Hi all!
I’d like to talk a bit about group buffs.
Opening Shot
As it stands, according to the simulations, for a maxed out KSR/Inverter build, Crystallized Blaze brings around 4k DPS out of 44k total (under exposed, passive tradeoff included). Enabling Opening Shot as a buff for this build brings on average around 1.7k extra DPS, which means that it is worth dropping Crystallized Blaze in favour of a shotgun with Opening Shot (for the best case of 4 DPS in the group being fully maxed KSR/Inverter, we’d have 1700 x 3 + 1200 = 6300 DPS brought by OS, 1200 here being the DPS gain of the person who uses OS - in exchange of a 4k DPS loss).
For hammer however, notably for a Maul / Inverter build, we’re also loosing around 4k DPS by abandoning Blaze in favour of shotgun + OS, so OS would be worth considering. In addition to that, on average, for any hammer build, OS brings at least 2.2k DPS, which could go really higher because of the fact that hammer has a stronger burst potential than a KSR build.
Finally, for Warped Visage DPS builds, dropping Blaze represents only around a 2.2k DPS loss due to not only 1 extra passive being freed (in this case, Butterfly Effect), but also 1 extra global every ~21s being done by chaos contributing a lot more than other weapons for the chaos DPS due to how the chaos specialty works. Warped Visage DPS builds are, therefore, the builds of choice to roll Opening Shot with.
Obviously, other factors exist:
- OS should be carried by any non maxed out DPS.
- OS should be carried by anyone who does not have a Signet of Nemain maxed out, since this is the biggest factor of the damage provided by Crystallized Blaze.
- OS should be carried by anyone who isn’t experienced with proper Blaze placement.
- OS should carried by anyone not playing the meta DPS builds (hammer or rifle).
I keep seeing Blazes being missplaced very often in any group content, resulting in a huge DPS loss. In this scenario, OS should be considered instead. The Blaze placement mistakes often come from a mix of lack of knowledge of given fight mechanics, lack of proactive gameplay and/or the simple ground targeting option being checked, which removes the ability to control precisely the Blaze placement.
A great example of Blaze placement would be Machine Tyrant. Depending on your group DPS, the fight goes as follows: at the beginning, 1 or 2 Crystallized Blazes on the boss which should be immobile for their duration, then 1 Blaze on the middle BEFORE the boss reaches the middle. After that, it’s a rotation of 1 Blaze on the boss, and 1 Blaze in the middle.
The boss should be moved to new Anima Wells between Blaze timings, and Blazes should be placed as soon as the boss is immobile and won’t be moved because of circles in the next ~10s.
If your group is unable to capitalize on Blaze timings on Machine Tyrant, then consider bringing OS instead, and even different offhands than Inverter or Shunt.
Glaciate
According to simulations, regardless of the build used, with a maxed out gear, Glaciate provides around 380 DPS per person (under exposed). For a typical KSR/Inverter build using Blizzard, we’d get a DPS loss of ~1800 DPS by slotting Ice Beam + Glaciate instead of Blizzard + Secondary Explosion (the rest of the passives are: Stability, Slow Burn, Heavy Payload, Crystallized Blaze). Ice Beam becomes worth slotting with at least 5 DPS fully taking advantage of the debuff for its entire 5s duration, so only in the context of a raid like a regional farming session.
I won’t consider Ice Beam viable for NY raid since the uptime on Glaciate and the cooldown usage of Ice Beam is likely not optimal at all and Ice Beam is a downgrade from the CC department, where Blizzard or High Explosive Grenade would be a smarter choice for Colossi / pods (for the latter, HEG is obviously the go-to elite).
Potency Enigma & The Redeemer
Quick summary: with a generous 10% uptime (it’s usually lower, even with the Long Term Chaos passive), for a maxed out gear and a regular chaos focus, the enigma brings on average 500 DPS, and around 700 with the Enigmatic Apparatus. The DPS brought by the enigma is worth it for a Warped Visage / Inverter chaos DPS build. Crystallized Blaze can be swapped for OS for a loss of ~2.2k DPS (one more passive and one more global every 21s used on chaos = more paradoxes generated).
The Redeemer brings around 900 DPS with the assumption of a reload every 7s of either Uranium Depleted shells or the Armor-Piercing shells (depending on the abilities and passives used, this is a more or less a realistic consideration). In the context of bufftanking, it is then better to roll Redeemer / Sanity’s Aphelion instead of going chaos primary.
Beatdown
Beatdown is the strongest debuff in the game for hammer and rifle main builds where the energy value is the highest - it is essentially a raid-wide cobra ring debuff for 6s, which grants on average an extra 4.5 energy.
I’d advise to use Blindside interrupt with Beatdown passive for the following dungeon bosses (at least): Pol1, Pol6, HE6, HR4, HR5, DW1. It is obviously possible to use it on even more bosses, but the listed ones are those where i see tanks going for Evulsion or an interrupt gadget the most often. The idea is the following: as a tank, as soon as you take Evulsion for a given encounter, ask yourself if you can’t instead go for Blindside + Beatdown.