Munitions: A preliminary guide/discussion

Hey Roomba, have you tried Particle Gun? Awesome single target.
Not sure how it would stack up long run. Only tested briefly, didn't fit my play style. (The animation and the sound in kinda funky kool).

Yup, the damage I've basically been seeing has been similar to chain gun. You're seeing it do a bit better though? I haven't used it in awhile

Yeah I cant find any difference really between RL and particle launcher, other than one hits 4 times and one hits 3 times. They have the same range, and I never saw one beat the other significantly in ST or aoe situations. RL was my third choice for a lot of fights, but now I may just use particle in the interest of saving power points.

I just wanted to let everyone know I have been trying to keep an open mind about the quicker powers: 50 Cal, Shrap, RL, and Particle. While there is a clear time difference between these and Rails/5BM, I cannot find a rotation with these powers that comes anywhere close to loadouts using both Rails and Mini.

I was hopeful in that by sacrificing raw dps, youd see a big boost in performance from Splosion, but nope. The BEST I could do was 1000 dps less on a single target league hall dummy. If anyone has any suggestions for a rotation, I'll parse it out if I haven't already.

Also: I keep falling in and out of love with Shrap. It's too crit dependent. I wish this had a higher consistent dps

Yeah I would consistently see 3500 on the first hit, then 1000-1200 on the two aoe hits (all of this on a single league hall dummy).

Mininuke I got up to 7500ish hits. (I was testing this with pistols into HB combos, my 101 weapon choices are limited)

The burning dot MAY get you up to/past mini nuke, but I think the safer bet would be take the damage up front, so it doesn't die or your dot doesn't get overwritten.

I should have tested smoke grenade as well, but I didn't. Werps.

Let me know what you think/find.

Roomba, thanks for this. I've been playing DCUO for a few years off and on, and for some reason it never occurred to me to optimize my rotation (strange, when you consider my history with mmos). In any case, I look forward to putting all this to work on my new munitions guy. Just one question - When discussing your rotation, you keep saying use RT in between these chains. I've been looking over and over your guide and can't find RT anywhere. What the heck is it?

Apologies, I'll toss in a clarification. RT = range tap, the quick range weapon attack (RMB on PC or triangle on PS)

Thanks

Couple more things I like to add. For those of you who for some reason would like to use WM instead of AM a very good rotation would be:
WM> Flak clipped KI> WM> Mini nuke or SGL.

You should be able to do 3 MN or SGLs before needing to reapply burning. Also if playing melee range subbing for Shotgun works as well.

Regarding Biggun, it's just so damn useful for clearing adds in boss fights. Hopefully idiots using it in the hallways on 3 adds to dmg boost doesn't cause a nerf.

Also, small package seems to be one of the better finishers in the game for whatever that's worth

Thanks for the info! will add an area on WM. How's Flak's range compared to MN? SGL is probably awesome though, didnt even think to try it. Good stuff good stuff

Agree with what you say about small package, really great in pvp.

I've had more time to sit down and try things out. Hit a crazy patch at work. Anyway. I'm updating my dps recommendation. And one loadout is going to include 50 Cal. I know. I know.

AoE range rotation: Rails > 5BM > Rocket
(Loadout: Rails, 5BM, Rocket, Splosion, VARIABLE, KI)

ST range rotation: Rails > Rocket > 50 Cal ( I may quickly change my mind and put something else here)
ST melee rotation: Rails > Rocket > 50 Cal / Splosion.
(Loadout: Rails, 50 Cal, Rocket, Splosion, VARIABLE, KI)

Rationale:
-Rails and 5BM have such great aoe cones that I can't pass them up.
-RL seems to give me the best parses out of the remaining abilities, and it looks cool. Does great ST and grouped aoe damage, better than 5BM


On to my thoughts on 50 Cal. Its timing is a curse and blessing. First let's look at what I compared it to:

Rails, 5BM, Splosion: Tried this first since it is my bread and better aoe loadout. If this loadout works, then my work here is done. Unfortunately, 5BM does pretty poor single target damage. Loadouts with 5BM are now scrapped for ST.

Rails, Rocket, Splosion:This is what I had been using. It's simple and still very effective. I recommend people new to the power set try this as it's the best performing "easy" combo IMO. This is basically the RSF of Munitions.

Rails, 50 Cal, Splosion: Okay. So let's see what the 50 cal business is all about. I must be missing something because I've had too many good-meaning people come in here to tell me about it and all I did was bite people's heads off. Bite the bullet, back to the drawing board. So 50 Cal's timing is its blessing and curse. 1.5 seconds is great and bad.

Our AM requires us to basically NOT use an ability more frequently than every 4 seconds. In other worse, if you use splosion, it better be another 4 seconds before you use it again if you want to keep the AM going. To compensate for this, I chose Rails.

Rails (2.5 sec) + 50 Cal (1.5 sec) = 4 seconds. Boom. Perfect. Right? Well, if your clipping is good, it's going to be under 4 seconds. If you're like me, you'll have to consciously remind yourself to slow down. I hate having to slow down in a crazy fight. There's nothing worse than having your damage come to a screeching halt because "you clip too well". Anyway. And besides, it wasn't doing as well as Rails, Rocket, and Splosion on my parses. So I wrote it off. And then...

Rails, Rocket, 50 Cal, Splosion:

More egg on Roomba's face. But only a little egg! Let's go on..

50 Cal clipped with splosion. We can basically think of this as a singular attack since Splosion does indeed clip 50 Cal perfectly (again that's 50 Cal / Splosion). Keeping this in mind, their combined dps is absolutely wonderful.

Again I use rails here. Even though we no longer need a longer combo to fulfill our 4 second requirement, its dps is just so, so much better than every other attack in the powerset. So yes, you will be attacking for 0.5 seconds longer compared to Chain Gun, Particle, SPL, but their dps is hundreds under Rails' on a single target test dummy. I invite you all to test this and share your findings.

Rocket is used again just because I think it is the best of the "others".

Rocket, 50 Cal, Splosion:

2 sec + 1.5 sec = 3.5 seconds. Does not fulfill our three second requirement. You could, you know, just attack more slowly, toss in a weapon combo here and there... but my buff kept dropping and this just felt clunky overall.

What have you guys found?

(Thank you to posters like Starbrand and Omnipotent for encouraging me to take a second look.)


EDIT: I would like to point out that I do not advise using 50 Cal without splosion. On its own, it seems to be turdy doo doo dps on all my tests. I am kicking around having one armory specced as such:

Guts: Down to 50 Cal, KI, and 5BM.
Glory: Down to Splosion, grabbing Biggun on the way
Iconics: Both DPS iconics

Loadout: Rails, Rocket, 50 Cal, Splosion, 5BM/Biggun, KI

I just would like to say that as of this post, the front page is not yet current. I will make revisions with dates as I'm available to do so. Too tired right now.

Oh and last request. Could people please help confirm animation times for AM powers? I did the best I could but I would like to verify the info I have on front page is accurate.

Is anyone able to find base dps of these powers? I drooled over Remander's spread sheet for Celest, but I am not able to do that.

Sore has a guide that shows how to calculate base damage. Here:
https://forums.station.sony.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/sores-stat-testing-guide.84/

For the defense calculation base and league hall sparring targets have 37.5% mitigation and WT/HoD sparring targets have 15% mitigation.

It takes some math to do.

You can skip some calculations by removing it completely, ie remove the defense calculation by using the 0 defense targets on test or removing the might calculation by removing all gear, skill points, base mods, and league hall proficiencies to have 0 might.

I need a good solo loadout for survival.

Not sure what to pick.

So I started an alt running munitions and wow this guy had crazy burn in throne elite. I asked him and i understand he had 40 more skill points than me but even my quantum dps leaguemates who usually are top dps he had double of them.

Too bad the poor guys loadout confused me to no end. I just cant replicate or even get close to getting his loadout to work for me, but its cool seeing someone hit the numbers like that.

What was his loadout?

I just added this to one of the first posts, but thought Id put it here too. I kept being on the fence about 5BM, SGL, and Chain. Here is a 5 minute parse. In my mind this is conclusive that 5BM is the clear winner in wide, ranged aoe situations (except for rails of course).

Any comments/reactions?

EDIT: THIS DOES NOT REPRESENT AN OPTIMAL ROTATION. Simply used for comparative purposes. Rotation was KI, then cycled 5BM, CG, and SGL for 5 painful minutes.

Also updated first page. Tried to make it cleaner, less cluttered, and somewhat less biased. Let me know what you think or if I should add anything

so far i'm really enjoying munitions dps.
I was a gadgets dps before leaving for Destiny, and came back to try out munitions and Amazon Fury 2.

Here are a few comparisons to Gadgets dps:

EMP is way better than Splosion. The damage is equal, but EMP has double the range. This needs to change as jumping in for close range against some raid bosses is suicidal.

the AM rotation with any 3 of the high-dps ranged options (minigun, railgun, shrapnel, rocket, chaingun) is very user friendly and very damaging. I would often get multiple 3-5k crits off the third ranged power. Compared to gadgets burst with weapon mastery, munitions AM with the ranged option is about equal.

Overall, I'm enjoying the power, but something needs to be done about Splosion's pathetic range.