Talk:Math Wrath

hmmm
this perk may actually suck despite sounding good.. ap costs are higher in nv than fo3 and also aiming and shooting out of vats is a lot easier and more powerful in nv than in 3.. Namad 19:36, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

then again it is equivalent to having 11% more AP and 11% more AP regeneration which sounds awesome? hmmm new vegas really is just so different from fallout3~! Namad 19:39, October 22, 2010 (UTC)

it really depends on how you are building your character. if you are taking things like trigger discipline and not taking things like action boy, grim reapers sprint, and kamikaze then its not really a good choice because you are going to be doing most of your fighting like a normal FPS and not using VATS much.

on the other hand if you are taking things like kamikaze, grim reapers sprint, and action boy x 2 and have a decent agility score to where you will have a lot of action points and you plan on using VATS a lot, then its more worth it.

personally i dont think its wise to ignore the action points on your character even if you plan on making a long range sniper type, simply because there are a lot of critters in this game you will end up having to deal with up close and personal. rad scorpions, death claws, and so on are really annoying to deal with normally, but can go down pretty easily if you use vats.

unless you plan on constantly reloading your game over and over so you get every scenario perfect with your long range sniper, you will end up dealing with things at close range, and vats is the difference between taking a lot of damage and wasting a lot of ammo, or having an easy time with it.

there is also dodging enemies while using an SMG...
there is also dodging enemies while using an SMG... I actually have math whiz and action boy and nothing else for ap and do most of my combat out of vats.... oh also miss fortunate kinda stinks Namad 00:26, October 29, 2010 (UTC)

Current Strategy section
Maybe someone could explain the current strategy section for this perk because it doesn't make a lot of sense to me as its written. --Wallach 03:35, November 4, 2010 (UTC)

I noticed someone rewrote the strategy section slightly, but it still doesn't quite make sense to me.

Let me just use an example, maybe someone can point out what I'm missing:

Let's say my character has 95 AP, and is currently equipped with a weapon that uses 30 AP per shot in VATS.

Math Wrath: the weapon now only costs 27 AP to fire. This would mean I am able to fire the weapon 3 times at full AP (81 AP total) and would have 14 AP remaining.

Action Boy: the weapon would cost 30 AP to fire but I would have a total of 110 AP - this would mean I am able to fire the weapon 3 times (90 AP) but would have 20 AP remaining.

Now, 95 AP is assuming a max AGI (10), but even if I had Kamikaze it seems like Action Boy would be the superior perk:

Math Wrath: I would be able to fire the weapon 3 times (81 AP) and would have 24 AP remaining, meaning I would have to exit VATS and regenerate 3 AP before being able to fire a fourth shot.

Action Boy: I would be able to fire the weapon 4 times (120 AP) in a single VATS round.

Maybe there is some aspect to this perk I am missing but I cannot think of any scenario where this is superior to a single rank of Action Boy. --Wallach 17:13, November 4, 2010 (UTC)

Well, it is only a level 10 perk. Also, taking both can really let you VATS it up out there! Helps on the high AP guns a bit more, sniper rifles/Ratslayer take a ton of AP so the 10% is more noticeable on those weapons. --JPro 12:05, November 5, 2010 (UTC)

I have removed all of the talk from the main page - IF YOU'RE GOING TO HOLD DISCUSSION DO IT ON THE DISCUSSION PAGE, NOT ON THE MAIN PAGE.

I've checked this perk through console and confirmed that it has no other effects. Logically, this means the previous Strategy section is just wrong.

The relative "threshold" where 10% reduced AP costs is basically "equal" to +15 total AP in terms of VATS performance/actions is 135 AP. The bad news is that the maximum base AP you can have without perks/chems is 105. Adding chems to the discussion is pointless; they benefit both perks and do not favor Math Wrath anywhere near enough to swing the discussion in any way.

This perk, as the game mechanics exist, is never "more powerful" than one rank of Action Boy. It is however a good talent for a VATS focused character nonetheless.

The old Strategy section can be found below this post. --Wallach 12:08, November 5, 2010 (UTC)

Moved this person's discussion to the talk page. "Question: When calculating the AP discount, does the system round up? For example if a weapon has 17 AP does the game round the 10% (1.7) up to 2, or does it stay at 1? (I believe it calculates the cost in point form and then rounds up. So for example, a cost of 17 AP that has had MathWrath applied would be 15.3 AP, which is rounded to 16 AP when actually spent.)" 21:31, November 23, 2010 (UTC)

Strategy
Compared with Action Boy, the usefulness of this perk is directly related to how much AP you have to begin with. If you have more than 75 AP, it would be better to take this perk. If you have less than 75 it would be better to take Action Boy. The reasoning behind this is explained below.

Math Wrath could also be thought of as increasing your total AP by 10% as well as increasing your AP recovery rate by 10%. Therefore this perk increases your total AP capacity by 20%. At 75 AP, the 15 AP you get from Action Boy would also increase your AP capacity by 20%. Because Action Boy's bonus does not change, it should be reserved for characters that would naturally have AP lower than this, such as those with low Agility. Math Wrath on the other hand is better for players who already have a significant amount of AP and want to boost their VATS ability as much as possible.

1.The reasoning above is flawed, for two reasons. First, reducing a cost by 10% does not equate to increasing the AP total by 10%. Mathematically, it would equate to increasing the AP total by 11.111%. Also, Math Wrath does not change your AP recovery rate, and even if it did, or even if you thought of it as doing so because you are pretending that it increases your AP pool rather than reducing your AP costs, a 10% increase in recovery rate definitely would not equate to a 10% increase in total AP. So yes, the usefulness of Math Wrath does vary by your AP pool size, but not at the cutoff point described above. Anyone with better math skills want to take another crack at it and find the true threshold?

2.At 135 Action Points, adding 15 AP from Action Boy is equivalent to reducing AP costs by 10%. X+15 = X/(1-.1)

3.Without Chems, even with a starting agility of 10 (95 AP) and the Kamikaze trait (10 AP) you would only have 105 AP, meaning that both ranks of Action Boy would be more valuable than Math Wrath. Nothing in Math Wrath indicates faster AP recovery.

4.The faster AP recovery assumption comes from the fact that the same number of shots can be fired with less AP and it takes less time to regenerate less AP, for example. Assume a weapon costs 10 AP per shot and you have 90 AP and that AP regenerates at 10 per second. That means you can fire 9 shots with that weapon, and 9 seconds later you will be able to fire 9 shots. With Math Wrath the weapon will be able to take only 9 AP per shot and fire 10 shots instead, 9 seconds later, another 10 shots can be fired. However you can also fire the original value of 9 shots FASTER as you only have to wait 8.1 seconds to do so. Therefore Math Wrath is indeed equal to increasing the max AP value by 11.11% AND increasing the recharge rate by the same value (11.11%), you must think outside the box. Therefore IF we assume that recharge rate is of equal value to maximum AP then we have a total effectiveness increase of 22.22% and we may assume that Math Wrath beats Action Boy at a threshold of only approximately 67.5 (67.5 x 22.22%= around 15)! We may determine the effectiveness of Math Wrath compared to Action Boy as soon as the following question is answered.

Question: Does increasing the total number of AP Points increase the recovery rate as well?

5.Of course, taking all three perks would be even more beneficial.

2nd Question: We can assume that you can round up to eliminate AP Costs with Math Wrath correct? For example 10% off of a 15 AP cost equals 1.5 which rounds up to 2 off, right?

6.The improvement works out to 11.11%, not 20% OR 22.22%. The calculation under point 4 is calculating the SAME bonus two different ways and then acting like it's two different bonuses and adding them together, which doesn't make sense because it's still the SAME bonus.

Here's another example: Assume you have 100 AP, it takes 10 seconds to fully regenerate all your APs (so 10AP per second) and you have a weapon that costs 10AP to fire (9AP with Math Wrath). After the initial round the baseline has fired 10 shots and has 0 AP remaining, Math Wrath will have fired 11 times and have 1 point remaining. After 8 seconds the baseline will have enough APs to fire 8 more shots (18 total, 0 AP remaining), Math Wrath will have enough to fire 9 shots (20 total, 0 AP remaining). So that works out to (20-18)/18 = 11.11% more shots fired. If you keep on firing, both scenarios sync up with 0 AP remaining every 9 seconds, with the baseline firing 9 shots in that period, and Math Wrath firing 10, so that still works out to (10-9)/9 = 11.11% more shots fired.

Seems to be some confusion here
Suppose, hypothetically, you have 100 AP and are firing a weapon that takes 10 AP per shot. You can fire 10 shots normally for 10 AP a piece in one round of VATS.

Now you get Math Wrath. All costs are reduced by 10%. You fire those same ten shots, which takes 90 AP, which is ten percent less than 100 AP, not 11.11% or whatever else is in the posts above. I see where you came up with those numbers though. Perhaps my original description should have been worded more clearly, but the basic point still remains. In addition, that same 90 AP takes ten percent less time to recharge than it would have before the perk was taken. Under my definition of AP efficiency- a combination of both AP use and recovery- this is an increase of 20%. Obviously this definition may change based on your play style- if you aren't continuously using round after round of VATS in battle, and just want to get off a bunch of shots occasionally in close quarters combat, sheer AP capacity may matter a heck of a lot more than recharge rate.

The question remains then- should a player dependent on VATS invest a huge amount of skill points boosting up Science for the sole reason of getting this perk? At what point would Action Boy be a better choice and these skill points be spent somewhere else? This NEEDS to be addressed in this article. The increase in AP efficiency given by Action Boy is a flat increase, the increase given by Math Wrath is on a diagonal line. To argue that someone with 20 AP would benefit more from Math Wrath is ridiculous, whereas it's obvious that someone with 200 AP would benefit much less from Action Boy. The key is figuring out where these lines cross.

-edited in light of new information-

Vryheid 05:38, November 12, 2010 (UTC)

After further testing...
It is clear that Action Boy does NOT increase game AP regeneration, thus showing that the basic premise of the old strategy section was correct. I noted this fact in the Action Points article itself. Unfortunately this also means the math I used was totally inaccurate, but Math Wrath is still often a much better investment than Action Boy for high leveled players.

To demonstrate this, suppose you have a player with 100 base AP and a gun that takes 10 AP. How much time would it take him to fire 40 shots in VATS?

With Action Boy you have 115 available AP points, and it takes 1.66 seconds to recover enough AP for one shot. You get 11 shots immediately, require another .83 seconds to fire off the next shot, and need 46.48 seconds total for the remaining 28 shots. You end up with 47.31 seconds required to make those 40 shots.

With Math Wrath you have 100 available AP points, and it takes 1.5 seconds to recover enough AP for one shot. You get 11 shots immediately (as they only cost 9 AP each), require another 1.33 seconds to fire off the next shot, and need 42 seconds for the remaining 28 shots. In this case you need 43.33 seconds to make the 40 shots.

Math wrath allows you to make those 40 shots about four seconds faster, which is pretty dang useful in my opinion. A heck of a lot better than Action Boy if you are depending on the ability for repetitive VATS usage.

I am going to edit the article to reflect this.

Vryheid 07:47, November 12, 2010 (UTC)


 * To be honest that doesn't sound very useful. It's nearly a best case scenario for the perk (100 base AP requires very high AGI *and* Kamikaze, as max base AP without it is only 95 at 10 AGI), and it's still not clear how AP rounding is handled. More importantly though you're speaking to a huge volume of time regarding truly sustained VATS usage. As soon as the player is out of combat long enough to regenerate AP back to the cap, a large portion of the perk's benefit becomes less useful. I would definitely say that happens far more often than not in the actual combat scenarios within the game. Wallach 09:18, November 24, 2010 (UTC)


 * His example isn't a best case scenario. Almost all scenarios will work out to the same benefit. AP costs are reduced by 10%, so you end up attacking 10 times when you normally could attack 9 times, that's all there is to it. Unlike Action Boy which gives you more attacks during the initial round, but won't help you at all for the rest of the combat duration, or Nerves of Steel which won't help you in the first round, but will prove more useful during extended combat. No clear comparison between the usefulness of Nerves of Steel, Action Boy and Math Wrath can be made. It all depends on how long combat is going to last, for short combat Action Boy will probably be better (unless you have an obscene amount of AP, in which case Math Wrath is always better than Action Boy), for extended combat Nerves of Steel will be better, and Math Wrath lies somewhere in the middle.


 * In short, Math Wrath is probably the safest choice when it comes to AP perks. It probably won't give you as many initial attacks as Action Boy, and the decrease in AP cost can't match Nerves of Steel's increased regeneration rate, but it isn't as situational as the other perks, its benefit is always applicable.


 * Another consideration is that Math Wrath does synergize with Grim Reaper's Sprint better than the other perks, as you can make more use of the 20AP you get back.


 * Oh, and after experimentation, I've come to the conclusion that AP costs aren't rounded, but are calculated as floating point numbers. So the 10% decrease is always exactly 10%, you won't be helped or screwed by beneficial or detrimental rounding.
 * Dwaz 11:34, December 1, 2010 (UTC)

Bug?
Patch 1.2 with Dead Money on Xbox: I wanted to see how the ultimate VATS character would look and ofcourse took this perk, when a day later I check my perks on the pip-boy and I did not see it in the list. I am 100% sure I took it. I'd like to know if it was just some random one time bug or something I should be more aware of, so can anyone else confirm what happened to me is not just an isolated incident. Thanks in advance. FieryWrath 16:51, February 12, 2011 (UTC)

Math Wrath glitched?
After reading all previous discussions about expected results and my own testing I think the Math Wrath perk is glitched... or I'm missing something.

First of all I'm on PC patch 1.3.0.452.

My character has 135 AP without chems. Ranger Sequoia AP cost is 30. With Math Wrath this cost is reduced to 27. So in VATS I should be able to perform 135 / 27 = 5 shots (full ammo clip). Well, I can only perform 4, VATS system reports "Low AP" for the fifth.

As a further proof let's consider Gobi. AP cost is 24. With Math Wrath this cost is reduced to 22 (I'm rounding down the cost reduction from 2.4 to 2). So in VATS I should be able to perform 6 shots (full ammo clip), with 3 AP left. But VATS system only allows for 5 shots, reporting "Low AP" for sixth, even when AP meter is clearly showing that certain amount of AP would remain after the sixth shot.

Without Math Wrath perk, VATS AP meter for second example shows that the sixth shot would consume all remaining AP points, so the perk is "mathematically working", yet I'm not getting the expected results in the end.

The problem could be related with the fact that in both examples the ammo clip is depleted, and VATS could be requiring more AP for the required reload. But it doesn't make sense because I'm not requesting a shoot beyond ammo clip capacity to VATS, so reload AP cost doesn't (or should not) apply. Starla 21:59, May 23, 2011 (UTC)

This perk has nothing to do with Old World Blues
I had the name discussion with Dr. O (O vs Zero) even though I didn't have the 'Math Wrath' perk, so this is inaccurate. 82.166.29.162 05:28, August 1, 2011 (UTC)

There is a special dialogue option indicating "Zero is the most powerful number, because dividing by zero = infinity" or something similar with a Math Wrath prompt. It's a one-off line within the name discussion with Dr. 0. Hahnsoo 21:03, August 7, 2011 (UTC)