Horns and Rapid advancement

[RozetaMeteor]

Title. Is there any advantage in doing this instead of using on double-muscled ?

[Bwixie]

rapid advancement can bring mutations beyond the usual limit of using mutation points to upgrade them.

[Icedfate]

higher ranked horns have higher + to hit, higher damage dice, higher AV.

double muscled improves base strength, which improves PV and has that chance to daze enemies.

you need to decide if you want more accuracy, damage and AV over more penetration and daze.


hoestly, i don't know which one would be objectively better. part of me would want the strength to maximize the unlimited potential of the horns.

AV can be raised other ways and accuracy doesn't seem much of an issue, for the most part, although, i haven't seen many endgame enemies yet, there might be ones that stack tons of dodgefoolery.

[RozetaMeteor]

Publicado originalmente por Bwixie:

rapid advancement can bring mutations beyond the usual limit of using mutation points to upgrade them.

i knew, to be honest i just wanted know which one was better, double muscled seems better for armor pen but i don't know how well horn scale post 10.

[💙Very Scary Dragon💠]

I think the biggest breakpoint on Double Muscled is the fact that it only gives you a strength point on odd-numbered levels. I.e., leveling it from 9 to 10 does not give you an extra point of str, just the +2% extra daze chance, kind of a wasted mutation point if you have to stop there. But leveling from 12 to 13 does give you 1 more str. So there's a pretty huge benefit to doing a single rapid advancement on that one.

According to the chart on the wiki, lvl 13 horns are 2d7 damage, +7 to hit, 5 AV. So a +1 across the board. compared to lvl 10. That looks kind of underwhelming to me compared to +2 str, which is a guaranteed +1 PV, and everything else that comes with +2 str.

Which is really better probably depends on your build. I'd think the +1 AV is the biggest benefit to rapid advancing horns.

[RealDealBreaker]

All the normal advantages and disadvantages that come with regularly upgrading one vs the other. Rapid advancement is just free points. Not rocket science.

[glass zebra]

Publicado originalmente por 💙Very Scary Dragon💠:

According to the chart on the wiki, lvl 13 horns are 2d7 damage, +7 to hit, 5 AV. So a +1 across the board. compared to lvl 10. That looks kind of underwhelming to me compared to +2 str, which is a guaranteed +1 PV, and everything else that comes with +2 str.

That is a ~14% damage upgrade on the horns, while +2 would only add that much damage if you would go from +7PV to +8PV or lower. If you already have higher PV over enemy AV than that, it adds less than 14% damage on average. Since double muscled on 10 already grants +3PV, it really depends on how much attribute points you put into strength and if you are fighting super tanky enemies.

[Pixel Peeper]

Interesting question!

Advancing Horns gives them better damage, better to-hit, better AV, and better bleeding.

Advancing Double-muscled gives Horns better PV and Daze chance.

Let's run two scenarios: one with Horns at 10 and Double-muscled at 25, and one with Horns at 25 and Double-muscled at 10.

First one, Horns are 2d6 damage, +6 to hit, 4 AV, 1d2+1/40 Bleeding. Double-muscled gives +14 Strength with 63% Daze chance.

Second one, Horns are 2d11 damage, +14 to hit, +9 AV, 1d2+5/70 Bleeding. Double-muscled gives +6 Strength and and 33% Daze chance.

In the first scenario, you have 8 more Strength. That's +4 on your Strength modifier, and therefore +4 PV. That's a whole freaking lot of PV. You also Daze much more consistently.

In the second scenario, you're 4 PV behind, but your Horns deal almost twice as much damage per penetration. You also have 8 more to-hit than the other version. You have 5 more AV than the other version. Your Bleeding is better. But your Daze chance is lower.

That still doesn't answer the question. Which is better?

The answer is... it depends on a few different factors, the main ones being your target's DV and AV.

You can't damage something if you can't hit it, and a difference of 8 to-hit is pretty huge.

If you were fighting something that had AV a bit above the 25 Horns variant's PV, the 25 Double-muscled variant would be much, much better. It would make the difference between doing almost nothing and getting multiple penetrations every attack. So there the 25 Double-muscled version is better.

On a low-AV target, having 4 additional PV still means more penetrations... but every penetration will do only half as much damage. Hitting 14 times is nice, but it's nowhere as nice as hitting 10 times for double the damage per hit.

tl;dr

If you're prioritizing Strength, I personally believe the 25 Horns 10 Double-muscled variant to be better in the vast majority of situations. You'll hit more reliably, you'll do more damage to most things, and you'll have a lot more AV. Shame about the much lower Daze chance, but it'll still activate quite often.

[peech]

As someone whose preferred build is Horns + Double-Muscled (with variations in the other mutations to taste), I always go for rapid advancing Double-Muscled once, and then putting all the rest of the rapid advancements into Horns. Getting the strength bonus to go from +6 at 10 to +8 at 13 squeezes out some extra PV, which I consider to be worth losing a little bit in Horns. Long-term, though, Horns is way more consistent to focus on because of the AV bonus, accuracy, and damage potential with both the damage increment and bleed damage.

To give a comparison to the two examples Pixel Peeper gave, if you had 5 rapid advancements divvied up this way, you'd have 13 in Double-Muscled - giving +8 Strength and 39% daze chance - and 22 in Horns - giving a 2d10 damage increment, +12 to-hit, 8 AV, and 1d2+4/64 bleeding. This is pretty close to what you're getting with the 10/25 variant, but importantly, you can take full advantage of this split by level 42, rather than level 48. Depending on the build, you might be putting a rapid advancement into a third mutation, like advancing Wings to hit the +6 charge distance benchmark or Multiple Arms to take better advantage of Double-Muscled's daze chance, in which case you'd cap out at Horns 19 and be taking full advantage of all your rapid mutations by level 36 - which is to say, you'd be skirting the mutation level cap entirely once you actually have access to that many rapid advancements. You could also skirt the cap this way by doing a split of 19 Double-Muscled and 16 Horns, which would let you hit another optimal Strength boost benchmark on Double-Muscled while still getting the benefit of boosting Horns a few times.

The tl;dr of it is - Horns is absolutely worth spending rapid advancements on, but in my experience, the build shines the most if you split the difference between Horns and Double-Muscled at least a little.

[glass zebra]

Publicado originalmente por peech:

This is pretty close to what you're getting with the 10/25 variant, but importantly, you can take full advantage of this split by level 42, rather than level 48

At those levels you can very much have access to some of the items that boost all mutations levels though?

[RozetaMeteor]

Thanks for the insights everyone, think i will be trying a horns oriented build later on, sometimes i wished mutations/cybernetics were discussed more, it's really fun reading those.

[peech]

Publicado originalmente por glass zebra:

At those levels you can very much have access to some of the items that boost all mutations levels though?

You can, but other than something near the very end (by the time you're not really worrying about your combat build as much), there's not any point where you're assured to get it via the main story, and I didn't want to muddy it too much. That said, the basic principle of splitting your rapid advancements is even more relevant with that taken into account - if you have the best mask and two circles of light, your split would be 13/28 if you put all advancements into one mutation, which would mean you need level 54 just to take advantage of it all, whereas a 13/22 split turns into a 16/25 split that works fully by 48 (and more evenly spread splits are at full power around 42 with all boosting items).

Publicado originalmente por RozetaMeteor:

Thanks for the insights everyone, think i will be trying a horns oriented build later on, sometimes i wished mutations/cybernetics were discussed more, it's really fun reading those.

Good luck!

[Pixel Peeper]

Indeed, some 3-level steps are more beneficial than others, and that this should be taken into account. Not all Advancements into the same mutation give as many benefits.

But the existence of equipment that adds +1 to all mutation levels does make it trickier to take this into account.

And there's always the question of whether to optimize for your current situation, for a particular point in the game, or for your "final" build. All are valid ways to play.

I suppose my tl;dr should have been "Putting Rapid Adancements into Horns is usually better than putting them into Double-muscled". And even then I'm talking strictly for combat. Someone might enjoy the much greater carry capacity that Double-muscled gives you, and you can't put a value on that because it's subjective.