A comparison of all weapons in DCUO (Weapon Mastery edition)

I love the information in this thread, thank you.

I'm curious though, I notice people are using the term "variance" incorrectly. It seems when people are saying "+/- 10%" or "+/- 20%", they are referring to the range of damage for a power about its mean (DMG = X +/- 10%). I'm not worried about misusing the term, my question actually lies in how the damage is actually distributed?

As an example, say the power does a base damage of 0.5 with +/-10% range (so the damage ranges from 0.4 - 0.6). Is the damage uniformly distributed in this range? As in, the probability of any possible damage for the power is equally likely...i.e. Pr(DMG = 0.4) = Pr(DMG = 0.5) = Pr(DMG = 0.6) = Pr(DMG = 0.55) ...etc.

Or, is the damage clustered closer to the mean and the probability that the damage is low (DMG = 0.4) or high (DMG = 0.6) are outliers (meaning low probability events).

I have assumed the damage is uniformly distributed (as gaussian distributions along with most other common probability distribution functions would not have limits, or ranges, for its values). Nonetheless, I'm curious if this is the case and wanted to know if someone could provide me the answer.

Finally, a fun fact for those who are statisticians (or simply like statistics), the variance of a uniform distribution is 1 / 12 * (Max - Min)^2, so in the previous example, this would be: (0.6 - 0.4)^2 / 12 = 0.0033333 or 1/300.

Yep, I don't mean statistical variance but just its general definition. I only use it because a developer first explained it to someone in those terms. All damage in this game is uniformly distributed, so "Pr(DMG = 0.4) = Pr(DMG = 0.5) = ..." is right. Range would be a better word to use instead.

Thank you for the information. Again, great job on this. I appreciate finding any well documented information about the mechanics of the game. It takes too much digging in the forums just to find a nugget of gold lol .

Can you take a look into Dual Wield into Explosive Shot? Alot of people are saying it's been ninja nerfed and I would like some confirmation.

I just switched to DW explosive shot from staff mortar combo and it feels like it's light years ahead. That's all I know.

sure. I can confirm that it's still the same as it was when i last checked.

Well, sounds like GU 47 just created a lot of work for you! Hope you're up to it. This has been one of the best guides in the game since inception.

I've been away from the game for a week and it seems like the world is falling. I don't have time to catch up with all the announced changes, so can you fill me in on what's changing - at the very least, in regards to this guide?

non-wm hold attacks are supposed to be buffed

doesn't seem too bad actually. the buff is just a 65% damage increase for every non-WM combo finisher. this affects every move except taps and basic combos that are tap-only like HB's 3x melee tap, 1H's spin slash, rifle's rifle slam (but not power discharge). I just have to figure out which combos got forgotten... already found that they forgot to buff HB's charged blast and MA's shuriken storm.

GU47

• All regular weapon combo moves were buffed, including lunges, ranged holds, and a few weapon tap combos.
• The weapon tap combos buffed were Staff's 5-tap Roundhouse Combo and DW's 10-tap Flying Spin Attack
• Flip Slash and HB Scissor Kick are now AoE and hit 8 targets, splitting after 2
• Certain weapon combos did not get buffed (see post below)

• Most of these moves got a +65% damage buff, buffing total combo damage by around 40-50% depending on how many taps are in the combo.
• A few longer combos, about one from each weapon, were buffed by more than 65%:
  • 1H Flip Slash: +95%
  • 2H Mega Smash: +168%
  • Brawl Launching Uppercut: +122%
  • HB Scissor Kick: +90%
  • DP Magnum Round: +118%
  • DP Full Auto: +105%
  • DW Dual Flurry (8-tap): +83%
  • MA Smoke Bomb: +107%
  • Rifle Overhead Smash (4-tap): +105%
  • Shield Handspring Kick: +120%
  • Staff Downward Smash: +82%

• Some WM moves also got indirectly buffed as they use non-WM moves in their combos. it's mostly in the range of 5-15%, which you can check out below.
• Primal Wolf and probably the other nature forms did not get buffed so all their combos are super weak except Primal Uppercut.

I put the % change in damage of each weapon combo next to every combo table here: http://i.imgur.com/0x4lfqz.png
this is probably the easiest way to see all the changes. If there's a negative anywhere, that's because I retested some melee taps and found they were off by a bit.

Or if you want to mess around with a sortable table with filters for each category, I loaded the entire weapon combo table into an html/js table cause excel sucks: http://weapons.dcuolog.com/
it doesn't have color formatting yet but you can easily filter for combos with a certain range of animation time, DPS, etc.

now about the changes-

they just buffed everything by essentially the same amount so now a lot of regular combos are much better than their WM equivalents and most are on par with the worst WM combos. some combos are just ridiculously strong now when clipped like HB's Fist Slam/Power Discharge, DW/2H/Shield's ranged holds, HB's ranged combos still, Brawl's Haymaker for single target, and a few of the 1H combos.

PvP's probably going to be crazy now since the stats on pvp armor didn't change. For PvE, I don't play anymore so I can't say for sure how often regular weapon combos are going to be used now, but my guess is that it will be worth it, not speccing into WM, for certain rotations. For the powers that still play like weapon combo -> clip power.

Some moves are getting fixed in the hotfix tomorrow. This was the issue:

and these are the patch notes:

I'm curious to see if only the lunges were fixed but not the other moves. If HB's ranged hold were buffed as well, the ranged HB combos would be insane.

There's a huge difference in damage between a regular Flip Slash and Flip Slash Mastery now. Are you saying it's better to not even spec WM for that combo? If so, the devs should probably adjust that.

I am extremely happy to get a hold of this info from the last update.

I cannot express just how wonderful a tool this is, and how great it is that you managed to take some of your time to keep this resource up to do date. Thank you!

I might have to rethink PvP a little with not unlocking WM looking like the better option, especially since the crit innate for unlocking WM typically goes past the cap anyways.

The upgrade to regular combos may potentially change the status quo. Regular clipping blows WM combos out of the water in some cases so we might see a resurgence in the need for trollers as power batteries.

Powersets with clipping-compatible power return mechanics like gadgets and mental will have an advantage. It will be interesting to see if pure clipping can keep up with AMs now even with some AM rotations benefiting from regular combo damage as well (Sorc, Earth, Ice).

Devs may have shot themselves in the foot with this update.

I don't see Gadgets being affected as much as the WM crit is more appealing for a Might based AM than pure weapon damage especially since Gadgets possesses DoTs that can land in the crit window too.

Mental's AM could use clipping before as it never got the WM crit like Gadgets in the first place. More people might realize that it is a boost than before, but I don't see much changing there besides it just performing better.

There might be some slight changes to some strategies for most AMs like clipping a Solar Flare with every Arctic Gust cast which really works for WM crit excluded powers a part of any AM, but that will only really slightly affect them.

The only big changes are for the DoT and Pet AMs. Some of the restraints of this will be cooldowns and such, but I don't see these two categories becoming prevalent enough on their own to shift it back to pure battery trolling.

Can you guys confirm if unlocking WM still grants these bonuses? And does unlocking WM still boost certain hold combos on top of the boost given by the update? I have an idea for a clipping pet AM rotation that might be special compared to spamming just WM.

Unlocking WM seems to weaken certain combos now. For instance if compare Solar Flame without full supercharge to Solar Flame Mastery, the version of Solar Flame get with the WM trait in the top right of the tree unlocked, without full supercharge the former has Dmg (1) of 4.46 while the latter has Dmg (1) of 3.47 meaning it is actually weaker.

Wow, that's crazy.

Aaand everything is out of whack again. But then it wasn't balanced before so who really cares at this point. Once again this update seems to have rolled the dice, shuffled the cards and turned the fortune wheel and the big winner is Hand Blasters... again.