Good points. The ambivalence of Hellfire is in my opinion actually exploitable. On very short fights, you can just afford to dump energy regardless of the grenades, and grenades will eventually proc by themselves and get consumed. On some longer fights, you can start micromanaging it a bit (namely, i’d put scenario bosses in this example), so i’d put this into flexibility.
In an endgame context, the biggest problem in my opinion with blade is that it brings nothing to the table in a party besides damage. The problem now exists as well with fists. For me, if a build doesn’t bring any utility whatsoever, and is even more constrained in terms of active ability slots (Spirit Blade slot tax), it has to compensate that by bringing a superior DPS. Blade does not bring that unfortunately, nor fists after Primal Instinct nerf.
Another issue with blade is in its mechanics: it has no way to dump energy fast, it cannot burst. In dungeons, it doesn’t matter that much most of the time, but it does in raids - any short burst windows and downtimes hurt blade’s DPS more than hammer’s. For example, in the Eidolon NM raid in TSW, the regular Eidolon phases were basically 10s burst windows - it depended greatly on the fact that DA/BS contributed a lot in that, and if Eidolon gets ever released again, i don’t think the situation will be THAT extreme, but the point still stands.
Moreover, hammer basically brings so much to the table: burst AoE / AoE stun / AoE interrupt / AoE purge / AoE exposed, that’s with Eruption, and the power of cooldowns (Seethe) and ability to dump energy very quickly, which just makes the weapon pretty much superior to anything else in terms of utility (the extras come from, for instance, the ability to quickly oneshot bomber adds in Polaris 5, where basically only KSR can really rival). A cooldown-based and bursty weapon/build is also less prone to loss of DPS due to downtime issues, since you can exploit short burst windows better than everything else.
Blade is a ramping sustain DPS weapon, and does not bring any utility, despite actually being capable of bringing good DPS. Fists are less affected by the issue and is also a bursty weapon, but its DPS has been overnerfed. I feel like Blade and Fists have serious design flaws that now make them more of a niche or solo weapons than weapons for group content : for fists, the top elite is basically never used because of its lack of real utility, clunkiness and subpar damage, and only Primal Instinct is worth using because of that. Same issue with blade and Four Seasons. For the rest, the are no other worthwhile cooldowns with Blade, and Ferocity for fists got pretty much killed instead of just being bugfixed, so these weapons are now in a clunky state, unfortunately. Hammer, on the contrary, can use both Eruption and Unstoppable Force (old bursty hammer/fists Savagery build), and scale tremendously with Opening Shot and Savagery.
I’m reading that guide now. Thanks!
I got a 2-star Soviet Techsword off the AH, since its special seemed custom made for making SB easy to maintain, and frees up a skill slot (seriously, why is the main mechanic of the weapon an optional skill and not built-in?)
That’s a very good analysis of the current state of melee weapons. Hopefully anyone planning on running end-game group content as melee will scroll down into the comments and catch it. I feel like it deserves its own post somewhere.
The balance issues with hammer’s design are even more glaring when you consider that hammer’s rage mechanic is also the easiest to manage, and the most consistent, with no risk of messing up.
I’d rather use hammer as benchmark instead. Honestly, all the melee weapon specialties are pretty straightforward compared to ranged specialties, and that is probably intentional to keep ranged in a decent spot considering they have uptime advantage (on paper). There’s nothing special to do to keep good uptimes with Spirit Blade either, nor it is hard to go into Frenzied Wrath with fists (it is really one of the easiest to manage since Frenzied Wrath bursts are always fixed rotations - Maim, then spam Ravage, basically). Same goes for chaos - the only tricky part is the execution of the burst rotation, but just like for fists, it’s always the exact same fixed rotation of abilities, and for the rest between cooldowns, it’s just ability spam. Hammer has some tricks with energy / rage pooling between bursts (especially when Opening Shot and/or Savagery are present), especially evident when you add Fast & Furious management.
- Added note explaining the numbers in parentheses beside ability names.
Just here to say THANK YOU!
I really appreciate your work and can’t wait to test some of it! 
Question on Elementalism Focus: Frozen Figurine -
The Frozen figurine will increase cooling from cooling abilities by 50 (I think is the latest). It also increases damage from Cooling abilities by 71%.
My question is how this works with Overpower? Overpower seems to separate the cooling portion from the Fire/Electrical portion that actually causes damage. But it’s still one ability.
Does the damage from Overpower get affected by the effects of the Frozen Figurine?
I tried it out just now. The description of Frozen Figurine, and the damage stated in the tooltip of Overload with Frozen Figurine equipped, aren’t accurate.
For Overload, Frozen Figurine only increases the damage of the first hit (the “cold portion”). So it seems Frozen Figurine only increases the cold damage of your elementalism abilities (not all damage of cold-related abilities).
That’s what I was afraid of.
The description of Overload seems to separate the Cooling and damaging aspects of the ability. And the way Frozen Figurine was worded, it made it questionable whether or not it would affect the damaging portion of Overload.
Thank you for the research and reply! Much appreciated! (I was stuck at work and needed to ask that question while it was fresh in my mind!)
- Changed passives for the generic build template (for primary) and the Stormbringer build template (for secondary).
- Changed recommended extraordinary weapons, to remove rare-quality cache weapons which weren’t strictly better than more-common weapons. (The old recommendations remain acceptable choices.)
- Added a Orochi Thermal Inverter build template (for secondary).
- Changed recommended extraordinary weapons, to remove rare-quality cache weapons which weren’t strictly better than more-common weapons. (The old recommendations remain acceptable choices.)
- Changed passives for the generic build template (for primary).
- Changed recommended extraordinary weapons, to remove epic-quality cache weapons which weren’t strictly better than more-common weapons. (The old recommendations remain acceptable choices.)
- Removed the Sov-Tech Harmonisers build template (for primary), as its increased difficulty was not commensurate with increased performance.
What would be the best build for a Slayer type? Pathfinder lists a Slayer as a combo of a Ranger and a Rogue, but all of them use blades in some form. Here would that be Blade/AR or AR/Pistols? Just trying to gear up here…looking for the most generic build possible so that way it is versatile and adaptable as well. If an AR is needed, prefer one without grenades…that mechanic is hard to master…rather just point and shoot to get the job done silently and quickly as possible. Thanks very much for this guide and any build advice you all may have.
That’s an interesting question. The fantasy archetypes I provided were mainly based on the character classes in World of Warcraft—rather than on pen-and-paper RPG’s—as I realized they matched up quite cleanly to the weapons in Secret World Legends.
An assault rifle build without grenades is possible using the Hellfire Assault Launcher weapon, but neglecting grenades is not recommended for end-game group content, as you’d be giving up a lot of damage output. If you’re not concerned with end-game group content, then it’s not a problem.
If you pair it with dual pistols, you gain the ability to debuff enemies using Trick Shot and Kill Blind (although there isn’t much need for debuffing in solo content), and Trick Shot is a better elite than assault rifle’s Red Mist. If you pair it with blade, you gain the melee weapon aesthetic, but it’ll be important to get a Stormbringer or Soviet Techsword to ensure adequate damage output. Both dual pistols and blade have a strong healing active, so survivability won’t be a concern.
If you have other RP-related requirements in mind, you might want to try posting a new thread to get some input from the RP community around here.
For shotgun offhand shouldn’t the ifritian be recommended over the SPES or at least alongside it?
I didn’t include Ifritian Despoiler originally because it requires high crit chance on top of high combat power to benefit from its extraordinary effect, and it wasn’t trivial to calculate whether the damage would eventually surpass SPES-C221. And since this guide is targeted towards people who are still soloing their way through the story, whose crit chance is likely a single-digit number, I decided to simply leave it out.
If you have data indicating it eventually becomes better than SPES-C221, I’d greatly appreciate it.
For the sake of your guide, there’s no situation where the Ifritian surpasses the SPES-C221. For endgame fully geared people, the Ifritian can surpass SPES-C221, particularly for bursty weapons such as hammer, but most of the time they have similar outputs.
Thanks for the input. I’ll trust your own numbers support this.
I’ll add it in with the note that it requires high crit chance, like I already do for a few other weapons which eventually become best-in-slot, so people are aware of them.
- Changed recommended extraordinary weapons, to add weapons which eventually become best-in-slot for high-tier end-game group content.
- Changed recommended extraordinary weapons, to add weapons which eventually become best-in-slot for high-tier end-game group content.
- Added recommended signets.
- Changed recommended extraordinary weapons, to add weapons from the Oni War Cache.