The Potshot is arguably one of the strongest launchers in the game, but how strong is it? People often say that the Storm King's Wrath is mathematically better for taking out the MSK Mini-Bosses, but why do players still prefer the Potshot.

There’s no denying that something feels off about the Potshot and over the past week, I ran several tests to investigate what exactly is going on. The results are very interesting, to say the least.

Experiment 1: Crit Probability Analysis

I asked several members of the community why they prefer the Potshot over the Wrath for killing Mini-Bosses in the Mythic Storm King fight. Multiple players told me they feel like the Potshot crits more often than the Wrath. This is difficult to test, but I ran an experiment anyways.

I played 10 games with Wrath focusing primarily on the Mini-Bosses and the Storm King himself. Over the course of 10 games, I fired 474 shots. Of those 474, I crit on 173 of them giving me a calculated crit chance of 36.5%. This value is actually quite accurate when compared to the theoretical crit chance. You can see over a 10-game span, that the Wrath was consistently critting around 30 to 40% of the time with a small standard deviation.

Table 1: Wrath Crit test

I ran the same experiment with the Potshot and found that I crit on 206 out of 361 shots giving me a calculated crit chance of 57%. This value deviates quite a bit from the theoretical 38% but if you look at the numbers on a game-by-game basis, you can see that the Potshot is consistently critting around 50%. You could definitely argue and say I was lucky these 10 games, but I’m confident if you ran the test over 100+ games, you would see similar results.

Table 2: Potshot Crit test

Experiment 2: Damage Value Investigation

When I ran the 10 games with the Potshot, I saw a range of damage values that did not make sense to me. So I was curious about how these values are obtained. See the spreadsheet for calculations -linked at the end of the post.

Things get interesting when looking at the Potshot.

From my findings, it appears the potshot has two different base values corresponding to two different crit values for each case. See Table below.

Note: These are my damage values for a solo lobby. Most of the testing was done solo. All necessary details are in the spreadsheet

Table 3: Theoretical and Actual Values Obtained for the Potshot

Something strange I noticed was whenever I crit on a Mist Monster, I would often hit two different values and these values would stack together. So in the image on the left, it’s kinda hard to see but there are definitely two different values. For comparison, on the right is an image of me hitting a mist monster with the Storm King's Wrath to show the damage is indeed stacking.

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Figure 1: Stacking damage of the Potshot against Mist Monsters

Here’s another image of the damage stacking against mist monsters. The issue is finding the relationship between the four values shown below.

Four different values when hitting mist monster

If you look over at Table 3 row: "Damage to Mist Monsters and Bosses", you will see that I am actually hitting one base value and the corresponding crit of the other base value. That probably made no sense to you, so I’ll label it as base value 1, base value 2, crit value 1, and crit value 2.

So in simple terms, whenever you crit with the Potshot, you will essentially hit a combination of a base value and a crit value, however, the base and crit value will never be from the same pair. This accumulates to 33% more damage than expected. This occurs as long as the mist monster is not at low HP. We will call this scenario 1.

Scenario 2 occurs when you hit a non-crit and the mist monster is not at low HP, the value will almost be double as expected. I was expecting to hit the mist monster for 349975, but I ended up hitting it for 690287. This is about 97% more damage than expected (ie. double damage).

Figure 2: Non-Crit Values for Mist Monsters

Lastly, scenario 3 is when the mist monster is at low hp, you will hit the expected value.

Note: By saying Low HP, I am referring to the enemy being at ~25% HP.

Now let’s focus on the mythic storm king fight.

It was important to conduct Experiment 2 to better understand the values obtained in the Mythic Storm king fight.

Something interesting I actually found out is that the “Damage to Mist Monsters and Bosses” perk is actually a 72% increase against mini-bosses.

The three scenarios I described above also apply to the mini-bosses in the Mythic Storm King Fight as well. However, when you hit a non-crit and the mini-boss is not at low hp (scenario 2), that non crit can actually crit resulting in the infamous double crit. This is why you sometimes see those big numbers above 5 million when you kunai crit hit the mini-boss.

Conclusion

• The Potshot crits more often than 38 % (around 50%)
• You essentially do 33% extra damage than expected when you crit on a mist monster or mini-boss and the enemy is not at low HP (25% HP)
• You essentially do 97% extra damage (basically double) than expected when hitting a non-crit on a mist monster or mini-boss and the enemy is not at low HP (25% HP). This non-crit has a small 5% chance of critting resulting in the double crit (5 million+ potential)
• When the mini-boss or mist monster is at low hp, you will hit the expected damage.
• The “Damage to Mist Monsters and Bosses” perk is actually a 72% increase to Mini-Bosses

I hope what I have said thus far made some sense. I was planning on making a video but I just don't have that time. I may make a smaller video in the coming days highlighting these values in-game.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xCPsLU_sC8cgq-OzQP31sAi8CoUr88wPe9NQrV0AoqY/edit?usp=sharing