In all the discussion surrounding the issue of clipping I am starting to realized I just don't understand how the combat system works. My original understanding was that you increased damage by stringing together combos, the more combos you string together the more bonuses you get, kind of like old school fighting games. The powers are used to deliver damage in and of themselves (DoT or Burst), add a buff to weapon damage, or perform some other specificity action (debuff, control, power and so on). Now if that is right, then clipping makes no sense at all because if you perform a combo then clip it with a power you're resetting the hit count back to zero and you never get your hit count into the blue let alone the orange range. Also if you clip each combo with a power not only are you running out of power pretty fast you are canceling buffs that don't stack (by popping a power that gives a 35% buff you might be negating one that gives 45%) . Now don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that clipping doesn't produce better numbers then racking up a hit count, it must or else no one would do it. What I am not misunderstanding is how it is that clipping a few 10th of a second off a combo animation can produce more damage then racking up a sustained hit count. I understand that, especially in PvP where you would never get the opportunity to rack up hit counts in the 30s and 40s, also with some mobs, but I manage it on mobs all the time and I would just like to understand a bit more about how damage is done in the game. Thanking you all in advance.
Most people combine might (yellow numbers) with precision (white numbers) to get a higher damage out. For a lot of the DoT powers people dont understand that DoTs are over time and so they spam their powers unnecessarily and only use their weapon when they don't have enough power. People who clip their powers usually don't have high enough precision to do much damage with their weapon or their DoTs run out too fast so they only have enough time to do one combo before they have to set up their DoTs again. Using mainly precision imo is kinda hard for most of the powers because the powers are something that help keep safe like the terror PI in mental's menace power. For powers like light (and earth i believe) presicion is more a a need than might because their power goes from might to precision after the first hit or the DoTs are just too slow. So to quickly answer your question might+precision does more damage faster than just precision except in light's case.
Clipping is important in PvP from my experience, being caught in animation is just a gift to your opponent and you have to plan ahead for powers that have long animations so you don't get smashed. As far as Burst and DoT damage is concerned you tend to offload when an opponent is about 30% health to try and rapidly tear them down before they can heal (or in the open world, run away). DoT is kind of a finisher in that respect, you are meant to layer over it with weapon damage to kill them off. Sometimes you need speed more than efficiency is the point anyway.
OK but what about stringing together combo's? What I have been doing is popping a power to get the DoT and the 45% damage increase then kick off a string of combos hopefully stringing together enough hits to go into the blue of not orange on the hit counter. I mean if I clip the combos that rests my hit count and I'm back to doing baseline damage. It seems as if that should be the best way to post big numbers but I guess it's not. I'm trying to understand why I should clip at all, it just doesn't make any sense, I pretty much run out of power after popping 3 or 4 powers and if I clip each combo I'm out of gas and I'm pretty much using my weapons anyway. I think I'm am fundamentally not understating what is going on, is there a detailed guide to the mechanics of the fight system? Maybe I'm reading the 35% or 45% damage wrong , a lot of powers give this buff and I have always understood it mean a buff on damage done.
OH so you're saying that clipping in situational? I mean for all of the discussion surrounding the practice it seems to me like it is crucial to put up big numbers. When I'm DPSing I have put up some pretty big numbers, other time I'm totally outclassed but toons who are geared lower than I am and I'm just not putting it together.
You don't get a damage bonus for getting your combo counter up high. Your combo counter is used to determine how much power you get back with each hit. Each threshold (blue, orange, etc.) increases the amount of power you get back with each hit.
Yeah you got it. Clipping is more of a thing you use to make your performance more effective rather than actual numbers and sometimes makes your loadout work better. Example you might decide to clip two shields together (stacked shields), even though as a DPS you would lose the damage bonus - +40% whatever - from the first shield that you clipped it might be the difference between staying alive and dying. The damage bonus is applied to the next power you cast or weapon attacks within a set time period, eg you have 5 seconds to apply a 45% damage bonus to a power or sequence of weapon attacks until the hit counter resets. The hit counter keeps the bonus outside the normal duration if you are still racking up hits. However you only get those damage bonuses for being in DPS role. For Tank/Healer/Controller clipping is therefore an advantageous thing should you decide to use it.
Ah I see ... no wonder I've been trying to stack hits and not really getting compound damage, trollers love me though
