What about the Laser Disker?
It can’t crit but still does amazing damage.
As a general rule, what Eel37 said was correct. For the most part, you want to use weapons that can crit on all the characters. Tediore is the exception.
Besides, I’m fairly certain tediore reloads can crit on sentinel, Iwa, and Eclipse. So TS and Escalation help them as well.
So I shouldn’t bother looking at the Legendary Torgue Assault Rifle (I forgot it’s name) huh?
Kerboom is pretty eh. It has nothing on the kerblaster since they nerfed the fire rate. Besides, the laser disker does what the kerboom does and has the throw reload.
So no, you probably shouldn’t unless you really enjoy the gun.
Okay, thanks. 
Flakker doesnt get crit bonuses. What he said isnt 100% true. Flakker is still worth using since its damage output is still top tier even on wilhelm.
If the skill was damage it would get a better rating.
Opinions and math/loguc arent the same.
These threads are based off logic and math not opinions.
Look at shock absorber, its only usable on some play styles and its bonuses are a little ehh, most people arent going to be sprinting and shooting.
It should have a lower rank but long story short its where its at now from issues.
Its mediocre at best, I know I have never made much use of it. Just like his melee skill, which is a longer story.
Just because wilhelm doesnt have too many game changing skills like the other characters doesnt mean a skill should be rated highly because its just on this character. They have to be rated at a whole compared to other skills, tested if they are additive or multiplicitive and a ton of other things.
Its not about opinions its about the massive about of time you have to put into this game to understand the skills as a whole.
My entire time in tps has been nothimg but testing and nothing else.
I never had the time to see if I even liked the game since its so demanding.
I got to my breaking point a while back which is why I gave up the top gear, which if you know me I dont do things like that.
I literally still have around 20 half finished guides for axton sitting on my desktop that I probably wont ever post except the laser sight one which is 90% done. Just need the illustrations finished and a few videos.
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While you do have a point, if you can’t rate a skill in the context of the character and the pool of skills he has, however shallow, at what point are the ratings useful to people?
Given the current state of the list some person trying to min/max a Wilhelm would just as often pick FtF as they would Scope when going down which I feel is complete mistake. I won’t argue further as I mostly respect your opinion, but I feel my point is valid.
Honestly ftf was originally rated bad but 5 pages of complaints later.
Its a terrible skill.
I have not once been allowed by the community to be real about wilhelms skills, I test stuff before i write up the synapses of the skill. If it doesnt add up it doesnt get high ranks.
This list has been bastardised really hard by you people. Go put 1000 hours of nothing but testing the skills for wilhelm, then come back to me. Because I’ve done this, anytime someone requests a rating change its back to testing.
I disappeared because of it too.
Welp i did spent roughly that amount of time testing wilhelm…remember the whole TG thing that i took offa yer hands?
And I think @johnrr6 has only wilhelm hours on his acct, holds some of the wilhelm records and surely has a huge chunk of play time to validate his opinion.
We’re not here to be against you or something just fellow WIlhelm diehards that wanna do him justice.
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A rework would do him justice honestly, too many skills that are useless.
It is your list, so nobody can really force you change something you don’t want to.
However, I think the way you rated some skills are hypocritical. Whenever someone complains about the flakker, you say that it is the player’s fault for not having the skill to use the weapon effectively. Here, you downgraded a skill because you don’t believe that most players are skilled enough to get the full effect from it. Going by the logic you present in this thread, that would mean that the flakker does suck, since it is hard to use and a lot of people can’t use it. But we all know you don’t think that, so bringing that mentality here doesn’t make any sense.
Wilhelm doesn’t have the most thought out skill tree. Some things work against each other. Others just aren’t good enough. Still, this is what we got, and they aren’t going to change it, so we have to make the best of what we’ve got. And TS is probably one of Wilhelm’s best 3 skills. It is your choice whether you want to rate the skill higher, and I know you’ve tested for a long time. But when 2 other Wilhelm players who have done just as much testing as you have contrary opinions, I think it is at least worth considering taking a second look.
Im downgrading ts to “never use this because it doesnt work with flakker”.
That better?
TS’s grade has been changed more times than any other skill. It’s an average skill at best, it doesnt break the game and you can do just fine without it. Thats why it will never be outstanding.
Its a worse onslaught, which was rated average and no one complained, infact they all agreed.
Im at 3155 hours of nothing but testing on wilhelm fyi.
Axton also had better and more potent damage skills than Wilhelm. TS is his highest DPS, least conditional skill.
Again though, its your guide. I just can’t agree with your reasoning on this one.
Its community based, you have yet to provide full equations behind it and better logic. Hoyle has provided better reasoning, but hasnt provided adequate proof or a full equation of its dps.
Back in the day, we used to make guides on game mechanics and character skills to settle disputes and help others. When someone disagreed, they would show with an example or their own math, if applicable.
Now, I think some people have forgotten how to do that…
I appreciate the effort you have put into making this guide, @Blutfatal. I know how much work these take, and its a nonstop effort to construct / maintain them. I definitely will be looking this up when I (eventually) get to leveling Wilhelm.
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Thank you.
These new people dont know our ways.
It’s only his biggest damage-boosting skill if you have at least 9/5 in it; otherwise UVHM Laser Guided beats it. LG is also far less conditional unless you don’t use W&S often (which you probably should considering how many skills are centered around them). You could also argue that Emergency Response boosts more DPS although being RoF it’s additive with OC and Suppression and also subject to RoF caps and the like.
Granted I do think it should be good considering how low Wilhelm’s damage potential is compared to everyone else’s but Blut’s reasoning makes sense.
Thats the other thing, if its 9/5 you lock yourself into a com.
That would mean its not too great of a skill if it has to get that high.
I have to rate the skill at 5/5 maximum since you might not get the com to boost it past that.
I mean if you want math I can do math for the sake of a damage calc.
Taking a fairly standard Soldier Wilhelm build (I won’t account the Celestial at this point in time)
From Face Value alone (the face value skill numbers might not be exact, i hear Laser Guided got buffed in UVHM but i haven’t tested it myself), say you have a laser that does X damage.
Without TS you got something looking roughly like this (Escalation is Type B yes?)
X* (1+0.7) * [2 * (1 + 0) * (1 + .25)] * {1 + .25} ~= 5.3X
Add a base 5/5 TS
X* (1+0.7) * [2 * (1 + .5) * (1 + .25)] * {1 + .25} ~=8.0X
Roughly a 50% Per-Damage Spike on Crit (I mean duh it’s the same equation with a 1.5x multiplier)
Same calcs with a Celestial
X* (1+1.2) * [2 * (1 + 0) * (1 + .25)] * {1 + .25} ~=6.9X
X* (1+1.2) * [2 * (1 + 1.0) * (1 + .25)] * {1 + .25} ~=13.8X
As expected like before it trivially doubles your per-shot damage on Crit
Of course you have caveats like “what if i’m bad and can’t crit”, "what if i’m bad and can kill an ad* and the like, If Escalation is indeed a multiplicative crit bonus like you say, adding the 50% additive crit bonus will boost your damage by 50%, as it’s Wilhelms only source of Type A crit outside of gear.
**Edit incase the wording was misinterpreted and Escalation is just Type A,
TS is still a 40% (80% at 10/5) Damage increase on Crit