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FAQ

Detailed answers to common damage-testing questions and persistent sandbox myths.

Frequently Asked Questions
Adept Impact	How much does Adept Impact matter on swords?	2.93% on light attack, 1.9% on heavy attack (wave).
BnS first shot	Does Bait and Switch affect the shot that activates it?	It depends. If a Bait and Switch weapon is the one to activate Bait and Switch, people typically think that, because the timer has not started and the damage number appears to be an unbuffed one, it is not active. However, in solo instances, the game actually does do the BnS damage to the enemy, meaning that BnS is effectively a flat 30% perk for all shots if used correctly. In the attached video, see that both rocket shots do approximately the same amount to the health bar despite the first shot being the activation condition (the difference between both shots' damage can be attributed to the ~7500 DDT damage error against Templar, 1 pixel's worth). In team settings, however, BnS does not seem to affect the first shot due to instance activity, which likely resulted in the 27% buff value you see in the Wolfpacks tab rather than a full 30.
BnS timing	How long do you have to activate Bait and Switch?	About 7 seconds between each weapon (14s total). No, this does not mean you can shoot weapon 1, wait 1 second, shoot weapon 2, wait 13 seconds, then shoot your Bait weapon. Additionally, you can infinitely store Bait and Switch prep by repeatedly tapping your second weapon without ever going back to your first weapon, provided you initially shot your second weapon within 7 seconds of firing the first. Finally, you can't start shooting weapons to reproc Bait and Switch until its timer is out.
Danger Zone blinding	Does Danger Zone increase the blast radius of the blinding effect of Disorienting Grenades?	No, not even with blast radius that is theoretically >0.
Cluster Bomb	How much damage does Cluster Bomb add to a rocket?	On Templar, each cluster does 334+1669 damage (old scalar). Assuming all 8 clusters hit, that's 16024 extra damage on top of a base value of 72339, which comes out to an increase of ~22.15%. However, none of this damage is affected by Pack Hunter, which yields a final result of ~17.5% overall against a regular Pack Hunter rocket.
Debuff extension	How does debuff extension work?	Timer-based full debuffs (30%) like Tractor and Felwinter's can have their timers refreshed by the application of a timer-based weaken, including Echo of Undermining grenades and Snare Bomb. This interaction does not work with either Tether variant, since the debuff applied by those supers does not seem to apply as a timed status effect, but rather by a consistent connection to the Tether object itself.
Double vs. triple swaps	How much damage loss is not using a third weapon in an Izi rocket rotation?	With how little your third weapon (GL/slug/sniper) makes up these days, in an Izi/slug/Apex Broodweaver rotation, you lose something like 4% of your damage by not using a third weapon, but having a third fill is still important if you're waiting for your rocket to load.
Duality	Is Duality worth using in the context of slug swapping?	Given that the standard double slug rocket rotation doesn't use any exotics, using Duality in place of Sojourner's Tale actually boosts damage by about 18.5% per shot against Frenzy Sojourner's. On top of this, in certain boss phases, you can proc On Black Wings and refresh it during damage through precision hits on the boss.
Frame-based damage	How much are certain damage sources affected by FPS?	Health bar-wise, not at all. This includes Leviathan's Breath, Touch of Thunder storm grenades, Anarchy, and Wolfpack rockets, tested at 30 (capped) to 150 (uncapped). When others have found that the game reports lower wipe screen numbers, this is likely because the game counts damage ticks on a per-frame basis, whereas the instance itself actually calculates damage values at its own rate.
Frontloaded health bars	Are bosses "frontloaded" in health?	No. Based on extensive testing across every raid and dungeon boss in the game, not a single boss has a health bar that is not uniformly distributed.
Golden Gun buffing	Does Well override Radiant for Golden Gun purposes? What about kinetic surges?	Yes. Stay outside a Well if you want to do full Golden Gun damage! As for kinetic surges, they are patched and no longer stack with Golden Gun! Finally, other empowering buffs like Lumina and Banner Shield also override the Radiant buff for Golden Gun :(
Kinetic Tremors	How much damage does Kinetic Tremors add to different weapons? Does it scale with different multipliers?	Here's how Kinetic Tremors scales on different weapon types, converted to a perk equivalent:rapid sniper: ~57.8% buff, 0.433s procrapid scout: ~160.2% buff, 0.932s procrapid pulse: ~49.6% buff, 0.981s procprecision HC: ~82.3% buff, 1.392s procadaptive sidearm: ~109.4% buff, 1.2s procrapid auto: ~175.6% buff, ~0.83s proclightweight SMG: ~163.7% buff, ~0.804s procprecision bow: ~146.1% buff, ~1.15s procAnd yes, it scales with buffs/debuffs/surges/most perks, but it does not stack with other players — only one KT user per team.
Nanotech Tracer Rockets	How much does Nanotech Tracer Rockets affect the damage of a weapon?	For every 3 Dimensional shots at 26623 damage each, one 5102 damage rocket is shot, resulting in approximately 6.4% more damage. This rocket's damage scales with perks, buffs, and debuffs!
Pack Hunter multiplier	How much damage does Pack Hunter add to legendary rockets?	See the Wolfpacks tab of this spreadsheet. In short, Pack Hunter is approximately an 25-30% buff to base rocket damage. However, not all perks are multiplied and treated the same — see the tab for more info.
Shotgun swaps	Double slug or double pellet? What about rapid fire shotguns?	Depends on the boss! Swap component-wise with no perk, slugs are at 95187 DPS (old scalar), while pellets are at 98213 DPS (lightweight, crit). Once you account for perks available on both archetypes, they're pretty close to equal. And yes, the other pellet frames are worse, with rapids at 93493 DPS and aggressive swapping at 88463 DPS.
Thundercrash exotics	Cuirass or Star-Eater or Synthos?	They're all essentially 50% buffs to Thundercrash now, Cuirass is a tiny bit ahead of the other two but it's completely negligible, so just use whatever suits the situation best.
Trench Barrel	Is meleeing to proc Trench Barrel damage loss? If not, what is the effective DPS change?	Yes, but only on some archetypes. For example, rapid-fire shotguns lose DPS against even 15% damage perks like Vorpal when wasting the time to melee with such a high fire rate weapon. On the other hand, archetypes like aggressives and lightweights benefit highly from meleeing between shots, with aggressives specifically losing almost no DPS at all from stopping to melee.
Triple rocket options	Are Radiant Dance Machines or Rain of Fire better/faster for rocket spam? What about The Dragon's Shadow and Whisper of Impetus?	Time to shoot 3 rockets:RDM: 1.366 + 1.366 = 2.732sRoF: 1.183 + 1.183 = 2.366sTDS: 2.383s (Lunafactions reload)Reconstruction + Impetus: 1.183 + 1.183 = 2.366s
Volatile Retrofit	How much damage do Volatile Rounds add to Retrofit Escapade now?	~5.2%, which is not worth the damage loss of making yourself invisible beforehand or swapping your exotic.
Weavewalk	Is Weavewalk worth using with Rain of Fire for reloading rockets?	Generally no, the animation is too slow (slower than a dash or Ascent reload, and approaching reloading at ~1.8s).