Beam Rifle: What the heck is my attack chain?

[Hopeling]

What's the best ranged ST attack chain for Beam Rifle?

First, since Pine's doesn't include Disintegrate bonus damage in the power display, here are DPA values when Disintegrate is up, counting Arcanatime:

• Single Shot: 50.05 damage, 1.188s cast = 42.1 DPA
• Charged Shot: 82.08+12.31 damage, 1.848s cast = 51.1 DPA
• Disintegrate: 108.1 damage, 2.112s cast = 51.2 DPA
• Lancer Shot: 106.1+21.22 damage, 2.112s cast = 60.3 DPA
• Piercing Beam: 108.6+35.84 damage, 2.508s cast = 57.6 DPA
• Overcharge: 175.2 damage, 3.036s cast = 57.7 DPA

So all of our DPA are fairly close together, but Single Shot is clearly lower than the rest, and Charged Shot isn't great (but of course, you need one of them to activate Opportunity). Overcharge is maybe just barely worth using on a single target; slotting it with an Achilles' Heel proc might bring it up to 'definitely an improvement, but a marginal one'.

 

We also have to consider secondary effects:

• Disintegrate gives +12.5% damage for 9.4 seconds for some reason (I think Blaster Defiance got left in by accident here), even though Pines doesn't display this. You also want the Disintegration debuff up all the time, so casting it more than just once every 10s is probably good to allow for misses.
• Piercing Beam gives -9.6% res for 10 seconds, and stacks.
• Single Shot gives -75% regen, which doesn't stack. On a level 50 AV, this amounts to ~10 DPS. I'm not sure if this is enough to make it worth using in your attack chain, but it's there.

One obvious candidate for an attack chain is Disintegrate - Piercing Beam - Lancer Shot - repeat, requiring 231% recharge in Piercing Beam and less in the other attacks. This chain is 6.732 seconds long, so you should have 2 stacks of the Disintegrate buff for every Lancer Shot and Piercing Beam, and 2 stacks of -res for every Lancer Shot, but Disintegrate will fall off if you miss. Is there a better chain? Preferably without using Dominate?

Edited July 24, 2019 by Hopeling

[oldskool]

Jeez, I can't believe I forgot Piercing Beam in that Beam/Bio thread!!!  *face palm* 

I don't have Pine's with me so I am mixing up powers and I hadn't logged in to my BR hero in a while.  I probably need to revisit some things on that build anyway. 

Anyway, I do recall originally I felt that the T1/T2 just stopped being included in my attacks with only the occasional use for Opportunity.  For that character, I was valuing Defensive more, but I can probably revisit some things to bring Single Shot back. 

I've been playing DP/Nin a lot and started retooling my AR/Bio as the next project. 

Edit, yeah, I have Piercing with both the Annihilation and Positron's Blast procs.  I have 4 Sentinels I have been rotating with another one I made a few days ago (Water/Energy).  I blame altitis and old age for not keeping these things together!
 

Edited July 24, 2019 by oldskool

[Sunsette]

You're sure that the Disintegrate DoT and -regen stacks?

Edited July 24, 2019 by Sunsette

[Hopeling]

DoTs generally do stack, and City of Data lists the DoT as a separate effect from the Disintegrating debuff, so it should but I haven't checked directly.

 

The -regen does not stack from either power, but since we need to keep up Disintegrate for other reasons, it's not much of a consideration there. I guess it does rule out high-recharge Disintegrate spam as a viable strategy, which is worth mentioning explicitly.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Hopeling

[marcussmythe]

33 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

DoTs generally do stack, and City of Data lists the DoT as a separate effect from the Disintegrating debuff, so it should but I haven't checked directly.

 

The -regen does not stack from either power, but since we need to keep up Disintegrate for other reasons, it's not much of a consideration there. I guess it does rule out high-recharge Disintegrate spam as a viable strategy, which is worth mentioning explicitly.

And sadly undermines what I found the most attractive on Beam Rifle - the idea that there might be some character who, lacking a debuff powerset, could shut down the rather silly regen that AVs have.

Side note - why do AVs need regen debuff resistance, when theyve explicitly given every debuff powerset enough -regen to blow right past any debuff resistance the AVs have?  Odd decisions.

[Hopeling]

Yes, regen debuffs are in a weird place in this game: they're useless except against AVs, who resist them heavily, so any worthwhile regen debuff has to have huge values even though NPCs almost never have more than base regen. Then this carries over to NPC regen debuffs, which seem to have -500% as a default value even when it's the secondary effect on an attack, which is absolutely punishing for any player character that relies on regeneration.

[Sunsette]

50 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

DoTs generally do stack, and City of Data lists the DoT as a separate effect from the Disintegrating debuff, so it should but I haven't checked directly.

 

The -regen does not stack from either power, but since we need to keep up Disintegrate for other reasons, it's not much of a consideration there. I guess it does rule out high-recharge Disintegrate spam as a viable strategy, which is worth mentioning explicitly.

...it is a weird, weird thing in my eyes for one aspect of an ability to stack with itself and another to not. I'm not saying you're wrong or that I disbelieve you, just that it's weird.

[Sunsette]

ATM it's looking like my chains are Disintegrate --> Piercing Beam --> Lancer Shot at Range, adding Havoc Punch to the chain at melee.

 

With disintegrate up, looking at a paper throughput of...

 

200 DPS, 100% chance of -9.60% Res, 40% chance of another -12.5% Res, + offensive opportunity for roughly 12 DPS, 60% uptime on another -20% Res, 33% uptime on Aim+BU, and -225% Regen. 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Sunsette

[Hopeling]

What's the -12.5% res coming from?

 

In other news, Refractor Beam takes defense debuff sets and accurate defense debuff sets. Why, who knows, but if you ever wished you could stick two -res procs in there, I guess you can.

[Sunsette]

55 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

What's the -12.5% res coming from?

 

In other news, Refractor Beam takes defense debuff sets and accurate defense debuff sets. Why, who knows, but if you ever wished you could stick two -res procs in there, I guess you can.

Annihilation: Chance for -Res. 3 PPM, works in all targeted AoEs. Pines calls it -20% but I don't believe that's correct. Actually I think it might be -10%. When I used the analyzer I don't think I remembered to compensate for the -2.5 res effect on all our attacks. 

 

This was tested on the pylon which has 20% resistance base to everything so it's also possible it's 12% depending on whether or not it is a resistible resistance penalty. 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Sunsette

[Hopeling]

Oh, I thought it was -20% like Achilles' Heel, but maybe not. I'll check it sometime.

[Sunsette]

I will do a more detailed check soon since ever since Mids added it, I've been second guessing my own test. 

[Sunsette]

So this is interesting. I don't have all my incarnates worked out on this character yet, but BR/EA DPS with Havoc Punch: 245 DPS. Without: 230 DPS. It's really amazing how much all the -res and -regen adds up. Should get a mild increase when I have my interface up to T4 from T1.

 

Furthermore, -12.5% confirmed:

[Hopeling]

Nice! If I can match that with my Beam/Elec, I'll be pretty satisfied. He only just hit 50 yesterday, so not really built out yet, but once he is we'll see.

 

Achilles and Fury of the Gladiator give -20%, right? It's strange that Annihilation is weaker for no reason, but that seems to be the trend for ranged attack sets in general.

[Bopper]

On ‎7‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 8:12 PM, Sunsette said:

So this is interesting. I don't have all my incarnates worked out on this character yet, but BR/EA DPS with Havoc Punch: 245 DPS. Without: 230 DPS. It's really amazing how much all the -res and -regen adds up. Should get a mild increase when I have my interface up to T4 from T1.

 

Furthermore, -12.5% confirmed:

Great find, that is pretty disappointing it's only 12.5%. I might have to rethink a few of my enhancement slots. Can you confirm what the duration is? I assume 10 seconds, but who knows what other changes lie beneath.

 

Edited September 7, 2019 by Bopper

[Sunsette]

Seems to be about 10 seconds but I wasn't specifically timing. 

[Hopeling]

Guys, guys... Overcharge has a base 90s recharge, not 125s. Pines is simply incorrect.

 

I kept wondering why my Overcharge would be up well before Aim, even though my build said their recharge should be within a second of each other. Apparently it's because my build is dumb, and if I had actually put some recharge in Aim, I could be using Overcharge every ~25s instead of every ~35s.

[Sunsette]

Gonna have to double check this myself, but my Aim usually recharges slightly first even though my overcharge has a lot more recharge. Recall it matching the predictions in pine's. Now am wondering if I'm crazy. 

Edited July 29, 2019 by Sunsette

[Hopeling]

This is my enhancement window:

And I just timed it with a stopwatch at 24 seconds. I have 181% global recharge, plus the 96% from slotting, so 90/(1+0.96+1.81)=23.87 is almost perfect, while the 125/(1+0.96+1.81)=33.2s recharge shown in Pine's is way off.

 

Maybe it was changed at some point, or maybe Pine's was just always wrong. Anyway, now I need to find 2 slots somewhere for recharge, haha. Maybe I'll just give upon softcapping.

[Sunsette]

yeah my memory must have been straight faulty -- it's a 90s recharge like the rest.