Which Rad melee to skip?

[subbacultchas]

I'm currently working on a Rad Melee/Energy Aura brute. I've got the build made and I typically don't use Proton Sweep or Devastating Blow much. I've got Cross Punch already, and will be using one of those as a mule/maybe fire off sometimes power. Whichever one I take will be using the same 5 piece set, so that's not a consideration.

So for those out there that have played Rad, which of the two attacks do you get more mileage out of, Proton Sweep or Devastating Blow?

[Obsinious]

1 hour ago, subbacultchas said:

I'm currently working on a Rad Melee/Energy Aura brute. I've got the build made and I typically don't use Proton Sweep or Devastating Blow much. I've got Cross Punch already, and will be using one of those as a mule/maybe fire off sometimes power. Whichever one I take will be using the same 5 piece set, so that's not a consideration.

So for those out there that have played Rad, which of the two attacks do you get more mileage out of, Proton Sweep or Devastating Blow?

Dev Blow by a mile.  The animation is long af, but it hits hard enough to be worth using.  It has the highest damage per animation in the set, skipping it is always a dps loss.

[Sovera]

Ditch Proton Sweep. You already have Irradiated Ground which will tidy you over until Atom Smasher. As much as we all shit on Devastating Blow the single target becomes mediocre trying not to use it.

[SeraphimKensai]

As someone who's taken rad melee to 50 4 times, proton sweep is the weakest link. Goodbye.

[Erratic1]

Proton Sweep is just plain not worth having. Replace it with Cross Punch. 

 

Devastating Blow is disappointingly slow but some stick by it. It does hit hard and is a near guarantee for applying the Contaminated status to a target, however I found Radiation Siphon performed only a little less reliably and with sufficient +Recharge you could apply Contaminated status with it and have it recharge to consume it for the healing/damage splash.

[subbacultchas]

Thanks, yall are completely right. And I looked at the build and looks like I'll need it anyways. Usually I have Gloom or similar filler from Epics, but taking the Teleport pool for Fold Space on this one, so I could use the extra attack at times.

I"m iffy on how much I'll like Fold Space end game, since it sometimes lines them up oddly. But if I end up redoing it later I can revisit this.

Edited January 7, 2022 by subbacultchas

[Sovera]

That said my math may be dodgy (I did it on a Tanker build) but using the T1 Contaminated Strike seems to only be a 9% damage loss compared to using Devastating Blow.

 

 

A full rotation with the T9 takes 8.7 seconds. Devastating, Smash, Siphon, Smash. Loop.

A full rotation with the T1 takes 6.2 seconds. Siphon, Strike, Smash, Strike. So I can squeeze another Siphon and be at 8.6 seconds for a in-the-time-that-it-takes-to-do-a-rotation-with-Devastating.

First rotation does 1379 damage. Second rotation does 878, but with a second Siphon added in the damage is elevated to 1264.

 

Am I mathing wrong?

[subbacultchas]

Man I'm bad with attack chains and the math on them, so I'm just flat out no help there. But if you are correct then its less than 100 damage there. But where would you fit in the Siphon exactly, if you put it in at the end then it would mess the rotation wouldn't it?

[Bill Z Bubba]

Think it might be better to calc the total base damage for the two chains.

 

From CoD setting AT to None to simplify things:

DBlow does 3.08 dam over 2.904 sec

RSmash does 1.48 dam over 1.716 sec

RSiphon 1.96 dam over 2.376 sec

CStrike does .84 dam over 1.056 sec

 

Chain 1: 8 dam over 8.712 secs or .918 dam/sec

Chain 2: 5.12 dam over 6.204 secs or .825 dam/sec

 

1st chain is better. If we go ahead and add back in the brute melee damage modifier of 41.7077 at lvl 50, we get 38.288 dam/sec vs 34.409 dam/sec, soooo 10% better?

 

Edit: So, no, looks like Sovera's math is right. I'd prefer the chain that's doing base 10% better.

Edited January 8, 2022 by Bill Z Bubba

[Sovera]

13 hours ago, subbacultchas said:

Man I'm bad with attack chains and the math on them, so I'm just flat out no help there. But if you are correct then its less than 100 damage there. But where would you fit in the Siphon exactly, if you put it in at the end then it would mess the rotation wouldn't it?

Re-read. It is Siphon, Strike, Smash, Strike. When the loop starts again it goes Siphon which is the second Siphon I speak of.

 

9 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Edit: So, no, looks like Sovera's math is right. I'd prefer the chain that's doing base 10% better.

 The thing is that we all loathe Devastating's animation so a 9-10% price can be paid to avoid it.

 

Not on a Srapper I would say. A crit with Devastating would mess the gain loss ratio.

[subbacultchas]

I gotcha now, I thought you meant in terms of a continuous rotation. And it was throwing me off that it would end and start with siphon strike.

I think youre right and the 10% is totally worth it, I've picked up Devastating and been using it a bit. My recharge at 30s isn't quite where it needs to be but I actually prefer the rotation with Devastating compared to the second one.

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 hours ago, Sovera said:

 The thing is that we all loathe Devastating's animation so a 9-10% price can be paid to avoid it.

 

I hear ya. I am going to have to respec the newish inv/nrg tank. I dumped ET and TF to completely avoid corpse blasting and crank up punchvoke but his ST damage is so ridiculously bad with just BS, Bar, EP, repeat that it's unplayable solo. For me, at least.

[subbacultchas]

If it gets to the point it annoys the hell out of me, and it might, good to know there is an alternative of switching it out for Contaminated Strike.

[Erratic1]

Waitaminute...you did NOT take Contaminated Strike?

[Sovera]

50 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I hear ya. I am going to have to respec the newish inv/nrg tank. I dumped ET and TF to completely avoid corpse blasting and crank up punchvoke but his ST damage is so ridiculously bad with just BS, Bar, EP, repeat that it's unplayable solo. For me, at least.

 

I tried that doubling down on quadruple procs to avoid ET and TF but yeah, no go. We talked about this though, use EP and BS more instead of TF unless it's a target at full life or a boss.

 

2 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

Waitaminute...you did NOT take Contaminated Strike?

 

We're not in the Tanker forums 😜 n

[subbacultchas]

17 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

Waitaminute...you did NOT take Contaminated Strike?

Don't know if this is for Sovera or me lol.  But yeah I have it, just may not be used in the first chain he posted. So kinda sitting and muling.

[Bill Z Bubba]

17 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I hear ya. I am going to have to respec the newish inv/nrg tank. I dumped ET and TF to completely avoid corpse blasting and crank up punchvoke but his ST damage is so ridiculously bad with just BS, Bar, EP, repeat that it's unplayable solo. For me, at least.

 

Hey @Sovera

 

Turns out I won't be respecing after all. Tanked an ITF last night for some of my SG mates and really enjoyed it. Felt like all that extra time spent smacking things around with BS, Bar and EP went a long way to having an absolute lockdown on aggro while also never being locked into the long animations meant I could just bounce all around the battlefield like a cracked up monkey.

[Sovera]

Just now, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Hey @Sovera

 

Turns out I won't be respecing after all. Tanked an ITF last night for some of my SG mates and really enjoyed it. Felt like all that extra time spent smacking things around with BS, Bar and EP went a long way to having an absolute lockdown on aggro while also never being locked into the long animations meant I could just bounce all around the battlefield like a cracked up monkey.

 

As long as you're having fun. But if you're not using ET and TF then why even bother with EM? Go Rad Melee and use the Contaminated Strike rotation and you get FF procs from Radioactive Smash, a heal, and the passive damage (with team wide buffing from -res procs) from IG.

[Bill Z Bubba]

6 minutes ago, Sovera said:

As long as you're having fun. But if you're not using ET and TF then why even bother with EM? Go Rad Melee and use the Contaminated Strike rotation and you get FF procs from Radioactive Smash, a heal, and the passive damage (with team wide buffing from -res procs) from IG.

 

Cuz barrage. Honestly, if I could, I'd love to have a character that used nothing but Nrg-Barrage, Fire-Flares, Claws-Slash, Dark-NightFall, repeat.

[Sovera]

On 1/7/2022 at 7:50 PM, Sovera said:

That said my math may be dodgy (I did it on a Tanker build) but using the T1 Contaminated Strike seems to only be a 9% damage loss compared to using Devastating Blow.

 

 

A full rotation with the T9 takes 8.7 seconds. Devastating, Smash, Siphon, Smash. Loop.

A full rotation with the T1 takes 6.2 seconds. Siphon, Strike, Smash, Strike. So I can squeeze another Siphon and be at 8.6 seconds for a in-the-time-that-it-takes-to-do-a-rotation-with-Devastating.

First rotation does 1379 damage. Second rotation does 878, but with a second Siphon added in the damage is elevated to 1264.

 

Am I mathing wrong?

 

 

Re-doing the math with a different rotation:

 

- Devastating Blow (2.9 and 781 damage), Radioactive Smash (1.7 and 332 damage), Radiation Siphon (2.4 and 476 damage), Radioactive Smash (1.7 and 332 damage) =8.7 seconds and 1885 damage.

- Radiation Siphon (2.4 seconds and 494 damage), Radioactive Smash (1.7 and 330 damage), Contaminated Strike (1.05 and 175 damage). This leaves a 0.08 second gap before Radiation Siphon is up again. So the rotation takes 5.15 seconds to do for 999 damage. This leaves enough time to add another Siphon (5.15 + 2.4 = 7.55) and another Radioactive Smash (7.55 + 1.7 = 9.25). This is cheating because it passes the rotation of Devastating Blow by half a second so it can be quibbled but it's a simple rotation. Which means Radiation Siphon, Radioactive Smash, Contaminated Strike, Radiation Siphon, Radioactive Smash, is half a second longer than the time it would take to do a Devastating Blow rotation.

 

Which amounts to 1824 damage... which makes a 3% damage loss and no 2.9 animation times in the rotation. It makes for friendlier leveling and exemplaring as well.

 

 

Caveats:

- The damage will be slightly different from build to build since a proc more or less will slightly alter the numbers. I'm comparing two builds instead of just swapping the slotting since Unrelenting Fury will go well in Contaminated Strike.

- Enough recharge is needed to eschew a second Contaminated Strike which would bring the damage down. This is the 'disgusting' Rad/Stone build I'm messing with. For leveling this means Siphon, Strike, Smash, Strike.

[Marshal_General]

Everyone ignores DB in favor of AS because DB is slow, but I think AS animates a bit slower.

[Erratic1]

16 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

Everyone ignores DB in favor of AS because DB is slow, but I think AS animates a bit slower.

 

It is but it also hits an area versus only one target for DB.

[Bill Z Bubba]

15 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

Everyone ignores DB in favor of AS because DB is slow, but I think AS animates a bit slower.

 

AS is AoE. DB is ST.

 

As for actual times, AS animation 2.933 with arcanacast time of 3.168

DB animation 2.667 with arcanacast time of 2.904.

 

So yea, it is slower but can hit 10X the number of enemies.

[Without_Pause]

On a Brute, I only skip the T1 in terms of a non-farming build.

Edited January 19, 2022 by Without_Pause

[Rahabina]

On 1/9/2022 at 8:16 AM, Sovera said:

 

As long as you're having fun. But if you're not using ET and TF then why even bother with EM? Go Rad Melee and use the Contaminated Strike rotation and you get FF procs from Radioactive Smash, a heal, and the passive damage (with team wide buffing from -res procs) from IG.

I made a RM/EA brute, while she seems to shine in most areas, she seems to get critted easier them my other EA brute (BS/EA)