Destiny 2 player cracks enemy scaling wide open "using just 3 bullets"

gamesradar.com:

Destiny 2 theory crafters have worked out a way to reliably measure enemy HP across multiple difficulties using a forgotten Exotic helmet.

New findings from Reddit user LegoWitch (opens in new tab), who previously helped collate (opens in new tab) the exact figures for weapon damage in Destiny 2's many Power brackets, outline a method "to measure any enemy’s HP using just 3 bullets." 

It all comes down to the Exotic Hunter helmet Foetracer, which buffs your damage against low-health enemies. As LegoWitch points out, Foetracer's buff scales up as enemy health drops below 30%. If the enemy has 25% health left, you get a 5% buff; if they're at 15% health, you get a 15% buff, and so on. 

"Importantly, this buff seems to be very precise in how it measures HP, so if an enemy has 24.55% health left, the game will give you a 5.45% buff," they add, citing findings from the Massive Breakdowns Destiny Discord channel. This is where the three-bullet damage calculations come in. 

By shooting an enemy at full health and comparing that shot's damage to two Foetracer-buffed shots, you can calculate the total HP of that enemy. Basically, the first shot gives you a baseline, and the ratio between the second and third shots will tell you how much the enemy HP changed against the 30% threshold. You could use figures from more Foetracer shots if you wanted to, but you technically only need two to math out how much the second shot was buffed compared to the third, and then extrapolate that to the enemy's entire health bar. 

This gets interesting – and more practical – when you start applying it to the same enemies in different activities of varying difficulties. A Fallen Captain has wildly different HP values in a normal Lost Sector compared