Discussion: Should Every Class Switch To A Rifle At Bosses?

[Ebalere]

Now, I know there's some benefits to each classes specific weapon type, from the fast blasting Operative, to the slow and steady AoE of a commando's cannon. But considering all the info on forums, most rifles pack a stronger punch, at an average speed, and have nice stat bonuses along with them. Their higher base damage does many things, overcomes a bosses armor easier, increases skill damage (and heals, I believe) , it can draw aggro for commandos from a single target with ease, and an Operative with 80+ crit (+6 precision, see the E.B.A. build.) can do some serious damge to a boss with simple auto attacks.

So my question is, what do you prefer to use at the level 5 boss in each campaign? They are all heavy hitters at their respective level. For me, I use rifles up to lv.20 even in mobs, no matter the class, just for the better skill damage and i find it adds to the survivability of a lowbie toon. After that i use sets with class specific weapons, and maybe the scavenger rifle or a plat rifle or two along the way for bosses. Now at lv.30 I have a build that benefits from either a class specific weapon in mobs to a rifle at a boss. Maybe some commandos prefer a pistol and shield at boss for single target, higher damage and the added armor and stats from the shield?

To be honest, I rarely bother switching off of my Deatomizers for the director because we waste him so fast anyway. And im usually grinding with a 3x combo on.. but I wanna hear what you guys do.

[IBNobody]

I love Rifles.

1. They do the most damage per hit.
2. They make your skills do more damage or heal more damage.
3. They have a slightly longer range than pistols.
4. They aren't class dependent.
5. They are worth more $$$ because of items 1-4.
6. They are great hand-me-downs if you level characters sequentially.

If they aren't the best item to use in a situation, they are always near the top.

[Kindread]

I'm the silly player who loves how SL looks and how my char looks and with my plat Engi set and the glowing things on the arms, it makes the pairing with Bionic Claws look cool when I'm running around. Got these flashing points of light on my swinging arms. Using a rifle makes me less sparkly. What is killing mobs it you're not looking sick doing it? Lol. Do I notice a difference in effectiveness in game, with heals or team survivability? Minute because I tend to overheal anyways as I don't care about gaining aggro and I think of my transference as my favorite attack skill so I spam it whenever it's available. I'm sure party members in that past have wondered what the hell is that engineer doing diving into the group of mobs and opening with transference lol. I'm just bored and looking for excitement and don't worry, I have lots of stims. Reckless engis FTW! I don't write guides for this reason: I would get you killed lol. Boo, no Color Guard for me ever. *sad face*

[Growwle]

Ops do more dps with high-end flashguns I believe. I firmly support rifles for commandos.

[ProSophist]

Does anybody have proof that rifles DO increase skill damage?

I did some testing last night for personal reasons on skill damage and I did not see any significant change in damage(perhaps 1-3 damage, but that is a very minimal change and almost insignificant).

Also, skill descriptions indicate no change when switching weapons. Before the fix in skills descriptions, it did show changes in damage range depending on the weapon.

I'd love to be proven wrong.

[Fac3bon3s]

Everything dies in a few seconds anyways I don't think we need to read to much into minute damage improvements. Bosses should take a bit longer to kill anyways. Why worry about speeding it up by a few seconds? Enjoy the game and help friends level and get gear. Don't be so over taken with trying to do everything as fast as you possibly can.

[Cahaun]

I use bionic crushers because they are good and flashy!

[kamikazees]

Does anybody have proof that rifles DO increase skill damage?

Yes, but it is not so much the weapon as it is the higher base damage. It is easy to test. Use a Class 1 AMP Pistol (4-8 damage), then a Modified Mark VI A-OK rifle (31-64). Skill damage is about 50% more.

[Rob Prose]

As a tank I mostly use my cannon but rifles do more damage making them the better choice when it comes to single target combat. In slouch I usually rock my cannon up till the director since the other bosses have adds during the fight and switch to rifle at the refresh break* before the fight.

*Refresh break: a short 1 minute regen break right before the final boss in a map. This allows for the group to re-up mana, health, and any pesky 1 min CD skills. When I'm tanking a run you will see me pop a "1 min break b4 boss. anyone need the fight explained?" quick message before the final room as a courtesy. Some groups dont need one min tho so I usually just go when everyone is ready.

Hmm that gets me thinking: We could use a ready check button added. IDK how much use it would get IMO most groups like to just dead sprint and only stop for mobs and loot. Maybe something for the devs to kick around. MB for jacking the thread.

[Register]

I like cannons and rifles...But switching every time before a boss is just too hard and tedious. Especially when I have to tank. If I dont, ops will run in and die. Thats not a good thing!

[ProSophist]

Does anybody have proof that rifles DO increase skill damage?

Yes, but it is not so much the weapon as it is the higher base damage. It is easy to test. Use a Class 1 AMP Pistol (4-8 damage), then a Modified Mark VI A-OK rifle (31-64). Skill damage is about 50% more.

Of course it'll be better damage because you are comparing a low level weapon to a higher level weapon. It's like comparing skill damage between Strange Metal Pistols and Deatomizer.

In order for the data to make sense, you'd have to compare weapons of the same level equivalence. In this case, it should be Deatomizer and Atomic Ripper.

As I've said in my previous post, I've done some personal testing myself and I failed to see any significant change in skill damage.

Unless higher weapon damage=higher skill damage actually works(I still believe it doesn't until proven otherwise), I would still prefer dual pistols. Since ops mainly rely on critical hits, faster weapons would ultimately equate to more chances of getting a critical.

[Growwle]

As a tank I mostly use my cannon but rifles do more damage making them the better choice when it comes to single target combat. In slouch I usually rock my cannon up till the director since the other bosses have adds during the fight and switch to rifle at the refresh break* before the fight.

*Refresh break: a short 1 minute regen break right before the final boss in a map. This allows for the group to re-up mana, health, and any pesky 1 min CD skills. When I'm tanking a run you will see me pop a "1 min break b4 boss. anyone need the fight explained?" quick message before the final room as a courtesy. Some groups dont need one min tho so I usually just go when everyone is ready.

Hmm that gets me thinking: We could use a ready check button added. IDK how much use it would get IMO most groups like to just dead sprint and only stop for mobs and loot. Maybe something for the devs to kick around. MB for jacking the thread.

What the game really needs is an assist macro or command so all dps can shoot at the target the tank is shooting at. Or at least a button that targets the target of the nearest commando.

[kamikazees]

I don't think the level of the weapon matters, it's damage. And it is not going to be a game changer when the weapon damage of two weapons is nearly identical. Even between weapons that have huge damage gaps like the lvl 1 AMP and the lvl 27 A-OK there is only about a 50% damage difference. A lvl 27 AMP (if there is one) and a lvl 27 A-OK will have a much smaller damage difference and thus smaller sill change, maybe 5-10% difference. But the A-OK will be higher.

[WhoIsThis]

Does anybody have proof that rifles DO increase skill damage?

...

I'd love to be proven wrong.

During the beta, the texts did show the actual skill damage in PL rather than just a fixed range as they do now.

Rifles if I recall, showed a 5-10% increase in skill damage compared to the class specific weapons: dual pistols, gloves, and heavy guns.

In my opinion, rifles are either the best or the second best choice in any situation. The slightly higher skill damage probably compensates for the lower dps of the dual pistols. Remember, dual pistols when you factor in armor will do significantly less damage per hit than rifles, although the difference is not as glaring as say, the dagger vs bow argument of PL.

[Nightarcher]

What the game really needs is an assist macro or command so all dps can shoot at the target the tank is shooting at. Or at least a button that targets the target of the nearest commando.

Well with regular mobs, Commandos are using AOE skills to target and control groups of enemies, plus the mobs are dead so fast that it doesn't really matter. And if you're at a boss and can't figure out what to target... try Angry Birds.

[Moogerfooger]

Ops do more dps with high-end flashguns I believe. I firmly support rifles for commandos.

DPS has nothing to do directly with damage. DPS is theoretical damage against AIR. Higher base damage weapons, even with a lower weapon speed, almost always outperform higher-DPS-but-lower-base-damage weapons, unless the lower base dmg weapon has some super effective proc to help its lower base damage. Ebalere even mentions this base damage being more important in his first paragraph of OP.

I'll say it yet again....DPS is the most overrated stat in PL/SL. None of your enemies have 0 armor aka "air".

Edit: As others have mentioned, lower DPS but higher base dmg weaps also usually have higher skill damages as well.

[ProSophist]

I stand corrected. Higher weapon base damage=higher skill damage does indeed WORK.

I just did some testing on Deatomizer vs Atomic Disperser. But this time, I did some changes.

This test was performed on the 1st map of Slouch-O against the Floating one-eyed robots. I tallied 10 consecutive Mind Wrack damages unbuffed and wearing nothing but the said weapons and got the following results(All of which were non-critical hits).

Deatomizer
Damage: 52 51 51 50 58 52 54 54 53 50
Average: 52.5

Atomic Disperser
Damage: 57 55 57 56 60 61 59 57 55 56
Average: 57.3

Based on my results, rifles seem to provide 8-10% skill damage over dual pistols.

Is this enough to conclude that rifles are ultimately better than dual pistols for Operatives? I'm not quite ready to say yes just yet. There are still plenty of factors to look at such as normal attack damage, hit%, crit%, and armor.

[IBNobody]

I stand corrected. [B]
Is this enough to conclude that rifles are ultimately better than dual pistols for Operatives? I'm not quite ready to say yes just yet. There are still plenty of factors to look at such as normal attack damage, hit%, crit%, and armor.

Just so your head doesn't hurt, I can tell you that...

			
Flash	Rifle	Delta	
200	200	--	Seconds
0.5	0.8	--	Speed
400	250	150	Total Shots
20%	20%	--	Crit Rate
320 	200 	120	Normal Shots
80 	50 	30	Critical Shots
100%	100%	--	Notmal Damage
133%	133%	--	Crit Damage
426.4	266.5	159.9	Damage Multiplier
107%	107%	--	Shot Multiplier
29	38	-9	Min Dam /w Lv 30 Epic
53	76	-23	Max Dam /w Lv 30 Epic
41	57	-16	Avg Dam /w Lv 30 Epic
17482	15191	2291.9	Total Dam
87.41	75.95	11.46	DPS
5	5	--	Armor Reduction
36	52	--	Avg Dam /w Lv 30 Epic After Armor
15350	13858	1492.4	Total Dam
76.75	69.29	7.46	DPS

Including crit rates (and optionally hit and dodge rates, which just act as multipliers), the Flashguns do more damage.

The armor was just assumed to be a flat rate, but that's just an estimation tool and is not how the game behaves.

We won't be able to put this issue to bed until PVP, where we can run controlled armor better.

[THE Tesla]

more dps= more damage per second... since boss fights are long u will put out a lot more damage over a long period of time. think of damage over time skills, maybe not useful on regular mobs..but bosses take extra time so more dps wins. fast guns imo...

[Reggin]

To piggy back off all the discussion about armor being rather useless from all the discussion about protection, I'd have to say that dual pistols is best. Armor doesn't seem to be anywhere near as useful in sl as it is in pl.

Even though skills do a bit more, the measurable dps is probably higher. Wish sts would implement a dps meter so we could settle it for good!