OPERATIVE OFFENSIVE BUILD and feedback

[Rodvik]

Just like to start this reply off with Great Guide very informative and useful for newer operatives starting out.

Although, I've been playing for a while now, and I have a bit of constructive criticism for your build.

I also have a guide written, link is in my signature, and I know its not the most dps efficient guide and I was critiqued by other operatives including my own guild mate lol but I had some valid points into why a lot of the skills used in "high dps" builds are useless. Then again my build was specifically written for people who want to play more casually rather than having to keep flipping pages hitting 7 buttons as opposed to only having 4 dps skills and maxing them out.

A reminder to you all, This build is for players who would rather kill faster than save stimpacks.

I beg to differ, your build seems to be more defensive than it is offensive. Also just looking at your ratio it tells me you probably pay more cautious than others not to ruin it..=)

1. First of all, you must max the DoT skills which are Flames of Insanity & Psychic Lash. Lets say you used Mind Wrack at lv6 which gives 10-25 damage in one attack and has a 6 second downtime. In 1 minute that will be 100-250damage. Now if you use Flames of Insanity with 11-12damage per second for 4 seconds and has an 8 second cooldown, in 1 minute you would have dealt 330-360damage!!! to your opponent. Not to mention that every CRIT you hit on flames of insanity is double the damage. Compared to Mind wrack which will only be activated 10 times in one minute, Flame of Insanity will strike 30 times in one minute which has a higher chance of dealing CRIT hits on your opponent.

I noticed you based everything around one minute. Most zones only take 5-6 minutes to clear. Most mobs die in 3-6 seconds, excluding bosses.

So yes Flames of Insanity vs Mind Wrack is no competition alone, but you haven't factored in the DPS of your weapon when killing mobs nor have you factored in the time it does take to kill a mob. Here's some math, excluding crit chance.

If you have a mob with 500 HPs. You're using Deatomizer so your DPS is 139 and you open with Mind Wrack 10-25 DPS.

Your mob now has 475-490 HPs divided by 139 it would take 3.41 secs - 3.52 secs to kill this mob.

Now you're using the Black Widow 114 DPS you open with Flames of Insanity 11-12 DPS.

Your mob now has 488-489 divided by 114 = 4.28 sec - 4.29 to kill this mob. If flames only ticked once.

Lets do the math for if it ticked 3 times. 3 ticks is 33-36 dmg over 3 seconds.

Your mob now has 464-467 divide that by 114 = 4.0 sec - 4.1 sec. Still not as effective as 139 base damage with Mind Wrack as your opener.

No need to do 4 ticks because the mob should be dead prior to 3.52 secs (Deatom + MW). And FoI is a 4 second tick. Of course this math doesn't factor in crit chance.

Now how about a boss? Lets say a Boss has 10,000 HPs

10,000 to kill with a Deatomizer = 72 sec (rounded up)
10,000 to kill with a Black Widow = 88 sec (rounded up)

So its 72 seconds to kill with Deatomizer, 6 second cooldown on Mind Wrack = 72/6 = I should be able to use Mind Wrack 12 times.

12x 10-25 = 120 - 300.

So that leaves the boss with 9700 - 9880 HPs with 139 DPS shaving it off = 70 secs - 71 secs to kill.

Now 88 seconds to kill with Black Widow divided by 8 seconds = 11 times you can use FoI in the fight.

11x 44-48 (4 ticks) = 484-528.

That leaves the boss with 9472 - 9516 shaving that off with black widow = 83 seconds - 83.5

So just by simply factoring in the extra dps from your weapons even over time Deatom + Mind Wrack is better than Black Widow + FoI.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now lets assume you have a 25% chance to crit and that the crit bonus is 1.5x your original damage.

First off with Deatomizer you're hitting the target more often because its a faster shooter then the Black Widow, I don't know if this factors in with your probability to crit but I don't see why it wouldn't.

Once again 10,000 HP Boss
10,000 to kill with a Deatomizer = 72 sec (rounded up)
10,000 to kill with a Black Widow = 88 sec (rounded up)
Mind Wrack can be used 12 times x 25% = 3 x (10-25 x 1.5) = 45 -112.5
FoI can be used 11 times but ticks 4 times = 44 x 25% = 11 x (11-12 x 1.5) = 181.5 - 198

So 9 Normal Mind Wracks + 3 Crits = 135-337.5
And 33 Normal FoI ticks + 11 Crits = 544.5-594

Boss HP for MW = 9663 - 9865 using Deatomizer = 69.5 to 70.9
Boss HP for FoI = 9406 - 9456 using Black Widow = 82.5 to 82.9


So with all this math, the Deatomizer is the weapon of choice for killing fast by A LOT. FoI is more effective on bosses than on trash. Mind Wrack is more effective on trash. Shorter cooldown and normal stuff dies too fast to even care about FoI ticking because you don't get full use out of it on trash.


If I am wrong please feel free to correct me. Its early morning and my math could be off. Anyways once again great guide but I'd suggest switching to Deatomizer as your weapon and maxing out mind wrack. Get rid of Lurch because theres absolutely no reason to have to hit the mob 5000 miles away from you unless you're playing defensively and Sympathetic Anguish because it hardly jumps and the mobs have to be pretty close together I think for it to hit more than one target (someone test this =)) If you would rather kill faster than save stims.

[Heavensblade]

Hey Rodvick. Thank you for the calculations. It is a good counter argument, but you are missing a few things :] have you forgotten that I have every existing attack skill so far? If I use amplify pain I can use all 8 skills within its 5sec duration buff. The key to making it more effective is to have high BASE attack. Every skill will deal more damage. Even a lv1 skill like mind wrack and neural shock can still deal 50+ damage without crit and depending on if you use amplify pain and do CRITS it can be stronger. since most skills have a short cooldown you can keep spamming these skills. Its like an ongoing barrage against the enemy. I based it on 1 minute intervarls to show a greater difference when comparing the skills. You might think the build is defensive because I prefer to use a shield and Black Widow rather than the Atomic Disperser. It is more like strategic offense. The shield gives off many stat bonuses and it should be put to use
-Like I've said before, this build spams skills. Therefore to make it more effective you must have every attack skill that you can get at this point. Lurch can be useful when fighting strong monsters since it can stun even in-place enemies like the turrets. I am not depending on Anguish's jump effect. It's just another skill that can be used during your Amplify and Precision buff. The more skills the better. And once calculated it will be a great deal of damage.

-NOTE: more importantly when you are activating a skill, your character will still continue doing it's normal attacks. Therefore nothing has been slowed down. This build is like increasing DPS of skills rather than normal attacks.

[Heavensblade]

KEY word. Like I said before I did not make this build for the purpose of DPS. I made this build using the specified equipment. That is why I was implying that Deatomizer is the least effective for this set of skills. Oh and by the way, Deatomizer will kill FASTER with this build. I simply created a balanced way for it to be effective. Since it's bad enough that you will be spamming mana stimpacks, equipping Deatomizer will reduce your chances of survival especially on Director Boss. Empathy won't be able to keep up unless you have a good tank that is willing to taunt with all of it's skills. The reason dual pistols would be faster is because not only do you have all of the offensive skills, but you are dealing more normal attacks with Deatomizer therefore your chances of striking an enemy without missing and your chances of doing criticals will be higher. I hope that this answers your question! thanks for posting up a response. It should introduce an alternation between the weapon use. You are correct about me playing cautious but before I was using blur, Inner focus and other debuff skills like lv6 Neural Shock. However I found myself wasting those skillpoints so I've decided to make a stronger build that will just have to depend on engineers and your stimpacks.

[Rodvik]

KEY word. Like I said before I did not make this build for the purpose of DPS. I made this build using the specified equipment. That is why I was implying that Deatomizer is the least effective for this set of skills. Oh and by the way, ATOMIC DISPERSER and Deatomizer will kill FASTER with this build. I simply created a balanced way for it to be effective. Since it's bad enough that you will be spamming mana stimpacks, equipping Deatomizer will reduce your chances of survival especially on Director Boss. Empathy won't be able to keep up unless you have a good tank that is willing to taunt with all of it's skills.

-First of all, I would like to tell you that the role of the operative class is foremost the simplest one.

So judging by your response + what you mentioned on the build do you still think playing an operative class is foremost the simplest? Controlling your aggro is not easy, especially with a terrible tank.

One more thing Rodvik, When running on this build I'm not telling you to spam every single skill on one enemy unless it is a boss. To benefit from the DoT skills like flames of insanity or Psychic Lash, you have to switch targets. For example, I am attacking a monster on Slouch-O and its HP is nearly depleted then I can just wait for the flames or lash to finish it off and save my other skills for another enemy. This build is powerful but you might not like to fast switching of slot 1 and 2 on your skills lol. Also the switching targets of enemies. When I am switching enemies to target I'm not completely depending on my DoT to kill it. You can also be assisted by the commando or engineer using their AoE skills. I switch my target to the next enemy with the more HP than my current target to finish them off fast. You don't have to waste all of your time on one enemy unless you are soloing or there are no AoE users in the group.

Definitely too lazy to switch skill sets so switching mobs is out of the question for me...rofl hence my build. Yet my build is still effective.

-Like I've said before, this build spams skills. Therefore to make it more effective you must have every attack skill that you can get at this point. Lurch can be useful when fighting strong monsters since it can stun even in-place enemies like the turrets. I am not depending on Anguish's jump effect. It's just another skill that can be used during your Amplify and Precision buff. The more skills the better. And once calculated it will be a great deal of damage.

Yes but 8 second cooldown on Amplified Pain and you're sitting there waiting for things to cooldown. Mind Wrack is 6 seconds also, by the time Amp cools down. Your other skills are cooled down already. You can only push so many predefined skills in a matter of seconds, switching between pages probably takes about a second or two to do before you move your finger back over your skill again. I don't see how having so much stuff spread out is beneficial. Stunning is obsolete on 95% of the things in this game because they don't hit for anything. Guardian and Director are the only two mobs right now in this game that hit anywhere remotely hard. Wasting precious times switching skill pages for rank 1 skills when you could have already used a rank 6 skill makes no sense to me. Like I said I could probably get rid of Inner Focus and grab another DPS skill to maximize my potential.

For example on my build:

Amplified Pain = 8 sec
Neural Shock = 7 sec
Mind Wrack = 6 sec

I push those 3 buttons in that order after I use Mind Wrack theres only a 3-4 second cooldown window until Amp Pain is ready to be used again depending on how fast you push your buttons. Switching skill trees takes about a second so theres really a 2-3 second cooldown window. You could probably offset this with 1 more maxed out skill and still have a 1 page rotation thats just as effective. You'd have to put Precision on Page 2 but that takes forever to cooldown anyways...lol

I don't see how you can constitute to having that many skills and pushing them in a sense where you're always having Amp Pain up.

When running on this build I'm not telling you to spam every single skill on one enemy unless it is a boss.

I can see where you're coming from on a dps perspective, but the whole basis of your builds was to kill faster and not care about stim packs. You will definitely achieve this goal judging by what you say your build does..lol I've pulled aggro on the boss several times just using 4 maxed skills even with a good tank and you pretty much have to drown yourself in potions pulling aggro off Guardian and Director and doing that just trying to keep yourself alive distracts you from DPSing as well.

I guess I'm just confused on the goal of this guide because you said its easy to play an operative with a good tank in mind but going gungho on a boss with your setup just seems like its a loss of dps cause of the chugging potion potential assuming your tank is terrible. Even if your tank is good seeing as you say this build is as effective as you say it is you're going to pull aggro. Though you did mention letting your tank go in first and building aggro, but I don't think the aggro generation of a commando to operative aggro dps generation is anywhere near each other in this game.

Perhaps I'm blind or just need more convincing by use of skill spamming numbers over a set period of time but we don't have any simulators right now to do this for us. People aren't as hardcore in this game as to go off and make a DPS Calculator for Operative...lol

[Heavensblade]

It all depends on who you play with. And yes I still think they have the simplest role. I have all 3 classes lv31 Commando, lv30 op, lv30 eng. The lack of a good tank that doesn't know how to pull aggro will be the most difficult problem that is why I chose black widow and shield rather than Deatomizer. My fingers have gotten used to it so my attacks are more accurate when it comes to timing for the duration of buffs. It's not fun lol but it does kill faster. I can switch to page 2 and use all 4 skills in 2-3 seconds. Depending on if I'm lagging or not. But hey you should play with me sometime my tank can pull aggro reall well so most of the time or should I say it's rare that someone dies in my group. I didn't say you have to wait for the Cooldown of amplify pain. Rather it's more effective on bosses that you spam each skill after it has cooled down.

[Heavensblade]

But still, flames of insanity is better than mind wrack no matter what. Even if it just ticks twice its still more damage than one stroke of mind wrack. Give it a try. After all these are just ideas. If we combine them I'm sure we can come up with better builds. So far this is the fastest way I've been killing. This build + Deatomizer. I used to have lv6 mind wrack and didn't use any DoT skills before. But I've also respecced so many times each time I time how long it takes to solo a certain mini boss.

[Heavensblade]

One more thing Rodvik, When running on this build I'm not telling you to spam every single skill on one enemy unless it is a boss. To benefit from the DoT skills like flames of insanity or Psychic Lash, you have to switch targets. For example, I am attacking a monster on Slouch-O and its HP is nearly depleted then I can just wait for the flames or lash to finish it off and save my other skills for another enemy. This build is powerful but you might not like to fast switching of slot 1 and 2 on your skills lol. Also the switching targets of enemies. When I am switching enemies to target I'm not completely depending on my DoT to kill it. You can also be assisted by the commando or engineer using their AoE skills. I switch my target to the next enemy with the more HP than my current target to finish them off fast. You don't have to waste all of your time on one enemy unless you are soloing or there are no AoE users in the group.

[Heavensblade]

My main point on this post is that its better to have more skills than spend all of your points maxing certain ones. Especially the DoT skills. People tend to disregard them. They strike more than once. 1 tick from FoI can do as much damage as a lv1 mind wrack.