Quick DPS question -

Strangely enough about 30 minutes ago I, out of curiosity, thought I would swap my Strat Card for my lvl200 Tetra to see if the might buff gave me more damage than what I get from the Strat Card. Short answer is no. I have 200k health so its not a small amount to buiff against, but the long and the short of it, the Strat card wins out.

My advice is you cant go wrong with Solar Amp, Trans Card and Strat Card, and they work well with all dps powers, meaning if you change power you are not facing levelling up a new artifact.

I also find that its not necessarily the case that the highest parsing rotation works best in a real scenario. My quantum 499sp dps single target parses around 55k per sec with the optimal loadout on a sparring target, but I opt to use a slightly less powerful rotation cos it gives me better flexibility of movement and generates my SC. Sometimes you can sacrifice a little damage to be a more effective dps.

Agreed fully
To your point since your quantum like me, have arts almost identicle to me, and seem to share a similar philosophy for dps’n as me let me ask this in your opinion
I run:
Solar amp, la mort, and trans card

Loadout:
Anomoly (for PI and AOE dot)
Distortion wave (to use PI and AOE)
HV (to use solar amp and get the AOE dot)
Energy expusion (to use lamort an easily my hardest hitting power per tick)
QT (for the obvious manuverability, immunity, shield, canceling, pickups etc) and tunneling is non-negotiable
RSK or Oblivion (situationally i.e. if a group member has the eye)

In your opinion, does my damage go up if I:
A) swap lamort and finisher for strat and something like GW?
B) swap SA an HV for strat and something like GW?

In your opinion (w/out butchering my loadout be ause i aint willing to change much) what could/should i do different to get a noticable higher output of functional damage. By functional i mostly mean boss damage as adds will die even if i stand around. Im not looking to pad my numbers killing adds faster. My loadout as is w/arts as is to me is just phenominal on ST bosses an the bits of AOE mixed in does fine for add control. If i change anything, it’d to be a more effective burner when it counts which is why i designed my loadout as i have NOT to oad my numbers and “pretend” to be a burner lol

I ask because perhaps im missing something but i know my setup isint all that great compared to whats out there for quantum an you mentioned 55k per sec consistent. Meaning 550k parsers for 10 sec an thats roughly where i am on ST, on the groups i get an average of about 750k per 10 sec parser or 75k per sec.
I feel like im doing more than adequate damage and have thus far always been a benefit to the group and even rarely dont make top 2 dps in any content

OK so may be easier if I say that I run 3 DPS builds...Single Target, AOE and Open World. I should also say that I prefer a ranged loadout so all of mine are max range. You can get higher burn with a melee loadout but you spend most of your time getting picked up up.

Single Target I use Trans, Solar A and Grim.
HV > Grav Field > Lift > Energy Expulsion > Robot Side > Neo Venom
Rotation is 1-2-3-4 repeat and cooldowns work perfectly.
I prefer Neo Ven even though Oblivion is awesome its a 10k power cost and I find it more flexible and quicker to recharge with Neo Venom. Trust me for single target max range you wont get higher, I have spent hours trying and this is it.
Depending on situation I will swap out Robot Sidekick for QT

AOE I use Trans, Solar and Strat.
HV > Distorion W > Time Shift > Warp Barrage > Robot Side > Neo Ven (or Oblivion if you prefer)
Rotation 1-2-3-4-2-1-2-3-4 repeat
Heat Vision, even after the nerf, still has good aoe and dot damage. I have tried swapping it out for many others and it still come out better. You don't need Grim as Time Shift sets up PI. Quantum has better single target damage than aoe but this still hits pretty hard and again is max range.
Depending on situation I will swap out Robot Sidekick for QT

Openworld I use Solar Amp, Trans and Strat
Anomaly > Time Shift > Distortion W > Warp Barrage > HV > Robot Side (No SC as only for openworld)
Rotation 1-2-3-4-5 (don't often get to 5 as normally adds are dead)
For openworld I like the stun and building SC as fast as possible for regular content. Slightly less damage but wide ranging damage spread, quick rotation and makes killing openworld adds easier.

I can honestly say that I have spent many wasted hours trying power and artifact combos until I am sick of looking at the game but these are the ones that work for me.

I haven't included troll loadouts as you have not mentioned that side at all.

Hope this helps

It does an i dont troll, maybe someday BUT today is not the day haha
I dont change loadout or artifacts AT ALL (not to say i cant or wont). Im just opposed to it and dont want multiple armories etc. if they fixed what i believe to be the issue with armories i would consider dif builds.
As it stands i go for complete universality. No matter the content, no matter the situation, no matter the group the only thing i change is RSK for oblivion and thats ONLY when someone in the group is running EoG otherwise i believe i get more damage from RSK by the end of the raid/alert than from the SC.
Honestly i feel like i am doing far better damage than most an cant quite put my finger on how because nothing im doing is really recommended in any loadout video or whatever and most that have builds like u have layed out IMO arent gaining enough damage on me to be worth the effort to me (which is why i dont change).
I feel like i have found the sweet spot with quantum DPS’n maybe?
Depending on the raid an group as i said i almost always finish in top 1-2 dps which tells me my loadout works great OR the dps community at large is just that bad (i consider myself mediocre-good at best FYI).
The only strange thing i notice is 2 fold.
1) i make up a fair bit of damage prob through my survivability because i almost always have the least deaths of anyone no matter the content.
2) when i do get smashed in damage, its mostly on total. Boss damage even when smashed im always much closer than i am in total.

Point 2 is what led me to differentiate functional damage from “padded” damage. And since my 2 channels are ST fo used it makes sense to me to be competitive in that way. Its just i cant quite finger how setting a PI with anomoly and using it w/distortion wave is enough to keep me competitve outside of the ST boss parts?
In any case, the unanswered part i suppose is if i pull la mort/finisher in favor of strat. What power goes in for the finisher that nets a higher output?
And agreed fully, i too stay max range haha

If your doing that good damage then please, share your loadout...I shared mine!

In regards to a finisher power , the one they created for that very reason gets some really high crits, energy expulsion, and it does multiple hits giving more chance to proc the strat card, That's the one thing that quantum lacks in comparison to powers like electric or nature, lots of dot damage which gives you more chance to proc the strat card.

Sure (thought i sort of did or maybe it was another thread sorry)
Quantum might 92k unbuffed
Artifacts: (all 200)
Transformation card
La mort card
Solar amp

Loadout:
Anomaly (for PI)
Distortion wave (to use PI)
Heat vision (for solar amp)
Energy expulsion (for la mort)
RSK/Oblivion (just depends if someone has EoG cause i think RSK nets more total damage in most content than super does unless sped up)
Quantum Tunneling (words cant express my love affair with QT, the utility is unmatched IMO)

I parse on the group in league hall exclusively because with that setup my ST damage is almost always far above most in actual content so no need to track it or worry about it IMO. I get beat sure but the differential when i do is minimal on boss damage side.
Im actually going to the “lab” tonight an do some testing with grim instead of either la mort or SA and will test swapping out anomaly and distortion wave in favor of lift and gravitonic field. My theory is that it will maintain same level of ST damage or close but will help AOE damage due to better dots from lift than anomaly. Will put some hours in it an see but my current state, i seem to be extremely power friendly and 10 sec parses are 700k to 750k very consistently. Obviously a parse on sparring targets is nothing more than a baseline is not 100% applicable to real world BUT its a definitive repeatable number to use as a baseline.
I see ppl all the time boast 1 mil parsers an such which is 33% more damage than i do. I find it possible unbuffed but hard to believe that so many ppl are getting much higher than me in actual practice because i rarely get out damaged, when i do, 1/2 the time theres anomalys to factor like coming in a raid late, getting knocked out an not picked up, picking up others, etc. when the occurances happen where i get smashed an by enough to offset any anomalys its usually on the total damage side, boss damage side is generally much closer and that to me is the real damage, the functional damage. And if im at least keeping up an doing so w/out being a liability then i deem myself functional an valuable to the group.

Im might an use hand blasters and have exactly 1 sp on them. Not wasting any on the trees or mastery. Im might an damage comes from my powers not weapons. I may tap triangle every once in a while but my loadout cycles nicely. Almost always have exactly 1 ability off cooldown so never a wasted moment doing a prec tap when im might

I have the extra SP on my primary Might DPS (Electric) to afford the weapon trees for both my primary and favored WM combo weapon, but the "1 SP in weapons for Might" thing is a good way to reduce the SP overhead needed to fill the stat out completely, since it reduces the SP you need to have max Might from SP by literally 17-18.

plus it keeps you from forgetting that you're not on your precision DPS...

Agreed but none of that was my point. I have 450 sp. its not about saving the sp to max my stat. Its about not wasting any time in the rotation doing weapon attacks for less damage (much less) than doing might damage.
I guess im sure there must be might loadouts out there that “require” a weapon tap on occasion for something BUT i would argue its a poorly setup loadout for a might dps if its requiring precision damage (i could be wrong).
Basically the time you use pulling off a combo for 4-5k damage from weapon as a might dps, i have likely used distortion wave for example an hit 1 enemy for a 75k crit. And depending on ur mastery combo time i may very well have QT canceled or jump canceled the animation an got 2-3 ticks from my finisher in for 35k+ each so my point is, if ur might go might an dont bother wasting sp in weapons that doesnt actually benefit you (again unless im wrong somehow an your loadout requires it). But again. If it does, i suggest testing is needed to find an optimal might loadout lol

... Pretty sure I did mention that .

Dont see the correlation but again if i misread ur original post my apologies