Does shred apply before or after?

As anyone been able to look at the code or experimented to find out if shred applies before damage is applied or after?

This would make some weapons actually much better that armor pen.

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My experience and calculations showed that it applies afterwards (which seems logical).

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Agree on the logic. It just doesn’t make sense with some guns.
The Anu shredding shotgun is worse than the regular one then. Since most enemies will die from a single shotgun blast.
On the other hand if you are not going up close the spread on the shotgun could apply shred on multiple body parts.
But on high difficulty i always set up attacks so that enemy dies immediately. Can’t afford to have 12+ wounded enemies around.

The shred shotguns comes in handy against enemies such as Chirons and Scillas, though for Scilla, burst rage Devastator to the abdomen is all you need. And if not possible it will still leave the torso or the carcas without armor.

That was my conclusion also.
You make 80 damage more with Iconoclast (40x10) on first shot compared to Harrower (40x8).

The following assumes that you hit the same body part with all pellets.
With “n” being the number of shots, “a” being the armor ans “s” being the shredding, you want to know when Harrower becomes interesting:
n x [(40-a) x 8] + (n x (n-1) / 2) x 8 x s > n x [(40-a) x 10]
(n x (n-1) / 2) x 8 x s > n x [(40-a) x 2]
divide both sides by 2n: 2(n-1)s > 40 - a

s = 8 for harrower

for 1st shot: 0 > 40 - a … no
2nd: 16 > 40 - a … worth it if target armor is greater than 24 (Iconoclast would do 160+160 damage in this case, Harrower 128 + 192)
3rd: what the formula above doesn’t take into account is that you can’t shred more than “a” and doing maths with “max()” in the mix is not great.
…
So here you have math to prove that Harrower can be worth it if you are going to take 2 shots at a target with high enough armor and manage to put all shots on the same body part
Since crabs return fire, you definitely don’t want them as the target.

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Nice math, and yeah it was what i was thinking.
I solely use shotguns with invisible infiltrators getting 300% bonus damage so i will keep using Iconoclast for one shot kills :slight_smile:

Infiltrator gets 100% damage.
It is the shock damage that gets tripled, and for that you have to be in their back (for a game where you can’t manage where you are facing). I wonder, what is considered being in their back … 180° ?

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What 300% damages? Attack in back doesn’t do additional damages, it’s related to stunning.

EDIT: Yeah 100% damages is nice but it works very well only because you are probably using Stealth very high like 100+, even with Stealth 85% it’s very hard but ok still an option to consider.

Ok pantolomin had answer already. :slight_smile: On my opinion that shoot in back is just a wrong skill, either it requires 100% stealth but stealth should be capped at 85%, either it’s neglect-able and won’t worth because of too few opportunities without Stealth 100%.

Sorry yes 100% was thinking of shock. Still it is 800 dmg with normal shotgun.

And Zzzz my infiltrators have 100% stealth so they are effectively invisible. If I stand next to an enemy unit in melee they can’t target me. The only way the AI deals with my invisible units is using aoe/ranged artillery/grenades/worms. It is actually quite clever using these abilities against my invisible units.

The way you get 100% stealth, is infiltrator class 25%, Styx armor set 50%, Thief perk 25%. You can even go above 100% with mutations.

Hardly, there’s armor, and in fact I’m surprised that Armor Break isn’t applied before, but it’s the problem of shotgun, bullets, they are probably not really simultaneous in case more than one hit the same part. Ok I never did the math to check.

OK, 750 at worse. 800dmg -50 armor. I use these a close range so it is easy to target a single body part. :slight_smile:

It’s after each bullet.

This is most easily visible when using berserker’s armor break ability with a PP or laser assault rifle - It’ll deal one shot less than full damage on a burst against targets with armor > 30.

It also makes the Harrower significantly better than the iconoclast against heavily armored targets, because each round of the burst deals successively more damage until they are all applied.

Anecdotally, the harrower and a troop with reckless/close combat perks can continue to one-shot crabmen from point blank range for the entire game, they cannot with the iconoclast.

The prior analysis on this thread about harrower being only useful if you’re going to shoot twice is quite incorrect - In practice, you don’t shoot twice at the same target with a harrower because they’re already dead.

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I use infiltrators with 75% stealth max on my legendary playthrough with assault rifle and sniper rifle and they aren’t level 7 yet. I don’t need to get too close and I attack only when I know I can kill. I overwatch in case they start coming closer. I use a mod that enables me to know which pandas are alerted and deal with those.

We’ll see how far I can go without cheese. Force myself to a single dash, no rageburst sniper, no priest, 75% steath max.

I don’t get the math, shotgun is 10 bullets, against armor 30 it’s only 500dmg, gee quite high, from what come all those damages a 100%?

75% is more than fair, I lost soldiers at this level until changing approach with a much more cautious approach.

Stealth with Sniper doesn’t really outmatch a sniper, but Infiltration+Sniper should be quite significant and a bit unfair unlike with a shotgun where Stealth broken should happen rather often.

For the mod you do what you want, myself I consider it cheating and making it easier. But that won’t stop enemies come too close, so the 75% shouldn’t be too op I believe.

EDIT: I have also an Infiltrator with a cannon, not really op but still a bit unfair, at least from long distance there’s precisions problems.

EDIT: Myself what I consider is what is lost to get something. With Infiltrator, firstly you have weak armor, so when revealed it’s dangerous. But also you pick the Infiltrator class, so at least a Sniper Infiltrator won’t get the Heavy completing well Sniper class. Or but it’s not on par with Sniper/Heavy, the bonus from Sniper/Berzerk like 4 shoot, ability to break armor without to need destroy a part, I’ll skip highlight Bloodlust because self damages and sniping seems just wrong.