04-06-2012, 05:03 PM
The following chart represents the basic rate of raw ranged damage, defined as: [Damage per shot] * [Rate of fire]
![[Image: 2vjq7.png]](https://i.imgur.com/2vjq7.png)
For each tier, the best available items from the marketplace only are used. For the Legendary category, the best available items from any source (including craftables and legendaries) are used at Tier 4.
This does not account for the following important factors of ranged combat:
The following considerations must be made when translating raw damage rate into actual in-game DPS.
Accuracy:
Accuracy is one of the most important factors to consider for ranged DPS, since a shot that misses all targets will inflict no damage. Also, in most situations better accuracy means better chance of headshots, which confer a 1.75x damage multiplier. Each type of ranged attack differs significantly in its accuracy. In order from least accurate to most accurate:
Throwing: Throwing attacks are by far the least accurate type of attacks. Even at Tier 4, the inaccuracy of most throwing weapons relegates their use to targeting crowds at short range. However, the Cursed Stones is an important exception, as their accuracy at Tier 4 is good enough to easily headshot at close range and to consistently hit enemies at medium range. They also have much larger stack sizes than other throwing weapons, making them especially useful for skirmishers who are soloing. The tradeoff is their lowered raw damage rate; here, Cursed Stones are represented as blunt damage:
![[Image: 1sqwc.png]](https://i.imgur.com/1sqwc.png)
Archery: Archery accuracy starts out very low, but improves quite dramatically at each tier (in a similar manner to archery damage). At Tier 2, archers can hit single targets with ease; at Tier 3, a competent archer should have no problems landing headshots consistently. Functionally speaking there is no difference between bow and crossbow accuracy at Tier 4 except at the longest ranges, since either weapon can easily headshot at will.
Crossbow: Crossbows start with significantly better accuracy and is quite usable even at Tier 0. Roughly speaking, crossbowmen have a 0.5-1.0 tier advantage in accuracy over same-tier archers at the lower tiers, although the gap closes to becoming virtually indistinguishable by Tier 4.
Armor Rating:
The higher the target's armor rating, the higher percentage of raw damage will be absorbed. There are two components to how armor affects incoming damage: reduction and soak. (NI uses 0.5 reduction factor vs. pierce, and 0.65 soak factor vs. pierce.) Reduction simply reduces the amount of raw damage by a set percentage based on damage type and is not relevant when comparing damage from piercing ranged attacks. Soak, however, is extremely relevant because it causes a specific value of damage to be absorbed per attack. Thus, using fewer but higher-damaging attacks to ensure that more raw damage bypasses armor soak is an advantageous strategy when facing disproportionately high armor. This typically occurs at the start of the game (very low attack damage) and at the end (very highly armored enemies). To illustrate, here is a comparison of per-shot damage by tier:
![[Image: bH70L.png]](https://i.imgur.com/bH70L.png)
Crossbows enjoy a huge advantage against armor at the earlier tiers. However, as the tiers advance, the per-shot damage between the different ranged types narrows until crossbows no longer enjoy any appreciable advantage against armor at the endgame.
One final aspect of a target’s armor is shield resistance. Crossbows (and only crossbows) have a chance of penetrating a target’s shield based on the shield’s resistance. In order to have a chance to penetrate at all, a crossbow’s damage must be at least higher than (30 + 3*resistance). Enemy shields in NI tend to have fairly high resistance: for example, to have any chance of penetrating a Huscarl Shield (resistance = 23), a crossbow must do a minimum of 99 damage to have a minimum chance of penetrating shield. Generally speaking, unless one is equipped with the Penetrator (legendary crossbow), shield penetration is of minor importance.
Velocity and Distance:
Just as higher speed bonuses during a melee swing increases its damage, higher velocity means more projectile damage as well. Thus, higher projectile velocities are always advantageous when it comes to damage. However, the relationship between projectile velocity and damage is situational, rather than strictly linear. For instance, crossbows have up to 77 velocity and throwing weapons as low as 18 velocity, but any pikeman will tell you that they don’t need 4x the raw damage of a crossbow to one-shot the same enemy despite having only 1/4th the projectile velocity; in fact, they’ll usually require comparable amounts of raw damage to kill the same target. Yet another variable (missile_damage_speed_power) also governs the relationship between projectile velocity and damage. However, in NI this factor has been reduced from Native (to 1.9 instead of the default 2.0), which further decreases the amount of damage added by increased velocity. Hence, under ordinary combat conditions, differences between projectile velocities have only minor impact on actual damage.
Where velocity has a much larger impact is when it comes to target distance. Mount&Blade (and Warband) uses an air friction coefficient to control how much damage projectiles can inflict at distance. Mods such as the Star Wars mod tone this value way down to make blasters lethal even at maximum distance; by contrast, in NI you can be easily survive being headshotted by rangers from across Mountain Pass, due to loss from air friction over distance. As a rule, the lower a projectile’s velocity, the greater proportion of its damage is lost as target distance increases. Thus, even a lucky headshot from a slow throwing axe will do little to no damage at too long of a range, and the low velocities of throwing weapons guarantees that they’re only ever useful at close range.
Unlike throwing weapons, bows and crossbows have similar projectile velocities: 60 vs. 70-77 respectively, compared to 18-22 for throwing weapons. At extreme range, this means that crossbows have a small edge in long-distance sniping. At normal combat range, however, the difference between bow and crossbow projectile speed matters little to actual damage dealt, something that anyone who has been one-shotted all too often by Nord Rangers (with their slow 47 velocity Long Bow) can easily attest.
Summary of Ranged Weapons:
Crossbows: A huge advantage in per-shot damage at lower tiers combined with high starting accuracy makes crossbows the default ranged option for low-level players, regardless of class. However, crossbow raw damage rates increase very little relative to other ranged options as tiers increase, and the myriad minor crossbow perks (such as shield penetration and increased projectile velocity) don’t come close to making up for their enormous deficiency in damage rate at the endgame. As a small equalizer, legendary crossbows give a far greater percentage boost to raw damage rate than do other legendary weapons, although without one of those legendaries a crossbowman won’t be remotely competitive in their raw damage rate.
Archery: The undisputed champion of ranged damage. Despite its terrible starting damage and accuracy, by the endgame archery is a deadly combination of firing speed, per-shot damage, reach, and accuracy. From a purely numerical standpoint, archery is highly competitive but never tops in any particular category. However, its complete lack of drawbacks and restrictions combined with its strong performance in all areas makes archery the indisputable ranged attack of choice.
Throwing: Throwing weapons enjoy the highest total output in terms of raw damage rate. However, this impressive damage is sorely hobbled by severe restrictions on range and accuracy. Using throwing weapons effectively will rely upon identifying the handful of situations where this enormous ranged damage rate can be effectively leveraged, then exploiting these opportunities to the greatest possible advantage. Throwing weapons are frequently underestimated and indisputably effective, but only within their narrow niche.
Please note that the above comparison is valid for NI 0.4.2 only and will be changed by future patches.
For each tier, the best available items from the marketplace only are used. For the Legendary category, the best available items from any source (including craftables and legendaries) are used at Tier 4.
This does not account for the following important factors of ranged combat:
![[+]](/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Calculations- Accuracy
- Armor rating of target
- Damage decrease due to target distance (as governed by projectile speed)
The following considerations must be made when translating raw damage rate into actual in-game DPS.
Accuracy:
Accuracy is one of the most important factors to consider for ranged DPS, since a shot that misses all targets will inflict no damage. Also, in most situations better accuracy means better chance of headshots, which confer a 1.75x damage multiplier. Each type of ranged attack differs significantly in its accuracy. In order from least accurate to most accurate:
Throwing: Throwing attacks are by far the least accurate type of attacks. Even at Tier 4, the inaccuracy of most throwing weapons relegates their use to targeting crowds at short range. However, the Cursed Stones is an important exception, as their accuracy at Tier 4 is good enough to easily headshot at close range and to consistently hit enemies at medium range. They also have much larger stack sizes than other throwing weapons, making them especially useful for skirmishers who are soloing. The tradeoff is their lowered raw damage rate; here, Cursed Stones are represented as blunt damage:
Archery: Archery accuracy starts out very low, but improves quite dramatically at each tier (in a similar manner to archery damage). At Tier 2, archers can hit single targets with ease; at Tier 3, a competent archer should have no problems landing headshots consistently. Functionally speaking there is no difference between bow and crossbow accuracy at Tier 4 except at the longest ranges, since either weapon can easily headshot at will.
Crossbow: Crossbows start with significantly better accuracy and is quite usable even at Tier 0. Roughly speaking, crossbowmen have a 0.5-1.0 tier advantage in accuracy over same-tier archers at the lower tiers, although the gap closes to becoming virtually indistinguishable by Tier 4.
Armor Rating:
The higher the target's armor rating, the higher percentage of raw damage will be absorbed. There are two components to how armor affects incoming damage: reduction and soak. (NI uses 0.5 reduction factor vs. pierce, and 0.65 soak factor vs. pierce.) Reduction simply reduces the amount of raw damage by a set percentage based on damage type and is not relevant when comparing damage from piercing ranged attacks. Soak, however, is extremely relevant because it causes a specific value of damage to be absorbed per attack. Thus, using fewer but higher-damaging attacks to ensure that more raw damage bypasses armor soak is an advantageous strategy when facing disproportionately high armor. This typically occurs at the start of the game (very low attack damage) and at the end (very highly armored enemies). To illustrate, here is a comparison of per-shot damage by tier:
Crossbows enjoy a huge advantage against armor at the earlier tiers. However, as the tiers advance, the per-shot damage between the different ranged types narrows until crossbows no longer enjoy any appreciable advantage against armor at the endgame.
One final aspect of a target’s armor is shield resistance. Crossbows (and only crossbows) have a chance of penetrating a target’s shield based on the shield’s resistance. In order to have a chance to penetrate at all, a crossbow’s damage must be at least higher than (30 + 3*resistance). Enemy shields in NI tend to have fairly high resistance: for example, to have any chance of penetrating a Huscarl Shield (resistance = 23), a crossbow must do a minimum of 99 damage to have a minimum chance of penetrating shield. Generally speaking, unless one is equipped with the Penetrator (legendary crossbow), shield penetration is of minor importance.
Velocity and Distance:
Just as higher speed bonuses during a melee swing increases its damage, higher velocity means more projectile damage as well. Thus, higher projectile velocities are always advantageous when it comes to damage. However, the relationship between projectile velocity and damage is situational, rather than strictly linear. For instance, crossbows have up to 77 velocity and throwing weapons as low as 18 velocity, but any pikeman will tell you that they don’t need 4x the raw damage of a crossbow to one-shot the same enemy despite having only 1/4th the projectile velocity; in fact, they’ll usually require comparable amounts of raw damage to kill the same target. Yet another variable (missile_damage_speed_power) also governs the relationship between projectile velocity and damage. However, in NI this factor has been reduced from Native (to 1.9 instead of the default 2.0), which further decreases the amount of damage added by increased velocity. Hence, under ordinary combat conditions, differences between projectile velocities have only minor impact on actual damage.
Where velocity has a much larger impact is when it comes to target distance. Mount&Blade (and Warband) uses an air friction coefficient to control how much damage projectiles can inflict at distance. Mods such as the Star Wars mod tone this value way down to make blasters lethal even at maximum distance; by contrast, in NI you can be easily survive being headshotted by rangers from across Mountain Pass, due to loss from air friction over distance. As a rule, the lower a projectile’s velocity, the greater proportion of its damage is lost as target distance increases. Thus, even a lucky headshot from a slow throwing axe will do little to no damage at too long of a range, and the low velocities of throwing weapons guarantees that they’re only ever useful at close range.
Unlike throwing weapons, bows and crossbows have similar projectile velocities: 60 vs. 70-77 respectively, compared to 18-22 for throwing weapons. At extreme range, this means that crossbows have a small edge in long-distance sniping. At normal combat range, however, the difference between bow and crossbow projectile speed matters little to actual damage dealt, something that anyone who has been one-shotted all too often by Nord Rangers (with their slow 47 velocity Long Bow) can easily attest.
Summary of Ranged Weapons:
Crossbows: A huge advantage in per-shot damage at lower tiers combined with high starting accuracy makes crossbows the default ranged option for low-level players, regardless of class. However, crossbow raw damage rates increase very little relative to other ranged options as tiers increase, and the myriad minor crossbow perks (such as shield penetration and increased projectile velocity) don’t come close to making up for their enormous deficiency in damage rate at the endgame. As a small equalizer, legendary crossbows give a far greater percentage boost to raw damage rate than do other legendary weapons, although without one of those legendaries a crossbowman won’t be remotely competitive in their raw damage rate.
Archery: The undisputed champion of ranged damage. Despite its terrible starting damage and accuracy, by the endgame archery is a deadly combination of firing speed, per-shot damage, reach, and accuracy. From a purely numerical standpoint, archery is highly competitive but never tops in any particular category. However, its complete lack of drawbacks and restrictions combined with its strong performance in all areas makes archery the indisputable ranged attack of choice.
Throwing: Throwing weapons enjoy the highest total output in terms of raw damage rate. However, this impressive damage is sorely hobbled by severe restrictions on range and accuracy. Using throwing weapons effectively will rely upon identifying the handful of situations where this enormous ranged damage rate can be effectively leveraged, then exploiting these opportunities to the greatest possible advantage. Throwing weapons are frequently underestimated and indisputably effective, but only within their narrow niche.
Please note that the above comparison is valid for NI 0.4.2 only and will be changed by future patches.
Main Characters: Lanseril (L.52 Sniper), Grundus (L.52 Pikeman), Eledwyn (L.49 Commando), Rutgard (L.52 Sharpshooter)
Does your house dare to face the Prince? Take Vlka Fenryka's Dominate the Prince! challenge.
Does your house dare to face the Prince? Take Vlka Fenryka's Dominate the Prince! challenge.
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