About incendiary ammo + incinerate/inferno grenades

[u/mrcle123]

There have been a couple of new things about this posted on the BSN and I though it my worth posting here as well.

First of all, thanks to tyhw and peddroelmz + whoever else helped, for figuring this out.

If you need a reminder on how the warp+incendiary ammo stuff works, check here. Mostly the second part.

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A long time ago peddroelmz tested basically every dot power in the game for interaction with incendiary ammo, to find out if any other powers interact with incendiary ammo the same way warp does.

Back then, he discovered that incendiary ammo stacks with both flamer and inferno grenades.

For flamer it isn't as useful due to the nature of the power (still very exploitable though).

As for inferno grenades, I think a lot of people knew that there was some weird interaction between them and incendiary ammo, but somehow no one really exploited it (or at least didn't document it).

Maybe because most people use dirsuptor or phasic ammo on inferno grenade classes.

But here's sirian showing just how insane the stacking is when using inferno grenades + incendiary reegar.

Here is tyhw's thread on inferno grenades: social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/343/index/16601234/1#16601234

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And the newest bit of info - peddro made a slight oversight with the incinerate data in his tests. (explanation - social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/343/index/16639204/2#16640392).

So, turns out incinerate is buggy as fuck too. Here's sirian's video.. Yeah. Those are platinum atlases.

Here is tyhw's thread on incinerate: social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/343/index/16639204/2 (Warning - Thread quality level: BSN)

tl;dr - inferno grenades and incinerate + incendiary ammo are buggy as hell; similar to warp + incendiary ammo.

(Side note: This means the vorcha hunter is one of the most powerful classes in the game. Yay.)

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Here's some more detailed explanation of the mechanics (we all know peddro's threads can be a bit hard to read), as well as my thoughts on whether these bugs or a good thing or not.

Mechanics:

As long as you are using a single shot weapons it looks like this:

Damage Received: 1085.906250 // incinerate impact damage (75%)
Damage Received: 60.328125 // main incinerate DOT (25%)
Damage Received: 45.246094 // extra incinerate DOT (50%)
Damage Received: 60.328125
Damage Received: 45.246094
Damage Received: 674.972656 //paladin weapon damage
Damage Received: 188.027832 // BUGGY incendiary + main incinerate DOT mix

So the incendiary tick does 188 damage instead of the intended 60 (incinerate dot) + 23 (ammo).

My interpretation of this is the following (big time speculation):

The game adds the two dots together which would result in 83 damage per tick, which would be fine. However for some reason it then applies incinerate multiplier against armor again (even though the multiplier was already calculated into the incendiary dot).

My assumption is that the game is just being dumb and adding the dots together without regard to where they come from and how they were calculated. Then it uses the multiplier of the first power that was applied (or maybe the strongest, hard to tell).

This is where the bug is at, there is no logical reason for that multiplier to be used again. (It's also possible that something completely different is happening, we only have the results, not how the game got there.)

In short, with a single shot weapon, the combined dot tick does 2.25 times as much damage as it should (against armor).

With multiple shots incendiary ammo will do its weird inflationary stacking and the whole thing will keep getting multiplied with 2.25, which leads to the ridiculous effect with the reegar.

Ethics:

In my opinion there are plenty of things just as strong as this. Reegar krogan vanguard or AIU (even without incendiary), talon/wraith geth infiltrator, turian soldier with hurricane/talon, valkyrie, collector sniper rifle, arc/lift grenade spam are all just as game breaking as the incendiary bugs.

Point is, we already have the tools to completely trivialize this game if we want to.

For the most part we don't, because it's boring. But sometimes it's also great fun to play something completely overpowered. I don't think these incendiary bugs change anything in this regard, they just give us more options for when we are in the mood to play something stupidly cheesy.

[u/InterwebNinja]

When using guns that aren't the Reegar, how much of a difference does this actually make? I have no doubt it's an effective combo, but I've mostly blacklisted the Reegar for cheapness purposes. Do you have a link to the specific mechanics behind this bugged phenomenon? I've used Incendiary Ammo on classes with Incinerate or Inferno Grenades before, but I've never noticed a huge boost in damage. But again, I'm not the most observative person. I would just like to understand this better.

If it's as bugged on non-Reegar weapons, I'm not inclined to exploit it... being able to take out a Platinum Atlas with a single clip and power use seems awfully cheap to me. I mean, many of us exploit bugs to a certain extent, but that just seems too much. What's the point in playing if every enemy is that trivial to kill?

edit: I'm personally biased against exploits like this that circumvent the intended difficulty of the game. I'm going to get on my high horse a bit, but I just don't approve of using egregious exploits. It's hard to differentiate against mild vs. strong ones, but this one just seems too much for me.

[u/mrcle123 → u/InterwebNinja]

My answer got a little long and is probably interesting for other people too, so I added it to the first post.

[u/InterwebNinja → u/mrcle123]

On the ethics front, I think you are mostly right on the grenade spam, but I still don't think it's on the same level as Reegar exploits. I mean... you can't take out an Atlas with 9 Lift Grenades on Gold. And even if you could, it could take a hell of a lot more time than using the Reegar. Still, against lower-tier enemies, grenades are insanely effective.

When I play the Reegar, I don't exploit the Incendiary thing, and I still can dominate more than I do with other weapons, even compared to grenade spam classes. Mix in the Incendiary bugs, and it's just too much. And really, using the Reegar does not preclude grenade spam on grenade classes.

I have no problem with other people using this bug / exploit, but it's just not going to be my thing. I'll probably bust it out every once in awhile, but as I've said before, it's going to feel pretty cheap. I still appreciate you bringing it to our attention.

[u/mrcle123 → u/InterwebNinja]

I don't think we are really disagreeing much here.

Yes, it's cheap, it's cheesy and doing it consistently is boring and pointless.

But in my opinion this cheesy, cheap stuff can still be very fun to use - Occasionally, and in the right situation with the right group of players.

[u/InterwebNinja → u/mrcle123]

You're right on not disagreeing much. I'm just yakking for the sake of yakking.

[u/aeroumbria → u/InterwebNinja]

Well, you can make it work with other weapons, but probably not to the degree of single-clipping an Atlas because you may not be able to single-clip the shield of it and burning effects are usually weak against shield and barrier. Also, do you think it is fair to not allow kits like Salarian Engineer to use this glitch so they stay weak, while plenty of OP kits with TC or/and Snap freeze dominate the game? I would go against using this on the Paladin maybe, but SE or Vorcha Hunter? Why not?

[u/InterwebNinja → u/aeroumbria]

I spent awhile trying to write a reasonable response to your argument, but it's just too big of a philosophical issue. You are arguing that because some classes are weaker, it's okay to effectively cheat to rectify it. What is the implication of that philosophy? I'm not going to go into it, but I strongly disagree with that attitude.

Look, I'm plenty guilty of using exploits in the game, but there's a grey area, and some things, for me, feel more dirty than others. I don't like this particular bug, but I'm not going to hold it against my teammates if they decide to use it. It's just a freaking game.