[PVE] Need help optimising skill use
I dunno it depends on the encounter. If you’re stacking might with BoB as an opener, of course you could displace your boss and mess up your group’s cc rotation, but I’m sure you know that.. I’ve actually found that thumper turret is better for stacking might at the risk of loss of heals and trading your stun breaker for another finisher. It’s bad for sustained might gain because of the cooldowns though. If you have experimental turrets traited, you offer group protection if you decide to leave it out. To tell the truth, I use napalm for all the long setups for might stacking. There’s no delay on it like with bomb kit and the window is so huge for all your finisher rotations. You don’t really need flame aura since at best you’ll probably get 1 stack of might from a bosses attack, but jumpshot’s 2 hits are great vulnerability stacker. What’s really needed is knowing your party’s rolls. If you have eles on your team or others that stack group might and fury, you’d be better off with grenades for vuln stacking. If you decide to use healing turret instead for might and fury share from the runes you run, you also get 2 conditition cleanses for party out of it, perma regen and another blast finisher, but you run the risk of messing up fire fields that are on the ground with the turret’s overcharge water field. if you’re after personal might stacking, zerkers with strength sigil and the dry top roasted cactus dish will help you stack more sustained personal might. And I always assumed bomb kit hits were more damaging than hip shot to single targets, you can also sustain dps while you dodge due to the explosives line.
But yeah I’ve gotten up to 18-21 stacks of group might with BoB > Napalm > Flame Blast (~detonate, it’s tricky, you might want to have something targeted before you try if you use 3/4 ovehead cam like i do, otherwise you have to almost mash double-tap) deploy healing turret, deploy thumper turret, overcharge thumper, detonate thumper > rumble (stun break) > detonate healing turret > stow kit, double tap shield 4 > swap back to flamethrower and double tap flame blast again. That’s a lot of might if you decide to take along a shield, though the runes don’t have power so you’d be losing personal dps increase your party’s dps. Hopefully it’s worth the group benefit of 3 might stacks on heal and fury.
For hybrid vuln/might builds, I just do hgh with triple elixirs and grenades and condi duration food. You can add acidic elixirs to boon strip if you like. You can get up to 9 stacks of group might and 16 personal might just downing all elixirs and tossing them on your stacked group. this is before any crits with sigil of strength or procking sigil of battle. The might duration on these is pretty long, and if you equip trinkets with boon duration, you can get really high personal stacks and keep 25 stacks of vuln on boss at all times. You just would have to give up incendiary powder for enhanced performance, which is okay if you have party members that do burning better. This might be really great for soloing with carrion or (ideally) sinister gear.
After your rotation you basically autoattack with the bomb kit for damage. Drop fire bomb, flame blast + detonate flame blast, keep autoattacking with bomb kit and then do your whole rotation again.
Thanks for the detailed replies!
I have seriously considered Thumper Turrets over Elixir Gun, especially since Acid Bomb’s displacement has, on some occasions, caused grief to me and my party. (I know it’s technically possible to cancel the jump animation, but insofar as I have tried, there’s still a 200 unit jump, unless I’m doing it wrong.) However the problem I’ve had in execution with Thumpers is the delay over Overload, which makes it rather difficult to time Detonate Turret while trying to spot the Thumper’s attack animation amidst the dog pile of bodies and flashy lights. Do you have any tips on better use of Thumpers?
Also, Sinister vs Rampager?
Elixir gun’s acid bomb has far more damage than thumper turret but the jump back is a little disorienting. One thing I do is do a 180 so my back is facing the wall and then use it that way I wont’ fly away from the stack.
Thanks for the detailed replies!
I have seriously considered Thumper Turrets over Elixir Gun, especially since Acid Bomb’s displacement has, on some occasions, caused grief to me and my party. (I know it’s technically possible to cancel the jump animation, but insofar as I have tried, there’s still a 200 unit jump, unless I’m doing it wrong.) However the problem I’ve had in execution with Thumpers is the delay over Overload, which makes it rather difficult to time Detonate Turret while trying to spot the Thumper’s attack animation amidst the dog pile of bodies and flashy lights. Do you have any tips on better use of Thumpers?
Also, Sinister vs Rampager?
With thumper (and every other skill in the game) there’s skill queuing and priority. Which is why mashing works and doesn’t work at the same time. But basically, you can double-tap thumper to deploy and overcharge it wait a split second and detonate it for 2 blast finishes. if you keep practicing it in your spare time, you’ll get the timing down. I think it might be a bug, but it’s the reason thumper sometimes has 2 knockbacks instead of just one on overcharge. It’s only supposed to trigger when an enemy gets in close to it, but for some reason the double tap deploy, OC then detonate gives you an extra finisher in and out of combat. Add the rumble stunbreaker and now you’ve got three on a 40 second cooldown. What you want to do is get the timing down without looking at your fingers. Like playing the piano, it comes from just practice.
The acid bomb cancel is a little different in timing. You have to use the “drop bundle” key (I think it’s the “~” key on default, I have mine bound to left mousewheel tilt). You want to hit that right before you leave the ground, a split second after you hit the acid bomb. If you do it to early, you’ll see purple cancel sparks and acid bomb will go on a 3 second mini-cooldown as you swap back to your regular weapons. if you do it just right, you’ll see the “you cannot drop bundles in the air!” message in red on your screen and you’ll stay in the kits while barely leaving the ground. That version will give you the finish. This is the trick that makes rocket boots cancel the landing roll. I believe teldo made a video tutorial about it.
Rolling with thumper turret instead of EG is a bit more man mode since you lose out on heals, cleanses and weakness on a boss, but getting 3 blast finishers instead of one is great for melting a target with team burst or getting about 9 seconds of stealth in a smoke field. You can get equivalent damage from thumper overcharge and deploy+rumble as you would from acid bomb without crits, but only if you’re stacked against a wall or boss has defiant stacks. Otherwise you get party foul knockbacks. Same with Big Ol’ Bomb.
As far as Sinister vs Rampager, You’ll have a lot more precision with Rampager, but lower condition damage. It’s like Sinster is to Rampager what Berserker is to Assasin’s. With sinister, you’ll have basically a lot more condition damage, decent power, and just enough precision to proc on-crit sigils and IP. Might be really great with grenade and bomb kit. Definitely good for might stacking, but risky since it’s a carrion stat with precision instead of vitality.
Anyway sorry to sound so deadpan but I was too tired last night when I wrote this up lol