[2019] [PSA] The Level 1 Defender Rifle is the best weapon in the game(also damage numbers are pointless and don't mean anything)

So I was just f*cking around with various guns and components, trying to quantify their damage amounts, when I stumbled upon something rather strange. It seems that the default weapon you get when creating a new loadout, is better than any other weapon in the game!

Components used during this test are Airborne Advantage, Convergence Core, Defensive Bulwark and Firearm Calibration Core. All are Ranger components which increase weapon damage. Anyway as for the test itself:

-With my Level 1 common Defender rifle, one bullet does 286 damage against a normal scar trooper.

-With my Level 45 masterwork Ralner's Blaze rifle, one bullet does 1184 damage against a normal scar trooper.

Given these numbers, you might (reasonably) assume that the MW weapon will kill enemies faster, since it does more damage.

This is NOT the case!

Going back to the scar troopers, the MW rifle takes 6 bullets to kill our scar friend. Given the damage numbers, our level 1 rifle should take around 5x more bullets to do the job. Guess how many it actually takes?

4

That's right. 4 bullets!!! Not 4x as many. Literally 4 rounds. Our level 1 rifle is somehow more effective than our level 45 masterwork, despite what our damage pop-ups are telling us.

I have tested this with various weapons and enemies, and while the numbers vary, the results are always the same: the level 1 defender rifle is by far the most effective weapon in my inventory. It melts literally f*cking everything!

So, from this we can draw two conclusions:

1 - There is some buggy f*ckery going on with the default level 1 rifle

2 - Damage numbers are meaningless and do not reflect the actual damage done to a target

The second one is by far the most concerning; as it implies some rather disturbing things about how the game was balanced.

Anyway, I'd love it if someone else could run these tests too to confirm that I'm not crazy or something...let me know what your results are!

EDIT

Thanks to u/beatpeet42, here is a GIF of the phenomenon in action!

As you can see, the first weapon (a legendary Ralners Blaze with 225% damage) does slightly less damage in 3 shots than the second weapon (level 1 Defender), despite the damage popup numbers telling a completely different story.

u/takeshikun also made a GIF showing this, only he used two defenders (one epic, one common) in the GIF.

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