Thoughts on Ongoing Directive
In the "How would you fix the worst gear sets? Mk.2" thread I was replying to the following,
Quote:
Originally Posted by
xJdKxZomBiE
Ongoing directive with the Carnage LMG? Dirty. I run Summit a lot with that build and outside on robo dogs, the setup absolutely destroys groups of enemies, especially when paired with BTSU gloves and a stinger hive.
when I realized it might make more sense to start a separate thread about this specific topic. So:
Yeah, there are bits of important information that they don't give you in the descriptions that clue you in about what to use with certain gearsets. I've been playing with Ongoing Directive for the last day or so, in an all-red build. I started with The Grudge (CMMG Banshee SMG with Perfectly Vindictive) and Scorpio; the problem with lack of range quickly became apparent. (I'm not a close-range guy.) I switched to an AR with Sadist, which worked better, and exposed that you need to be able to kill an enemy within less than 50 rounds to keep the buffs going. So I switched to a rifle which worked a lot better (and which I prefer anyway) and only then noticed that you get one magazine's worth of Hollow Point ammo on a kill. So yeah, Carnage came out of my stash and is waiting to go into a rebuild.
I still have doubts about Ongoing Directive, though. It doesn't seem to be so much about doing damage with status effects as keeping a chain of status effects going to do more weapon damage. (Even the buff from the third piece, +20% reload speed, is a weapon damage buff.) And sure weapon damage buffs such as +20%/+35% OG and +25% from Carnage are both nice, but the problem is that these are weapon damage buffs on a multiplier that's already usually large, not a separate multiplier like total weapon damage that you can get from talents like Composure. If you have a typical 120% weapon damage modifier (weapon, specialization, 6 core attributes: 8 * 15% = 120%), Composure's 15% TWD alone gives you 2.20 * 1.15 = 2.53, or the equivalant of 2.53 - 2.20 = 33% weapon damage, with a lot less work to manage the buff and no risk of it failing (unless you fumble-finger your move into cover).
I'd be interested in knowing a bit more about your Ongoing Directive build and how you make use of it. Is it full-red or a mix? What's your secondary weapon, and does it contribute? How do you make best use of the hive?
(And if anybody else has anything to contribute about Ongoing Directive, excepting useless "I personally hate it" comments, please do chime in.)
Edit: And there are a few other questions that come to mind that I forgot to include when I first posted this:
- What's the best way to kick off the OG buffs if you don't happen to have special ammo on a weapon, especially if you're starting out at medium to long range (30 m or more)? An incendiary grenade from the Survivalist specialization? (I've been using these regularly, and I seem to run out pretty quickly.)
- Is it worth losing 15% weapon damage (about 6% overall in a high-red build) to use Trauma on chest instead of OG? This at least solves the "kick it off" and restarting a broken chain issue above.
- How much damage does bleed really do, anyway? I've not seen this documented anywhere.
- And bleed procs only once on an enemy and never again until the bleed duration finishes, right? So you can't stack up a lot of bleed to more quickly kill an enemy? (I.e., a bullet that gives you bleed is no different from an ordinary bullet on an already-bleeding enemy, except for the +20%/+35% weapon damage you get from bullets that are Hollow Point, right?)