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  1. #11
    Originally Posted by xcel30 Go to original post
    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
    Got it, thanks. I get what you're saying and I don't want to come off as that guy but I use the crossbow first on heavies in that build, but I do understand that it may not be possible in all configurations. I think I'll always have a soft spot for the set though (not sure why to be honest) but just a tweak here, a buff there and it could have so many fans.
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  2. #12
    The Status Effect bonus isn't useless, it's just underwhelming as a bonus. It lengthens the time that your applied SE will last - which is important in getting that initial kill. It probably would have been better served with a pure duration bonus, because that 15% just adds like < 0.5 sec to most SE's (that helps, but not much). The most minimal improvement on this set would be to increase that SE bonus to at least double. But you're right...the SE isn't really the point of this set - it's just the means to proc Wicked and the amplified bonus from the ammo.

    Another issue that you didn't mention is that the hollow-point ammo works independent of the ammo in your gun. You can run out of bullets and need to reload while still having plenty of hollow-point ammo. It should be like the Chatterbox in that kills just reload your gun as well since hollow-point ammo doesn't deplete your regular stored ammo.

    But in complete agreement that some other tweak needs to happen to make this gear set more viable and you have some interesting ideas.
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  3. #13
    xcel30's Avatar Senior Member
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    Yeah my problem isn't with status effect as an bonus for a set since for EP build is pretty much a must and works perfectly for that gear set, it's just that bleed is .... bleed. if the set bonus was something like 100% bleed duration i would shut myself up because when paired with the backpack you would have something interesting going on, but in terms of damage and duration bleed is the worst status effect so that small set bonus is kinda insulting at this point to me
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  4. #14
    The other thing about the back pack talent is that it made sense to me when the ammo fell to the floor on kill. I always thought that it just needed to be godly in that scavenge proc, and along the lines of excel's ammo/resource buff but I had no thoughts about damage buffs at that point. Naturally the PvP version of bleed was pretty devastating early days but that was swiftly nerfed so I wonder if that crossed over (assuming it even could as there were many things the dev's couldn't balance seperately then). Bleed being bad affects so many builds too.
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  5. #15
    Weird, when I use this set and Carnage, I play in the Summit with my wife who runs a skillbuild set and her skills also apply bleed to enemies, but she focuses more on the explosive damage side of things. It synergizes well because whether its my Hive initiating the first bleed or her abilities, I ALWAYS get a damage boost to targets because they always have bleed on them. I usually focus on trash mobs and flankers, because I have noticed that hitting them with bleed causes them to interrupt whatever they were trying to do and makes them duck for cover. She can focus on heavy targets, but even heavies can have the bleed icon on them and while it doesn't do much damage, it is still damage, and then when I also shoot them with either weapon I have equipped I do extra damage to them because of them bleeding. My bleed kit is all red so my weapon damage is already enough to lay waste without the bleed but the extra damage boost from it just makes it even more effective.

    God I wish could have my Classified Predators Mark from Division 1 though. Funny how in 1, fire sucked and bleed was king, and in 2 its switched.
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  6. #16
    xcel30's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by xJdKxZomBiE Go to original post

    God I wish could have my Classified Predators Mark from Division 1 though. Funny how in 1, fire sucked and bleed was king, and in 2 its switched.
    Since i never played much with skills in D1 this is mostly from what i heard, but firecrest had a niche for some people and got more interesting when MDR got added with the game making it a set very good for the turret and burning enemies.

    I would say that one of the main differences is that status effect were not something you could build towards to status effects from the sets were tailored to scale more with the player so it worked better since they had no real base to work on, in the case of predator what became infamous is that classified became a set that was too good at doing two different things with the new bonus being better at doing damage if you invested in health which created an issue of DPS set that became a tank set without losing his DPS much.

    Devs definetly want to avoid this situation with the mixed focus of the set in bonus damage from the ammo and bleed they probably don't want to let people to invest in being a tank and having magical bullets that cause super bleed while letting the player run a full blue or skill. Reworking status effect so they scale with world tier but not with enemy level, veterancy or player number makes some of them very strong and others not so much, case in point this set works very well solo actually, no reason to worry about someone killing your target, health wont scale to dumb numbers vs the flat bleed numbers and and so on.

    But devs afraid of making another predator that was too good at doing indirect damage while letting player get away investing in other stats is the main issue and why i believe bleed will remain bad, so the weird focus on some parts of the set in buffing bleed when it's bad for groups and higher difficulty sabotages the set itself
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  7. #17
    I am 100% certain Predators Mark is why they adjusted bleed in 2 to be a mere shell of itself.

    But that being said, a good solid bleed build in 2 does work. It doesn't do diddly to burn down heavies but its easy enough to simply blast some reds and purples with a solid "brrrt" from Carnage and hollow points and while they sit "SUPPRESSED" behind cover they are actively bleeding to death if red, and near death if veteran. Even elites get beat down pretty hard once you burn down their armor bar.

    When we can build specifically for Status Effects, I'd like to believe that anything effect you can inflict on the enemy will be boosted in damage, whether thats popping a circuit breaker box behind them and they get shocked, popping a medics drone or weakpoint, setting enemies on fire with their own grenade clouds, or flame tanks, or even the Outcasts propensity to have poison barrels around that we can shoot to inflict a very potent straight to Health damage type.

    I'm pretty sure Bleed does not work off crit damage, but I wonder if it would be considered health damage, or armor damage? Or just raw damage?

    Makes me want to go throw together a status effects only set just to test the difference between bleed and "enhanced by a set" bleed.
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  8. #18
    How does it work with Ridgeways Pride? Or is the OD chest better?
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  9. #19
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
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    I've been trying out Ongoing Dilemma with an all-red build, but one around 20% short of all-15% weapon damage buff, and somewhat short of perfect on critical chance and damage as well, using Carnage and sometimes a rifle. Difficulty is Heroic with four directives (Cool Skills, Fog of War Revisited, No Regen and Special Ammo) and the SHD Exposed event turned on.

    This is not too dissimilar to my Pestilence build, where I have no real problem with those difficulty settings. Except for today, my worst day of play ever, where I'm getting killed once in a while even with the Pestilence build (though not nearly as much as with the OD build). But a relative comparison between the two should still be reasonably valid. (Possibly the extra work to manage my SHD exposure is part of the problem, though it didn't seem to be much of an issue couple of days ago.) Anyway:

    Originally Posted by Sircowdog1 Go to original post
    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.
    Since the event includes a challenge for disrupting three agents at once, this seemed perfect to combine with testing the Jammer Pulse. For me, anyway, at skill tier 0 it fails on several fronts.

    1. The 3.8 s duration is enough time in the range to kill an non-elite enemy before it expires, but out in the world with enemies moving and taking cover and so on it's a lot more chancy, and if you've not proc'd Hollow Point ammo yet (the only time you'd be relying on the skill) there's no hope to kill an undamaged elite in that time. The enemies do pop out of cover and freeze for a moment after being disrupted, but it's not even for the full length of the disruption.
    2. The range is only 22 m. In the open world the open world (and presumably in in all but small mission rooms) this is pretty short, and I can't tell you how many times I've pulsed during battle only to have it fall slightly short of the enemies. 22 m is also much closer than I'd normally prefer to start an encounter, too. (I'm am trying to work at longer ranges as much as possible because at shorter ranges I'm dying a lot, but the poor performance of Carnage past about 20 m makes that difficult. Pestilence seems to have noticeably better effective range.)
    3. Then there's the 24.7 s cooldown time. I considered skill mods to reduce this to 19.3 s (a little less if they were perfect rolls), but that's not much difference and of course would reduce my outgoing damage by 7-10% or so compared to using crit chance/damage mods.
    4. The icing on the cake is of course that disruption does no damage to enemies.

    All in all, this has been one of my most frustrating experiences ever in the game because trying to get in close enough to make the Jammer Pulse work reliably has made me die more in the last two days than in any normal month of play. Maybe some of that is the SHD Exposed event and my lack of skill with that (I'm still not clear on exactly what it does—just increases damage in proportion to exposure on a player or enemy?), but still.

    What works a lot better is the Stinger Hive. The range isn't any better (17 m throw plus 8 m radius) and it's a bit more finicky to use because you have to think about placement, but:

    • it's at least as good at crowd control;
    • it does bleed, proc'ing Sadist on your weapon;
    • it does useful direct damage, not just bleed;
    • it refills a charge in 5.5 s, so even if you have to destroy it you quickly have the ability to proc a status effect again; and
    • it's better with the Cool Skills directive because you can pick it up without losing your charges.

    I've also tried out the Burn Sticky Bomb and Firestarter Chem Launcher. These I rather like because they do good damage and have much better range than the other options, but they don't proc bleed, the sticky bomb has a huge (47.3 s) cooldown time, and the chem launcher has somewhat awkward controls and still not great cooldown (24.7 s).

    I've not tried the Blinder Firefly. That does at least offer better range than the Jammer Pulse, but it still lasts only 5 s and has an even longer cooldown (38.3 s), so I don't really hold out much hope for that being significantly better.

    I went back to a Pestilence build for a little while after OD and it definitely worked better. Some of this is probably down to having an extra 15% or so weapon damage and 12% total weapon damage, but I think what really hurts OD is that what it gives you doesn't really make up for being short two brand bonuses and four attributes.
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  10. #20
    CategoryTheory's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by xJdKxZomBiE Go to original post
    I'm pretty sure Bleed does not work off crit damage, but I wonder if it would be considered health damage, or armor damage? Or just raw damage?
    While testing OD in the range, I happened to notice that bleed does damage against both armour (you can even see it popping blue damage numbers) and health, and the damage amount when bleeding armour is definitely buffed by your damage to armour bonus. With 13% DtA I was seeing 45,555 damage per tick against an enemy's armour which changed to 40,315 per tick when his armour was gone and it switched to health. Those ticks against armour are exactly 13.00% higher than the ticks against health.

    Originally Posted by xJdKxZomBiE Go to original post
    ...but even heavies can have the bleed icon on them and while it doesn't do much damage, it is still damage...
    In my testing, not really, no, even with DtA and the like buffing it. Above I was getting around 40-45k/sec for 15 seconds, which comes to about the same as 7 non-critical hits (1/2 second of fire) from the Carnage LMG before the OD buff, Sadist, Wicked or any other talents. By the time all that's taken into account, it's probably not doing even three rounds worth of damage over the 15 seconds it's active.

    Given that bleed's effect on enemy behaviour also seems to be the least of any status effect, it really looks to me as if the status thing is just there to give you something to manage to keep your OD buff, and not something expected to do any damage at all, beyond occasionally taking out an enemy who's managed to get out of your line of fire just before you killed him with your weapon. I'd certainly take anything buffing damage over the +15% status effect boost from the first two OD pieces, and on the pack Wicked (+18% TWD to status-affected enemies) is obviously going to do far more damage than status effect +50% duration/+100% damage from OD's pack talent.

    In other words, I'm with xcel30 on this:

    Originally Posted by xcel30 Go to original post
    ...bleed is useless so the status effect set bonus AND the backpack bleed bonus are worthless and get in the [w]ay of the player...
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