I use the Technician spec with the Striker Drone and the Technician Hive, and rely mainly on my drone for damage. I prefer to sit back in cover and take potshots with a rifle.
I'm wondering if the Rigger gear set (which is new to me, I haven't played in a few months) is any good? The backpack talent sounds great and negates the need for Skill Haste or Duration. 4pc Rigger with 1pc Empress and 1pc Hana for Skill Damage sounds pretty appealing.
I know the new AR Capacitor has Perfectly In-Sync, so I'm looking forward to getting that. Maybe Surge as my secondary weapon.
The BTSU Datagloves and the Waveform Holster look awesome, but they don't work very well with my skills since only one of them is doing damage.
I have a Rigger build using the waveform holster, Hana Mask and with Assault Drone and Assault Turret. All gear Attributes are Skill Damage/ Crit Hit / Damage. For weapons I use the Capacitor for CQB and a M1A with In Sync for longer range combat. As far as I can remember Rigger does not work with Hives.
The set works great as a Skill Assault set as it does excellent damage with zero cool-downs (if you are vigilant). If you are fighting from cover at a reasonable distance you are, in my opinion wasting your second skill slot, that is what med kits are for.
It works with hives or any other skill that has charges, the problem is that it refills only one charge...
Personally I don't like Rigger that much.
It's absolutely the easiest and strongest Skill Build to put together while working on a HE one, but I find it too gimmicky trying to put out its full damage.
Also, when one of your skills gets destroyed you have no skill haste to compensate.
There are basically two types of skill builds: traditional (like you are doing) and status. Both can rely heavily on skills as primary damage.Originally Posted by SHD-WATCHDOG Go to original post
For the more traditional one like you are suggesting, nothing beats a 4-piece Rigger. Once upon a time this would be a Hard Wired recommendation, but as a primary skill player myself I think the buffs from Rigger effectively put HW out to pasture.
My suggestion would be to skip Hive for this type of build; it works much better with a status-type build. Rigger works ideally with skills you interact with, such as the drone and turret. Waveform exotic holster is "OK," but so long as you interact with our skills occasionally (to re-start the Rigger buff) I think it's much, much better than the goofy way Waveform works (and at least as powerful, if not more so).
Mine is 4 pieces of Rigger (mask, chest, holster, backpack), all +1 skill tier with the other attribute rolled to max skill damage (on all four). Another benefit of Rigger is that if you cancel your skills before they time out or are destroyed their cool downs are instantly reset. For this reason my gear mods are all armor on kill, since that benefit makes skill haste totally unnecessary.
My other two pieces (gloves, knees) are Empress International, each happened to be god rolled for skill damage and skill haste, plus the 2-pc set bonus is +10% skill health and +10% skill damage.
My weapons are Capacitor (primary, up close) and Harmony (for those pot shots like you describe). Both are fully optimized, and every hit adds even more to my skill damage.
Also, as mentioned: my skills are turret and drone. With so much +skill damage you'd be shocked how much these two tear through enemy NPCs.
This load out is so superior to my old HW set I don't even use it or BTSU gloves any more. You have two skills constantly shooting and receiving buffs, and when I train both my drone and my turret on an Elite heavy he falls apart in seconds.
Hope this helps. Let me know if any Qs.
Capacitor Build:
3 Empress - +1 Skill/Skill Damage/Skill Haste
2 Hana U - +1 Skill/Skill Damage/Skill Haste
Waveform
Capacitor
Harmony
TDI Kard
Mods: Skill Haste
Skills: Assault Drone/Assault Turrent
Easy Peasy, did it in one run of Summit, and less than 20 minutes in the "Holster" zone for Waveform off the WB...
Harmony from Named Cache/Global Event, oh, about 8 boxes needed....
Skill Haste is a waste on a Turret/Drone build. The Drone cooldown is already very small and more than covered by Empress. The Turret can be picked up to refund cooldown. And especially if you're using Capacitor, you should take full advantage of being able to do both Skill damage AND bullet damage. To that end, what you should be doing instead is:Originally Posted by Ken_Koerperich Go to original post
TECHNICIAN:
3pc Empress
1pc Belstone
1pc Wyvern
Either Waveform exotic holster or Memento exotic backpack.
You don't really need skill haste, as I've said before. So what you actually want is for every single piece to have Skill Damage and either Critical Hit Chance or Critical Hit Damage, ideally with at least 60% CHC total. Recalibration will help you A LOT here.
Ideally what you want are pieces that look like this:
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And every single mod slot on your chest/back/mask should have either CHC or CHD to push things even further. Everything is in service of maximizing the synergy between Capacitor and skills. The only tricky part of the gearing process is finding a chest and backpack that has the right secondary attributes with the right talents. Fortunately there are a LOT of talents that work well with this build:
BACKPACK:
Combined Arms Very good when combined with Spark.
Tech Support Added skill damage, but your turret/drone has to get the kill instead of shooting.
Companion Good because you're usually posted up in cover next to your turret.
Composure Good since most of your time should be spent in cover anyway.
Vigilance Most of the time you're in cover and enemies are shooting your drone/turret instead of you.
Memento Best choice all around for everything: Weapon Damage/Survivability/Skill damage.
CHEST:
Overwatch Very good team talent, since it's a bonus for you and your allies.
Kinetic Mementum Best in slot for skill damage.
Unbreakable Does nothing for your damage. Pure survivability.
Glass Cannon Risky, but adds top damage for weapon and skills.
Obliterate Pure weapon damage, and needs that 60% CHC
Spark Excellent in general, but even better when combined with Combined Arms
If you're using Memento this is a pretty simple loop: Drop turret, deploy drone, shoot capacitor to build stacks, pick up trophies after everything is dead. With Waveform it's only a little different because you have to find a backpack talent. But the gameplay is pretty similar.
Personally I'm not a fan of the Rigger set, but the numbers are pretty similar as far as skill damage calculations. Where it falls off is in the weapon damage category. It's not a bad place to start for gear farming since sets are MUCH easier to collect, but eventually you want to be using a high-end set so you can get that skill damage AND critical damage.
Hello there, fellow Agents!! I have a question in regards to Skill builds. If one is running Technician, which grants an extra skill tier, is there any benefit to wearing six +1 skill tier gear pieces? I know about the Overcharge effect that comes with the Future Perfect gun talent, but I was thinking that six skill tiers was the maximum that the skill builds could recognize.
With my build, I rolled +170,000 maximum armor in place of my extra skill tier and one maximum armor regen in place of of one of my skill hastes.
I was told there is no benefit for a 7th tier. I had the same thought but found out its a waste.GhostAgent14
Hello there, fellow Agents!! I have a question in regards to Skill builds. If one is running Technician, which grants an extra skill tier, is there any benefit to wearing six +1 skill tier gear pieces? I know about the Overcharge effect that comes with the Future Perfect gun talent, but I was thinking that six skill tiers was the maximum that the skill builds could recognize.
With my build, I rolled +170,000 maximum armor in place of my extra skill tier and one maximum armor regen in place of of one of my skill hastes.
Nope, cool down is still 10 seconds, and on Solo Heroic, that's instant death. Got to have skills back instantly....Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
Play your way, I'll play mine...
Toodles!
There is no direct benefit. Skill Tier caps at 6 and anything past that through passive means(gear or technician) is wasted. This is why the build I posted has a piece of Belstone Armory, or suggests maybe recalibrating a piece of gear to have weapon damage.Originally Posted by GhostAgent14 Go to original post
But where it can become important is if you have anything that gives a temporary boost to skill tier, thus triggering overcharge. The most common version of this would be the weapon talent Future Perfect.