Artificer feats - rapid shot

[Loriac]

What exactly does rapid shot do? From searching / reading posts in these forums, I've seen people say that it increases ranged damage by speeding up your shots.

However, there are two main ways to use a repeater:

i. keep your finger pressed down on the left mouse button (equivalent to autoattack). doing this, I get 108 shots per minute on my L16 arti, who has rapid reload but not rapid shot

ii. time your clicks - a long click/hold whilst you're firing, take your finger off the button as the reload animation happens, and then press down again to fire once the animation is back in the ready to fire position. Using this method, I get 120 shots per minute. Worth noting that timing is key however, as if you click to fire too soon, you get hit with a pause before firing, and do this more than a couple of times and your fire rate may even go below the 108 per minute from autoattack.

*tests done by using a buff timer as the 'clock', starting with 1000 bolts in inventory, and firing for a minute and then checking how many of the 1000 bolts were used.

Method ii. is harder to use in combat (particularly when things get frantic), but the difference in fire rate is basically because under method i. there is a pause in the animation when the xbow is ready to fire - rather than firing immediately, theres a gap of maybe 0.2 seconds (difficult to say exactly how long this is, but its noticeable)

Now, my question is: using rapid shot, does the pause in the animation merely become shorter? Or does the entire animation speed up, but the pause stay in place?

I'm going to test this when I hit level 18 (which is when I'd planned to take rapid shot) but it would be good to know if anyone has done this testing already as it saves me a feat reslot and a flawless shard. If the only change is that the pause gets shorter under autoattack / holding down the button, then rapid shot is not so much an essential feat as one that reduces the reliance on player skill to achieve maximum damage output.

[Loriac]

Testing based on L17 arti with rapid reload only, and L18 arti with rapid reload and rapid shot.

Rapid reload only

Autoattack mode (finger pressed down on LMB)

Bolts fired over 2 mins: 198; test repeated twice, same number each time. Assuming that I over counted by at most 1 volley during the 2 minutes (the temptation is to fire one last round as the timer runs down), I'm going with 195 bolts over 2 mins, or 97 bolts per min.

Twitch fire (time firing based on the animation for reloading having finished)

Bolts fired over 2 mins: 237; test repeated twice, same number each time. Same assumption as before, this gives 234 bolts over 2 mins, or 117 bots per min.

Twitch fire is extremely sensitive to reaction speed and timing; its easy to mess up and fire too soon, which causes substantial delay. Some tests I ran, the rate of fire went right down to as low as 105 per minute. However, I never saw rates higher than 120 per min, so I think the cap is around 117-120 based on this fire method.


With rapid reload and rapid shot.

I wasn't expecting rapid shot to be worthwhile, which meant I was looking forward to having an extra feat to spend on something else. I was wrong.

Autoattack

105 bolts per minute.

Twitch fire

Two 2 min tests run, 252 bolts fired each time. Same assumption as before, gives a fire rate of 125 bolts per min. This is a 7% increase in rate of fire, which is well worth the feat spend.

It looks like rapid shot is speeding up the entire animation more or less evenly; the autoattack rate also goes up by about 7%.


Conclusions

i. Obviously, take rapid shot.

ii. If you want to maximise your dps as an artificer, you have to learn to twitch fire. Twitch fire without rapid shot is better than autoattack with rapid shot. The difference isn't marginal either; it represents approximately 19% difference in fire rate vs. autoattack.

[Singular]

Plus 1 to you my good sir! I was going to ask this very question and you have presaged me - thank you!

These numbers are very different than the ones posted 2 years ago. Your numbers, I'm happy to say, are about 30 bolts higher.

Have you tried the twitch firing with Armor of Speed? Previous tests showed that Haste didn't speed up the RoF of Arfiticers, but that Armor of Speed did. So I'm wondering what numbers you'd be seeing with that, and with alacrity.

Now that you've provided the methodology - find out from the 1000 bolts and subtract the last volley - I will test this out once I get my computer back from the repair shop

[droid327]

Does the "timed click" method actually PRODUCE a higher ROF, or is that just an animation thing? I know sometimes, especially when strafing around, I seem to get a higher ROF, but the damage flyover numbers dont always appear synchronized with the animation - which leads me to think, server-side, there's no difference between the two "methods".

That being said, Rapid Shot is still worth it in either case

[BladeTricks]

+1

Side note: You BAB increased going from arti lvl 17 to lvl 18, and it has a small influence on fire rate as well. See this thread.

[Loriac]

Just out of interest, do you have links to the numbers from 2 years ago? I recall seeing a thread a while ago, but I'm not sure whether the tests included twitch fire. If the tests were conducted solely on autoattack rates, I can easily believe that a low level arti (say level 1-4) might be seeing rates of fire closer to 90 / minute.

I did try at L17 (so no rapid shot at that time) with armor of speed, and I wasn't seeing any real difference on twitch fire rates; this is actually what led me to believe that rapid shot might not be necessary if you weren't relying on holding down the left mouse button in fights. I also looked at fire rates using divine power, but again no real differences on twitch fire rate (so I suspect the increase from BAB is minor between 17 and 18). AoS (and probably haste) do make a difference on autoattack rates from what I saw. As I don't have a 2 minute + haste, I am loathe to use a count from 30 or 45 seconds to test haste, as that will introduce a significant error on overall fire rate.

As to whether the hits are registered or not, its difficult to find a mob that stands still (movement itself can cause shots to be lost on geometry in my experience). When firing at the ship dummy however, I do see damage numbers as expected when twitch firing, so I've no reason to believe that any bolts are being lost because of this method. Twitch fire doesn't actually interrupt the normal animation; rather, I think what is happening is that the standard animation includes a small delay between the xbow being brought up to the ready position and the next shot taken.

In terms of counting the bolts fired, I removed all bolts from inventory and conjured one new stack at the start of the test. When you first load them, you may lose 3 bolts - this needs to be factored into the count. If you drag them directly to the arrow slot, you normally have to click once to 'reload' before starting the test. At the end of 2 minutes, I simply looked at how many bolts were left.

These tests assume the reliability of the timers on buffs; its quite possible though that they are affected by server lag - in some tests, I was seeing unreasonably low fire rates (down to 105 ish on twitch fire) which I put down to tiredness or lack of concentration on my part, but may have been artefacts caused by latency issues. Best way to run the tests I suppose would be to use an independent time source like a stopwatch.

One final thing - whilst the twitch fire numbers look good on paper, actually maintaining the concentration in heavy fights can be tricky. I like it, because it makes the gameplay more involved, but it will take practice to use it as second nature (certainly for me). However, one very nice side benefit is that if you get used to firing in this manner, your xbow should always be 'reloaded' when you expect it to be so - this may help with e.g. abilities triggered in the shadowdancer tree such as shrouding shot or executioner's shot, where some people are reporting that if the xbow isn't loaded, the ability's cooldown is triggered without any shot being fired.

[Singular]

@Loriac

Here are two threads from 2 and 1 years ago. The first discusses variations of speed, testing rapid fire, rapid reload, haste and armor of speed. Your numbers have increased, I think, since his. The second thread is more relevant. It discusses click speed and that the RoF has changed with updates.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=341522

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=354448

[Loriac]

@Loriac

Here are two threads from 2 and 1 years ago. The first discusses variations of speed, testing rapid fire, rapid reload, haste and armor of speed. Your numbers have increased, I think, since his. The second thread is more relevant. It discusses click speed and that the RoF has changed with updates.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=341522

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=354448

It looks to me like both those posts are consistent with my numbers. The first post mentions 57 secs for a BAB 15 artificer with RR and RS to fire 100 bolts - this is a rate of 105/min which is consistent with what I found.

The second post talks about double click attacking, which I presume is a method of twitch firing (calling it double click gives me some pause however, as I find the optimal method to be a long click until all 3 bolts are fired, release the button as the arm goes down the reload animation happens, then wait and click again (long click) once the xbow is back up in the ready to fire position). Again, it looks consistent, the highest rates are stated as 126 bolts per min, which is what I was getting (though without having AoS or haste up it should be said). If the poster was doubleclicking, I can imagine that was causing misfires all over the place - what I'm seeing is that a fairly smooth action with the right gap as you reload is fairly reliable.

[Singular]

It looks to me like both those posts are consistent with my numbers. The first post mentions 57 secs for a BAB 15 artificer with RR and RS to fire 100 bolts - this is a rate of 105/min which is consistent with what I found.

The second post talks about double click attacking, which I presume is a method of twitch firing (calling it double click gives me some pause however, as I find the optimal method to be a long click until all 3 bolts are fired, release the button as the arm goes down the reload animation happens, then wait and click again (long click) once the xbow is back up in the ready to fire position). Again, it looks consistent, the highest rates are stated as 126 bolts per min, which is what I was getting (though without having AoS or haste up it should be said). If the poster was doubleclicking, I can imagine that was causing misfires all over the place - what I'm seeing is that a fairly smooth action with the right gap as you reload is fairly reliable.

Sweet, ok.

I thought I read a thread a long time ago that gave lessor values and therefore thought, based on your values, that the devs have increased the firing rates. But those ones are two years old and they agree with your numbers, so I seem to be mistaken and the firing rates haven't changed.

That's great, actually. It means we can achieve 2 bolts per second and makes it easy to calculate our dps!