Valla’s Bequest Testing
DiEoxidE and I tested Valla’s Bequest for several hours a few times now. Originally, we were skeptical (which is a good idea when little information is known) and we thought the the reason top players were running Valla’s was due to a placebo or bandwagon effect. During our later testing on July 1st, we determined Valla’s Bequest does have a tangible effect on the number of projectiles.
I have restructured this thread now that we know what is going on. I also have deleted the old tests we performed since they did not show any difference between Valla’s Bequest with another hand-crossbow. For the sake of clarity, I won’t mention the details of those earlier tests to avoid confusion. I cropped all the updates as well to keep only the pertinent information.
Our new tests involved three players (one attacker, two targets) in the Scorched Chapel. We had one player strafe in place in a corner while the two target players were arranged in a line so that the piercing hits were hitting both targets. During our tests, with and without Valla’s Bequest, there were some attack speed breakpoints with appropriate distances between the two targets where Valla’s Bequest clearly showed the extra projectile spawns since some were aimed at the closer target and others were aimed at the further target (slightly different trajectories).
DiEoxidE has made a consolidated video showing the results of our tests:
Conclusion
The GoD 4-piece set bonus appears to have a 9 frame internal cooldown which means if your Strafe breakpoint is higher than 1.6667 then Strafe will spawn a primary every other attack. Valla’s Bequest fills in the internal cooldown gap enabling more primaries to spawn.
As a correlary, it appears that Valla’s does nothing when your attack speed is in the 1.5001 and 1.6666 range (doable with a bow or a hand-crossbow + shield) since you’re attacking at the optimal breakpoint. Also, Valla’s appeared to have no effect when using above 2.5001 attacks per second.
Again, originally we thought that this was a placebo or bandwagon effect since the interaction is only visible at certain attack speeds and with multiple spread out targets. Until today, we only had a notion that Valla’s was helping but weren’t sure why.
As a mathematician and a scientist in real life, I recommend waiting for confirmation on a given result to avoid a spreading around wrong information if it turned out to be false. The spread of misinformation or misconceptions, especially in today’s current environment, can be dangerous to the progress of knowledge and understanding. For the Valla’s Bequest example, it was important to understand why the interaction worked the way it did instead of just copying the leaderboards blindly (without considering breakpoints).
Lastly, I would like to add that there is some more work to be done in determining optimal breakpoints with dual wield setups with Valla’s Bequest when above 1.6667 attacks per second. Additionally, Rocket Storm also generates extra projectiles as demonstrated by Wudijo due to the same internal cooldown gap.
Have a nice day!
Special Thanks
I would like to thank the following players for helping in our tests or providing hints as to what the interaction might have been:
DiEoxidE
Woogmoog
dmkt
Wudijo and his clanmates
Landy
Kindergarten
and everyone else who contributed testing ideas
