Aim?

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Carnifax said:

In addition on the ToHit / Snipe thing, as above ToHit no longer affects Snipe damage. When things were moved to giving everyone "In combat" fast snipes it was removed. 

Your first 22% of to hit buff definitely does still increase sniper damage. It used to be that you needed that much to hit for fast snipers. Now sniper is always fast in combat but the damage is increased by up to 22% of your to hit buff.

[Carnifax]

8 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

Your first 22% of to hit buff definitely does still increase sniper damage. It used to be that you needed that much to hit for fast snipers. Now sniper is always fast in combat but the damage is increased by up to 22% of your to hit buff.

Ooooooooh. This is interesting for my Stalker. 

 

Cos he totally needs moar single target damage 

[macskull]

51 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

Yup, that's what I thought too. Nowadays Performance Shifter is flagged only to affect Friendly targets so it will buff allies if it can. Pretty sure that "Friendly only" flag wasn't already there so for a while back on Live you had a weird situation where you could give your enemies End back if it was in a Blast. 

Fun fact, this also applied to the Energy Manipulator stun proc. The proc was changed to have no effect on player targets because otherwise you could slot it in an auto power like Stamina and randomly stun yourself, or slot it into a power like Speed Boost and randomly stun allies which was hilarious in the days when toggle dropping was still a thing.

[Omega-202]

3 hours ago, Carnifax said:

Ooooooooh. This is interesting for my Stalker. 

 

Cos he totally needs moar single target damage 

Kismet + Invincible gets my Stalker to 16% with minimum investment and with a single teammate running Tactics, my Zapp is always at max.  Alternatively, BU (with Gaussians) also gets you there and then some.  Add Manticore and Apocalypse procs, and Zapp hits like a freight train.  

 

"Oh no, we've got a runner!"  not for long...

[Sir Myshkin]

19 hours ago, Monos King said:

Worth nothing that while that definitely can work for support classes it is otherwise just a loss of damage.

On the short end of, exclusively from a burst perspective, yes Aim would provide more "on the spot" damage exclusively for that one Blaster, but it does not balance out over time for total damage accrued in a way you're thinking it would.

 

In a build that takes Aim versus one that takes Assault, and uses Fireball with three damage IO's worth of enhancement, and enough recharge for Fireball to cycle every 7/s w/ animation, and Aim in 35/s, I can shoot six total Fireballs in that window (two of which will occur under Aim's buff). Between the two, over time, the Assault build will only have executed 46 fewer points of total damage by the Blaster through one total Aim cycle. Assault is a team buff, and that impactful difference will have easily been made up in compounded interest over time by other's executing their own attacks.

 

In a sustained constant-combat scenario Aim's buff is actually on the borderline of whether its buff counterbalances its own cast time comparatively to Assault (even on a Blaster at only 10.5%). In a consistent DPS scenario (like an AV fight, solo) Aim's own activation is costing damage performance. Not only does it result in zero damage in that time frame, but another attack could have taken its place extending the imbalance another step. This can be an extreme case, and is based on very specific build philosophy/plan/design that does not "one size fits all" work, but it is for my perspective of total self sufficiency in a build into max volume performance. I think you'd be surprised to analyze consistent performance with and without the use of Aim over Assault and the negative draw of Aim for just 50% buff. When some builds start getting into the realm of 300+ DPS, just activating a non-damage ability needs to be weighed heavily on overall impact. This is quite literally taking things to the min/max extreme, and as I said does not apply to everyone.

 

Overall, if I'm going to team, suffering -46 points of AoE to support the team is, in my book, an acceptable trade at the bottom line.

 

 

 

 

[Monos King]

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

On the short end of, exclusively from a burst perspective, yes Aim would provide more "on the spot" damage exclusively for that one Blaster, but it does not balance out over time for total damage accrued in a way you're thinking it would.

I don't disagree with any of that actually, and the impact of assault you specified there were pretty informative, but yeah I'd stick to aim if I'm a beginner (or don't even know why one would select Aim to begin with). All of the above assumes you don't miss, which Aim would practically guaranteed. And in the event of having a nuke, your practical damage is just higher, as you clear enemies with a stronger burst. Damage over time is again, relevant in longer duration scenarios, but most encountered enemies don't have the health for that to be relevant, thus Aims short duration dmg buff is king, and it's eventual inferiority to Assault rarely surfaces. 

 

I think we gave enough feedback to the OP on our opinions with aim, but if you have more to say about my stance I wouldn't mind learning more about your hyper min-max results via DM to be sure, sounds interesting.