Nobody talks about Weapons Expert? (Stats Revamp)

well as of lately ive switched to ice running a full prec build weapons expert

at melee
-wintery tempest,ice bash,cold snap, bitter winds, snow devil, blizzard

with the exception of ice bash (and supercharge depending on how you want to classify it) those are all dots after all my dots are up i currently use handblasters weapon mastery first slam to ground pound the awesome thing about this loadout is when your doing melee in the raids your hitting everything 360 degrees weapons and powers. for me this works really well with weapon mastery because you cant clip out of weapon mastery with a power so not having a burst really works well with the wepon mastery

at range
-wintery tempest,ice bash,snowdevil, blizzard,throwing knives(acrobatics move), ice bolder

with this build i still use handblasters but i use the solar flame combo(not weapon mastery). weapon mastery doesnt allow for fastclipping as you have to wait for the cast of your weapon mastery to ride out. so just using the hold range tap range ie solar flame handblaster combo im able to apply my dots and then focus on handblaster clip throwing knives, handblasters clip ice boulder

You like snow devil or robot sidekick? Thought they made the damage really bad, like swarm.

What kind of numbers are you seeing from the HB melee? I didn't think they were hitting as hard or as well as 1h.

no hand blasters weapon mastery ground pound doesnt hit as hard as one hand flipslash however the trade off is with one handed you have a cone of damage so you only hit in front of you and slightly to the sides where as i get full 360 degree damage. the best weapon for melee would be martial arts as it hit 360 degrees at the same strength and speed on one handed.

im not a fan of having to grind 2 weapon just so i can play melee and ranged i found handblasters to be a good balance for both. Granted i dont chase the scoreboard i play tank majority of the time.

snowdevil is nice because it spawns for 15seconds and has a 12 second cool down so for 3 seconds you can have two snowdevils out the other reason snowdevil is because it targets aoe and works off the power interaction

i also view snowdevil as a dot more so than a pet i view robo as a pet
people can argue symantics but the way they work is different snowdevil requires constant power to keep going where as robo is out for good til death or desummon

Try the 1h masteries, not flip slash. I think they are both AOE, I think.

Agree on the multiple weapons, especially with the vendor prices.

one handed doesnt have ranged options which is why il still use handblasters. im sure the melee is excellent as it was on test but with no ranged options each time a dlc comes out id have to buy two weapons. id still take martial arts over one handed if i was to use two weapons one for ranged one for melee the reason being i can get spinning punch and smoke bomb from martials arts without wastiing the extra skillpoints going into a second weapon instead i can place those skill points into might bringing up my overall damage

Was it a melee build or range? Also much WM did you use?

Sure, some powers work only at melee distance. With a ranged weapon, ALL attacks do ranged damage. The fair comparison would be for ALL powers to do ranged damage if you have a single ranged power in your Loadout.

And here's an additional question. Why do Weapon Mastery combos still exist? If the idea was to give you the option to use the weapon you want, the power you want, etc. But, you pretty much have to use the Weapon Mastery Combo. Why should a WM combo do more damage than a regular combo? A 5-click combo should do the same approximate damage regardless if it's WM or not. That should have been part of the point of getting rid of the AM/WM and such.

with a range weapon all attacks do ranged damage i thought handblasters which is ranged weapon when using fist slam which is melee and weapon mastery it in ground pound does melee damage.

It wasnt me, the 3rd dps. I can ask em tho when i speak to em next. But i recall him saying he was using MA. And its an alert so im guessing it was melee. But i will ask em and let ya know.

To be honest, I don't know much about Handblasters. I never liked them enough to stick with them long enough to know much about them. Rifle and Dual Pistol don't have melee combos or melee WM combos. Handblaster and Bow both have a combo that would appear to be melee. Whether the damage is consistent with that or not, I don't know. That's a pretty clear inconsistency though. Rifle and Dual Pistol are purely ranged with no possibility of melee. The other two appear to be capable of choosing between melee and ranged, though as I said, I have no idea if their WM melee combo is actually getting melee damage or being chopped down to range damage levels.

Ah okay, I want to try MA myself, but I always found it hard to put decent build together for ranged in raids.

So i did speak to em but he was only on discord for like 30 secs. He jumped on to say hello and to let us know he would be back for raids later. All i could get from em was he was using MA. When i speak to em later tonight or 2mor i can get details and shoot ya a pm on here if u want. Let me know.

Sure, would appreciate that.

For maximum DPS potential for WM combos, its Bow Smoke Bomb Mastery for melee and Dual Wield Explosive Shot Mastery for range. Nothing else comes close in terms of both damage out and execution time. Or use Dual Wield Flurry Shot Mastery for single target on bosses.

For example, in the time that one executes two Hand Blasters Explosive Shot Mastery, you can pull off four Dual Wield Explosive Shot Mastery combos.

If you just want 1 weapon, then can go with Dual Wield. Dual Wield melee also can access Ground Pound Mastery, but Launching Uppercut Mastery should be hitting harder.

Another ranged WM combo that can be considered is Brawling Stomp Smash Enhanced Shuriken (not the Clap Shuriken Storm), for single target bosses.

For non-WM combos, ignore Bow Explosive Shot. Clippable. But now it sucks cos Bow Hold Range Long Draw hits harder. Brawling Haymaker non-WM sucks also. Hardest hitting non-wm combo should be Staff Downward Smash.

Rifle lovers can consider Overhead Smash Flurry, which is not AOE but frontal 180.

Very sure that 1H Stunning Swipe is only frontal, and conal at that, not even frontal 180.

1H Dual Flurry probably hits frontal 180 also, no longer AOE.

i have no interest in using wm from ranged it slows the playstyle waiting for the cast time of the weapon mastery to finsih handblaster to solar flame is faster and does great damage. honestly i wouldnt use weapon mastery at all if i had 2 weapons i would rock handblasters solar flame for range and martial arts spinning punch occasionally smoke bomb for melee saves you the skill points of putting them into another weapon tree for weapon mastery.

for ranged handblasters solar flame
for melee martial arts spinning punch