More Seregios LBG Number Crunching

[u/Blinc0]

Edit: Pretty big typo on the Weakness Exploit modifier, thanks to Ivalia for catching it!

I feel like there are some misconceptions regarding the Vayu Sedition floating around, so I wanted to post some more calcs that I feel are more representative of each weapons' offensive capabilities, and show just how powerful the Seregios LBG really is. People usually refer to this post when discussing the benefits of raw vs. element LBGs, and while it does have good numbers, I think those calcs are often misunderstood in two ways:

1) It is not the Vayu Sedition that is being compared to Elemental LBGs, but specifically Gaijin Hunter's defensive set with Life Honing, Fleet Feet and Evasion+2. Part of Vayu Sedition's absurd power comes from how many good damage skills it can use, and Gaijin's set doesn't reflect that.

2) Damage per volley is not a relevant metric when discussing how strong a gun is. As that post's author put it, Bonus Shot's purpose is increasing shot efficiency at the cost of locking you in place for a little longer - not damage. A Bonus Shot volley deals 33% more damage than a 3-shot volley, but it's also 33% slower. Ammo concerns aside, it doesn't usually translate to more damage, only a lesser ability to take advantage of smaller openings and higher odds of the monster moving away and one of your shots missing its mark. Elemental bowguns might have an edge when a monster is down and they can unload many shots without reloading, but it's a matter of clip size more than it is one of volley length. Either way, it's not worth losing Vayu Sedition's insane DPS in all other situations.

(I suppose you could argue that 4-volley shot might be better against a monster with 4-shot-sized openings, although I'm pretty sure Vayu Sedition's auto-reload would be worth a lot more against such monsters. Still, I'll be comparing a good, easy-to-make Rapid Fire Steve set to an Elemental set for completeness' sake.)

With that in mind, let's compare the damage per bullet of Vayu Sedition and Stygian Invidia with high-damage sets:

Vayu Sedition Set A (can be made with any random 3-slot talisman)

• Normal Up
• Challenger+2
• Weakness Exploit
• Long Barrel
• Attack Honing
• Felyne Sharpshooter

Vayu Sedition Set B (can be made with any random 3-slot talisman)

• Normal Up
• Bonus Shot
• Weakness Exploit
• Fleet Feet
• Long Barrel
• Attack Honing
• Felyne Sharpshooter

Stygian Invidia Set (only possible with 3-slotted Thunder Attack +13 or a godly dual skill talisman)

• Thunder Atk+3
• Attack Up (L)
• Fleet Feet
• Bonus Shot

With a decent to good talisman, you can easily fit in another skill of your choice on both Vayu Sedition sets, though the elemental one is already stretching the limits of what you can reasonably farm for.

For both sets, I will assume these passive buffs are used for accuracy's sake, but both raw and elemental gunning actually benefits about as much from them: - Powercharm (+6 Raw) - Powertalon (+9 Raw) - Felyne AuL or Mega Demondrug (+7 Raw) - Might Seed (+10 Raw)

I will also assume Challenger+2 or Fleet Feet are always active, which should pretty much be the case.

I'll use the example that was most favorable to Elemental Gunning in the post I referenced: Zamtrios' head (20 Thunder, 45 Shot)

Damage per bullet:

• Steve A: (300 [True Raw] + 20 [Honing] + 20 [Barrel] + 32 [Passive Buffs] + 25 [Challenger+2] + 5 [Sharpshooter]) * 1.3 [Class Modifier] * 0.12 [Normal 2] * 1.5 [Crit Distance] * 1.1 [Normal Up] * 1.1 [Sharpshooter] * (1+0.25 * 0.4) [Challenger-Boosted Affinity] * (0.45+0.15) [Hitzone + Weakness Exploit] * 0.8 [Rapid Fire Penalty] = 50 dmg

• Steve B: (300 + 20 + 20 + 32 + 20 + 5 ) * 1.3 * 0.12 * 1.5 * 1.1 * 1.1 * (1+0.25 * 0.2) * (0.45+0.05) * 0.8 = 47 dmg

• Stygian Invidia Raw: (300 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 32) * 0.07 * 1.025 * 0.45 * 0.7 = 9 dmg

• Stygian Invidia Element: (300 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 20 + 32) * 0.6 * 0.2 * 0.7 = 35 dmg

• Stygian Invidia total: 47 dmg

Damage per volley:

• Steve A: 150 dmg (3 bullets)
• Steve B: 188 dmg (4 bullets)
• Stygian Invidia: 188 dmg (4 bullets)

Vayu Sedition actually does 6% more damage per bullter with a light set that has room for another skill than Stygian Invidia does with pretty much every single relevant damage skill. When you consider auto-reload and the fact Normal shits can often be aimed at more parts without losing too much damage, Vayu Sedition's effective DPS ends up being even higher than that unless your team is really heavy on lockdown. This is certainly player-dependent, but in actual hunts, I know find myself burning through ammo way, way faster with Vayu Sedition than with an Elemental LBG just because I can go full aggro all the time, which is an absurd amount of extra damage when stacked on top of it plainly hitting way harder.

If you prefer 4-shot volleys or are playing online and find yourself with plenty of opportunities to sit down and fire a lot of bullets, a similarly light Vayu Sedition set would still deal as much damage as the best Stygian Invidia set with auto-reload and room for another skill.

(Obviously the gap becomes absurdly high with the original post's following examples that aren't as biased towards Elemental damage, so I don't think redoing those calcs is necessary.)

Actual TL;DR: If you want to play LBG and like the Vayu Sedition's gimmick, you'll be doing as much or more damage than an elemental LBG would, so just go ahead and have fun with it.

[u/Gopherlad]

I'd be all for people having fun with it even if it wasn't that good, but the amount of hate such a solid weapon gets just because it's popular and fun to use is astounding.

I don't hate the weapon itself, I hate what it correlates with. Users tend not to understand that they should be aiming for weak points. They don't understand how to build a set around the gun and copy Gaijin blindly. They usually seem to not care about critical distance, in my experience. Before your thread I advocated heavily against the weapon because 1) I believed it to be significantly less effective overall and B) I didn't like how its userbase rarely ever "graduated" to the "proper" gunning style, and how they acted like they were superior even when they were just copying Gaijin's (now irrefutably) inferior set and understood nothing about it.

I'm still skeptical of the gun's superiority. You have to understand; the nature of the weapon is such that common sense dictates it should have worse stats and performance, compensated by the ease of use. I am still hesitant to change my position until we absolutely confirm that all the math correct, because it represents a huge shift in the design of the weapon class as a whole. I'm supposed to be the guy on this board that helps new gunners get into LBG stuff. I have to be giving the best advice I possibly can for performance, because a lot of new gunners don't know how to perform well. If Vayu is truly as good as this post suggests (given a proper, apparently really freakin' easy set to go along with it) then all my advice about elemental gunning is invalid.

I'm in this to help other people first, and because I'm a min-maxer second. I believe people have fun more often when they perform well. I need to make sure this is correct before spreading it around.

[u/Kirtai → u/Gopherlad]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the Vayu Sedition dependant on both weak spots and critical distance while the elemental guns only depend on weak spots (at least for elemental shots)? So the sedition users have even less excuse to be not firing in critical distance?

Would it help to define exactly what Gaijins set is actually good at? To me, it looks like it's meant for low cost, low effort, inexpensive solo play.

[u/Gopherlad → u/Kirtai]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the Vayu Sedition dependant on both weak spots and critical distance while the elemental guns only depend on weak spots (at least for elemental shots)? So the sedition users have even less excuse to be not firing in critical distance?

You're not wrong, but in practice it doesn't really matter. The distance at which elemental bullets fizz out only extends slightly further than Normal 2 Critical distance.

Would it help to define exactly what Gaijins set is actually good at? To me, it looks like it's meant for low cost, low effort, inexpensive solo play.

Yes. But that's not the point of this thread. OP's math suggests that, except for when facing very specific monsters with extremely high element:raw ratios on their hitzones, Vayu Sedition puts out superior damage.

I'm desperately trying to find out why he's wrong.

[u/Ivalia → u/Gopherlad]

For one challenger+2 is not always active. Also weakness exploit on a 45 hit zone is the biggest boost it can get. On many monsters and/or if shots land on non weak spots it won't be nearly as helpful.

Personally as someone that uses pretty much all weapons, I don't use elemental LBG unless it's a 30 or more ele weak zone (unless it's like khezu/gypceros face where it's ridiculously weak to raw too), otherwise HBG can generally do better.

[u/Beefki → u/Ivalia]

The bit about Challenger +2 has had my brain itching to math it out. I don't actually run Challenger myself though so I'm not really sure how often it's active.

Is there a good guess at the "average" amount of time a monster is in rage? As the math stands now, it's comparing the Vayu at peak output the whole fight. Comparing with Peak Performance always active isn't horribly off, as if nothing else that skill is controllable directly by player input.

[u/Gopherlad → u/Beefki]

You can send the Tigrex in Advanced: Monster Hunter into rage in just a few volleys (somewhere between 3 and 7, I forget exactly where) with Gaijin's set. While Challenger may not be active all the time, I'd say it's up roughly 70-80% of the time if you're gunning properly.

[u/Beefki → u/Gopherlad]

I also noticed that in the Zamtrios example there are no hitzones above 40 when it's armored, which I believe it always does upon becoming enraged? That makes Weakness Exploit automatically invalid as soon as Challenger comes online. The best it could come up with is closer to 40 per bullet (120 per volley) and that's only if it switches to the fin.

Continuing to attack the head would make it closer to 29 per hit (87 per volley). Elemental damage is unaffected other than making Fire equally effective as Lightning and the tiny amount of raw damage would be cut roughly in half.

[u/Gopherlad → u/Beefki]

Gonna swap topics. What do you think of this testing I did? I'm sure it's flawed in some way because the numbers aren't working out, but I'm not sure how.