Hi, so last week I got into a discussion with a few people about the Vortex. I stated that in my opinion, aside from it's increased projectile velocity, it was crap vs. the Comet. Frosty the Pyro was kind enough to come in and give the DPS values adjusted for reload for each weapon and showed that the Vortex DPS was greater than I had thought. I finally got time to go to the VR and check. Now I know the VR can be wonky, so I ask anyone with information as to why these times would occur to please respond. I tried both the Vortex and the Comet on the two Vanguard tanks directly out from the vehicle terminals. Range was 10 meters from target as I was checking only damage, not adjusting for travel time to target. Please, go into VR and check these times for yourself. I did each test 5 times and averaged the time. I did not do anything to purposefully corrupt the test. Again, if you know of a reason why these times don't match the current belief about these two weapons, please share. These are the average times, I used the Stop Watch function from my phone to get them. Rear TTK: Comet: 8.5 Vortex (L1 shots only): 9.8 Vortex (L3 opener (counting 2 second charge)): 10.1 (yeah, this surprised me as well, thought it would be much lower. If you discount the 2 second charge, then the time is 8.1) Side TTK: Comet: 17.4 Vortex (L1 shots only): 19.3 Vortex (L3 opener): 18.8 (16.8 if you discount the 2 second charge) Front TTK: Comet: 19 Vortex (L1 shots only): 19.5 Vortex (L3 opener): 19.3 (17.3 if you discount the 2 second charge) Shots to Kill: Vortex Rear: 29 (L1) Vortex Side: 57 (L1) Vortex Front: 63 (l1) Comet Rear: 12 Comet Side: 24 Comet Front: 28 Please, if you get different result tell me along with what you think I might have done wrong. But as you can see, from my results the Comet does better DPS than the Vortex. It does better burst damage than the Vortex as well. And under 180 meters, which is the 2 second charge up the Vortex needs to do 490 (infantry value damage mind you, vehicle is double) damage and the distance the Comet can travel in that time, the Comet performs better (provided you can aim).
just replied in the other thread but here it is too sorry i havnt been on the forums in a few days whats your click rate? vortex is suposed to max out at 180 rpm or 3 shots per second. In order to reach 63 shots ( van front armor from your tests) with 2x vortex should take 14.33 seconds (63/2 round up = 32. There will be two reloads at 2 seconds each. so 32*.333=10.666, the final refire doesnt count as the shot is already in the air, so 10.333+4 seconds of reload= a calculated ttk of 14.333 for vortex to the front of the vanguard). To have 19.5 seconds you need to be fireing at 120 rpm (or a 0.5 second refire) which would result in the vortex pulling 615 dps instead of 820 compared to the commets 691. The math calculation for duel commets to put out 29 shots is 19.25s, which is apropropiately close to your value of 19s when you take in human error of a stopwatch. As for VR wonkyness 29*475=13,775 and 63*210=13,230. A discrepency of 540, which isnt too bad honestly, the max discreptioncy you would expect in a fully mathamatic way would be 474 (the lower damage landing right on but the higher overkilling as much as it can), but throw in some burning time (which you will incounter if tryin to test precise shots) and a little extra is to be expected. On the otherhand acording to patch notes a stock van has 68% front armor, which when combined with are known MBT health of 4000 that would give an expected effective health of 12,500. That is a large discrepency, and weather that is VR weirdness or inacurate patch notes I do not know. the values you got would indicate around 70 or 70.5% front armor resistance. The expected and observed health difference is greater than can be explained by burning (which rather slow) A good way to check would be to compare your other armor facing shots to kill to expected values. For the side 24*475=11,400 for comets and 47*210=11,970 for vortex. And for the rear 12*475=5,700 for comet and 29*210=6,090. The expected values for van side (65% armor) is 11,429, and for vanguard rear (35% armor) is 6,153. The side values line up apropriately, almost perfectly for comet and it looks like you overkilled the side by a shot or two with vortex, not hard to do if you are tryin to click as fast as you can. The rear values are close but off a bit, you could explain the vortex difference with some burning, but the comet difference is a bit large, it would take quite some time to burn that much. On the otherhand if the vanguard had the same rear armor as MBTs (30% isntead of 35%), then the expected effective health would be 5714, which would have your numbers being right one with the comet, and a shot over with the vortex (again not unexpected if trying to keep up a proper fire rate with the vortex), or you miscounted and it took one more comet hit than you reported. Best way I can think of to test that would be to take a 2000 damage weapon (AV Mana turret, pheonix, or decimator) and hit the rear of a vanguard 3 times. 2 shots should not cause any burning, so if the 3rd shot kills the value is likely 5714, if the third shot causes it to burn for a while before exploding the value is 6153. Considering the side an rear closeness to expected I would guess that either the van had more front armor than expected or its VR wonkyness there. In respect to the vortex and your testing, its obviosly not keepin up with its max fire rate, which would either be you bein a relitively slow clicker, or the vortex is misrepresenting its fire rate at 180 rpm.
2 shots per second is about as fast as anyone is going to be able to fire short of using an autofire macro. That's what limits the no charge Vortex DPS. Honestly, I think the best way to use Vortex's in game is like Lancers... use full charges and in a group firing at distant armor. The rapid fire for increased DPS is only any good at ranges the Comet would have no problem hitting anyways (100-150m) Not to mention... the damage spiking of charged shots is often better in many ways. I dunno.. I'm still holding off on buying my VS AV MAX weapons. Comet is generally better I think, and I already have a Lancer if we want to set up a long range bombardment team.... not to mention, I only need to buy 1 comet (and they can bloody well kill infantry FFS)
In a real combat scenario you rarely if every will get to use the maximum fire rate of the Vortex because of recoil and hitting both mouse buttons continuously will probably pull the crosshair off the target eventually. So yeah about 1 shot every half second is as good as you'll get in any kind of mid to long range scenario. Then there's all those charging bugs the Vortex suffers from. I constantly get dud charges where I get the charging animation, sound and even indicator and when I let off... nothing. This happens randomly with one gun or even both at the same time. If you abort a charge with a MAX punch the thing also has a charging delay most of the time. Sometimes it outright refuses to charge until you release the fire button and try again. Of course your charge indicator randomly disappears as well after being revived or using an infantry terminal, which makes it harder to judge when your shot is ready. I think the Vortex would become a lot better if they made it auto charge and hold that charge until you need it. It would help a little with the Vortex AI problem because I usually get caught out in the open and then have to charge up the bloody thing while constantly taking damage. It would also work around all those bugs and make the thing actually user friendly. Giving you time to aim and a little self defense capability when someone jumps on you.
Frosty, thanks for responding. And thank you for the calculations. I will double check the vanguard rear armor with a deci in a bit, just got home from work and all. I wanted to respond before I went to eat. My click rate was as fast as I could manage. I don't have that number to give unfortunately, but as you point out mathematically it was well below the 180 click/release per minute needed to reach the damage potential. I was clicking and releasing as fast as I could (the Vortex fires on release, not the click) as I wanted to avoid/reduce as much human error as I could. I don't think it was entirely my click rate however. Like I said, I was clicking as fast as I could, but I noticed two things: 1. The shots didn't seem to fire as fast as I clicked: If others reading this thread could please try to reach the 180 rpm the Vortex says it is capable of, I would appreciate it. I just don't seem to be able to get it to fire that fast. I'm not old and arthritic, but I'm not a youngin either, so if one of you quick fingers could check it out and respond here, that would help us all. 2. The Vortex has extreme recoil rise: The recoil rise of the dual Vortex got so extreme I nearly started shooting over the vanguard, and that was from 10 meters away. I'm not sure it's possible to maintain that rpm anyway, not and still be accurate with it. The recoil got progressively worse, more than you would expect and the guns were bouncing all over the place. As I said, I was 10 meters away and nearly kept missing. I'm thinking that realistically it isn't feasible to reach the 820 DPS that on paper it says is possible. I think that with the combination of recoil, the semi-auto fire, and perhaps a slight fire delay caused by the charge mechanic, realistically the Vortex DPS is much, much lower than it is on paper. This is probably why every time I have tested this thing, from PTS to Live, it has performed like crap for me. As I said, I'll double check the armor values of the vanguard in the VR in a bit, but I think this might be a major reason why I haven't been able to feel that the Vortex is anything other than crap.
Thank you for joining in the discussion. I think you might be on to something with the realistic click and release rate of players. Could you do me a favor and try the Vortex in the VR and see if you are able to reach the 180 rpm, and more importantly sustain it while being accurate?
The weapon does feel clunky to me as well, and I have also encountered those bugs. I don't think an auto-charge will improve it as the DPS would still be sub-par for the full charged shots, the burst would still be out performed by the Comet, and the highest DPS, I don't think, is realistically achievable and sustainable while being even remotely accurate. Could you do me a favor and see how quickly you can destroy one of the vanguards in the VR using dual vortex for me? More results would only help determine if this weapon is capable of performing at its listed values.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/554667 here is the first thing I found on a search for click speed test, I pulled 4.35 clicks per second first try on my laptop pad, which is subpar compared to a mouse. I then tried a more steady rythm and got 5.3 and 4.75, no fast clicking tricks or second activation buttons or anything like that. 3 clicks per second is very much a reasonable rate for just about anyone. Now of course when runnin dual vortex you would need to be clicking both left and riht buttons, I dont know how that would impact ones speed, thouh i doubt it it would have a large effect. You also report that you think it frequently droped shots (aka fired less than you clicked), which is fully posible, and maybe even expected. And it all depends on how it deals with semi auto fire rates. What does it do when you click during a refire? Does it just ignore it, or does it say fire as soon as this refire is done. If it ignores a click durin the refire, then that would greatly slow the effective fire rate. If for example you had a more or less steady rate of my lesser test (4.35 per second) which is one click every ~.23 seconds, then your first click would count, and your second would not because it was within the .333 second refire, and then your third click would again count, but it would effectively have half your click rate to .46 seconds per counted click or 2.18 clicks per second. A notable reduction. If it does "say fire as soon as this refire is done", then it should simply platau the effective rate at the weapons max (180 in this case). you would still ocasionaly have wasted clicks when you click twice within one refire, but you would never loos fire rate because of them. The best way to test that would be to take a semi auto weapon and double click very quickly (ensuring the second click is within the refire time). If it fires once then its likely the first case (which is bad news all around), if it fires twice its likely the second case, which is a good thing in general, though it means the issue is either our testers click speed, or a lag/optimization/netcode issue. And netcode is a bit out of my depth. Best test subject would be I think second line pump action shotgun, whose 71 rpm means a 0.85 second refire, easy to click within. Regardless I still suport being able to toggle vortexs between charge and automatic modes via the weapon mode key ("b" by default), though as maxes use two arms you could have the weapon mode button toggle the left and the tertiary fire button toggle the right. edit: though pump shotguns might just be funky, there was a patch note about them fixing something in the animation that was letting them fire faster than they were suposed to. Testing with the vortex themself would have the least uncertanty in weapon wonkyness, but then you need to double click within .333 instead of within .85, should be easy but figured i would metnion it.
So I tried your click tester and got 6.55 average. Looking at your figures, and my brain is too fried from work today to figure out if that means I was clicking during refire or not. It's about the same speed I was clicking both buttons before. Nothing crazy. It's interesting though. I mean, on paper it looks okish (my opinion, others vary), but every time I use it I get crap on my hands. Also, the fact that the recoil gets crazy with fast clicks definitely affects the DPS. I really don't think that the Vortex is capable of performing how the stats say it can. Be interesting if out of my dislike for the weapon and you trying to convince me its good we discover a bug keeping it from where it should be.
Those theoretical DPS figures are exactly that... theoretical. Unfortunately there are usability problems with the charge mechanic which work against the vortex and achieving its potential. I already outlined these issues here; https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...esirable-charge-mechanic.125607/#post-1719692
My Vortex tests in VR. Note that I only tested with L1 shot spam and all L3 charges. TTK on the L3 charges (except for the vanguard front armor test) could have shaved off at least 1 to 1 1/2 seconds if I would have finished off the tank with L1 hits. It was also very difficult to actually get the two guns to fire simultaneously with L1 spam, perhaps because the charge mechanism would kick in here and there and cause a delay. I tested by recording a video of each test and then marked the frames from the point of beginning to click (the lights at the side of the Vortex go out once you charge / click) to the point where the health bar of the Vanguard disappears (point of death of the vehicle, not when it explodes) TTK Vanguard front L1 - 19.667 L3 - 21.663 TTK Vanguard side L1 - 17.6 L3 - 20.7 TTK Vanguard rear L1 - 8.867 L3 - 10.633
So i got a few minutes yesterday to test some in VR. it was 3 decimators to the rear of the van, so its highly probable that they had a typo in the patch notes and the vans rear armor is 30% just like other MBTs. Trying to double click with vortex and with pump actions only produced one shot. With the beamer it produced two shots, but the beamer has a fairly high rpm so thats to be expected. I should have tried some tests with a slower fireing pistol (such as the commisioner or rebel) but didnt think of it till later. the conclusion is relitvely poor for acheiving max fire rate as its not about clicking faster than 3 per second (an increadably simple achievement) but instead about clicking as close to a multiple of 3 times per second as posible without goin over. the math is relitively simple. if you click between 0 and 3 per second, then that is your fire rate. (fire rate between 0 and 3) If you click between 3 and 6, then half your click speed for your fire rate (fire rate between 1.5 and 3) if you click between 6 and 9 then one third your click speed is your fire rate (fire rate between 2 and 3) if you click between 9 and 12 then one forth your click speed is your fire rate (fire rate between 2.25 and 3) and so on and so on. so for example armoks 6.55 would give about 2.2 shots per second were my 5.3 would rank 2.65 per second.
Thanks again for your math skills Frosty. So the trick to getting maximum DPS with the Vortex is to not only use the uncharged shots, but to click slowly and rhythmically. I still haven't been able to achieve what the stats say is possible though. And that's just using it in the VR. Thank you for your numbers. I agree that the charge mechanism seems to cause a delay, but it could be as Frosty has said which is it appears to be part of the mechanics of all weapons. Still, you did manage to average nearly a full second faster on the rear using the L1 shots. Of course it should be pointed out that spamming L1 shots to reach that DPS level negates any accuracy bonus people believe the Vortex has as it jumps around a great deal.
SOE just needs to stop being lazy and code a full auto mode to the vortex just like the fracture and raven have. Hey presto now the weapon is fine.
I wouldn't mind a full auto mode for short range and self defense against infantry. It's a real pain to have infantry engage you at short range without either a charge ready to deal spike damage or some kind of auto firing mode. However I only use the Vortex at mid to long range usually and I'm rather happy with it's performance there. Now if only all the bugs would get fixed and an auto charge mode would be implemented, or at least being able to hold the charge longer.
