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sword vs rifle DPS?
captainpirko
Member Posts: 270 Arc User
okay so a while back i did a DPS test with one of my fleetmates that runs ACT. we did khitomer ground elite and both went wild with our skills. i'm an engineer using the [Engineering Kit - Enemy Neutralization Mk IX] and he was a tactical, though i cant remember what kit he used.
our arguement was that as an engineer using he neutralization kit, i needed to get close to enemies anyway to be most effective with my kit, and that a sword would be better do them having some pretty steady damage, and can easily get flanks and crits alot faster then the maco rifle.
he objected saying that a combination of the maco, and adapted maco weapons would be far better then any sword. so we put it to the test
my combined DPS using a MK12 Tsunkatse Falchion, and using my mines as frequently as i could, i reached a DPS of 378.
however his DPS using rifles and tactical skills capped out at 405. upon seeing this, everyone at first wanted to say that rifles did more damage, however: there's alot more to this.
borg drones according to the wiki have about 1k health in normal mode STFs. while it doesnt list the health of it's shields, let us assume its only half what its armor is.
that's 1000 health, 500 shields for sake of simplicity.
now, the difference between my damage and the tactical's damage is about 27 points. considering rifles have to go through 500 points of shields before they can do any reasonable damage to armor, they're damage has to be considerably higher in order to compete. 27 points would not be called 'considerable difference' in my book. consider that a rifles damage would have to be half again better then a melee weapon in order to kill the same number of borg in the same amount of time.
another factor i want to throw in was that this test was done before nukara rep was added. there's now a new sword that can be easily acquired that's the nukara force MK12 sword, sometimes just referred to as the 'lightsaber' do to it's secondary ability. my nukara sword has more damage then my previous sword used during the test. so would anyone else agree then that swords are considerably better (at least for an engineer in this situation) then any rifle could be? at least as a primary weapon
i mostly ask this as in several STFs i've done recently, (usually just khitomer ground) there have been people that are either surprised that anyone is using swords, or seems angry that we're refusing to use rifles. am i missing something important that makes rifles better? with the exception of situations that require range (starbase incursion speedrun, infected ground, etc.) am i the only one that considers swords better for simply taking out enemies?
thanks, and let the debate commence
our arguement was that as an engineer using he neutralization kit, i needed to get close to enemies anyway to be most effective with my kit, and that a sword would be better do them having some pretty steady damage, and can easily get flanks and crits alot faster then the maco rifle.
he objected saying that a combination of the maco, and adapted maco weapons would be far better then any sword. so we put it to the test
my combined DPS using a MK12 Tsunkatse Falchion, and using my mines as frequently as i could, i reached a DPS of 378.
however his DPS using rifles and tactical skills capped out at 405. upon seeing this, everyone at first wanted to say that rifles did more damage, however: there's alot more to this.
borg drones according to the wiki have about 1k health in normal mode STFs. while it doesnt list the health of it's shields, let us assume its only half what its armor is.
that's 1000 health, 500 shields for sake of simplicity.
now, the difference between my damage and the tactical's damage is about 27 points. considering rifles have to go through 500 points of shields before they can do any reasonable damage to armor, they're damage has to be considerably higher in order to compete. 27 points would not be called 'considerable difference' in my book. consider that a rifles damage would have to be half again better then a melee weapon in order to kill the same number of borg in the same amount of time.
another factor i want to throw in was that this test was done before nukara rep was added. there's now a new sword that can be easily acquired that's the nukara force MK12 sword, sometimes just referred to as the 'lightsaber' do to it's secondary ability. my nukara sword has more damage then my previous sword used during the test. so would anyone else agree then that swords are considerably better (at least for an engineer in this situation) then any rifle could be? at least as a primary weapon
i mostly ask this as in several STFs i've done recently, (usually just khitomer ground) there have been people that are either surprised that anyone is using swords, or seems angry that we're refusing to use rifles. am i missing something important that makes rifles better? with the exception of situations that require range (starbase incursion speedrun, infected ground, etc.) am i the only one that considers swords better for simply taking out enemies?
thanks, and let the debate commence
[SIGPIC]Timelords Fleet [/SIGPIC]
Post edited by captainpirko on
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What I can add myself is that
- weapons can deal damage to several people at once (e.g. pulsewave)
- pulsewave weapons have a great knockback proc which can be critical in some stf's
I never used a melee weapon because I think that Vulcan thing just look plain silly. BUT I got myself a bran new sword yesterday so I'll try it out.
Your logic is sound though.
- Scotty, to La Forge
With regards to rifles though, with the maco set giving the rapid remodulation, plus having the range on the borg gives its own advantages. Still wouldn't be criticising sword usage though.
But here's the real reason, all weapons have melee attacks associated with them. Granted it won't let you do the combos you can do with true melee weaponry, but the "butt smack" attack with a rifle is perfectly capable of exposing OR exploiting an enemy.
Even my scis during CGE won't carry melee weapons for those reasons. I don't think much of melee weaponry, having seen maybe one person who was any good with such weapons (and that was on an especially strong premade KAGE team). I don't doubt that it is possible to be effective with a melee weapon, but it seems rather more difficult to do so than it is really worth doing so.
Personally, I'll stick with my tried and true Sniper/Pulsewave combo (swap Sniper for Omega carbine for the sci)
the lirpa does look silly. @_@ for the longest time i avoided melee because that was the only weapon i saw besides the batleth, and the batleth is hard to get a MK12 version of as a feddy. however i got my Falchion as a drop in an STF once, and immediately loved it's speed. without any critical chance bonus, just because of how many times it hits targets when your spamming the attack button, i get a critical every 5 seconds. and in a pack of borg, the secondary attack can usually count as an AoE. several of the combos actually allows you to spin and hit several borg all around you. this with the mine barrier allows alot of nice group damage =D
i do think to be good with melee you need kit skills that are good with melee. engineer's mines and bombs are all close range, so to use those good melee is really one of the better ways to go. tacticals that use the close range kit could probably be pretty good too.
science on the other hand doesnt have anything that relies on close range however, so there's no real reason unless you want to bypass shields of the target, which i do think does more damage then dealing with their shields.
also the melee function of guns, the 'butt attack' of the gun, is sorta meh to me. with guns like the maco rifle, you can get some really nice damage, but if the target is walking away, you have to keep following it manually, whereas with a sword, your character will automatically run after then to club em over the head with your sword. which is alot more convenient and lets you focus on where your skills are needed. however, thats more of a personal choice matter.
1. It bypasses shields.
2. Borg can't adapt to steel.
I always have a melee weapon onhand.
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Sci medic Armek tanking. However, that is a wee bit situational!
Really, I tend to have an omega carbine on my sci (who is set up for debuffing on the ground). Set up exposes for the tacs!
I've never seen the "auto pursue" function you describe. I'll have to ask around and try it out for myself.
The butt smack attacks just as quickly as a standard melee attack iirc.
Only partially iirc. Something like 40% bleed through? You'd get the job done just as quickly with a ranged weapon.
Very true, though they can adapt to cold damage which you can get with one of the tholian rep powers.
With 3 purple melee doffs and mk xii lightsaber, then preferable a tac with melee spec you can roll drones, elite, tac or any other with little difficulty.
But it takes some fairly serious investment.
Sword are currently bugged at the moment. They are dealing unresistable knockback every time the secondary attack is used. There are a lot of players that use swords just for that knockback. The problem is, if anyone is using shooter mode, having the target knocked around the map makes it difficult to target, forcing them to go back to RPG mode for the 100% hit chance. A lot of players don't like RPG mode, preferring shooter mode. Fortunately, the knockback bug will be fixed with Season 8.
The other reason players do not like seeing melee attacks is because it triggers the borg assimilation attack in the same way that hitting a borg with an AoE attack causes them to return the favor. Having to stop in order to clear assimilation attacks constantly can become tedious, even if you have immunosupport hypos.
Pistols have the highest DPS with a moderate range, rifles have moderate DPS with the longest range, and swords have moderate/low DPS with shield bypassing properties. For any situation, a rifle or pistol will kill a target faster than a sword. The only exception at the moment is the Elachi, they are all shields and no health. The Voth will also have several highly shielded units with very little health, yet they will be difficult to hit with melee due to their repulsion fields.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Lightsabers are also a bad idea. The regular melee weapons (swords and falchions, avoid batleths and lirpas) are superior. Look for a blue CritDx2 mk12 for a powerful weapon that won't break the bank.
Swords can make a poor to average player perform well, because they do reliable dps and crowd control without much work from the player. They can be devastating in the hands of an excellent player because (when properly built) they are capable of gun levels of DPS that bypasses shields, which will let you melt minibosses in a couple of seconds. But if you fall between those skill ranges be careful: they can also pull you out of position, get you assimilated, lunge you off of platforms to fall to your death, expose your back to flank shots, draw aggro before your team is ready, trigger scripted enemy actions ahead of your team's schedule, etc.
For my part, I pack the Lobi sword as secondary and use a Fleet Tetryon Pulsewave + KB in solo play. I barely use the sword.
*sweeping strikes 3*
However, I find Security Protocols to be much more like my style. I can summon Nurses to heal me, I have all those traits like Conduit and Firearms Spec, and if anything fires at me, has its Weapons Malfunctioned. And Overwatch one-click cleanses all debuffs, excellent in the event of fuse armor.
All while they can't move 35m fast enough from all that Suppressing Fire.
Had a melee spec, but I found SecP much better for my playstyle.
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How one sided and chose to use blind ignorance when you comment on other players anger towards you or other players not using energy weapons.
You with your rose colored glasses think that all players using Melee weapons are engineers and use the mine and melee combo.
Well if that were the case most player wouldn?t care, but the fact is that most yes, MOST, players do not use that combo. They come in not prepared to use a melee weapon. They just beam in to show off and brag that they have a melee weapon without a clue as to how to use them in combat.
All I have seen was players trying to swing at something and most of the time they miss because other players use knock back weapons like the rifles and pulswave weapons that move them all over the field and because they get knocked back all over the place, the melee user has a hard time getting in a few good swings and thus their DPS is in the toilet.
I have also seen player trying to avoid the knock back by charging into the mob of Borg only to die from assimilation which for some strange and stupid reason they chose not to carry any Immunosupport Nanite Injector to counter act that effect or they die from heavy fire from the other Borg they agro.
Now that they have died multiple times I have also noticed that they usually don?t carry anything to heal their injuries.
Wow what a shocker.
So now that I have removed your rose colored glasses, that is why some player don?t like other players using melee weapons in ground STFs
Don?t get me wrong I have seen VERY skilled players use a melee weapon with great perfection, but sadly it is very rare when it happens.
my guy's base crit chance is 11% with 85% severity. with the gambling device, it's increased by 10% both chance and severity bringing it to 21% and 95%. with 3 purple doffs, it's increased by 24% chance, 75% severity, thus bringing it to 45% crit chance, 170% severity. a crtdx3 sword adds another 60% crit severity bringing the final stats to 45% crit chance and 230% crit severity on all basic and buffed attacks.
every third sword attack is an aoe strike as well. swords and falchions have a lunge feature, which is extremely helpful in closing distances between enemies.
base crit chance and severity is derived from traits and reputation choices. and even if they were to fix the secondary attack knockback bug, there are still doffs that you can use to make up for it. they offer a 15% chance for knockback, which is really helpful in knocking heavy and tac drones down, because when theyre down, they can't attack you and that's a good thing.
however, the caveat is that to equip yourself with the proper melee gear and doffs is a significant investment. current prices run the doffs at about 22m (fed) 42m (kdf) each. the crtdx3 sword is another 12-15m. so if you have the money to throw around, then go for it. for the average joe, you're better off sticking to your rifles.
Very interesting read, thanks! Just out of curiousity, did you spec your toon for ground or do you just have the minimum in points required?
balanced between space and ground.
Once the knockback bug is fixed, those "melee teams" won't be able to exploit the knockback bug anymore. There will be times where they are taking enemy fire because of that fact. With everything dumped into Critically hitting, they will melt like butter.
A sword team will finish slower than a rifle team. Rifles do not have Critical chance and Severity buffing duty officers, but they deal three times the base damage/second over a sword. Also, their damage may be buffed with Aim mode and large power cells. In the end, the only true bonus swords have compared to ranged weapons is an extra +24% critical chance and +75% critical severity at the cost of three duty officer slots. They will still be underperforming compared to ranged weapons.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
if you think 24% cc and 75% cs is something to shrug off, then it speaks volumes about the type of ground player you are. aim mode is truly inefficient in terms of rattling off dps. for one, it makes it thatmuch harder to keep.moving around an enemy to get the flanking bonus that would increase your overall damage.
as per your remark about rifle teams finishing quicker than a melee team, i don't see how that can be possible. rifle teams require you to focus fire on a single target or a similar grouping to be effective, especially on shielded targets. a melee group can easily split up to engage multiple groups regardless of if they're shielded or not. a single tac melee can solo armek. can a single rifle do that?
regardless, my original post was purely informative. it's a high commitment spec that requires skill and lots of resources to get off the ground correctly, but the dividends paid off in pure damage is unbelievable.
i dont use swords for the knockback, never have, and dont care about it either. if you're only reading the numbers on the weapons themselves, yes it looks like all guns far outmatch swords. but if you'd bother to read my original post that started this thread, you'd see just why swords beat the living hell out of guns and is the point that is being made here.
my sword does not do damage to shields. it completely skips shields and does direct health damage. while there's probably a damage resistance system that comes into play if the target still has shields, that is hardly a deciding factor. in ground combat i always go after the heavy tactical drone first, as they have the ability to completely oneshot people of you arent paying attention. in close combat, most borg dont have any skills that deal a whole lot of damage, especially if you've got armor like MK12 maco. their punch of smack attacks arent that threatening, and even if you didnt knock them down much you'd still be out damaging them by alot. tactical drones have alot of shields, which makes trying to kill them with a rifle exceedingly annoying. with swords i can completely skip the borg having shields at all, circle around them after a lucky knockback, and do about a 300+ flank with a spin attack. i dont have any points into ground damage. i dont mess around with buffs like the gambling device, or the skill tree. my only Doffs are there to buff my Kit skills and nothing to do with a sword, and yet my DPS is still really close to tacticals with exceedingly well thought out Doff layouts, skill trees, gambling devices, reputation items, and every trait that increases ground damage.
now tell me swords will be pointless when the knockback is removed.
As for an Engi, chroniton mine barrier can shred borg in some cases, particularly if your captain has the creative trait and 9 points in demolitions. The ones it doesn't flat out kill are left very weakened for mop up by the others. And it is fairly easy to lure them through your mine field. If they miss a mine or two, just aggro one and kite him to it. He'll happily 'splode himself chasing you. Using a sword to make them back up into a missed mine is a good tactic as, like I said above, they tend to back away many times. This has nothing to do with melee weapons, but choke points filled with mines and a bomb with someone to kite the borg back into it works very well.
I don't have a Tac so I can't say anything about grenade kits. It seems to me a plasma grenade used by team members is pretty good vs borg but I would think that you can't kite a borg into a grenade with a melee weapon like you can a mine. In this case, logic would have the Tac grenade the borg an Engi roots with fuse armor or a Sci roots with various skills. Again, I have never played a Tac vs borg so I will leave that to the experts to comment upon.
So my opinion is yes, with certain kits on Sci (in limited cases) and Engi (with mines in most cases) that a melee weapon is very useful for the team. Your Tac friend need not despair though. Their skills are best used picking off the others that weren't 'sploded and finishing off the survivors. Not to mention that he has the grenades to 'splode his own borg that you root for him. I would like to say in addition that, for the love of all that is non-borg, carry an energy weapon as a backup. That sword is really useless for the boss fight in Manus!
Melee has many things involved with it and not just hack and slash dmg. Also depending on if you are unarmed striking, rifle butting or hand held melee weaponing it there is some shield penetration differences ranging from as low as 30% to as high as 80%. DPS scoring for melee weapons can also hit as high as the 80+dps range, while ranged energy weapons score no higher from what I have seen than 139dps. The dps numbers are simply what is shown in the base dmg range and as always it is only a indicator as to how fast and possibly effective the energy weapon is against an enemy. You need also take in consideration that while both melee and range weapons can trigger exploits and exposing of enemies, this can lead to ever changing dmg numbers. Both serve a very useful purpose and to not make use of both either yourself or with you allies is to only limit the team's effectiveness.
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Science officers have this ability called Tachyon Harmonics, it strips shields in an AoE directly ahead of the target. A Tactical officer can oneshot an entire group of unshielded borg and they can oneshot unshielded Elite Tactical Drones on critical hit. You also don't need a sword to solo Armek with a Tactical officer, you can do that fine with a pulsewave. And focus firing a target with rifles? That would be overkill.
Swords deal 80% shield bypass damage, 20% of that damage still goes into shields. The borg do have a high damage attack they use at melee range, it's assimilation nanites, which most sword players don't counter in time due to the animation lock on combo moves. 300+ damage with a flank sword attack may seem significant, but standard pulsewave shots can deal 360 damage in an AoE per shot at the same range.
You could solo kill Armek with a Phaser Stun Pistol - Standard Issue if you felt so inclined when on the medic kit. Locking Armek into melee mode isn't needed, Science officers are more than capable of tanking fire from Armek's plasma cannon. In most cases, a Fleet Tetryon Pulsewave is a much better choice of weapon for a Science Officer when fighting borg. Using the Analyst kit for most of the missions and Medic for the boss fights. Engineering mines are extremely effective against borg, though pulsewaves are usually a better choice for weapons, as they allow you to knock entire groups into the minefields. Tactical officers are also capable of dealing massive AoE spike damage with a pulsewave, but such damage doesn't reach the level that a fully specced dual minefield may deal.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
lol. I have no interest in pvp, as it is so very broken. in regards to pve, run a kage and tell me how much time you have left on your optional. I've gotten close to 9:30 remaining. if your team can beat that, without boots, then I will concede my point. if not, then, well. that's that.
The burden of proof is on you to prove that you've actually done a recent run with 9:30 left on the clock before requiring me to beat such a time. Back before Cryptic patched a map bug, it was possible to get runs finished in under 6 minutes or less. Now that the knockback bug is fixed on Holodeck, killing borg won't be the cakewalk it once was with a sword.
And banning frosted boots from a rifle run eh? Let me get this straight, you don't have a problem with using sword lunge for double movement speed, but if rifle players use frosted boots to increase their movement it's not fair. Funny double standard you have there.
--->Ground Combat General Bugs Directory
Real join date: March 2012 / PvP Veteran since May 2012 (Ground and Space)
Anyway thanks to the OP for the information. I've been running a melee romulan with melee boffs. It's been fun.. but I've been searching for information on how to maximize his potential. There's plenty of helpful information in this thread that I'm going to try out.
Thanks again to the OP.