Concealment Effects on Aimed Shot Critical Hits:
by: Tekkor / Date:7/25/01

Tonight I finished the remaining tests for the examination of whether or not the Concealment stat increases the chance of a Critical damage hit when using an Aimed Shot.

First of all lets get my Agent stats out of the way:

Tekkor / Lvl 26 Agent
Concealment 210
Rifle 182
Aimed Shot 208
Sense 95
Agility 93

These are my buffed normal combat stats. Now for this test what I intended to do was fire a series of shots using the Concealment NF Shadow Crown which is +63 to Concealment.

The test rifle was the following:

Now if you read my earlier article on comparing the Aimed Shot Damage between the Gripo and the Tsak the next numbers will look familier. These Aimed Shot hits were all done with the Concealment stat of 210.

These shots were taken late on 7/22/01.

Tonights Results:

Tonight I went to the same area. I attacked the same creatures. They were Large Chirops that conned low Yellow to high green so usually about this: ----o|----- or this: ---o-|-----

Here are the results of having all the same buffs and settings as the previous night with the exception of not having Shadow Crown on. So my Concealment was 147 instead of 210.

As you can see I did 3 more Chirops then the previous test. The numbers to me at least were quite shocking. 3 out of 9 got the critical and the rest were very low.

So I was sceptical that perhaps with the Concealment adjustments Funcom made the other day I should redo some of the 210 Concealment Aimed Shot hits just to confirm. Again I was shocked. Here are those results:

I only could do 7 Chirops on this round of tests as I leveled right after the 7th one and knew this would mess the test up. All of these Aimed Shots were done in the same area on monsters very close in level to each other. Again all basically low yellows. I think the numbers are pretty evident however and I am more confident in saying now that your Concealment stat has a direct effect on the frequency of critical Aimed Shot hits for Agents.

I have no idea if this effects other classes as well.

Items of note on person for tests:
Following NF's: +20 to rifle, +20 aimed shot, +20 run speed, +4 dmg, +63 concealment.
Extra items: Low light targeting scope QL 20, adds +3 to critical chance.
Implants: Various implants giving +'s to Rifle, sense and aimed shot.

What does it mean?:
I think it is pretty obvious that Concealment has a direct effect of frequency of Aimed Shot critical hits. The numbers show it over the 23 creatures I tested on. I would think this shows that every Agent should of course get the NF Shadow Crown if you intended to use Aimed Shot with a Rifle.

I know many people (including myself before) did not bother to put Shadow Crown on when out hunting or in groups etc. We would fill NCU's with other buffs etc. Most Agents would only use Shadow Crown for doing missions usually. Well these tests show that the NF is much more useful.

In closing:
I would love for some of you to do similar tests and let me know what your results come out like. Now that I am level 27 I am about to do some shopping for a new Tsak and perhaps will do some extensive testing between the same rifle of varying levels next so we can see just how much the improvement of a couple QL levels on a rifle effects the actual damage we do.

Of course to be super accurate on the above results and prove them with 100% accuracy is near impossible. It would obviously be more accurate to test it on say 50 creatures each way and that would give a big pool for strange luck or whatever to work it's way out. I would love though to hear from you guys on the boards in regards to these tests. I know one Anon poster already posted that my earlier test were a waste of time and did not prove anything. I would hope now with these expanded numbers it is a bit more evident.

Anyway..happy hunting and may your Aimed Shots always hit true.