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  1. #1
    Sircowdog1's Avatar Senior Member
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    What I've learned after 2 weeks of trying skill builds.

    They aren't good.

    Sure, you can make them work. In some situations they're even useful. But not as useful as just shooting things.

    I'm sure there will be a few skill fanatics who'll disagree with me. I'm trying to be as objective as I can here. But Red builds are just more responsive, deal damage faster and more accurately, and don't have the inherent weakness of cooldowns, extremely limited ammo, bad targeting....or in some cases blowing yourself up.

    Now...using a skill to augment shooting is a better use. CC builds are a good example of this. Maybe that's the intent, I don't know.

    However, I would REALLY like to see something done about this. Whether it's through better interface, more ammo, more effective status...or what. I don't know. I just know that there's a distinct imbalance right now, where Red builds are just better than any other build.

    If someone has a different explanation of the situation, I'd love to hear it. Because what I've seen through first hand experience tells me otherwise.
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  2. #2
    BioXTC's Avatar Senior Member
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    From my personal experience there are 3 skill builds that are usable. CC, which is awesome, healing, which can feel useless at times but nevertheless is strong, and mortar explosive build for DPS. That build can easily wreck red builds in most missions.

    The other combos just feel clunky and mediocre. I see people running sniper turret pretty often, but it doesn’t hold a candle to mortar.

    Really the main issues with skills are too low of damage, too long CDs, minimal utility in actual gameplay, and buggy/clunky deployment and behavior.

    A lot of the skills have all or a combination of those issues that makes them unusable or a really bad choice compared to a clearly better skill. Example: flame turret vs air burst vs firestarter.
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  3. #3
    Merphee's Avatar Volunteer Moderator
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    Skills require more "start up" than aiming a gun. A skill can dish out the same amount of damage as a fully offensive build, but just at a much slower pace, to a point where NPCs often have the advantage in between uses.
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  4. #4
    NLxAROSA's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by Merphee Go to original post
    Skills require more "start up" than aiming a gun. A skill can dish out the same amount of damage as a fully offensive build, but just at a much slower pace, to a point where NPCs often have the advantage in between uses.
    Yup. The difference between skill/weapon builds is pretty small when enemy armor pools are small, so you can proc kill-based talents easily. But at the higher difficulties a red build just keeps on dishing out at a continuous pace while the skill build peaks, drops, peaks, drops, etc.

    I'd say that up to Challenging (in most cases) a skill build is fine and fun, but above I'd pick a red build anytime.
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  5. #5
    The.Smint's Avatar Member
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    Plus, it's pretty boring just waiting in cover while your underpowered skills try to do the work.

    I played around with the mortar turret build a bit, it worked, but waaaay slower than my red DPS build. Plus when there is a rusher you are fcked.
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  6. #6
    Skill builds are a godsent in group play on higher difficulty settings. I was in a group with a dude that repeatedly took down waves of Black Tusk drones with his pulse. Those are a problem otherwise. Same goes for competent healer builds. You quickly develop a significant appreciation for those on higher difficulties.
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  7. #7
    The.Smint's Avatar Member
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    Yes, in groups a good skill build can make all the difference. I prefer solo so it's a little less viable. Maybe I should invest some time in a decent hybrid build, but not before the NPC's get nerfed a bit on some missions.
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  8. #8
    mrwtw's Avatar Senior Member
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    I love having people good with the Mortar or sniper turret in my group. Also, a good healer/jammer on higher difficulties.

    Mine is effective up to heroic difficulty. Basic 4 piece HW with Seekers and Stinger, but the key is to use the HW backpack to reduce the “Feedback Loop” cool down to 10 seconds.

    I use a China Light chest with glass cannon rolled on it, and gloves from the brand that gives 10% skill damage. Demo.
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  9. #9
    inb4
    my wife's son always comes first in damage with his turret & seeker build so you are WRONG
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  10. #10
    Noxious81's Avatar Senior Member
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    I also currently see three main skill-based builds:

    The Skill-DD
    You invest into skill haste and damage, you equip brands for skill haste and damage as well as explosive damage and use the Demolitionist as specialization. Possible skills, variants and talents for such a build are the cluster seekers, mortar turret (e. g. with backpack talent Shock and Awe), automatic turret (e. g. with talents Skilled and Tech Support) or the attack drone. While I prefer the automatic turret while playing solo, I often use the mortar when in a team. You could also use the sticky bomb in this build. I mainly use this build for solo speedruns on challenging difficulty. The automatic turret has a cooldown of approx. 10 seconds, the seekers are around 21 seconds (but can be used way more often thanks to Skilled). Oh, and make sure to have Spike as a talent on your gun.

    The Reclaimer
    A good healer is a nice thing to have in some missions. I play mine with the Survivalist specialization, invested into skill haste and repair skills including the respective brands. The repair chem launcher has 8 or 9 (I don't know atm, sorry) shots, a cooldown of 14 seconds and heals 1.3 million HP. As the second skill I use the repair hive with a cooldown of 1 second per charge and (if I recall this correctly) a healing of 375k per charge. Useful talents for supportive healers are: Safeguard, Overclock (both on backpacks), Kinetic Momentum, Empathic Resolve, Overwatch (all vest), and of course Reformation as your weapon's talent

    The CC
    I think a good CC is almost mandatory for legendary missions. Investing in status effects and skill haste and respective brands. The goal should be to have the cooldown of your firefly shorter than you can make the blind status effect last. As I personally don't like to be the CC, I don't have a build to call my own, but here are also a lot of talents, that can be of great use. Such as Perpetuation.

    So don't give up on those skill builds to early, they can be fun, they can be useful, and they can be essential!
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