Powertech/Vanguard DPS Compendium

[Asmiroth]

(01-10-2012 11:23 PM)Weidekuh Wrote:  this list is still just a very vague approximation, since we discounted the armor penetration, crit, crit multiplier.... of the abilities.

Everything but armor penetration is in those numbers I provided. Crit, haste (only DFA and Flamethrower are affected), Surge and armor resistance. Every talent that directly affects an ability is also included.


@Blott - FB is oddly one of the worst abilities we have for a few reasons. First, the damage is always going to be low and the scaling is poor. Second, the Heat cost is too high for the low damage. This gives it the lowest Damage Per Heat score, no matter what build you take. Third, the benefits of FB (excluding Combust) are such that it takes 4-5 casts to ensure the proc, which makes it incredibly unreliable. To get that proc, you're giving up the use of more damaging abilities.

Prototype Flame Thrower
Are 5 casts of FB (and 4 casts of Rapid Shots to get rid of the Heat) worth the 5 stack for Flamethrower? That sequence takes 16.5 seconds and deals 164K damage. If I completely ignored FB and just used the priority list I would deal 185K damage over the same time.


Here's a slightly different way of looking at it.
Prototype Particle Accelerator
FB has a net gain of 8.5 Heat. That's 1.1 casts of Rapid Shots to lose the heat, so FB has a cast time of 3.15 seconds to be Heat neutral. PPA has a 30% chance to proc a free Rail Shot. It will take 3.3 casts of FB to get a proc (this is not accurate but I'm simplifying). It will take you 10.4 seconds to get a proc, using the abilities with the lowest possible damage.


The core issue with Bounty Hunters (and Troopers) is that you have an extremely limited resource pool, where you can only use 1-2 abilities in sequence before using an auto-attack (Rapid Shots) in order to be efficient. Any skill that requires an active attack to have a % chance to proc another item, is extremely unreliable and next to impossible to manage for damage purposes. In every single case that I have mathed out, it is completely inadvisable to try for or wait for a proc rather than just use the priority list provided.


Prototype has a 15 second rotation due to cooldowns. You would normally see:
- Flamethrower
- Retractable Blade
- Rapid Shots
- Rail Shot
- Immolate
- Rocket Punch
- Explosive Dart
- Flame Burst (this means that future Flamethrower attacks will have a 10% boost)
- Rapid Shots (finish at ~5 Heat)

Pyro does not have a rotation due to the mix of 15 and 18 second cooldowns. It stays a priority list.