[Guide] Overkill Explained

[bvhjdbvkjf.unhacked (Just a random Casual)]

Excess Damage is added to the orb but your next gun shot still does Overkill Damage – if you shoot an enemy before the orb hits or if the orb fails to hit an enemy

It was a very interesting read and I appreciate you sharing your findings. I do have a quick question though regarding the remnant portion…

If the next shot deals overkill damage only before an orb hits, or on the occasions that it doesn’t… Does the orb still do overkill damage regardless? Or does getting the overkill damage on gun shot prevent the orb from dealing that overkill just the same?

Edit - and though it might be harder to test it, but if the gun shot takes the overkill damage, does the potential new overkill damage affect the orb it stole from, or just the newly created orb?

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Those are good questions, but I’ll need to look more into that, I can’t give definite answers right now. It seemed to me that once the orb starts with its excess damage, it will keep it, no matter what happens otherwise. And if you kill another enemy inbetween, the new orb will take excess damage from that. I think I had two orbs flying around at the same time, killing two enemies with different overkill damage.

But again, I need to look into it more. No guarantee on any of this.

edit: I seem to have overlooked that Remnant isn’t tied to the Overkill Guardian perk. They are probably independent of each other. I may look deeper into this.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

There is a unique pistol, the Dead Chamber, that has a 50% chance at firing an amped shot.

Not sure how best to test it. However it would be interesting to know how well it’s amped shot stacks with an amp shield. As well as how that combo would work with your whole overkill equations.

It’s an interesting question, gave that some testing.

• Dead Chamber does multiplicative x2.4 damage with buffed shots.
• Amp shields are also multiplicative, up to x2.2 with a Re-Router.
• Thus, combining both does 2.2x2.4 = x5.28 damage.
• For Overkill, only NormalDMG is affected, not the ExcessDMG part.
• However, since the damage cap is based on NormalDMG, it will be raised by the same amount (up to x5.28) - this is where it can make a great difference.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Update: added Face-puncher. Short story: bad for Overkill because it greatly suffers from the same disadvantages as other shotguns.

Not necessarily the topic of this thread, but here are a few findings about this weapon from my testing with Amara anyway, for anyone who’s interested:

Overall base damage stated on the card is based on regular melee damage without any bonuses. On level 50, that is 18 × 1.09⁵⁰ = 1338, which is divided by 7 pellets for 191×7.

Face-puncher is affected by:

• melee bonuses (including the +60% from its blade) and melee Guardian Rank
• Overkill
• Dread
• Samsara
• Jab Cross (only damage bonus received, the FP won’t trigger this skill)
• Blitz (only the general +100% bonus, no element or extra damage)

It’s not affected by:

• Gun damage Guardian Rank
• Personal Space
• Forceful Expression
• Indiscriminate
• not turned into elemental damage by Illuminated Fist or Blitz

[Ratore]

Thanks for all your testing and information!

Do you know where skills like Two F4ng and Playing Dirty fall in on this? I have a weird impression of Two F4ng making things a bit worse but not actually wasting Overkill. As in, it may be reducing the effective Overkill Damage but not wasting it whole, which means the skill still helps when Overkill resets. But i’m entirely not sure.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Interesting question, just gave that a try and you’re right.

When Two F4ng adds another projectile, it turns e.g. a 1000 gun dmg sniper into a 1000x2 sniper, and now the damage cap penalty mentioned in the guide applies. With one bullet, damage cap is x5, so 5000. With two bullets, the cap is x3, so you’re shooting 2 bullets with 3000 each for a total of 6000.

Of course 6000 is more than 5000, but if you’re chaining Overkills and the next shot kills the next enemy, the issue of “Excess damage can’t exceed the damage of a single projectile” kicks in.

Let’s say the enemy has 1500 health left. With the 5000 bullet, excess damage from killing him will be 5000 - 1500 = 3500. With Two F4ng’s 3000x2 shot, only one bullet will connect, and excess damage will be 3000 - 1500 = 1500.

So if you’re reaching the damage cap when chaining Overkill shots, Two F4ng seems to be detrimental.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Update:

• did more thorough Remnant testing and gave that its own chapter
• added Two F4ng
• added Monocle to notable weapons and expanded upon its “super critters” sub-category
• removed obsolete Bloody Harvest info

[Ratore]

Thanks a lot for testing and confirming this, always thought it felt weird but could have been some placebo thing. Glad it’s cleared up.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Now this kept me very curious, wanted to test my theory by simulation and found it a great opportunity for learning Excel. I created a simulation that would show how much damage 32 shots would do over time when chaining critical Overkill shots. For the gun I thought of a Jakobs sniper with 3000 normal damage and about 11K crit damage. Which shots are TF, and what health the enemies have is randomised on each run.

So when we give the enemies 20,000 health (± 20%), we’ll quickly get to the point where we always hit the cap, which is normally x5, but x3 on Two F4ng shots that kill the enemy with only one projectile, which always happens at this low health. It doesn’t really matter though because every hit is a kill either way.

Raising health to 30,000 ± 20% causes problems for Two F4ng. Without the skill, once the overkill cap is reached it firmly stays there. TF shots however mess with this and cause drops out of the chain, from where it has to recover to reach the cap again. Sometimes this causes it to not even kill an enemy on hit, resetting excess damage to 0:

This fluctuates a lot on every run, some are luckier, some less – but about 80% of the time, TF caused a decrease in average damage.

However if we raise health further to 40,000 ± 20%, we’re reaching a point where we can’t really chain Overkill anymore, needing 2 hits for most enemies. Now TF becomes good because it’s mostly a DPS increase. Thanks to enemies with more health, you’ll much more often see TF doing full overkill damage with both bullets now, which raises the damage cap of both bullets combined to 6x regular damage (TF capping at 6x damage four times here, normal capping at 5x two times):

This also fluctuates a lot, but on average it’s clearly Two F4ng that’s doing better now.

So if Two F4ng is better or worse depends on a lot of things, among them a lot of chance. However at the sweet spot where you can just consistently chain Overkill shots, it seems to be rather unhelpful.

So should you take this skill? I think yes, because most of the time it’s just a great DPS increase. It’s only a certain scenario where it doesn’t synergise well with Overkill.

[Moz1ah]

That’s me giving you a high five.

This is AWESOME! I have been wracking my head trying to figure out how to make a Red Fang Gamma Burst FL4K work (where the Skag takes all the punishment and I can just sit in the back blasting people with my Monocle) and this totally explains the shortcomings I’ve been finding.

Best I’ve been able to do is Mayhem 2. Anything higher and I just can’t kill in 1 shot anymore. I thought that using the Ion Cannon from the DLC I could use that to start my overkill chain, but based on your findings I can now see that the low damage of the Monocle would probably still get in the way, but I think anointment might help.

One question I have for you is have you messed around with anointments? Some I believe should be of interest are:

• “Weapon Damage Increased by 100% for a short time”
• “On Grenade Throw, Weapon, Grenade, and Action Skill Damage are increased by 25% for 6 seconds”
• “125% Weapon damage to Badass, Named, and Boss enemies for a short period”

For the middle one, I beat up Thunk and Sloth in Konrad’s Hold until they finally gave me a “It’s Piss” grenade with that anointment, and it’s been a huge help. Still haven’t found a Monocle with one of the other 2 anointments but I’ll keep an eye out.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Damage anointments are great, they’re similar to crit or charge bonuses: on the Excess Kill they produce more excess damage, and on the Overkill shot they multiply that Excess Damage for even more Overkill damage.

I’ve got a Monocle with +250% after Phasecast, without any other bonuses except Guardian ranks that hits the cap at 297K. For this shot it needs only 5931 Excess Damage.

I’ll add an Anointment chapter to the guide.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Update:

• added Anointment section
• added Infusion to notable skills

[Ratore]

Correct me if i’m wrong, but Splash anointments with certain weapons (like the Proton Rifles and Headsplosion) produce an even more destructive effect, since Splash is multiplicative with Weapon Damage and so on. I’m pretty sure it boosts Hollow Point damage too, it’s how i’ve managed 50M + hits on a Headsplosion.

Also, and this is in FL4K’S case, another advantage of Splash Anointments is that they get full effect for the third shot of Fade Away, triggering alongside Elemental Anointments. Weapon Damage anointment only gets its effect after the third shot.

Thanks for all your work and testing on this and everything else. It has helped a lot on many decisions.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

I’m pretty sure it boosts Hollow Point damage too, it’s how i’ve managed 50M + hits on a Headsplosion.

50M? How do you get 50M damage?

[Ratore]

I wish i fully knew how lol

At the end of this video there’s a 40M Ricochet + Hollow Point thing happening.

And then there’s things like this:

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Can you tell me what gear you’re using? I have zero idea what’s going on there

[Ratore]

Splash Anointed Headsplosion
O.m or Re-Router Amp Shield
DE4DEYE Com with Sniper DMG + Jakobs Crit (Should work with others too)
Any artifact with Area DMG/Sniper DMG/Both

No Two F4ng on the first video. Well, actually 2/5 two F4ng but since it has the predetermined proc pool it doesn’t get in the way at all until 3/5 or 4/5. Using a Power Inside setup.

Second video had 10/5 Two F4ng (or at least 7/5, i don’t remember exactly), as the raid is tankier. Using a Megavore setup.

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Did some Hollow Point testing and I’m beginning to see what’s going on. It’s another separate instance of overkill. Excess Damage is applied to all enemies hit by the explosion, increased by AoE bonuses, the 35% from De4deye, C-C-Combo and more. Interplanetary Stalker and The Power Inside also increase it, although none of the other skills from those two trees that I tested did.

With a few bonuses, more than 2x damage can be easily achieved, which is what apparently happened to the Kraken. The 40M in the other video still seems off though. Maybe that’s got something to do with the explosion coming from an anointed Militant?

Anyway, since this is another instance of overkill damage, it’ll get its own section.

Also thanks for the info about Two F4ng being predetermined, didn’t know that either.

[plenipotence]

Have you looked at the Ion Cannon at all doc? I’ve been wondering how the charge mechanic interacts with Overkill. You mention the proton rifle getting a 2x multiplier from charging - am I understanding it correctly that the overkill damage is added to the base damage before it is multiplied by the charge? I’m curious if ion works the same. Either way it overkills pretty hard and deserves a mention

[DocStrangelove (int GetOutOfBed (char DayOfWeek, int time) {return 0;})]

Yes, you’re understanding that right: Excess Damage is added to Gun Damage before being multiplied by charging, that’s what makes these weapons great for Overkill. Hadn’t try this with the Ion Cannon, now I did, and yes it works the same. Unlike Proton Rifle/Melter which are increased to up to ×2, the Ion Cannon apparently deals ×2.25 damage when fully charged. Excess Damage is scaled accordingly on Overkill shots. I’ll add it to the guide in the next update.

Note that if you’ve got a ×2 Ion Cannon, multi-pellet penalties apply, most notably the damage cap is Gun Damage ×3, not ×5.