A brief overview of some of the different types of damage increases different perks provide
Damage Types
Broadly speaking, every damage increase perk increases your damage in one of three ways:
- Flat Increases,
- Percent Increases,
- and Multiplicative increases.
Flat Increases are perks like Sharp Shot, Wind Up, and Clip Shot. They add a flat amount of damage to each shot, nice and simple. These perks shine for fast firing weapons like the minigun, making each shot deal significantly more damage. A slow firing weapon with high base damage however, like the rocket launcher, benefits very little from these types of perks
Percent Increases are perks like Damage Shot, Spiral Shot, and Heavy shot. Most damage perks fall into this category. They actually behave very similarly to Flat Increases! Every weapon has a base damage value, and the percent increase in the description of the perk adds that percent of the BASE damage to each of your shots. (a 50% increase perk on a weapon with a base damage of 40 ADDS 20 damage to your shots) Perks that boost grenade and melee damage work the same way, boosting off of their respective damage values. Percent Increase perks will always have the actual damage they’re adding in parentheses.
These perks help all weapons, but weapons like sniper will see a huge increase in damage per shot, which is very desirable in most situations.
Multiplicative Increases are certain perks that multiplies your damage output AFTER your perk damage is applied! Red Fury, Danger Close, and Vitality fall into this category. Perks that say they increase damage by a percent, but DON’T have an actual damage amount in parentheses are Multiplicative Increases. Critical hits falls into a similar category, multiplying you FINAL damage rather than your base damage.
Because of this, these perks start really shining the later you get into a run. The other perks do a lot starting out, but adding to an already large number doesn’t do much. Multiplying it, however starts to take your damage to the next level.
