Repeater fire rates

[TimoteoDeLani]

Just did some testing of repeater fire rates with various feats and BAB on live, since it seems no one has posted any yet.

Fire rates listed is the % of time taken to fire 100 bolts holding down attack (i.e. no clicking to improve rates of fire) e.g. if I say a 78% fire rate it means it took 78% of the time to fire 100 bolts compared with the base time.

No significant difference between light and heavy repeaters at any level - nearly all variability was within margin of error. There were a couple of outliers, but 1 was in favour of heavy, the others in favour of light. I can't call it.

None of Haste, Action Boost Haste or Ranged Alactiry seems to affect rate of fire (I'm guessing at least RA should - I've bug reported it). Armor of Speed seems to give a very slight improvement to 93% - well off the "15% faster attack speed" listed. It could be within testing error as well.

UpdateFurther testing by other people suggests that haste effects do give improvements, but due to the multiplicative nature of the effects, once you start getting too many e.g. RR + RS + haste the improvement starts becoming hard to tell at times.

Rapid Reload improves fire rate to approx 75%.

Rapid Shot improves fire rate to approx 78%.

Rapid Reload and Rapid Shot combined improve fire rate to about 60% over having neither.

Rapid Reload and Rapid Shot improves fire rate to about 83% over either Rapid Reload or Rapid Shot alone (i.e. improvement is not as good as having either over none, but still a significant improvement).

BAB +14 compared to BAB +1 with Rapid Reload only gave a fire rate of 88%. BAB +13 compared to BAB +0 with both RR and RS gave an improved fire rate of 90%. So let's say BAB difference of 13 gives approx a 90% fire rate.

So, comparing a level 1 Rogue with with no feats with a level 20 Rogue:

BAB only: ~90%
BAB + Rapid Reload: ~68%
BAB + Rapid Shot: ~70%
BAB + Rapid Reload + Rapid Shot: ~54%

Level 1 Artificer with no feats (already has RR) compared with a level 20 Artificer:

BAB only: ~90%
BAB + Rapid Shot: ~70%

Based on this, I would recommend any Artificer using a repeater to take Rapid Shot and use a heavy repeater unless the effects on available light repeaters are better. Other repeater users (e.g. Mechanic) should take both Rapid Reload and Rapid Shot.

BTW Artificers should also take Quick Draw to reduce the activation times of Fusillade and Action Boosts (and swapping weapons of course).

UPDATE

I don't have every possible combination, but here's an update with raw numbers - number of seconds required to fire 100 bolts (smaller is better):

Heavy vs Light Repeater

Heavy/Light     BAB     Rapid Reload     Rapid Shot     Time (seconds)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Light            +0     Y                                75
Heavy            +0     Y                                74
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Light            +4     Y                                76
Heavy            +4     Y                                72
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Light           +14                      Y               68
Heavy           +14                      Y               69
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Light           +15     Y                Y               56
Heavy           +15     Y                Y               57
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rapid Reload/Rapid Shot

Heavy/Light     BAB     Rapid Reload     Rapid Shot     Time (seconds)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heavy            +1                                     100
Heavy            +0     Y                                74
Heavy            +1                      Y               78
Heavy            +0     Y                Y               62
------------------------------------------------------------------------

BAB

Heavy/Light     BAB     Rapid Reload     Rapid Shot     Time (seconds)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heavy            +1                      Y               78
Heavy           +14                      Y               69
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heavy            +0     Y                                74
Heavy            +4     Y                                72
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heavy            +0     Y                Y               62
Heavy           +13     Y                Y               57
Heavy           +15     Y                Y               57
Heavy           +19     Y                Y               55
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Haste/Action Boost Haste (20%)/Ranged Alacrity 10%/Armor of Speed - all with RR and RS

Heavy/Light     BAB     Haste   20% Boost  10% Alacrity   AoS   Time (seconds)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Light           +10                                              56
Light           +10     Y                                        56
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heavy           +11                                              60
Heavy           +11             Y                                58
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heavy           +13                                              57
Heavy           +13                         Y                    58
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heavy            +6                                              62
Heavy            +6                                        Y     58
------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Maatogaeoth]

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for taking the time!

[bhgiant]

Can you do breakdown of the numbers for us? Like x bolts fired in 1 minute per cetegory?

[Ebforest60]

Did my own (semi-scientific) test. Fighter level 4 purchased weapons from vendor and stacks of 100 bolts, clicked Armor Boost (20 seconds) then held down mouse button to fire. Number of bolts fired in 20 seconds (only one pass each so could stand some further testing to account for lag, and other variables.)

--> No Ranged Feats
Heavy Xbow 10
Great Xbow 9
Hvy Repeater 24

--> Rapid Shot only
Heavy Xbow 12
Great XBow 11
Hvy Repeater 27

--> Rapid Reload only
Heavy Xbow 13
Great Xbow 13
Hvy Repeater 30

--> Rapid Shot AND Rapid Reload
Heavy Xbow 15
Great Xbow 15
Hvy Repeater 46


I'll be taking both feats on my Crossbow user.

[Berjik]

I'm not sure if I should report this but I am still losing shots quite often on my 20 Mechanic with heavy repeater, not as much as before the update but still about 10-20% of them are still being lost. Also my repeater will fire off randomly but just once, you hear just one shot sound and causes me to lose all my bolts and have to reload.

[bhgiant]

Did my own (semi-scientific) test. Fighter level 4 purchased weapons from vendor and stacks of 100 bolts, clicked Armor Boost (20 seconds) then held down mouse button to fire. Number of bolts fired in 20 seconds (only one pass each so could stand some further testing to account for lag, and other variables.)

--> No Ranged Feats
Heavy Xbow 10
Great Xbow 9
Hvy Repeater 24

--> Rapid Shot only
Heavy Xbow 12
Great XBow 11
Hvy Repeater 27

--> Rapid Reload only
Heavy Xbow 13
Great Xbow 13
Hvy Repeater 30

--> Rapid Shot AND Rapid Reload
Heavy Xbow 15
Great Xbow 15
Hvy Repeater 46


I'll be taking both feats on my Crossbow user.

So taking both feats improved you Repeater attack speed by nearly 100%? ARTIES FTW!

[TimoteoDeLani]

Updated first post with raw numbers and also Haste/Action Boost Haste. Will update with Armor of Speed and Ranged Alacrity when I can.

[Vellrad]

Nice thread, but to be honest, all info I need is that, at endless fussilade and haste, artificer is firing 30 bolts in 6 seconds (with rapid shot).

[Kachajal]

Thanks so much for doing the work. I've done some testing myself at a low level, and the results were fairly close, so I think this should be fairly accurate.

[TimoteoDeLani]

Updated with Ranged Alacrity (it doesn't improve RoF).

[TimoteoDeLani]

Updated with Armor of Speed (maybe a slight improvement to RoF).

[Jaid314]

Updated with Armor of Speed (maybe a slight improvement to RoF).

ummm... your recent tests show you did those with much lower BAB, so the haste and armor of speed things are probably counting for something at least.

though i must admit, i'm curious why the stated BAB is all over the place.

[TimoteoDeLani]

ummm... your recent tests show you did those with much lower BAB, so the haste and armor of speed things are probably counting for something at least.

though i must admit, i'm curious why the stated BAB is all over the place.

I always made sure there was a direct comparison on each variable (or at most a BAB difference of +1) - for example, for the Armor of Speed the comparison is only between the last 2 (the only difference is AoS). I've updated the tables to make it more obvious which lines should be being compared.

Why is the BAB all over the place for the various tests? Depended on what characters I had available with what feats.

My conclusions about Haste, etc may be wrong - it's possible that their increases are applying to only a small part of the animation, and running longer tests would reveal it. But if so, they're not working as I understand they should e.g. 10% faster ranged combat suggests to me that my overall RoF should improve by approx 10%.

[voodoogroves]

Can you test at BAB 16 or 20?

[TimoteoDeLani]

Unfortunately I don't currently have any repeater users above BAB +15. My Mechanic I/Kensei II builds will max out at BAB +16. You really need to go pure fighter to fit a repeater in and hit BAB +20, and most people just opt for quick draw and a throwing weapon for ranged damage on a fighter (since throwing gets strength added to damage).

Maybe with so many people discovering the joys of the repeater with their artificers we'll start to see it feature in a few more builds.

[Vellrad]

Unfortunately I don't currently have any repeater users above BAB +15. My Mechanic I/Kensei II builds will max out at BAB +16. You really need to go pure fighter to fit a repeater in and hit BAB +20, and most people just opt for quick draw and a throwing weapon for ranged damage on a fighter (since throwing gets strength added to damage).

Maybe with so many people discovering the joys of the repeater with their artificers we'll start to see it feature in a few more builds.

Divine power clicky.
Or artifical BAB increase don't affects rate of fire?

[TimoteoDeLani]

I didn't even think of that - d'oh! Updated with a +19 BAB - slight improvement over +15.

[BananaHat]

I always made sure there was a direct comparison on each variable (or at most a BAB difference of +1) - for example, for the Armor of Speed the comparison is only between the last 2 (the only difference is AoS). I've updated the tables to make it more obvious which lines should be being compared.

Why is the BAB all over the place for the various tests? Depended on what characters I had available with what feats.

My conclusions about Haste, etc may be wrong - it's possible that their increases are applying to only a small part of the animation, and running longer tests would reveal it. But if so, they're not working as I understand they should e.g. 10% faster ranged combat suggests to me that my overall RoF should improve by approx 10%.

It is a known "feature" to the players that all attack speed bonuses only apply at half strength to ranged attacks e.g. ranger capstone is really 12.5% bonus, haste is 7.5%, etc. This does make it harder to test the increase and requires longer tests to smooth out the error.

[chung_kuel]

Actually having been involved in a lot of the tests that this thread is based on, Im pretty sure that when you fire enough bolts in a single test, then a 7.5% ROF increase is pretty obvious.

Due to the number of factors involved here such as lag, unreliable animations etc it is nearly impossible to accurately measure something like a 1-3% ROF increase, however 7.5% does tend to show up reliably.

[Ziindarax]

I've heard Armor of Speed and Haste do not stack with each other.