PvE Damage Mechanics

Due to the complexities of how damage calculations work,
I performed extensive testing and discovered how the mechanics of PvE work from
a damage perspective.  The following
factors impact the calculation: (1) Base damage (2) Enemy damage resistance (3)
Skill, gear, and buff damage boosts (4) Crit multiplier and (5) Skill, gear,
and buff critical damage boosts.  Note that for damage boosts in the skill tree, only sneak attack and fight for your life have specific places in the damage calculation where they are added. Lord of War, Iron Sight Damage, and Elite Damage skill boosts are added in at the same time as the damage to elite values found on your gear and through buffs. Damage
is calculated as follows.

  = Base damage adjusted for enemy resistance, sneak attack, and damage to elites
  + Supercharger damage value (only in case of supercharger being
 activated, this value will equal 100% of base damage adjusted for enemy
  = Final critical hit value

To illustrate, let's use a Grinch sniper rifle, which has
base damage of 748.  I currently have a
5% iron sight damage perk and a 10% damage to elites perk unlocked on it.  When testing, I used a build of 9A-3C-8S with
no buffs, damage perks, or critical damage perks on my armor.  For ease of the calculation, we'll look at
damage to the Blade Dancer, who is classified as an Elite enemy and carries a
15% damage resistance.  With
supercharger and aiming down iron sight, I would expect to do the following critical
damage.

**Maximizing your critical hit value**

Based on this mechanic, I then compared expected critical
hit values between 2 maximum damage builds: (1) a 13 point agility build, to
capture both the 20% damage bonus from Sneak Attack and the 15% critical hit bonus skill (2) a 12 point combat
build to capture 25% damage to elites boost and a 25% damage boost to
secondary weapons (Lord of War).

*Agility*
build (13A-3C-4S)

*Combat*
build (8A-12C-0S)

As you can see, the combat build yields critical hits to
the back that are roughly 30% higher than the Agility build because of the additional damage from Lord of War, 15% iron sight, and 25% elite damage. This represents a significant change from the previous skill tree setup, where shots to the back were actually marginally stronger with an agility build because of its access to the iron sight damage skill that was moved to the combat tree and the fact that sneak attack was not an option for the 12 point combat build previously. I previously noted that in order to capture the value of Sneak
Attack, one must be shooting at an enemy's back, which is more difficult to do
consistently, and the powerful thing about the Combat build is that it carries its damage bonuses to headshots
and body shots and its crit bonus to headshots as well as backshots.  In a typical run of Gold Arena, the
differentiating factor on what will lead to the most overall damage done and
the fastest clear time will be the skills lost from moving from the Agility
build to the Combat build, namely AM Bomb. AM Bomb is somewhat of a dark horse
here, due to its power at clearing trash mobs, although this has seen a decrease because of the nerf of AM Bomb.
In a typical run of Gold Arena, I have time enough to use AM Bomb 4
times, which from a strategic perspective is valuable as it can get me out of a
sticky situation rather quickly while I continue to run away or DPS other
enemies.  However, I think that the clear
boost to DPS for your secondary weapon, which is constant throughout the whole
run, compensates for the loss in damage from AM Bomb.  This hypothesis assumes that your access to
ammunition for your secondary weapon is virtually unlimited, which holds fairly
true in Gold Arena, at least for the first four rounds.

For practicality's sake, I also ran a calculation for damage that would be done with a 6A-12C-2S skill build, which gives up 2% critical hit points, increased sprint speed (Greased Lightning), and Frag Grenades, in exchange for Survival Kit and 17% extra HP. I find that the 6A-12C-2S build is much more consistent in its use because having 0 points in Survivability makes me far too squishy in places like Hive Mind and Gold Arena. The resulting critical hit with this build measured in at 3,936, which is only 1% lower than the 8A-12C-0S build and still 28.5% higher than the Agility build. I'll agree that giving up sprint speed is noticeable, especially if you decide to PvP with the 6A-12C-2S build, but for PvE, it's an easy tradeoff for that extra survivability.

For your reference I am including a table of damage
resistance by enemy type based on my testing in game.

A big thank you goes out to Halide, who was
my fellow tester and proof reader in this endeavor, to NateGoregasm, our producer and motivator, and to KrvavyPatejl, who
initially brought the 12 point combat build to my attention.

If anyone comes up with results outside of the given 1 point rounding error, please let me know so that I can revise this post accordingly.

--[APx] InsulinMaze

[1] Total
damage boost equals 10% damage to elites perk from weapon

[2] Total
damage boost equals 5% damage bonus from iron sight perk on weapon

[3] Total
critical hit boost equals 9%, which is purely from the points spent in the
Agility tree

[4] Actual
damage will be within 1 point of calculated damage due to rounding

[5] Total
damage boost equals 10% damage to elites perk from weapon

[6] Total
damage boost equals 5% damage bonus from iron sight perk on weapon

[7] Total
critical hit boost equals 28%, which is from the 13 points spent in the Agility
tree and the 15% critical hit skill

[8] Actual
damage will be within 1 point of calculated damage due to rounding

[9] Total
damage boost equals 10% damage to elites perk from weapon plus 25% damage bonus
from damage to elites skill

[10] Total
damage boost equals 5% iron sight damage perk from weapon plus 25% damage boost
from Lord of War skill plus 15% iron sight damage from the combat skill

[11] Total
critical hit boost equals 8%, which is purely from the points spent in the
Agility tree

[12] Actual
damage will be within 1 point of calculated damage due to rounding