It seems to require a power loadout slot to trigger the Talon Strike effect. I thought it would be an innate affect and not a power loadout one. I'm a bit confused on the effect though. I haven't taken it to 80+ so I can't tell it's use yet. But based on online videos, it seems to be a close combat effect. Is the Talon Strike triggered on near enemies only? So if I'm a range Precision DPS, the Talon Strike won't hit the targets I'm attacking? The only other Prec DPS artifact I came across was Cog. But that seems to require weapon mastery combo.
If you're looking for a pure Precision artifact, may I suggest the recently updated Venom Wrist Dispenser? You'll have to get it from the Quark Vendor instead of Constantine, but everything else about the leveling process is identical.
I need to get the Eyes of Dusk and get all the items for that right? Must buy Eyes of Dusk for Quarks and since I'm a returning player, I don't have any Quarks from before. So only way to get it from Destiny tokens which is very hard to come by on Fremium account.
As of right now the 2 go-to artifact combos for prec are trans-start-gemini and trans-start-quis. Do not use venom wrist dispenser, it's a net loss of dps over the other 2. trans and Strat will always be the first 2 arts and then just swap between quis and gemini depending on whether you're in a spam group or are using a power like elec. Again, do not use venom wrist dispenser, unless you already have it leveled in which case the difference is TOO big, but I wouldn't level it otherwise. Also as far as any other "prec" arts (such as gem of Horus), they would also be a net dps loss over the 2 combos I just stated. This is me speaking numbers wise here. If you like a particular play style then by all means go for it, but do not expect to be putting out the most damage possible with prec using other options.
Answer to your thread title: No. (No "buts" or alternative answers. A simple no. Dont waste your sources on that artifact.) And this is why: (Instead of quislet you can run trans-strat-gemini in slot and swap to soul cloak whenever you pop a SC. That way you can sustain your SC and use gemini damage more frequently.)
I have Trans and Strat in my art loadout. The 3rd one is what I'm trying to decide. Cog seems to boost my weapon damage but I end up spending 16 SP to get that (two mastery). So not sure how worth it is against putting those SP in my Prec stats. I'm trying to keep the toon as weapon damage one than power driven. So my main powers are all health restore (fire DPS). Quislet is more might driven while Gemini seems to be more Prec driven. So probably Gemini is the way to go? But I was looking at Horus in YT and when putting Bleed on, it seemed to do quite a bit of damage. But the video only showed close combat. Not range combat. So that had me wondering.
Thing is that in order to achieve the best precision damage you need to first get the Weapon Mastery point in the weapon you use, because it increases the damage of your combos, it isn't there only to access Cross Weapon Combos. And second, sadly there is a huge imbalance in the output of different weapons and combos, which means that there are only two or three usable weapons, and they mainly rely on those Cross Weapon Combos.
If you've never done the mini quest, you just need to open up an Assasin Time Capsule and get the Artificer's Capsule to drop. Once you select that from the loot options, the Eyes of Dusk will be mailed to you. From there you just need to equip it in styles and defeat some enemies once a day for ten days in order to get the necessary items to drop. Everytime they drop, you collect them, and once you hit 10/10 for each of the "plans", the artifacts will be mailed to you. (Venom Wrist Dispenser, Demon Fang and Lazarus Pit) You can also check your progress by checking the counter on your feat for this under the General > Artifact tab in the feat menu. This can also be replayed (using replay badges) on Alts in order to unlock the feat and trigger it to mail the artifacts to your alts as well if desired. (Without needing to play out the 10 days) If you've done this already and there are no feats you can replay, then your remaining option is using quarks at the vendor. In my opinion it is an inefficient use of destiny tokens to use them on a bad exchange rate for quarks. This coupled with the small cost of those artifacts on the vendor, (~ 22 quarks each) make the best choice to just open up a couple of time capsules and select Quarks for the amount you need to obtain them. This would be the cheapest route to get there besides doing the mini quest explained above. Hope some of this helps, take care.
You can also just buy the Eyes of Dusk from the 'Rewards from Time and Space' vending machine with 100 quarks and $250. That's what I did.
That's what the OP already mentioned. I was responding to their concern about the cost in quarks to obtain and offering an alternative method. If you've done all the feats and don't have the artifacts anymore then the fastest way to reacquire them is the vendor but if you still have the feats to do you are missing out on easy SP by skipping doing it that way at least once.
I don't have any Assassination Time Capsules as I was not playing when that was released. Haven't opened any Time Capsules yet either to know how much Quarks you get. Curious. Is the Venom Wrist worth it? Light Bender92 suggests it to not be worth it so wondering if that effort is useful or not.
I'm not sure what server you're on (or what your cash flow is like), but on US PC/PS there are Assassin Capsules on the broker for $2M
Cog isn't used for relatively "selfish" reasons. For example, as a might dps a pretty basic combo is trans-strat-solar (using solar for the base might increase, not necessarily to use heat vision). You could technically use tetra instead of solar as it would net you higher might than solar, but the "problem" is that it buffs the entire group, so in a way you'd just be giving the other dps a "fourth" art. It would technically increase your stats but it would also help the group, meaning you wouldn't really be able to tell. The same "problem" arises with cog. This is why a lot of times you'll see some buff controllers using these arts instead because they can help the group without sacrificing their own damage (because they aren't dpsing). As far as quislet goes, before quis prec users would run grim. Why? because the passive damage from grim would net you more damage than you'd get from venom wrist dispenser buff. When quis dropped, not only was its passive damage even higher, but you also get 1% supercharge regen every 5 sec (at rank 200) which is huge, so this naturally replaced grim on the slot. Even with the new changes to venom wrist dispenser, quis still just barely eeks it out overall while providing good SC regen. The strongest third tho would obviously be gemini. You could also level and swap in scrap of the soul cloak whenever you use an SC to get the absolute most damage, however this isn't necessary at all. If you don't have the money to level all of these arts to 200 or mostly just pug content/play casually, then id just run quis as your third as its the most versatile. If you are constantly running in gem spam groups or want to be highly competitive then you should obviously run gemini and try to level scrap for swap-ins as well.
