The Math of Fade Away

A lot of people don’t seem to understand how the numbers work on Fade Away, Guerillas in the Mist, and Unblinking Eye so I’m writing a summary so hopefully more of us can discuss the nerfs and any potential future changes from a more accurate perspective.

The basic crit formula is something like this:
Crit = Applied Damage × Crit Multiplier × (1 + Crit Bonuses)
Now, how does Fade Away work in to this? Well, it depends on whether or not you hit a weakpoint while in Fade Away.
Fade Away Crit = Damage * (1 + Fade Away Bonuses)
Fade Away Crit + Weakpoint = Damage × (Crit Multiplier × ( 1 + Crit Bonuses) + Fade Away Bonuses)
I could condense these in to 1 Formula but it would probably look ugly.

Yes, it is additive to normal crits and you do not get critical damage bonuses from coms or skills if you do not score a natural crit despite getting “automatic crits” in Fade Away. Fade Away crits to non-weakpoints only apply Fade Away Bonuses. This also means that Megavore will still boost damage in Fade Away on body shots.

Here are a couple numbers I’ve taken from my testing using a Jakobs pistol with a critical bonus and some guardian rank:
Normal Body Shot 1500, Normal Crit 3631
Fade Away Body Shot 4501, Fade Away Crit 6632

The Fade Away Body shot is exactly 3x my base shot, which is just what is stated on the skill 200% damage. No Crit modifiers from guardian rank or my gun have applied.
The difference between the normal crit and the Fade away crit is actually smaller. We’ve gone from 3x in the body shot comparison to less than 2x an increase from Fade Away, but it is still exactly 200% of the body shot damage being applied by Fade Away. The damage from the natural crit lessens the impact of Fade Away quite substantially.

Guerillas in the Mist and Unblinking Eye are Fade Away bonuses and are calculated the exact same way. Guerillas in the Mist will add 25% more of your body shot damage and Unblinking Eye will add 75/150/225% respectively. While Fade Away and Guerillas critical damage bonuses are distinct from each other they both stack additively with Unblinking Eye. Fade Away will have bonuses of 275/350/425% and Guerillas 100/175/250%.

So how does Guerillas compare to base Fade Away? Well let’s plug some numbers in to the formula. This is the body shot no bonuses perspective, 100 base damage for simplicity’s sake.
Fade Away = 100 × (1 + 2) = 300 damage
Guerillas = 100 x (1 + .25) = 125 damage
Fade Away is over twice as strong. But with just 3 shots to fire Guerillas will catch up on damage on its 8th shot.

For this one I’ll include Unblinking Eye’s average 150% modifier
100 × (1 + 3.5) = 450 damage
100 x (1 + 1.75) = 275 damage
Guerillas is now approximately 61% of how much damage Fade Away dealt. It will only take it 5 shots to match base Fade Away. And this is before we’re adding in natural crits, and crit bonuses from guns, coms, relics and skills that all further push down the value added by Fade Away.

In short, the critical bonus of Guerillas in the Mist really doesn’t matter all that much if at all, its true power comes from its ability to synergize with Unblinking Eye, Leave No Trace, and high fire rate weapons.

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have they changed things recently because thats not how i though gitm worked?
just after the game came out there was a pretty indepth reddit post about how the 50% gitm crit damage was not an extra 50% crit damage but actually a global crit modifer. as in all your various crit damage was added up as usual but then was multiplied by 0.5 at the end - so you were trading 3 high damage crit shots for lots of half damge crit shots.

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Well I’m only checking in to that thread now but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
The way they calculate the damage Fl4k should have gotten has the weakspot multiplier active. But in the video they look at the number they are using appears to come from a shot to the Varkid’s head, which isn’t actually its weakspot and shouldn’t get that bonus. So they’re overestimating the damage it should have dealt in both of their values.

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Does Megavore get critical damage bonuses from coms or skills if you do not score a natural crit?

Megavore can proc while in Fade Away and gets the bonuses from gear and all skills except the vs. human critical damage bonus of Hunter’s Eye.

Yeah i figured this had to be the case. Just started Fl4k a day or two ago and was looking forward to using the lvl 23 Flood i found, on them. Well i got to level 23 and decided to use a golden key to get a decent shield. I got a 23 Unforgiven. Figured i could test out normal Fade away and GitM with the two. Wasn’t aiming for the crits when in Fade Away with the Unforgiven and i was noticing it was taking 2 sometimes 3 shots to kill. (still a couple points away from Unblinking Eye) But i was getting one shot kills if i crit out of Fade Away.

So when i do have Unblinking Eye, if i use the Unforgiven in normal Fade Away and land a true crit, will i get the gun bonus crit dmg, fade away bonus, and unblinking eye bonus?

Yes that’s right. Even in Fade Away Unforgiven needs to hit crit spots to get even its own critical damage bonus. Fade Away Body Shots with it would be no different than using a normal Jakobs pistol.

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Thanks a lot. I guess Flood with GitM would be a bit easier lol. I’ll still mess around with the Unforgiven a bit too

So thats why it was such a broken skill the calculation just doesnt work the same way you naturally interpret the text, you dont half all of your crits but just add a smaller multiplier and then unblinking eye boosts that to what it was originally anyway…
This is really good to know and explains why unblinking eye is so important on flak with GitM. When i originally looked at it i thought all of its bonuses were gonna be halved or worse and it didnt look too attractive, but when i tried it out the results were stupid good.

Unblinking Eye is now more impactful than ever and honestly, I hope they cut the critical bonus of Guerillas in the Mist completely and restore the original duration. UE is very strong in and of itself, but with every nerf to GitM it becomes more valuable. Originally I went Guerillas in the Mist and Until you are Dead for the best of both worlds, but now I want Unblinking Eye for the extra damage.

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I definitely agree with that line of thinking. Nerfing Guerillas does make Unblinking Eye more necessary, and it was already very necessary.

Thank you very much for your testing. This was on my mind for several hours.

This thread should be sticky in the FL4K Forum.

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