Force Cascade's optimal circumstances

glortor

Hey, the title is the question. What stats, passives, toggles and other interactions such as powers and spec trees make the best of Force Cascade - arguably the best ranged power in the game?

flowcyto

I already gave ya some advice in private, so I'll just wait for others to step in w/ their prefs or experiences regarding FC builds. Like Might or Muni, it seems like many players have their own fave builds for it.

cyrone

The current build for my FC user has been retconned to use EGO/Con/Rec with Night Warrior and still manages to fire off full charges without Energy Forms (whether they be passives or AO's). Making use of Avenger and Vindicator specs and is capable of nailing targets for 20k+ (still). An energy form, Int, and/or End is not a necessity to FC builds.

avianos

cyrone wrote: »

The current build for my FC user has been retconned to use EGO/Con/Rec with Night Warrior and still manages to fire off full charges without Energy Forms (whether they be passives or AO's). Making use of Avenger and Vindicator specs and is capable of nailing targets for 20k+ (still). An energy form, Int, and/or End is not a necessity to FC builds.

Are you using some specific Energy Unlock for this Build? MSA? Overdrive? Dark Transfussion?​​

cyrone

avianos said:

cyrone wrote: »

The current build for my FC user has been retconned to use EGO/Con/Rec with Night Warrior and still manages to fire off full charges without Energy Forms (whether they be passives or AO's). Making use of Avenger and Vindicator specs and is capable of nailing targets for 20k+ (still). An energy form, Int, and/or End is not a necessity to FC builds.

Are you using some specific Energy Unlock for this Build? MSA? Overdrive? Dark Transfussion?​​

Here is my latest build for Nova Remnant.

PowerHouse http://powerhouse.nullware.com/

Link to this build: http://powerhouse.nullware.com/powerhouse.html?v=11&n=Nova Remnant&d=1537b537PWN6013300031033303DC07370438003E033D033G038800QJ01F604EI057G000CFo3VNY2Lxr

Name: Nova Remnant

Archetype: Freeform

Super Stats:
Level 6: Ego (Primary)
Level 10: Constitution (Secondary)
Level 15: Recovery (Secondary)

Talents:
Level 1: The Scourge
Level 6: Indomitable
Level 9: Enduring
Level 12: Tireless
Level 15: Quick Recovery
Level 18: Wordly
Level 21: Ascetic

Powers:
Level 1: Force Bolts
Level 1: Force Blast (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 6: Force Eruption (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 8: Night Warrior (Rank 2, Rank 3, Silent Running)
Level 11: Force Shield (Force Sheathe)
Level 14: Force Geyser
Level 17: Force Detonation (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 20: Force Cascade (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 23: Gravity Driver (Rank 2, Rank 3)
Level 26: Concentration
Level 29: Rebirth (Rank 2)
Level 32: Ego Placate (Svengali's Guile)
Level 35: Ego Surge (Rank 2, Nimble Mind)
Level 38: Molecular Self-Assembly

Travel Powers:
Level 6: Athletics
Level 35: Flight (Rank 2, Rank 3)

Specializations:
Ego: Mental Endurance (3/3)
Ego: Insight (2/3)
Ego: Follow Through (3/3)
Ego: Exploit Opening (2/2)
Avenger: Ruthless (2/2)
Avenger: Round 'em Up (3/3)
Avenger: Surprise Attack (2/2)
Avenger: Preemptive Strike (3/3)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: The Rush of Battle (3/3)
Vindicator: Focused Strikes (2/3)
Vindicator: Mass Destruction (2/3)
Mastery: Ego Mastery (1/1)

*Edit: The link will show Energy Storm in Gravity Driver's place. Made the change manually.

cyrone

Also to note, in addition to the 20k+ FC crits, this build also manages 14k+ crits on Gravity Driver. Not sure why people say that power doesn't do good damage.

*Edit: Also, this character has only one piece of Legion's gear (crit chance primary). The other two primaries are still Heroic.

darqaura2

cyrone said:

Also to note, in addition to the 20k+ FC crits, this build also manages 14k+ crits on Gravity Driver. Not sure why people say that power doesn't do good damage.

*Edit: Also, this character has only one piece of Legion's gear (crit chance primary). The other two primaries are still Heroic.

People say Gravity Driver doesn't do good damage? Weird. That has not been my experience in the three builds I have it on.

avianos

cyrone wrote: »

Also to note, in addition to the 20k+ FC crits, this build also manages 14k+ crits on Gravity Driver. Not sure why people say that power doesn't do good damage.

*Edit: Also, this character has only one piece of Legion's gear (crit chance primary). The other two primaries are still Heroic.

I do almost the same damage in a build which use INT primary and Stormbringer, My guess is that some people are still bittered that Devs fixed the Hella-Broken -200% -300% Resistance Debuff. Yes there are actual players ingame that wanted the power to be broken
or people are still bittered that we get powers from lockboxes

Gravity Driver is really GOOD Ultimate, i really don't see how people say it's bad

Thanks for sharing your build, I have plans to make a Force Warlock build in the future ​​

cyrone

darqaura2 said:

cyrone said:

Also to note, in addition to the 20k+ FC crits, this build also manages 14k+ crits on Gravity Driver. Not sure why people say that power doesn't do good damage.

*Edit: Also, this character has only one piece of Legion's gear (crit chance primary). The other two primaries are still Heroic.

People say Gravity Driver doesn't do good damage? Weird. That has not been my experience in the three builds I have it on.

It's what I've gathered from remarks that have been made to me in game in regards to the amount of damage I throw around with it.

theravenforce

Personally?

I use FC on an all force build and it works pretty well.

I try not to use it too much though, for my own weird reasons but I really like it on an all force build, I use Personal Force Field on that build. I make use of the defensive passive (PFF) but it's not for everyone. Others may prefer to use an offensive passive like Quarry or use another type of passive.

I've used it in conjunction with IDF/Concentration/IDF + Concentration and also without a toggle. Generally speaking it deals 7-14.7k dependant on crits or not. Top end without crits is usually 9k or 10k, with crits it goes to 14k. I don't make use of Active Offensives or offensive boost spec trees like Avenger Tree on that build purely based on my own reasons. (I don't use AO's that much across my characters actually).

Another couple of builds I have it on, I use AoPM for both, one is a "magic/sorcery focused" build, the other is pure force. Their damage values are a little lower generally, for unknown reasons.

As for Gravity Driver, it's a fantastic Ultimate.

All three builds use MSA energy unlock. EGO is great for obvious reasons, so I would advise going with that on a force cascade build, or at the very least, having a good amount of it, somewhere between 300 and 410 is ideal to blow enemies away.

You can make very good use of EGO's Insight spec and pair this with Recovery in order to fire off multiple FC's be it full charges or spams. If you do pair these two, be sure to pick up Force Sheathe and always make sure you're taking some form of damage to keep your energy up whilst spamming or otherwise.

nbkxs

I use AOPM, cuz having your passive eaten up for some bit of time is unacceptable in terms of DPS, and survive. AOPM with 1 rec mod gives you just enough ammo to fire it from a standstill w/int ss secondary.​​

chuckwolf

I Personally use Ego, End and Rec as my superstats. Make sure I have the energy refraction advantage on the Energy builder. and charge it whenever the refraction bubble pops/

vonqball

I'm leveling an Invulnerability, Might/Force hero. Force Blast->Cascade is my big damage spike. The preemptive strike talent from the avenger tree gives a nice boost to Cascade's damage. I'm aiming for a rotation of Demolish->FB->FC vs big bads.

chuckwolf

nbkxs said:

I use AOPM, cuz having your passive eaten up for some bit of time is unacceptable in terms of DPS, and survive. AOPM with 1 rec mod gives you just enough ammo to fire it from a standstill w/int ss secondary.​​

I use PFF as my passive for that very reason, yes I lose a bit on damage by being in balanced role but having Ego as primary makes up for some of that and I don't lose my passive on a Cascade. I value survivability over pure damage any day. Though having to rely on refraction popping is a slight pain... I miss the days when Field Surge was an energy form. That way you could get protection, a 15% damage bonus and a cost discount on cascade all on a single power activation. Now it's just the first 2, no discount.

chaelk

you don't lose the passive because the force bolts bubble counts as an energy form, when I understand it's not meant to .​​

theravenforce

Energy Refraction is meant to count as an Energy Form...I don't ever recall Field Surge being an Energy Form...possibly turning into one with the Power Surge advantage but outside of that it's always been a Containment Field AD.

Generally speaking you don't need Energy Refraction/An Energy Form/END to use Cascade anyway.

cyrone

chaelk said:

you don't lose the passive because the force bolts bubble counts as an energy form, when I understand it's not meant to .​​

theravenforce said:

Energy Refraction is meant to count as an Energy Form...I don't ever recall Field Surge being an Energy Form...possibly turning into one with the Power Surge advantage but outside of that it's always been a Containment Field AD.

Generally speaking you don't need Energy Refraction/An Energy Form/END to use Cascade anyway.

Energy Refraction has always counted as an Energy Form and Field Surge counted way back in the day.

chuckwolf

theravenforce said:

Energy Refraction is meant to count as an Energy Form...I don't ever recall Field Surge being an Energy Form...possibly turning into one with the Power Surge advantage but outside of that it's always been a Containment Field AD.

Generally speaking you don't need Energy Refraction/An Energy Form/END to use Cascade anyway.

Field surge was in the very early stages of the game, it use to be you could trigger it for the discount, and the damage bonus, for a nice alpha strike... then when free for all came along they changed it for some reason, then again I'm one of the longtime vets. Been here since CO went retail.

theravenforce

chuckwolf said:

Field surge was in the very early stages of the game, it use to be you could trigger it for the discount, and the damage bonus, for a nice alpha strike... then when free for all came along they changed it for some reason, then again I'm one of the longtime vets. Been here since CO went retail.

Don't get me wrong, it's more than likely I don't remember using it because I was mostly into Telepathy, moreso than Force.

But honestly, I'm happy they made the change. Nothing like your active defensive stripped by a boss or another player...or swallowed up in an attack.

pantagruel01

I'd pretty much favor just removing the entire energy form interaction from Force Cascade at this point; all it does is mean "nope, no way am I taking Kinetic Manipulation on a Force Cascade user".

chaelk

my gimp can get force cascade to go off, ok their energy bar has to be full but they can do it​​

magpieuk2014

Stacking the Universe in Balance buff during the Hi-Pan alert is always fun, too.

Your Force Cascade deals 22026 (21390) Crushing Damage to Hi Pan.