Hello fellow heroes & you other evil-doers! I am a ranged might dps & I like to supplement my dmg with my weapon, of course. ^-^ I was wondering if there was any data on the hardest hitting ranged weapon is. Keep in mind, every weapon is viable & it's whatever the player feels most attuned to, yes - but I'm speaking purely about numbers. Strip away the SP & gear. Just the weapon. I've been doing some testing of my own & I think I have landed on dual pistols as the strongest base damage so far, but I haven't gone through every single weapon. I am a bow user & will continue to be; however, this question has been going through my mind & we've been having discussions in my league about it, lol, so I was wanting to see what everyone else thought. <3
Weapon mastery/combo will help with the determination process. Things to consider, speed of attack vs damage vs ability to rotate it in with your night loadout. If I'm not mistaken, brawling into martial range combo is the fastest attack. But does throwing in mastery reduce your might output compared to just a range tap here and there? Dual wield to flurry shot is, I believe, one of the best weapon combo for ST. Brawling into martial for adds (given it's speed of execution).
For Bow, You can do Explosive Shot to Full Auto, which is linked to Dual Pistol. Additionally, there's another Bow -> Dual Pistol attack with Magnum Round. One Handed is linked to Hand Blast, with having another blast attack on top of its base hold right, damaging all enemies within its range. So Focused Blast to Solar Flame. Downside with this link is you're locked with only 3 attacking options, and locked in place when attacking with Focused Blast. Hand Blast is linked to Bow (Hand Blast must be equipped) that lets you use Explosive Shot after Solar Flame, and Arrow Fling after Meteor blast. Hand Blast also has a 3 tap right to hold right (Scissor Kick), which lets you kick an energy ball that damages all enemies within range of its splash zone after hitting the locked target. Hand Blast is probably the most versatile in terms of ranged options and having decent mobility. Dual Wield is probably one of the fastest, and is frequently seen in solos due to powerful single targeting and being able to be used whilst bunny hopping around. Brawling is linked to Martial Arts, where such shurikens can aid in ranged utility. Unsure what to say with this, but stick with the tap range to hold since that can be a bunny hop option. I'd say for SP budgeting, Bow -> Dual Pistol | Brawling -> Martial Arts | Dual Wield -> Bow | Hand Blast -> Bow. Personal experience with One Handed and Hand Blast is rather iffy for me to use most of the time. Other weapon combos are rather slow to execute, at least from my experience. Certain Powers benefit from Range while others benefit the most with Melee. Further Testing may be required to implement hybridization builds, ones that specialize in both melee and range depending on the situation.
Are you looking to do a precision based toon or are you trying to weave weapon attacks in between your might attacks? Those are 2 very different things.
So, I'm speaking about the basic range attack for each weapon. Not combos, their speed, or any weapon mastery. Just flat out one ranged shot from each weapon.
Use to be phantom rifle taps was the go to. Not sure any more, I use one handed and que range taps in my rotation personally.
if your lock-on is red, you're within range and all attacks will hit intentionally. If it's grayed out, some of your attacks will not hit their intended target. For might loadouts (superpowers), tap range is usually supplemented for extra damage and all weapons have this by default, but persistently spamming them would count as a vulnerable to lunge interruptions, which is something you don't want. You can spam about 3 taps safely before being marked with the cross hair above your head and this counter is resetted upon using a power within your load out or iconic powers. Certain attacks will also place you in this same vulnerable to interrupt cycle if you plan on using it as a block-breaker, to which gives bonus damage if hitting a blocking enemy. Range is relatively the same for all weapons, but speed on the other hand, that's usually what you want to produce the most damage as possible. From solo experiences, Ranged gets punished more often with enemies lunging more often than Melee due to the number of combos that make said person vulnerable in the process, especially in multi-target situations. Factoring Clipping as well, there's some instances where the animation goes off, but no damage occurs due to attacks being "cancelled" too early, but that's another story for another day.
One small thing is that you actually can hit enemies even if the crosshairs is greyed out, a couple examples of instances where this can occur are listed under “150% max range rotations” in AV’s dps guide. Everything else was spot on
Hence why I said "some" attacks, not "all". For Hard Light, Hand Clap is by far the best single target option since that hits 3 times provided you have enough power, and you can throw in a tap range for extra damage and since such applauding has a low cooldown, you can repeat this in an infinite loop while jumping up and down with joy to rack up some massive damage against these loot pinatas. And in terms of tap speed, Martial Arts is the fastest from my recollection of attempting to be a jack of all weapons back in the day. One-handed is decently quick as well, and the others have either iffy speed and/or hit multiple targets as a result. Looking at you, Shotgun that has Grenade Shells that triggers upon tap instead of hold as it so implies with the in-game tooltip/guides.
All of this information is amazing & I thank you for all of the detailed & supportive responses! <3 However, I am literally ONLY referring to the basic ranged attack of each weapon. I am not talking about what sort of dps I am or what mastery combo is fastest, what is more optimal, if supplementing a ranged attack every now & then will hinder your score at the end of the run. No. Scenario: We have 11 heroes/villains lined up, each one with a different weapon. They are not dressed for war, but only in a shooting range. Just basic gear, nothing special. They each take ONE shot, just a basic shot, at their respective target. The archer shoots an arrow, the dual pistol wielder takes one shot with a single pistol, & so on. Given this example, which one is going to do more damage to their target? They are all just standing there taking just ONE shot.
You can't compare weapon damage like this from only one parse because you may get the wrong impression. For example if I shoot a sparring target with my bow and then shoot again, the numbers are going to be different. You have to do several parses with each weapon and compare the average. And I agree with Trykz that rifle would probably come up on top.
Run 10/10s parsers in HoL single sparring target doing only tap triangle as fast as you can, then avg that and repeat for every weapon sound about right? You’d also have to account for gear and sp, I’d remove all of both and your arts, basically nothing but the 1sp to equip the weapon yea?
Exactly. No gear. No SP's. A few hits to get an average, ofc. But, bare minimum & only testing to see which hits harder. That's all. Nothing extra or difficult about it, lol
Yup. I got a mill that rifle wins that contest. But with the ranged interrupt it’s terrible for cutting the distance to target. 1h is still king if you take out WM from the equation in my opinionz
Ya, so far I've tested dual wield, dual pistol, ma, bow, & 1h. One handed has won in both average base dmg & average crit dmg with ten single hits to a target.
Did some tests myself, and Hand Blaster + Bow from my experience gives a load more damage than what One Handed + Hand Blaster was capable of. Stick to Arrow Fling Mastery, line them up, and then watch them get knocked over from a very good STRIKE! Now if only we have bowling pin bulldozed by bowling ball noises.
