Fish or Bear Paw

When shooting, there is a 100% chance (reduced by 3.5% per projectile) to deal -50% Total DMG but deal extra DMG once.

Enhanced ( 60?): When shooting, there is a 100% chance (reduced by 3.5% per projectile) to deal -20% Total DMG but deal extra DMG once.

### Unlock

Kill Catfish Gunner 100 times

Fish or Bear Paw is an Occult Scroll.

Each weapon projectile has a chance to deal reduced damage twice. The chance decreases with a higher total projectile count, with no effect if a weapon has 29 or more projectiles.

Since the damage is reduced by -50% then the hits are doubled, damage dealt is effectively always 100%. The scroll gains its effectiveness from the increased number of hits you are capable of inflicting, boosting the power of any effect that relies on hits.

This has no effect on skill damage.

**Enhanced**: Reduces damage penalty from -50% to -20%. This allows weapons to deal up to +57.9% damage on average, working **multiplicatively**. The lower the weapon's projectile count, the higher the damage potential.

## Synergies

### Positive

* Any weapon with an inscription which triggers on-hit, such as ◆ *25% instant kill on crit*(full text).
* Any elemental weapon, which receives more chances per shot to trigger the elemental effect.
* Fatal Bloom deals additional damage more often.
* Recharge Shot increases  Armor? gain per shot, however the cap of 12 Armor every second still applies.
* Crimson Firescale and  Poisonous Ghost charge their  Weapon Skill? much faster. Poisonous Ghost also has a chance to apply its  True? damage twice.
* Demonlore and  Laser Gloves stack their bonuses much faster.
* Victory Rush requires much less hits to gain its maximum bonus.
* Eye of the Storm increases damage at a much faster rate.
* Lightning From Void has a chance to receive two chances per shot to trigger  Chain Lightning.
* Empathy with Sword has higher activation chance.
* Skill Booster has a chance to increase next Skill damage by +8% instead of +4%.
* Giant Slayer has higher activation chance.
* Coin Shot has a reduced chance to consume copper.
* Merciless Combo receives higher stacks.

### Reduced Positive

* Weapons with high projectile count such as any  Shotgun and  Sunder will have less chance to activate the effect. Some weapons such as  Cloud Weaver and  Deafening Mortar do not receive as big of a penalty despite hitting many times.

### Negative

* Burning? effects may deal half damage.
* Combustion? may occur more often than normal, but the effects will deal half damage and may trigger less than expected due to its cooldown.
* Electric Circuit only spreads the damage of one hit, resulting in a chance of half damage to other enemies.
* Thunderbolt Converter only increases the damage of one hit, possibly halving the bonus.

## Effect on Proc Chance

Fish or Bear Paw universally increases the chance of triggering on-hit effects on weapons that fire fewer than 29 projectiles.

The effect of Fish or Bear Paw can be modelled using a binomial distribution, of size 2, where *p* is the probability of an effect triggering from one projectile hit and *b* is the number of projectiles fired:

X
∼

(

(
1
−
0.035
b
)
×

∑

# i
1

2

B

(

i
,
p

)

)

0.035
p

{\displaystyle X\sim \left((1-0.035b)\times \sum \_{i=1}^{2}B\left(i,p\right)\right)+0.035p}

For example, if one is using a Prism with a 30% Corrosion chance, each hit has a 30% chance of causing corrosion. Thus the chance of inflicting corrosion increases to 50.26% per shot.

Another way to intuitively think of this is that as prism fires one shot, there is a 3.5% chance of just performing a normal attack and 96.5% chance of performing two attacks. If one attack is performed we just take the proc chance as usual. If not, on the first hit, you have 30% chance of causing corrosion and a 70% chance to do nothing. In 30% of the 70% of times where the hit does nothing, the second hit will trigger corrosion. As 30% of 70 is 21, thus the chance given Fish or Bear Paw triggers is 30% + 21% = 51%. Then finally we fold in the small chance that the scroll does not trigger at all: 3.5% of 30% is 1.05%, 96.5% of 51% is ~49.21%, thus the total chance is 49.21% + 1.05% or 50.26%

The following table lists the chance of getting 1, 2, or at least 1 proc of an effect for a 1-projectile weapon given different initial chances. Most of the time, the final column (At *least* 1 proc) is the most relevant, as most effects do not stack.

Assuming that each projectile fired has a chance to hit twice (this assumption is currently untested), the probability for a single trigger pull to proc an effect can be modeled by a set of nested binomial distributions. Again, *p* is the probability of an effect triggering from one projectile hit and *b* is the number of projectiles fired:

X
∼

∑

# j
1

b

B

(

j
,

(

(
1
−
0.035
b
)
×

∑

# i
1

2

B

(

i
,
p

)

)

0.035
p

)

{\displaystyle X\sim \sum \_{j=1}^{b}B\left(j,\left((1-0.035b)\times \sum \_{i=1}^{2}B\left(i,p\right)\right)+0.035p\right)}

As a worked example here, each projectile from a Hell shotgun with 8% Fire chance has an ~11.75% chance of causing  Burning?. As Hell fires 14 projectiles, it gets 14 attempts to inflict burning (with an 11.75% chance). Therefore with one trigger pull, Hell has an 82.62% chance of inflicting Burning on an enemy, assuming all shots hit.

## Notes

* Double Caliber has a strange interaction with the scroll. Both shots landing critical hits will no longer refund ammo, but 1 shot landing a critical hit will refund ammo.

## Update History

* 08/25/2023 update: Scroll reworked again. (Previous effect: -40%(-25%) Weapon DMG. Every attack hits twice, effective on up to 15 Projectiles. For every excess Projectile, gain 3%(4%) Weapon DMG for the current shot.)
* 09/23/2022 update: Scroll reworked. (Previous effect: Weapon damage -50%, but each attack has 100%(75%) chance to hit twice, and 0%(25%) to hit 3 times.)