More on passthrough [How it behaves]

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
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Relative topics that encouraged me to do this, uh, “research”:

Usually I was testing stuff on dummies in DC or Coven’s Refuge. But for whatever reason, when I was testing Dagallon’s pistol, I decided to do that on Fort Ikon dummies instead. As can be seen from topics above, having 50% passthrough more or less equals to 100%. But that’s not everything.

Today I decided to check PRM, Phantasmal Blades, as well as (yet again) Cadence and DEE with Dreeg set. And I got some, um, interesting results out of it.

It appears that % passthrough affects how effectively you can pierce multiple targets, not just a probability of piercing ALL enemies in line. Would be best if I just show this on the video (feat. Phantasmal Blades):

With 10% PT from Heart Seeker, PB’s were able to pierce 1 target rather often and 2 targets less frequently. I’m assuming piercing 3 targets would be even rarer.

With 25% PT piercing 2 targets became no problem, and PB’s started piercing 3 dummies, and sometimes even all 4 (you can see that on 0:25 and 0:26).

At 50% PT PB’s started to pierce all 4 dummies in line 100% of the time. Pretty much the same applies to PRM, Cadence and DEE - all of them showed the same.

At first I thought “well, I guess % of PT is calculated for each target individually”, meaning with each target hit the chance to hit another is decreased dramatically. Though that doesn’t explain why at 50% it starts piercing all 4 dummies all the time.

But there’s that. Maybe it was plain obvious and I just reinvented the wheel, but somehow I was thinking that 25% PT meant “pierce all targets 25% of the time, pierce none 75% of the time”. If I remember correctly, Diablo 2 had this “pierce calculation for each individual target”, but oh well. Hope this helps or sheds [some] light on… something.

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What the hell. Everything looks normally / intuitively in the video until you increase the pass through for the last time.
Then it really starts passing all the time!

Maybe something is doubling this % chance somehow and it reaches 100%?
Do PBs have some native pass through? [edit] No, I’ve tested it.

Seems like 30% pass through is more like 50% from my rough testing. But not 60%.

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Right? There’s no limit to my confusion XD

Was my consensus as well. Just do 1 million casts and we’ll be golden on the sample size! =) I would also check this on, say, 10 dummies, but I don’t have modding skills to create such test environment… maybe it will stop piercing after 7 dummies with 50%, so it would need to be increase to like 75% to start piercing all 10. I wolud imagine there’s some sort of “hard” limit to how many targets can be affected, like 2^64 or something, LMAO.

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Made a small test in game with ranged Cadence

with 1 point in Fighting Form, so 33% prob of passthrough

  • 2 targets: 34 one hit, 66 two hits
  • 3 targets: 33 one hit, 21 two hits, 46 three hits

wtih 3 points in Fighting Form, 45% prob of passthrough

  • 2 targets: 13 one hit, 87 two hits
  • 3 targets: 9 one hit, 9 tow hits, 82 three hits

so the prob to passthrough seemly is two times the stated value - and it is likely done sequentially for each target (so .e.g if 33% stated means currently 66% pass first target and 66% x 66 % = 43.6% hit the third target)

and it seems (this time I have not counted the events) - that the a miss will be calculated only after passthrough was calculated (a first target miss can still hit the second target)

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Thanks for a very good test. Gotta use this trick of having 100 hits to not have to calculate the % myself next time.

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So essentially, for now, FFis a must on ranged Cadence builds? I wonder if this is something so deeply baked into the mechanics that changing it would be a significant effort. And not to mention Cadence itself is rather wonky.

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the most easy way to fix it - if the above is in fact the real issue

  • half all passthrough values (below 100%)
  • display two times the passthrough number in the UI (and max the displayed value at 100%)

or

  • fix the formula

It was always important to have passthrough Cadence shoots (btw, of course the passthrough only apply to the Cadence shoot), but having Fighting Form at 4/12 currently provides 100% passthrough

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Yep, that seems to be the most “logical” answer. If only we could get some general idea of why it doubles the chance… Like, until today I was thinking maybe it’s tied to dual-wielding somehow, but that doesn’t make sense now because PRM and PB are not weapon attacks. Yet another mystery!

And hey, thanks for your input guys. I’m terrible at math/numbers, so having some sort of backup from brighter folk is really appreciated.

You mean you didn’t invest in FF before? =) If anything, at THIS point, investing heavily in FF (more than rank 4) on ranged (non-bleed) is detrimential, so basically what is written in the first linked topic in the OP.

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Lol for some reason I thought we were talking about Counter Strike….don’t ask me why. (I was working at the time) Yes ofc FF is a must for any Cadence build really.

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I did a test of my own, and analyzed the data from the video and the cadence test.

From the video: the 50% value is clearly 100% passthrough, and you can see it visually. For the 10% value, we get 3 instances of double passthrough out of 23 throws with 3 blades each. Expected percentage mathematically for an actual value of 10% passthrough is 1% double passthrough, and for 20% passthrough is 4% double passthrough. 3 blades out of 69 is 4.3%.

For the 25% value, we expect for an actual 25% a 1.6% rate of triple passthrough, and for an actual 50% value about 12.5% triple passthrough. It’s a bit difficult to count for sure, and one blade just went to the side completely, but it looks like 24 throws, 3 blades each (minus one that went by the side) and we got 8 triple passthroughs. 8 out of 71 is 11.3%.

So for all three values, the actual value was twice the listed value, and passthrough was calculated on a per hit basis.

From the cadence test, the numbers are almost exactly what we’d expect if the actual passthrough value is twice what is listed, and passthrough was calculated on a per hit basis.

I did a test of the Plunderer’s talisman proc, which is a volley of 3 shots (with a rifle) and a 70% chance of passthrough. Since it does not pass through all the time, this passthrough number is not doubled. I used 3 dummies in a straight line, shooting at the last dummy, and ran 2 tests, one for the dummy hit by 1 passthrough, and one for the dummy hit by 2 passthroughs. Each test had 56 volleys in them.

Looking at the numbers only by total number of hits, there were 168 shots per trial, with 115 hits on the first dummy and 88 on the second, for a 68.5% rate on the first dummy and 52.4% on the second. The expected value for 1 passthrough at 70% chance is 70%, and for 2 is 49%.

Conclusion: this is what we’d expect if this proc had exactly the 70% passthrough number listed, and passthrough was calculated per hit.

It looks like passthrough is always calculated on a per hit basis in grim dawn.

I’m not sure why the difference between cadence and phantasmal blades on the one hand, and the Plunderer’s talisman proc on the other. If I had to guess, I’d say that passthrough amounts on skills in masteries gets doubled, but on skills from gear, it doesn’t.

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the question is if it was always doubled? or if it was something that occurred during the great passthrough patch/9.6 or at some point in between in recent years
*considering when it got brought up, despite other borked passthrough was reported much earlier, like og sandspitter passthrough being 100% despite saying 50 etc

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I can answer the question in some ways but not others.

I don’t know if passthrough has always been calculated on a per hit basis, and I don’t know how long phantasmal blades has been like this.

I do know for the Gunslinger’s/Marauder’s/Plunderer’s talisman, where they added the passthrough for the first time in the recent 1.1.9.6 patch, and I know in the case of Cadence, since I was playing Cadence based gunslingers and I heard about 4 points in Fighting Form giving 100% passthrough before either of the expansions came out.

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