The “fight” doesn’t take long and I usually finish Pete off with anything between 550-650 SMG bullets left.
I then switched to a Legendary Cat Mod, with +131% SMG Gun Damage & -31% SMG Accuracy, figuring the extra SMG buff would shorten the fight even more. Er, no. I’m still finishing the fight with the same number of bullets. So why does the Cat Mod appear to make no difference? Is there something in particular about The Bee / Sandhawk combo that’s affecting it, or is it something else entirely?
Most gun damage bonuses are additive to the original gun damage. Let’s take that Cat COM you’re using with the Sand Hawk which deals 10k damage for simplicity. 131% bonus damage equals to 13.1k bonus damage so you end up with 23.1k damage per pellet. Accelerate is another additive gun damage bonus. At 10/5 you get 30% bonus damage but of the original gun damage so you end up with 26.1k (10000*(1+1.31+.3)=26100). BAR is also added at this point in the calculation as another additive gun damage increase.
Now the Bee’s amp damage (and all Amp shields in general) is added after the previous increases. So the Bee adds 100k and now you deal 126.1k per pellet. This result is affected by the Elemental Advantages (Shock on Shield for example), Elemental Relics, in the case of Maya by Reaper (which is one of the few skills that multiply almost everything), Slag and crits which are all multiplicative with each other. So against Pete’s shields with a max Shock Relic (39%), 10/5 Reaper and Slag you deal a crazy 2,366,266.5 damage per pellet (1261002.51.391.83). And that’s not even including crit damage.
Let’s look at Legendary Binder now.
It has Reaper but not Accelerate or SMG gun damage bonus so the same Sand Hawk only deals 11.5k damage. Now let’s add the Bee and you get 111.5k per pellet. Already not a significant difference. Let’s add the previous bonuses again and we reach 2,092,297.5
Not much lower than the previous result as you already deal insane damage.
The Cat COM is still superior but the effect isn’t very noticeable because of the Bee. Of course, if all 8 Pellets hit the difference is a bit more noticeable but again, the damage is already insane to begin with. Not sure if all Pellets have the same initial power but they all deal the same amp damage so the difference wouldn’t be great either.
Without the Bee the difference is massive however.
(BTW, Money Shot and No Kill Like Overkill work like Reaper here which is why Salvador is so ridiculously powerful)
makes sense, thanks. So in essence the Cat Mod is less useful with The Bee and I’d be better off speccing a Leg Siren or Leg Binder Mod instead to improve cooldown?
No problem.
Cat is still superior in most cases as it offers the best DPS increases for Raid Bosses (Foresight, Reaper and Mind’s Eye) which Binder lacks (only Reaper). By shooting of Pete’s Helmet with a Trespasser you can crit him while his shields are up which would make the Cat even better because of the additional 25% crit damage from the Cat mod(which is actually more than it seems).
Binder however allows you to apply Slag (slightly) more frequently. The damage may be similar but you’re using the Dahl Allegiance Relic which does increase your DPS quite a bit too by allowing you shoot for longer and faster before reloading which makes the Reload Speed and Magazine Size bonuses Foresight offers even more apparent over time.
Legendary Siren offers Mind’s Eye and Foresight but lacks Reaper making it only really useful when Pete is below 50% health but it lacks the massive gun damage Cat offers but again, the difference isn’t that big.
The main difference between the Cat/Binder/Siren are the Cooldown bonuses as you’ve noticed yourself. Do you use Quicken in your build? Even 30% can make a difference as it shaves of 3 seconds already allowing you to slag every 10 seconds. Binder is a bit weaker than Quicken so there’s that.
If you can have Pete slagged the entire time while Phaselock is cooling down with only Quicken then Cat is still the winner here, even more so if you choose to use the Bone of the Ancients instead. The max of a 72 Bone is 37% Elemental and 43.8% Cooldown which combined with Quicken reduces the cooldown to 7.48 seconds. At this point the Binder does barely any difference. Still Dahl Allegiance and Binder (max of 27%) brings you to 8.28 seconds, slightly worse than the previous combo. If you were to use Bone of the Ancients, Quicken and Binder you’d only reach 6.47 seconds. Not that impressive really.
If you’re wondering about the Cooldown calculation it is also additive. Base rate is 13 seconds. These bonuses only increase the speed at which the skill cools off. As such, the Calculation works like this:
13/(1+0.X+0.X+0.X…) where X represents each bonus. Quicken becomes .3, Binder becomes .27 and the Relic becomes .438 resulting in 13/(1+0.3+0.27+0.438)=6.47 (rounded down). Once you reach a cooldown rate of beyond 200% each additional bonus becomes weaker making the Leg. Siren less efficient overall.
I’d still recommend to use the Cat still but if you feel you’re doing a better job with the Binder you should use that one.
I do have Bone of the Ancients with (I think) 36.4% Shock and 40% cooldown. I was debating whether to use instead of the Dahl Allegiance Relic but since It only takes me around three or four clips to strip Pete’s shields with the latter I figured I didn’t really need it! It takes me slightly longer to bring his health down. I might give the Bone a whirl later.
I do use Quicken and I’ve found that I get p/l back before slag wears off anyway, so cooldown against Pete at least is not a major issue. I spec to Ruin, then put 3 pts in Sweet Release and max out Wreck and Mind’s Eye. The rest I put in Motion, maxxing out Ward, Accelerate, Quicken, Suspension and, of course, Converge. I then split the remaining points between Inertia (3) and Kinetic Reflection (4), which I appreciate won’t help with Pete but I don’t spec just for him.
I normally spec the Cat as standard but occasionally I try Binder if I’m not using SMGs for any reason. I just found it noticeable that the Cat didn’t have the expected effect when I put it on. It’s not a big deal either way but the geek in me finds the science behind it interesting
Will do! If so, I won’t be unhappy about freeing up a backpack slot as it’s getting a little crowded. I’m only keeping the Dahl Relic for my Sandhawk!
VaultHunter101
(So long, and thanks for all the fish)
#8
Just out of curiousity, roughly how long do you think it takes you from spawning Pete to lootsplosion? Also, what strategy are you using for the fight: hanging tough by the water pipe, cheesing him around the scaffolding, using the upper room, … ?
I haven’t timed it, but getting the Sandhawk has made a massive difference (I wanted to wait until L72 before doing the mission). I don’t think it takes me more than three or four minutes now from spawning to lootsplosion. I’ll have to time it next time I go on.
I jump up by the water pipe and just pound him from there. At some point in the fight he usually jumps up with me (although not always), so then I just jump down again and he can’t follow. As I said, it normally takes me between three-four clips (extended with the Dahl Allegiance Relic) to get rid of his shields and then maybe eight or so to kill him. Once his shields are down I aim for the head for crits which speeds things up a bit, although annoyingly he sometimes turns away and I can’t get the angle. When he raises his arms as a prelude to his wave attack I just make sure the pipe is between me and him. It’s over almost before it’s begun tbh.
VaultHunter101
(So long, and thanks for all the fish)
#10
Good to know. I’ve beaten Pete with my level 72 Maya once co-op, but haven’t (re-)attempted solo yet. It’s next on my list, now that I’ve got the fight down with Axton!
Ok, just timed it. And with a Shock Bone of the Ancients Relic and Legendary Cat Mod the whole fight took under 2 minutes, starting from when I pushed the button to spawn Pete. Four clips to bring the shields down and another eight to wipe him out.
I have to say that, although Axton wasn’t hard by any means, killing Pete with Maya seems a lot quicker. It’s over before you know it
yes, just did a run using the Bone and Cat and cleared his shield in three clips and his health in six. Left me with over 1,000 ammo, so definitely faster, thanks
Probably already been stated, but it’s because the Bee is doing a very large percentage of the work. Each individual pellet in the Sandhawk receives full amp damage. After looking up the average values for each, at level 50, the amp damage from the Bee is almost 10 times higher than the damage from the bullets of the Sand Hawk by itself.
So while the Cat mod may be adding an extra 100% damage, it’s nothing compared to the 900% from the Bee, plus with the -30% accuracy you’re likely missing one or two more pellets and losing that tasty amp damage that gets stacked on top of it.
The sandhawk has a fixed fire pattern so the accuracy penalty has pretty much no effect. Also the cat com bonus smg bonus isn’t the only dps advantage over the binder. All 5 boosts are DPS ones, like foresight for example makes a huge difference vs Pete.
Also while its true the bee does most of the work do to unlisted pellets that does not mean the sandhak its self is not doing work and adding that much to the base damage does a ton considering how many shots you are outing on Pete.
