No love for rad assault?

[Onlyasandwich]

Trolling back over the years of posts, I see very little talk of Rad assault, and it was the only secondary to not even get a single nod in the poll @honoroitshared earlier.

 

It fits thematically for the illusion dom I'm brewing up, and I'd love to hear more from folks who've put it through its paces.

 

Off hand I see a lot of long animation times, but also some pretty strong dpa powers mixed in. High procability, a seemingly useful secondary mechanic to help aoe, and a better than average healing option for doms.

 

Do you use rad? Do you think it's trash, underappreciated, mediocre? 

[Wimbochismo]

I did an in-depth theorycraft of Gravity/Radiation when I was looking for my "next Dom." It's coming up soon once I finish some other projects.

 

Rad has some interesting nuances that need some consideration. There's lots of nice heavy hitting single target attacks but the aoe is arguably lower. The big talking point is the Contaminated mechanic. I liken the new Storm Blast set to a ranged version of Radiation, where there is more setup and conditional aoe dmg. 

 

Every attack in Radiation has a variable % chance to inflict Contaminated. Devastating Blow has a 100% chance and an increased crit chance, so it could be good to use as an opener. Fusion will also give you a 100% chance, so you could Fusion + Atom Smasher to apply it via aoe. Then, when you use only the single target attacks on Contaminated foes, it creates an 8ft radius 5 target max aoe attack - excluding the main target. Therefore, you really want some way to clump mobs to take advantage of this. I'm also not sure yet if there is some sort of internal cooldown on it.

 

I don't love Electron Haze with a narrow cone and the additional kb tax, but you could take advantage of FF procs etc with it, it's at least faster than Atom Smasher. The only way to get wider ranging aoe is to proc your primary or go with Epics.

 

In the end I'd advocate for Fold Space. Get em nice and clumpy before targeting a boss to go to town on. Maybe even Presence for aoe taunt?

[EnjoyTheJourney]

It seems underappreciated. 

In case you're looking for a "template" build or two for some ideas about how to make your own build, two sample builds are attached. The builds are not perfect. But, they have a fairly quickly animating single target attack chain. Single target attack chain DPS should be in at least the high 300s or thereabouts, depending on execution and luck. Even without devastating blow the heal activates fairly often and the heal helps to take care of chip damage.

The fire mastery build is more focused on being part of hard mode content, so defenses aren't given as much weight and leadership powers are taken. The psi mastery build is intended to provide better defenses for PUG teams and to ramp up damage that can be done to mobs that are wormholed basically on top of your dom (or on top the the team's tank, which you would probably be standing close to at the time).  

Hopefully these prove helpful. 

Dominator (Gravity Control - Radioactive Assault - Fire Mastery)Domper,SelfRez,MeltArmor.mbd Dominator (Gravity Control - Radioactive Assault - Psi Mastery),Vigor alpha.mbd

[Voltak]

8 hours ago, Onlyasandwich said:

Trolling back over the years of posts, I see very little talk of Rad assault, and it was the only secondary to not even get a single nod in the poll @honoroitshared earlier.

 

It fits thematically for the illusion dom I'm brewing up, and I'd love to hear more from folks who've put it through its paces.

 

Off hand I see a lot of long animation times, but also some pretty strong dpa powers mixed in. High procability, a seemingly useful secondary mechanic to help aoe, and a better than average healing option for doms.

 

Do you use rad? Do you think it's trash, underappreciated, mediocre? 

Radiation assault is good, for sure.  Solid and with a self sustain.  The melee ST attacks are certainly good choices if you are in doubt about those  

[TygerDarkstorm]

6 hours ago, Wimbochismo said:

I did an in-depth theorycraft of Gravity/Radiation when I was looking for my "next Dom." It's coming up soon once I finish some other projects.

 

Rad has some interesting nuances that need some consideration. There's lots of nice heavy hitting single target attacks but the aoe is arguably lower. The big talking point is the Contaminated mechanic. I liken the new Storm Blast set to a ranged version of Radiation, where there is more setup and conditional aoe dmg. 

 

Every attack in Radiation has a variable % chance to inflict Contaminated. Devastating Blow has a 100% chance and an increased crit chance, so it could be good to use as an opener. Fusion will also give you a 100% chance, so you could Fusion + Atom Smasher to apply it via aoe. Then, when you use only the single target attacks on Contaminated foes, it creates an 8ft radius 5 target max aoe attack - excluding the main target. Therefore, you really want some way to clump mobs to take advantage of this. I'm also not sure yet if there is some sort of internal cooldown on it.

 

I don't love Electron Haze with a narrow cone and the additional kb tax, but you could take advantage of FF procs etc with it, it's at least faster than Atom Smasher. The only way to get wider ranging aoe is to proc your primary or go with Epics.

 

In the end I'd advocate for Fold Space. Get em nice and clumpy before targeting a boss to go to town on. Maybe even Presence for aoe taunt?

I think I paired Rad Assault with Earth Control, but I'm liking this idea of pairing it with Grav for the reasons you've given here.

 

To the OP; I think Rad Assault gets skipped over for a lot of the same reasons people don't like Total Focus or take Rad Melee on melee toons--the animations/activation times are so slow that you're often corpse blasting on fast moving teams. I imagine it's perfectly workable solo though where it's less likely to happen.

[Clave Dark 5]

I made something of an unconventional build with Rad, so I can't speak to it too much, but it feels just fine to me, no problems other than the slow animations mentioned, which I could see might bug some people.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Atom smasher is admittedly a slow casting PbAOE. But, if you skip devastating blow and take the melee heal on a grav / rad dom you can end up with the following for single target ...

1. lift (1.03 second cast time)
2. contaminated strike (0.83 second cast time)
3. proton volley (snipe on quickform is 1.33 seconds cast time)
4. radiation siphon (2.23 seconds cast time)

That doesn't seem like a slow attack chain. Also, with liberal proc usage single target damage will be pretty good. 

Try out some builds that don't incorporate devastating blow and you might find the damage such builds can put out to be surprising. 
 

[BZRKR]

On 1/28/2024 at 7:53 AM, Onlyasandwich said:

It fits thematically for the illusion dom I'm brewing up, and I'd love to hear more from folks who've put it through its paces.

I have built an Illusion/Rad/Psi Dominator and it is awesome. It fills the map with things to distract the enemy, and  then sneaks around Proton Volley-ing enemies in the neck. The only odd thing that makes me feel 😕 about the slotting is that I decided to 6-slot Radiation Siphon with Preventative Medicine for the Recharge bonus, but with Musculature Alpha, it still hits for okay damage. The constant cloud of Phantom Army helps me feel better about that choice though.