Can someone help me determine which weapon is better?

[Hayashi.226]

I'm trying to see if the Lead Spitter is superior weapon to the Exceptional Arquebus, or not. If someone could help interpret the data I'd be thankful.

 

[Boeroer]

It depends which ability you are using it with. 

For example with a Paladin's Flames of Devotion the arquebus is better - while a Rogue with Penetrating Shot, Sneak Attack/Deathblows and Crippling Strike might prefer Lead Spitter. 

Reason is that lashes (see Flames of Devotion's burning lash) don't profit from DR bypass at all - so all the nice additional burn damage of each of the 6 low dmg projectiles will get eaten up by enemies' DR.

A Rogue doesn't have a lashing ability but instead uses high additive damage bonuses. Those help each pellet to overcome DR more easily and lead to higher damage (unless enemy has really high pierce DR) because all 6 pellets combined have higher base damage than an arquebus. Lead Spitter is also rending so it has an additional 3 DR bypass with means +18 dmg per shot for the blunderbuss. Add Penetrating Shot (adds +30 dmg per shot). And on top of that you get 6 chances to apply Hobbled (Crippling Strike) or Blinded (Blinding Strike) and so on while an arquebus only gives you one chance.

So if you tell us which class you are using we can give better advice. 

[Hayashi.226]

Thanks. My main character is a ranged cipher who uses a unique bow (can't remember the name at the moment), and the exceptional arquebus is equipped by Kana. I don't have a rogue NPC to take advantage of Lead Spitter's abilities, if I understood your analysis correctly.

[Boeroer]

If Cipher or Kana have Penetrating Shot then I'd give Lead Spitter to one of them. Kana's invocation "Hel-Hyraf" is also great for this weapon as is the "Sure Handed Ila" chant.

With Lead Spitter a Cipher can gain a lot of focus with one shot. Its dps is most likely worse than a bow's, but you can fire the Blunderbuss and then switch to bow.

If you have a Wizard with Combusting Wounds in the party I'd also use the Blunderbuss: its 6 projectiles will each trigger an instance of Combusting Wounds which is a strong combo.

[Hayashi.226]

Thank you.

[claudius]

Not directly answering your question but I found blunderbuss great to use with rogues blinding strike.  I figure it would be good with any class that has an ability that debuffs on an attack.  Blindness gives -20 accuracy if I recall to that opponent which is quite good.  The reason blunderbuss is good with a debuff on attack is that (I believe according to combat log) that each of the six bullets rolls an independent chance to critical hit.  I would often see in the combat log graze 2, hit 2, critical 2 or the like.  I did have dirty/viscious fighting and often priests buffs so not sure if that independent attack roll is due to dirty/viscious/priestbuffs?  But the end result was that (with good accuracy net from gear/stats/etc) most any tough enemy at least one of the 6 rolls would crit them and they would be debuffed for a LONG time.  I remember this the most with Dragons getting debuffed 20 seconds with blindness which was SO helpful to defeat them.

Edited February 10, 2020 by claudius

[Boeroer]

Correct. Blunderbuss has 6 projectiles and each will do an attack roll. As you said this is very nice with abilities like Rogue's strikes which apply an affliction - like Blind.