Here I am again <3 I have always noticed how weapon fighting is a whole different system than powers. I use PFTT in Rage, so I can usually attack all out and ignore most of what the adds do, except for bosses, but, with my healer, as I use HB, I have noticed that the fight plays entirely differently: I have a much easier time following the system and doing counters and everything else. In reality, weapon fighting and paying attention to counters makes things MUCH EASIER. I mean, doing the exact same dungeons with my rage DPS and my celestial HEALER have different results: Rage does damage faster but takes more damage, while my celestial is able to calmly fight the enemies and remain at full HP and power, even if the fights last much longer. So, I want to ask how is a precision only build compared to might only powers. And which power works better? I was thinking of using fire allied with dual wield. Fire because of the shield and self-healing and duel wield because I like the weapon. I also read that only Bow and some other power work as prec dps, is it true? Cheers.
For Precision dps there are 2 weapons right now that are competitive. For range single target you have dual wield with weapon mastery on bow for the Flurry Shot crosscombo. You have to jump cancel the last part of the combo to get the most of it. Do it right after the 4th hit. Also you can use the other crosscombo from bow, Explosive Shot, for ranged AoE. For melee you have Two-handed with Doom Spin combo, that does massive damage on AoE. The build, referring to skill points allocation, once you unlock all weapon combos, you choose Weapons Expert as your Focus. You maximize your criticals and then max Precision. After that you can get Might to 100SP for the 10% increase in Might/Powrr and then go for Health. Your loadout for melee will need 2 damage powers, your Precision buff, and a pet. You will start the fight with one damage power clipped with Prec buff, you perform the combo, then you clip the end of the combo with the second damage power. And repeat. For ranged AoE you do the same but changing the combo. For ranged single target you will use one damage power, your Prec buff and a pet. You use your damage power clipped with buff, then Flurry Shot until weapon buff is available again. You can fill your empty slots with a shield, Phase Dodge power from the Speedster tree, a Supercharge, preferably a buff one like Neo Venom... Artifacts you can use are Venom Wrist Dispenser, Transformation Card, Strategist Card, Grimorum Verum. Top Prec powersets are probably Nature, Gadgets, Electric, Ice. But any powersets can do well as Prec dps. Of course this all is the "meta" and you are free to find your own way.
well written, by Berza... of note: precision is not as strong as might (since nerf'g in nov/dec last year and I believe there was another one recently) I say this because I notice how hard I hit using explosive shot - at one time I could do 80k damage as a healer - now I'm lucky to hit 50k once in a while - also the low damage for explosive shot can be less than 10k - sigh... (but I'm not changing - its costly - too much time and $$$ to change to might based or even a might/prec build) so IMHO the might squeakers (the squeaky wheel gets the grease) got what they wanted they are the power choice atm. and if you did not know, artifacts are everything - as I often pug and watch players w/fully buffed artifacts (so it's pay to do the most damage) out damage me easily with a might based powerset. you can look at their artifacts and easily surmise if precision or might and often their augments are barely buffed as well as missing mods from gear. So this works for regular content - especially if they are paired w/a strong player - but they also seem to be dependent on role players - specifically healers, then tanks and a few want to play with a troller. These types of players are also hard to carry in elite - IMHO only one player of this type can be carried - if they can make it thru the latest elite content. Else they'll die easily. Best power? hard to say - it's really the player skill and knowledge of content and skill points (sp) do help, more so in elite content than anything else - but I don't think the devs will ever make a focus on SP. They would need to change their stat tree and weapon/power trees. I say this because I really doubt any player will ever be able to fill out the might and precision buttons. With each new DLC - might and prec always increase by 10 pts (so does dom, vit and resto as well). if the devs wanted SP to count more, they would have more powers or precision open in the trees or a greater buff. So though having enough SP to fill out the weapons tree for advanced mechanics, your choice of either might/prec stat, and of course movement and stun - you don't need anymore than adding up what you need (see stats)- because once you have extra pts - where does it go? most use it as Berza suggests.... but you could google the dcuo forum and you'll be able to find other players complaining about where to put these points. and other topics as well... enough of my rambling.....
If you’re interested in fire prec I do have that build up. I personally would never recommend to go pure weapon since you want to weave abilities with your weapon. At very end of explosive shot can be clipped for full damage but I really do mean the very end. This is comparable to weapon weaving in might builds. Doing a tap range and immediately clipping it with an ability so that the weapon animation doesn’t show. In both cases you gain extra damage by doing so however it can be done without using abilities for lower but safer damage since you don’t have to worry about overclippjng and losing out the damage. As said above the meta currently are DW for range aoe and ST and 2H for melee.
I fight full precision, 0 offensive abilities, on my Mental character - mostly because Mental's offensive abilities kinda suck unless you string a bunch of them together. Two hand, Doom Spin - by the time you have like 300+ SP, 160+ arts (Strategist, Transformation and Wrist for me, as Fire, sub Wrist for Grim - a BUNCH of testing provided the observation that the difference is mostly anecdotal, but as a Fire DPS, Grim will set up your PI for you so food for though) and a CR in the 300 range, you'll be outputting 65K+ with relative ease against the three-set sparring targets. As a mental character I use RSK, NVB, and a bunch of shields - as a Fire DPS, some of your shields actually set up Burning DOT on people, so "win-in". For a Fire loadout using 2H I was using Enflame before combat, then Lunge, clip Inferno - > Stoke Flames - > Fiery Weapon, then Doom Spin. If you wanna save a little time, Enflame - > Stoke - > Fiery, then Doom Spin - you'll be missing 1 DOT but setting up Doom Spin faster. The main drawback to doing this is - you're gonna be fighting close range for optimal damage. The benefit is the same thing, since Fire has a lot of passive, proximity-based damage output and a ******** of self-healing options. Though if you do this? Learn which side of the Boss the tank is on and stay on the opposite side.
I mean you could’ve wrote you last 3 post in one single post. And also, fun is subjective. So what one person enjoys another will hate. I personally find might boring for the most part. Hit power a then b then c the d repeat. But for someone else they might hate clipping or combo powers. Ands that’s fine
I like playing lantern because I dislike the exobyte concept and because of the fween (the whistling sound rage + HL do when using constructs), but my all-time favourite type of play is some sort of a power brawler, ergo, a fighter who uses powers as a complement to the fighting. And, let's be honest, the weapon fighting, with the counters, blocks and knockdowns, seems more complex and entertaining than powers. Due to that, I'm practically immortal doing content with my healer, although it takes long. I'm using a Fire Brawler on DPS role. My power tray, so far, consists of the fire shield, a punch he does to the ground, the weapon dps increase and venom dispenser SC that increases weapon DPS. I am doing quite well, tbh.
