:

(BaseDmg + ((FinesseDmg - BaseDmg) * FinesseBonus%)) * (DmgBonus% + EnemyTypeBonus%) * Power% * DebuffBonus%

I’m not 100% on where all melee particulars stand in that but it’s probably at least very close. I don’t remember where perks came, iirc they just flat out increased the total dmg. Still, dmg bonuses - especially of the same type - tend to be additive, not multiplicative. In your talent setup you have:

• +30% dmg vs. oggies
• +5% rending
• +10% heavy melee dmg (Aura)
• +20% melee dmg (10% + 5% + 5%)
• +0-25% melee dmg (Heavy Hitter)
• (+ weapon perks & blessings, unknown)

Let’s assume your heavy attack does 300 dmg, hit an unarmored, Heavy Hitter is at 0 or 5 stacks (+25%):

• Bonuses applied:
  • +30% / 55% dmg
    • +20% melee
    • +10% heavy attack
    • +0 or 25% Heavy Hitter
• Damage (Heavy Hitter 5-stacks) = 300 * 1.55 = 465
• Damage (no HH) = 300 * 1.30 = 390
• Diff with vs. without Heavy Hitter = 465/390-1 = 19.2%

So even with such minor bonuses the difference becomes obvious. Now add even more bonuses & rending on top, or attack an oggy with that further +30% bonus? The more stuff you add, the less relative difference there is by adding Heavy Hitter. It may seem disappointing, but even then Heavy Hitter’s bonus is definitely valuable and very obvious in the game.

For some other related data in case you or others are interested:

• Typically peril efficiency & dmg resist are multiplicative (but stacks from the same source are additive)
  • For example say your peril reduction is 5% + 5% + 5% + 40% + 24% (3 passives + Empyric Resolve + Warp Siphon 4-stacks)
  • Added together they would be 79%
  • In reality, being additive they add up to 60.9% peril reduction
• SOME talents, like zealot’s tiny passive +5% toughness dmg resist, are actually additive
• Block efficiency is additive!
  • Which means if you’re at 60% BE, adding 20% BE on top is a 50% difference from before (60% vs. 80% stamina reduction)
• Toughness recovery % is based on max toughness
  • If you have 100 toughness, each melee kill (+5% base) or +5% talent recovers 5 toughness
  • If you have 200, they recover 10 toughness instead
• Since we’re in the topic of toughness, always get 3x 30% toughness regen speed curios, since they affect both the rate and delay of your in-coherency toughness recovery
  • Normal full-coherency regen is is 7.5/s (fixed rate btw), with a 3s delay every time you get hit or exit coherency
  • With +90% from curios, it’s instead 14.25/s with a delay of 1.65s
  • In practice you get minor hits, split-second coherency exists etc. all the time. The real difference in having these perks is orders of magnitude more passive toughness regen.

[Phracatti]

Hold on, HH stacks with itself multiplicative?

Fatshark has done it again?

[Geadly]

Sheesh man, thank you for this

@Elodie

• weapon perks & blessings, unknown

@Geadly

Weapon:

Enemy: Crusher (Carapace, Ogryn, Body)

• Base Damge for Heavies were: 376 without base aura

So all buffs are: +30% to Ogryns, +5% Rending, +25% heavy melee dmg + 5% melee (From my skill tree)

• Tested Damage (no HH, but with everything else) = 634
  So to calculate the multiplier: 634/376 = ~1.69
• Tested Damage (with HH) = 733 (15.6% difference)
  Now I calculate it somewhat like you did: 1.69+0.25 = 1.94 (Damage multiplier with HH)
• 376 * 1.94 = ~729 (supposed damage with HH)
  It’s pretty close to what it is

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So yes, you are right, about how HH stacks with Damage buffs

Rending(5%) is kind of a mystery to me, but it somehow added 9% Damage
Thank you for clearing most of the mystery to me!

[Elodie]

For some reason I have no way to quote others anymore, anyone know what’s going on? I don’t even remember how it worked but there used to be a button for it right? Now I’d have to manually type the whole string and I don’t remember how to link someone else’s post like in a quote like t hat.

@Phracatti : No, afaik every single stacking thing is additive with itself. Regardless of the formula, you always add stacking buffs as one - total - number only.

@Geadly : If you want the real baseline, you need to make sure you have no talents or perks or blessings at all. Ofc, the weapon details pane already shows that so you can just use that instead.

I went to test this out fast myself:

Testing Karsolas Pickaxe

I picked the same weapon, same stats only I had cleave 80% and CC 60%. Weapon Details put base Carapace dmg at 375, but the real base dmg is 404 (likely due to some passive like armor piercing).

So:

Talents	Damage
Base	404
Rending 5%	426
Heavyweight (+30%)	516
Rending 5% + Heavyweight (+30%)	545
Rending 5% + Heavy passive (+10%)	466
* + Heavy passive (+10%)	585
* + Aura (+10%)	594
* + Melee passive (+5%)	614
* + Melee passive (+5%)	634
* + Heavy Hitter 5-stacks (+25%)	733

Immediately we notice that there’s something odd here. The real base dmg is not the same as it is in details. Heavyweight bonus is not 30% but ~27.7%, but not knowing what that hidden buff is that boosts base dmg over expected it’s hard to say what’s going on there. This is why I don’t like testing on carapace tbh. It’s often something like this with it what with the different weapon armor penetration bonuses etc.

Anyway, I tried to estimate the rending based on base vs. HW vs. passive 10%, arrived at about 5.5% likely applied after base+bonuses. Making no sense of the weird base penetration I instead went with the assumption that each +10% bonus = flat ~+37.33 dmg. Checking that in the formula seemed to get close enough. The aura obviously isn’t 10%, rather 9 flat dmg, or what I’ll assume could even be just 10 flat because somehow that makes more sense as a mistake?

Not perfect, but close enough. So:

• HW (Heavyweight) = (404+(37.33*3)) = 515.99
  • Real dmg 516
• Hpa10 (Heavy passive 10%) + R (Rending) = (404+37.33)*1.055 = 465.60315
  • Real dmg 466
• HW + R = (404+(37.33*3))*1.055 = 544.36945
  • Real dmg 545
• HW + Hpa10 + (Hpa5 *2) + Aura → (404+(37.33 *5)+10)*1.055 = 633.68575
  • Real dmg 634
• As above + HH5stack = 633.68575+((37.33*2.5) = 727.01075
  • Real dmg 733

tldr; Close but not quite. Something about Heavy Hitter is different, it’s stronger than it should be. Also I’d like to test that aura more but doesn’t look good.

Tbh there’s a reason every time I do these when it comes to the actual formulas I ignore carapace and rending / brittleness mechanics, they always get tricky. With more data we could ofc. work out that weird base penetration bonus and how it affects the bonuses but this will have to do.

[Geadly]

@Elodie

Carapace dmg at 375, but the real base dmg is 404

This is because you had base Bonebreaker’s Aura that gives Ogryn +7.5% Heavy Melee Damage, I took Coward Culling to limit any buffs
376*1.075 = 404 that’s maybe the reason why your results are slightly different than it should be

Accurate Calculations:

(Thank you Telepots for this https://youtu.be/fIxOjj28cuE?si=NyJxS6pGmsyU7U5z)
Base = 376
Listed = 416 (as in listed Heavy Attack Damage)

ADM = Base/Listed = 376/416 = 0,903
ADM+5% Rending = ADM + 0,05 = 0,903 + 0,05 = 0,953
Damage with Rending(DwR) = Listed * ADM+5% Rending = 416 * 0,952 = 396,448

• 7.5% Aura = DwR*(1+Aura) = 396,448 * (1+0,075) = 426,1816
  • Real dmg 426
• HW (Heavyweight) = DwR*(1+HW) = 396,448 * (1+0,3) = 515,3824
  • Real dmg 516
• Hpa10 (Heavy passive 10%) = DwR*(1+Aura+Hpa10) = 396,448 * (1+0,075+0,1) = 465,8264
  • Real dmg 466
• HW + R = DwR*(1+HW+Aura) = 396,448 * (1+0,075+0,3) = 545,116
  • Real dmg 545
• HW + Hpa10 + (Hpa5 2) + Aura = DwR(1+10%Aura+Hpa10+(Hpa5 *2)) = 396,448 * (1+0,1+0,3+0,1+0,05+0,05) = 634,3168
  • Real dmg 634
• As above + HH5stack = DwR*(1+10%Aura+Hpa10+(Hpa5 *2)+HH) =
  396,448 * (1+0,1+0,3+0,1+0,05+0,05+0,25) = 396,448 * (1+0,1+0,3+0,1+0,05+0,05+0,25) = 733,4288
  • Real dmg 733

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@Elodie

That really could be the case!

In conclusion, it can not be the case, you just didn’t account for how Rending is calculated and that Ogryn has Base Aura of +7,5% Heavy Melee Damage
So @Phracatti was not correct, it’s not multiplicative with itself

Sadly, there is no issue in how Heavy Hitter and Damage is calculated
Half of my thread is just misinformed, but I guess it’s nice that it’s all documented here

[Murderer]

Interestingly FNP actually works that way and stacks multiplicatively with itself

[Elodie]

Yess thanks for bringing it up! A proper learning experience.

[kqgee]

Good to know for Payback! I was on the fence using this Talent.

[Geadly]

Oh, sorry for not saying that clearly in the end , but Payback Time works on Ranged AND Melee Damage, as well as Bleed and Fire, so it’s kind of better than Heavy Hitter, because it increases Base Damage(Melee, Ranged, Bleed, Fire)

It’s also an equivalent of 4 stacks of Heavy Hitter

Payback Time is good increases Base Damage, good

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Here’s the Demonstration of Payback Time working on Melee (4 Stacks of Heavy Hitter = Payback Time) (Here you can also see that it works on Bleed too)

Here’s the Demonstration of Payback Time working on Bleed:

And that’s Ranged Demonstration:

@Geadly

PPS:
Oh, and forgot to say that Payback Time works on Ranged Damage and Melee Damage too(maybe even bleed), even tho it says the same thing as Heavy Hitter

[kqgee]

Im lazy and tech into FNP + Dakka ability , so Im sure i can snag Payback with some easy flips on talents, Thanks for all the info!

[TrueZealot]

@Geadly

:(398×244 37.2 KB

It literally says “bonus damage on HEAVY ATTACK”

You cant “heavy attack” with a ranged weapon, cant heavy attack with a grenade, cant heavy attack with class skill. Now put your thinking caps on! What could heavy attack mean?

[Murderer]

Read it properly bud, the Heavy Attack Hit is how you stack the instances of +5% Damage. The damage is not heavy attack specific.

PS: ranged weapons do have heavy attacks on Ogryn, but that’s beside the point

[harlekein]

What’s really wild to me on how Fatshark coders calculate percentage additions by passing the number around for each calculation instead of calculating the total modifier first and then calculate the total.

Do this in any other field and you couldn’t get away with it. Besides it being blatantly wrong, it’s also hugely inefficient.

[Durandal94]

It interacts wierdly with light attack tho, I tested in psykanium and I lost most of the buff (not all) for light attacks before heavy hitter had expired, I assume this isn’t a problem when using the node that makes you refresh on light attacks but I didn’t test it.

[TrueZealot]

@Murderer

Heavy Attack Hit is how you stack the instances

Legit just change out the on for every. Description basically means “bonus damage every heavy attack stacks 5x”, not “bonus damage stacks 5x via heavy attack”.

It’s a damage buff semi-exclusively for melee heavy attacks. Not a damage buff that has a conditional offer.

@Murderer

ranged weapons do have heavy attacks on Ogryn

Are the heavy attacks weakspots/crits or something? I’ve never heard of ranged heavy attacks.

[Murderer]

@TrueZealot

“bonus damage every heavy attack stacks 5x”, not “bonus damage stacks 5x via heavy attack”.

These two things literally mean the same thing, and the point to begin with is just that it says one thing (global damage stacks) but does another (it’s only melee damage)

@TrueZealot

Are the heavy attacks weakspots/crits or something? I’ve never heard of ranged heavy attacks.

I don’t know if the same is true for humans, but for ogryns the gun swings + ripper bayonet jab all count as heavy attack

[Geadly]

I am sorry for not showing Light Attacks testings in my demonstrations, this may have caused the misunderstanding

Also, description itself is the issue, so no wonder why so many people got it wrong

Heavy Hitter Talent Typo or Doesn't Work as it's Described

The issue is the description, as you’ve uncovered it should indeed only apply to melee.

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Heavy Hitter’s Damage buff works on all Melee Damage including Light Attacks, and is activated on Heavy Attack Hit.

Here’s the Light Attack Demonstration:

Before Heavy Hitter - 244
After Heavy Hitter - 301
The difference is not 25% because of how Damage is calculated, see above reply for explaination
During your calculation, note that some Ogryn’s Passives work only on Heavy Attacks (Like Aura)

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Some Ogryn’s Ranged weapons have Heavy Attacks on their Special:

[gpkgpk]

@TrueZealot

I’ve never heard of ranged heavy attacks.

Huh? This has been a thing since day 0, well 1 because Lua.
Special attack on ogryn ranged weapons (excluding new flashlight) have always been considered heavy attacks.

And in any game since forever, in English, this kind of wording “5% X for Ts on Y” has always meant Y procs (triggers) 5%X for Ts. On Y == performing action Y. The wording issue here is that the 5% X doesn’t have a conditional Z attached to it.