Spamcaster (Assault optimised for 2.0)

[Gyronamics]

Making the best of a bad dps branch.

 

Thought I might as well make this talent and attack system "official" and give others a peek into the essentially abandoned world of Assault.

 

Strictly speaking it's not bad at doing damage, not as it currently is. What it is bad at is being compared to the DPS tree beside it at which point everyone goes to play Gunnery.

 

100/110 accuracy, rest in surge

4 mods of crit, rest in power

 

I use BM +61crit/surge and EWH 120 power. Use whatever you like.

 

Old 2 set bonus of 15% crit on Charged Bolts

New 2 set bonus of 15% crit on Charged Bolts

Total of 30% crit on Charged Bolts.

 

Your talent tree is 3/10/33, for dummy parsing or fights where you do not take damage it can be 5/8/33 gaining 2 crit for the loss of pushback resistance.

 

Your attacks are extremely limited but all highly talent boosted.

 

Plasma Cell 30% crit multi, 30% boost on sub30% targets

Hammer Shot 9% buff on burning target

Charged Bolts 30% crit chance, 30% crit multi, 9% buff on burning target

High Impact Bolt 60% armour pen, 30% crit multi, 9% buff on burning target

Incendiary Round 30% crit multi, 30% boost on sub30% targets

Electronet 6000 damage for 8 ammo, yeah you can join in too.

 

Full Auto is this poisonous little red herring that is assumed to be good for you, it's not.

 

It causes ammo overflow because it barely uses any and you're never having to use Recharge Cells or Reserve Powercell.

 

This "Spamcaster" approach uses Charged Bolts exclusively for higher ammo consumption and higher damage output.

 

I use Reserve Powercell on Incendiary Round which will give a long useful buff rather than the short damage dump of Plasma Grenade which barely buffs me at all.

 

 

Sustained Spamming

 

Your priority above all else is focusing on hitting the 6s window of Ionic Accelerator.

 

You have 4.5s of lockout between procs because using a proc High Impact Bolt takes up ~1.5s. So 3 GCD e.g. 3xCB or 1xHS+2xCB.

 

You can power a burst phase every time Recharge Cells is up

 

Do not be afraid of "losing dps" by using Hammer Shots, you will screw up so badly in this tight ammo usage if you overcast when Recharge Cells is on CD.

 

 

So why is it called Spamcaster? (practical demonstration time)

 

A sustained run from today:

 

And the parse of that exact fight: http://www.torparse.com/a/252407/time/1369666169/1369666583/0/Overview

 

My best Spamcaster parse is only slightly higher: http://www.torparse.com/a/248285/time/1369363543/1369363961/0/Damage+Dealt

 

You should now understand the name.

 

I'm not in the stats I would like at the moment, waiting on L75 gear to correct my accuracy which is 99.33.

 

 

Signs you are Doing It Right

 

High APM of 40+

50% or more total damage from Charged Bolts

 

 

Signs you are Doing It Wrong

 

Gunnery level APM of 30-35

Use of Full Auto

Never using Recharge Cells

Not using Reserve Powercell enough

 

 

But It Still Isn't Parsing As High As Gunnery (no the dummy lies to you)

 

Tag on 200dps to simulate the effect of getting a 20% armour debuff and a 30% boost to DoT when a target goes sub30%.

 

Completed a L55 HM FP with some randoms within the last 10 mins, one was a DPS guardian who sometimes put his armour debuff on.

 

See what I do in a real fight: http://www.torparse.com/a/252888

 

Of particular note is the total freecast I have on the bonus boss Gil: http://www.torparse.com/a/252888/24/0/Damage+Dealt

 

 

But Gunnery Has More Survivability For The Same Damage

 

And this is why I go into challenging fights as Gunnery...

Edited May 28, 2013 by Gyronamics

[Luckeyduckey]

So even Assault can out DPS Assassins. Great...

 

Good job though.

[GeckoOBac]

Boy, that's a boring playstyle for sure!

 

Also, with spamming keys all the time like that (especially both hib and charged rounds at the same time basically), don't you get a lot of phantom activations?

 

Also, since you have a window of no proc anyway (and the proc chance on bolts is not that high), wouldn't it be better to chain charged bolts together and fire hib the gcd after the proc? Attacks tend to chain together better that way, and (for gunnery at least) I've found it ends giving you less trouble with phantom activations and false channels

[Gyronamics]

No I get no false activations.

 

IMO false activations and random GCD happen if you use channels like FA and MS, for some reason actual casts or instants don't do that for me.

 

Generally the faster you hit HIB the better because it recovers ammo and gives 1GCD of regen which can be important to keep out of medium regen.

 

Small things but I reckon it adds up.

Edited May 27, 2013 by Gyronamics

[GeckoOBac]

No I get no false activations.

 

IMO false activations and random GCD happen if you use channels like FA and MS, for some reason actual casts or instants don't do that for me.

That's not my experience but as it seems they are somewhat latency/server load related I would guess it's possible.

Spamming skills back to back usually doesn't generate false activations, but, for me, it happens quite often when switching from one cast to another (say, going full auto from a grav round chain). Not sure for hib, but in the particular case of full auto, it often happens that it starts casting for a split second and then stops if the proc isn't active, which delays my following grav round regardless (even without a false activation and related GCD), that's why I usually go grav grav proc grav full auto.

 

It does happen with instants too, though we don't have spammable ones so it happens less often, but I've seen videos of vanguards spamming ion pulse and it happened to those as well.

 

 

Generally the faster you hit HIB the better because it recovers ammo and gives 1GCD of regen which can be important to keep out of medium regen.

 

Small things but I reckon it adds up.

 

Yeah that's true ofc and sometimes that 1 gcd of regen will make the difference between using a hammer shot or not. My concern was mostly due to the slight delay you get when you bash the hib button while the CD is still up (IE expecting a proc which hasn't happened yet). In the video I do notice that sometimes you get such small delay as well (the CBs don't chain together well.), the question here is whether such small delay is more harmful in the long run than simply delaying hib a gcd, which is, I suspect, largely a philosophical question as a person playstyle will have a bigger impact than that anyway. I, for one, couldn't bear spamming those two keys like that.

[NoFishing]

Hah! I love it.

 

I've been toying with the assault tree myself a bit, figuring there just *has* to be a way to make it work, so I gave yours a couple of tries. The best I could see is about 2300 DPS, which I figure is due in equal parts to some weaker gear (my commando is 3rd or 4th in line for getting gear among my current toons), and that I sometimes fail to have a burn running, and that my crit is relatively low.

 

So I am curious, where do you plan on taking your crit % and rating to? It seems like this is a spec that requires a fairly high crit chance to take advantage of all the surge buffs.

[Gyronamics]

Interesting number fiddling behind it all but 4 mods of crit for low 200's is optimal.

 

And when I say optimal I mean it's all in your mind really.

 

I'm talking about the difference between 217 crit and 450 crit being 0.005%

 

Similar drop off if you go 0 crit.

 

But by that kind of margin, low 200's is optimal.

 

 

There are two other areas to consider.

 

1) Power is better for our untalented AOEs and anything not taking the +30% surge talent

 

2) Crit is a sneaky way to increase damage on certain things because a crit roll can't be shielded

Edited May 28, 2013 by Gyronamics

[GeckoOBac]

2) Crit is a sneaky way to increase damage on certain things because a crit roll can't be shielded

 

From what I know though, this doesn't really have any gameplay effect unless you have autocritting abilities or hitting some kind of crazy shielding chance. Besides, there's no boss that uses a shielding mechanics afaik (though there are some random npcs).

 

But, to recap, afaik the crit chance doesn't influence hit chance at all, that's only accuracy vs defense (assuming you don't have a base miss chance but that can basically be added to the enemy defense).

If an ability hits, there is then the second check that is the shield/crit mechanic, with the gimmick though (and this is the important part) that they don't push each out unless there is no chance left for a normal hit at all. Given the average crit ratings of 25%ish percent, even 30%, it means this will not (for now at least) happen, ever, even in pvp as the highest you can get your shield up atm is around 60, 65% at best, except for very short amounts of times (like, cooldowns, adrenals, procs, etc), which still leaves a 10% percent of normal hit chance, which means crit won't push shielding off.

[Gyronamics]

Mmm.

 

Well as I've mentioned the difference between 440-odd where I currently am and 0 crit is about 0.009% so there's no pressing need for me to adjust.

 

On the offchance it helps then all is good, if not, I've lost nothing at all

 

I should really calculate things for Gunnery too and see how crit is valued when only FA gets a 30% crit damage boost.

 

Been running a few ops as Spamcaster now, damage output is more than sufficient. I miss all of the reduced damage factors of Gunnery not least of all the "stole aggro" diversion which zeros the next tech/force hit and use only two of the abilities in Assault but they are highly situational.

 

Regen on incapacitation/immobility/physics effect

Flaming shield (get aggro, helps offset DPS loss from cast pushback)

 

However I can't say I'm any worse off than a 8/22/16 hybrid VG which is another attempt to make Assault relevant.

Edited May 29, 2013 by Gyronamics

[GeckoOBac]

Mmm.

 

Well as I've mentioned the difference between 440-odd where I currently am and 0 crit is about 0.009% so there's no pressing need for me to adjust.

Yeah, I'm keeping some crit as well because if nothing else it makes itemisation a little bit easier.

 

I should really calculate things for Gunnery too and see how crit is valued when only FA gets a 30% crit damage boost.

Demo round too, though FA has a bigger impact on our overall dps.

 

Been running a few ops as Spamcaster now, damage output is more than sufficient. I miss all of the reduced damage factors of Gunnery not least of all the "stole aggro" diversion which zeros the next tech/force hit and use only two of the abilities in Assault but they are highly situational.

Tbh I've seen your parses and you do more dps in any spec than me in gunnery, and I still can kill pretty much everything, so...

I still can't fathom how can you play a spec like that though, feels incredibly boring.

[Gyronamics]

I was definitely right about it being boosted a lot in raids.

 

I never 16m raid, however last night our 8m grouped with another 8m for a two guild 16m and suddenly there were armour debuffs and elemental DoTs everywhere.

 

Both of which the Spamcaster build will leech off for more damage and more efficient ammo to damage conversion.

 

So off to TFB

 

Couple of logs:

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/256890 Mutant Squirrel & DG

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/257283 Operator 9

 

Merry chaos at operator 9 with two raid groups who never met each other before but it happened eventually, there's a log of wipes somewhere too

 

Best demonstration fight is DG, no AOE fluff just single target for a 6m in a live fight with minor movement and target swapping.

Edited May 30, 2013 by Gyronamics

[Gyronamics]

Massive DPS loss now.

 

Pre-Game Update 2.0 gear that had the same set bonuses (or affected the same abilities) as Post-2.0 gear no longer stacks the bonus effects. The first set bonus placed on the character will take affect but the second one will not.

[NoFishing]

Massive DPS loss now.

 

Yeah. The 8% boost to HiB will help some, given how often it gets hit compared to gunnery, but clearly not enough to make up for the loss of 15% crit on CB. Although gunnery should get hit just as badly by that, right?

[Gyronamics]

Yeah. The 8% boost to HiB will help some, given how often it gets hit compared to gunnery, but clearly not enough to make up for the loss of 15% crit on CB. Although gunnery should get hit just as badly by that, right?

 

Spamcaster Assault is over 50% damage from CB, straight Gunnery is 30-35% from Grav even with double 2 set.

 

The move to HiB is worth less to Gunnery but they also lose less.

 

But the move to HiB doesn't equal the loss to CB for Spamcaster Assault.

[GeckoOBac]

Spamcaster Assault is over 50% damage from CB, straight Gunnery is 30-35% from Grav even with double 2 set.

 

The move to HiB is worth less to Gunnery but they also lose less.

 

But the move to HiB doesn't equal the loss to CB for Spamcaster Assault.

 

Not sure about spamcaster, but with average crit multiplier rating, the loss is roughly 1, 2% total damage, and that's without considering the boost in stats you get from having 72 (or soon 75) armorings compared to 63.

 

Napkin math say that a 15% loss in crit should equate to roughly 6.75% dmg loss (asuming 50% dmg comes from CB). The dmg you conversely gain from HIB depends mostly on the composition of your total damage, but assuming a (VERY HIGH) 20% total damage from HIB, you'd gain 1.6% damage there, for a net loss of 5.15% dmg. It likely is more than that, even considering the better armorings in going full 4 piece bonus, because I doubt HIB reaches 20% of your total damage.

[Gyronamics]

My calculations say a bit over 5% lost even when HiB is increased by 8%

 

About 150dps lost on the maximum, in practical terms, take all previous parses and remove a bit over 100dps from it.

 

What a drag.

[GeckoOBac]

My calculations say a bit over 5% lost even when HiB is increased by 8%

 

About 150dps lost on the maximum, in practical terms, take all previous parses and remove a bit over 100dps from it.

 

What a drag.

 

Yeah compatible with my napkin math of roughly 5.15% dps loss

 

But... You shouldn't be surprised really, the double set bonus thing was going to be temporarily anyway.

Edited May 31, 2013 by GeckoOBac

[oaceen]

i tried this as full assault with just HIB > AP > CB mostly and found the rotation a lot better. over about 10min, there was only one time i tried to use HIB and the dummy wasn't burning, but it start burning 1s later from AP

 

i found using RC on PG still allowed me to use IR because otherwise i would have filled up on ammo before casting the next CB

 

 

i also like that my ammo isn't so sporadic. using a full assault rotation utlizing every skill, i find myself fluctuating between full and half ammo quite a lot. a big problem i have with it is that unless FA puts me into a lower regen, using HIB afterwards puts me at too much ammo, so i feel i have to use FA at 7 or less ammo, but if it doesn't reset HIB, i'm screwed. if i reset it at 8 ammo, i have to cast CB or AP before HIB or i feel i'm wasting ammo regen.

 

 

 

i think the main reason i like this is because FA is, in actually, an unreliable proc for HIB because of the chance to reset only being at the beginning of the cast (plus with CB's reset happens at the end of its GCD, the timing is really unintuitive for me).

so many times i find myself holding back casting FA or not using it at all because i know it's within the 6s lockout or i'm not at a good place with ammo. and now with the CD lowered to 12s, it's exactly double the lockout. it can only be used on CD if HIB is absolutely reset on CD, which is basically impossible.

 

maybe if they changed it so that FA had a separate chance each tick of the channel, i'd like it a lot more, because even though it has a less % chance, i feel CB is just a more reliable skill to reset HIB.

Edited May 31, 2013 by oaceen

[Gyronamics]

Completed SV HM with it despite the nerfs.

 

However as mentioned at the start and probably a few times after, this cannot be considered viable over Gunnery if no one else is bringing an armour debuff

 

Which is why for the city sneaking fight I'm in Gunnery where I need to solo a patrol with a healer backing me, however on reflection it was not necessary and it could also have been done as Assault albeit with lower damage.

 

Here's my logs to rummage through: http://www.torparse.com/a/272581

 

Ballsed up the dps on the final kill by badly overloading my ammo (as opposed to correctly overloading my ammo in prep for ammo recovery moments), the one where I died during enrage was far more controlled and we would have had the git if I hadn't been cut down early, missed it by about 30k.

 

The council fight was and always has been like shooting fish in a barrel, purely single target is still over 2600.

 

In related news I gained a 72MH in that raid so my output should increase a bit more again since at least 80% of my damage is ranged.

 

With new 4set and new MH I've seen 9k HiB when adrenals are going AND an armour debuff from someone of course.

 

If you compare solo dummy damage (most recent): http://www.torparse.com/a/273522/time/1370578045/1370578464/0/Overview ...to fight damage you'll see it translates very closely to live raid damage, all the negative DPS aspects of a raid are reversed by the DPS boosts of armour pen, mooching off other players elemental burns and the odd transcendence.

 

Notes for tuning:

 

Full Auto can be used but it should not be part of the rotation. Should be seen as an idling tool to tide you over between procs only if you do not have the regen tools available to power the main casting.

 

I've changed my use of Reserve Powercell back to to Plasma Grenade instead of Incendiary for heavier burst damage.

 

Spamcaster lives on with the last assault commando

Edited June 7, 2013 by Gyronamics

[GeckoOBac]

I commend your dedication and your skill, how you can even bear to play this spec is beyond my imagination

[Gyronamics]

I commend your dedication and your skill, how you can even bear to play this spec is beyond my imagination

 

It's simpler, all-instant attacks are more responsive, I get to be a special snowflake, ammo control is smoother and the work needed to keep up damage decreases in a raid.

 

Small things which add up to make it a reliable damage producer.

 

If only the defensive talent side wasn't so outright poor it would be good to go.

 

Something like a secondary short duration but high mitigation shield to make amends for gunnery having better permanent damage reduction.

 

 

I do get some confusion from related class players. Not other classes because they often have no idea what troopers do anyway. But from troopers who know enough about other troopers to know I'm playing it funny but not enough to know what I'm really doing.

 

Worst mess was from an Assault VG who told me to use my Incendiary Round in a FP, I explained I was using his multiple dots to buff myself, he then promptly respecced to Tactics so I couldn't steal his DoTs.

 

Uhh. Teamwork.

Edited June 7, 2013 by Gyronamics

[GeckoOBac]

Worst mess was from an Assault VG who told me to use my Incendiary Round in a FP, I explained I was using his multiple dots to buff myself, he then promptly respecced to Tactics so I couldn't steal his DoTs.

 

Uhh. Teamwork.

 

AHAHAHA! Genius!

 

But anyway, I get all that, I simply couldn't bear to smash that one, two keys repeatedly so hard all the time Poor keyboard would need a replacement soon!

[respwn]

I cant seem to get to the talent tree build link. Is that link broken for anyone else?

[GeckoOBac]

Works fine for me

[Gyronamics]

3/10/33 works

5/8/33 also works

 

Try on a different browser?