Inquisitor gets more flat with one Havoc and Unchained Grasp. Soldier and Inquisitor both get 150%-200% more physical damage easily, so whatever flat you get from Necro won’t mean as much. The only real advantage is another WPS, and Oppressor with 2 Deathdealers is completely starved for skill points, since it gives you all of 4 points per gun.
Genuine question, what elemental to phys gear would you expect to use on an oppressor that’ll also support RF and leave you with enough skill points? Because just converting vit and half of aether will still output lower total damage without any %phys.
Kinda agree here. Been playing ranged tactician and I must say, before getting Havoc Burrwitch Peacekeeper is a more sexy option even prior to this patch. Damage wise it almost the same as Deathdealer and have no adcth, but in exchange it got cunning+DA+physical resist.
Nice thread. Haven’t built anything ranged since AoM but I guess I’ll chime in a bit since there are reasons why I didn’t…
First of all lemme point onto the elephant - ranged is balanced around FS. FS got two AoE mechanics.
FS is the most supported AA replacer for ranged. Dagallon, Arcanum Sigillis, Arcaneweaver, Valdun, Darkblaze, Dreadscorcher. So while I myself want to see a physical FS rifle to use with 3pc Valdun on Commando and a lightning FS rifle for Elementalist in the game, honestly FS is loaded as is and is in the least need of help. If you further support FS you might just delete all non-FS support for ranged in the game then.
Contrary to my earlier (AoM time) beliefs I think piercethrough isn’t THAT op in general. Valdun isn’t a piercethrough gun but it works because of all the innate Fire Strike’s AoE, same for Gargabol. On the other hand, Dreadscorcher is a piercethrough FS gun but it’s known to be lackluster, and Phasebreakers received a cold shoulder despite having a built-in passthrough. Ranged Cadence is also a good example.
The reason why piercethrough is less impactful than is looks at a glance is most enemies don’t really line up for you. Melee tries to encircle you and ranged typically makes a wide arc. Part of the reason why melee has it easier is melee’s wps tend to have an arc wps. Ranged’s answer to that won’t be piercethrough but AoE blast radius and fragmentation, both of which FS has by default.
Obviously RF and Savagery are at a great disadvantage compared to FS since they are single target. It might had been a different story if FS was incompatible with ranged WPS, which would had been quite interesting, but alas - can’t really inject too much steroid into ranged WPS with FS fully supporting them.
You may argue that you can get AoE from procs and I’d agree, but then RF and Savagery need to be really good single-target wise, which isn’t true. Pistols have base damage of a dagger while they have base attack speed of a fucking mace, which makes pistols the worst weapon type in the game stat-wise. Don’t think I’d be far off if I claim that pistols as a weapon type is carried by huge sheer flat damage of FS. It’s easy to fix by reducing weapon damage of FS and compensating to 2H and melee by bumping transmuters and buffing base weapon damage of guns to reasonable levels.
Unlike Cadence, RF and granteds that do have a pistol support (“support” in case of granteds), pistol Savagery is pretty much non-existant. Whether it’s fine or not is up to debate though. While I’ve made a ranged Savagery vindi before and it was pretty fun, admittedly if DW melee lightning doesn’t work all that well high end then why would DW ranged lightning be different.
Yea what immediately came to mind when I saw this pistol was bonemonger set. Its support to Inquisitor and Inquisitor’s general ranged support alongside aether RR should imo make Paladin the better class for this pistol. Paladin does have a problem with %aether damage though…
Sparkthrower, Arcaneweaver are amazing, Bilelauncher kinda works as well (there was a build by Plasmo). Boltthrower is interesting stat-wise, but it’s Cadence. Messenger’s Repeater and Fleshwarped Carbine got attack speed but I can’t really see them as useful ranged weapons.
EDIT: as for pistol MIs until recently we didn’t had ranged AA pistol MIs, so the only hope Rutnik’s Blaster turns out to be great.
Didn’t they nerf stoneguard’s retal bonuses? But yeah using it on acid retal is interesting. Wps chance for non dw is quite low tho and retal without a shield is questionable at best.
Thanks for this breakdown @Stupid_Dragon, expanded on all the key points perfectly.
Based on what most gun builds are doing, 5:34 firestrike qualifies as fine imo. Looking at the wider picture, maybe not so much, but assuming we’ll need baby steps to get there if it happens. I’m going to mark phasebreaker as passable for now as I expect some glassier purifiers are tankier in 1.1.8
Thanks, and will see what pops out from Deathdealer now
Blues and MIs I’ll add today. MI 2handers have held more potential, since most of the 1 handers as mentioned either aren’t focused on AA or were all physical based before rutnick blaster. And the latter helps check off the arc AoE concern
(I actually think this will do fine [for ranged] with RF in my quick testing. Paladin or Oppressor appear to stack enough flat, the procs act as the extra arc AoE you need, and you get a super charged smite if you go the bonemonger route. Arcanist support I’m not sold on the surface)
Oppressor is probably the best bet on RF. Harbinger of souls is just too good to pass up. Templar isn’t going to cut it even with better support on the gun and the recent mob resist nerf. Dunno about Paladin. I don’t really rate classes without % damage on both masteries highly. There’s storm spread but idk if it will outweigh what necro gives.
There is at least 2 pistol MI that come to my mind prior the update that support ranged AA build the Viper Sandspitter and Ugdenbog Venom Launcher, the latter should have much synergy with Inquisitor Radaggan but the problem in aoe still exists.
Only build I enjoyed phasebreaker with , Did deceiver alot with them too but that pair is as clunky as sab, Which brings me to sab … Sab looks so good with these pistols he just gets starved out of pts naturally since they offer none for them.
They will be a big focus for 1.8 for me
I made a meme deceiver based on this https://www.grimtools.com/calc/r2BbmeB2 . It was able to clear SR 80 on HC but the aoe and single target are lackluster. Sandspitter is used on some retal builds for conversion, haven’t seen any RF build with it though.
Sandspitter sure, although it’s very much a non-standard gun with trauma design. Don’t know how it performs, but the obvious problem is you yet again have to poke every enemy one by one and hope for lucky Zolhan procs. Piercethrough to Zolhan might had helped.
As for Ugdenbog Venomlauncher there’s nothing in it that suggest a ranged AA design tbh.
Strange, I’m pretty sure it had 33% piercethrough to FS at some point in time…
