Tom Clancy's The Division: Yes, it's actually really good now!

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40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Ugly In The Morning posted:

I haven't really branched my skill choice out from sticky bomb/first aid. What else should I try? The numbers on turrets look really, really garbage.

Gas seeker mine is a great option as always for crowd control. The splitter seeker mines cause bleed now, while the flame mine pairs well with the flame turret for Firecrest.

The shield is actually a decent option now, since the pistols have been generally buffed, threat generation redone, and the bugs fixed.

Support station pairs really well in groups now, as the revive functions combined with better healing make it a good First Aid alternative.

First Aid defibrilator mod got a significant cooldown reduction, so if you want to pick your buddies back up, it's a good one.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2016 02:48

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# ¿ May 26, 2024 01:53

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Alchenar posted:

No he's right, the effect of 1.4 is that you hit gear level 228 in no time, but actually getting the right set of gear with a good set of talents is a matter of grinding away.

Right now I'm playing underground and missions because it's fun to see the content but because I'm fully geared up I'm not getting anything from it but the fun of the gameplay itself, which is okay but not as lasting as it could be.

Do an Incursion.

Doing all the other activities will get you swimming in set pieces, but for the most part, you'll have 2-3 good pieces of a set and be missing the 4th for the full set bonus, which is where the actual major gameplay change in a set comes from.

Incursions in 1.4 are now weighted for specific item drops, so if you're looking for a set piece in a certain slot, do the Incursion that drops it a few times.

Falcon Lost: Gloves/Masks
Clear Sky: Chests/Holsters
Dragon's Nest: Backpacks/Kneepads

Before 1.4, Incursions were ludicrously difficult for the time invested and loot rewards; these days, the difficulty is no more than other activities. Post-patch, I've matchmade into decent enough groups that we were able to run a decent few runs playing completely suboptimally. In 1.3, running Clear Sky at Heroic meant cheesing Pulse/Smart Cover/Overheal shenanigans; I just ran 1.4 Heroic Clear Sky five times as a Riot Shield guy pulling the enemies towards me while the fuse runners did their thing. Falcon Lost in a group running around the zone with a chicken's head cut off worked somehow; wiped on the last wave in two runs, but the new checkpoints meant we only redid 3 waves instead of 15.

The real moral of the story is the 1.4 Shield fixes are very nice and everyone with at least 100k Skill Power will have a fantastic time.

40 Proof Listerine fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Oct 31, 2016

# ¿ Oct 31, 2016 15:31

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Croccers posted:

Where's my SMG Shield skill/talent?

Well, in the meantime, you stick extended magazines and a loudener on a First Wave X-45, those stats really aren't too different from an SMG if you can click fast enough.

And for those that haven't tried it, you get the benefit of a guaranteed stagger with shield melee, PVE and PVP, so you can run crowd control on shotgunners. Haven't tried the Dark Zone shenanigans with the shield yet, but in a group working around it it may actually be viable.

EDIT: They also seem to have fixed the protection arc on the shield, the thing soaks up Cleaner flamers (regular and heavy) wonderfully, so that's absolutely a thing for Dark Zone/HVTs

# ¿ Oct 31, 2016 15:39

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Rick_Hunter posted:

Keep in mind that abilities that revived players from a downed state now revive them from death. If you build your character to have have high skill power and haste you can theoretically help your allies stay up. Of course, if you're using the abilities that revive them often then there's something wrong with your group.
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So I finally managed to play about 3-4 hours of group content last night and I have to agree with the people who have said that enemies still feel like bullet sponges. It still takes 2+ mags by myself to take out WT4 enemies on challenging while running with a full team. The real kicker though is that at 350k toughness I do not feel squishy at all. I feel like player toughness is at the point where unless you manage to walk into a monster closet while 6 LMBs come out you can retreat and pop a heal to survive.

Long encounters can be a bitch because of the skill power changes. For my 200k/350k/76k main character it still feels like ages to get my overdose heal back from cooldown.

Finally, I really wish there was a ilvl 33 performance mod blueprint that I could buy. My P-mods are a mish mash of anything that I could throw in slots when I would much prefer 5% self heal mods.

There's a couple solutions to help your cooldown problem (which comes from not having a single point in Electronics):
1) Use Defibrilator on First Aid (cools down significantly faster than Booster Shot / Overdose; you get less self healing, but allies get far more healing)
2) Swap a Stamina part for Electronics - You'll still be in the ballpark of 300k toughness, but cooldowns are around ~30s per skill at 100k skillpower, ~25s at 120k skillpower.
3) Run Determined / Coolheaded in a free slot (or use a lower tier pistol with Coolheaded - 204 requires ~3100 electronics).
4) Do Support Station instead of First Aid - it doesn't recharge any faster in your setup, but it'll last long enough to get you through most of the encounter.

Galewolf posted:

-I really like pistols, revolvers to be exact. Is it possible to use a pistol and still play the game (I don't mind if it will be a support role or whatever, just like my pistols yo). All videos I watched about the game is like people hosing mobs with belt fed LMG's or SMG's. Even if pistols are not a thing I'd like to experiment with rifles or sniper rifles.

-Will people suck my dick if I play medic/support because I'm a mutant who loves doing that poo poo?

You're in luck, there's an entire endgame gear set revolving around team support through pistols / marksman rifles, Sentry's Call (which also works well with shotguns). Headshots with semi-automatic weapons mark enemies for your team and those enemies take up to 15% bonus damage.

Pistol-wise, there's a family of .357 magnum revolvers, which have very high burst damage potential, but it is a chaotic game and you will reload frequently. Semi-automatic pistols can be modded out extensively - the pistols are well-balanced post-patch and you can pick between damage and rate of fire to taste. I'm using a modded 1911 and it's doing a solid 100,000 damage per headshot as fast as I can click at 300 RPM, compared to automatic rifles doing 50k-70k and a M60 doing ~80-100k.

It's trading raw DPS for infinite ammo (pistols have an infinite reserve). When combined with the Riot Shield though, you get incredible protection, which is a much better tradeoff for that DPS drop.

The riot shield mentioned works swimmingly at World Tier 4 (the highest endgame difficulty) and is great in a support role, since it makes you a big threat beacon that influences enemies to shoot you and not your teammates. You can use a second skill with the shield, which helps even better. Riot Shield / Health Support Station heals everyone in a big radius and can prevent status effects / automatically revive folks, while Riot Shield / Seeker Mine or Shield / Turret lets you drop crowd control that rolls to the enemies while keeping your shield up. Reviving folks with the shield up also prevents you from getting shot, so you can act as a frontline medic. The shield itself can be modded to pulse enemies for your team, make you shoot your pistol harder, or even heal yourself as the shield gets shot, which is incredibly useful.

I've been deriving more joy than I should dragging pubbies across the finish line with the Shield in Dragon's Nest and Clear Sky, and not getting killed by incursion enemies while killing them almost as fast, clear times are pretty solid.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2016 21:47

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

For those who haven't checked the Special Weapons Vendor this week, there's an Omega Rifle Suppressor for 500k that has 16% headshot damage, goes great with just about everything, unless you want more threat, which I do on half my guns.

Capn Beeb posted:

Does a Vigorous chest pieces' thing where healing grants Overheal get procced by heal on kill?

Unfortunately not, since it only works on healing skills. But a cheap overheal if you don't have Vigorous is manually detonating your support station, which will overheal regardless of Vigorous.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2016 05:32

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Underground Riot Shield trip report:

Fog of War - Easy enough to work around, but the limited field of view on the shield makes hunting down enemies difficult. Supplies missions can be failed because it's tough to actually find the supply dump in time.
Waste Not, Want Not - shielding completely negates the directive
Mad Skills - Other skill charges normally after shield is up, so you functionally have two skills. Not a bad choice if your team works around it.
Special Forces - Shielding lets you comfortably ignore disrupt bullets from LMB and rioters, since your shield doesn't get knocked out by distruption, but is a huge pain against Cleaners, since you'll spend more time on fire than actually shooting.
Sickness - Heal shield comfortably outheals the decay when being shot at, but having a heal skill on secondary is still highly recommended.
Multi-phase runs - the shield undeploys when you take the elevator to the next phase, so you have to redeploy. Press Q once, not twice - you'll throw your shield away and you'll get shotgunned by rushers.
Limited visibility rooms are surprisingly difficult, since the shield FOV is cramped. Most of those rooms have switches to kill the lights, so it can be worth learning the layouts.
Big open rooms, especially the ones where you open via lever, are much easier to get to a good spot in due to being a big moving hunk of cover.

Overall, Underground shielding is incredibly safe as long as you take it methodically. The new SMG set will make for an interesting twist on the formula.

One of the changes in 1.5 is that enemies will be doing 10% more damage to the shield, so that's going to be a thing. But hey, Rhinos and burst pistols.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2016 04:03

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

The Locator posted:

At what level do I need to start paying attention to the talent on gear/weapons? I am only level 12, and so far I have been trying to get stamina and weapon, with the emphasis on stamina, while also trying to get the most armor. On weapons I've been just going with the biggest damage number.

Thanks.

When you're leveling, the talent requirements are based around having your gear be the same level and the same rarity (color). If you have a blue gun, having blue gear around the same level will let you activate the talent pretty easily. Having gear mods slotted at your level lets you fill the gap for the last few points you're missing.

It's still the same principle at 30 when Gear Score is introduced - if you have a gear score 163 gun, then having gear score 163 gear and gear mods will let you easily activate the talent.

The numbers scale up and down across the levels, but the pattern follows like this:

Perfectly rolled, you have a little under 12 gear slots worth of stats - Holster counts as 3 (1 of each stat), your 5 gear mods together count as ~1, Vest/Gloves/Mask/Backpack/Kneepads make the other 5 up, you get 1.5 slots from leveling up (535 per stat) and the freebie stats on gear add up to another ~1.5 in all stats at a given gear score. At Gear Score 229, a pretty much perfect roll in a gear slot is ~1000 in a stat, while an average roll is ~950 in a stat. No time to grind? You'll be okay - full average rolls is only a ~0.5 slot difference from near-perfect.

Moderate unlock talents require ~3.25 slots of stat (e.g. 229 Deadly at 3098 Firearms)
Tough unlock talents require ~4 slots in a stat (e.g. 229 Brutal at 3873 Firearms) So this would be your Holster,
Moderate Hybrid talents tend to require two moderate unlocks (e.g. Coolheaded at 3098 Firearms / 3098 Electronics) for 6.5 slots total.
Tough Hybrid Talents require one tough unlock and one moderate (e.g. Vicious at 3098 Firearms / 3873 Stamina) for 7.75 slots total.
Specialized Hybrid talents require an easy ~2.5 slots in one stat and a tough (4) stat in another (e.g. Responsive at 3874 firearms / 2374 Stamina) for 6.5 slots.
Hybrid Hybrid talents (e.g. Meticulous at 3099 Stamina / 2374 Firearms / 2374 Electronics) have a moderate unlock and two easys for ~7.25 - going to take up part of your build, but easily doable with a few mods shuffled around.
And then there's Fierce, which has three moderate requirements (3099 Firearms / 3099 Stamina / 3099 Electronics) for 9.25 slots total, which

The short version: Holster + Freebies gives you a base of 2 in each stat to work with, with 5 pieces + gear mods to close the gap for the build you want. Think of your build as how you mix the six remaining slots up.

You want a tough Firearms talent (e.g. Brutal)? Wear two firearms pieces to reach the 4-piece threshold. Want Fierce? Wear one Electronics piece and salt the rest of your gear to taste.

Well-Rounded? 2.25 Firearms / 2.5 Stamina / 1.5 Electronics. (~105k SP base)
Mister AlphaBridge? 2/2/2 (~120k SP base)
Turbo Skillpower? 3 Electronics, 1 Firearms, 2 Stamina. (~150k base, ~180 with SP rolls on BP/Mask, ~200 with gear mods)
"Streamer" DPS? 3 Firearms, 3 Stamina, or 2 Firearms / 4 Stamina if really tanking it up. (~70k SP base, this is practically the "base stats" on the skills panel, don't do this your cooldowns will be 60s)

# ¿ Nov 15, 2016 05:16

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

cubicle gangster posted:

I just got this and I'm not sure if I'm playing it right. I'm level 4 trying to do the rescue dr kandel mission and I'm finding the part where you make your way across the court near impossible. If I stay back and try and pick away behind cover I can't hit anyone, and when I do it does fuckall damage - if I try and get close I get flanked immediately and die in a couple of hits.

Any tips? Do I need to go and grind side missions to stay leveled above the main missions? This was a 4 and I am 4, but the enemies seem like they are a much higher level than me.

I love the atmosphere and I know it can be a pretty hardcore game, but I thought I'd at least be able to play it solo without needing to be constantly popping off pixel perfect headshots using a controller.

Edit: Just figured out how to see the list of all available missions, think I'm getting my head around this. It's an odd game. Weird how once you replace swords with guns in an rpg it's harder to get your head around levels affecting damage.

After you do Madison Field Hospital you unlock healing skills which let you have a separate source of healing besides your limited quantity medkits, so that helps tremendously when playing solo.

If you're stuck making advances or having trouble with the cover layout, try giving the riot shield a spin. It's essentially a second, much bigger health bar, and it being portable cover gives you a big boost in advancing across open arenas like the court in Madison. If you use the shield and go into cover, it remembers you have the shield when you leave that cover, and while you are in cover you can use your normal weapons.

If at any point you don't feel like you are doing enough damage, check to make sure your weapons are at your level. Even a one or two level difference makes a large impact, since the damage scales exponentially, not linearly. If you need a weapon upgrade, craft one or buy one from a vendor - an at-level green will do more damage than a blue three to four levels lower. Conversely, if you do have a blue gun, those can last you longer than expected.

Raged posted:

What is a good base DPS for weapons at 229?

I have a M60 with a base dps(no mods) of 125k and a marksman rifle of 225k. I have not found one smg that has a base DPS anywhere near those. Is the intentional or am I just having a bad run?

DPS is highly skewed by magazine size and ROF, which affects the consideration. Those Marksman Rifles are based on the full RPM, but unless you use a mouse macro you won't fire anywhere near fire rate cap and actually hit with all of your bullets. M60 is highly skewed by having 100 rounds in the tank. SMGs with bases of 20 or 25 bullets just don't compare.

Short version is any full auto combination at 200k DPS is more than plenty to be comfortable in Tier 4 content.

Reload speed mods, since they've been buffed, also significantly impact DPS while not necessarily improving per-bullet performance.

Per-bullet performance is a better indicator of how the guns compare. I'm not super optimized, and on balanced loadouts (2/2/1 firearms/stamina/electronics splits) I tend to get 35k headshots/50k HS crits with SMGs, 45k HS/65-70k HS crits with assault rifles, 60-70K headshots / 100k crits on slower LMGs, 300k HS/ 500k HS crits with bolt-action DMRs, and about half that with semi-autos. Pistols with Decisive gloves clock in at 50k headshots for big magazine pistols, 100k headshots base with 1911s and higher.

40 Proof Listerine fucked around with this message at 07:56 on Nov 20, 2016

# ¿ Nov 20, 2016 07:47

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

hey welcome to the show! posted:

I'm the most unlucky bastard in survival...

2, 20 minuet runs in a row we're I didn't find any weapons or weapon parts after killing as many NPCs as I could. And then when I get to purple and gold enemies all I have is a pistol so I get rolled. I've earned a total of 2 survival cashes over 5 attempts.

If you're stuck without weapon parts but have tools, craft a shield - the starter pistol is surprisingly decent and crafting a shield for 3 blue tools will let you get over that hump without a weapon and let you clear a landmark.

Conversely, if you have all the firearms parts but few tools, the turret is a pro buy for 3 blue gun parts / 1 blue tool.

# ¿ Nov 24, 2016 20:44

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

I've been farting around with the stupidest build - Tactician's + Coolheaded 93R + Heal Shield + BFB. 4 Electronics pieces, 1 Stamina, Firearms mods to get 3800 to trigger Coolheaded.

It's kind of impressive for brawling, as you can get close enough to chain the Coolheaded procs to have a near-instant recharge, and with no optimization (207k SP base, no Sticky damage performance mods) it's a 500k blast a decent amount of Tac stacks (30+, get two folks in blast). It's only 305k toughness, but the shield has stupid HP (currently rocking +Health +Shield DMG Reduction performance mods)

I was using it to solo the DZ decently, and it has the bonus of popping rogue agents easily.

It's terrible against certain long-distance scenarios, since you can't hit squat with the 93R, but it's a hilarious change of pace from AlphaBridging.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2016 05:22

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

poptart_fairy posted:

So, smart use of Riot Shield has broken my reliance on the healing ability, and I can rely on medkits and positioning without hammering the L1 button to get through combat. I'm trying t think of a secondary skill though - my min/maxer side is telling me to stick with Pulse so I get around the SMG's lack of crit in shield mode, but that seems a bit cheesy. BFB is kind of hilarious but even with 135k skill power the recharge lets it down (even if "erase a combat encounter every minute" is hard to argue with...).

What are you guys running?

Shock turret is one option. Firecrest + Flame turret is another great pair, but since you're running D3-FNC the gas seeker mine is probably your best combination at that skill power level. It'll run around the entire field (great in Clear Sky) and set up easy shots for the rest of the team.

Run Precision as a talent and you'll get around needing Pulse for that bit of crit with the Shield up.

# ¿ Dec 3, 2016 19:16

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Pierson posted:

Does that mean how much damage your sidearm/SMG does when you have the shield equipped?

It does. It means that if you slot for it just using the storebought mods, you can get +34% damage on the assault shield and +24% damage on the heal shield, which are both very respectable.

On the flip side, if you gear for shield damage resilience, you can get 26%, which will stack with Booster Shot handily. I don't know if shooting Smart Cover onto Riot Shields still works, though.

A 50S RAYGUN posted:

i ran a bunch of underground last night with some friends

my buddy and i went in at around 180-200 and we're all 256 now. feels good, but the wt5 incursions are super rough. i have like 4.5k firearms and 7k stamina (1200 armor or so) with 33 pct life on kill or something and i still melt and feel like i do no damage. is that just because it's an incursion at wt5?

Incursions throw a lot more enemies at once in more open areas, so you'll want some form of crowd control to keep from getting overwhelmed. Sources of percentile-based damage reduction like Smart Cover and Booster Shot are a big help. On the Move Perk (30% damage reduction after killing enemy while moving), Battle Buddy (50% damage reduction for both players 10s after revive) are also handy.

You may want to shift some of that stamina to electronics so you can use crowd control skills more frequently. If you're using First Aid, consider using defibrilator, both for the lowered cooldown and the ability to pick up friends. If using Pulse and you aren't invested in Electronics, have another guy be the Pulse guy. If the electronics guy only has 160-180k electronics, have him use the Recon Pack instead of Tac Pulse for the greater uptime. Bring a bunch of Survivor links.

Challenging Incursions are doable if you can easily do Challenging missions / Underground; Heroic Incursions require a bit more optimization on the teamwork and damage output.

Pro tip for any Firecrest users on Dragon's Nest - you can throw a fire turret on top of the fire truck. The flamethrower will focus on the turret, your turret will burn just about the entirety of both sides of the room, and it works swimmingly.

40 Proof Listerine fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Dec 3, 2016

# ¿ Dec 3, 2016 23:00

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Kommando posted:

What does skill power actually do?

This here is a Skill Power calculator; punch yours in and find out!
It's for 1.5 launch, so it doesn't have the cooldown tweaks (e.g. Recon Pulse v. Tactical Pulse) but the skill power curve is generally the same.

The major benefit of Skill Power is in cooldown reduction - it's the difference between waiting for 45s for your Overdose to come back or getting it back in 20 seconds, which is double the dosage. It also makes your skills actually do damage and your buffs actually be worth the slot. Comparing a baby 80k skill power Tactical Scanner giving 13% crit for 20s on a 50s cooldown versus a 260k Tactician's / Reclaimer Performance modded Pulse at 34% crit for 20s on a 16s cooldown, it's far better to have the first guy just run a gas mine.

Even with just one Electronics piece, it's a huge quality of life upgrade having your heals actually work for multiple bars of health or being able to get 33% more heals out overall just with 20-40k more Skill Power.

Wamdoodle posted:

Re: Shotguns
Is there any set that actually benefits them? It seems they're neglected. Too bad. I like me a good video game shotgun. The pellets don't seem to just vanish once they reach across the street like most video game shotties. I guess they could have a bigger boom too.

Lone Star 4 piece is very fun to run, since you can have 24/7 uptime with the instant reload on switching weapons. A Super 90 for close quarters and a Saiga for long-range (Saigas have 22 meters base optimal range, equal to an SMG; sticking a vertical grip for +Optimal range on it gives it very nice reach) is a good Lone Star combo.

It's also a good AlphaBridge combo; you would want to run +reload speed on the tube-fed shotguns and maybe include Swift in your weapon talents, but AlphaBridge shotguns are fairly beefy.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2016 02:47

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Damegane posted:

I got a pair of Skulls MC gloves with electronics and shotgun damage on it. Which should I reroll away? I do like shotties, but I prefer to bring a bunch of different weapons when I go without sets.

What's the electronics roll? 256 gear goes up to 1272, so if you got something in the low 1100s, go ahead and reroll the main stat.

If it's a high electronics roll, if you're missing crit or crit damage that may be a good choice for the shotgun damage, or damage to elites.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2016 05:53

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Rick_Hunter posted:

Why would you want that scope? It doesn't get headshot damage above 6%.

It's certainly better than a white 1% HS damage scope when you can't get a 12x scope to drop for the life of you.

# ¿ Dec 24, 2016 03:49

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Thronde posted:

What's this about Shield Damage mods not doing anything? Because my Assault Shield damage modifier is up to 35% from 20% with 4 mods. Guess it's time to mess around with my mods and do some

Complete:

Removed my Shield Damage Mods, gun went down to 35k from 40k headshots. Put them back on, dropped and reopened the shield, back to 40k. Shield Damage Mods are working.

Reddit was panicking because some guy tested them on YouTube and didn't remove the shield between putting in/ taking out the mods, so his damage remained static. Since shield stats are fixed on summoning the skill, you need the performance mods in at the time of shield use to get the damage buff.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2016 18:42

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

poptart_fairy posted:

Can someone explain to me, a big stupid doodoo head, why a lot of people running D3-FENC build for critical hit damage? A lot of these threads and talks just dump their builds and attributes into a list without really explaining it. Does the headshot pulse ability negate the crit penalty from the set bonus, or what?

Rick_Hunter posted:

With the only abilities giving you crit chance being base pulse and savage, you're looking at a 14.70% crit chance with no buffs and while it's possible to stack crit damage with mods - about 72% - it's something I wouldn't gamble on. I'd make sure that your other mods had headshot damage to increase your dps and stability/accuracy to stay on target.

To build on this, if you (or a kind-hearted tech specialist in the group) specs for turbo pulse (with pulse crit chance performance mods), you can get about 30% bonus crit chance at 200k skill power, 34% at 260k skill power, which combined with Savage will put you at a little under 40% crit out of the 60% crit cap, which gives plenty decent returns on crit damage.

# ¿ Jan 1, 2017 04:20

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Cling-Wrap Condom posted:

How the gently caress do you do the stupid lovely raid with the crashed osprey and the constant mortar spam. gently caress. oh ym god. im going to scream.

It's a pain from all angles when learning it, but once you know the mechanics it's a very relaxing Phoenix credit farm with moderate gearing.

The mortars have a radius just shorter than your roll length. If you see a red circle, roll immediately, and you'll be safe.
More importantly, if you are walking in a straight line, you can just barely walk out of the mortar radius before it hits. Learning the timing on this is trial and error, but crucial for powering through on when holding the fuse.
The chopper shoots six shots at the closest agent to it who is out of cover (for comparison, Falcon Lost mortar always targets closest agent to APC). You would think that it'd be great to take cover and avoid it; that just means the fuse guy gets shot. Designate a high toughness guy to tank the shots (e.g., Ballistic Shield). Fuse walker should use hard cover if available, and walk fuse in gaps between chopper cannon bursts.
Enemies spawn infinitely until the boss is killed. Prioritize Shotgunners > Snipers > LMG, but if you can pick off regular mooks from your cover spot go for it - less incoming damage. Absolutely try to shoot the back on LMG heavies - you'll get overrun trying to burn them down.
Ammo crates are infinite, but don't refill medkits.
Bring CC and don't neglect skillpower. Seeker gas mine is great since it'll roll all over the arena. Your fuse runner will appreciate having a low cooldown on your First Aid. A guy with the Ballistic Shield (D3-FNC or other, I like Firecrest/Sentry) is plenty of CC.
There's two reliable fuse running strategies. Strategy 1 is to have 3 guys draw over and shoot the Rikers on one side of the arena, while #4 runs the fuse. #4 needs a ton of toughness and a beefy First Aid for this; Coolheaded pistol helps. Strategy 2 is to have guy #4 run the fuse on the same side as the other 3 guys; this will take longer, but is better if guy #4 isn't comfortable soloing the fuses. Going 2 and 2 on fuses just splits up the mobs and is recommended only for those extremely coordinated groups.
Recommended sets: Sentry (Shield or Shotgun), Firecrest, Predator's, Reclaimer / Tactician's (high SP First Aid + bleed Seekers or Turbo Pulse), D3-FNC
Still effective but not flashy sets: AlphaBridge (it's AlphaBridge), Lone Star (great for high density), Final Measure (soaks mortars), Nomad (Forgiving of mistakes)
Trickier sets: Striker's (tough to keep stacks up), Hunter's Faith (Close range map), Banshee (Good for out-of-cover bonus, but any other set would be better)
More Recovery Links = better wipe prevention. Be mindful that Recovery Link won't revive someone already being revived - check team before popping. (Edit: Survivor Link is not Recovery Link. Survivor Link's nice to have one of, though.)

40 Proof Listerine fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Jan 3, 2017

# ¿ Jan 3, 2017 02:27

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Roman posted:

For not being really organized, we weren't doing THAT bad, but that last wave... does it actually end or do they keep respawning forever?

Also people used to do that horseshit without checkpoints

Like I wanted to do FL at least once but I'm not sure I care now. Being hard is fine but it's just not fun. At least I got a few prof caches out of it anyway

Just remember to not cluster together - the mortars land on the guy closest to the APC, so if you have a designated survivor up a ways from the rest of the crew it takes a lot of the stress out of the ordeal.

Clustering on the left side used to work because the geometry would tank the mortar shots - no more. Same with the trench in the middle - trench is awful since there's no cover and waves take forever to come down stairs.

A pretty reliable way of doing it is to hang on the back right of the arena - one guy up front on the L-shaped portion, two near the back, and the 4th guy in the middle / middle back down low - works great if the 4th guy has a shield build and can draw aggro even better. This setup lets the point guy on right and point guy down low run up both sides of the arena when it's time to hit the turret switches for the bomb.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2017 03:00

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Lima posted:

Got a bit tired of his "this beats AB meta fosho" line which comes up in nearly all videos, esp in the Reclaimer vid where it's debatable at best

So AlphaBridge is pretty sweet, but at the end of the day most of the other sets give it plenty of a run for its money. If you break down AlphaBridge's bonus, it comes from what the second gun brings, which boils down to a maximum potential of:
AlphaBridge: +45% damage (3 damage talents + 5% on 3-piece) or +30% damage / quality of life talent (e.g. Self-Preserved, Accurate, Stable, Meticulous)

Compare to:
FireCrest: 15% damage to on fire targets, 50% DMG/range on turret (loses on raw damage, wins on massive crowd control / Exotic damage)
Lone Star: Free Reload on switch, 8% LMG / Shotgun damage (free reload lets you take +reload speed parts and convert to +crit / crit dmg, which is a nice bit of extra damage. 1.5s reload (time to switch) isn't quite +100% reload speed, but it's roughly analogous to 50% more DPS)
Predator's: +50% damage on bleed, 8% AR/SMG damage, +10% reload speed (reload speed is always welcome)
Striker's: +100% conditional damage, 10% armor damage, 20% stability (assuming keeping 50 stacks up, that's +60% damage)
Sentry: +15% damage for team (so equivalent to +60% damage from one guy), +10% damage to elites, +30% accuracy (so +25% damage for yourself)

Tougher to Quantify:
D3-FNC: SMG stats will be about 60% raw DPS of an AB build due to no crit, but you have a sweet Ballistic Shield.
Tactician's: Everyone loves the skill power guy. +40% skill power past what any other build can do is a whole lotta power.
Reclaimer's: Water is a +20% buff to the team with 75% uptime, so it's a similar class to Sentry. Soda's a great team buff too.
DeadEYE: Crunching numbers is super wonky and I'm not even going to try.

Not-Damage Sets:
Hunter's Faith: +10% headshot damage is nice, but the armor benefit is tough to measure (never actually seen anyone use it in the wild).
Nomad: It's a 1-UP
Final Measure: Not exploding from one grenade at a time is like a 1-UP
Banshee: +10% damage, +10% additional damage v. rogue / non rogue;

Any of the sets that are damage focused give a similar or better return on investment with the bonus of better crowd control. AlphaBridge has all its damage up front and about 10-20% more raw damage (e.g., 45% AB v. 25% Sentry), but you lose weapon variety and you miss out on quality of life.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 02:36

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Rick_Hunter posted:

Well, here's a tip then: Don't head towards the Office Hideout (The bank UDBG bank south of DZ 04 East extract). Those 3 LMB will gently caress you right up. The agent basically 5 shot my ballistic shield.

I've seen plenty of folks split from group in the DZ to try and beeline for that sweet loot pi�ata around DZ04 and that First Wave agent has gotten them every time.

Everyone's been praising the Custom M44, but I think a really underrated contender is crafting a high end SASG-12. The stagger on that thing is perfect for being able to get some crowd control for friends - good aim an an extended mag is a reliable way to put down said First Wave agent or a hunter at lower risk, especially if they're already on top of you.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2017 22:27

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

hug a mexican posted:

shield guys leave their backpack exposed to your right so you could still wreck them at range!! well, semi-range. just shooting the backpack from the front in general sometimes counts as a weak spot hit, and sometimes doesn't

This applies to all heavies - Rioters, Rikers, along with LMB LMG users. The backpack itself doesn't have collision, so if your shot through the front would hit the tiny red box in the back, it'll hit the weak spot. It's invaluable on LMG waves on Falcon Lost.

The rub of course, is that the red box is still tiny and it's even more difficult to hit when you can't see it. At a certain point you hit the sunk cost fallacy and should have just shot them in the face, but I still go for it every time.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2017 02:53

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

PTS Last Stand is pretty interesting - the loot's good for the time invested, and the stat normalization means that you can throw on a bunch of previously useless gear with the right talents but terrible stat rolls and still have a purpose.

I am trying my darnedest to make a Lone Star triumvirate of the Showstopper / Medved / SASG work, and it seems to be hilarious when paired with a shock/fire turret, but it's still pretty tough dealing with roving gangs of Lightweight M4s on a bad server.

Psion posted:

Just from hearing about it, it really sounds like #2

like unless the debuff is huge so your group can just effortlessly focus some poor bastard, why not just focus on them and use something which just ... makes them dead directly

The theory on it is that it's for Electronics-based classes that are throwing out Seeker mines to debuff folks every few seconds while the actual damage-dealing skills are on cooldown, but theory and practice are seldom alike.

# ¿ Feb 4, 2017 03:08

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Back Hack posted:

Man, I hate how SMGs and Shotguns suck so much, they're my favorite weapons to use. They could really use some loving.

SMGs are getting crit chance innate back in 1.6, which is a big bonus to them.

Savage (7%) + Glove CHC Roll (6%) + Mask CHC Roll (4%) + CHC minor rolls on magazine/scope/barrel (3%+3%+3%) + SMG Innate (22%) is 48% crit chance out of the 60% cap before you even factor Pulse in. 160k SP on the 1.6 PTS is about 20% CHC base on Recon Pulse, a little less on Conceal and a bit more on Tac, but with performance mods you get an extra +8%. This is before talents and assuming average rolls - It'll be stupid easy to cap out the crits and you can ignore Pulse entirely / use Conceal Pulse.

Mod-wise it'll probably be preferable to use Extended Mags / CHD scope / Loud Vent Brake / CHD grip combo.

Shotguns won't get as much love, but the exotics are solid and in PVP they have extra stagger, so that's something going for them. I was using Medved / SASG combos on the PTS in Last Stand reliably, so there's that.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 06:24

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Dr. Mantis Toboggan posted:

I checked out this video recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR6cwuuFFSI

TL;DR: SMGs getting CHC rather than CHD is actually a nerf to them because there is already so much (108%, when there is a cap of 60%) CHC that you can get on your gear. Meanwhile, there is only a total 123.5% CHD damage that you can get on your gear. CHC:CHD are balanced to be most effective at a 1:10 ratio. When you add more CHD past that ratio, CHC becomes better, and vice versa.

So, removing SMGs as a source of CHD actually makes them weaker than they were in patch 1.5. However, they weren't bad before; they were just underpowered compared to the OP Alphabridge/FAMAS setup, and their strength relative to ARs has improved because of the changes to that setup.

This is a pro find, since this video's description has a link to an updated DPS spreadsheet calculator for 1.6, containing sample tabs for the SMG setups referred to in the video, making it easy to tinker around.

One thing is that the additional CHC means you don't have to use CHC performance mods and can swap out for CHD mods or mods for another skill.

Another interesting find for PVP purposes is that due to the armor changes, Destructive has less overall PVP damage contribution than a flat 10% damage talent like Competent or Responsive.

Does Precision still override Concealed status? A lot of the parity in the CHD v. CHC SMG calculation comes from Pulse - taking Pulse out puts the CHC SMG out front by a pretty wide margin.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2017 10:21

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

jerichojx posted:

That's mean and retarded at the same time

Good news is, 1.6 will give you rewards for fully clearing landmarks - you'll get non-contaminated items that go straight into your inventory, similar to Supply Drops.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2017 02:56

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Rick_Hunter posted:

I so want the MG5 to be a good LMG but as everyone else says right now it sucks balls compared to the meta guns. It's more accurate, stable, and has a higher RoF compared to the RPK but has lower damage and a glacial reload on par with the M60 and M249. For an additional ~15 rounds in your magazine you too can suffer a 5.5 second reload on sub par LMG...or trade those 15 rounds for RPK and benefit from some of the best hipfire accuracy in the game, decent damage, and a modest 2 second reload.

I still have that Destructive/Brutal/Ferocious MG5 that the advanced weaponry vendor was selling about 3 weeks ago but right now it's a paperweight.

Goes great with Lone Star for that exact reason - been using a Destructive/Brutal/Skilled MG5 paired with a Destructive/Brutal/Skilled M249 on a Tactical Link oriented build for farming solo and it cleans up real well, with the signature back up every other wave in a mission.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2017 02:27

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

HiriseSoftware posted:

In my experience the trench hasn't protected me from the mortars, do you have to stand underneath the little grated walkway? I'll try Lexington though. Falcon Lost is still fun as you go through it and the LMB on the comms get more desperate. Plus the music!

Haven't we wiped all of these factions out by now? How many sanitation workers does NYC have?

They've fixed most of the hitbox issues with the mortar, so it'll hit you no matter where you're taking cover. It's also got a nasty delayed active burst that will still light you on fire shortly after the actual impact.

The mortar in Falcon Lost targets the guy closest to the APC, which means you can bait it as long as the whole group isn't huddling on top of each other. This is more difficult in the trench since it's horizontal compared to the APC, so it's a tossup where it's going to land.

I'm not a fan of the trench since the waves take twice as long due to waiting for folks to filter down there - the fastest, cleanest way I've run it in 1.5 has been on the right side - great lines of sight, plenty of cover, and 2 levels (if folks are on the top level, drop down to bottom level, and vice versa).

If you have a Nimble holster, it's worth its weight in gold in Falcon Lost - you're constantly bouncing from cover to cover in the process of dodging adds and mortars.

Nimble's going to be even more valuable in 1.6 for low skillpower builds, since First Aid's getting a nerf and health pools are getting bigger overall.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2017 02:40

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

I can't stop buying the Loud Vent Brakes at the birdcoin vendor for all my SMGs - 18% CHD, 6% HSD, 3% CHC for 200 coins a pop is a great deal.

Goes great with the Hildr/Eir combo.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2017 07:45

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

GET MY BELT SON posted:

So i finally got a MDR to drop and it has capable and talented

currently running a firearms build

what should i reroll and to what?

Reroll Talented to either Brutal or Destructive and you'll have a good time. Capable's not bad to keep on there since the MDR has a decent amount of bloom.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2017 01:24

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Roman posted:

anyway, can the Showstopper be any good with Striker? I've got Responsive/Accurate on one

Showstopper with accuracy mods builds stacks like crazy - Accurate helps even further. Staying in cover helps tremendously, as does a Stability roll on the backpack. Those are really about the best talents you can get on one - mine currently has Brutal/Unforgiving, but I'd trade either one for Accurate.

I'm running the Showstopper with an all-HE Skulls MC build, and it's really solid in Legendary missions in blind-fire - stops swarms of shotgunners in Warrengate in their tracks.

Speaking of Legendary missions, a group I was with the other night had a really great tactic for the assault on Napalm Production Factory - starting out at the top of the third floor of the scaffolding right by where the enemies are streaming out from. When the giant swarm of shotgun scouts come out, the AI gets a bit confused and tries to flank three floors down, which allows enough time to safely burn them down.

Once the initial swarm is dealt with and the First Wave agents start coming out with the grenadier / shield heavy combo, that's a good time to get down to ground level and slowly fall back while popping weak points, but that top spot is a great initiation point.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2017 07:17

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Roller derby disco gas seekers is another good pulse replacement if you're carrying a bunch of folks who think that 90k SP Tac Pulses are a good idea and didn't bring any crowd control.

Psion posted:

If you're expecting to be the one person carrying a team of randos, IMO bring pulse/defib shot TA. You'll be a lot more flexible than trying to corral downed players into your station radius, even with the boosted radius from Reclaimer. Your pulse will give everyone huge damage increases and your defib can be fired to revive or overheal someone in a much larger area than a station.

if you have a coordinated team, a reclaimer station is good though. why yes I love infinite ammo and status immunity with a Deadeye or similar dps build, why do you ask?

there's a pattern to the fire shots which you can use to avoid having to huddle in stations - basically you only have to move around 2/3 of the map even when they're lighting the whole thing up because fire burns out from the first rocket at the same time the sixth rocket lands.

basically the map is a 3x3 grid of squares, like this:
code:
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
pretend the truck is in 8, for the purposes of this. If it fires 1-2-3-6-5-4, which I see all the time, just move in that pattern yourself ahead of the rockets - move across the map 1-2-3, down to 6, back the other way 6-5-4, then roll into 1 as the rocket lands in 4. The fire will go out and you'll be on fire a little bit depending on how well you time it but not enough to cause real trouble. If you have an immunizer and can toss it near the border of 1 and 4, you're really set.

there's another bonus to doing this: you don't have to care what the rockets or truck do in 7-8-9 because you aren't down there. You don't get pushed around by the turret flamethrower or the ground-level Cleaner spawns flanking you or any of that nonsense. The only spawns you really need to get on fast are the sniper ones and you already know how to deal with those.

Running the grid is super solid Dragon's Nest advice, folks, listen to the above and save yourself much stress.

Another major stress reduction is to have a guy with a strong turret (be it FireCrest, Tactician's, or whatever) throw his turret physically on top of the fire truck (in grid #8, per Psion's example). The flamethrower will aggro on the turret, the turret will pull mobs to it, and the turret will eat flames with style since the flamethrower does really small damage for some reason.

You can drop it either on the left or right front corner of the truck with a hefty verticle arc; if the adds are getting in the way of a good drop, put it on top of one of the boxes as far up as you can. This will let you get more aggressive running in grid 7/8/9 for the later phases when the switches are closer to the truck.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2017 01:35

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

IM DAY DAY IRL posted:

you know, despite the fact that chasing exotics is basically the game for me right now I can not bring myself to poopsock missions for the weekly. I'd legitimately prefer to cycle sub-1k point survival runs over more lex repeats.

Legendary missions count for the weekly, so there's 3 right there. Combine with doing the dailies a few times over the week (or just doing more Legendaries), and it goes by a whole lot faster than it used to. Worst comes to worst, running Madison Square Garden solo with a Tactical Link-focused build (Skilled/Commanding/whatever) takes half the time of Lex and gives a chance for Shortbows.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2017 22:09

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Mr. Neutron posted:

Is this game supposed to be so difficult or am I doing something wrong? Level 27 now and I basically die every fight with the purple or gold elites. How the hell am I supposed to take on 3 of them at the same time when I'm dead the moment I poke out of cover?

The game's gearing scales exponentially, so check your inventory and see if you're wearing anything that's several levels behind. The difference between a level 27 and a level 22 gear piece can be 150 stat points or more, almost double the range of the 22.

In addition to Alteisen's tip on hitting up world bosses, feel free to flex that recalibration station on on-level gear - it's a fraction of the cost of buying an equivalent. You'll want at least blues, but at 27 you can find purples around the world (such as from the World Bosses).

You'll want a couple pieces of gear with health rolled on it (see vest/kneepads/backpack/holster) and having a couple of those pieces be stamina will also help get your health in a good spot.

Once you're up to date stats-wise, the next thing would be working a form of crowd control into your skills. Gas seeker mine, flashbang sticky, any turret, any Ballistic Shield are all ways to distract / pull aggro / get crowd control going. If the enemies are blinded/on fire, they're not shooting you.

The Ballistic Shield and a good pistol will pretty much get you to 30 and beyond if you don't mind taking missions slower and more deliberately.

A good general combat tip is to blind-fire to suppress enemies, then pop out for better cover. Also blind-fire on advancing enemies (like LMB shotgunners). You're more accurate in blind fire than you'd expect, so you can burn down folks from much better cover than you would trying to use soft cover.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2017 02:23

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Thronde posted:

Why exactly are medkits getting buffed? I've never thought they didn't do enough. I dunno though, know I'm not complaining.

~~Medkits used to do 30% health flat, and were changed to 15% burst heal + 15% over time~~ Medkits do 30% burst + 15% over time, with the heal over time portion stopping if you got shot.

Edit: Reddit has bad information and I shouldn't trust it, thanks insert name here. The important thing is that the buff to medkits is to bump the burst heal up to 40%, apparently.

This, combined with Adrenaline being changed to make medkits have 0% burst and entirely heal over time (but not stop when shot) meant burst healing was reduced significantly.

Since most people slammed a medkit in the middle of being shot, the change was a nerf in practice. The details of how much they're increasing the actual heal amount haven't been revealed yet.

40 Proof Listerine fucked around with this message at 04:24 on Mar 31, 2017

# ¿ Mar 30, 2017 00:50

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

Mr. Kurtz posted:

On another note, is there a good SMG to use with the D3 riot shield set? It doesn't seem like a great set but the idea of running around with a shield seems like fun.

You can use pretty much whatever and do well. Try each model and see which one handles best for you - you do 0% of the DPS of the bullets you miss.

MP7: High ROF, high accuracy, low magazine.
SMG-9: Better handling than MP5, but worse damage due to no underbarrel.
MP5: Well-rounded - higher ROF than AUG, less damage.
AUG: Well-rounded damage / great stability, smaller mags.
Vector: Bad accuracy, higher ROF / less damage than AUG (7% ROF gain for 4% damage loss)
PP-19: Large magazines, guaranteed Hurried, terrible accuracy, bad damage due to no underbarrel.
T821: Fat magazines and damage, but the slowest ROF.
UMP-45: Highest damage per bullet, but bad accuracy and mag size. Converted USC has an extra 50 RPM to make up for smaller mag size. Ambusher plays well with shield.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2017 08:18

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

MREBoy posted:

So the game decided to give me an Urban MDR tonight from a pubbie Hudson run. 49.somethingk damage, Responsive/Deadly. What exactly do I do with this thing ? Does Deadeye work with it ?

Sentry combines two great tastes with the MDR, Sentry stacks and a whole bunch of accuracy (which the MDR desperately needs).

You can also do the classic Striker "build stacks with SASG then switch" combo, and the extra stability is nice.

40 Proof Listerine fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Apr 16, 2017

# ¿ Apr 16, 2017 05:48

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

What kind of gear do I want when I'm screwing around in PvP? I'm talking rogue or Last Stand. Stand is dumb as hell but it can be kind of fun sometimes.

Any of the sets are viable, though some are much easier to get up and running than others. This is just my personal take from fooling around with all the sets on multiple alts.

In terms of builds, the current archetypes are either:

A) Firearms-heavy (7000-9000 Firearms, rest in Electronics, possibly one piece in Stamina to unlock talents)
B) Balanced (~5000 in each stat, flexible talent choices)
C) Electronics-heavy (6000-9000 Electronics, rest in Firearms, stack Skill Haste)

Sets by difficulty levels in gearing:

1) "A child can do this" - DeadEYE, Striker's, Skulls MC Gloves/HEs
2) "Some Thought Required, Works as Labeled" - Tactician's, Sentry's, D3-FNC5, AlphaBridge
3) "More Thought Required" - Reclaimer, FireCrest, Banshee's Shadow
4) "Know Your Audience" - Final Measure, Nomad, Lone Star, Predator's Mark, Hunter's Faith

Sets in tier 1 are easy - get as many firearms pieces as you can, then get as much health/CHC/CHD as you feel comfortable with. If you feel more confident in your ability to stick and move, you can swap out a few health rolls for stability/reload speed/exotic damage resist to taste.

Tier 2 sets are straightforward - get a bunch of pieces that match what you're trying to do for a firearms or electronics archetype, then play to your set's strength. If you have a Bliss holster, you can do a really funny Sentry's build with the Ballistic Shield, but Sentry's still works great with shotguns.

Tier 3 sets are more gimmicky and rely on stationary assets / specific conditions to hit their peak, but when they're active, they're really good. Banshee's works great in the DZ as a 4-piece, but lots of people run it in Last Stand as a 3-piece with either 3-piece Lone Star, Striker's, or Predator's Mark for the extra 8% damage to go with the 10% out of cover bonus. FireCrest is really good at area denial and can be run as any of the stat archetypes.

Since PVP has a ton of burst damage going on, Tier 4 sets aren't going to win you firefights straight up. They're much better at sustained running firefights, which means you'll outlast if you can stay mobile and at mid range, but trading with a Striker's LVOA-C guy is going to get you melted. I run these as balanced builds, leaning towards 6000 electronics, and use a combination of overheals, conceal pulses, and disrupt sticky bombs with grenades to win fights against pure DPS cannons.

My current setups:
Nomad - Rapid chest, 250k SP, Overdose First Aid / Conceal Puse, Savage Gloves (plan to switch to Shortbows). Talents: Adrenaline / Critical Save / On the Move / One is None; eat canned food before each fight.
Final Measure - Bliss Holster, Vigorous Chest, Defib First Aid / Heal Shield, 250k SP, Tactical 1911, (can also run immunity station, Ferro's mask, or conceal pulse) Talents: On the Move / Battle Buddy / Precision / One is None
Lone Star 1 - Vigorous Chest, Savage Gloves, 200k SP, Saiga / Super 90 combo, Defib First Aid / Conceal Pulse combo
Lone Star 2 - Specialized Backpack, 280k SP, Destructive/Commanding/Skilled MG5 / MK46 combo, Defib First Aid (clear landmarks, Tac Link all day)
Predator's Mark - See Lone Star, substitute in AR/SMG of choice
Hunter's Faith - Vigorous Chest, 170-200k SP, Conceal Smart Cover, Defib First Aid (Larae Barrett's Bullet-Proof Vest is a good option too), L86 / Pakhan primary, SCAR-H/M1A/SVD secondary. Smart Cover damage resilience performance mods.

Depending on your SP / skill haste setup, you can get down to 25s/30s cooldowns on a balanced build, which is often enough in a running fight.

Also remember in Last Stand all your grenades / consumables respawn every death, so fling 'nades left and right, use explosive bullets liberally (esp. against DeadEYE users) and eat candy bars if you're getting chain stunned and don't want to burn a medkit.

Edit: Forgot Hunter's Faith, it's actually a favorite for Incursions / Legendary modes, but a bit trickier in Last Stand. Great for mid-long distance engagement.

40 Proof Listerine fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Apr 24, 2017

# ¿ Apr 24, 2017 19:35

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

Thanks for that. It'll give me some food for thought going forward. I've got the Bliss Holster and MC Gloves, but the only set I've put together so far ( that has actually useful stats ) is Nomad's.

I always feel like I am doing something wrong when I am slapping together some gear or staring at my character screen because I'm not sure how to optimize the stats ( firearms, electronics, etc ), or what's considered good/bad. I wish there was a better way to sort all this gear in my stash.

When you're looking to add on skillpower, where do you get it from? Do you stack up some mods, or rely on armor stats?

A decent grab bag of the stat ranges on gear is on the Division Gear Attribute Sheet on Google Docs; it's laid out in an easy format, but is slightly outdated, since the numbers are only current as of the 1.6 PTS, not live.

If you want to get really crunchy on the numbers, check out http://www.divisionfieldguide.com. The layout's pretty awful, but the data's current as of 1.6 live and each weapon has a calculator on the page you can punch in your stats for and get damage ranges for.

SkillUp made a downloadable DPS calculator available on Google Docs if you want to tomfool around offline.

The very short version is that 1000 more firearms = ~10% more base damage. Going from 4000 firearms to 9000 firearms is about a 50% raw damage boost. That's pretty neat, but comes at a huge opportunity cost in skillpower. 7000 firearms is plenty for you to still feel useful as a primary DPS.

My Skillpower shorthands:

1 Gear Piece = change of 1,000 of a stat (205 base, 1267 max)
4 Gear Mods = 1 Gear Piece
Base World Tier 5 Electronics = 80,000 SP (no electronics rolls gives ~2,800 Electronics. This is terrible and will lead to 50-60s skill recharges.)
1,000 electronics = 30,000 SP
1 SP Gear Mod = 3,000 SP
1 Electronics Gear Mod = 8,000 SP
Backpack Major = 12,000 SP
Specialized Backpack Talent = 20,000 - 30,000 SP (1,000 Firearms / Stamina = 2,000 SP)

So if you're looking for about 200k SP, having 3 electronics pieces, a few gear mods, and a backpack SP Major will do the trick. Getting to 250k would be 4 Electronics pieces and a Specialized backpack on top of that. Alternately, 3 electronics pieces + 2 firearms, with all electronics gear mods.

Part of the other benefit of having a pretty decent SP on a balanced build (170k-260k) is that your base Pulse stat will be pretty beefy for skills that Pulse (shield, Smart Cover, Precision talent), at least 20%, with up to 8% more if you spring for performance mods. DPS builds that have 80k SP are lucky to break 9% crit chance on a base Pulse.

Since crit hit chance cap is 60%, this means you don't actually have to run a dedicated Pulse / are just fine with Conceal Pulse. If you run an SMG (~20% CHC), you're guaranteed to hit 60% CHC without trying.

10% off weapon (all minor CHC rolls)
12-16% off gear (2-3 CHC rolls between mask/gloves/holster)
22-30% base Pulse
= 45-50% CHC

16% - 58% weapon CHD
16% gloves
0-16% backpack/kneepads
30%-40% base pulse
= 80%-130% CHD

40 Proof Listerine fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Apr 24, 2017

# ¿ Apr 24, 2017 21:16

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# ¿ May 26, 2024 01:53

40 Proof Listerine: Jul 1, 2007; Baroness Kanan-Zelaya of the minor House of Carbon

xxEightxx posted:

Are there any viable lmg builds for end game pve? I can get my damage to a good spot but I end up being exposed for so long I end up getting shredded.

An RPK, Pakhan, or a MG5 are on the higher end of the ROF spectrum - run either a crit magazine or a ROF magazine, and the base magazines are just big enough to go through them and take cover before taking too much damage or supressing too many folks.

Set-wise, they go great with Reclaimer (as mentioned by A Buff Gay Dude), but particularly well with Hunter's Faith - each bullet procs the team buff. I run it with a 5k/3k/7k split on stats with Smart Cover and Smart Cover durability mods, second skill you can salt to taste (refibrilator is always welcome). Your team will thank you extensively and you get bonus uptime with your LMG as a result of the damage reduction and stability.

Lone Star LMG Tactical Link builds are fun for goofing when soloing missions or doing HVTs - get you two solid LMGs with Skilled and Commanding (I use an MG5 and a M249 variant), then you can have about 2/3 uptime on your Tactical Links blasting through waves, swapping LMGs as you empty them. MG5's better for burst, M249 has better sustain. This will only get better in the next patch, as Determined and Coolheaded are getting patched to reduce cooldowns on Signature skills in addition to regular skills, so you can get some serious cooldown reduction on a skill haste-focused Determined/Skilled LMG (7.5% any kill, 12.5% headshot kill).

# ¿ Jul 4, 2017 01:49

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