'Game Mechanics/How Impairment Works' 카테고리의 글 목록

How Impairment Works

The follow guide will answer some but not all questions about impairment. The following questions are:

1. How Impairment Relates to Damage (It Doesn't) and Impairment Level

So let's take a look at this DH rifle skill. In the ENG patch its called Great Disaster. In LATree it's Catastrophe.

As you can see, its default impairment level is II (2) without tripods.
The following videos show the comparison of a DH using the rifle skill.
In the 1st video, the DH is using a trash weapon and has a DEX of 638. The skill is rank 1.
In the 2nd video, the DH has all his armor on and has a DEX of 2108. The skill is rank 10.
The difference in HP values for the bosses is because the boss scales to the ilvl of the player.

If you couldn't quite clearly catch it, here are snapshots of the impairment bar.

Conclusion: Damage is not related to impairment, clearly shown with the difference in ilvls.

2. Do Back Attacks Increase Impairment Effect?

The DH skill being used for this is called Omen of Apocalypse, a shotgun skill with two ticks, Impairment I (1).
The 1st video shows the skill being used normally with no back attack.
The 2nd video shows the skill used as a back attack.

If you couldn't quite clearly catch it, here are snapshots of the impairment bar.
In the 1st image you see that the impairment bar is just in between the r and the a.
With the back attack, the impairment bar is now just above the e.

Conclusion: Impairment is increased when back attacking with impairment skills that allow it.

3. How is Impairment Scaled?

The same DH rifle skill also has a tripod which increases the impairment effect from II to III (2 to 3).

If you couldn't quite catch it, here are the comparison images of Impairment 2 vs Impairment 3.

Impairment 3 has 1.5x the effect of Impairment 2, so 3x the effect of Impairment 1.
In other words, 3 is 1*3, 2 is 1*2. :)
Conclusion: Simply stated, impairment is scaled linearly.

4. How Impairment Behaves When Skills Deal Damage in Ticks

This is a grey area and I'm not exactly too sure about it, but here is the (short and simple) research.
The DH rifle skill used above also has a tripod which doubles the grenades fired.

If you couldn't quite catch it, here are the comparison images of single hit vs double hit (Impairment III).

Pretty simple to see. With the double hit tripod, each hit has an impairment effect of 3.

The matter is not settled yet though. Let's take a look at a bard's stigma ability.
Both Great Disaster and Stigma are Impairment II (2) skills, but Stigma deals its damage in multiple ticks.

To summarize, stigma dealt the same impairment effect even though all ticks of damage hit the boss.
Though, each tick's impairment effect was added to the total final impairment effect.
So if you miss a tick of damage, you won't reach the full impairment effect.
You might be thinking that we can come to a general conclusion now, but we can't.
The conclusion being that if the skill originally deals damage in ticks, the impairment effect is spread out.
And if it's made to do one more tick through tripods, each tick applies the full impairment effect.

Inconsistency

To refute my conclusion above, I use two videos comparing 2 BM skills.
Since I have never played BM before, I am only going off the skill descriptions.
The two BM skills I am comparing are Phoenix Dive vs Dragon's Ascent without tripods.
Phoenix Dive is Impairment I (1), while Dragon's Ascent is Impairment IV (4).
Both skills deal damage in ticks, so one would assume the impairment effect of DA is 4x greater.
Also the reason why the BM skills seem to have a greater effect is because the boss is different.

If you couldn't quite clearly catch it, here are snapshots of the impairment bar.

The bottom image is of Dragon's Ascent, which deals damage in ticks and has a total impairment of IV (4)
The top image is of Phoenix Dive, which says it has an impairment of I (1).
Phoenix Dive says the damage is dealt in two ticks, and so total impairment level reached would be I (1).
This is not the case though as you can see in the video.
Dragon's Ascent should be 4x the impairment, but as shown has only 2x the impairment effect.
So even without tripods, each tick of Phoenix Dive applies an impairment effect of I (1).

Another Example

Let's take the Bard skill Holy Sound. It has Impairment II (2). It's been a while, so feel free to correct me.
The 2nd tier tripod for the skill increases duration by 1.5s, meaning more ticks of damage are fired.
Since each tick adds to the final impairment effect, adding more ticks means more total impairment.
So increasing the duration here of the skill, makes the impairment higher than what it states.
The 3rd tier tripod for the skill reduces duration by 50%.
But this just means that the same amount of ticks are fired in a shorter duration.
The increased impairment effect you got from the 2nd tier upgrade did not disappear.
Conclusion: Skills need more clarity and consistency.

Posted by Yaen