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  1. #1
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
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    Thoughts on Ongoing Directive

    In the "How would you fix the worst gear sets? Mk.2" thread I was replying to the following,

    Originally Posted by xJdKxZomBiE Go to original post
    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?)
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  2. #2
    Sircowdog1's Avatar Senior Member
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    My guess would be the easiest way to activate it against any target would be with a disrupt pulse. Works equally well on mechanicals and human targets, and has a massive area of effect that seems to mostly ignore cover.
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  3. #3
    I've put my thoughts into another little vid as they're so easy to do these days and I just think it's a better format for these types of chats.

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  4. #4
    Sircowdog1's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by RichardOshea Go to original post
    I've put my thoughts into another little vid as they're so easy to do these days and I just think it's a better format for these types of chats.
    The main thing that turned me off of Ongoing Directive, even way back in 9.0....was that despite how effective it might be against human targets, there are too many non-human, non-bleed targets in the game. It completely breaks the flow of the action, and removes the power of the set entirely. You're already giving up secondary attribute slots, and it's not really fair or fun to have it just not work against certain targets.
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  5. #5
    Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
    The main thing that turned me off of Ongoing Directive, even way back in 9.0....was that despite how effective it might be against human targets, there are too many non-human, non-bleed targets in the game. It completely breaks the flow of the action, and removes the power of the set entirely. You're already giving up secondary attribute slots, and it's not really fair or fun to have it just not work against certain targets.
    I agree with that. This version is mostly group oriented which is why it's in Survivalist but you can easily change that to Technician and that will bump up the damage to tech. If you go the route of choosing Jammer as a wide area proc then that too will assist in those specific engagements. I guess you do need to be aware of the enemy types and be flexible in your skill selection while you use this, but I have to be honest when I say that the problem you've raised has never been so overtly negative that it made me think mid-battle that I'm doing it wrong. It is a valid fault that you raise though.
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  6. #6
    Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
    The main thing that turned me off of Ongoing Directive, even way back in 9.0....was that despite how effective it might be against human targets, there are too many non-human, non-bleed targets in the game. It completely breaks the flow of the action, and removes the power of the set entirely. You're already giving up secondary attribute slots, and it's not really fair or fun to have it just not work against certain targets.
    Same with my eclipse burn build. Devestatingly powerful at wiping out rooms of NPC's and entirely worthless against dogs and heavies.
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  7. #7
    WrecK3rr's Avatar Senior Member
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    This thread needs @xcel30 ASAP.
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  8. #8
    xcel30's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by WrecK3rr Go to original post
    This thread needs @xcel30 ASAP.
    I was already on my way thank you but work kept me busy, but make sure as the self proclaimed OD expert i will post a comments on general about the set.

    So the quick and dirty issues with the set, bleed is useless so the status effect set bonus AND the backpack bleed bonus are worthless and get in the say of the player, as long bleed stays irrelevant for PVE this det will stay bad, but on the other hand a non timed buff that stays with teh gun and the quite nice chespiece that gives you amplified damage is quite nice

    Second point of discussion is the hollow points itself, the idea is quite great and simple, cause status effect, get special ammo that buffs you and also causes status effect, kill other thing better and faster and get ammo back... Except there are some issues with the execution:

    1- You need to kickstart to get set going
    2- Gaining ammo is time sensitive
    3- Total ammo is weapon dependent (useless in double barrel shotguns and few snipers, OP with LMGs)
    4- YOU need the kill so teamates killing an enemy that you were shooting makes you not get ammo back
    5- Enemies killed in one shot with hollow points dont count for the set (enemy has 1HP and you shoot him with a hollow point? not gonna get any ammo, one shotted an enemy with a sniper? also not gonna get any). Oddly enough skills bypass this
    6- bleed sucks mang

    These are my biggest issues with the det performance when actually used vs on paper theorycrafting, since in harder content and in group play (heroic 4 man for example) set doesn't work that well unless you use an LMG

    Funny enough in the 2.0 release the set gave you flat 30 ammo no matter the gun which reversed the situation and made it crazy good with shotguns,MMR and regular rifles because they could carry ammo surplus and the drops would stay in the groun so you could have 30 in your shotgun and another 90 spread in the arena close to you.

    I honestly have two basic suggestions to fix this set, one fixes mostly these issues the other one changes a bit the gimmick.

    First one would change the status effect bonus to magazine size %, backapack gives you extra 30% bullets based on your magazine size or something like when reloading you get up to 30% of you magazine as hollow point in case you have less than that, causing status effect gives enemies a "tag" debuff that does nothing other than mark so when that enemy is killed (either by you or the other players) you get ammo, hollow point bonus and bleed stay just to create tags.

    This one really doesn't fix the issues against heavies as much just makes the set more consistent and easier to keep it going.

    Second suggestion is using the older TU6 version that instead dropped Explosive ammo instead (https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/2141944). Changes with this version would be to throw out the status effect bonus (who could have guessed that) and replace for explosive damage, hitting enemies with explosives or status effect tags them, enemies take 5% extra explosive and status effect damage for each tag and you can tag an enemy up ot three 3 times with them being somewhat longer debuffs (around 15s), chestpiece increases explosive damage against armor and backpack the number of tags per enemies.

    This one is mostly to compensate the lack of explosive damage available so people could run 2 pieces of it to get explosive damage bonus which i think could work for some other builds, bleed is there mostly as legacy, explosive ammo IGNORES dog armor and of few other enemies as well as hitting some weakpoints due hte small explosive aoe (shoot true sons heavy gunner from the front and pop his ammo belt on the back, or shoot a black tusk in hte chest and pop his minigun belt) and it would be more focused on breaking through armor instead of just flat big dumb damage bonus.

    Heck the concept of special ammo is so vast that you could make anything, could make the set gives you phosphorous tip bullets that if you hit an enemy enough to fill a bar next to his health you ignite him and get a buff for each ignited enemy. You could switch Ridgeways pride and this gear set of place and make the set be about letting you have multiple stacks of bleed in the same enemy the closer he is and you heal based on that and ridgeway gets the whole special bleed ammo on kill which honestly makes more sense to me

    tl;dr Bleed is bad, don't think it will ever be useful in this game due stigma against predator being OP in the first game so focus on making the special ammo part good and bleed just stays as minor detail but NOT the focus.
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  9. #9
    I'd love to go back to the old way when the ammo just dropped on the floor. You could easily have the ammo in every weapon but now I rarely have any in my sidearms. Bleed does indeed suck, but it also has a behavioural impact on NPCs -- you'll hear them comment on it and it can trigger a type of panic from what I see in game. It's still not enough though and if it's to stay as a bleed effect with some minor behavioural impacts then it needs improving. Excel's idea regarding ammo count doesn't sound all that bad but I wonder about its relationship to other parts of a build that might also increase ammo (even non-hollow point ammo)?

    I missed something; what is the issue with heavies?

    Asking the devs for explosive damage after what they did to Negotiator's Dilemma and explosive builds in general might be wishful thinking, but I'd make that wish with you if I thought it would help.
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  10. #10
    xcel30's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by RichardOshea Go to original post
    I'd love to go back to the old way when the ammo just dropped on the floor. You could easily have the ammo in every weapon but now I rarely have any in my sidearms. Bleed does indeed suck, but it also has a behavioural impact on NPCs -- you'll hear them comment on it and it can trigger a type of panic from what I see in game. It's still not enough though and if it's to stay as a bleed effect with some minor behavioural impacts then it needs improving. Excel's idea regarding ammo count doesn't sound all that bad but I wonder about its relationship to other parts of a build that might also increase ammo (even non-hollow point ammo)?

    I missed something; what is the issue with heavies?

    Asking the devs for explosive damage after what they did to Negotiator's Dilemma and explosive builds in general might be wishful thinking, but I'd make that wish with you if I thought it would help.
    I mean they did make the set give explosive ammo at one point and i honestly liked, so i can see it coming back honestly. Issues with heavies and dogs is that all of your ammo will be used breaking the armor and by then the bleed will have run out so you don't get ammo back unless you kickstart another status effect with something, and machine enemies are immune to bleed so black tusks become annoying to fight
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