Preferred Weapon for Earth DPS

Wait, what? Why?

I'm not disagreeing with your point of view.

But I've seen you make several post in the past, with little to no points and accusing stuff of being exploits, yet they aren't exploits.

"First let's talk about exploits that were not removed on other powers...

Gadgets and Mental..Hit EMP or MT and than distract and than EMP or MT again...your first EMP/MT can get the boosted damage than you follow that up with another boosted hit. That can be over 200K in a very short time. Why has this not been resolved?

Atomic combo can hit just as hard at Geiger abilities. I have some combo hitting for 40K regularly. Using that AM, I am well above the threshold for Tunso test."

These two for examples aren't exploits at all.



I get you may find it as an exploit, and I'm in no means defending one handed.

But I have yet to see a developer confirm if the range is intended or not.



Also: The Range being 12M, I think more or less weapons will be set towards to do max damage at 7M or less.



Because If you keep this in mind: Electricity, Nature, Earth, Sorcery, are dependant on weapons.

Starting my rotation off with Gadget I can go EMP, Distract, EMP and get both to hit with high damage. The first EMP should not register as it was hit prior to distract. EMP boosted damage requires 3 PI, using distract, or stealth to get the boosted damage. However, the glitch or exploit is at the start of your rotation you get one extra EMP boosted. How is that not an exploit, please explain.

I would state that the Atomic is a glitch or exploit as well as your last hit with combos should be your biggest; however, that is not the case and a player who knows what they are doing can do 1 move with one combo from it and go into another one. This results in higher damage as the power is allowing a player to not use the full combo with the second hit registering higher damage. Add to, if you clip just right you can speed through your animation and hit 40K hits regularly.

Now if both powers are designed as such so be it, they are not exploits. But from what I have read about Gadget update and Atomic combo AM, the current use of these are IMO exploits as the powers are not being used as designed and are able to produce higher numbers. So, explain again how these are not exploits. Keep in mind an exploit takes a powers damage ability and pushes it past the threshold designed by the developers and both of these do just that.

The two above are not as easy to spot because Gadget exploit is one time at the start of combat so you may get that off 3-4 times, maybe more, during a run. That is not really going to make a break you as a DPS. Atomic issue I see with the combo is keeping the aura up. Some of the players who do this method drop the aura and lose the damage. Devs are probably not to concern as both have no real major impact to DPS total damage out during a instance. At a sparring target only Atomic rotation really gets higher numbers but not like a Pet Power with Flip Slah or Atomic Gieger Exploit.

For me, if the power allows you do to even a slight variation from the standard design and provides any boost in damage it is an exploit and needs to be fixed.

I'm curious if someone did parsing just using Flip Trash and what that does for DPS.

Warning - Long post.

Why do some people consider 1-H Flip Slash an exploit?

Its not, not really when one looks in detail at the history of weapons in DCUO.

First, lets look at the range and effective range of other weapon combos with either 5 / 6 / 7 melee tap hold, along with their damage during different eras, and comparing them to 1-H Flip Slash:
Brawling - 5 melee tap hold Haymaker. Range of Haymaker move is frontal conal, not 180 degrees frontal AOE. Effective range of Haymaker combo is good because a) your character moves forward one step during the Launching Uppercut animation b) your character moves forward another step due to the Haymaker animation. Haymaker damage has always been very good, be it before WM+AM or in the current era.

Compared to 1-H Flip Slash, Brawling Haymaker does more damage. Actually, if one includes the damage from the launching uppercut, Haymaker has excellent damage. But the effective damage is much less because Haymaker is slower. Despite 1-H Flip Slash animation moving you two steps forward during the animation (once on the overhead kick part and once more on the flip slash motion with the 1-H), same as the Haymaker (once on the Launching Uppercut part and once more on the Haymaker motion), thus making them have the same effective range, one can execute and clip the 1-H Flip Slash much faster than with the Brawling Haymaker.

Martial Arts - 5 melee tap hold Smokebomb. Range of Smokebomb move is 360 degrees AOE. Effective range of Smokebomb combo is good because your character moves forward one step due to the Smokebomb animation. At one point, before WM+AM, damage of Smokebomb versus Spinning Punch was not that much greater, and hence most people went with the 4 melee tap Spinning Punch. There was quite a bit of complaints on the comparative damage of Smokebomb. Once Smokebomb damage was increased, more people started using Smokebomb.

Compared to 1-H Flip Slash, Martial Arts Smokebomb does more damage. But the effective damage is much less because Martial Arts Smokebomb is slower. For effective range, the radius of the Smokebomb is similar to the 1-H Flip Slash. But, that 5th melee tap where you move one step forward on the kick motion is slower, compared to the 1-H Flip Slash, where you can immediately clip on the overhead kick motion part.

Also 1-H Flip Slash animation moves you two steps forward during the animation (once on the overhead kick part and once more on the flip slash motion with the 1-H), for greater effective range.

Critically speaking, it is this two-step motion that seems to make 1-H Flip Slash have greater range than all other combos. Not really. The range of the hold portion is the same, be it the Brawling Haymaker or the Martial Arts Smokebomb. But Martial Arts moves you only one step forward. Brawling Haymaker moves you the same two steps forward, but at a much slower pace than 1-H Flip Slash.

Dual Wield - 6 melee tap hold Dual Flurry. Does greater damage than Smokebomb or Flip Slash. Range of Dual Flurry move is 360 degrees AOE. Effective range of Dual Flurry combo is good because your character moves forward one huge step due to the Dual Flurry animation. In fact it has one of the highest, if not the greatest effective range, because you effectively move right next to your target on the Dual Flurry animation.

Effective range of Dual Flurry combo > Effective range of 1-H Flip Slash. However, it is much more dangerous to use because you can move right next to your target. You can avoid this by not doing target locking and veering sideways at the last moment so the Dual Flurry does not land you next to your target. But it is much more troublesome to do so, and also slower since it is six melee tap versus four melee tap for 1-H.

Shield - 6 / 7 melee tap hold Two-Footed Slam / Devastating Kicks combo. Pound for pound the greatest damage on execution. Range is frontal conal, not 180 degrees frontal AOE, similar to Brawling Haymaker.

If one includes the damage from merging different hold combos before executing the final 6 / 7 melee tap hold combo, it has the max damage possible in one long chain. However, like the Dual Wield, it is slow, a bit slower than Dual Wield which is a bit slower than 1-H.

One-Handed - 4 melee tap hold Flip Slash combo.

As mentioned above in the Brawling part, the 1-H Flip Slash is not that unique in its two-step moving forward animation part. It is unique in that it is the only Hold animation where you move two steps forward, plus you can clip the first part to get the damage.

In the older days, the damage from 1-H Flip Slash was in two stages, once on the overhead kick and once on the flip slash sword motion. Then the damage was merged into just one. Comparatively speaking, the Flip Slash had always lost out to either Spin Chop or Flurry, not until the merge. This merge is critical because it merged the damage of two components into one. And then, with future updates, that merged damage had a multiplier effect when damage for hold combos was updated.

This merging of the two damage components has made Flip Slash kinda like the Spin Chop of old, which had one of the best effective DPS because of the long animation on Spin Chop, before they nerfed Spin Chop. However, that broke the old rule that the devs had put in place, where longer animations gave greater damage. The same can be said of the old Focus Blast, before tap blockbreakers were removed from DCUO.

Then they sorta re-introduced this greater damage on longer animations. On longer WM combos, you get more damage, on the precision portion of the WM moves and also on the crit damage when you clip in the powers. For example, you get less damage on Frost Snipe if you clip it in after Martial Arts Loft Shot mastery, versus Martial Arts Sweep Shot mastery. But this has also sorta been broken / negated by the introduction of AMs.

Thus, in conclusion, in terms of raw damage, 1-H Flip Slash is less than others. In terms of effective range, it can lose out to Dual Wield Dual Flurry. In terms of range, it has the same radius range as others like Martial Arts Smokebomb for example. Its not even unique in the step forward during the hold animation, but it does two steps forward instead of one (like Brawling Haymaker).

But it has the greatest effective DPS because it gives the greatest amount of damage for the least amount of taps (only 4 melee tap before executing and clipping the hold for the full damage), and the greatest effective range because of its two-step forward motion during the hold animation (once on the overhead kick, once on the flip slash), versus others with only one-step forward motion.

If 1-H Flip Slash is considered an exploit, then other melee hold combos can also be termed as exploits because of the step forward motions.

A short-term fix would be to roll back the GU51 where damage was increased for certain combos.

The long-term fix is to relook into all animations for all weapons, where some weapons might actually have to be redesigned to fit in the current era, for both PvE and PvP, weapons like Dual Pistols and 2-H.