Commando - Skills & Efficiency Guide.
Greetings fellow Commandos and welcome to your PvE guide!
First off, let me say that unlike Engineer, the Commando has a wider variety of how he can combine and use his skills as well as a variety of ways to allocate his skill points depending on play style. Therefore, what is provided below is just one of the optimal builds in terms of skill points spent hence the importance of each skill as well as their prioritization of (secondary) skills --meaning anything apart from the AoE knockdowns/taunts/CC's-- can differ between two experienced users of this class. So here goes:
-Singularity (6):
Every commando's bread and butter skill. Pushes, knocks down and grabs aggro (taunts).
- The skill description is not clear, the direction of the explosion does not depend on the target as the visual effect would suggest. It purely depends on your character's position (eg. even if you target an enemy in the middle of a mob from distance, they will all be blown towards one direction, which always is away from your character).
- The second thing that makes this skill so important is that it's one of the two skills that knock down (which is the requirement for the powerful commando's skill combo).
- Unlike Gravity Well, if you get knocked down (or some inanimate ingame object -like a wall- blocks your line of sight), Singularity's explosion will not occur. In return, Singularity will go off inside a fight even if the target has died before the explosion.
-Neutron Stomp (6):
The second most important and first most powerful mob controlling tool a commando has. Knocks down all enemies around you.
- Best combined with Gravity Well, which is next on the list. If not, always make sure you get close to the enemy cluster before using it because it has a short 6m range.
- Keep in mind that the radius is static so it will only hit the targets which are in range when cast and not when the animation finishes.
-Gravity Well (2):
Third but definitely equally important with the previous one. Doesn't knock down but pulls towards you.
- Unlike Singularity, it will go off even if you get knocked down (or something blocks your line of sight).
- An important thing to note here is that the more you stack the enemies in one spot, the easier it is to control them. In order to do that, it's highly recommended that you always pull with your character touching a wall or at least near it.
- Slightly higher damage out of the top three skills mentioned, most likely to cover up for the lack of knock down. But for an endgame build, you should probably opt to maximize your combo damage with Back Breaker instead of maxing this (mainly to help taking out the self-healing Vularoids).
-Increase Mass (6):
Great armor buff that you can keep on half of the time everywhere.
- Especially powerful in earlier levels since unfortunately it doesn't scale but must-have for any hard map.
- Avoid using it unless necessary since it debuffs your dodge and critical rate, something that most people don't seem to realize (don't spam it unless you actually need it in higher levels).
-Graviton Slam (5):
Compliments your mob control skill rotation pretty well, keeps enemies slowed while your knockdowns are on CD.
- Hanful AoE, use it preferrably after pulling the mobs together so that it hits all of them without fail (eg. Gravity Well -> Neutron Stomp -> Graviton Slam).
- Another important thing to note is that this is the first part of the powerful commando-operative combo (Graviton Slam + Lurch) which is the only combo which works on everything, bosses included.
-Growing Rage (6):
The best you can hope for in terms of damage amplification. Applies a heavy critical rate buff.
- This skill is what allows for significant damage through AoE skills so use it wisely in order to keep aggro and help the team clear the room faster.
- Again, since it can only be active for one fourth of the time that it remains on CD, do not mindlessly spam it every time it's ready.
-Back Breaker (6):
The last skill you unlock at L28. Fair damage, single target taunt.
- Crucial because it's part of your single target combo, really important for your commando's damage output.
- Another thing worth mentioning here is that you can get a good grasp of someone's experience as a commando from how often/successful his combos are (other things included like the ability to keep aggro, how well he's using his CC's and so on).
-Vigor (6):
Your only self-heal. Potent but its importance is secondary if you can afford using stims.
- There's really not much to be said about this and the next one but you can/should use it as often as you can unless you have a decent engineer in party.
- It is extremely more vital in the current endgame maps where you want all the healing you can get.
-Kinetic Reservoir (6):
Your MP regen skill. Comes with side-effects.
- Side-effects being a damage loss which is why you should avoid using it if you don't really need it.
- In return to the damage loss for most of time it's active, it offers a powerful two-second damage buff in the end. If you're going to use it, it's advised to practice in order to time your commando combos (knockdown skill + Back Breaker) so that the combo occurs in that two-second window.
-Force Hammer (1):
Doesn't really stand out nor is especially useful somewhere. Fair damage if maxed, taunts single target.
- Could have been much more useful if the Suppression skill (for Engineers) was designed better than the mess it now is (eg. if it worked on bosses, even for two seconds). That is because the Engineer-Commando combo is Suppression + Force Hammer.
- Useful for getting/keeping the boss's attention although as you will find, there are only very few cases in which losing boss aggro really matters (Du'rrex, BioMech, Zyra). Unless one or more of your teammates are really bad-geared or not using stims.
-Nebula (0):
So I don't get to glow anymore? Uh.
- This is one of the skills which would've been much better if they were properly balanced post-launch. What breaks this skill is the low DoT and primarily the short range.
- To be fair, this was probably designed in order to help you retain aggro of the mobs and not really deal damage. But thankfully, SL's tanks don't need it (AL's tanks do, heh).
---The above uses 50 out of the 50 possible skill points. There can be differentiations depending on whether you want to focus on multiple targets or just one and what maps you usually run.----
LEGEND:
- AL: Arcane Legends
- CC: Crowd Control
- CD: Cooldown
- DoT: Damage over Time
- MP: Mana Points
- regen: regeneration
Here's my current skill setup, focusing on pushing out as much damage as possible to single targets hence the AoE damage is not maximum (see skill build above):
http://i.imgur.com/mojI3hI.png
In this example you would want to replace Vigor with K. Reservoir if you are running with an experienced Engineer. Also, this is what I use on comm for running the no-stims maps.
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So this concludes the Commando guide! For any questions, specifications or alternative suggestions post below!
Enjoy! :)
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Link to Engineer Guide: http://www.spacetimestudios.com/showthread.php?270224
