StJ damage increase from combo points.

[Sovera]

First of all, I noticed this at the rear end of powering through the SLOG that is acquiring the last three accolades so I was too burned out to sit and test properly with numbers. I'll do so tonight.

 

But I noticed that the 'does more damage with each combo point' that I took as gospel when making the character seems to be... well... missing?

 

I had Fake Nemesis set as -1 and lieutenants which allowed me to nearly one-shot one with combo-less Crushing Uppercut. Then the next Fake Nemesis I would use my regular attack rotation, and I noticed I arrived at the following Nemesis with full combo points.... and CU would again nearly one-shot them.

 

So, basically, comboless CU = mob with a sliver of HP. Full combo CU = same mob with a sliver of HP. This was repeated several times with the same result.

 

I mentioned this to a friend who was playing an StJ Tanker in an ITF and they tested giving something like 500 damage without combo points and 550 with.

 

 

This is not the 30% damage boost I read of.

 

While the secondary effects are nice (the Terrify in Spinning Strike is darn good mitigation though I am not fussed about the Hold in CU) it does mean if the damage increase is so minimal then the rotation can be tweaked so CU's are fired more often. This because since CU's cooldown is a bit too long I do three combo CU, then build back the combos and do a three combo Spinning Strike. But this means CU is off CD by the time I have re-built three combos which mean less CU per minute. Spinning Strike's damage is okay and has the -res proc in it.

 

At the top of my head Shin Breaker, Rib Cracker, Heavy Blow, Crushing Uppercut, Spinning Strike would be gapless for maximum CUs.

 

I actually toyed with Rib Cracker, Shin Breaker, Rib Cracker (love the animation), CU, and it worked fine, but since Rib Cracker is where I shuffled the Critical Strike proc it happened that the proc went off at the first Rib Cracker making it go to 'waste' in the following Shin Breaker + Rib Cracker and not be up in time for CU/Spinning (assuming the proc works how I think it does).

[Sovera]

So I went to test on a pylon. Turned off all sources of -res to not mess with the tests, did several hits without combos and several with.

 

The increase for CU and Spinning was always 25% on the dot (combo less CU from 334 to 417, comboless Spinning from 83x2 to 104x2) so from that angle all is working correctly (I just overestimated the damage boost I suppose, Fake Nemesis surviving on a sliver of health and all).

 

Considering that Spinning does literally half the damage of CU it is absolutely not worth it to do fewer CUs in order to do Spinning at full combo points. CU takes too long for just Shin Kicker, Rib Cracker, Heavy Blow, thus leaving a small gap that could be filled with a second Shin Kicker, but Spinning hits nearly as hard (though animates slower, but the slower animation is not a problem since we are tied to CU's recharge) and takes a -res proc which feeds the whole chain and nullifies the small damage difference (111 base damage from Spinning VS 131 base of Shin kicker).

 

That -res proc elevates the number of -res sources to five in the build:

 

- Evolving 7.5% native.

- Spinning 12.5% proc.

- Rib Cracker 7.5% native.

- Genetic Corruption 20% proc.

- Shin kicker 20% proc.