Buid Divesity- Skill Dmg Builds on Heroic and Legendary. SOLO player perspective.
I believe harder content, Heroic but most of all Legendary, are tuned in a way that it forces a particular playstyle, meaning build and distance for engagement, in detriment of other options in the game.
Builds, talents, skills are all content for me, and not to be able to feel that variety to work and feel rewarding and powerfull in the harder content it's a bit unfair.
I'm talking about dmg per second and clearing time. Also about effectiveness of dmg skills. I want to be clear that I don't want the tu7 skill damage seeker and hive power. Which made all content trivial. But I'm comparing with the other type of builds that actually work on harder content.
On my explosive skill dmg build I can make the Sticky bomb up to 11.4 millon dmg. Using glass Cannon, perfect combined arms and the new Harmony. Which is almost the max dmg you can get without boost from your team. With spike I can go up to 10,2 mill. That is indeed enough to kill an elite npc from that one sticky, barely. An elite NPC has 9,8 armor and health on Heroic. On top of that I have a 12 second CD.
With my M1A build also glass cannon I need two crits to the head or three to the body to kill and elite, and I still has 13 more bullets, no cooldown. I can even use focus and take the mobs in the distance. Which is much needed on Legendary Solo, and also a good strat on heroic.
Cluster seekers, even with the improved accuracy, are good when group composition. But when solo Cooldown is just too much for the dmg they provide. With the same build I can hit up to 6 mill per seeker. And I have a 23 cooldown. So even If every seeker hits the target, its the same as a 2 crit shot to the m1A
On top of this, all NPCs can be taken down pretty easy with the M1A build, since you pick em from a distance, you hit the weakpoints on tanks and dogs. Or even the Quadcopters can be nullified and killed with that.
However, NOT all npcs can be affected by all skills. and to change Skill you have to wait for the cooldown. If you go full explosive, you won't do almost anything to the tanks. Oxidizer is just a joke, you don't have enough dps to break the chain with your gun. Burster firefly can do it, but as soon as cd is over chain is back up.
There are some skills that work fine, mostly because they drove aggro and deal good sustain dmg, but they work up to heroic. Which are striker drone and turret. They have also a nice cd, so even if the are broken, you can get them up quite fast. However, completition times, clearing times for a room, are just waaaaay longer than running with a M1a build.
Even with the new talents I still feel skill dmg builds for Heroic and Legendary is just not diverse enough. Using Hardwire or Skilled or other talent to reduce cooldowns, for solo just makes no sense, for the amount of dmg you loose. You need a kill to get the cd benefit, or you do the dmg to actually kill something
PROPOSED CHANGES:
BURST DMG SKILLS
All skills that are NOT autotarget should be brought up a lot. I'm including on this:
the Sniper Turret, since you have to aim and expose yourself for the headshot, and has a huge reload and capped ammo.
The chemlauncher firestarter and oxidizer, this last a lot, since most of the time npcs just exit the cloud with barely any dmg unless you stack them with many clouds. Oxidizer should be a Tank and Robotic killer IMO
Explosive Seeker and Sticky bomb, should both be NUCLEAR, if fully spec into explosive dmg and skill dmg. And with that I mean, I should be able to one tap an Heroic Elite regular mob, without the need to allert them by shooting to proc all the talents and have a narrow windows to land the sticky.
STICKY BOMB should be able to hit 10 mill withouth the need of perfect combined arms and spike. The skill requires aim and precision, and has a proper cd, already.
Bombardier Drone should also be much more lethal. Mostly because it's not all that easy to control and many times NPCs just dodge the bombs.
SUSTAIN AND MULTI TARGET SKILLS:
And for the more sustain or multiple targets skills mostly reduce cooldowns.
Burster Firefly, make it so I can explode for one target only. Or even if targets are too far away. Right now explosion is just too little even when targets are close.
Demolicionist Firefly, well... it's kinda usefull, but I don't consider it a dmg skill. I do believe it should destroy tanks backpack, which currently it does not, and would be an awesome tool for legendary.
Cluster seekers, reduce cooldown %50 even at the cost of some dmg loose. I'm talking from a Solo Player perspective. And if you go solo and you got one or two tanks, Explosive dmg does nothing to those.
Hive, is a bit better now, however I still feel radius could get a boost.
Striker Drone and Assault turret are in a good place as far as sustain and cd. Same for the bombardier turret.
A side Note for the Fire Turret and the Fire Seeker. Which I believe have a very limited usage.
Fire Seeker should be a very low cooldwon imo and having it back to auto target.
Fire Turret make it have the same logic than the hive, an area denial weapon. Make it last longer and auto target in a bigger radius, since you have many npcs that don't burn, and that much scenarios that are way to open or have too many cover options, I don't think it will become that op.
With that tweaks I believe Skills will be a much funnier option to go on heroic and mostly on legendary.
Thanks for reading.
Bests wishes for all and for the game.
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