The Truth about the Uzi

Lord Garak

Lord Garak

Retinazer
After getting into yet another argument about whether the Uzi being able to out-DPS the Megashark is merely an urban legend or the real deal, I decided to do some amateur number-crunching and find out for myself. Using a 30 defense enemy (the Destroyer) as reference:

The Megashark will do 10 damage per bullet, and the Uzi 15, NOT counting bullet damage

While trying to figure this out I realized I didn't actually know how use times work in regards to real time. It turns out you can find out how many times a weapon fires per second by dividing its use time into the game's total frames: 60

So, the Megashark fires 8.57 bullets per second, and the Uzi fires 6.67

This means that without modifiers the base dps of both guns totals to 85.7 and 100, respectively.

We can conclude that the long-repeated "fact" that the Uzi out-performs the Megashark against high-defense enemies and bosses is, in fact, true.

At what defensive integer does the Uzi's dps overtake the Mega-sharks? That I don't know, which warrants future math.
 
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You are correct that against high defense enemies, the Uzi out performs the Megashark.

However, I disagree with the idea of dismissing bullet damage. Bullet damage is inherent when considering the DPS of guns, as even the weakest bullets (Musket Ball and Endless Musket Pouch) deal 7 damage extra on every round. Because this is applied "evenly" to both guns, it decreases the total damage per bullet difference between them, which favors the Megashark.

This means under minimum damage circumstances, the damage per bullet is 32 and 37 respectively (86%-100%), rather than 25 and 30 (83%-100%). However, far more likely is that the player will be using at least Silver or Crystal Bullets with a damage of 9, or even higher.

What this all translates to is that the minimum enemy defense required for Uzi to outperform Megashark increases, the higher the damage of the bullet you use.

HOWEVER, this is somewhat further complicated due to the split nature of Crystal Bullets. Crystal Bullet shards are a huge portion of its damage, but dealing reduced damage per shard, this means that the defense factor is reduced. Crystal Bullets are also some of the best bullets in the game. So in high defense scenarios, the Uzi is uniquely suited to use some of the best bullets to greater effect than the Megashark.

Now, I didn't do the math, running a bit short on time, but according to the wiki, the threshold where Crystal Bullets on Uzi starts to perform better is 36 defense. That's a pretty high defense number. At that tier, very few enemies have that much. Skeletron Prime has defense like that when spinning, as do some of his arms. Duke Fishron is, feasibly, an enemy you might face with these guns, and his defense is very high. There are a few other examples worth noting, but in general, they are exceptions to the rule.

Another interesting wrinkle, and I really rushed the math on this so if I'm wrong, someone please correct me, but it seems as if Critical hits favor lower damage/high fire rate weapons in high defense scenarios, since the bonus damage is typically not impacted by the defense (and comes more often as a result of the higher fire rate).

This leaves the Uzi in, IMO, a very conceptual form of superiority. It is, on paper, better, but in a particularly limited number of scenarios, namely a few particular bosses and a small handful of enemies.
 
I generally rely more on the mega shark. It has a faster firing speed and for some reason just seams more fun to use.
 
Using the Uzi with an endless musket pouch will convert all bullets to high velocity bullets, giving you an endless supply, but if you want to use any other ammo the Megashark's 50% chance not to consume ammo is more useful.
 
Megashark is better! Its way more fun to use and uzi is really innacurate, according to the wiki it has a 15 degree spread.
 
Quite the old thread, but I can say this - the Uzi only requires some farming and can be acquired at the start of Hardmode, lasting you well up until the point you'd be crafting the Megashark anyway. Context and availability is highly important when comparing guns since the vast majority of them do the same thing (launch bullets in the general direction of your mouse).

I've always preferred the Uzi to the Megashark, but the theoretical DPS vs practical DPS of weapons is hardly a concern when their actual performance is a lot closer than you'd think - one may out-perform the other, but in an actual combat scenario, for the vast majority of the playerbase, you likely wouldn't notice the difference between the two in an active combat scenario. It's trying to minmax something that doesn't really warrant minmaxing.

The human desire for efficiency is a strange one.
 
I would have to agree with Leinfors in this thread.

If the Uzi does 100 DPS and the Megashark does 85.7 DPS, and we add +7 damage to both guns, we get...

Megashark: 147.69 DPS
Uzi: 146.74 DPS

Here, you see the Megashark out-performing the Uzi in Raw DPS assuming 0 Defense target, even if just barely.

Now, let's say you do this against an enemy that has 20 defense (which would remove 10 damage from each gun):

Megashark: 59.99 DPS
Uzi: 80.4 DPS

Here you see quite a bit more DPS, and the disparity will only climb as the Defense goes higher UNTIL you get to 30-something Defense (where both guns are hitting the 1 damage cap before bullets), then the Megashark will start winning again due to the higher RoF.

However, there's also something to be said about accuracy and cost of missing shots, especially in a more highly mobile boss fight, such the Twins. Each missed shot from the Megashark is less costly than a missed shot from the Uzi.

And also, as another pointed out above, the Uzi is much, much harder to obtain than the Megashark.
 
I'd like to see the comparison number curves plotted out on a graph, with annotations indicating where various bosses fit in.
P.S. It seems a little misleading to claim the Uzi is "harder to obtain" --given its rarity as a Jungle drop is balanced by the fact that you can get it pre-any-mechanical boss. Granted the luck factor is less deterministic than gathering the ingredients to craft MegaShark.
 
markhu said:
I'd like to see the comparison number curves plotted out on a graph, with annotations indicating where various bosses fit in.
Click to expand...

Here are some graphs. Something that is worth mentioning that hasn't been talked about is that if you increase the damage of both weapons using gear and modifers defense starts to become less and less relevant. The Uzi could have a dps advantage at a certain defense threshold but as you start buffing the weapons with equipment the megashark can pass it.

docs.google.com

Uzi Vs. megashark

docs.google.com docs.google.com
 
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