Most Damaging Primary Paired With Kinetics

[Darkir]

So, I've always thought (and the numbers in pines/mids seemed to bare this out), that fire was the most damaging primary to pair with kinetics. You get very high damaging powers like blaze and inferno, with a DoT, at capped enhanced damage. But in the game, I have heard some people say that ice out damages fire. I can't see how this could possibly be true with the extra DoTs from fire, but is it? And why? Any help would be appreciated.

[FrostyDelicious]

From what I have heard ice outbeats fire in single target DPS. Fire is more damage overall for multiple enemies. I believe blizzard does way more damage than inferno as well when slotted properly and with scourge

[Griffin]

For AoE I still think fire has ice beat due to fire ball. It’s on a short(ish) cool down and does good damage, where blizzard is on a pretty long cool down, but considering it can scourge is pretty awesome. Fire may also catch up in single target damage if you can achieve insta snipe consistently. Someone has probably crunched the numbers.

[Darkir]

Even if I grant that blizzard will do more dmg than inferno, it also has a longer recharge. My inferno comes up roughly every 28-32 seconds and if I used blizzard it would come up every 45 seconds or so. Does it really do 50% more dmg properly slotted and with scourge? It seems unlikely.

[Bionic_Flea]

When talking about damage in CoH, the answer is almost always Fire.

[Fate]

Even if I grant that blizzard will do more dmg than inferno, it also has a longer recharge. My inferno comes up roughly every 28-32 seconds and if I used blizzard it would come up every 45 seconds or so. Does it really do 50% more dmg properly slotted and with scourge? It seems unlikely.

 

It's not nearly that big of a difference in recharge. With both having a purple set and Agility Core Paragon Alpha, Inferno has a 32.76 second recharge with 225 global recharge and Blizzard has 38.52 second recharge with 223 global recharge.

 

As for damage, if the in game info is correct, Inferno does 166.83 damage instantly and an additional 112.59 over 8.6 seconds for 279.42 total. Blizzard does 282.72 over 15 seconds. On pure base damage, Inferno is much better. What advantage Blizzard does have, is that each tick gets to check for Scourge, rather than just the initial cast, and DoTs don't scourge. Nukes generally aren't going to be used at times when enemies are low enough for Scourge to trigger and Blizzard, according to its info, hits harder when it Scourges (2 1.86 ticks normally, with scourge giving a bonus 4.45 tick), which can result in it doing significantly more damage than Inferno over the course of a fight. Blizzard also activates a second quicker, which makes it stronger against tough single targets as well. Besides damage, Blizzard gives a 20 second 35% to hit debuff.

 

Both have their advantages and disadvantages, and which is better will depend on the situation.

[Obitus]

From what I have heard ice outbeats fire in single target DPS. Fire is more damage overall for multiple enemies. I believe blizzard does way more damage than inferno as well when slotted properly and with scourge

 

The main advantage Ice has over Fire, in terms of single-target damage, is that Ice attacks can take more procs.  This is a deceptively important little fact in the post-PPM world, especially for an AT with relatively low innate damage, like a Corruptor (0.75 damage scale). 

 

But Fulcrum Shift doesn't buff proc damage, and as others have pointed out, Fire has better AoE output, even if we stipulate that Blizzard is better than Inferno.  Ice simply has no analogue for Fireball - a 16-target AoE with a generous radius that can be up every ~4 seconds.

 

Both sets work great.  Ice has more control, and a little more single-target damage at the high end, all else being equal- though again this difference in ST damage will be less significant at the damage cap.  Ice has a much better nuke too, IMO - even leaving aside the damage comparison, Blizzard comes with a huge -35% ToHit Debuff to all targets, along with the slow effects.  Blizzard thus doubles as an extremely powerful defensive power for the whole team.  On the other hand, if you're going to get in melee range anyway for Fulcrum Shift, then Blizzard's range advantage probably isn't all that important.

 

That said, there's a reason that Fire/Kin is the stereotype.  If you want damage with a side of damage, and damage for dessert, then that's the combo to go for.

[Hjarki]

I'd start by cautioning you that while */Kinetics may seem like a high damage build for a Corruptor, it normally doesn't work out that way for a variety of reasons.

 

The first is that Kinetics has almost no decent slotting options. For virtually all of the powers, there are either no set bonuses or you're forced to choose between useful set bonuses and useful set pieces. You end up using a lot of plain vanilla IOs - which essentially 'wastes' slots that you want to use to make your build more powerful. Not addressing these slotting challenges when talking about 'most damage' means any answer you'd come up with would be meaningless. Given the enormous demands on defense necessary to Fulcrum Shift yourself (rather than just pets/melee), I'd strongly recommend you work up a build that solves all of your issues to see what can be done rather than just taking a naive look at the Blast sets.

 

The second is that Kinetics takes enormous amounts of time away from a Blast set. Ultimately, you'll be spending 30% of your time on Siphon Speed alone. Add in Siphon Power/Fulcrum Shift and you probably only have 30% of your total activation time available to Blast (which severely hampers your damage). That's why you routinely see Mastermind Kinetics builds that don't even have attacks (just pet powers/buffs) - there's no time to use them. It's also why Kinetics on a Corruptor/Defender is somewhat rare compared to Kinetics on a Controller/Mastermind at 50. For most Defenders/Corruptors, a pairing with Kinetics is dissonant: the combination is less potent than the sum of the parts. They really just end up being glorified buff/heal-bots rather than meaningful sources of damage. And if you're going to play a buff/heal-bot, you should probably just play a Defender. While it's nice to theorize about perfectly laid out spawns when you get maximum Fulcrum Shift every use, the game is a bit more messy and having the bigger numbers means your melee will spend a lot more time at the +damage cap.

 

So, assuming you still want to do Kinetics, let's talk about what constitutes 'most damaging'.

 

Except in special circumstances, you can safely ignore almost everything in the blast set except:

• The ultimate. This is really why players want to play Kinetics - for the 'big boom' effect. However, you need to recognize that even after the Fulcrum Shift, you're probably dealing less damage than your Blaster buddy.
  
• Rains. Conventional AE is rarely going to make the cut in a Kinetics build because you just don't have time for it. Rains are unusually potent with Scourge and have tremendous damage per animation.
  
• Your two best single target attacks. You can't realistically run anything close to a full rotation, so you're really only concerned about you two heaviest-hitting attacks.
  
• Voltaic Sentinel. This is a unique ability and, frankly, probably not a very good one (note: I haven't tested it under the new PPM system - it might be much better now). The virtue of the Sentinel is that it keeps attacking even when you aren't, so its value scales up dramatically when you're not attacking much.
  

 

From that, I'd say that Electrical Blast and Beam Rifle would be 'second tier' sets. They've got unique features (the Sentinel and the -regen/resist on Disintegrate/Piercing Ray), but don't match our overall criteria. Either of these sets would probably also work better as the 'buff/heal-bot' Defender version - the Electrical version in particular could be built as a sapper where you're less concerned about the actual damage you deal and primarily concerned about zero-ing out Endurance.

 

Water is a possibility, but it takes an unconventional approach to make it work and managing the rotation is tricky so let's ignore it.

 

That leaves Ice and Fire (I'm skipping the other sets for a variety of reasons).

 

In terms of single target, the performance is similar. Fire also imposing a significant constraint on slotting in that you need to reach +22.5% to hit for Blazing Bolt to become a useful part of your rotation. Ice also gains an edge due to throwing single target Holds alongside its damage.

 

For AE, the two Rains are equivalent.

 

Fire has Fireball to back up the Rain, but it's unlikely you'll get much use out of it because you won't have the time to use it and it's too low on your AE priority list. About the only time you'll find it worthwhile is on AE farms with all-boss spawns.

 

That leaves Blizzard vs. Inferno.

 

Blizzard is significantly safer than Inferno. Not only does it prevent the spawn from striking back, but it can be used at range. It will also deal more damage than Inferno due to Scourge. On the other hand, the recharge is longer. This may or may not matter. Generally, ultimates are more about 'how many spawns per use' than exploiting incremental improvements in recharge. With Blizzard, it's almost always going to be 1 use per 2 spawns. For Inferno, it might be one use per spawn. There's also the issue that playing Kinetics as a Corruptor means you want to self-Fulcrum Shift - so the fact that you can operate safely at range isn't all that meaningful when you need to close for the Fulcrum Shift anyway.

 

But overall, I'd argue that ties go to Ice Blast. Fire brings nothing but damage, so it had better have a hefty lead to justify using it. In contrast, Ice brings a lot of non-damage utility so when the damage is equivalent, Ice is a better choice. The slotting options for Ice are also significantly better than those for Fire since you can actually mule some of the attacks for a variety of set bonuses.

[Papaschtroumpf]

It's been mostly covered, but as the proud owner of a Fire/Time and an Ice/Rad corruptors, is that it's not worth bickering between the two. they are both awesome, it's just that Ice is often relegated to the cliche of "it's better for single target". I have been on a campaign to dispell that idea. Ice is also great for AoE, although Fire gets 3 (Fireball, Rain Of Fire and Inferno) and Ice has 2 (Ice Sotm and Blizzard).

Ice feels like it animates slightly faster, at least it feels that way even though I haven't looked at the numbers.

I love that Blizzard knocks the enemies about, making it a much more survivable set when solo (gives me time to fire off /rad toggles). I also love the fact that ICE doesn't have a snipe where you have to worry about Interrupt, and it has 2 holds. In fact When I switch from my Ice/Rad to Fire/Time solo, I alwyas miss the holds at first, even though /Time offers other mitigation tools. At least with proper power selection and slotting you can make the fire snipe but Insta, otherwise I'd likely not take it.

 

and yes, kin... /kin can be a high maintenance set in a team, taking away from your own beating up stuff. But if you team and don't buff your teammate, then shame on you, you're not contrinuting to the team to the best of your potential. Maybe I'm remembering wrong (it's been 7 years) but doesnt Fulcrum Shift work best when you are in melee range becuase you get a multiplying effect from being close to multiple foes? I remember my Fire/Kin Controller going into melee range with hotfeet and using the stun I think to get in safely (I need ot make another one of those!).  Blizzard would definitely be a great opener to get in melee range safely on a corruptor.

 

 

[Hjarki]

and yes, kin... /kin can be a high maintenance set in a team, taking away from your own beating up stuff. But if you team and don't buff your teammate, then shame on you, you're not contrinuting to the team to the best of your potential. Maybe I'm remembering wrong (it's been 7 years) but doesnt Fulcrum Shift work best when you are in melee range becuase you get a multiplying effect from being close to multiple foes? I remember my Fire/Kin Controller going into melee range with hotfeet and using the stun I think to get in safely (I need ot make another one of those!).  Blizzard would definitely be a great opener to get in melee range safely on a corruptor.

 

Fulcrum Shift provides a large damage buff around the user and then a smaller damage buff around each target (all of which stack). If you stay at range and Fulcrum Shift, you'll get the larger buff while your melee teammates get all the little ones. If you go into melee range, everyone gets everything.

 

The issue I was mentioning with Kinetics was not a recommendation to ignore its power and just nuke - it was a warning that, if played well, Kinetics consumes so much of your time that it doesn't leave time to nuke. Indeed, this is a fairly common problem with high level play and support sets. People tend to carefully analyze 'rotations' without realizing that most of their time is going to be spent doing non-Blast things - and this dramatically shifts the value of various sets.

 

Indeed, this is part of the reason its so hard to do a good build that doesn't work better as a Defender than a Corruptor. If you choose a great support set, then it probably consumes so much time that your Corruptor doesn't have any damage advantage over a Defender but the Defender still has a buff/debuff/heal advantage over the Corruptor. So the best Corruptors tend to be those with 'crappy' support sets or ones that are missing key features. In the hands of a Defender, the lack of a heal for Cold Domination is a big problem. For a Corruptor, the lack of a heal just means more time to nuke.

 

In terms of Blizzard, it's indeed a great opener. However, it's a great opened for debuff-centric sets. With Ice/Time, you can Blizzard and then Slowed Response because Blizzard's damage is delayed and Slowed Response will catch most of it. With Inferno, you have to Slowed Response - and take the alpha strike - before casting Inferno (and then taking the alpha strike because Inferno doesn't protect you at all). With Kinetics, you can't do this - you need to Fulcrum Shift before the Blizzard to gain its benefits and it's almost impossible to get the timing such that you can Blizzard -> Fulcrum Shift and still have the buff remaining for the next spawn.

[tjknight]

I think the consensus back in the old days, was that AR/Kin had extremely good AoE potential. Especially, after getting fulcrum shift. Trying to find the old thread about this, but wasn't able to.

 

 

[oedipus_tex]

These days I would strongly consider a Blaster over a Kin Defender or Corruptor for farming. Blasters can sustain themselves easier and deal huge damage.

 

Kinetics is still a very good set for boosting team damage, so Kinetics has its place.

 

Kinetics Fire and Plant Controllers are of course still good farmers. I'd generally prefer the Corruptor or Defender over either of them for iTrials so it balances somewhat.

[Burnt Toast]

As a proud Fire/Kin Corruptor I can say this.... there is a huge difference between theory and actual game play. I do not spend the majority of my time buffing/siphoning speed - I don't need siphon speed to have perma hasten. I speed boost between fights.. and then FS at beginning of fight... heal if needed - same if i notice end issues with anyone I will use Transference. The rest of the time I am destroying baddies with my 400%-500% damage. Insta-Snipe (22% not 22.5%) is easily achievable with Tactics and Kismet proc. Blaze, Insta-Snipe and Fire Blast are my single target attack chain AFTER I do Rain of Fire and Fire Ball. I do have my nuke and sometimes will use that after FS and then drop RoF and Fire Ball and then ST.  Not sure why some people think you don't have time to fire off 5-6 attacks, but I can say from a lot of experience with Fire/Kin Corruptor on Live and HC - I find this to be easily doable. 

[Auroxis]

On 7/22/2019 at 8:58 PM, Hjarki said:

Fire has Fireball to back up the Rain, but it's unlikely you'll get much use out of it because you won't have the time to use it and it's too low on your AE priority list. About the only time you'll find it worthwhile is on AE farms with all-boss spawns.

This is the first time I see Fireball get so much disrespect. How you "won't have time" to use a 15ft Radius AoE that deals good damage and takes 1 second to cast is beyond me.

[Nayeh]

I have found that Ice/Kinetic has the advantage of bypassing (more so ignoring) "AGGRO" and "Maximum Target" cap using rains. For instance, you could focus on the immediate crowd you're dealing with while additionally drop a Blizzard on a distant crowd.  I imagine for a Fire/Kinetic you need to place yourself inside each group and deal with them as you move along whereas I'm dropping 2 groups at a time.

 

A cycle for me would consist of:

Drop a Blizzard on distant concentration of enemies.

Move toward a separate concentration. Drop Ice Storm, Kinetics, Ions, Soul Drain and Single-Target Damages.

Once Blizzard recharges, drop it on another distant crowd.

Rinse. Repeat.

 

The greatest aspect of all is that having Two rains frees of time to perform other necessary actions instead of spamming Fire Ball.

Edited August 3, 2019 by Nayeh
Last line note.

[Darkir]

51 minutes ago, Nayeh said:

I have found that Ice/Kinetic has the advantage of bypassing (more so ignoring) "AGGRO" and "Maximum Target" cap using rains. For instance, you could focus on the immediate crowd you're dealing with while additionally drop a Blizzard on a distant crowd.  I imagine for a Fire/Kinetic you need to place yourself inside each group and deal with them as you move along whereas I'm dropping 2 groups at a time.

 

A cycle for me would consist of:

Drop a Blizzard on distant concentration of enemies.

Move toward a separate concentration. Drop Ice Storm, Kinetics, Ions, Soul Drain and Single-Target Damages.

Once Blizzard recharges, drop it on another distant crowd.

Rinse. Repeat.

 

The greatest aspect of all is that having Two rains frees of time to perform other necessary actions instead of spamming Fire Ball.

This sounds nice for when you are in a team or doing +2s, but you just won't be able to clean up a spawn with bosses at +4x8 with just blizzard or ice storm. Fireball and inferno really help when fighting lots of tougher enemies. I do need to make an ice/kin though to test these things out for myself and compare it to my fire/kin.

[Hjarki]

4 minutes ago, Darkir said:

This sounds nice for when you are in a team or doing +2s, but you just won't be able to clean up a spawn with bosses at +4x8 with just blizzard or ice storm. Fireball and inferno really help when fighting lots of tougher enemies. I do need to make an ice/kin though to test these things out for myself and compare it to my fire/kin.

A level 54 lieutenant has 867 health. A fully Fulcrum Shifted Blizzard will deal approximately 1816 damage, leaving nothing but the bosses alive. However, this also tends to mean that the AE portion of the fight is over because the bosses are normally spread out enough that you're going to need to use primarily single target nukes.

 

In a team setting, you'll also have team mates who bring their own Judgements and alpha strike attacks that will compound this. Even when split up, I find that the duration of the AE phase of a fight in a level 50 +4x8 group is 3 - 4 seconds. After that you're just finishing off bosses and picking off stragglers. If you're fighting purely melee enemies with a decent tank, they might be able to keep them clustered but this is a bit of a rarity with high level enemies outside of farms.

[Darkir]

32 minutes ago, Hjarki said:

A level 54 lieutenant has 867 health. A fully Fulcrum Shifted Blizzard will deal approximately 1816 damage, leaving nothing but the bosses alive. However, this also tends to mean that the AE portion of the fight is over because the bosses are normally spread out enough that you're going to need to use primarily single target nukes.

 

In a team setting, you'll also have team mates who bring their own Judgements and alpha strike attacks that will compound this. Even when split up, I find that the duration of the AE phase of a fight in a level 50 +4x8 group is 3 - 4 seconds. After that you're just finishing off bosses and picking off stragglers. If you're fighting purely melee enemies with a decent tank, they might be able to keep them clustered but this is a bit of a rarity with high level enemies outside of farms.

Inferno does the same thing at a lower cooldown though, the only thing left is the bosses and EBs. It is true that this is not very common outside of ITFs and farms that this happens, but then wouldn't that be all the more reason to use fire? It deals all its dmg upfront, and so everything dies right when you cast it. 

 

I do need to test ice because blizzard+icestorm does seem very good with all that damage and no one would be able to escape it really. In the end I suspect both will work just fine.

[SeraphimKensai]

For single target, sonic might actually be in contention as the minus resistance paired with the damage cap will do some serious numbers.

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, SeraphimKensai said:

For single target, sonic might actually be in contention as the minus resistance paired with the damage cap will do some serious numbers.

Sonic is mediocre for Corruptors since the -resist values are scaled down but the abysmal base damage is not scaled up. You can also get that -resist on other sets via procs like Achilles' and Annihilation.

 

9 hours ago, Darkir said:

Inferno does the same thing at a lower cooldown though, the only thing left is the bosses and EBs. It is true that this is not very common outside of ITFs and farms that this happens, but then wouldn't that be all the more reason to use fire? It deals all its dmg upfront, and so everything dies right when you cast it. 

 

I do need to test ice because blizzard+icestorm does seem very good with all that damage and no one would be able to escape it really. In the end I suspect both will work just fine.

AE dps tends to function with two different types of recharge:

• Burst dps. This is the classic "nuke the entire spawn" approach. What you're counting on here is that most of the long recharge will be consumed by travel between spawns. So really you're not concerned with the precise value on the recharge numbers but the very granular "number of spawns per use" figure for your nuke. In most cases, this is going to be the same between Blizzard and Inferno. While Inferno will have a lower recharge, it still won't be low enough for every spawn use. You really need powers like Geyser, Overcharge or Hail of Bullets for that (or Archery/Assault Rifle with their 60 sec base recharge).
• Sustained dps. This is what you're concerned with in something like an AE farm. However, Scourge tends to offset the longer recharge on Blizzard, making the two effects a wash. Also, none of the ultimates are particularly good sustained dps.

For use as burst dps, I think Blizzard tends to be much better because it can be used very safely. It's a ranged effect that can benefit from debuffs laid after the fact and paralyzes an entire spawn (bosses included). In contrast, Inferno requires you stand in the middle of a spawn during its very long activation time - an activation time that needs to come after you've already alerted the spawn with your attempts to pump it up - and then leaves the bosses standing, completely uncontrolled and undebuffed, right next to you and able to strike back.

 

It's possible to build a character who can operate in that environment. But it is significantly more difficult than building a character who operates at a distance - and that difficulty translates into having to make compromises that inevitably reduce your damage output.

 

I'm also increasing skeptical of the notion of Kinetics as a 'tier one' set due to the i24/i25 changes. Consider:

• The gap between current and capped +damage has shrunk due to Gaussian's. Almost anyone who could use Gaussian's has an Aim/Build Up style ability, probably slotted with Gaussian's. Since it's nearly an automatic proc, this means a +130% damage shift right before their big attacks. The amount of additional value added by Fulcrum Shift isn't nearly as great as it was on Live.
• The increasing prevalence of procs means that less and less of a player's damage is subject to Fulcrum Shift. For an i24/i25 build, you're almost certainly going to be getting between 20% and 40% of your damage from various procs - but that damage can't be buffed in this fashion. It can only be increased by debuffs. This means that Fulcrum Shift'ing someone to cap will often have less impact than simply using an effect like Slowed Response which provides a straight multiplier to all of their damage.

[SmalltalkJava]

Love this discussion.   I have basic question.   Maybe I missed it if someone mentioned it above.    A lot of testing and builds are moving towards slotting lots of procs. I’ve heard that rains don’t work very well with procs.  Do they work well with them? 

[Hjarki]

2 hours ago, SmalltalkJava said:

Love this discussion.   I have basic question.   Maybe I missed it if someone mentioned it above.    A lot of testing and builds are moving towards slotting lots of procs. I’ve heard that rains don’t work very well with procs.  Do they work well with them? 

I think people are slowly assimilating the consequences of those i24/i25 changes. The sniper changes were perhaps the first thing people latched onto, but they're beginning to see the impact of the PPM and knockback changes as well.

 

However, unlike the Sniper changes, the PPM/knockback changes both cut across people's long-held understanding of the game and involve a lot of detailed examination of what can and can not be effectively slotted. For example, the Storm Summoning thread on the Defender forums features a long (pages) back-and-forth between myself and a few other players with different builds - and, if you read between the lines, you can see how seemingly trivial distinctions led to significant changes in the final outcome.

 

In terms of Rains, the general answer seems to be that they don't trigger most procs at all. I know they trigger self-buff style procs (mine are slotted with the Defender ATOs and are capped proc chance). Sadly, the proc I most want to slot in a Rain - Force Feedback - doesn't recognize that there's a knockdown involved.

 

This tends to mean that Rains are primarily worthwhile for Corruptors. Because they can't slot procs usefully, you can easily get away with 4-slotting or 3-slotting them. Because they have the benefit of Scourge on later ticks, they remain potent. For Blasters and Defenders, this is not the case - they're going to be considerably weaker vs. click nukes than they were pre-I24/I25.

 

That being said, I find there are two mitigating issues:

• Larger area. With a decent tank and some herding, 15 yard areas are fine. When you're the tip of the spear, there are just too many places where the spawn is spread all over the place and the 25 yard radius is the difference between "must as well use single target attacks" and "can use mass AE". On my Storm/Water Defender, I eventually dropped Water Burst because there were too few places where it was worth the bother of activating.
• ATO sets. The ATOs are some of the most powerful enhancement around and you're often stuck trying to figure out places to slot them. Rains are a great place to dump them because you don't care all that much how they're slotted - as long as you've got maximum damage and some recharge, you're fine.

[Griffin]

Should I be forgoing set bonuses in order to slot more procs in single target attacks? I know set bonuses are important, but also moar damage!

[Darkir]

2 hours ago, Griffin said:

Should I be forgoing set bonuses in order to slot more procs in single target attacks? I know set bonuses are important, but also moar damage!

So, this really depends on your build and AT. If we are talking purely kinetics corruptors then procs are not as important because they do not scale with dmg buffs, nor do they scourge, and so you can likely get more end/hp/def/res/mez res/rech with those slots elsewhere. Other powersets can really benefit from them, like storm summoning and ice (seriously go to the defender forums and read the storm summoning thread, it has tons of great info). The ATs that benefit the most from procs are the ones with lower base dmg (like defenders and controllers).  However if your only goal is to do the most dmg possible, then yeah, even as kinetics, 6-slot your attacks with dmg procs and let fulcrum shift do all the dmg enhancement and then focus all your other set bonuses on global recharge (global recharge does not effect the PPM rate). 

[Darkir]

11 hours ago, Hjarki said:

I'm also increasing skeptical of the notion of Kinetics as a 'tier one' set due to the i24/i25 changes. Consider:

• The gap between current and capped +damage has shrunk due to Gaussian's. Almost anyone who could use Gaussian's has an Aim/Build Up style ability, probably slotted with Gaussian's. Since it's nearly an automatic proc, this means a +130% damage shift right before their big attacks. The amount of additional value added by Fulcrum Shift isn't nearly as great as it was on Live.
• The increasing prevalence of procs means that less and less of a player's damage is subject to Fulcrum Shift. For an i24/i25 build, you're almost certainly going to be getting between 20% and 40% of your damage from various procs - but that damage can't be buffed in this fashion. It can only be increased by debuffs. This means that Fulcrum Shift'ing someone to cap will often have less impact than simply using an effect like Slowed Response which provides a straight multiplier to all of their damage.

Absolutely agree with the first point, the gaussian proc is amazing in things like aim (never put it in a toggle, it floors the proc chance to something like 6.5% every 10 seconds). 

 

The second point I generally agree with, with the exception of fire primary, all those secondary DoT effects are still being buffed with kinetics and so your dmg output still scales a ton when paired with the capped dmg buffs of kinetics. Another huge benefit that the i24/25 changes allowed for kinetics was the ability to slot the kb to kd io from sudden acceleration into repel, this makes repel go from useless/not helpful to amazing. Couple that with the FF recharge proc and repel allows you to reach huge levels of recharge and semi CC, of course, in order to really get these benefits you need to build your character to survive in melee range, but you get the most out of fulcrum shift in melee range anyway.

Edited August 4, 2019 by Darkir