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.

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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.