Fixed Pattern Spread analysis for D.Va and Torbjorn

General Discussion
1

After doing this for Roadhog’s spread pattern during the experimental, I finally got around to finishing this in depth for D.Va and Torbjorn.

Here are the links. If someone could be nice enough to post the direct links I would appreciate it, since I do not have permission to post links on my forum account.

D.Va

https://imgur.com/oSoQvu2

Torbjorn

https://imgur.com/X3AJfQ0

I was surprised by the actual pattern for both of these since it seems that they are actually quite a bit less center-clustered than roadhog. Both D.Va and torbjorn have half or more of their total impacts in the more spaced outer ring. By comparison, roadhog only has 9/25 of his impacts in the larger outer ring.

What this generally means is that aiming at head level will produce considerably worse results for both heroes unless you close enough that the head hitbox will take up the entire spread pattern.

D.Va has 11 impacts and torbjorn has 10, which means unlike roadhog with his 25 impacts, each separate pellet that misses has a huge effect on the damage dealt. For roadhog it is generally better to assume the top-most impacts will miss, since the center-clustering will give you quite a few more head impacts to make up for the misses.

For both D.Va and torbjorn this is not the case, and aiming too high can cause multiple misses in exchange for 1-2 additional head impacts. This is a net negative tradeoff. It is far better to get 1-2 head impacts TOTAL and then 8-9 body impacts than it is to get 2-3 head impacts, 5 body impacts, and 2-3 misses.

Each head impact + miss is roughly = to 2 body impacts, so head impacts with no misses are the only net gain.

  • The following is specifically for 5-10 meter distances. If you get closer than that, it is always preferable to aim at or near head level.

The ideal for D.Va looks like it is below shoulder level on most models. This will give you 2 head impacts + 9 body impacts, This ends up being 26 damage per shot, which sounds low, but keep in mind that D.Va fires 6.67 shots per second, so about 173.42 dps

For torbjorn, the ideal is even lower than that, and his aim should be about dead center of torso in order to get the top-most impact as a headshot instead of a miss. This will give you around 137.5 damage, with 2 head impacts, 7 body impacts and then one shot that will either miss upper left or upper right on thin models.

I may get around to doing this for reaper eventually, but don’t ask me to analyze ashe’s coach gun. The spread on that thing is so ridiculous it won’t matter how you aim it.

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2

Remember when ppl said D.Va was actually gonna be good bc of this and she benefits almost the least :flushed:

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Her pattern seems to be the LEAST center-focused spread pattern of every hero. She is the only one who has more outer-ring pellets than center-ring pellets.

This may be part of why her damage seems so inconsistent.

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1600×1011

1600×815

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Thank you very much!

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6

Of course Blizzard would do this. Why wouldn’t they? They hate Dva after all.

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Again: “consistent” doesn’t automatically mean better.
You cut off the high outliers too.

They pulled the same stunt when they changed her pellet count.
They made it more consistent. It also made the average damage LOWER.

This will be the second time people point it out, and it will be ignored yet again because Blizzard don’t care or don’t even understand.

They could make every D.Va shot PERFECTLY consistent by making them NOT PELLETS. NOT a shotgun. They choose not to. Their quest for “consistency” is a farce.

They like to make themselves sound like they’re doing something for D.Va when they’re actually crapping on her, and most on these forums clap for more.

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8

I mean. She also has (iirc) the most severe fall off in the game if not one of the most severe and pretty low damage per shot despite the RoF (factoring in average accuracy). They just don’t like her

Edit: it does appear that the ideal aiming place for D.Va is the same at least

1 Like
9

Her falloff is 10-20m, the same as reaper’s. It only SEEMS worse because her spread is tight enough that you can actually hit people beyond her max falloff range. Reaper won’t hit them anyway, so it doesn’t matter if he does 30% or even 10%.

The more I think about it, the more I honestly think they should change the minimum falloff damage on shotgun type weapons to be 50% like with every other gun instead of 30%. Most of them, like reaper, have such huge spread angles that it makes very little difference how much penalty is applied at max range, but it definitely makes a difference for the “in-between range”.

For reference - at 10 meters the falloff starts to kick in, and it goes from 100% damage to 30% damage at the max of 20 meters.

This is actually a VERY sharp curve for such a short distance; at 15 meters you are doing roughly 65% damage. You can go into the practice room and look at the markers on the floor if you want to see how far away this actually is. The fact that your gun loses 35-40% of your damage from what is essentially one reinhardt’s width away is a massive penalty.

I mean, if you really think about it, one of the biggest problems in the game right now is the dominance of ranged hitscan heroes. Why do you think that is, actually?

It’s not the damage output, it’s the fact that they do not lose most of their damage just because they aren’t standing right next to somebody.

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10

I really feel like Shotguns in general shouldn’t be able to crit, not like, logically, meaning that of course if you get shotgun’d to the face you’ll die right there but in general it feels like shotguns are a weapon that rewards bodyshots (hitting all pellets) and having them crit is just the oposite of that

I think I would be fine if they removed crit and increased damage dealt by pellets individually

1 Like
11

While I appreciate the reasoning you are using, I do not think it is a good idea to remove the possibility of precision damage from any gun, shotgun or otherwise, as doing so instantly lowers the potential skill ceiling and allows less skilled players to achieve the same results as more highly skilled players.

In general, this is never a good idea for a competitive game.

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12

So in essence, instead of buffing the hero, they made her weaker when you try to go for crits?

Imagine me being optimistic about changes made for dva.

I just fooled myself into thinking devs don’t actually hate dva with a passion.

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13

This is really interesting, all this time I thought it was uniformly distributed across the hexagon.

I kinda want the devs to play around with dispersion or anti armor passives; Dva being so much better at fighting squishies than tanks def contributes to how hard she is to balance.

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Well, at least I know where to better aim with torb shotgun.

15

You misunderstand I think. Just because the spread pattern is less random does not mean it was a different pattern. It is essentially the same pattern it has always been, except it is not rotating at random angles while you are shooting.

Since it is circular and symmetrical, it should not make any difference how you rotate the spread pattern, it will still have roughly the same ideal distribution of impacts, with the slight possibility of being worse when two spots on the outer ring are rotated so that the head-hitbox falls between them and you get an extra two misses.

It doesn’t make her any worse than she was before. Arguably, it does not make her significantly better. The only actual improvement is that now that it is the same every time, you can adjust how you make use of it to get the most value out of every shot.

That was part of the point of analyzing it like this, to demonstrate how to adjust your aim now that it will always produce the same result.

1 Like
16

it shouldnt be a nerf to damage since now aiming at lower torso gets consistent headshots and since they didnt increase the number of pellets in the outer ring they just fixed their placements so now whenever you aim as dva you know where they are doing to be and can aim accordingly allowing for more damage on avg.

17

this is wrong they did not change pellet placements they just removed the randomness from the out ring if you were to have shot a wall as old dva for a while you would have made an out ring now its an asterisk cause the other ring inst random anymore and since one of the ends of the outer ring is directly up you can aim for headshots with it while still getting body shots with the majority of your gun.

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good post ur poggers now i know where to aim with my 15fps

19

her old spread had a lot of shots on the outside ring too. this does seem like it’s easier to do more damage if you’re centered right on someone’s head now

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I find it does help her, mostly in the 5-10m fights where the vertical stripe allows you to guarantee damage on even thin heroes like Tracer and Sombra who used to feel like they just didn’t take any damage.

1 Like